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Discussion > A single repository of scientific scepticism

the fallacy of the unmeasured saviour....

That is, whenever EM is in a spot of bother, he seeks recourse to a puysical quantity that is not measured and tells us that is where the imbalance is taken up.

It would be laughable if only we did not know that he has been teaching people. Teaching people to be stupid.

Feb 21, 2016 at 11:22 PM | Unregistered Commenterdiogenes

Diogenes, Martin A, Radical Rodent

3500 ARGO buoys are measuring temperatures,initially to 700m and latterly to 2000m. Below 2000myou have to use shipborne sensors, so the samples are smaller.

NASA data based on tocean temperature change gives an increase in heat content of 2O*10^22 Joules since 1980. That is an annual increase of 0.6*10^22Joules/year. Since this does not include warming below 2000m it can be regarded as a lower bound for the rate of ocean energy uptake..

My own calculation based on sea level rise allows for thermal expansion of the full ocean volume, less ice melt, emptying aquifers etc gives 3*10^22.

The CERES satellite data gives an imbalance of 4.2W/m2+/-0.2., equivalent to 18*10^22.+/-8*10^22.

That gives a total range between 0.6*10^22 and 26*10^22, the lower limit based on sea temperature and the upper limit based on satellite outward radiation data.

Since the temperatures are rising the imbalance must be allowing a net increase in heat content (2nd law), so the lowest probable imbalance is 0.

I would be interested to read your critique of this post, your own estimates of the imbalance and your reasoning.

Feb 21, 2016 at 11:37 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man

In other words, an unmeasured quantity. Thanks

Feb 21, 2016 at 11:54 PM | Unregistered Commenterdiogenes

Your hypothesis rests on your cultish belief that oceans are expanding, for which you can provide no proof, given that most sea-level gauges disprove you.

Sciences about evidence rather than belief, EM. did no one ever tell you that?

Feb 21, 2016 at 11:57 PM | Unregistered Commenterdiogenes

EM what do Argo buoys tell you about sea level rise and fall through recorded history?

The original 'Cinque Ports' were supplemented by Winchelsea and Rye. Try Google Maps and Earth to see where they are now, relative to sea level. Silting up did not move Winchelsea inland. The silt beneath Harlech Castle must be on steroids.

Climate Scientists only report on areas where sea level, relative to land level is rising, ignoring all areas where the reverse is happening. Cherry picking data to support a theory of accelerating sea level rise is normal practice in climate science.

History can judge better than climate science. It has stood the test of time, and will continue to do so.

Feb 22, 2016 at 2:52 AM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

EM, are you aware how vast the oceans are? Each of the 3,500 ARGO buoys is monitoring several thousand cubic kilometres of the oceans – scatter some thermometers around the few tens of cubic metres in your living room, and see the possible variation that can occur in that limited space, let alone the reliability of the instruments in such a hostile environment (the open ocean, that is, not your living room... but, hey, what do I know?). The data being gathered is a start, and certainly not something that any conclusions can be based upon.

Now, your “calculations” of sea level rise use rather too many assumptions: thermal expansion, for a start; ice melt, and emptying aquifers, to conclude (using the logic that just 1 assumption is too many assumptions for scientific analysis). Is the ice melting; or is it growing? The evidence is for the latter. Are aquifers emptying? Once more, where is your evidence?

Feb 22, 2016 at 9:35 AM | Registered CommenterRadical Rodent

Diogenes, Radical Rodent, golf Charlie

Diogenes

<,blockquote>most sea-level gauges disprove you.

There are more than 1750 tide guage worldwide. Please list the gauges which show that sea level is dropping and show how these affect the sea level rise calculation. Do not forget the GIA corrections.

Radical Rodent

Please provide numerical estimates of uncertainty and summarise the calculations you used, so that I can check them.


Golf Charlie

Climate Scientists only report on areas where sea level, relative to land level is rising, ignoring all areas where the reverse is happening.

Conspiracy theory. No reply necessary unless you can prove it.

