Reposted from Dr. Roger Pielke Sr’s Climate Science
Climate Progress has a weblog by Joesph Romm titled “Breaking: NOAA puts out “El Niño Watch,” so record temperatures are coming and this will be the hottest decade on record“.
This is an interesting and very bold forecast of record temperatures by Joe Romm, and, if this does occurs, it would substantially support his claims on the dominance of human-caused global warming. Only time will tell, of course, if this warming will occur.
However, unfortunately, he still does not understand that i) the appropriate metric to monitor global warming involves heat in Joules, most which occurs in the oceans (e.g. see), and ii) that the accumulation Joules in the upper ocean has not occurred since 2003 (e.g. see and see). Even Jim Hansen agrees that the ocean is the dominant reservoir for heat accumulation (e. g. see).
In Joe Romm’s weblog, there is the text
“As a side note: Roger Pielke, Sr.’s “analysis” of how there supposedly hasn’t been measurable ocean warming from 2004 to 2008 is uber-lame. In the middle of a strong 50-year warming trend, any clever (but cynical) analyst can connect an El Niño-driven warm year to a La Niña-driven cool year a few years later to make it look like warming has stopped. In fact, the latest analysis shows “that ocean heat content has indeed been increasing in recent decades, just like the models said it should.”
This text shows a failure to understand the physics of global warming and cooling. There are peer reviewed analyses that document that upper ocean warming has halted since 2003 (e.g. see and see). Even the last few years of the Levitus et al 2009 paper shows this lack of wamring (see).
Joe Romm, since he disagrees with this, should present other observational analyses of the continued accumulation of heat content in Joules since 2003. He should also focus on this time period since the Argo network was established, as it is this data network which is providing us more accurate assessments of the heat content in the upper ocean than is found in the earlier data.
If he continues to use the global average surface temperature trends as the metric for global warming, he will convince us that he does not recognize i) that surface temperature, by itself, is not a meaasure of heat (e.g. see), and ii) that there are major remaining uncertainties and biases with the surface temperature data set (e.g. see, see and see).
He writes
“In the middle of a strong 50-year warming trend, any clever (but cynical) analyst can connect an El Niño-driven warm year to a La Niña-driven cool year a few years later to make it look like warming has stopped.”
He ignores that since 2003, global warming (the accumulation of Joules) has stopped. An objective scientist [as opposed to a “clever (but cynical) analyst”] would report this scientific observation.
He would find more appreciation and respect for his viewpoints if he properly presented the actual observational finding, and discussed its implications as to where we are with respect to the accumulation of Joules over time. I have proposed such an approach in my weblogs
A Litmus Test For Global Warming – A Much Overdue Requirement
The epic ‘Stan Palmer’ thread, Autumn of ’07 at Pharyngula, is a wonderful example of PZ’s posters being rude. I only commented toward, not at, the end, and was civil throughout, but eventually was banned by PZ hisself. While I commented, though, the abuse was pretty constant and nearly always ignorant. One commenter agreed to look at Stevie Mac’s Divergence Problem. The rest were astoundingly stupidheaded for a blog that apparently does real science now and then. Maybe I shouldn’t have defended Intelligent Design as an instructive exercise in Theory of Knowledge and a wonderful irony about faith in scientific knowledge. That’s an issue they are unseemingly sensitive about.
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Leif, there have been many times in human history, unfortunately, when the cries of emotional pseudo-experts have prodded the populace to action in unreasonable amounts. Sadly too. Undeclared wars, enslavement, torture, economic distress, and loss of life have resulted from such majority call to questionable action.
Why does alarmism exist anyway? The human species tends to cluster in groups around deeply held and emotionally charged shared thoughts and beliefs, whether or not those beliefs are informed with scientifically derived observations and facts. This is why, in my opinion, that a Republic form for government is one of the few forms capable of minimizing this. While it is not failproof, it is one of the best weapons we have against misinformed decisions forced on the populace.
We vigorously debate against the Romms of this world who seek to develop an influential fast-track majority opinion based on ill-developed theory, so that more reasonable, thoughtful decisions can be made. Maybe too, it is because we have been led down the primrose path of alarmism once or twice before without calling for more debate. And lived to regret it.
An emotional belief should never become the sole basis for inaction or action. To do so discredits the noble pursuit of observed phenomena, the proper construction of the null hypothesis, and the necessary fertile ground of theory and paradigm development and shift. Alarmism wants to bypass that slow path, to our collective detriment.
Finally, failure to raise the level of debate when debate is clearly needed in the face of misinformed alarmism, labels us complicit.
It’s not what Romm says that disturbs me but what he represents.
