Dana Nuccitelli (of Skeptical Science fame) and John Abraham (the scientists who destroyed Monckton’s reputation) have started a great new blog on The Guardian. Titled ”The Climate Consensus: the 97%” their first article puts to rest the myth that global warming has “paused” and that scientists are puzzled by it:
The rate of heat building up on Earth over the past decade is equivalent to detonating about 4 Hiroshima atomic bombs per second. Take a moment to visualize 4 atomic bomb detonations happening every single second. That’s the global warming that we’re frequently told isn’t happening.
There are periods when the ocean heats up more quickly than the surface, and other periods when the surface heats up more quickly than the oceans. Right now we’re in a period of fast ocean warming and overall, global warming is continuing at a very fast pace.
The confusion on this subject lies in the fact that only about 2 percent of global warming is used in heating air, whereas about 90 percent of global warming goes into heating the oceans (the rest heats ice and land masses). But humans live at the Earth’s surface, and thus we tend to focus on surface temperatures. Over the past 10–15 years, Earth’s surface temperature has continued to rise, but slowly. At the same time, the warming of the oceans – and the warming of the Earth as a whole – has accelerated.
This was the conclusion of a scientific paper I co-authored last year, in which our team found more overall global warming (of the oceans, air, land, and ice combined) over the past 15 years than during the prior 15 years. Just recently, another paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters found that the warming of the oceans since the turn of the century has been the most sustained in the past 50 years. They also found that, consistent with my team’s research, about 30% of overall global warming has gone into the deep oceans below 700 meters due to changing wind patterns and ocean currents. This accelerated deep ocean warming is also unprecedented in the past 50 years.
We often hear from the media that the (surface air) warming has slowed or paused over the past 15 years. This isn’t a puzzle; climate scientists are well aware of several contributing factors, as a recent Reuters article – “Climate scientists struggle to explain warming slowdown” – eventually discussed. The accelerated warming of the oceans is likely the main contributor.
During years with La Niña events, more heat is transferred to the oceans, and surface temperatures are relatively cool as a result. The opposite is true during El Niño years. During the 1990s, there were more El Niño than La Niña events, which resulted in more surface air warming. One of the strongest El Niño events of the century happened in 1998, which not coincidentally was 15 years ago.
When people say ‘no warming in 15 years’, they’re cherry picking the timeframe to begin in an abnormally hot year. It’s like arguing that your car must have broken down because it hasn’t moved in the 15 seconds while you’ve been stopped at a red light. The argument selects a short timeframe that’s not representative of the whole.
The first “97%” blog is practically a compendium of false information. As this post on WUWT shows, much of what is says is misleading.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/25/dana-nuccitelli-misleads-and-misinforms-in-his-first-blog-post-at-the-guardian/
Even the name – the “97%” is based on a dodgy student study, which used various filters on respondents to whittle down 3146 respondents, of which 80% indicated they were concerned about anthropogenic climate change, to 77 respondents, 75 of whom indicated they were concerned about anthropogenic climate change.
If this is the best you guys can do, you’re getting desperate.
Here’s a link to the Forbes article which discusses where the “97%” claim originated.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/07/17/that-scientific-global-warming-consensus-not/
Eric,
If I understand your comment correctly, you are objecting to the name of the new blog, not to what the first post on it says. I thought it was worth reading.
No, I’m saying even the name is based on a misleading study. The first link provides information on what is wrong with the first post.
Its quite an impressive effort.
You’re too easily diverted, Eric. Watts attacks Nuccitelli? That’s unexpected….
How’re you going with your reading?
I think some climate change is caused by humans, as does Watts, Lindzen, Muller, and a host of scientists you consider “deniers”. Were their papers included in the black area of the graphic?
If the question had been “how many papers indicate imminent catastrophe?”, the result might have been more interesting.
Muller is not a denier. Watts is an idiot. Lindzen is wrong.
Imminent catastrophe was never predicted….you’d know that if you’d read even one IPCC report.
