Tropical Tropospheric Hotspots RIP

[Spud1k]

Why don't you revisit your linkies there and fix them?

See my ETA on the first post. Not sure what happened to them; they still exist on the Google cache and DOI still has their identifiers. As they were 'in press' before, it's possible they are currently in limbo pending proper publication.

Anyway, like I said, those two aren't the most important ones.

 

[Spud1k]

Must smell bad!

"Bated" is the word you want I think.

Hey, the spellchecker never lies...

 

[TrueSceptic]

LOL. Realclimate and the most notorious AGW'rs were saying that this signature was not a failure of the models: now it happens that it was but it was "reconciled". The real question is:
Why the warmers didn't take it as a falsification onf the AGW hypothesis when the paper came out? All I heard was character assasination for Douglass.

A claim of falsification and actual falsification aren't the same thing. Strange that you don't, or can't, understand that. And where was all the character assassination you allege?

Now that they have a paper that they think refutes Douglass they recognize that it could have been a problem. Of course, Santers is still wrong (it seems that he didn't understood the problem in the first place).

So, what was the problem, and what is your evidence that Santer doesn't understand it?

Douglass told me that he will publish a new paper about this, probably in the same journal. However, it takes 4-6 months for the publication process.

We can only hope that it is better science than his usual efforts.

 

[CapelDodger]

You are being far too generous. If the problem with Santer's work is that obvious, he could have a publication in GRL out in short order. If that'd take too long, a paper in ACPD could be published
online tomorrow.

The outlines of Douglass's response could indeed appear almost anywhere - Climate Audit for instance.

The claim that Santer "doesn't seem to understand the problem" suggests to me that we're likely to see Douglass trying to shift the ground. Which would be amusing.

And let's not forget that if the implications are as earth-shattering as some people think them to be, Science and Nature would be fighting to be first to get in there. As far as I'm concerned, he can either put up or shut up.

Agreed. But then, some people think a cool Alaskan summer is earth-shattering and that news of it is being "suppressed", so I suppose some people might think that the Douglass et al paper has been suppressed by the likes of Science and Nature.

 

[Spud1k]

The claim that Santer "doesn't seem to understand the problem" suggests to me that we're likely to see Douglass trying to shift the ground. Which would be amusing.

Quite. That entire approach bothers me; while finding and attempting to explain anomalies is sound science, it should never be oversold. When people start bending over backwards to try to justify their original conclusions, that's when things get counterproductive. Part of being a good scientist is being able to admit it when you are wrong and move on.

 

[CapelDodger]

Quite. That entire approach bothers me; while finding and attempting to explain anomalies is sound science, it should never be oversold. When people start bending over backwards to try to justify their original conclusions, that's when things get counterproductive. Part of being a good scientist is being able to admit it when you are wrong and move on.

To be fair, I haven't yet seen any response from Douglass et al, and it's early days yet. "It seems that [Santer] didn't understood the problem in the first place" comes from the other guy (the one that's not mhaze or David Rodale); that may not be from Douglass. We'll have to wait and see. (I don't expect much contribution from Singer; he just phones it in these days, frankly.)

There are a few comments at http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3058 (#518 onwards), but nothing substantial and none of it from Douglass (or from et al for that matter).

If Santer et al indeed haven't understood the problem, the original Douglass et al paper can't have stated it very clearly. They can't have it both ways, after all.

 

[a_unique_person]

It's been less than a year after the supposed killer indictment of AGW theory was originally published, but after a sound thrashing in the literature, it seems to have been delivered a final kick in the nuts:



So to cut a long story short, the whole shebang was down to dodgy instrumental data, a selective approach to data comparisons and some questionable statistical techniques thrown in for good measure. I doubt the deniers will think much of this paper (nothing that has the likes of Solomon and Jones as co-authors can be trusted apparently), but at the same time I predict this particular so-dubbed 'AGW falsification' will quietly die over the coming months.

ETA: A couple of the above links (not the important ones) seem to have died, possibly because they might be in publishing limbo at the Journal of Climate. The doi numbers are 10.1175/2008JCLI2287.1 and 10.1175/2008JCLI2320.1. An in press version of the latter can be found here.

Thanks.

 

[Spud1k]

Incidentally, the two dead links are back up now. I think it was just a case of bad timing because they are both in the current issue.