But temperatures this decade are already warmer than the last one, the one that contained 1998.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/
/// The 1990s were the warmest complete decade in the series. The warmest year of the entire series has been 1998, with a temperature of 0.546°C above the 1961-90 mean. Thirteen of the fourteen warmest years in the series have now occurred in the past fourteen years (1995-2008). The only year in the last fourteen not among the warmest fourteen is 1996 (replaced in the warm list by 1990). The period 2001-2008 (0.43°C above 1961-90 mean) is 0.19°C warmer than the 1991-2000 decade (0.24°C above 1961-90 mean). ///
Pielke’s text shows a failure to understand the facts of global warming.
Pamela Gray (08:57:51) :
“Leif, there have been many times in human history, unfortunately, when the cries of emotional pseudo-experts have prodded the populace to action in unreasonable amounts.”
Pamela Gray, I have less confidence in the emotion vs reason agrument than in a hard-headed look at power and access/control of affluence and the means of production.
There is a huge slush-fund of gazillions of $s floating around the AGW group (the academy, the bureaucracy, wealthy liberals, financial bigwigs, and corporations that believe they will be in on the take) to further their hopes/plans that cap-and-trade will continue them in their slush-fund lives for “generations”, or at least for themselves and their children.
Most “conservatives” in the U.S. are now on the outside of power because they permitted fraud in the election of their last president, they vastly increased the power of the executive, tried to legislate behavior, and did little or nothing about the necessary concerns of the little “d” democratic millions who where suffering lack of affordable basic health care, decent pay for a day’s honest work, and decent education for their children. There was no attempt to begin a solution to the reality that jobs and benefits that make life livable (health, life insurance, education sometimes, and retirement) can no longer be conflated if we are to be competitive in this world. Any national solutions that are sensible were/are called “socialism”.
Now that that the political tables are turned, fraud in elections in a supposed democracy has escalated exponentially, executive power has increased wildly, health care and education continue to suffer, authoritarian unions are taking over democratic unions, and we have people in power who have never once in their lives helped the little “d” democratic millions. Elite control is what we are left with — and those who argue AGW/ Climate Sensitivity are among those elites. And both so-called conservatives and pseudo-liberals are to blame. This is not simply a nightmare of liberabs gone wacko. I see no liberals in the current group in power.
What is the solution? Science is science and the truth is the truth no matter which side you are on. Neither vinegar nor honey apply. Straightforward, respectful arguments — even if the opposing side finds them rude — not devious bending of the truth or personal attacks will further science, technology, productivity, and creativity. The purpose is to solve the current problems and to help people live well — “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.
I find these qualities on WUWT. Thanks, Anthony Watts.
Dennis Ward
Pielke’s text shows a failure to understand the facts of global warming.
Or perhaps your failure to understand that Pielke is talking about ocean heat content rather than the surface temperatures which lag several years behind it.
The amount of heat in Joules is the issue, not the temperature in Celcius or Fahrenheit.
From an engineering or systems point of view, total energy in a system is more fundamental than the temperature of any particular point or collection of points.
Interesting interview with Prof. Freeman Dyson, who has forgotten more science than Joe Romm will ever learn.
Or there is also the possibility that the scientists arguing for and the scientists arguing against catastrophic global warming occuring are virtually all honest, intelligent people that hold differing points of view and aren’t the money grubbing opportunists of grant money or oil money. Just a thought.
I have been a daily reader of climate progress for almost two years. Everything I know about climate science, I learned at Joe Romm’s blog. It is the only blog where I regularly comment.
To get a feel for the climateprogress blog, this is written in its style:
Anti-environmentalist character assassin Joe Romm adds Greenpeace to his list of despicable enablers of global warming doom. The former Enron cheerleader wallows in hyper partisan loathing. His propaganda pushing website puts politics before all else. Actually solving the problem he claims will kill us all is less far less important to him than gaining political power for his George Soros and corrupt banking interest funded friends and allies.
CP has from its beginning built readership by vituperative attack on any available target. Romm loves to feud. He will slam you, then he’ll ban you. When reading or trying to communicate with Romm, understand that he’s a lot like Rush Limbaugh in that like on Limbaugh’s radio show, the purpose of the content on CP is to make Joe Romm look good.
When WUWT was first slammed at CP, I wrote in that, given his life history, Anthony has done more to reduce CO2 than most of his critics. Actions mean nothing, it was said. Watts’ words of disagreement alone are destroying the future. There is no point in arguing science at CP. Romm is really only interested the politics and the policy. His exaggeration of the science is so ridiculous at times. He actually tried to claim the Catlin Project was the authoritative arctic sea ice data source.
This question is O/T but generally relevant, I think, to the concerns of those who post here.
