by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
LiveScience.com posted an article yesterday where the usual IPCC suspects (Gavin Schmidt, Kevin Trenberth, and Andy Dessler) dissed our recent paper in in the journal Remote Sensing.
Given their comments, I doubt any of them could actually state what the major conclusion of our paper was.
For example, Andy Dessler told LiveScience:
“He’s taken an incorrect model, he’s tweaked it to match observations, but the conclusions you get from that are not correct…”
Well, apparently Andy did not notice that those were OBSERVATIONS that disagreed with the IPCC climate models. And our model can quantitatively explain the disagreement.
Besides, is Andy implying the IPCC models he is so fond of DON’T have THEIR results tweaked to match the observations? Yeah, right.
Kevin Trenberth’s response to our paper, rather predictably, was:
“I cannot believe it got published”
Which when translated from IPCC-speak actually means, “Why didn’t I get the chance to deep-six Spencer’s paper, just like I’ve done with his other papers?”
Finally Gavin Schmidt claims that it’s the paleoclimate record that tells us how sensitive the climate system is, not the current satellite data. Oh, really? Then why have so many papers been published over the years trying to figure out how sensitive today’s climate system is? When scientists appeal to unfalsifiable theories of ancient events which we have virtually no data on, and ignore many years of detailed global satellite observations of today’s climate system, *I* think they are giving science a bad name.
COMMENTS ON THE FORBES ARTICLE BY JAMES TAYLOR
I have received literally dozens of phone calls and e-mails asking basically the same question: did James Taylor’s Forbes article really represent what we published in our Remote Sensing journal article this week?
Several of those people, including AP science reporter Seth Borenstein, actually read our article and said that there seemed to be a disconnect.
The short answer is that, while the title of the Forbes article (New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism) is a little over the top (as are most mainstream media articles about global warming science), the body of his article is — upon my re-reading of it — actually pretty good.
About the only disconnect I can see is we state in our paper that, while the discrepancy between the satellite observations were in the direction of the models producing too much global warming, it is really not possible to say by how much. Taylor’s article makes it sound much more certain that we have shown that the models produce too much warming in the long term. (Which I think is true…we just did not actually ‘prove’ it.)
But how is this any different than the reporting we see on the other side of the issue? Heck, how different is it than the misrepresentation of the certainty of the science in the IPCC’s own summaries for policymakers, versus what the scientists write in the body of those IPCC reports?
I am quite frankly getting tired of the climate ‘alarmists’ demanding that we ’skeptics’ be held a higher standard than they are held to. They claim our results don’t prove their models are wrong in their predictions of strong future warming, yet fail to mention they have no good, independent evidence their models are right.
For example….
…while our detractors correctly point out that the feedbacks we see in short term (year-to-year) climate variability might not indicate what the long-term feedbacks are in response to increasing CO2, the IPCC still uses short-term variability in their models to compare to satellite observations to then support the claimed realism of the long-term behavior of those models.
Well, they can’t have it both ways.
If they are going to validate their models with short term variability as some sort of indication that their models can be believed for long-term global warming, then they are going to HAVE to explain why there is such a huge discrepancy (see Fig. 3 in our paper) between the models and the satellite observations in what is the most fundamental issue: How fast do the models lose excess radiant energy in response to warming?
That is essentially the definition of “feedback”, and feedbacks determine climate sensitivity.
I’m sorry, but if this is the best they can do in the way of rebuttal to our study, they are going to have to become a little more creative.
Chris Jarrett says:
July 30, 2011 at 10:20 am
Roy, your ‘publication’ is a joke. The journal is an internet, on-line journal where authors provide the reviewers to the editor and then pay to have it “published”. It’s a publication venue for articles that won’t get accepted in real journals.
WOW! That sure disproved everything he said in it, everything. Boy that was good, no need to do hard math or anything like that, just attack the publication. WOW! It must be wrong now. WOW!
Gavin replied to my post pointing out he admits there could be “real problems” with the model:
“Response: This is an odd game of gotcha you appear to be playing. Whenever someone does an analysis and shows a difference between a model and the observations there is always the possibility you have revealed something interesting about model imperfections (since no-one is of the opinion they are perfect). In some cases that imperfection is well known (like the double ITCZ problem in
tropical rainfall), sometimes it isn’t, and other times the data is wrong. Very often though it is the comparison that is faulty (comparing apples to oranges for instance), or the implication that is at fault and that seems to be the case here – the big differences in this diagnostic between different models is not related to overall climate sensitivity (which you can easily see in Spencer’s figures), but between models that have a reasonable ENSO or not (see above). Some models did not have sufficient ENSO variability (GISS-ER was one) and this appears to affect this particular diagnostics. It is however, unrelated to climate sensitivity. – gavin] A little snark in the beginning, but a reasonable reply.
