[Vision2020] Richland Wa. PNNL Scientist Reviews U. of Alabama Spencer's “The Great Global Warming Blunder"

[Ted Moffett]

Info on PNNL climate scientist Steven Ghan:

http://www.pnl.gov/atmospheric/staff/staff_info.asp?staff_num=5663

Ghan's review of “The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature
Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists” by University of Alabama's
Roy Spencer is after my brief comment.  Comments on Realclimate.org to
this review may still be temporarily suspended due to power failures
in Alabama from tornado damage that could prevent Spencer from
responding, though his website given in the next paragraph has info on
the tornado outbreak that Spencer indicated was possible, despite
power failure, with his "Verizon broadband on my laptop."  In fact,
just since I started to write this post, Spencer has posted on his
website again today April 29, 2011.
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Given the theory that ocean currents are a primary driver of the
increasing global average temperature over the past century, rather
than human sourced CO2, of which Roy Spencer's (University Alabama
Huntsville: http://www.drroyspencer.com/ ) climate science theories
are an example, perhaps the following review should mention that
tropospheric warming coupled with stratospheric cooling is a unique
signature of surface atmospheric warming caused by greenhouse gases,
that does not fit ocean current or solar forcing explanations for
warming surface atmospheric temperatures ( Read here:
http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/2011-April/075821.html
and here: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/2011-April/075820.html
and here for reference to Roy Spencer's climate science work, at the
top of this post:
http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/2011-April/075753.html
I had no clue till today about Spencer's book under review here!
-------------------
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/04/review-of-spencers-great-global-warming-blunder/#more-7253

Review of Spencer’s ‘Great Global Warming Blunder’
Filed under: Climate Science skeptics— group @ 28 April 2011
Guest commentary from Steve Ghan

A good writer knows their audience, and Roy Spencer knows his. There
are plenty of people who would love to hear a compelling argument for
why no action is needed to mitigate global warming, and Spencer’s book
“The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the
World’s Top Climate Scientists” will give uncritical readers the
argument they’ve been looking for. As Sarah Palin said, “while we
recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental
trends, we can’t say with assurance that man’s activities cause
weather change”. That is really the essence of Roy’s argument.

What is the Great Blunder? According to his book, “a fundamental
mistake has been made in previous interpretations of satellite
data”…”a mix-up between cause and effect when analyzing cloud and
temperature variations”.

Who made this mistake? Invariably, it is “the IPCC researchers”. He
cites a couple of specific papers by Piers Forster, but finds no fault
with them. So he casts aspersions into the wind.

Spencer’s assertion in his book of that there has been a “mix-up
between cause and effect” is quite a different conclusion from his
recent article published in the Journal of Geophysical Research –
Atmospheres in 2010, which concluded innocuously that “since the
climate system is never in equilibrium, feedbacks in the climate
system cannot be diagnosed from differences between equilibrium
climate states” … despite the fact that this is the exact diagnosis
supporting his conclusion in the book.

In his book Spencer contends that short-term fluctuations in the
energy balance and surface temperature are consistent with a low
climate sensitivity: “A careful examination of the satellite data
suggests that manmade warming due to a doubling of atmospheric carbon
dioxide could be less than 1ºC – possibly much less.”

Why does Spencer consider his “discovery” of a mix-up between cause
and effect to be so important? Because “natural cloud fluctuations in
the climate system will cause a bias in the diagnosed feedback in the
direction of positive feedback”, which means those careless IPCC
researchers have vastly overestimated the climate sensitivity. He then
asserts that “if the real climate system looks sensitive to climate
modelers, they will build their models to be sensitive also.” But he
never mentions the fact that climate models have produced climate
sensitivities of 2-5ºC per doubling of CO2 concentration for decades,
well before the Forster papers and before satellite measurements were
available for those careless anonymous IPCC researchers to produce
biased estimates of climate sensitivity.

Moreover, how could models explain the observed warming during the
20th century if the climate sensitivity is as low as it is, unless
aerosols don’t cool and there is some other warming mechanism? Spencer
addresses this question with a hypothesis that natural cloud
variability is the cause of longer term trends. He proposes a
relationship between the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and clouds
by considering a variety of combinations of initial ocean temperature,
ocean thickness, cloud feedback, and forcing by clouds (neglecting
forcing by CO2 and the water vapor feedback entirely) in a simple
energy balance model, and finds a relationship between PDO and clouds
using 9 years of satellite data. By exploring parameter space randomly
he found the agreement with the observed 20th century warming was best
for an initial ocean temperature 0.6ºC below normal, which means
almost all of the warming that his model explains is simply the ocean
returning to normal, not the response to decadal variability in
clouds. (Ed: note that the details of this calculation are heavily
criticised by Barry Bickmore in a series of posts). Of course, decadal
variability in clouds can only be a response to decadal variability in
the surface conditions or atmospheric circulation that drive cloud
formation, because the lifetime of cloud systems is days rather than
decades.

How, then, does Spencer explain the ice ages? He essentially punts,
saying he believes the ice core record is “irrelevant”, that “we don’t
have a clue” what was causing those climate variations. But if climate
really is as insensitive as he claims it to be, the climate forcing
producing the ice ages must have been huge, much larger than the
radiative forcing from orbital changes, surface albedo, and greenhouse
gases. He claims to prefer empiricism to theoretical models, yet when
the paleo data supports the higher climate sensitivity simulated by
climate models, he blames some unknown mechanism. It reminds one of
the old cartoon of the physicist drawing mathematical theories madly
on the blackboard, completing his theory with the statement “and then
a miracle occurred”.

Spencer does make a valid point about the potential for bias toward
exaggerating problems because it can bring in more funding. We all
must be wary of this. On the other hand, it’s worth noting that the
book market tends to financially reward a bias toward contrarianism.

But for me his credibility as a climate scientist was most compromised
with his assertion that “it would take only one research study to
cause the global warming house of cards to collapse.” So much for
weighing the evidence. As Arnold Schwarzenegger said about the
diversity of views of climate scientists, if your child is ill and 98
out of 100 doctors call for life-saving surgery and 2 say it is not
necessary, your decision is obvious.

Roy Spencer is respected for his remote sensing expertise, but the
conclusions of his book are nothing like those in his JGR article.
What a difference an audience can make.

Suspension of comments: Due to Roy Spencer being caught up in a loss
of power related to the tornado outbreak in Alabama, we are suspending
comments on this post until he is in a position to respond (should he
choose to).
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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett