Strong Negative Feedback Found in Radiation Budget

[Piggy]

You might as well ask why Alfred Wegener^WP, a meteorologist with a background in astronomy, developed the theory of continental drift.


To paraphrase a well-known senator: Most papers are unpublished before they're published.

The paper was presented (as an invited paper, no less) at the fall 2009 meeting of the American Geophysical Union:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu//abs/2009AGUFM.A32A..03S

The paper has been accepted for publication in the Atmospheres section of the Journal of Geophysical Research:
http://www.agu.org/journals/jd/papersinpress.shtml


If that's your point, then this particular paper and this particular author do not appear to support your point very well. Just sayin'.

Thank you for the link regarding acceptance of the paper.

But you still miss my point.

If mhaze and his lot want to challenge the accepted science, why is it that we get only this kind of reference, time and again, in support of their position?

Yes, it's true that scientists can make contributions outside their narrow field, sometimes quite significant ones. But when you see nothing but a barrage of bloggers, meteorologists, economists, downright cranks, etc. in a supposed refutation of the global community of climate scientists, it can't be taken seriously.

And yes, you get the occasional contrarian publication, like Behe's on IC in the field of evolution, but until and unless others take it seriously enough to base further research on it, it doesn't matter in the face of the currently accepted, and copiously documented, paradigm.

What's worse, time and again the papers they claim are disprobative of AGW actually are not.

So let me ask you, do you think that paper challenges the currently accepted science on AGW?

This is what we're objecting to. You have to take our statements in the entire context of the ongoing discussion of AGW and AGW-denial on this board.

 

[BenBurch]

They think a paper they have not EVEN READ is the Holy Graal.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Thank you for the link regarding acceptance of the paper.

You're welcome, but I was just repeating URLs that BenBurch and DogB had posted previously.

If mhaze and his lot want to challenge the accepted science, why is it that we get only this kind of reference, time and again, in support of their position?

Groupthink?

Yes, it's true that scientists can make contributions outside their narrow field, sometimes quite significant ones. But when you see nothing but a barrage of bloggers, meteorologists, economists, downright cranks, etc. in a supposed refutation of the global community of climate scientists, it can't be taken seriously.

Agreed, but this thread represents one of their better efforts. Spencer is a meteorologist with contrarian/crank tendencies who blogs, but the argumentum ad hominem doesn't change the fact that he's a legitimate scientist who's been trying to make a legitimate argument, nor does it change the fact that this appears to be a legitimate scientific paper to appear in a legitimate scientific journal.

What's worse, time and again the papers they claim are disprobative of AGW actually are not.

So let me ask you, do you think that paper challenges the currently accepted science on AGW?

No. I think it's clear that the original poster hasn't read the paper itself, and his main goal here is to use the authority of the paper and its first author to promote the first author's opinions as expressed at his blog. Argumentum ad verecundiam is closely related to argumentum ad hominem; both are fallacies.

ETA: The paper's abstract does challenge a "variety of feedback estimates" of radiative feedback that have been based on satellite data. The sheer variety of those estimates suggests that no one estimate has yet become the accepted value, and the 2001 IPCC report identified this as one of the major uncertainties that still remain within current models.

This is what we're objecting to. You have to take our statements in the entire context of the ongoing discussion of AGW and AGW-denial on this board.

I understand your frustration.

 

[uke2se]

Groupthink?

I lol'ed.

 

[macdoc]

WD

he's a legitimate scientist who's been trying to make a legitimate argument,

too bad the title of the thread does not reflect that..

 

[mhaze]

Thank you for the link regarding acceptance of the paper.

But you still miss my point.

If mhaze and his lot want to challenge the accepted science, why is it that we get only this kind of reference, time and again, in support of their position?

Yes, it's true that scientists can make contributions outside their narrow field....

So Spencer is publishing outside of his area of expertise? Why, that is certainly news to me. Anyway, what in the world are you calling a "challenge to the accepted science"?

Let's look at that. Spencer indicates that short time intervals have to be used to separate out forcing and feedbacks in estimates of feedbacks. Now that's not been done before, right? If it has been I'm sure you can point us to the citations?

Otherwise a new and improved method is to be frowned upon because it's a "challenge to the accepted science" which said science did not have such a method? That's rather strange. So you are in favor of broader uncertainty in calculations, instead of lowering those uncertainties?

Y....
ETA: The paper's abstract does challenge a "variety of feedback estimates" of radiative feedback that have been based on satellite data. The sheer variety of those estimates suggests that no one estimate has yet become the accepted value, and the 2001 IPCC report identified this as one of the major uncertainties that still remain within current models.
...

Odd, that anyone would consider a clarification to "one of the major uncertainties that still remain within current models" as a "challenge to the existing science".

But Hey!

This is "climate science"!

....until and unless others take it seriously enough to base further research on it, it doesn't matter in the face of the currently accepted, and copiously documented, paradigm.....

See above comments about uncertainty in calculations. Maybe you want to reconsider this.

 

[mhaze]

I know this pattern of your responses quite well, Lomiller. But I'm actually a bit curious about something.

