Next decade 'may see no warming'

And directly on topic for the original post, take a look at the most recent Realclimate posting. A group of Realclimate scientists has challenged the authors of that short-term global cooling paper to a bet, after verifying that they indeed are predicting lower global temperatures (and not just proposing this as a theoretical exercise). The realclimate guys are betting that the decade average temperatures will not fall. But the article's just a teaser -- they don't disclose the scientific (or other?) reasoning behind their bet, just promise to do that in a future post.

Check out the third comment if you have time. In order for the prediction to be true (about the decade ending 2010 being colder than the prior decade), given the warming already on the books, there would have to be an implausibly large amount of cooling in the remaining years. So that seems to be the main driver behind offering the bet. Yet, as the realclimate authors note, even though it would require an implausibly large amount of cooling in the next couple of years to make that prediction right, that didn't stop the authors of the short-term cooling article from posting and publicizing that prediction. So I think that's the point of the bet -- to underline that.

Anyway, they also show what the original article actually predicted. As noted earlier in the thread, the short-term cooling is projected to disappear within 20 years or so. Hope this was not posted earlier, I didn't recheck the whole thread.

 

The key point is this: these periods of "no warming" are really periods of "no atmospheric warming". During these periods, instead of going into heating (that is, raising the average temperature of) the atmosphere, the heat trapped by global warming is going into the deep ocean and warming the deep ocean water. When these periodic changes in ocean circulation change back, the cold deep ocean water is no longer exposed, and global warming resumes heating the atmosphere. We will get no long-term relief from these episodes, only a pause in the trend which can mislead the careless.

And of course, as long as global warming continues, with each subsequent oscillation in ocean circulation the deep ocean is not quite as cold as it was in the previous oscillation. Eventually the deep ocean warms enough to significantly change these periodic oscillations, and we'll stop getting periods of "no warming".

 

That's the stupidest argument I've ever heard. Now, there are lots of things out there when you google "DAI", but none of which I could fine that defines the term "catastrophic". I asked you a simple question, and you've done everything to avoid answering it. Then you claim that my inability to understand a term I've never heard of proves that my views are based on emotion? (Which is not at all the point you were trying to make by the way.) Is that all you have left to argue with? I submit that when you are no longer able use facts to back up your point, it is you who are basing your views on emotions, not me. Now back to my question, please define what "catastrophic" means to you, without pointing me to yet another obscure reference.

 

Goodness knows it's hard to get access to RAOBCORE data.

Why didn't they include 1.3 data? Equally hard to access.
Theoretical Meteorology and Climatology

They cherry-picked, much as you have, in focusing only on RAOBCORE 1.4 out of all the excellent rebuttal material to Douglass et all presented in this thread.

And there's no need to be mysterious about DAI.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2004/dai_complete_20041026.pdf

 

So tell me Tim, after how many pages of the Google search would I have run into this? I stopped after 8.

Obviously you'd rather turn this discussion into a personal attack on me, rather than address the issue.

 

What the hey? I never accused you of being uneducated, and did not accuse you of not caring about "the children".

Again, no. I've already addressed your central point, and you have not responded to mine.

 

Thanks Tim, accepted.

I do understand that this is your central point, and that you can point to literature that supports your point. As others here have already said, there is even more literature out there that does not support your point. As someone who works with climate modelers (but not a climate modeler myself), I can tell you that what they (the ones I work with ) are saying is that indeed their models are wrong. Based on comparisons with satellite data in the past 2-5 years, the models are underestimating recent temperature increases. This is what they are saying; I don't know if it has gotten into the literature yet. The discussions have turned from "Is there an anthropogenic effect?" to "How bad is it?" to "What can we do to reverse it?" (geoengineering), and we've gotten into a realm of some pretty far out proposals (beyond the simple man-made dust storms into ideas like thousands of mini satellites with mirrors and mass airplane flights at high altitudes to induce jet streams) because the problem has gotten that far out of hand.

 

The recent study makes no claims that climate change will not be catastrophic. That's not at all its subject.

Nature article on 'cooling' confuses media, deniers
Next decade may see rapid warming, not cooling

Dr. Keenlyside writes me this morning, "All our figures are decadal means, and it is hard to say (due to high frequency internal variability) at which point [after 2010] a rapid increase will occur." That is, his study does not necessarily predict the rapid warming will actually start in, say, 2011, though his results are not inconsistent with that possibility. He reiterates that his paper is not designed to make such detailed year-by-year predictions. Indeed, the paper was designed to show that any such predictions are complicated by decadal-scale climate factors.

 

Contrails, not jet streams.
:doh:

 

Here's an example of what I'm talking about, from Science Magazine.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2007/2007_Rahmstorf_etal.pdf

 

The only real science is observed science. Theories are meaningless unless you can prove them through observation. You observe; you note; you publish and then let your peers review your findings and replicate if possible to prove your theories were correct. Kind of simple really; when you think about it. Any other way of coming up with scientific conclusions is not worthy of discussion.

 

I wouldn't go so far as to say theories are meaningless. There have been many theories that could not be effectively tested or falsified in the past yet they were vindicated at some point in the future. Remember that a theory is generally an explaination that works with many other theories and/or laws. I am hesitant to call Global Warming a theory though, only because the true definition of the word means that any new evidence is not likely to alter the theory in such a way so as to break it down.

Now, we can have a situation where the basic idea of global warming is completely valid but other factors will alter the expected outcome and in this fashion the theory is not wrong but the predictions based on the theory can be wrong. It is similar to Lord Kelvin's estimate of the age of the earth. He made very detailed calculations of the earth's age of (using earth's current temps and assuming the earth has been cooling since it's formation as a molten ball of rock) and came up well short of the true age as we know it today. He was careful to state that his calculations are null if there are other factors effecting the earth's present temperature. He was wrong as was archbishop James Ussher (the man who claimed the earth was created in 4004 BC.). Ernest Rutherford presented information that falsified Lord Kelvin's estimated age of the earth in 1904. Kelvin's idea was in conflict with natural phoenomena and observations by folks like James Hutton , Charles Darwin, and Allen Hall so since it did not work in concert with other available data I would not call it a theory although some might have.

My point is this, theories are not simply educated guesses and should not be taken with a grain of salt like many people would like to do when they toss around phrases like "ohh, that's JUST a theory". Likewise we should not call something a theory until it meets the required criteria.