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.
What impresses me most about all of this is the recent “flurry” of studies attempting to explain why the planet is not warming as fast as was expected. This includes increasing stratospheric aerosols and Asian pollution. http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110721_particles.html The very fact that we are debating something that wasn’t supposed to be happening in the first place is progress all by itself!
[Let me rephrase] Phil Plait-
“The first author of this work is Roy Spencer — one of the extremely few climate scientists who denies human-caused climate change, so more on [Big Oil] him in a moment — and his work has been shown to be thoroughly wrong by mainstream [Global Gruesome Greasum] climate scientists.”
And not only that but Thinkprogress can produce a geochemist that agrees with us so that trumps a Big Oil climate scientist any day so nyar nyar!
Careful there Phil or next thing you know you’ll have any old common or garden scientist sticking their two bobs worth in and the well lubricated Climatology Club can’t have that now can they?
Roy W. Spencer, Ph. “I view my job a little like a legislator, supported by the taxpayer, to protect the interests of the taxpayer and to minimize the role of government.”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/07/fundanomics-the-free-market-simplified/
Holy cow – imagine how people would respond here if a mainstream scientist said something like this.
Talk about bringing a bias into the mix here…
Bill, you have us nailed in terms of precip under both ENSO conditions. The kicker is that in NE Oregon, we need snow, not just rain. Fortunately we got a boat load of mountain snow during the La Nina winter and our rivers are full. When we are under an El Nino winter condition we get lots of winter rain in the moutains, but that leaves us high and dry for summer irrigation water.
Jose Suro says:
July 30, 2011 at 2:44 pm
“I think I understand that feedback cannot be accurately measured through observation because all the measured radiation is Net in just one bucket?”
Right, And it cannot be otherwise for the Warmista because their models are radiation models only. In other words, the only natural processes that they model are processes of radiation. There arises the problem. Feedback is not a property of radiation. Feedback is a property of natural processes such as cloud formation. Warmista cannot deal with feedback for the simple reason that their models have nothing representing natural processes such as cloud behavior. In their models, phenomena such as La Nina are “emergent properties” of radiation.
Judith Curry’s comments and conclusions regarding Spencer’s paper that she posted at her site are excellent. From the standpoints of solid science and solid scientific method, she explains that Spencer’s thesis is important. She does reject the “over the top” readings of Spencer’s thesis.
Julian Braggins says:
July 30, 2011 at 9:30 pm
“Are you sure the clouds in a La Nina episode are not just shifted? The eastern seaboard of Australia and most of the eastern half of the continent seem to have had their cloudiest period for ~30 years. The ocean temperatures have been well above the daily max on many occasions which would help to explain the cloud. OK, local weather— for half a continent.”
____
You are correct in that warmer waters pile up of the eastern half of Australia during La Nina episodes & colder PDO cycles (hence the reason for the tremendous floods this past winter). But in addition to the location of cloudiness, El Nino/La Nina cycles are not equal in their NET contribution of heat and types and locations of cloudiness. More net heat globally is transferred from ocean to atmosphere during El Nino and this can be seen quite easily in global temperature data. One can very easily think of the charging and discharging of a battery as a good example of the NET effect of the ENSO cycle, where the battery charges during La Nina, and discharges during El Nino. Now there have been studies showing a relationship between solar cycles and ENSO, such as this:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3232.1?journalCode=clim
And I’ve long suspected this is the case, and, if such studies are correct, then one might expect that during a round of La Nina’s occurring during a very quiet sun period, that the ocean battery of heat would not be recharging to quite the same level, so that during the following El Ninos, not quite as much heat will be released to the atmosphere.
Bystander:
Your comment at July 31, 2011 at 7:28 am makes no sense.
You quote Roy Spencer as having said;
“I view my job a little like a legislator, supported by the taxpayer, to protect the interests of the taxpayer and to minimize the role of government.”
Then you comment on that quotation by saying;
“Talk about bringing a bias into the mix here…”
Please explain how a person “supported by the taxpayer” to conduct honest research, and who tries to “protect the interests of the taxpayer” by his conducting honest research, is exhibiting “bias” when he attempts to “minimize the role of government” (or anybody else) in the conduct of that research.
Should he behave like the Team by bowing to “the role of government” and ‘adjust’ his findings to support what government wants? Do you think that would not be “bias”?
Richard
Holy trolling, Bystander! Nice quote mining there. It was in reference to his book “Fundamonics” and he goes on to say “my point was that a federally-funded person like myself can be against excess government spending, just as some federally-funded legislators are, that’s all.”
Besides, if a laimstream scientist ever said that I’d guess they would all freeze for eternity instead of roasting.
Climate politics gets old after awhile.
