At the German Readers Edition, Rudolf Kipp has a short write-up poking fun at Kevin Trenberth’s missing heat. http://www.readers-edition.de/2010/04/18/raetsel-geloest-globale-erwaermung-versteckt-sich-in-den-ozeanen/. I’d like to build further on that.
Kevin Trenberth is a devout believer in AGW. Unfortunately measurements haven’t been cooperating and they show the world hasn’t warmed up at all over the last years. Frustrated, Trenberth was unable to contain his exasperation in a Climategate e-mail:
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.
If that weren’t bad enough, new studies now show the oceans, where most of the thermal energy is stored, are cooling. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/21/recent-ocean-heat-and-mlo-co2-trends/
Still, like a true believer, Trenberth denies it and insists the heat is there – somewhere. It’s just simply hidden. After all the climate models say the heat has to be there. And so he warns us:
The heat will come back to haunt us sooner or later.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=868nr1Pgxw0&feature=player_embedded#
In the meantime more signs are mounting that we should be preparing for cooling due to quiet solar activity, which some scientists are now realising there’s strong evidence of a link. http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/2/024001/fulltext
In May 2008 Mojib Latif was one of the first established climate scientists to recognise cooling, writing that the missing heat was due to ocean oscillations and that it would last another 10 to 20 years. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/abs/nature06921.html and http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17742-worlds-climate-could-cool-first-warm-later.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news.
Meteorologist Joe Bastardi has also been beating the drums of a cooling period, saying the current El Nino is about to fizzle out and that we can expect a La Nina with a couple of cold years ahead. And recall that a recent survey showed that a large majority of meteorologists believe climate is driven by natural factors, and much less so by man.
Dr. Don Easterbook and others are convinced that the cooling will indeed be longterm. Kevin Mooney writes: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/206060-21st-century-global-cooling-trend-debunks-United-Nations-computer-climate-models
The momentum is now very much with researchers who have identified natural forces as opposed to human activity as the primary driving force behind warming and cooling trends. Ideally, they should find greater expression.
But devout believers will hear none of it and they continue to believe in the Hidden Heat. Stefan Rahmstorf even defiantly offered to bet “big money” that average temps will continue to rise through 2020. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/global-cooling-wanna-bet/langswitch_lang/en. Of course Rahmstorf would not be so careless as to forget a back-door escape clause, just in case:
To be fair, the bet needs an escape clause in case a big volcano erupts or a big meteorite hits the Earth and causes cooling below the 1994-2004 level.
Update. Check this out: http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/missing-heat-hides-climate-scientists
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