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.
Intelligence is where you find it and sometimes the most profound come from unlikely sources. For example, years ago it was a production operator with an 8th grade education that came to me and said that the engineers had better soon design a method of electronically determining the quality of the integrated circuits she was inspecting with a microscope because each new generation ‘chip’ had smaller features. Specifically, she said “It will soon be like trying to find missing garbage cans while flying over Los Angles.” That comment directly led to the creation of whole product lines of circuit and board testers. Noteworthy was that none of the PhD (and the many more BS and MS degreed) scientists and engineers on staff saw it coming.
While the odds of the presence of increased intelligence is higher in degreed individuals, there is still a vast range in intelligence as typified by medical doctors. It also seems that ego comes with having ‘toughed out’ a demanding scientific education yet it is ego that can blind even the most competent. As we get older the exposure to the medical profession increases. It has become easy to see the need for a “second opinion” because doctors range from ‘how did that bozo get a degree’ to the truly brilliant. That range of intelligence (and ego) certainly exists in ‘Climate Scientists.
Willis’s work is not only insightful but he has the ability to clearly communicate in a way that gets the attention of the non-scientist which arms them with concise ‘talking points’ to counter the prevailing propaganda. This latter point is the true brilliance of Willis because climate debate has moved into the political arena and that is where the ultimate decisions will be made.
l problems. An early learning is that intelligence is where you find it and sometimes it comes from unlikely sources.
RE: Ken’s comments at 7:02 — Ken, Your comments give a picture of your character. Willis’ complaint really hinges on the utter disregard, nay disrespect, that Dr. Roy displayed in his post. And you pile on, waving your pompoms and cheering wildly, showing your support for the arrogant, ego driven put down that the post really was. I respect smart people. I loath smart people who want to tell me how smart they are and then try to pat me on the head as if I were ten years old. Your ‘I don’t pay attention to what it is, I just want to know who it is’ attitude is reminiscent of every status quo defending, snarky, put down artist that has ever inhabited academe. They aren’t teachers and they don’t care if the students learn. They just want to be enthroned with the aura of settled science glowing from their closed minds as they lord it over those beneath their recognition and beneath their self appointed station. The presumption to know without asking what another has read or understands is the height of hypocrisy. Pretending to be all knowing while knowing nothing at all about another individual (read citizen) is too lay your own ignorance bare. Why the arrogance? Why the snide? Why the supercilious? Why not join the rest of the mortals who slog through this life? We’d welcome your company once you stop sneering.
pbh
Well I have read Spencer’s Take Two and I don’t see that it has added anything new unless you count the CEPEX reference. Still no chapter and verse. Roy complains about doing other peoples’ homework (in comments) but I don’t see where this is done. There is a lot of bluster but little revelation.
“‘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.”
The rule that for every place you have rising air someplace else you have falling air is hardly falsified by the existence of squall lines Willis. In fact the squalls being in a line provides evidence of what Roy states to be true. Thunderstorms would expand chaotically if there were no such rule. I suspect that when air starts rising everywhere then we will have a real problem.
Seriously though, I don’t see Roy taking swipes at your underlying hypothesis other than noting that the CEPEX experiment arose out of the Ramanathan and Collins paper and that the issue is more complex and has been on the climate radar for a considerable period of time.
But that appears to be the case with every hypothesis so far advanced purporting to have answers about our climate system so you should not take that personally either. Once we get past that then we can build climate models that actually predicts stuff.
In the meantime its probably more useful to note that a lot of alternatives have been overllooked in the rush to certainty so your article is in fact useful and I would take Roy’s comments in a positive way as it would become more useful to include as much on the topic as possible. I think Roy was understanding about your lack of education (studying history so as to not relive it) and your lack of access to existing science on the topic. . . .both major issues and obstacles for me also.
OssQss says:
October 10, 2013 at 8:59 am
The part I loved in Dr. Roy’s latest rant is this one:
Gosh … I’ve never published one single thing that Dr. Roy and professional climate scientists didn’t already know?
