Rob Burton

It is possible for the atmosphere to warm the ocean if the air temperature is higher than the water temperature. Conduction from air to water surface warms the surface and cools the air. The result of that heat transfer is sea fog as the temperature of the air in the boundary layer drops below its dew point.

Most of the time the heat transfer is from sea to air. Visible light warms the upper 50M of the sea and DWLR warms the surface film. Conduction and evaporation then warm the air above the surface.

Schrodinger's cat is mistaken if he thinks that the scientists think otherwise, but then he often gets it backwards.

Oh, my last link may have misfired . Try this one.

That old NOAA sea surface data proof again. That resulted in the famous, or should I say infamous "Pause Busting" paper by Tom Karl et al of NOAA. It was rushed out for the Paris conference.

Unfortunately it failed all the NOAA rules on data verification and integrity. This was pointed out by John Bates, the senior NOAA scientis who wrote the rules. The paper and its data have been comprehensively discredited.

"Most of the time heat transfer is fro sea to air." So we agree then. I never said that the atmosphere could never warm the sea.

EM, thank you for your responses. Your link refers back to the Karl "Pausebuster" paper.

Judith Curry had previously highlighted:

https://judithcurry.com/2014/01/06/ipcc-ar5-weakens-the-case-for-agw/

The IPCC AR5 notes the lack of warming since 1998:

[T]he rate of warming over the past 15 years (1998–2012) [is] 0.05 [–0.05 to +0.15] °C per decade)which is smaller than the rate calculated since 1951 (1951–2012) [of] 0.12 [0.08 to 0.14] °C per decade.

The significance of this hiatus in warming since 1998 is in context of comparison with climate model projections.  The IPCC AR4 stated:

"For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios.  (AR4 SPM)"

"For the IPCC AR5, CMIP5 has produced a multi-model dataset that includes long-term simulations of twentieth-century climate and projections for the twenty-first century and beyond.  The IPCC summarizes near-term projections of global mean surface temperature anomalies in Figure 1. Figure 1 shows that observations particularly since 2005 are on the low end of the envelope that contains 90% of the climate model simulations. Observations in 2011-2012 are below the 5-95% envelope of the CMIP5 simulations. The trend in the model simulations is substantially larger than the observed trend over the past 15 years. "

So Karl's paper is in conflict with previous findings of the IPCC. Karl lays the blame at the instruments, not the scientists, but had previously confirmed:

http://articles.latimes.com/1989-01-26/news/mn-1958_1_global-warming-models

"The most important result of this study is that there is no statistically significant evidence of an overall increase in annual temperature or change in annual precipitation for the contiguous U.S. (between) 1895 and 1987," they concluded."

"The findings, published in the January issue of the American Geophysical Union's Geophysical Research Letters, were the result of research by three scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The co-authors of the study were George A. Maul and Thomas R. Karl."

If Karl is right (he has not admitted otherwise) there was no warming from 1895-1987, and then there was no pause in the warming upto 2015 and the Paris Climate Conference.

What happened in Climate Science that was so convincing between 1987 and Mann's Hockey Stick?

Next?

EM - What's this I hear about you being a supporter of the hockey stick? Surely not?

I thought all of that had been consigned to history years ago. There must be a whole library on it by now.

RadicalRodent EM usually questions our understandings, our data and our scientific conclusions, not our motives. As such he is ineligible for sainthood. Nonetheless I would consign him into deepest purgatory (endlessly to perform calculations on a broken abacus, where many of us would reside.

Radical Rodent, linking Climate Science, Politics and death is is pure Hansenism.

Entropic Man, you make reference to the Karl et al paper. Have you seen this?
http://notrickszone.com/2016/09/13/massive-cover-up-exposed-285-papers-from-1960s-80s-reveal-robust-global-cooling-scientific-consensus/#sthash.Z2Knx4C3.dpbs

Reference is made to Peterson, Connolley and Fleck.

"Peterson, Connolley, and Fleck (2008, hereafter PCF08) published “The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus” in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, hoping to quash once and for all  the perception that there were scientists in the 1960s and 1970s who agreed the Earth was cooling (and may continue to do so), or that CO2 did not play a dominant role in climate change."

