World's climate warming faster than feared, scientists say

[lynnvinc]

I have no need to enlighten you. The theory was that rising Co2 cause increased atmospheric temperature. That has proven to be false.

Not so.

ALL the models were wrong.

Not so (unless your expectation of exactitude is so stringent that no one can meet it to the one-hundred of one degree.

I see no reason to disrupt the economies of countries to mitigate a myth.

Since policy does not determine science, and AGW science is now in and quite robust, why not join with reasonable, concerned people who are coming up with ways to mitigate that do not hurt the economy or people’s pocketbooks, but actually help these, while reducing GHG emissions (and concomitant harmful killing pollution) by 60%, even 75%, without lowering productivity or personal living standards. Since that will take businesses and families some 10 to 20 years to implement, who knows what new great tech will be there to help us reduce more without harming the economy or our pockebooks.

It can be done, or at the very least we should be working vigorously to try and accomplish that rather than ruing climate science. We just need the will and God’s grace, which it there for the prayer.

 

[lynnvinc]

And we have already shown, via your own “experts” that heat transfer goes from the oceans to atmosphere not the other way around. So the increase in ocean temps cannot be from increasing atmospheric temperatures (especially since the atmosphere hasn’t warmed in 20 years).

It is the sun AND reflected IR radiation from the atmospheric GHGs that warms the oceans and land. I and others here at CAF (not being climate scientists) may have been a bit confused on that earlier, but I have checked it out and it is not mainly the air temps, as your “experts” claim climate scientists are saying.

Here’s an image that will help:

 

[jilly4ski]

It is the sun AND reflected IR radiation from the atmospheric GHGs that warms the oceans and land. I and others here at CAF (not being climate scientists) may have been a bit confused on that earlier, but I have checked it out and it is not mainly the air temps, as your “experts” claim climate scientists are saying.

Here’s an image that will help:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8e/Earth's_greenhouse_effect_(US_EPA%2C_2012).png/640px-Earth's_greenhouse_effect_(US_EPA%2C_2012).png

LOL, I notice there is nothing in that graphic about the oceans. And no, they are not my experts. I will go back and see if I can direct you to the post where I quoted and linked to articles given to me by a AGW supporter.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

And we have already shown, via your own “experts” that heat transfer goes from the oceans to atmosphere not the other way around. So the increase in ocean temps cannot be from increasing atmospheric temperatures (especially since the atmosphere hasn’t warmed in 20 years).

That is a gross oversimplification. Heat flow goes both ways between oceans and the atmosphere at different times. And the largest part of the heat flow into the ocean is directly from the sun, and does not involve direct transfer between air and ocean at all!

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LOL, I notice there is nothing in that graphic about the oceans.

For a graphic to explain the greenhouse effect, there is no need to explicitly mention the oceans. The oceans and the land together comprise the earth’s surface, and the earth’s surface is explicitly named in the graphic (which includes the oceans) so what’s the problem?

 

[lynnvinc]

…since the atmosphere hasn’t warmed in 20 years

So now it is 20 years with no warming. It started out as a 15 year claim, then 17, then 18, all within the spate of a one year period.

Here’s a chart from 1990. You can see the temp 20 years ago in 1994, it is around +.23C (anomaly from pre-warming temps), then compare it with temps thereafter, esp after 2001 when all the temps were above .42 or 43C. The global average temp for 2013 was the same as for 2003, about .57 or .58 on that chart.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Predictions_500.gif

The “flattening out” seems to have started around 2002, or at the very earliest, 1997, which would make the 17 year claim correct.

However, as mentioned many times, such short trends (less than 30 years) tell us nothing about climate change (at a .05 on the null level of significance), since there are so many factors, and it takes years and decades for GHGs going into the atmosphere to play out in terms of causing warming.

And that 30 year “wait & see period” for climate science cuts both ways. While we environmentalists concerned about life on earth figured AGW was already happening in the late 80s and seriously into mitigating, it took science until 1995, when the first studies came out that AGW was happening (with 95% confidence). No harm done, we’re saving $$ thru our mitigation measures without lowering our living standards.

