Warming Stalled

[Coss]

more on climate change too much to post in entirety, but excerpts and links below

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned against drawing too many conclusions from the latest leaked version of its upcoming, and eagerly awaited, Assessment Report 5 (AR5).

 

This massive tome will be published in four stages over the next year - the first part, the physical science behind climate change, will be presented in Stockholm on 26 September.

 

The process of compiling this report - with several hundred scientists, 195 governments and over 100 non-governmental organisations involved - has been particularly leaky, with at least three confidential drafts being made public in the last year.

 

“We've had 1,800 comments on that 15-page document†Jonathan Lynn IPCC

 

According to the latest scoop, the scientists are set to say they are more convinced than ever that global warming is caused by humans. They will say they are 95% certain that our use of fossil fuels is the main reason behind the global rise in temperatures since the 1950s.

 

The panel will also outline why global temperatures have been rising more slowly since 1998, a controversial slowdown that scientists have been struggling to explain.

 

Sensitive questions

According to the leak, they will put it down to natural meteorological variations and other factors that could include greater absorption of heat into the deep oceans - and the possibility that the climate is less sensitive to carbon dioxide than had previously been believed.

 

Many climate sceptics have argued that this is a key factor behind the temperature slowdown, and a good reason not to believe the more extreme predictions of those they dismiss as warmist conspirators.

 

continues http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23755901

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Each of the last few decades has been warmer than the last. But start your graph in 1998 - which happened to be an exceptionally warm year - and there hasn't been much global warming at all.

 

Gradually the words 'pause' and 'hiatus' which first featured in the blogs have crossed to the media and then to the scientists professionally engaged in researching the global climate.

 

The headline - which the scientists will not thank me for - is that no one is really sure why the rate of warming has stumbled.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23409404

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I don't feel I have to argue my corner now, not with the BBC doing it for me....

[Coss]

And because of the overwhelming response to my previous post, I am delighted to provide the following for your delectation:

 

 

And now it's global COOLING! Record return of Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60% in a year

 

- Almost a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than in 2012

- BBC reported in 2007 global warming would leave Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013

- Publication of UN climate change report suggesting global warming caused by humans pushed back to later this month

 

 

A chilly Arctic summer has left nearly a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than at the same time last year – an increase of 60 per cent.

 

The rebound from 2012’s record low comes six years after the BBC reported that global warming would leave the Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013.

 

Instead, days before the annual autumn re-freeze is due to begin, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia’s northern shores.

 

The Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific has remained blocked by pack-ice all year. More than 20 yachts that had planned to sail it have been left ice-bound and a cruise ship attempting the route was forced to turn back.

Some eminent scientists now believe the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of this century – a process that would expose computer forecasts of imminent catastrophic warming as dangerously misleading.

 

The disclosure comes 11 months after The Mail on Sunday triggered intense political and scientific debate by revealing that global warming has ‘paused’ since the beginning of 1997 – an event that the computer models used by climate experts failed to predict.

 

In March, this newspaper further revealed that temperatures are about to drop below the level that the models forecast with ‘90 per cent certainty’.

 

The pause – which has now been accepted as real by every major climate research centre – is important, because the models’ predictions of ever-increasing global temperatures have made many of the world’s economies divert billions of pounds into ‘green’ measures to counter climate change.

 

Those predictions now appear gravely flawed.

 

Read more...

[scoobydoo]

chuckle...poor al gore....wonder how he wriggles out of this

[Coss]

In this modern world, and if the warming does stop, Al would just say that he'd operated on the best information to hand, and now we should all start getting ready for cooler climes. A tax on things that make the world cooler, would be a first priority. I read that closing the ozone hole will make the world cooler, more CFCs please...

 

I'm so glad I didn't invest in any carbon credit scams...

[baa99]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/28/pacific-ocean-temperatures_n_3832273.html

 

...

While global surface temperatures have not warmed significantly since 1998, other studies have shown that Earth’s climate system continues to warm, with emerging evidence indicating that the deep oceans may be taking up much of the extra heat. That extra heat is expected to be released back into the atmosphere in the coming decades. Even with a slowed rate of warming, the first decade of the 21st century was still the warmest decade since instrumental records began in 1850.

...

[SpiceMan]

Coss, you said "I don't feel I have to argue my corner now, not with the BBC doing it for me...."

 

The BBC was biased against your point of view for years. Their panel on climate change was loaded with environmentalists with dubious scientific qualifications. Despite freedom of information requests they have refused to say who those "scientists" were. This has come under scrutiny in the UK and now the BBC has a more balanced panel, hence the change of view point.