Matt Rogers says:
July 31, 2011 at 6:42 am
What impresses me most about all of this is the recent “flurry” of studies attempting to explain why the planet is not warming as fast as was expected. This includes increasing stratospheric aerosols and Asian pollution. http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110721_particles.html The very fact that we are debating something that wasn’t supposed to be happening in the first place is progress all by itself!
_____
Matt, you completely misunderstand what global climate models include, and have always included since first being developed. You also fail to see how the degree of confidence is high that there ought to have been more warming during the 2000-2009 period based on climate models. To search for reasons why something doesn’t happen when you think it should have, or happens when you think it should not is how you validate and refine your models.
The whole issue really is that we don’t have a “control” earth where we can leave things untouched and then alter only one variable at a time on our separate “test” earth, to see what altering just that one variable will do. The next best thing we have is our global climate models which can serve as our “control” and “test” earth. The models showed we should have warmed more than we did in the 2000-2009 period, based on the contributions to the energy balance of the planet by the additional CO2 from humans. Since the models were wrong, then they obviously missed one or more factors. It is only logical for scientists to begin looking at what those factors might have been and once identified, to plug them into the global climate models and see if they can come close to duplicating what actually occurred. When you plug in the additional aerosols from increased volcanic activity, human sources (mainly China), a quiet sun, and several La Nina’s, etc. the climate models start to come close to duplicating what the actual temperatures were.
A parallel experiment would be to ask what would have happened to the climate during the 2000-2009 period if you returned CO2 to pre-industrial levels of around 280 ppm. How much additional cooling might have occurred from the factors mentioned above?
“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.”
This has been a frequent approach parroted by all of the rank and file activists as well.
Alarmists to skeptics, “prove we are wrong.”
On this alarmists regain and demand strict adherance to scientific evidence while their eyes looking for these standards never pass in front of any mirrors.
The merry go round is spinning faster lately with academia seemingly complelled to launch more frequent and more embellished chants as if they think that sells. All it id doing is massaging their own delusions to get them through another day.
It’s as many of them feel if they pull out the lethal injection of lying that is slowly killing their careers they’ll be ruined quicker by the truth.
RC is a good barometer for how the climate community feel about such papers. Today, they have this posted:
Predictable.
Yes, the debates now sounds like this:
Realist; This study shows that the climate models vastly over estimate the amount of heat trapped by GHG’s. AGW is not nearly as significant as the models predict.
Crazed and Angry Group of Warmists; Look at all the drowning polar bears, the end is nears!
R; Uhm….that turned out to be a hoax, now about this data-
CAGW; Have you seen the list of island atolls that will be drowned by global warming?
R; Well island atolls float actually, now about this data-
CAGW; This data didn’t come from a peer reviewed publication so we don’t have to look at it.
R; Well publication and being right or being wrong don’t have much to do with each other, and nobody has been able to show where this study is wrong.
CAGW; I’ve heard you believe in religion. That makes you stupid.
R; Well I see no reason to debate what I belive in or of it makes me stupid when all we have to do is look at this data and we can see that-
CAGW; You probably vote Republican too. Did you know that stupid people are more likely to vote Republican?
R; Well how I vote doesn’t really change the data here at all, so how about taking a look-
CAGW; Do you know that George Bush believes in global warming?
R; Uhm… yeah…. and he believes in religion too, so by your argument-
CAGW; There’s no point looking at your results because they are based on a flawed model.
R; No, they are based on actual measurements and then compared to a model to see if it is flawed….
CAGW; So you admit it, the model you used is flawed.
R: Yes, the model I usd is YOUR model, which is flawed.
CAGW; What flaws did you introduce into our model to make is flawed? Did you also adjust the data? Do you have any idea what the scientific methos is about at all?
R; Yes, I know what the scientific method is, in fact I-
CAGW; So you admit that you producted the results despite knowiing what the scientific method is. Do you even know how many polar bears are drowning? You should have your degree revoked.
R; I’ll give up my degreee if you can show one single solitary scientific rebuttal to my data.
CAGW; so, you really don’t care what happens to the polar bears at all, do you?
Another blog picking up Dr. Spencer’s work.
Climate Change May Be Less Severe Than Predicted
Posted on: Sunday, 31 July 2011, 06:10 CDT
A University of Alabama climatologist is claiming that temperature-monitoring satellites have revealed “a huge discrepancy” between global warming predictions and the actual levels of heat contained within the atmosphere.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/2087781/climate_change_may_be_less_severe_than_predicted/index.html?source=r_science
Blade says:
July 31, 2011 at 2:12 am
LOL! RINO Republicrats. The breaking news would be if the any of the three of them were skeptics!
