Set Phasers on Stun
March 29th, 2009 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
I’ve been receiving a steady stream of e-mails asking when our latest work on feedbacks in the climate system will be published. Since I’ve been trying to fit the material from three (previously rejected) papers into one unified paper, it has taken a bit longer than expected…but we are now very close to submission.
We’ve tentatively decided to submit to Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR) rather than any of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) journals. This is because it appears that JGR editors are somewhat less concerned about a paper’s scientific conclusions supporting the policy goals of the IPCC — regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, JGR’s instructions to reviewers is to not reject a paper simply because the reviewer does not agree with the paper’s scientific conclusions. More on that later.
As those who have been following our work already know, our main conclusion is that climate sensitivity has been grossly overestimated due to a mix up between cause and effect when researchers have observed how global cloud cover varies with temperature.
To use my favorite example, when researchers have observed that global cloud cover decreases with warming, they have assumed that the warming caused the cloud cover to dissipate. This would be a positive feedback since such a response by clouds would let more sunlight in and enhance the warming.
But what they have ignored is the possibility that causation is actually working in the opposite direction: That the decrease in cloud cover caused the warming…not the other way around. And as shown by Spencer and Braswell (2008 J. Climate), this can mask the true existence of negative feedback.
All 20 of the IPCC climate models now have positive cloud feedbacks, which amplify the small about of warming from extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But if cloud feedbacks in the climate system are negative, then the climate system does not particularly care how much you drive your SUV. This is an issue of obvious importance to global warming research. Even the IPCC has admitted that cloud feedbacks remain the largest source of uncertainty in predicting global warming.
Significantly, our new work provides a method for identifying which direction of causation is occurring (forcing or feedback), and for obtaining a more accurate estimate of feedback in the presence of clouds forcing a temperature change. The method involves a new way of analyzing graphs of time filtered satellite observations of the Earth (or even of climate model output).
Well…at least I thought it was new way of analyzing graphs. It turns out that we have simply rediscovered a method used in other physical sciences: phase space analysis. This methodology was first introduced by Willard Gibbs in 1901.
We found that by connecting successively plotted points in graphs of how the global average temperature varies over time versus how global average radiative balance varies over time, one sees two different kinds of structures emerge: linear striations, which are the result of feedback, and spirals which are the result of internal radiative forcing by clouds.
But such a methodology is not new. To quote from Wikipedia on the subject of ‘phase space’:
“Often this succession of plotted points is analogous to the system’s state evolving over time. In the end, the phase diagram…can easily elucidate qualities of the system that might not be obvious otherwise.”
Using a simple climate model we show that these two features that show up in the graphs are a direct result of the two directions of causation: temperature causing clouds to change (revealed by ‘feedback stripes’), and clouds causing temperature to change (revealed by ‘radiative forcing spirals’).
The fact that others have found phase space analysis to be a useful methodology is a good thing. It should lend some credibility to our interpretation. Phase space analysis is what has helped us better understand chaos, along with its Lorenz attractor, strange attractor, etc.
And the fact that we find the exact same structures in the output of the IPCC climate models means that the modelers can not claim our interpretation has no physical basis.
And now we can also use some additional buzzwords in the new article…which seems to help from the standpoint of reviewers thinking you know what you are talking about. The new paper title is, “Phase Space Analysis of Forcing and Feedback in Models and Satellite Observations of Climate Variability”.
It just rolls of the tongue, doesn’t it?
I am confident the work will get published…eventually. But even if it didn’t, our original published paper on the issue has laid the groundwork…it would just take awhile before the research community understands the implications of that work.
What amazes me is the resistance there has been to ‘thinking out of the box’ when trying to estimate the sensitivity of the climate system. Especially when it has been considered to be ‘thinking in the box’ by other sciences for over a century now.
And it is truly unfortunate that the AMS, home of Lorenz’s first published work on chaos in 1963, has decided that political correctness is more important than the advancement of science.