I am disappointed with all three of you. Science is about numbers. You quote your beliefs, but cannot back them up with numbers.

Feb 22, 2016 at 6:40 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man

I find it ironic that EM talks about numbers when the only numbers he ever cites have been plucked out of thin air.

Feb 22, 2016 at 7:02 PM | Unregistered Commenterdiogenes

Diogenes

Don't bother. It is too late anyway.

Feb 22, 2016 at 7:57 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man

EM, your 'Don't Bother' response only confirms what is wrong with climate science, when confronted with inconvenient evidence.

You then refer to a graph showing a gradual rise in sea level, that suddenly shoots up, based on what precisely? Lucrative funding?

Why do you bother? Lucrative funding?

Feb 22, 2016 at 9:54 PM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

Golf Charlie

Can't you read a graph?

.It projects the sort of sea rise seen in the paleo data and it is too late to do anything about it.

Feel free to continue denying all the measurements relating to sea level rise. Reality has already passed you by.

Feb 22, 2016 at 10:33 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man

EM, projections or predictions? I though climate scientists never did such things.

Next you are going to claim that the graphs are the product of computer models, wth their track record of being wrong.

What makes you so confident about the forecasting reliability of that graph? It's University origin? You know the modeler? It was peer reviewed?

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a really scary graph in climate science generates lucrative funding, irrespective of actual sience.

Feb 23, 2016 at 12:41 AM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

Okay, EM, the paper might be from a university, it might look scientific, but it is still utter balderdash. Like your own “scientific” conclusions, it is based upon estimates and heavily-prejudiced assumptions, with not an ounce of data in it; much like your comment directed to me:

Please provide numerical estimates of uncertainty and summarise the calculations you used, so that I can check them.
How can I when I have no idea what they might be, not having sufficient data to make the slightest intelligent guess? Read what I wrote, not what you like to think that I wrote. The best I could do is offer a rabidly-biased guess – much like you are doing. At least I would be honest, and admit that it is just a wild guess; you prefer to dress yours up in scientific-sounding mumbo-jumbo, and claim proper academic rigour. Nils Axel-Morner is (was, now, I suppose, given his conclusion) probably the most-respected scientist with regards to sea-levels, and he did conclude, based upon many, many more observations over years of study than you have made in the months you have borne it in mind, that there was nothing to worry about – sea-levels were not increasing any more rapidly than in the past, and might even be static, or even diminishing: more data was required. As I have intimated, that conclusion put him beyond the pale, and he has since been effectively dismissed as a believable scientist by the True Believers. It serves him right, too, using such base principles as “data” to reach conclusions that are so against the meme of the Believers.

Feb 23, 2016 at 12:45 AM | Registered CommenterRadical Rodent

EM is taking over the post of the Norman Wisdom of alarm. Empiricists need evidence. EM needs the feel of love from his cullt followers.

Feb 23, 2016 at 12:49 AM | Unregistered Commenterdiogenes

EM is it the Hockey Team players and supporters amongst Clark et al that gives you confidence in their work?

What is going to happen 'Today' that is going to change sea level so much?

Should we all restart worrying about polar bears? At current rates of growth, it seems that Icelanders need to arm themselves in case polar bears are again able to walk across sea ice to Iceland.

Reality for me (Monday) included seeing High Tide in Chichester Harbour, next to concrete structures built in-situ during WW2. They still seemed fit for purpose to me, and are still used for launching more modern craft.

Why haven't sea levels started rising at a faster rate already, if the average temperature has risen?

Nonscience.

Feb 23, 2016 at 2:21 AM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

More detail

Feb 23, 2016 at 11:39 AM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man

Golf charlie

Why haven't sea levels started rising at a faster rate already, if the average temperature has risen?

As you say, AGW would imply an accelerating rate of sea level rise.

Take a look at the first graph here, taken from Church et al(2008).

The slope of the graph is becoming steeper with time. This indicates that the rate of sea level rise is accelerating.

Feb 23, 2016 at 12:00 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man

EM, providing links to Real Climate and SKS, when they have so much association with Climate NonScience, is hardly a guarantee of reliability.

