Your ship is sinking. Will spin help?

This is a hypothesis that the Met Office seems to be testing in the series of papers they have released today. There are three documents: 

• Paper 1: Observing changes in the climate system (PDF, 2 MB)
• Paper 2: Recent pause in global warming (PDF, 1 MB)
• Paper 3: Implications for projections (PDF, 664 kB)

Having focused on climate sensitivity in recent months, as far as this blog is concerned it's the third paper that is most of interest. As readers know, there is a surfeit of new observationally constrained papers that have found low climate sensitivity. Strangely, the Met Office authors only consider the Otto et al study, which had a relatively high ECS estimate - a function of the ocean temperature dataset used. As we know, if any other dataset had been used then they would have got an estimate in line with the other recent observational estimates.

Sure looks like spin to me.

Comments

[Pointman]

At this stage, even Pope Hansen I of the Church of Climatology has grudgingly admitted nothing much is fricking-well happening and given that other ecclesiastical worthies like Archbishop Jones of Norwich and the rarely ecumenical conclave of cardinals at the Met Office have already said pretty much the same, things are looking a bit desperate for the church.

http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/07/05/the-pause/

When it comes to the pause, we're by this stage shooting ducks in a barrel. Best to deploy the humour weapon.

Pointman

[Green Sand]

As commented on a previous post

From - "Bishop in the commons"

"It seems that the government is looking to find a way to persuade everyone that the science of global warming is solid so that we accept the IPCC report without question."

Tis the start of the campaign

[Dodgy Geezer]

God, this is a mess!

It's a random list of things which might be doing something - what, they're not too sure about.

But the whole CO2 warming hypothesis is now shot. For instance, the Met Office now says that stratospheric water vapour has DECREASED recently - yet the AGW theory clearly requires stratospheric water vapour to INCREASE.

This was all meant to be 'settled science'. They had looked for all other possible inputs to the global temperature, and couldn't find ANY apart from CO2. These Met Office papers now say that there could be any number of reasons why temperatures change, none of which are well understood.

Now is the time for a concerted effort - questions to MPs and the rest, pointing out the discrepancies between what was said in order to establish AGW as a settled fact requiring international policies to be applied, and what is now being said. Whether there is warming or not is NOT the issue - the issue is whether we can so unequivocally pin the blame for temperature onto CO2 as to justify ruining our economy and way of life...

[Stuck-Record]

Message to any climate scientists who have been keeping your heads down: 'Speak up very soon.'

It's too late for the main politicians and Warmist gang, and the activists don't care (Communism was falsified fifty years ago and is still recruiting true believers).

But if you don't act now you will be forever tarred by association to these people. At best you'll be seen as tea-leaf reading incompetents, at worst it'll be as partners in one of the biggest frauds in human history. Think you'll be remembered for your science? Wrong. You'll be remembered in the chapters containing Tulip mania and The South Sea Bubble.

And we will make sure the public remember your names.

[confusedphoton]

Wow what a lot of nonsense

From the recent pause in global warming (1):
"It has shown that a wide range of observed climate indicators continue to show changes that
are consistent with a globally warming world, and our understanding of how the climate system works." The old chesnut globally warming world - however this is not the debate - is it caused by man is the question? - given how wrong they have been in the past, their understanding is about the same as a lichen! Why are we paying for these clowns.

The recent pause in global warming (2):
"What can we conclude from all this?" - apart from the verbiage - it would appear nothing!

The recent pause in global warming (3):
"In conclusion, the recent pause in global surface temperature rise does not invalidate climate
models or their estimates of climate sensitivity.It does however raise some important
questions about how well we understand and observe the energy budget of the climate
system, particularly the important role of the oceans in taking up and redistributing heat, as
highlighted in the second report."

It reminds you of the many statements " does not disprove (or consistent with) global warming" or the Morecome and Wise sketch - "all the right notes but in the wrong order"

[Roger Longstaff]

Having just skimmed paper 3, I am surprised by figure 4 - which appears to show that GCM projections made before 1996 have proven to be just about spot on, thereby implicitly validating GCM methodology. Just about everything else I have read shows model forecasts that failed to predict 15 years of flatlining temperatures, with "reality" about to crash out of the (lower) 95 percentile Figure 4 of paper 3 references a 2013 publication by Myles Allen et al, in Nature Geoscience:

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n4/fig_tab/ngeo1788_F1.html

Is anybody else aware of this work?

