Contents Page

In creating this blog I found that all my posts have come out in the reverse order to which I intended them to be read. To save you the reader the hassle of having to plough back through my previous posts I have decided to create a contents page here with links to each section in the order they were originally intended. Of course you are free to view them in any order you choose. So just click on a link and enjoy learning.

Section 1: Introduction to me, my motivation and my blog:
1. Introduction

Section 2: Background information on CO2 and temperature:
2. Global warming from the Little Ice Age
3. Global warming since 1998
4. Global warming prior to the Little Ice Age
5. Global warming -CO2 - the facts

Section 3: Background information on the major groups and issues involved in the debate:
6. The three realities of climate change
7. The sceptics
8. Noble cause corruption in climate change
9. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC)
10. The IPCC and the Hockey stick graph
11. Chartmanship
12. The IPCC's 4th Assessment Report
13. The IPCC's 2500 scientists and the consensus of scientific opinion
14. The 31,072 scientists who oppose the IPCC's position
15. US Senator James Inhofe's 650 dissenting scientists
16. Climate Alarmism and Al Gore
17. Dr. James Hansen and alarmism
18. Professor Stephen Schnider and alarmism
19. Alarmism and the IPCC
20. Australian scientists and alarmism - Dr. David Karoly
21. Australian scientists and alarmism - Dr. Tim Flannery
22. Australian scientists and alarmism - Professor Matthew England
23. Australian scientists and alarmism - Professor Barry Brook
24. Australian scientists and alarmisim
25. Australian activists and alarmism
26. The media on climate change - part 1
27. The media on climate change - part 2
28. The media on climate change - part 3
29. The media on climate change - part 4
30. UK Met Office employs hindsight to claim prediction perfection.
31. Use of visual media as a propaganda tool
32. The reaction of some of the public to the media campaign on climate change
33. In the pay of "Big Oil" and other funding arrangements
34. Private beneficiaries of climate change
35. The 35 errors in "An Inconvenient Truth" - part 1
36. The 35 errors in "An Inconvenient Truth" - part 2
37. The 35 errors in “An Inconvenient Truth” – part 3
38. The 35 errors in “An Inconvenient Truth” – part 4
39. The 35 errors in “An Inconvenient Truth” – part 5
40. The 35 errors in “An Inconvenient Truth” – part 6
41. The 35 errors in “An Inconvenient Truth” – part 7
42. The 35 errors in “An Inconvenient Truth” – part 8
43. The 35 errors in “An Inconvenient Truth” – part 9
44. The 35 errors in “An Inconvenient Truth” – part 10
45. The 35 errors in “An Inconvenient Truth” – part 11
46. The 35 errors in “An Inconvenient Truth” – part 12
47. The 35 errors in "An Inconvenient Truth" - part 13
48. More errors by Al Gore
49. Do as I say, not as I do
50. The environmental activists hidden agendas

Section 4: The major issues:
51. Comic relief
52. The Polar Icecaps - part 1
53. The Polar Icecaps - part 2
54. The Polar Icecaps - part 3
55. The Polar Icecaps - part 4
56. The Polar Bears
57. Permafrost
58. Rising seas - part 1
59. Rising seas - part 2
60. Rising seas - part 3
61. Acid seas and coral reefs - part 1
62. Acid seas and coral reefs - part 2
63. Acid seas and coral reefs - part 3
64. Hurricanes and cyclones
65. Drought and the Murray Darling Basin
66. Temperature and the natural cycles
67. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)
68. The Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation (AMO)
69. Air and ocean temperatures
70. Transition to Solar cycle 24
71. Cosmic rays
72. Urban Heat Island effect
73. Mosquito borne diseases

Section 5: The proposed cures for climate change
74. The alternate energy systems
75. Wind power - part 1
76. Wind power - part 2
77. Wind power - part 3
78. Solar power - part 1
79. Solar power - part 2
80. Solar power - part 3
81. Other renewable sources of power
82. Nuclear - part 1
83. Nuclear - part 2
84. Nuclear - part 3
85. Other "Green" initiatives - biofuels
86. Other "Green" initiatives - hybrid /electric cars
87. Other "Green" initiatives - Compact Florescent Lights (CFL's) - part 1
88. Other "Green" initiatives - CFL's - part 2
89. Other "Green" initiatives - CFL's - part 3
90. Other "Green" initiatives - CFL's - part 4
91. The list of all things caused by global warming