It appears that the “defense” has settled on how well a model handles ENSO. I do not know how legit this is as ENSO is an oscillation, so the effect should cancel out. So for the sake of argument, heat flux increases during positive ENSO and decreases during negative ENSO. Model A predicts this. Model B will therefore underpredict heat flux during positive ENSO and overpredict heat flux during negative ENSO. So it would cancel out. However, the graphs in the RealClimate article show that the “ENSO aware” model does a decent job. Whether this is because it is “ENSO Aware” or is a coincidence is unknown.
Tilo:
You miss the point entirely. As usual
Doug in Seattle says:
July 30, 2011 at 10:38 am
The ball is back on Dr. Spencer’s side of the net after Trenberth, et al give a weak return. Now its time for the spike. Perhaps Kirby or Svensmark will take the honors.
########
They raise some issues that all skeptics should rally behind.
1. Where is the code and data.
2. error bars please.
3. Models that represent El Nino better, tend to represent this data better.
That’s actually a good thing for people to note: Why persist in using bad models. Some are better than others.
Seems Trenberth is missing more than the heat he can’t find and whines about.
This drive by means he is now missing credibility, integrity and honesty.
Steve Garcia says:
July 30, 2011 at 11:01 am
“I’d like to know how he can assert this. I’ve searched high and low and can’t find out where the scientists say the heat energy for El Niño comes from. I know, Trenberth has much better access to sources than I do. I would have this question: What paper explains the mechanisms of HOW the La Niña “uptakes” and “stores” the heat? I’d like to see exactly what assumptions are behind this assertion. I have a hypothesis in the back of my head that I’d like to falsify and get rid of, if it is worthless.”
Superb question and post. The dirty little secret is that Warmista do not include in their models any thing resembling an La Nina process. Their models are about radiation inputs and outputs only. They contain no actual empirical generalizations that describe physical processes such as La Nina. In other words, aside from the hypotheses about radiation that they inherited from Arrhenius, all of their work is purely “a priori.” In Warmista models, La Nina is what they call an “emergent property.”
“Finally Gavin Schmidt claims that it’s the paleoclimate record that tells us how sensitive the climate system is, not the current satellite data. ”
Is that the same Gavin Schmidt who claims global warming started in 1980?
Kevin Trenberth and John Fasullo:
“Moreover the description of methods of what was done is not sufficient to be able to replicate results.”
This almost sounds like something Stephen McIntyre could have said about Michael Mann’s hockey stick. I hope Trenberth was equally critical of Mann at the time.
davidmhoffer says:
“Nice hijack attempt R Gates. The results of Spencer’s study are about how much energy is being released to space versus how much energy the computer models calculate is being released to space. It has nothing to do with what drives what, and the study isn’t a model, it is just measurements compared to models. The models are wrong, or the measurements are.
“Sad is it not that the world is inhabited by legions of those (like you) who would rather believe that the sky is falling than to admit that the bump on Chicken Little’s head is from an acorn. Confronted with the fact that there are no cracks in the sky, nor pieces missing from it, they point to the bump on Chicken Little’s head and come up with the most convoluted of theories as to why it could not possibly have been an acorn, or any of a thousand other causes, it must have been a piece of the sky. They even have computer models showing exactly how the sky is falling apart.
“Sadder still is what their obvious belief system dictates to them. They rejoice in every bit of evidence showing that the world is coming to an end, and with grim determination, discredit every shred of evidence that it is not. It is bad enough that they believe their models to the point that they ignore actual measurements showing the models to be wrong. But the worst part is that they WANT the sky to be falling. Not because it would prove their models right, but because they can’t believe in a world where humanity has a bright future and doesn’t bring disaster down on themselves.”
This is exactly true. My neighbor last night, discussing the day’s polar bear news, insisted that whether or not some people made things up, she knew for a fact that polar bears were dying from AGW because she had studied the issue, being a frequent viewer of the Nat Geo channel.
When I said to her, “You believe this because you WANT to believe it,” she responded, “Yes, I DO want to believe it.” And then told me that I didn’t believe it because I DIDN’T want to believe it. How true in both cases, though I, at least, have years of exposure to the conflicting evidence that she does not. Who in his (or her) right might would WANT to believe the world is ending? Someone hoping to take credit for stopping it? Someone who loves wallowing in negativity and misery? Or both? I think many alarmists may be more than just gullible or dishonest: They may be mentally ill.
