Missing heat not in deep oceans but “found” in missing data in upper ocean instead

Two papers on ocean heat released together today. The first says the missing heat is not in the deep ocean abyss below 2000m. The second finds the missing heat in missing data in the Southern Hemisphere instead. Toss out one excuse, move to another.

The first paper by Llovel and Willis et al, looked at the total sea-level rise as measured by adjusted satellites*, then removed the part of that rise due to expanding warming oceans above 2,000 m and the part due to ice melting off glaciers and ice-sheets.** The upshot is that the bottom half of the ocean is apparently not warming — there was nothing much left for the deep oceans to do. This result comes from Argo buoy data which went into full operation in 2005. (Before Argo the uncertainties in ocean temperature measurements massively outweigh the expected temperature changes, so the “data” is pretty useless.)

Figure 2 | Global mean steric sea-level change contributions from different layers of the ocean. 0–2,000m (red), 0–700m (green), 700–2,000m (blue). The dashed black curve shows an estimate for the remainder of the ocean below 2,000m computed by removing the 0–2,000m estimate from the GRACE-corrected observed mean sea-level time series. Seasonal signals have been removed from all curves. Curves are offset for clarity. Shading, where shown, denotes 1-sigma uncertainty of the respective  estimates.

The second paper provides the excuse that the missing heat is really in the top 700m of the Southern Hemisphere instead. The title tells us they are adding up what they don’t know: “Quantifying underestimates of long-term upper-ocean warming”. The data they use comes satellites and “simulations” of the Earth’s climate.

 Using satellite altimetry observations and a large suite of climate models, we conclude that observed estimates of 0–700 dbar global ocean warming since 1970 are likely biased low.

So we all know that this is an excellent estimate of heat accruing on a planet a lot like Earth — except that global warming didn’t pause on that planet, the upper tropospheric humidity is rising instead of falling, the sea-ice is shrinking at the south pole instead of increasing, and so on. Simulated Earth is a different planet. On that planet, the ARGO buoys are “biased low”.

Yet again, the missing heat is found in missing data:

This underestimation is attributed to poor sampling of the Southern Hemisphere, and limitations of the analysis methods that conservatively estimate temperature changes in data-sparse regions.

We only have half-decent data on the ocean starting around 2005. But thousands upon millions of joules are arriving every day, and if some of that energy is being trapped on Earth, it must be somewhere. What incredible bad luck for climate scientists: yet again the observations are biased low, like 28 million weather balloons which underestimate heat and humidity, the 3,000 Argo buoys are underestimating ocean heat too.*** The models could not possibly be wrong …

Another recent paper by Schulz found that the first air-sea flux mooring in the Southern Ocean was recording a heat loss at a rate of -10Wm-2. That would kind of fit with the record increase in sea ice perhaps?

This is the part, below, where Durack concludes the models are probably right, and the observations are probably wrong. The black horizontal lines are the model predictions, and the diamonds in color are the observations. (Notice too that the period is 1970 to 2004, ending just as the ocean temperature starts to get measured properly for the first time.)

Figure 4 | Histogram of the observed and simulated Southern Hemisphere contribution to global OHC trends for 1970–2004. The distribution from 62 independent CMIP5 (historical) and CMIP3 (20c3m) model means (average of single model simulations) is shown in dark grey (21 CMIP3 20c3m simulations; overlaid light grey). Results from additional CMIP experiments are summarized with the MMM and one standard deviation spread indicated by small black diamonds and horizontal black lines respectively. The full ensemble MMM (dark grey) is presented as a vertical white line. Supplementary Fig. 8 shows composite single simulation distributions and Supplementary Fig. 9 shows each CMIP experiment. Models are listed in Supplementary Tables 1 and 2.

In their own words, the observations agree with each other, but not with the models.

“All but one of the four observational OHC trend estimates in Fig. 3b suggest a much smaller SH contribution, with stabilized ratios at timescales of 15 years and longer, well outside the intermodel standard deviation (0.500.63, MMM 0.56 versus 0.330.49 for observations).”

Astute reader Robbo says this is his favorite passage from Durack et al:

“Thus, it seems that our preliminary finding is robust: the SH contribution to the total upper-OHC change found in the five observational data sets is inconsistent with the CMIP model ensembles (Figs 3b and 4). The agreement between the observed and simulated SSH changes, the close correspondence between OHC and SSH (Fig. 2), and the better agreement of observed and simulated OHC for the recent Argo period (with improved SH coverage) suggests systematic model biases are not the dominant factor. We thus conclude, in agreement with previous works, that long-term observational estimates of SH upper-ocean heat content change are biased low.

If models are correct in their hemispheric partitioning of OHC changes, we can use them to guide observational adjustment over the data-sparse SH.

Thus, the data is inconsistent with the models, therefore the data is biased, and we can use models to adjust the data.

Two more Classic Climatology sentences from the Durack paper:

“we adjust the poorly constrained SH estimates (Methods) so that they yield an inter-hemispheric ratio that is consistent with the MMM [multi-model-mean] (Fig. 4). When this adjustment is applied, the various observational estimates of 35-year global upper-OHC change are substantially increased in all cases.” 

“Adjusting the poorly constrained SH OHC change estimates to yield an improved consistency with models.”

Who would have thought… after adjusting to the data to fit the models, they get a better agreement with the models.

I hear the ABC reported it as proof that it’s warming faster than we thought.

For those who want to gawk at the observations of the Southern Hemisphere heat content versus the models. Here is Fig 3 parts b, c, and d. Note how the observation lines almost all run entirely below the models.

Figure 3 | Southern Hemisphere fractional contributions to global upper-OHC or global average SSH anomaly for varying trend lengths (1–35 years). a,b, Results over 1–35-years (1970–2004) for SSH (a) and OHC (b). c,d, Results for a shorter 11-year period (1993–2004) for SSH (c) and OHC (d) duringwhich observed SSH data is available. Observed results extend to 2012 if available. Discontinuous black and grey lines extend 2004 CMIP5 values to 2012. The CMIP5MMMand one standard deviation spread are obtained from CMIP5 historical simulations.

*Satellite altimetry has its own problems. As near as I can tell, these are probably the same satellites that showed virtually no sea-level rise in the 1990s until they were calibrated against one tide gauge in Hong Kong, which is sinking compared to the four gauges around it. Durack says: “From 2005 to 2013, sea level rose at a rate of 2.78 ±0.32mmyr-1 .” Nils Axel-Morner and others like Beenstock have shown that hundreds of tide gauges around the world record an average rate of about 1mm a year or so. 182 gauges are showing a rise of about 1.6mm annually. In one location with long records and a lot of data about crustal movements of the land, Axel Morner estimates the rise is 0.8-0.9mm annually.  Llovel estimates steric sea level rise at 0.9mm.

The globally averaged steric sea level between 66° of latitude and above 2,000m depth (red curve in Fig. 1) rose with a linear trend of 0.9 ±0.15mmyr-1 between 2005 and 2013.

Either way, without adjustments, the sea level rises shown by satellites would find a lot less “heat” content.

**Melting ice etc was estimated by GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment)

***Assuming the ARGO buoys are giving meaningful results, which I’m unconvinced of.

The papers:

The deep heat is missing:

Llovel, W., Willis, J. K. ,  Landerer,F. W.,  Fukumori.I.

Deep-ocean contribution to sea level and energy budget not detectable over the past decade

[Abstract] As the dominant reservoir of heat uptake in the climate system, the world’s oceans provide a critical measure of global climate change. Here, we infer deep-ocean warming in the context of global sea-level rise and Earth’s energy budget between January 2005 and December 2013. Direct measurements of ocean warming above 2,000 m depth explain about 32% of the observed annual rate of global mean sea-level rise. Over the entire water column, independent estimates of ocean warming yield a contribution of 0.77 ± 0.28 mm yr−1 in sea-level rise and agree with the upper-ocean estimate to within the estimated uncertainties. Accounting for additional possible systematic uncertainties, the deep ocean (below 2,000 m) contributes −0.13 ± 0.72 mm yr−1 to global sea-level rise and −0.08 ± 0.43 W m−2 to Earth’s energy balance. The net warming of the ocean implies an energy imbalance for the Earth of 0.64 ± 0.44 W m−2 from 2005 to 2013.

The models predicted an imbalance of about 0.69W/m2, so Llovel et al would be happy with finding the implications of finding an imbalance of “0.64W/m2.”  But this assumes that most of the observed sea level rise (as measured by tide gauges, rather than adjusted satellites) is due to warming oceans, not to melting ice or glaciers. If those satellite altimeters were calibrated against other tide gauges, the heat content could shrink by 50% – 70%. That would fit with the models overestimating warming by a similar degree, as well as fitting with the pause, which fits with the slowdown in sea level rise, but it does not fit with modelers mindsets.

The missing heat is “found” in missing data:

Durack, Paul, Gleckler, Peter J. , Landerer, Felix W. , Taylor, Karl E.

Quantifying underestimates of long-term upper-ocean warming

[Abstract] The global ocean stores more than 90% of the heat associated with observed greenhouse-gas-attributed global warming1, 2, 3, 4. Using satellite altimetry observations and a large suite of climate models, we conclude that observed estimates of 0–700 dbar global ocean warming since 1970 are likely biased low. This underestimation is attributed to poor sampling of the Southern Hemisphere, and limitations of the analysis methods that conservatively estimate temperature changes in data-sparse regions5, 6, 7. We find that the partitioning of northern and southern hemispheric simulated sea surface height changes are consistent with precise altimeter observations, whereas the hemispheric partitioning of simulated upper-ocean warming is inconsistent with observed in-situ-based ocean heat content estimates. Relying on the close correspondence between hemispheric-scale ocean heat content and steric changes, we adjust the poorly constrained Southern Hemisphere observed warming estimates so that hemispheric ratios are consistent with the broad range of modelled results. These adjustments yield large increases (2.2–7.1 × 1022 J 35 yr−1) to current global upper-ocean heat content change estimates, and have important implications for sea level, the planetary energy budget and climate sensitivity assessments.

 

The bottom line: energy can be neither created nor destroyed, so it has be somewhere. If it isn’t in the ocean (where 90% of the energy in the planet’s climate system is) then it’s probably in space.

REFERENCES

Llovel, W., Willis,J. K. ,  Landerer,F. W.,  Fukumori.I. (2014) Deep-ocean contribution to sea level and energy budget not detectable over the past decade. Nature Climate Change, 2014; DOI: 10.1038/nclimate238

Durack, Paul, Gleckler, Peter J. , Landerer, Felix W. , Taylor, Karl E. (2014) Quantifying underestimates of long-term upper-ocean warming. Nature Climate Change, 2014; DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2389

Schulz, E.W., Josey S.A., & Verein, R. (2014)  First air-sea flux mooring measurements in the Southern Ocean GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L16606, 8 PP., 2012
doi:10.1029/2012GL052290

9.4 out of 10 based on 98 ratings

159 comments to Missing heat not in deep oceans but “found” in missing data in upper ocean instead

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    It seems the press is asking the question: “where has all the warming that CO2 causes gone?” Even if there’s no obvious rise in recent temperatures it is generally accepted that CO2 causes a whole lot of warming. And a major problems with saying that natural variation or cycles is now stronger than man made warming is that the warmist can then assert “well, when the cycle goes the other way, then we are really in for it.”

    I think the answer for us is to redouble our efforts on showing that CO2 doesn’t do much at all, and in fact there is actually no evidence, no signal, showing that CO2.. does anything. That’s what the 800 year CO2 lag implies. Use the gist of what is presented in the excellent linked video below to help in knocking down CO2 from its unwarranted perch. The video persuasively shoots down Al Gore’s bs about CO2, in just 3 minutes, a must see and share: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK_WyvfcJyg&info=GGWarmingSwindle_CO2Lag

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    • #
      John

      The number of existing Argo buoys, if equally placed over the oceans, would each measure a 47k mile area are various depths. The data is insufficient at best.

      Perhaps, uncertainties in ocean heat content exist because they’re looking for temperature rather then the consequence of relative SST change.

      The “heat”/energy is likely stored in carbonates and biological response?