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here is a good book:-
http://books.google.com/books?id=rKzsij-FCI0C&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105&dq=rain+water+co2+pH&source=bl&ots=4YCft71Hcw&sig=9Aqde5Wr5kORyO-1KAAZ7qQUkEs&hl=en&ei=QYfRSY-aJZeMtgPqpozGAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=6&ct=result#PPA107,M1
Aaaaah yes,
And I always take my science from someone who thinks creationism presents a more scientific answer to the origins of our biosphere than evolution…. this is NOT ad hom, for those who are ready to let loose – this is HIGHLY pertinent to judging what reliability or status one should afford this man’s views. Careful of the horses you decide to back…
REPLY: Be sure to read the latest on the main page from Dr. Richard Lindzen – Anthony
Thanks Anthony, will do
Thank you Mr Watts and thank you commentors. Combined you make a great website that is very educational and held to high standards of both conduct and intellectual honesty. It is very enjoyable and one of my regular stops. Thanks you guys.
Anyway, some thoughts.. I agree that the carbon atom is just hitchhiking on already present O2, and that C atom would be the increase in atmospheric mass, not the whole CO2 molecule. I don’t know that it displaces other gasses as CO2, but would rather dilute their concentration.
As far as the oceans taking on more CO2, that would be a function of temperature. In my thought path, once the oceans saturate at ambient temperature, they would not take on more CO2 if the atmosphere were 70,000ppm instead of 385 unless the temperature changes. Only the carrying ability of the ocean, directly a function of temperature, would determine that saturation point, not atmospheric concentration. Am I on the right path here?
Matt Bennett (21:03:33) :
Aaaaah yes,
And I always take my science from someone who thinks creationism presents a more scientific answer to the origins of our biosphere than evolution…. this is NOT ad hom, for those who are ready to let loose – this is HIGHLY pertinent to judging what reliability or status one should afford this man’s views. Careful of the horses you decide to back…
REPLY: Be sure to read the latest on the main page from Dr. Richard Lindzen – Anthony
Correct – not an Ad Hom – It is however an example of the rhetorical and logically flawed technique of “Poisoning the Well”. Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well
The point is, the man’s beliefs that are not pertinent to the subject matter at hand are irrelevant to the validity of his comments wrt the subject matter at hand.
I.e. If he believes in Creationism, that does not invalidate his capacity to provide valid science on Climate.
In the same manner, my auto mechanic may believe in fairies in the garden, and yet be an excellent mechanic.
Graeme,
Absolutely not correct. The very task he is purporting to engage in is ‘science’ and by saying (in a quote on Wiki) that the best scientific explanation for our bioshere that he can come up with is creationism, he forfeits any right to respect for other ‘scientific’ claims. Ask yourself, “Do you recognise the truth of in evolution?” It’ll help clarify it for you.
A better metaphor would be if your motor mechanic swore that your engine worked as a perpetual motion machine – I think you’d thank him and kindly take you car elsewhere.
Matt Bennett (22:37:06) :
Graeme,
Absolutely not correct. The very task he is purporting to engage in is ’science’ and by saying (in a quote on Wiki) that the best scientific explanation for our bioshere that he can come up with is creationism, he forfeits any right to respect for other ’scientific’ claims. Ask yourself, “Do you recognise the truth of in evolution?” It’ll help clarify it for you.
A better metaphor would be if your motor mechanic swore that your engine worked as a perpetual motion machine – I think you’d thank him and kindly take you car elsewhere.
The distinction is centered on their being different domains. If my Mechanic did swear that the engine was a perpetual motion machine – then yes I would be going elsewhere as he would be remarking about the “relevant” domain.
Origins of Life and Climate Science are too different domains, and my assertion still holds.
BTW: I’m an evolutionist of long standing.
Matt Bennett (22:37:06) :
As another example, is Isacc Newtons scientific work any less valid for the fact that he spent approx 20 years devoting himself to Alchemy.
