Willis says some of this water is apparently coming from a recent increase in the melting rate of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica.

I guess if you keep repeating the lie enough, it just has to come true. "Recent increase in melting rate of glaciers in...Antarctica." Where do these people come up with this garbage? Calving does not equal melting. Maybe Mr. Willis should keep his comments to his own field of expertise. But, then, I guess he does need to keep the money supply coming.

More heat is leaving the ocean than entering it.

Given that there haven't been any large volcanic eruptions in the past 17 years, one can only infer that Hansen better hope that the sun acts up soon and gives a few more years cover before the Toto pulls the curtain back.

"Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, says that it is probably going back out to space" Hmmm, that means there is no Greenhouse Effect to keep it in.

Interesting historical quote about Houston.

"Heat is so severe during the middle of the day that most of us lie in the shade and pant," wrote a doctor in 1838.
http://american.com/archive/2008/march-april-magazine-contents/lone-star-rising

Temperatures in that region of Texas have dropped by nearly five degrees since the 1880s.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/broker?id=411048&_PROGRAM=prog.gplot_meanclim_mon_yr.sas&_SERVICE=default¶m=TAVE&minyear=1885&maxyear=2005

(There is no USHCN station in Houston, Brenham is the closest.)

So where is the extra heat going?

REPLY: Certainly not Pittsburgh, where we have 5 seasons. Winter, Steelers, Road Construction, Fireworks, and Winter! And as far as unanswered questions, here's an answer for ya. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GLO-BULL WARMING!!!!!!

Reply: That was a great reply Oiz! LOL

Things have not been going well for the global warming people lately. One of their solutions to the "carbon footprint" was more biofuels. I just read a study at the University of Edinburgh which claims that corn based ethanol produces 50% more greenhouse gases than fossil fuels. Maybe that is why PM Brown is heeding the advice of his two top science advisers to fight the EU mandates to add more biofuels in their fuel mixes. Al Gore and his friends will soon launch a 300 million dollar publicity campaign to counter all this heresy.

So did they settle this issue with them? Replacing several thousand sensors in a year, they must have been very busy out there.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=436

As a skeptic, I must first say that while this news appears to support my position, the extremely short period over which the readings have been taken discounts any credible sort of analysis of these readings one way or another. Seems to be cherry-picking to me either way.

I wonder how long the poor robots are tasked to be in service? Anything less than a couple of decades of data is cute but probably meaningless in the grand survey.

On a more important note, it is stated that the sea level has risen 1/2" in four years or approximately 1/8" per year. Just how the heck is this measured?

Being a midwestern landlubber who only gets to see the ocean sparingly, I kinda recall seeing lots of waves and roiled up water. You know, beachy stuff. And I never recall seeing a dipstick anywhere. So, how, and where are these measurements taken? Yeah, I know, they have SATS now that can read water elevation, but doesn't the wave action kinda muddle the results?

I mean I have a pond on my property with a stick to kinda keep track of the depth and I would find it dang difficult to establish that the elevation was +/- 1" in any given year let alone a mere 1/8". And besides, what is the "baseline" of the mesurement? I have no idea what the elevation of my pond was more than 10 years ago when we moved here.

Seriously, 1/8" of elevation change is challenging to discover and review in the concrete slab on grade of any given large warehouse anywhere in the country. I mean there are a multitude of companies who do nothing but survey concrete slabs in buildings just to figure out if they are tilted or settled. And, if they find anything, the results can be disputed. A different company might come in and find a completely different result. And this is in a space infinitesimly smaller than the ocean.

So, how can 1/8" be measured realistically?

Reply: BTW Darren, I find 70 a better option going to Indy than 80. I didn't care for the drive through and around Akron. Quite confusing with the road signs not coming up until the last second. It also looks like the harsh winter has taken a big toll on some of the interstates, as there is just an amazing amount of pot holes, especially right under the white divider paint. I heard that stuff actually weakens the pavement. Brett

"A period of less rapid warming" Give me a break.
Jim

"The robots have recorded no warming of the global oceans, but in fact, a very slight cooling. Willis feels that we may be in a period of less rapid warming." Cooling equals less rapid warming?

The heat may have gone even deeper in the ocean? Seems heat doesn't work like that. I'll go with it went back into space.

Thanks Brett, good post.

