Slashdot Mirror
Past Measurements May Have Missed Massive Ocean Warming
An anonymous reader writes "Previous estimates of global ocean warming have been significantly underestimated due to historically sparse temperature data from the Southern Ocean, new research has found. From the article: "Earth's oceans have absorbed more than 90% of the warming caused by greenhouse gases, researchers estimate, with the stored heat showing up as warmer seawater. But a new analysis suggests scientists may have underestimated the size of the heat sink in the upper ocean—which could have implications for researchers trying to understand the pace and scale of past warming."
> nonono, the science is settled.
Science, by definition, is never settled. What's far more difficult is to bring a scientific attitude to the table if there is a political dog (or two) in the fight.
The basic science has been settled for a long time now, the Earth is warming. Models of the extra heat distribution may undergo changes though, as data accumulate and better models are developled.
Soon even the US will have to accept that this is really happening. Simply saying "God bless us" won't help us - only changing our way of living will.
The Earth warms, it cools, it warms, it cools.
Models will NEVER be accurate enough for any real predictions, causes or illustrations. Why? Because the input to the models will NEVER have enough, or even appropriate data. If we don't have the Oceans data, and we don't, as highlighted recently by the breakthrough in mapping, we couldn't even begin an approach to modeling the future. What else don't we have? Other criteria, bits of relevant information, which acts on other data, producing results unknown, which again makes up the whole. No, this modeling business could be done on ALL the worlds computers networked together and you'd still have shit. Simply, you don't have enough criteria to accurately say, one way or the other, let alone pinpoint anything.
I'd love to see the gravity models and the data on magnetic poles with compensation for shift. Yeah, thought so...
Leave predictions to gypsies, weathermen, stock brokers and sports pundits. All are on par with a flip of the coin even with all the data they crunch. Don't tell me how damn accurate science is predicting fuck about the Earth.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Enough already.
The Earth is warmer, probably.
We don't know for how much longer.
We don't know how much warmer.
We don't know how it's happening, mostly.
We don't know why it's happening.
That's climate in a nutshell. Do you want a _government_ ringing in new policies based on that? A government can't even get well understood problems under control ... like say, traffic, or urban development. And if you dare say, "Hey, traffic is hard to model!", well guess what, climate is harder.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
im so sick of the lying. both poles have jncreased 40% or more accordibg to daily mail
You win todays internet prize for most ironic forum post.
start using your brain people.
If you used your brain rather than blathering mindlessly about popular media reporting of a science topic, you wouldn't have made this post.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Really? The same models that predict that result in the weather man telling you its going to be a beautiful sunny day while it pours down rain?
Weather models are an absolute joke.
What?
Your weather forecasts are wrong every day? And in every conceivable way (Temperature, Cloud cover, Humidity, Rainfall, Windspeed, etc.)?
Honestly, that would be an achievement in itself!
Or, maybe, they get it right most of the time, but it's only the times they're wrong that stand out?
However, while I'm sure that both 'sides' in this debate are equally guilty of seeing what they want to see, that which confirms their observer bias, I'm not sure that ridiculing weather forecasts is a valid argument against the accuracy and predictive power (or lack thereof) of climate models.
Just because your model predicted the outcome of something does not mean your model is accurate.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-other-planets-solar-system-intermediate.htm
Fact: The models are accurate.
I think what annoys me the most about climate alarmism is the false certainty such as conflating opinion with fact. The second most annoying thing is the lack of scientific grounds for the arguments made.
For example, the above two links in the parent post show considerable divergence between the models and reality (sea level and polar ice extent while substantially and suspiciously downplaying the temperature difference between model and reality). The "myth" is confirmed but the writer portrays it as affirmation of their desired conclusion.
Meanwhile the assertion that models fit past events is near irrelevant since that is data which is already known and it is expected that the models would have been adjusted in the first place to fit that data). For example, I can construct an interpolation of any temperature (or other numerical) data to perfect precision using an even degree polynomial of sufficiently high degree, yet it'll be completely irrelevant once I attempt any sort of extrapolation into the future (odds are good, about 50% I'd say, that it'll predict temperatures far below absolute zero by 2100).
We see this attitude in action in the current story. First, the story noted that these models don't actually predict past events when they're run backwards from a current state. Then someone rationalizes that it's because the observations are wrong, not the models. This not only runs counter to your empty assertion that the models predict the known past, but also is profoundly anti-scientific.
