Climate scientists struggle to explain warming slowdown

REUTERS ^ | April 16, 2013 | Reuters Correspondent Alister Doyle

[Moseley]

Scientists are struggling to explain a slowdown in climate change that has exposed gaps in their understanding and defies a rise in global greenhouse gas emissions.

Often focused on century-long trends, most climate models failed to predict that the temperature rise would slow, starting around 2000. Scientists are now intent on figuring out the causes and determining whether the respite will be brief or a more lasting phenomenon.

Getting this right is essential for the short and long-term planning of governments and businesses ranging from energy to construction, from agriculture to insurance. Many scientists say they expect a revival of warming in coming years.

Theories for the pause include that deep oceans have taken up more heat with the result that the surface is cooler than expected, that industrial pollution in Asia or clouds are blocking the sun, or that greenhouse gases trap less heat than previously believed.

The change may be a result of an observed decline in heat-trapping water vapor in the high atmosphere, for unknown reasons. It could be a combination of factors or some as yet unknown natural variations, scientists say.

Weak economic growth and the pause in warming is undermining governments' willingness to make a rapid billion-dollar shift from fossil fuels. Almost 200 governments have agreed to work out a plan by the end of 2015 to combat global warming.

[Moseley]

Here's a thought: Maybe they were wrong?

[Moseley]

NOTE that REUTERS requires an excerpt. For the full article -- including the hogwash trying to explain away the facts -- you have to go to: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/16/us-climate-slowdown-idUSBRE93F0AJ20130416

[IbJensen]

The only problem with the gorebal warming fiasco is that if they pray for things to heat up nothing will happen.

God doesn’t listen to or grant the prayerful requests of fools whose only goal is to ruin civilization.

On the other hand, Satan listens to them as he listens to the entire political miasma. Any time their wishes are granted it’s strictly by accident.

[Mouton]

I guess they are searching for some anomoly so they can continue their mission to seek funds to further support their theory.

I give Rush credit on this when he said consensus is not settled science. Of course unless it is something from the left. If we say Radical Islam is an enemy and severe threat to the western world, the left says that is not settled regardless of the consensus saying it is.

[Da Coyote]

One can only imagine what Sheldon Cooper would say about the climate clowns.

[headstamp 2]

“Getting this right is essential for the short and long-term planning of governments and businesses ranging from energy to construction, from agriculture to insurance. Many scientists say they expect a revival of warming in coming years. “

They have no idea why it “slowed” but they expect a revival soon. Got it.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

It was the Ocean, see, the ocean, it swallowed up all the heat, then, no, it was the aerosols from Chinese power plants, yeah, that’s the ticket, it was the Chinese, see, the Chinese did it, with all their power plants. And it’s worse, see. So now I think I got, we got it right this time, see?

[C210N]

They are expecting a double peak, or a double-ended hockey-stick, or whatever, any day now...

[556x45]

Here’s another: Maybe they aren’t scientists.

[Tzimisce]

Global Warming scientists struggle to keep the lie going....

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

consensus is not ... science

When all the astrologists and theologians in the Vatican agree, am I to believe some obscure Pisan mathematician who says that the earth whirls around its poles and the circles around the sun, a proposition that is both against the evidence of my senses and contrary to Holy Scripture?

[Mouton]

I am sure you have a theory about whether or not you should so why not just spell it out.

Climate change in my book is correct, there is and always has been climate change. Now, whether or not it is man made I have my severe doubts, after all, man was not on the planet a million years ago now was he?

[FroggyTheGremlim]

It's

Bush's

Sarah Palin's

The Tea Party's

Right-Wing Extremist's

The GOP's

not our

fault!

[Billthedrill]

No real scientist is ever dismayed by new data, nor does he feel threatened by the prospect of having to modify a theory. Political activists, however, are.

[MrB]

It’s funny how they get so confused, it’s because they go about it backwards.

agenda->”solution”->conclusions->theory->evidence

[El Cid]

When all the astrologists and theologians in the Vatican agree, am I to believe some obscure Pisan mathematician who says that the earth whirls around its poles and the circles around the sun, a proposition that is both against the evidence of my senses and contrary to Holy Scripture?

I know you were engaging in sarcasm to ridicule today's Global Warming Chicken Littles, but to be fair, it was primarily the 'scientists' of the day that were going after Galileo. They were 'schooled' in the Ptolemaic model of Astronomy, and they didn't like this upstart telling them that they were wrong. They were the ones who leaned on the Pope to tell him that he needed to slap down this 'infidel'. And no, Holy Scripture doesn't say anything about the Earth's place in the Solar System. It tells us that 'He hangeth the Earth on nothing' (perceptive insights for someone writing some 4000 years ago), but the primary focus of this Book is to tell us about a God of love and justice reaching out to lost mankind - and it doesn't share a lot of insights regarding physics.

[SampleMan]

Climate scientist, "x+2=5, therefore manmade global warming"

Critics, "We just examined 'x' and quantified it as being 5"

Climate scientist "x+2-2=5, therfore manmade global warming"

[DuncanWaring]

As Michael Crichton put it in his “Aliens Cause Global Warming” lecture, “There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”

[katana]

Here's a thought: Maybe they were wrong?

There comes a point in the evolution of any scientific hoax when the perpetrators have too much invested to ever feel safe admitting the truth of what they've done. Besides, well earned though it may be, the destruction of their professional reputations would be unbearable. Most of them will cling to this fraud to their dying breath.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Actually, the Vatican-Galileo controversy is a lot more complicated than the simple morality tale of a conflict between superstition and science that silly people like Bertolt Brecht make it out to be. A good precis can be found in Arthur Koestler's The Sleepwalkers. Harvard Astrophysicist turned historian of science, Owen Gingerich in The Eye of Heaven gives a modern scientist's perspective. Ptolemaic astronomy would be seen as a better physical theory in modern terms. What Copernicus accomplished was little more than a change in coordinates, and to less convenient coordinate system.

To complicate things further, Koestler suggests that the Jesuits were convinced Copernicans by the time of Galileo kerfuffle, but wanted to introduce Copernicanism in a manner that wouldn't cause a fuss or get anyone excommunicated. They saw Galileo's needlessly confrontational style as counterproductive. There is something to this since De Revolutionibus had been out for 80 years without being placed in the Index until Galileo raised a ruckus.

My little analogy was for the edification of those whose minds are incapable of Jesuitical subtlety.