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New Study Confirms the Oceans Are Warming Rapidly (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report from The Guardian, written by John Abraham, who discusses the rising ocean temperatures and the important factors that affect ocean-temperature accuracy: The most important measurement of global warming is in the oceans. In fact, "global warming" is really "ocean warming." If you are going to measure the changing climate of the oceans, you need to have many sensors spread out across the globe that take measurements from the ocean surface to the very depths of the waters. Importantly, you need to have measurements that span decades so a long-term trend can be established. These difficulties are tackled by oceanographers, and a significant advancement was presented in a paper just published in the journal Climate Dynamics. That paper, which I was fortunate to be involved with, looked at three different ocean temperature measurements made by three different groups. We found that regardless of whose data was used or where the data was gathered, the oceans are warming. In the paper, we describe perhaps the three most important factors that affect ocean-temperature accuracy. First, sensors can have biases (they can be "hot" or "cold"), and these biases can change over time. Another source of uncertainty is related to the fact that we just don't have sensors at all ocean locations and at all times. Some sensors, which are dropped from cargo ships, are densely located along major shipping routes. Other sensors, dropped from research vessels, are also confined to specific locations across the globe. Finally, temperatures are usually referenced to a baseline "climatology." So, when we say temperatures have increased by 1 degree, it is important to say what the baseline climatology is. Have temperatures increased by 1 degree since the year 1990? Since the year 1970? Since 1900? The choice of baseline climatology really matters.
Umm... the article is linked in the summary?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If we can get it warm enough the oceans will start to evaporate, countering global warming's rising sea level.
"...it does seem to me that the world has become more verdant over the past several decades..."
You do realize that as you age, your spectral sensitivities deteriorate? Specifically loss of sensitivity towards purple and yellow-green confusion. In other words, as you get older, the world simply appears greener:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140220102614.htm
"... I have become immune to scary reports and will simply ignore this one."
Oh, that's something entirely different. This means that you are an idiot. This may be age related, but it is entirely possible that you have always been an idiot.
"But after 20+ years of exaggerations, and occasional falsification..."
Oh dear, you aren't only an idiot, you are a liar as well. What occasional falsification?
Just for your amusement, you may want to look into the Ocean Warming Studies of Richard Muller, funded by the Kochs. He started out as a "Sceptic"; he felt that not enough rigor had been applied. He came to the conclusion that the situation was worse than first appeared. The Kochs paid for it because they had long-term planning to do; they're continuing to deny Warming is but PR gibberish for Koch Suckers like you.
"Am I imagining this, or are increasing temperatures and CO2 levels causing plant life to flourish?"
Which is it, no Warming or only Good Warming? You really should make up your mind. That is, if you ever had one.
change in heat content since 1970=3 e23 J (from TFA)
SHC of water =4e3 J/kg/deg C
mass of oceans = 1.4e21 kg
temperature rise is 3e23/1.4e21/4e3, about 0.05 deg C
Hmm, in 50 years? Colour me unexcited.
As a person who has lived his whole life in Arctic I can tell you that the thousands of years old permafrost is melting. Biologists are fighting against time to preserve mammoth DNA because the carcasses are finally rotting.
Sadly, even if that were true (7% seems quite a lot though, any link?), that is of little comfort to many people in the temperate region. We don't exactly need or want tropical diseases and bugs here. We're just fine with the way things are now.
Ezekiel 23:20
Why do you have to be 'left' to support renewable energy? Renewable energy gives back control of your energy sources and localises them. This fully compatible with a conservative world view.
Maybe, but those other events were accompanied by mass extinctions and sea level rise of about 13.5 m in about 290 years...
The priesthood has spoken. AGW acolytes will be along shortly to mod anyone to -1 who dares question the IPCC Assessment Report holy book. The unadjusted data will be kept under lock and key while everyone is instructed to accept based on faith that the oceans are warming rapidly. The AGW cult is even more profitable than the LDS cult, and this will no doubt be used to justify even more wealth redistribution.
