An interesting development here with the launch of a campaign, ostensibly to overturn the Cleggeron "green" targets. Amongst other things, they are putting tests to the warmists, challenging them to prove ten points. Interestingly, one of those they want the warmists to prove is: "Data recorded by ground-based stations are a reliable indicator of global surface temperature trends".

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I see they wheeled out Bob Ward to provide his usual calm and collected response.

Yes, and quite a few adverse comments on the Telegraph website.

You'll be lucky to find a Warmist these days. They've all left that room, and popped down the corridor to the room marked 'Biodiversity crisis.'

I think that is somewhat of an understatement. I am really starting to wonder how long this caper can carry on now.

Ref - surfacetemperatures - there are problems with calibration, arbitrary selection of stations, and the limited spatial sampling . The warmists will respond with " but there are satellite measurements as well".


True, but it's not obvious to me why this is a killer fact ?

Ultimately, it's temperature that matters - I need to know if tomorrow I'm going to be subjected to zero degrees or 40 degrees, not how much "heat energy" there is in the oceans. Yes, the increased heat energy would heat the oceans at different levels. But again, what matters to life there is the temperature.

In any decent model, energy will be conserved. Globally, radiative energy comes in, there's energy going in and out due to chemistry, biology, phase changes, bulk movement, etc. Plus "heating", with associated temperature increase. Radiative energy goes out.

If the temperature measurements are poor, then the calculation of the heat energy is poor, and calculation of the radiative output is poor, modeling of convective flow may be poor. Beyond that ? Er, OK, predictions of biosphere behaviour will be be wrong - it'll all be out by the uncertainties in the temperature. But is this due to the heat capacity relation of temperature to heat energy ?

See Charlie's comment......BioDiversity is the next crisis......

But I agree with yr comment,......reading comment boards, it is clear that the Cleggerons are already held in contempt and they haven't even been in power 6 months yet!!!!!

I know the point about the surface temperatures is different, but for - ahem - adjustments in Western Australia see the latest post in Jo Nova's excellent blog -

http://joannenova.com.au/2010/10/bom-gi ... are-miles/

Information please Richard -or someone- you say, "and we have no reliable way of determining the average temperature of the global water mass,"

What about the ARGO array, I thought this was supposed to provide this for the upper layers. Are its sensors not widespread enough, or the data suspect?

I have read that since deployment it has shown disappointingly for Warmists, that upper ocean temperatures have not increased and in fact cooled slightly.

Of course deep down remains a mystery.

No ... even there, you are wrong. There is a huge difference in human perception and physiological response to the same temperature when the humidity is very low, say <10%, and when it is very high ... above 90%. That is in part a reflection of the difference in the amount of heat carried. More to the point, it is total heat ... and the distribution of that heat which ultimately determines local temperatures, and in the longer term, the climate. In other words, temperature is the downstream measurement. The amount of heat in even the atmosphere is of considerable importance to you. The amount of heat in the oceans is even more so.

Quarantesix - the Argos network is only measuring a fraction of the total volume of the oceans ... the role of deep currents in the determination of climate cycles may be highly significant, but Argos goes nowhere near these water masses.

Yes ... but it is there, perhaps, that we are losing it. If temperature is irrelevant as a measure of global warming - or even cooling - why are we accepting battle on the terms set by the warmists? Should we not be standing above the fray, and pointing this out? After all, if it is wrong to use temperature as a proxy for global heat volume, the accuracy or otherwise of the temperature records is not an issue. Even if they were right, they are wrong, and if they are wrong it is only a degree of wrongness, where any amount of wrongness is as fatal as being right - or irrelevant, as the case may be.

It's a horse that won't run.

1. People are suffering crisis fatigue. Times are getting hard and the last crisis, which was supposed to boil the oceans, isn't happening. Calling it "Climate Change" was an attempt to breath life into it, but folks are joking about "Climate Change" being the reason for just about anything.

2. Turning the earth into Venus was a personal threat, they have to work hard to explain and sell "Biodiversity" especially so hot on the heels of a failed scare story. They have to explain what it is, how anything can be done about it, and why anyone should take the threat seriously enough to want to have their lives changed because of it.

The fraud was always called "climate change": the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was set up in 1988, and Thatcher mentioned "climate change" in her Tickell-scripted speech a year later. "Climate change" was not hurried into production when "global warming" failed to happen; it's the original name. Don't let the warmists score easy - and irrelevant* - points by saying correctly that it was always called "climate change".

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignoratio_elenchi

Richard - there is a vulnerability in attempting to be too theoretical here. I put some "quotes" in my previous post because some of my terminology was not scientifically accurate. Equilibrium thermodynamics is a fully understood field, and to the extent that parts of the climate system are in quasi-equilibrium it is valid. There are defined quantities such as temperature, internal energy and enthalpy. Heat is an energy transfer mechanism. Internal energy roughly corresponds an intuitive concept of heat content. At constant pressure, the heat flow into a system increases the enthalpy. Formally, there is no such thing as heat content.

"Warming" / "heating" are not well defined terms - they could mean increase in temperature, or increase in internal energy, or the process of transferring heat into a system. Global heat volume is not a thermodynamically recognisable term.

If the criticism is that the models are inadequate because they cannot track ocean temperatures at depth, then IMHO, it's best just to say that.

Edit - sorry - missed your previous answer - I will go back to it.

Edit 2. Replacing "heat" with "energy", I agree. Humidity, storms etc. matter. But, what is the thrust of the argument here ? If the buffering capacity of the oceans has been underestimated, this could be helpful to the warmists. It could explain an absence of immediate warming, without improving long term predictions.

Elf

However you want to define it, it is total energy that matters. Temperature is not a measure of that.