Resisting climate hysteria
by Richard S. Lindzen on Quadrant Online
July 26, 2009
A Case Against Precipitous Climate Action
The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat.
excerpts:
For small changes in climate associated with tenths of a degree, there is no need for any external cause. The earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Recent work (Tsonis et al, 2007), suggests that this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th Century. Supporting the notion that man has not been the cause of this unexceptional change in temperature is the fact that there is a distinct signature to greenhouse warming: surface warming should be accompanied by warming in the tropics around an altitude of about 9km that is about 2.5 times greater than at the surface. Measurements show that warming at these levels is only about 3/4 of what is seen at the surface, implying that only about a third of the surface warming is associated with the greenhouse effect, and, quite possibly, not all of even this really small warming is due to man (Lindzen, 2007, Douglass et al, 2007). This further implies that all models predicting significant warming are greatly overestimating warming. This should not be surprising (though inevitably in climate science, when data conflicts with models, a small coterie of scientists can be counted upon to modify the data. Thus, Santer, et al (2008), argue that stretching uncertainties in observations and models might marginally eliminate the inconsistency. That the data should always need correcting to agree with models is totally implausible and indicative of a certain corruption within the climate science community).
…
Climate alarmists respond that some of the hottest years on record have occurred during the past decade. Given that we are in a relatively warm period, this is not surprising, but it says nothing about trends.
Given that the evidence (and I have noted only a few of many pieces of evidence) strongly implies that anthropogenic warming has been greatly exaggerated, the basis for alarm due to such warming is similarly diminished. However, a really important point is that the case for alarm would still be weak even if anthropogenic global warming were significant. Polar bears, arctic summer sea ice, regional droughts and floods, coral bleaching, hurricanes, alpine glaciers, malaria, etc. etc. all depend not on some global average of surface temperature anomaly, but on a huge number of regional variables including temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, and direction and magnitude of wind. The state of the ocean is also often crucial. Our ability to forecast any of these over periods beyond a few days is minimal (a leading modeler refers to it as essentially guesswork). Yet, each catastrophic forecast depends on each of these being in a specific range. The odds of any specific catastrophe actually occurring are almost zero. This was equally true for earlier forecasts of famine for the 1980’s, global cooling in the 1970’s, Y2K and many others. Regionally, year to year fluctuations in temperature are over four times larger than fluctuations in the global mean.
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In view of the above, one may reasonably ask why there is the current alarm, and, in particular, why the astounding upsurge in alarmism of the past 4 years. When an issue like global warming is around for over twenty years, numerous agendas are developed to exploit the issue. The interests of the environmental movement in acquiring more power, influence, and donations are reasonably clear. So too are the interests of bureaucrats for whom control of CO2 is a dream-come-true. After all, CO2 is a product of breathing itself. Politicians can see the possibility of taxation that will be cheerfully accepted because it is necessary for ‘saving’ the earth. Nations have seen how to exploit this issue in order to gain competitive advantages. But, by now, things have gone much further. The case of ENRON (a now bankrupt Texas energy firm) is illustrative in this respect.
…
And finally, there are the numerous well meaning individuals who have allowed propagandists to convince them that in accepting the alarmist view of anthropogenic climate change, they are displaying intelligence and virtue For them, their psychic welfare is at stake.
With all this at stake, one can readily suspect that there might be a sense of urgency provoked by the possibility that warming may have ceased and that the case for such warming as was seen being due in significant measure to man, disintegrating. For those committed to the more venal agendas, the need to act soon, before the public appreciates the situation, is real indeed. However, for more serious leaders, the need to courageously resist hysteria is clear. Wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever present climate change is no substitute for prudence. Nor is the assumption that the earth’s climate reached a point of perfection in the middle of the twentieth century a sign of intelligence.
Read the complete essay with references at Quadrant Online
Richard S. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
h/t to Bob Carter
Joel Shore (18:58:46) :
Hi Joel,
With all respect, what events, if they were to occur, would you consider to be clear evidence of refutation of the following notions.
[1] That man made emissions of CO2 are causing global warming, and
[2] That warming caused by man made emissions of CO2 will be catastrophic.
I.e. what are the falsification criteria?
Thanks G.
Tom in Florida (16:38:34) :
Ahhh, the eternal, burning question of the 20th century, carried over into the 21st: Pepe’s or Sallie’s? Sallie’s or Pepe’s? Why choose? Both are distinctive, tasty and better than anything made anywhere else. After all, American Pizza was invented in New Haven.
Joel Shore (18:58:46) :
‘And, as I like to continually stress, while the issue of the tropical tropospheric amplification is not completely resolved, claiming it as some sort of direct test of whether the current warming is due mainly to greenhouse gases or not is wrong since the prediction of such amplification by the models seems to be basically independent of the warming mechanism.’
I agree, any input of heat near teh surface surface in the tropics would have the same effect as greenhouse gases. And I agree that there is always noise/drift/doubt in any very long term data set (weather balloons from 1960 for example). But I think this all begs the real issue: essentially all the GCM’s predict that radiative forcing in the tropics will increase tropospheric humidity, leading to warming in the troposphere that is substantially greater (up to several times) the warming observed near the ground, and this large tropospheric warming is clearly not supported by the data.
Yes, it is true that if you critically assess the satellite and balloon data and assign very conservative (generous) error bars to both the climate models and the measurements, as the modelers already have published, you can’t statistically prove (at >95% confidence) that the models are in conflict with the data. But any reasonable person should agree that the best estimates of tropospheric warming from the models are not at all close to the best estimates of warming from the data. If I were looking at my own model output and saw that kind of discrepancy, I would be very cautious in claiming my model is an accuate description of reality. After all, even if the data say the models are “only” 80% or 85% likely to be wrong, it would be prudent to at least consider that there may be significant problems with the models.
A very reasonable alternative explanation is of course that the true net radiative forcing (including positive feed backs) is substantially less than the models assume. If I were working on these models, that is what I would be considering right now. But I doubt they are considering this alternative explanation.
Joel Shore “The fact is that if you are never going to accept AGW as long as there are any unsolved puzzles, you are never going to accept it period, because in science there is always data that is not understood and in some seeming contradiction with the current theory.”
HUH? Wow. Circular reasoning in progress.
Smokey….you around? Help me here…LOL.
“And, as I like to continually stress, while the issue of the tropical tropospheric amplification is not completely resolved, claiming it as some sort of direct test of whether the current warming is due mainly to greenhouse gases or not is wrong since the prediction of such amplification by the models seems to be basically independent of the warming mechanism.
What warming mechanism?
The LIA recovery warming mechanism?
The ENSO / PDO /AMO (or any combination thereto) warming mechanism?
Al Gore’s warming mechanism?
What?
Joel Shore (19:31:12) :
Wow, you are talking about apples and I am talking about bananas.
“Statement #1: From what I know, I don’t think I would agree with it. I.e., I think there is some uncertainty in that “bare” sensitivity value but my impression is that the uncertainty is on the order of maybe +-20% at most.”
I made no comment about how much the true “bare” sensitivity might vary from 1C per doubling of CO2. A quick look at how much long wave radiation escapes at different latitudes indicates the full range may be considerably much more than +/-20 % in total, but this does not say what the weighted average would be; I was only trying to note there is considerable uncertainty, even in this most basic number.
“Statement #2: I agree with most of it, but I still think that there is quite a bit of evidence pointing to a sensitivity is in the range of ~2 C to 4 C. Yes, values lower or higher than this can’t be excluded but they do seem less likely based on our current understanding of the climate and the paleoclimate data.”
I said nothing about what the sensitivity actually is. From where comes your pronouncement of 2-4 degrees? And how is that connected to the statement I actually made?
Statement #3: I pretty much agree with it but I would say that, while there is a distribution of urgencies depending on the climate sensitivity, I would say that distribution is centered around doing about what the consensus of the scientific community seems to believe is necessary (as opposed to the extremes of what Hansen seems to think is necessary…i.e., getting back down to 350ppm…and what those who essentially don’t believe it is a problem think is necessary, i.e., having no restrictions.) This middle course of action is also the one that will allow us to either ratchet up or ratchet down our emissions cutbacks as future science gives us more certainty.
I said nothing about what the actual climate forcing is and the consequent perceived urgency for action based on that forcing. The question is: do you agree that the perceived urgency for action depends on the perceived climate sensitivity? I said nothing about specific actions or suggestions by anyone or about the consensus opinion of what actions are needed.
I am really trying to take this exchange in small steps, while you seem to only want to talk about a conclusion. Staring with a conclusion (about which we will clearly disagree) makes it impossible to understand where there is technical agreement and disagreement.
Joel Shore says: “…while the issue of the tropical tropospheric amplification is not completely resolved…”
In other words: “Let’s be bipartisan, guys. Just trust us, and here, let me hold your wallet for you.”
Climate alarmists need to prove their case. So far they’ve come up short.
Those folks need to understand that the unmeasurably small forcing that additional CO2 may add to the planet’s temperature is clearly overwhelmed by other causes. The effect of CO2 on the planet’s temperature can be disregarded as insignificant.
Because the first CO2 molecules made the biggest difference, even doubling its concentration from, say, 4 parts in 10,000 to 5 parts in 10,000 will cause only minuscule warming.
eric (17:41:28) : Read AGAIN-the measurements from before the seventies don’t exist for any of those things, again PERIOD. And again, there is no continuous measurement of TSI-only several different series which must be stitched together subjectively. Given the insistence by your pal Joel that stitching satellites together makes UAH wrong, it’s funny you ignore the issue…
And Tom is an ambulance chasing idiot, linking to him greatly diminishes your credibility-suggesting to me that your thinking ability is similarly impaired.
Joel Shore (18:58:46) : “:Well, I know that Spencer and Christy have published some papers attempting to show that the major difference that remains is due to a problem with RSS. And, while you may have decided which data set to believe, I don’t think the scientific community as a whole has reached any such conclusion.”
Not just them but several others. The fact is that the “scientific community as a whole” has an opinion which is frankly worth less than zero.
“It is also useful to go back and look at the whole history of the satellite data.”
Your not arguing for prudence, your arguing for dismissing the data because it has been wrong in the past! Give an actual reason why its wrong damn it! The issues have largely been resolved and unless you can come up with another flaw to be accounted for, you are simply full of $#!%.
Joel Shore (19:31:12) : “I pretty much agree with it but I would say that, while there is a distribution of urgencies depending on the climate sensitivity, I would say that distribution is centered around doing about what the consensus of the scientific community seems to believe is necessary (as opposed to the extremes of what Hansen seems to think is necessary…i.e., getting back down to 350ppm…and what those who essentially don’t believe it is a problem think is necessary, i.e., having no restrictions.) This middle course of action is also the one that will allow us to either ratchet up or ratchet down our emissions cutbacks as future science gives us more certainty.”
I’ve had it. You are obviously politically biased toward wanting a massive restructuring of society along your favored lines. If you can’t understand how much more disastrous the proposed policies are than even a thousand million billion degrees of warming then…
I’m done.
Don’t give up, timetochooseagain.
The burden of proof is on his[Joel’s] back…not yours.
Prove it Joel. Show the incontrovertible evidence.
You can not….because there is none.
So you have to cloak everything that you say with two more sentences of padding.
Pure textbook sophistry.
Show the evidence.
Show it.
Chris
Norfolk, VA
“But how did the warm water get below the cold without makingthe cold warm?”
You know sonar guys have a lot of trouble if they are trying to find something in the ocean due to different temperatures and salinity that come in layers.
Of course if they are trying to stay hidden it helps.
Bravo Lindzen,
How very well put!
“..the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth..” Any evidence pointing against catastrophic anthropogenic global warming comes up against a stone wall of “scientific consensus” and “the time for talking is over”.
“..inevitably in climate science, when data conflicts with models, a small coterie of scientists can be counted upon to modify the data….That the data should always need correcting to agree with models is totally implausible and indicative of a certain corruption within the climate science community”
Instead of implausible I would say unscientific and totally dishonest!
“Wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever present climate change is … ” besides being asinine, a recipe for catastrophe!
savethesharks (21:17:39) : People have tended to notice that my temper is rather short. I myself get depressed about this fact quite often.
And certain things set me off. Shore revealing his political bias infuriated me. At least someone without any reason to hold to a erroneous view can be spoken to without them revealing their orientation towards particular policies as the reason for their incessant clinging.
Thomas J. Arnold. (11:17:08) :
20% Doh! should use number pad.
Actually it was very funny as posted. A keeper.
Sorry, maybe I’m wrong, but from reading the above it seems that the AGW hypotheses requires that the average temp of atmosphere controls the average temperature of the oceans? In other words the AGW crowd believe that the ’98 “super El Nino” was caused by CO2 warming the atmosphere and in turn warming the oceans? I believe this is manifestly wrong. How much more massive is the thermal inertia of the ocean vs that of the atmosphere? Surely the oceans receive the overwhelming majority of this heat, or energy, from sunlight falling upon its surface not from radiated heat from the atmosphere? Now my understanding is that the ’98 El Nino was the clearest expression of the “warming climate” so if it cannot have been caused by CO2 then the AGW argument is essentially falsified?
Again, to believe in AGW you have to believe that the temperature of the atmosphere controls the temperature of the oceans. Think about it.
There may be other ways CO2 effects the climate. Maybe it affects the opacity of the atmosphere? But that is not an AGW argument.
Thinking about the arctic ice cap, has been determined whether it is the ambient air temperature that melts the ice in summer… or something else? Say the water temperature under the ice?
Again, if it is water temperature it would nothing to do with CO2 levels in the atmosphere (see my post above).
If CO2 “traps” heat what is the effect on average ocean temps when CO2 is outgassed as a result of oceanic temperature increases? I.e. does the CO2 content of the oceans effect their retention of heat? If not, why not? Once the CO2 levels of the oceans drops due to outgassing, does that cause the oceans to cool down due to the loss of this “greenhouse” gas?
Steve Fitzpatrick(14:09:04):
“All working scientists agree that CO2 doubling without any other feedback or changes in forcings will increase the average temperature 1C if nothing else happens.
Agreed, it is a direct consequence of how a ~255K black body responds to changes in radiative heating.”
Could you point me in the direction of the original calculation of 1oC please would be interested in seeing it.
Thanks for the chart Joel. Reminds me of a second hand car salesman talking up the charms of the nodding dog in the back window while keeping a hand firmly over that darn rust spot.
Can you do the same trick but over, say, a 1,000 years?
Joel Shore (13:45:06) :
Steve says:
Spouting this kind of BS make you lose your credibility. UAH and RSS agree very well. See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980/plot/uah/from:1980
It starts at zero and ends at zero, with lots of natural variation in between. Also the scales are very handy: what does 0.2° feel like?
Try doing a linear trend through the data ( http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980/trend/plot/uah/from:1980/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1980/trend ). You will find that the trends are somewhat different. It is not a huge difference…but it is a difference…and as you can see, it is significantly larger than the difference in trends over the same time period between RSS and either of the surface records. (What matters here are the slopes…The offsets are due to different base periods.)
And, as I noted, I believe that the tropics only data shows significantly more difference in trends.
I have to agree that Joel is wasting his degree. He is here to argue that we should ACT NOW – the models hint that something is amiss and needs to be fixed. We can’t wait until the science is in – WE MUST ACT NOW TO SAVE THE PLANET … WOE is ME!!!
Rehplan,
The fact the Lindzen was consulted as part of the Jason report does not contradict the fact that the roots of the current idea that climate change due to CO2 emissions are based on theoretical physical calculations, through this report, rather than as a result of recent temperature changes.
It makes his statement even more bizarre, since he should know better.
In addition to the Jason report there was the Charney report, and James Hansen’s paper and testimony in 1981. None of these were arguments for AGW based on any past accumulated temperature changes. The projection of global warming, and its regional effects were based on modeling.
Steve Fitzpatrick
Sorry that I didn’t get to your points in any detail sooner.
I was a little hasty in my agreement with your points.
Here are some comments, which may duplicate replies that others have made.
1) The significance of the 1C number is that it shows that GHG’s are a real forcing factor. There are some AGW skeptics that deny this is the case, despite the fact that it is accepted by all climate scientists, including the tiny minority who say that other factors provide negative feedback to make this insignificant.
2 and 3) )I don’t believe that the basic 1C number may not be correct. It just is not the complete story. It is a kind of hypothetical number. I agree that there are feedbacks and other forcing factors that are significant. The range of values derived by many different climate researchers indicates that including these factors gives a number 1.5-4.5C and even higher than that .
4)Ocean heat, which is hard to measure accurately is a good index. The ocean absorbs about 80% of the incident energy that is absorbed by the earth and has 70% of the area.
5) Ocean heat measurements require very careful painstaking research, and the values up to 2003 have been corrected by different researchers many times over. They are still working on 2003 to the present, and the numbers you quote are likely to change.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Does-ocean-cooling-disprove-global-warming.html
6) I am not familiar with the theory that climate sensitivity correlates with lag.
It isn’t obvious to me. I do believe that the large variations in climate from year to year, compared to the long term trend, is an indication of high climate sensitivity.
I agree that there are feedbacks and other forcing factors that are significant. The range of values derived by many different climate researchers indicates that including these factors gives a number 1.5-4.5C and even higher than that .
Unless, of course, it turns out that the feedbacks are negative rather than positive. And the recent evidence (AquaSat, etc.) has been pointing in that direction. If correctly interpreted, one set of data can refute “many different climate researchers”.
Ocean heat measurements require very careful painstaking research, and the values up to 2003 have been corrected by different researchers many times over. They are still working on 2003 to the present, and the numbers you quote are likely to change.
So far, first change was to throw out the coldest readings. The second change was to sub in non-ARGO readings with a known warm bias. And there is still a slight cooling.
I understand that there are problems inherent in raw data. But I begin to suspect that the problems regarding adjustment procedures are greater still–particularly when raw data access is denied and adjustment procedures are tightly concealed.
evanmjones (07:02:42) :
“I understand that there are problems inherent in raw data. But I begin to suspect that the problems regarding adjustment procedures are greater still–particularly when raw data access is denied and adjustment procedures are tightly concealed.”
Absolutely. As an analogue, I have done a lot of work on old oil well logs. At some stage during the drilling of an oil well a series of electronic tools are run in the hole to measure physical properties of the rocks. These include, for example, natural gamma radiation, the speed of sound, the density and the resistivity of the rocks. These days all the data is recorded digitally but older wells – say before around 1980? – were logged by analogue tools and the data recorded on photographic film.
These older well logs have since been digitised and errors in digitisation are very common. (On one data set I worked with, which was purchased from a national government, there was not a single well without errors. And this was a western first world country.!) It is essential to have original data at hand in order to check the digitised data. If the data can’t be checked it is effectively worthless.
Note that these errors were all genuine errors: Log digitising isn’t the most exciting of pastimes! (Although I always found it to be somewhat therapeutic!)
James (01:35:19) :
‘Could you point me in the direction of the original calculation of 1oC please would be interested in seeing it.’
You can Google it, but I can save you some time.
An approximate value for climate sensitivity in the absence of any feedbacks, positive or negative, can be estimated from the change in blackbody emission temperature that is required to balance a 1 watt per square meter increase in heat input, using the Stefan-Boltzman Law. Assuming solar intensity is 1366 watts/M^2, and assuming the Earth’s average albedo is ~0.3 (it might be a little higher or a little lower), the net solar intensity averaged over the whole of the Earth’s surface is ~239 watts/M^2, requiring a blackbody (Stefan-Blotzman) emission temperature of 254.802 K to balance incoming heat. This characteristic emission temperature corresponds to some altitude in the troposphere, which is of course much cooler than the Earth’s surface do to the thermal lapse rate. The characteristic emission temperature is where infrared emission (on average) actually heads off into space. At altitudes below this level, infrared emission of course takes place, but is mostly re-absorbed by the atmosphere above it. With 1 watt/M^2 more input, the required blackbody emission temperature increases according to Stefan-Boltzman to 255.069, so the expected climate sensitivity is (255.069 – 254.802) = 0.267 degree increase for one watt per square meter of added heat. This can be directly related to the effect expected for doubling of CO2, since doubling CO2 will effectively increase radiative forcing by ~5.35 LN(2) = ~3.71 watts per square meter. So the “bare” climate sensitivity, as Joel Shore calls it, to a doubling of CO2 is about 3.71*0.267 = 0.991 degree C; or in round numbers, a 1C increase for a doubling of CO2. Calculating an exact value for the blackbody sensitivity requires that you take the first derivative of equilibrium blackbody temperature with respect to applied heating rate, but the above approximation using a 1 watt per square meter step change in applied heat is very close to correct.
Of course, even calculating a single “bare sensitivity” is a terrible oversimplification, since the sun’s heat is not applied uniformly over the entire surface. The characteristic emission temperature varies with latitude, season, region, albedo, and weather, and consequently, so must the “bare” sensitivity to forcing, since sensitivity depends on characteristic emission temperature. The point is that even in the absence of (often disputed!) internal feedbacks (like ‘net positive cloud feed-back’), it is no simple task to determine a true “average sensitivity”.
eric (06:45:02) : “I am not familiar with the theory that climate sensitivity correlates with lag.”
