Ocean Cooling and Global Warming

Below is an NYT article by ANDREW REVKIN that comments on the recent finding that the ocean has not been warming. The man in charge of the research that reported the ocean temperature finding has denied that his findings damage global warming theory and Revkin has seized on that, saying that the adverse findings are just a "speed bump".

The scientist concerned however is clearly engaged in a damage control exercise and makes some wild assertions in the course of it. He says, for instance, that "It is a well-established fact that human activities are heating up the planet and that global temperatures will continue to rise for decades to come". So in his confused mind a prophecy ("will continue to rise") is a fact! Since that is his opening gambit we know how little to expect of what follows. And in saying that "It is a well-established fact that human activities are heating up the planet" he is simply assuming what he has to prove! Sad. Let's hope his observational skills are better than his logic.

Following the Revkin screed I go on to present a brief critique by Roger Pielke

There's a tendency among energetic advocates on every side of the debate over human-caused global warming to jump on the latest finding that appears to go in their direction, often before reading the fine print in the science.

This has happened with hurricanes, Greenland, Kilimanjaro, and recent wintry weather. Over the last two weeks, it happened with the building body of temperature readings used to chart the heat buildup in the global ocean. (The latest news burst around ocean temperatures echoes one that occurred in 2006, when the first findings pointing to an ocean "speed bump" on the road to a warmer world were released. That finding was adjusted later (pdf alert).)

Along with two co-authors, Josh Willis, a climate scientist and ocean expert at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, found that warming of the seas - as measured by a network of deep-diving "Argo" buoys - essentially stopped over the last four years.

Richard Harris did a National Public Radio report on the ocean heat analysis by Dr. Willis, which is to be published soon in the Journal of Geophysical Research. The provocative headline on the piece was "The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat."

That story led to a burst of blogging, and complaints on Dot Earth, questioning why the rest of the mainstream media were silent on this blockbuster. On Monday, Canada's National Post published a column by Dr. Willis explaining his findings in the context of long-term climate change. The newspaper hosts the Full Comment blog of Lorne Gunther, one of those picking up on short-term ocean cooling as a reason to question global warming.

Dr. Willis included a succinct description of how some people opposed to restrictions on greenhouse gases sometimes operate:

It is a well-established fact that human activities are heating up the planet and that global temperatures will continue to rise for decades to come. Climate change skeptics often highlight certain scientific results as a means of confusing this issue, and that appears to be the case with Mr. Gunter's description of our recent results based on data from Argo buoys.

Indeed, Argo data show no warming in the upper ocean over the past four years, but this does not contradict the climate models. In fact, many climate models simulate four to five year periods with no warming in the upper ocean from time to time. The same is true for the warming trend observed by NASA satellites; it too is in good agreement with climate model simulations. But more important than agreement with computer models is the fact that four years with no warming in the upper ocean does not erase the 50 years of warming we've seen since ocean temperature measurements became widespread.

It is important to remember that climate science is not a public debate carried out on the opinion pages of newspapers. What we know about global warming comes from thousands of scientists pouring over countless data sets, conducting experiments to figure out how the climate works and scrutinizing every aspect of each other's work.

He added:

It is easy to pick on computer climate models for not simulating certain things or point out the odd measurement that isn't well understood. Despite this, models and data of all different types tell the same story about the past century: the oceans are warming, sea levels are rising, the temperature of the atmosphere is increasing and carbon dioxide levels continue to go up. Given that, you don't need a fancy computer model or an Argo buoy to tell you that the future will be warmer.
The real debate is not over whether global warming exists, but how we as a society will address it. The climate system is already committed to a certain amount of warming from carbon dioxide emissions of the past, but the worst effects of global warming can still be avoided. It only requires the will to look toward the future and to curb our addiction to fossil fuels. That's not alarmist, it's just common sense.

Now that last line on policy might be read by some folks as a bit of rhetorical cover to keep Dr. Willis in good standing with his colleagues. I know him and a lot of his peers, and I doubt very much he's worried about appearances. But that's just my perception.

Source






Comment On Weblog By Josh Willis Titled "Josh Willis On Climate Change: Global Warming Is Real"

Post below lifted from Climate Science. See the original for links

There is an interesting post on March 31 2008 of comments by Josh Willis on nationalpost.com by Marni Soupcoff titled "Josh Willis on climate change: Global warming is real" [thanks to Jos de Laat for alerting us to it!].
It reads

"As a scientist, I always enjoy it when people outside my field take an interest in oceanography. But I was a bit disappointed to read Lorne Gunter's column: Perhaps The Climate Change Models are Wrong, March 24.