It’s not uncommon for people to have “odd” beliefs outside their technical speciality.
Lots of Scientists, and Engineers, etc have Religeous beliefs – does this make then less capable in their specialist field.
A good friend of mine is a skilled Physicist and Hardware Engineer, and a holder of fundamentalist Christian beliefs. I haven’t seen any evidence that his religeous beliefs impact on his Engineering Skills.
In the end – my assertion about “poisoning the well” still stands, as the biological origins of life and it’s subsequent evolution is a sufficiently different domain to the analysis of Satellite data (Physics and Math) to render views on one irrelevant to the validity of views in the the other.
“Matt Bennett (21:03:33) : ”
Faraday was a devout believer in God. So, should we throw out his EM fields ideas?
Einstein said “God does not play dice”; God and intelligence. So, should we throw out E=mc2?
Georges Lemaître was a priest. So, should we throw out the Big Bang?
p.s. I sometimes wonder if I should take the time to respond to these kind of posts.
Matt Bennett,
I like to look at who takes who seriously.
Over the last 2 or 3 years Roy Spencer has had a number of guest articles on climate forcing and feedback at “Climate Science”, the website of Roger Pielke Snr. Pielke takes Spencer very seriously. That speaks volumes for me.
I think you need to take a close look at Spencers accomplishents in scence, which are substantial. Clearly his spiritual views do not impact on his ability describe what is happening in the physical world. If you think otherwise then back your view up with evidence. Which specific piece of published research by Spencer do you think demonstrates tainted judgement or reasoning? Further, what part do you disagree with and why? Otherwise you are just piling in with a very cheap shot.
I am also an evolutionist of long standing, but that has no relevence to my views on climate science. I suspect Spencers views on creation are somewhat more nuanced than most but regardless the matter is irrelevant.
Rob R
To Matt Bennett
Where is that “missing link”.
and for the creation peolpe
I didn’t know God had a “watch”.
Matt,
Just one more comment wrt “Poisoning the Well”.
The essence of this type of fallacious argument is follows.
[Assumption] The source of the evidence is polluted, hence the evidence is polluted.
[Payoff] The evidence can be discarded, ignored, and otherwise not addressed.
The problem is that the assumption is not valid.
Playing this card allows access to the payoff – i.e. the opportunity to discount the evidence.
And it is this payoff that attracts the use of this argument.
So Matt – please address the actual evidence. Do you have conclusive proof (based on hard physical evidence) that Water Vapour does not act as a negative Feedback for CO2 induced warming.
Note that the presence of such feedback eliminates the catastrophism of AGW and hence the panic.
Is this the problem, – will life have less meaning if the world is not teetering on the edge of a precipice, if you are not part of a movement that is “Saving the Planet”, if you have been duped and used by those who are more ruthless than you are?
Food for thought indeed.
Old construction worker,
That made me laugh 🙂
Graeme, Rob – at first your assertions seem quite reasonable. That is, until you consider the fact that during their respective periods of operation, those scientists were not in possession of the vast store of knowledge that is today available to almost anybody at the click of a mouse. Were either of those gentlemen alive today, I have no doubt they would distance themselves from the more suspect of their beliefs, GIVEN THE BENEFIT OF ALL WE”VE LEARNT SINCE. That’s the big difference. You can’t take a person outside of the times they lived in and judge them on modern values or standards of evidence – that would be unfair. Remember once, almost everybody thought slavery was ok, that didn’t make everybody a raving redneck lunatic. You have to be careful making these claims. Alchemy was then quite respected as a field of investigation and, given the fact that we can now perform exactly the goals they sought (ie lead into gold etc) it was obviously not ridiculous to entertain the possibility. It just doesn’t work the way they envisaged and takes more energy than is worth the effort.
My statement stands, that if, in the face of all the contrary available evidence in this day and age, Spencer can still compartmentalise his brain enough to entertain superstitious nonsense, his science will remain, at least to my judgement, suspect. I respect your right to believe otherwise.
