According to a newly published paper in the journal “Remote Sensing” the Earth’s atmosphere releases into space more heat than climate scientists had previously estimated in a way that effectively removes concern about fossil CO2 being released into the atmosphere.
The reason scientists have this wrong, according to the article’s authors, Roy Spencer and William Braswell, is that climate scientists use a fundamentally flawed model of atmospheric heat dynamics and radiation of heat from the surface of the climate system into space. The senior author, Spencer, has previously argued that variations in the earth’s climate system, with respect to heat and water vapor, do not follow traditional models where certain things can “force” changes in key values (heat, moisture), but rather, changes occur around an equilibrium in a mathematically chaotic fashion.
Most climate scientists agree that a chaos model for atmospheric heat and humidity could work over short time scales, but no serious climate scientist things that key forcing factors such as greenhouse gasses, solar radiation, or dust and other albedo related factors are unimportant. In fact, Spencer’s earlier writings on this topic were soundly debunked when they were first published (see this and links therein for a full accounting of that debunking).
Here’s the difference between Spencer’s model and what climate scientists think in the form of an analogy. Suppose you want to understand the process by which Great Aunt Tillie and her husband Roy get from their place in Hicksville New York to your Ma’s house in Terrytown for Thanksgiving. The analogous approach used by climate scientists might be this: Observe the direction in which Great Aunt Tillie turns at each intersection, and also note that Uncle Roy is giving her instructions based on a map he’s looking at. That may not be a perfect model … construction related detours, misunderstandings between navigator and driver (Roy and Tillie have a thing going about driving and directions and have for years!) and the need to stop at Carvelle’s for an ice cream cake all make the trip seem somewhat chaotic, but really, it isn’t. Various factors directly or nearly directly determine the path from Hicksville to Terrytown. Spencer, in contrast, would look at the seemingly random variations in the path the car takes as it mostly stays in a particular lane but occasionally wanders to one side of the road or another, or slows and speeds up in accordance with squirrels running across the road or Tillie’s state of mind or other factors. Spencer’s model claims to explain how Tillie and Roy manage to get from Hicksville to Terrytown on the basis of the accumulation of short term, random, and largely averaged out movements of the car on the roads.
Spencer and Braswell’s paper is actually a pretty good example of academic fraud. The authors clearly understand enough climate science to know that what they are suggesting is impossible, absurd, and simply wrong. The editors of Remote Sensing must have been very clever with their choice of peer reviewers to let this one past, and one wonders what their intentions are.
“On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance” is a big ol’ bunch of hooey. I eagerly await an explanation from the journal’s editors, Dr. Wolfgang Wagner and Mr. Elvis Wang and the editorial board as to what they are up to with this paper. Of those on the board, Prof. Dr. Ralph Dubayah, Dr. Mekonnen Gebremichael, Prof. Dr. Alfredo R. Huete, Dr. Richard Müller, Dr. Dale A. Quattrochi, and Dr. Prasad S. Thenkabail seem to have the clearest connections with atmospheric sciences. Perhaps they should be queried!
Spencer, R., & Braswell, W. (2011). On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance Remote Sensing, 3 (8), 1603-1613 DOI: 10.3390/rs3081603
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From what I’ve read about chaos theory, particularly the “sensitivity to initial conditions” aspect, a change in one parameter of a complex system can kick the system into a different gear, making AGW more plausible.
Can you expound a bit more on your allegations of fraud?
What? It’s right there in the very next sentence after the words “academic fraud” are used:
They didn’t say this is some hypothetical that can be used to better understand the role of natural variability in the events we see (which would still be a stretch); they said (paraphrasing) that this is proof that the (thoroughly debunked) cloud cover theories from their previous papers are, in fact, correct and that the scientific community has treated their revelations with contempt and dishonesty (instead of the well-deserved ridicule and refutation they actually got) because their theory implies low climate sensitivity to CO2.
Spencer has jumped back and forth between “It’s the Sun,” “It’s El Nino,” and “It’s Natural Variability” quite a bit in the last decade or so, but every one of those has been exhaustingly shown to be based on false premises.
So we get back to the point. Spencer et al should have known better, and put out conspiracy-laden drivel anyway, leaving us with only intellectual dishonesty or gross incompetence as the viable options.
If I am reading Spencer and Braswell’s abstract correctly, they are arguing that in addition to trend line radiative forcings there is a random walk component, and the latter is causing people to overestimate the former. Which would be true for some sufficient combination of large random walk component and short averaging time (this is why you cannot prove or disprove global warming based on a few years of data), but I am skeptical as to whether this random component is sufficiently large to throw off the trend by more than the error bars that are in place because we don’t fully understand all of the feedbacks. IOW, Spencer and Braswell are making an extraordinary claim. Do they have the extraordinary evidence in the body of the paper to back that claim? I didn’t download the article, but color me skeptical.
Greg seems to be alleging that the principles and factors in evidence in Spencer’s already rebuked model require a knowledge of the factors the model neglects. It’s blatant cherry picking, which constitutes intellectual fraud.
The thing that got me about this was, when I first saw it reported (here, via Slashdot), the summary claimed that observed warming was less than common models predicted, and this paper offered an explanation. Now, my understanding had always been the opposite — that observed warming was in fact worse than all but the most pessimistic models predicted. Was I wrong? Or was that part of the summary bullshit?
It is primarily bullshit. One can pick and chose among the models and the data and make whatever comparison you want.
I was just reading about this at FOXNEWS: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/07/29/data-cooling-on-global-warming/
Commenting is easy there!
@ Ana – Surely, the coverage on Fox News is the point of this paper. Since no one in climate science will find it credible, it will never be cited in academic literature, but all the denialists can point and say “SEE?! I always knew I was right, and I can ignore all the science that disproves me because I found the one paper that proves me right.”
I read one minor quote somewhere (and no, I can’t find the reference, but I think it was a comment on realclimate) that the paper had not, in fact, been peer-reviewed.
I can’t verify that, but it would make sense on how it got through peer-review.
Where are the error bars? What are the error margins?
Woo science.
OgreMkV, I’ve seen many people saying that it was not properly peer reviewed, but that does not mean that they skipped the process. Rather, that is just a commentary on how the journal messed up. It is a peer reviewed journal and, according to their own web site. It is technically a peer reviewed paper. I cannot vouch for the credibility of this journal, however. It is not one I follow.
Kevin, Yeah, I think ana was making that point indirectly.
I remember the account of a creationist/ID paper that was “reviewed” and ended up getting published in a good journal (about 8 years ago?) Didn’t it turn out that paper had been reviewed by one person, a friend of the author(s), somewhat outside of the normal process? Might that have happened here too?
On the plus side, the denialists cannot whine about how the “AGW orthodoxy” is preventing them from publishing. The publication of this paper might make it harder for them to play the persecution card.
“Dr. Spencer received his B.S. in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Michigan in 1978 and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Meteorology from the University of Wisconsin in 1980 and 1982. He then continued at the University of Wisconsin through 1984 in the Space Science and Engineering Center as a research scientist. He joined NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in 1984, where he later became Senior Scientist for Climate Studies. He resigned from NASA in 2001 and joined the Univeristy of Alabama in Huntsville as a Principal Research Scientist. Dr. Spencer has served as Pricipal Investigator on the Global Precipitation Studies with Nimbus-7 and DMSP SSM/I, and the Advanced Microwave Precipitation Radiometer High Altitude Studies of Precipitation Systems. He has been a member of several science teams: the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Space Station Accommodations Analysis Study Team, Science Steering Group for TRMM, TOVS Pathfinder Working Group, NASA Headquarters Earth Science and Applications Advisory Subcommittee, and two National Research Council study panels.
Since 1992 Dr. Spencer has been the U.S. Team Leader for the Multichannel Imaging Microwave Radiometer (MIMR) team and the follow-on AMSR-E team. In 1994 he became the AMSR-E Science Team leader.
He received the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 1991, the MSFC Center Directorâ??s Commendation in 1989, and the American Meteorological Societyâ??s Special Award in 1996.”
http://aqua.nasa.gov/about/team_spencer.php
So Greg, where did you receive your PHD in meteorology from? Where do you display your Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal? Dr. Spencer should not ever even reply to anything that you claim regarding him because you know nothing about any of this, as anyone that follows your blog knows.
You know, Einstein had substantially more impressive credentials relevant to the standards of his field, than you attribute to Spencer based on the standards of his, and that didn’t stop him from being dead fucking wrong about several major points of quantum mechanics, essentially because of an a priori ideological commitment.
Are you really so fucking stupid you think credentials are like penises, where simply whipping out a bigger one automatically settles the argument? (Are you really so fucking stupid you think penises work like that, for that matter?)
which is obviously no guarantee against making major mistakes.
My 2¢:
If a poster such as Swallow has *honest* credential / believability questions, something like:
a) Can you point me to some climate scientists who share your views?
b) Can you give me a more detailed technical explanation about your criticism? This doesn’t seem like your field, so I’d like a little more explanation before I agree with you.
What I see from Swallow reads more like, “My daddy has bigger credentials than you, nyah nyah nyah.”
It is clearly not an attempt at discourse – he’s made up his mind and nothing from Laden will convince him otherwise.
I’m not a climate scientist so I’m going to reserve judgement – if this paper demonstrates something significant I’m sure that it will get the attention it deserves. Until then, I’m going to accept the consensus up till now – global warming is real and is anthropogenic.
Whenever someone throws in “chaos theory” I immediately think “bullshit” – exceptions are mathematical papers and scientific papers which tell you exactly what mathematical model is being looked at and how they are demonstrating that it can make accurate predictions.
I haven’t had time to keep track of satellite instruments lately, but years ago I was thinking it would be nice to have a few imagers so we could get a good estimate of energy in and energy out (day and night). However, I never got as far as calculating how well we need to measure the energy reflected and emitted by the earth as seen from space – measuring energy coming in from the sun on the other hand is somewhat trivial. At any rate, such measurements will only give total in / total out and no information on how energy is distributed within the system (for example, is some observed heating occurring at the ground or in the stratosphere).
Azkyroth: you mean you’ve never used your penis like that?
it’s very hard to find out what his NASA medal was actually for, but given his most well-known work was 20 years of incorrect data showing global cooling (which was corrected in 1998 once orbital decay and other factors were accounted for), I’d guess it’s probably for that.
An item at Rabbett Run led me to an absurd explanation discussed at Deltoid. Just goes to show what you get from a group posing as something they aren’t.
John 16: My PhD in Palaeoanthropology wor which I studied climate change, is from a small university out east. I am not a meteorologist.
The Spencer and Braswell paper is expertly reviewed by NCAR’s Kevin Trenberth and John Fasullo at RealClimate. The post begins thus:
Argue with them, not me.
It seems there are many more layers to this story they the simple ‘they’re wrong…no they’re wrong’ storyline being told here.
As the link Greg provides in the second paragraphs (supposedly ‘debunking’ Spencer’s initial guess) clearly shows, mainstream climate scientists did believe that there were serious questions concerning the identification of cause and effect in the radiative balance at the top of the atmosphere (TOA). That’s why after a year’s worth of peer review and re-submits, the Journal of Climate (a very serious climate journal) published their paper. If it were really junk, they would not have published it
That should be enough to convince any interested individual that what Spencer started in 2008 is legit, whether or not one ‘wants’ to agree with Spencer’s final interpretation based on that paper.
Now, it’s the Dressler paper that supposedly showed that cloud feedbacks are positive, meaning that Spencer’s thesis would be flawed. But even Dessler’s thesis depends on assumptions concerning the relationship between ENSO cycles and cloud cover that certain researchers believe to be more ‘realistic’ than Spencer’s assumptions.
No surprises there.
Now Spencer published a paper in a journal he knew would publish his work since he a world-renowned expert on interpretation of remote sensed data (climate satellite data). Whether or not Journal of Climate or another top tier climate journal would have published it, we’ll never know, but it is in a journal of good repute (NASA scientists regularly publish in it).
So the debate continues.
But what is surprising that when there is genuine scientific debate related to a particular research issue, bystanders (on both sides) begin to accuse particular researchers of ‘intellectual fraud’ because they don’t reach the same conclusion.
I mean, isn’t the point of science to find the weakest links in our understanding so that we can have a fullest appreciation for how the world works?
Unfortunately, especially for Spencer, people are confusing his scientific contributions with his personal political preferences. To a certain a degree, a degree I have pointed out to his face, he is as well.
But ‘intellectual fraud’? Given how the ‘Climategate’ fiasco has turned out, I’d think people would be backing down from those types of accusations. Climate blogs just keep surprising me.
Just goes to show we can all do one thing right over 20 years.
Azkyroth: “Are you really so fucking stupid you think credentials are like penises, where simply whipping out a bigger one automatically settles the argument? (Are you really so fucking stupid you think penises work like that, for that matter?)”
QFT.
Maxwell@25
Exactly how did the “‘Climategate’ fiasco” turn out?
Realclimte has shredded this crap on the front page of their site. It’s also interesting to note his WP page.
1. Spencer no longer works at NASA.
2. He’s a director at the one of the most notorious anti-AGW think tanks, the “George C Marshall Institute” who’s spin-offs include the Heartland Institute.
3. He rejects the theory of evolution.
4. While at NASA he collected the data that confirmed model predictions of stratospheric cooling, however he concluded the data meant the entire Earth was cooling.
maxwell:
But we know what probably would have happened.
Good repute does not mean the same as significant to the subject.
It is hardly a genuine scientific debate when a paper that didn’t receive an adequate review is published in an insignificant journal to the subject.
Azkyroth: Aren’t you one very articulate, well spoken sort of a person? I can well imagine that for this reason Einstein is remembered when who knows anything about some one such as you who will not even use his own name, at least I assume that your real name is not Azkyroth. If you look back at Einstein’s career, he was slow getting started, he once took an entrance exam in Zurich and failed it, but unlike you, Azkyroth, used his real name and went on to be the most widely known figure in science. I well imagine that his superior intelligence caused him to not be as worried about penis size or caused him to ever revert to such trash talk as you think makes you appear to be intelligent, no wonder you post under a stupid name like Azkyroth which allows you to post something as stupid as this:
“In other words, for guys, embracing feminism isn’t just human decency. It’s self-defense.”
http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2011/06/wealthy-handsome-strong.html?cid=6a00d8341bf68b53ef01538f596a0f970b
This may be a shock to some that worship at this cathedral of their religion, anthropogenic global warming, but Al Gore, the spokesman for this scam, has no scientific credentials . He studied law at Vanderbilt Law School and for sure didn’t finish his divinity training there either. The head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, is an economist. â??It is well known that many, if not most, of its members are not scientists at all, 80 percent of the IPCC membership has absolutely no dealing with the climate as part of their academic studies.â?
