Levitus rewarmed

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lovely iceberg in boundary conditions

Boundary conditions are complex.

Yes, the ocean has warmed; no, it’s not ‘global warming’

And warm water does not sink

Oceanographer Dr Willem de Lange has referred us to a really clear treatment of ocean warming and ocean-atmosphere interaction in an article by a noted oceanographer (now deceased). It appeared in 21st Century Science & Technology magazine in 2000 and carried the “Yes, the ocean has warmed” headline you see above. Though written 12 years ago, it makes a solid rebuttal to the substance of the modern warming scare, emphasizing, as though marine scientists needed to be told, that warm water cannot sink.
 
The author was Dr. Robert E. Stevenson, an oceanography consultant, who trained NASA astronauts in oceanography and marine meteorology, was Secretary General of the International Association for the Physical Science of the Oceans from 1987 to 1995 and was an oceanographer for the U.S. Office of Naval Research for 20 years.

Having completed the post, I’ve discovered the new Levitus paper. How does Levitus et al. 2012 compare with the old Levitus et al. 2000? The new paper is in press, so we only have the abstracts to compare. In 2000, the heat content of the world ocean increased by ∼2 × 1023 joules between the mid-1950s and mid-1990s, representing a volume mean warming of 0.06°C. In 2012, the heat content of the world ocean increased by 24.0 × 1022 J for 1955-2010, corresponding to a volume mean warming of 0.09ºC.

With 24.0 × 1022 being 20% greater than 2 × 1023, and the temperature going from 0.06 to 0.09°C giving an increase of 50%, we have a familiar picture. It’s deja vu, only warmer.

Here’s the article’s original introduction:

Contrary to recent press reports that the oceans hold the still-undetected global atmospheric warming predicted by climate models, ocean warming occurs in 100-year cycles, independent of both radiative and human influences.

Which echoes today’s headlines about ocean heat content trying to explain why climate models don’t predict the climate. Continue Reading →

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NIWA’s data proves NZ warming halt

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It’s getting worse than they thought (for them!)

NZ monthly temperature anomalies 2001-2012 from NIWA reports

NZ monthly temperature anomalies 2001-2012 from NIWA’s monthly press releases. Although the trend is as near to zero as “damn it” is to swearing, it is, as a matter of fact, cooling. Anyway, for at least 10 years and 5 months, New Zealand has officially experienced no warming — unlike the great globe itself, which was predicted by highly skilled computer models to warm about 0.2°C over the same period, and so no doubt it did warm. Oh, no it didn’t.

This insight into the NZ temperature record is from the resourceful Bob D. I’ve promoted it because it’s priceless. Bob says:

NIWA’s Climate Updates

I thought I’d share the local New Zealand temperatures over the last decade. I downloaded all NIWA’s Climate Updates from their website (the first one I could find was Oct 2001) and plotted the temperature anomalies that were published for each month.

Of course, what with Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming and all, I expected to see temperatures rising (accelerating, even) in a wild, out-of-control fashion, as the water vapour feedbacks kicked in, tripling the initial warming that came from the gigatons of poisonous carbon dioxide pollution that we’ve spewed (spewed, I tell you) into the atmosphere over the past decade.
/sarc

I was a little surprised at what I saw. Continue Reading →

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Well, where’s your evidence, Renowden?

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HadCRUT3 graph for Feb 2012

The graph that proves no significant warming for about 15 years – since about 1996. Measured by satellite, not the unreliable hand of man. The wiggly blue line trending steadily upwards is the CO2 concentration. There is no sign of it affecting the temperature. Though CO2 probably raises the temperature a little, it is for all practical concerns irrelevant because other factors overpower it for decades at a time — which is why we point out the lack of warming over the last 15 years. The global warming hypothesis has been demolished. Click for larger version.

You’ve seen mine, now show me yours

On 29 March Hot Topic took exception to my factual assertion in relation to climate fraud that “Global warming has not happened for about 15 years, unless you take a micrometer to the thermometer. And if you have to do that just to detect warming, then it’s hardly dangerous, is it?” by thundering:

The certainty of Treadgold’s denial is only possible because he creates a carefully cultivated cocoon of ignorance around himself and around the true believers who worship at his blog. The world where the rest of us live is a much more uncomfortable place. We have to work with whatever reality throws at us. Retreating into a fantasy world where warming hasn’t happened for 15 years is a luxury only the deluded can afford.