How would those at the AGU conference respond to your raising this point at Dr. Spencer's presentation? I'm sure you could take off a few days and go to the 2010 conference. You'd have no problem raising your hand and voicing that opinion right there in the question and answer after Spencer's presentation, would you?

You strongly hold your views and you are not an intellectual coward, right?

Your views are shared by that wider and professional scientific community, aren't they?




Aren't they?

What, no response?

 

[DogB]

They think a paper they have not EVEN READ is the Holy Graal.

I'm honestly bemused as to why anybody is commenting at all. Call me crazy but I might wait for the actual paper.

 

[BenBurch]

I'm honestly bemused as to why anybody is commenting at all. Call me crazy but I might wait for the actual paper.

I'd like to see it, too!

 

[Wangler]

Cool. I expect people to be able to back up their assertions, and mhaze wouldn't do that.

Now the question is: is the paper in print saying the same thing as the morons at Wattsupwiththat are saying? It's often the case with these things that the papers cited on denialist sites just don't say what the denialists say.

Found the creationist evidence on your own in the same post you first asked the question, but you had trouble finding the evidence about the paper being in press?

You certainly didn't rely on lomiller to back up his assertations.

Don't look now, but your bias is showing.

 

[At In To]

I'm honestly bemused as to why anybody is commenting at all.

Spencer saw fit to comment. I see fit to comment. Others as well. There's actual content, though not very much in his blog post.

 

[mhaze]

Of course a lot of people here wouldn't get the AGU paper anyway, because it's gonna be pay to play.

Seems to me like the AGU presentation sets forth the basic ideas pretty well.

Frankly the disadvantage to the resident Warmers of discussing the concepts now is that they can't parrot Tamino, Gavin, Lambert, etc.

Why not just look at the issue now and come up with some actual original takes on the matter?

 

[bit_pattern]

How is it original? He had to rewrite it twice, largely because the holes in it exposed by Tamino.

 

[mhaze]

How is it original? He had to rewrite it twice, largely because the holes in it exposed by Tamino.

Huh?

I was suggesting that people here look at the matter and come up with some original comments.

And skip the parroting of the three or four bloggers who put out the, uh, party line. Gets trivial and boring, you see.

 

[uke2se]

Found the creationist evidence on your own in the same post you first asked the question, but you had trouble finding the evidence about the paper being in press?

You certainly didn't rely on lomiller to back up his assertations.

Don't look now, but your bias is showing.

I'm more skeptical towards creationists and those promoting them than I am towards others.

 

[uke2se]

Huh?

I was suggesting that people here look at the matter and come up with some original comments.

And skip the parroting of the three or four bloggers who put out the, uh, party line. Gets trivial and boring, you see.

Well, that happened on page one.

 

[bit_pattern]

And skip the parroting of the three or four bloggers who put out the, uh, party line. Gets trivial and boring, you see.

Irony!

 

[At In To]

Does anyone have any idea how those linear and looping striations in Spencer's filtered results are made? I mean is he just playing connect the dots, or is there some reason that he does so?

 

[DC]

Huh?

I was suggesting that people here look at the matter and come up with some original comments.

And skip the parroting of the three or four bloggers who put out the, uh, party line. Gets trivial and boring, you see.

isnt that what you are doing?
a forum troll is the best the deniers can bring up? and he even sucks at trolling. tztztztz

 

[mhaze]

Does anyone have any idea how those linear and looping striations in Spencer's filtered results are made? I mean is he just playing connect the dots, or is there some reason that he does so?

That's the central question.

If one had a time series chart with an apparent scatterplot, one could draw a linear straight line through it. But what if one looked at short or variable length "windows of time" progressions? Then you might see the dots marching in circular or linear patterns. Bandpass filtering separates out such phenomena, which typically is just "phase shifting" of response times. Reminds me of fourier analysis. The linear straight line curve fit (and or any polynomial curve fit) would be wrongly applied.

Wrongly applied, that is, in describing a feedback function that is real world analogous.

Those looping patterns come up counterclockwise. Seems like I recall similar things in stock market behavior charts.

Go to slide 8 for the formula that separates these out - the prior several slides describe looping and linear striations.

http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-cont...rcing-Feedback-AGU-09-San-Francisco-final.pdf

More.

From Spencer's talk at the politically oriented "EPA Endangerment Finding: Submitted Comments".

This method of plotting is called phase space analysis, and it can “easily elucidate qualities of (a) system that might not be obvious otherwise” (Wikipedia.com entry on “Phase Space”). What we now see instead of a seemingly random scatter of points is a series of linear striations and looping or spiraling patterns.

A very simple forcing-feedback model widely used in climate studies (e.g. Spencer and Braswell, 2008) can be used to show that the linear features are temperature changes causing cloud-induced radiative changes (that is, feedback); while the looping features are from causation in the opposite direction: cloud variations causing temperature variations.

Significantly, it is the natural cloud variations causing temperature variations that de-correlates the data, leading to a regression line slope biased in the direction of high climate sensitivity (positive feedback) like that seen in Fig. 1.
We also find the spiral features and linear features in IPCC climate models tracked by the IPCC, for instance in the GFDL CM2.1 model shown in Fig. 3.​