[AlecM]

@Roger Longstaff: there has been AGW, just not from CO2 and it has saturated.

[Don Keiller]

The Marxist Office is now doing a passable imitation of the 3 "mystic" monkeys.

"See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil".

Here "evil" is data contrary to the "consensus" of Climate Science.

[Martin A]

"Sure looks like spin to me."

S.L.B.T.M.

[mt]

It's worthwhile to remember the Met Office's most recent decadal forecast:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/long-range/decadal-fc

[matthu]

"When projections made by earlier climate models are verified against the subsequent observational record, it is shown that the projections cover the temperatures observed in the most recent decade, thus providing support for the overall validity of climate models and the fundamental physics of global warming."

It only shows that climate models have not been invalidated in a period as short as 10 years. It says nothing about the overall validity of climate models.

"When projections from the newer climate models are combined with observations, including those from the last 10 years, the uncertainty range for warming out to 2050 is reduced. The very highest values of projected warming are eliminated, but the lower bound is largely unchanged. The most likely warming is reduced by only 10%, indicating that the warming that we might previously have expected by 2050 would be delayed by only a few years."

To put this delay into perspective, Bjorn Lomborg has calculated that "Germany Spends $110 Billion to Delay Global Warming by 37 Hours". So a delay of a few years could be worth a thousand times the total spend of any one country in combatting climate change.

[LiT]

After the sky dragons debate comes the introduction of deep sea dragons... You couldn't make it up. Oh wait...

[Salamano]

This is what the IPCC said about its own use of the IS92a model member http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/emission/index.php?idp=27

"The review concluded that the mere fact of the IS92a being an intermediate, or central, CO2 emissions scenario at the global level does not equate it with being the most likely scenario. Indeed, the conclusion was that there was no objective basis on which to assign likelihood to any of the scenarios. Furthermore, the IS92a scenario was shown to be "central" for only a few of its salient characteristics such as global population growth, global economic development and global CO2 emissions. In other ways, IS92a was found not to be central with respect to the published literature, particularly in some of its regional input assumptions. The same is the case with the new set of SRES scenarios, as is shown below. No single scenario can be central with respect to all the characteristics relevant for different uses of emissions scenarios and there is no objective way to assign likelihood to any of the scenarios.

1.5. Why New IPCC Emissions Scenarios?
The 1994 IPCC evaluation of the IS92 scenarios found that the scenarios were innovative at the time of their publication and path-breaking in their coverage of the full range of GHG and SO2 emissions, on both a global and a regional basis. The review also identified a number of weaknesses. These included the limited range of CO2 intensities of energy (CO2 emissions per unit energy) reflected in the six scenarios and the absence of any scenario with significant closure in the income gap between developed and developing countries, even after a full century (Parikh, 1992). Across all six scenarios the per capita income in the developing countries grows only to a share of 17% to 26% of that of the industrial countries, compared to 6% today.

Furthermore, since the development of the IS92 scenarios much has changed in our understanding of both the possible future GHG emissions and the climate impacts that might result."

I was wondering why they were reaching back to this model compared to observations, because they've been touting all their other models that have "improved" upon this one in the years that followed.

[knr]

Its looks like spin becasue it is spin, they bet their rear ends out to 'the cause ' because that was a horse they thought could not lose .And for a time they were right , cash and power came their way , but it turned out not to be a stayer and as the race goes on its fallan furter back. But their all-in with hand full of worthless bets , so what choice but to spin and hope the people don't notice they backed a worthless lag.

[Mike Jackson]

Worth a question to Richard Betts, I would suggest.
Richard, given that the whole question of sensitivity appears to have been thrown wide open in recent months not only from some of the more "fringe" participants but also from reputable sources in the mainstream, why is the Met Office concentrating on the one paper that is bound to raise the suspicions among the ever-increasing number of well-informed and scientifically-literate sceptics that it has been cherry-picked to give the answer the Met Office wants?
Surely if there is a decent range of research on a subject as currently controversial as sensitivity it would be more honest to reflect that range in the Met Office's publications.

[Justice4Rinka]

@ Dodgy Geezer

This was all meant to be 'settled science'. They had looked for all other possible inputs to the global temperature, and couldn't find ANY apart from CO2. These Met Office papers now say that there could be any number of reasons why temperatures change, none of which are well understood.

This is indeed interesting. Essentially, they measured temperature and CO2 and found both rising. They couldn't think of any reason for this so they blamed CO2 for forcing the temperature up.

