If your hypothesis is as good as you think then why hasn't some qualified contrarian climate scientist like Richard Lindzen or Roy Spencer taken it on? If it was as obvious as you think it is someone would have published on it by now.
The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere goes up about 7% for every 1 degree C of temperature rise. Since over 70% of the planet is covered by water humans can do essentially nothing to affect that. We could float an exposed nuclear reactor core in the ocean producing massive amounts of water vapor and it would have an unnoticeable effect on worldwide water vapor levels.
I think a more accurate term is "climate science deniers". They reject the science that the vast majority of climate scientists produce. No one denies that climate changes and the problem isn't that it is changing but that the rate of change is one or two orders of magnitude faster with natural climate change (excluding of course such catastrophic events as an asteroid hitting the Earth). If the temperature change and ocean acidification that took place in the past century and is taking place this century took 10,000 years to occur it wouldn't be much of a problem. Everything would have plenty of time to adapt.
You mean the visible shrill climate alarmists, Michael Mann included.
They are all scientists who are well respected in their fields. Despite all of the vilification of Michael Mann no one has found any scientific misconduct by him. His original hockey stick graph still holds up as shown by around a dozen similar studies done by different scientists using different proxies and techniques. If you think the past 17 years disproves the graph it's more like a nick in the blade of the hockey stick than anything significant.
You might do better not to trust anyone, and look at everything with a critical eye.
I could say the same thing to you. I'll admit that after over 25 years of following this issue I may tend to give climate scientists the benefit of the doubt but over the years I've found very little evidence that they haven't earned that trust. I've also read papers by such noted climate science contrarians as Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen. Even they admit that more CO2 means more warming. They just disagree on how much. They nibble around the edges but don't get much traction.
I seem to have a pretty good understanding, for a layman, anyway. And there are major problems with the inputs and assumptions in the prevalent models. You should look into that. It's pointed out in the peer-reviewed literature every month where the issues are, but the shrill alarmist nutjobs seem to want to put more effort into shutting those people up and controlling the mainstream messages than they are addressing those issues.
Perhaps you can be more specific about what some of those major problem with inputs and assumptions are so I know what to look for. Climate models are far from perfect but we don't have anything better to do the job. As the Real Climate post pointed out the temperature observations are still within the range predicted by climate models. Climate modelers are well aware of the problems and limitations of their models, no doubt far better than you or I. Here's some more posts from the "shrill alarmist nutjobs" at Real Climate about climate models and some of the issues with them. You may dismiss it as a propaganda site but how can you effectively argue against them if you don't know what they're saying in the first place?
The point is they don't do what they are claiming they do - which is predict climate changes and the (all bad, disastrous, something-must-be-done-think-of-the-children) effects of those changes. That makes them BAD science, and screaming for politicians to make expensive and damaging policy changes based on those untenable predictions with major deviations from observation make them REALLY BAD scientists.
So far the climate has been changing within the bounds projected by those models or in the case of ice loss faster than most model projections. Just because you want them to predict something other than what they're capable of predicting doesn't make them wrong. If you think it's too costly to respond to the threats of climate change just wait until you see what it's going to cost to not do anything. If you're young enough you certainly will experience that.
Real Climate is run by some of the leading climate scientists in the world and that post was written by one of the principals of the NASA/GISS Model E climate model. I trust what they say about the science and how to interpret it far more than some random person on the internet. If you expect climate models to "predict" the current slow down in warming in such a short time period you really don't understand how climate models work and how their projections are made. While individual model runs do show periods of lack of warming similar the the current period when you combine the results of many models and model runs the curve gets smoothed out. No matter how much you expect climate models to predict short term natural variability such as we're experiencing now they are not expected by scientists to be able to do that. It's absurd to call climate models wrong for not doing something they're not expected to do in the first place.
"(relatively) sharp" meaning approximately 10,000 years for the transition. The current temperature transition is more on the order of a few hundred years. It's not the change that is the problem so much as the rate of change.
Most deniers dispute CATASTROPHIC global warming, of the runaway type as espoused by Gore, Hansen, Mann, et al.
Or maybe climate science deniers just understand the science so poorly that they are not capable of really judging what the climate science side is saying. Maybe climate science deniers focus in on possible worst case scenarios, even exaggerating them instead of understanding the full range of scientific predictions. Scientifically speaking nothing that has happened is outside of the range of projections so far. If you want to criticize science you need to understand it well enough to do it scientifically. It's useless for a scientist to try and debate someone who doesn't know the science well enough to talk intelligently about it.
You have this shit seriously backwards. You want us to continue to permit you to tear apart the biosystem upon which we all depend, your case had better fucking be bulletproof. "And it isn't."