Here are two examples where the most FUD-inducing interpretations are used. The climate models are "too conservative" because they allegedly underplay sea level rise, but the corresponding inability of the models to predict temperature increase is not (though that means the models are exaggerating sensitivity of carbon dioxide temperature forcing, the most important of the unknowns in climate research.
Similarly, when models are shown to be out of whack with past observations (as they were with future observations), the interpretation is that the observations are wrong, not the models even though it is more likely to be the other way around.
This profound inability to admit error is why I don't trust current climate models or the doomsday predictions they spawn in the least. That's why I'm going to wait a few decades and see what happens. If it genuinely is as bad as claimed, then we'll see something by then.
and there is no conclusive proof that cigarette smoking causes lung disease. No, really, there has never been an observation of a cell mutating after exposure to a puff of smoke. The evidence is only statistical. And yet... reasonable people can accept that the odds are that smoking is unhealthy, in spite of the lack of "hard" scientific proof. Proof of the kind that Climate Change Deniers seem to be demanding. Arctic ice that is 60% thinner than it was when our first nuclear sub crossed under it in the 60s, Old photos of curling (that obscure shuffle board type sport) on fjords that haven't frozen over in decades, the no longer needed fleet of ice breakers on our Great Lakes, fauna found further and further north every year, tree rings, ice cores, historical records...all prove...nothing...but still, reasonable people can conclude that there is a link between our draining of the carbon sinks, and greenhouse warming. It's really not a stretch is it?
The USA is only 4X older than me...perspective
I'm pretty sure it was you that diverged from reality... The earth is getting warmer dude... The data is easy to see. It's really easy to see. You can look up satellite pics of ice coverage. A simple Wolfram Alpha search will tell you global mean temperatures, and show you the data sources so you can investigate them better.
How do you people keep insisting nothing is going on? The excuses keep changing. "It's not warming. Ok, it is, but it's solar! Ok, it's not solar, but it's not man made.... It's natural cycles! Ok, it's it's moving too fast for natural cycles, but it paused for the last few years! It's warmer, but it stopped, so it's not warming! Ok, so yeah, Arctic sea ice is dwindling, but antarctic is growing! Ok, sure, arctic is sea ice and antarctic is land ice, but.... It's scientists, just making a grab for lucrative grab for government money! Ok, so that money is shit and it's pretty obvious all the real money is in private industry, but..."
On and on you people go, changing your story. Diverging from reality, if you will.....
furthermore, it's quite obvious that several industries just don't want a drop in profits that would come with regulation. It's quite obvious they've spent a TON of money to muddy the conversation. My question is, in 30 years when we can look back on this, will you !@#$holes fess up that you were wrong the whole time? Will you admit that you all were duped and spent decades ignoring your betters? Will you finally shut up?
Don't worry, I know the answer....
argh.... Just... what do you think HAPPENS when you release a few million years of stored up carbon in a measly few hundred years as CO2. Just... think about it. It's not that hard... Fossil fuels are quite literally millions of years of stored CO2 from dead plants.... And you release it in this HUGE surge in just 200 years... We KNOW CO2 is a greenhouse gas. We know it prevents us from radiating heat back out into space. This is not disputed..
I need to stop arguing about this. I know the people that argue against global warming are morons or have an agenda... Why do I do this to myself?
" and a massive increase in tropical hurricanes."
They have been saying this for YEARS now, and there hasn't been a major hurricane in how many years?
It is predictions and statements like this that have people like me scratching our heads. None of the predictions of doom have happened. Polar Bears are not drowning either. When people are caught lying, repeatedly, people stop believing them. This is what happens when people stop reading fairy tales and start creating them using "Science" as a backdrop.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
So it wasnt going into the oceans before and all of a sudden started going into the oceans all at once? Thus creating a "pause"? Why wasnt the heat going into the oceans before the "pause"?
There are some really simple explanations for this: one, the ocean currents changed (due to changes in the atmospheric climate) forcing more of the warmer water deeper into the ocean than before, two, no one said it was an "all-at-once" thing, and even if they did their perspective on "all-at-once" may be decades where you may be thinking more immediately, three, no one said that the rise in air temperatures WASN'T heating the oceans all along. As a matter of fact the continuing rise in ocean temperature has always been a priority concern to climatologists because of the impact on the entire food chain.