Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Over at Roy Spencer’s usually excellent blog, Roy has published what could be called a hatchet job on “citizen climate scientists” in general and me in particular. Now, Dr. Roy has long been a hero of mine, because of all his excellent scientific work … which is why his attack mystifies me. Maybe he simply had a bad day and I was the focus of frustration, we all have days like that. Anthony tells me he can’t answer half of the email he gets some days, Dr. Roy apparently gets quite a lot of mail too, asking for comment.
Dr. Roy posted a number of uncited and unreferenced claims in his essay. So, I thought I’d give him the chance to provide data and citations to back up those claims. He opens with this graphic:
Dr. Roy, the citizen climate scientists are the ones who have made the overwhelming majority of the gains in the struggle against rampant climate alarmism. It is people like Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts and Donna LaFramboise and myself and Joanne Nova and Warwick Hughes and the late John Daly, citizen climate scientists all, who did the work that your fellow mainstream climate scientists either neglected or refused to do. You should be showering us with thanks for doing the work your peers didn’t get done, not speciously claiming that we are likeable idiots like Homer Simpson.
Dr. Roy begins his text by saying:
I’ve been asked to comment on Willis Eschenbach’s recent analysis of CERES radiative budget data (e.g., here). Willis likes to analyze data, which I applaud. But sometimes Willis gives the impression that his analysis of the data (or his climate regulation theory) is original, which is far from the case.
Hundreds of researchers have devoted their careers to understanding the climate system, including analyzing data from the ERBE and CERES satellite missions that measure the Earth’s radiative energy budget. Those data have been sliced and diced every which way, including being compared to surface temperatures (as Willis recently did).
So, Roy’s claim seems to be that my work couldn’t possibly be original, because all conceivable analyses of the data have already been done. Now that’s a curious claim in any case … but in this case, somehow, he seems to have omitted the links to the work he says antedates mine.
When someone starts making unreferenced, uncited, unsupported accusations about me like that, there’s only one thing to say … Where’s the beef? Where’s the study? Where’s the data?
In fact, I know of no one who has done a number of the things that I’ve done with the CERES data. If Dr. Roy thinks so, then he needs to provide evidence of that. He needs to show, for example, that someone has analyzed the data in this fashion:
Now, I’ve never seen any such graphic. I freely admit, as I have before, that maybe the analysis has been done some time in the past, and my research hasn’t turned it up. I did find two studies that were kind of similar, but nothing like that graph above. Dr. Roy certainly seems to think such an analysis leading to such a graphic exists … if so, I suggest that before he starts slamming me with accusations, he needs to cite the previous graphic that he claims that my graphic is merely repeating.
I say this for two reasons. In addition to it being regular scientific practice to cite your sources, it is common courtesy not to accuse a man of doing something without providing data to back it up.
And finally, if someone has done any of my analyses before, I want to know so I can save myself some time … if the work’s been done, I’m not interested in repeating it. So I ask Dr. Roy: which study have I missed out on that has shown what my graphic above shows?
Dr. Roy then goes on to claim that my ideas about thunderstorms regulating the global climate are not new because of the famous Ramanathan and Collins 1991 paper called “Thermodynamic regulation of ocean warming by cirrus clouds deduced from observations of the 1987 El Niño”. Dr. Roy says:
I’ve previously commented on Willis’ thermostat hypothesis of climate system regulation, which Willis never mentioned was originally put forth by Ramanathan and Collins in a 1991 Nature article.
Well … no, it wasn’t “put forth” in R&C 1991, not even close. Since Dr. Roy didn’t provide a link to the article he accuses me of “never mentioning”, I’ll remedy that, it’s here.
Unfortunately, either Dr. Roy doesn’t fully understand what R&C 1991 said, or he doesn’t fully understand what I’ve said. This is the Ramanathan and Collins hypothesis as expressed in their abstract:
Observations made during the 1987 El Niño show that in the upper range of sea surface temperatures, the greenhouse effect increases with surface temperature at a rate which exceeds the rate at which radiation is being emitted from the surface. In response to this ‘super greenhouse effect’, highly reflective cirrus clouds are produced which act like a thermostat, shielding the ocean from solar radiation. The regulatory effect of these cirrus clouds may limit sea surface temperatures to less than 305K.
Why didn’t I mention R&C 1991 with respect to my hypothesis? Well … because it’s very different from my hypothesis, root and branch.