Section 6: Conclusion of Sections 1 to 5
92. Conclusion

Section 7: Updates
93. More Hockey Stick Graph Controversy
94. Antarctic Not Melting During Summer
95. Cosmic Rays Hit Space Age High
96. Quiz Time
97. Alarmists Deliberately Target Children
98. Alarmists Deliberately Target Children - Part 2
99. Dr. James Hansen's Failed Prediction
100. Yet More Political Support For Alarmism
101. Dr. Richard Lindzen Discusses Climate Change
102. The Climate Research Unit Email Scandal
103. The Global Warming Swindle Movie
104. More Informational Videos
105. Climategate (The C.R.U. EMail Scandal) Update
106. Professor Bob Carter on CO2 and Climate Change
107. The Debate
108. Report from Copenhagen
109. Hiding the Decline - Part 1
110. Hiding the Decline - Part 2
111. Hiding the Decline - Part 3
112. Hiding the Decline - Part 4
113. Hiding the Decline - Part 5
114. Hiding the Decline - Part 6
115. Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) dismisses what it should be revealing
116. Cloud Mystery Video Series
117. Those Who Control The Information Try To Control The Debate.
118. Glaciergate And The TERI Link
119. No Peer Review Required At IPCC
120. The CRU Was Not Alone In Manipulating Data
121. How GISTEMP Produce Their Fudged Data.
122. Dr. Richard Lindzen - The Earth Is Never In Equilibrium
123. Climategate Enquiries And The Tom Sawyer Effect
124. Would You Trust Truth Fudgers?
125. When Scientists Go Bad
126. Tuvalu - The Defiant Island
127. Update On Wind Power Generation
128. Anthony Watts Discusses His Surface Stations Project
129. More Evidence Of Enhanced Global Temperature Data
130. Dr. Roy Spencer's Global Warming For Dummies
131. "Even if we have to redefine what the peer-reviewed literature is".
132. IPCC Continues To Fail In Its Bid For Accuracy
133. Failing To Convince, Climate Activists Threaten Instead
134. Stinks Of Desperation By The Alarmists.
135. A Very Important Letter
136. New Peer Reviewed Study Rebuts Steig et al Study on Antarctic
137. New Peer Review Study Rebuts Schmidt Paper on Surface Temperature Measurements
138. New Peer Reviewed Study Shows Just How Bad Climate Models Are
139. New Peer Reiviewed Paper Shows “Absence Of Correlation Between Temperature Changes … And CO2″
140. Is The Warming Still Too Large To Be Explained By Solar?
141. CERN CLOUD Experiment - Preliminary Results
142. Global Warming Panic Explained
143. Two Important Interviews In The Carbon Dioxide Tax Debate
144. Sea Levels Don't Respond To Alarmism
145. Geoengineering - Not Quite The Fix They Thought It Was
146. Latest News From CERN CLOUD Experiment
147. New Study Links Cosmic Rays To Aerosols/Cloud Formation Via Solar Magnetic Activity Modulation
148. New Study Admits “Global Surface Temperatures Did Not Rise Between 1998 and 2008″
149. Dr Judith Curry - An explanation(?) for lack of warming since 1998
150. Dr. Roy Spencer's Video
151.

Dr. Roy Spencer's Video

An interesting video from Dr. Roy Spencer of UAH on Why the Global Warming Agenda is Wrong. Particularly interesting given here in Australia our Prime Minister Julia Gillard has just announced the introduction of a Carbon Tax (despite promising in the election not to do so).

