Unfortunately Michael McPhaden doesn't have 120000 years of Surface Temperature or Satellite data to back up his claim.

We also don't have photographs of dinosaurs, Freddy, but we can scientifically prove that they existed via other methods.

Brett: Please forward to Katie Fehlinger.

Katie Fehlinger: Please ask Mr. McPhaden to clarify his answer to your question. You asked, "Should it come to pass that the Earth experiences more El Nino events?"

He replied, "Those regions that feel El Nino's impacts now will feel them even more in the future?"

Is he saying that the effects are cumulative? Is he saying that if there is a period when the frequency and amplitude of El Nino events outweigh those of La Ninas, the overall regional and global trends would be those of the El Ninos? It would make sense, with the subsequent El Nino events compounding the effects of those that came before? But is that what he meant?

Reply: I will do that.

Thanks.

Yes, Fred, since the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

Right?

Fred Nieuwenhuis | December 3, 2008 1:21 PM --- There are other proxies.

D.Caldwell:Good post.I apologize for my haste. I misread your statement,and it was not trite or
but insightful.Sorry. KIPP

The tropics warm and this warmth is not conveyed to high latitudes causing an increase in temperature generally? This is head in the sand stuff.

Temperature proxies by any other name still stink. The accuracy of the proxies leave something to be desired and it has been shown elsewhere that paleoclimatology studies showing the recent warming as unprecedented are extremely flawed.

Mark, there are fossils of dinosaurs...A very poor analogy.

Brookline, please keep the personal attacks to yourself.

This won't be reported in the papers!

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/12/03/rethinking-observed-warming/

Excerpt:
In the second sentence of their abstract, Compo and Sardeshmukh tell us �Atmospheric model simulations of the last half-century with prescribed observed ocean temperature changes, but without prescribed GHG changes, account for most of the land warming.� Are they kidding? Are they really suggesting that the warming of the land areas of the Earth may not have been caused directly by the increased concentration of greenhouse gases? The answer is � yes!

http://www.westernstandard.ca/website/article.php?id=2846

A little off this topic , but an interesting insight into the Gore's money making green investment schemes making him a cool 100 million, connected to his AGW scares.

Fred Nieuwenhuis | December 4, 2008 9:19 AM --- Temperature proxy: reading on a thermometer.

Also whether you feel hot or cold.

The World Climate Report site referenced by Gary can be relied upon to have a major distortion of the science in nearly every post. The coal industry pays them to do this (see here for details).

Regarding this particular paper, the authors found that (anthropogenic) GHG warming of land areas occurs largely through the oceans rather than directly. Specifically, GHGs warm the oceans and evaporate water, which in turn passes over land areas and traps infrared radiation emitted by the land, thus warming it.

The sentence Gary quoted describes what happened when they ran a model without the GHGs over land. The land warmed up most of the way anyway, which supports the conclusion that oceanic water vapor rather than GHGs are the major factor in the warming.

Notice that WCR never provides links to the complete abstract and/or paper so that people can confirm for themselves what was said. It's funny how easy that is to do.

Fred, the 6,000 year old earth claim is no more preposterous than your original assertion.

Perhaps you need a thicker skin -- particularly if you're going to swing brick-bats like your first comment on the thread.

Steve Bloom,

I agree that it is a good idea for folks to read the paper directly. In particular, I would ask a fair minded individual to read the conclusion in its entirety and determine for themselves if it sounds like "the science is settled."

And as long as we're talking vested interests:

link

Steve Bloom, regarding your comment posted at 8:44PM on December 4, 2008: Go back and read that paper again. Your interpretation is misleading or it expresses your misunderstanding of what was written. This is the abstract directly from the paper:

"Evidence is presented that the recent worldwide land warming has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land. Atmospheric model simulations of the last half-century with prescribed observed ocean temperature changes, but without prescribed GHG changes, account for most of the land warming. The oceanic influence has occurred through hydrodynamic-radiative teleconnections, primarily by moistening and warming the air over land and increasing the downward longwave radiation at the surface. The oceans may themselves have warmed from a combination of natural and anthropogenic influences."

Note the use of the word may in the last sentence.

They even state that in their conclusions that "Although not a focus of this study, the degree to which the oceans themselves have recently warmed due to increased GHG, other anthropogenic, natural solar and volcanic forcings, or internal multi-decadal climate variations is a matter of active investigation..."

Your comment above would lead me to believe that you haven't actually read the paper, that you're simply bad-mouthing WorldClimateReport.

