Guest post by David Middleton
This is a sort of sequel to my most recent guest post. Any and all sarcasm is purely intentional.
I ran across this really bizarre blog post from “The Energy Collective” on Real Clear Energy…
This bit is just “nutty”…
Five degrees:
The Atlantic ocean is five degrees warmer than is was when most of you were born. Let that sink in for a minute. The entire Atlantic ocean averages five degrees warmer.
What does that mean for hurricanes? Hurricanes get their power by feeding on the warm water under them. That means that a warmer Atlantic has a lot more fuel to contribute. How much more? Hard to say for sure but the the number is astronomical. Take the top inch of ocean surface below hurricane Katrina (125,000 sq. miles) then run out the math to heat that volume by five degrees. What you get is an amount of energy in that water eight times greater than was released in all the nuclear tests in the history of the world.
[…]
“The Atlantic ocean is five degrees warmer than is was when most of you were born.” Really?
I was born in 1958. I don’t have a handy temperature plot of the Atlantic Ocean, but the folks a the UK Hadley Center & Climategate CRU do have a plot of Northern Hemisphere sea surface temperatures. If the Atlantic has warmed by 5 degrees since 1958, it should show up on this plot, unless the North Pacific Ocean has been cooling…
I get a warming of 0.3-0.5°C since I was born… And only about 0.6°C of warming since the last time a Whig held the presidency…
The author noted that, “We’ve only been aware that the earth revolves around the sun for some 500 years.” This is true. It’s also true that New England was hit by at least four storms, rivaling Sandy, between 1300 and 1650 AD. But our temperature records only go back to about 1850.
Fortunately, there are little critters living in the oceans called “Foraminifera,” or Foram’s as we tend to call them in oil exploration. Foram’s have the capacity to act as geochemical thermometers. Globigerinoides ruber is a particularly good geochemical thermometer. Back in 1996, Lloyd Keigwin of WHOI published a really good paper in which he reconstructed a 3,000-yr record of the sea surface temperature of the Sargasso Sea.
Keigwin was able to calibrate his proxy temperature series to a 50-yr long instrumental record (Station S). Station S matches the HadSST NH quite well…
If we add in the Foram proxy record, we can see how warm the Atlantic Ocean was back when those pre-1650 monster storms hit New England…
The 1351 AD (±56-yr) storm occurred when the Atlantic was most likely a bit cooler as when I was born. The 1425 (±21-yr) storm occurred when the Atlantic was most likely a bit warmer than I was born. The 1635 and 1638 storms occurred when the Atlantic was a lot cooler than when I was born. And the 1815 storm occurred when the Atlantic was a bit cooler than when I was born.
It appears to me that the climatological state of the Atlantic Ocean hasn’t really been a controlling factor in the frequency of major storms hitting New England. If a climatologically warm Atlantic was the cause of these monster storms, the Medieval Warm Period must have been a veritable hurricane nightmare…
And the Minoan Warm Period must have been an absolute hurricane apocalypse, even though the Atlantic was only about 2°C warmer than when I was born.
Well, that’s enough on the “five degrees”… On to the really nutty bit…
Gazillions of joules!
A five degree rise for just the first inch of ocean, for a static area 900 miles in diameter (the size of hurricane Sandy) requires 95-million terajoules of energy. If we assume it gets used the most efficiently it can be, a ton of coal gets you about 35 gigajoules. That means we’d need a cube of coal .9 of a mile/side to generate the energy needed to heat just that first inch of water five degrees. All that energy is a fraction of the heat being trapped, just a fraction. We’re going to see a lot more storms get charged up this way.
The best way to alarm the scientifically illiterate is to convert 0.8°C into eleventy gazillion joules.
Ocean Heat Content for the upper 700 meters of the oceans increased by about 16 gazillion (10^22) Joules over the last 40 years or so! 16 gazillion is a huge number! Unfortunately for Warmists, 16 gazillion is a very tiny number relative to the volume of the top 700 meters of the oceans and the heat content that normally resides in the oceans…
16 gazillion Joules is enough heat to increase the average temperature of the upper 700 meters of ocean by a whopping 0.168 degrees Centigrade.
The average temperature of the upper 700 meters of ocean is somewhere in the ballpark of 10 degrees Centigrade…
How much heat content is required to raise the temperature of the upper 700 meters of ocean from 0 to 10 degrees Centigrade?
A bit less than 950 gazillion Joules.
16 gazillion is less than 2% of 950 gazillion.
More fun with gazillions of Joules
This is a graph from a Skeptical Science post…
Frightening, right?
In addition to lacking any context, the title of the graph is amazingly and ignorantly wrong. There’s a lot more to the Earth than water, ice and air… There’s that whole solid(ish) thing in the middle.
