Gavin Schmidt on Advocacy and Judith Curry's "missing element"

I don't know how many people saw Gavin Schmidt give the Stephen Schneider Lecture at the AGU Falll Meeting this year.  It's worth watching - more than once.  Here it is:

What should a climate scientist advocate for? The Intersection of Expertise and Values in a Politicized World

Stephen Schneider Lecture by Dr Gavin  Schmidt, NASA at AGU Fall Meeting, December 2013

Stephen Schneider was a science communicator who understood intimately the roles of expertise and values in raising public awareness and in discussing both problems and solutions to issues of public concern. With a new generation of climate scientists stepping up to the microphone, what are the lessons to be learned from his experiences? I will discuss the ethical issues associated with being both a scientist and a human being, the importance of honesty - to oneself and to ones audience - and how this can be effective. I will also discuss how scientists can find a role for themselves in advocating what they feel strongly about and how to avoid some common pitfalls and problems. Above all, I will present a picture of how one can try to be both a public voice and a good scientist, and how these roles, in the end, reinforce one another.

What climate science disinformers advocate

Judith Curry, a climate scientist who mostly seems to advocate for global warming, has written an article about Gavin Schmidt's lecture. Despite or perhaps because of her own personal experience as an advocate, Judith writes (archived here):

I have long stated that scientists advocating for public policy can lead to distrust of scientists and their scientific findings.

Gavin Schmidt argued that scientists should be clear about their personal values when discussion climate science and the implications and when advocating courses of action. Gavin Schmidt also stated that it is irresponsible to misrepresent or hide values.

I haven't seen Judith clearly expressing her values when she advocates doing nothing to limit emissions.  One can only speculate.

In her blog article, Judith makes a statement and poses some questions, which are suggestive of her policy position and her values.  But she does not explicitly state either her policy position or her values in detail as relevant to this subject.  I'll leave it to readers to see if they can figure them out.

Judith's general approach on her blog and in various testimonies (eg to US government hearings) is to avoid or misrepresent science.  She has even gone so far as to recommend that scientists stop reporting climate science to governments by saying that "the IPCC should be put down".  She pretends that much more is "unknown" and "uncertain" than it really is.  She has argued that rather than reduce emissions we should improve weather forecasting, as if that's an either/or decision.

The rest of this article is about Judith's implied advocacy in the light of Gavin Schmidt's lecture.  It's rather long so if you are on the home page, click here to continue reading.

Boxing Day Special: NASA faked the moon landing - a Christmas gift from WUWT

As a Christmas special, Anthony Watts paraded out Christopher Monckton, who wrote how his religion frowns on lies while proceeding to tell lie after lie after lie.  He spent much of the article wrongly accusing climate and other earth system scientists all around the world of fraud, deception, being on the take, profiteering and being socialists. (And using a verb as an adjective in the process.) Lots of bedazzled WUWTers bowed their heads and chanted homage to the lord (Monckton), while atheistic WUWTers chastised him for bringing religion to WUWT and socialist WUWTers objected to Monckton's suggestion that socialism is immoral. (Archived here - and updated here in case anyone wants to waste time wading through 342 comments just to learn about the myriad weird and illogical non-reasons people come up with to justify their rejection of science. Or to collect more evidence of just how nutty Christopher Monckton is - eg his comments about how species could not have evolved and his illogical comments trying to justify his claims that climate science is a hoax.)

Then Anthony gave us some insight into how the Watts family spends its leisure time.  Anthony wrote an article saying how his children are off playing their favourite game - find the money.  Yes, quite literally.  He hides coins around the house and says it keeps his children amused for hours looking for them. He gave instructions so his readers so they could teach their children how to play 'find the money'.  He even posted a number of snapshots showing how to hide the coins in plain sight. Very educational and intellectually stimulating, eh? (Archived here.)

After that Anthony gave his readers an article about the Apollo 8 moon mission, with what is known as the Genesis or Christmas Eve broadcast - passages from Genesis that were recited by the astronauts, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders. (Archived here - updated archive here.)

Anthony included this historic shot taken by the astronauts as they orbited the moon.  His article contained no swipes at climate scientists or anyone else, which made a nice change.

Earthrise
Credit: NASA

In the comments several people joined in an argument about whether or not the moon rotates.  Some said it did and some said it didn't.

Gerald Kelleher says (excerpt):

December 25, 2013 at 12:30 am
This is one wonderful insane world because when people can force themselves to believe the moon spins when clearly it doesn’t then forget interpreting climate !...

...For goodness sake give the world a magnificent Christmas present this year and deal decisively with this issue because if you can’t get rid of the mindnumbing idea that the moon spins as it orbits the Earth then what can be said of getting rid of the notion that humans can control the Earth’s temperature.

Gareth Phillips says (excerpt):

December 25, 2013 at 2:58 am...The mon does not actually spin or rotate on it’s own axis, it’s can’t if it keeps the same face to the earth....

Here is what we would see over time if the moon wasn't in a synchronous rotation with Earth.  That is, if its speed of rotation was longer or shorter than the time it takes to go around Earth.

Update

There's more from Gerald Kelleher, who is a very confused bloke but doesn't know it.  He not only asserts that all the world except he is wrong and that the moon doesn't rotate, he hasn't grasped the difference between sidereal and solar days.  He says (excerpts - archived here):

December 25, 2013 at 2:09 pm
People who believe that the moon spins are a troubled people and always have been that way despite its persistence as mainstream policy and it comes from the same group who will announce to the world that all the effects within a 24 hour cycle such as daily temperature rises and falls are not due to the rotation of the Earth by virtue that they insist that there are more rotations of the Earth in a year than there are days -

” It is a fact not generally known that,owing to the difference between solar and sidereal time,the Earth rotates upon its axis once more often than there are days in the year” NASA /Harvard

It is an intractable problem for the necessary intellectual and interpretative talent is not available at the present time to square away the 24 hour AM/PM system with the Lat/Long system which keeps the Earth turning at a rate of 15 degrees per hour is being obscured by a bunch of cretins who can’t seemingly begin with the fact that when you wake up tomorrow you not only wake up to another day but also another rotation of the planet and they never,ever fall out of step.

All I can see are bluffers with a lot of voodoo thrown in. People think the ‘climate issue’ is the problem but it is much,much bigger than that – it is a uniquely human problem that started a few centuries ago.

In a later comment, Gerald maintains that NASA is wrong on another score or, more properly, a variation of the moon rotating score - writing (excerpt):

...For $17 billion the wider public has an organization that once landed men on the moon yet has the population believes the far side of the moon receives sunlight due to rotation -(December 25, 2013 at 2:57 pm)

We've got a couple of live ones! NASA faked the moon landing...

The comments section housed other gems.  Or perhaps I should refer to them as lumps of coal for Christmas. After all,  WUWT readers don't like to think that climate deniers like them also number people who think that NASA faked the moon landing. You could say it's a Christmas gift from Anthony Watts to Stephan Lewandowsky et al (Archived here.)


Dorian Sabaz says:

December 25, 2013 at 4:21 am
Here is a question for all to consider….

Why are there no photos of the Earth from the Moon surface?

You’d think after thousands of years of looking at the Moon from the Earth, that when finally Man stands on the surface of the Moon the first thing any astronaunt would do, is take a photo of Mother Earth…no?

That photo you show above is only from an automated probe going to the Moon. Where are the photos of the Earth from the Moon?

Afterall, from the surface of the Moon, the Earth would look about four times larger as that of the Moon seen on the Earth. It would be very spectacular, considering there would also be no atmosphere too, just black sky. And much of the time the Sun would be in opposition, that is, the Earth would be between the Moon and the Sun, it would make it perfectly large, clear and beautiful.

BUT NO. THERE ARE NO PHOTOS OF THE EARTH FROM THE LUNAR SURFACE.
WHY?

Oh…before you point out that single ridiculous photo of the Earth in the back drop of the lunar lander (the only supposedly photo of the Earth), take a very close look at where the Earth is, the Moon does not rotate on its axis with respect to the Earth, thus it is always facing the same way, that photo shows the Earth as if it rising, and that can not be, the Earth must be straight up. Use common sense. The Earth can never rise or set on the Moon.

So where are the photos? After the greatest adventure of Mankind, it seems EVERY SINGLE ASTRONAUNT forgot to take a photo of the Earth FROM THE MOON’S LUNAR SURFACE.

Now isn’t that interesting.

bruce1337 says:

December 25, 2013 at 8:36 am
Just for the record: Here’s another one who doesn’t buy the manned moon landings anymore. While there’s a mountain of inconsistencies to discuss, this is probably neither the time nor place to do it. Just this one teaser: 44 years of technological progress, and modern heavy lift vehicles still don’t come anywhere close to the Saturn V’s capabilities. cAGW isn’t the only grand deception of the TV era…

To finish, here is another comment from WUWT.  Alan Robertson says (my bold italics):

December 25, 2013 at 7:28 am
Hello, Dorian. It’s a pity that you chose to run from the conversation. However, there is a positive aspect resulting from your unfortunate statements.

You are serving as a prime example of how people will not be shaken from their mistaken beliefs, no matter how much truthful information is given to them.

Thank you, Merry Christmas.

That could apply to 98.4% of people who comment at WUWT, although they'd have to leave WUWT if they were interested "truthful information" about climate.".

Happy Holidays to Everyone

Well - it's Christmas Eve already.

Happy Holidays to everyone.

It's been quite an interesting year with some serious weather events, the widest tornado, the worst typhoon and Australia's hottest year on record, and the IPCC WG1 report - congrats to all the authors for a job well done. Plus ordinary Australians spoke up with their wallets and came up with more than half a million dollars in about three days for the Climate Council after our incoming climate-wrecking Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, shut down the Climate Commission.

HotWhopper had it's first birthday this month and, coincidentally, it's also just registered more than 500,000 page views from people in 145 countries, which amazes me.  A big thank you to all HotWhopper readers and everyone who's linked to HotWhopper in various parts of the web.

The most popular article was Watts is Whopping Mad (Crazy) after Marcott et al - Must be the Heat! followed by David Rose and his tabloid "reporting" of Arctic sea ice and other nonsense.

Others included:
Anthony Watts is finally back to his field of expertise, with help and Cook et al Paper Confirms 97% Scientific Consensus - Prompting Silly Conspiracy Theories from Anthony Watts and WUWT and to round off the top five Talking to contrarians. Why do you do it? Or why not?

I wish everyone a safe, happy, healthy and successful 2014.  May the weather be kind and the CO2 drop.

Here's an Australianised Christmas song.  Hope you like it :)

::-::-::

PS I upped the time of this post to keep it at the top for a bit in the spirit of the holiday season.

Anthony Watts trips over his feet (in mouth) in his haste to stomp on Michael Mann

Anthony Watts of WUWT is full of blunders today.  First some science-related blunders now a legal blunder. As readers know from previously, US law is not something I'm familiar with but it reads to me as if poor old Anthony has got it wrong again. (Confirmed!)

Anthony wrote gleefully, popcorn in the popper (archived here):

What a great Christmas present for Mike. It is back to square one for him with his lawsuit over what he views as libel by Mark Steyn and CEI.

Poor old Anthony is going to be dreadfully disappointed.  He thinks that the appeals court overturned the previous court ruling.  But it didn't.  Anthony wrote:

Since the previous ruling this summer that said the lawsuit could go ahead was nothing less than a bad legal joke: ...Mann-Steyn lawsuit judge inverts the defendants actions, botches ruling…that ruling has now been nullified by a higher appeals court ruling, Mann’s case will now have to start over.  This new ruling seems pretty blunt. They basically accepted the ACLU amicus brief as fact, saying:

ORDERED, sua sponte, that the Clerk shall file the ACLU’s lodged amicus curiae response as its response.

The appeal was granted with no caveats or exceptions, suggesting that the appeals court views the decision by that wacky judge Natalia M. Combs Greene (now retired) this summer as being very badly flawed, much like the hockey stick itself.

Anthony's wrong.  The appeals court didn't overturn anything let alone "with no caveats or exceptions".  No appeal was granted. On the contrary, some appeals were dismissed. Nor did it accept any amicus curiae as fact.  It only ordered that various amici curiae be filed.

From the The Court of Appeals Order - it  "considered" various bits and pieces relating to Michael Manns lawsuit against Mark Steyn and various parties.  It ruled that:

• The ACLU's amicus curiae be filed
• The amicus curiae submitted by Reporters for Freedom of the Press (whoever they may be - they are supporting the appellant, Mark Steyn) and umpteen others, and the supplement to it be filed
• Michael Mann's opposition to the appeal and Mark Steyn's response to the opposition be filed
• The appeals by Mark Steyn etc be dismissed because Michael Mann amended his complaint, so the appeals are moot.  They've subsequently lodged new appeals which remain pending.
• The dismissal of the appeals doesn't prevent the appellants from lodging new appeals.

Anthony Watts is acting like a goose again!

I'd say there is nothing to see there.  It's nothing more than legal housekeeping. Anthony Watts is acting like a goose (again).

Anthony Watts gets more than the sun wrong at WUWT

Anthony Watts of WUWT mocks another scientific study, this time one that shows something that won't surprise too many people. (Archived here.)

The Schurer, Tett and Hegerl paper, published in Nature Geoscience, finds that changes in solar radiation resulted in only small changes in climate over the past 1,000 years.  Volcanic eruptions had a bigger impact on climate than changes in incoming solar radiation.  From the abstract:

We find that neither a high magnitude of solar forcing nor a strong climate effect of that forcing agree with the temperature reconstructions. We instead conclude that solar forcing probably had a minor effect on Northern Hemisphere climate over the past 1,000 years, while, volcanic eruptions and changes in greenhouse gas concentrations seem to be the most important influence over this period.

This seems to be consistent with a 2006 paper by Ammann et al - from the abstract:

Smaller, rather than larger, long-term trends in solar irradiance appear more plausible and produced modeled climates in better agreement with the range of Northern Hemisphere temperature proxy records both with respect to phase and magnitude. Despite the direct response of the model to solar forcing, even large solar irradiance change combined with realistic volcanic forcing over past centuries could not explain the late 20th century warming without inclusion of greenhouse gas forcing. Although solar and volcanic effects appear to dominate most of the slow climate variations within the past thousand years, the impacts of greenhouse gases have dominated since the second half of the last century.