One is entitled to the opinion that there was no time, matter or space, before the big bang. One is equally entitled to imagine that DNA formed via natural selection during its 4.5 billion year tenure on this planet alone. Or to postulate that life, expressed as the human mind and its construct of “the arrow of time”, is the only function that consists of a straight line with a beginning and an end, whilst every known other is spiral, spherical or circular. Or to suppose that that same life is extant solely here. One is entitled to imagine that the very industries that permit this discussion will result in our ultimate demise by climate change via trace gas. Heck, you can even believe that governments are benign and politicians hold our best interests at heart. Just don’t claim you will overburden me for my production of plant food because I know I am entitled to tell you where to get off.
For the record. I believe that most of, if not all of, the big questions remain unanswered and that most of, if not all of, the current hypotheses will be shown to be erroneous, and possibly malodorous, before my allotted span is up. Hey, we can all dream.
😉
It is certainly not a matter of belief that the ‘big questions’ remain unanswered. They simply are, and probably will remain so indefinitely, though accepting this is hard for many. As someone said, “Wonder is the true religious attitude.” I might add that it is also the true scientific attitude: wonder at how little we really know or understand.
I would be curious to know whether Dr. Spencer thinks that Creationism or ‘Intelligent Design’ can generate falsifiable hypotheses, as evolutionary theory can and does. If not, then it falls outside the realm of science and into that of theology. If so, then it would be interesting to hear some.
It is true, as Matt Bennett says, that the history of Earth’s biota is directly relevant to the history of Earth’s climate (after all, where did the oxygen in the atmosphere come from?), so that if a climatologist were to hold, against all paleontological and geological evidence, that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, such views would cast serious doubt on his scientific judgment.
I have seen no evidence that Dr. Spencer is a so-called ‘young Earth Creationist’. He does seem to hold that natural selection is an inadequate explanatory mechanism for species evolution, but this verges into ‘origins’, in other words ‘big question’ territory. One can hold that natural selection is a necessary but not sufficient explanation for evolution; what one cannot do, without denying the entire fossil record, is to deny that evolution occurred.
In any case, I should say, none of this bears directly upon Dr. Spencer’s considerable contributions to our understanding of how the seemingly chaotic climate works, so rather than point this thread off into what will only become an increasingly rancorous discussion of evolution, moderators, feel free to nip this post in the bud.
/Mr Lynn
dgallagher (05:13:46) :
Ohioholic,
“what Gas is displaced”?
According to AGW theory, the increase in CO2 is primarily due to man’s use of fossil fuels. This means that we are burning (oxidizing) fuels containing carbon which is being combined with oxygen from the environment.
Actually you would have to do a mass balance of the before and after conditions, but if everything else were to remain constant, the total mass of gas comprising the atmosphere would be increasing by the amount of carbon being added from the fuel, but the oxygen in the CO2 would come from the atmosphere, so % O2 should be dropping.
In reality, there is so much flux of CO2 due to the natural carbon cycles that it is impossible to know what is really happening.
Actually, the decrease of O2 is measured, be at the edge of analytical possibilities, since about 1992. This showes that the biosphere is a net CO2 sink, as a little less oxygen is used than calculated from the burning of fossil fuels. That means more oxygen production from photosynthesis than oxygen use from organic decay…
Thus a part of the emissions (about 1.4 +/- 0.8 GtC/year) is taken away by vegetation growth, the rest of the about 4 GtC sink out of 8 GtC emissions is absorbed in the oceans. See:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/287/5462/2467
Ray B (21:23:35) :
As far as the oceans taking on more CO2, that would be a function of temperature. In my thought path, once the oceans saturate at ambient temperature, they would not take on more CO2 if the atmosphere were 70,000ppm instead of 385 unless the temperature changes. Only the carrying ability of the ocean, directly a function of temperature, would determine that saturation point, not atmospheric concentration. Am I on the right path here?
