Bishop Hill False alarm
Mar 26, 2010 Climate: other Journals New Scientist in 2005:
Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age
The ocean current that gives western Europe its relatively balmy climate is stuttering, raising fears that it might fail entirely and plunge the continent into a mini ice age.
The dramatic finding comes from a study of ocean circulation in the North Atlantic, which found a 30% reduction in the warm currents that carry water north from the Gulf Stream.
The slow-down, which has long been predicted as a possible consequence of global warming, will give renewed urgency to intergovernmental talks in Montreal, Canada, this week on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
The American Geophysical Union press release 2010
New measurements of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, part of the global ocean conveyor belt that helps regulate climate around the North Atlantic, show no significant slowing over the past 15 years. The data suggest the circulation may have even sped up slightly in the recent past.
The findings are the result of a new monitoring technique, developed by oceanographer Josh Willis of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using measurements from ocean-observing satellites and profiling floats. The findings are published today in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).
Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age
Bishop Hill
Doug Keenan in the comments gives some of the backstory to the Bryden paper that was the source of the original New Scientist piece:
A scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory noticed that the paper had a simple error in arithmetic—and that when the error was corrected, there was no evidence of slowing circulation. The scientist, Petr Chylek, published his criticism of the paper in the popular journal Physics Today [2007]. I asked Chylek why his correction was not published in Nature. Chylek replied: "Although they [Nature] did not deny that my criticism was correct, they decided not to publish as being of no great interest to Nature readers".
Reader Comments (31)
I remember the scares of 2005. I was quite worried. I thought the science was settled. This new finding just confirms that AGW can cause anything to happen in any direction. A tweak of the validated computer models and out pop alarming answers.
"a 30% reduction in the warm currents that carry water north from the Gulf Stream". That's some reduction. Wouldn't we have noticed the difference?
"Renewed urgency to intergovernmental talks". Aah I see.
Was this one too fishy even for the IPCC to pick up?
LOL...no matter what happens, we will always have something to be alarmed about. Alarmism leads to fear, fear leads to money, money leads to power, power leads to the dark side...
Haha, brilliant. I remember having an argument with a co-worker over this very issue a few years ago. He was wittering on about the NAD slowing, causing a new ice-age in Europe. I pointed out that they'd only been measuring it for a few years and therefore had no idea what variability there was.
So, it turns out I was right and he was a mug. Sweet.
Are these entirely contradictory?
The 2005 report has the bulk of the apparent slowdown occurring before 1998 and the 2010 report says 'little change in 15 years'. There isn't much of an overlap.
Chuckled at the Met Office contribution by Richard Wood. If Bryden and Cunningham's analysis was reasonably kosher then the Met Office don't know how the atmosphere works.
Another scary prediction bites the dust. Another stain on the already dirty mac of the New Scientist.
Re Gareth '...then the Met Office don't know how the atmosphere works'
I fear that the Met Office doesn't give two hoots about how the atmosphere works. Under Napier, they are turning themselves into a state adjunct of the WWF, an organisation which he also helped to transform. In both cases, they end up with a name reflecting their origins but bearing no relationship to their current role and objectives, which are socio-political. Got to fix the system, before tinkering with little details like wildlife and weather!
The whole 'ocean conveyor' responsible for Europes' 'balmy' climate meme is extremely persistent and much loved by greens and fleet street hacks, and clearly by New Scientist as well.
Just, unfortunately, not really supported by much evidence. As this winter shows, our climates' 'balminess' (or barminess?) is mainly driven by the prevailing winds and atmospheric idiosyncracies. See next week for details.
Do not blame New Scientist, whose report is fairly based on the 2005 paper by Harry Bryden and co-researchers that was published in Nature.
A scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory noticed that the paper had a simple error in arithmetic—and that when the error was corrected, there was no evidence of slowing circulation. The scientist, Petr Chylek, published his criticism of the paper in the popular journal Physics Today [2007]. I asked Chylek why his criticism was not published in Nature. Chylek replied: "Although they [Nature] did not deny that my criticism was correct, they decided not to publish as being of no great interest to Nature readers".