• Their hypothesis was that cirrus clouds act as a thermostat to regulate maximum temperatures in the “Pacific Warm Pool” via a highly localized “super greenhouse effect”.
• My hypothesis is that thunderstorms act all over the planet as natural emergent air conditioning units, which form over local surface hot spots and (along with other emergent phenomena) cool the surface and regulate the global temperature.
In addition, I fear that Dr. Roy hasn’t done his own research on this particular matter. A quick look on Google shows that I have commented on R&C 1991 before. Back in 2012, in response to Dr. Roy’s same claim (but made by someone else), I wrote:
I disagree that the analysis of thunderstorms as a governing mechanism has been “extensively examined in the literature”. It has scarcely been discussed in the literature at all. The thermostatic mechanism discussed by Ramanathan is quite different from the one I have proposed. In 1991, Ramanathan and Collins said that the albedos of deep convective clouds in the tropics limited the SST … but as far as I know, they didn’t discuss the idea of thunderstorms as a governing mechanism at all.
And regarding the Pacific Warm Pool, I also quoted the Abstract of R&C1991 in this my post on Argo and the Ocean Temperature Maximum. So somebody’s not searching here before making claims …
In any case, I leave it to the reader to decide whether my hypothesis, that emergent phenomena like thunderstorms regulate the climate, was “originally put forth” in the R&C 1991 Nature paper about cirrus clouds, or not …
Finally, Dr. Roy closes with this plea:
Anyway, I applaud Willis, who is a sharp guy, for trying. But now I am asking him (and others): read up on what has been done first, then add to it. Or, show why what was done previously came to the wrong conclusion, or analyzed the data wrong.
That’s what I work at doing.
But don’t assume you have anything new unless you first do some searching of the literature on the subject. True, some of the literature is paywalled. Sorry, I didn’t make the rules. And I agree, if research was public-funded, it should also be made publicly available.
First, let me say that I agree with all parts of that plea. I do my best to find out what’s been done before, among other reasons in order to save me time repeating past work.
However, many of my ideas are indeed novel, as are my methods of analysis. I’m the only person I know of, for example, to do graphic cluster analysis on temperature proxies (see “Kill It With Fire“). Now, has someone actually done that kind of analysis before? Not that I’ve seen, but if there is, I’m happy to find that out—it ups the odds that I’m on the right track when that happens. I have no problem with acknowledging past work—as I noted above, I have previously cited the very R&C 1991 study that Dr. Roy accuses me of ignoring.
Dr. Roy has not given me any examples of other people doing the kind of analysis of the CERES data that I’m doing. All he’s given are claims that someone somewhere did some unspecified thing that he claims I said I thought I’d done first. Oh, plus he’s pointed at, but not linked to, Ramanathan & Collins 1991, which doesn’t have anything to do with my hypothesis.
So all we have are his unsupported claims that my work is not novel.
And you know what? Dr. Roy may well be right. My work may not be novel. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been wrong … but without specific examples, he is just handwaving. All I ask is that he shows this with proper citations.
Dr. Roy goes on to say:
But cloud feedback is a hard enough subject without muddying the waters further. Yes, clouds cool the climate system on average (they raise the planetary albedo, so they reduce solar input into the climate system). But how clouds will change due to warming (cloud feedback) could be another matter entirely. Don’t conflate the two.
I ask Dr. Roy to please note the title of my graphic above. It shows how the the clouds actually change due to warming. I have not conflated the two in the slightest, and your accusation that I have done so is just like your other accusations—it lacks specifics. Exactly what did I say that makes you think I’m conflating the two? Dr. Roy, I ask of you the simple thing I ask of everyone—if you object to something that I say, please QUOTE MY WORDS, so we can all see what you are talking about.
Dr. Roy continues:
For instance, let’s say “global warming” occurs, which should then increase surface evaporation, leading to more convective overturning of the atmosphere and precipitation. But if you increase clouds in one area with more upward motion and precipitation, you tend to decrease clouds elsewhere with sinking motion. It’s called mass continuity…you can’t have rising air in one region without sinking air elsewhere to complete the circulation. “Nature abhors a vacuum”.
Not true. For example, if thunderstorms alone are not sufficient to stop an area-wide temperature rise, a new emergent phenomenon arises. The thunderstorms will self-assemble into “squall lines”. These are long lines of massed thunderstorms, with long canyons of rising air between them. In part this happens because it allows for a more dense packing of thunderstorms, due to increased circulation efficiency. So your claim above, that an increase of clouds in one area means a decrease in another area, is strongly falsified by the emergence of squall lines.
In addition, you’ve failed to consider the timing of onset of the phenomena. A change of ten minutes in the average formation time of tropical cumulus makes a very large difference in net downwelling radiation … so yes, contrary to your claim, I’ve just listed two ways the clouds can indeed increase in one area without a decrease in another area.
So, examining how clouds and temperatures vary together locally (as Willis has done) really doesn’t tell you anything about feedbacks. Feedbacks only make sense over entire atmospheric circulation systems, which are ill-defined (except in the global average).
Mmm … well, to start with, these are not simple “feedbacks”. I say that clouds are among the emergent thermoregulatory phenomena that keep the earth’s temperature within bounds. The system acts, not as a simple feedback, but as a governor. What’s the difference?
- A simple feedback moves the result in a certain direction (positive or negative) with a fixed feedback factor. It is the value of this feedback factor that people argue about, the cloud feedback factor … I say that is meaningless, because what we’re looking at is not a feedback like that at all.
- A governor, on the other hand, uses feedback to move the result towards some set-point, by utilizing a variable feedback factor.
In short, feedback acts in one direction by a fixed amount. A governor, on the other hand, acts to restore the result to the set-point by varying the feedback. The system of emergent phenomena on the planet is a governor. It does not resemble simple feedback in the slightest.
And the size of those emergent phenomena varies from very small to very large on both spatial and temporal scales. Dust devils arise when a small area of the land gets too hot, for example. They are not a feedback, but a special emergent form which acts as an independent entity with freedom of motion. Dust devils move preferentially to the warmest nearby location, and because they are so good at cooling the earth, like all such mechanisms they have to move and evolve in order to persist. Typically they live for some seconds to minutes and then disappear. That’s an emergent phenomenon cooling the surface at the small end of the time and distance scales.
From there, the scales increase from local (cumulus clouds and thunderstorms) to area-wide (cyclones, grouping of thunderstorms into “squall lines”) to regional and multiannual (El Nino/La Nina Equator-To-Poles warm water pump) to half the planet and tens of years (Pacific Decadal Oscillation).
So I strongly dispute Dr. Roy’s idea that “feedbacks only make sense over entire atmospheric circulation systems”. To start with, they’re not feedbacks, they are emergent phenomena … and they have a huge effect on the regulation of the climate on all temporal and spatial scales.
And I also strongly dispute his claim that my hypothesis is not novel, the idea that thunderstorms and other emergent climate phenomena work in concert planet-wide to maintain the temperature of the earth within narrow bounds.
Like I said, Dr. Roy is one of my heroes, and I’m mystified by his attack on citizen scientists in general, and on me in particular. Yes, I’ve said that I thought that some of my research has been novel and original. Much of it is certainly original, in that I don’t know of anyone else who has done the work in that way, so the ideas are my own.
However, it just as certainly may not be novel. There’s nothing new under the sun. My point is that I don’t know of anyone advancing this hypothesis, the claim that emergent phenomena regulate the temperature and that forcing has little to do with it.
If Dr. Roy thinks my ideas are not new, I’m more than willing to look at any citations he brings to the table. As far as I’m concerned they would be support for my hypothesis, so I invite him to either back it up or back it off.
Best regards to all.
w.
Seeing this play out reminds me of what happened between writer Stephen Ambrose (Band of Brothers) and his critics in the academic historian community. Ambrose took facts and wrote a story around them in a way that brought history alive and made it interesting to common everyday folks. He had a real gift and was villified for it by historians.
In a way, Willis is doing the same thing. BUT… even Ambrose knew the actual facts before writing. I see nothing wrong with what Dr. Roy said other than he probably should have said it privately. Conducting research always starts with assessing what’s been done in the past… good or bad. That way the new research can build upon what’s already been done and avoid problems that were found.
The scientist-activist is dangerous to science, as anyone who has a good impression of what science is and what it ought to be can see through the activist prostituting it to his or her own ends. It puts lay people off as impressions of science derive from curiosity, hankering for insight and respect for those who work towards it.