S. mosher,
“3. Models that represent El Nino better, tend to represent this data better.”
Is this for certain? In one case (on RealClimate) the model that represented El Nino better matched the satellite data better. Is it because of El Nino?
And what does this mean? That warmer SST leads to more convection and more heat flux? So that means we can expect less warming than we had been led to believe, no?
Thanks Dr Spencer, keep on chipping away, you lead the way, and we are one step closer to the day when climate science is restored to credibility and open to new research, new ideas, new discoveries. The team hid behind corrupted peer review, lax media scrutiny,”their” science, may they reap the weeds they sowed, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. the wheel is turning!
From R. Gates on July 30, 2011 at 2:23 pm:
So Anthony Watts, Willis Eschenbach, even E.M. Smith, aren’t qualified as they don’t have PhD’s. Got it. Oh well, maybe someone with a PhD in Business Accounting can review the paper, since at the very least they are qualified to analyze the statistics, and they have the important qualification of having a PhD at all. Check.
Anyone with a PhD in Ancient Babylonian Art want to review this paper?
R. de Haan says:
July 30, 2011 at 2:24 pm
reading back from your link I see KT has written the following
‘The part not so well known is the pollution (aerosol), but that is
small. Nearly all of the variations in water vapor and clouds, except for those
affected by aerosol, are a response to the weather and climate variations; they
are NOT a forcing’
re the first sentence – how can one dismiss something as simply ‘small’?
re the second – water vapor and clouds are not a forcing, but when affected by aerosols they are? – am off to visit confused.com……..
answers on a postcard to
‘WTF does it all Mean’
IPCC
Switzerland
Wait a minute…….
Amazing how much has yet to be done after all “The Science is settled”. The Science still seems very restless to me.
Keep going at them Dr. Roy, we are in awe of your persistence.
As I read through this thread, paying attention to the negative comments in general, R Gates and Brian in particular, I notice that the criticism can be boiled down to a few devastating tactics:
o change the subject to something unrelated
o point out that even some big name politicians think agw is real
o complain that the journal isn’t reputable
o complain that there doesn’t appear to be any peer review process
o claim that only comments by people with PhD’s matter
o claim that the paleo record is of more importance than actual, current, real, directly measured temperatures
o complain that the results can’t be reproduced because ( roflmao ) the description isn’t detailed enough to replicate results.
I couldn’t help but notice that there hasn’t been one criticism, not a single comment, not even a vague one, saying that the results are invalid and giving a reason why. Not one single explanation of anything in the paper that would point to factors not considered, math that was wrongly done, data that had errors in it, data that was excluded and should not have been, data that was included and should not have been, data that was compared to models that were measuring something else and so shouldn’t have been compared…..
Nothing. Nada. Not one solitary criticism of anything about the SCIENCE presented.
The models claim to be able to predict how much heat escapes the earth under various conditions, and based on 11 years of data measuring how much heat escapes from the earth…they got it wrong.
Clearly George Bush’s opinions on WMD, “the war is over”, and AGW all trump the facts? That’s the best you guys can come up with? Wow.
Dr Spencer (don’t know if you read the comments),
As an ‘average non-science human’ I want to thank yourself and your colleagues who are fighting against massive pressure, deceit and money to get the truth on AGW out there. There are a LOT of people like myself out in the world, who can tell there’s a political agenda behind the UN, IPCC, Trenberth et all and our Govts. Keep up the good work and remember one little thing: there is a lot of support for the work you guys are doing to bring down this political agenda, and bring cred back to science.
Gavin Schmidt has not logically connected the implications of the paleoclimatic data with what we are observing now. The gradual climate changes and the cyclic abrupt climate changes occurred are known to have occurred in the paleoclimatic record occurred for a physical reason.
The modern satellite observational evidence indicates the atmospheric feedback mechanism resists change. (Feedback is negative.) If that is a fact, then there is based on the paleoclimatic record a massive forcing mechanism that abrupt cyclically abruptly cools or warms the planet in addition to cyclic forcing function that warms and cools the planet. All of the past interglacial periods have ended abruptly. Solar cycle 24 is an abrupt change to the solar cycle. If Svensmark’s hypothesized mechanism is correct the planet should cool. Marshall’s analysis indicates in the past planetary cloud cover closely track GCR up until roughly 1994. At that time there was significant increase in solar wind bursts that remove cloud forming ions by creating a space charge differential in the ionosphere. The solar wind bursts have abated. The planet has not cooled however.