Dr Spencer has also written another article worth reading called:

More Evidence that Global Warming is a False Alarm: A Model Simulation of the last 40 Years of Deep Ocean Warming

June 25th, 2011

NOTE: I am making available the Excel spreadsheet with the simple forcing-feedback-diffusion model so people can experiment with it. The spreadsheet is fairly self-explanatory. THE DIFFUSION COEFFICIENTS CANNOT BE VARIED TOO DRASTICALLY SINCE, WITH A MONTHLY TIME STEP, THE MODEL WILL CREATE UNSTABLE TEMPERATURE OSCILLATIONS. This is a common problem with numerical integration, which could be eliminated by reducing the time step, but I wanted to keep the model file size manageable:
simple-forcing-feedback-ocean-heat-diffusion-model-v1.0
FOLLOWUP NOTE: The above spreadsheet has an error in the equations, which does not change the conclusions, but affects the physical consistency of the calculations. The heat capacity used for water is 10 times too low, and the diffusion coefficients are also 10x too low. Those errors cancel out. I will post a new spreadsheet when I get back to the office, as I am on travel now.

NASA’s James Hansen is probably right about this point: the importance of ocean heat storage to a better understanding of how sensitive the climate system is to our greenhouse gas emissions. The more efficient the oceans are at storing excess heat during warming, the slower will be the surface temperature response of the climate system to an imposed energy imbalance.

Unfortunately, the uncertainties over the rate at which vertical mixing takes place in the ocean allows climate modelers to dismiss a lack of recent warming by simply asserting that the deep oceans must somehow be absorbing the extra heat. Think Trenberth’s “missing heat“. (For a discussion of the complex processes involved in ocean mixing see here.)

Well, maybe what is really missing is the IPCC’s willingness to admit the climate system is simply not as sensitive to our greenhouse gas emissions as they claim it is. Maybe the missing heat is missing because it does not really exist.

This is where we can learn from the 40+ year record of deep ocean temperature changes. Even the 2007 IPCC report admitted the oceans have warmed more slowly at depth than the climate models can explain.

Here I will show quantitatively with a simple forcing-feedback-diffusion model that recent ocean warming is actually consistent with a climate sensitivity which is so low that the IPCC considers it very unlikely.

I will also show how disingenuous the IPCC 2007 report was in presenting the ocean warming evidence to support its view that anthropogenic global warming will be a serious problem.

The Need for Ocean Layers in a Climate Model

Ten years ago Dick Lindzen used a simple climate model to look into the issue of whether the rate of ocean warming at 500 meters depth might help us better understand how sensitive the climate system is. He concluded that it is the surface temperature that is most important, not what happens deeper down in the ocean.

Conceptually, the line of reasoning here would be that the deep ocean can’t warm unless the surface warms first, and the rate of surface warming is largely controlled by atmospheric feedbacks.

In contrast, Roger Pielke, Sr. has always maintained that the heat content of the ocean is what we should be monitoring, not the surface temperature, to better understand how sensitive the climate system is to various forcings.

I WILL say I firmly believe that the surface temperature is THE MOST important temperature in the climate system. This is because (1) the surface is where most sunlight is absorbed, (2) the atmosphere is then convectively coupled to the surface, and (3) the surface and atmosphere together are the ONLY way for the Earth to radiatively cool to space in the face of continuous solar heating.

But, as we will see, the detailed profile of recent warming with depth in the ocean does appear to have additional information about climate sensitivity that is not apparent from surface warming alone.

Explaining the Observed Heating Profile of the Ocean

The following picture is worth a thousand words….but I will try to use fewer than that. First, it is partly a reworking of Fig. 9.15 of the IPCC 2007 report, showing the substantial discrepancy between observed global-average warming of the oceans to 700 meters depth (red curve), and warming estimated from the PCM1 climate model (solid green curve) for the 40-year period ending (I believe) around 2005 (click for the large version).

The green dashed line is my simple model simulation of the PCM1 model’s 40-year warming profile, where I used the GISS yearly global climate forcings to force temperature changes in the 30-layer model, where all layers have adjustable diffusion coefficients.

To get this match to the PCM1 model results, I specified the known PCM1 model net feedback parameter (1.8 Watts per sq. meter per degree), and then adjusted the diffusion coefficients between the simple model’s 50-meter thick layers extending from the surface to a depth of 1,500 meters until I got good agreement between my simple model and the PCM1 model results.