The heat flow at the surface (the coolest part of the solid Earth) of the Earth is ~47 Terawatts (TW). A Joule is 1 Watt*second of power. 47 TW is 47,000,000,000,000 joules per second (47*10^12 J/s). Over the 40-yr period (1969-2008) the Earth’s heat flow transferred 6 gazillion (10^12) Joules of heat from the interior to the surface. That 6 gazillion is a very tiny fraction of the total heat content of the Earth (~12,600,000,000 gazillion Joules). So the SkepSci graph doesn’t even come close to capturing the “change in the Earth’s total heat content.”
Here’s a little more context… Unsurprisingly, ocean heat content and sea surface temperature are highly correlated…
So, we can very easily estimate OHC from SST to see what the OHC was
doing before we started measuring it…
Wow!!! The OHC had to have increased by 13 gazillion Joules from 1910-1941. How did that happen? CO2 was mired in the “safe” range of 310-320 ppmv (assuming Antarctic ice cores are accurate sources of paleo-CO2 data).
I’ve been thinking and discussing the human animal’s proclivity for not just believing but acting upon the most outrageous of ideas. From those who sit in their houses while the witchhunting assaillants progress down their streets, saying “They are my neighbours, it can’t happen to me!”, to the blogger here who, eyes-wide is shock, says that the Atlantic is 5 degrees warmer than 50 years ago, I get the same sense of a refusal to think critically when reality threatens a fundamental tenet of their self. Outside of these narrow points, they can think critically very well. But not with regard to these items.
I am concluding that there is a pathological problem with (perhaps most of) us: core values are unconsciously defended with whatever resources one has, be it intellectual rationalization or angered rebute. Hansen, Mann and Romm cannot discuss rationally as a rational discussion is a give and take, a recognition that the other side has some points that have some validity, and that one’s own position might be modified by their inclusion. If the more pathological view is correct, there may be a hypothamalic-type mechanism that prevents these considerations. Hansen doesn’t consider the worthiness of what Watts says not because he is being perversely stubborn but because his brain cannot physically perform the act.
Before you respond that I am pathologizing dissent like the warmists are doing for the skeptical position, consider that what I am saying is that the mechanisms of defense for a self-identity are beyond the pschological and into the physical. That certain individuals are so prone to this problem that, like Paul Erhlich, no matter what observations show, they can hold firm to their prior assertions (and also deny that they made incorrect predictions, even when faced with the written word). Recall that Harold Camping claimed the world would end on March 21 (or thereabouts) of 2011, and then October 18, 2011 when the dawn of March 22 arrived without change. If the non-end of the universe does not shake your belief system, nothing else could.
The implication of what I am suggesting is immense: it is that we, as a species, will always be subject to bizarre, reality-denying claims by vehement, compelling alphas. The situation is like that of the sociopath, the one who has no emotional attachment or connection to others. They exist very much amongst us, and become successful businessmen, artists, generals and politicians for their very ability to move without disturbance to their agendas regardless of their external impact. They can be very good providers as mothers and fathers, except that their childrren find them distant. A sociopath like this is not evil, as harming others is of no interest. It is when the sociopath is ALSO one who enjoys, i.e. derived benefit from, harming others, that the killer is born. It is the melding of a broken human virtue with a nasty disposition that causes the harm. So when the “broken”, socially concerned who cannot, really cannot think critically about what he proposes is inhabiting a strong, influential, charismatic individual, we get a dangerous demagogue.
Is that not what we are seeing in Hansen et al? Demagogery? The push of an agenda supported by evidence that others find not just non-compelling but actually false?
The Atlantic is warmer by five degrees today than it was fifty years ago? Anyone at, connected to, or having visited a seaside resort along the New England coast would know this to be false. Yet this fellow can hold it, nay, grasp tightly to this harbinger of disaster as it strongly supports both his beliefs and his ardent convictions. Roswell is where the alien technolgoy of Kodak, Apple and Xerox came from. The only reason we don’t have an anti-alien task force patrolling our skies is the Roswell conspiracist isn’t also the type to be successful at the polls.
Cynicism or realism? Strange days, indeed.
This is relevant. An article just up on Popular science stated, “I myself spoke to a hurricane expert about three hours before I spoke to Mampel who told me that the roughly two-degree increase in the water temperature in the Atlantic could have had a major effect on Hurricane Sandy’s strength in the northeast. Mampel doesn’t care. He wasn’t going to mention climate change.”
Here’s what Wikipedia says about the warming of the North Atlantic, in the article on the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, which indicates that the SSTs may decline after 2015 due to a downturn in the AMO (and implies that current warming is partly due to the AMO):
————–
“The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) is a mode of variability occurring in the North Atlantic Ocean and which has its principal expression in the sea surface temperature (SST) field.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..