Connolley's involvement with the Hockey Team is explained.

Peterson was a co-author of Karl et al.

Which bits of Climate Science will stand the test of time, longer than the reputations of Climate Scientists that made them up?

Trump made his presence felt at COP23, by not turning up. If you remove the Politics from Climate Science, what are you left with?

Supertroll,
St Jude is the Patron Saint of Lost Causes.  St Hilary of Poitiers is the Patron Saint of Lawyers.

I wonder where Climate Science is going?

Nov 22, 2017 at 1:51 PM | Radical Rodent

It is important to make the link between Mugabe's achievements in Zimbabwe, and Climate Science's intentions for the rest of the world.

It is almost as though Lord Stern used Mugabe's Economic reforms to computer model his infamous report, as none of it makes sense to 97% of the population.

But that's Green House Gas Theory for you, Backward Step by Backward Step, until it goes round in circles, and trips over its own footprints.

Climate Science needs to retire Karl et al.

Dear All on this thread

What are the good bits "Climate Science" that should be saved from the skip/dumpster, should Climate Scientists need to vacate their offices following a reverse Hockey Stick in funding?

Should there be a discussion about whether it would be possible for mankind to prevent too much of a cold cycle kicking-in with a vengeance?

Peterson, Connolley, and Fleck 

https://econ.unm.edu/people/Faculty/profile/john-fleck.html
"John Fleck is Professor of Practice in Water Policy and Governance and Director of the University of New Mexico Water Resources Program. Much of his career was spent in journalism, focused since the 1980s on the interface between science and political and policy processes, with special emphasis on climate and water in the southwestern United States. He was the Water Resource program’s writer-in-residence for three years before transitioning to academia full time in 2016. In the field of water resources, his primary interest is in nurturing the collaborative water governance needed to adapt to scarcity in the southwestern United States as populations grow while climate change reduces water supplies. That goal animates the Water Resources Program, where he and his colleagues work with graduate students who will become the region’s future water managers. In both the Water Resources Program and the Department of Economics, he also works on translational activities – helping make the technical work done in academia of maximum benefit to political and policy processes."

Politics and Journalism have served him well.

http://joannenova.com.au/2017/11/antarctica-cooling-since-roman-times/

"For anyone who doesn’t know, as I’ve been saying for years, the parts of West Antarctica that have warmed lately seem to have big volcano’s under them, coincidence?"

Links at the end to previous posts

Antarctica – 91 volcanoes coincidentally found under glaciers warming “due to climate change”
Giant blob of superheated rock under West Antarctica
CO2 hits record high: Antarctic temperatures do nothing
West Antarctica: more evidence it was the volcanoes that melted the ice
That West Antarctic melting couldn’t be caused by volcanoes could it?

Not the cheeriest news for Hockey Teamster Eric Steig. Perhaps CO2 is not the dominant Climate Control Knob.

If Karl is right (he has not admitted otherwise) there was no warming from 1895-1987, and then there was no pause in the warming up to 2015 and the Paris Climate Conference.

Apples and Oranges. That paper was 'Are atmospheric “greenhouse” effects apparent in the climatic record of the contiguous U.S. (1895-1987)?' (Hanson, Kirby; Maul, George A.; Karl, Thomas R., 1989).

Published in 1989, and covering just the 48 states - which comprise <2% of the planetary surface. As the LA Times article notes

The NOAA scientists said they found no such temperature rise in the lower 48 states, a finding that was in keeping with Hansen's estimates that he would not expect to see greenhouse effects in the United States until about 1990.

We cannot use the USA as a proxy for the global temperature - which has risen about 1C since 1895.

The rate of warming (0.05C/decade) did indeed undershoot the model projections for the 15 years after strong El Nino year 1998, but this is a short period, indeed the 15 year period that ended that year had a trend of 0.22C / decade, comfortably above model projections. Maybe 15 years is too short for significant comparisons.

http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2013/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1984/to:1999/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1975/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1998/to:2013/trend

He trend for the last thirty years, to 2dp is 0.18C/decade. I leave you to quibble over whether that is consistent with 'around 0.2C/decade'.

