By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Tom Karl’s paper (Karl et al. 2015) purporting to abolish the global-warming pause, recently published in Science, may be partly my fault. I first ran across the National Climatic Data Center’s (NCDC) accident-prone director in a Congressional hearing room in about 2009, when I was the witness for the Republicans, Karl for the Democrats.
I showed the energy and environment committee a graph showing the mean of the temperature anomalies from the three terrestrial and two satellite datasets. The graph showed that in the first eight years of the 21st century the Earth had cooled:
Representative Joe Barton of Texas, the formidable Republican ranking member of the House climate committee, feigned astonishment. He rounded on Karl and said: “You and other officials have made repeated appearances before this committee in recent months, telling us over and over again about “global warming”. Not one of you has ever told us that there has been global cooling throughout the past seven or eight years. Why not? Or is Lord Monckton lying to us?”
Tom Karl, who was sitting next to me, looked as though he wished the “warming” Earth would swallow him up. He shifted from one well-padded butt-cheek to the other. He harrumphed, “Er, ah, well, that is, we wouldn’t have quite – oof – um – done the calculations that way, aaahh… We wouldn’t have averaged the anomalies from – umf – multiple datasets with different fields of coverage, err – aaagh…”
Karl was Saved by the Bell (perhaps he saw himself in the role of Screech to my Zack Morris in the hit 90s teen TV series). A division was called and proceedings were suspended while Hon. Members shuffled out to vote.
While the committee members were doing their democratic duty, Tom Karl rounded on me and hissed, “How do you expect to be taken seriously?”
“I don’t,” I said. “I expect the data to be taken seriously.”
Karl also took issue with my having told the committee there had been no particular trend in landfalling U.S. hurricanes over the past 100 years. He was carrying a vast artist’s portfolio of charts about with him. He flipped it open and said, “You’re wrong.”
“No,” I said, “I’m right.”
He pointed to the graph. I was indeed wrong. Karl’s graph showed no trend in landfalling hurricanes not only for 100 years but for 150 years. His face fell, then brightened again: “Ah,” he said, “but just look at how tropical storms have increased in the past 30 years!”
“You know perfectly well,” I replied, “that that apparent increase is merely an artifact of the satellite coverage that began 30 years ago. Before then, you knew if a hurricane had hit you, but you would probably not be able to detect every tropical storm.”
The committee members murmured back into the hearing room and took their seats. Joe Barton snapped, “Both of you had better write to this committee informing it of how you reached your mutually incompatible conclusions about whether there has been cooling over the past seven or eight years.”
I was quick off the mark, sending the committee a letter that week pointing out that each of the datasets individually showed the cooling. I had particular pleasure in pointing out that Karl’s own NCDC dataset showed it:
Karl sent a rather testy reply to the committee saying that the mere data were not relevant. Eight years was too short a period to draw any conclusion, yada yada. What he could not quite bring himself to admit was that he had been wrong in suggesting there had been no global cooling from 2001-2008. His own dataset showed it.
Now, perhaps still smarting over his trouncing at the hands of a mere layman trumping predictions with data, Karl has done his best to abolish outright the Pause of 18 years 6 months that makes a standing mockery of the wildly exaggerated predictions of the error-prone models unjustifiably but profitably favored by the politico-scientific establishment of which he is a member.
Skeptical scientists including Bob Tisdale, Judith Curry, Ross McKitrick Dick Lindzen and our kind host, have all weighed in with commendable speed to point out how much is wrong with Karl’s overt data tampering.
There is one glorious point they have not mentioned. Karl’s paper appears to repeal the laws of thermodynamics.
Suppose, ad argumentum, that he is right. In that event, in the past 15 years global warming at the Earth’s surface has continued at the not particularly alarming rate of 0.116 K per decade. In 1990 the IPCC’s central business-as-usual prediction for the medium term was equivalent to 0.28 K per decade, so, on any view, Karl’s paper is an admission that the models have been exaggerating by well over double.
But let us look at what happened either side of the surface over the same period.
Beneath the surface heaves the vasty deep. The least ill-resolved source of data about the temperature of the top 1900 m of the ocean is the network of some 3600 automated ARGO bathythermograph buoys.
Unlike the assorted ship’s buckets and engine intake sensors and promenade-deck thermometers that preceded them, the bathythermographs were specifically designed to provide a consistent, calibrated, competent ocean temperature dataset.
They have their problems, not the least of which is that there are so few of them. Each buoy takes only 3 measurements a month in 200,000 cubic kilometres of ocean – a volume 200 miles square and a mile and a quarter deep. The bias uncertainty is of course less than it was in the bad old days of buckets and such, but the coverage uncertainty remains formidable.
Another problem is that ARGO only began producing proper data in 2004, and there seems to have been no update to its marine atlas since the end of 2014.
Nevertheless, ARGO is the least bad we have. And what the buoys show is that the rate of global ocean warming in those 11 full years of data is equivalent to less than a fortieth of a degree per decade – 0.023 degrees per decade, to be more precise:
The lower troposphere extends about as far above the surface as the ARGO-measured upper ocean extends below it. Its temperature is measured by the satellites from which the RSS and UAH datasets come. They have a highish bias uncertainty, but a low coverage uncertainty. Following the recent revision of the UAH dataset, they now tell much the same story. Here is the RSS graph for the 11 years 2004-2014:
These considerations raise an important question, which – once it has been raised – is obvious. But, as Dr Lyne, my wise tutor in Classics at Cambridge, used to remind us: “Do not be frightened to state the obvious. It is surprising how often the obvious goes unnoticed until someone points it out.”
Here is the obvious question. Where is Karl’s surface warming coming from?
It is not coming from above, for in the lower troposphere there was no warming over the 11-year period 2004-2014 (or, for that matter, over the 15-year period 2000-2014).
Four-fifths of it is not coming from below, for Karl’s paper says that from 2000-2014, the 15-year period that includes the 11 years for which we have ARGO data, the surface warming rate was equivalent to 0.116 degrees per decade – more or less exactly five times the measured ocean warming rate.
Not much is coming from the land, for Karl’s paper makes few adjustments to the rate of warming of the air above the land, which in any event accounts for only 29% of the Earth’s surface.
Where is the missing heat coming from? Spukhäfte Fernwirkung, perhaps? Have Mr Karl, and the peerless peer-reviewers of Science who ought surely to have spotted this huge error, inadvertently repealed the laws of thermodynamics? I think we should be told. For if I am right this is the simplest, clearest, most complete refutation of Karl’s paper.