[Flashermac]

In this modern world, and if the warming does stop, Al would just say that he'd operated on the best information to hand, and now we should all start getting ready for cooler climes. A tax on things that make the world cooler, would be a first priority. I read that closing the ozone hole will make the world cooler, more CFCs please...

 

 

 

[Coss]

...the first decade of the 21st century was still the warmest decade since instrumental records began in 1850.

...

 

Ahh yes. To put that in perspective:

 

"It was conventional wisdom that the typical interglacial period lasts about 12,000 years, but this has been called into question recently. For example, an article in Nature[34] argues that the current interglacial might be most analogous to a previous interglacial that lasted 28,000 years."

 

2013 - 1850 = 163 years

 

If we take the shorter of the two estimates for interglacial periods above, (being generous to the argument), that means that according to the first quoted passage, we are to worry because we've got measurements for 1.36% of the period. (correct me if my math is wrong)

 

That's like looking at the temperature in your day and measuring it for 19 or 20 minutes and saying, "the temperature is rising for 20 minutes! we're all gonna burn!"

 

An then we see this little graph showing the cyclical nature of ice on the planet.

 

 

 

All of this from Wikipedia

 

Coss, you said "I don't feel I have to argue my corner now, not with the BBC doing it for me...."

 

The BBC was biased against your point of view for years. Their panel on climate change was loaded with environmentalists with dubious scientific qualifications. Despite freedom of information requests they have refused to say who those "scientists" were. This has come under scrutiny in the UK and now the BBC has a more balanced panel, hence the change of view point.

Quite so.

 

And that's the problem with Journos these days. It used to be that a Journo would know his field. Now they are trained to report on anything, so they take 'experts' whom all, one side or the other, have agendas.

 

If Journos could be educated in what they are reporting on, then they'd do a good job. But instead they report on what other people say, the facts tend to get in the way. That's why we have 'news' reports of Tiger births in zoos, with photos of leopards or cheetahs (not in LOS, in the western world)

[baa99]

So you discount 163 yrs of data and yet embrace the last 15 yrs! How about 40 mil yrs of data.

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130102104945.htm

 

By comparing reconstructions of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations and sea level over the past 40 million years, researchers based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton have found that greenhouse gas concentrations similar to the present (almost 400 parts per million) were systematically associated with sea levels at least nine metres above current levels.

 

The study determined the ‘natural equilibrium’ sea level for CO2 concentrations ranging between ice-age values of 180 parts per million and ice-free values of more than 1,000 parts per million.

 

It takes many centuries for such an equilibrium to be reached, therefore whilst the study does not predict any sea level value for the coming century, it does illustrate what sea level might be expected if climate were stabilized at a certain CO2 level for several centuries.

[Coss]

So you discount 163 yrs of data and yet embrace the last 15 yrs! How about 40 mil yrs of data.

 

I'm not embracing any 15 years, I merely relayed the story by others that showed an alternative to the we're gonna burn views of folks.

 

Indeed my last post had to do with thousands and millions of years.

 

 

http://www.scienceda...30102104945.htm

 

By comparing reconstructions of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations and sea level over the past 40 million years, researchers based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton have found that greenhouse gas concentrations similar to the present (almost 400 parts per million) were systematically associated with sea levels at least nine metres above current levels.

 

The study determined the ‘natural equilibrium’ sea level for CO2 concentrations ranging between ice-age values of 180 parts per million and ice-free values of more than 1,000 parts per million.

 

It takes many centuries for such an equilibrium to be reached, therefore whilst the study does not predict any sea level value for the coming century, it does illustrate what sea level might be expected if climate were stabilized at a certain CO2 level for several centuries.

 

Quite interesting. It raises two questions.

 

1/. If the CO2 levels are such, where's the 9 metres of sea? OK they do say it could take centuries, but that's "could".

 

2/. The chicken and the egg. There is a serious argument about whether CO2 levels (et al) is causing temperature rise, or if temperature rise is causing raised levels of CO2. The issue being that a number of factors can support the latter argument. I'll detail two: 1 Water hold less gas as temperature rises, therefore a temperature rise in the world's water (Oceans, Lakes, vast, vast, amount of CO2 in the water) would result in increased CO2 in the atmosphere. 2 Leaf litter. The world's leaf litter is a huge resource for CO2, massive. It decays, producing lots of CO2 amongst other things. As temperature rises, the rate of CO2 emission from leaf litter rises too.

 

I'm not denying that the world is getting warmer or cooler. What I'm agin is the flawed assumption that humans are the primary cause. Certainly we have an effect on the planet, but it's the height of arrogance to assume that we control our environment in any long term way. We only have to look at the Tsunamis and Earthquakes of recent times to see that we don't control much...