Gaping Hole in the Gaping Hole
July 29, 2011
– Comments (5)
It has recently been reported on these pages that "New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole in Global Warming Alarmism". http://caps.fool.com/Blogs/new-nasa-data-blow-gaping-hole/620350
And in the very first reply to this post, chk999 leveled a preemptive name calling attack against any who would dare question the information offered.
Expect this to be shouted down by the Global Warming Mafia - chk999
But, disrespectful pig that I am, that didn't stop me. But first I had to read the article, which actually eneded with a preemptive attack on the integrity of any who would challenge the articles content.
When objective NASA satellite data, reported in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, show a "huge discrepancy" between alarmist climate models and real-world facts, climate scientists, the media and our elected officials would be wise to take notice. Whether or not they do so will tell us a great deal about how honest the purveyors of global warming alarmism truly are. - James Taylor writing in Forbes magazine.
I also learned from the first paragraph that we are not talking about "new" from NASA as the title suggests, but old data being reintrepreted. This is a process that is often discredited as "fudged" by skeptics,when the conclusion is reached that Co2 forced global warming is happening. Of course if the new intrepretation is valid, then calling something "doctored" does not matter.
The gist of the article is threefold, the first that clouds screwed up measurements of heat loss iinto space and so most computer models are predicting worse global warming than they should, two, that those computer models would be alarming, or "alarmist" if they were correct, and three, that people who do not take notice of this report are of questionable integrity.
So number two is the quickest to deal with. The conditions we can expect to live under if the Co2 caused global warming predictions are correct and ignored, are alarming. So lets hope it is not happening or we deal with it.
Number three is the next easiest to deal with. The scientist in question, Roy Spencer, has decided that his work is ignored by a community of scientists determined to foster the falsehood of Co2 forced global warming on an unsuspecting public. Scientists, who examined his work and did not ignore it, say they don't think the work is good and that is why they discount it. We've all pretty much dug in our heels on that one, with me thinking that it is more likely that deniers are being funded by the fossil fuel industry to preserve income of billions, and others thinking it is more likely that scientists are lying to preserve income of thousands. There is really not much use in us beating that dead horse again.
Finally we come to the science. Usually when a a scientist speaks on mainstream media warning us of the alarming consequences of continuing to force global warming by pumping Co2 into the atmosphere, someone is also brought on for balance with thoughts on why global warming is not happening, caused by volcanoes, sunspots, normal variations in climate, or generally not Co2 forced, or not bad for us, etc. In the interest of balance I would like to provide the opinion of Skepticalscience blog, someone known to be in agreement with the science that says Co2 forced global warming is happening and is bad for us and therfore often called "alarmist".
From them we learn that a scientist named Piers Forster upon reading the article about cloud issues initially agreed with Spencer's theories, which most scientist do, but do not believe have the dominant effect that Spencer claims. However after a more detailed review reached a different conclusion and it is described on the skepticalscience blog this way in an article titled "Roy Spencers Great Blunder" which you can read here. http://www.skepticalscience.com/Roy-Spencers-Great-Blunder-Part-1.html
Second, do you remember Piers Forster? One of the scientists who gave a favorable review of Spencer and Braswell’s paper, and even suggested ways to improve it? The guy who published a paper mentioning Spencer and Braswell’s work, and saying his results were consistent with theirs? Well, Murphy and Forster (2010) went ahead and did a more thorough examination of Spencer and Braswell’s approach, and the result wasn’t pretty. Here’s the abstract of their paper.
Changes in outgoing radiation are both a consequence and a cause of changes in the earth’s temperature. Spencer and Braswell recently showed that in a simple box model for the earth the regression of outgoing radiation against surface temperature gave a slope that differed from the model’s true feedback parameter. They went on to select input parameters for the box model based on observations, computed the difference for those conditions, and asserted that there is a significant bias for climate studies. This paper shows that Spencer and Braswell overestimated the difference. Differences between the regression slope and the true feedback parameter are significantly reduced when 1) a more realistic value for the ocean mixed layer depth is used, 2) a corrected standard deviation of outgoing radiation is used, and 3) the model temperature variability is computed over the same time interval as the observations. When all three changes are made, the difference between the slope and feedback parameter is less than one-tenth of that estimated by Spencer and Braswell. Absolute values of the difference for realistic cases are less than 0.05 W/m^2/K, which is not significant for climate studies that employ regressions of outgoing radiation against temperature. Previously published results show that the difference is negligible in the Hadley Centre Slab Climate Model, version 3 (HadSM3). (Murphy and Forster, 2010)
Obviously I cannot force any of you to stop pumping Co2 into the atmosphere alone, though I am hoping to engage your support for politicians that commit to forcing you to reduce Co2 emissions in the USA and your home countrys, and also hoping that I can engage your support in voluntarily reducing your own emissions for whatever reasons you choose to.
Best wishes,
Steven
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