Dr. Roy W. Spencer replies to “Tamino”‘s latest angry missive. As one commenter in my email list put it:
It is absolutely hilarious that Tamino’s lengthy, time-consuming, chest-puffing critique can be so comprehensively dismissed in a mere two sentences.
Here is what Dr. Spencer posted on his web page:
October 8, 2008: A Brief Comment on “Spencer’s Folly”
For anyone who has stumbled across a rather condescending critique of our latest research on feedback by someone who calls himself “Tamino”, I can only say that Tamino could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he would have noticed that all of my feedback work addresses TIME-VARYING radiative forcing (as occurs during natural climate variability), not CONSTANT radiative forcing (as is approximately the case with global warming). Tamino’s analytical solution does not exist in the time-varying case, and so his holier-than-thou critique is irrelevant to what I have presented.
Here is the original Spencer essay in PDF form, hosted on Roger Pielke’s website.
On the other hand, here is a recently published paper on climate sensitivity (PDF) that says the opposite. I’ll let the reader decide how well it defines the climate sensitivity, but I would note that since it uses GISTEMP data, which has a number of data problems that we’ve uncovered, for example here and here, the sensitivity may be overrated due to inflated trends in the GISTEMP database.
In the meantime, if you feel like supporting Dr. Spencer’s work, head on down to Barnes and Noble and get his latest book:
Spencer’s new book “Climate Confusion” is
now available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
(See book covers, and first page of each chapter.)
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Re: Joel Shore (October 8, 2008 17:08:07)
“To me, it does seem that one has to consider the nature of the processes at different timescales…and Spencer might be correct that the fact that the forcing is varying on a shorter timescale is important. However, Tamino is probably correct that you also have to worry about the timescales for the feedback and, in particular, if you are looking over timescales short compared to the timescales over which the feedback processes operate.”
Consider:
Limits on CO2 Climate Forcing from Recent Temperature Data of Earth
Author: David H. Douglass
Author: John R. Christy
Abstract: “The global atmospheric temperature anomalies of Earth reached a maximum in 1998 which has not been exceeded during the subsequent 10 years. The global anomalies are calculated from the average of climate effects occurring in the tropical and the extratropical latitude bands. El Niño/La Niña effects in the tropical band are shown to explain the 1998 maximum while variations in the background of the global anomalies largely come from climate effects in the northern extratropics. hese effects do not have the signature associated with CO2 climate forcing. However, the data show a small underlying positive trend that is consistent with CO2 climate forcing with no-feedback.”
Date: August 2008
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.0581.pdf
Correction: As reads “hese effects”, amend to read “These effects”
I think I can safely say that both sides of the argument think they are more right on the topic than the actual data warrants such confidence.
That being the case it is us “undeciders” who are actually more right than both extremes :p
😀
Regards
Andy
Why give Tamino the attention? He’s just another coward liberal blogger calling people names while hiding behind a fake screen name on the internet.
[…] Dr. Roy Spencer evaporates Tamino’s critique […]
This is all very amusing. 55 coments in and not one person has noticed that Spencer is simply wrong – Tamino’s approximate solution is for time varying forcing.
note the variation in s over 0 to t for theta (the time changing forcing term)?
For a bunch of ‘skeptics’, you might try being a little more skeptical.
WA says:
Also consider the fact that this is a paper to be published in a journal that is not considered a serious scientific journal and is received by only a handful of libraries worldwide and that its conclusions contradict many papers in the field published in real scientific journals.
kuhnkat says:
The problem with Spencer’s work is probably less with the data than the interpretation. He is trying to derive an equilibrium climate sensitivity using data over very short times.
By contrast, Hansen is using a “natural experiment” that occurred on timescales large enough that the equilibrium sensitivity is very straightforward to calculate if you know roughly the forcings and the temperature. As for your complaints about the quality of the data: Please explain exactly what you think is wrong with Hansen’s estimate. Do you have reason to believe that the average global temperature change between the last interglacial and now is significantly less than 5 C…that seems quite hard to fathom! What do you believe is wrong with his estimates of the forcings? (As Hansen has more recently pointed out, the climate sensitivity that he estimates in this way from the LGM is actually a lower sensitivity than one would expect for our current behavior…because it includes albedo effects due to the glaciers as a forcing and not a feedback whereas in the current scenario, these are a feedback.)
kim says
It is strange that you consider it a scurrilous charge that Spencer has misinterpreted the data even though we have real arguments for that (and a past history of it having happened before), yet you don’t consider it a scurrilous charge to say the same thing about Hansen.
Still, trying to tell me the data is wrong, not the models, won’t get off the ground. Doesn’t float the boat.
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Gavin says:
Yes and no. The formalism that Tamino has worked out is indeed worked out for an arbitrary time-varying forcing. However, the example that he uses to demonstrate the “feedback stripes” and how they can fool you in to getting a wrong estimate of the climate sensitivity does assume a constant forcing (although it does allow for fluctuations in the radiative imbalance due to fluctuations in the temperature).
So, I guess there are two important questions here in my mind:
(1) Is Spencer’s whole concept that spontaneous variations in cloudcover cause spontaneous variations in the albedo and thus in the climate forcing a correct way to look at things?
(2) If it is correct, does consideration of this dramatically change the results that Tamino has produced? My rough feeling is that it may make it more difficult to diagnose the equilibrium climate sensitivity correctly in the way that Tamino proposes (and Forster and Gregory attempted); however, it still wouldn’t make Spencer’s way of doing it correct because you would still be stuck with the fact that looking at responses that are on shorter timescales than the feedback effects operate are not going to allow you to see how the feedbacks alter the climate sensitivity!
Joel (06:24:45) I think the answer to (1) is yes, because if that is what is happening, which seems likely, then that is the correct way to look at it. I’m not sure of the answer to (2) but I suspect it would be that Spencer might agree that his vision isn’t perfectly clear, yet, but Tamino, on this issue, is seeing as through a glass, darkly.
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kim says:
No. What I am trying to tell you is that it is not correct to cherry-pick the small amount of data…or really the data interpretation…that supports your point of view (even when there are severe known problems with that data or interpretation) and at the same time ignore the wealth of data and data interpretation that goes the other way.
By the way, you should all go read Tamino’s reply to Randall Semrau at ‘Spencer’s Folly’ at Open mind through the link Anthony gives above. It is vintage Tamino, neither silent, patient, nor firm.
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Gavin, Tamino is so confused it’s not clear what he is trying to say. He says ‘If we make F constant’, then later on, as you rightly say, allows F to be varying, then in his final example he makes F constant again.
Tamino also does not even seem to understand the word ‘stable’. He says that for it to be stable, dT/dt = 0. But that’s the condition for temperature to be steady. The condition for it to be stable is lambda > 0, as Spencer correctly says in his presentation. (Stable means “If you give it a nudge it won’t fall over”). Any scientist would know this.
So who do we place more trust in:
The established research scientist with many published papers in the field?
Or the ignorant and confused anonymous blogger?
Joel (07:05:10) I see your point, though I’m not sure it is correct. If those feedbacks are indeed variable, over very short periods of time, then that might be the right way to look at them, and since they are so variable, different periods of time would give you different figures for feedback. But still, this admits a wide range of feedbacks, both to magnitude and sign, and the result of integrating all the feedbacks seems unpredictable.
So shall we look and see if high positive feedback of water vapor to CO2 forcing in present long term? It sure doesn’t explain the present cooling, which is becoming long term.
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Joel (05:00:22) It is scurrilous because you don’t support your contention that he is misinterpreting the data, and you insinuate that his intent is to do so. Tamino is just as insulting and just as unsupported. This is the kind of [snip] that hampers progress in climate science, and one side has it in spades.
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“Actually, if you have read much of Hansen’s work”
Yeah, I’ve read his ‘work’ in Fortran77 and there is not a more primitive, unprofessional, poorly motivated body of work extant.