Exactly. Too many people are clueless about just how dependent human life is on the natural world and the ecosystem services it provides to our civilization. One of the great failings of capitalism is the undervaluing of the natural capital of the Earth system. Right now we're spending the principal of that system like there's no tomorrow and sooner or later that will come back to bite us in the butt.
Claims need to accurate. So far not one AGW model has been shown to be correct by actual climate. No one needs to prove them wrong, the fact that their predictions aren't accurate prove them wrong.
Is the problem inaccurate projections by climate models or is it poor understanding by people like you of what climate models are capable of in the first place? I really doubt you know enough about how climate models work and what they are expected to do to make a useful judgement about their accuracy.
If you're going to put Obama in that category then I have to add George W Bush to the list and most of Congress who also went along with violations of the Constitution too.
You're making some pretty facile assumptions about how it all works. Of course there is a lag in the response of oceans to increased forcing. The oceans have something like 1000 times the thermal mass of the atmosphere.
Saying temperatures stopped rising in 1998 is a massive cherry pick. On any graph of surface temperatures you look at 1998 stands out as an extreme outlier. If you look at decadal averages the 2000's were still warmer than the 1990's by a substantial amount. I see no reason to believe that trend won't continue.
Time will tell but for now I'll continue to go with the scientists who study this stuff and I think surface temperatures and ocean energy content will continue to rise.
Do you realize that the 700-2000 m depth is nearly twice as deep therefore nearly twice as much water and nearly twice as much potential for storing heat as the 0-700 m depth? The heat it is gaining has to come from somewhere. It is being convected down from the surface in places like the Western Pacific because of the water that's been piling up there in the La Nina dominated past decade.
If you look at the first and third chart in the first cite the 0-2000 m heat content lines have hardly leveled off at all. Only the 0-700 m chart shows a leveling off of the heat content. Since that is included in the 0-2000 m chart the lower 1300 m must have gained even more heat to compensate for the leveling off of the 0-700 m heat content gain. Since air temperatures over the oceans are coupled to ocean surface temperatures it's not surprising that since the upper 700 m of ocean have not warmed as much lately that air temperatures would follow. But the rate of rise of total heat content of the 0-2000 m depth has hardly slowed at all.
Do you even realize that your source off-handedly says that ocean heating responds to surface temperatures and not the other way around?
Where did you get that from? In fact this quote from the first cite contradicts you:
This recent slower warming in the upper ocean is closely related to the slower warming of the global surface temperature, because the temperature of the overlaying atmosphere is strongly coupled to the temperature of the ocean surface.
Did you not notice the increased energy in the 0-2000 m graph? The oceans are still absorbing heat.
The numbers don't add up for lack of warming either.
In the case of the Hawaiian Islands they form a chain of islands over a hot spot in the Earth's mantle. You can trace the path of the sea floor over the hot spot by following it island arc. So the original volcano formed and as the position of the hot spot moved southeast the volcanoes that comprise the present day Oahu formed on its flanks. The same thing is presently happening on the Big Island, Hawaii where the current volcanic activity is mostly on the southeast at Kilauea and 22 miles out to sea at Loihi Seamount while the northwest part of the island is eroding away.
So obviously the hot spot is forming new magma channels as the sea floor moves over it and whether any particular vent on the flanks of a volcano is a breakout from old channels or a new one is a moot point. Any specific channel won't last for long (in geological time) as the hot spot moves on.
That's certainly a debatable statement. After all the US was instrumental in deposing the democratically elected President of Iran in 1952, we've supported all sorts of oppressive governments in the Middle East and we've supported Israel without reservation*. After a while you may reach the point where rather than bending over and assuming the position you're not going to take it anymore.
*I support Israel's right to exist but I think they've done themselves no favors by being so repressive of the people who were living there before they took over.
My solution would be for the USA to quit poking it's nose in other countries business, quit projecting our power to protect American and international business interests and quit supporting the tyrants that rule over those countries and support the average citizens instead.
Of course the Earth's magnetic fields aren't fixed. They move around quite a bit and there are at least yearly corrections issued for magnetic declination changes.
If you have a clear view of the sky at night you can pretty easily determine your latitude, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. If you have a 24 hour watch and know what time zone it's set for you can get a pretty good clue of your longitude by comparing the time on your watch to sunrise, noon and sunset. That doesn't get you to the nearest 10 meters but may get you down to 10 or 20 km. If you have a good map you should be able to narrow it down from there.
Slashdot Mirror
If your hypothesis is as good as you think then why hasn't some qualified contrarian climate scientist like Richard Lindzen or Roy Spencer taken it on? If it was as obvious as you think it is someone would have published on it by now.
The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere goes up about 7% for every 1 degree C of temperature rise. Since over 70% of the planet is covered by water humans can do essentially nothing to affect that. We could float an exposed nuclear reactor core in the ocean producing massive amounts of water vapor and it would have an unnoticeable effect on worldwide water vapor levels.