Steve Running, who shared in the Nobel prize with Gore, holds a â??B.S. in Botany; Oregon State University, Corvallis, 1972, M.S. in Forest Management; Oregon State University, Corvallis, 1973 and a Ph.D. in Forest Ecophysiology; {what ever that is}, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, 1979.
“Plant ecophysiology is an experimental science that seeks to describe the physiological mechanisms underlying ecological observations.” At least he has been exposed to science but is a long ways from being a climatologist, but then again, how much difference do credentials make when the head of the IPCC is an economist?
Â
Then we have Dr. John Christy:
â??Ph.D., Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, 1987 M.S., Atmospheric Sciences, , University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, 1984; B.A., Mathematics, California State University, Fresno, 1969â? and also “Richard Siegmund Lindzen who is a Harvard-trained atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen is known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides and ozone photochemistry. He has published more than 200 books and scientific papers. He has been a critic of some anthropogenic global warming theories and the alleged political pressures on climate scientists” I tend to listen to Dr. Christy, Dr Spencer and Dr. Lindzen before paying much attention to Gore or Running. We shouldn’t forget James Hansen that was predicting global cooling back in the 1970’s
Describes the IPCC Panel quite well:
“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual”. –Galileo
John Douglas Swallow…
I bet he does…
I see that we have another mindless coward on here that wants to make an issue out of someone’s name while hiding behind an anonymous name of IA and probably for good reason; to not allow any one to realize just how ignorant/stupid they really are.
“My PhD in Palaeoanthropology wor which I studied climate change, is from a small university out east. I am not a meteorologist.” I guess one is left to read between the lines to get the whole meaning of this but it is well known that you received this PhD from Harvard. I’m sure that it took much perseverance and tenacity to keep at this long enough to over look most of the mindless exercises you were required to perform to receive this exalted degree.
One can only wonder at just what would have become of Bill Gates if he would have had enough discipline to overlook the pointless education he was receiving at Harvard and not quit after a year to join his high school buddy, Paul Allen, and form Microsoft. I can well imagine had he stuck it out, he could have gained a PHD in computer science and probably by now had a great position as head of the department at a Washington State University. He would not have to worry about winning a bridge game with the second wealthiest person in the U.S., Warren Buffett, or how to best give his billions way and do the most good with this wealth.
Buffett became interested in investing after reading a book that Ben Graham had written and eventually studied under Graham and received a Master’s degree but quit education after that to end up owning Berkshire Hathaway that did well enough for him that he was able to buy coal mines, coal fired generating plants and the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe railroad to haul coal on. Mind you, this is a man who knows what the future is for the nation and is going to cash in on it.
John Swallow:
You’ve been sucked in by a lie. This is what climate scientists were saying about global warming in the 1970s.
Education is the back bone of any nation and it seems that the standing in the world of the United States education system has fallen.
“The three-yearly OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, which compares the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in 70 countries around the world, ranked the United States 14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/07/us-falls-in-world-education-rankings_n_793185.html
Another study found that the U.S. now ranks eighteenth in Education among the World’s industrial nations.
“McGaw said that the United States remains atop the “knowledge economy,” one that uses information to produce economic benefits. But, he said, “education’s contribution to that economy is weakening, and you ought to be worrying.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/13/national/main838207.shtml
It is no joke that we need to be worrying. This is the nation that put men on the moon and now the US is going to have to go, hat in hand, to the Russians and beg rides to the International Space Station or hope that Richard Branson gets his privately developed system up and running and helps us out, kind of makes one wonder just who won the space race. Boeing was the worlds undisputed leader in aircraft production and now they have to fight the federal government to be able to build a new plant where they want, if the unions don’t like the location. The nation did many exceptional things; such as building the Interstate Highway System, the TVA and other huge hydro projects, developed nuclear energy and made great strides in technology and now when Conoco-Philips wanted to upgrade their coking plant in Billings, MT. they had to have the equipment built in Japan because there was no one in the US that could manufacture it.
After WWII the US was at the top regarding industry and education but for some reason most other countries not only caught up but now have surpassed the US. Why?
“According to the report, less than 60 percent of college graduates can effectively identify the three branches of government or decipher the difference between passages from the Gettysburg Address and the Declaration of Independence on a multiple choice examination. The report also indicated that most college graduates cannot recall basic information concerning the Revolutionary, Civil and Vietnam wars, or even the free enterprise capitalist system practiced in America. (this is one college graduate that knows something about the Vietnam war because I got a personal invitation from that far left president, LBJ, to help him “hang the coon skin on the wall” and after the deaths of close to 60,000 fine young Americans, there is no coon skin on the wall. I have been back to Vietnam on four different occasions and, surprisingly, they seem to hold no grudges and are doing better than the US is.)
This begs the question: who is to blame for this disparity amongst college graduates? A survey conducted by the North American Academic Study Survey (NAASS) in 1999 blames the overwhelming disproportionate amount of liberal faculty in humanities and social science fields. The study concluded that the lack of ideological balance within the humanities, social sciences and English subjects are negatively affecting students at universities across the nation. In the humanities for example, 77 percent of faculty were liberal with eight percent conservative; social sciences had 66 percent and eight percent breakdown; the English faculty exhibited an astounding 85 percent and three percent respectively.”
http://www.thehilltoponline.com/professors-liberal-ideals-influence-students-learning-1.2185427
Education isn’t the only answer for success as Thomas A. Edison exemplifies because he held 1095 patents, making him one of the most prolific inventors ever, and he had three months of formal education. Was he a scientist? We need more people like him, given freedom from government interference from the likes of the EPA because of how much CO2 he might have the potential to produce when he founded General Electric. I know that people like Edison have done much more for humanity than an anthropogenic global warming alarmist with a PhD in Paleoanthropology.
Chris O’Neill: Who has been sucked into a lie? I read through your recommended site and saw no mention of James Hansen’s name but did see some different takes on this scam called agw submitted.
Science: Another Ice Age?
Monday, Nov. 13, 1972
Writing in Science, Emiliani reports that the earth has undergone at least eight periods of extreme cold and seven of torrid heat in the past 400,000 years. [Was human activity the cause of this, Chris?]
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,910467,00.html
“NASA scientist James E. Hansen, who has publicly criticized the Bush administration for dragging its feet on climate change and labeled skeptics of man-made global warming as distracting â??court jesters,â? appears in a 1971 Washington Post article that warns of an impending ice age within 50 years.
â??U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming,â? blares the headline of the July 9, 1971, article, which cautions readers that the world â??could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age, a leading atmospheric scientist predicts.â?
The scientist was S.I.Rasool, a colleague of Mr. Hansenâ??s at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The article goes on to say that Mr. Rasool came to his chilling conclusions by resorting in part to a new computer program developed by Mr. Hansen that studied clouds above Venus.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/sep/19/inside-the-beltway-69748548/>
I’m sure that it took much perseverance and tenacity to keep at this long enough to over look most of the mindless exercises you were required to perform to receive this exalted degree.
Like what?
For the minute, assume Spencer’s paper is not flawed. The Forbes article makes statements and reaches conclusions that are not supported by Spencer’s paper. If you doubt this, read both. If you don’t have the level of knowledge needed to read the Spencer paper, but are busy defending it, then you might want to consider why you are defending a paper you don’t understand and that the experts decry as badly flawed. Special knowledge on your part, or a preformed opinion in search of support, any support, no matter how tenuous or flawed?
Greg, on the topic of academic fraud here’s what Gavin at RealClimate says in the comments in response to your paragraph on the topic.
Perhaps Gavin is being cautious with his language so giving the benefit of the doubt, or maybe Spencer et al know what they are doing (I’m inclined to think the latter based on at least Spencer’s past posts where he has to know what he is saying is wrong–sort of like Pat Michaels’ first Forbes’ article where he clearly knows that he is being misleading because it is just high school level math he misuses when discussing trends).
John Swallow:
You mean the one that refers to this paper which begins with:
“Effects on the global temperature of large increases in carbon dioxide and aerosol densities in the atmosphere of Earth have been computed. It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. ”
Sounds like a warning about the effect of adding CO2 to me. It went on to say:
“An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5 ° K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.”
So that’s where the newspaper might have got its sensational headline from. Perhaps that newspaper and you don’t know what the words “may” and “if” mean. The climate scientists at that time were studying the effects of both greenhouse gases and aerosols and quite rightly were publishing papers on the effects of both. Just because some of their papers reported their results from aerosols doesn’t mean they were forecasting those aerosols were going to increase as much as they considered the effect of in those papers.
Oh I see. Not only did no-one make an unconditional prediction, Hansen wasn’t even an author of the paper your newspaper makes up stories about and yet you think that means Hansen made a prediction of global cooling.
You don’t need to be sucked in by lies, you just make them up yourself.
One can pick and chose among the models and the data and make whatever comparison you want.
So it’s all pretty subjective? Good to know.
@Daniel J. Andrews:
Gavin’s just being cautious with his language, because he knows his own bunch of (hopefully just intellectual) hooligans are more guilty of this than SP11. (For a discussion of this, see many posts at Climate Audit.)
Greg’s just trying to stir up a lynch mob here, with his accusations of scientific malfeasance. Nothing to see here, folks, just keep moving.
The first I heard of this paper was this post, and when I went and read it, my first reaction was negative: using the word “equilibrium” WRT a fundamentally chaotic system such as the global climate must be confused, at best. And I came at the paper with a highly positive attitude, given Greg’s negative review. IMO Greg’s got (almost) everything wrong with his criticisms (especially the analogy, which is incorrect and highly deceptive), as have TF (Realclimate).
After second and third reading, I’m still uncertain whether SB11 really don’t understand how almost all climate scientists use the word “forcing”, or if they’re trying to communicate to non-climate-scientists and failing. All I know is that by calling cloud effects “forcing” they’re turning their paper into gobbledygook, and I’m not sure even they know what they’re actually trying to say.