Sorry about that. I’m reminded of a joke about Margaret Truman. Reporters asked her why she couldn’t get the President to refer to what he put on his lawn as ‘fertilizer’ instead of ‘manure’ and she replied that they had no idea how hard it had been for her to get him to call it ‘manure’.
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Gavin,
I.e. it’s time invariant
time invariant then he goes on to integrate what he has defined as time invariant.
Then you have this late remark from the great man himself:
I guess he doesn’t think it’s time varying either.
kim says:
Tamino has supported it and you even admit that Spencer’s looking only over very short periods of time will miss feedbacks on longer timescales. As for his intent, I (like Tamino) think that Spencer honestly believes what he is saying but I think that he has preconceptions on the subject of AGW that lead him to find arguments against it. I have noted that all scientists have preconceptions and biases that can influence them in this manner, including Hansen in the other direction. However, I have also noted that I do not think it very easy to hijack a whole field with such biases.
What sort of response would you expect from Tamino to a comment that starts out “You are a joke, Pal”?
As for “one side [having] it in spades”, if I didn’t know your biases, I would assume that you are talking about the vicious attacks on people like Hansen and Mann, which often go well beyond just pointing out that all scientists have biases that affect their judgement but instead actually essentially accuse these scientists of fraud.
PaulM says
And, you do not seem to understand that different words can be used differently in different contexts. You are insistent on using one definition of stability from one context when it is clear that this is not the way in which Tamino meant it. In fact, all one would have to do to remedy your complaint if you really wanted to insist that Tamino only use the word in the way that you want it used is to change those places he uses “stable” to “steady”. There would be absolutely no need to change any of the actual equations or other content of his post. Thus your complaint seems to reflect more on your own lack of understanding rather than Tamino’s.
Joel (08:33:55) So Joel, help us to bridge the gap here betwixt the two, even more than you have so far. I affirm that your explanations have been more helpful than either Pielke Pere’s or Tamino’s, and I thank you for that.
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Joel (08:19:55) Well the sort of response I’d expect to ‘you are a joke’ would be a refutation, unless he’s the foil and just trying to prove my point, which is what we so often see with him. He becomes ridiculous, but just at moments. Nonetheless, observing him for those short moments is revelatory.
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kim (08:45:37) er, that should be ‘more helpful than either Roy Spencer’s or Tamino’s’.
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kim says:
Thanks, kim. I very much appreciate the positive feedback (no pun intended…or maybe intended a little bit). I sometimes wonder if it is worth my while to be posting on a blog where it seems rather unlikely to me that many of the commenters are going to take my posts seriously, so it is nice to get your feedback to what I have posted here.
As for helping to bridge the gap more, at this point I think I have gone about as far as I can go myself without doing some serious calculations with Tamino’s model myself (and trying to learn more about the magnitudes of timescales over which Spencer’s time varying forcings might occur)…which I don’t think I can realistically undertake. But, I’ll certainly let you know if I have any further thoughts (or comments on what other people say)!
So tell us Gavin, how did three articles by Spencer manage to make it past the peer review process without Tamino’s approval? Now that his fourth article is in review, shouldn’t Hansen’s cronies cry foul and expose the deception before it is published? RealClimate did accuse Spencer of “cooking the books” didn’t it?
While it is amusing to you that Roy Spencer publishes his research in peer reviewed journals, pulling back the curtain at GISS reveals an army of munchkins pulling levers on GCM’s as the Great and Powerful Oz adjusts the dials until the desired output is attained.
Is it too much to ask to update the 2005 Hansen et al paper as ocean heat content reported since 2003 does not agree with those conclusions? Maybe it would benefit us all if Josh Willis (a co-author) would make the Argo OHC database available for public viewing and keep it updated? Or must we wait 30 years for the “heat in the pipeline” to come to fruition while the oceans continue to fail to adhere to the AGW talking points?