The temperature then stopped rising but CO2 didn't. Rather than changing the hypothesis, they insisted the temperature was still rising but the heat was hiding.

It's kind of mad, isn't it?

If this were invented today, it couldn't happen. You could not put a chart up today and say Look, CO2 causes temperature rises. You wouldn't pass the laugh test.

A rich seam of interesting data being deposited for future anthropologists.

[sherlock1]

Is David Shukman going 'sceptic'..? After an extremely balanced summation of the 'fracking' business on Radio 4 recently, he is openly writing on the BBC website under the heading: 'What happened to global warming?'..
Well - he does in the end decide that it IS still happening - and states that the first decade of the 21st century is the warmest 'on record', but he does at least conced that possibly, just POSSIBLY, the models have exaggerated...
Stay tuned, folks...

[NickM]

@Roger Longstaff - well spotted.

There have been 4 IPCC reports. Of these the one that made the lowest forecast was SAR the second one. And that's the one they've chosen to use to make a claim that the predictions made by scientists aren't so bad really. That graph is, well basically, a lie. It purports to show that the IPCC has made good predictions. Well - they did once back in 1995/6 probably by accident rather than design.

I've skimmed through all 3 reports and as far as I can see it's pretty much all spin and half truths.

But I think figure 4 is definitely a candidate for the worst graph in the reports (the one that plots decadal averages is another candidate IMHO).

You know it makes me angry. Angry, angry, angry. Not that a bunch of taxpayer funded researchers who claim to be scientists are deliberately spinning the data to misinform politicians and the public. Nah long past getting angry about that. What makes me angry is they think no one will notice - they really do have so much contempt for us.

Cheers,
Nick.

[sherlock1]

'Its all down in the deep oceans - the heat, that is..!
Phew - that was a close one - you don't think they noticed, do you..? I think we got away with it.. Altogether now - The Science is Settled....'

[Dave Salt]

Roger Longstaff (Jul 23, 2013 at 12:14 PM), the explanation of Figure 1a says "The grey shaded region indicates the 5–95% uncertainty interval in forecast anthropogenic warming after scaling the model-simulated spatiotemporal patterns of response to greenhouse gas and sulphate forcing to give the best fit (dashed line) to observations over 1946–1996".

So, if I'm interpreting this correctly, they tweaked the model projection down to fit the real-world data and then plot that real-world data alongside the tweaked projection to show how good it is... somebody, please tell me I've misunderstood this?

[Athelstan.]

But using hindcasting techniques, we told you so ......................erm........we just didn't let on!

This is what happens when science has been kicked out of the window and politics and civil servants are running the show at the Met Office but then using our own [realist] hindcasting techniques - we knew that 25 years ago.

The kiddies at the MO have started bawling again, you know how it goes - first it was global warming, then it was climate change, then................ it stopped warming.....................

Flippin' eck they shouted at Exeter/UAE - what a to do!

It cannot be - it's not natural - it was man made! But now [warming] - it's 'stopped'.

OK then - lets blame it on natural causes......heat disappearing into the oceans, um maybe the Sun going into hibernation, volcanos............gulp!

The current 'pause' in global warming is not unexpected and temperatures will continue to rise, climate scientists have said.

Heat going into the deep ocean is part of the reason global average surface temperatures have increased at a lower rate in the past 10 to 15 years than in previous decades, experts said.

Recent low solar activity and volcanic eruptions, which send particles into the atmosphere that reflect heat, have also contributed to a slowing in temperature rises, while natural climate variations also play a part.
Global warming has not stopped but the average rate of warming was just 0.04C per decade between 1998 and 2012, compared with 0.17C per decade from 1970-1998.

Recent measurements of deep-ocean temperatures indicate heat is being absorbed at lower levels, which the researchers suggest could be due to a period of more circulation within the ocean, taking heat into the deep where it is 'hidden from view'.

But Met Office experts and climate scientists said periods of slow-down or 'pauses' in surface warming are not unusual in temperature records and are predicted in climate models, which suggests such periods could occur at least twice a century because of natural variation.

link Daily Mail.

The clowns at the MO - just cannot bring themselves to admit the truth - man made warming - it's a chimera, is gone, because: it never existed.

When are they going to give up, is it not about time that the taxpayer was given some relief from the catastrophists?

Close down the Met Office.

