Climate deniers get even more ridiculous

[Harv]

Do you not pay attention to climate science? Or do you honestly believe that cherry picking single data points is good evidence? The message that the climate scientists have been sending out for a long time now is that we will see more extreme weather patterns with an overall GLOBAL trend of warming. And by global trend they mean "average temperature worldwide", not "every single place on earth will be a scorching inferno". The fact that the northeastern US is freezing it's ass off this winter in no way contradicts what scientists have been saying. How comforting it must be to live in a world where every scientist who disagrees with your own gut feelings is a lying shill. Reminds me of the speech Colbert gave at the White House Correspondents dinner.

"He believes the same thing on Wednesday that he believed on Monday, NO MATTER WHAT happened on Tuesday."

To answer your first question in a word: No. I already stated the reason. The thread title invites personal attacks escalating into a flame war.

I mentioned El-Mac's thread. His title and post invites honest discussion. The only name he has for the bulk of people for the bulk of the people on the other side of the discussion: Uninformed. Possibly Misinformed.

Where I am at in this discussion, coming from a skeptic: The basic science works and you can trust NASA on the average 0.6 W/m² that the Earth is collecting on the ten or twenty year average. Multiply this by 5.1·10^14 m² Earth's Surface and the number of seconds in a year and you get the current surplus in Earth's energy budget.

Most of this energy is in the ocean. If you count the number of Joules stored in the oceans, this will show a rising trend. The more of the ocean included in the chart, the more steady the rising trend.

The water near the ocean surface will warm most rapidly. The ocean currents will mix the deep water and the water near the surface. As well as I understand it, these currents will shift and cause variations in the surface temperature. So we see bumps and dips in the temperature.

The atmosphere will respond very quickly to changes in the surface temperature, relative to the oceans. The severity of this year's winter compared to last year's or twenty years ago has little to do with global warming. It is just the weather doing what the weather does.

The question I am at is how long it really takes for the oceans to warm up?

Sorry about the lack of citations - My time over lunch hour is limited.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

Harv, my post wasn't directed at you, it was directed at Classical Hero. Someone else posted while I was typing it, separating my post from CH's, so that might not have been clear. Sorry about that.

Edit: And, for the record, just so that my position on this topic is clear, I do believe that man is having a significant impact on global climate change, because the preponderance of evidence points that way. But I am not in the camp of the hysterics that claim we're all doomed if we don't start living in caves ASAP, I think the data on what the ultimate result of the warming will be is still quite spotty, at least from what I've seen, so there's no reason to panic just yet. So even though I'm not in the environmentalist "OMG THE SKY IS FALLING" camp, I still felt like I had to reply to CH, because this "it's cold in the eastern US therefore global climate change isn't real" nonsense is so absurd that it borders on non sequitur.

 

[Rashiminos]

The atmosphere will respond very quickly to changes in the surface temperature, relative to the oceans. The severity of this year's winter compared to last year's or twenty years ago has little to do with global warming. It is just the weather doing what the weather does.

The question I am at is how long it really takes for the oceans to warm up?

Longer than it takes for persistent severe winters to alter albedo at high latitudes.