Repelled thus from science, one encounters a self-described antithesis: an amateur, pursuing knowledge for its own sake, driven solely by curiosity and speaking the local dialect.
I hate to defend a man who cannot take a slightest criticism in stride, and insults with impunity anyone who disagrees with him about anything, but… there is no worse attitude than “I am a real official scientist, and you are not, therefore shut up.”
Many scientific breakthroughs have been achieved by “amateurs” and ridiculed by “professional scientists.” Anyone remotely familiar with the history of science knows that by heart. Anyone familiar with the human condition understands also that discoverers and pioneers, “amateurs” and “professionals” alike, can display execrable character flaws.
Three points.
1 – I don’t know about Willis, but I would be quite honoured to be compared to Homer Simpson rather than Hansen. First, because Homer probably knows more science than I do, and second because the child-like wonder with which Homer approaches the world has always been a marker of the best researchers in the business. Newton, Faraday, Feynman; they all used to say that they really didn’t know what was going on….
2 – I don’t think that Dr Spencer has accused Willis of plagiarism, so much as warned everyone that there was a lot of other work in this area which needed considering. The money quotes are these:
The reason I am picking on Willis a little bit here is that his posts sometimes lead to comments like this:
“Geez – if I was one of the hoard of IPCC enthusiastic fools, this would be downright embarrassing. I sure wouldn’t want my mom to know I was so ineffective that some guy named Willis sits in his den and does more and better work than my entire IPCC crowd of hundreds of scientists, economists, psychologists, train engineers, tree surgeons, etc does in 4-5 years.”
C’mon, folks! Do you really think that of the billions of dollars spent on designing, launching, and keeping these satellite instruments going, that no one thought to analyze the data? Really? That’s why hundreds of scientists and engineers collaborated on such projects in the first place!
Note that Dr Spencer is NOT saying that Willis is claiming that ‘all the IPCC are incompetent’. He is saying that some people respond to Willis by smearing ALL climate science. And that can create a difficult working atmosphere for the paid researchers who ARE trying to get it right. Note that he later says:
..Anyway, I applaud Willis, who is a sharp guy, for trying. But now I am asking him (and others): read up on what has been done first, then add to it. Or, show why what was done previously came to the wrong conclusion, or analyzed the data wrong.
This seems a reasonably polite request. I interpret it to be aimed, not solely at Willis, but also at the generality of WUWT, who, he believes, are in danger of thinking that all current climate science is wrong and that WUWT holds the only real truth.
To a large extent, of course, this is originally the fault of some researchers working in the IPCC. It was the ‘team’ who started to use politics to push their agenda, and many WUWT readers are happy to return the compliment. This is, of course, bad for science on both sides. It is an unfortunate necessity nowadays, and I depreciate it.
The third point? Oh, just that a much better author than I has said (I rely on memory):
“A little insolence is good for the Great Arts”…
JJ:
In your post at October 9, 2013 at 11:05 pm you say to Willis
That would make more sense if your writings demonstrated that you had read R&C 1991 and understood it. Clearly, you have not and you do not.
The Eschenbach hypothesis is very different from anything in R&C 1991. And it is very clear that Willis knows and understands the contents of R&C 1991: in my first post in this thread I explained that I know this for certain fact.
And before you redirect your daft assertion at me, I first read R&C 1991 on the day it came out, I still have my copy of Nature magazine in which I first read it, and I have referenced it in peer reviewed publication. Also, since you claim that Appeal to Authority is valid, I retain a copy of the email from Mike McCracken where he commends a summary I provided in the late 1990s of R&C 1991 and the series of papers which attempted to dispute that paper.
Your posts in this thread amount to misleading character assassination of Willis Eschenbach provided from behind a cowardly shield of anonymity. Whatever motivation you have for this behaviour, it is despicable.
Importantly, those – including me – who respect both Roy Spencer and Willis Eschenbach hope their disagreement can soon be resolved. Your series post in this thread inhibit that.
Richard
I stopped reading Willis’ posts a while back when it was apparent that his pursuit of climate science gold nuggets, while commendable for being dogged, lacked the substance and overall accuracy one sees in truly scientific papers. Too often have I seen Willis come back to a blog entry and correct a major underpinning of his original thoughts. If you wish to maintain credibility, that is something that cannot be done even once, let alone several times a year.
