Bishop Hill Hoskins' heat haze
Dec 14, 2013 Climate: Oceans Climate: Surface 
The Guardian has obtained some more details of the meeting between Royal Society fellows and representatives of the GWPF, apparently from Brian Hoskins:
Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, of Imperial College London, said: "There was not any major disagreement on the science we presented, which is an interesting thing."
In particular, Hoskins debunked the so-called warming "pause", describing how excess heat has continued to be trapped by greenhouse gases for the past 15 years, showing that global warming is continuing.
He said air temperature alone is a very limited view of climate change, given that 93% of all trapped heat enters the oceans.
"I can't remember any challenge of that in the meeting," he said.
It would be interesting to examine Hoskins' earlier public pronouncements on anthropogenic global warming to see how often he discusses changes to ocean heat content rather than the "limited view" represented by surface temperatures.
Perhaps readers would like to take a look.
Reader Comments (188)
Schrodinger's Cat, is your "...solar activity peak coincided with the peak in warming but climate scientists ignored that fact." a puzzle? SKS lists 20 or so papers on the subject since 1998 so are we supposed to figure out whether it was the wrong sort of scientists or in the wrong journals or at the wrong universities or .... Or is it just that they find solar activity relatively insignificant - will you only accept that they haven't ignored it when they give your preferred result?
I'm still interested though which paper you trust to give an accurate temperature profile of the last few thousand years and what you think is behind your sinusoidal pattern. Some sort of giant climatic oscillation? Come on you must have a theory. And do let us know who you want to pay for the new-energy research, I'm fascinated by contradictions like that (maybe you are a socialist in which case there isn't one).
ptw, what is the basis of your "skepticism"? From what you write, you strike me as someone with little understanding of physics or the climate debate, despite having commented here for 18 months. How can you seriously be "skeptical" of climate science if you understand so little of it?
Chandra,
If you need to ask about these matters, you are clearly not very well informed.
Please try to pay attention and read scientific sources rather than just warmist ones.
SCat, I understand well what sources there are, I was just curious about you. I'll take it from your non-answer that you were unaware that the contribution of solar activity has been well researched and found to be slight. I guess the Bishop and Watts failed to tell you that. And your part-sinusoid is just a pretty pattern with no mechanism behind it and therefore no way of knowing where it is going. Just wishful thinking, in other words.
That you won't nail your colours to any particular temperature reconstruction is no surprise as no "skeptic" will do so. Once you constrain yourself in that way your would no longer be free to make contradictory statements about temperature records.
As for your inability to identify how you want energy research to be paid for, no surprise there either. The only research you are likely to want is into better ways of extracting fossil fuels. You are just another of the "nothing but fossils" brigade.
Chandra
Question
Chandra, which "particular temperature" data set do you "nail your colours to"?
Chandra, let me make the correction for you: “…your part-sinusoid is just a pretty pattern with no known mechanism behind it…” There. Fixed.
Do you deny the Little Ice Age, with temperatures about 2°C cooler than now?
Do you deny the Mediaeval Warming Period, with temperatures about 1°C warmer than now?
Do you deny the Dark Ages, with temperatures cooler than now?
How about the Roman era, with temperatures about 2°C warmer than now?
All acknowledged by warmists, AGWists, and sceptics… erm, but, I expect, not you. Then you have the audacity to call those like Schrodinger’s Cat “deniers”!
Now, what do you think caused that rise and fall; which looks suspiciously like a wave form to me, but you, no doubt, know better – though seem unable to provide any evidence to back your argument. Strange, that.
Then you make another tremendous leap of (non-)logic: “You are just another of the "nothing but fossils" brigade.” – probably as is everyone who does not agree with you. Out of interest, what other conspiracy theories do you have?
Have you found any evidence of aquifer contamination by hydraulic fracturing?
Imagine the ridicule a skeptic would have received 20 years ago had he suggested that the excess heat would be absorbed by the ocean. These people are beyond parody.
Radical Rodent
This is probably the most up-to-date ensemble paper on Holocene temperatures.
http://content.csbs.utah.edu/~mli/Economics%207004/Marcott_Global%20Temperature%20Reconstructed.pdf
Your values for temperature deviations over the last two millennia would seem to be rather exaggerated. Look at Fig.1B.