[Anoneumouse]

The MET office is a failed executive agency and is no longer fit for purpose. The government should retain the MMU element and privatise the rest of it.

[Martin A]

"The ten hottest years on record globally have all been since 1997." (Met Office)

Until now the Met Office has relied on spouting that to silence anyone who questioned whether global warming was still under way.

What changed?

[Richard Drake]

LiT:

After the sky dragons debate comes the introduction of deep sea dragons ...

I liked that, thank you. Just skimming through y'know. Too much excitement in the last week and a bit.

[JamesG]

The net result of all these lies and half-truths is that we are paying 30% more for our energy - with bigger rises to come. People should be a darn sight angrier.

[rhoda]

So, in those model runs where the global average air temp was flat for fifteen-plus years, did the ocean temps below 700m increase at all? If not, whether they describe what happened to one metric is not an indication that they are right, but rather that they got a right answer by sheer chance. But then I wonder why I would get interested in a debate about claims that are clearly rubbish. If the met office can't or won't engage here it is all for naught. And Dr Betts chipping in occasionally does not count as engagement. Nor does anything that happens on twitter.

[Richard Drake]

No need to rule Twitter out, as long as the longer version is obtainable at some point.

[michael hart]

The first document is being more than a little bit disingenuous with the "missing heat" argument again.

If it has gone into the ocean depths, somehow bypassing the layers in between, it has only made a huge amount of cold water a tiny amount less cold. A lay person might read the words "heat" and "ocean" and be led to believe the abyss is now warm. It isn't. It is cold, and will remain cold for a very long time. It contains the accumulated cold waters of ice-ages past.

The article goes on to say that the heat could re-emerge later. Well, some cold water could emerge later. But significantly more more cold water than is currently emerging would be a disturbing prospect to trouble an unhappy world. The dilution of the current puny surface warmth into the vast bulk of cold ocean cannot be unpicked. You cannot un-scramble an egg.

[Green Sand]

Is this a possible reason for the "pause":-

http://i43.tinypic.com/2dj8ht0.png

If, BIG IF, there is a 60 year cycle in play then we are one third of the way down a 30 year down leg.

If so will there be another 20 years with the 30 year (climate) rate of warming continuing to decline?

I don't know how to confirm or refute a cycle, can it be done, are there accepted principles?

My gut feeling is that we need to be about half way down the present down leg, so approx another 5 years. Which ties in with the latest UKMO Decadal (5 year) Forecast as shown by the dotted extension line.

[Dung]

JamesG

I AM angrier!

Just to look at their current excuse; if heat really is going into the oceans then there will be more CO2 released ^.^

[shub]

The global warming debate has officially turned into a Scooby Doo episode, with masked ghosts, deep sea monsters and a bunch of scared kids running about.

[Mike Jackson]

They couldn't think of any reason for this so they blamed CO2

I think you're being more than a tad generous there, J4R.
Look at the people who have really been pushing this meme:
WWF
Greenpeace
Friends of the Earth
the eco-activist do-gooders in the NGOs (Christian Aid, Oxfam,etc)
the scientific activists associated with any of the above that managed to get themselves into senior positions in places like NASA, the Met Office, CRU, and others
the political/animal rights activists that have either created their own or succeeded in taking over the mainstream animal charities
The Club of Rome
The Sierra Club.
And I have no doubt I have missed out a few.
That is the basis on which I have argued for over a decade that this has always been political and CO2 has been essential to the politics because the aim of all these groups — to a greater or lesser extent —has been to rein in development; to limit or if possible ban the use of fossil fuels; and to bring an end to the sort of industrial society that has made us all (more or less) healthy and wealthy, of not all that wise sometimes, and reducing "carbon emissions" in the name of "saving the planet" was seen as the most effective way of persuading governments and people to go along with those aims.
And it worked.
We all know that the political wing of the Environmentalists has never won a significant share of the popular vote in the UK (or most other countries) and neither has the political wing of their brothers-in-arms the hard left ex-trots.
I hesitate to use the word 'conspiracy' but there is a definite commonality of interest at work and when you add in the rest of the useful idiots gorging themselves at various government troughs, not to mention Big Oil and others who like their bread buttered on both sides if they can manage it, it is not hard to realise that AGW was a philosophy whose time had most definitely come!

[Roger Longstaff]

Jul 23, 2013 at 2:00 PM | Dave Salt: " ... somebody, please tell me I've misunderstood this?"

Well I am afriad that I can't Dave. Perhaps Richard Betts can...?

