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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Kaboom says:
June 11, 2012 at 7:26 am
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.
=============
How about payment for forecast accuracy. Not the accuracy of how well the instruments they maintain meet the forecasts, any child can figure out how to make that work. Rather, if they forecast 500,000 climate refuges by 2012, then bet their pensions on this forecast.
If they turn out to be wrong then they lose their pensions. If they turn out to be right, then their pensions are increased. Perhaps substantially, depending on the odds. This will almost certainly significantly improve the accuracy of the forecasts.
Right now the system is similar to newspapers. It rewards the most spectacular headlines. “1 billion to die in 10 years” is going to draw attention, even though on average that is the number that can be expected to die from a population of 7 billion and an average lifespan of 70 years.
“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.”
This is the practice of comparing one or more dependent variables with another dependent variable, and then applying statistics as if one of them was a dependent variable to arrive at your conclusion. It’s not valid.
Often this kind of research is conducted, treating atmospheric CO2 as an independent variable. It isn’t, and it never will be.
the hubris of these “scientists” is just staggering. these are the same guys whose models have completely failed to predict reality and over predicted warming by 90%.
they then have the chutzpah to use these same utterly failed models to make negative inferences that “it must be CO2 because we have accounted for all other variables”? wow. just wow.
this is a child’s argument. you could use this same logic to argue for aliens using heat rays on us.
the “logic” of these models is as flawed as it is circular.
how have these “scientists” not been laughed out of the profession?
Not long ago WUWT posted a great review of what we know about climate. Regarding the oceans, two big factors to consider are: 1) Visible light is absorbed from the surface down to tens of meters below the surface of the ocean, and that is where the big change in energy content is derived; 2) IR is absorbed at the surface only, and leads to evaporation of water, producing more clouds.
Are the observations consistent with that? Well they don’t say because the models don’t handle clouds and water vapor consistently or correctly. Different models make different assumptions and use different algorithms. That is, they guess differently. No doubt they used an “ensemble” to arrive at their conclusion. What does that mean? The dozen models might get the “right” answers, but clearly for the wrong reasons. Otherwise, they would only need one model.
Skeptik says:
June 11, 2012 at 3:40 am
People with two heads are twice as smart as people with one
What if they are both schizophrenic
This is all one day going to be a model study in the processes of indoctrination.
I just cannot understand why all real scientists do not just instantly recoil in horror when presented with studies as imprecise and modelled as this is, and hear that amazing statement, “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.
The whole thing seems almost a caricature of all we know about the processes of science. These people must be mightily ‘programmed’.
According to Max Planck Institutes’ Dr. Solanki’s October, 28 2004 Nature article, the solar cycles from 1930 to 1996 were the strongest 70yr-string of solar cycles in 11,400 years.
With higher solar cycles comes much higher levels (over 15%) of UV radiation, which penetrates deeper into the surface of oceans, which increases ocean warming. In addition, these high solar cycles generated stronger solar winds, which prevented GCRs from hitting the troposphere and reduced cloud cover, which further intensified the warming cycle.
CAGW theory discounts all these factors, and attributes almost all the 0.6C of warming last century to CO2’s ability to absorb a tiny sliver of IR around 15 microns….
Isn’t funny that there hasn’t been any warming trend since 1998 according to HadCRUT3, CRUTEM3, RSS and UAH temp data, even though CO2 levels continue to rise….
Did someone send the memo to the CAGW *sigh*entists that SC23 was a dud, SC24 is the lowest solar cycle in 100 years and SC25 will be the lowest in 300 years??
Hmmmm. What a coincidence…. It’s almost like the Svensmark Effect explains things perfectly.
I can’t wait until Dr. Svensmark’s new paper showing how GCRs + UV+ SO2 +O3 creates
cloud seeds >50nm comes out. That should really cause the CAGW *sigh*entists to circle the wagons…
BTW, any news on how the peer-review process is going on Svensmark’s new paper?