Regards

I notice Steve Bloom criticized "World Climate Report" for not giving a link, but Steve Bloom didn't give a link either. Unlike Steve Bloom, "World Climate Report" DID cite the source, which was easy enough to find doing a Google search.

http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/gilbert.p.compo/CompoSardeshmukh2007a.pdf

- A. McIntire

"Regarding this particular paper, the authors found that (anthropogenic) GHG warming of land areas occurs largely through the oceans rather than directly. Specifically, GHGs warm the oceans and evaporate water, which in turn passes over land areas and traps infrared radiation emitted by the land, thus warming it."

It is a well known fact that the sun and only sun that warms the oceans. GHGs in and of themselves warm nothing. Repeat, GHGs are not an energy source.

Steve Bloom;
Your OPINION is noted.

While it may be a minority point you of view, you are entittled to it.

SB, you're kidding, right? RealClimate is nothing more than a propaganda site supporting the ridiculous AGW mantra, and referring to it as an authority about anything in this debate is like referring to Himmler for confirmation that Nazi Germany is winning the war. LOL

Best description from Dr. Richard Lindzen:

"[the] website appears to constitute a support center for global warming believers, wherein any criticism of global warming is given an answer that, however implausible, is then repeated by the reassured believers"

Brett: Hmm, the spam filter ate another comment. I posted the following on 12/3 and even sent you an email. From now on, I'll use the website address without the http-colon-double slash and note the bloggers will need to cut and paste the website addresses to their browsers.
############

Brett, you wrote, "2. Much of the oceans in the southern hemisphere over the past few years have been cooler than normal, but now we are seeing larger areas of above-normal anomalies showing up. Will that continue? Tough to say at this point."

I just posted my monthly SST anomaly update based on the OI.v2 SST data, which includes November data. (Cut and paste website addresses to your browser)
bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/12/november-2008-sst-update.html

Southern Hemisphere SST anomalies have been dropping quite dramatically for 7 years.
i35.tinypic.com/mijjoz.jpg

They're following the Southern Ocean, which has been dropping for more than 20 years.
i35.tinypic.com/s3djds.jpg

The overall trend in Southern Ocean SST anomalies has been negative for more than 2 decades and does not show signs of changing.

To all chiding Fred regarding his comment..

Can any of you produce actual physical evidence of what the temperature was 30 yrs ago? What about 10,000 years? How about 30 minutes ago?

Until then, his statement stands, temperature proxies are merely nothing more than a mildly educated guess and interpretation of energy levels. The fact that for most things and certainly anything more than several thousand years old, it must be correlated to a time proxy as well, induces just another level of question.

And before you whine at me about this, it's really the AGWer fault for it as it is these groups that consistently state accuracies of a tenth of a degree and centuries in time. Pretty fine numbers if you think about it since the significant digit standard would be a hundredth of a degree and a decade respectively.

The fact that none of you see that truth is funny as hell.

Oh and Mark, nice dig as well calling him "Freddy", would you like to be called "Markie"?

And BT, you should talk about thick skin, you gave up on serious commenting months ago because of what? Your just too bright for the rest of us? Or you're too important? Or maybe because of all of the comments you solicited with your elitist environmental views?

Got your bailout yet?

And BT, you should talk about thick skin, you gave up on serious commenting months ago because of what? Your just too bright for the rest of us? Or you're too important? Or maybe because of all of the comments you solicited with your elitist environmental views?

Still taking cheap-shots, Darren?

I posted my reasons fairly explicitly at the time, both publicly and privately to Brett. Did you not bother to read them, or did you just conveniently forget them?

I grew tired of having my comments dropped by the spam filter. A blog that tags a post with multiple links as "spam" is going to end up filled with flames that lack supporting cites. You may have time for such a blog; I don't. When you, or anyone else, begin offering insightful comments on the many peer-reviewed climate change pieces being published these days, I might reconsider.

Meanwhile, Fred posted a preposterous assertion that was, at best, hyperbole -- and then whined that my comment was a "personal attack". I stand by my suggestion that he grow a thicker skin.

Just a follow-up to my last comment.

Last June 24, Darren wondered why I was silent. He asked:
Anybody heard anything out of BT? I miss his comments and debates, hope he is OK.

The next day, RICH speculated:
Perhaps BT is silent because of embarassment for being a warming alarmist. A warming that was grossly exagerated and more natural than he previously thought?