"So where is the extra heat going?
Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, says that it is probably going back out to space"

UAH MSU data indicates that the upper troposphere at low latitudes has not significantly warmed, contrary to AGW theory implemented in current GCMs, that require these temps to be 1.2 times that of surface temps.
At the same time the Stratosphere has not cooled, also required by AGW theory.

Conclusion? Anyone?

Congratulations on the new arrival Brett. Reply: Thanks Rick.

Re the ocean temps might I suggest that the data needs to be adjusted by Hansen ( or Mann / or Jones ) ... with enough torturing the data will yield the warming trend as it always has in the past!! I read on another blog that the Argos can go to 6,000 feet ... anyone know the correct depth. I thought 6,000 was a lot so I would suspect the 3,000 is the right number.

I'll give everyone a good laugh with my ignorance of this subject, but I remember a study a few years back about the vast amount of water underneath the Earth's surface. Is it possible that there could be some giant cracks that are allowing underground/undersea water to seep into the oceans and cause meaningful sea level rise.

It makes no difference whether the oceans are warming or cooling to AGW alarmists. They will always find some pimp, like Al Gore, to keep the story going.

The ARGO network itself is a fascinating creation, both scientifically and financially. The price for each unit is about $15,000 with the total cost of the program at about $30,000 per unit including S&H, and data accumulation. The US funds about 1/2 of the cost of the program.

The reasons for the network are not only scientific, but, also to gather information to help shape political and INDUSTRIAL POLICIES.

This is the United Nations at work with your money, people.

By the way, the data is free to those who want to use it.

Still waiting on NSIDC...

They promised me a response to my query about the Wilkins Ice Shelf breakup, but nothing coming.
Reply: You should try the BAS.

Since they promised it 48 hours ago, an area nearly 50,000% larger than the collapsed area has frozen over in Antarctica.
(200,000 km2 / 415 km2) * 100

Or put another way, an area of sea the size of the Wilkins collapse freezes every six minutes in Antarctica.

Where is the extra heat going?

The other carbon. Smoke particles may be second only to atmospheric CO2 in altering climate.

Study Fingers Soot as a Major Player in Global Warming. from Science Magazine, March 28, 2008.

The IPCC report noted that black carbon is a strong absorber of sunlight but downplayed its impact because the haze it produces occurs regionally rather than globally. IPCC estimated that, at current levels, black carbon warms the atmosphere by 0.2 to 0.4 watts per square meter (W m-2), considerably below the value of 1.66 W m-2 for CO2. But in their new analysis of a wide variety of recent data, Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, and Gregory Carmichael of the University of Iowa in Iowa City suggest that black carbon warms the atmosphere by as much as 0.9 W m-2--enough to vault it over the impact of other climate-warming gases such as methane, halocarbons, and tropospheric ozone.

Ramanathan says previous conservative estimates of black carbon's warming effect overlooked key factors--most importantly, the interaction between black carbon and other particles in the atmosphere. "Black carbon doesn't exist by itself," says Ramanathan. "It's always mixed with other aerosols," such as sulfate particles, and other organic combustion byproducts. Many of those other aerosols reflect light, increasing the chances that it will be absorbed by nearby flecks of soot. Black carbon high in the atmosphere also absorbs light reflected by Earth's surface and clouds. Because most climate models don't adequately represent such effects, they often underestimate how much reflected light soot absorbs, Ramanathan says.

If studies by Ramanathan and others turn out to be right, that's both good and bad news for policymakers. On the downside, the plethora of sources of black carbon will make it hard to cut emissions. On the other hand, the particles circulate in the atmosphere for only about a week before falling back to Earth. So concerted efforts to reduce biomass burning in the Amazon, cut diesel emissions, or convert cooking stoves to biogas or even solar power could have a powerful impact far more quickly than changes in CO2 emissions.

Reply: That was a great reply Oiz! LOL

REPLY: Thanks Brett. Hmmm. Thought I used it once before. Anyway, congrats and welcome back!

So, the atmosphere hasn't warmed in this decade and now we learn that the oceans have cooled slightly in the past few years. Did the models predict this? No. Can the scientists explain this? No. Do the "experts" understand what is happening? Emphatically, NO! But that doesn't deter them from carrying on their crusade.

Al Gore tells us that if we don't believe that man is causing catastrophic global warming then we must also believe that the earth is flat. The operative word in Al Gore's statement is BELIEVE because that is the only way one could share his view, on faith, since the evidence shows that the opposite is occurring.

