NP - It Should Be Very Cold Now

[David Morris]

http://www.juancole.com/2013/09/minimum-ninas-really.html

2013 is witnessing another year of very low sunspot
activity<http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-09-18/science/42182028_1_sunspots-maunder-minimum-solar-cycle>,
showing that we are in a years-long solar minimum. It may not last much
longer, but something is going on more than just the usual drop in solar
activity every 11 years. Even that 11-year cycle affects the
weather.<http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/>But
we’ve seen remarkably low sunspot activity for several years now, with 2009
being especially quiet. We are probably at the bottom of the 100-year
Gleissberg Cycle, and the limited sunspot activity could last for another
10 years or so.

[...]

So if we are at the bottom of the hundred-year Gleissberg cycle with few
sunspots for years, it should be really, really cold, right?

Then, there is the cyclical but somewhat unpredictable El Nino/ La Nina
phenomenon in the center-east Pacific Ocean. There have been an unusual
number of cool La Ninas in the past 15
years.<http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/352813/description/Global_warming_hiatus_tied_to_cooler_temps_in_Pacific>

So it should be really, really cold, right? Back to back La Ninas, plus a
Gleissberg solar minimum.

Then, it turns out that the upper waters of the world’s oceans are warming
up faster than in the
past.<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/what-ocean-heating-reveals-about-global-warming/>
The
oceans are very deep and very cold, and take a long time to warm and to
circulate the heat. But even they are noticeably heating up. Some parts of
the ocean, such as the Greenland Sea, are heating up 10 times
faster<http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/4159/20130925/warming-greenland-sea-outpaces-global-ocean.htm>
than
the rest of the ocean. So much that it is like a Hiroshima atomic bomb
going off every second for thirty years in a row. If the oceans are
absorbing a lot of the extra heat produced by greenhouse gases trapping the
sun’s energy on earth, then the atmosphere would not have to warm as much.

So it should be really, really, really cold.

But it isn’t cold. Warming has continued during the past decade and a
half.Sophie
Lewis writes,<http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/debunking-the-persistent-myth-that-global-warming-stopped-in-1998-20130927-2ui8j.html>
“The
last decade was the hottest on record globally. Each year from 2000 to
2010, except 2008, was in the 10 warmest recorded globally.”

That conclusion is terrifying. We should be shivering. We’re sweltering.
All the solar minimum and the La Ninas and the displacement of warming to
the seas have been able to do is slightly slow the rate in the warming of
surface temperatures. If we’d had normal sunspot activity and lots of El
Ninos and if the oceans hadn’t started taking on some of the extra heat,
the thermometers would be bursting the way they do in a Roadrunner cartoon.

The world has already warmed by 1 degree C. in the past century, and we are
locking ourselves into a 2-4 degrees C. rise in this century. (Hint: a 4
degrees C. increase might well make the climate unstable and endanger human
survival).

The paid-for denialists who will try to tell you that global warming has
stopped and we don’t need to get off oil, gas and coal tout de suite are
snowing you. And they are drowning your grandchildren as sure as if they
were pushing their heads under the waves and holding them there while the
little ones thrash and their eyes bulge and their lungs fill with water.
All to make another buck off their dirty fuel. If you have a house and you
haven’t had it properly insulated and haven’t made an appointment to put
solar panels on it, you aren’t helping save humankind.
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