      “Core fluid constraints on deep ocean temperature and salinity during the last glacial maximum.”
      http://schraglab.unix.fas.harvard.edu/publications/CV33.pdf

      Geological Approaches to Coral Reef Ecology
      By Richard B. Anderson

      excerpt:
      … From a thermodynamic standpoint, at present-day concentrations of atmospheric CO2, a 1 degree C increase in temperature causes about 2.5% increase in carbonate ion concentration, and by influence from coral calcification-versus-carbonate ion experiments, an increase in calcification. However, the increase in calcification expected from temperature-induced increase in saturation state can explain only a fraction of the calcification-versus-carbonate regressions from the cores (Fig. 12.10B). Simply put, the response of Porites calcification to temperature is both biological and geochemical, and the biological response is obviously greater. …They concluded that increased SSTs in the future will outweigh the effects of decreased saturation state, so that future coral reef calcification will actually increase over the coming century. However, they assumed that coral calcification will increase indefinitely with temperature increase. In reality, calcification in corals peaks near the average summertime temperature, then decreases as temperatures exceed that point (Jokiel and Coles, 1977; Marshall and Clode 2004).

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      • #
        John

        In reality, calcification in corals peaks near the average summertime temperature, then decreases as temperatures exceed that point (Jokiel and Coles, 1977; Marshall and Clode 2004).

        Logically, if the average summertime sea surface temperature increases in the future, the current average summertime temperature would increase in duration thus increasing peak calcification in corals.

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      • #
        James Bradley

        John,

        Prehistoric catastrophic global warming on a scale large enough to defrost the entire planet from the last Great Ice Age, there was much more CO2 then, as well as: salinity, carbonates, biological responses, mystery deep ocean heat along with all the rest of the alarmist propagsnda.

        And yet here we are today…

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  • #
    Yonniestone

    Is this another one of those deep satire posts?
    If not it should be, seriously I’ve been reading the above overview of the 2 papers and after talking themselves in circles over climate, sea levels and missing heat they come up inconclusive of a result, is this correct or am I missing something as well?

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      The problem you are experiencing is due to something called cognitive lensing. Cognitive lensing [TM] is caused by focussing on, and thinking about, a problem too intensely. The lensing phenomena tends to blur the peripheral (but important, from a financial perspective) factors, and gives far too much weight to the nub of the problem under consideration. This leads to the formulation of simplistic solutions that lack the convoluted reasoning demanded by most major funding sources.

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  • #
    DY

    Money makes the heat go round.

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  • #
    Grant Burfield

    Just when they’d brought me Climate Change stress relief by convincing me with their Mentholatum theory, they go and find it somewhere else.

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  • #
    Fox From Melbourne

    They the “Climate Scientist” claim the world is warming and when it doesn’t, they claim is hiding in the deep Ocean. Then its not found hiding in the deep Ocean so its must be hiding in the South Southern Ocean instead. Have they look under their beds for it?
    When will these so called “Scientist” learn that data isn’t adjusted to fit their models or theory but their theory and their models are adjusted to fit the data. That’s the scientific method. That’s the way it was done for centuries until “Climate Scientist” came along and adjusted it so that it works or should I dare say doesn’t work that other way round. If the data that they collect isn’t going to be believed unless it agrees with their preconceived belief systems and has to be adjust to fit in with their preconceived belief systems why bother collecting real data in the first place. Shouldn’t they just make it up just like their have made up their minds?

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    • #
      aussiebear

      These “Climate Scientists” aren’t scientists. To be more precise, they are activists with scientific credentials (And the activists are often the Left-wing kind). To these people, their credentials and the scientific field are nothing more than political tools to be used to “shape public opinion“. ie: You cannot question us! We are scientists! It is all settled! We have the word!

      Remember, politics is everything to a modern Left-wing activist. It trumps honesty. It trumps academic integrity. It trumps the scientific method. In fact, science is ignored in favour of lies and dishonesty posing as science. To these people, science is an avenue to supply material for their propaganda campaign. NOT for exploration, discovery, and to understand. These people do NOT want to understand. They are pushing a narrative! This is why they behave the way they do!

      Its really about steering public away from common sense and turning things into such a way where they personally benefit from it in the end. (Often at the cost of the taxpayer). ie: Someone needs to note the union run superannuation programs that have heavily invested into “green energy companies”. The very companies who have been subsidised by the taxpayer. (Eco-cronyism at its best.)

      Why would I say Left-wing? Because it is only the political Left who are actively pushing this and other activist narratives for the last decade! (Gay Marriage, Feminism, Environmentalism, “Global Citizen”, Equality this and that, Rights! Rights! Rights! Etc, etc.)

      They have infected…

      * Our education system.
      => Why is Al Gore’s DVD still in our public education system? Why are grades still falling despite $20 billion spent on laptops and the “Education Revolution”? (This isn’t just comparing us with our Asian neighbours. This is just comparing our own results with our past results!)

      * Our political system.
      => We experienced it with Rudd-Gillard-Rudd period of Govt…Pushing a Carbon Tax no one but their Global Warming buddies liked.
      => You know something is very wrong with the UN when they care more about Climate Change than nutjobs (ISIL) cutting people’s heads off.

      * Our scientific system.
      => CSIRO, Bureau of Meteorology, and all the dodgy behaviour JoNova website and others have noted in terms of released reports and hypocritical behaviour.

      * Our culture.
      => The use of celebrity endorsements. (Note the growing trend of celebrities getting involved in political matters!)
      ==> Cate Blanchett => http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcLd9Eh8CyU => This is why I call her Carbon Cate.
      ==> Leonardo DiCaprio => Environmental Activist and recently named “United Nations Messenger of Peace” => I call him LearJet Leo. For all the jet fuel he has burned travelling around the world.

      …They are the only ones pushing and impose their will upon us all. Why? Haven’t you notice these self-appointed, morally superior, political-privileged elitist class often behave like hypocritical totalitarians? They know all! They know what’s good for ALL OF US! Listen to them! They know what is right for you and me! Don’t question them! One rule for you, another rule for them!

      Note the titles they give themselves to make them look like someone of status! The general rule is: The more nonsensical the title of position is, the more stupid or incompetent the person to fill the position. Because to the political Left, symbolism/style/public relations is more important than genuine substance. This is why there is the bloat of useless positions being created!

      So what’s the go with these modern activist tendencies?

      The process is simple. (They think they’re smart, but they aren’t.)

      (1) Create a narrative and repeat it until everyone believes it is true.
      (2) Create manipulated (processed) data, studies, or models to support the narrative.
      (3) Don’t test the hypothesis of (1) with experimentation or real world tests. (Because that will reveal the narrative is wrong!)
      (4) Emotionally bully or play down anyone who doesn’t support the narrative. (Call names, portray them as evil or stupid; do anything to shutdown opposition).
      (5) Profit from those who are naive to believe in the narrative OR acquire taxpayer money through lobbying the political process.
      (6) If its revealed the data doesn’t support the narrative OR the narrative has failed with poor outcomes and consequences; fall back to excuses, change definitions and labels that have not been publicly damaged. Even ignore (change subject) or pretend bad outcomes didn’t happen! (Hope everyone forgets!)

      As we see in this article:
      Our planet is heating up!
      …There’s a pause in warming? Its in the ocean!
      …There’s no warming in the ocean? Its in the Southern end of the Ocean!

      Or maybe they just made it all up and pulled it out of their AR$E from the start!

      By the way, the above 6 steps are also used in Western Feminist movement. eg: 75 cents to the dollar! …They are part of the profitable Grievance Industry that is only interested in itself. (Which explains the growing trend of young women no longer supporting Feminism!)
      => http://womenagainstfeminism.tumblr.com/
      => https://www.facebook.com/WomenAgainstFeminism

      Regardless, the next time you encounter another activist movement…Always look for the 6 steps. A genuine movement (with real demonstrated concerns) wouldn’t involve these 6 steps at all. They’re the kind of movements one can support.

      As for this Climate Change nonsense? Its one big sham. Its interesting the issue in Australia is pretty much politically dead. And despite the Mainstream Media Class allowing activists the microphone without debate; regular people have moved on with their lives.

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      • #
        Fox From Melbourne

        Thank you very much Aussiebear for one of the best reply to one of my post I’ve ever had. I totally agree with everything you said. Why can’t their be my people out there like you and me ha. People that listen, remember, pay attention and bother to think for themselves and have the brains to workout whats going on ha. Its a shame about the rest of them who actually have the brains but just don’t bother to use them now isn’t it. We should stop calling them Greenies and start call them Vegetables ha. Well thank you again and please keep thinking and post on Jo’s site I look forward to reading your future post’s bye.

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      • #
        Peter C

        Wow Aussiebear,

        What a rant . And very good.

        Defines the problem.
        Can you prescribe any antidote?

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        • #
          aussiebear

          Antidote?

          The biggest 3 threats to this activist dishonesty in our schools, culture, science, and political systems is:

          (1) the truth.
          (2) public exposure of the truth.
          (3) Time.

          Remember, these people run on a foundation of dishonest behaviour as they promote their narrative. They make extra-ordinary claims. But they get really worried when someone goes through their studies and claims. (They go on the offensive by destroying someone’s reputation; anyone who they see as a threat to “their cause”). This is why when the truth comes out, their whole house comes tumbling down. They are forced into a position of coming up excuses. (Move goal posts as they are doing now)

          The solution to the problem is simple: The truth. Expose their unaccountable and irresponsible behaviour. Expressly name those activists. So the next time when they make more ridiculous claims, the public will know to ignore them! People like Flannery, Gore, Suzuki, etc…Eco-hustlers.

          And how do you get that exposure to the public?

          It appears we have friends! eg: 2GB Radio (Alan Jones this morning has commented on this very topic of heat not being in the oceans!)
          => http://www.2gb.com/article/alan-jones-comments-8th-october-2014#.VDUcbK0vCUk

          And what of time? Time is not on the liar’s side. The very moment Gore claimed various things in his video, the clock started ticking. Now his claims have shown to be untrue, he is now all butt-hurt in terms of public relations. (Especially when he got played by Clive Palmer!)

          The politically Left hate being made accountable. So put them in a position where they have to be! They also hate being ignored! Like a spoiled and entitled child at a toy store, if mummy and daddy don’t give them what they want, they will cause trouble until they get their way. Don’t give it to them. To appease their needs will encourage their poor behaviour further! Force them into a position where they have to grow up. That’s what being accountable and responsible does to kids. This is why I suggest to make activists accountable for their BS….You’ll often find they will storm off when they lose an argument. (As they are emotionally invested in topics like Climate Change.)

          The worst thing you can do against this Left-wing style activism is to remain silent. This is when they can only declare victory: When there is no opposition. This is why one must stand strong, speak up, and question everything they promote. They will hate you for it and will target you, because you don’t take their BS.

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    • #

      That’s the way it was done for centuries until “Climate Scientist” came along and adjusted it so that it works or should I dare say doesn’t work that other way round

      The best climate models fail either way, or to euphemise, they’re “robust to doing things bass ackwards.”

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  • #
    Rereke Whakaaro

    Shouldn’t they just make it up …

    They do. The Climategate emails make that quite clear.

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    • #
      scaper...

      Well…they’re not very good at it.

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        I know, that is why you and I are here scaper… We are attracted to mediocracy, in all its forms.

        Looked at correctly, mediocracy can be viewed as an art form, and Climate Seance has some of the best practitioners in the business.

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        • #
          Winston

          It appears to this observer that the cognitive dissonance of climastrology has reached its apogee. It has now evolved into a full blown cognitive cacophony.

          Or for classical music or jazz aficionados, cognitive atonality.

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          • #
            Tim

            Talking about jazz, I noticed the Argo Buoys mentioned above.
            Will they be making a comeback? They were a great trio.

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        • #
          David

          Climate Seance

          Gold RW – summed up the [snip] in two words.

          🙂

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    • #
      Andrew McRae

      They do seem to make it up, but Science requires an initial hypothesis or guess. The suspicious part is all the excuses, ad-hoc reasoning, and distortions of original measurements that are then enacted to keep a dying hypothesis on life-support.
      I’ll give ya a fer-instance.