@Greg:
I still don’t see why you insist on demonizing Judith Curry as a “denialist”. Any real climate denialist, reading her article on the paper, would conclude she was going through the motions of being even-handed so she could pan it without looking biased:
IOW (as I read it) the IPPC models could well be overstating the problem, but they could equally well be understating it. We don’t really know enough about how the climate really works to say for sure.
Chris O’Neill: I guess you do not know what quotation marks mean. For your information, they mean that what is quoted was said by someone else; therefore, take the time to explain how I lied to you.
Then you go on to present this:
“Effects on the global temperature of large increases in carbon dioxide and aerosol densities in the atmosphere of Earth have been computed. It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. ”
Sounds like a warning about the effect of adding CO2 to me. It went on to say:
“An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5 ° K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.”
It sounds to me like they were predicting another ice age and that is what I presented to you but all you can do is call me a liar, strange thought process going on; but, using that same thought process, please take the time to explain to me just what the hell this means: “It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. ”
AK,
I agree that fraud is a bit much but it is strange, to say the least, that Spencer chose to publish in “Remote Sensing” and now claims that this paper “refutes” Andrew Dressler’s recent paper and that this paper is all about climate science.
Go look at “Remote Sensing,” most of the articles are about teasing information out of imaging: how to do it better, how to do it reliably, how to improve it, how to get new information by leveraging existing imagine data channels. Spencer’s article is unique in that it’s about the use of information returned by satellite.
This paper is waaaay out of the norm for “Remote Sensing.”
I wonder what the reviewers are like at “Remote Sensing?” Well versed in climate science, do you suppose?
John Swallow:
For instance here is a quotation of John Swallow:
“We shouldn’t forget James Hansen that was predicting global cooling back in the 1970’s”
I’ve already quoted your lie. Hansen made no such prediction in any of the material you cited. Hansen’s colleagues writing a paper about the effects of hypothetical large increases in CO2 and aerosols is not a prediction and is not even a statement by Hansen.
“An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5 ° K.”
Where is the word “predict” in the above statement?
“It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”
This refers to the fact that radiative forcing by CO2, over a wide range around current levels, is proportional to the logarithm of its concentration.
@CharlieH…
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Frankly, CharlieH, I suspect you of dishonesty: that you are repeating the same straw-man ad hominem arguments so often used by warmist intellectual hooligans. With that caveat, I’ll address your argument as though it’s honest.
There has been an on-going effort to prevent publication of any article that questions the current orthodox doctrine WRT “global warming”. For instance, see Bias in the Peer Review Process: A Cautionary and Personal Account by Ross McKitrick, in Michaels, Patrick J., 2011: Climate Coup: Global Warmingâ??s Invasion of Our Government and Our Lives. Cato Institute. ISBN: 978-1-935308447.
Of course, you’ll probably dismiss (and denigrate) this based on who (McK) and where (Cato) it comes from, but by using this catch-22, you’ll simply be proving my suspicions regarding your honesty.
AK
“NASA scientist James E. Hansen, who has publicly criticized the Bush administration for dragging its feet on climate change and labeled skeptics of man-made global warming as distracting â??court jesters,â? appears in a 1971 Washington Post article that warns of an impending ice age within 50 years.
â??U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming,â? blares the headline of the July 9, 1971, article, which cautions readers that the world â??could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age, a leading atmospheric scientist predicts.â?
The scientist was S.I.Rasool, a colleague of Mr. Hansenâ??s at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The article goes on to say that Mr. Rasool came to his chilling conclusions by resorting in part to a new computer program developed by Mr. Hansen that studied clouds above Venus.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/sep/19/inside-the-beltway-69748548/>
It appears that the statements I made have to do with how one interprets being “a colleague of Mr. Hansenâ??s at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration” and developing his “chilling conclusions by resorting in part to a new computer program developed by Mr. Hansen that studied clouds above Venus.” You go ahead and interpret it any way you want but try to limit your feeling that you have the right to label someone a liar over this. While giving some consideration to that, fill me in on the predictions that Hansen has made that have proven to be correct, it will not be a long explanation, I assure you. I see so much hypocrisy in the Alarmist ranks that it is humorous, such as the poster boy for the cause that has no scientific credentials at all,Al Gore, after predicting rapid and devastating sea level raise buys a rather expensive home on the beach in California.
I realize this is not about Gore but how could his name not come up when one considers fraud and lies?
His home in TN: “A 20-room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house all heated by gas. In ONE MONTH ALONE this mansion consumes more energy than the average American household in an ENTIRE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2,400.00 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not in a northern or Midwestern “snow belt,” either. It’s in the South.”
Then we have house #2
“Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university, this house incorporates every “green” feature current home construction can provide. The house contains only 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on arid high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in winter and cools it in summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas, and it consumes 25% of the electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Flowers and shrubs native to the area blend the property into the surrounding rural landscape.”
House #2 is George Bush’s home in Crawford Texas and this is the same Bush that Hansen said was trying to muzzle him.
“This refers to the fact that radiative forcing by CO2, over a wide range around current levels, is proportional to the logarithm of its concentration.” Is this another way of saying that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere doesn’t matter?
