Arrrrr.

The public certainly seems to agree with AGW. Advertising works. If you contend that the current paradigm is AGW in the public’s mind, I would agree. But that’s not what I was referring to, and I don’t think steamtracker was either.

The current paradigm – among scientists – is a healthy and overwhelming skepticism of the AGW conjecture: click

Generally I agree with your synopsis of the paper. I’m agnostic on the possible influence of GHG on ocean heat content, there’s science to support conduction of heat from warmer air into the seas. The gotcha is this:

TSI & total solar phenomenological influence (that’d be TSI + cosmic rays) seem to coincide strongly with total global warming, with avg TSI levels decreasing circa 1992 – date. Since latent heating is characteristic of the oceanic “heat bucket” the post-1998 situation has seen a temperature plateau consistent with both the gradual reduction in solar effects and the massive heat release from the ’98 el Nino.

Research shows the recorded TSI levels of the 1950′s – 1980′s was markedly higher than previous imputed TSI, suggesting that a great deal of the ocean & air heating was from the unusually active sun. Lief Svalgaard however thinks that historical TSI proxies are underestimating TSI prior to the 1950′s, and if we are to recalibrate them then the sun might be exculpated from most of the extra warming of last 50 years. Svalgaard is cautious however, and in light of the recent temperature plateau (sea & air), I’d lean toward the former analysis, implicating the sun in at least 30 percent of the warming until 1998, if not 50.

If sea temperatures were going consistently up while air temperatures were plateaued, then I’d be quite ready to implicate GHGs with the seas sponging up heat conducted from the air, esp. in light of a still-dimming sun. But instead we see neither accelerated warming of either the air or seas with the sun still dimming.

Intuitively this leaves me with a quandary (as I shift my spot along the fence…): Which force is most dominant?

Mindless nonsense. Back-radiation warming cannot occur. The emissivities of the surface are 1000 times greater than those of the GHGs.

The atmosphere warms the surface by conduction. The heat capacity of the atmosphere is 1/2000th that of the oceans.

I’m going to side with streamtracker (note the “r”) on associating “paradigm” with the AGW hypothesis (presuming that he was also). If there was ever an apt application of the Kuhnian concept of “normal science” and a “reigning paradigm” it is AGW. Just look at the flap that took place with the APS recently. Most “scientific societies” have issued statements supporting the AGW hypothesis. I have recently read numerous papers on “natural climate variability” (since I’m researching the issue myself) and these days any paper that alleges natural climate variability is likely to have a qualifier along the lines of “but this doesn’t disprove AGW,” or “but this is merely masking AGW.”

Now, you might ask when did the revolution — from “natural climate variability” to “AGW” take place? It was gradual. And I suspect it was originally benign, in the sense that proponents had no idea that it would become the storm of contention it is today. The early proponents probably just looked at it as a way to make their research “relevant to public policy.” Nobody does science for its own sake any more. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but you don’t get grant money to doing science for its own sake. You have to justify the research you are doing somehow. How are you going to justify research in natural climate variability? Actually, I can think of a few ways. But somewhere, some time ago, somebody opened the flood gates for grant money on the impact of rising CO2, and here we are today with AGW as a dominant paradigm of normal science for climate studies.

I have on my desk — because of the research into natural climate variability I’m doing — a book, well a compendium of studies published by the Natural Research Council, entitled Natural Climate Variability on Decade-to-Century Time Scales published in 1995. In it is an interesting paper by Keeling and Worf entitle “Decadal Oscillations in Global Temperature and Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.” The final words of the article? “Financial support came from the National Science Foundation via Grant …. and from the U.S. Department of Energy via Grant ….”

To do science these days, you have to sell it. And for a long time, selling it as investigating AGW has paid off, making it a paradigm of normal science in climate studies.

Basil

Smokey — “I would be interested in a citation.”

***

As would I. This sounds like one of those “we lose 32 species every week” claims that is merely a WAG. Since he said “we” it wouldn’t appear as if he’s claiming natural seepage.

Would it increase at all? The entire surface area would be losing the heat as fast as the tiny concentrated point from the hairdryer could heat it.

Greenland has stopped its net melting.

Steamtracker:

the oceans are cooling.

Someone didn’t pay the heating bill obviously. Sorry, no AGW disaster until the bills get paid.

Next, concerning a possible deep ocean heat source, this article mentions the recent and unexpected discovery of hundreds of thousands of new undersea volcanoes. We don’t know enough about this heat/CO2 source to even begin to model it, much less come up with empirical measurements.

steamtracker:

“This looks like a paper that will help us refine our understanding of the climate system, but it will not overturn the current paradigm.”

What ‘paradigm’ is that? I hope you’re not referring to the AGW/climate catastrophe hypothesis as the current paradigm. The ‘current paradigm’ is natural climate variability. The relatively new AGW/runaway global warming hypothesis has been put forth, but as you can see throughout these threads, it has been falsified in numerous ways. It would not supersede natural climate variability as the ‘current paradigm’ unless it had withstood falsification. Please correct me if I didn’t understand what you were referring to when you said ‘current paradigm.’ If I misunderstood, I apologize.

Julian Flood:

“We spill enough oil on the ocean every two weeks to cover it completely.”

I would be interested in a citation. Are you referring to covering the oceans with a one molecule thick layer of oil, or some similar miniscule amount? If so, I have two questions:

1. Is that tiny thickness enough to create the calm swathes of ocean you mentioned, and as you stated, to cause waves to break with less force?

2. Since human caused oil spills are now even more infrequent than in past decades, are you taking into account natural oil seepage, which occurs constantly, and greatly exceeds anything humans do?

Finally, Evan, International Talk Like A Pirate Day isn’t until Sept. 19th. Are you practicing up?

Over and out.

Anyway the obvious flaw in this paper is the ‘assumption’ that increased humidity over land results from increased SSTs despite a lack of clear evidence that SSTs have in fact increased.

There is an altogether simpler explanation for increased humidity over land – irrigation over 600,000,000 acres.

(I’ve looked around for a direct link but haven’t found one)

I remember eading somewhere that early this year the rate of increase had slowed markedly. I’m just wondering if this trend had continued.

Reply: Click here ~charles the moderator

Meanwhile, it is interesting that modelling with observed ocean temperatures and assumed physics appears to give somewhat different outcomes than scenario-based modelling with assumed physics.