      The first time they claimed the measurements were biased was in 2007 when they claimed the cooling in OHC from 2002 onwards was due to the transition from the old XBTs to the ARGOs and AchutaRao argued the XBTs were warm biased. Okay, but was the bias recreated with that same batch of XBTs under controlled conditions? No mention of either NASA or “The Germans” doing that.

      The next time they claimed the measurements were biased it was the brand spanking new ARGO fleet that allegedly had a cool bias according to Josh Willis. It wasn’t much at first, by Josh kept massaging the measurements until he got the politically correct answer. What a guy.
      But did they reproduce the same cooling bias in test ARGO floats under controlled conditions? No mention of that. Just data massaging. No attempt to show the cooling bias is real in a real test.

      I don’t mind that they guess… as long as they then proceed to check.

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        Rereke Whakaaro

        No attempt to show the cooling bias is real in a real test.

        Perhaps we should crowd-source the time-line of instances of Non-Empirical Adjustment Rationalisation?

        We could call it the NEAR Project.

        It would put the onus on Climate fraternity to demonstrate that the manufacturers had failed to calibrate the ARGO’s to the required standard of accuracy.

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        • #
          ExWarmist

          Or we could call it Finagling Adjustment Rationalisation,

          Which would then be the FAR Project.

          I would suggest that both the NEAR and the FAR projects could be funded as the real answer is likely to be found somewhere around the MIDDLE.

          (Measured Instrumented Data Defined Logical Empiricism)

          Cheers ExWarmist

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  • #
    KinkyKeith

    “Argo buoy data which went into full operation in 2005”

    That was about nine years ago.

    The full cycle length for the freezing and warming cycles is nominally 100,000 years.

    That’s a known and undisputed scientific fact that the Earth’s cooling and reheating cycle is a result of orbital considerations and that the next big freeze is due any time soon.

    We are 25,000 years into the last big meltdown of accumulated ice which caused oceans to rise about 130 metres before settling 6 or 7 metres lower at current levels.

    The 9 years of Argo is one 11,111 th part of the normal cycle; Is that a useful piece of data to measure and posture about?

    Is less than one ten thousandth part of the cycle truly representative?

    KK

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      Peter C

      Argo data is very short term (9 years). Any conclusions are tentative in the extreme.

      That’s a known and undisputed scientific fact that the Earth’s cooling and reheating cycle is a result of orbital considerations

      To the best of my knowledge this is a plausible theory.

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  • #
    john karajas

    Another recent paper by Schulz found that the first air-sea flux mooring in the Southern Ocean was recording a heat loss at a rate of -10Wm-2. That would kind of fit with the record increase in sea ice perhaps?

    An excellent observation, Jo. I also agree that “the missing heat” is in space, reflected off increased cloud cover (albedo effect).

    These sorts of observations were being made back in the 1960’s (e.g. in papers published in the Scientific American, before it became an alarmist propaganda vehicle). Then along came Jim Hanson of NASA.


    [Edit – Quote fixed – J]

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      john karajas

      [Comment fixed above – J]

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        KinkyKeith

        “the missing heat” is in space”

        With a temperature gradient from Earth surface at about 15 deg C to deep space at 1.6 above absolute zero ( 271.56 C below zero) the biggest wonder is that we retain as much heat energy on Earth as we do.

        The big problem is HEAT LOSS!!!!

        A temperature gradient of 286C deg over say 50 km is a fearsome attraction for energy to slip away.

        KK

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  • #
    thingadonta

    Collaterised model obligations. CMOs.

    Model NONCAs. No observations, no correlations, no accuracy.

    As Greenspan might say, I have found a flaw! The models don’t work.

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  • #

    Oh, please forgive me. I just couldn’t help it, when I read the title to this Post.

    I can now see where all that missing heat is.

    Evidently, it’s being carried around by that fantastic white winged warrior ….. Chickenman.

    Tony.

    PostScript – Tony thinks to self ….. Hmm! I wonder how many readers remember that guy?

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    • #
      Mark F

      You mean THE Courageous Capon? Of course!

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    • #
      Leigh

      Tony, in my opinion, possibly the biggest individual threat to the serial adjusters of the global warmists “snipsters” is onto this “hidden heat”.
      She’s just passed an educated eye over a couple of new peer reviewed worlds best practice papers on the “hidden heat”.

      “The bottom line is that uncertainties in ocean heat content are very large, and there is no particularly convincing evidence that the ‘missing heat’ is hiding in the ocean.”
      Prof. Judith Curry.

      http://judithcurry.com/2014/10/05/evidence-of-deep-ocean-cooling/#more-17028

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      • #
        Richard C (NZ)

        >a couple of new peer reviewed worlds best practice papers on the “hidden heat”

        Same papers as the post above Leigh.

        20

        • #
          Leigh

          Yes, I know Richard but highlighting one of “their owns” critical assessment.
          With all due respect given to Jo and her efforts to hold them to a account.
          Goes a hell of a lot further in the “propoganda wars” than a skeptics criticism of them.
          Hence the link to Prof. Curry.
          Who up till recently was part of the “peer reviewed, worlds best practice” clique.

          20

  • #
    Olaf Koenders

    They’ve a more accurate chance of modelling the heat at the bottom of my coffee. [slurp] Oops.. that just caused Climate Change ©®™!

    90

  • #
    Malcolm

    This story is being run on The (one-sided) Conversation. Watch what happens when someone questions the veracity of the ‘science’ in the comments section.

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      • #
        PeterPetrum

        They clearly do not like adverse comments against the warmist dogma, or am I iinterpreting the “comment removed by moderator” incorrectly?

        40

        • #
          Gary in Erko

          “They clearly do not like adverse comments against the warmist dogma”
          That’s correct. The usual watchdogs attack first, making sure that non-dogma information gets responded with a long series of tirades, like pretty bows on the tailstring of a kite. The tirades consist of personal slander studded with links and quotes from hastily discovered websites. Then the deletes occur, with a note emailed to the deleted commentators, too cryptic to specify exactly why your comment was removed. It proudly calls itself The Conversation (“The” has a leading capital to indicate its importance). The forum is actually serving a useful purpose in demonstrating to the thinking public the style & content of research and reports currently fashionable in academia.

          30

  • #
    Ursus Augustus

    Gee I wish I could use a model to readjust my income cos there appears to be some missing according to the data I have on income and expenditure.

    Is it just me or are the alarmists getting madder, more incoherent and more frequent in their PR driven drivel?

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    • #
      Yonniestone

      I’ll have to inform the banks of my missing millions in accounts they’re not aware of, and yes I have a model to prove it’s true, I homogenized the sh$t out of the interest too.

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    • #
      Konrad

      “are the alarmists getting madder, more incoherent and more frequent in their PR driven drivel?”

      In a word, yes. Another commenter described it as “extinction explosion”. Many of the fellow travellers have their reputations full invested in this sorry hoax, and they have no exit strategy. They’ve tried 50 or more excuses for the pause and the public aren’t buying any of them. They are in full on foaming panic. And this is not just the pseudo scientists, it’s every activist, journalist and politician of the professional left. It is suddenly dawning on them what losing the first information war in the Internet age means. They are going to be branded fools and liars for the rest of their lives, and so they shriek. And they know the shrieking is only making things worse, and in their despair they can’t help but shriek louder.

      But it’s not just about reputation, for some it’s about millions of dollars. Big Wind is too expensive, environmentally destructive and failure prone to every be justified by “sustainability” or “energy security” arguments. It’s sole justification was the CAGW hoax. Big Wind needs CO2 to be the demon for it’s very survival. Millions were spent on the anti shale gas propaganda. That propaganda push has failed. Big Wind will pour millions into “ocean acidification” propaganda next, as it is the only option that demonises CO2 they have left.

      The panicked shrieking, boosted by Big Wind dollars soaked in the blood of endangered species, will get louder, but only for a short time. Then the last burst of venomous rage, then the sobbing and pleading. But ultimately there can be no forgiveness. This assault on science, freedom and democracy was too vile to ever be forgiven.

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      • #
        Olaf Koenders

        What bothers me the most is they made money out of it for decades. When it collapses, I hope – likely in vain – that the corrupt are jailed and the money refunded.

        OK.. Now everyone start laughing at me if it weren’t so sad already..

        20

  • #
    Richard C (NZ)

    “then removed the part of that rise due to expanding warming oceans ”

    From the Climate Etc thread discussing this:

    Bob Ludwick | October 5, 2014 at 10:01 pm |

    Awhile back I was in the midst of venting my outrage about something or other here regarding ocean heating and the effect on sea level. In the process, I decided that I needed the coefficient of thermal expansion of seawater to get my numbers right, so with the help of Google, I found this:

    http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=kt167nb66r&chunk.id=d3_4_ch03&toc.id=ch03&brand=eschol%20

    Bottom line: the coefficient of expansion of seawater isn’t a number; it is a table. It varies wildly with temperature, salinity, and pressure and for some combinations can be strongly negative. I. e., more heat makes it contract. Oh, and don’t forget, the specific heat ALSO varies with all of the above, too, so unless you know a LOT about the water being heated you can’t predict how much a given injection of energy will affect its volume OR its temperature.

    So simply saying that a certain change in ocean temperature will result in a known, calculable change in sea level is naive, to say the least. SOMEONE may in fact know how to do it; it isn’t me. But that one link above, written by people who DO know a lot about seawater and how it behaves under various stimuli, taught me enough to be very suspicious when I see someone treating sea level variability as some sort of ‘thermometer’ for the oceans at large, and then treating variations in the OUTPUT of that thermometer as ‘the signature’ of ACO2.

    http://judithcurry.com/2014/10/05/evidence-of-deep-ocean-cooling/#comment-635290

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  • #
    TdeF

    Heat lemonade and CO2 comes out. So heat the ocean and CO2 increases. What is the chance that heating causes the CO2 rise, not the other way around? It fits the facts much better than CO2 rise causing heating, but then you do not need the endless windmills and the windmill industry will suffer. It makes you wonder about the people who used to make jousting sticks?

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    • #
      Andrew McRae

      What is the chance that heating causes the CO2 rise, not the other way around?

      None.

      It fits the facts much better than CO2 rise causing heating

      Actually it’s counter-factual.
      The explanation has been given many times before, both here and other web sites such as WUWT. It’s called the Mass Balance principle, or Carbon Accounting. Basic law of conservation of mass applied to the atmospheric measurements and industrial emissions. Show some interest in the truth by searching for it.

      If there had been no industrial emission of CO2, the CO2 level would still be rising right now for exactly the natural reason you have stated (Henry’s Law). But it wouldn’t be rising as quickly because the sea temperature rise has been minuscule (0.25% increase) compared to CO2 (37.50% increase).

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      • #
        Richard C (NZ)

        Mass Balance doesn’t take time into account.

        20

        • #
          Andrew McRae

          It also doesn’t take into account whether you prefer strawberry or vanilla, but as Mass Balance is inviolate at all time scales it is no worse for it. Choose any time period and Mass Balance applies to the net change between the beginning and end of that period.

          41

          • #
            Richard C (NZ)

            >”Choose any time period and Mass Balance applies to the net change between the beginning and end of that period.”

            Well yes, no-brainer, except what is the time period used to estimate mass balance wrt carbon? It’s a simplified snapshot in time, an estimate. Of course there should be a balance (problem with the missing bit- see comment below), but it says nothing about the carbon cycle. TdeF has taken this up below so not much to say except the time snapshots used to compute mass balance don’t take total ocean time scale and volume into account for example (impossible to know data 100s, 1000s of yrs ago anyway).

            And at the other end of the scale is annual anthro emissions data values. By the time day 365 is emitted how much of day 1 has possibly already been absorbed unless there’s wind or something to prevent that? And has it been re-emitted naturally during the year? Mass balance using the 365 day emissions average doesn’t tell you anything about that.

            31

            • #
              Richard C (NZ)

              Biosphere Carbon Flow for ten years 2002 to 2012

              Global Carbon – Balance Sheets

              By Hemi McKenzie (at Climate Conversation Group)

              https://www.dropbox.com/s/embfk7ns81m5y9k/Copy%20of%20Carbon%20financial%20model%202012%20updated.xls

              By 2002 the ocean had already gained the bulk of heat accumulation so now we need the same for an interval in the 1600s.

