The story of my visit at Bob Tisdale's blog "Climate Observations"

Bob Tisdale is a little bit a strange fellow. He has a very odd belief that global warming, including the one of the oceans is caused by the El Nino-La Nina (or ENSO - El Nino Southern Oscillation) cycle. El Nino is characterized by a strong ocean heat and sea surface temperature anomaly in the Central and Eastern equatorial Pacific ocean. La Nina is the counterpart, characterized by a negative heat and sea surface temperature anomaly. The equatorial Pacific produces El Ninos and La Ninas every few years, with global reach through the atmospheric circulation, leading to temperature and precipitation anomalies even in remote regions of the planet, mediated through so called teleconnections. Sometimes warm or cold phases occurs in a row only interrupted by neutral conditions. It is a major mode of internal chaotic variability in the ocean-atmosphere system. Bob Tisdale understands as much. However, he does not seem to understand that El Nino-La Nina cannot generate by itself a global ocean warming trend, because the ocean does not heat itself. A net influx of energy into the oceans is needed to cause a secular warming trend of the whole body of ocean water. The energy must come from somewhere. Bob Tisdale cannot explain where it comes from. The axiom here is, like for all the AGW-"skeptics", global (ocean) warming cannot, never ever, be caused by the radiation effect of increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases. All the arguments are built around this axiom.

This figure (added to the post after original posting) shows the increase in the ocean heat content since 1955, for which needs to be explained what the energy source for all the heating of the   oceans is:

(Source: http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/)

I paid a visit at Bob Tisdale's blog, because I accidentally had seen that he had written and published on his blog an open letter to Daily Show host Jon Stewart who had made fun of AGW-denialism (here and here). After introducing himself, what an important personality he was, in the AGW-denial blogosphere, who even publishes at such an important blog as wattsupwiththat, Bob Tisdale explained to Jon Stewart how utterly wrong established climate science was regarding anthropogenic global warming.

Well, I had had the impression before that Bob Tisdale was someone among the AGW-"skeptics" with whom one at least could talk and who is able to maintain civility, damn was I wrong. What a bully and jerk, filled with delusions of grandeur, and at the same time with the need of getting reassured from his comrades. He very quickly started to show the usual reaction of fake skeptics, when they are losing the argument. He resorted to ad hominem attacks and other evasion tactics. Apparently, when he felt that the lack of physical soundness in his "theory" was pointed out too much and confronted with the inconvenient reality of empirical data, it turned out he is just another one who can't take it when he is being contradicted:

 

Emerging new El Nino?

There has been some interesting development in the equatorial subsurface temperatures in the Pacific for the last two months. The positive temperature anomaly, which has been dominant in the upper 300 meters of the equatorial water body of the Western Pacific has spread eastward. Now we have a positive subsurface anomaly over the whole longitude range from 130E to 100 W. Only the far Eastern Pacific still shows a negative anomaly.

(Source: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf, pg. 11)

The last model simulations are from June 2013. Most of the models predicted ENSO neutral conditions through 2013 back then.

(Source: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf, pg. 26)

I am curious what the new model simulations, initialized with updated input data are going to say.

If one looks at the table of cold and warm episodes of ENSO, there has not been any period longer than four years from the end of an El Nino to the start of the following El Nino, going back to the year 1950. We are in the third year since the end of the last El Nino episode now. If it does not happen this year a new El Nino really will be due next year. Otherwise it would be unusual, if none occured compared to the frequency of occurrence for the period between 1950 and present.

What got me snipped from wattsupwiththat.com - 3

"The reason is that WUWT does not censor comments like alarmist blogs do. It allows true freedom of speech, thus the grain of truth is winnowed from the chaff of propaganda; readers can make up their own minds, and arrive at reasonable conclusions based on the facts presented."
(Smokey aka David B. Stealey, moderator of the blog wattsupwiththat.com, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/28/comment-of-the-week-2/#comment-754850)

I continue my series that documents comments that are apparently not liked, and therefore vanished at the opinion blog wattsupwiththat.com, which is presented by blog host Anthony Watts as "The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change" and which promotes denial of anthropogenically caused global warming. The comment was in reply to the claim by regular guest author Bob Tisdale, made in his posting "Tisdale asks: Hey, Where'd The El Niño Go?". Mr. Tisdale asserts global warming was caused by the natural phenomenon El Niño.  The El Niño/La Niña pattern (or ENSO - El Niño/Southern Oscillation) is a major mode of ocean variability in the tropical Pacific. It influences the weather in many parts of the world through so called teleconnections. Here is my comment to this claim. The comment also included a couple of questions for Mr. Tisdale:

----- snip -----
How is El Nino supposed to cause global warming? El Nino/La Nina is a major mode of natural variability with warm and cold phases, but global warming is a long-term trend. And the temperature of the upper ocean layers is not an independent climate driver. It's a dependent variable, so it can be the first cause that explains global warming. Claiming a warming of the upper ocean layers was the cause of global warming is just circular reasoning, since warming of the upper ocean layers is part of global warming.

Here are the annually and globally averaged anomalies of the surface temperature according to the GISS analysis relative to the average of the reference period 1951-1980:

For the decade of 1991 to 2000:
0.36, 0.14, 0.15, 0.25, 0.4, 0.3, 0.42, 0.59, 0.34, 0.36; mean+/-std = 0.331+/-0.133
For the decade of 2001 to 2010:
0.49, 0.58, 0.57, 0.49, 0.62, 0.56, 0.59, 0.44, 0.57, 0.63; mean+/-std = 0.554+/-0.061
(http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.txt)

What El Nino events are supposed to have caused and how are they supposed to have caused it that the 10 year average of the global temperature anomaly of the period 2001 to 2010 was 0.22 K higher than the 10-year average of the period 1991 to 2000? How does El Nino cause the long-term increase in the ocean heat content?

----- snip -----

Update 09/25/2012, at 9:27 AM:  The statement above, "It's a dependent variable, so it can be the first cause that explains global warming", was supposed to say "It's a dependent variable, so it can't be the first cause that explains global warming" (h/t Al. Thank you for spotting this and notifying me). Comments still don't work.

Update 09/25/2012, at 9:32 AM: Posting new comments actually works. Old comments have not been imported yet.