Really? Not anything?
My entire corpus of work, including the parts that were published by Nature magazine and other scientific journals, was completely and entirely derivative and already known to Dr. Roy? That’s his claim, that I’ve never done any original work at all?
I give up. When a man backs himself into a corner with fingers-in-the-ears stuff like that, it means he’s lost the plot and is desperately inventing things.
I do note that other than repeating his ridiculous claim that R&C1991 is the same as the ideas I’ve advanced about emergent phenomena regulating the temperature, Dr. Roy has not pointed out one single example of what he is accusing me of. He has not pointed to one of the ideas I’ve put forwards and shown where it was already published and known.
In short, he’s just slinging more mud at the wall and hoping that some sticks.
I’ve invited him, over and over, to specify what work I’ve done that I thought was new that actually wasn’t new.
Not to wave his hand and just repeat his puerile accusations, but to actually link to my claim(s) and show how they were anticipated in the literature.
He. Has. Not. Provided. One. Single. Example.
Not one.
When he gets around to doing that (if he ever does) I’m more than happy to discuss whatever his ideas might be.
But I can’t discuss vague accusations with no specifics … and that’s all that he’s provided to date.
w.
In Roy Spencer’s rebuttal (posted this morning ) he flatly claims that “…you will find Willis talking about the Thermostat Hypothesis as being ‘his’ theory. For scientists, this would be a major faux pas.”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/10/willisgate-take-2/#comments
Yet, in Feb 2012, Willis said this:
…”Let me be clear that I am by no means the originator of the claim that there is a thermostat regulating the maximum ocean temperature. See among many others the Central Equatorial Pacific Experiment. I am merely looking at the Argo data with this thermostat in mind.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/12/argo-and-the-ocean-temperature-maximum/
I would suggest that Roy is not completely familiar with what Willis has been doing.
The most regrettable thing about this whole affair is the publicizing of fights among skeptics. While everyone may have different views about exactly how much or how little man’s activities or CO2 affect climate, I think there is general agreement that the effect is nugatory, and it does not serve our “cause” (to borrow the alarmists’ term) to disagree in this manner. It gives the AGW crowd a stick to beat skeptics with, and it violates the rules of civility (amongst ourselves, as skeptics – no holds barred with respect to the alarmists, of course) that is one of the things that distinguishes our informed discourse from the claptrap emanating from the AGW crowd.
I would respectfully point out to Dr. Spencer two things: first of all, ordinary laymen can easily see the irrationality of the AGW position if they aren’t themselves blinded by ideology. It is so obvious that it just doesn’t add up. And if you’ve lived long enough (as I think I have, at age 66) you can see simply from your life experience that the AGW meme makes no sense. Second, you don’t have to have a Ph.D. in atmospheric physics to understand the basics of things like a greenhouse effect. What I am saying is that a great deal of citizen science is possible with respect to this issue that does not require advanced degrees in the field, but merely common sense (something altogether lacking in too many academics).
As a history Ph.D., I have read enough of the historical record to see that it provides compelling evidence of past climate change that does not fit the AGW meme. This evidence alone is sufficient to debunk the AGW hypothesis, even without the hard science. I’ve also researched extensively into radical and revolutionary ideologies, which gives me some perspective on how the AGW crowd thinks (and which, incidentally, shows an amazingly close parallel between the tactics of Hitler in Germany in 1933 and our own der Fuehrer today – and of th4e AGW crowd in their efforts to suppress contrary evidence).
Let’s not forget, also, the citizen science that has led to crucial discoveries. The name Milton Humason comes to mind – a high school dropout who revolutionized stellar observation techniques, as an amateur.
Finally, dissing “citizen science” is really only a form of the ad hominem fallacy. One could be a gorilla, and if the gorilla finds the right answer to a scientific question, that answer is still right despite the gorilla’s lack of credentials. (A bit hyperbolic, maybe, but I think it makes the point.) Even if a congenital liar like der Fuehrer says 2+2 = 4, it’s still true.