              I don’t know of one of those.

              30

              • #
                Richard C (NZ)

                >”I don’t know of one of those.” (Carbon balance for a 1600s interval).

                Modeling attempts to do this dynamically e.g.

                ‘Climate and carbon-cycle variability over the last millennium’

                Jungclaus et al (2010)

                http://www.clim-past.net/6/723/2010/cp-6-723-2010.pdf

                4 Discussion and conclusion

                “In particular, the
                magnitude and rate of CO2 change during the LIA and the timing of the MWP prove difficult to reconcile with our best estimates of the climate forcing and response over the last millennium.”

                “After 1750 AD, there
                is a steep increase towards modern values. The CO2 decrease [1100AD – 1700AD] coincides with a period of decreasing temperatures towards the LIA, suggesting that CO2 simply follows temperature. However, the relation is probably not that simple:…..”

                “Therefore, although temperature changes certainly explain part of the observed CO2 variations, we cannot rule out that carbon-cycle variations related to mechanisms other than surface temperatures, such as redistributions
                in the oceanic/sediment pools, with timescales
                from century to millennia play a considerable role.”

                # # #

                Which leads us back to TdeF at #15 top of this thread:

                “What is the chance that heating causes the CO2 rise, not the other way around?”

                Ans: “partly”, “certainly”, according to Jungclaus et al (2010)

                20

      • #
      • #
        Mark D.

        Andrew, have you watched this presentation by Salby?

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2ROw_cDKwc0

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        • #
          Andrew McRae

          Salby fails at step 1 by removing the long term trend prior to the lag and frequency analysis. A natural CO2 rise would indeed be proportional to the integral of temperature, but he has already thrown away the constant of integration which if it were added would show that cause as insufficient. Look at the second line of his equations (video 13:30) where he’s integrated both sides w.r.t. δt. Where is the constant of integration? It’s MIA, as it must be to prop up the deception. To keep the RHS as he shows it, the constant of integration of temperature would have to be moved to the LHS by subtracting it. In other words, if the equation was written properly, the CO2 would be higher than can be accounted for by temperature integral alone.
          Yes, if you remove the annual evidence of industrial forcing then it appears to logically follow that the cause must be natural due to positive lag, but it’s still mistaken, doomed from step 1. The lagged analysis simply proves that temperature increases are reducing the rate at which the oceans can absorb CO2. The lagged analysis being consistent with a quadrature covariance just proves Henry’s Law is still working, but nobody ever said it wasn’t. What it does not establish is which direction the carbon is flowing.
          It’s similar to when you go downhill in your car, the elevation distance of your car’s brake pedal above the floor has a positively lagged (i.e. leading) correlation with the speed of your car – but you would not conclude as Salby does that the brakes are driving the car forward. Ocean warming puts the brakes on CO2 absorption and allows CO2 from the fossil source to temporarily accumulate in the air, all consistent with the data Salby is using, he just has the dynamic interpretation backwards.

          And you cannot annul Mass Balance by simply blurting the word “Salby”. It’s because the Mass Balance argument must be true that any contrary conclusion must be false no matter what argument has been given for it.

          Salby substitutes a complex argument in place of a simple one. You have to ask why he would choose to obfuscate the issue.

          No. Never mind. I have said too much.

          I have given up arguing this particular issue. I can point people towards the facts and the arithmetic, and they either get it or they don’t. If they don’t get it, no facts will change their mind. If they do get it, they’ve saved me the hassle of educating them. Either way I have nothing to gain by arguing against the stubborn.

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            Mark D.

            Andrew, I didn’t blurt Salby as an annulment of your argument. I was looking for a critique and should have said that. Later in the video he does cover the issue of different carbon specie in the atmosphere and would like your thoughts on his accounting.

            I didn’t remember your previous shredding of Salby as you provided in the link.

            Thank you

            30

          • #
            Winston

            Andrew,

            Please correct my ignorance if I pose a stupid question, but…..

            Aren’t you assuming an idealised model of sorts that doesn’t represent the physical reality? i.e.

            1. that CO2 balance between sea water in the oceans and the atmosphere is related purely to a chemical equation related to the solubility of CO2 when sea water is actually more akin to a soup than to salt water,

            2. the effect of even relatively small fluctuations/alterations to phytoplankton and algal populations (with increased photosynthetic absorption/metabolism as a consequence), which I would think would potentially dwarf human CO2 production.

            3. that CO2 doesn’t precipitate to Calcium carbonate, etc and that the oceans don’t have a vast ability to be a near limitless sink for this process, to speed up or slow down dynamically to overwhelm our relatively puny input.

            20

            • #
              Andrew McRae

              I’m surprised you don’t understand what conservation of mass implies, but as you have been so polite I will try to keep my condescension to a minimum.

              1. Conservation of mass applies to everything, including soup.

              2. The Mass Balance argument says nothing at all about particular processes of absorption or emission, the method is not important, only the net mass flow after summing all fluxes.

              3. The mass balance argument does not estimate or hypothesize about what any potential flux might be nor how much capacity the oceans might have. The mass balance argument tells you what net mass movement really happened between two points in time as the net result of every force and process involved, known or unknown. See previous answer. (You are trying to claim that 8Gt is puny compared to 4Gt, but they are the real world measurements and you are mistaken.)

              The question is to determine whether industry or nature is the main contributor to the observed conversion of the atmosphere into a net sink of CO2. The mass balance argument provides the answer.
              Speculation about algae soup will not help you. It’s because the Mass Balance argument does not rely upon a perfect inventory of every conceivable carbon-bearing process and repository in the world that it can answer the question reliably with the measurements that we do have (industrial emissions and atmospheric increase).

              20

              • #
                Winston

                Andrew,

                I have no position either way on your argument, especially as I don’t think increased anthropogenic CO2 is even remotely important.

                However I thought this was interesting:
                http://www.marbef.org/wiki/Microbial_research

                In this article I quote:
                “In the ocean, microbes (organisms from 0.2 to 100µm) are very abundant. It has been calculated that they account for about half of the biomass on Earth. In the ocean, Bacteria and Archaea account for billions of tonnes of carbon (estimates range from 3 to 14 billion) while, in contrast, all people on Earth combined only account for about 0.03 billion tonnes of carbon. In a drop (one millilitre) of seawater, one can find 10 million viruses, one million bacteria and about 1,000 small protozoans and algae (called “protists”). In addition to their high abundance, microbes play a crucial role in most biogeochemical processes occurring in the marine environment: they account for almost half of global primary production and form a major part of ecosystem respiration and nutrient recycling”.

                Suggests to me that fluctuations in this microbial populations may have some significant impacts on your CO2 fluxes and repositories, in spite of your contentions to the contrary.

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              • #
                Andrew McRae

                Winston you have not understood a single thing I have said.
                For a start, the atmosphere is gaining carbon at over 4Gt per year. If dead microbes were generating that there would be no microbes left in the sea today, your figure of 16Gt of microbes would be used up already.

                I was fairly sure you are not stupid, so the explanation for your aCO2 denialism will have to be different to TdeF. I’m not ready to pronounce a definite diagnosis yet.

                02

              • #
                Mark D.

                Pleasant isn’t he?

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              • #
                Andrew McRae

                Sorry, Winston, in hindsight I figure you were implying that an increase in microbes would create an increase in their respired CO2 output. Conservation of mass still applies, regardless of what process is producing CO2, so the arithmetic is still the same. -8 + 4 + x = 0, solve for x, where x is the net year-on-year change of total carbon in the ocean and biosphere combined.

                Yes, Mark, I did lose temper when it became obvious nothing that I said was sinking in.
                Perhaps you wouldn’t be reduced to making observations of style if you had ever had a counterargument to the substance.

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              • #
                Richard C (NZ)

                You’ve got some 2010 – 2013 arithmetic to address in the next sub-thread down Andrew.

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            • #
              Richard C (NZ)

              Year, Atm C, Anth C

              GtC
              2010, 826.48, 9.19
              2011, 830.26, 9.47
              2012, 834.90, 9.7
              2013, 840.54, 9.9

              Tropic venting from oceans 2002 to 2012 (IPCC)
              93.89 GtC per year

              Cumulative GtC change
              2011, 3.78, 9.47, 93.89
              2012, 8.42,19.17, 187.78
              2013,14.06,29.07, 281.67

              11

              • #
                Richard C (NZ)

                Vegetative and animal decay & waste to atm
                2002 to 2012 (IPCC)
                120 GtC per year

                Cumulative GtC change
                2011, 120
                2012, 240
                2013, 360

                11

              • #
                Andrew McRae

                Richard C of NZ, you have form on this. You have again misinterpreted a single flux to be a net emission. It’s not. At the same time that outflux occurred, a differently sized influx was also occurring. Carbon atoms are going both ways all the time. Hypothetically, if that tropic flux were the net emission of the ocean then, to not violate conservation of mass, the land would have to be a net sink of ~ 98.66GtC/year, so that over those 3 years the net total change is zero:
                [Atmo](+14) + [Anthro](−29) + [Nature](−281+296) = 0.
                That hypothetical still requires nature to be a net absorber of ~5Gt/year, not a net emitter. No matter what fluxes you contrive, the net change must match what is observed. That’s the lesson you don’t seem to be …absorbing.

                I’m not normally in the habit of reading IPCC material, but that text “93.89” does not appear anywhere in AR5 WG1 Ch6 so I don’t know where you got it from, so I can’t check what the source of that figure really meant when they wrote it (before you misinterpreted it).

                My answer to you in particular is still the same:
                How many years have you spent examining this issue and you still don’t understand the terminology, let alone how to answer the question.

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              • #
                Richard C (NZ)

                Andrew

                >”You have again misinterpreted a single flux to be a net emission. It’s not.”

                No I haven’t, those are NOT net fluxes. Those are the greater gross flows (fluxes) in to the atmosphere 2011/12/13 base year 2010.

                The fixed figure is the measured atmospheric gain – the residual.

                >”Carbon atoms are going both ways all the time.”

                Exactly, but not in the same location on the surface the’re not. But I haven’t got to that yet. I’m putting aCO2 in context with inflows to the atmosphere from land and ocean.

                >”No matter what fluxes you contrive”

                I don’t “contrive” any, unless you think a mass balance is “contrived” e.g. the IPCC’s Fig 6.1 below or the C balance I’ve used as source. I don’t think you do given your preaching on the topic except if you look at the error ranges and uncertainties, the data is contrived to a large degree. Just not by me.

                Atm C is from NOAA ESRL ppm converted to GtC using the IPCC’s conversion factor 2.12.

                The gross flows are estimates in the C balance spreadsheet upthread attributed to the IPCC. Remember “mass balance” Andrew?

                >”I’m not normally in the habit of reading IPCC material,”

                Might be a good time to start, otherwise you don’t know what you are talking about.

                >”that text “93.89” does not appear anywhere in AR5 WG1 Ch6″

                Why should it? And did you look at the Supplementary Information? The 10 year value is from the C balance upthread which was 938.9 GtC attributed to the IPCC. That’s 93.89/yr. I’ll have a look in Chap 6 & SI when I’ve got time but meantime you’ll have to take HemiMcK’s word for it (it is a mass balance afterall) or give us a better value if you can.

                AR5 WGI Figure 6.1 doesn’t separate the ocean-atm exchange into warm and cold:

                http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/figures/WGI_AR5_Fig6-1.jpg

                Obviously that simplified depiction is misleading, AO exchange does not occur at one spot on the ocean surface – that is impossible. I’ve just used Mauna Loa values for atm which is warm-only. A better analysis would be Mauna Loa for warm and Barrow Is Alaska for cold values (NOAA has the data). You’ll have to wade through Chap 6 & SI for details of the tropics. As will I.

                Moving on. The significant 3 yr inflows were (GtC):

                360 Land => Atm
                281.67 Trop Ocean => Atm
                641.67 L+O => Atm
                29.07 Anth => Atm
                670.74 L+O+A => Atm

                The Atm residual was 14.06. Therefore, the 3 yr flow out of the atmosphere was:

                656.68 Atm => L+O

                218.89 GtC/yr

                Photosynthesis is about 120 GtC/yr (C balance and Figure 6.1 above).

