[Luis Dias]

@Luis:
Is the heat uptake by the oceans an ad hoc explanation?  Not at all.  Atmospheric and climate scientists have known about the importance of the ocean for quite a while now.^{1, 2}  It's also observable and quantifiable.  Quite frankly I don't think you have any good argument against it, and so far it seems that you're simply regurgitating the criticisms from skeptical websites without actually giving them much critical thought.

That's somewhat facetious. I could say the same about you: you are only regurgitating what the editorials of the IPCC tell you.

While it is true that everyone "knew" that the oceans were important, the argument is quite different this time, and you should not ignore this point. Of course you can always delude yourself and tell yourself that eurasia was always at war with eastasia and lesser thought crimes , but what is true is that this argument of "the oceans ate the warming" is quite recent and new, coming after some discussions in 2009 by Trenberth et al:

"Global warming is still happening - our planet is still accumulating heat. But our observation systems aren't able to comprehensively keep track of where all the energy is going. Consequently, we can't definitively explain why surface temperatures have gone down in the last few years. That's a travesty!"

This is clearly an indication of the usual troubles that science must go through to eventually get to the best answers. I have zero problems with it (unlike many deniers / skeptics / whatever). What I have more problems with is this whitewashing after the facts and for the reports for politicians that "we always knew this, this was always taken account for, skeptics' lies, etc". What is true is that this explanation is recent and it still lacks any predictive power. The models still depend on many prejudices that may well turn out to be as false as the travesties that were plaguing climatology in 2009.

*head scratch* what you are describing sounds exactly like science. Propose model for complex system. => run model, find results slightly different than observed phenomena => re-evaluate model, find phenomena that were not counted on in the model => refine model, incorporating new bits => model now closer to observed results. Sounds like running a chemistry experiment. Sounds like honing a theory.

That's only the first step. If you only do what you are referring to you aren't getting a true theory, you are only capturing fine tuned and fudged models that represent the past exceedingly well. The real thing only comes when you actually predict data that is not in your present bucket of data and you get it right. Ensuring your models capture past data is trivial. Ensuring your model will be able to capture future unseen data is the Real ****.

[Mika]

The problem is that ocean's ecosystems are very fragile, and built around very gradual temperature changes. The IPCC predicts that the closer we get to 3c, the more the ecosystems there start getting damaged, with catastrophic and irreversible damage starting from roughly two degrees, and with quite a lot of bad stuff happening from three degrees onwards. With the continued accidification of the ocean due to higher CO2 levels and the rising temperature, several of the organisms that live at the bottem of the food chain (pterapods, IIRC) are already at risk.

That, on the other hand, wouldn't be the first time humans have extincted something. And the additional heat is going to cause similar changes also on ground, not only in seas. Both land and ocean ecosystems are fragile, the more specialized you become the more vulnerable you are for changes - which might on the other hand be exactly the kind of changes that boosts your species.

Luis Dias has a point here too, I'm a bit curious on what are the legal consequences towards the people who pushed for regulation towards CO2 if it turns out that the very same regulations have increased the CO2 levels world wide. Not to mention, what are the legal consequences towards the people if the warming doesn't actually occur as planned. Remember that Italy did sue the researchers who provided "wrong" information, no matter how scientifically sound that wrong might have been at that point of time.

I do recall skeptics actually catching one glaring error in the IPCC report, which was the Mann's hockey stick graph. Skeptics inserted random data to the routine and it still produced the rising curve... I think that has been taken out of the reports as far as I have seen (thought I really cannot be bothered to read a 2200 page document). Additionally, I recall somebody started to take a better look on the current state of the weather stations, which revealed several problems in the measurements (including changed surroundings). This contribution from the skeptics should be considered positive by the scientifical method.

I'd say that in about 10 years we probably know a lot better what way the climate is going.

[karajorma]

Luis Dias has a point here too, I'm a bit curious on what are the legal consequences towards the people who pushed for regulation towards CO2 if it turns out that the very same regulations have increased the CO2 levels world wide. Not to mention, what are the legal consequences towards the people if the warming doesn't actually occur as planned. Remember that Italy did sue the researchers who provided "wrong" information, no matter how scientifically sound that wrong might have been at that point of time.

Would you want there to be legal consequences for those people who ten years ago claimed that there was no such thing as Global Warming? Cause the fact that the Earth has warmed has reached the point were even the people who denied that with every breath had to concede and change their claim to "The Earth has warmed but it's natural and not man-made). Surely we could start locking those people up now or taking their money if you think it should also go the other way?

[Mika]

Luis Dias has a point here too, I'm a bit curious on what are the legal consequences towards the people who pushed for regulation towards CO2 if it turns out that the very same regulations have increased the CO2 levels world wide. Not to mention, what are the legal consequences towards the people if the warming doesn't actually occur as planned. Remember that Italy did sue the researchers who provided "wrong" information, no matter how scientifically sound that wrong might have been at that point of time.

Would you want there to be legal consequences for those people who ten years ago claimed that there was no such thing as Global Warming? Cause the fact that the Earth has warmed has reached the point were even the people who denied that with every breath had to concede and change their claim to "The Earth has warmed but it's natural and not man-made). Surely we could start locking those people up now or taking their money if you think it should also go the other way?

Well, speaking as a scientist who can and does face legal consequences of his actions, this is nothing new for me - it is OK that both sides are held responsible for their actions. It is a matter of amount of damage inflicted, and I'd classify the warming skeptics as scientifical inertia for that time, their actions would be seen just causing inaction. Mainstream view is different in my books since they have already prompted actions which seemingly have increased CO2 output world wide (and still promote that), affecting the lives of thousands of Europeans as industry migrates outside EU area. Admittedly, this is indeed a gray area, and should be judged case by case.

I'll have to say that some excerpts in the IPCC's report though are starting to worry me. I probably do need to read through it myself as it sounds to me rewriting the document to allow no warming at all scenario.

[watsisname]

@Luis:
Nonsense.  It has excellent predictive power.  It predicts that a full accounting of the energy accumulated by the Earth system should correspond to the change in radiative forcing.  By extension, it predicts that the tropospheric/surface temperature observations should show an increase corresponding to the change in radiative forcing after accounting for the heat flow between the atmosphere and other systems (natural variability).

So you can test this prediction through future measurements, and you can also test it by looking at past measurements.

The quote you provided from Trenberth relates to the state of knowledge and observational capability in 2009, which was that the full energy budget determined through observations came shy of what would be expected, mostly due to the insufficient data from the deep ocean, below 700m.  But even well before then we understood that the ocean accounted for much of the heat gained via global warming, as seen by the literature.

I probably do need to read through it myself as it sounds to me rewriting the document to allow no warming at all scenario.

By observation the warming is continuing and is still expected to continue.  Even under a zero emissions scenario, the Earth will likely continue to warm due to the thermal inertia of the system (particularly the oceans, which take a long time to reach thermal equilibrium).

And yeah, I would recommend at the very least reading through the Summary for Policymakers.  It's only 36 pages, the last 9 of which are figures.