In his latest tirade against me, Dr. Roy says:
Dr. Roy, what part of “cirrus clouds” are you not understanding? They are the central part of the R&C hypothesis. Here’s the purpose of the CEPEX experiment (emphasis mine)
So the CEPEX experiment was to test the R&C1991 hypothesis, which was that very high and cold cirrus clouds act as a thermostat.
Dr. Roy, if you can’t see the difference between that hypothesis about high cirrus clouds putting a lid on SSTs in the Pacific Warm Pool, and my hypothesis that thunderstorms and other emergent phenomena regulate worldwide temperatures … well, I don’t know what to say.
w.
Tucker says:
October 10, 2013 at 4:19 am
I stopped reading Willis’ posts a while back …
___________________________
In contrast, I always read WIllis’ posts. I like to keep tabs on the fellow and this is a good way to find out if he’s eaten his Wheaties. I see he’s also had banana pancakes this morning…
Willis, please do not get discouraged in your work due to hateful remarks from Dr Spencer. I can see that you may well have pissed off many a scientist for your insightful work.(jealousy is the best word for it imo)
I truly think you have been one of the brightest lights in the climate analysis. I hope I can see more of your creative and original thoughts posted here in the future.
Why should not Willis have spoken about this quietly and privately, whatever the meritsof his complaint?
Dr. Spencer is a friend of honest ethical science, a true skeptic, someone I have had the great pleasure of meeting with in person, and incredibly accomplished. To the extent that skeptics are winning in the public square it is because people Dr. Spencer have held their ground. As brilliant as Willis is, and as important as citizen scientists and journlaists have been in exposing the (many) problems with the climate consensus, this article is too much and not constructive.
richardscourtney: Then an air conditioner (ac) unit is switched on.
The feedback mechanisms in Willis’ thermostat model do not turn on and turn off. The clouds, for example, vary continuously from relatively small coverage to relatively large coverage, and they reflect, correspondingly, less or more incoming radiation. Thus they are feedbacks in the Sun-Earth climate system. The thunderstorms are spiral waves like the spiral waves that arise in many observed and simulated nigh dimensional non-linear dissipative systems, like the rotational eddies in the sea currents and like dust-devils in deserts. They convey energy from the surface and lower troposphere to the upper troposphere: if in addition they result in increased net cloud cover, they are feedbacks.
“Emergent phenomena” arise from processes in the system studied that had not previously been observed, but they are within the system. That’s why they are called “emergent”. A mushroom, to pick another example, emerges from a complex fungal network, but it is within the system; it just was not at first known to be related, so mushrooms were though to be independent entities.
Those who are supporting Spencer in this debate are overlooking the elephant in the room. You can see that elephant in a quotation from Spencer that Willis provides above:
“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).”
Is it not plain as the nose on your face that Spencer is protecting his paradigm. Spencer’s claim is not about Willis’ work or Ramanathan’s work or a comparison of the two. Rather, Spencer is dismissing (‘dismissing’ is the right word) all work that creates physical, testable hypotheses about how temperatures and clouds vary together locally. Empirical science that creates physical hypotheses about local phenomena does not belong to Spencer’s paradigm. What is Spencer’s paradigm?
Read the second sentence in the quotation. According to Spencer, cloud feedback cannot be studied locally but must be studied over entire atmospheric circulation systems defined in global averages. What does that mean? It means that Spencer’s vision of the future of studies on feedbacks consists of time-series analysis on global averages; that is, it means that the status quo in mainstream climate science will always be the status quo.
Time-series analysis and computer models are wonderful analytical tools. They are used extensively in business. However, neither of them (nor both of them together) can substitute for genuine scientific theory. Neither provide predictions; that is, neither provides predictions that meet the standards for scientific predictions.
Spencer should stop playing games and explain why he is unwilling to countenance a theory of cloud feedback that does not depend on global averages that are products of time-series analysis or computer models.