Later that day I posted here: Continue Reading →

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Deadly effective manipulation

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This excellent post is from our friend Rupert Postlethwaite, a real scientist who is so good at putting two and two together he often has trouble getting them apart. However, he pretends to be so many people he can also, like any properly absent-minded professor, quite forget who he is. Rupert says a glance at this conference programme will reveal how professionally clever the climate alarmists are and I agree. But, given global temperatures have not risen significantly since about 1995, while at the same time the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere went up by about 9%, it is obvious that FACTORS OTHER THAN CO2 have a controlling influence on temperature. To douse this oh-so-serious sea level conference with copious quantities of cold sea water, you can easily find objective data on sea level rise in our part of the world. Visit the Australian South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project and check out the February 2012 report (pdf). From the Executive Summary on page 3: “Monthly sea levels during February 2012 were around 5cm higher than normal at Marshall Islands, PNG, Samoa and Cook Islands and as much as 12cm higher than normal at Solomon Islands. Sea levels were around 7cm lower than normal at Vanuatu. Sea levels at Kiribati, Nauru, Tuvalu, Fiji and Tonga were all near normal for this time of the year.” What was that about global sea levels rising with global temperature and always going up, never going down? Explain this, NIWA! – Richard Treadgold

the ocean

Gazing at the sea level; just like a navel gaze.

CO2 imagined to raise the oceans

Assisted by some mainly taxpayer or citizen-funded organisations, including the Royal Society of New Zealand, GNS Science, Victoria University and the Wellington City Council, the New Zealand Climate Change Centre is hosting yet another expensive climate jamboree in Wellington on May 10-11.

Sea-level Rise, Meeting the Challenge is nominally concerned with discussions of sea-level rise that is imagined as being caused by human carbon dioxide emissions.

Many Kiwis are concerned that New Zealand already has an expensive and ineffectual emissions trading scheme to help “stop climate change” (a banal and utterly impractical notion, if ever there were), and which the government shows no sign of repealing despite almost complete recalcitrance by other countries to mimic its crazy brave venture. Continue Reading →

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Even an oik has freedoms

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Imprisoned just for speaking

A Welsh district judge, John Charles, just barged through ancient legal protections for free speech and gaoled one Liam Stacey for 56 days for offensive tweets — essentially two months in pokey for speaking.

These tweets were obnoxiously filthy but the judge went too far. It should be possible to utter any offensive words in public without fear of arrest or legal sanction. If the words are wrong, if they accuse a person incorrectly, or make allegations without justification, then the speaker should expect to be charged with slander or similar. But so-called “hate speech” — merely insulting a person, organisation, community, city, nation or race gives insufficient grounds to deprive a person of liberty.

Shall it now be unlawful to craft insults or express hatred? Why should we not hate some people? Continue Reading →

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Climate Conversation v. Hot Topic et al.

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Alexa world-wide rankings

I bow to you, my reader.

As measured informally on my Alexa toolbar, you’ve raised this humble blog into a leading Kiwi site for sceptical discussion of global warming. Though many of you are silent and your participation limited to quiet reading, you’ve achieved a remarkable thing with your frequent loyal visits (I’ll be sure to keep the kettle hot).

It shows that north of sixty thousand visitors per month prefer a moderate tone over stridency and a restrained view of climate data better than a doomsday clamour. Large numbers! MSM, are you noticing?

In June last year there was a bit of a fuss over climate blog rankings and whether the numbers were reliable. Nothing to do with climate, of course.

Then a while back I reinstalled the Alexa toolbar, just out of interest. Apparently you have to give Alexa time to get settled information on your traffic, so I waited. Just now I noticed our world ranking is up to 844,719, having started at over 1.3 million. The NZ rank is under 900. Wow! So it’s time to tell you. Continue Reading →

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It’s not so easy to ignore your friends

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When being criticised, it’s relatively easy to ignore people you’ve never heard of, but it’s not so easy to ignore your friends. It’s possible that this astonishing rebuke from respected former NASA scientists, engineers and astronauts might change minds at NASA where world-wide sceptical opposition from strangers has not. h/t WUWT. Press release from SPPI.

Former NASA scientists, astronauts admonish agency on climate change position

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Blanquita Cullum

703-307-9510

bqview at mac.com

Joint letter to NASA Administrator blasts agency’s policy of ignoring empirical evidence

HOUSTON, TX – April 10, 2012. 49 former NASA scientists and astronauts sent a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden last week admonishing the agency for its role in advocating a high degree of certainty that man-made CO2 is a major cause of climate change while neglecting empirical evidence that calls the theory into question.

