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.
Jeremy says:
October 9, 2013 at 6:42 pm
“…..Let’s park the egos please on all sides.”
=============
Well put.
I personally don’t care WHO does “something” that was done previously.
If someone can explain it to me to where I learn and I understand better, that is GOOD WORK. We need people like that — who make the knowledge accessible to many without formal training in a certain field.
AllI know is Willis makes me smarter and probably a great deal many others.
Willis
A key issue I got from Spencer’s post was the importance of doing a decent literature search before diving in, to better understand the field. That is drummed into graduate students before you ever dream of starting the research.
Willis’ theory of global climate homeostasis bears examination and discussion.
In mammals and other animals there are centres in the brain that regulate temperature heat flow and heat creation.
Clearly since the Earth lacks any form of central nervous system this mechanism cannot explain the robustness that the Earth achieves in dampening changes of incoming and exiting heat.
The heat engine mechanisms that transport heat to the upper atmosphere could be modeled and seen if predictive.
The use of the term ‘governor’ is apt in that it correlates with say the mechanism of a steam engine,a machine, more than a random collection of inputs and outputs,which runs smoothly and not chaotically.
The fact that the discussion years ago was of Cirrus cloud formations and not Storm fronts, in the Tropics especially, points to the evolution of the discussion,as every scientist stands on the shoulders of those who precede.
As such this site needs to be congratulated as it lets other Citizen Scientists have a look at what is going on in climate science.
ATheoK says:
October 9, 2013 at 6:59 pm
Very well said. Given that Spencer used the image of Homer, Spencer had a hissy fit. I am truly floored.
JJ says:
October 9, 2013 at 5:37 pm
Not a bit. He said:
Now, that is a clear accusation of plagiarism—he’s saying that I lifted the idea from R&C1991, and that I never mentioned that little detail. It’s total bullshit, of course, but nasty false accusations like that grow legs. I won’t stand to be lied about like that, JJ. R&C1991 was about an entirely different hypothsis.
That’s an attack, JJ.
It’s also a hatchet job to accuse me of not doing my homework without pointing out the prior studies that I’m supposed to be ignorant of. Roy’s all over my case … but he hasn’t yet pointed out either:
a) what I’m supposedly ignorant of, or
b) just what past study would have alleviated my ignorance if I’d only read it.
Accusing a man of that kind of thing, without a single scrap of evidence to back it up?
That’s an attack, JJ.
w.
Who cares who thought of it first. If the analysis is valid, even if it is incomplete, bring it on.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
He Mad!
Willis, I applaud your work. Specially since it is accessible by all. I find it ridiculous that someone would put you down because ‘it has been done before’. In this age of puplish or perish, one must sieve through 100 or 200 papers just to find one or two of any worth. And we are expected to pay $35 for each crappy 4 page paper? Ridiculous, when dover sell high quality scientific paperbacks for $10. I just cant afford to pay $3500 to $7000 just for a decent paper one a single subject. In my mind this is nothing more than censorship, keeping science within a ‘select’ group. I never thought of Mr. Spenser as a snob or elitist. I hope hes not
W
This brings to mind Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin who each independently formulted, through observation of the natural world, the theory of evolution by natural selection…unbeknownst to each other.
That others may have also reached the same conclusions in no way diminishes your own orriginal thinking.
A wise man once said “there is nothing new under the Sun”.
“Alfred Russel Wallace OM FRS (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection; his paper on the subject was jointly published with some of Charles Darwin’s writings in 1858.[1] This prompted Darwin to publish his own ideas in On the Origin of Species”. -Wiki
I agree that the thermostat was originally Roy’s hypothesis. If you’re posting on his website, then he has every right to comment and respond. Chill!
P.S. The resemblance between the two images is striking.
Well, I haven’t read Roy’s comments, but any commentary that starts with that graphic is not friendly. And on top of its cruel mockery and imposition of some kind of hierarchy of mental capability, he got it wrong. The second panel should show someone in prison stripes, because what passes for a “professional climate scientist” these days, in my eyes at least, is a crook or a crank or a totalitarian playing the system for every bit of money, power or both that our idiot political class will allow. Shame on Roy Spencer for that.
JJ says:
October 9, 2013 at 3:41 pm: PS. Screw you too. If you want to argue with Willis, be specific and factual. If you do that, he usually responds in the same tone. The cranks and misanthropes who sometimes surface here don’t deserve kind treatment.
I’m a geologist, and I love holistic solutions that call on the various real forces of earth to explain the earth’s behavior. Such as plate tectonics, an exercise in density contrasts, first and foremost, that overcame two centuries of sterile attempts to explain (and pigeonhole) “geosynclines” and all kinds of similar occurrences (rock types and fossils and metamorphic zones, etc.) on widely separated cratons that any child with a globe could piece back together. Willis has put out an holistic concept of a thermal regulator that I believe is true and important in climate. This earth has been pretty warm, and pretty cold off and on for four billion years, but it never incinerated itself nor became an eternal ice ball. Its climate is somehow regulated within boundaries fit for life as we know it, and CO2 is one tiny bit of that. There’s a lot of explanation waiting to be elucidated, and Willis at least is among those looking at what makes the earth tick.
Willis, I wish I could write as well as you do. I could care less whether or not some one n a cloistered dungeon speaking to the walls previously considered something that now draws your interest. You wish to share.it. To share it well. The spirit of the exercise is to peek the curiosity and improve the collective understanding. so that we can (“So it’s time to) abandon the religion of environmentalism, and return to the science of environmentalism, and base our public policy decisions firmly on that.” – Michael Crichton …and rush into an era of enlightenment. The world has made a remarkable transition and the internet has demolished the barriers of distance, boarders and time in the aggregation of critical thought to challenges. It is absolutely inspiring.to be able to engage in a global conversation at the speed of light with individuals with facile minds. . There is a lot more to the process of advancing science than meets the eye. some times one has to rework already plowed ground to find the ring. Finally I am absolutely delighted with the gray beards who choose to share their perspective and expertise. IN our family we have a saying that one should never allow their schooling to get in the way of their education and you are well educated. Thank you for your efforts. .
I am very pleased with Willis Eschenbach’s post, his reply to Dr. Roy Spencer, and his reasonable support for the “citizen scientist”. Human hubris being what it is, we need everyone — from “inside and outside” science — to insist on the truth, on the scientific method. I also have critiques at times (from “outside”) of some of Willis’ position and any way Roy the academic scientist helps Willis the citizen scientist be more effective all the better. However, Roy did not do his thing well! Name calling? No citations? It suggests a need to be condescending (someone wrote interestingly about “public humiliation”) for whatever reason. Thanks Willis for responding. I hope you and Scientist Roy can enjoy a beer together. Thanks Anthony for supporting this kind of conversation. I, being an outsider, liked this comment, as of 7:47 pdt, among the many intelligent, cogent, pointed, and hilarious comments, the best:
MarkUK says:
October 9, 2013 at 4:27 pm
“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! ”
Roy Spencer
Then up pops Willis, who does it for fun on his own and offers an analysis and some conclusions into the public arena before they choose to, or are allowed to?
I am hoping it is just sour grapes from RS , anything else is quiet worrying.
” Dr. Spencer’s blog post caused ill and Roy is directly responsible. Hopefully a responsible scientist, citizen or professional, will own up to their mistakes and apologize”
I agree.
If Dr Spencer has any character, he will delete that post of his and apologize.
teven Mosher says:
October 9, 2013 at 6:01 pm
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/Stephens-review-of-cloud-feedback.pdf
actually a pretty good place to start.
I know when I started looking at UHI I started with the literature review, and then read the 100 or so papers. Its a good practice to read on your own first rather than force people to give you links
S.M. Funny, I recall you recently “dissed” to use the modern teenaged vernacular, a certain Dr. Svensmark, visa vie his Cosmic Ray Hypothesis, saying there was NO EVIDENCE, based on a “fictitious understanding” of the ground weather observing stations.
I corrected you by pointing out Svensmark’s papers on the Forebush decreases and the correlation with a decrease in overall cloud cover. A case of the kettle calling the pot black? (Obviously YOU had not been reading Svensmark’s work.)
Perhaps making ANY presumption about someone’s background research is perhaps “poor form” at best, and just dangerous (in the long run for the critic) at worse.
I would like to comment, even though I said it before, on what is being said here is the “Eschenbach Effect”, as one of 2 mechanisms of “regulation” of temperature of the humid convective subset of tropical weather:
One is that W. Eschenbach has recently cited mentioned thunderstorms having negative feedbacks other than radiative / “cloud albedo” feedback. I continue to note that these specifics are not so much lumped into “cloud albedo feedback”, but the “lapse rate feedback”. Where I see paleohistory showing that feedback having nonlinear response – its negativity increases as greenhouse gases increase. I see that feedback as having paleohistory of capping global temperature at 24-25 C, even with 6,000 PPMV CO2, with stability dominating past of warming of the world decreasing coverage of year-to-year variable snow/ice cover.
However, I doubt his proposed “thermostat” is completely one, because I doubt Earth would maintain its current or paleo-past global surface temperature if Earth gets its orbit moved to perhaps, 1/3 of an orbit circumference ahead-of or behind Venus in its orbit. (Which I am hearing is a stable orbit for a small object, possibly not for a similar-mass object.)