[BH adds: link fixed per later comment. Also changed "correction" to "criticism" as per DK request]
Here is a set of failed predictions from alarmists and their witting or unwitting supporters:
http://www.c3headlines.com/predictionsforecasts/
Incomplete of course, but who can keep up!
Sadly I do blame the New Scientist. Under its management over the past few years it has become shallow and sensationalist and eager to uncritically swallow any scary AGW story that comes across its desk.
Interesting. If the AMOC is running slighly faster, wouldn't it be fair to say that it is carrying slightly more heat northward to the pole? I've read articles indicating that the equator is fairly self regulating through evaporation and cloud cover. More heat in the north and the same heat at the equator means a higher global mean temperature, doesn't it?
MrC
What do people think of Seager's paper in the Royal Meteorological Society Journal.."Is the Gulf Stream Responsible for Europe's Mild Winters?" -a paper that strongly challenges the global warming claim that “global warming could trigger a collapse in temperatures across western Europe due to collapse of the Gulf Stream etc”
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/gs/pubs/Seager_etal_QJ_2002.pdf
A more popular/reader friendly version here:
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/gs/pubs/Seager_AmSci_2006.pdf
It says that the main source of Europe’s mild climate is not the Gulf Stream as previously thought. The Pacific Ocean’s version of the gulf stream, the “Kuroshio current” does not reach as far as the northern latitiudes of Washington and British Columbia in north-west America. Yet the climate there is mild compared to similar latitudes in east asia on the west side of the Pacific such as Vladivostok. So something other than the Pacific Gulf Stream is keeping these latitidues in North America milder. It turns out the warmer climates on the east side of the Atlantic and Pacific are due to heat transfer from prevailing winds off the ocean, rather than the ocean currents themselves bringing in warm water ..This means we are not going to crash into an ice-age due to breakdown of the atlantic conveyor …
The only thing I noticed wasn't mentioned is the Jet Stream - a significant factor? After all, wasn't this winter's cold snap in part due to the Jet Stream moving south?
Maybe 'prevailing winds' (as discussed by Seager) and 'jet stream' could be viewed as one?
On a different subject, I got a response from No.10 Dowing Street e-petitions on the subject of suspending the CRU. In it they say:
"CRU’s analysis of temperature records is not funded by, prepared for, or published by the Government. The resulting outputs are not Government statistics.
Our confidence that the Earth is warming is taken from multiple sources of evidence and not only the HadCRUT temperature record, which CRU scientists contribute to. The same warming trend is seen in two independent analyses carried out in the United States, by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Goddard Institute of Space Studies at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). These analyses draw on the same pool of temperature data as HadCRUT, but use different methodologies to produce analyses of temperature change through time. Further evidence of this warming is found in data from instruments on satellites, and in trends of declining arctic sea ice and rising sea levels."
This business about the independence of data sets...they do admit that raw data is shared between HADCRUT and NOAA /NASA institutions but try to emphasise that different methodologies are used to treat the data. However the CRU scandal does expose close collusion between key figures in the different institutions on results and presentation and co-ordination of such results, does it not? Also more importantly, can anyone shed any light on the link between satellite data and terrestial data. I gather there is no link between those responsible for satellite records (e.g. John Christy, Roy Spencer ) and those responsible for terrestial datasets. However I had it in my head that there was a connection between satellite and terrestial datasets - that the satellite data is calibrated in some way against the terrestial data, so that if the surface datasets have been artificially altered in any way then this would also show itself to some extent in the satellite data. That is, until I read this from Roy Spencer himself on wattsupwiththat:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/04/january-uah-global-temperature-warmest/
"[NOTE: These satellite measurements are not calibrated to surface thermometer data in any way, but instead use on-board redundant precision platinum resistance thermometers (PRTs) carried on the satellite radiometers. The PRT's are individually calibrated in a laboratory before being installed in the instruments.]"