Note particularly that the Roman and MWP temperatures are similar to today's. The overall trend over the last two millennia has also been a decline in temperature to the latter 19th century of about 0.5C per millennium.
Note also that HadCRUt, GISS amd other records based on the current observational record show a recovery to MWP levels at a rate of 0.6C per century.
I also see no long term sinusoidal pattern, unless it is small enough to be lost in the confidence limits.
Have you found any evidence of aquifer contamination by hydraulic fracturing?
Dec 15, 2013 at 11:41 PM | Radical Rodent
Pennsylvania's environment department have been issuing Notices of Violation to shale gas drillers at the rate of one a month. Most are not due to leaking wells, which only happens if there is damage to, or poor installation of the well casing. The biggest problem is leakage or spillage from surface storage of fracking fluid.
Hoskins and his ilk first predicted parabolic temperature rise, then denied there was any pause for many years (it was just 'noise'), then admitted a pause due to natural variation that would end in 2009 after which temperatures would shoot up, then finally they declare several contradictory excuses for the continuing pause - each presented with 100% certainty despite almost zero data. At what point will they wake up and smell what they're shoveling? Oh I know - when the funding dries up!
chandra, you are capable of wasting a lot of words without conveying much. A lot of descriptors cross my mind too when I read your rants but I I don't put them to paper. The point is not about you having really interesting explanations for the names you call people but to move beyond.
A number of years ago, it was simply enough to invoke the back-radiation of atmospheric greenhouse gases to explain excess surface heating. Anyone who didn't buy this sequence was labeled a denier. Now, it appears, if you don't buy the deep ocean heating as an explanation you'd be labeled a denier. Clearly, a denier is anyone who isn't ready to swallow your incompetent science.
Entropic man Dec 16, 2013 at 1:00 AM
Presumably you're confirming what Radical has said?
My proposal was that you could be rude if you were rude under your own name. But if you were sheltering behind a pseudoname you had to be polite or you got a "yellow card" (@osseo - neat) etc. I was criticised on grounds of "free speech" which was a rather silly. Speech is everywhere constrained even here (think racist hate speech, paedophile information exchange, abusing the Koran, or feelthy words). Also for being too thin-skinned. Probably fair comment but google for "suicide social media child" for a contrary view. Finally I am regular reader and an occasional user of the tip jar.
@Chandra: the Law of Conservation of Energy applied to the interaction of EM waves and matter is from 'Atmospheric Physics' by Goody and Yung: Ox Ac Press. qdot = -Div Fv where qdot is the monochromatic rate of transfer of heat energy per unit volume of matter, Div is the Divergence operator and Fv is the monochromatic radiation flux density.
Integrate this over all wavelengths and time and Delta Q = -Delta t.Delta I where Delta Q is the change of heat content of that volume of matter, Delta t is the time interval and Delta I is the vector sum of the Radiation Fields.
At the Earth's surface, the loss of heat from the surface absorbed as IR radiation by the atmosphere is the difference of the surface RF and the opposite direction atmospheric RF. This means the atmosphere heats by 23 W/m^2 = 396 - 333 - 60, the latter being the net surface IR to Space via the 'atmospheric window'. The K-T 'Energy budget' exaggerates atmospheric IR heating by 157.5/23 = 6.85, minus a bit of IR from stratospheric heating.
Fair enough, Peter, and the Bishop does moderate people’s language to a degree by snipping. However, much of the list you gave says more about the person who types it than who reads it; however, none of them could be contrived from any of the subjects that The Bishop posts, so he would be quite right to snip them for being too far off-topic. I still maintain that to fall into mindlessly insulting your opponent is to admit that you have lost the argument; you then become a troll, and fair game for anyone, prior to removal by the good Bishop.
There is nothing that you, or anyone else, can say that will offend me; I might be surprised, disappointed or annoyed, but certainly not offended, nor depressed. Remember that old, old saying: “Sticks and stones…”? Apart from the bruising of your ego, what physical harm do you suffer if you were called a stupid honky/kyke/nigger? (or, even worse, Welsh – ye gods, but I can be so cruel!)
This is the blog of Bishop Hill. You are not forced to come here, nor forced to read; you are welcome to post whatever comments you think are relevant. If you are offended by any of the replies, then it might be a good recommendation that you stay away; indeed, you might be better staying in the carefully cossetted world such as the BBC has to offer.
Finally, we only have your word for it that “Peter Mott” is not a pseudonym. What if you have a name that sounds like a pseudonym? Mrs and Mrs and Mrs Radical decided to label all those of my litter with names that would not lead to stereotyping; the only exception is Colin, but she doesn’t go out much, now.
@radical rodent. Yes, the biggest difficulty with my proposal is to identify real names - that would take work which the Bishop likely would not want to undertake. The other difficulty is that if you use Facebook you will know that even under real names people seem to fall into abuse and name-calling at the least provocation!
"Peter Mott" is my real name but which one? :-)
One thing that has suddenly occurred to me, Peter, is that you still have not quite grasped the scale of the con that is being inflicted upon us. Should you realise what we are aware of – and very, very frightened of – then you will be surprised how moderate with our language we are being.
Our fear is not of global warming, but of policies and, worse, actions by governments that are going to destroy this country, and much of the western world. Think of that as your gas and electricity bills mount into several hundred pounds per month, yet you still cannot get warm.
chandra
should I be supporter of warmism , when I understand little of climate?
Why? Is there any precedent that the establishment "knows better" in the last 10.000 years.
i ask a simple question I get leftist character assassination over me.
This Downward Longwave Radiation seems the same as the Upward Longwave Radiation.
In elementary class they learnt me to cross away same amounts in an equation.
comments, ideas, opinions, "its bush fault!", "obama knows better look , one of his astroturfed bestsellers", "yes but the BBC says.."
@radical rodent
I read euan mearns blog at http://euanmearns.com so I am pretty much abreast of the issues. I think you sound too frightened even panicked. And I think it's all more cockup and cowardice than con. But it is pretty serious and not at all clear what will happen. But best to look for bases for optimism!
Great phrase. Thank you very much for your input.
80% of facebook is astroturf
I have 12 facebook ids, would you like a male/female/or a war-of-the-worlds id ?
Obama's "friends" were once sampled and they were all fake friends.
Peter Mott
It's a "convergence of interest", I think.
Conspiracy (which is how some people see it) requires equal partners, at least to an extent.
The comments that have been sparked by the Hone post (A sudden realisation) are starting to suggest the possibility that the eco-nuts have been largely useful idiots in a war by the oil majors on coal. Makes sense to me.
As for the troughers, I said some time ago that in a perfect world giving Yeo the chairmanship of the E&CC Select Committee made sense. Here is a man with an interest in and knowledge of climate change matters; make use of his expertise. Unfortunately we do not live in a perfect world and he has not been quite the objective chairman that one might have hoped for.
And as for the CCC ... nobody in government or advising it through a statutory body ought to be allowed anywhere near any organisation that has any chance of benefiting from the advice it gives. Since the UK government and the UK civil service used to have the reputation of being the most honest, the most honourable and the least corruptible group of rulers in the world it is hardly surprising that a majority of the population either still believe that to be the case or are just waking up to the possibility that our rulers might but just as venal as any other lot.
What is surprising is that this state of affairs should hold under a Conservative government since while the Left has largely believed that mankind is basically honest if given the chance it has always been the Right that has taken the view that humanity is inclined towards sin and needs to be carefully watched.
As my very first employer said, "I trust everyone; I just keep checking on them because that way I know I can trust them".
(Have a look at the 'top climate official likely to be jailed' thread for further details.)
And this is why RR is right to be frightened. Nobody is checking on the fat cats that Rose refers to in his article yesterday. There is a cat's cradle of interlocking interests in and around the renewables/CO2/government/science meme which is operating for the benefit of a relatively small number mostly already rich at the expense of ordinary people.
It started as cock-up; certainly cowardice plays a part among those too far locked in to dare break ranks; con it now certainly is. And none of this has any bearing on the facts of climate or global warming. The science (if there ever was any science) has long ago been suborned by the grubby little bottom-feeders who don't give a flying f*** for anyone but themselves — with politicians of all stripes, activists, eco-loons, and lovers of the fast buck all well to the fore.
Peter (2:08 PM):
If you think it is cock-up and cowardice, you have certainly missed the point. The serial troughing that Yeo et al are engaged in is certainly no indication of cock-up or cowardice but of seriously fleecing the public of a shed-load of money. And it is not fear or panic I feel but a growing, seething anger – anger directed at those who are making such vast profits from feeding fear, such as Al Gore, and at those who are so dedicated to the supply of dodgy, suspect or utterly false information (Mann, Trenberth, et al) to back up the arguments of those filching us.
Entropic man Dec 16, 2013 at 1:00 AM
Presumably you're confirming what Radical has said?
Dec 16, 2013 at 10:24 AM | SandyS
Which statement?
He was exaggerating the temperature changes since Roman times, but correct to suggest that there has been a long term cooling trend for most of the 2000 years since, up until 20th century warming reversed the trend.
There is groundwater contamination from fracking. He is wrong to imply that there is none, but right to say that the primary cause is not leakage from the wells themselves. As I said, most of the contamination comes from surface spills and leakage from storage ponds. Note that one reason why Cuadrilla shut down their Lancashire drill pad until 2014 was that the earthquake they may have triggered damaged their well lining, which had to be repaired before they could continue.
I cant get at my source at present (server error), but if memory serves there have been three successful prosecutions for groundwater contamination in Pennsylvania. That's a level of proof sufficient to convince a court. How many of the other Notices involved contamination but did not lead to successful prosecutions, I dont know.
You might find this of interest.
http://sites.nicholas.duke.edu/avnervengosh/files/2012/12/Overview-on-shale-gas-development.pdf
"air temperature alone is a very limited view of climate change, given that 93% of all trapped heat enters the oceans."
Hoskins is right. Offhand I can think of 30+ parameters changing in a manner indicating a warming trend of climate change.
Ice
Arctic sea ice extent decreasing
Arctic sea ice volume decreasing
Greenland and Antarctica ice caps losing mass
Arctic snow cover decreasing Antarctic sea ice extent increasing.
Antarctic sea salinity decreasing
Glaciers retreating
Ocean
Sea surface temperatures increasing
Shallow ( above 700m) ocean heat content increasing
Deep ocean heat content increasing
Sea level rising
Land
Surface temperatures increasing
Droughts increasing
Extreme weather increasing
Permafrost melting
Atmosphere
CO2 content increasing
O2 concentration decreasing
Carbon 13 decreasing
Troposphere temperatures increasing
Stratosphere temperatures decreasing
Water vapour increasing
Jetstreams less stable
High cloud increasing
Low cloud increasing
Energy flows
Imbalance between insolation and OLR
Surface infrared radiation increasing
Downwelling infra-red radiation increasing
15micrometre CO2 band spreading
Biology
Treelines moving to higher altitudes and latitudes
Biome and species ranges spreading to higher latitudes
Longer growing seasons
Vegetation cover increasing
Entropic Man: I object to the assertion that asking for evidence of something is an implication that there is none to be found. That said, can it be justified claiming the aquifer is contaminated with gas, sand – or even water?
My understanding of fracking is that it has developed such that the chemicals used other than those mentioned are kept to a minimum, and are hardly contaminants in their own right (like “hydrogen chloride… or chlorine… I can’t remember which exactly…”). Also, what takes place in the USA may not be applicable in this country; for instance, few, if any, homes are supplied with water that has not been extensively treated. Other known contaminants include radon and boron, which naturally occur in the Earth’s crust… which is probably why water supplies have to be treated – the implication here being that any found may be an increase in concentration, rather than outright contamination.
By the way, I suspect that there will be most who read this thread will have contention with many items on your list of parameters. This could be very interesting.
EM
Nice try.
Your "proofs" include several that are inherently beneficial, several that contradict each other, several where you have cherry-picked, several that look to me to be extremely dubious,and several that are irrelevant.
None that suggest that the warming is inevitably endless or harmful or catastrophic or requiring the diversion of large amounts of taxpayers' money into the coffers of opportunistic businessmen, crooked politicians, and above all the national exchequers of foreign governments by way of lost jobs and increased imports simply because a bunch of eco-loons thinks there's a planet out there somewhere that needs "saving".
em, all your indicators are good for increasing heat energy. However, that is not synonymous with greenhouse gas mediated heating. The greenhouse effect-mediated heating is said to occur by increased forcing causing an increase of surface temperatures.
the sceptics would ask EM about his level of proof for his assertions....did those seals dive deep enough to capture those oceanic temps that are otherwise unmeasured.......? etc...Sorry EM, you are beyond a joke. take a temperature at 200 metres and then pass it through a model to give the equivalent temp at -200 metres altitude ....your kind of science...most peoploe would call it as it is.
shub
You are right, a lot of these are consequences of increasing energy in the system, knock-on effects of the surface heating. This is my point, that there's much more to climate change than just a temperature record.
I've been putting this list together for a while, just for fun.
Some of it is undisputed.
Some is trends which can be observed, but are not yet significant.
Some, like the Antarctic sea ice increase, are counter-intuitive.
A few are my own inductions from the science, but will need a longer baseline before they even become measurable
Entropic man
RR's statement regarding aquifer contamination.
Your lists of Dec 16, 2013 at 5:41 PM
Surely the last one (Biology) is just a red herring for instance
High Andean, mid-Holocene plant community and Viking Outpost Unearthed in Greenland, ancient rivers in Arabian Desert prove that the whole of your list is only for recent; post Little Ice Age, times and not for the current interglacial? Like a lot of your references a little research shows that they are not all that you claim them to be. Might be worth you double checking the rest of your claims because I don't want to.
Entropic,
As I was scrolling back up the page, this
CO2 content increasing
O2 concentration decreasing
Stood out as well it would wouldn't it combining solid carbon into gaseous CO2 by combining it with gaseous Oxygen would change the proportions of both CO2 and O2 in the atmosphere but doesn't prove anything other than humans are consuming "fossil" fuels.
SandyS
The recent biological changes are consistent with a trend back towards conditions seen during the Holocene temperature optimum some 5000 years ago. Since we are agreed on this, and therefore on the warming trend, I see no problem.
Be careful that you do not fall into the logical trap of claiming that since the optimum was warm for natural reasons, the current warming must be natural too. That does not automatically follow. The evidence is a better fit to an artificial warming interrupting a natural downward trend. Remember Marcott et al?
The CO2/O2 changes confirm that the CO2 is coming from fossil fuel combustion and not from some natural source. It's worth confirming. Out in the margins of the sceptic blogsphere are a few people denying that the extra CO2 is ours at all.
Everything I mentioned, and some more I missed (eg methane) are all part of the same pattern. One of the main reasons I accept the carbon dioxide driven AGW paradigm is because so many diferent changes fit the pattern. I'm not inclined to get excited if one parameter or another speeds up or slows down in the short term. Such variation is to be expected. If all of them slow down in the long term, now that would be good news! Unfortunately, there's nothing in the science which would lead me to expect that to happen.
Checking my list would be worthwhile.Some of them are well established. Some are developing. On a couple, such as an increasing trend in DWIR, I think I may be hypothesising ahead of the literature. It's a personal list, not something intended for peer review, so feel free to bounce more constructive criticism my way.
It is always unwise to rely on secondary sources such as the spin-sceptics or the greens. Both spin to fit their agendas.Best to go to original papers where you can.
EM
Also falling into the trap of using a few years, less than a decades worth of data to decide what the trend is?
As Sondra Locke says in several Eastwood films, "show me" which no one has because of the paucity of verifiable data.
entropic, your list is useless for attribution. The climate is always changing and that is what your list shows. Your/our ability to see patterns in noisy, multi-component systems and throw away conflicting pieces of evidence makes for good story-telling and imagining unifying causes, but, as we know, reality and inferential reasoning doesn't work like that. What if you took things that would happen on their own and slapped a 'cause' on them? How would that be different from a cause making them happen, which you then observed? Both situations would look the same. How would you differentiate one from the other? That is the question, and not whether or not 'change' is taking place.
Change alone is unchanging. - Heraclitus
SandyS
Remember Newton's 4th Law of Inquiry.
"Work with the data you have."
Even a limited dataset allows hypothesis generation. They can then be tested against larger datasets as the years accumulate.
Shub
If the changes were random, then some would consistent with warming, some with cooling and some with stasis.
The parameters I listed were all changing in ways consistent with a warming trend, increasing energy storage and an increasing CO2 greenhouse effect.
This is not just evidence of change, these are evidence of change in a particular direction due to a particular mechanism.
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