A Pause, Not an End, to Warming

[Nye Bevan]

THE global warming crowd has a problem. For all of its warnings, and despite a steady escalation of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, the planet’s average surface temperature has remained pretty much the same for the last 15 years.

.......

As for the recent plateau, I predicted it, back in 2004. Well, not exactly. In an essay published online then at MIT Technology Review, I worried that the famous “hockey stick” graph plotted by three American climatologists in the late 1990s portrayed the global warming curve with too much certainty and inappropriate simplicity. The graph shows a long, relatively unwavering line of temperatures across the last millennium (the stick), followed by a sharp, upward turn of warming over the last century (the blade). The upward turn implied that greenhouse gases had become so dominant that future temperatures would rise well above their variability and closely track carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

I knew that wasn’t the case. The planet warmed by 0.6 degrees over the prior 50 years, but occasional, unexplained temperature fluctuations of as much as 0.3 degrees countered the rise at times and resulted in apparent pauses. Some of the fluctuations might have been caused by shifting ocean currents related to the Gulf Stream and El Niño — the episodic appearance of unusually warm ocean temperatures along the west coast of South America. Here’s what I wrote in 2004:

“Suppose... future measurements in the years 2005-2015 show a clear and distinct global cooling trend. (It could happen.) If we mistakenly took the hockey stick seriously — that is, if we believed that natural fluctuations in climate are small — then we might conclude (mistakenly) that the cooling could not be just a random fluctuation on top of a long-term warming trend, since according to the hockey stick, such fluctuations are negligible. And that might lead in turn to the mistaken conclusion that global warming predictions are a lot of hooey. If, on the other hand, we reject the hockey stick, and recognize that natural fluctuations can be large, then we will not be misled by a few years of random cooling.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/26/opinion/a-pause-not-an-end-to-warming.html?_r=0

[Democracyinkind]

1. That's a good argument in the article...

Although I'm not sure that "we" should even concede the "pause" terminology - as the newest report accounts for much of the plateau (oceanic changes).

[JayhawkSD]

2. Yes, it's not a pause

Instead of the air continuing to warm, it is now the ocean that is doing so.

But the real sleeper here is the difference between "temperature" and "heat." Temperature is the measurement of a state of being. Heat is a quantity of potential energy.

A substance can continue to gain in heat without the temperature rising at all. Water never rises above 212 degrees Farenheight at atmospheric pressure, but as it changes from water to vapor form it absorbs a tremendous amount of heat.

The atmosphere is becoming heat saturated, has absorbed about as much heat as it can at the temperature and pressure range that exists. It rose only slightly in tempreature in the process, but it absorbed a tremendouds amount of heat, and as a result became more energetic. Now the ocean is absorbing the heat that reaches us from the Sun and that is causing the oceans to warm up. Like the atmosphere, they are not getting a lot warmer, but they are absorbing a hell of a lot of heat and we are not going to like it when they become more energetic.

[Democracyinkind]

3. Very good explanation. I encourage everyone to read this post and compare it to the denier nonsense.