Richard Muller & his team looked at a truckload of "unadjusted data" in his examination of the surface temp record & came to the same conclusions & roughly the same trends as NOAA et al. Looks like the raw data lies as much as the adjusted.
As for wealth redistribution, Trumpcare is trying to fix that by giving an $800 billion tax cut to the 1% & will deprive about 20 million Americans of their healthcare
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I must protest. Trump has no idea what's in that bill. It runs several pages long, which is several pages - one of attention span he doesn't have. His support is merely because he's trying to pee in all the corners Obama visited before him. He has no bright ideas of his own.
Ok.
It doesn't show an "increaase" in much of anything. It shows an increase in heat content, i.e., a quantity of energy per unit area as defined in equation 1, when integrated over an area. You'll note that the units are energy/(area^2), as in J/(m^2). You're correct that the number is based upon temperature, but then you go off the rails...
BZZT. The figure 1 data is not an average. It's a quantity integrated over depth (equation 1), then over the area of the ocean basin (figure 1), to give you a change in the quantity of thermal energy versus a comparison point -- modern day . You'll notice that the units on the Y axis are Joules, not degrees F or C.
Somehow a TOTAL of an ADDITIVE quantity (increase of thermal energy in each of four oceans making up the "global" ocean) of 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, and 0.6 added up to 1.8 -- x10^23 Joules. As everyone would expect.
For you and your reading comprehension skills. My children can read and understand a graph better than you.
Interesting read but I have to admit I'm skeptical. I work in the field and its common knowledge that sensors are few and far between outside of normal travel lanes/coast lines. http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/ is the site I most often use and its quite lacking all things considered. From TFA (I know, I know) "Since one can never re-observe the ocean in the past, some synthetic data should be used, for instance high-resolution model outputs, sea level data, etc." While these models are decent, they won't perform the best in extremely data sparse areas which can easily skew data when working with over a large area. Not claiming its wrong, just that the lack of live data makes it difficult to honestly assess the situation.
“People who claim we’re in the sixth mass extinction don’t understand enough about mass extinctions to understand the logical flaw in their argument. To a certain extent they’re claiming it as a way of frightening people into action"
“Many of those making facile comparisons between the current situation and past mass extinctions don’t have a clue about the difference in the nature of the data, [...] as scientists we have a responsibility to be accurate about such comparisons.”
- Smithsonian paleontologist Doug Erwin
https://www.theatlantic.com/sc...
it's in my head
I wasn't the one pretending that money is the motivation behind publishing such findings. I was actually responding to someone claiming that these scientists publish results that support global warming with the sole intent to make money that way.
My rebuttal was that if the goal is money, there was more to be had by pretending that global warming is a myth and becoming the "science" mouthpiece of some corporations that have a vested interest in fossil fuels and heavy industry.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Umm... what am I? I think social services, taxes and government spending are a good idea. but I also like guns and think that using them isn't outright wrong as long as the reason is right.
Care to point me to my pigeon-hole?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
.Nuclear baseload. We've known how to do it for half a century. That alone would resolve most of the CO2 issues.
When you find a left-leaning AGW zealot who wants more nukes, then I'll start taking the problem more seriously.
As is, looks more like an attempt at social engineering (lowering everyone's standard of living except for the "Right People")
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
"There is no reason to think that mass extinctions will not happen in the future, and, in fact, many biologists believe that we are in the midst of a human-caused mass extinction right now. Our ancestors began killing off many large vertebrates some 12,000 years ago (mammoths, saber-toothed cats, and dire wolves, among others), and we continue by depleting the oceans and destroying habitats for plants and animals. There are lots of other potential causes of mass extinction, including the collision of extra-terrestrial objects into Earth, massive volcanism, and glaciation, but no way of predicting which of them might affect us or when (contrary to some bad Hollywood movies). None of these is very likely to happen soon, so we would be better off worrying about our own effect on the planet." - Smithsonian paleontologist Doug Erwin
Your quote is from November 28, 2006
Mine is from June 13, 2017
Apparently Doug has had the scientific decency to change his views on new data. Or, to use his words:
Surely we’ve earned our place in the pantheon next to the greatest ecological catastrophes of all time: the so-called Big Five mass extinctions of earth history. Surely our Anthropocene extinction can confidently take its place next to the juggernauts of deep time—the Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Triassic and Cretaceous extinctions.
Erwin says no. He thinks it’s junk science.
it's in my head
Seconded, and double that down when - not if - we have to resort to such things as seeding the oceans with iron-sulfur nutrients to grow carbon-gobbling algae.
If you really want to make an AGW priest squirm, mention the success of the Haida experiment.
As an _actual_ oceanographer
[Citation needed]
I did a quick search for work published by someone named "Anonymous Coward", but came up empty. The search just came back with a mountain of useless Slashdot comments.
If you're asking seriously, I'll answer for you (although I'm not a conservative).
Sure man, what are you then, a full-on reactionary?
"Renewable energy" is a left-wing dogwhistle for "let's throw government money at this".
That's the right-wing soundbite, actually. They scream it all the time. Attacking leftists, and meanwhile, they throw government money at EVERYTHING they want.
The actual idea of renewable energy is great as long as it's economically efficient. What we tend to get instead is Solyndra.
You mean a company that the right-wing dogmatically lies about, claims they don't even have a working product, and fails to admit that the reason for their failure was simply due to dropping solar prices, which was itself a result of MASSIVE Chinese subsidies?
Most can't even remember that it was part of a larger program, which was a great success overall, or even that it was wait for it, wait for it, a BUSH-PROPOSED program. That's right, compassionate conservative, Bush the Younger, came up with the idea. Yet who do you think they mysteriously blame?
Bad enough getting the circumstances wrong, the person blamed isn't even the right one.
So, yeah, anybody with a brain is all for renewable energy. But anybody with a brain also wants the government to butt out and let the market handle it.
Anybody with a brain remembers a little company called Enron that broke California's power system. Sorry, but the government exists to restrain such impulses, and it is necessary.
(And, yes, I understand the concept of using government money to get production up to scale so it'll be more economically feasible - I understand it but I also understand the world doesn't work that way).
So you think you understand, but you don't. Because it turns out that it does work that way, in China, in the US, in France, in the UK, in Germany, in Russia, in Japan,in India and all across the world.
Quite successfully too. With railroads, and highways, and power plants, and farms, and steel mills, and the Internet, well, the list goes on. It's so funny to see you chant your superior comprehension even as the words coming out of your mouth so you are so very mistaken.
When you find a left-leaning AGW zealot who wants more nukes, then I'll start taking the problem more seriously.
Here I am! I find man-made global warming to be very obviously real, and feel that some fourth generation nuclear plants would an excellent addition to our energy supply. You may now take the problem more seriously!
When you find a left-leaning AGW zealot who wants more nukes, then I'll start taking the problem more seriously.
You've always got excuses, but the fact is that mining is shitty, and uranium mining is extra-shitty. Uranium is the least concentrated ore we mine, and we never seem to actually bother to clean up the toxic mine tailings adequately. Nuclear advocates also never seem to account for the full lifecycle costs, including decommissioning and making waste safe. Even if we were to reprocess the waste, the cost would be beyond astronomical, which is why that's a non-starter. Expecting an environmentalist to endorse open pit mining with radioactive tailings is not realistic, so you've built yourself a position which doesn't require you to change your lifestyle. That's very convenient.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And here's another. Man-made global warming is real, 90-something percent of scientists and 99ish percent of climatologists agree. Nuclear baseload is where it's at. Gen IV reactors, especially MSRs could mitigate much of the problems of current reactor technology if the NIMBYs would let the technology progress.
