Argo scientist blasts deniers distortion of his work

[Viking12]

Starting with an NPR story on the heat content of the oceans, various distortions of the report spread around the intertubes (including a post by some moron here at DU) claiming the report as yet more proof that global warming is a "fraud". Those distoritons were picked up by a neanderthal columnist in Canada's RW RAG the National Post. As a result, the scientist originally featured in the NPR wrote a response in the National Post blasting the deniers in general and the columnist in particualr. Nice work Josh Willis!


As a scientist, I always enjoy it when people outside my field take an interest in oceanography. But I was a bit disappointed to read Lorne Gunter's column: Perhaps The Climate Change Models are Wrong, March 24.

It is a well-established fact that human activities are heating up the planet and that global temperatures will continue to rise for decades to come. Climate change skeptics often highlight certain scientific results as a means of confusing this issue, and that appears to be the case with Mr. Gunter's description of our recent results based on data from Argo buoys.

Indeed, Argo data show no warming in the upper ocean over the past four years, but this does not contradict the climate models. In fact, many climate models simulate four to five year periods with no warming in the upper ocean from time to time. The same is true for the warming trend observed by NASA satellites; it too is in good agreement with climate model simulations. But more important than agreement with computer models is the fact that four years with no warming in the upper ocean does not erase the 50 years of warming we've seen since ocean temperature measurements became widespread. Nor does it erase the eight inches of sea level rise we've experienced in the past 100 years. Both of these are important indicators of human-kind's effect on the climate.

It is important to remember that climate science is not a public debate carried out on the opinion pages of newspapers. What we know about global warming comes from thousands of scientists pouring over countless data sets, conducting experiments to figure out how the climate works and scrutinizing every aspect of each other's work.

Scientists don't determine which results will be picked up by the media and "broadcast far and wide" -- reporters do that. New science results often spark new questions (that's what makes science fun), but they don't often change the answers to old ones and it's important to place new results in their proper context. For instance, Mr. Gunter quoted me saying we are in a period of "less rapid warming." This was not "climate change dogma," but simply a reminder that other parts of the climate like the atmosphere, sea ice, glaciers and probably the deep ocean-- which is not measured by Argo buoys --did continue to heat up even though the upper-ocean didn't.


http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/03/31/josh-willis-on-climate-change-global-warming-is-real.aspx

[Nihil]

1. K & R

> Scientists don't determine which results will be picked up by the media
> and "broadcast far and wide" -- reporters do that.

:applause: