Roy Spencer writes on his website:
NASA’s James Hansen is probably right about this point: the importance of ocean heat storage to a better understanding of how sensitive the climate system is to our greenhouse gas emissions. The more efficient the oceans are at storing excess heat during warming, the slower will be the surface temperature response of the climate system to an imposed energy imbalance.
Unfortunately, the uncertainties over the rate at which vertical mixing takes place in the ocean allows climate modelers to dismiss a lack of recent warming by simply asserting that the deep oceans must somehow be absorbing the extra heat. Think Trenberth’s “missing heat“. (For a discussion of the complex processes involved in ocean mixing see here.)
Well, maybe what is really missing is the IPCC’s willingness to admit the climate system is simply not as sensitive to our greenhouse gas emissions as they claim it is. Maybe the missing heat is missing because it does not really exist.
This is where we can learn from the 40+ year record of deep ocean temperature changes. Even the 2007 IPCC report admitted the oceans have warmed more slowly at depth than the climate models can explain.
Hat Tip to “Jeff Id ” for posting in Tips & Notes
ScientistForTruth says:
June 28, 2011 at 4:51 am
“Models of combustion and heat have a long history of being wrong: we don’t go looking for phlogiston and caloric loss in materials today because they never had any physical basis in reality. In their day (to which we could add the luminiferous ether for electromagnetic propagation, the miasma theory of disease transmission and many others), these concepts were consensus ideas, tenaciously held by the most prominent and respectable scientists. A little knowledge of history and the philosophy of science would engender a bit of humility and realism in climate science today.”
Sometimes these things are dismissed prematurely. Lamarckian evolution (the inheritance of acquired traits) was entirely discounted during most of the past century by the central dogma of molecular biology that states: DNA—>RNA—>Protein is a one way street. Turns out it ain’t and there’s a thriving field nowdays in study of what’s called epigenetics. Yo and most every other living thing can inherit traits yo momma acquired during her lifetime. These are inherited in a number of different ways from the mix of small interfering and micro RNA (siRNA and miRNA) molecule types and ratios floating around in the protoplasm to methyl groups that attach to the DNA molecule itself causing changes in transcription activity which are duplicated when the cell replicates.
Likewise, luminiferous ether is making a comeback which I wrote about here a month or so ago. In a surprising recent observation it has been found that gamma rays from very distant sources are spread out in their arrivial times by frequency. This suggests a medium of some sort through which they travel otherwise they should all arrive at the same time as the speed of light in a vacuum is constant regardless of the temperature of individual photons.
While we do control the amount of CO2 releaed from our fossil fuel burning, and the heat energy released by the combustion process, none of that controls the climate.
The CO2 is eaten by the biosphere as it consumes incoming solar energy, and the released heat of combustion escapes off the planet, in blackbody fashion, to replace the extra incoming that is processed by the biosphere.
Zero-sum game. The missing heat came from the Sun, and it was merely stopping by at our place on it’s merry way out of the Solar System. It left the building.
Energy: use it or lose it.
Ignore – following comments
Brent Hargreaves says:
June 28, 2011 at 3:49 am
What’s the Global Warming equivalent of ‘dark matter’?
Dark Forcing?
The figure is very interesting. However, it seems to imply that low temperature flow is blocked by the ridge at the equator. Can’t be. The slice of ocean we are looking at is shown at the bottom right (blue line). I think we can be sure the low temperature deep current makes a left turn away from the section. As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I don’t believe mixing can be significant, or else energy would be removed from thermohaline current through turbulence. That would make the current slow or stop.
I suspect the depth of the deep current is too great for thermal conduction even with 1000-1600 years traveling from the North Atlantic to the Indian Ocean or Eastern Pacific. The higher density of colder salt water at the bottom of the deep zone would maintain separation from the overlying warmer water in the pycnocline. The bulk of the deep zone would serve as insulation.
Buzz Belleville says:
June 28, 2011 at 5:06 am
From the most recent peer-reviewed paper on the issue (Kouketsu et al. 2011):
“We calculated basin-scale and global ocean decadal temperature change rates from the 1990s to the 2000s for waters below 3000 m. Large temperature increases were detected around Antarctica, and a relatively large temperature increase was detected along the northward path of Circumpolar Deep Water in the Pacific. The global heat content (HC) change estimated from the temperature change rates below 3000 m was 0.8 × 10²² J/decade; a value that cannot be neglected for precise estimation of the global heat balance.”