Suppose the sun achieves TSI around 5-10-plus what it has now, as predicted for 4-5 billion years from now, when the sun’s “swan song” has 2 layers of 2 different fusion reactions. Certainly, I don’t expect thunderstorms to continue to continue to regulate earth’s surface temperature over the warmest of tropical waters to a 30 degree C cap.
What I see, is increased thunderstorm activity as a result of increased surface heating, especially if due to increasing greenhouse gases cooling the upper troposphere, as being a negative feedback that increases its negativity as greenhouse gases increase. I don’t see the regulation being strict on global surface temperature (assuming the sun does not brighten) until the global average surface temperatures gets to paleohistorically regulated levels of 24 to briefly 25 degrees C.
Also, even if this is a repeat, I see such regulation by thunderstorms as by being highly in a negative feedback class named by IPCC as “lapse rate feedback”, as opposed to “cloud albedo” or “cloud net radiation” feedback. Even though I see nonlinearity, of increased greenhouse gases increasing this negative feedback once the increase gets noticeable increasing thunderstorm activity – especially over tropical waters.
I would say 25 degrees C is what 6,000 PPMV CO2 would accomplish nowadays considering what I have seen in planetary paleohistory presented to me in such matters of debate, even considering a slight brightening trend in stellar evolution of main sequence stars.
And as for regulation to something that is a function of solar output – I ask for consideration that the negative feedbacks are probably less, and the positive feedbacks are probably greater, when global temperature is in-between the more-stable (historically only intermittently so) schemes of “snowball” and “ultimate greenhouse”.
The Church of Global Warming ?
….. and still Roy Spencer won’t say where his sunrise/sunset data is
I personally doubt if it even exists. see my #comment-1442376 @ur momisugly 5:36 pm
As I browse the comments about “originality”, “reinventing the wheel”, blah blah blah, I am struck by the curious assumption that reinventing the wheel is a bad thing. How many iterations are required to get the “Right” answer anyway?
/Tangent. In a time and place far far away, I was taking data processed by an 8, yes 8 bit (predating personal computers) processor that had been running for years to another machine that operated differently. It was soon discovered that the data contained a rather large number of question marks in supposedly numeric fields. Not so good when working with the general ledger. Suffice it to say the number of iterations mean squat.
/end tangent
I sense a trend similar to that of amateur astronomy. Amateurs were all fine and dandy when they could supply observations as good or better than the professionals. But once the the big money meant big equipment the amateurs were not so welcome.
It appears the the size of the equipment (cough cough) means more then the size of the intellect that runs it. Even worse, it supposes that only guys with big equipment are able to correctly interpret the output. Not sure this is a good assumption.
Different folks, different strokes. The more the merrier I say.
Doug
Respectfully, Willis, I love you but this doesn’t mean that Roy doesn’t have a point. Ramanathan and Collins make some statements very similar to what your Thermostat hypothesis does. From Roy’s point of view asking him to comment on whether there is a thermostat that acts in the tropics is, he can legitimately answer that this question was answered 22 years ago.
It might be instructive to lay out precisely the way in which your hypothesis differs from R&C’s especially where and when the testable predictions between the two are different.
Personally, like you, I am very dubious about the mass balance idea but I don’t know that much about it. Personally, I don’t see how an increased cloudiness has to be balanced by decreased cloudiness in another area. I think increased cloudiness is balanced by increased
*rain*.
Cheers, 🙂
Willis, I understand your concern about Dr. Roy attacking you. He did so in a similar manner in WUWT about a year or so ago. You asked for references at that time but essentially brushed it off. Now he comes back again in a similar attack on his own blog. His excuse he did it because someone asked him to check out some of your work is unprofessional.
Roy makes mistakes too frequently for me to hold him in as good a light as you do. I think he is an okay guy but he may be jealous of your innate ability to lay out a problem, solve it and then tell it. If he is willing to offer you a apology, please accept it graciously but tell him privately that he needs to straighten up and fly right. Once was more than enough.
When someone has the “facts” on hand, they usually bring them to bear quickly in order to make their point.
Links, direct quotes, citations & etc.
When someone just says “your wrong” and doesn’t back it up with specifics, it’s most often because they don’t have anything more to offer.
Privided on David Appell’ssite, this video of the Spencer-Schmidt “empty chair” debate on the John Stossel show. It might give clue as to where Roy adopted his approach from.
http://davidappell.blogspot.ca/2013/03/spencerschmidt-not-debate-on-john.html
Dr. Spencer,
All here (I presume) will be interested in your considered response. You have leveled criticism. Willis has responded in depth. We await your rebuttal.
Sincerely,
William