“Relation to Atlantic hurricanes
“In viewing actual data on a short time horizon, sparse experience would suggest the frequency of major hurricanes is not strongly correlated with the AMO. During warm phases of the AMO, the number of minor hurricanes (category 1 and 2) saw a modest increase.[9] With full consideration of meteorological science, the number of tropical storms that can mature into severe hurricanes is much greater during warm phases of the AMO than during cool phases, at least twice as many; the AMO is reflected in the frequency of severe Atlantic hurricanes.[6] The hurricane activity index is found to be highly correlated with the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation.[9] If there is an increase in hurricane activity connected to global warming, it is currently obscured by the AMO quasi-periodic cycle.[9] The AMO alternately obscures and exaggerates the global increase in temperatures due to human-induced global warming.[6] Based on the typical duration of negative and positive phases of the AMO, the current warm regime is expected to persist at least until 2015 and possibly as late as 2035. Enfield et al. assume a peak around 2020.[10]”
5.0 or 0.5 , dyslexia rules K.O.
This guy must get lost on the way home !
OH, I just scanned the site, it appears all this is “The New Math:”
You know, the one where they don’t teach you how to count any more. Poor old Brian probably doesn’t realise that it matters where you put the little dot.
PaulH
“The real story of how the scientific and religious establishments greeted the Copernican revolution is quite different from the folklore. And it’s a lot more interesting.”
—————————————————————
It had long been known that Copernicus was merely regurgitating ancient knowledge. That is why the UK comedy series called Copernicus the “greatest liars in the world”.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xjemsu_s1e1-the-black-adder-the-foretelling_creation
.
I agree with you in some respects but I am not sure it is a “human failure” just a quirk.
For example the characteristic of altruism is destructive to the individual who possesses if if he is placed in a position where he is the only member of the tribe in position to stand and fight the cave bear while the rest of the clan retreats, but it is beneficial to the preservation of his genetic heritage if others in the clan survive to pass on his genetic heritage. So the characteristic to sacrifice ones self to ensure the survival of the group over all is beneficial to the society.
As a result all human groups will have a small number of individuals that when push comes to shove will stand and fight the cave bear even at the cost of their own life.
I think you could view that blind stubbornness of defense of belief system as an analogous trait, as over time if every human group has a few folks predisposed to defend old beliefs to the end, they act as a storage of diversity of thought that at some future time might benefit the group. For example the person who hordes food even though all the others in the group keep near empty shelves, could be the life line that keeps the group alive during an unanticipated famine.
In this case it is a pathological quirk of a trait that over the long term has some group survival benefit. Like genetic diversity it is probably beneficial over all for a society to have a few people who refuse to change their beliefs or conform to new ways of thinking as they provide a bridge back to other behaviors and beliefs that in some circumstances could spell the survival of the group.
I bet that among the survivors that kept the human genome alive during the genetic bottle neck, there were a few who would not give up and change beliefs just because it seemed there was no way they could survive what ever calamity befell human kind at that time.
Sort of different horses for different courses problem, what is a major liability in climate research, among a large group in comfortable circumstances, might be very useful if you are the leader of a band trying to walk across a desert and persist despite unimaginable hardships.
Larry
rgbatduke says:
November 3, 2012 at 10:14 am
… weakly modulated by ENSO …
Most humans don’t know what modulation is either 🙂
DaveA says:
November 3, 2012 at 6:25 am
All this joule talk is lost on me – can someone convert it to the Hiroshima Bomb standard unit, as used by JC.
I have done the math, and eleventy gazillion joules = 1.75271 x 10 to the 86, 418 hiroshima blasts.
Give or take.
“If we assume it gets used the most efficiently it can be, a ton of coal gets you about 35 gigajoules”. How would anybody get less than that?
“Brian Reynolds is a serial entrepreneur. He comes from three generations of manufacturers and spent years in the Owens Corning network before opening the doors at Global Power Solutions,LLC. Global is a clean power company that specializes in connecting stakeholders at opposite ends of solar power projects. Brian currently spends the majority of his time consulting with the NIST’s.”
Follow the money! But it did provide the excuse for a very intersting article by David Middleton so perhaps Mr. Reynolds should be thanked rather than ridiculed.
Bam, Kapow, holy warmistas Bat Man there must be gazillions of them.
No time to lose Robin, to the Bat Cave…….
The possible “source” for the 5 degree claim:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/31/3076655_p2/did-climate-change-play-a-role.html
“Sandy resulted from the chance alignment of several weather systems, including a winter storm that dumped snow on Colorado, said Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a federally funded research and development center.
But a human influence was present, too, he said. From the Carolinas to Canada, sea surface temperatures just before the storm were about 5 degrees Fahrenheit above the 30-year average for this time of year. About 1 degree is “very likely a direct result of global warming,” Trenberth wrote in an article explaining the role of climate change in the storm.”
Ahhhhhhhh, Trenbeth.
That could explain it.