It is a well-established fact that human activities are heating up the planet and that global temperatures will continue to rise for decades to come. Climate change skeptics often highlight certain scientific results as a means of confusing this issue, and that appears to be the case with Mr. Gunter's description of our recent results based on data from Argo buoys.

Indeed, Argo data show no warming in the upper ocean over the past four years, but this does not contradict the climate models. In fact, many climate models simulate four to five year periods with no warming in the upper ocean from time to time. The same is true for the warming trend observed by NASA satellites; it too is in good agreement with climate model simulations. But more important than agreement with computer models is the fact that four years with no warming in the upper ocean does not erase the 50 years of warming we've seen since ocean temperature measurements became widespread. Nor does it erase the eight inches of sea level rise we've experienced in the past 100 years. Both of these are important indicators of human-kind's effect on the climate.

It is important to remember that climate science is not a public debate carried out on the opinion pages of newspapers. What we know about global warming comes from thousands of scientists pouring over countless data sets, conducting experiments to figure out how the climate works and scrutinizing every aspect of each other's work.

Scientists don't determine which results will be picked up by the media and "broadcast far and wide" - reporters do that. New science results often spark new questions (that's what makes science fun), but they don't often change the answers to old ones and it's important to place new results in their proper context. For instance, Mr. Gunter quoted me saying we are in a period of "less rapid warming." This was not "climate change dogma," but simply a reminder that other parts of the climate like the atmosphere, sea ice, glaciers and probably the deep ocean- which is not measured by Argo buoys -did continue to heat up even though the upper-ocean didn't.

It is easy to pick on computer climate models for not simulating certain things or point out the odd measurement that isn't well understood. Despite this, models and data of all different types tell the same story about the past century: the oceans are warming, sea levels are rising, the temperature of the atmosphere is increasing and carbon dioxide levels continue to go up. Given that, you don't need a fancy computer model or an Argo buoy to tell you that the future will be warmer.

The real debate is not over whether global warming exists, but how we as a society will address it. The climate system is already committed to a certain amount of warming from carbon dioxide emissions of the past, but the worst effects of global warming can still be avoided. It only requires the will to look toward the future and to curb our addiction to fossil fuels. That's not alarmist, it's just common sense.

- Josh Willis is an oceanographer and climate scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif."

Josh Willis is a well respected scientist and his views merit consideration. In this case, however, Climate Science concludes that he is misinterpreting the significance of his data analysis. He agrees that

"Indeed, Argo data show no warming in the upper ocean over the past four years".

He dismisses this though by claiming that

".but this does not contradict the climate models. In fact, many climate models simulate four to five year periods with no warming in the upper ocean from time to time. "

Where are these model results that show lack of upper ocean warming in recent years? There is an example of a model prediction of upper (3km) ocean heat content for decadal averages in Figure 1 of Barnett, T.P., D.W. Pierce, and R. Schnur, 2001: Detection of anthropogenic climate change in the world's oceans. Science, 292, 270-274, but they did not present shorter time periods. Nonetheless, since Figure 1 is presumably a running 10 year average, the steady monotonic increase in the model prediction of upper ocean heat content (the grey shading) suggests that no several years (or even one year) of zero heating occurred in the model results. The layer they analyzed in the figure is also for the upper 3 km but in Figure 2 the Barnett et al study showed that most of this heating was in the uppermost levels. Thus the lack of heating in the upper 700m over the last 4 years does conflict with at least the Barnett et al model results!

What the upper ocean data (and lack of warming) actually tells us is that if global warming occurred over the last 4 years, it was in the deeper ocean and is thus not available in the short term to the atmosphere. Indeed, if it is in the deeper ocean, it likely more diffused and therefore could only enter the atmosphere slowly if at all. This heat could also have exited into space, although the continuation of global ocean sea level rise suggests that this is less likely unless this sea level rise can be otherwise explained.

The other heat stores in the climate system are too small (and the atmosphere has clearly not warmed over the last few years). Global sea ice cover is actually above average at present (the Antarctic sea ice is at a near record level). The continued sea level rise indicates that the heat is in the deeper ocean (which is not predicted by the models).

Finally, there is also no "unrealized" heat in the system. This is a fallacy of using temperature trends as the surrogate for heat trends as has been reported Climate Science (e.g. see, see and see). Josh Willis too easily dismisses the significance of his research findings.