                AR5 Chap 6 has Arctic ocean CO2 uptake
                24-100 TgC.yr [GtC] in FAQ 6.1 Figure 1, page 530 pdf.

                120 + 62 = 182 GtC/yr

                The minor uptake flows and Sub-Arctic (not to mention the huge uncertainty) make up the 36 GtC shortfall.

                It all makes sense Andrew. But aCO2 is a bit-player.

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              • #
                Richard C (NZ)

                >”[Atmo](+14) + [Anthro](−29) + [Nature](−281+296) = 0.”

                What’s 296?

                281 Trop Ocean => Atm
                360 Veg+Animal => Atm
                641 Nature => Atm
                29 Anth => Atm
                670 Nat+Anth => Atm

                10

              • #
                Richard C (NZ)

                Atm + L+O+A – L+O = 0

                14 + 670 – 684 = 0

                Of the 684 I’ve got 546 just from photosythesis and Arctic ocean uptake.

                Anthro is 0.04 of the gross flow to the atmosphere (29/670) – a bit player.

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              • #
                Richard C (NZ)

                >”AR5 Chap 6 has Arctic ocean CO2 uptake
                24-100 TgC.yr [GtC] in FAQ 6.1 Figure 1, page 530 pdf.”

                Wrong here.

                1 TgC = 1 MtC
                1 PgC = 1 GtC

                I’ll have to find the ocean uptake data by latitude division from somewhere. There’s obviously much more than 24-100 MtC/yr being taken up by the ocean.

                10

              • #
                Richard C (NZ)

                Quantified gross fluxes by latitude are very hard to come by (not a meme to run with apparently) but there is this from NOAA in the meantime:

                ‘The oceanic sink for carbon dioxide’

                Christopher L. Sabine and Richard A. Feely

                3.3.1 Effect of surface sea water pCO2 variations on CO2 fluxes

                The equatorial Pacific is a strong source of CO2 to the atmosphere throughout the year as a result of upwelling that brings deep, high CO2 waters to the surface in the central and eastern regions. This upwelling, and thus the CO2 flux to the atmosphere, is heavily modulated by the El Niño–southern oscillation (ENSO) cycle. During strong El Niño years the equatorial Pacific CO2 source can drop to zero. During La Niña the CO2 source to the atmosphere is enhanced. High CO2 outgassing fluxes are also observed in the tropical Atlantic and Indian oceans throughout the year. The Arabian Sea becomes a significant source of CO2 to the atmosphere in the late summer and early fall months as the south-east monsoon generates intense upwelling off the Arabian peninsula.

                Strong convective mixing also brings up high CO2 values in the north-western sub-Arctic Pacific and Bering Sea during the northern winter. However, just outside this region there is a seasonal oscillation in CO2 flux. The geochemical response of the ocean to changing temperatures is to decrease the pCO2 by 4.23%/°C of sea water cooling (Takahashi et al., 1993). In some regions, decreasing temperatures in the winter can lower the ocean’s pCO2 values sufficiently to counteract the elevated CO2 brought to the surface from stronger winter time mixing (e.g., temperate North Pacific and North Atlantic oceans). The fluxes out of the ocean from elevated temperatures during summer are limited by stratification, resulting in a small net annual flux into the ocean. Similar seasonal changes are observed in the southern temperate oceans, but are out of phase by half a year.

                Intense regions of CO2 uptake are seen in the high-latitude northern ocean in summer and in the high-latitude South Atlantic and southern Indian oceans in austral summer. This uptake is associated with high biological utilization of CO2 in thin mixed layers. As the seasons progress, vertical mixing of deep waters eliminates this uptake of CO2. These observations indicate that the CO2 flux in high-latitude oceans is governed primarily by deep convection in winter and biological uptake during the spring and summer months, whereas in the temperate and subtropical oceans, the flux is governed primarily by water temperature. Outside the equatorial belt, the ∆pCO2 (sea water pCO2—atmospheric pCO2) is highest during winter in subpolar and polar waters, whereas it is highest during summer in the temperate regions. Thus, the seasonal variation of ∆pCO2 and, consequently, the shift between net uptake and release of CO2 in subpolar and polar regions are about 6 months out of phase with that in the temperate regions.

                http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/sabi2854/modern.shtml

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              • #
                cohenite

                CO2 fluxes, however defined, are all guesstimates and do not include the biggest flux of all, recycling of CO2 through the Mantle, see Berner and Caldeira.

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              • #
                Richard C (NZ)

                Can’t find gross fluxes anywhere, everything is net. I’ll have to find out how AR5 Figure 6.1 was compiled. Did find the latest update of net ocean carbon fluxes that shows uptake and outgassing by latitude i.e. a longitudinal cross-section in m2 terms:

                ‘Global ocean carbon uptake: magnitude, variability and trends’

                Wanninkhof et al (2013)

                Page 13 pdf,

                Fig. 9. Latitudinal distribution of zonal means (thick solid line)
                and standard deviations (spatial and temporal variability; thin solid
                line with squares) for the: [……………]

                (b)[delta]pCO2 from the monthly Takahashi et al. (2009) climatology; and

                (c) the specific sea–air CO2 flux [molm2 month−1] computed by applying the 20 yr CCMP wind product to the Takahashi pCO2 climatology using Eq. (2).

                http://www.biogeosciences.net/10/1983/2013/bg-10-1983-2013.pdf

                Plenty of net flux maps, this from NOAA ESRL CarbonTracker:

                Figure 1. Posterior long-term mean ocean fluxes from CarbonTracker. The pattern of air-sea exchange of CO2 averaged over the time period indicated, as estimated by CarbonTracker. Negative fluxes (blue colors) represent CO2 uptake by the ocean, whereas positive fluxes (red colors) indicate regions in which the ocean is a net source of CO2 to the atmosphere. Units are gC m-2 yr-1.

                http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker/CT2011_oi/documentation/longterm_flux1x1_ocn_ltm.png

                From web page
                http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker/CT2011_oi/documentation_ocn.html

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              • #
                Richard C (NZ)

                AR5 WGI Figure 6.1 has this attribution:

                “The change of gross terrestrial fluxes (red arrows of Gross photosynthesis and Total respiration and fires) has been estimated from CMIP5 model results (Section 6.4). The change in air–sea exchange fluxes (red arrows of ocean atmosphere gas exchange) have been estimated from the difference in atmospheric partial pressure of CO2 since 1750 (Sarmiento and Gruber, 2006).”

                That is an e-book:

                ‘Ocean Biogeochemical Dynamics’

                Chapter 10: Carbon Cycle, CO2, and Climate is available free,

                http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s10_8223.pdf

                Unfortunately, no gross fluxes so stuck on Figure 6.1. I do see from reading that “venting” refers to transfer from upper to deeper rather than upper to atmosphere so my exercise upthread needs revising from IPCC Fig 6.1.

                Revised outgassing from oceans, 78.4 GtC/yr

                Cumulative GtC change
                2011, 3.78, 9.47, 78.4
                2012, 8.42,19.17, 156.8
                2013,14.06,29.07, 235.2

                Significant 3 yr inflows to Atm (GtC):

                360 Land => Atm
                235.2 Ocean => Atm
                595.2 L+O => Atm
                29.07 Anth => Atm
                624.27 L+O+A => Atm

                The Atm residual was 14.06. Therefore, the 3 yr flow out of the atmosphere was:

                609.4 Atm => L+O

                203 GtC/yr

                Photosynthesis is about 123 GtC/yr. Ocean uptake 80 GtC.

                203 GtC Atm => L+O

                So,

                235 Ocean => Atm
                360 Veg => Atm
                595 Nature => Atm
                29 Anth => Atm
                624 Nat+Anth => Atm

                Andrew’s expression was wrong. Revised exp:

                L+O+A – (L+O + Atm) = 0

                624 – (609 + 14) = 0

                609 accounted for by photosynthesis and ocean uptake (369 + 240).

                Anthro is 0.046 of the gross flow to the atmosphere (29/624) – a bit player, still.

                00

              • #
                Richard C (NZ)

                Some gross fluxes in this paper:

                ‘The carbon budget of the North Sea’

                Thomas et al (2005)

                Fig. 3. Gross carbon budgets of the North Sea. The gross carbon fluxes across the boundaries (see Fig. 1) as well as the fluxes across the air-sea and sediment water interfaces are shown [page 5 pdf]

                http://www.biogeosciences.net/2/87/2005/bg-2-87-2005.pdf

                Units are 10^12 Mol C.
                1 Mol C = 12.0107 grams

                Intro states:

                “One of the reasons for this uncertainty is the lack of reliable information on the coastal oceans, which hitherto have only barely been considered in the oceanic and global carbon budgets. Coastal and marginal seas reveal strong biological activity, in part triggered by terrestrial and human impacts, and
                play an important role in the global carbon cycle by linking the terrestrial, oceanic and atmospheric carbon reservoirs (Gattuso et al., 1998). The high biological activity causes
                high CO2 fluxes between the coastal and marginal seas and the atmosphere and the adjacent open oceans, respectively.”

                And,

                “During the last years detailed field studies
                have been initiated in a few areas such as the East China Sea, the NW European shelf, the Baltic Sea and the North Sea (Chen and Wang, 1999; Thomas et al., 1999, 2003b, 2004; Thomas and Schneider, 1999; Frankignoulle and Borges,
                2001; Borges and Frankignoulle, 2002, 2003; Bozec et al., 2005a). However, there is only limited information available on a global scale about these CO2 fluxes (Liu et al., 2000a, b; Chen et al., 2003).”

                00

      • #
        TdeF

        You cannot compare %s, like 0.25% and 37.5%. CO2 becomes extremely soluble at high pressure and low temperature. Ask Coca Cola. That is why the total CO2 gas in the sea is agreed to be a massive 50x that of the atmosphere per unit volume and not roughly equal as under Henry’s law. This enhances the outgassing effect x 50, so a tiny rise in sea temperature means a massive output of CO2. The other dramatic result is that the time to equilibrium, something not mentioned in Henry’s law, is far shorter than the 75 years or so used by the IPCC. This can be proven absolutely by studying the time doubling of C14O2 took to disappear from the atmosphere after the 1960s. This is all empirical evidence, no theories required.

        51

      • #
        TdeF

        As for this “mass balance principle”, it is amazing that anyone comes up with such exalted principles. All chemistry is based on the simple idea that nothing gets lost, that the atoms remain unchanged from one side of the equation to another. This is chemistry’s most basic principle. It never occurred that this was a special principle which needed enunciation and naming and has been core idea behind stoichiometric chemistry since chemistry was invented. Yes, nothing gets lost in a chemical reaction. Conservation of mass? Of course. Hardly worth mentioning. These are chemical reactions, not nuclear. There is no contribution to the story by quoting the most elementary rules of all chemistry as if this was a monumental discovery.

        The question is the carbon cycle. There have been many studies of the carbon cycle, but the element which is missing is the entire ocean. The core problem is that only the top layer of the 4km deep oceans is considered with the simple argument that only the top layer is in play with currents taking thousands of years to perform thorough mixing. This ignores the fact that gases are not liquids. 98% of all aerial CO2 is in the ocean. This is generally ignored or dismissed as irrelevant, a small player. It is in fact the whole story. Heat the ocean even slightly and you can dramatically increase the tiny 2% of all CO2 in the atmosphere.

        So is it any surprise that people are now discovering that there has been warming in the oceans? The evidence is in the increased CO2. As Prof Selby demonstrates, total CO2 does not track with air temperature at all, but tracks perfectly with the integral of temperature, which is total heat input to the oceans and through simple heating, sea temperature. Even tiny heating of a body of water which contains 98% of the planet’s free CO2, explains everything. Man does not control CO2 levels. The sun does.

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      • #
        The Backslider

        But it wouldn’t be rising as quickly because the sea temperature rise has been minuscule

        This ignores what else happens in the biosphere as the planet has warmed. If you want to talk about miniscule, then just look at man’s emissions of CO2.

        30

      • #
        The Backslider

        Oh, and I doubt very much that rise in CO2 is directly proportional to rise in temperature.

        30

    • #
      NielsZoo

      Heat lemonade and CO2 comes out.

      For those of you in the States, that’s 7-Up or Sprite.