I think a more accurate term is "climate science deniers". They reject the science that the vast majority of climate scientists produce. No one denies that climate changes and the problem isn't that it is changing but that the rate of change is one or two orders of magnitude faster with natural climate change (excluding of course such catastrophic events as an asteroid hitting the Earth). If the temperature change and ocean acidification that took place in the past century and is taking place this century took 10,000 years to occur it wouldn't be much of a problem. Everything would have plenty of time to adapt.
You mean the visible shrill climate alarmists, Michael Mann included.
They are all scientists who are well respected in their fields. Despite all of the vilification of Michael Mann no one has found any scientific misconduct by him. His original hockey stick graph still holds up as shown by around a dozen similar studies done by different scientists using different proxies and techniques. If you think the past 17 years disproves the graph it's more like a nick in the blade of the hockey stick than anything significant.
You might do better not to trust anyone, and look at everything with a critical eye.
I could say the same thing to you. I'll admit that after over 25 years of following this issue I may tend to give climate scientists the benefit of the doubt but over the years I've found very little evidence that they haven't earned that trust. I've also read papers by such noted climate science contrarians as Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen. Even they admit that more CO2 means more warming. They just disagree on how much. They nibble around the edges but don't get much traction.
I seem to have a pretty good understanding, for a layman, anyway. And there are major problems with the inputs and assumptions in the prevalent models. You should look into that. It's pointed out in the peer-reviewed literature every month where the issues are, but the shrill alarmist nutjobs seem to want to put more effort into shutting those people up and controlling the mainstream messages than they are addressing those issues.
Perhaps you can be more specific about what some of those major problem with inputs and assumptions are so I know what to look for. Climate models are far from perfect but we don't have anything better to do the job. As the Real Climate post pointed out the temperature observations are still within the range predicted by climate models. Climate modelers are well aware of the problems and limitations of their models, no doubt far better than you or I. Here's some more posts from the "shrill alarmist nutjobs" at Real Climate about climate models and some of the issues with them. You may dismiss it as a propaganda site but how can you effectively argue against them if you don't know what they're saying in the first place?
FAQ on Climate Models
FAQ on Climate Models: Part II
On mismatches between models and observations
The point is they don't do what they are claiming they do - which is predict climate changes and the (all bad, disastrous, something-must-be-done-think-of-the-children) effects of those changes. That makes them BAD science, and screaming for politicians to make expensive and damaging policy changes based on those untenable predictions with major deviations from observation make them REALLY BAD scientists.
So far the climate has been changing within the bounds projected by those models or in the case of ice loss faster than most model projections. Just because you want them to predict something other than what they're capable of predicting doesn't make them wrong. If you think it's too costly to respond to the threats of climate change just wait until you see what it's going to cost to not do anything. If you're young enough you certainly will experience that.
Real Climate is run by some of the leading climate scientists in the world and that post was written by one of the principals of the NASA/GISS Model E climate model. I trust what they say about the science and how to interpret it far more than some random person on the internet. If you expect climate models to "predict" the current slow down in warming in such a short time period you really don't understand how climate models work and how their projections are made. While individual model runs do show periods of lack of warming similar the the current period when you combine the results of many models and model runs the curve gets smoothed out. No matter how much you expect climate models to predict short term natural variability such as we're experiencing now they are not expected by scientists to be able to do that. It's absurd to call climate models wrong for not doing something they're not expected to do in the first place.
"(relatively) sharp" meaning approximately 10,000 years for the transition. The current temperature transition is more on the order of a few hundred years. It's not the change that is the problem so much as the rate of change.
Not only that but clouds at night will always hold in heat and clouds near the terminator may actually reflect sunlight back down toward the Earth.
Most deniers dispute CATASTROPHIC global warming, of the runaway type as espoused by Gore, Hansen, Mann, et al.
Or maybe climate science deniers just understand the science so poorly that they are not capable of really judging what the climate science side is saying. Maybe climate science deniers focus in on possible worst case scenarios, even exaggerating them instead of understanding the full range of scientific predictions. Scientifically speaking nothing that has happened is outside of the range of projections so far. If you want to criticize science you need to understand it well enough to do it scientifically. It's useless for a scientist to try and debate someone who doesn't know the science well enough to talk intelligently about it.
You have this shit seriously backwards. You want us to continue to permit you to tear apart the biosystem upon which we all depend, your case had better fucking be bulletproof. "And it isn't."
Exactly. Too many people are clueless about just how dependent human life is on the natural world and the ecosystem services it provides to our civilization. One of the great failings of capitalism is the undervaluing of the natural capital of the Earth system. Right now we're spending the principal of that system like there's no tomorrow and sooner or later that will come back to bite us in the butt.