 

[Erich]

If the models are correct.

1895 – Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again – New York Times, February 1895
**http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F02E1D8163CE433A25757C2A9649C94649ED7CF
**1912 – Prof. Schmidt Warns Us of an Encroaching Ice Age – New York Times, October 1912

1923 – “Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada” – Professor Gregory of Yale University, American representative to the Pan-Pacific Science Congress, – Chicago Tribune

1923 – “The discoveries of changes in the sun’s heat and the southward advance of glaciers in recent years have given rise to conjectures of the possible advent of a new ice age” – Washington Post

1924 – MacMillan Reports Signs of New Ice Age – New York Times, Sept 18, 1924

1929 – “Most geologists think the world is growing warmer, and that it will continue to get warmer” – Los Angeles Times, in Is another ice age coming?

1932 – “If these things be true, it is evident, therefore that we must be just teetering on an ice age” – The Atlantic magazine, This Cold, Cold World

1933 – America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-Year Rise – New York Times, March 27th, 1933

1933 – “…wide-spread and persistent tendency toward warmer weather…Is our climate changing?” – Federal Weather Bureau “Monthly Weather Review.”

1970 – “…get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters – the worst may be yet to come…there’s no relief in sight” – Washington Post

1988 – I would like to draw three main conclusions. Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements. Number two, the global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect. And number three, our computer climate simulations indicate that thegreenhouse effect is already large enough to begin to effect the probability of extreme events such as summer heat waves. – Jim Hansen, June 1988 testimony before Congress

1989 -“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.” – Stephen Schneider, lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Discover magazine, October 1989

1990 – “We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing – in terms of economic policy and environmental policy” – Colorado Senator Timothy Wirth (D)

Aside from the absurdity of the argument that even if a problem is non existent then dealing with a non existent problem is the right thing to do, it should be obvious that climate science has been wrong for at least the past 120 years. The expensive and religiously revered “Computer Models” have yet to predict any event that has actually happened, yet their erroneous results still trump observed empirical evidence.

 

[estesbob]

This is to be expected. Just look at the line before 2000, quite wobbly indeed. There is a long lag time between GHGs entering the atmosphere to the full extent of their warming potential. In fact, some scientists say there is about 2.4C warming “in the pipes” from the current levels of GHGs that will take some decades to play out.

If it was to be expected why did not one single scientist predict it , why did not one single model take it into account?

 

[jilly4ski]

So now it is 20 years with no warming. It started out as a 15 year claim, then 17, then 18, all within the spate of a one year period.

Here’s a chart from 1990. You can see the temp 20 years ago in 1994, it is around +.23C (anomaly from pre-warming temps), then compare it with temps thereafter, esp after 2001 when all the temps were above .42 or 43C. The global average temp for 2013 was the same as for 2003, about .57 or .58 on that chart.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Predictions_500.gif

The “flattening out” seems to have started around 2002, or at the very earliest, 1997, which would make the 17 year claim correct.

I rounded, as a saw the article about 17 years and 10monthsas I was going back looking for my post. But I am curious are these the “raw” data or is this corrected data on this graph and is two(?) tenths of a degree a statistically significant change over 20 years?

As for the ocean warming debate please go back and read your post #1075 and my reply at #1077. I clearly pointed out that the sources you cited all claim that heat flows from the oceans to the atmosphere, not vice versa, and no one has explained the mechanism for the oceans warming, much less connecting it to global warming and increased CO2. There is a theory that heavy trade winds have stirred up ocean currents trapping infrared heat from the sun, so it can’t escape to the atmosphere. But that does not make it “climate change.”

 

[jilly4ski]

That is a gross oversimplification. Heat flow goes both ways between oceans and the atmosphere at different times. And the largest part of the heat flow into the ocean is directly from the sun, and does not involve direct transfer between air and ocean at all!

