Another “the science is settled” moment. From the ABC:
A new US-led study, featuring research by Tasmanian scientists, has concluded that warming ocean temperatures over the past 50 years are largely a man-made phenomenon.
Researchers from America, India, Japan and Australia say the study is the most comprehensive look at how the oceans have warmed.
The study, published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, examined a dozen different models used to project climate change, and compared them with observations of ocean warming over the past 50 years.
It found natural variations accounted for about 10 per cent of rising temperatures, but man-made greenhouse gases were the major cause.
One of the report’s co-authors, Hobart-based Dr John Church, is the CSIRO Fellow with the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research.
He told AM the study was one of the most comprehensive looks into the changes in ocean heat to date, “by quite some margin”.
Dr Church said the breadth of the study had “allowed the group to rule out that the changes are related to natural variability in the climate system”.
He said there was simply no way the upper layers of every ocean in the world could have warmed by more than 0.1 degrees Celsius through natural causes alone.
“Natural variability could only explain 10 per cent, or thereabouts, of the observed change,” he said.
Professor Nathan Bindoff is one of the world’s foremost oceanography experts, and has been a lead author on past Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports.
“Ninety per cent of the temperature change stored in the whole of the Earth’s system is stored in the ocean, so global warming is really an ocean warming problem,” he said.
Professor Bindoff said the new research balanced the man-made impacts of warming greenhouse gases and cooling pollution in the troposphere against natural changes in the ocean’s temperature and volcanic eruptions.
“This paper’s important because, for the first time, we can actually say that we’re virtually certain that the oceans have warmed, and that warming is caused not by natural processes, but by rising greenhouse gases primarily.”
And he described the evidence of global warming as unequivocal.
“We did it. No matter how you look at it, we did it. That’s it,” he said.
Full story: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-11/research-taps-into-ocean-temperatures/4063886
h/t to reader Mick Muller
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timetochooseagain said:
“The conclusion in step six is inevitable after step two. As is seven. One might as well stop after two, the other steps just conceal that the conclusion is actually an assumption.”
I thought so. I just can’t bring myself to believe it, even after all this time. I’m kind of curious about the mindset of the people perpetrating it. They must know it’s bogus, right? What processes of excuse and projection must go on in the mind once you’ve committed yourself to broadcasting what is basically propaganda masking as science?
Alex says:
June 11, 2012 at 5:43 am
Are they claiming that the ocean heated 1 deg celcius the last 50 years?
Actually, they’re claiming that their models prove that AGW has raised the temperature of the oceans by 0.09⁰C over the course of fifty years — followed by the weasel-words that they’re *almost sure* that the oceans have actually, y’know, *warmed*…
Greenhouse Effect CAN NOT warm the Oceans.
http://www.klimaatfraude.info/images/sverdrup.gif
from
http://www.klimaatfraude.info/oceaanopwarming-of-zeespiegelstijging-door-co2-is-niet-mogelijk_193094.html
I don’t bother reading beyond the author list if it contains the name Ben Santer.
quidsapio says:
June 11, 2012 at 7:21 am
“I thought so. I just can’t bring myself to believe it, even after all this time. I’m kind of curious about the mindset of the people perpetrating it. They must know it’s bogus, right? ”
Its a selection process, otherwise known as peer review, a process in which scientists sell their integrity to the highest bidder, based on the political pragmatism/expediency of the period. Those who can’t commit to selling their integrity risk loss of position and funding.
I’m increasingly drawn to the idea that the pension money for these jokers should be invested in the stock market based upon a stock market computer model they get to design themselves. I am virtually certain they would embrace that considering their unwavering trust in their modeling work.
You could write to the University of Melbourne
E: rebeccas@unimelb.edu.au
and ask them to justify Gergis continuation at that Institution at taxpayers expense
This study is all about getting your name in lights in the IPCC AR5. If it had said “no sign AGW” there is no way it would have received any notice. If on the other hand it said “proof of AGW” it will receive widespread attention and rewards for the authors. So, as a scientist trying to make a living and a name for yourself, which one are you going to publish?
The theory predicts that the ocean should have warmed by 2 to 3 times this much.
So either the theory is wrong is their 10% natural factors were providing a much larger negative temperature influence.
They can’t have it both ways.
(And of course the warming rate is down by another half since the Argo floats started providing world-wide coverage).
It is interesting that Church is involved in this study. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/19/despite-popular-opinion-and-calls-to-action-the-maldives-is-not-being-overrun-by-sea-level-rise/
Later Dr. Vincent Gray weighed in:
Have you heard of the Australian study on 12 Pacific islands, some of them mentioned by Church? They used much more reliable equipment than the others. They claimed an upward trend but this was done by the dishonest use of a linear regression which made use of the temporary depression on all the records caused by the 1988 hurricane.
Australian climate scientists – all you need to know? Down Under is competing with Lotus Land for “virtual reality” world leadership status. Did the study measure the amount of unicorn poop that has fertilised the upper layers of the ocean over the study period or was it modelled? Unicorns -they fly you know and they all live on Atlantis, or is that Australia?