Come on. That’s a 0.05 W/m² global average imbalance. A quantity of this magnitude is absolutely negligible compared to the alleged (and probably non-existent) 0.85 W/m² long term radiative imbalance at TOA (Top of Atmosphere). Therefore they effectively say no heat is sequestered below 3000 m. Even if they prefer to use a different wording.
BTW, the concept of “virtual observations” is simply hilarious.
@Dave Springer:
This suggests a medium of some sort through which they travel otherwise they should all arrive at the same time as the speed of light in a vacuum is constant regardless of the temperature of individual photons.
It could also suggest something as yet unknown about (a) the source of the gamma rays, or (b) the path taken between their source and here. To discount other possibilities simply because one likes one particular possibility more is not science.
@Hoser
I think they should have stayed on one side or the other of the mid-ocean ridge rather than crossing it.
TonyG says:
June 28, 2011 at 2:48 pm
To discount other possibilities simply because one likes one particular possibility more is not science.
Oh, yes it is! It’s a special kind of science called “Climate Science”.
The “Missing Heat” is hiding with the “Hot spot”.
to all sceptics in sydney australia at 12.oo mid day 1st july at martin place a rally will be held to stop labour bringing in a carbon tax
Dave Springer says:
June 28, 2011 at 10:22 am
“Likewise, luminiferous ether is making a comeback. . . ”
Aha! Aristotle is vindicated! At least for some things scientific.
A problem with the ether is that it must also be quanta, otherwise a wave couldn’t exist or propagate: what is the distinction between the ether at the crest and at the trough of a “wave”? It can’t be “continuous”.
So it’s just pushing the transmission issue back one step, not changing it.
As for dark matter, it was there all along, remember?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081020135219.htm
Dave Springer says:
June 28, 2011 at 10:22 am
“…speed of light in a vacuum is constant regardless of the temperature of individual photons…”
Yes. All evidence would appear to substantiate this fact. However, space is not a vacuum and every cubic centimetre is being transited by millions of assorted particles at any moment of time, with photon/neutrino ‘traffic’ predominant in numerical terms.
The ‘dynamic mass’ of this traffic could be both the mysterious ‘dark matter’ and the luminiferous aether which have yet to be found. How ironic it would be this conjecture turned out to be true – it would prove modern physics is still in the dark about how the universe works!
“The laugh is on you. That’s pretty apt. There is no question that dark matter exists. Its gravitational effects on visible matter is as unmistakable and well established as the moon’s gravity causing tides. But just like we don’t know what particles, if any, carry the force of gravity from the moon to the ocean we don’t know what particles make up dark matter.”
Fricking hilarious. I happen to loosely know the guy who came up with the whole dark matter/dark energy theory, and he completely disagrees with you. Dark matter has never been detected, only inferred by theory, and all the top physicists know this means it remain hypothetical, not actual. They know it takes real experiments and real data to confirm the theory, and they don’t have that yet. They built the LHC in large part to test this theory. This guy gets an automatic Nobel Prize if the tests turn out positively, but when asked what he would do if they smashed his theory, he said, “I would be much happier if the theory were disproved, because it would make the universe a much more interesting place”. You will never hear any of these climate wizards voice a similar sentiment. They aren’t real scientists, they are advocates for a hypothesis they have fallen in love with and can’t let go of. It’s becoming pathological, like a bunch of nerdy stalkers who can’t get the girl to pay attention anymore.
[snip. Please read the site Polcy regarding the use of “deniers” and its derivatives. ~dbs, mod.]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13796479
Suggest reading this summary and the final report for an alternative study on the Ocean.
The IPCC climate model is broken. If it cannot predict PDOs and AMOs it isn’t working and must be discarded.
Any electrical engineering system analyst will tell you that a ramp function input (CO2 increase) cannot cause an oscillation output (ocean temperatures).
Planetary beats and the Sun account for the oscillations by their very orbits and transfer of angular momentum, which is totally predictable. It’s celestial mechanics that drives the climate, not man.