I have discussed this topic enough with you, think what you want & I shall do the same.
It seems that Dr. Spencer’s data that shows that the earth is more efficient at releasing heat into space than what some, or most of the models, predicted. I guess that if the alarmist “models” don’t perform as they are suppose to, these alarmist do not want to hear what is actually being observed.
â??The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show,â? Spencer said. â??There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans.â?
It seems that what actually takes place is to be condemned as a heresy by the alarmist, to include Greg, in favor of what their computer models predict, strange “science” going on in the heads of these alarmist. It seems to matter not that the NASA Terra satellite data is consistent with the long term NOAA and NASA data that shows that humidity and cirrus clouds are not increasing like the alarmist models predicted and if that doesn’t happen then some need to kill the messenger and in this case it is Dr. Spencer. It seems that Dr. Spencer’s report shows that the climate is actually far less effected by CO2 and that the natural changing in the placement and quantity of clouds; there are clear days and there are cloudy days and some just in between, there is solar radiation, difference in how much heat is being lost from the oceans and too many other complex factors to accurately predict which part of the earth’s climate is caused by anthropogenic green house gas such as CO2 that makes up a paltry .038% of the atmosphere and is one and one half time heavier than air.
It is said that there is an increase in CO2 of from 280ppm to 392ppm[just have to love how precise some think that this measurement is]; but, placed in the proper perspective and that is that one part per million is equal to one inch in sixteen miles and that these 112 additional ppm are spread out over this 16 miles in different one inch segments.
At 392 parts per million, CO2 is a minor constituent of earth’s atmosphere– less than 4/100ths of 1% of all gases present. Compared to former geologic times, earth’s current atmosphere is CO2 impoverished. Please explain how this CO2 is going to act like a pane of glass in a green house when as the various spheres that compose the earth’s atmosphere increase in altitude they obviously increase in area and when was the last time you were able to “trap” anything using a gas?
“In short, the central premise of alarmist global warming theory is that carbon dioxide emissions should be directly and indirectly trapping a certain amount of heat in the earthâ??s atmosphere and preventing it from escaping into space. Real-world measurements, however, show far less heat is being trapped in the earthâ??s atmosphere than the alarmist computer models predict, and far more heat is escaping into space than the alarmist computer models predict.”
â??There are simply too many variables to reliably gauge the right number for that,â? Spencer said. â??The main finding from this research is that there is no solution to the problem of measuring atmospheric feedback, due mostly to our inability to distinguish between radiative forcing and radiative feedback in our observations.â?
It appears that data for surface temps for this experiment came from the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Great Britain. I wonder how accurate this information is.
What follows is what I would classify as lying and being just down right dishonest.
“A NASA scientist who said the Bush administration muzzled him because of his belief in global warming yesterday acknowledged to Congress that he’d done more than 1,400 on-the-job interviews in recent years.
James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who argues global warming could be catastrophic, said NASA staffers denied his request to do a National Public Radio interview because they didn’t want his message to get out.
But Republicans told him the hundreds of other interviews he did belie his broad claim he was being silenced.
“We have over 1,400 opportunities that you’ve availed yourself to, and yet you call it, you know, being stifled,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican.
Mr. Hansen responded: “For the sake of theâ?¦”
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-6343558/Climate-scientist-sees-cover-up.html
Earth has COOLED since Hansenâ??s Dire Climate Warning in 1988 – According to Meteorologist Joe Dâ??Aleo
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=b6a8baa3-802a-23ad-4650-cb6a01303a65
Washington Times: Scientist Hansen who alleged Bush administration muzzled him — did 1,400 on-the-job media interviews â?? March 20, 2007Â
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=b6a8baa3-802a-23ad-4650-cb6a01303a65>
“Hansen Received $250,000 from partisan Heinz Foundation & Endorsed Dem. John Kerry for Pres. in 2004 – EPW Report on Hansen – July 11, 2006”
Skeptical Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer, Formerly of NASA, Reveals Being Muzzled â?? June 3, 2008
“Well, I had the same pressure as a NASA employee during the Clinton-Gore years, because NASA management and the Clinton/Gore administration knew that I was skeptical that mankind’s CO2 emissions were the main cause of global warming. I was even told not to give my views during congressional testimony, and so I purposely dodged a question, under oath, when it arose. But I didn’t complain about it like Hansen has. NASA is an executive branch agency and the President was, ultimately, my boss (and is, ultimately, Hansen’s boss). So, because of the restrictions on what I could and couldn’t do or say, I finally just resigned from NASA and went to work for the university here in Huntsville.”
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=b6a8baa3-802a-23ad-4650-cb6a01303a65>
It would appear that Dr. Spencer found it better to just move on while Hansen is still in his same position.
Could what follows have anything to do with James Hansen declaring that 2010 was the hottest year ever and that declaration caused the alarmist to feel a tingle in both legs and that was caused by them becoming so excited that they urinated down both legs? Just change the data base until you get the results that you want and don’t mention how many reporting stations in the USSR had closed down; no longer reporting, because of the break up of the USSR and if one looks at a map it is easy to see that many or these stations would be in a rather cool part of the world.