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The only data that matters is radiosonde data and satellite data. Al
As I have said AGW enthusiast will either ignore the data , say the data is wrong or manipulated it if it does not conform to their absurd theory.
If the claim is that the surface temperature of earth is increasing, then I don’t see how satellite data is the only data that matters. My understanding of CO2 GHE warming is that more of the sun’s energy is staying in the lower atmosphere longer, which causes higher surface temperatures. The oceans of course are going to heat up slower and is where a lot of the heat is “hiding”. I see nothing wrong with an argument that a 1 degree rise in surface air temperature would show up as 0.1 degree or less rise in ocean temperatures. The upper atmosphere (satellite data) may show a lower temperature increase or stay flat because the energy is staying at the surface and less is reaching space. I don’t see how any of this goes against the Laws of Thermodynamics.
If there is the same energy coming is, and less going out due to spring traps, cages, and CO2, then the temperature must necessarily increase. That increase will show in the blackbody curve and be analyzable via Wien’s Displacement Law.
We could, if we like, posit that it’s regional rather than global in nature. Put aside that this would refute the idea of a global climate change in preference of regional climate change. But the regions of interest here are respectively 1/4 and 3/4 of the Earth’s surface. If this is the case, then it is still easily teased out by satellite measurement. That is, the new findings cannot disagree with the satellite data, but the satellite data may be improperly averaged.
The only alternate notions require some manner of claiming that heat is playing peekaboo with Stefan-Boltzmann. And that the heating has occurred despite that it hasn’t. Which gives us two logical options. We can either pursue the antiquated notion that such a contradiction disproves the premises. Or the less antiquated notion that the premises may not only stand, but that every other possible notion is proven thereby. In which case the propositions that ‘Global Warming is false,’ ‘This paper is accounting fraud,’ and ‘Obama is our first bacterial colony to hold the office of president,’ are all undeniably true and proven.
I leave to your taste which path you wish to follow for the conclusions.
Jquip – “then the temperature must necessarily increase” Sorry Jquip, this is simply not true. Not all energy is measured as temperature. There are all sorts of other energies. For example, when water changes to ice or water vapor, there is a large energy change but not necessarily a temperature change. The earth is not a perfect “black body” nor is it in equilibrium. I simple do not see how any of your comments are relevant.
Dan, you’re engaging in the fallacy of composition. That is, since we can speak of phase change and temperature with respect to water, that necessarily this includes the entirety of the earth and all the molecules it is composed of without exception. If you are stating that your argument is correct, then it is necessarily impossible that absorbing radiation will increase the temperature of anything. While you’re formulating your rebuttal, I’ll go take a nice, hot shower.
And yes, of course, the Earth is neither a perfect Black Body nor is it in equilibrium. But then I did not claim either of these things. So we are here dealing immediately with Straw Mean. Expressly I referred to states of disequilibrium, so that claim is a novelty of your own production. And of course I did not state a ‘perfect’ Black Body, nor do I think it is hardly necessary to be at pains to note that the Earth — a real and existant object — is not made of unobtanium used in gedankens about Thermodynamics. Certainly, if we’re to state that this is necessary, I mind you that I only speak to Humans and you have not taken the pains to state that you are not a Unicorn.
But it remains that the black body curve peaks are used with with grey bodies all the time. And indeed, this is a feature of every spectral based measure of temperature. For which, I apologize if I have taken up the common understanding of science on this point and as has been used with wild success for well over a century. But having taken it upon yourself to refute this notion you have taken it upon yourself to engage in pedagogy: To make the argument for why we cannot use these notions as engineers have so long done.
With bated breath I await such a useful argument to the field of science.
Jquip June 5, 2015 at 10:55 am says
“(SNIP) In which case the propositions that ‘Global Warming is false,’ ‘This paper is accounting fraud,’ and ‘Obama is our first bacterial colony to hold the office of president,’ are all undeniably true and proven.”
With a population of over 300 Billion, you may be onto something regarding Pres. BO’s make-up
OOPS Make that 300 Trillion
Around 6 lbs. for a 200 lb. person but, Cell for Cell, about 90% of all cells contained in the Human Body are non human
Jquip, “then it is necessarily impossible that absorbing radiation will increase the temperature of anything”. Now you are the one stating a straw man. I said that not ALL absorbing radiation necessarily shows up as temperature increase and that there are cases when radiation is absorbed and there is no temperature change. You cannot simply measure the difference in the blackbody curve of a changing grey body and determine temperature change accurately, especially at a particular place within the grey body such as the air temperature at the surface of the earth. The earth is a constantly changing grey body. You seem to be saying that you can analyze “the blackbody curve” of the earth and tell the surface air temperature of the earth within tenths of a degree. And you seem to be implying that it is more accurate than actual earth thermometers. I disagree. The discussion is about the surface air temperature in case you forgot. It is not about the theoretical temperature of all the molecules of the entire earth.
LOL another comedian.
If you are stating that ‘some’ radiation necessarily shows up as a temperature increase then the global average will have gone up. For your objection to carry water it is necessary that there are conditions in which there is NO absorbing radiation that shows up as a temperature increase. And I grant you, that if you intended to state that there are conditions — here on this blue marble — in which every quantity and kind of radiation increase causes, for some period of time, no increased radiation and no increased temperature change? Then indeed, I have misrepresented your position. Simply confirm that this is what you intended, and I shall grant you the demonstration of my error and correct the point.
Otherwise, it is the position you presented.
The discussion as I see it is about global warming. And certainly if you did not accept this to be the case you would not have said ‘surface air temperature’ but ‘surface air temperature’ in Topeka. And if we are talking about such global conditions we are necessarily talking about all manner of samping. And this is a quandry. For you could be stating that more measurements are less accurate that less measurements. But this is so absurd that I wouldn’t dare accuse you of holding to such nonsense. The other is that you are, in fact, stating that as a point of global temperature trends that there are none.
That, in fact, there is nothing at all wrong with the idea that increasing radiation does not lead to increased temperature. And that if did lead to increased temperature, the increasing temperature would cause a decreasing atmospheric temperature just so finely defined as to erase all and only just that increase in radiation that makes it appear as if it is warming. And that even if this is nonsense, we couldn’t detect global temperature trends from space because you personally disagree with Wien’s Displacement Law for unstated reasons.
No, I’m an in error after all. It is vastly less absurd to understand your position as that of stating that more measurement is less accurate than less measurement.
Jquip: I am glad you agree with me. I am glad you admit you are in error. More does not equal better. More can be better, but not always – even when measuring or modelling.
