The Discerning Texan

I hope that Mr. McQ over at QandO will not mind my mirroring his post here; I wouldn't know where to even begin to cut it. (Go pay QandO a visit anyway). Meanwhile I present Mr. McQ's tremendous contribution towards ending the greatest threat to our planet today: Global Vapidity:

Global Warming - The Oceans Aren't Cooperating

In fact, they've shown a slight cooling in the last 4 or 5 years:

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. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.

"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."

One of the more interesting aspects of this is that sea levels have risen about half an inch over the years. That's previously been believed to be because the oceans were warming and, as they warm the water expands. Now scientists are theorizing that the rise may be because of ice melting in Antarctica and from the Greenland glacier.

But what doesn't seem to be happening is warming oceans. So where is all this heat 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.

Wait ... so we don't know for sure where the heat is going (but speculate it may be going out into space) and don't have enough data on how clouds work or any way to measure this phenomenon, but we're still able to say the earth is warming?

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. It's an exciting time, though, with all this new data about global sea temperature, sea level and other features of climate.

Since when does heated water sink?

But it's "exciting" alright - governments are getting ready to spend us into oblivion and science isn't even sure how all of this works or if what they say is happening is happening.

But there is all that consensus to fall back on isn't there?

As usual, I want to include this for anyone of my readers who has not seen it yet: do yourselves a favor.

UPDATE: If you watch carefully and pay attention, the documentary linked above provides the answer for why the ocean's temprature does not mimic that of land masses. If the scientists are really "puzzled" about this, they should just click the link. OTOH, methinks that what these "scientists" are really "puzzled" about is how to keep this ridiculous myth alive with all of this contrary evidence streaming in.