Bob tisdale climate biography books

UPDATE: Two of the repeated and interrelated take-home points of my book Who Turned the Heat? were that an ENSO index does not represent the processes and aftereffects of ENSO, and that the ENSO index simply represents the impacts of that ENSO index on the variable represented by the ENSO index. When I wrote this Section of the book, it was hoped that was understood. I didn’t repeat it in every chapter. Keep that in mind while reading the posts in this series. These are my simple responses to comments made by people who do not understand the processes of ENSO, and these responses may not address the myth-maker’s misunderstandings.

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This is the first of a series of posts that address many of the myths and misunderstandings about the tropical Pacific processes that herald themselves during El Niño and La Niña events. Most of the content will be chapters from my recently published ebook Who Turned on the Heat?

For almost 4 years, my presentations about the long-term effects of El Niño and La Niña events indicate the global oceans over the past 30+ years have warmed naturally. This puzzles many proponents of anthropogenic global warming. They see the often-used name for the coupled ocean-atmosphere process—El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)—and assume the processes are oscillatory or cyclical. They will then post a comment to the effect of:

What part of oscillation don’t you understand?

Or

Haven’t you ever heard of the ENSO cycle? El Niño and La Niña are parts of a cycle. How can a cycle cause long-term global warming?

Comments like that are the first clue their authors are arguing from ignorance; that is, they have no understanding of the subjects being discussed—none whatsoever.

First off, it indicates those persons have never examined an ENSO index, such as the sea surface temperature anomalies of the NINO3.4 region—an area along the eastern equatorial Pacific bordered by the coordinates of 5S-5N, 170W-120W. ENSO indices are used

I think Anthony Watts must be getting rattled by what Sou is writing on her blog. Not only did he – very kindly – out her a while ago, he and Bob Tisdale now insist on using her proper name (rather than her chosen pseudonym), and Bob Tisdale has now written two posts about why she is wrong and he is right (here and here). There’s nothing fundamentally immoral or illegal about deciding not to respect someone’s decision to remain pseudonymous, but it’s not great. Given that all you typically discover is someone’s name, where they work, and something of where they live, it would seem to be more an intimidation tactic, than anything else.

I haven’t gone through Bob Tisdale’s recent posts about Sou to see precisely what he thinks she’s getting wrong, but I have read a number of his earlier posts, that present his views on global warming. I’ve also read many of Sou’s posts. Bob’s are typically wrong, and Sou’s are – typically – not wrong. The main problem with Bob’s principle argument is that he is suggesting that global warming is a consequence of ENSO events. He does this by looking at temperature records and associating changes in temperature with ENSO events. Nothing fundamentally wrong with this, as it is clear that ENSO events are significant contributor to variability in the temperature record. However, this does not mean that they are the cause of our long-term warming.

The problem with Bob’s basic idea is that if we are in equilibrium and an ENSO event produces a change in surface temperature, this will either push temperatures above equilibrium, and we will then be losing more energy than we’re gaining and will then cool, or it will do the reverse. The heat content of the atmosphere is quite low, so we should then return to equilibrium quite quickly. This isn’t what we’re seeing. On long timescales we see a continual rise in surface temp

Bob Tisdale, author of Who Turned on the Heat?, has produced an excellent explanation of the solar-driven El Nino-La Nina events that arise in the Pacific Ocean and control global weather and climate on annual, decadal, and multidecadal time frames.

His long post contains 29 illustrations that take you through the process (three illustrations are reproduced below). Tisdale also provides explanatory text. I have read many papers on El Nino-La Nina (collectively called ENSO) and think Tisdale’s presentation is the most lucid and understandable explanation of the interplay between trade winds and ocean currents and their effects on ocean and air temperatures. It is aimed at the layman. Give it a look, read the whole post here.
A free preview of Tisdale’s book, in pdf format, is available here. The whole book is available for purchase here.

Book Review By Donald Rapp [ see for the post on Donald’s book – The Climate Debate]

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Bob Tisdale has produced an extraordinary new book:

Who Turned on the Heat? – The Unsuspected Global Warming Culprit, El Niño-Southern Oscillation –The Unsuspected Global Warming Culprit, El Niño-Southern Oscillationis now on sale in pdf form for US$8.00 – Please click here to buy a copy.

This book is also subtitled “Everything you wanted to know about El Niño and La Niña” and that is quite accurate.

I didn’t realize how little I understood El Niño and La Niña phenomena until I read Bob Tisdale’s book. I learned a great deal from this book, which provides the reader with thorough but easily understandable explanations of El Niño and La Niña phenomena enhanced by many wonderful cartoon-like illustrations. The book provides lucid descriptions of the various indices used to characterize El Niño and La Niña phenomena. It also provides a wealth of graphical data on El Niño and La Niña occurrences. While the book deals predominantly with the last thirty years, it also deals with the entire 20 century.

Perhaps the three most important facts that I had not previously fully appreciated were:

(1) While incident sunlight can penetrate several to many meters into oceans, incident IR penetrates only up to a few mm.

(2) After an El Niño (particularly a strong one) a pool of warm surface water stretches across the Pacific that continues to warm the atmosphere even after El Niño conditions have subsided. (This seems to have been particularly important for the great 1998 El Niño).

(3) A La Niña is not the opposite of an El Niño, but rather is an amplified version of normal conditions in the Pacific Ocean.

In addition, Tisdale emphasizes the enormity of the Pacific Ocean (about 1/3 of the earth’s surface) and he also emphasizes the worldwide climatic effects of El Niños.

Tisdal