What Roy Spencer wrote was not derogatory toward Willis, but an acknowledgement that the casual layperson (such as Willis and myself) does not have the overall academic expertise and access that would allow for new ground to be covered in a paper. That is all that he is saying, and anything else that is being read into his statements is an attempt to push blame for being honest onto the messenger.
Dear Willis,
We all want a pat on the back from people we respect. I can see why you feel you got a slap on the face this time. When I read Dr, Spencers article i hoped you would not take it too personal as it was clearly not the feedback you hoped for. I’m not competent to judge between you but let it be clear nothing of the critique of your science has any bearing on how I regard you as person, writer or (amateur) scientist.
I still apreciate your article and admire how you with appearant ease retrieved data, analysed and presented your findings.
I still also apreciate Dr. Spencer who takes the time and trouble to educate the Public on climate physics and what he sees as errors in the mainstream Climate reserarch. Far to few scientists have the energy to be volontary educators in this time of publish or perish. Especially in the infectous area of climate science where a taking a public position like Dr. Spencers will cause him real harm.
I’m not asking you to grin and bear it but will remind you that a discussion on the interpretation of details in different articles takes time and energy that is better spent on new science. I for one woudl much prefer to read about that.
Amazing number of responses to this little spat. Both of you are wonderful. Can we all stop and go home now.
The greatest obstacle to progress is the illusion of knowledge
I have had dealings with both Roy and Willis and will not opine on this matter. I like them both.
They will probably make peace in due time and do not need our help or our criticism.
I suggest that his sort of forum (WUWT, Climate Audit, etc.) provides, with some modification, a better model for the peer review process than the formal peer (pal) review practised by the “eminent” scientific journals.
The obvious corruption of these scientific journals, through scientist-activist misbehaviour, is apparent from the ClimateGate emails, the utter screed that had been published on climate science in once-respected journals, and the alarmist nonsense that appears in the IPCC reports, particularly the SPM’s.
I suggest that the peer review process needs to be open to more (reasonably qualified) participants, much more transparent, and thus much less susceptible to corrupting influences.
I suggest that climate science has experienced a “New Dark Age” and is slowly emerging from the abyss, in no small part due to the activities of “citizen scientists”, enabled by the internet, publicly-available satellite data, and also by the exceptionally low standards of the “official“ climate science community, too many of whom produced and lauded the aforementioned screed.
The mainstream media, with a few notable exceptions, also deserve censure for their hysterical promotion of global warming mania, and their lack of competence and objectivity. Based on scientific principles, global warming hysteria was unbelievable when it appeared in the 1980’s, and is even more unbelievable today after about two decades of “lack of warming”, despite ever-increasing atmospheric CO2.
I finally suggest, as I have since 2002, that Earth is entering a natural cooling cycle that may or may not be severe, some energy systems, particularly in Europe, have been crippled by “green energy nonsense” related to global warming mania, and some societies are ill-prepared for imminent global cooling.
At a minimum, “green energy” nonsense should stop now, energy systems should be shored up on an emergency basis, and serious efforts devoted to frost-resistant crops and other such low-cost, high impact mitigative measures. It has also been suggested that the storage of grains should be accelerated – this would seem to be a better alternative than the current practise of converting huge amounts of grain into fuel ethanol.
Regards to all, Allan
Willis has a refreshingly clean and engaging writing style. It is easier to learn from him than it is from some others.
I do not know who penned the following from the IPCC AR5 draft of WGII –
http://www.geoffstuff.com/Funny_talk.JPG
(It’s a jpg because I don’t have a key to unlock the Adobe stuff that IPCC used. It’s parked on my rudimentary web site that is used for passing on quotes).
I have no idea if this IPCC text is meaningful or not. It’s practically incomprehensible.
………………………………
It comes in a section containing astonishing new IPCC discoveries such as –
“Both male and female deaths are recorded after flooding …”
“Tropical cyclones (….) cause high winds, torrential rains, high waves and storm surge…….”
“The mean of the individual-realization mean and variability values are (sic) then calculated across the realizations of that model in each period, yielding model-mean mean and variability values derived from the timeseries of each realization (rather than from the mean of the timeseries).”
“Robust evidence demonstrates that low per capita incomes, economic contraction, and inconsistent state institutions, all of which are sensitive to climate change, are associated with the incidence of civil wars.”
………………………………
Really, what were they smoking?
Willis, please press on.
