Monthly Archives: September 2010

Maybe they’ve found Trenberth’s missing heat

Posted on by
3

“Maybe they’ve found Trenberth’s missing heat“. Anthony Watts notes another climate press release with a class-clown giggle so he can side-step the fact that Kevin Trenberth’s honest concern about deep-ocean temperature records is being resolved. His confederacy of dunces sings along in the comments. Once again Anthony’s entire contribution is his choice of blog post title. It’s a reference to a cherry-picked statement by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Kevin Trenberth back in the Spring:

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.

Trenberth used the word “travesty” to describe the lack of well-distributed temperature measurements from places like the deep ocean, he was not talking about a failure of climate theory. However the denialists grabbed that useful sentence fragment with both hands and tried to paint him as agreeing with them that climatology was corrupt, fraudulent, and never visits its mother. This malicious denialist meme is still widely circulating.

NOAA has a press release called Scientists Find 20 Years of Deep Water Warming Leading to Sea Level Rise. It covers a paper on this subject in the Journal of Climate titled Warming of Global Abyssal and Deep Southern Ocean Waters Between the 1990s and 2000s: Contributions to Global Heat and Sea Level Rise Budgets (abstract here, PDF here):

This study shows that the deep ocean – below about 3,300 feet – is taking up about 16 percent of what the upper ocean is absorbing. The authors note that there are several possible causes for this deep warming: a shift in Southern Ocean winds, a change in the density of what is called Antarctic Bottom Water, or how quickly that bottom water is formed near the Antarctic, where it sinks to fill the deepest, coldest portions of the ocean around much of the globe.

Anthony’s last kick at this cat is to now suggest that Trenberth is a sloppy scientist. He lost the heat! So careless.

Abyssal Heat Fluxes in the Southern Ocean. From Purkey and Johnson, 2010.

What’s really happening? Climate scientists are improving our understanding of the Earth’s climate. Uncertainties are being reduced. The honest overall picture remains the same: AGW is real. Anthony’s readers aren’t having any of that though.

Where Consensus Fails – The Science Cannot Be Called ‘Settled’

Posted on by
1

“Where Consensus Fails – The Science Cannot Be Called ‘Settled’“. Anthony Watts gives us another entertaining guest post by his Steven Goddard replacement, Thomas Fuller. Thomas tells us that back in 2008 Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch surveyed 379 “climate scientists” online. How would you answer a question like: “Some scientists present extreme accounts of catastrophic impacts related to climate change in a popular format with the claim that it is their task to alert the public. How much do you agree with this practice?” Well, you’re obviously a smart scientist who knows that AGW is all made-up!

To quote the report itself “The survey employed a non-probability convenience sample.” This is a sort of admission that the survey is completely untrustworthy. Just the kind of evidence Anthony Watts finds the most useful.

By the way, who is it that keeps claiming that believers in AGW say that “the science is settled”? Denialists do, that’s who, so they can claim imaginary victories over a straw-man. Informed participants know that we are constantly learning more about the historical evidence and mechanisms of Global Warming. It’s just that what we learn keeps agreeing with the AGW proposition…

Enviro and Media Agenda on Extreme Weather – State Climatologist Invited, then Uninvited to Rally

Posted on by
Reply

“Enviro and Media Agenda on Extreme Weather – State Climatologist Invited, then Uninvited to Rally“. Anthony Watts wants us to know that the State Climatologist for Delaware, “David R. Legates, Ph.D., C.C.M” was invited by Environment America to speak at a press conference about “Extreme Weather in Delaware.” He was cruelly uninvited when they learned that he was loose cannon looking for opportunities to misrepresent climate science in support of the posturing of the politicians who appointed him.

How dare Environment America state that “we do not suggest that these [particular] extreme weather events were caused by global warming” and then say that “the point of examining the recent extreme weather events – and the economic losses and other negative impacts they caused – is to document why we need to take action to protect against them, including by reducing emissions of pollutants that are changing our climate.” That’s a total contradiction, unless you can comprehend the English language!

It’s ironic to see Anthony decrying censorship when his blog comment policy personifies it (and the mob justice he encourages).

New paper in Nature on ocean cycles finally causes recognition in media

Posted on by
Reply

“New paper in Nature on ocean cycles finally causes recognition in media“. Anthony Watts’ “European friend” Pierre Gosselin has discovered some important science in Der Spiegel. Apparently the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) controls our entire climate, which no-one except denialists knew about until just now!

It’s all explained by a Der Spiegel article about a Nature paper  titled An abrupt drop in Northern Hemisphere sea surface temperature around 1970 that is completely demonstrated by a denialist blogger’s bulls**t fake chart. Dr. Phil Jones is one of the authors! He’s starting to admit all the lies!!!! The denialists have won!

Who doesn't like crayons?

Oops, someone didn’t read the article that Der Spiegel tried to summarize. The AMO has been well described for many years, oceanic circulation patterns are a well-known factor in climate change (remember last year when Anthony spent all his time posting bunk about El Niño?), the AMO cycles don’t correlate with the recorded global temperature changes (neither did the El Niño ones). In fact, the paper is a perfectly good investigation of historical circulation patterns in the Atlantic Ocean.