Unfortunately it failed all the NOAA rules on data verification and integrity. This was pointed out by John Bates, the senior NOAA scientis who wrote the rules. The paper and its data have been comprehensively discredited.

Discredited where? Bate's criticism was that the researchers had - in his opinion - not followed protocol to the letter.

However Bates, who acknowledges that Earth is warming from man-made carbon dioxide emissions, said in the interview that there was “no data tampering, no data changing, nothing malicious.”
“It’s really a story of not disclosing what you did,” Bates said in the interview. “It’s not trumped up data in any way shape or form.”

https://apnews.com/3fc5d49a349344f1967aadc4950e1a91/major-global-warming-study-again-questioned-again-defended

Phil Clarke, have you read this account, written by Bates about the events leading upto Karl et al 2015 and subsequent issues?
https://judithcurry.com/2017/02/04/climate-scientists-versus-climate-data/

A few excerpts:

"In the following sections, I provide the details of how Mr. Karl failed to disclose critical information to NOAA, Science Magazine, and Chairman Smith regarding the datasets used in K15. I have extensive documentation that provides independent verification of the story below. I also provide my suggestions for how we might keep such a flagrant manipulation of scientific integrity guidelines and scientific publication standards from happening in the future. "

"I was dumbstruck that Tom Karl, the NCEI Director in charge of NOAA’s climate data archive, would not follow the policy of his own Agency nor the guidelines in Science magazine for dataset archival and documentation."

"A NOAA NCEI supervisor remarked how it was eye-opening to watch Karl work the co-authors, mostly subtly but sometimes not, pushing choices to emphasize warming. Gradually, in the months after K15 came out, the evidence kept mounting that Tom Karl constantly had his ‘thumb on the scale’—in the documentation, scientific choices, and release of datasets—in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy."

"Unfortunately, the NCDC/NCEI surface temperature processing group was split on whether to adopt this process, with scientist Dr. Thomas C. Peterson (a co-author on K15, now retired from NOAA) vigorously opposing it. Tom Karl never required the surface temperature group to use the rigor of the CDR methodology, although a document was prepared identifying what parts of the surface temperature processing had to be improved to qualify as an operational CDR."

"Having a thumb on the scale" is not the behaviour of a responsible scientist, in charge of the data set at a whelk stall, let alone one paid for by US Taxpayers, and critical to a United Nations initiative.

Phil Clarke

it is a bit like getting sour lemons to judge other sour lemons

Schrodinger's cat

Cherrypicking?

Check the graph.

The match in slope between early and late century warming rates only occurs if you cherrypick the cold period around 1910 as your starting point. Move the starting point 10 years either way and the early century slope is a lot flatter.

"Is not the behaviour of a responsible scientist..." says it all.

If climate change is such a cut and dried case with settled science, why do we have so many cases of climate scientists being caught doing something similar? ClimateGate was a catalogue of such cases and there have been a number since. Even the global temperature records are treated with justified suspicion.

EM - What does it prove?

If we select a lot of different start and end points, cherry picking, as you say, I'm pretty sure we can prove that the later rate of warming was less, equal and greater than the earlier rate of warming. That is my point.

About a month ago, the BBC got a well known British scientist to comment on why climate science was not controversial. He claimed that the warming at the end of last century was unprecedented and therefore absolute proof that global warming was real and a serious danger to the planet.

The reality is that cherry picking that particular data can prove anything and is pretty meaningless. There are three points here.

1. That scientist and the BBC had no case for the above reasons.
2. The warming of the later part of last century was not unprecedented.
3. If rates of warming within fifty years were comparable, what is the chance of finding faster rates of warming within climatic timescales?

The reality is that the recent warming is not unprecedented. That does not prove that global warming is happening or not happening, The warming is within natural variability. That is important, in that global warming does not yet have incontrovertible proof that it is happening.

Schrodinger's cat

"that global warming does not yet have incontrovertible proof that it is happening."

Science does not do incontrovertible proof, as you should know.