And therein lies the problem. Most heat transfer to the oceans is directly from the sun. Generally the oceans shed their heat to the atmosphere. This in no way ties increasing ocean temps to climate change.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

1895 – Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again – New York Times, February 1895
**http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F02E1D8163CE433A25757C2A9649C94649ED7CF
**1912 – Prof. Schmidt Warns Us of an Encroaching Ice Age – New York Times, October 1912

1923 – “Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada” – Professor Gregory of Yale University, American representative to the Pan-Pacific Science Congress, – Chicago Tribune

1923 – “The discoveries of changes in the sun’s heat and the southward advance of glaciers in recent years have given rise to conjectures of the possible advent of a new ice age” – Washington Post

1924 – MacMillan Reports Signs of New Ice Age – New York Times, Sept 18, 1924

1929 – “Most geologists think the world is growing warmer, and that it will continue to get warmer” – Los Angeles Times, in Is another ice age coming?

1932 – “If these things be true, it is evident, therefore that we must be just teetering on an ice age” – The Atlantic magazine, This Cold, Cold World

1933 – America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-Year Rise – New York Times, March 27th, 1933

1933 – “…wide-spread and persistent tendency toward warmer weather…Is our climate changing?” – Federal Weather Bureau “Monthly Weather Review.”

1970 – “…get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters – the worst may be yet to come…there’s no relief in sight” – Washington Post

1988 – I would like to draw three main conclusions. Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements. Number two, the global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect. And number three, our computer climate simulations indicate that thegreenhouse effect is already large enough to begin to effect the probability of extreme events such as summer heat waves. – Jim Hansen, June 1988 testimony before Congress

1989 -“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.” – Stephen Schneider, lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Discover magazine, October 1989

1990 – “We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing – in terms of economic policy and environmental policy” – Colorado Senator Timothy Wirth (D)

Aside from the absurdity of the argument that even if a problem is non existent then dealing with a non existent problem is the right thing to do, it should be obvious that climate science has been wrong for at least the past 120 years. The expensive and religiously revered “Computer Models” have yet to predict any event that has actually happened, yet their erroneous results still trump observed empirical evidence.

Going back 120 years to find wrong weather predictions is a no-brainer. It doesn’t prove anything. The tools for combining massive amounts of data from around the world just did not exist back then.

As for the track record of computer models, they have proved enormously successful in predicting the path and intensity of hurricanes days before they hit land. That is just one example, which contradicts your claim that computer models have never predicted anything that has not yet happened.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

And therein lies the problem. Most heat transfer to the oceans is directly from the sun. Generally the oceans shed their heat to the atmosphere. This in no way ties increasing ocean temps to climate change.

If climate change is not the cause of the rising ocean temps, then what is?

 

[LeafByNiggle]

…no one has explained the mechanism for the oceans warming, much less connecting it to global warming and increased CO2. There is a theory that heavy trade winds have stirred up ocean currents trapping infrared heat from the sun, so it can’t escape to the atmosphere. But that does not make it “climate change.”

You have just given the mechanism yourself! You said that the oceans are stirred up trapping infrared heat from the sun. But some of that IR heat comes not directly from the sun, but from re-radiation from greenhouse gases. So climate change makes more IR heat available to be trapped. Further verification of that is provided by the fact the surface temperatures have remained relatively stable. If the same amount of heat as before was being stirred up into the deeper ocean, then the surface temperatures would get correspondingly cooler. The fact that they are not getting cool is evidence that additional heat is coming into the system.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

If it was to be expected why did not one single scientist predict it , why did not one single model take it into account?

“To be expected” is not the same thing as “to be predicted”. It is expected that some days in March will be windy. That does not mean I can predict which days those are.

 

[Bill1940]

That is not a relevant question. The reason it is not relevant is that the greenhouse gasses that are not caused by mankind have been relatively stable for the last few thousands of years, and their effect is in balance. We have achieved an equilibrium or sorts with these effects. But add more CO2 and that equilibrium will be upset.

