There were two responses to my letter Good news about climate warming (Jan. 28) in the Advocate (Deniers manipulate science by Ken Collier, Feb. 1, and Warming denier selective by Evan Bedford, Feb. 2). Thank you for caring enough to respond.
Mr. Collier seemed especially bothered by my recommending Watts Up With That.com for further studies. I read about 20 other science blogs as well, but WUWT is a world leader on climate with over 138 million hits. It has five major blog awards. Contrary to your assertion that Watts snips “bits out of context,” he is meticulous in providing links to original sources — including all of the publications you name (except Wotts Up).
I had never heard of Wotts Up With That before so I spent three-quarters of an hour examining his analysis of WUWT. It is one of the worst sites I have ever seen. I saw one scientific link, but he doesn’t deal with scientific argument, he prefers invective. Or, debate by drive-by shooting. Or smear by sneer. I would invite anyone to read WUWT for half an hour and then Wotts Up and decide for yourself.
Mr. Bedford, you’ve done some search for scientific evidence — that’s commendable. And you’re right that the UK Met Office says they expect a 0.43C rise in temperature anomaly above the base period. Previously they forecast a 0.54C anomaly, so they dropped it about 20 per cent. And then you go on to disparage me.
But did you not notice that the anomaly was already very close to the 0.43 in 1997? And they now are predicting after 20 years it’s going to be at … wait for it !… 0.43C. So the statement stands — the UK Met sees no global warming for the past 15 years and none for the next five. Agreed, they may be wrong — it could be more or less. Compare these two graphs from the Met (they don’t publish them together): go to http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/figure-1.gif.
Then you went on to rag me about the high El Nino in 1998 (stating I was being less than totally open). But the Met chose this period (they didn’t bother to consult me!); I’m simply reporting what they said and I’m convinced that’s good news.
I didn’t talk about ocean heat content — you realize there is only so much can be covered in a letter. You say 60 years of heat content is hidden in the oceans down to 2000 metres. Well, warmists like to assert that in desperation but there is no evidence for it. In fact, there was no way to measure accurately below surface layers until the year 2000 (that’s only 13 years ago, not 60) when they dispatched 3000-plus Argo floats that could dive down to 2000 metres and then surface and report via satellite every 10 days.
Dr. Kevin Trenberth (head of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, or NCAR) famously said, “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming and it’s a travesty that we can’t.” See WUWT, Jan. 6, 2011, for a link to a peer-reviewed paper on ocean warming.
Contrary to your letter, I said nothing about economic losses due to extreme weather. The IPCC says extreme weather events cannot be attributed to global warming even though Suzuki, Gore and Obama state it constantly.
Please forego the continual use of “straw man” arguments and of snarky ad hominems (personal put downs). If you can’t win the argument by discussing dispassionately, don’t resort to finger pointing.
Murray Snyder
Rocky Mountain House