British policy advisor says Gore is in 'panic' mode

British environmental analyst Christopher Monckton says Al Gore's latest attack on global warming skeptics shows the former vice president and other climate alarmists are "panicking." On Sunday, CBS News correspondent Leslie Stahl asked Al Gore on the television show 60 Minutes what he thinks of people like Vice President Dick Cheney who doubt that global warming is caused by human activity. "I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view, they're almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona, and those who believe the earth is flat," replied Gore. "That demeans them a little bit, but it's not that far off."

However, Lord Christopher Monckton, a policy advisor for former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s, says the former vice president can enjoy his "flat earth fantasies" for a few months, but in the end, the world will be laughing at him. "The alarmists are alarmed, the panic mongers are panicking, the scare mongers are scared; the Gores are gored. Why? Because global warming stopped ten years ago; it hasn't got warmer since 1998," he points out. "And in fact in the last seven years, there has been a downturn in global temperatures equivalent on average to about [or] very close to one degree Fahrenheit per decade. We're actually in a period ... of global cooling."

Monckton contends Gore is now "panicking" because he has staked his reputation as a former American VP on "telling the world that we're all doomed unless we shut down 90 percent of the Western economies." He also contends that Gore is the largest "global-warming profiteer."

Gore's group The Alliance for Climate Protection is currently launching a new $300 million ad campaign that demands reforms in environmental law to help reduce the supposed "climate crisis." But Monckton points out that in the U.K., Gore is not allowed to speak in public about his "green investment company" because to do so would violate racketeering laws by "peddling a false prospectus." He says that fact came about after a British high court found Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, riddled with errors. Monckton challenged Gore to an internationally televised debate on climate change last year.

Source





Now it's only 'many' scientists

I detect at least one admirable note of prudence in this Canadian Press story about the start today of "complex" new talks to produce a Kyoto II agreement. Specifically, this line: "Many scientists and the United Nations agree that the world needs to stabilize emissions of greenhouse gases in the next 10-15 years and slash them by 50 per cent by 2050 to prevent rising temperatures from triggering devastating changes in the environment." Note, the story does not say most scientists, or a scientific consensus, but simply "many" -- a number which could mean a minority, of course.

However, the story goes in the other direction with this one-sided declaration: "News of accelerating effects of global warming, such as the recent collapse of a massive chunk of Antarctic ice and worsening cyclones and flooding, has put even more pressure on the UN talks to provide decisive action." Omitted, of course, is any recognition of the deccerlation of global warming, as manifested in this winter's (and spring's!) unusually cold weather.

Source







No Consensus on Global Warming

By Jack Dini, a materials engineer and section leader of fabrication processes at Lawrence Livermore National Labs

"Rashomon," a celebrated Japanese film, presents four witnesses observing a single crime. Each witness perceives the situation so differently that the audience experiences what appears to be four distinct events. Current discourse on climate change, or if you prefer, global warming, raises a "Rashomon-like" specter of competing perceptions. On the one side are those of see the world in a heap of trouble.

As Lynn Scarlett notes, "They focus on the moment, see despoliation, and predict doom. They believe we can evade doom, but only through sweeping changes, wrought through single-minded pursuit of an environmental imperative." (1) They are convinced that mankind is responsible for the earth's surface warming about 0.7C over the past century. These are the folks in the `consensus category' that Al Gore and the media talk about. According to Gore, "The science is settled on climate change. The planet has a fever and its cause is too many cars, power plants, factories, and other human-related sources putting too many emissions into the atmosphere." (2)

On the other side are the `disbelievers.' These folks posit that warming is part of Mother Nature's natural cycle and there isn't a whole lot we can do about it. Although they are a `minority,' there are many more scientists that fit this category than most people realize. They aren't given much media attention since the media for the most part belongs too the `consensus' group.

After all, you don't get attention by saying that things are just fine; you need to spruce news up with doom and gloom stories. More than 22,000 scientists signed the dissenting "Petition Project" which urges political leaders to reject the Kyoto Protocol or other similar proposals that would mandate draconian tax and regulatory measures aimed at virtually all human economic activity. The petition states there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other green house gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. (3)

According to a January 1, 2007 New York Times article by Andrew Revkin, a new middle stance has emerged in the debate over climate change. Revkin reports that more scientists are distancing themselves from the extreme fear mongering and exaggerated claims of the climate-change alarmists. (4)