If there is no connection between satellite and terrestial data and the two show similar temperatures and trends, how does this alter perspectives on evidence of tampering with the terrestial datasets to show warming? I guess tampering of terrestial data prior to the existence of satellite data would still be under suspicion?
A Modest Cunning Plan for Assisting Economic Recovery.
Rather than just slashing essential services, hiking up indirect taxation, pouring Billions into madcap schemes and making electricity unaffordable, why not introduce a levy on all "Scientists".
Anyone producing a scary prediction about absolutely anything, on the basis of what "could" happen, as predicted by some computer model (or by their 'hunches') should pay £1,000 of their own money into a kitty. ALL their data and code to be publically accessible, without exception.
Anyone crony reviewing the prediction to also pay £1,000 into the kitty.
Any "scientific" journal publishing this scary prediction (whether crony reviewed or not) to invest £50,000 in the same kitty.
Any Campaigning Group disseminating the scary prediction in order to con people into making donations to also stump up £50,000.
Any politician picking up the scary prediction and using it to try to garner votes or gain influence to shell out £25,000 of their own money. No, really. Out of their bank account.
Any newspaper or media outlet picking up the scary prediction and publishing it to fork out £100,000 to the same kitty UNLESS they also simultaneously publish the views of another credible scientist, pointing out all the uncertainties, inconsistencies and improbabilities in the prediction and giving equal space and prominence to this contrary view.
Any Scientific Institution adopting the scary prediction without the agreement of at least 60% of the Membership to also contribute £100,000.
Any Big Business or Big Finance organisation using the scary prediction to create or further some investment or trading scam to deposit £5,000,000.
If, at the end of five years, there is strong evidence, on the basis of actual scientific observations and properly conducted experiment that the prediction is accurate, the money to be returned with bank rate interest.
Anyone having analysed the data & code and proving that the scary prediction is crap to receive 50% of all sums deposited from a grateful public.
Otherwise the money should be sent to the Treasury for them to waste in the usual way.
OK, I gotta admit. There is scope for endless debate about definitions, exemptions, my suggested amounts and all the rest.
But can you imagine how this would boost actual science rather than the pathetic bullshit that we get served now? Don't you thing it would concentrate minds?
Obviously, it would make Steve McIntyre a very rich man. Nothing wrong with that!
"they decided not to publish as being of no great interest to Nature readers"
Nature readers not interested in science or truth? Gosh.
The Physics Today link posted by Doug in his comment and contained in the update links to an anecdote about Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and Arthur Eddington. The correct link is for what I assume to be the previous letter (p14, 1 rather than p14, 2), which can be found here.
I remember the original too - it got a significant amount of media coverage. Then a couple of years later its author, without media reporting, announced that further meausrement had shown it wasn't. The implication was that somebody had gone out the next year & measured the current rather than any sort of arithmetical error.
I must acmit I am quite shocked & I try to be cynical, that Nature would again refuse to publish a truthful discrediting of something they have published. This is what they did when they repeatedly refused to publish McIntyre's dissection of the Hockey Stick maths but (A) the political push supporting that was much bigger, no government having staked its integrity on the Gulf Stream stopping & (B) doing so once could be an accident - twice is fraud.
I do not think Nature can now claim to adhere to scientific principles.
"Although they [Nature] did not deny that my criticism was correct, they decided not to publish as being of no great interest to Nature readers".
I had to read that a number of times before it finally sunk in. I'm about 2/3 the way through The Hockey Stick Illusion and shouldn't be shocked anymore by stuff like this, but I can't help it. Absolute disgrace.
It did rather remind me of the bit where Nature rejects McIntyre's submission because it is technical and therefore not of interest to their readers.
Douglas Keenan's link also contains "Bryden's paper as submitted for publication to Nature included a question mark at the end of the title, suggesting only a possibility that the circulation might be slowing down. On the editor's insistence, the question mark was removed, and the title was changed into a positive statement that caused a considerable stir."