I loved the part where Willis says that it is possible that the robot data is being misinterpreted by the scientists and the oceans have actually warmed; he sounds like a real AGW zealot. It is also possible, in fact highly likely, that the hypothesis that AGW is causing warming is flat out wrong since more and more objective evidence says so.

Al Gore is the "flat earther" when it comes to a scientific analysis. Pot.....meet kettle!

I hope these results aren't going to lead to false reasoning of the sort expressed by Jennifer Marohasy claiming that recent temperature flattening sheds doubt on CO2-based AGW. I don�t recall the source but I got this quote (checks with my memory anyway) from a thread at Washington Monthly:

�Actually, no. The head of the IPCC has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognizes that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued � This is not what you�d expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you�d expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up � So (it�s) very unexpected, not something that�s being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it�s very significant.�

No, false reasoning. With fluctuations imposed upon a trend it is perfectly expected to have flat periods (that would have been downturns if no upward trend!) Good lord, just plot e.g. y = ax + bRND(x) for cryin� out loud! Do it, and look at the graph, you'll see what I mean.

Well, that theoretical point was wrong, but it is still possible that the weather effects will cancel AGW as she later claims. But what if they don�t? Our asses are grass.

Perhaps the exrta heat went to melt more polar ice before going to space??

If there's to be warming in the oceans it would be detected near the surface. There's a force called convection that applies almost as well to the ocean as it does the air.

The data didn't tell us what we expected to see...... ergo..... the data is either wrong, or we have misinterpreted it.

Okay, now how about this: What if we have misinterpreted the data that tells us that sea level has risen?

Maybe what we need to do here is just work to form a concencus on what reality is and then just get busy and adjust all the data and statistical analysis to fit it. Oh, I'm sorry that's what the AGW alarmists have been doing for years. You'll have to excuse me. I don't get out much.

And now cousin Al is on 60 minutes telling anyone silly enough to watch that I, and people like me are ignorant just because we don't happen to agree with him. That's one of the reasons I didn't vote for him in 2000. I'm hoping he runs this year so I can demonstrate how REALLY ignorant I am and not vote for him again.

All the best everyone

Aaron

Hi Brett, Welcome Back. I'm wondering if I could make a request. Is there any possibility you could do a thread on water vapor trends over the same period that Argos has been showing the oceans cooling? I would also like to see something on Global Cloudiness Trends as well.

Reply: I will do what I can and see if there is enough info out there on the two subjects.

I suppose this is news to AGW crows, but in normal times people would say, "So what?" It use to be a given that physicists believed that both the ocean SSTs and land base temps oscillated. Dr Trennbeth was speaking truthfully when he quipped that more than likely the oceans exhausted excessive heat energy into space. I think this use to be taught in Atmospheric Sciences 101. The role of GHGs is not inifinite. A very large portion of lower tropespheric heat energy both land and sea) is radiated out to space.

But this doesn't mean that the entire surface of our oceans are cooling. The North Atlantic remains well above normal. Again, this makes sense as the AMO is in the middle of a 25 year positive phase. Perhaps it will catch up. But don't bet on it. The decades 1920 through 1930 were quite similar to now. The Pacific gradually cooled, but the Atlantic remained quite warm. The 1930s were known not only for an excessively warm dry North America, but also for a number of active tropical storm seasons.

The biggest difference today, is that we are at the end of a near 200 year positive Gleissberg Cycle. If you believe the Russians (and many do not), the Sun is about to begin a 100-200 year solar shutdown similar to the years (1600-1800). During this period, the Maunder and Dalton Minimums occured.

I got an email from Kim and Scott's Gourmet Pretzels today encouraging me to turn off my lights for Earth Hour to reduce CO2.

I think I will have every light, ceiling fan, both TV's on, a DVD playing, while I play X-Box and will have the computer doing something too, while I leave the car running outside.

Some people need to stick to what they do best, and make pretzels.

Hi Patrick H - comparing sea ice area to the Wilkins collapse is like comparing apples to oranges. As you must know, the Wilkins shelf is very thick, (2 to 3 hundred meters?) Antarctic Sea ice averages 3-6 FEET (1 or 2 METERS) in thickness. And that is if it is older sea ice. New sea ice won't even be that thick.

http://nsidc.org/sea