Anthony Watts confused NERC with NRDC

You want to know one reason for Anthony bagging the paper?  It's because he confused UK's Natural Environment Research Council, which funded the study, with the USA's Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).  Anthony wrote:

Note the “…was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council.” at the end. That alone makes me suspicious of the science presented because it looks a lot like “science for hire” when a blatantly political group like NRDC funds the study. 

Only the NRDC didn't fund the study, did it.  The UK, like Australia, has a number of R&D Councils some of which are funded wholly by government and some of which would be jointly funded by government and industry (such as on a government dollar for industry dollar basis).

Update: Ha ha - it looks as if someone corrected Anthony because he's made a few changes to his article now (original archived here and updated version archived here). BUT although Anthony deleted the section above, in one spot he only made a minor correction which now looks plain silly:

...another one-paper syndrome in the making funded by an NGO with a political mission to grab a headline. 

An R&D Council's mission is to support R&D.  They don't have a "political mission to make a headline".  What a plonker!

Anthony Watts confuses weather and climate

Then poor old Anthony goes and confuses weather with climate, writing:

Then there is: “…climatic fingerprints of high and low solar forcing derived from model simulations…”. IPCC Models haven’t been able to reproduce the last ten years; what makes them think they are worth anything 100-200 years ago?

Climate models are designed for climate, for multi-decadal timescales not ten years or less.  In any case, observations are still in the realm of model simulations.  It's not that hard to compare models with observations going back 160 years so they'd be able to figure out how close the models are to observations.  And there are proxy temperature reconstructions to see how models fare against global surface temperatures going back 1,000 years.

Anthony Watts wouldn't know an expert if he tripped over one

Finally, Anthony has a go at the lead author, Andrew P Schurer, writing:

I’m not so sure this fellow is fully versed on climatology. His papers up to 2011 were all about cosmology, then all of the sudden he starts publishing on climatology issues. One wonders if his previous funding dried up to make such a dramatic shift in study. 

Actually, Andrew Schurer has been publishing climate papers since 2011.  Five of his eight listed publications are directly related to climate and this one makes six out of nine.  The first was published in 2011.  He's only published three papers on galaxies, the last one in 2011. And is it such a dramatic shift?  I don't know but what I would remark on is that for a presumably young researcher he is doing very well, with publications not just in Nature Geoscience but GRL and JGR.  He has to be a whole lot more qualified than the so-called "experts" that Anthony promotes, like the potty peer Christopher Monckton, David "funny sunny" Archibald, Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale and Wondering Willis Eschenbach and Anthony "UHI disease" Watts himself.

As for Andrew Schurer's co-authors, Professors Simon Tett and Gabriele Hegerl, they would be known to many HotWhopper readers by reputation at least.

From the WUWT comments

Steven Mosher says:

December 23, 2013 at 9:46 am
one paper wonder?
what was it Einstein said?

Anthony Watts reply shows he doesn't know anything at all about the work of Albert Einstein:

REPLY: I’ll remind you of what you said to me at AGU discussing Robert Rhode’s poster. “models aren’t proof of anything, they are simply best guesses”. So here we have modeled (not observed) solar activity being curve fit to observed surface temperatures. I’m pretty sure Einstein would not be impressed. – Anthony

Eyal Porat "wanders" but doesn't wander as far as here or here and says:

December 23, 2013 at 9:51 am
I wander what volcanoes caused the LIA.
That was a 150 years stretch of mighty volcano activity…

Rob wants to see scientists find a correlation between sun activity and housing?

December 23, 2013 at 9:56 am
I’m Rob M too and I was just about to say that.
They are “fitting” sun activity to models rather than finding correlation between sun activity and realty.

Richard M seems to think oceans can force climate all by their little selves.  I guess he doesn't accept there was a medieval climate anomaly or a little ice age and says:

December 23, 2013 at 10:20 am
Sadly they ignore the single most important factor in climate changes … the oceans. From what I can tell solar changes tend to be of shorter duration which is also true of volcanoes. They won’t find great correlations with either one..

---

Andrew P. Schurer, Simon F. B. Tett & Gabriele C. Hegerl, Small influence of solar variability on climate over the past millennium, Nature Geoscience, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2040

Ammann, Caspar M., Fortunat Joos, David S. Schimel, Bette L. Otto-Bliesner, and Robert A. Tomas. "Solar influence on climate during the past millennium: Results from transient simulations with the NCAR Climate System Model." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104, no. 10 (2007): 3713-3718. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0605064103

Wondering Willis' Original Weather Hypotheses

Wondering Willis Eschenbach wonders some more at WUWT.  This time, as almost every other time, about the way energy moves through the Earth system.  Willis combines the known with the unreal and thinks he has come up with something new.  Instead he makes simple science complex and complex science overly simple and mixes it all up into a weird concoction of his own making. (Archived here.)

Willis is keen to let everyone know he has invented meteorology.  Here are some of his claimed "original" ideas:

However, the idea that the temperature-determined time of onset of tropical clouds and thunderstorms is a main regulator of the temperature of the globe is my own, as far as I know. I think the same is true for the idea that the PDO regulates the temperature by either impeding or encouraging polewards heat flow. Finally, I think that the idea that the El Nino / La Nina alteration functions to regulate the temperature by pumping warm tropical water to the poles when the tropics start to overheat is my own idea as well. (December 22, 2013 at 2:40 pm)

Willis Original: Clouds & thunderstorms are the main regulator

First Willis claims this as his own idea:

...the idea that the temperature-determined time of onset of tropical clouds and thunderstorms is a main regulator of the temperature of the globe is my own, as far as I know.

Willis, as some of you will remember, doesn't read science.  It would both spoil his claims of originality and show his ideas up as foolish. Probably more the latter than the former.  Go to any page about tropical storms and you'll probably find a sentence something like the one on this NOAA page:

Since tropical cyclones help regulate the earth's temperature, any decrease in tropical cyclone intensity means the oceans retain more heat. 

A two-second Google search would tell even the least informed person that Willis hasn't made any original discovery relating to diurnal cloud formation in the tropics.  But for fake sceptics Google is for the birds.  (Sorry, birds.  I meant no offence.)

Clouds are formed when warm air meets surface water and the water evaporates, rises and condenses. I don't imagine that Willis is claiming that as an original thought of his own.  So what is he claiming as his original thought? Is it the "main regulator of the temperature of the globe" bit?  Surely he's not trying to claim to be the first to recognise that the water cycle is one of the main temperature regulating mechanisms.

The image below is from the National Environment Agency in Singapore, where it states that "Thunderstorms tend to occur between 2 pm and 6 pm in the afternoon as diurnal heating and convection play an important role in thunderstorm development".  I guess they must have got the "original idea" from Wondering Willis :)

A mature thunderstorm cell is characterised by vigorous updrafts and downdrafts. Updrafts are associated with inflow of humid air from the base of the cloud. When a thunderstorm matures, the falling of raindrops drags and pushes air downwards causing downdrafts. These downdrafts eventually spread throughout the entire cloud, cutting off the feed of moisture by updrafts. The thunderstorm cell then enters the dissipating stage. Each individual thunderstorm cell typically has a lifespan of less than one hour and a horizontal extent of several kilometres. 