I dare you to read Chapter 7 from the IPCC AR5 Report that deals with Cloud Feedbacks (and water vapor, lapse rate, aerosols, etc.)
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5_WGI-12Doc2b_FinalDraft_Chapter07.pdf
You will not come away with a better understanding of what is really going on, just the many vagaries of the assumptions used in climate models to simulate high cloud, low cloud, clouds, mid-latitude clouds, tropical clouds, more clouds, grade-school illustrations, stratiform convective interactions. No data or observations is presented but the cloud feedback is slightly positive, even though they are uncertain of its strength or even sign.
pokerguy says: Willis, you’re just not as important as you obviously think you are.
I have an enormous amount of respect for Willis, I HAD an enormous amount of respect for Dr. Spencer and I have NO respect for Pokerguy….
Willis Eschenbach says:
October 9, 2013 at 4:01 pm
Dodgy Geezer says:
October 10, 2013 at 3:45 am
Willis, it’s important to see both images, (linked by Fedoras). Then apply some positive spin. On the left is a folksy character loved by millions. The other is a tired scientist whose science is increasingly rejected who has to resort to public protest to attract the attention of thousands.
The colonial song “Yankee Doodle” was the rebels’ reaction to the derisive tag applied by the redcoats to what they saw as upstarts who would flee for their lives when facing a well disciplined British line.
You’d do better developing a kinship with Homer Simpson, or Yankee Doodle, or whatever a west coast analog is than obsessing over Roy’s attempt at cute humor.
So much of science as practiced in the “publish or perish” environment is the relentless climbing of ladders leaned up against the wrong wall. And climate science is a perfect illustration of this. Willis is more of an observational thinker and not blinded by the professional requirement that he engage in the everlasting searching for the next rung, without regard for where the ladder is actually stationed. He says in effect, “Hey guys, lets put this ladder over here and compare it to the real world. This is how it looks to me!” Sometimes he is inevitably wrong. But sometimes he may be right. But the crowd that just keeps climbing, rung by rung, up the wrong wall (C02 as the climate governor, ulcers, and tectonics for example) are always wrong.
Now a fellow who keeps wanting to move your ladder is a nuisance to the people climbing it. They have to keep climbing back down and and explaining to him and everyone else why the wall they are leaned against is the right one. Or they can just suggest that no on should pay attention to him because he’s failed to do the proper rung by rung exercises. That’s the easy way out and saves you the trouble of fundamental analysis or communication. And you could also loudly compare the ladder mover to the world’s most famous no nothing doofus. That would surely convince the world of the high regard you had for that “sharp” fellow and amateur ladder movers in general. /sarc
But more to the point. Spencer has made very specific criticisms of Willis’s work which appear to be flat out wrong. He needs to make his case or retract and apologize. It appears to the casual observer that he’s guilty of exactly the thing he accused Willis of. And what’s with that cartoon and the Hansen picture? It makes no sense. What is his point with that? Does he just detest everyone?
Isn’t it amazing how rapidly social mores are changing? How we are reverting, in our new virtual environment, to a truly egalitarian forum in which a functioning and natural meritocracy is arising? WUWT has to be one of the most important of many worthy examples of this process of change online. A process that is seeing the legacy establishment lose control of the narrative.
And that’s the nub of it, that’s what drives men (and women) on the inside of the bubble so crazy – apoplectic even. They, in their ivory towers above the line, cannot perceive that nobodies like me could possibly possess or even develop the ability to sift out the dross. To nurture discernment. Sure, I’ve stepped on many metaphorical mines in my search for truth. But every cognitive injury I have sustained has only strengthened my resolve to henceforth be more disciplined and focused in my studies. And surely that is the essence of learning. What’s more, it sure as hell develops the capacity for self-criticism. And it makes one increasingly anti-fragile, to boot (bring on the Black Swan!)…
Through this blog Anthony Watts is facilitating that process for many lurkers like me. And Willis Eschenbach and others here are creating a disciplined environment for challenging the received wisdom on a wide range of issues. Of course there are many good-hearted, hard-working men like Roy Spencer on the inside of the bubble, but their apparent monopoly on truth is being severely and swiftly eroded – ultimately to the benefit of all of us who inhabit the worlds outside of academic nerdsville.
But my appreciation of the Eschenbachs of this world does not make me a Willis groupie or ‘fanboy’. I know for sure that he and I would disagree vehemently on many important matters. It’s his intellectual discipline and irrepressible, almost childlike, inquiring mind that I respect and value. He’s earned my respect.
