Oh no!
The robot uprising has begun…
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.
The oceans are cooling or, um, not warming? Wait a sec. How will Master Gorebot crush this dissent?
In recent years, heat has actually been flowing out of the ocean and into the air. This is a feature of the weather phenomenon known as El Nino. So it is indeed possible the air has warmed but the ocean has not. But it’s also possible that something more mysterious is going on.
Mysterious heat is escaping! Our greenhouse isn’t working. No more hothouse tomatoes, apparently. What could be happening?
One possibility is that the sea has, in fact, warmed and expanded — and scientists are somehow misinterpreting the data from the diving buoys.
Stupid scientists.
Trenberth and Willis agree that a few mild years have no effect on the long-term trend of global warming. But they say there are still things to learn about how our planet copes with the heat.
Of course. These strange readings that don’t fit our preconceptions so we’ll need more data to make the statistics work with our models.
Essentially, we’re doomed by the non-dooming. Wake up warm people!
Sigh,
– bob