Immediate action is needed because of the long feedback times in the system.
Nick says; “Imminent catastrophe was never predicted….you’d know that if you’d read even one IPCC report.”
Obviously you were born AFTER 1970! History was never a good subject with global warming/climate change preachers.
Earth Day 1970 predictions.
“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”
Kenneth Watt, ecologist
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
George Wald, Harvard Biologist
“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”
Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist
“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”
Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day
“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University
“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
Life Magazine, January 1970
“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”
Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.”
Martin Litton, Sierra Club director
“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”
Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
Sen. Gaylord Nelson
“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
Mr Snafu has problems with the definition of “imminent”, amongst other things.
Very appropriate nym BTW.
Would Mr Zoot like to tell us what his definition of “imminent” is?
Is a period of 43 years “imminent”?
BTW…I would’ve like to use FUBAR, but it was already used.
Bob’s weird. He takes the ocean temperature, subtracts the temperature rise and then subtracts it again and says the oceans are really cooling except for ENSO, Dunning Kruger in action.
Bob doesn’t write about global ocean heat content. He only looks at ENSO. Nor did he bother to look at Dana’s references that supported what Dana wrote.
Here are some good charts on changes over time in global ocean heat and salt content.
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
Does the Dunning-Kruger effect explain the Fermi paradox?
Explain how experimenting with different filters to apply to 3146 responses to excessively broad questions, to produce a result which fits your narrative, even if it means eliminating most of the respondents, is good science.
Odd. My comment wasn’t a reply to yours, and your reply is irrelevant to my question.
But I’ve already discussed other surveys which also report results in categories ranked by experience. That’s the same thing that makes a medical student different than a brain surgeon.
I’ve already shown you a list of dozens of large scientific organizations who agree that most of the warming since 1950 is very likely due to our CO2 emissions. You just started babbling about eugenics. So consensus or not, you’re gonna punch scientists.
By the way, here’s that list.
And here’s the babbling.
Why on Earth does anyone even reply to Eric any more?
Mike; you should do a quick analysis on how often Eric is the first or second commenter on your articles and then look at how often they fall prey to typical tactics, such as “strawmen”, “irrelevance”, “misrepresentation” etc and how quick he is to link to WUWT. The bloke’s a bloody parrot, nothing more, out to promote his phone apps.
It would make for a great article, for sure.
Not holding my breath for Eric to produce poptech or similarly wrong ‘evidence’ to refute the fact that almost all climate science papers strongly support the reality of the greenhouse effect.
At what point did I say I don’t believe in the Greenhouse Effect?
You do not understand the “greenhouse effect”, Eric.
Consequently, whatever you think you know is wrong.
Interesting news item on “Global Warming” from snowbound America.
http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/video/8804457-good-question-is-global-warming-the-wrong-term/
Lots of people have been writing in to demand “what happened to the global warming?”. So the news people did this rather lame explanatory piece.
(h/t M4GW)
Most (>90%) of the energy accumulating in the climate system as a result of radiative imbalance (GHG forcing) is in the oceans. See Levitus et al. (2012). Link previously provided. Focussing on short-term variability in surface air temperature is *misleading*, Eric.
Sou provides a general link to the NODC OHC page upthread (data from Levitus 2012). Here is a specific graph, showing the *increase* in OHC below 700m.
There is no “missing” energy, and “global warming” has not stopped. One must be wary of being tricked by liars into re-broadcasting misinformation, Eric.
From Eric’s web site.
“Referencing this site
I am not an academic researcher and hence have no need for formal references. However, if you’ve found this site useful, an informal ‘mention in dispatches’ and a Web link wouldn’t go amiss.
This cuts both ways, however: The algorithms used on this site have not been formally peer reviewed and hence should not be used unverified for academic publication (and certainly not for policy- making!). This site is only intended to help find interesting directions for further research to be carried out more formally.”
Great disclaimer.
Thank you for shining a light into the darkness chez Worrall. What a prat this man is.