And yet those same people, who don't understand the difference, feel totally qualified to shit all over a study done by people for whom understanding such things part of their day to day job.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
To this Anonymous Coward: Wow - You must really hate The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (its official name) to turn a climate change article into an anti-LDS blast. Being Mormon, and knowing how angry, belligerent, and willing to spread misinformation and half-truths solely to tear down a sect/philosophy, I can understand how you can be so capable of closing your eyes on hard climate change numbers.
To all other Slashdot readers (atheist, religious, or somewhere inbetween): While there are some Mormons that ignorantly think differently, our church takes no stand on this debate. It's a human failing - not a religious one. I know that climate change is occurring and the hard numbers are clear.
Just as importantly: Religious or not, can you at least empathize with what us Mormons have to put up with? Crackpots like this poster spreading lies and half-truths all the time - sounds just like when they attack climate change science.
You can show them the temperature numbers, the photos of glaciers, the past record of corporate interests hiding the truth to turn a profit, etc. - but they ignore it and attack you. It gets to the point where you just start tuning their anger and stupidity out. And then we're ironically labeled as closed-minded cult members again - just like this guy labeled all of you. So insidiously hateful and stupid...
So... What kinds of subsidies do you think fossil fuels are getting?
I'm given to believe that this is actually a damnable lie which being often repeated is blindly accepted as truth by some. Every time I get someone to actually try to detail what these things might be, I find that the are either non-existent (and the poster is mistaken) or they are not unique to fossil fuel producers (such as the ability of a company to deduct the cost of capital equipment as an expense.) About the only thing I can come up with that *might* be a subsidy is the leasing of Federal lands to producers, but I believe that is a competitive bidding process....
So... Citation please....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
You are so correct. The cost of wind and solar are now a small fraction of the cost of nuclear when all costs are considered. Given the very real prospect of radioactive contamination that may persist for tens of thousands of years, nuclear fission holds no commercial promise. Nonetheless support for research for containable fusion reactors should be sustained..
Many believe the "It's settled science" party line, but there are quite a few people in the field of climate studies who don't.
Less than 1%, if you're talking about actual climate scientists.
1. How much actual control man really has? It is well known that the climate has varied greatly in the past.
Yes, everybody involved in climate studies knows this. They are also quite sure that man is responsible for this one. The science behind CO2 is well understood. CO2 has actually been responsible for quite a few climatic changes in the past (although on a much slower timescale)
2. How much actual harm does climate change actually represent? There are lots of theories about this, but the past predictions of catastrophic events have mysteriously not proven accurate (Al Gore, I'm looking at your "Inconvenient truth").
Al Gore is not a scientist. Real scientists are generally much more conservatives in their prediction. A few exceptions get a lot of press, because scary predictions sell papers. The real harm starts slow, and gets gradually worse over centuries. The problem is that the reverse is equally slow. So when we do get catastrophic events, it will be too late to stop them.
How much social and economic harm would come from some of the "save the world" initiatives being suggested?
Thank you for proving my point. You're debating policy again. A disease doesn't go away just because you don't like the cure.
It's not solar panels, which I am absolutely not opposed to in any way, by all means, put them up where they make financial sense.... However, I do believe that unilaterally giving up economic advantage by regulating cheaper power sources out of use when our world competitors are not IS the issue. First, it doesn't actually succeed in reducing emissions (countries like China are not going to stop any time soon) and second it weakens our economy and thus our ability to protect ourselves which is stupid from a geopolitical perspective.
Also, your theories about the effects of global warming are a bit alarmist from my view.... If the big problem is fossil fuel use, then if you are going to advocate the elimination of their use, you condemn the world to starvation a whole lot sooner than even your dire global warming "the sky is falling" predictions. Do you have any idea where fertilizer comes from? We used up all the natural sources of that a LONG time ago.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Climate change skepticism, creationism, anti-vax, anti-GMO, HIV denialists. All different aspects of the same kind of stupidity. History will judge your ilk harshly, and rightly so. You're a bunch of fucking dickheads.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.