If the study of cloud feedback must use time-series analysis or computer models alone then a pause of 30 or 300 years would not count as evidence against such a study. Neither method specifies some relationship to the data, unlike scientific theory, and some statistical analysis or computer model can be found that is consistent with whatever data.
lurker, passing through laughing says:
October 10, 2013 at 10:26 am
~
____________
Science isn’t performed in secret and applied by decree. Back rooms are for politics. This forum is for science.
I’m going to put this one in the “When the Elephants Dance, get off the dance floor” category.
RC Saumarez: The thing that makes these citizen scientists proper scientists is that they publish their results in mainstream journals, expose themselves to independent criticism and defend there theses with logic.
I occasionally wish that Willis Eschenbach would write up his work for publication and publish it. However, he does good work, and he chooses to publish very little of it. He does expose his work to independent criticism, and he defends his theses with evidence and with logic.
The problem here is that Dr. Spencer posted a diatribe that was wrong on its two main counts.
Willis’ proposals fit well within the mathematical analyses and empirical studies of other high-dimensional non-linear dissipative systems. Right or wrong with respect to the actual climate, his writings make perfect sense in light of other such systems. I dislike some of his language (“thermostat”, “emergent phenomena”), but the ideas of self-organizing systems include processes such as he has hypothesized and investigated. For an example of mathematical analysis and empirical study of other spiral waves, namely ocean eddies, read “Nonlinear Physical Oceanography”, by Henk Dijkstra, pp 245-254, where he includes discussion of the Gulf Stream.
richardscourtney says:
“In 1991, Ramanathan and Collins advanced in Nature their theory of surface temperature regulation by deep moist convection in the tropics. This became known as the “Thermostat Hypothesis”, which led to a field experiment (CEPEX, 1993). Yet, on WUWT, you will find Willis talking about the Thermostat Hypothesis as being ‘his’ theory. For scientists, this would be a major faux pas.”
I fail to understand how that can be read as anything other than an accusation of plagiarism.
That is certainly your failing.
There is no accusation of plagiarism in that statement. It is instead a very kind way of pointing out to Willis that much of what is attributed to him as original is in fact his own exploration of territory that has been well mapped by previous travelers of whom Willis is woefully ignorant. That is the plain reading of the situation, and Dr Spencer has confirmed explicitly that was his intent.
If a PhD is supposed to indicate a certain level of basic competence in a subject, then somehow the system failed in the case of Mann. But then maybe the statistical incompetence he exhibited in perpetrating the Hockey Stick was intentional, not out of ignorance of the discipline. For whatever reason, Mann failed & McIntyre, et al corrected him after publication. The pal review process also failed in allowing the HS travesty to see the light of day in the first place.
IMO competence can be tested, or at least should be, through a rigorous yet fair review process of papers submitted for publication, both from amateurs & professionals. The system worked in the case over a century ago of a Swiss patent clerk’s submission of a physics paper to a journal. In this century, the process has become corrupted by government & academic scientists who support a dubious at best orthodoxy.
Willis, most of your theories are quite original & interesting, being sincere attempt to discover the way nature work by observation & reasonable logic.
Me think this is similar to a “Black Swan” or “Egg of Columbus” effect…
Willis, would you be willing to discuss /debate this with Dr. Spencer on WUWT TV?
I have proposed the same to Dr. Spencer also.
It would be an opportunity to clear the air and clarify that of which can be far too easily misinterpreted in text.
All being subject to project support from Anthony in the end.
I think it would be much healthier than what we have at hand.
A cordial end to any disagreement is one with less chance of resentment.
Just my take folks!