You fail to persuade me that the question is irrelevant. As I recall, the percentage of CO2 caused by mankind is 0.11 %, and the percentage of all greenhouse gases caused by mankind is 0.28%. It is true that man’s contribution was stable for millennia prior to the industrial era but also true that man’s contribution is miniscule. If all the greenhouse gases can raise the temperature by a degree in a century, man is responsible for three tenths of a degree. A distinction without a difference, if we ever saw one. The science has been compromised by scandal involving certain principle players. There are numerous apparent conflicts of interest, financial and political. Moreover, the association with the extreme left is enough to give anyone pause. There are far more proximate and severe dangers about which to worry and confront. The growing apostasy from faith, the demographic suicide of the West, the rise of militant Islam, the disarming of the United States on the eve of great dangers, and the approaching bankruptcy of America and Europe are far more portentous than a myopic obsession with a remote, strained, and theoretical possibility of a climatic catastrophe. As ever, I doubt not the sincere intentions of those with whom I disagree but I really think there are bigger fish to fry.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

You fail to persuade me that the question is irrelevant. As I recall, the percentage of CO2 caused by mankind is 0.11 %,.

I must stop you right there because that number is false. To be more precise, the CO2 level has risen from 318 ppm in 1958 to over 400 ppm today. That is a 25% increase during the industrial boom. And all of the increase (25%) was caused by man, for nothing else of note happened in these past 56 years that would account for such a dramatic rise. So if you think the number is closer to 0.11% than to 25%, tell me if you dispute that CO2 levels have risen by the numbers I quoted, or do you dispute that the rise cited is caused by something other than the industrial boom. And if you choose the second, tell me where that huge increase came from. And be sure your answer is consistent with isotope analysis of CO2 which shows that most of the increase has the atomic weight of carbon that was in fossil fuels.

 

[lynnvinc]

1895 – Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again – New York Times, February 1895
**http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F02E1D8163CE433A25757C2A9649C94649ED7CF
**1912 – Prof. Schmidt Warns Us of an Encroaching Ice Age – New York Times, October 1912

1923 – “Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada” – Professor Gregory of Yale University, American representative to the Pan-Pacific Science Congress, – Chicago Tribune

1923 – “The discoveries of changes in the sun’s heat and the southward advance of glaciers in recent years have given rise to conjectures of the possible advent of a new ice age” – Washington Post

1924 – MacMillan Reports Signs of New Ice Age – New York Times, Sept 18, 1924

1929 – “Most geologists think the world is growing warmer, and that it will continue to get warmer” – Los Angeles Times, in Is another ice age coming?

1932 – “If these things be true, it is evident, therefore that we must be just teetering on an ice age” – The Atlantic magazine, This Cold, Cold World

1933 – America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-Year Rise – New York Times, March 27th, 1933

1933 – “…wide-spread and persistent tendency toward warmer weather…Is our climate changing?” – Federal Weather Bureau “Monthly Weather Review.”

1970 – “…get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters – the worst may be yet to come…there’s no relief in sight” – Washington Post

1988 – I would like to draw three main conclusions. Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements. Number two, the global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect. And number three, our computer climate simulations indicate that thegreenhouse effect is already large enough to begin to effect the probability of extreme events such as summer heat waves. – Jim Hansen, June 1988 testimony before Congress…

My-my, how science advances. First it was the earth goes around the sun (from the sun goes around the earth) to now AGW is real (from we’re heading into an ice age).

I guess that’s just the way science works. It advances.

And those few “Galileo” types, like Arrhenius (100 years ago) and Hansen (25 years ago) are now proven correct. AGW is happening, and pretty much as they expected.

 

[Ridgerunner]

And all of the increase (25%) was caused by man, for nothing else of note happened in these past 56 years that would account for such a dramatic rise.

The first part of the sentence is wrong, the second is an assumption. Plenty has happened in the last 56 that could reasonably result in increased CO2 in the atmosphere, some of it caused by man, but in ways other than burning fossil fuels.

One is the very significant increase in desertification which removes plants that absorb CO2. That’s caused by man, but not by man burning fossil fuels. Burning, such as the incredible fires we have seen in Indonesia, Brazil and even in the U.S. Deforestation and subsequent burning of non-valuable trees, tree parts and underbrush are the cause in the first two. Stupidity on the part of the U.S. Forest Service and the BLM is responsible for the third.