I stopped by TheEnergyCollective web site, I figured I’d see what the original article stated, here is a reply Brian Reynolds gave to questions on the source of the 5 degree warming of the Atlantic:
I will say that he still had not answered the original question of the origin of the 5 degrees, other than pointing out he stated the first inch of the ocean.
He does make the statement that:
More devastating and breaking all previous records can easily be stated because more and more people are living in those effected areas AND the cost will always increase because of inflation.. I believe previous storms have been shown to be more costly once inflation is adjusted. But the loss of human life has decreased as science improves forecasting and people start to heed the warnings.
“‘We’ve only been aware that the earth revolves around the sun for some 500 years.’ This is true.”
Whattaya mean “we”?
Imagine the headlines reading “Storm Sandy causes 5 foot storm surge above the expectedl high tide resulting from a full moon along with a normal high tide”.
Does someone have the facts to back it up? Probably so.
@PaulH
Much appreciated. I read a fascinating account of how Galileo got into so much trouble. He really brought it all on himself by humiliating a Cardinal at a party. He was apparemtly a loudmouth entertainer and the moves against him were personally motivated.
I am correcting myself above, it was Ptolomy as the system is the Ptolemaic one (Earth-centered). Prior to that the Greeks thought the Earth went round the sun as is obvious from the movements of the planets in the sky.
Most people forget a) that the church only applied current thinking amongst scientists, and b) that most science was supported by the church. It is the modern hostility to theism that drives the defective and improper attitude to what happened with Copernicus and Galileo.
@MikeH
Thanks for the update. The guy is still talking through his hat. That is why his answer sounds like bafflegab with a terrible warming of how it will end. When it comes to eating his words, he will show you at that time they were not really his words so he doesn’t have to eat them.
There is no reason known to science why hurricanes should be less frequent in a warming world, seeing as there is ‘all that extra energy in the ocean’, right? What a load of bunk. He confuses energy with temperature and ignores specific humidity and so one and on. The damage was caused mostly by the storm surge and that was because it took place on the New York Bight. The disaster in Rhode Island years ago was for similar reasons: local architecture and bad luck.
When a proper hurricane hits New York late in the year, what superlatives will he choose? He has already used them all. Cat 4’s land on NYC. Let’s see what happens then. The ‘Superstorm’ will be quickly forgotten.
Just a quick note re Celcius. The original Celcius scale had freezing point at 100C and freezing at 0C. One of the many reasons I stick to Fahrenheit.
Steve from Rockwood says:
November 3, 2012 at 6:25 am
I plotted global ocean temperatures (HADSST2) and land (HADCRUT3) for the first time after reading your post. The correlation is so high it leads me to believe the oceans are responsible for global warming. I have a feeling this has been discussed here before and I imagine I’m about to be lessoned by Roy Spencer. But I was surprised by how highly correlated they (land and sea temps) are.
Of more interest is that this is contrary to what GHG warming predicts. It predicts the atmosphere warms ahead of the oceans and then the oceans warm with an equalization lag measured in years. I recall 8 years is the best estimate.
That the SSTs and near surface temperatures warm together indicates they are warm simultaneously by the same process, and that would be increased solar insolation.
The most interesting thing about that SST anomaly map is that a colder than normal area has appeared in the wake of Sandy: From Cuba over the Bahamas and along the US east coast.
=======================================================
In a curious way, hurricanes may be the Atlantic’s response to being cut off from ENSO.
Nonsense. It’s “Celsius“. and 100°C was and is boiling.
This gazillion joules stuff worries me,I work only in calories and the new measure of olympic pools, I need the conversion factors for one gazillion joules in calories /olympic pools or calories/ Hiroshima equivalent , these conversions need to be in fractions as my computer can not understand decimals in the post normal sense as the pundits measure global warming to the third decimal place, which seems to me a rather unlikely outcome. 22/7 works perfectly, doing that in decimals will cause your computer some pain for years. Real old measures with no fudges works for me. These alarmist idiots really cause pain and suffering to the people that least need it.
Some / much / most of the warming in the NW Atlantic is due to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which is due to reverse in 2015 / 2020 / 2035.
=====
Regarding the Celsius scale:
In response to the questions & comments about “gazilliobs, ” I adopted it from Dr Roy Spencer:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/05/weak-warming-of-the-oceans-1955-2010-implies-low-climate-sensitivity/
I figure any scientific notation large enough to make me think more than three seconds about its English name, must be a gazillion.
Steve from Rockwood says:
>>
I plotted global ocean temperatures (HADSST2) and land (HADCRUT3) for the first time after reading your post. The correlation is so high it leads me to believe the oceans are responsible for global warming.
>>
Perhaps the oceans are responsible for being 70% of the Earth’s surface !
Maybe you need to find out why HADCRUT is called HADCRUT (hint HAD+CRUT)
It really is quite helpful to understand what data you are looking at before drawing conclusion about what it means.