      40

      • #
        KinkyKeith

        Congrats Niels, on one of the less aggressive comments on this section!

        I always believed that CO2 levels could be contained if more Coke was made.

        But not opened!!!

        KK

        00

  • #

    They seek it here, they seek it there,
    Those Warmists seek it everywhere.
    Is it in the heavens? – Is it in the deep?
    That damned, elusive missing heat.

    320

  • #
    Richard C (NZ)

    [Llovel et al Abstract] – “As the dominant reservoir of heat uptake in the climate system, the world’s oceans provide a critical measure of global climate change.”

    [Durack et al Abstract] – “The global ocean stores more than 90% of the heat associated with observed greenhouse-gas-attributed global warming1, 2, 3, 4.”

    Llovel et al don’t make a direct anthro attribution but Durack et al do with 4 citations. Hews reports have lapped it up e.g.

    ”oceans have absorbed more than 90% of the warming caused by greenhouse gases” – Science Mag

    “Sea temperatures are a crucial yardstick for global warming as the ocean stores more than 90 per cent of human-induced excess heat.” – SMH

    I have not yet looked at those citations but the assertion is incredibly bogus. Oceans are warmed in the tropics by insolation and ocean heat accumulation is simply the result of the highest solar activity in 1000, 3000, or 11,000 yrs depending on which study.

    After 25 years of investigation and 5 assessment reports, the IPCC still doesn’t have a physical mechanism for GHG ocean heating, just speculation – “air-sea fluxes”. No citation (not one of Durack et al’s four), nothing. That’s because it’s an impossibility as documented by Dr Roy Clark in his US EPA Submission 6/17/09, see:

    ‘A Null Hypothesis For CO2′ – The Air-Ocean Interface

    http://appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/EPA_Submission_RClark.pdf

    Dr Clark models ocean heating by solar driver:

    “The solar heating of the ocean may be simulated using a simple Beer’s law model as illustrated in Figure 2. This was used to determine ocean solar heating and cooling as a function of depth over a 1 year period at 30° latitude with the solar constant set to 1365 W.m-2. The model depth resolution was 1 m and the time step was 0.5 hours. The calculated results are shown in Figure 3. They are consistent with Argo Float data such as the examples shown in Figure 1. The model was then extended to simulate changes in the solar constant due to the sunspot cycle from 1650 to 2000 using a scale factor of 1 W.m-2 per 100 change in the annual sunspot index.11 The calculated change in ocean temperatures at 90 m depth is shown in Figure 4. There is a distinct decrease to the end of the Maunder Minimum followed by an overall increase of almost 0.5 C from 1750 to 2000. This simple model clearly demonstrates that small changes in the solar constant influence ocean temperatures and cause climate change. Subsurface ocean layers are transported over long distances by wind driven ocean currents without any interaction with the surface.”

    Then debunks the GHG attribution,

    “It is also straightforward to show that a 1.7 W.m-2 increase in downward LWIR flux at the ocean surface cannot change ocean temperatures. Water is almost completely opaque to LWIR radiation.18 The LWIR absorption/emission depth is less than 1 mm, so the interaction volume is at most 10 cm3. An increase in downward LWIR flux at the ocean surface of 1.7 W.m-2 heats the surface layer at a rate of at least 2.4 C per minute. The ocean responds by rapidly increasing the surface evaporation rate by 1.7 W.m-2, or 2.7 g.hr-1 of water for ideal ‘clear sky’ conditions.”

    From 2009 but we are still reading the miss-attribution in 2014.

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    • #
      Malcolm

      I’ve been saying the same thing for a very long time – the physical processes by which ACO2 enhanced LWIR heats the oceans to an extent which is distinguishable from the heating effects of SW solar don’t exist in reality. It’s an unfortunate sub-paradigm which no serious dynamicist would ever go along with. But the idea still rides and infests all these ocean warming papers and is generally accepted for no other reason than that it was conceived of by a prominent climate scientist.

      90

    • #
      Richard C (NZ)

      >”[Durack et al Abstract] – “The global ocean stores more than 90% of the heat associated with observed greenhouse-gas-attributed global warming1, 2, 3, 4.”

      >”the IPCC still doesn’t have a physical mechanism for GHG ocean heating, just speculation – “air-sea fluxes”. No citation (not one of Durack et al’s four)”

      One of Durack et al’s 4 citations in support of their anthro ocean heating attribution is the IPCC (hotlinks at link below):

      1. Levitus, S., Antonov, J. & Boyer, T. Warming of the world ocean, 1955–2003. Geophys. Res. Lett. 32, L02604 (2005).

      2. Church, J. A. et al. Revisiting the Earth’s sea-level and energy budgets from 1961 to 2008. Geophys. Res. Lett. 38, L18601 (2011).

      3. Otto, A. et al. Energy budget constraints on climate response. Nature Geosci. 6, 415–416 (2013).

      4. Rhein, M. et al. in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. et al.) Ch. 3, 255–315 (IPCC, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013).

      http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2389.html

      I would have to check but I don’t think there is anthro attribution in 1 or 2, those are observations. There may be something in 3 but doubtful because if there was I think we would have heard about it loud and clear.

      4. is AR5 WGI Chapter 3 Observations: Ocean, in entirety:

      http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_Chapter03_FINAL.pdf

      WGI Chap 3 is an Observations chapter, it is NOT attribution. That’s WGII.

      Box 3.1, page 266 states (my emphasis):

      “The ocean’s large mass and high heat capacity allow it to store huge amounts of energy—more than 1000 times that in the atmosphere for an equivalent increase in temperature. The Earth is absorbing more heat than it is emitting back into space, and nearly all this excess heat is entering the oceans and being stored there. The ocean has absorbed about 93% of the combined heat stored by warmed air, sea, and land, and melted ice between 1971 and 2010. The ocean’s huge heat capacity and slow circulation lend it significant thermal inertia. It takes about a decade for near-surface ocean temperatures to adjust in response to climate forcing (Section 12.5), such as changes in greenhouse gas concentrations.”

      They merely allude to GHG forcing, no anthro attribution, and say nothing of solar forcing which easily accounts for ocean heat (see Dr Clark’s model #17 above).

      Then on Page 278 the air-sea heat flux section conclusions (my emphasis):

      3.4.6 Conclusions
      Uncertainties in air–sea heat flux data sets are too large to allow detection of the change in global mean net air–sea heat flux, on the order
      of 0.5 W m–2 since 1971
      , required for consistency with the observed ocean heat content increase.

      In other words, if there’s gobs of heat being transferred from the air to the ocean (highly improbable to account for OH rise) it cannot be detected.

      This is not an anthro attribution and does NOT support Durack et al’s initial statement.

      They’re lying and peer-review condoned it.

      90

  • #
    Neville

    The Wunsch et al 2014 study also found that part of the deep oceans were cooling.

    http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/wunsch&heimbach_jpo2014_bidecadalheat.pdf And here is the abstract————–

    ABSTRACT
    A dynamically consistent state estimate is used for the period 1992–2011 to describe the changes in oceanic
    temperatures and heat content, with an emphasis on determining the noise background in the abyssal (below
    2000m) depths. Interpretation requires close attention to the long memory of the deep ocean, implying that
    meteorological forcing of decades to thousands of years ago should still be producing trendlike changes in abyssal
    heat content. Much of the deep-ocean volume remained unobserved. At the present time, warming is seen in the
    deep western Atlantic and Southern Oceans, roughly consistent with those regions of the ocean expected to
    display the earliest responses to surface disturbances. Parts of the deeper ocean, below 3600 m, show cooling.
    Most of the variation in the abyssal Pacific Ocean is comparatively featureless, consistent with the slow, diffusive
    approach to a steady state expected there. In the global average, changes in heat content below 2000m are
    roughly 10% of those inferred for the upper ocean over the 20-yr period. A useful global observing strategy for
    detecting future change has to be designed to account for the different time and spatial scales manifested in the
    observed changes. If the precision estimates of heat content change are independent of systematic errors, determining
    oceanic heat uptake values equivalent to 0.1Wm22 is possibly attainable over future bidecadal periods.

    30

  • #
    Richard C (NZ)

    [Durack et al] – “Relying on the close correspondence between hemispheric-scale ocean heat content and steric changes,……”

    Not that close

    OHC trends NH 0-700m
    http://oi39.tinypic.com/23r96ko.jpg

    OHC trends SH 0-700m
    http://oi41.tinypic.com/13zv6na.jpg

    MSL trends
    http://www.aviso.altimetry.fr/fileadmin/images/data/Products/indic/msl/MSL_Map_MERGED_Global_IB_RWT_NoGIA_Adjust.gif

    Take a look at the following:

    North of Australia
    Around PNG
    Around Madagascar
    Tasman Sea
    Sth Atlantic off Sth America
    Mid Atlantic

    30

  • #

    So more warming occurs where there is less man made CO2 ….right?

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    • #
      Mark D.

      Close Lance, but it always occurs in places that we humans are poorly equipped to detect it. It’s just coincidental that those places have less man made anything.

      100

      • #
        Andrew McRae

        I agree with you there, Mark D.
        It’s almost comical that the proof is said to be wherever they can’t presently measure, as though they want their theory to be unfalsifiable.

        The idea that the heat is dodging all the ARGO floats is… implausible.
        Have you seen a map of ARGO float positions lately? There’s places on land that have been homogenized across larger distances than those floats. Plus at the moment they seem to have none in the Arctic and dozens in the Southern Ocean. Is that typical? But they blame it on heat hiding in the South not the North!
        And remember on that map projection the areas near the pole are exaggerated, so the density of coverage isn’t quite as bad as it might first seem.

        80

  • #
    Keith L

    “This is the part, below, where Durack concludes the models are probably right, and the observations are probably wrong.”

    Was this translated from Russian?
    If so you missed one word – Durack.
    Translations of дурак
    noun

    fool
    chump
    stupid
    pillock
    idiot
    imbecile
    driveller
    mutt
    jackass

    171

  • #

    Why do they never adjust the models to fit the data? After all, is not that the reason why you collect the data in the first place.

    Ah Ha I know, they want to avoid collecting the data in the first place because it is messy and does not fit in with their preconceived ideas.

    120

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      No, it is because they keep on collecting the wrong data, due to budgetary constraints.

      I simple quadrupling of their funding might make it possible to collect slightly more accurate data, although that cannot be guaranteed.

      You have to stay on message – we will not warn you again.

      /sarc

      60

      • #
        Keith L

        I think the precautionary principle dictates that we should increase funding by a factor of ten or one hundred, just to be on the safe side…

        00

  • #
    Radical Rodent

    …like 28 million weather balloons which underestimate heat and humidity, the 3,000 Argo buoys are underestimating ocean heat…

    Hang on. I have long understood that the weather balloons, Argo buoys, etc. are measuring temperatures and humidity, etc. Now, it would seem, they are estimating. This does suggest a bad bit of planning on the part of the scientists; would it not have been more prudent to put measuring instruments on these bits of kit, not estimating instruments? (And how do they make this “estimate”? Wet a mathematical digit, stick it up in the air and say, “Ooh, that feels like…”?) The whole farce is getting more and more nonsensical – it is like one of those bad movies, where the writers have lost the plot, and the film lurches from one ridiculous scenario to the next. One day, folks are going to wake up and say the equivalent of: “Well, yeah, we know it had Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts in it, but The Mexican was a truly awful film!” And their colleagues, with whom they were in full agreement of its genius last week, will all nod sagely and agree, again.

    (I know that there are other films with stars as big and standards much worse, but none came as immediately to mind.)

    Egad! I read further, and it seems it IS worse – a lot, lot worse – than I thought: the data does not agree with the models, therefore the data is wrong! The world, or at least the political and politico-scientific part of it, is truly going insane.

    110

  • #
    NielsZoo

    … the deep ocean (below 2,000 m) contributes −0.13 ± 0.72 mm yr−1 to global sea-level rise and −0.08 ± 0.43 W m−2 to Earth’s energy balance.

    (from Llovel, Willis, Landerer, Fukumori)
    If this is the abstract I don’t need to even read the paper. They have no clue what’s going on. The sea level rise “measurement” and energy “measurement” are both a full order of magnitude below the tolerance range! I used this analogy somewhere else but I think it works. Would you buy a car that had a fuel gauge that told you the amount of fuel in your tank… plus or minus 5 tanks? Your 15 gallon tank could have 75 gallons in it or -75 gallons. They call this science? I was taught this kind of thing was called handicapping and was reserved for betting on horses that rarely won.

    I don’t believe using the GRACE gravity experiment satellites to find something like an extra mm or two of seawater when they can’t “see” whole mountain ranges is the best approach. If I do the math right (which is not a guarantee,) assume it’s resolution is 1 mGal (the maps are stepped at 10 mGal) that comes out to somewhere in the order of 76,928,970,865,770 kg (76.9 trillion kg or 76.9 Pg) as the smallest mass change it can measure. I’m simplifying by assuming that mass to be 500km away and ignoring the mass of the Earth, core convection, planetary gravities etc. that would be dwarfing this signal. This would be absolutely ideal. That works out to the entire Pacific Ocean area (1.64 trillion m²) increasing in height by over 46mm… ignoring salinity and temperature as 1mm rise is 1kg/m². Even if it had that level of resolution, they’re assuming that the seafloor is a perfect, spherical surface.

    90

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Did you account for the mass of warm-bodied mammals in the sea, Niels?

      You seem to have accounted for everything else 🙂

      30

    • #
      Debbie

      And the GHG part of the AGW theory assumes the earth’s atmosphere is similar to an impervious black body or, at the very least, a sheet of glass. 🙂
      Ocean floor ain’t perfectly spherical. . . atmosphere ain’t impervious.
      Even members of the ‘rural environmental un – elite’ as opposed to the ‘urban environmental elite’ have got that figured. Some of us members of ‘the great unwashed’ out here who live and work in the fair dinkum environment/weather/climate actually grow stuff in REAL greenhouses & -SHOCK ! HORROR! – we sometimes pump extra CO2 into them!
      Not because we want to make them hotter (the greenhouse covering takes care of that) but because it promotes healthier growth!

      70

  • #
    Anton

    As a theoretical physicist, I used to laugh about the data being wrong if they didn’t conform to theory. It’s not funny now.

    250

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    But thousands upon millions of joules are arriving every day, and if some of that energy is being trapped on Earth, it must be somewhere.

    There it is, that biggest two-letter word in the English language — “if”.

    The reasoning goes this way. “If” there is some of that energy trapped on Earth — not demonstrated by any observation of course — well…then it must be somewhere and since we don’t know much about the southern ocean why not arbitrarily assign it there. We can worry about the details later.

    Is it really in the upper 700 meters or could it be hiding in the closet at CRU? Umm… …equally probable I think.

    So it goes round and round, in and out through the models, forward, sideways and backward to get to the answer, using mysterious, magical algorithms delivering their wisdom from upon high to a waiting world hungry for a crisis to be afraid of.

    How do they expect to be taken seriously? One fantasy is built on top of another until it makes Rube Goldberg look like an amateure. 🙁

    100

    • #
      jorgekafkazar

      How do they expect to be taken seriously?

      Ultimately, at gun-point.

      80

      • #
        Mark D.

        Ultimately, at gun-point.

        I’m sorry, I need a bit of clarification: Which side is holding the gun?

        Thanks

        40

        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          If I were holding the gun, I still wouldn’t take them seriously, in fact I would expect them to lie more intensely in an attempt avoid the obvious.

          Therefore, I assume that Jorge expects them to have the gun in order to force us to quiesce to their stated position, or face the alternative.

          This assumption is backed up by an observation that, with the spelling of his name, Jorge may have had some experience with a regime that would think such an approach to be quite acceptable.

          50

          • #
            Mark D.

            I really, really REALLY think that these papers are a direct result of skeptics pounding on the warmists to provide a physical mechanism for deep warming. They could not demonstrate that mechanism and therefore they had to replace that deep hidden heat with something more practical; shallow hidden heat.

            70

            • #
              Rereke Whakaaro

              … they had to replace that deep hidden heat with something more practical; shallow hidden heat.

              But they still need to provide a physical mechanism for the shallow hidden heat.

              They also need to demonstrate why it only works in some parts of the oceans and not in others.

              I say the latter, because we have been repeatedly told that local phenomena are perforce Weather, which we know we don’t influence. Whereas Climate, which is quite ineffable, is a Global phenomenon, that humankind somehow dramatically influences just by being on the planet, and having big brains.

              40

              • #
                Roy Hogue

                I wonder what happened to the null hypothesis. If no one can find it why not start with the assumption that it all escaped into space as it’s been doing for gazillions of years? Problem solved and they can all go home. But no, that would be too simple, not to mention too honest.

                I wouldn’t care if they keep looking for it forever. But don’t come around bothering me until you actually find it.

                40

              • #
                NielsZoo

                Roy, they also seem to ignore all the work that solar energy is doing before it bops off into space. You know like rain, wind, (OK, the ENTIRE weather system,) ocean currents, erosion, plant growth, and everything else not driven by convective heat loss from our planetary core and tidal forces. It is trying desperately to get back into space, increase entropy and turn the universe into homogenous atomic fog.

                30

              • #
                Roy Hogue

                Niel,

                Chief among the things they ignore is their own ignorance of how things work. I know I’m ignorant, abysmally ignorant about a whole lot more than what I have any real understanding of. But I do at least understand that if you tell me there’s something disastrous happening and I’m a part of the cause, then you need to show me sound evidence to support your position. Absent that evidence you have no cause, no case and are laughed out of court.

                As you mention, the whole universe is a giant clock that once wound up and set into operation, can never be wound again. So even the global warming scare is doomed to extinction as the clock finally runs down. Is it so worth worrying about that we must jump off a cliff to save ourselves?

                I live where an earthquake could happen today or tomorrow and destroy my house and possibly me as well. But I don’t worry about it. Life’s too short for that. I’ve lived through the worst that earthquakes have thrown at me since 1939 and I’m still here. And I’ll still be here even if the Earth is hiding all those Hiroshima bombs worth of heat in the southern ocean — or more likely, in the closet at CRU where it all came from in the first place.

                We agree on their ignorance 100%. 🙂

                30

  • #
    Lyle

    So,where do I think the missing heat is?

    The answer my friend….

    H/T Bob Dylan, Dick Lindzen et al

    70

  • #
    hunter

    The climate obsessed kooks won’t ask the logical, ethical, rational, obvious question:
    Are the models correct?
    By so obviously refusing to do what any other endeavor would have long ago led any reasonable person to do, climate kooks corrupt their science and betray those whom they claim to serve.

    90

  • #
    Robber

    In this new, modern, post-science world, “we” have decided that observations are no longer necessary. The models tell us all we need to know.

    40

  • #
    Richard C (NZ)

    ‘New paper shows global sea level rise has greatly decelerated since ~2002, opposite of predictions’

    The Hockey Schtick

    ……notable findings from the paper include:

    1) The positive global sea level rise trend is almost entirely due to an apparent huge “bulge” located in the Western equatorial Pacific region [Fig 12 immediately below, and the “bulge” 3-D illustrated by StevenGoddard.wordpress.com in the 3rd figure below].

    2) Conversely, all areas shown in blue have experienced a drop in altimetric sea levels [different from relative sea levels which are more dependent upon land height changes] from 1993-2010, including most of the East and West coasts of North and South America.

    3) As the 2nd figure below indicates, this “bulge” is almost entirely steric sea level rise from thermal expansion, as opposed to eustatic sea level rise from melting of ice. The fact that the “bulge” is so localized in the equatorial Western Pacific points to trade winds or ocean oscillations such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation as responsible, rather than any effect from greenhouse gases, which would cause a generalized, not highly localized, effect on ocean thermal expansion or eustatic sea level rise from melting ice.

    4) – 7) follows

    Ocean Sci. Discuss., 11, 2029-2071, 2014
    http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net/11/2029/2014/
    doi:10.5194/osd-11-2029-2014

    Improved sea level record over the satellite altimetry era (1993–2010) from the Climate Change Initiative Project

    M. Ablain1, A. Cazenave2, G. Larnicol1, M. Balmaseda11, P. Cipollini7, Y. Faugère1, M. J. Fernandes10,14, O. Henry2, J. A. Johannessen3, P. Knudsen6, O. Andersen6, J. Legeais1, B. Meyssignac2, M. Picot12, M. Roca8, S. Rudenko9, M. G. Scharffenberg4, D. Stammer4, G. Timms5, and J. Benveniste13

    http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.nz/2014/10/new-paper-shows-global-sea-level-rise.html

    Abstract. Sea level is one of the 50 Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) listed by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) in climate change monitoring. In the last two decades, sea level has been routinely measured from space using satellite altimetry techniques. In order to address a number of important scientific questions such as: “Is sea level rise accelerating?”, “Can we close the sea level budget?”, “What are the causes of the regional and interannual variability?”, “Can we already detect the anthropogenic forcing signature and separate it from the internal/natural climate variability?”, and “What are the coastal impacts of sea level rise?”, the accuracy of altimetry-based sea level records at global and regional scales needs to be significantly improved.

    Sarc/ Because we’re not getting the right answers.

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    • #
      Richard C (NZ)

      Ablain et al (from above #30) is another paper that makes a bland anthro ocean heating claim with no supporting evidence of mechanism i.e. they lie:

      1 Introduction
      Global warming in response to the anthropogenic green-house gases emissions has already shown several visible consequences, among them the increase of the Earth’s mean air temperature and ocean heat content,……

      http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net/11/2029/2014/osd-11-2029-2014-print.pdf

      The miss-attribution continues unabated. Soon, it must reach a tipping point.

      20

  • #
    handjive

    Bureau’s MetEye service revolutionising the way we understand the weather

    The interactive service allows users to pinpoint within a six-square-kilometre area what the forecast is for their suburb or rural area for the next week.

    Crucially, the service omits weather warnings.

    The bureau warns users not to rely on it when extreme weather has been forecast.

    “It is provided as a public service and data should be used entirely at your own risk. MetEye does not replace the bureau’s official forecasts and warnings.

    It should not be used for critical decision-making,” a statement on the bureau’s website says.

    MetEye is one of the products developed as part of the Next Generation Forecast and Warning System, a $30 million upgrade of weather services funded by the federal government.
    http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/bureaus-meteye-service-revolutionising-the-way-we-understand-the-weather-20141007-10r82d.html
    . . .
    Shouldn’t the same disclaimer be included on climate models predictions in 2070 used for carbon(sic) tax/direct action now?

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      Safetyguy66

      “It should not be used for critical decision-making,” a statement on the bureau’s website says.”

      Oops Julia and Christine must have missed that bit when they didn’t bother to read the available evidence.

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      Robert of Ottawa

      So, for every 6km in Australia, the bureau says “HOT”.

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    Safetyguy66

    So I guess expecting some sort of apology from those who came to Jo’s pages and vilified the learned people of this blog for suggesting deep heat in the oceans was nonsense would be pointless right.

    Alarmists just make up a theory, fit some data to it, then use it to berate, vilify and insult sceptics who have the temerity to ask for more details.

    Many, many people on this site have said it before, but I will say it again. Climate alarmists in the science community have done their profession a monumental disservice. We can only hope that when a genuine threat to our society does emerge, the cry wolf brigade have not totally destroyed the credibility of sensible science so that mankind misses an opportunity for risk mitigation when it is actually required.

    And while we are on the topic of vilification. Riddle me this…

    The Oxford defines terrorism as “The unofficial or unauthorized use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims:”

    So when you consider this http://www.cbsnews.com/news/environmentalists-turn-to-violence/

    And this http://mothersagainstwindturbines.com/2014/09/20/famous-climate-alarmists-frequently-resort-to-blatant-lies-to-create-fear/

    Then remember the words of Michael Crichton https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDCCvOv3qZY

    What exactly is the difference between climate alarmism and terrorism? What is the difference between a climate alarmist willing to lie and take violent action and a terrorist?

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      D o u g   C o t t o n  

       
      Yes, Safetyguy66, well said.

      And for the physics that proves the whole GH conjecture wrong see this comment.

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      Yonniestone

      Does the ‘Kill The Deniers’ state funded play count as terrorism in the form of propaganda?