The fact that the planet has not cooled indicates something is happening to suppress the Svensmark mechanism. (i.e. GCR is high something must be removing the ions that are created.)
The extreme AGW crowd appeal to positive feedback to amplify small internal forcing changes which amplify the random and internal changes to explain the paleoclimatic observation that however is not what is observed. (The statement is if there is not massive positive feedback we (let say Gavin Schmidt for example) cannot explain the observation does not prove the feedback is positive.) Positive feedback creates a system that will oscillate widely. That is not what is observed. During the glacial phase the sensitivity is higher but still negative as the Canadian and European ice sheets are at lower latitudes and low elevation and hence melt if the temperature changes at the margin of the ice sheet. The swings in temperature are greater during the glacial phase due to substantial ice sheet melting at the margin of the ice sheet. What is observed in the glacial period is consistent with a strong external forcing function.
The discussion of feedbacks is still stuck in the rut of the flawed assumption of linearity. Climate is a nonlinear oscillatory system. As such, the effects of feedbacks, positive and negative, is quite different to those in a linear system.
In a nonlinear-nonequilibrium dynamic system, negative feedback produces complex structure and attractors with fractal pattern – not the cancellation of any departure from stasis (Lindzen’s ironic “climate perfection of the early 20th century”). Likewise positive feedback is not unlimited and eternal, leading to either a plazma or absolute zero, but such positive feedbacks are time limited and eventually “saturate”, causing reactive opposite positive feedbacks, the result being regular, monotonic oscillation, and the suppression of the complex fractal structure associated with negative feedbacks.
(In such chaotic-nonlinear systems negative feedback goes by other names such as friction, damping or dissipation.)
The climate temperature wavetrain can be seen as the result of the competing effects of negative and positive feedbacks, with the complexity from negative damping masking periodicities from the reactive or excitable positive components.
The most fundamental “given” of the system is that it oscillates. That is what oscillators do. The character of the oscillation is determined by the character of the feedbacks.
Bob Tisdale says:
July 30, 2011 at 9:19 am
A note to Trenberth and Fasullo : That’s as far as I read. Your post began with nonsensical name calling, so I assumed the rest was nonsense.
I hate to add an AOL-style comment, but … me too.
I checked the documentation on the MPI ECHAM5 model and find no discussion on ENSO.
Appeal to authority much?
It doesn’t matter how many were too PC, paid off, intimidated, or brainwashed to take it.
davidmhoffer says:
July 30, 2011 at 4:47 pm
I couldn’t help but notice that there hasn’t been one criticism, not a single comment, not even a vague one, saying that the results are invalid and giving a reason why.
===============================================================
ding…..ding
We have a winner……..
David, if the science was settled, they would have whipped out a paper countering it………
R. Gates says: July 30, 2011 at 2:23 pm…..
By group, I didn’t mean to imply a team working in unison, but rather, more than one person. I simply and honestly wanted to know who reviewed the paper. …..
Just as many here would like to know who reviewed many warmist papers. It is my understanding that authors of papers are not normally told who the reviewers are. So how can anyone expect to get an answer to that question?
Even if we were to find out who the reviewers are would that change the conclusions of the paper?
Hmmm…. The more I think about this “ENSO defense”, the more it seems like b.s. What does it mean that ECHAM5 handles ENSO better? Does this mean they have an ENSO flag/factor, such that when it goes positive, they force an increase in heat flux? That would be completely bogus to do for a back cast.
You see, the ability of a model to match yearly temps is not that important, really. However, the ability of the models to match HEAT FLUX at a given temperature IS CRUCIAL. So it doesn’t matter if ENSO is positive, except that this conveniently is also the only time we had any heating to speak of. So the ENSO argument boils down to throwing out the results during ENSO because of some mysterious mechanism that increases heat flux during positive ENSO, which mechanism (pay attention here) WON’T cause an increase in predicted heat flux for “regular” heating. A stretch.
Bottom line, during periods of high temperatures during the past 10 years, heat flux was higher than predicted by the models. It boils down to that.
To James D!
“It boils down to that”
Yes I agree and i have read all the comments. They are trying to lay out smokes screens. But the beauty of the paper is that its includes all radiation and that’s the central message. To claim that the ten year period is too short is defenitly someting to prove for the team. But they have the advantage to publish any rubbish they like.