Even within satellite records trends are not the same. Check out the RSS satellite data website:
“Globally averaged temperature anomaly time series for the Lower Tropospheric Temperature (TLT). The plot shows the WARMING of the troposphere over the last 3 decades which has been attributed to human-caused global warming.”
“Globally averaged temperature anomaly time series for the Lower Tropospheric Stratosphere (TLS). The plot shows the COOLING of the lower stratosphere over the past 3 decades. This cooling is caused by a combination of ozone depletion and the increase of greenhouse gases.”
How is this possible? Don’t all the layers of the atmosphere have to move in tandem? Does it go against the Laws of Thermodynamics? Is the earth warming or cooling? This article about “repealed the Laws of Thermodynamics” is just bad logic. The first post about only looking at satellite records is just bad logic.
The bottom line is that no one knows with very much accuracy what the climate was like in the past or what it will be in the future. No one knows the total effect that humans are having on the climate.
If more measurement is less accurate — by your argument — then it behooves you to give an example relevant to what we are discussing as to how this can be. Otherwise this is just content-free nonsense.
Your example here is just a trivial sophistry. That regional measurments by lattitude, longitude, and elevation can vary differently from one another is neither interesting nor novel; it is expected. That different regions can have different trends is also not interesting or novel; it is expected. And none of these conditions by themselves say anything about the global temperature trends.
Sure, you can say that. I can say that. Anyone can say that. But if it is bad logic, then it is on the onus of anyone that claims it to demonstrate it. There’s no free pass for just asserting ‘I hatez it, I hatez the dirty Baggins’ and then calling that good. But then, your original post did not do that. Specifically, it didn’t even address the point that Monckton made: That the trends used as input by Karl do not add up to the trends used as output by Karl. If you wish the focus to be on Mockton’s logic, then that’s the part you need to rebut.
I can only assume that you mean my first post, for I do not recall Monckton having stated such. But then, of course, I did not state such either. It might assist you to go back and review both.
If Karl’s paper is valid and sound then we don’t know with very much accuracy what the climate is like now. And if we accept your argument that more measurement is less accuracy in this sphere, then you’re putting forth that we know less now — by consequence of better measurements — then we did a century ago. I suggest that’s not bad logic, it’s Not Even Wrong.
“Where is the missing heat coming from?” From determined Antroproghenic minds?
Years ago I pointed out that it made no sense to me that CO2 at 400 ppm and still increasing could suddenly stop warming the atmosphere and yet lower levels of CO2 between 1970-1998 were claimed to have warmed the atmosphere by the green house effect. What was happening? For 18 years CO2, a greenhouse gas, was not warming up the greenhouse, the atmosphere. Then the party line became that the oceans were sucking up all the heat and that is why atmospheric warming stopped. It seemed to cute that for 18 years suddenly the oceans sucked up just enough heat to keep global atmospheric temperature stable, on a flat line or even dropping slightly as Lord Monckton states. This was based on spotty ocean temperature measurement before Argus launched buoys. After all temperatures randomly made by ships on shipping lanes by slinging a metal or canvas bucked over the side hardly seemed a way to sample 70% of the area of the earth that consists of oceans, let alone these were all surface measurements which are affected by wind and storms that stir up the oceans and mix the warmer surface water with colder deeper water.
Isn’t it clear surface warming is different that atmospheric warming by CO2 or other greenhouse gases?
Greenhouse gases absorb sunlight at certain specral wave length and radiate the heat back into the atmosphere. Surface warming is caused by absorbton of the sun’s radiaation or its reflection back into the atmosphere. ice covered oceans reflect more sunlight than open water that absorbs more radiation and heats up accordingly.
Why should surface measurents even be used? Just because our weather stations are enclosed in a box on the surface of land? If surface measurements of temperature are being used as an indicator of anthropogenic CO2 atmospheric warming, then how can we not be concerned about where the thermometer is placed ? Place a thermometer 6 inches above an asphalt pavement and you may get 180 degrees. SImilarly the thermometer above green grass will be different than above a patch of bare ry clay or on a sand white beach. The type of soil and vegetation around the surface thermometer will change the thermometer’s reading.
I realize satellite data has some problems but as Lord Monckton says they have less variability from limited sites beng samples. There is no fudging, adjusting of data for thermometer location, filling in missing observations in unpopulated parts of the earth with assumed values, and other concerns about locations of heat sinks, the paint used on the weather station thermometer box,etc.
Anyone like to comment to clarify this? i would be deeply appreciative.
And this excerpt is the key to the entire debacle called AGW and the doctrines well funded warmist disciples;
” How do you expect me to be taken seriously?”
“I don’t,” I said. “I expect the data to be taken seriously.”
I agree, excellent line.
“Where is the missing heat coming from?”
UHI must be worse than we thought.
Isn’t this an admission that ARGO doesn’t work, has never worked and they wasted billions of dollars on it?
The reason for the adjustment is to justify spending more money on a system they just ‘scientifically proved’ doesn’t work!
I think that the “idea” of Argo floats is kinda neat, but the implementation is woefully lacking. As someone here once pointed out, the resolution of the Argo system is akin to making 1 measurement per year at a random time in a volume of ocean equivalent to Lake Superior. The fact that the Climate Fearosphere tries to make a big deal out of such measurements should tell anyone capable of independent thought, all they need to know about the veracity of the CAGW proponents.
“…capable of independent thought…”
There’s the catch, right there.
Not sure that ‘doesn’t work’ is an accurate description. In a different time, without the Politics, Argo would have been a good idea.
Sadly, with those in control being hardcore ‘adjusters’, I can’t take the Argo network ‘adjustments’ any more seriously than GISS ‘adjustments’.
Very sad IMHO that I now consider an apparently worthwhile expense like Argo to be just another COP meal ticket to every ‘all expenses paid’ vacation these wankers can think up.
I don’t think that activist scientists have thought this (Karl et adjustments (hide the straight line)) nonsense through terribly well regarding its implications for the longer term . Fool me once … Fool me twice and your Argo (and other) funding gets pulled…
Destroying science one ‘paper’ (ticket to Paris) at a time. A sad end to the automatic funding of ‘science’ in our time. Is that a tear or just another ‘scientists’ finger in my eye!
Not disagreeing just I do not comprehend the value of a measuring system that takes measurements by random location and time. Or more specifically how can random measurements be used to develop trends..
I agree. I saw how GISS “adjusted” their 1998 graph by lowering temperatures before 1970 or so and then when released again in 2009 the GISS curve showed 1998 the warmest year on record and not 1934 which was warmer than 1998 in the 1998 graph.Who was in charge at GISS during this time interval? Was it Dr. James Hansen? Wasn’t he involved in climategate and the hacked email messages from East Anglia Climate center? What is known about his integrity? Has the GISS data been independent audited after “adjustments” to determine ow the adjustments where made, why and by what magnitude?
I wonder how long it will be before we get an admission that after all, ARGO doesn’t provide data with sufficient detail and accuracy to allow us to conclude what the trend has been within the now widened error bars, but that it must be so that the Ocean ate their homework. Jo Nova has given them an escape route by pointing up this earlier paper:
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/06/study-shows-argo-ocean-robots-uncertainty-was-up-to-100-times-larger-than-advertised/
Whether it is Monckton or Mann, for others to decide, this debate must be about facts, NOT personalties.
However, at the trial before a jury of their peers, all intransigent liars must be exposed and prosecuted.
The current administration has a disregard for law anyway, in the words of our former Secretary of State: “what difference does it make” if one more Federal employee disregards laws
Messing Heat.
===========
And again, Lord Monckton, thank you, thank you, thank you …
L of M..the only classics major who is admired for his misleading of the research of hundreds of PhD Climate Scientists who, in 10s of thousands of research oapers, conclude AGW. What does that say about the standards of his admirers?
Nothing about his admirers, but everything about you.
Um…OK, so…..what? Seriously? I can’t even. I would have LMofB over for dinner. My wife says I’m a decent person, so does my Mother. So, if thinking well of LMofB is the wrong thing to be doing…I have to shift a bunch of stuff around. I have to send out a pile of emails and change a bunch of things internally. Thanks for the heads up
warrenlb
You are one of the Borg desperately afraid of having an individual thought — a part of the Climate Collective.
Hmmmm….. might be a poem in that.
Eugene WR Gallun
do you have a problem with the data L of M provides?
what a woefully sad appeal to authority Warren!
What does “conclude AGW” mean in Warrenlb’s post? And since when did the fallacies of head-count (argumentum ad populum) and of appeal to authority or reputation (argumentum ad verecundiam) become part of the scientific method?
Science is done by checking. Has Warrenlb checked how many scientists support Karl’s dopey paper? He’ll get quite a surprise.
Ed Z,
Exactly.
All of warrenlb’s comments are either ad hominem attacks like that, or filled with his endless appeal to authority logical fallacies. He’s lost the science argument so decisively that those are the only arguments he has left.
@sly
Not an ‘appeal to authority’ but an appeal to experts in Science rather than amateurs. L of M is not a Scientist. The attitude of your post seems to be “we’re all amateurs, so let’s listen to another amateur and ridicule the experts”. Or, ‘ my child needs brain surgery, so I’m taking her to a barber, or maybe do it myself, since brain surgeons are all corrupt and incompetent, around the world”
warrenlb says:
Not an ‘appeal to authority’ but an appeal to experts in Science…&blah, blah, etc.
Wrong. The ultimate Authority is Planet Earth. When there is a glaring discrepancy between the pronouncements of self-appointed ‘authorities’ and real world observations, one of them has to be wrong.
warrenlb is saying that Planet Earth is wrong; that observations and evidence are wrong, and that his ‘authorities’ are right. As usual, warrenlb has it upside down and backward.
The ‘authorities’ that warrenlb refers to are six member boards that presume to speak for thousands of dues-paying members. Those boards have been corrupted. Strong evidence: they all say the same thing. None say “Wait and see,” or “What is the cost/benefit analysis?” There is no deviation in their propaganda message: “Dangerous man-made globhal warming is an urgent problem!” Anyone with common sense knows that among dozens of different organizations, they will not all have exactly the same message. And many of those organizations have little to do with the question of “dangerous man-made global warming”. But they chime in, too.
Conclusion: some or all of those 6 board members in each organization were bought and paid for in some way. Their votes were obtained. None of them allow a fair vote of their memebrship on the question, and none of them allow members to contact each other through membership lists, which are kept highly confidential. It seems obvious to the most casual observer that this is a planned strategy. With $billions at stake annually, there is plenty of money to grease the wheels.
warrenlb is naive and credulous. He might even believe his “authority” nonsense. But folks who give it some rational thought know that where there’s smoke there’s fire. It is no mere coincidence, or accident, that every professional board has endorsed the exact same message. Not one board has taken the position of the OISM Petition, which was co-signed by more than 30,000 American scientists and engineers including more than 9,000 PhD’s, stating that CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere. Based on the opinions of rank-and-file scientists and engineers, warrenlb’s appeal to those self-serving ‘authorities’ is just too much BS to accept.
warrenlb, I think it says that they don’t want to delegate their understanding of the matter to PhD’s and Climate Scientists that have a vested interest (i.e. funding, fame etc.) in propagating a theory that is easily proven either totally wrong or vastly overstated. Your continued ‘not a scientist’ diatribe doesn’t make the data any less true. What’s your degree in, anyway?
appealing to experts *is* an ‘appeal to authority’. rather than appealing to authority, why don’t you take a crack at the scienctific arguments the good Lord M of B is making because you see, in science it doesn’t matter who is making the arguement, what matters is the science and data behind what they are saying. As no less a scientist than Albert Einstein said it only takes 1 person who is correct to prove any science’s theory wrong.
It’s worth noting that there’s a modern fad to recase an Appeal to Authority to an Appeal to a False Authority. That it is not the mechanism that is fallacious itself, but only which authority is utilized. You’ll find this a common strain of argumentation these days. eg. The disregard to science that is not published in a peer reviewed journal. Such that, since the science wasn’t put forward by an authority that uses authorities to vet the soundness of the paper, that the science was produced by a false authority. But that all papers published via the approved authorities is authoritative even if unsound, invalid, or a string of random letters.
Hey warren,
People were wondering about your conspicuous absence on another thread…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/04/senator-whitehouse-use-the-rico-law-against-climate-deniers/#comment-1953581
One of my favorite Feynman quotes seems apropos: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts”. Virtually every advance in science has come about because someone was convinced some expert was wrong.
What does your snide comment say about you?
Warren, you are hot for Appeals to Authority (or “experts” as you put it). Here are some quotes from the very eminent Authority: Richard Feynman.
– Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
– Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers of the preceding generation.
– We are not to tell nature what she’s gotta be. … She’s always got better imagination than we have.
– Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation, because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet. Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again or, more likely, to be corrected. … The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific “truth”.
– Since then I never pay attention to anything by “experts”. I calculate everything myself.