As you can see, my model fit (green dashed line) to the PCM1 model results (green solid line) is pretty good. (Some small amount of warming occurs all the way to the 1,500 m bottom of the model, although it is extremely weak). This demonstrates that the simple model can basically replicate the behavior of the much more complex PCM1 model, albeit for only global-average results.

Next, after I got the simple model to mimic the PCM1 model, then I tried to explain the observations (red) curve by adjusting (1) the model sensitivity (assumed feedback parameter), and (2) the diffusion coefficients, until the model explained the actual observed warming profile. Interestingly, the diffusion coefficients only needed to be changed for the top three ocean layers (down to 200 m depth, which would be about the bottom of the themocline.) The rest of the diffusion coefficients remained the same as in the PCM1-matching simulation.

The result is the blue curve. Significantly, the simple model required a feedback parameter equivalent to a climate sensitivity of only 1.3 deg. C in response to a doubling of CO2. This is well below the range of warming the IPCC claims is most likely (2.5 to 4 deg. C).

What It Means

The bottom line is that 40 years of warming of the 0-700 meter ocean layer has been so modest that, even if we assume it was caused by the GISS forcings (which Hansen believes will eventually cause strong warming) , it corresponds to low climate sensitivity anyway.

In other words, the oceans have not warmed enough to support the IPCC’s predictions of future warming.

The problem in the IPCC models seems to be that they mix excess heat too rapidly from the mixed layer into the deep ocean. This allows the models to retain high climate sensitivity, while limiting the amount of surface warming they produce to match the observed warming to date.

Voila! The models can thus “explain” the surface temperature record AND STILL predict strong warming for the future.

Even though the model I use is admittedly simple, this does not really matter because, in the global average, long-term temperature change is only a function of 3 basic processes:

(1) the strength of the forcing (imposed energy imbalance on the climate system, due to whatever);

(2) the strength of the climate system’s resistance to that forcing (net feedback, which determines climate sensitivity); and,

(3) the rate of ocean mixing (which affects surface temperature, which affects the rate of energy loss to space through feedback processes).

Everything else is details.

How the IPCC Cheated

In the process of this little study I learned that the IPCC’s 2007 presentation of the ocean warming data was, at best, disingenuous. Here’s the original PCM1 panel of Fig. 9.15 from the 2007 IPCC report, from which I took numbers to re-plot on the figure, above:

With this figure, the IPCC was cleverly able to make it LOOK like there was general agreement between their climate models (green shaded area) and observations (red curve), with no less than four ploys:

1) They chose a climate model (PCM1) that is the 2nd LEAST sensitive of the twenty-something climate models they survey. PCM1 produces even less warming than the IPCC’s official projected range of warming from a doubling of CO2.

2) For the PCM1 model results, they presented a rather broad range of warming (green shaded area), meant to represent natural climate variations about the average warming produced by the model. In this way, they were able to get the weak observed warming to better overlap with the model produced warming, suggesting agreement.

3) They omitted the 0 deg. (no temperature change) vertical line from the figure, the presence of which would have visually revealed the significant discrepancy between the PCM1 model results and the observations.

4) They made the ocean depth scale nonlinear, which disproportionally emphasized the agreement in the relatively shallow mixed layer of the ocean, while downplaying the rather large discrepancy deeper down. But there is NO physical reason to make the ocean depth scale nonlinear; the total heat carrying capacity of the ocean varies linearly with depth, not non-linearly.

Conclusion

It appears that the vertical profile of ocean warming could be a key ingredient in getting a better idea of how sensitive the climate system is to our greenhouse gas emissions. The results here suggests the warming has been considerably weaker than what would be expected for a sensitive climate system.

The sensitivity number I estimate — 1.3 deg. C — arguably puts future warming in the realm of “eh, who cares?”

It will be interesting to see how the next IPCC report, now in the early stages of preparation, explains away the increasing discrepancies between their climate models and the observations. Since IPCC outcomes are ultimately driven by desired governmental policies and politicians, rather than science, I’m sure the wordsmithing (and figuresmithing) will be artfully done.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The above model simulation does not account for the possibility that some of recent warming could have been due to one or more natural processes, in which case the diagnosed climate sensitivity would be even lower.