Credit: National Environment Agency, Singapore

I came across this graphic of a tropical cyclone, which I'll include because I like it and it's more interesting than Willis' wonderings.  Click to enlarge it.

Credit: BOM/NOAA/ABC Tim Madden

Willis Original: PDO regulates the temperature

The next "original" claim by Willis is this:

I think the same is true for the idea that the PDO regulates the temperature by either impeding or encouraging polewards heat flow. 

I don't know what Willis means by that.  Does anyone?  Maybe he is referring to the fact that if there is a steeper temperature gradient in the North Pacific then heat will "flow" more from the tropics to the Arctic. But surely he wouldn't try to claim that idea as his own original thought.

The PDO is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.  It is described in terms of sea surface temperature (SST). From my limited reading, the general view is that these changes are brought about by a confluence of factors. For example, a paper by Schneider and Cornuelle suggests that it is influenced by various effects (some of which I've only vaguely heard of) including ENSO, the Aleutian low and the Kuroshio–Oyashio Extension.  A more recent paper by Michael Alexander states that the PDO is not a "mode of the climate system" but more the result of several different mechanisms:

Unlike ENSO, the PDO does not appear to be a mode of the climate system, but rather it results from several different mechanisms including (1) stochastic heat flux forcing associated with random fluctuations in the Aleutian Low, (2) the atmospheric bridge augmented by the reemergence mechanism, and (3) wind-driven changes in the North Pacific gyres.

So it doesn't seem right to my way of thinking to say that the PDO regulates something.  It seems to me it is an expression of what is regulated rather than being a regulator.

Willis Original: ENSO pumping tropical water to the poles

Remember Willis wrote this:

Finally, I think that the idea that the El Nino / La Nina alteration functions to regulate the temperature by pumping warm tropical water to the poles when the tropics start to overheat is my own idea as well.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know ENSO doesn't "pump warm tropical water to the poles when the tropics start to overheat". ENSO events are associated with changes in the Walker Circulation, which is an east-west circulation of the atmosphere above the tropical Pacific, not a north-south circulation.  In the ocean, it is associated with a shift in the thermocline with upwelling in the eastern tropical Pacific during La Nina - bringing cooler water to the surface in the east and with warm water being concentrated in the west. And suppressed upwelling in El Nino, allowing warm water to pool over a larger area in the east warming the air and land surface.

The surface current goes east to west across the tropical Pacific.  It's deep currents that go north-south and south-north.  But they flow all the time and as far as I know don't change with the different phases of ENSO, which is what Willis is arguing.

The video below shows the main ocean currents of the world:

Credit: CSIRO, the Wealth from Oceans Flagship and the Australian Climate Change Science Program

Willis' Thermostat is Broken

What Willis maintains is that his tropical clouds and thunderstorms act as a "global thermostat".  There's nothing new about that notion, whatever Willis tries to tell people.  Willis goes further though and argues that clouds keeps temperature at a set point.  Well, it looks as if that thermostat is broken now, doesn't it.  Willis insists that "over the previous century the total variation in temperature was ≈ ± 0.3K".  I have no idea where he got that notion from.  It wasn't from a chart of temperature variations over the past 100 years.  As you can see below the temperature rose from -0.4 to +0.6 degrees.  It rose by 1 degree Celsius (or 1 degree Kelvin if you prefer) over that time.  That's a lot more than +/- 0.3 degrees.

Data Source: NASA

Willis Eschenbach and the Dunning-Kruger Effect 

Willis, who wouldn't have much of a clue about what climatologists and meteorologists know about climate and weather, goes full on Dunning Kruger when he writes:

I differ from the majority of current climate scientists by saying that the climate is not the linear slave of the forcing. I say it is a regulated system, where the temperature is kept within bounds by a variety of interlocking and overlapping thermoregulatory phenomena.

What does Willis mean by "the linear slave of forcing"?  Is he arguing that nothing can force climate or is he saying that climate forcings aren't linear?  If the former he's wrong. The main climate forcings operating today are increased greenhouse gases and, to a lesser extent, changes in solar radiation and volcanic eruptions.  If the latter then he's wrong too, because forcings are not simply linear.  Forcings lead to a complex set of feedbacks that operate on different time scales so that the net impact is not linear.

And what's that gobbledegook about "variety of interlocking and overlapping thermoregulatory phenomena"? Could that be his fancy way of talking about feedbacks?  If so, why doesn't he just use the common word: "feedback".  If he is arguing that the water cycle is a limiting mechanism then I say - duh! Everyone should know that. Water vapour condenses when it gets cold and precipitates.  That helps stop the world getting too hot.

Maybe Willis is trying to argue that nothing can force the climate.  Surely not.  How would he explain glacials and interglacials?  How would he explain the current warming?

How does weather work?

Personally, for a simple description of how "weather" works, I'd go for something like this page that discusses the "heat engine" in a more sensible manner than does Willis.  If you want to get stuck in the clouds, there's a fair bit written here to keep you going for a while.  Or for something simple, the video below, from the UK Met gives a thumbnail sketch of the global weather system.

.

Denier weirdness: The crank blog popularity contest

A commenter alerted me to a post by science denier Pierre Gosselin (archived here).  He reckons that because there are quite a few climate cranks who run blogs, it disproves the fact that 97% of science papers on the topic find that humans are causing climate change.  Or something like that.  Which of course it doesn't.

Pierre Gosselin, you may recall, back in 2008, two years before the equal hottest year on record so far, said he thought that Earth would become icy cold by 2020, writing (archived here):

Pierre Gosselin says:

October 23, 2008 at 2:03 am

-2.5°C by 2020!

Some powerful cycles appear to be aligning to deliver a vicious deep freeze.

- Solar cycles

- Ocean cycles – PDO, AMO, etc.

- and the 100K year ice-age cycle

There are some things to keep in mind:

1. Climate does not change gradually.

2. Climate changes abruptly, without warning.

3. Temperatures over the last 2 million years have been colder than today’s 95+% of the time.

4. Warm, like today, is in fact highly unusual.

5. Our current interglacial has been abnormally long.

6. Interglacial are more often much briefer, short-lived spikes.

6. Thus, the climate dice are not in our favour!

Ice ages have occurred right ON SCHEDULE for the last 3 million years.

And if you examine the interglacial temperature peaks, i.e the brief optimums between the cold intervals, you’ll see our modern optimum is indeed prolonged. More often the interglacials are just brief spikes that suddenly nosedive back into prolonged deep-freezes. Now the sun is going to sleep, and the oceans are reversing to boot!

My prediction is we’ve started a nasty cold period that will make the 1960s look balmy. We’re about to get caught with our pants down.

And a few molecules of CO2 is not going to change it.