“Perhaps the key point discovered by Smith was that by 1990, NOAA had deleted from its datasets all but 1,500 of the 6,000 thermometers in service around the globe.
Now, 75% represents quite a drop in sampling population, particularly considering that these stations provide the readings used to compile both the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) and United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) datasets.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/climategate_cru_was_but_the_ti.html
Yet as disturbing as the number of dropped stations was, it is the nature of NOAAâ??s â??selection biasâ? that Smith found infinitely more troubling.
It seems that stations placed in historically cooler, rural areas of higher latitude and elevation were scrapped from the data series in favor of more urban locales at lower latitudes and elevations. Consequently, post-1990 readings have been biased to the warm side not only by selective geographic location, but also by the anthropogenic heating influence of a phenomenon known as the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI).
For example, Canadaâ??s reporting stations dropped from 496 in 1989 to 44 in 1991, with the percentage of stations at lower elevations tripling while the numbers of those at higher elevations dropped to one. Thatâ??s right: As Smith wrote in his blog, they left â??one thermometer for everything north of LAT 65.â? And that one resides in a place called Eureka, which has been described as â??The Garden Spot of the Arcticâ? due to its unusually moderate summers.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/climategate_cru_was_but_the_ti.html
“It is interesting to note that, even though carbon dioxide is necessary for life on Earth to exist, there is precious little of it in Earthâ??s atmosphere. As of 2008, only 39 out of every 100,000 molecules of air were CO2, and it will take mankindâ??s CO2 emissions 5 more years to increase that number by 1, to 40.”
<http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-natural-or-manmade/>
I think that a blind person would have a better chance of experiencing honesty and the truth if involved in a high stakes game of scrabble with a band of Gypsies than what we will ever realize coming from James Hansen. It does seem that, in most respects, that the alarmist try to remain blind to what the truth is if it doesn’t fit into their ignorant preconceived idea of what their “truth” is
â??Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.â? George Orwell
“The growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement” — Karl Popper I am about to quit this site because I don’t seem to be increasing in any knowledge of anything because of this exercise.
Greg: I end this exercise with a few observations that follow along with what Dr. Spencer has maintained from ACTUAL observations and not some “tweaked” computer model that is in essences of no value at predicting anything, as has been demonstrated in the past. Recall how the models and the fools that believe them were telling the unwashed masses that after Hurricane Katrina that was going to be the norm from here to eternity, We have had the quietest hurricane seasons since the Civil War.
This also so should be of some interest to a foaming at the mouth, agw alarmist for the state that you now live in, MN:
Max. temp[there were two occasions when this temp. was reached] 114 degrees F. at Beardsley, July 29, 1917 & Moorhead on July 6, 1936. Now for the one that you will find hard to contend with since in your mind we are BURNING UP:
-60 degrees F., February 2, 1996 Near Tower. I would be willing to bet you what ever you want to wager that the night this record was set there was no cloud cover what so ever and this is always the rule with extreme cold conditions, no cloud cover to hold any heat. I doubt that you have ever given any thought to why desert areas can be up over 100 degrees in the day time and close to freeing at night, again no cloud cover and no humidity which is basically the same for extremely cold days/nights. Just so I don’t get the usual “pulling out of my rear end” BS, look it up:.http://climate.umn.edu/doc/historical/extremes.htm>
You present your stupid little scenario about Uncle Roy and Great Aunt Tilly that tells no one one thing about this allegation that you make: “Spencer and Braswell’s paper is actually a pretty good example of academic fraud.” All your scenario did was to tell anyone dumb enough to read it that you don’t know one thing about this subject and just because there is information that contradicts your equally stupid and unfounded belief that the “demon” of CO2 being the main driver of something as complex as the earth’s climate, it should not be believed. Some of your commenters say that there is no “chaos theory” when they can’t tell you what the climate or weather will be even two days from now with any degree of accuracy.
I think you should consider disregarding your pride and go to a Harvard drop out, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, and see if you can get a grant from him to study why the Efe Pygmies in the Ituri Forest, of Zaire that still defecate in the forest have a higher incidence of malaria than their fellow residence of Zaire that live in urban areas. One must keep in mind how much the incidence of malaria has climbed since the book written by Rachel Carson, “Silent Spring” limited the use of DDT but this leads to maybe one of the only true statements that I’ve ever heard your hero, Al Gore ever make. He said that what got him interested in environmentalism was when his mother read the book “Silent Spring” to him as a child. Al would have been 14 years old when the book came out.
The following quote is directed at the panel of UN “scientist” regarding this issue: “In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual”. –Galileo
John Swallow:
Someone being a colleague of Hansen does not mean Hansen must have said something. Asserting that it does is just a lie.
You probably also think that astronomers who say an X million tonne meteorite hitting the earth is enough to wipe out civilization are saying that it will likely happen soon. That is also a lie. I can see you have a penchant for lying.
All cars and trucks should be electric in few years. We must stop the fuel burning which causes most of CO2 pollution and global warming.