The group, which includes seven Apollo astronauts and two former directors of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, are dismayed over the failure of NASA, and specifically the Goddard Institute For Space Studies (GISS), to make an objective assessment of all available scientific data on climate change. They charge that NASA is relying too heavily on complex climate models that have proven scientifically inadequate in predicting climate only one or two decades in advance. Continue Reading →

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Yet again: climate scepticism is founded on facts, not faith

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Scepticism is not a psychological disorder, you morons

Though climate alarmists have claimed for several years that evidence for dangerous man-made global warming is “overwhelming”, it’s actually becoming harder and harder to find.

Thus it has instead become fashionable among climate alarmists to ignore what climate sceptics say and to discredit them with pseudo-psychological, ethical or moral inventions to explain why they say it. Anything but actually address what they say. Here are five examples. At the end are four facts that explain why climate scepticism arises spontaneously around the world — even without oil money. Continue Reading →

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Runaway warming impossible — Herald uninterested

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A week ago I offered the NZ Herald this short rebuttal of some alarmist climate nonsense from Carmen Gravatt (well, it’s really from Greenpeace but Carmen didn’t check it). The Herald has neither published nor acknowledged receipt of this so now you can see it and wonder with me why they turn down even moderate sceptical material. It goes without saying that the new, radical Greenpeace will flog this dead horse for years to come, but there’s no excuse for professional journalists to persist in ignoring well-known facts. When this climate revel is finally ended the Herald’s editors will deeply regret having adopted blinkers.

Carmen Gravatt’s gravely misleading Herald article of 15 March We don’t need extreme oil gives a gross distortion of a stupendously simple truth.

She blames oil for global warming, claiming we’ll cause “global average temperature [to soar] – uncontrollably.” But runaway warming is impossible. No credible climate scientist is making that claim — and it’s never happened before. Oil can cause real pollution and injury to humans and wildlife, but the global warming threat is imaginary, for no dangerous climatic influence from our emissions has been detected.

Jo Nova said in a report three years ago (Massive climate funding exposed) that the US government had poured $30 billion into pure climate research over 20 years. Yet the simple truth is that still nobody can point to a single piece of empirical evidence that man-made carbon dioxide has a significant effect on the global climate. Continue Reading →

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Quote of the week

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what a thing to say

An unimaginable proposal

“As a result — and for reasons that remain unexplained — the waters of the Southern Ocean may have begun to release carbon dioxide.”

Scientific American makes the most illogical statement I’ve heard in a while.

If there’s no reason for this event, why would one propose it?

An event is proposed for which no cause can be imagined. The author proposes something he has no reason to believe — or proposes something but can’t imagine why. This is nuts. It’s not science. Continue Reading →

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Solving the non-existent toothfish problem

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The Antarctic Ocean Alliance wants to create the largest-ever marine reserve around most of Antarctica. Why? The Herald published an article the other day by Geoff Keey, outlining the main issues. He makes a couple of strange comments.

First, he says the Ross Sea is “likely to be one [of] the last places in the Southern Ocean to lose sea ice because of climate change, making it an important refuge for ice-dependent animals.”

But Keey must be unaware that the Antarctic continent has lost no sea ice to climate change or any other cause. On the contrary, it has been gradually cooling over 30 years of observations. So it may be an important refuge, but not because its capacity to provide a refuge is diminishing or even threatened. Continue Reading →

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Sciblogs ignores climate facts

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Talk about spin.

Greenpeace went in to bat for the seabirds killed off by a bit of oil from the Rena – good on them. But they had a big, juicy agenda – killing off deep sea oil drilling near NZ. So they exaggerated the few Rena bird deaths. The 1300 little bodies collected became 20,000 dead, without evidence to justify the expansion.

Then they claimed that 1000 times more again “could” perish in a spill the size of the Gulf of Mexico disaster. That would mean 20 million dead birds. Well, that was ambiguously tentative, although they said later they weren’t talking just about bird deaths.

Our good friend Bryan Leyland complained to the Advertising Standards Authority over Greenpeace’s wild claims. The ASA agreed with him, saying Greenpeace made misleading claims and really shouldn’t. Continue Reading →

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