Climate Change

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

But the e-mail in question was never intended to be read by an outsider.

Good grief! Slang is used to communicate within a group, whose members may be amused by what they imagine an outsider's reaction would be upon hearing it.

When I was in college I used many slang terms, some of which are not printable here ... but not in communications with colleagues about research and publication.

... and if everyone were Just Like You ...

I simply find it difficult to believe that a serious scientist would use "hide" in reference to completely justified/valid/acceptable modifications to observed data, precisely because it is generally construed to mean something quite different than e.g. "correction for [some known effect]."

I've already expressed a preference to wait until we all learn more about the authenticity of the claimed messages and their respective contexts.

Are you saying you would deliberately use deliberately misleading-or-misconstruable language in research-and-publication-related e-mails with colleagues?

No, but I can imagine using slang that might conceivably be misinterpreted by outsiders. If challenged by such an outsider, I'd explain the slang's meaning in standard terminology. If some outsider made some fuss without bothering to determine the slang's intended "inside" meaning, I'd be delighted to publicly embarrass that outsider for his failure to seek clarification before spouting off.

So? There is no serious dispute about *whether* the climate has warming over the past century, rather the issue is the *causes*. You know this as well as anyone, so what's the point of posting "look, shit is melting" links that provide precisely zero illumination as to the core issue of the debate, nmely: "To what degree (if any) is the warming the result of human activity"?

Really, really tightly-wound today, aren't you?

The point was that GW consequences can seem paradoxical, the sort of thing some folks like to seize upon to say, "Why are we getting more icebergs if there's global warming?" This contemporary specific example illustrates why it's not a contradiction for future climate models to predict that certain regions will become cooler while most other regions warm.

I saw lots of icebergs around the southern tip of Greenland this past summer while flying back from Europe to the U.S. - but it seemed to me that there were less than the last time I flew that route a few years ago. It must be global cooling! Should I send out a bunch of ambiguously-worded e-mails to colleagues and then contact the IPCC, do ya think?

Yes, you should. The sooner you expose them to your blathering, the smaller their likelihood of mistakenly thinking you know what you're talking about.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

It would seem that a more plausible explanation is that it comes from geological activity on the ocean floor.

As I thought I'd already pointed out, there's no evidence that heat flow from within the earth has changed noticeably.

Do you admit that the directly-measured increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide (not a theory -- an observed fact) have a greenhouse effect?

Otherwise, if that heat supposedly passes through the surface layers before going down, how come we don't see that same heat warming up land surface areas?

We do!! Perhaps you've noticed discussions about observed increases in land temperatures elsewhere in this very thread.

And then some of that heat makes its way into the air and oceans through the well-known (to most people), long-established interactions of land, air, and ocean --- the sort of things the National Weather Service takes into account when making its weather predictions. Weren't you aware of such interactions?

Have you ever read an article explaining how water evaporates from land and sea, forms clouds, then precipitates back to land and sea later as rain/snow?

Have you ever seen a diagram of heat flows between land, air, and ocean?

But you're ignoring other sources of ice, besides just glaciers. It just happens that a whole lot of glaciers are in the parts of the earth that are warming, and not as much in the parts that are cooling. What about polar icecaps? Last I heard, the Antarctic icecap is getting bigger in its center region.

I already explained about the Antarctic ice cap previously. Please go back and read it.

This assumes that the subsurface warming is actually being caused by AGW.

No, it doesn't!

Nothing I wrote in the following

Originally Posted by cheesehead

For example, when ocean water circulates vertically, warm surface water becomes subsurface water and is replaced by cold formerly-subsurface water.

That's a simple example. Do you have trouble understand that example? Do you need some more detailed explanation?

No, you haven't shown that it doesn't. All you've shown is that you don't understand some ways in which the subsurface does affect the surface.

... and as I've been trying to tell you, that way the heat is exchanged is through vertical circulation. The heat absorbed by surface water is transported further down through vertical circulation of the water.

Do you remember ever being taught about the three methods by which heat travels: radiation, conduction and convection?

Vertical water circulation is convection.

has any reliance on AGW. That is just a general explanation that is always true. It's just the basic physical properties of water and heat. There's not one sentence in that section that relies on AGW in any way.

Heat doesn't have some "owner". It doesn't know whether it came from AGW or something else. I just explained what happens with warm and cold ocean water.

If you disagree, please explain where you think the AGW-dependence is.

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

But what about the skepticalscience.com articles taht you posted? How do you know those are any more reliable than the Spiegel article?

They don't contain the sort of obvious scientific errors that the Spiegel article did. Their articles don't contradict what I've learned from other reliable sources.

Do you see any specific error at skepticalscience.com? I (and they, I think) would be glad to be informed of it so that it could be corrected, so please specify what you think is in error at skepticalscience.com.

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

As I thought I'd already pointed out, there's no evidence that heat flow from within the earth has changed noticeably.

Do you admit that the directly-measured increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide (not a theory -- an observed fact) have a greenhouse effect?

Yes, I don't dispute that. However, what I do dispute is that it's the cause of the measurable changes in subsurface ocean heat content.

We do!! Perhaps you've noticed discussions about observed increases in land temperatures elsewhere in this very thread.

Sure, land temperatures are increasing, but they're also decreasing too. Some parts of the world are cooling just as starkly as others are warming.

And then some of that heat makes its way into the air and oceans through the well-known (to most people), long-established interactions of land, air, and ocean --- the sort of things the National Weather Service takes into account when making its weather predictions. Weren't you aware of such interactions?

Have you ever read an article explaining how water evaporates from land and sea, forms clouds, then precipitates back to land and sea later as rain/snow?

Have you ever seen a diagram of heat flows between land, air, and ocean?

I already explained about the Antarctic ice cap previously. Please go back and read it.

No, it doesn't!

Nothing I wrote in the following
has any reliance on AGW. That is just a general explanation that is always true. It's just the basic physical properties of water and heat. There's not one sentence in that section that relies on AGW in any way.

Heat doesn't have some "owner". It doesn't know whether it came from AGW or something else. I just explained what happens with warm and cold ocean water.

If you disagree, please explain where you think the AGW-dependence is.

Perhaps I worded my statement unclearly. I wasn't intending to say that your explanation of ocean water circulation is dependent on AGW; rather, that your assumption that the heat warming the subsurface had come down from above (rather than below) assumes AGW.

They don't contain the sort of obvious scientific errors that the Spiegel article did. Their articles don't contradict what I've learned from other reliable sources.

Do you see any specific error at skepticalscience.com? I (and they, I think) would be glad to be informed of it so that it could be corrected, so please specify what you think is in error at skepticalscience.com.

It's not that I see a specific error in the skepticalscience.com article; rather, it's that they're relying largely on the same data that's being called into question by this recent unveiling of emails regarding a potential conspiracy to skew that data in favor of AGW. Why then should I trust the skepticalscience.com article to be relaying accurate, un-skewed information?

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

I wasn't intending to say that your explanation of ocean water circulation is dependent on AGW; rather, that your assumption that the heat warming the subsurface had come down from above (rather than below) assumes AGW.

No, my "assumption" had no dependence on global warming at all, much less AGW.

And I wasn't "assuming" that the subsurface heating had come down from above -- I was presenting a scenario to show how it could happen just because of the ordinary properties of ocean water. I was showing you how the heating did _not_ have to come from below.

Plain old sunlight has been warming ocean surfaces for billions of years.

I was describing a scenario in which there is warm surface water and colder subsurface water, with no specification whatsoever that the surface water had to be warmer _because of any particular reason_! This is, and has been, a normal situation all over the world ever since oceans were first formed billions of years ago! My scenario never required that the surface waters be warm because of global warming! It was true two millenia ago when the ancient Greeks and Romans sailed the seas -- surface waters were warmer than deeper waters then, too.

There are other forces at work in the ocean than temperature gradients -- currents, for instance. When currents shift around -- because of changing winds, for example -- this can cause vertical turbulence and sometimes there is a vertical circulation at least for a while. This is all just basic physics of water and has nothing to do with global warming. Such turbulence and circulation has also been occurring since the oceans formed billions of years ago. They're a product of simply the physical characteristics of ocean water and sunlight. AGW or just plain GW has nothing to do it!

Why do you find this so hard to understand? Is it because you have "global warming" on your mind so much that you read it into paragraphs even when it isn't there?

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

No, my assumption had no dependence on global warming at all, much less AGW.

Plain old sunlight has been warming ocean surfaces for billions of years.

I was describing a scenario in which there is warm surface water and colder subsurface water, with no specification whatsoever that the surface water had to be warmer _because of any particular reason_! This is, and has been, a normal situation all over the world ever since oceans were first formed billions of years ago! My scenario never required that the surface waters be warm because of global warming! It was true two millenia ago when the ancient Greeks and Romans sailed the seas -- surface waters were warmer than deeper waters then, too.

There are other forces at work in the ocean than temperature gradients -- currents, for instance. When currents shift around -- because of changing winds, for example -- this can cause vertical turbulence and sometimes there is a vertical circulation at least for a while. This is all just basic physics of water and has nothing to do with global warming. Such turbulence and circulation has also been occurring since the oceans formed billions of years ago. They're a product of simply the physical characteristics of ocean water and sunlight. AGW or just plain GW has nothing to do it!

Ah, I see. I was under the impression that you were referring to GW-produced heat being cycled down to the subsurface by the process you described (which of course, yes, would happen to some degree due to normal sunlight levels).

You know, now that I think about that a bit...as you mentioned earlier, in order for the ocean's surface to maintain an overall constant temperature, then it would have to receive as much heat from above via sunlight as is being cycled down below to the subsurface. In that case, then, it would make perfect sense that the subsurface would be warming regardless of whether (A)GW is occurring or not--after all, over time all that energy from normal sunlight is going to keep cycling down and keep heating up the subsurface.

Edit: Whoops, I didn't catch your edit in time for my response. As for that, the reason why I was thinking that was because you had implied earlier that the heat being cycled down to the subsurface was coming from global warming.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

rather, it's that they're relying largely on the same data that's being called into question by this recent unveiling of emails regarding a potential conspiracy to skew that data in favor of AGW.

All that does is reveal your own ignorance of the numerous independent lines of evidence for global warming and AGW.

If global warming is a hoax, why is it that numerous species of animals, birds, and insects have been _observed_ (not just theorized) to have been shifting their ranges farther from the equator? (This is often stated as being a shift northward, but only because the majority of such observations have been in the northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere, the observed shifts are southward.) Do you think that birds and caribou have been somehow hypnotized by the hoaxers?

Why are plants observed to be flowering earlier and earlier in the spring? Because some human conspiracy has people spreading plant pheromones to make them bloom earlier?

Even if it were found that every single tree-ring study had been fraudulent, that wouldn't disprove either AGW or just plain GW, because of all the other independent lines of evidence.

Why then should I trust the skepticalscience.com article to be relaying accurate, un-skewed information?

Because their evidence consists of far more independent lines of data than are usually mentioned by AGW-deniers.

There are plenty of AGW-denying websites that are relating inaccurate, skewed information.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

I was under the impression that you were referring to GW-produced heat being cycled down to the subsurface by the process you described

You were right. I was. But I wasn't saying that heat from any other source was _not_ being cycled down by the same process. I wasn't saying that GW-produced heat was being treated any differently than heat from anything else.

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

All that does is reveal your own ignorance of the numerous independent lines of evidence for global warming and AGW.

If global warming is a hoax, why is it that numerous species of animals, birds, and insects have been _observed_ (not just theorized) to have been shifting their ranges farther from the equator? (This is often stated as being a shift northward, but only because the majority of such observations have been in the northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere, the observed shifts are southward.) Do you think that birds and caribou have been somehow hypnotized by the hoaxers?

Why are plants observed to be flowering earlier and earlier in the spring? Because some human conspiracy has people tiptoeing all over to spread plant pheromones to make them bloom earlier?

None of that is inconsistent with the anti-AGW position. We're not denying that much of the western hemisphere has in fact warmed up. However, as that warms up, much of the eastern hemisphere cools down and balances it out.

Because their evidence consists of far more independent lines of data than are usually mentioned by AGW-deniers.

There are plenty of AGW-denying websites that are relating inaccurate, skewed information.

Both sides will always have their wackos who make their points using emotion and faked evidence rather than facts. That's to be expected. However, what we obviously do disagree on is just how much of each other's evidence is inaccurate and skewed.

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

You were right. I was. But I wasn't saying that heat from any other source was _not_ being cycled down by the same process. I wasn't saying that GW-produced heat was being treated any differently than heat from anything else.

And neither did I allege that you said any of that. However, you did use the increase in subsurface ocean heat content as evidence for GW, when as I explained above, that can just as easily be caused by normal levels of sunlight as well.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

We're not denying that much of the western hemisphere has in fact warmed up. However, as that warms up, much of the eastern hemisphere cools down and balances it out.

Bull. I've never seen evidence of that. Show me where someone shows data to support that claim.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

However, you did use the increase in subsurface ocean heat content as evidence for GW,

No, you're leaving out that it was increase in subsurface ocean heat content _in combination with other evidence_ that was for GW.