Too bad it’s not useful for the purpose that Anthony tries to squeeze out of it. Why is Anthony promoting a blog post that so clearly misrepresents the paper it is ostensibly about? Oh, and once again we see Anthony likes suddenly computer models when he thinks they are saying what he wants to hear…

Climate science solar shock and awe

Posted on by
6

“Climate science solar shock and awe“. Anthony Watts thinks that climate scientists have suddenly realized that there’s a sun up there in the sky. Wow, it heats the Earth too! So it’s all natural after all. That’s a relief.

This revelation was, um, revealed, in an editorial in New Scientist! You never know where new ideas will pop into existence, do you? Maybe even from Anthony’s blog where the solar looneys are out in full force in the comments.

You know, there are lots of natural cycles out there that correlate pretty well with natural variations in the earth’s climate. Just not any that correlate with the recent large and abrupt changes that climate scientists ascribe to human activity. Sorry Anthony.

Igor cool ocean

Posted on by
1

“Igor cool ocean“. Anthony Watts notes that hurricanes “do a splendid job of cooling the ocean surface over which they travel.” He even trusts some nasty NASA computer climate models to explain it. Thus ending Global Warming!

How does he does manage to ignore the more relevant discussion of whether increasing numbers and intensity of cyclones are a symptom of Global Warming? Here are a few random notes on the subject:

Wood fired power plants help reduce climate change

Posted on by
Reply

“Wood fired power plants help reduce climate change“. Anthony Watts has read a press release from the University of Manchester titled How heating our homes could help reduce climate change and thinks we can burn our way to a lower CO2 emissions. No need to change anything else to solve Global Warming. Which isn’t happening.

Um, this is really a report of biomass-fueled district heating concepts. Biomass sequesters and then releases carbon in a repeating cycle, so it’s inherently “neutral” in climate terms if processing, transport and power generation are efficient enough.

“Fossil” fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas were sequestered millions of years ago and completely removed from the natural carbon cycle. When they are extracted and consumed their carbon, in the form of CO2 is released back into the environment with what a “consensus” of scientists would describe as pronounced and measurable impacts on the Earth’s climate.

Google Earth leads to spectacular meteor crater find

Posted on by
2

“Google Earth leads to spectacular meteor crater find“. Random science news from Anthony Watts. See? He runs a science blog, not an anti-science blog! This story makes a pretty good fig-leaf though.

The Kamil crater in the Egyptian desert was first spotted in 2008 by mineralogist Vincenzo De Michele in Google Earth imagery. From a European Space Agency press release:

One day within the last several thousand years, a rare metallic meteorite travelling over 12 000 km/hour smashed into Earth’s surface near what is today the trackless border region between Egypt, Sudan and Libya. The impact of the 1.3 m, 10-tonne chunk of iron generated a fireball and plume that would have been visible over 1000 km away, and drilled a hole 16 m deep and 45 m wide into the rocky terrain.

Engelbeen on why he thinks the CO2 increase is man made (part 4)

Posted on by
Reply

“Engelbeen on why he thinks the CO2 increase is man made (part 4)“. Anthony pats himself on the back for letting someone with a “narrative contrary to the blog owner(s) view” post on his website. Of course although retired engineer Ferdinand Engelbeen happens to accept the scientific principles and evidence for increasing CO2 levels, he has similar ideas about how this has nothing to do with Global Warming. Which of course isn’t happening.

Regardless if that is man made or not, I think we agree that the influence of the increase itself on temperature/climate is limited, if observable at all.

Poor Ferdinand Engelbeen thinks that patiently explaining, in this post, how useful “background” CO2 levels are actually derived, how sampling locations and techniques dramatically diminish the value of many historical records, and how the ratio of stomata openings to the total number of cells on leaves are a poor proxy for CO2 levels, will stem the flow of ignorant commentary.

Good luck Ferdinand! And good luck with the nothing’s happening theory.

Hint to Anthony Watts: the d13C ratios show that the added CO2 has come from fossil fuel sources. Engelbeen explained it to you a week ago. End of story.

NASA discovery: solar storms don’t always travel in straight lines

Posted on by
Reply

“NASA discovery: solar storms don’t always travel in straight lines“. Anthony Watts posts another NASA news report, Solar Storms can Change Directions, Surprising Forecasters. A 2008 coronal mass ejection (CME) was observed by NASA’s STEREO-A and STEREO–B spacecraft. The researchers speculate that CME’s follow the sun’s curving magnetic field until they get swept up by the solar wind. The paper by Byrne et al, Propagation of an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection in three dimensions, is in the Sept. 21, 2010 issue of Nature Communications.

The Dec. 12, 2008 coronal mass ejection observed by STEREO. Source: NASA.

I guess Anthony thinks this report is helpful in suggesting that a) we don’t know anything about that big fiery ball in the sky, and b) them scientists are going to change their minds anyway, so don’t bother listening to them.