Would anyone like to suggest a date after which one might incline to view Nature as being unmistakeably crooked?
The only time we need to worry is when they say NOT to worry. Now is the time to worry.
Nature's stock is crashing daily. Its blatant bias, shameless inaccuracy and rampant denialism in refusing to publish acknowledged truth (never mind denying its readers *technical* insights, perish the thought) gives it no more credibility than the the average UK tabloid newspaper.
As far as I'm concerned that carefully nurtured brand has done a Ratner. It peddles worthless crap.
The problem we seem to be facing here is if a study's initial results seem to be consistent with increased rate of global warming, the authors don't check their work. On the other hand, if it results are inconsistent, they try again.
And, I might add, when the new results are consistent with more rapid global warming, they don't check those.
@J Ferguson,
If something confirms AGW/CC in expected or accelerated form, there is nothing to check. The consensus is confirmed.
If it does not however, it is obviously in error, and must be debunked, rebutted or refuted, depending on how seriously it is in error.
In any of the heretic categories it is simply necessary for an approved 'climate scientist' to disagree in spoken or written form for the correct status to be achieved. In extreme cases a disapproving frown has been demonstrated to be enough.
The initial report came the year after The Day After Tomorrow was released. It is perhaps not surprising it was given undue buoyancy. *Disaster could happen* will alway trump *we don't know what's happening* and *there's nothing to worry about*.
@chuckles
These guys are giving religion a bad name.
I beleive it was early 2004 when I read in Discover of this speculation. Its source was Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, which along with the University of East Anglia was the source of all the hype in the 1970s about an oncoming Ice Age.
I almost had my eyebrows fly off my forehead in reading of it then and I get a belly laugh even now.
The very physics of the principle they talk about is just WRONG.
- Sinking water near Iceland cannot SUCK water north from down near the coast of Florida.
--- Suction takes from the nearest source, the easiest source
--- When there are multiple sources for filling a low pressure zone, for each source scavenged from, there is a concomitant pressure drop. The "suction" pressure differential from a sinking - which sinking is a slow process, BTW - thus gets less and less the farther from the sinking location. By a few miles away the pressure differential that is available would be at zero. When it hits zero, no flow occurs - at least not from this cause.
- Every single "Atlantic Conveyor" map I have ever seen leaves something out of the Gulf Stream: THE GULF OF MEXICO.
--- The source of the heat is the sun-baking that the water receives in the slow clockwise flow around the Gulf of Mexico, which carries the heat out through the Florida Strait and into the Atlantic at the southeren end of the Gulf Stream. Any Atlantic Conveyor that ignores the Gulf of Mexico is either stupid or an intentional misrepresentation.
--- If the suction is supposed to stop the Gulf Stream, what do they propose happens to all that heat accumulating in the Gulf of Mexico? They don't even address this!
--- And where does the water go that comes out of the Florida Strait? And they don't address this!
--- They act is if that heat build-up just ceases to exist.
- The REAL force that move the Gulf Stream waters from Florida's coast NORTH and EAST to the North Atlantic is the Coriolis Effect, which PUSHES the water, via the angular momentum of each water molecule.
--- Any Atlantic Conveyor article or paper or study that does not even MENTION the Coriolis Effect is either wrong or intentional misrepresentation.
- (Assisting the eastward vector of the flow of the Gulf Stream is the shape of the American coastline, which translates some of the northward vector to an eastward vector.)
Thus, only two things could stop the Gulf Stream carrying all that mass of heat toward Europe.
One is if the Florida Strait is closed, which would force the waters to flow as shown in their maps.
The other is if the Earth itself stopped rotating. And if that happens, one of the least of our problems would be the Gulf Stream and Europe cooling down. All ocean currents and air circulation other than convection would stop. We would have 6 month days - ONE per year. Or, worse, if - like the moon - the same side of the Earth faced the Sun year-round, one side would bake in 24-hour day and the other would suffer 24-hour nights. So, as long as the Earth turns and the Gulf of Mexico stays where it is, Europe will receive the warmth of the Gulf Stream.
The theory is wrong on so many levels it makes me just freaking angry. How could supposed scientists miss the obvious and come up with such stupid ideas? And how can so many people not see the errors?
@Gareth -
NO. The original report came out BEFORE the movie came out. I laughed when I heard about the movie, that they were going to take such a patently stupid idea (see my comment above) as the Woods Hole people had come up with and scare the bejeezus out of people.
In fact, I found a Christian Science Monitor article even earlier, from Sept 26, 2002,
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0926/p14s02-sten.html.
The movie was released May 28, 2004.
The first article I read was in the January, 2004, issue of Discover Magazine, which I read in December 2003. (If my memory about it is correct. I can't get the article without subscribing.)
@Chuckles -
Yes, if the high priests have said it is so, who is to argue? It is spoken.
This is EXACTLY what the early scientists had to contend with - truth from on high.
The Royal Society was a group of inquiring minds who decided that NOTHING was true unless it was supported by repeatable experiment, by reality. But then, in their own reality, even before that first generation of eminently rational gentlemen died, they were already violating that dictum, and Robert Hooke was fit to be tied about it. That was in the 1600s.
When Agassiz and his Ice Ages and Lyell with his Uniformitarianism and Darwin with his Evolution came along in the first half of the 1800s, modern science (in spite of not always following its own rules of decorum) felt it had finally left behind the superstitions of religion. (But I for one am not so sure those three haven't been turned into a latter-day synod. While 100% against Creationism, I am not sold on the arguments of those three, either. Catastrophism has had a new rebirth since comet Shoemaker-Levy, and the dust not only hasn't settled, it has only just begun to be kicked up. Uniformitarianism has had a few chinks put in it. And we are a long way from having a clear idea where we are headed. But that is for another thread...)
Sometimes I work myself up into a lather over "scientist's" conclusions that are nothing more than speculation, in a lot more fields than just climatology.
I don't have a problem with that, as long as they correctly label their guesses as guesses, but they rarely do. The certainty is merely the hubris of the "modern."
Science is ALWAYS just at some point along the continuum. Even in our modern times - which is really just the latest "modern" times.
All pontifications of our time will be shown, in time, to be in error - no matter HOW certain we are of that not being the case. (I don't use the word "all" there lightly. I DO think that is the case.) All points in time are considered by its inhabitants to be the apex of knowledge - yet to people 50-100, years later, most especially by 200 years later, every one of those periods is looked at as if their inquirers were people just off the boat. Thus is the lesson of time.
AGW is teaching so many of us that the spoutings of scientists are no more than pontifications from on high. From Monsignor Mann, Pope Jones and The Dalai Hansen for example.
We are getting a dose of what Newton and Bacon, Galileo and Copernicus, Kepler and their predecessors had to deal with. And our rationality will be better for it.
Main headline in BBC Science and Environment section...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8589512.stm
:-0
Nial.
Feet2thefire
Catastrophism got it's first boost around 1980 with the Alvarez's suggestions of an asteroid impact being the cause of the end Cretaceous extinction. While the evidence is not entirely unquestioned, it seems that this catastrophe theory has largely won out over the more uniformitarian argument relating to climate change with the Deccan Traps volcanic eruptions.
As a geologist, I think the principle of uniformitarianism is a foundation in much the same way as Newtonian mechanics is for physics - good enough for most situations but with limitations that mean you have to be careful not to over-use them.
As for evolution, I think there is little doubt that Darwin was correct in 'broad brush' terms (anyone who argues that we are not closely related to the great apes has no observational skills) . There are mechanistic problems at the genetic scale in particular that still require consideration.
Regarding the initial story, I never understood how the system would not be self-regulating anyway - the NAD was supposedly being slowed by heating leading to too much run-off from Greenland, diluting the cold salty water that sinks to the south of Greenland. Slow down the conveyor and cause cooling in this area and you reduce the run-off and dilution effects.