Here is what Pierre's prediction looks like.  In six years from now, according to Pierre Gosselin, the temperature will drop to 2.5 degrees Celsius below that at the beginning of the 20th century:

Data sources: NASA and WUWT

Now we've established Pierre's credentials, let's look at how he measures scientific acumen.  He was referring to a list of mostly climate disinformers, made up on a blog called "ScottishSceptic" (archived here) and made an odd observation.  He wrote at Notrickszone (archived here):

Having done a quick count of the warmist sites, I came up with 48 from a total of 137. That’s crunches to be only 35%. That’s a far cry from the 97% the warmists like to try to have the rest of the world believe.

He thinks that because ScottishSceptic found a whole bunch of crank climate disinformation blogs that somehow PROVES that only 35% of the scientific literature on the subject finds that humans are causing climate change.

Credit: Plognark

You think that's weird?  He goes even further and writes:

That means that almost two thirds of all climate science blogs are very skeptical or somewhat skeptical of the IPCC science (skeptic or luke-warmer). That’s hardly a consensus! Many of the skeptic sites are run by scientists and meteorologists…also showing that that “consensus among experts” is a complete myth.

Moreover, the top 20 sites are clearly dominated by skeptics.

I'd love to know which "skeptic" sites are run by "scientists and meteorologists".  Anyone?

The list puts websites like Jeff Masters at Wunderground.com and ClimateProgress, which would both beat WUWT readership by a mile, way down in the rankings.  That's because ScottishSceptic used wrong and outdated addresses.  The list doesn't rank any of the scienceblog blogs because they aren't shown separately in Alexa.  It leaves off the really popular blogs such as the BadAstronomy on Slate.com, and the myriad of general and specialist science websites that post articles on all sorts of topics, not just climate science.  All of which, like Carl Zimmer on the Loom and Ed Yong at National Geographic would leave Anthony Watts' pitiful effort at WUWT in the dust.  And it doesn't include discussion boards like Reddit, which was the subject of my last article.

Thing is, fake sceptics have very little choice when it comes to quack websites.  They have blogs run by cranks like Anthony Watts and Pierre Gosselin and that's it.  Their choice is very limited.

Pseudoscience nutters don't have science blogs or specialist climate science blogs.  They don't have quality websites like ArsTechnica.com or Smithsonian.com or Scientific American or National Geographic.  They don't have science and environment sections in mainstream media, like at the Guardian or the Sydney Morning Herald.

And there is no such thing as in-depth discussion of pseudo-science, which is why they are stuck with the sort of quackery you read at WUWT and notrickszone and similar.

There are no equivalents in pseudo-science land of climate websites run by scientific organisations, like NASA, the CSIRO, all the universities and meteorological offices around the world.  They would get vastly more web traffic than the piddly little anti-science blogs at which science deniers congregate - and from a much better educated and informed class of visitor, too.

Of course, one big information source the fake sceptics lack is pseudo-scientific journals.  They is no pseudo-science equivalent of Nature, Science, PNAS, the Journal of Climate or any of the dozens of other high quality scientific journals. Fake sceptics and contrarians have a few, like Energy and Environment and the dog astrology journal.  But not many fake sceptics bother with getting their pseudo-science published.  Why would they when it's so much more fun to attack scientists personally and make silly "ice age cometh" predictions?

I expect there are equivalents to the climate disinformation websites in other aspects of science.  I'm not up with blogs that specialise in promoting HAARP and chemtrails conspiracy theories, which fall into the same bag as the climate science cranks as far as I'm concerned.

There are also the cranks who peddle health pseudo-science.  One Mike Adams, who blogs at various places but who I'd not come across before.  I have come across people who are fans of another health pseudo-science crank called Joe Mercola.  Unlike the climate science disinformers, these blokes seem to be able to earn a good living from their quackery and they attract a lot more traffic than WUWT does.

So the climate cranks might pat themselves on the back for getting lots of readers.  The rest of the world scratches its collective head and wonders.  Why would anyone be pleased to be viewed as a crank, even a popular nutcase?  Is it really something to boast about?  What motivates someone to have the "most widely read crank pseudo-scientific blog"?  Why would anyone be proud of being anti-science?

To finish up, I'll list what I see as the main ingredients for attracting the most nutters to your pseudo-science blog:

1. Be a crank yourself.  The most popular pseudo-science blogs are run by cranks. Be a caricature of a human being. Make believe you are a hero for fighting all those nasty scientists and the guvmint, or even portray yourself as a god (worshipped by Janice Moore).

2. Be a conspiracy theorist. If you allege that all climate science is a hoax you'll draw a lot of other conspiracy theoriest out of the woodwork.  Add in conspiracy theories about money and government, like JoNova does, and you'll draw a bigger crowd.

3. Publish outlandish articles.  The more outlandish the better.  Catching UHI disease from Russian steampipes isn't bad.  OMG it's insects isn't bad.  An Ice-Age Cometh is better still.

4. Make fun of well-respected scientists.  Libel them ferociously.  Support your mockery with cartoons. Your readers might not understand science (or pseudo-science) but they just love being part of a lynch mob. They take special delight in "shooting the messenger".

5. Keep text to a minimum. Short sentences and short paragraphs are best. Words of no more than two syllables and not too many of them. Your audience finds text tedious but can (sometimes) follow pictures, especially coloured pictures in cartoon-style.

6. Blow the dog-whistle loudly.  Make sure even the dimmest person in your audience understands that you are mocking science.  Otherwise they will leave you for another crank blog.

7. Reward readers who flame sensible comments.  Make sure your readers pile on so heavily that normal people will disappear never to return. Otherwise you'll lose most of your ratbag audience and your blog will fail dismally.

8. Regularly post silly drawings that look "sciency" - the uglier the better, supported by "equations" that look sciency to the uninformed.  That way you can proudly claim to be a 100% genuine pseudo-science blog.

9. Make up lies about what scientists actually have found so that you can say "it's wrong" and "aren't we clever for showing all the science is wrong".

10. Wear your politics on your sleeve.  You really don't want any bleeding heart liberals polluting your blog with comments.

Finally. Flatter your audience.  Make them feel they are clever for rejecting science. Tell them how smart they are for not accepting anything from the evil guvmint or gravy-train scientists. Everyone loves a bit of flattery.

Science at Reddit to its credit - and moans from the illiterati at WUWT

A year or so back, Reddit science forum imposed stricter moderation of comments, particularly of fact-free rants from climate science deniers.  There's an article by one of the moderators, Nathan Allen, on Grist, explaining the decision and what happened (and didn't happen) as a result.

Everyone knows that only a small percentage of the population rejects climate science but those who do make a big song and dance about it.  That's what Nathan Allen found, too.

The Reddit science forum is described as "a small part of reddit, but it nonetheless enjoys over 4 million subscribers [Sou: 4.5 million currently]. By comparison, that’s roughly twice the circulation of The New York Times."

As most HotWhopper readers would probably know, reddit.com is very popular.  It's in the top 100 most popular sites on the internet.  Some sections are wild, others are more informative. About a year ago the moderators at  /r/science decided to more strictly control discussion and not allow the "bitter and biased" comments that sites like WUWT foster and fester.  Nathan Allen wrote at Grist:

We discovered that the disruptive faction that bombarded climate change posts was actually substantially smaller than it had seemed. Just a small handful of people ran all of the most offensive accounts. What looked like a substantial group of objective skeptics to the outside observer was actually just a few bitter and biased posters with more opinions then evidence.