      In the future will there be a satirical play called ‘Springtime For Gore’? only time will tell.

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    DonS

    Where to next in the pursuit of the missing heat? We know it’s not in the atmosphere, it now seems unlikely (if it ever was) to be in the deep ocean and now it might be in the upper ocean. Although if this very ordinary paper is best support for the latest idea then it will not hold up for very long.

    Hey Jo, maybe we could run a competition to see who can work out where the next idea for the missing heat will be found and pre-empt the next location that the climate “scientists” will name.

    I’ll kick it off with my own ill considered and just thought up idea (maybe I should have been a climate scientist after all).

    What if the missing heat was not being radiated into the atmosphere but instead was somehow being conducted down through the rock system of the crust and into the mantle? This idea has the advantage of it being impossible to measure such small changes in the temperatures of the mantle so can never be disproved by sceptics and our odd need for real data (totally reliant on models). Then at some non specific time in the future the excess heat might make its way back to the surface via volcanic vents and thus cause catastrophic climate change.

    Ok, I’m joking, but can anyone else put forward the possible next location for the missing heat? And don’t say space, too obvious and of no help to global warming community.

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    Angry

    A bit OT but still relevant to the overall global warming SCAM….

    Scientists to ‘fast-track’ evidence linking extreme weather to climate change in sign of panic that they’re losing propaganda battle to the sceptics:-

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2780587/Scientists-fast-track-evidence-linking-extreme-weather-climate-change-sign-panic-losing-propaganda-battle-sceptics.html

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      Radical Rodent

      Go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vgy51NMI-14 to find a real scientist in action. Skip the ad, and you only have to watch the first few minutes to see that what lies in the oceans renders the worst that humans can do utterly impotent.

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      hunter

      Not OT at all.
      The climate obsessed realize they have lost the legitimate arguments.
      Now the cliamte fear industry is hoping that by shouting early and loud they can deafen people from hearing the simple truth. Missing heat? Shout early that it is not missing but is hiding out in a small safe house in a nondescript suburb in the NW part of town.
      No slr crisis? Just shout out that islands are drowning, even if there are no islands drowning.
      No warming for 18 years? Loudly accuse those who repeat this fact of being liars and in the pay of big oil.

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    John Watt

    Is it time to mention John Nicol’s work again? Surely his conclusions are relevant to the “lost” heat. Maybe, if Nicol is on the right track there is no heat to lose? I also notice that some “kind” souls with nothing better to do have messed up the AESC website.

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    Michael P

    This may and probably is totally off-topic but I felt that this post at Watts UP needed to be posted here,as it’s one of the best posts I’ve read for a while http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/06/real-science-debates-are-not-rare/

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    Robert of Ottawa

    The missing heat, by definition is not found. Therefore it must be where we have not looked.

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      Maybe Voyager One or Two could help us find it!!!

      Tony.

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      You know, when you lose something, you generally ask yourself, “When was the last time I saw it?”
      Maybe that’s the problem, they need to ask themselves, “Where was the last place we saw it?”
      But then there’s always the question as to whether they’d recognize it if they saw it again.

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    old44

    “after adjusting to the data to fit the models, they get a better agreement with the models”

    Now if I could only get the Stewards at Moonee Valley to do that to the nags I bet bet on I will be rich.

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    pat

    one can only hope Fairfax readers are capable of seeking out the facts for themselves!

    8 Oct: Age Editorial: Government drops ball on climate change
    Two weeks ago, when Prime Minister Tony Abbott spoke before the General Assembly of the United Nations…
    But Mr Abbott did not mention climate change at all. That failure was conspicuous because just two days earlier, at the same podium, US President Barack Obama had outlined the same four threats to the world (”terrorism, instability, inequality and disease”) but added one more. Mr Obama told more than 120 leaders attending the UN Climate Summit that ”there’s one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate”. Mr Obama said the US had a duty to lead on emissions reduction strategies, and he urged other nations to do their part, saying no nation could afford to pretend climate change was not real.
    Mr Abbott, though, did not even bother to attend the Climate Summit…
    The governments of the world’s biggest economies and biggest emitters – the United States and China – are focused on emissions reduction strategies…
    http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-age-editorial/government-drops-ball-on-climate-change-20141007-3hhgq.html

    7 Oct: Reuters: UPDATE 2-EU abandons ‘dirty’ label for Canada tar sands oil
    By Barbara Lewis and Scott Haggett
    A European Union plan to label Canadian tar sands oil as highly polluting as part of its fight against climate change has been abandoned after years of opposition from Canada, clearing the way for exports of tar sands crude to the European market…
    EU sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that given the situation with Moscow, the desire for a trade deal with Canada had been a factor in the commission’s move to remove the “dirty oil” tag…
    The commission also had been lobbied heavily by Canada and Canadian allies such as the United Kingdom…
    Environmental campaigners and green politicians criticised what they saw as a step backwards…
    Oil sands crude is produced by oil majors such as BP, Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil and production from the region is expected to rise by nearly 70 percent to 3.2 million barrels per day by 2020, according to industry forecasts…
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/07/energy-eu-canada-tarsands-idUSL6N0S21AM20141007

    to be continued…

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    pat

    for Fairfax/ABC/Guardian & the rest of the CAGW MSM:

    7 Oct: NatureWorldNews: Jenna Iacurci: China’s Carbon Goal Thwarted by Economic Boom
    Contrary to its goal to reduce carbon emissions by up to 45 percent by 2020, China has seen a three percent increase in the greenhouse gas thanks to its rampant economic boom, according to a new study from the University of East Anglia (UEA)…
    China may have implemented new, less wasteful technologies to help boost carbon efficiency, but these improvements are moot considering they’ve resulted in increased production and associated rise in emissions.
    For example, Inner Mongolia replaced many inefficient, carbon-intensive factories with more modern facilities. This, in turn, led to metal smelting and cement production increasing 14-fold between 2002 and 2009…
    http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/9417/20141007/chinas-carbon-goal-thwarted-by-economic-boom.htm

    3 Oct: Seattle Times: Hal Bernton: Gas exports may foil B.C. carbon goals
    British Columbia has launched an ambitious effort to reduce its carbon emissions by one-third, with a tax on gas, coal and oil use as its centerpiece. But that goal could be subverted by the province’s desire to become a major natural-gas exporter…
    B.C. hopes to have three major natural-gas export terminals in operation by 2020. The production, piping and liquefaction of this gas for shipment to Asia releases large amounts of greenhouse gases, and development of the terminals could nearly double the province’s current carbon emissions, according to an analysis by the Pembina Institute…
    British Columbia is competing with other gas-rich regions for a share of the Asia market, and politicians have been wary of piling on too many costs that might stifle a potential economic bonanza.
    So the provincial government has extended a partial exemption from the carbon tax for the gas industry. Carbon dioxide typically is present in natural gas as it comes out of the ground. The exemption allows the industry to remove this gas and release it into the air without paying a carbon tax.
    Without a tax, there is no incentive to bear the added expenses of injecting the carbon dioxide underground so it won’t contribute to climate change…
    The natural-gas industry also benefits from an exemption from the Clean Energy Act that frees up the export terminals to use natural gas — rather than zero-carbon hydropower — to generate electricity that provides part of the energy used at the facilities…
    http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2024694638_losinggroundbritishcolumbiaxml.html?cmpid=2628

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    pat

    to think this rubbish is published in Scientific American!

    6 Oct: Scientific American: David Biello: Gaming Carbon Must End to Solve Global Warming
    Can economic incentives evolve to combat climate change?
    Good Chinese communists now trade a commodity that can neither be seen nor felt, yet is responsible for changing the climate. The country has set up seven markets for trading carbon dioxide to test whether such a market can help restrain China’s growing pollution problem…
    In other words, the World Bank wants a price on carbon, like that occurring in these seven regions of China, because its team of economists and financiers thinks that climate change is an outcome of getting the prices of different sources of energy wrong…
    “You clearly have to put a price on carbon so there is a level playing field and the cost of renewable energy is actually less than fossil-fuel generated electricity,” says Ted Roosevelt, a managing director at global bank Barclays…
    The World Bank used its financial weight to convince 74 countries, 23 states, provinces or cities and more than 1,000 businesses, including oil giant Shell, plus investors to join in a call for such a global price on carbon at the United Nation’s Climate Summit on September 23…
    Old idea
    The idea of charging rent for using the sky as a dump first popped up in 1920. Arthur Pigou, a top economist at the University of Cambridge, proposed taxing companies for the amount of pollution they emitted into the atmosphere. Pigou speculated that forcing companies to pay for the use of the air would discourage pollution, just as sin taxes on alcohol or tobacco discourage drinking and smoking. The idea never really caught on outside of academic circles, perhaps because even high sin taxes have failed to completely cure bad habits…
    To help the Kyoto process along, the World Bank set up investment funds in the early years of the 21st century dedicated solely to developing projects that could produce carbon credits…
    Financial schemes…
    The magic of markets cannot accomplish everything, however.

    ***A pollution market cannot eliminate pollution, for what then would be left to trade?

    Markets also cannot offer justice: The burden of bad air falls disproportionately on the poor, who cannot afford to move away from major pollution sources such as oil refineries or coal-fired power plants or pay not to be polluted. Such markets also require continual oversight by government, both to ensure that polluters are only emitting what they say they are emitting but also that they actually have the allowances for that level of emissions—an oversight that is often lacking. And, like most markets, pollution markets are not truly free, distorted by the whims of government.
    As any trader, even a Communist one, can tell you, a market set up by fiat can be closed by fiat…
    In the end, all of the above—some form of a price on carbon plus subsidies for alternatives—is likely needed to combat climate change.
    Or as Barclay’s Roosevelt adds: “Unless we do this, have the [research and development] investments and a price on carbon, we will not successfully be able to decarbonize our economy and get global emissions down to a level where we’ve essentially saved the planet.”
    That seems a trade worth making.
    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gaming-carbon-must-end-to-solve-global-warming/

    funny thing is the CAGW crowd aka the Occupy Wall St crowd are playing right into the hands of the banksters they claim to loathe. heard John Perkins (Confessions of an Economic Hit-Man) on the Keiser Report yesterday, praising the Climate protestors while, as always, criticising the World Bank, IMF, etc. does Perkins live in an ideological bubble, refusing to acknowledge reality, in the manner of Fairfax/ABC/Guardian etc?

    5 Sept: Factsheet: Climate, Environment, and the IMF
    In line with its mandate and expertise, the IMF focuses on the fiscal, financial, and macroeconomic challenges of climate change…
    http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/enviro.htm

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    Jo, if the methods of Durack et al weren’t so absurd, that paper would be funny.

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    Neville

    Steve McIntyre compares the much changed and messy Pages 2K study to the Hanhijarvi study of the past 2000 years.

    http://climateaudit.org/2014/10/07/pages2k-vs-the-hanjiharvi-reconstruction/#more-20048

    The hanhijarvi study shows a higher Med WP , a definite LIA and a lower Modern WP. Pages 2K have now used some of their data up the right way but Steve is still far from happy.

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    When speed reading your post, along with the various graphs, I first thought that one of the papers had been dredged up from the Bible, and Leviticus; but fortunately checked and found I was mistaken.

    Mind you, if some of the statistics had come out of the best-selling Book, I reckon they might be viewed with slightly more credence than some of the aslleged adjusted computer-models to which our Warmist brethren cling to with such ferocity.

    We should now stand by for a statement regarding the Flood, and the Ark Mark Two.

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      NielsZoo

      I’m ready. We had so much rain this summer in Florida that I ordered a tape measure marked in cubits.

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    richsrd

    Looks like the temps in the Arctic have been decreasing from a high in 1935 by 0.07 per decade until 2001. As there has been a Hiatus for the last 18 years I would imagine 1935 was the hottest year in the last century.

    http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/arctic_ice3.php

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    Mark D.

    Thanks for that Link richsrd, The graph included in it defies the text when you look at the period between 1918 to 1939 you see a much steeper and higher temp rise than the recent one. They don’t bother to mention this inconvenient truth in the text do they?

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    DP

    Dear Miss Nova

    This conclusively proves CAGW*.

    DP

    *Computer aided global warming

    00