“Pielke Sr. on new Spencer and Braswell paper” (2011/07/26). Who’d ‘a thunk that Roger Pielke (the dad who’s a grumpy scientist, not the son who’s just a grumpy economist) would, again, sing the praises of Dr. Roy Spencer’s latest paper proving, again, sort of, that there is no global warming? Anthony Watts is excited enough by this startling development to copy and paste Pielke Sr.’s insights.
Dr. Pielke Sr. intones that Dr. Spencer’s paper, On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance in Remote Sensing, “raises further questions on the robustness of multi-decadal global climate predictions”. Yes, it’s the final nail in the coffin of global warming alarmism! Again! This time, for real! Oh, they have to be smart questions? Oops. Remote Sensing, for their part, is a new journal that seems more interested in publication fees than ensuring the scientific credibility of their papers.
Not yet referenced by Anthony, there’s also an enthusiastic “so there!” article in Forbes magazine. Right-wing climate change denying Heartland Institute lobbyist James Taylor sings the praises of right-wing climate change denying scientist Dr. Spencer, also tightly associated with Heartland Institute, in a right-wing climate change denying magazine! It stirs the soul to see all the pistons firing together so smoothly but using “alarmist” in 15 times, in practically every sentence, shines the spotlight in a presumably unintended direction.
So, what about Dr. Spencer’s science? Do clouds really cause climate like Spencer keeps saying? Is the Earth really failing to warm up quite as much as alarmist scientists say it is? This is just a laugh-at-Anthony-Watts’-lies blog, so today I’ll simply point out some of the criticisms from around the web.
- “Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedback” (Real Climate)
- Just Put the Model Down, Roy (Barry Bickmore)
- No, new data does not “blow a gaping hole in global warming alarmism” (Bad Astronomy)
- On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance (Greg Laden)
Synchronized shouting seems the only tactic left to the denialists.
2011-08-01 Update: Climate Progress weighs in on Spencer’s science that Pielke Sr. likes so much. Climate Scientists Debunk Latest Bunk by Denier Roy Spencer.
2011-08-10 Update: John Timmer covers Spencer’s paper in the larger context at Ars Technica – Climate change: cloudy, with a chance of competing realities.
2011-09-02 Update: More embarrassing fallout for Spencer covered at Ars Technica – Editor who published controversial climate paper resigns, blasts media.
2011-09-07 Update: Well this hasn’t taken long. Spencer’s ‘final nail in the coffin of AGW’ has completely unravelled. Turns out his crayon version of atmospheric physics has in fact proven the validity of current “alarmist” climate theories and models! Thanks Roy. That’s what happens when you work backwards from a baseless conclusion and ignore logic. Thanks for wading through the stupid, Dr. Dessler (preprint here, watch a video summary here).
Wott's Up With That? 
Help! Help! They’re being repressed! Evil commie scientists actually dared read the paper and in a display of unprecedented malice and arrogance outlined various flaws in it Fallout from Our Paper: The Empire Strikes Back
Hopefully nobody was playing “The Alarmism drinking game” while reading the Forbes article, they may yet be slumped over their computers.
[Roy’s use of ALL CAPS ensures that we recognize that his arguments are clever. – Ben]
You can fool some of the people all of the time [That would be the denialist booble heads, – Ben], and all of the people some of the time [That would be the un-informed public, – Ben], but you can not fool all of the people all of the time. …Abraham Lincoln
Another very well-written and informative critique of Spencer’s paper:
“Climate change debunked? Not so fast” by Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience.
[Yes, a good critique. – Ben]
They have a great game going on, the more people that write critical pieces of Spencer’s paper is more evidence of just how big the conspiracy is.
[Nothing at all to do with his wish-fulfilment science! – Ben]
Posted this on CA (but never made it out of mod)
The satellite record requires so many models to convert radiation to temperature. Spencer has had many attempts to get it right. Together with dying satellites (whose modelled temperatures do not match with new satellites) how can he deduce anything from his measurements with any certainty?
walt man
[McIntyre is a tunnel-vision hypocrite. – Ben]
Playing curve fitting games and then declaring that they have disproven the entire AGW theory appears to have become the denialists’ favorite pastime. All the attention Spencer’s paper has drawn has led to another denialist paper with similar techniques (Loehle and Scafetta ’11), published in a similarly obscure journal which also seems mostly interested in publication fees, to fall out of the spotlight. It was featured on WUWT and Curry’s blog prior to the Spencer hubub.
Anyway, we’re publishing a post on this paper at Skeptical Science on Wednesday. Like Spencer, L&S used an extremely simple climate model (even simpler than Spencer) and played some curve fitting games with no regard for physical reality, then declared that their results proved that climate sensitivity to increasing CO2 is low.
[Looking forward to your always cogent insights! – Ben]
Spencer has caught the crazy:
[That would be Spencer’s July 30th Watts Up rant “Rise of the 1st Law Deniers“. This is the same scientist, also a creationist, who said “I view my job [to be]… to protect the interests of the taxpayer and to minimize the role of government”, so I think he’s had a hard-core agenda for quite a while. – Ben]
All the people who hate computer models now love at least one – it’s very simple and very flawed but it says what they want it to say – at least when certain numbers are plugged in to make it say what they want it to say.
And all the people who hate NASA now love NASA, because they finally found someone who thinks that NASA data proves global warming is not happening – only no-one’s been game to tell NASA yet.
And suddenly clouds have decided to force the climate. Wonder why they didn’t start doing that hundreds of years ago. I suppose they were resting until recently, then woke up, had a confab and said – we’re going to force this global warming away. Clever things, clouds.
Funny how things work out isn’t it.
[A bunch of damn flip-floppers! – Ben]
Spencer seems prepared to publish any bs to support his agenda, doesn’t say much for the Journal either.
Roy Spencer’s six trillion degree warming
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