Previous commenters mentioned your Appeal to Authority. I have a different take on it …
George Bush :: Appeal to Inferiority
Mitt Romney :: Appeal to Sorority
John McCain :: Appeal to Seniority
Really? Bush, McCain, and Romney aren’t conservative enough? Sounds like bad news for the GOP. A more appropriate response would be to point out the fact that you don’t have to be a Republican to be a skeptic, either.
noaaprogrammer says:
July 30, 2011 at 10:17 pm
“Don’t you remember that the temperature of the Earth’s interior is at millions and millions of degrees?! Quite a heat sink!”
Ah, but that is impossible. If the interior is millions of degrees, and the surface is at, say 293 K, then the suface cannot heat the interior.
Sorry, could’nt help it. Shouldn’t be chipping away on a fellow sceptic !
Keep up the work Mr. Spencer. I’m glad your shooting for the same low goal as the other Team.
We don’t want to listen to anything those crazy Creationists and IDers have to say because the science of Evolution is settled. How does it go again? Once upon a time Gaia had this Big Bang and all the water suddenly appeared for some of the amoeba to crawl out of onto the land in Africa and evolve and spread out into intelligent evolutionary folk you all see about you today, which naturally means some are more evolved than others…err..no.. that’s wrong because God said all creatures were created equal..err..no that was the equally evolved Karl Marx that pointed out the obvious, which naturally means we need a whole host of positive discrimination policies…err..
Well that’s cleared that little lot up for us all and now we can move on to the evolving science of climate change.
R. Gates wrote:
You also fail to see how the degree of confidence is high that there ought to have been more warming during the 2000-2009 period based on climate models. To search for reasons why something doesn’t happen when you think it should have, or happens when you think it should not is how you validate and refine your models.
So we can agree the models are not validated and need further refining. Thus why should we take actions based on the output of these unvalidated and unrefined models? Confidence in the models may have been high, but apparently misplaced. As your own words indicate. A wise person would thus conclude that we should have LOW confidence in the predicted future as indicated by these unvalidated, unrefined models.
R Gates said
“It is only logical for scientists to begin looking at what those factors might have been and once identified, to plug them into the global climate models and see if they can come close to duplicating what actually occurred. When you plug in the additional aerosols from increased volcanic activity, human sources (mainly China), a quiet sun, and several La Nina’s, etc. the climate models start to come close to duplicating what the actual temperatures were.”
Are you suggesting they know the amounts, the right assumptions and have the ability to accurately “plug in” layers of other factors and come out the other end with reliable duplication of observations?
Oh please. I am a simple lay person but have read much. I find your imagination and confidence in climate modeling to be near fantasy like.
Furthermore I don’t remember ever reading any evidence that a 280 ppm CO2 today would be mean any noticable difference in the climate.
You seem to have a knack for embellishing the refinement level of climate science.
R. Gates writes:
When you plug in the additional aerosols from increased volcanic activity, human sources (mainly China), a quiet sun, and several La Nina’s, etc. the climate models start to come close to duplicating what the actual temperatures were.
Wait a minute. I thought the drumbeat was that solar input was basically irrelevant, and that aerosols are a non-problem as well. Now we’re adding back in the sensitivity and effect of those? Are they so great they can cover the supposed contribution from CO2? If so, then is CO2 the actual thing that should be concern?
It APPEARS Trenberth IS ALWAYS CONDESCENDING WHEN IT COME TO ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW HE STRIKES ME AS A GUY THAT HAS AN AGENDA TO PROTECT.
” Finally Gavin Schmidt claims that it’s the paleoclimate record that tells us how sensitive the climate system is, not the current satellite data. ”
Richard Alley sez:
“This staff member is siting there telling me: ‘I didn’t take science, I don’t know science, I don’t like science. I’m going to tell you that you’re basing global warming on a hockey stick.’
Alley: “No we are not! We’re basing it on something that a satellite measures.”
25:30
Hell no.
Yep.
Well naturally! But you do have to admit that the Democratic-Socialist party attracts alarmists the same way a dung pile attracts flies.
Admittedly, Bush, McCain, Romney are not identical triplets. Two of the three pay lip service to the Second Amendment, but none of them give a crap about the Ninth and Tenth, which are the chief limiting agents preventing the Federal government from turning Feral. So no, they are not ‘conservative’ enough (your word), especially at this juncture where the FedGov must either be cut to the bone to its Constitutional definition or it will completely devour the country.
I’m not vaguely interested in the word ‘conservative’ and even less enthusiastic about the GOP Republicrats or Democratic Socialist ‘parties’. It was only 16 years ago when conservative and Liberal completely swapped meanings. In 1995, the incoming young turks were the liberals trying to radically change the FedGov, Contract With America, balance the budget and devolve power from DC to the states, while the establishment liberals became the conservative defenders of the status quo, fighting every change. So the adjectives are truly meaningless unless one is a party hack.
All three of them, Bush, McCain, and Romney are establishment types. If you need proof you are not paying attention.