That’s funny, since Hansen wrote a paper about this in 1985.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/229/4716/857
Dang it! Anthony, can you or a moderator dig that last comment out of the spam bucket for me? Thanks.
eric (06:45:02) :
‘The significance of the 1C number is that it shows that GHG’s are a real forcing factor.’
I already agreed that the “bare sensitivity” to a doubling of CO2 should be in the range of 1C, which comes from Stefan-Boltzman and the expected forcing (~3.7 watts per square meter) for a doubling of CO2. No need to convince me of this.
The point of my original #1 was that there is at least some uncertainty in even this theoretical “no feed-back” climate sensitivity value, and determining the correct no-feedback value is itself a non-trivial task. I am not sure now if you agree with this or not.
‘2 and 3) )I don’t believe that the basic 1C number may not be correct. It just is not the complete story. It is a kind of hypothetical number. I agree that there are feedbacks and other forcing factors that are significant. The range of values derived by many different climate researchers indicates that including these factors gives a number 1.5-4.5C and even higher than that .’
I purposely did not suggest any range of values for final sensitivity, because I really want only to understand where we agree and disagree on how one ought to arrive at a reasonable range for net sensitivity. That we might honestly disagree on the correct range of final sensitivities (and/or the credibility of different published estimates of climate sensitivity) is not terribly informative; what matters is how we arrive at those different conclusions. I arrive at my expected range of credible climate sensitivity based on my (critical) analysis of the data, publications, and theoretical information that I have been able to read over the last couple of years. If you have done something similar, then a dialog really ought to be constructive. If on the other hand you believe that the IPCC’s range of sensitivities (or some similar range, as you wrote above) simply because you believe that the “consensus view” of climate scientists (or at least those that contribute to the IPCC projections), is the most credible based on the background/experience of the scientists involved, then there may not be a lot for us to discuss.
‘5) Ocean heat measurements require very careful painstaking research, and the values up to 2003 have been corrected by different researchers many times over. They are still working on 2003 to the present, and the numbers you quote are likely to change.’
I agree that ocean heat measurements, like all climate measuremnts, require careful research, and there have been several significant revisions of past estimates, especially those based on the more limited data from pre-Argo days. There was one significant revision in the Argo data (not ‘many times over’), due to a problem with a small sub-set of the Argo bouys made by a single manufacturer. This problem was identified by Josh Willis, and he showed that the incorrect data lead to lower than correct heat estimates… until the problem was identified. The Argo group has identified and flagged the faulty bouys, and no more faulty bouys are being placed. All recently published analyses of the Argo data (including that of Josh Willis et al) have excluded the suspect data. It is this corrected data that shows little or no net ocean heat accumulation. If you know of other significant revisions to Argo data I am not aware of, then please tell me about them. In addition, at least two groups have used satellite measurements of total ocean mass and sea level to independently verify that there has been very little or no thermal expansion of the ocean starting in ~2003, consistent with the Argo measurements. For me, 3000+ heat profiles collected every few days, with data that is being carefully monitored/checked for quality by the Argo group, independently verified by other means, represent the most reliable ocean heat data that has ever been available. In light of this, do you believe that Argo’s lack of increase in total heat in the top 700 meters is probably not correct? If so, why do you think that?
‘6) I am not familiar with the theory that climate sensitivity correlates with lag.’
Fore example:
Bell, T. L.: Climate sensitivity from fluctuation dissipation: some
simple model tests, J. Atmos. Sci., 37, 1700–1707, 1980.
Cionni, I., Visconti, G., and Sassi, F.: Fluctuation dissipation theorem
in a general circulation model, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31,
L09206, doi:10.1029/2004GL019739, 2004.
There have been a number or recent publications saying essentially that with a less than perfectly known lag profile (that is, a less than perfectly known profile of lags with different temporal scales), you need a huge amount of data (up to hundreds of years!) to extract accurate information about climate sensitivity, and such data does not exist. I noted that these objections to FDT analysis were published very quickly after a couple of publications based on FDT concluded that the existing data suggest a relatively low climate sensitivity, in conflict with GCM’s. These objections to FDT all rely upon the behavior of GCM’s to cast doubt on the results of analyses of real data; as a scientist, I find this most distressing, since they seem to me to have the process upside down.