Marc Morano notes that after a May 16, 2007 vote in the Senate on global warming, "there is a shift taking place in climate science. Many former believers in catastrophic man-made global warming have recently reversed themselves and are now climate skeptics. The media's fear factor seemingly grows louder even as the latest science grows less and less alarming by the day. It is also worth noting that the proponents of climate change fears are increasingly attempting to suppress dissent by skeptics." (5)

In December 2007, over 400 scientists from more than two dozen countries voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called `consensus' on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC, and Al Gore in a report issued by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The report lists the scientists by name, country of residence, and academic/institutional affiliation. It also provides their own words, biographies, and weblinks to their peer reviewed studies and original source materials as gathered from public statements, various news outlets, and websites in 2007. (6)

And more recently, scientists skeptical of man-made climate fears met at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in New York City. The March 2-4 groundbreaking conference featured about 100 speakers with over people in attendance. Key items discussed at the conference included:

- Most of climate change is caused by natural forces.

- The human contribution is not significant.

- Solar activity changes are the main cause of climate change.

William Jasper reports,"The advocates of Kyoto and other schemes to super-regulate the planet frequently try to portray the scientists who dispute their claims of global warming peril as fringies, fogies, and `nut cases' who shouldn't be taken seriously. However, as brutal scientific facts have poked holes in their hypothetical global-warming models, the Gore camp has become more strident and abusive. Rather than answer the scientific critiques, they have tended simply to accuse opposition scientists of being in the pay of energy companies. Even worse, they have adapted the tactic of labeling scientists who dispute their claims as being `climate-change deniers,' on a par with `Holocaust deniers." The more radical elements of the climate-change alarmist movement have targeted dissenting scientists for vilification and harassment, even trying to deprive them of their jobs, research grants, and tenure. The most virulent `Greens' call for them to be tried as `traitors.' (2)

Many of the scientists feature in the Senate Report issued in December 2007 consistently stated that numerous colleagues shared their views, but they will not speak out publicly for fear of retribution. Atmospheric scientist, Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author of almost 70 peer-reviewed studies, explains how many of his fellow scientists have been intimidated: "Many of my colleagues with whom I spoke share these views and report on their inability to publish their skepticism in the scientific or public media." (6) Another example is Dr. Robert Giegengack of the University of Pennsylvania, a geologist who studies ancient atmospheres and finds no relationship between global temperatures in the past and carbon dioxide levels. He says other scientists have told him to just stop broadcasting that finding saying, "People come to me and say, `Stop talking like this, you're hurting the cause.'" (7)

Looks like William F. Buckley, Jr., wasn't far off the mark with his comment: "The heavy condemnatory breathing on the subject of global warming outdoes anything since high moments of the Inquisition." (8)

Some Final Words

Assertions by zealots and politicians, who should really know better, that climate change is the `most important environmental problem facing the world,' ought to be subjected to the cold light of reason says Michael Shaw. Before untold resources are spent, shouldn't we at least compare climate change to other problems facing mankind? (9) What about issues like communicable diseases, malnutrition and hunger, sanitation and access to clean water? Many, if not all, of these demand immediate attention and can aid folks in serious need at present, not some future generations, that may or may not be affected by the weather in the 2100s.

Lastly, 30 years ago we were supposedly headed into a cooling cycle akin to the Little Ice Age [Click here to see an actual document from that time. Click on it and use the expansion gadget to read it]. Now, it's an unprecedented heating cycle. If you ask me, that's an awfully quick time for a flip-flop on the weather. If the 14 billion year cosmic history were scaled to one day, then 100,000 years of human history would by 4 minutes and a 100 year life-span would be 0.2 seconds. (11) So, in less than 0.1 second in cosmic time we've switched on climate change. Seems like we need a few more cosmic time seconds to gather more data.

Source






FOOD MILES ARE JUST A FORM OF PROTECTIONISM

Middle-class neurosis is being exploited to protect an archaic form of agriculture

By Dominic Lawson

Was Prince Charles' chum Patrick Holden, director of the Soil Association, expecting the Kenyan High Commissioner to fall to his knees in gratitude? It rather sounded like it yesterday morning, when the two of them met in a BBC radio studio.

They were there to discuss the Soil Association's proposals to discriminate against the "organic food" which is air freighted into this country, mostly from East Africa. "One option was to ban it altogether," declared Mr Holden, but instead he and his colleagues had decided that such food would only be banned if it was "not produced ethically" - whatever that means.

