What a Puzzlingly Mysterious Enigma! Global Warming Seems To Not Be Happening At All For Past 5 Years; In Fact, The Oceans Have Cooled

I blame Iraq, personally.

Can anyone suggest any possible reasons why the data seem to show that, contra the theory and super-awesome computer models, the oceans are not in fact warming at all?

I can't. The theory says they should. The data must be in error.

Oh, there you go. Mystery solved.

Watch NPR twist itself into a shade-grown fair-wage all-organic local-food free-range pretzel:

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.

In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can.,,,

"There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says. So the buildup of heat on Earth may be on a brief hiatus. "Global warming doesn't mean every year will be warmer than the last. And it may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming."

...

"But in fact there's a little bit of a mystery. We can't account for all of the sea level increase we've seen over the last three or four years," he says.

One possibility is that the sea has, in fact, warmed and expanded — and scientists are somehow misinterpreting the data from the diving buoys.

But if the aquatic robots are actually telling the right story, that raises a new question: Where is the extra heat all going?

Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research says it's probably going back out into space. The Earth has a number of natural thermostats, including clouds, which can either trap heat and turn up the temperature, or reflect sunlight and help cool the planet.

That can't be directly measured at the moment, however.

"Unfortunately, we don't have adequate tracking of clouds to determine exactly what role they've been playing during this period," Trenberth says.

It's also possible that some of the heat has gone even deeper into the ocean, he says. Or it's possible that scientists need to correct for some other feature of the planet they don't know about. [ed.-- psst, it's Big, Yellow, and Fiery. Some know it as "the Sun." Others call it "Geoffrey."] It's an exciting time, though, with all this new data about global sea temperature, sea level and other features of climate.

"I suspect that we'll able to put this together with a little bit more perspective and further analysis," Trenberth says. "But what this does is highlight some of the issues and send people back to the drawing board."

1) Global warming predicts additional heat, particularly in the oceans.

2) There is no additional heat in the oceans; in fact, they have cooled.

Conclusion:

The additional heat in the oceans must be hiding even deeper in the oceans, or gathering out in space, like an alien armada poised to destroy the earth.

Puzzling, indeed.

It's an exciting time in science. You can just make shit up like a screenwriter or comic book writer.

Damn, they never let you do that, the squares. Have fun, guys!

Icy skull image cribbed from T-Shirt Studios.

Previously... One year global temperature plunge wipes out almost all of the scary warming that's happened over the past century.

Gee, maybe natural forces have more to do with this than scientists (ahem) allow in their models.

Maybe the fundamental assumption of global warming alarmists -- that the earth's temperature is basically static and only anthropogenic (man-made) changes can explain any temperature deviation -- is fatally flawed.

Global Warming

Catch the (Earth's) Fever!

Global Warming Seems To Not Be Happening At All For Past 5 Years; In Fact, The Oceans Have Cooled&bodytext= I blame Iraq, personally. Can anyone suggest any possible reasons why the data seem to show that, contra the theory and super-awesome computer models, the oceans are not in fact warming at all? I can't. The theory says they...&topic=world_news"> posted by Ace at 10:59 AM

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