– Doubting the great Descartes … was a reaction I learned from my father: Have no respect whatsoever for authority; forget who said it and instead look what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, “Is it reasonable?”
– Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.
– I believe in limited government. I believe that government should be limited in many ways, and what I am going to emphasize is only an intellectual thing. I don’t want to talk about everything at the same time. Let’s take a small piece, an intellectual thing. No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated.
– We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified — how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact.
Finally,
Richard Feynman became so exasperated [at the National Academy of Sciences] that he resigned his membership, saying that he saw no point in belonging to an organization that spent most of its time deciding who to let in.
Gregory Benford, “A Scientist’s Notebook: Scientist Heroes” in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (April 1996)
zip it
@warenlb
Your data, please. Since we are living in the coolest warm period of the past 10,000 years – when compared to Holocene Climatic Optimum, Minoan, Roman, and Medieval warm periods, as shown by Greenland ice core and a North Atlantic sediment core studies- and current warming is a natural rebound from the coldest period of the past 10,000 years – the Little Ice Age – what does its about he standards of the 10s of thousands of PhD Climate Professors? Many found reasons for the “pause”, and now many will have to lose those reasons, as “they” realize the pause never happened – and also find they must lose the satellite and radiosonde observations. Perhaps, warrenlb, you need to start admiring the data more than the professors, as we WUWT readers do.
Oh Great Warren of Pound, please produce evidence of these “10s of thousands of research oapers” that conclude AGW! Even Cooking with Lew et al 2013 wasn’t bold enough to declare such a thing….and their data proved fewer than 100 out of 12,000 could even be called close to concluding AGW.
And how exactly did L of M “mislead the research of hundreds of PhD Climate Scientists”? Did he “seep” into their labs? Did they all take classes from him?
You keep using words that don’t mean what you think they mean.
That is one of the funniest exagerations and deliberate mistatements I have ever seen. Congratulations, sir. And I suggest you never try to debate even the lowliest of us here, never mind Monckton — you’ll be eaten alive by facts and logic.
Warren,
Please show us the “research papers” which “conclude” AGW. Thanks.
Warrenlb.
Clinging desperately to a belief that has been thoroughly discredited by lord Monckton, who, clearly you despise because he he does what he does so well. Your argument on the other hand is … what exactly? Try leave your personal dislike out of it and deal specifically with the content of the post.
Eamon.
“Not an ‘appeal to authority’ but an appeal to experts in Science…”
Sophistry at its finest.
You have totally missed the point again warrenlb. The Karl paper flys in the face of all those “climate scientists” who have admitted there is a pause/hiatus. For example the IPCC and all those who have come up with 70 excuses for the pause/hiatus. Nevertheless the Karl paper is fatally flawed trash specifically designed for the Paris gab fest.
…research oapers, …”
Surely you meant “research whoppers,” did you not?
Appeals to authority is not how to win an argument, If it were the case there would be no need for debate, arguments, or even research. Why do additional research when an authority has already settled it.
Appeals to authority can viably be used in making an argument only if the premise based on the authority is reasonable in representing the conclusions of the authority and their expertise. The claim that figures of authority have concluded AGW is about the stupidest appeal to authority I have seen to date. Which makes me wonder if you are only acting this stupid to get people riled up. In other words an empty-headed attention seeking troll.
However, if you have an argument then make it, or else save yourself some keyboard strokes reducing your CO2 footprint on the planet by using less energy thereby expelling less CO2. The Earth thanks you for your service in advance.
warrenlb
You say
Many have pointed out that you are presenting a logical fallacy, but repeated examples demonstrate that you are incapable of understanding your error.
As a method to help you understand how wrong you are, I will accept that your error is correct.
I take your authority of “hundreds of PhD Climate Scientists” and trump it with the authority of the most recent “scientific” Report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Box 9.2 on page 769 of Chapter 9 of IPCC the AR5 Working Group 1 (i.e. the most recent IPCC so-called science report) is here and says
GMST trend is global mean surface temperature trend.
A “hiatus” is a stop.
And this from the IPCC that is tasked to provide information supportive of the AGW hypothesis.
So, according to your argument, the admirers of Lord Monckton are supporting what the IPCC says and the IPCC is a greater authority than your unstated “hundreds of PhD Climate Scientists”.
Richard
I’ve a mixture of pity and admiration for Josh Willis; he may be one of the most conflicted men in climate science. His wonderful machine is not showing what the narrative expects, nay, demands.
For Tom Karl? Well, I remember when Antnee went to tea.
==========
Why should the heat come from either the troposphere or the deep ocean? AFAIK, most of the warming entering the ocean comes from the sun directly. So this could happen just by reducing the cloudiness. It’s not like I support the paper, it is bullshit, but claiming that it breaks thermodynamics laws? C’mon…
If it was cloudiness, why hasn’t that showed up in the surface and rawinsond data?
I’m not saying that it is cloudiness. It is bad data, or to put it better, bad data adjustments. But it COULD have been cloudiness. You don’t need to violate any thermodinamics law to have the ocean’s surface heat faster than either the troposphere or the deep ocean. If troposphere, deep ocean and ocean surface were all the components of the system, then yes. But there is another important component called sun, playing some significant role.
Let us suppose that the ocean surface were warming at 0.116 K/decade, as Nylo imagines. In that event, the lower troposphere would warm at the same rate, for the ocean is denser than the air and the surface or mixed stratum is intimately connected with the lower troposphere by tropical afternoon convection in the tropics. But the lower troposphere is not warming, as it would have to do (by the laws of thermodynamics) if the surface layer were warming.
Furthermore, if the Sun were warming the upper ocean at a rapid rate, then CO2 would not be the causative agent.
However, as it happens the upper layer of the ocean is not warming at anything like 0.116 K/decade.
Yeah. The paper is suspect for statistical reasons, but there’s no thermodynamic problem. Let’s back away from this limb.
Let’s not back away until we’ve done our homework. The fluid media that are said to be warming – the ocean surface and the air immediately above it – are not in fact warming at the rate posited by Mr Karl. The measurements from above and from below confirm this. It is as simple as that.
Yes absolutely. No trouble with thermodynamics, on the contrary. Trouble is with bad data and their biased manipulation
MoB, what nylo is saying is that this is first a radiation problem, and second a convection problem. This argument works in favor of a lower climate sensitivity when you look at the entire atmospheric system (e.g convective thunder clouds bypassing the greenhouse effect), but it also means that the thermal energy is originating in the top ocean layer, which is absorbing shortwave IR. That layer is where the IR turns to molecular motion. That layer gets warmed directly from the sun. The heat does not have to get to it by conduction/convection. Then it has to get away from there through conduction, convention, and a small amount of radiation.