So sorry my dear Drs, PhDs, etc., but there are many men of my ilk and era who do not give a canine testicular appendage for the fancy abbreviations before or after your names. In my experience, they are quite frankly meaningless in the quest for wisdom. Often they in fact denote an arrogance and pride that stand in the way of wisdom. Fortunately there are many men and women of note – both with and without ‘credentials’ – that possess a humility and humanity that engenders respect in folk like me (I don’t feel I’m being treated like the idiot I quite probably am – ‘he is no friend that guides not, but ridicules, when one speaks from ignorance’).
So the argument that one must work within the system to be taken seriously, and if you refuse you’re being narcissistic, is specious in the extreme. What such people mean of course is that one must work within the system to be taken seriously by others in the system. Sure, there may be a place for that. Many are clearly happy with that particular dynamic. But as you might have guessed, I’m not one of them! And I’m not alone. And I’m not being narcissistic (and yes I have painful personal experience of what NPD really involves!). There’s a myriad nobodies ‘out there’ who fly under the system’s radar, learning on the go. Developing wisdom and understanding in the school of hard knocks, otherwise known as life.
We give no automatic deference to assumed or usurped authority. You have to earn our respect, and that is not easy. It means you have to act out of a different relational code. One that is based on seeing your interlocutor as your equal and not your inferior, regardless of his or her ‘credentials’, or lack thereof. Men and women who act in such a fashion are comparable in my eyes to the ‘prophet’ featured in Albert J. Nock’s ‘Isaiah’s Job’ (well worth a read, by the way).
So that’s my take on what’s really going on here behind the scenes. Take it leave it as you see fit…
The idea of thunderstorms as some kind of tropical thermostat precedes even Ramanathan and Collins in1991. I remember a talk by Walter Munk in the mid 70’s where he was discussing thunderstorms as tropical thermostats and the general research question of why is there a limit on tropical ocean surface temperatures. He also talked about the failure of models to appropriately capture mesoscale atmospheric properties, something still true today. Unfortunately I don’t have a reference. My memory is that he was referring to somebody else’s work not his own, but something from that period should exist – even if it’s only in the grey literature.
All this misses the big point which is that trying to investigate the exact mechanism by which thunderstorms operate in the tropics is both very important and appropriate. It’s also different than the general statement that they seem to somehow act in this way. Thunderstorms are nowhere near “settled science”. Kudos to you Willis for tackling this in an interesting and informative way.
Eschenbach, I said it once before and I’ll say it once again:
Less is more…
To W. Eschenbach RE: “I would have had no problem with his accusations if they had been cited and referenced. … The accusation about Ramanathan … he didn’t give one single example of the ignorance and PLAGARISM he accused me of.
“In addition to it being good science to cite the previous work that he claims I either don’t know about OR AM STEALING FROM, it’s downright nasty to ACCUSE OF MAN OF MALFEASANCE without giving one damn example to back up the accusation. How on earth can I defend myself against such vague nastiness?” [EMPHASIS added]
RESPONSE: Dr. Spencer made a consistent pattern of remarks–NONE OF WHICH ACCUSE YOU OF “STEALING” or “MALFEASANCE.” E.G.: “But don’t assume you have anything new unless you first do some searching of the literature on the subject. True, some of the literature is paywalled. Sorry, I didn’t make the rules. And I agree, if research was public-funded, it should also be made publicly available” … “…read up on what has been done first, then add to it…”
Dr. Spencer’s statement indicates suitable research was not done…NOT that such research was done and was being attributed as original (not that it was “stolen” or “plagiarized”). Obviously, one cannot plagiarize what one hasn’t researched (“read up on what has been done first” unmistakably indicates his observation you didn’t consult pre-existing findings, hence, you couldn’t have stolen or plagiarized them as you mis-perceive him of accusing you of having done).
At worst, he’s “accusing” you of INDEPENDENTLY DEVELOPING AN ANALYSIS & REACING FINDINGS OTHERS HAVE DONE PREVIOUSLY and thinking you’ve done something new. Spencer concedes that much of what you may be ignorant about might not be readily accessible to you even if you did look (i.e. that it’s not all your fault).