I agree that they seem to have used the lowest ensemble mean they could find in the cupboard (from IPCC2) then retrospectively forecast a new ensemble mean and 5% - 95% probabilty limits, without explaining this in paper 3. I would now like to see the original forecast WITHOUT any data manipulation and retrospective adjustment. I will look for it....

Remember - this is their sole justification that GCMs have been validated!

[steve ta]

So it's not just missing heat - they are now blaming volcanos - but as far as I can tell, these are also missing.

Don't these "scientists" realise that with 24-hour global news, we all know of any major volcano within minutes of any eruption. And there simply haven't been any major ones since Pinatubo.

So why are volcanos even mentioned?

[Brent Hargreaves]

The first volume, "What do observations of the climate system tell us?" word-searched for the word "Antarctic" results in "no matches found".

Denialists. Worse: taxpayer-funded denialists desperately trying to conceal the collapse of their hoax. Funding for this squalid nest of eco-alarmists should be slashed by three quarters with consequent job losses. We pay them to forecast the weather, no more than that.

[rhoda]

Shub: "The global warming debate has officially turned into a Scooby Doo episode, with masked ghosts, deep sea monsters and a bunch of scared kids running about."

I thought we were the Scooby gang. The Met is the one who ends up saying 'And we would have gotten away with it, if it wasn't fer them pesky kids.'

[Schrodinger's Cat]

Our host is right, it does look like spin.

The MO seems to have pulled out all the stops in a desperate attempt to counter the flagging credibility of global warming, not to mention their own diminishing standing which took another knock when they announced soggy cold summers about a week before the current heat wave.

I don't have all the necessary data at hand but their first paper looks like cherry picking and spin. It will probably convince most of the journalists who don't realise that some of these trends have continued since the Little Ice Age. I noticed that an ice extent graph included the Antarctic, but while the Arctic was discussed at length I didn't notice any comments on the record ice levels at the other pole.

I hope that people with the appropriate skills will look in detail at these papers and expose any attempts to mislead the rest of us.

[HaroldW]

Roger Longstaff -
Paul Homewood discussed the Allen et al. paper here.

[David Chappell]

Time to put the Met Office back on the Air Ministry roof, where it came from.

[Pointman]

Respect please - Scooby Doo is a reasonable artistic endeavour compared to this stuff. At least it maintains a constant position. The first friendly person they meet in each episode always turns out to be the villain. Guys with the red tunic beaming down will get zapped etc etc.

Pointman

[Chris Long]

Off-topic but relevant to recent posts... Shukman's recent article (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23409404) includes this statement:

"But the key factor - according to all the speakers at the briefing - is that whatever solar energy is making it through to the surface, much is being absorbed by the hidden depths of the oceans."

Is it assumed that all solar energy reaching the surface remains in the form of heat? This is patently not true, as significant(?) amounts of energy are absorbed by plants, algae etc and converted to chemical potential energy. How many watts-per-square-metre are absorbed in this way and removed from the heat balance (assuming long-lived plants in the 'greening' areas of the world, etc)?

[Stephen Richards]

The ten hottest years on record globally have all been since 1997." (Met Office)

Until now the Met Office has relied on spouting that to silence anyone who questioned whether global warming was still under way.

What changed?

Global cooling AND the number of years over which they have to look to find the ten hottest. It used to be 9 of the last ten, then 9 of the last 12 now .....

[Roger Longstaff]

I have come to the conclusion that figure 4 of paper 3 is not only disingenuous, but downright misleading! Just compare it with figure 1.4 of (draft) AR5:

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/ipcc_fig1-4_models_obs.png

These two figures tell entirely different stories - the first that GCMs have been validated by historic predictions, the second that GCMs are completely useless!

You pays your money and you makes your choice, but paying and getting it wrong wrecks the economy. Surely, in this case the precautionary principle must apply to the precautionary principle itself - first, do no harm!

[matthu]

The IPCC said this about warming

"It is very unlikely that the 20th-century warming can be explained by natural causes. The late 20th century has been unusually warm. Palaeoclimatic reconstructions show that the second half of the 20th century was likely the warmest 50-year period in the Northern Hemisphere in the last 1300 years. This rapid warming is consistent with the scientific understanding of how the climate should respond to a rapid increase in greenhouse gases like that which has occurred over the past century"

Since the climate is responding differently now, we must conclude that the latest hiatus is no longer consistent with the scientific understanding of how the climate should respond.