As I said, this cuts both ways; this is also why the ‘greenhouse’ has holes.
The matter is simple. Mr Karl’s assumption that the locus of all points at which the lower troposphere meets the upper ocean can warm at a rate greater than either transparently offends against the laws as much of thermodynamics as of logic.
To me, the point that Monckton of Brenchley (June 5, 2015 at 3:34 pm) is sound, and it confirms that the Karl et al. 2015 paper is simply inappropriate data adjustment and nothing more than that.
The two fundamental data sets (the slices of bread) show no warming. Of course, ARGO has its own issues (lack of spatial coverage, short duration, immediatedely adjusted to get rid of the buoys that showed the greatest cooling, no assessment of potential bias from the free floating nature of the buoys that get carried along on currents that are themselves temperature dependent etc), and whilst this is the best of a bad bunch, the truth is that we do not know very much about ocean temperatures over the course of this century still less as from the 1970s.
It would appear that backradiation cannot effectively heat the oceans since very little energy penetrates more than a few MICRONS. If the oceans are warming it would appear that this is due to Solar and the most likely candidate for that is changes in cloudiness allowing more solar insolation to reach the surface, and possible aided by a reduction in airborne particulate matter since the 60s. However, the data sets (as Bob frequently posts in details) shows very little (if any) ocean warming and many ocean basins are cooling not warming.
from a relevant 2011 WUWT post, one of the comments
Being no expert, it seems to me the question is what happens at night over the ocean? if there is more CO2 in the air, the ocean surface will cool slightly slower … but that would warm the air too.
which puts me sort of half-agreeing. if the heat is retained by the surface of the ocean, then half would also have be retained in the air, and would end up in the RSS data over the oceans.
I think we have data on cloud cover, and the trends thereof during the stated time period.
If you want to make a point about decreasing cloud cover, why not provide some information showing that there has been such a decrease, of the magnitude necessary to produce rapid warming of the sea surface?
Very interesting piece, Lord Monckton. Congratulations. And don’t take offense, but this is the shortest piece I have ever seen you write, and you made your point clearly as well. Thank you for the time and energy you put into trying to save our civilization.
Some of my recent pieces have been long ones, because I have been answering people – Varley of the Met Office, Obama at the Coastguard commencement, a Greenpeace blog posting – who had indulged in Gish-gallops of falsehood after falsehood. It was necessary to answer all the falsehoods, so as to show just how little scientific credibility any of the three actually possesses.
The present piece makes a single point that is, in my submission, devastating. The very thin surface layer that Mr Karl says is warming at five times the rate of the upper layer of the ocean is composed partly of ocean water and partly of lower-troposphere air. Since neither of these two fluid media are warming at anything like the rate claimed for the surface, the surface is not warming at that claimed rate either.
They hear voices, don’t they? They climb the foothill and there is a burning bush or a burning old tire and a voice tells them their Carbon is poisoning the planet. When you have heard this voice all is certain and data must be adjusted…
So, my simple mind wants to order the point as follows – Karl maintains a warming trend at the surface of the earth that could not be – because satellites measuring the atmosphere show a lower warming trend, and the Argo buoys measure a lower warming trend in the oceans to 1900 meters. Since thermal energy always flow from an area of higher heat to an area of lower heat, and everything tends towards a state of thermal equilibrium – it is physically impossible for such an area of higher heat to exist at the surface because the atmosphere, and therefore the surface, are heated by the oceans. Something cannot be heated by another thing that is colder than it
Is this correct everyone?
Tomdesabla has summed it up nicely. Th surface is a sandwich filling a few feet thick with a mile and a half of lower troposphere above it and a mile and a quarter of upper ocean below it.
Yet Karl would have us believe that the thin filling is warming faster than the bread. Oops.
The food in my tupperware is surrounded by plastic, and when I put it in the microwave, it will indeed heat faster than its surroundings. From where in the tupperware could the heat be comming from, if the tupperware is colder? Meeec… wrong question. Heat doesn’t come from the tupperware. Comes from further away, through an energy flux that goes through the tupperware without heating it. Hey! That looks a lot like what the solar radiation does when it reaches the Earth’s surface without heating the atmosphere in the middle, doesn’t it? Something to do with electromagnetic energy’s frequency band absorptions of different materials.
Amazing how the true-believers try to evade the main point. The surface layer of air where the temperature readings are taken is composed not of Tupperware but of air (just like the lower troposphere above it) and water (just like the upper ocean below it). There is no plausible mechanism by which CO2 could be causing that thin surface sandwich-filling to warm when the air above and the ocean below are not also warming.
I often need mitts to take my stuff out of the microwave, but then I’m not pulsing for 30 seconds.
Perhaps I mis-remember, but I believe that the “0” measurement by the ARGO floats is actually taken at 5m below the sea surface. IIRC, Karl ’15 is calculating temperatures right at the surface. I don’t know what the extinction coefficient for incident solar radiation in the open sea is, but perhaps this is a potential source of disconnect regarding the temperature records.
D.J. Hawkins June 5, 2015 at 9:51 am
It would surprise me if the “0” reading taken by ARGO is at 5 metres. Ship’s data when taken by inlet manufold water temperature is taken at depth. Ship’s data is not surface temperature data but is the temperature drawn typically at about 4 to 10 metres depth.
At night time, there is little difference between the ocean temperature between 5mm and 5m, but in daytime there is a significant difference even from 1mm downwards. In all cases the very top of the ocean is cooler than the 1mm layer.See for example:
http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/oceans/additional/science-focus/modis/MODIS_and_AIRS_SST_comp_fig2.i.jpg
In the plot (a) is the temperature profile at night, and (b) the temperature profile for the daylight hours.
Lord Monckton wrote:
It is not the first time I am misunderstood as a warmist, but I had never been called a true believer before 😀
It is you sir who evades the point because I have never said nor implied that CO2 did it, we are just discussing whether it is thermodynamically possible to have the upper layer of the ocean warming faster than the troposphere or the deep ocean. And it is possible, no law broken. But if you want to change topic and talk now about causes, first, I think that the apparent warming in this paper is the result of bad adjustments and not real, and second, if it was real, it would more likely have been produced by changes in albedo and more solar energy entering the ocean than by CO2. The only thing I am arguing against is whether you would need to break thermodynamics laws or not to get the “result” that the authors of this shitty paper get. Which, I believe, was the center point of your guest post, at least judging it by the title. So I don’t really understand why you say that I am evading the main point. The main point is exactly what I am discussing.