Not completely right: the uptake of CO2 in the oceans is a matter of temperature ánd pressure. Think of a soda bottle: with a high pressure of CO2 the water is carbonated, with most CO2 in solution. Opening the bottle releases the pressure above the liquid and a lot of CO2 comes out of the water.
To a certain extent that happens with the oceans too: an overall increase in temperature releases more CO2 from the warm parts of the oceans and reduces the uptake of cold(er) ocean parts. This gives an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, which gives the opposite effect: an increased uptake of the oceans. At a certain increased CO2 level, release and uptake are again in (dynamic) equilibrium. That equilibrium is at about 3 ppmv/°C on short term to 8 ppmv/°C on (very) long term.
Human emissions are to the atmosphere and increase the (partial) pressure of CO2 (pCO2) of the atmosphere, relative to the oceans (and vegetation alveoles liquid). That gives less outgassing and more uptake by the oceans. If the emissions were constant, the atmospheric levels would reach a new equilibrium with the oceans, when the difference between release and uptake by the oceans was equal to the emissions. But as the current emissions increase over the years, the atmospheric level is increasing too in ratio with the emissions…
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
Have I understood what you are saying? The biosphere is more than capable of handling the CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere and turns much of it into O2 (and biomass) with the aid of sunlight?
I recall reading an article about the Aqua satellite and it stated that it should have found hotspots in the Troposphere over the Equator if the models were correct but found no such evidence.
Other comments regarding the findings suggested that the CO2 interaction took place a relatively low altitude and appeared to increase cloud cover and promote cooling along with precipitation.
The article by Professor Spencer appears to give a more scientific evaluation of the findings of what the satellite was suggesting.
” Matt Bennett (03:42:36) : My statement stands,”
I did not think you would be convinced by my points. And that’s ok. I only posted what I said for the benefit of others who are thinking.
As it stands your line of reasoning also discards E=mc2. Your opinion does not alter what people think of Einstein, or of Roy Spencer. But it does affect what people think of you.
Sheesh, for someone who “just wants truth”……
Einstein was not religious in any sense that you mean. You position is not well supported. He is explicit on this and would probably have agreed with what I’m saying, that a propensity for wish thinking doesn’t serve one overly well as a scientist.t
“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. ”
Stark contrast to Spencer who needs dressed up creationism to account for his biota (which accounts for his atmosphere, which……) See?
Good point JWT (15:10:09) … It’s pretty easy to see that Matt does not understand that “creationism” is not just one simple belief. He has no idea what Dr. Spencer believes but he is more than willing to discard Spencer’s research simply because it supports his own belief system. Oh, the irony …
Matt Bennett,
I noticed some good [and pointed – at you] questions directly above your post @03:42:36.
Like other questions in this thread, you hide out from answering them. Why is that?
[snip – Joel, I’m not going to let you open the door on discussions of people’s religious view here. Please don’t post on it again. – Anthony]
Of course, ultimately Spencer’s current work will rise or fall on its own merits. However, on the basis of his previous judgment and track record, I am not going to be holding my breath.
re: Creationism. Without knowing the details of Dr. Spencer’s creation beliefs, I would be careful in labelling them fringe.
I believe that the following statements are part of the scientific consensus.
1. The universe just happened in a Big Bang. Cause unexplained.
2. Single celled organisms just happened on Earth. Cause unexplained.
3. Cellular differentiation just happened on Earth. Cause unexplained.
4. The Cambrian explosion just happened. Cause unexplained.
It has been a number of years since I looked at this. I went through a phase where I had to satisfy myself of the falseness of the (young earth) Creationist myths. What struck me as an side effect was just how many of the remarkable steps along the way remain unexplained. I think that the works of Stephen Jay Gould (I think I have all of his books) nicely lay out the wonder and mystery of it all.
Reply: OK STOP RIGHT THERE! This discussion goes no farther. Discussions of Creationism and Evolution are strictly prohibited. ~ charles the moderator