What is being taught ot kids these days, K-12, about meteorology? When I was in 7th grade, back in the Medieval Warm Period, we had an entire sequence of lessons in science class about weather and climate. We studied the layers of the atmosphere, the traditional categories of clouds, and different types of storms. We learned how to read a simple weather map, and constructed a primitive barometer with colored water instead of mercury.
This was at a time, the late ’50’s, when hurricanes tended to barrel up along the mid-Atlantic and New England coastlines, so weather was often a local newsmaker. I believe I was in second year French class in Sept of 1960, studying the pluperfect subjunctive, while Hurricane Donna was blowing by.
I always loved meteorology because it didn’t stink, like chemistry often did, did not waterboard me with math, as was the case with physics, and was best studied outside, looking up at the sky, which I have always loved to do anyway.
What do kids learn about the basics of meteorology today? I have a sinking feeling that they watch An Inconvenient Truth and put on plays in which the prettiest girl in the class plays Gaia, and the fattest boy, sporting a twirlable paste-on moustache, plays a rapacious evil capitalist.
Anthony, would it be possible to open a thread in which the subject of the teaching of meteorology in elementary and secondar schools might be discussed? I suspect that you have yourself been a guest lecturer at schools.
Jeremy (07:51:05) :
Ozzie John (04:34:10) :
Q – How much energy does it take to stop all activity on Climate Progress ?
A – 1 Watt !
Watts = Joules/Second = Power
Joules = Energy
Q How many climate activists does it take to change a light bulb?
A They’re not going to. They’re going to crush your spare light bulbs and make you buy their eco friendly mercury vapour filled ones instead.
Dennis Ward (09:44:26) : said
“But temperatures this decade are already warmer than the last one, the one that contained 1998.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/ ”
Of course there are various data sets-all of which start with tiny numbers of stations back in 1850 (Hadley) or 1880 (Giss) from which temperatures are constructed from the ever changing numbers of stations in ever changing locations. The item you linked to mentions;
“This time series is being compiled jointly by the Climatic Research Unit and the UK Met. Office Hadley Centre. The record is being continually up-dated and improved (see Brohan et al., 2006). This paper includes a new and more thorough assessment of errors, recognizing that these differ on annual and decadal timescales.”
So even temperatures back as far as 1850 are still ptentially being altered and improved. It would be unfair to suggest these are mostly in one direction.
The question of what exactly is being measured and where, is dealt with by James Hansen .
“Q. What do I do if I need absolute SATs, not anomalies ?
A. In 99.9% of the cases you’ll find that anomalies are exactly what you need, not absolute temperatures. In the remaining cases, you have to pick one of the available climatologies and add the anomalies (with respect to the proper base period) to it. For the global mean, the most trusted models produce a value of roughly 14 Celsius, i.e. 57.2 F, but it may easily be anywhere between 56 and 58 F and regionally, let alone locally, the situation is even worse.”
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/abs_temp.html
So surface temperatures are a rather variable feast in which the global mean average is said to be inaccurate to within 2 Degrees F -rather larger than the amount of increase since 1880 being put forward as needing immediate action.
This is without adding in the greater than expected increases due to UHI
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6256520.ece
or taking into account Mr Watt’s work on incorrect siting.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/surfacestationsreport_spring09.pdf
In reality the global mean temperature could be almost anything you want, should you believe such a concept has any merit in the first place.
Tonyb
Climate Depot is completely absorbed by Romm and now misses out on the real relevant issues. I think it’s a pitty and something that will never happen at WUWT.
this truly is one of the most civilized blogs on the world wide web.
What struck me about Joe Romm’s post was the glee that he seemed to be displaying at the thought of rising temperatures. It occurred to me that it might be an idea to ask Joe, the following question.
Dear Joe:
Supposing, somehow, that whatever triggered the last Little Ice Age (or big Ice Age if you are a true believer in the Hockey Stick) was to strike again tomorrow and the global that will be caused by CO2 will be counteracted so that the temperature of the planet remained stable, would you be happy? Specifically, would you be happy that we would not have to spend all those Trillions on CO2 reduction and could instead , for instance, provide cheap, reliable, fossil fuel based electricity to the two billion people who do not currently have it?
Yours
Shane
PS, I considered posting this there, but as others have commented, the bile put me off
Of course that should be
… was to strike again tomorrow and the global warming that will be caused by CO2…
S
“I want my commenters to be uncivil. There is no virtue in politeness when confronted with ignorance, dishonesty, and delusion. I want them to charge in to the heart of the issue and shred the frauds, without hesitation and without faltering over manners.”
Within reason I like this thinking of one P.Z. Myers. I’ll have to check him out some day.