Karl’s paper is bad; but not for the reason given in this post. Solar radiation could easily heat the ocean surface to a greater or lesser degree than the air above it. One needn’t be a scientist to understand that.
This post should be withdrawn, or, better yet, marked by its author as disproved, to serve as an example to Alarmists (and everyone, for that matter) that those who adhere to scientific principles have no qualms about accepting facts and admitting error.
It is very difficult to explain elementary scientific concepts to those who are unwilling to take a rational approach.
Mr Karl’s thesis is that the rate of change of temperature over time at the Earth’s surface is greater than the rate of change of temperature over time directly above and directly below the surface, and that this rate of change at the surface is driven by Man’s sins of emission.
What he proposes offends against the laws of thermodynamics.
By time he does not mean a day. He means a decade and more.
Mr Verney shows that the ocean has different temperatures at different depths at different times of day. So what? The air above behaves in much the same way.
The question raised in the head posting remains: whence comes the heat to warm the upper few meters of the ocean and the lower few meters of the lower troposphere over as long as 11 years at a rate far in excess of the rate at which the upper ocean and the lower troposphere are warming?
Nylo has had to admit the alleged surface warming cannot be caused by CO2. It cannot be caused by the Sun, because the near-full solar cycle over the 11 years was not exceptionally active.
Like it or not, the laws of thermodynamics do not permit the heat to come from nowhere.
What, the, is the anthropogenic source that causes Karl’s surface warming? And why does that surface warming, over as long as a decade, not communicate itself detectably to either the lower troposphere or the upper ocean?
Karl’s extra heat not only has to come from somewhere: it has to go somewhere. Since the two fluid media of which the surface is composed are the upper ocean and the lower troposphere, what is the nature of the barrier that prevents the imagined higher rate of surface warming from communicating itself to either the upper ocean or the lower troposphere?
Recall that the two fluid media are well intermingled, not least by tropical afternoon convection. How, then, does this thermodynamic barrier operate to prevent heat transfer from the faster-warming surface stratum to the strata above and below it?
Fortunately (for Karl), he never studied law.
A few years back the ARGO data showed global oceans to be cooling so I presume this is the adjusted data you are using. Josh Willis is now adjusting the ARGO temperature data because he says; the TOA radiation shows energy coming in as greater than that going out therefore it must be going into the ocean. (ignores the systemic error that is present) then he says the satellite sea level analysis shows sea level rising faster than can be accounted for by global ice melt which must be due to thermal expansion so therefore the ARGO buoy temperatures must be wrong and on that basis he has adjusted them from a cooling trend to a warming trend.
Ignoring of course the GIA adjustments, which are used in several sea level metrics, are based on computer modelling that requires major assumptions. That the satellite sea level is itself an adjusted metric. That the measurement of ice melt is also based on highly questionable assumptions.
So we take one of the seven basic measurements of science, one that we can do with considerable accuracy, ie temperature, and adjust it on the basis of other derived metrics that involve many assumptions unsupported by actual data. Great stuff. see http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/page1.php
Love to see someone better skilled than I take the ARGO adjustments apart.
I think this is a very good argument. Even I can understand this. Would appear that Karl is a good writer of fiction.
Thanks for this article, Peter Foster. I just read all 12 pages (pdf) of it. Amazing: Adjusting the data to conform to the models because he was getting flak from others around him. My question is how did he know some of the ARGO buoys were running cool? Did he physically go there? Did he use data on the movement and temp of currents?
And you have to read 3/4 through the article (which is only revealed if you scroll to the bottom and wait for the rest to appear) to read Levitus’ cogent point, which should have followed the lede.
But Dr. Willis put that possibility to rest, didn’t he. He changed the data.
Good to see this.
I have pointed this out many many times over the years. Indeed, in a comment I posted above (made before I saw yours) I pointed out this adjustment.
ARGO is the best of a bad bunch, but one needs to approach it with a certain amount of caution.
Did the Greens or Nature Do It? Global Brightening by Clean Air Acts or lower Clouds?
Rethinking solar resource assessments in the context of global dimming and brightening
This may explain part of the ocean warming seen by Argo.
Karl’s ‘clown car’ of a paper is real knee slapper.
Here is more evidence of NOAA’s ‘cooking the books’ for a fist-full of dollars.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2015/06/05/top-weather-service-official-creates-consulting-job-then-takes-it-himself-with-43200-raise-watchdog-says/
Perhaps from sub-oceanic volcanoes? According to the inconvenient truth apostle the Earth’s center is extremely hot. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/11/18/al-gore-earths-interior-extremely-hot-several-million-degrees
That was merely a misunderstanding, JK. What Al Gore meant was that his earthy interior was millions of degrees.
Today’s usually pro-alarmist BBC radio series “Science in Action” did report remarkably cautiously about the claims of Karl et al. :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02sbqd3
Maybe, thanks to the critical analysis of the paper here in wuwt, they realized how fishy the data adjustments of Karl et al. are.
I think a quick email to the BBC every time they trifle with logic or data helps move things towards making them adhere to some sort of impartiality . Like the ABC in Australia it seems difficult for governments of whatever stripe to make them conform with their charters. But constantly reminding them they are making fools of themselves will have an effect when in time the truth of the matter becomes plain. I listened to the broadcast and for the first time in a long time on this publication they took a bob each way.
The good Lord, (Monkton took a delicious swipe at them recently about the licence fee. They need constant reminders that they are making idiots of themselves
Thanks once more to Lord Monckton for his able, precise and joyously entertaining use of language in setting out a part of the counter-argument. Add this to very competent and comprehensive comments from Messrs McKittrick here at WUWT, Pat Michaels, and Judith Curry elsewhere, and I profess myself convinced that this paper is a destructive spoiler designed from the outset to provide the demanded conclusions.
Although a definite sceptic of CAGW I have been very reluctant to believe that so many decent folk in science could have been seduced and corrupted by this one idea, and I invariably try to give them the benefit of the doubt, at first at least. Maybe there is no central co-ordination of the conspiracy, but the pull of the common cause is enough to rope-in so many, and the polarisation of the debate means that many bridges have been burnt. Very sad for science, and for the world.
Follow the money.
I doubt the above graph for 2001-2008 was exactly what was shown in a congressional hearing room in 2009. The graph as shown here says that one of the datasets that it is a combination of is UAHv6, which was first noted as being in existence earlier this year. Another is HadCRUT4, which I think came into existence later than 2009.