So what some scientists are evidently doing, is changing their scientific understanding.

But then we must ask the question, could the warming sibnce 1980 be consistent with heat coming out of the depths of the oceans?

In the light of our new understanding about the possible transfer of heat between the surface and depths of the ocean and in the absence of any suitable measurements at depth dating back to this period, this must become a distinct possibility.

If this is a possibility, then we can no longer truthfully claim that it is very unlikely that the 20th-century warming can be explained by natural causes.

[Mike Jackson]

"But the key factor - according to all the speakers at the briefing - is that whatever solar energy is making it through to the surface, much is being absorbed by the hidden depths of the oceans."

All right, already! So a scientist I'm not! But will somebody out there explain to me how heat can travel through water without heating it?
Because that is what I am being told is happening.
I'm a simple-minded soul: the first thing to get heated by either the sun or the warmists' lost heat is the top millimetre of the ocean. Yes or No.
The second thing to get heated is the second millimetre. Then the third. Then the fourth.
But this Miracle Heat appears to have gathered itself into a little ball with an outer shell of ......... some wonderful new insulating material? and gone zooming down 700 metres to "lurk" in the depths.
Somebody can explain this in simple language perhaps?

[matthu]

Mike - can we be sure that the flow of heat did not originate at the bottom of the ocean rather than the top?

[Dave Salt]

Roger Longstaff (Jul 23, 2013 at 2:45 PM) if this really is the best 'scientific' evidence thay have, then words fail me.

Chris Long (Jul 23, 2013 at 3:23 PM) I think you need to first ask another question: how much solar energy is reflected back into space by clouds and is this process well modelled?

I note that the IPCC were most candid within AR4 WG1 where they stated clearly that clouds were poorely modeled. Here are a few examples of those statements...
——————————————————-
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch08.pdf
8.6.3.2 Clouds
In the current climate, clouds exert a cooling effect on climate (the global mean CRF is negative). In response to global warming, the cooling effect of clouds on climate might be enhanced or weakened, thereby producing a radiative feedback to climate warming.
…
Therefore, cloud feedbacks remain the largest source of uncertainty in climate sensitivity estimates.
8.6.3.2.1 Understanding of the physical processes involved in cloud feedbacks
The sign of the climate change radiative feedback associated with the combined effects of dynamical and temperature changes on extratropical clouds is still unknown.
…
The role of polar cloud feedbacks in climate sensitivity has been emphasized by Holland and Bitz (2003) and Vavrus (2004). However, these feedbacks remain poorly understood.
8.6.3.2.4 Conclusion on cloud feedbacks
Despite some advances in the understanding of the physical processes that control the cloud response to climate change and in the evaluation of some components of cloud feedbacks in current models, it is not yet possible to assess which of the model estimates of cloud feedback is the most reliable.

[JCToronto]

From Paper 2:
“…the additional heat from the continued rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations has been absorbed in the ocean and has not been manifest as a rise in surface temperature”.

Accepting the above gives rise to a few questions, some rhetorical:

Does that not mean GCM’s have failed to adequately model heat transfer to the oceans?

Given that we live on ye olde water planet, does that not reduce confidence in the predictive power of GCM’s?

If the heat is going into the oceans and results in an almost immeasurably small change in deep ocean temperature, is there any physical justification for a water vapour amplification of climate sensitivity to CO2 forcing?

Jumping on a different nag, possibly headed for the knackers yard, is there any reason to believe that the ocean will occasionally burp out this heat (ENSO anyone?) in a manner consistent with the step change temperature graphs, ala Bob Tisdale?

[sHx]

Here is the summary of what the Met Office now says (as accurately predicted by someone just last month):

“Here come de heap big warmy. Bigtime warmy warmy. Is big big hot. Plenty big warm burny hot. Hot! Hot hot! But now not hot. Not hot now. De hot come go, come go. Now Is Coldy Coldy. Is ice. Hot den cold. Frreeeezy ice til hot again. Den de rain. It faaaalllll. Make pasty.”

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/6/19/here-come-de-heap-big-warmy.html

[cheshirered]

Lies, deceit, spin, call it what you will. We can see as clearly as ever the whole agw charade is pure BS.

All warming down to humans, and the science was settled - none of that warming was down to natural variation....except when there's no warming for eons....and suddenly it's all 'suppressed' due to...natural variation!

Absolute tripe. Met Office; you should be ashamed.