Chris Schoneveld wrote (in part): “Imagine that the global surface temperature stays flat for the rest of the 21st century then nobody would consider that alarming or catastrophic but it would falsify the AGW hypothesis, yet it would be the hottest century on record.”
If that happens, anybody who survives until the year 2100 (2101 for purists) should own up to the fact that global warming had stopped in 2009.
Until then, of course, your hypothesis is mere speculation. If AGW is to be falsified, it will not be done by speculating on what may happen decades in the future.
Bill Illis: Thanks for the GODAS links. I’ve illustrated the direction of flow I believe you discussed. Refer to the following:
http://i39.tinypic.com/2rd91m8.jpg
I’ve seen that west to east flow along the thermocline in an animation I created of ECMWF equatorial temperature anomaly cross-sections. Never posted it, though. But I noticed something I’ve never seen before in the GODAS one you linked. There also appears to be flow visible at lower levels.
http://i39.tinypic.com/5vro0k.jpg
Take a look at the GODAS gif animation you linked and see if you pick it up also. I may be imagining it. The eyes play tricks. I tried to confirm it by downloading the GODAS gif to Windows Movie Maker, (I was going to speed it up. That helps at times.), but unlike any other gif I’ve loaded, that one locked up the program big time. So bad I had to pull the power.
Thanks for those links, Bob (Bob Tisdale, 01:59:55).
The link to Carl Wonk’s work included…….” The origin of this cold water is not the Humboldt Current pumping exceptionally cold water periodically from the Southern Ocean for the current follows too close to the coast. Instead, it is likely that the transfer of warm water back-and-forth between the East and West Pacific noted by Bob Tisdale here is responsible for the cold jolts.”
The cold spot formed at about 110^.I have seen patterns where the Humboldt current although coast hugging, follows the geography of western South America,seems to exit coastal contact at Lima and curls upward and eastward. It may be running out of steam at 110^but could it be part of the cold spot origin?
On the subject of other sites losing it:
Wikipedia won’t let you even post any type of counter AGW material anymore. As soon as you post, they remove to archives for some foolish reason. It is so biased that one of the more agressive “editors” wrote me and said – why do even waste your time, you know we aren’t going to allow any debate !
Wow !!!
REPLY: Do it again, document it, screencap it, and I’ll post it here. Embarrassment and exposure is often the only tool that works. – Anthony
Bob, here is a Tao/Triton Temperature and Dynamic height 3D of the equatorial region that needs to be watched.Very impressive computing power.
Your videos were very instructive,especially with the pause button.
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/vis/explorer/t-dyn-med.html
[sorry a bit to close to ad hom]
Our esteemed host Mr Watts is the main target of a flood of ad hominim rants from Romm and commenters alike.
That might get under anybody’s skin, especially of the target of the vile aspersions.
But consider how awful it would be if he were being complimented by that crowd.
China and India have made it absolutely clear that the only metric they will sign up for is CO2 emissions per capita.
Priceless. And who can argue that ain’t fair? (Go on, I dare ya!)
Anyhow, does this blog block comments as frequently as Climate Progress?
I haven’t blocked one in ages. I rarely even snip. Fortunately, thanks to the generally high tone around here, it’s rarely necessary.
(I will never snip anything directed at myself, no matter how objectionable.)
Chris Winter (15:44:12) :
If AGW is to be falsified, it will not be done by speculating on what may happen decades in the future.
What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, no? The predictions of AGW are for what will happen decades in the future!!
Let us be clear. There is no if. As far as scientific falsification is required, the IPCC Ceneral Circulation Models outputs have been clearly and definitively falsified.
1) temperatures are in stasis and might possibly roll down the incline
2) The tropospheric predictions do not pan out, there is no extra heating of the tropical troposphere
3)The relative humidities do not follow the model expectations
4) the oceans are not heating but also are in stasis, to say the least.
While, CO2 is merrly rising and having no effect on the cold PDO.
This is the CO2 that would reverse an ice age according to Hansen.
The PDO is in a cool phase, the albedo is rising, and everything is falsifying the predictions of the GCMs.
And I have not touched upon the behavior of the sun, since Leif has convinced me that at the moment there is no solid scientific explanation of any observed correlations. If the speculative model of cosmic ray influence pans out, that is another strike out.
So what do we have? We have a crowd psychology that is being driven to hysterical levels by wrong and disproved data by people who should know better as they are PhD scientists. The hysteria aimed at is such that it is convincing politicians in these hard economic times to commit what is practivally hara kiri of the western economies. Unfortunately hysteria has a momentum of its own and cannot be stopped by scientific falsification arguments.