If you want to know “why” these so-called scientists behave the way they do, just read “The Firm”
by John Grisham. It’s an example of “Servitude Volontaire” (La Boetie)
Gavin writes at RC playing down the Gergis affair,
Contrast that statement with this one made in relation to a new peer reviewed paper,
I’d also like to find evidence how warm air can actually heat oceans. Waters specific heat capacity is large, and it takes a vast quantity of energy to hear it up. The chances that the atmosphere and “Global Warming” is actually heating the oceans is probably rubbish.
Its more likely the vast quantity of underground thermal vents that are being discovered all over the place.
Is that abstract right?
“…When global mean changes are included, we consistently obtain a positive identification (at the 1% significance level) of an anthropogenic fingerprint in observed upper-ocean temperature changes, thereby substantially strengthening existing detection and attribution evidence…”
At a one percent significance level?
WUWT?
These climate apparatchiks have zero interest in and even less knowledge of natural variability. It has been the skeptical debate that has forced them, unwillingly, to even address the issue of natural variation. “Natural” for them is a dirty and scary word. Does this paper address ENSO and Bob Tisdale’s work showing OHC changes can be traced to changing ENSO regimes? Thought not. Of course, in their climate-ocean models, ENSO is just noise.
But they should be applauded for the clever trick they use to eliminate any solar forcing effect: in the place from which they get their 10% value for natural variation, the sun does not shine.
VIRTUALLY – adv. “In essence but NOT IN FACT.”
May be I am not very smart, but I fail to see how one can measure the temperature of all the oceans in the world to that degree of acuracy
I saw this statistic tossed out above “Given that our proportion of the global atmospheric CO2 content from fossil fuel use is 3%…”. I’ve always wondered what the cite for that statement is. Does anyone know of a good link for it? Everything I found on Google was a “debunking” of it by the alarmist sites.
Is this the missing heat that has been as elusive to global warming as the missing link has been to evolution?
Sounds like saying the water in the pot on the stove is getting hotter due to the hot moist air above it.
So if we set aside all of their navel gazing with the falsified climate models, tell me again how exactly did they actually conclusively rule out natural causes?
Also how can anyone draw any reliable conclusions about what the ocean may or may not be doing temperature wise with such a short time scale of sparse temperature data available?
How does this junk pass for science?
I am really tired of propaganda being passed off as science.
I would love to see a good estimate of ocean temperature/heat content error bars based solely on the spatial density and variability of the measured data. I don’t even think the ARGO data is remotely close to resolving this to a meaningful global value due to extreme undersampling, let alone the previous data to cover the claimed 50 year period. BOB TISDALE have you ever tried to quantify this or can you point us to a source that has?
Quite right. If this study doesn’t stray into the realm of argumentum ad ignorantiam, it comes perilously close.
Let me see if I have this right: They wrote a computer model that forced agreement with observations and declared victory?
Science? Really? Hell, anyone can do that….
There must be lots of these power stations worldwide dumping waste heat into the water, which makes its way to the sea, warming the oceans a bit. Have the warmists taken this into account? It ought to reduce the warming attributable to CO2.
So, the apparently warming Atlantic means all oceans are warming?
Sigh. Another one trying to get into AR5. Pretty models, Prof, but thank Heaven we don’t live in one.
Most here are dismissive of this study but it does seem to confirm results published in Nature Climate Change on April 3 2012. In this study temperatures from the Argo buoys, averaged over the period 2004-2010, were compared at those measured at 273 sites where ocean temperatures were measured by HMS Challenger in the 1870s. At 211 of the 273 sites surface temperatures measured by Argo were significantly higher. The authors estimated that the global average surface temperature measured by Argo was 0.59C greater than that determined in the 1870s. The average difference at 366 meters was +0.39C, at 914 meters was +0.12C and no difference was seen at 1500 meters. As these comparisons are not model based and so cannot be criticised on that score.