Negating the ability of this misguided group to post to the forum quickly resulted in a change in the culture within the comments. Where once there were personal insults and bitter accusations, there is now discussion of the relevant aspects of the research. Instead of (almost comically) paranoid and delusional conspiracy theories, we have knowledgeable users explaining complicated concepts to non-scientists who are simply interested in understanding the research. While we won’t claim /r/science is perfect, users seem happy with the changes made.

Offsetting the outsized influence 

Nathan Allen wrote about the outsized influence of climate science deniers, out of all proportion to their numbers, not to mention their knowledge:

Like our commenters, professional climate change deniers have an outsized influence in the media and the public. And like our commenters, their rejection of climate science is not based on an accurate understanding of the science but on political preferences and personality. As moderators responsible for what millions of people see, we felt that to allow a handful of commenters to so purposefully mislead our audience was simply immoral.

This supports what I've noticed at WUWT.  The most vocal and stupidest comments there come from a relatively small number of people.  It's true that WUWT has a large readership for a niche climate disinformation blog, however the core commenters make up only a small proportion of its readership.  You may recall that WUWT caters only for the scientific illiterati, with more than 97% of its readers rejecting science.  So at most, they represent the views of only 8-10% of the population.  When you think that only about half the population of most democracies would be classed as politically conservative and a much smaller percentage as far to the right as most of the WUWT crowd, it puts the 8% Dismissives who live in the denialist fishbowl into perspective.

Anthony Watts sympathises with Reddit for the opposite reason

Anthony bignotes himself and tells fibs when he writes (archived here):

I can understand the situation, running the most viewed climate related blog, where I’ve noted that a small minority of people can cause a lot of trouble and waste a lot of time. Those people often go astray of the site policy for WUWT, and sometimes find themselves banned for repeated bad behavior. Those that might have contentious views but aren’t intractable zealots learn to work within policy and stick around, and contribute to debate here. That said, a “blanket ban” just wouldn’t work nor would it be sensible. Imagine if a single WUWT moderator decided to make a blanket policy change here. -Anthony

Anthony Watts' blog is popular but it's not the "most viewed climate related blog".  (Think ClimateProgress and Jeff Masters' blog at wunderground.com for examples. And I wouldn't mind betting that every article at realclimate.org and probably at skepticalscience.com gets read by many more people than any single article at WUWT.  The thing is that Anthony Watts puts up three or four articles a day so his regulars will keep up his hit count. Quantity vs quality - quality wins hands down every time.) WUWT only survives because it provides a home for people who reject climate science and who are encouraged to say what they like at WUWT, as long as it's anti-science.

Anthony's definition of "trouble" is any disputation of the pseudo-science that his disinformation blog is known for.  Science-lovers at WUWT are treated like minorities the world over.  They are tolerated only if they toe the anti-science line. If they don't respond to criticism and make only bland comments they can stay for a bit.  However, if they even once bite back when personally attacked by the swarm of nutters (the WUWT majority), they will be banned.  (As an example of how little it takes to be banned from WUWT, I was banned from WUWT for a tweet, not a comment at WUWT.  I rarely commented at WUWT but even my very rare comments drew the ire of the proprietor and I was told in no uncertain terms that I was not welcome.  I was never as rude as the regulars.)

From the WUWT comments

To illustrate how the WUWT-ers live in their own little bubble of science denial, here are some of the responses to the article about the Reddit science forum.  There are a few complaints along the same lines as as you'd read at HotCopper about "free speech" but not all that many.  Maybe some WUWT-ers recognise that "free speech" conflicts with WUWT policy (not likely).  (Archived here.)


E L Frederick says:

December 20, 2013 at 11:21 am
Does anyone take Reddit seriously anyway?

Onion is trying to imitate his or her namesake and says:

December 20, 2013 at 11:30 am
The difference between wuwt and reddit here is that the reddit moderator is relying on the 97% consensus as a rationale for banning ‘deniers’. Yet we know that 97% was based on lies and misleading statistics as wells as shoddy methodology.

If the moderator is incapable of seeing the 97% consensus for the myth that it is, he is surely not fit to determine if sceptic arguments follow from peer-reviewed research. His call for newspapers to close down ‘denier’ comments where the latter have no such rules on arguments needing to be backed by peer-reviewed research, is chilling.

M Simon is one of many WUWT-ers who says:

December 20, 2013 at 11:34 am
What is Reddit?

Janice Moore thinks it's all just simply marvellous and will result in a lot more deniers flocking to WUWT.  I'm surprised she didn't praise her lord with allelluias:

December 20, 2013 at 11:35 am
This is, as I said a couple of days ago, the loveliest Christmas gift Red It could have given to us. “Why are they banned…. ?” will get FAR more people to read WUWT and other science truth sites than would otherwise have but for the ban.
Heh, heh, heh. So, A-th-y, how much did you have to pay the guy to do that… (JUST KIDDING).
Thank you, Red It!
#(:))

john robertson does what deniers do when it comes to any site they disagree with, tries to downplay its popularity and says:

December 20, 2013 at 11:38 am
Are you sure this is not a publicity ploy by another, dead in the water, website?
After all I am pretty sure when you mention the likes of SS, Real Climate and such like, their site visits spike enormously.
Reddit? Never been there.

John's wrong.  Most WUWT-ers don't venture from the safety of WUWT.  HotWhopper gets as many visitors from a mention by CitizensChallenge as it does when Anthony mentions HotWhopper or Sou in one of his blog articles or comments, which usually results in only a dozen or so hits.  (I get many more visits when HotWhopper gets mentioned on reddit. As for BadAstronomy at Slate - even a buried link among dozens bring thousands of visitors to HotWhopper.)


leon0112 doesn't have a clue about the reach of reddit, and an over-inflated view of WUWT and says:

December 20, 2013 at 11:39 am
I wonder if Reddit science has 169 million views.

Jeff in Calgary informs WUWT readers about reddit, though as far as /r/science goes he misjudges the age group and says:

December 20, 2013 at 11:49 am
FYI, Reddit is very popular with 20-30 yearold crowd. It is ranked 80th most popular web site in the world by Alexa (vs. WUWT at about 25,000th). So while you may not have heard of it, it is in fact a big deal.

Mike Jonas doesn't seem to know that Anthony soon bans any stray science commenters on one pretext or other and says:

December 20, 2013 at 12:09 pm
I would like to put in a word for the commenters on WUWT who support the mainstream position in a sensible way. There aren’t many, and they often get given a tough time (which may be why there aren’t many), but they help to test the arguments put forward and to keep everyone else honest. I congratulate Anthony for determinedly keeping WUWT open to all views. It is very much the better for it.

Joseph Murphy didn't twig to the fact that the policy has been in place for a year already and, oblivious to the fact that all WUWT is for is to "sit around and talk with people who agree with you", says (excerpt - quote removed):

December 20, 2013 at 12:14 pm
Beat me to it! I predict this new policy won’t last long with Reddit. It does go against what they are all about. If it does stand it will not be good for Reddit. I don’t mean that in any deep way, just that how long can you sit around and talk with people who agree with you?

Brian R believes that "rude, uninformed, and outspoken opinions" are simply "friendly thought" and says:

December 20, 2013 at 12:16 pm
I don’t know what the problem is. Reddit is doing exactly what they say they sould. They are challenging the genre that Reddit is a place for friendly thought.

Steven Mosher shows the nasty anti-scientist streak he's known for and, true to his past form, urges WUWT-ers to spam reddit.  (This nastiness Steven often shows towards scientists comes across as jealousy.) Also he obviously didn't read the bit in the Grist article about "deniers were frequently insulted and accused of being paid to comment" and says:

December 20, 2013 at 12:24 pm
folks need to get more creative.
thread bomb him with idiotic pro AGW comments.
post horrible lies about dellingpole. they wont delete those
mess with the upvoting and down voting.
since your readership dwarfs reddit, make them pay.

Tom in Florida at least recognises WUWT for what it is, but gives it too much credit. As if someone like Nathan Allen would be welcome at WUWT.

December 20, 2013 at 12:25 pm

““These people were true believers, blind to the fact that their arguments were hopelessly flawed, the result of cherry-picked data and conspiratorial thinking,” Allen said in his article, which is posted on Grist.org. “They had no idea that the smart-sounding talking points from their preferred climate blog were, even to a casual climate science observer, plainly wrong.””

I would guess this statement is directed at this blog. Of course, I do not believe we have ever had the pleasure of Nathan Allen gracing us with his scientific expertise, unless of course he is hiding behind an alias.

Paul Westhaver is quite comfy in his little denialist fishbowl, thank you very much, and says:

December 20, 2013 at 12:27 pm
It is useful to the cause of real scientific inquiry that an apparent rag web site like reddeit (I have never visited their site) would self filter itself to the fringes of credibility by inviting only contributors who agree with them. Self-filtering extremists like at reddit self-identify as incredible activists and thereby doom their small readership to bad science mutual masturbators. Yes they make each other feel good don’t they, but they are impotent and sterile.

As for WUWT, the most popular science blog, where dialogue is open and challenging, the cause for science will prosper in the fertile interactive debate.

Reddit is a shallow empty box where global warming activists can sneer aloud and hear their echos reflect back at them so they can feel validated.

David Schofield thinks he can't be defined, and then proceeds to define his "opinions".  He says:

December 20, 2013 at 1:15 pm
How do you ban someone you can’t define? I’m a sceptic. I believe the climate changes. I believe man plays a (small) part. I don’t believe this is catastrophic. I believe some research should be undertaken. I don’t believe models work. Ban me?

David S thinks he has some "evidence to support his position" whatever that may be and says:

December 20, 2013 at 1:56 pm
I find it disturbing that the warmists think that we don’t have evidence to support our position. It is the warmists that are hypothesising that natural climate patterns are not as it seems. It is they who are the deniers and should be required to provide the evidence which unfortunately for them does not exist. Climate models, and hypotheses based on them is not evidence neither is fabricated consensus. The reactions of warmists to refuse to debate issues is the clearest evidence of their lack of evidence

Steve from Rockwood corrects an earlier comment of his and says:

December 20, 2013 at 2:05 pm
I stand corrected. The reddit /r/science forum does have 4 million users. Please disregard my earlier post. Must work on my reading comprehension.

Jim G quotes the disinformation Brit who tries to persuade his readers that science doesn't support the science it supports or something and says:

December 20, 2013 at 2:14 pm
Delingpole told FoxNews.com, arguing that Allen’s tactic is part of a “classic liberal defense mechanism: If the facts don’t support you, then close down the argument.”

That is a bullseye. Few here deny changing climate in any event. We merely argue with the proposed causal variables for that change and faulty predictions of past, present and future climate and expectations of same. Better not to emulate A&E ala Duck Dynasty

Mike Maguire is appalled that his grand-daughter is being presented with facts at school and says (excerpt):

December 20, 2013 at 2:18 pm
...Our youngest generation has been completely brainwashed by design on this topic. My 2nd grade grand daughters science book(not just teacher….book) had a chapter on humans negative impact on our planet. It stated damages from global warming and the changing climate from carbon dioxide coming from power plants and cars.

sean is fairly typical of the more erudite thinkers at WUWT and says:

December 20, 2013 at 2:58 pm
Nathan Allen — yet another eco-fascist junk scientist who projects his own cognitive bias on others.

WUWT's resident troll and moderator, dbstealey, who savagely attacks anyone normal who ventures a comment at WUWT, with a straight face talks about "head-nodders" and says:

December 20, 2013 at 3:55 pm
...I hope you see what they’re doing: corraling scientific skeptics into their own separate enclosure. Since as you note, CAGWers do not go to that page, Reddit is [effectively] making it a group of head-nodders.

Who wants that? 

Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale knows zilch about ocean heat...

Today Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale is puzzled about ocean heat.  Going by what he's written today (archived here), he knows less about ocean heat transport than I do.  And I know very little about the subject.

This article isn't anything more than a bit of a hodge podge of material relating to ocean heat transport. It's prompted by Perennially Puzzled Bob's article. I'm aware that a lot of HotWhopper readers know a lot more about the subject than me, so feel free to point out errors or add to the discussion.

Bob Tisdale asks a (very long) question:

If Manmade Greenhouse Gases Are Responsible for the Warming of the Global Oceans……then why do the vertical mean temperature anomalies (NODC 0-2000 meter data) of the Pacific Ocean as a whole and of the North Atlantic fail to show any warming over the past decade, a period when ARGO floats have measured subsurface temperatures, providing reasonably complete coverage of the global oceans?

Let's have a look.  Here is the ocean heat content with data from NODC/NOAA. First the change in ocean heat content in the different oceans and globally.

Data source: NODC/NOAA

As shown above, the biggest increase in heat content in recent years in the top 2000m is in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans.  Here is a chart showing the north and south Atlantic and global total.

Data source: NODC/NOAA

So you can see how the heat shifts around.  The heat in the North Atlantic shot up around the turn of the century, then it kept going up, more so in the South Atlantic than the North.

Let's move up and just look at the top 700 metres.  Here is a chart tracking the heat content of the different oceans.

Data source: NODC/NOAA

Here it appears that the top 700 m of the Indian Ocean got a lot warmer since 2000 while the heat content in this upper level of the Atlantic and Pacific didn't change much.  In fact in the Pacific as a whole, the heat content of the top 700 metres dropped a bit. Here is a chart of the North and South Pacific.

Data source: NODC/NOAA

Most of the increased heat globally in the top 700 metres is down to the Indian Ocean heating up.

Back to Bob Tisdale's question:

...why do the vertical mean temperature anomalies (NODC 0-2000 meter data) of the Pacific Ocean as a whole and of the North Atlantic fail to show any warming over the past decade...

Bob expands on his question:

Or, in other words, why is the warming of the global oceans (0-2000 meters) over the past 10 years limited to the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans, when carbon dioxide is said to be a well-mixed greenhouse gas, meaning all ocean basins should be warming?

He seems to think that CO2 being a well-mixed greenhouse gas (which it is) means that everywhere on Earth will warm at the same rate.  He's wrong.  Air moves, oceans move, heat is transported around the world in different ways at different times.