Climate models have a track record of Unreliability. What makes Church et al different?

Climate Science has not yet realised that the general public have lost trust in climate science. 'You' have been quick to disassociate yourselves from previous failed predictions/projections, yet you want Church et al taken seriously?

Surely you can't be serious?

Feb 23, 2016 at 12:36 PM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

EM when I said

Sorry EM, I don't buy it in your response to

"Ocean heat content is therefore your proper measure of climate change."

All you came up with

You may have noticed a large El Nio recently. That is not a "tenuous" relationship between ocean heat content and temperature. ."

I then asked

If we were to accept "Ocean heat content is therefore your proper measure of climate change" would you be willing to divulge the actual formula that related the two?

But all we got was some waffle about ARGO bouys. (Of which there seems to be about one per 0.001% of ocean area.)

Come on EM, admit it. Nobody knows what the relation is (even if one exists that is not completely chaotic, random and unknowable) between "ocean heat content and "climate change".

You certainly (in view of the waffle you came up with about El Nino) don't know what that relation is. So "Ocean heat content is therefore your proper measure of climate change" is simply (to use the technical term preferred by epistemologists) complete bollocks.

Feb 23, 2016 at 12:42 PM | Registered CommenterMartin A

What climates have changed, anyway? And how are these changes manifest?

It would be interesting to get answers to both those questions, though I doubt that any will truly be forthcoming.

Feb 23, 2016 at 1:16 PM | Registered CommenterRadical Rodent

NASA data based on tocean temperature change gives an increase in heat content of 2O*10^22 Joules since 1980.
(...)
Feb 21, 2016 at 11:37 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man

Not sure why the graph you point to has negative energy values prior to 1978. How does 20*10^22 joules compare with the total heat content of the ocean?

Feb 23, 2016 at 4:34 PM | Registered CommenterMartin A

EM - To answer my question on negative energies, I looked at

World ocean heat content and thermosteric sea level change (0 – 2000 m), 1955 – 2010 S. Levitus, et al GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L10603, doi:10.1029/2012GL051106 , 2012

They said:

We use the term “ocean heat content” as opposed to “ocean heat content anomaly” used by some authors because “ocean heat content” is an anomaly by definition. OHC is always computed with a reference mean subtracted out from each temperature observation. Otherwise the OHC computation depends on the temperature scale used.

That sounds like total bullshit to me but maybe I'm missing something somewhere? It seems like saying that the journey time to London depends on the units used to measure the speed of the car.

Feb 23, 2016 at 5:24 PM | Registered CommenterMartin A

Martin A

The graph is showing the ∆ relative to a baseline, as with temperature anomalies.

No negative energy. Alas, we won't be able to open wormholes under the sea just yet.☺

Relative to total heat content of the oceans the question is more complex. If heat content were proportional to absolute temperature regardless of change of state, the average temperature change is 0.06K and the average bulk temperature is 277K the total heat content would be about

277/0.06 *20*10^22= 9.23*10^26 Joules..

20*10^22 is an increase of 1 part in 4500 or 0.02% in 35 years.

Before you go into Judith Curry mode and say how small the change is, remember that our annual energy consumption as a world civilisation is about 5.6*10^20 Joules.

The annual ocean warming of 0.6*10^22J/year by this measure is ten times our entire civilization's annual energy budget.

Feb 23, 2016 at 6:45 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man

Radical Rodent

It seems pointless to discuss uncertainty with someone demonstrably unable to understand it or calculate it, and who would ignore any attempt I made to educate him.

Probably the most comprehensive review of the effect of climate change. Is Hansen et al (2013).

You can download a PDF here

Feb 23, 2016 at 7:22 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man

Radical Rodent

It seems pointless to discuss uncertainty with someone demonstrably unable to understand it or calculate it, and who would ignore any attempt I made to educate him.

Probably the most comprehensive review of the effect of climate change. Is Hansen et al (2013).

You can download a PDF here

Feb 23, 2016 at 7:23 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man