On Recent Criticisms of My Research
By Dr. Roy Spencer
One of the downsides of going against the supposed “consensus of scientists” on global warming — other than great difficulty in getting your research funded and published — is that you get attacked in the media. In the modern blogging era, this is now easier to do than ever.
I have received many requests recently to respond to an extended blog critique by Barry Bickmore of my book, The Great Global Warming Blunder. The primary theme of my book was to present evidence that scientists have mixed up cause and effect when diagnosing feedbacks in the climate system, and as a result could have greatly overestimated how sensitive the climate system is to our addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere from fossil fuel burning.
For those interested, here is our most extensive peer reviewed and published evidence for my claim.
But for now, instead of responding to blog posts, I am devoting all the time I can spare to responding to peer-reviewed and published criticism of my work. The main one is Andy Dessler’s paper in Science from last fall, which claimed to find positive cloud feedback in the same 10 years of NASA satellite radiative energy balance (CERES) data we have been analyzing.
In his paper, Dessler dismissed all of the evidence we presented with a single claim: that since (1) the global temperature variations which occurred during the satellite record (2000-2010) were mostly caused by El Nino and La Nina, and (2) no one has ever demonstrated that “clouds cause El Nino”, then there could not be a clouds-causing-temperature-change contamination of his cloud feedback estimate.
But we now have clear evidence that El Nino and La Nina temperature variations are indeed caused in large measure by changes in clouds, with the cloud changes coming months in advance of the temperature changes.
And without going into detail, I will say it now appears that this is not the only major problem with Dessler’s diagnosis of positive cloud feedback from the data he presented. Since we will also be submitting this evidence to Science, and they are very picky about the newsworthiness of their articles, I cannot provide any details.
Of course, if Science refuses to publish it, that is another matter. Dick Lindzen has recently told me Science has been sitting on his critique of Dessler’s paper for months. Science has demonstrated an editorial bias against ’skeptical’ climate papers in recent years, something I hope they will correct.
In the meantime, I will not be wasting much time addressing blog criticisms of my work. The peer-reviewed literature is where I must focus my attention.
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Vice versa, mutatis mutandis, Art.
And, you’re still not groveling.
Besides, I have already answered all of these questions. You just need to read for comprehension this time.
Someone didn’t close his tag.
Barry sez… my objections are moot. Indeed, they are. For two reasons. One, as I have explained repeatedly, is that you are imposing a rigid interpretation on the physical meaning of the model without any appreciation for the underlying complexity of the real world system involved.
The other is that you are attacking Spencer’s self-described 3 days plinking at his home desktop computer, to get a ROM estimate of the narrow effects of PDO on cloud cover and temperatures, as though it were a full blown theory claiming to upend the entire artfully constructed edifice of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. In fact, it is merely the first step on a long road which would need to be trod to tease out the details of the underlying complexity to which I just referred.
But, you know this. I have stated both reasons repeatedly and in detail. The game is over. But, you are still in denial an hour after the last whistle blew. You lost. Suck it up and get ready for the next one.
The best that you guys can say is that, based on your interpretation of physical parameters which are themselves uncertain, Spencer’s PDO model, and/or its interpretation, needs work, and it may not end up accounting for the entire record of 20th century warming. At the very most, that’s all you’ve got. But, Spencer himself readily agrees. He’s chomping at the bit to research the PDO and other possible natural contributors to observed 20th century warming. So, you have brewed up a tempest in a teapot, and the whole discussion is moot.
As I stated at the outset of this discussion, it’s a lot of sound and fury, signifying little. Nothing which has been stated has changed my opinion, only reinforced it.
And, when Art gets tired of dissembling, I am still expecting some groveling to atone for his most egregious error.
Ok, Bart, I’m glad you agree that Spencer’s model “needs work, and it may not end up accounting for the entire record of 20th century warming”. Although in fact Spencer’s model accounts for none of the 20th century warming at all, but who’s quibbling. Thanks for the discussion.
Art – “[W]ho’s quibbling”? Why, you are. If you see no correlation between the PDO index, whatever it represents, and global temperatures since 1900, then you are wearing blinders.
As for ‘Spencer’s model “needs work, and it may not end up accounting for the entire record of 20th century warming’, Spencer himself effectively said this. Of course it needs work. Spencer tossed it off in a few days at home. The establishment climate modelers have spent decades and hundreds of millions, and still don’t know what to make of the stagnation in temperatures for the last decade.
This is no departure from my position from the very first – read back through the thread and see. You’ve been in too high dudgeon trying thoroughly to vanquish your imagined foe that you never paid attention to his, or my, words.
Let me make this a little clearer: The PDO is modulating temperatures in some fashion, which Spencer believes likely has to do with induced cloud formation. It is a powerful effect which is readily apparent in the temperature record. If the PDO can modulate cloud cover to have that great of an impact, then what other processes affecting cloud cover might be driving the rising component in the latter half of the 20th century?
Barry and Art want to focus only on the purely oscillatory component of whatever process the PDO is part of. They numerically integrate* a collection of data which is zero mean by design and proclaim, mirabile dictu, that this would produce a zero mean output of a linear, time invariant approximation of the dynamics. And, they proclaim this result to be evidence that the theory is wanting, rather than recognizing it as the mere tautology that it is.
What is the underlying process of which the PDO is only a symptom? How does it affect cloud cover in a manner which Spencer’s model demonstrates is significant? Could this process be responsible for the observed rise in global temperatures in the latter half of the 20th century? Obviously, it could. Is it responsible? That is TBD.
*I did not even get into all the hazards of numerically integrating an undersampled, aliased signal sampled via an arbitrary measurement process with unknown, or at least uncharacterized, information transmission properties. Ei yi yi…
Joel Shore says:
April 6, 2011 at 2:10 pm
I just noticed this comment. Most of what you had to say is irrelevant, and you can find the answers in the subsequent discussion. But, I will comment on this:
“…and believe his evidence that he claims points to the negative feedback…”
I don’t “believe” anything. I can see the evidence directly when I look at his plot, as I explained. I am not so timid as to doubt my own eyes when the information they convey goes against popular sentiment. You would do well to do the same.