The real question is "how does heat move around?"  And more specifically in relation to the world's oceans: "how does heat move around in the oceans?".  Bob seems to think that oceans heat up like this:

However the oceans have a life of their own.  Think how deep 700 metres is, then think just how deep 2000 metres is.  That's two kilometres or, for the metrically challenged, 1.24 miles.  And it's all sea water.  Water isn't static.  The oceans aren't static.  Water moves in the oceans.

I found this chart in a paper by Lynne Talley from Scripps, which is a simplified view of the global overturning circulation.

Figure 1. Schematic of the global overturning circulation (“GOC”). Purple (upper ocean and thermocline), red (denser thermocline and intermediate water), orange (IDW and PDW), green (NADW), blue (AABW), gray (Bering Strait components; Mediterranean and Red Sea inflows). Updated from Talley et al. (2011), based on Schmitz (1995), Rahmstorf (2002), and Lumpkin and Speer (2007). Source: Talley 13.

That's not the whole story by a long shot.  But it gives some idea of how water moves within and between the different oceans, coming up for air (so to speak) and moving to depths.  The Talley paper in Oceanography gives a lot of detail and is quite technical.  If you're up for that level of discussion I can recommend it.

If you are new to the subject (like me) and want a simpler overview, I found a PowerPoint presentation that has some neat diagrams.  It's a start. From that as I understand it, most of the heat transport between the oceans and the surface is wind-driven.  At depth within the oceans it's a different story of course.

Here is some more information, which looks to be from a Columbia lecture.  It describes directions of flows as well as the mechanisms of heat exchange:

Meridional heat and freshwater transfer: The ocean and atmosphere work together to move heat and freshwater across latitudes, as required to maintain a quasi-stationary climate pattern. The wind-driven and thermohaline ocean circulation accomplish this task for the ocean, by moving warm waters poleward, colder water toward the Equator. On average the ocean meridional heat flux is higher or at least equivalent to that of the atmosphere between the equator and 30° latitude, with the atmosphere becoming dominate at higher latitudes. Ocean currents of differing salinity also move freshwater from place to place to close the global hydrological budget. For example, salty water flows away from the evaporative subtropics to be replaced with lower salinity water from the tropics.

Fluxes across the sea-atmosphere interface: Heat exchange between ocean and atmosphere is a product of a number of processes: solar radiation heats the ocean; net long wave back radiation cools the ocean; heat transfer by conduction and convection between the air and water generally cools the ocean as does evaporation of water from the ocean surface

Any imbalance of the heat or freshwater budgets due to sea-atmosphere fluxes is compensated by transfer of heat and freshwater by ocean currents. Generally heat transport across latitudes is from the tropics to the polar regions, but in the South Atlantic Ocean the oceanic heat transport is directed towards the equator. This is due to the thermohaline circulation - as warm upper kilometer water is carried northward, across the equator, offsetting the southward flow of cooler North Atlantic Deep Water near 3000 m. Much of the heat lost to the atmosphere in the North Atlantic is derived from this cross equatorial heat transfer. The flux of freshwater in the North and South Atlantic is southward, as freshwater excess of the Arctic is brought into off set the net evaporation and influx of salty water from the Indian Ocean

If this is more than you bargained for, you can blame Bob Tisdale for prompting me to look into the topic with his dumb question at WUWT.  I'd have thought he would know better given he's often going on about water moving around when he pontificates about ENSO.  The odd thing is that Bob refers to some recent papers that go a fair way to explaining the accumulation of heat within the deeper ocean.  Bob says the data shows differently, but he's wrong.  Maybe he didn't understand the papers or maybe he did and he's counting on the fact that a lot of his readers won't bother reading them.

These are the papers Bob referenced:

• Meehl et al (2013)
• Balmaseda et al. (2013)
• Trenberth and Fasullo (2013)

In that third paper, the one by Kevin Trenberth and John Fasullo, they attribute the so-called hiatus in surface warming to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), which is a natural variation:

The picture emerging is one where the positive phase of the PDO from 1976 to 1998 enhanced the surface warming somewhat by reducing the amount of heat sequestered by the deep ocean, while the negative phase of the PDO is one where more heat gets deposited at greater depths, contributing to the overall warming of the oceans but cooling the surface somewhat. The Pacific Ocean appears to account for the majority of the decadal variability [Chen et al., 2008]. Nevertheless, the events in the Pacific undoubtedly also affect the Atlantic, Indian, and Southern Oceans as the system acts collectively to equilibrate to these changes in the flow of energy.

I note that Bob only looks at the top 2,000 metres.  (The deepest part of the Pacific is the Mariana Trench which goes down almost 11 kilometres at its deepest.) I don't know how far down in the Pacific Ocean the heat referred to by Trenberth and Fasullo gets to.  But there sure is a lot of water in which heat can accumulate.

If you were expecting easy answers, I'm sorry.  When it comes to quantifying every bit of heat and exactly how and where and when it moves through the Earth system it gets a bit tricky, especially when dealing with the deep ocean, which isn't easy to monitor directly.  The scientists are doing a stellar job.  Bob Tisdale and the denialati at WUWT not so much.  (By the way, Bob Tisdale is a greenhouse effect denier too.)

From the WUWT comments

Just a few of the comments from the illiterati at WUWT (archived here).

Phil's Dad thinks it might be underwater volcanoes and says:

December 19, 2013 at 3:35 am
Any idea why the Indian and South Atlantic are warming and the rest not? Volcanic chains?

Ronald says there are no such thing as ocean currents transporting water and heat and there is no such thing as thermohaline circulation:

December 19, 2013 at 4:56 am
Anomalies are nice but not the point. Heat is sitting in the ocean and heat is temperature just like cold and every thing in between. So warm water is heat and that cant go under cold water because of it being lighter than cold water. By giving it a fancy name it masks the problem of the case. And by doing so they cane take it a way from reality.

Dan points out that Bob's charts don't conflict with the papers from actual scientists (unlike Bob's questions and conclusions) and says:

December 19, 2013 at 5:23 am
Bob,
You say that “Kevin Trenberth and associates say the recent series of La Niña events are causing the Pacific Ocean to warm at depths below 700 meters”.

Looking at your derived analysis of the 700-2000m depth temperatures, it would appear you are proving Trenberth to be correct, with a cooling surface and warming ocean underlayer. Is my understanding correct?

Correct me if I am wrong,from my understanding of Trenberth’s analysis, I think that the warming down to 2000m is insufficient to account for the anticipated energy imbalance, and hence it is hypothesised that the warming is also taking place at depths below 2000m?

Old'un goes off topic and all alarmist, saying that the shift to clean energy will be a killer:

December 19, 2013 at 7:07 am
...Sadly, blind belief in CAGW is already driving the UK down a calamitous path of high energy costs, deaths from fuel poverty and probable black-outs. To paraphrase John Maynard Keyne’s comment on stock markets, our leaders seem intent on remaining irrational for longer than the Nation will be able remain solvent.

Talley, L.D. 2013. Closure of the global overturning circulation through the Indian, Pacific, and Southern Oceans: Schematics and transports. Oceanography 26(1):80–97, http://dx.doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2013.07