I’m impressed that according to Dr. Spencer it is a well worn path that Willis is following. If this is such an old chestnut, why is it nowhere to be found in climate models or in the voluminous waste of paper that 5 iterations of the same theme by IPCC’s 5000 climate scientists? Something missing from Spencer’s prose is how he stands on the thermostat hypothesis? If he disagreed with the idea, no matter who he thinks came up with it, why didn’t he say so. No Spencer has been blown away with this simple, compelling idea or he would have cheerfully shown us how it was all wrong. I’m not a climate scientist (I am a geologist who did study paleoclimate almost 60 years ago and an engineer) but surely climate science starts with the idea that we have an unbroken chain of life extending back a billion years that in itself is near invincible proof that the climate system has negative feedbacks of enough effect to keep the planet within ~8C of variation or so throughout most of its history. There has to be a thermostat!!
I put this comment together a few hours age and the thread is moving quite rapidly. I’m posting now and follow up on previous comments.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Ken says:
October 9, 2013 at 3:08 pm
Ken says:
October 10, 2013 at 7:02 am
=========================
Ken,
You seem to have much interest in this issue between Willis and Roy. Do you simply surf the net looking to try to be the arbitrating judge or do you have a vested interest here?
You wrote : “…. If one wants to get in the game they need to get on the right playing field & play by the rules….” —- You are clearly an advocate of the claim to “academic authority” by your own words in your first post on this thread. I responded in a comment.
You wrote : “It remains incumbent on the outsider to work with the established system.” — Same response as above.
You wrote : “Why did WUWT even permit this essay?” — Your sandbox?
You wrote : “It’s time to stop whining & grow up.“ — You wrote this. Can you digest it?
You seem like a smart kid (sophomore perhaps), so you get a “B” for trying. Now go back and come up with something worthwhile. Meantime, I’m really too busy to help you more as much as I’d like to.
P.S. With regards to the fanboy snipes on this thread, I’m just not one of yours.
P.S.S. Ken I welcome your contribution to this thread (unlike your questioning Anthony for allowing Willis’ reply). As you mature you will understand.
P.S.S. Are you walking the plank in your academic studies? Sucking-up is no longer cool.
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Willis, you are receiving much flack so you must be over the target. Some clearly don’t want YOU there. Full speed ahead, there is an army of ‘ones’ supporting you all the way. Your mission, should you choose to continue, may well deliver the final blow to the sinking ship CAGW. Why the hell did I write “should you choose to continue”, you will not back off from the two fingered tea sipping wannabes, I retract that statement. Carry on.
Roger Sowell says:
October 10, 2013 at 8:25 am
@ur momisugly Tucker on Oct 10, 2013 at 4:19 am,
Exactly right, well-said.
Guys, how is this anything but a disguised appeal to authority? You basically said “Spencer is a professional scientist, therefore he understands things better than nonprofessional scientists.” Besides from being logically inept, Spencer made specific criticisms—some of which could be fairly characterized as accusations—both personal (Willis allegedly did not know about R&C ’91) and scientific in nature. Given that a few of them appear to be false, instead of merely citing to Spencer’s status, or noting that Willis has been wrong on occasion about other subjects, can you respond to Willis’ rebuttal on this subject with examples of why he is wrong? This is not a rhetorical question. My specialty lays somewhat far afield from climate science, so I use sites like this one, including the many invaluable comments left by readers, to better inform myself. Merely telling us that Willis is wrong and Spencer is right because Real Scientist is logically laughable and does a disservice to the community. Of course, you are under no obligation to explain the facts of life to me or others, especially as you note that you are not an expert, but I don’t think asking for some sort of minimal intellectual exertion in composing a critical comment is all that unreasonable. Willis might very well be wrong, as he notes, but I’d like to know why.
This article is very strange approach if the desire was an amicable resolution with Dr. Spencer.
Willis Eschenbach……
A fellow climate change skeptic who has an Ego bigger than Michael Mann.
For some reason..Watts grants him special status. Friendship? Financial support? Really interested in his “Heroic Life Story?”
The greatest Skeptic site..A site that explains the questions of settled science and leads the scientific curious to examine the science. .. Is not skeptical of Willis. It posts his travel monologue.
It’s so stupid.
Bless you Spencer. It’s hard enough to be a honest broker .