That sort of thing is very common. At some point or other almost everyone will do something really neat & innovative and later learn some else got there first; pretty much everybody takes it in stride & moves along.
There’s absolutely no need to get defensive about it — esp. to the point of working hard to extract insulting meanings that simply are not there.
You have been informed by an expert in the field that you’re duplicating old work & need to go back & do more research up front to come up with something new.
And there’s no reasonable expectation that he, or anyone else, has it incumbent upon him or them to provide you with the information you either didn’t look for or couldn’t find if you did look. Or to guide you regarding techniques for finding & accessing information. If you want it, you should ask. Politely. Or go look, or look again. Or take some courses…. Foundational research that is common knowledge in the community in which it applies need not be cited.
The fact you are expressing such an expectation as an entitlement, and doing so from a self-proclaimed position of unsupportable defensiveness, indicates other issues…. Publishing this attitude is doing yourself no favors. Perhaps you should consider that, by not pointing out the specific references that ought to have been known, Dr. Spencer did you a favor — identifying these would only highlight [to everybody] the extent to which due-diligence background research is both overdue and not diligent.
richardscourtney says:
Richard, don’t go all Courtney on me :). I respect what you do here immensely, and numerous times you and I have tagged-teamed on some of the usual suspects to good effect. Pay attention to those attempting to divide the house, and do not be led astray.
The Eschenbach hypothesis is very different from anything in R&C 1991.
R&C’s hypothesis depends on increased transport of large quantities of heat from the surface to the higher atmosphere by thunderstorms. R&C’s cirrus cloud effect is driven by the latent heat released by such deep convection, providing the diabatic forcing for the vertical velocity field, and it becomes (in their opinion) a hugely negative feedback in part because the LW forcing that would otherwise constitute a positive feedback greenhouse effect at the surface is exported in that manner. In an important way, R&C’s thermostat subsumes Willis’ thermostat. That is Roy’s point, and it is valid.
And it is very clear that Willis knows and understands the contents of R&C 1991: in my first post in this thread I explained that I know this for certain fact.
No. Willis thinks that R&C91 is only about cirrus cloud albedo. Because that is all that is mentioned in the three sentence abstract. Please read Willis’ comments on Roy’s blog page to divine Willis’ understanding.
Importantly, those – including me – who respect both Roy Spencer and Willis Eschenbach hope their disagreement can soon be resolved. Your series post in this thread inhibit that.
Those of us that see value in Willis’ work understand the extent to which his tantrums detract from it, and we certainly see the harm in Willis launching on Roy Spencer, who takes more than his share of crap from the warmists of the world and does not deserve it from any of us. Willis has grossly overreacted. Resolution will come from that starting place.
JJ
Thanks, Willis. Before you posted this, I too was puzzled by Dr Spencer’s comments.
For Dr. Spencer to picture James Hansen as a “Professional climate scientist” is an example of sarcasm par excellence.
Just consider the handcuffs.
I would suggest that if Willis wants to be taken seriously as a citizen scientist, he should start behaving like a proper scientist.
He should write up his thoughts into a proper scientific paper with the mathematics, data and processing clearly defined. This should then be presented for peer review at a respectable journal to see if they meet an acceptable intellectual level.
Writing folksy articles, with incorrect maths, which he claims to be of ground breaking quality and refusing to acknowledge criticisms does not cut the mustard as respectable science.
JJ says:
October 9, 2013 at 11:05 pm
You have not read more than the three-sentence abstract of the first. How far did you get with the rest?
JJ, do you really believe the crap that you write, or are you just trying to provoke? On which grounds do you assume that Willis only read an abstract of the first? Does he need to copy the whole scientific article for you to recognise that perhaps he has read it? Or will you then assume that Willis has copied it but didn’t really read it? Gosh…
I haven’t read through all 300 posts, so please forgive if someone has already mentioned this.
In my experience, a “governor” in a mechanical systems sense, prevents a system from exceeding a predetermined maximum. It does not “move the result towards some set-point”. Willis made this reference in another post that I don’t have time to find at the moment (literally about to run out the door for work), equating a governor to a “cruise control” in a car. The two aren’t the same. “Cruise Control” or “Speed Control” DOES “move the result towards some set-point”, but doesn’t prevent the vehicle from exceeding that set point. If I step on the gas, I’ll exceed that set point. A governor will prevent me from exceeding the max allowed speed no matter how much I step on the gas.