 

[lynnvinc]

I rounded, as a saw the article about 17 years and 10monthsas I was going back looking for my post. But I am curious are these the “raw” data or is this corrected data on this graph and is two(?) tenths of a degree a statistically significant change over 20 years?

It is based on raw data – thermometer temps – from around the world, and adjusted (usually downward) for the urban heat island effect, etc…as urban sprawl builds up around the weather stations over the years and decades and might make it look like warming, when it is just the UHI effect.

I think .2C may be a significant difference, because there is such a tremendously large dataset of temps around the world they are dealing with; it at least shows an upward slope of the best-fitting line. However, even if it is not a sig increase (at .05 on the null or 95% confidence), what is needed is at least 30 years worth of data, and if you go back to 1984, then that would show a significant increase, and that would be the important point to show that AGW is happening and fairly close to projected (just a bit under, which is due to some of the GHG warming going into the deeper ocean (which is not used in their usual calc).

Here’s something that explains the “pause” better than I can: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_hiatus

As for the ocean warming debate please go back and read your post #1075 and my reply at #1077. I clearly pointed out that the sources you cited all claim that heat flows from the oceans to the atmosphere, not vice versa, and no one has explained the mechanism for the oceans warming, much less connecting it to global warming and increased CO2. There is a theory that heavy trade winds have stirred up ocean currents trapping infrared heat from the sun, so it can’t escape to the atmosphere. But that does not make it “climate change.”

The ocean warming is due to the sun. Practically all of earth’s increased warming is due to the sun, as the earth’s core is actually cooling down. There just is not any evidence that there has been a surge in underwater volcanism or heat venting from deep beneath the earth in recent decades.

So most of the ocean warming is directly from the sun, and some is from the inferred radiation that the ocean and land reflect back to the GH band in the atmosphere, with some of that escaping to space and some of that reflecting back to earth and the oceans, causing more ocean (and land) warming.

The oceans then have those mechanisms to churn that sun- and IR- warmed water down to deeper levels.

Here’s what some scientists are saying re ocean warming:

• realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/what-ocean-heating-reveals-about-global-warming/
• realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/04/the-answer-is-blowing-in-the-wind-the-warming-went-into-the-deep-end/
• realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/10/global-warming-and-ocean-heat-content/
• realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/09/why-greenhouse-gases-heat-the-ocean/

For more indepth, see

• England, Matthew (February 2014). “Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus”. Nature Climate Change. at nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n3/full/nclimate2106.html
• Kosaka Y, Xie SP (September 2013). “Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling”. Nature 501 (7467): 403–7 at nature.com/nature/journal/v501/n7467/full/nature12534.html

From the Wiki article cited above: “One proposal is that it was a part of natural climate variability, specifically related to decadal cooling in the eastern equatorial Pacific in the La Niña phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. This has been explained as due to unprecedented strengthening of Pacific trade winds in the last 20 years, so that surface warming has been substantially slowed by increased subsurface ocean heat uptake caused by increased subduction in the Pacific shallow overturning cells, and increased equatorial upwelling in the central and eastern Pacific.”

 

[lynnvinc]

The first part of the sentence is wrong, the second is an assumption. Plenty has happened in the last 56 that could reasonably result in increased CO2 in the atmosphere, some of it caused by man, but in ways other than burning fossil fuels.

One is the very significant increase in desertification which removes plants that absorb CO2. That’s caused by man, but not by man burning fossil fuels. Burning, such as the incredible fires we have seen in Indonesia, Brazil and even in the U.S. Deforestation and subsequent burning of non-valuable trees, tree parts and underbrush are the cause in the first two. Stupidity on the part of the U.S. Forest Service and the BLM is responsible for the third.

I think that’s actually correct. I’ve always heard it as our fossil fuel emissions AND changes in land use as contributing to AGW.

Also some of that Indonesian burning is for palm plantations for palm oil (which we use in cooking, candies, cosmetics, etc). I just read that Cargill is going to engage in more sustainable palm oil operations.