I responded to both on June 26:
I have been silent, and expect to remain so, because I am sick to death of having half of my posts deleted. Specifically, posts that contain links are black-listed by this site's spam filter. The spam filter, in turn, is needed because the Accuweather refuses to insist that participants sign up with a user-name and password. This simple step eliminates 99% of the spam problems that plague Brett. The site is now the blog equivalent of an "open relay" mail server. It's no wonder that Brett is besieged with spam; this blog uses none of the techniques, tools, and wisdom the industry has developed since Ward Cunningham created the first Wiki more than a decade ago.

The result is that comments that include links to supporting material are filtered, leaving behind the rants, flames, and unsubstantiated garbage that passes as "discussion" here. It seems clear enough that the rejects from the more disciplined sites in the climate-related segment of the blogosphere have landed here.

Too much spam? Absolutely. It also seems clear enough that Accuweather management (not Brett) likes things just the way they are -- including all the spam, a filter that actively selects against contributors who support their submissions with citations, and the 10-1 denier ratio.

This site has become worse than a Limbaugh episode, and isn't worth my time. I've made it clear to Brett that when and if Accuweather makes the minimal changes needed to solve this problem, I will return.

While I appreciate the concern for me that Darren expressed last June, I would appreciate it even more if he would take the time to actually read my response before taking yet another cheap-shot.

Meanwhile, I wonder if Darren (or anybody else) has, for example, bothered to actually READ "Large tundra methane burst during onset of freezing" (Christensen et al) -- published in Nature, volume 456, Issue no. 7222, last week. Christensen was, after all, the featured author of the issue.

For folks who incessantly proclaim their interest in science, the relentless disregard for publications in the field is striking. I suppose that flaming passionately-held opinions, unrestrained by fact or science, is more fun.

Yeah, I read your reasons and like your usual self, they were well put together. Sorry, I couldn't resist the temptation to goad you into a reply.

Say, I was over near your neighborhood in August, Concord, Lexington, Boston suburb area, you know, standard tourist stuff. Very pretty area, roads are goofy though going every which way. Yeah, I know, old time paths. Must be interesting living near all of that history.

Maybe you could try not using so many links and try to use reason in your arguments instead of a bunch of numbers.

Just for the record:

Various comments above accuse me of misunderstanding the meaning of the Compo and Sardeshmukh (2007a) paper. I would chalk all of that up to Bob Tisdale et al being unable to read these papers correctly, but as someone else pointed out I'm not a scientist either so what do I know?

We can, however, do a quick google in an attempt to see what's really what. Unsurprisingly, right up front we see plenty of activity showing nicely how garbage circulates around the denialosphere, finally fetching up in "end user" locations like this blog and Watts Up With That.

But have the authors of the paper said anything? It turns out they have:

"'This paper does not dispute that man-made greenhouse gases are causing the climate to change. However, it does show that the mechanisms of land warming may be different than commonly believed,' said study co-author Prashant Sardeshmukh.

(...)

"In particular, the researchers noted that ocean warming during the second half of the 20th century likely caused specific humidity -- the amount of water vapor in the air -- to increase by as much as 10% in the upper troposphere, a region of the atmosphere about 30,000 feet above the ground.

"'Water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas. Like CO2, it traps heat, reflecting radiation back towards Earth's surface,' explained Compo.

"The researchers also found that ocean warming may have altered atmospheric circulation patterns, reducing cloud cover over places like the tropics. In these regions, the increase in solar radiation may have also contributed to higher temperatures over land.

"As far as what's driving sea surface temperatures to increase, both Sardeshmukh and Compo suspect that greenhouse gas emissions are largely to blame, though some natural variability may also be at work."

So we see what they think is going on. But since other papers have established the GHG-SST connection, one might reasonably ask why these two weren't willing to just repeat that. The reason is that scientists are careful people, and these two will want to do a new analysis matching the particular pattern of SST warming to GHGs before going farther. What's entirely clear is what they expect that analysis to show.

Steve Bloom: Sorry for the lateness of this comment, but I came back here to see if Katie had received any feedback from my first comment on this thread, when I found your last comment.

So what you're telling us is that the Compo et al publish a peer-reviewed paper but have contradicted themselves in later interviews--or the author of the promo piece embellished on what was written or what they said. Compo et al were very specific in the wording of their paper. It's kind of odd that Compo et al or the author of your linked promotional article later alter the intent of what they'd written.

Regards