Claims need to accurate. So far not one AGW model has been shown to be correct by actual climate. No one needs to prove them wrong, the fact that their predictions aren't accurate prove them wrong.
Is the problem inaccurate projections by climate models or is it poor understanding by people like you of what climate models are capable of in the first place? I really doubt you know enough about how climate models work and what they are expected to do to make a useful judgement about their accuracy.
Here is a comparison of model output to observations to help you understand the situation a little better.
Value is a subjective judgement. Nothing has any value on it's own but only in it's utility for a living entity.
If you're going to put Obama in that category then I have to add George W Bush to the list and most of Congress who also went along with violations of the Constitution too.
You're making some pretty facile assumptions about how it all works. Of course there is a lag in the response of oceans to increased forcing. The oceans have something like 1000 times the thermal mass of the atmosphere.
Saying temperatures stopped rising in 1998 is a massive cherry pick. On any graph of surface temperatures you look at 1998 stands out as an extreme outlier. If you look at decadal averages the 2000's were still warmer than the 1990's by a substantial amount. I see no reason to believe that trend won't continue.
Time will tell but for now I'll continue to go with the scientists who study this stuff and I think surface temperatures and ocean energy content will continue to rise.
Do you realize that the 700-2000 m depth is nearly twice as deep therefore nearly twice as much water and nearly twice as much potential for storing heat as the 0-700 m depth? The heat it is gaining has to come from somewhere. It is being convected down from the surface in places like the Western Pacific because of the water that's been piling up there in the La Nina dominated past decade.
If you look at the first and third chart in the first cite the 0-2000 m heat content lines have hardly leveled off at all. Only the 0-700 m chart shows a leveling off of the heat content. Since that is included in the 0-2000 m chart the lower 1300 m must have gained even more heat to compensate for the leveling off of the 0-700 m heat content gain. Since air temperatures over the oceans are coupled to ocean surface temperatures it's not surprising that since the upper 700 m of ocean have not warmed as much lately that air temperatures would follow. But the rate of rise of total heat content of the 0-2000 m depth has hardly slowed at all.
Do you even realize that your source off-handedly says that ocean heating responds to surface temperatures and not the other way around?
Where did you get that from? In fact this quote from the first cite contradicts you:
This recent slower warming in the upper ocean is closely related to the slower warming of the global surface temperature, because the temperature of the overlaying atmosphere is strongly coupled to the temperature of the ocean surface.
Did you not notice the increased energy in the 0-2000 m graph? The oceans are still absorbing heat.
The numbers don't add up for lack of warming either.
In the case of the Hawaiian Islands they form a chain of islands over a hot spot in the Earth's mantle. You can trace the path of the sea floor over the hot spot by following it island arc. So the original volcano formed and as the position of the hot spot moved southeast the volcanoes that comprise the present day Oahu formed on its flanks. The same thing is presently happening on the Big Island, Hawaii where the current volcanic activity is mostly on the southeast at Kilauea and 22 miles out to sea at Loihi Seamount while the northwest part of the island is eroding away.
So obviously the hot spot is forming new magma channels as the sea floor moves over it and whether any particular vent on the flanks of a volcano is a breakout from old channels or a new one is a moot point. Any specific channel won't last for long (in geological time) as the hot spot moves on.
I think Howard Hughes Spruce Goose could fit in this category. It only had one flight and never got out of ground effect.
We didn't start this war, let's not forget, ...
That's certainly a debatable statement. After all the US was instrumental in deposing the democratically elected President of Iran in 1952, we've supported all sorts of oppressive governments in the Middle East and we've supported Israel without reservation*. After a while you may reach the point where rather than bending over and assuming the position you're not going to take it anymore.
*I support Israel's right to exist but I think they've done themselves no favors by being so repressive of the people who were living there before they took over.
My solution would be for the USA to quit poking it's nose in other countries business, quit projecting our power to protect American and international business interests and quit supporting the tyrants that rule over those countries and support the average citizens instead.
Did you miss the "and a job" part?
Oh, I always thought it was called dead reckoning because your chances of death increase exponentially if you use it. ;)
Of course the Earth's magnetic fields aren't fixed. They move around quite a bit and there are at least yearly corrections issued for magnetic declination changes.
If you have a clear view of the sky at night you can pretty easily determine your latitude, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. If you have a 24 hour watch and know what time zone it's set for you can get a pretty good clue of your longitude by comparing the time on your watch to sunrise, noon and sunset. That doesn't get you to the nearest 10 meters but may get you down to 10 or 20 km. If you have a good map you should be able to narrow it down from there.
Not to mention the gravitational lensing of massive objects changing the apparent positions...
Isn't that a city in California?
Wait, that's spelled Ojai. Nevermind.