Thursday 12 March 2015

Science Moves On. Even Climate Science


Science moves on.  Thus Al Gore's 2006 "Inconvenient Truth" is full of unmet expectations e.g.
·         Polar Bears are not dying out – their numbers have been increasing since the hunting ban
·         Both poles are not melting – the Antarctic ice is much the same as previously. (Ice-shelves  and sea-ice are always breaking up due to wind activity.  Depth and Extent of ice, particularly land-ice, is the important metric.)
·         1975 to 1998 warming is not the fastest ever, …
·         Temperatures are not the highest ever during human civilisation – Mediaeval Warm Period (~11---1250 AD), Roman Warm Period  and Minoan Warm Period were all at least as warm (within the error margins of times when people didn't have thermometers).
·    Extreme weather – IPCC says no connection found with Climate Change
And, whatever they say now, the vocal scientist supporters of the Dangerous Global Warming hypothesis were surprised by the 'pause' or 'hiatus' in warming (Quotes here)

Those scientists who'd kept their heads down and continued researching ocean currents, cloud formations, atmospheric circulation and ice formation /melting were now finding their research results more popular.

IPCC's AR5 report in 2013 accepted for the first time that the 1975-1998 warming could have been 50% natural due to a series of warm El Nino currents in the Pacific.


Supporters of the 'Climate Change – Earth's Energy Budget is being wrecked by human emissions of carbon-dioxide' theory (e.g. Michael Mann, Kenneth Trenberth, Naomi Oreskes) are 'finding' all the extra heat hidden in the deep oceans where it can't be measured reliably; & prophesying that there'll be a sudden huge release of heat in the future.


While some recent developments include:-
     (i)            Arctic warming happens from time to time without any help from human carbon-dioxide emissions
   (ii)            Atmospheric water vapour does not behave as simply as depicted in NASA's Runaway Warming hypothesis:-
a.       IPCC says cloud formation is very uncertain
b.      March 2015 Paper discussing a stabilizing feedback between atmosphere & ocean circulations, clouds and radiation . From the summary: "The major source of albedo variability and the principal mode of regulation are associated with the interannual variations of cloudiness. The small variability observed suggests a high degree of buffering by the albedo of clouds" http://judithcurry.com/2015/03/10/the-albedo-of-earth

d.      Clouds have the biggest effect at the equator – January 2015 paper: Current Hiatus of Global Warming Tied to Equatorial Pacific Surface Cooling, Yu Kosaka, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan; and S. P. Xie.

See images below

Cloud Cover vs Surface Temperature

Carbon-dioxide Global Distribution

Reflected Sunlight Global Distribution


As with all science, Time Will Tell.  Eventually.

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