I'm taking a breather, too. Discussing this subject on Free Republic as I have done for quite awhile kinda reminds me of this guy:
Posted on 03/19/2008 1:09:27 PM PDT by Lazamataz
Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.
This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.
In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.
"There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says. So the buildup of heat on Earth may be on a brief hiatus. "Global warming doesn't mean every year will be warmer than the last. And it may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming."
In recent years, heat has actually been flowing out of the ocean and into the air. This is a feature of the weather phenomenon known as El Nino. So it is indeed possible the air has warmed but the ocean has not. But it's also possible that something more mysterious is going on.
That becomes clear when you consider what's happening to global sea level. Sea level rises when the oceans get warm because warmer water expands. This accounts for about half of global sea level rise. So with the oceans not warming, you would expect to see less sea level rise. Instead, sea level has risen about half an inch in the past four years. That's a lot.
Willis says some of this water is apparently coming from a recent increase in the melting rate of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica.
"But in fact there's a little bit of a mystery. We can't account for all of the sea level increase we've seen over the last three or four years," he says.
One possibility is that the sea has, in fact, warmed and expanded — and scientists are somehow misinterpreting the data from the diving buoys.
But if the aquatic robots are actually telling the right story, that raises a new question: Where is the extra heat all going?
Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research says it's probably going back out into space. The Earth has a number of natural thermostats, including clouds, which can either trap heat and turn up the temperature, or reflect sunlight and help cool the planet.
That can't be directly measured at the moment, however.
"Unfortunately, we don't have adequate tracking of clouds to determine exactly what role they've been playing during this period," Trenberth says.
It's also possible that some of the heat has gone even deeper into the ocean, he says. Or it's possible that scientists need to correct for some other feature of the planet they don't know about. It's an exciting time, though, with all this new data about global sea temperature, sea level and other features of climate.
"I suspect that we'll able to put this together with a little bit more perspective and further analysis," Trenberth says. "But what this does is highlight some of the issues and send people back to the drawing board."
Trenberth and Willis agree that a few mild years have no effect on the long-term trend of global warming. But they say there are still things to learn about how our planet copes with the heat.
I'm taking a breather, too. Discussing this subject on Free Republic as I have done for quite awhile kinda reminds me of this guy:
bump
“Or it could mean scientists aren’t quite understanding what their robots are telling them.”
Translation = “We will have to alter the measurements the robots are recording upward.”
Are you familiar with Government "Spending Cuts" ? Same principle.
“That could mean global warming has taken a breather.”
Or it could mean...... Strawmen don’t breathe.
The whole theory of AGW as espoused by St. Algore is a myth and never was supported by true science. Despite attempts by the liberal media and other wacko groups to see “proof” of global warming in every above normal high temperature, melting glacier etc. the data doesn’t support the conclusions of the model. This is another example of how we supposedly know the cause of global warming and will kill the global economy to stop it, but can’t explain why actual data doesn’t support the premise.
Satellite altimetry; radar bounced off the ocean surface repeatedly to determine sea surface height. Over the long term, numerous multiple measurements allow variability to be "subtracted out" (a simple phrase for a more complex calculation) and the long-term sea level rise signal emerges.
Intriguingly, when I first image-searched, I found a 2004 plot that indicated that the rate of rise was 2.8 mm/year. This plot shows 3.4 mm/year. There are two spikes in late 2005 and late 2007 (probably) that may explain the slight increase in the trend value.
About 1/3 of the rise is attributed to thermal expansion of the oceans. Another 1/3 is attributable to melting of ice on land. The source of the final 1/3 isn't clear. Despite that, if there is a slowdown of ocean warming or a slight cooldown, as the article suggests is possible, this should be apparent in the sea level data.
The Web site where this plot was obtained is University of Colorado at Boulder -- Sea Level Change. This site has good information on current sea level change.
It must suck to be a GW “scientist” if the data doesn’t show warming. My guess is there’s not much fear or grant money in “the Earth is normal”, so they’d better find data to show the coming ice age.
“Less rapid warming” is what they call it when it cools down!
No, I think you are all wrong. On warm years there are a lot of people peeing in the oceans; on cool years, they are putting ice in the oceans. That’s what I think and I’m sticking by it.
The sea levels are changing.
Some of them even go down. Some have gone down so far there is no water left. These places abound all over the planet.
But. They are ‘small’ compared to the great oceans.
So, Why would the major oceans sea levels go up?
Well, the Earth is bombarded with tiny ice particles from space, to the tune of millions of tons a year. (and was noticed as a ‘background noise’ by those in telecommunications and radio astronomy, and wasn’t understood until recently)
The Oceans have been growing, and growing, since the Earth began.
Used to be, the Earth had no significant oceans.
The Earth grows all the time, expanding at the deep ocean Ridges (ring of fire).
If one starts at those ridges, and removes (shrinks) them, all the continental plates merge back together.
Yes, there used to be a SUPERCONTINENT, and it covered the entire surface of the Earth.
All the planets ‘grow’ in size over time.
We can see that on the surface of Mars.
We can see that from a study of the ocean floors.
The concept that the continents are ‘free’ to float about and bang into each other like icebergs in the Artic, is as true as C02 causing global warming.
Dinosaurs ruled the world, and they were extremely large, and even the pterodactyls could fly. This was because the Earth was smaller, had less ‘mass’, and therefore less gravitational pull.
They started dying out, in part due to catastrophic asteroid collisions, but some survived, and would exist today.
The ‘real’ reason is that ‘they couldn’t pull their weight, anymore’.
SUMMARY: I heard this phrase, and every day I find it to be truer, and truer.
“Every thing you were taught, is wrong.”
Ehrlich wrote an article that appeared in New Scientist in December 1967. In that article, Ehrlich predicted that the world would experience famines sometime between 1970 and 1985 due to population growth outstripping resources.
Ehrlich wrote that "the battle to feed all of humanity is over ... In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." Ehrlich also stated, "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980," and "I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks that India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971."
By the way, out of curiousity I took a 3.4 mm annual rise multiplied by 4 years and converted to inches, and it comes out to 0.535 inches. So that’s consistent with the uncited numbers you asked about.
Some times the nuttiness of my fellow freepers wobbles me.
I have been amazed at your stamina! For all of our hard debate, I think you're alright.
To be clear, I mean “since 2003” land temps, not the water ones written about later here.
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Right is Wrong. Left is Right. Good is Evil.
Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Don’t oceans take like 400 years to heat up AFTER a cyclical global warming event? So is this an echo telling us that the warm days are coming to an end?
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