The actual graph, which is not to hand because I am traveling, used the data available at the time and would, therefore, have shown rather more cooling than the present graph, based on data nearly all of which have been adjusted to make the rate of recent warming seem steeper. Either way, the point is made: the graph showed cooling; Karl tried to mimble around the point; Joe Barton called him out; and I wrote showing that even NCDC’s own dataset demonstrated cooling.
It’s quite permissible to abolish the Laws of Thermodynamics if you have already abandoned the scientific method. You now nothing either way.
Which it is quite clear that Karl has done and now knows.
He must be worried about his job if the paper gets retracted.
But they THINK they can walk on water!
They better wait till the lake freezes.
Small puddles have been known to freeze on clear nights where the air temperature says above freezing. In fact, in India, they used to make ice that way:
“In India before the invention of artificial refrigeration technology, ice making by nocturnal cooling was common. The apparatus consisted of a shallow ceramic tray with a thin layer of water, placed outdoors with a clear exposure to the night sky. The bottom and sides were insulated with a thick layer of hay. On a clear night the water would lose heat by radiation upwards. Provided the air was calm and not too far above freezing, heat gain from the surrounding air by convection would be low enough to allow the water to freeze by dawn.[1]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_cooling
Repealing the laws of thermodynamics could happen if observations were found that contradicted the law. I don’t believe actual observations of that sort exist at present, but it is possible. Of course any theory that proposes to replace the laws of thermodynamics must explain the phenomena that the laws currently explain at least as well or they are also trash.
After all, general relativity repealed the law of gravity; both describe daily observed occurrences equally well to our ability to measure, but the law of gravity fails when attempting to describe the motion of a body in a large gravity well like the Mercury/Sun system. Of course I have not seen any conundrums like the Mercury orbit problem in the thermodynamics field
This is in reply to Harold (no hyperlink button above). It seems to me (without doing the math) that what Wikipedia claims to explain (your cite) — the formation of ice when air temperatures are above freezing) may be do to evaporative cooling — not radiative.
If the world’s oceans are warming at the rate of 0.23C/century isn’t that cause for some concern? After all that represents an enormous amount of heat energy that is being absorbed. Is the heating evenly disbursed or is it concentrated in certain areas? Am I missing something? I have trouble accepting that the CO2 increase is showing up in the oceans alone, but if the data is correct then something is happening and the heat is coming from somewhere…
The weight of the atmosphere is 5.15 X 10 to the 18th kilo, whereas the oceans weigh in at 1.4 X 10 to the 24th kilograms or about 2.2 X 10 to the 7th difference – large numbers, but if the oceans are heating at 0.23C/century doesn’t that represent an rather large influx of heat?
Why are the oceans alone heating up? Where is this heat coming from? Is it uniform around the globe or concentrated in areas such as deep ocean thermal vents?
I’m sure that I am making some sort of mistake here in my figuring, but I haven’t the time to explore it further for now…just tossing it out in the hopes that someone can easily tell me where I went wrong!
You went wrong in assuming the oceans in their vastness were heating with any confidence. I’ll refer you to the coverage issue ARGO has to deal with. Its like sticking a thermometer into a hole in your sock once every few months, registering that measurement and then extrapolating the mean core temp of your friends heart per annum.
Precisely because the oceans have so vast a heat capacity, they will not warm very fast. If they are warming at all, they are doing so very slowly. However, since the atmosphere above them is not warming, the likelihood is that the oceans are not warming either.
Cannot…stop…chuckling!
I believe you forgot the extra zero. Isn’t that .023 rather than .23?
Argo shows the ocean warming at .023 K/decade; .23 K/century.
Most likely it is tied to the PDO. Note the decreasing trend just prior to the PDO flip in 2005-2007. The PDO is closely related to ENSO (Bob Tisdale claims it is an after effect I believe). Since ocean heat is recharged during La Nina events one should expect an increasing heat content if there are more La Nina events over time. By the same token the heat that was driving increased global temperature during the +PDO (1975-2006) came out of the oceans during the more prevalent El Nino events which is why the ocean heat was decreasing in the first couple of years.
The data prior to 2003 is so sparse and so adjusted it is basically worthless.
John Robertson: The numbers you show do appear to be impressive and enormous compared to the heat quantities we as humans are normally exposed to everyday. This creates a certain amount of awe and dread that some people are more than willing to exploit to their own ends. Think of the first people trying to get a grips on how big the sun really was when they first started measuring it. They probably all assumed that it was no bigger than a large tree or mountain. One Greek philosopher opined that the sun could be as big as Peloponnesus, (a peninsula in Greece) resulting in derision by his peers for suggesting something so big. Part of the beauty of science is putting away our pre-conceptions and letting nature do the talking.
Assuming that the measurement itself is correct, no, it is not an alarming amount of heat. In 100 years, the temperature rise would still be barely measurable on a thermometer. Think of what will be different 100 years from now. The face of the Earth will be completely different. Microscopic warming in the oceans will be the least of our concerns.
A very large percentage of the ocean is very cold. Near freezing. Even in the tropical latitudes, the deep water is very cold.
There may even be large amounts of supercooled water in the polar regions and deep ocean.
Given that supercooled water is given to sudden freezing, I would prefer to see warming oceans than cooling oceans.
But that is just me.
What with my concern that a sudden and sharp cooling of the Earth would likely cause starvation on a scale that the world has never seen. And my guess is, should food start running out and starving people by the millions, they would not die quietly and it would/will be very bad.
For everyone.
Besides for all of that…I love to swim. Except in cold water. Then it sucks (the heat out of my body).
Regarding “The lower troposphere extends about as far above the surface as the ARGO-measured upper ocean extends below it.”: You said the ARGO floats measure the ocean down to 1900 meters. The RSS TLT weighting curve is shown in http://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html, and indicates that altitudes from the surface to 5 km up are heavily considered. The TLT weighting curve seems to give some significant weighting to altitudes up to 8 or 9 km up.
Check the nearest atmospheric density chart. It’s the lowest mile and a half that is of the greatest significance.
The 500 millibar level, where the pressure is usually slightly under half the sea level pressure and the density is usually slightly over half the sea level density, averages a little over 5.5 km above sea level. The RSS weighting curve gives about half its peak weighting that far up, and peak weighting about 2 km up, where the density is about 80% of sea level density. A slight majority of the mass of the lower troposphere, as weighted by the RSS TLT weighting curve, seems to be more than 2 km above sea level.