Model outputs are nothing more than maps of existing data. A map is a good analogue for amodel output:
Given enough parameters, one can make a three dimensional map of an explored region to great accuracy. One could use a complete set of functions in a tailor expansion and fit with as many parameters as are necessary for the fit. Obviously a map is very useful, but its predictive power to uncharted regions is very small. For example if a mountain is fitted, maybe a prediction can be made of whether the land goes up or down in the uncharted region from the slopes at the interface, but one would not trust them to great distance.
These General Circulaion Models do not use a complete set of functions in the usual sense of fitting, but in a sense they do, they use the Navier Stokes solutions or the whatnot solutions but still they have a large number of parameters that can be manipulated to create a good fit. If the fit is good, their outputs are just as valid as maps. In unknown values of the variables they cannot be reliable.
This is obvious in weather predictions, which can change even within a day, and nobody is surprised. The GCMs are just similar weather programs where averages are substituted for hourly values in order to make future projections. It is inevitable that the outputs will diverge, as they have already, from the AR4 IPCC projections.
You could write to the University of Melbourne
E: rebeccas@unimelb.edu.au
and ask them to justify Gergis and the team that produced this drivel to continue working at that Institution at taxpayers expense
A study of the frequency of alarmist papers as a function of time to IPCC report dates might produce interesting results.
Hilarious! Can only go back far enough for 1/2 an oceanic cycle, not that there is any implied understanding of oceanic cycles in this paper. I’d assumed it would use detrended enso and amo…not even that crafty. I REALLY AM IN THE WRONG PROFESSION! Easy money…
In proper science, a model run that disagreed with observations would be an observation which would lead to a (falsifiable) hypothesis, which would lead to an experiment to determine the truth (or more likely not) of the hypothesis.
In post-modern science, a model run that disagrees with observations is a conclusion. As everyone since Trofim Lysenko knows, you can’t produce good science by flailing around in the dark, asking questions you don’t know the answer to.
So. The tuned fudge factors used in the models (kind of like solar stuff – they don’t know how it works to drive temperature so they use a fudge factor) show that fudge-modeled oceanic warming correlates with observed oceanic warming. I suppose this piece of circular reasoning cost more than a bit of coinage.
If natural variability can only explain 10% of the late 20th century warming, what caused the early 20th century warming?
From Human-induced global ocean warming on multidecadal timescales
I wonder how much this fakery cost us fools in the US.
Translated: We decided without any direct evidence of causation based on our multiply data adjusted and infilled datasets that man is responsible. And that if anything, we underestimate man’s effects on the warming oceans. Oh yeah, our analysis proves we’ve not identified any error that could cause us to think otherwise, so don’t bother asking.
sarc (Oh how I wish this could be true, but they don’t think they’re being sarcastic nor do I think I am in translating their fakery).
Data sets used have undergone ‘adjustments’ perhaps many times. It has been throttled till it tells us what we desire.
Model runs Many models and many model runs were used. We also averaged model runs to make a dataset we call a ‘multimodel run MMR’.
Man’s fingerprint of proof There isn’t any, so we decided that the change in temperature we identified in the MMR of all our MMRs is definitively the fingerprint of man. No doubt about it, we scientists know it when we see it.
Noise We concatenated all available control data for a given subset and performed a skilful magical series and decided there was no errors of substance. We suggest alternative methods of tomfoolery, but we don’t want to try methods that might be better.
Adjusted data + many model runs, averaged + CAGW wisdom = positive proof man warmed the oceans a fraction of a degree and we are absolutely positive!
/sarc
I hope the Inspector Generals of the US funders of this nonsense start asking real questions and seize evidence. Of course though, I wouldn’t be surprised if they might be afraid that one of this paper’s co-authors might beat them up…
He said there was simply no way the upper layers of every ocean in the world could have warmed by more than 0.1 degrees Celsius through natural causes alone.
He specifically mentioned “upper layers”. See the graph below to see what happened to sea surface temperatures over the last decade and a half. There has been no change for 15 years and 4 months, and over the last 10 and 4 months, there has been a cooling. (-0.0100897 per year or -1.0 C/century)
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/trend
P.S. The April value of 0.292 is not on WFT yet, but that will not change what I have written above.
“This paper’s important because, for the first time, we can actually say that we’re virtually certain that the oceans have warmed, and that warming is caused not by natural processes, but by rising greenhouse gases primarily.”
Virtually certain? Virtual is the word, considering it’s virtual reality.
Study of models which are just a form of virtual reality, so “virtually certain” seems an appropriate phrase.
“This paper’s important because, for the first time, we can actually say that we’re virtually certain that the oceans have warmed, and that warming is caused not by natural processes, but by rising greenhouse gases primarily.”
Virtually certain? Virtual being the word, considering it is virtual reality.
DDP says:
June 11, 2012 at 7:14 am
No matter how much food I put into my dog, no matter how different types of food I put into my dog….it all comes out as a turd, every single time. Same rule applies. My dog however is considerably cheaper and faster.
LOL What an apt analogy!!
Are there any papers comparing the number of studies that rely on models versus the number of studies that make use of observed data?
There needs to be.