Of course, this is folie de grandeur on the part of the Soil Association. It cannot, fortunately, "ban" us from buying whatever food we wish to eat. All that Mr Holden really meant was that his organisation would withdraw its certification from foreign farmers whom it deemed to be "unethical". Needless to say, British organic farmers (like Mr Holden CBE) will be subject to no such extra conditions, over and above the standard requirement of not using pesticides or other man-made aids to enhance production.

In so far as this is not just old-style agricultural protectionism, it is all about the fashionable obsession with "food miles". The Soil Association, which evidently sees itself as some sort of global environmental organisation, has been agonising over the fact that the farmers of Africa are using aeroplanes - spawn of the devil! - to freight bona fide "organic" food into this country. Somehow it has convinced itself that this means that the food is not "organic", in the spiritual sense, and so must be "banned".

As the Kenyan High Commissioner, Joseph Muchemi, patiently tried to explain, the carbon emissions from his country's food producers are much less per vegetable than those of British "organic" farmers, even if you factor in the CO2 generated by flying the stuff halfway across the world. "Our farmers use manual labour, not tractors; we use compost rather than organic fertilisers," he said.

For some reason, Mr Holden did not want to address this powerful point; instead he asserted that there was really no case at all for "global trade in food", although he allowed that an exception could be made for "things like tea, coffee and bananas - things we can't produce ourselves".

This is the classic argument put by British landowners for the extortion of a monopoly rent from captive local consumers. The great Scottish economist Adam Smith delivered a withering retort to such selfish domestic agricultural interests over two centuries ago: "By means of glasses, hotbeds and hotwalls very good grapes can be raised in Scotland ... would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines, merely to encourage the making of Claret and Burgundy in Scotland?"

This sort of thinking lay behind the recent creation of the Icelandic banana industry: the Icelandic government banned banana imports, as a result of which local landowners began to produce them in gigantic greenhouses. They were fabulously expensive, of course, which was not such good news for families who wished to feed their children healthily at a reasonable cost.

Similarly, there are tiny hobby producers of tea and coffee in Great Britain. In Patrick Holden's perfect deglobalised world, we could do with these products what the Icelanders did with bananas. Obviously this would mean that tea and coffee could be enjoyed only by the rich in this country, and Third World producers would suffer a dramatic loss of revenue and employment. This might seem a preposterous example of "self-sufficiency". Yet if we were to allow a fetish with the carbon emissions from airfreight to dominate agricultural policy, then this is the sort of mutual impoverishment that could result.

Let us, for the sake of argument, accept that the Soil Association's members are not merely acting as a trade union for Prince Charles' Duchy Originals and assorted other quaintly expensive British food producers. Let us accept, therefore, that in implementing some sort of discriminatory policy against long-distance air-freighted food, they really do believe that they are trying to "limit the damage of climate change".

Surely it ought to have occurred to them that they will only be hurting the very people whom they affect to be concerned about? After all, it is Africa, not Great Britain, which would suffer from a significant increase in average temperatures - whether caused by man or nature.

As Clare Malamed of the charity Action Aid has pointed out, the "banning of organic green beans from Kenya or mange tout from Zambia" will make no measurable difference to the UK's carbon emissions: "however, there are many poor people in Africa who depend on that trade so, for them, banning organic air freight means less development of the economy and more poverty". Mr Holden complained yesterday that many of the African food exporters are "multinationals"; but even multinationals employ locals.

There is something else quite odd about the Soil Association's position. Its members assert that "organic food" is healthier for the consumer than food which is produced with the aid of pesticides. If they are right, then if low-cost African producers can land such "good" food in this country at a price which is competitive with non-organic local producers, this ought to encourage more people to buy organic, to the great benefit of the public's health.

In fact there has never been any reliable scientific evidence that so-called "organic" food is actually better for you than food produced with the aid of pesticides. At the weekend, the former head of the Food Standards Agency, Lord Krebs, wearily reiterated that there was no such evidence. Thus last year David Miliband spoke nothing less than the truth when, as Environment Secretary, he described "organic" food as a "lifestyle choice".

On the whole it is a "lifestyle choice" limited to middle-class mothers in the South-east of England who are neurotic enough to believe the insinuations of the Soil Association that little Henry and Caroline are more likely to get cancer if mummy doesn't buy organic (at twice the price).

Now another largely middle-class neurosis - we are all doomed unless everybody stops flying! - is being exploited to protect an archaic form of agriculture which could never feed this country, still less the world. It is, at best, an exercise in self-delusion. At worst, it is a way of using food as the instrument of a deliberate policy of racial discrimination.

Source

***************************************

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

*****************************************