The Evangelical Science Denier and the Alarmist Fundamentalist Religious Cult: The Cornwall Alliance

I wrote an article on David Legates' denial of science a few hours ago.  I've been told that David rejects science on quasi-religious grounds.  He is a member of a cult called the Cornwall Alliance.

David Legates apparently rejects even more aspects of climate science than does Roy Spencer.  Based on his article from yesterday, David rejects the greenhouse effect.  The things they have in common are that they are both employed as climate scientists and are both members of an evangelical quasi-religious cult in the USA called the Cornwall Alliance.  Based on their published material, this cult is a mixture of fundamentalist christianity, alarmist economics, pseudo-science, opposition to mainstream climate science and more than a hint of sexism (and suggestive of more deviant thinking).  It assumes male supremacy and that men were put on earth to plunder as they please.  Only in the USA, home of the weird and wacky.

A Mission to Reject Science

These chaps on their evangelical mission are not shy about using their "god" to distort and misrepresent the science.  It appears to be the very reason they formed their cult.  To promote disinformation about climate science and oppose any attempts to mitigate global warming. They are up front in their rejection of climate science.  They have an Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming which states in part:

We deny that Earth and its ecosystems are the fragile and unstable products of chance, and particularly that Earth’s climate system is vulnerable to dangerous alteration because of minuscule changes in atmospheric chemistry. 

Now I've got no beef with anyone who wants to go to their temple or church or mosque or synagogue or wherever on whatever day of the week.  I do have a beef with people who create a false god so they can hide behind "him" (their image of god has to be male) and use that false image of a god to spread lies about important matters of science and  economics.  I also have a real beef with people who fake concern for "poor" people in less developed countries as an excuse for their evangelism.

The "holier than thou" attitude expressed in the cult's writings comes across to me as a sickening perversion.  Their quasi-religion smacks of "world view" and christian fundamentalism of the worst kind.  It's not about charity or hope.  It's about preserving their own personal status quo.  It is raw hypocrisy.

Alarmists of the Cornwall Alliance

Here are some examples of the alarmist ideas that these guys (and they are all men) promote.  They "believe" that progressively shifting to a clean energy economy over the next few decades will:

• destroy millions of jobs.
• cost trillions of dollars in lost economic production.
• slow, stop, or reverse economic growth.
• reduce the standard of living for all but the elite few who are well positioned to benefit from laws that unfairly advantage them at the expense of most businesses and all consumers.
• endanger liberty by putting vast new powers over private, social, and market life in the hands of national and international governments.
• condemn the world’s poor to generations of continued misery characterized by rampant disease and premature death.

How's that for alarmism.  Not only do they provide no evidence but they hold on fast to these convictions in the face of evidence to the contrary. 

World view drives their rejection of science and alarmist economics

These evangelists are up front that they reject science and promote alarmist economics because of their world view and religion.  It's got nothing to do with scientific facts or real world economics.  They state quite openly that:

Our examination of theology, worldview, and ethics (Chapter One) finds that global warming alarmism wrongly views the Earth and its ecosystems as the fragile product of chance, not the robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting product of God’s wise design and powerful sustaining. 

They reckon they can do whatever they like and their god will save them.  Fundamentalism in its pure form.

The fact that they refer to mainstream science, such as the greenhouse effect, as "global warming alarmism" puts them in the 8% Dismissives category of the Yale Project.  On the other hand, the fact that some of this motley lot of evangelicals have managed to wangle their way into positions where they have some influence, where they can chew the ear of politicians of dubious character, makes them not far removed from the description of "scumbucket" authority figures of Robert Altemeyer's Right Wing Authoritarians. ("Scumbuckets" take on the role of authority figures that Right Wing Authoritarians follow for support against their perceived persecution by formal authority, such as government.)

Anthony Watts is one of the people who promotes disinformation from these evangelical religious science deniers.  The Auditor, Steve McIntyre, who obsesses about things of which he has little understanding and no experience, has partnered with Ross McKitrick, a member of the Cornwall Alliance.  (One of Anthony Watts' attack dogs, Rev Richard S Courtney aka richardscourtney, is also a member of the Cornwall Alliance.)

The type of evangelism practiced by this crowd is typical US-style christian fundamentalism.  It places man (not woman) as second only to their god in the order of things and talks of subduing everything to "man's" desires.  It is sybaritic in nature.  The world is there for "man" to plunder.  In case any one of them feels a twinge of remorse for their greed and selfishness, they hide behind their god, telling themselves that's why their god created them.  They wrote their own rules to justify their crusade of disinformation.  The words peppered throughout their quasi-religious texts are highly suggestive, like "subdue" and "rule".  For example:

Human beings have the divine mandate to multiply and to fill, subdue, and rule the Earth, transforming it from wilderness into garden. They act as stewards under God to cultivate and guard what they subdue and rule. 

Yes, it's hard to believe this is the twenty first century.  It sounds like something from one of the less enlightened ages in the distant past.  One can imagine them burning witches and riding off to the crusades.  Actually, while I can imagine them burning witches I think they'd be the ones sending foot soldiers to battle rather than going off to fight in the trenches themselves.  Their writing smacks of elitism and a sense of righteous authority.  It's right up there with the McCarthyism of the 1950s and more recently, Inhofe and Cuccinelli wanting to prosecute scientists, viewing them as criminals.

I'm tolerant of people having their own religious beliefs and practicing whatever rituals makes them feel good.  I prefer they do it privately but I'm not intolerant of public displays or missions, provided they stick to their god thing and spirituality or peering into crystals or tarot cards or whatever.

What I'm much less tolerant of is people using their religion to mess with politics, education and science.

What I have no tolerance for is people who make up a false image of a god as an excuse for their crusade to spread disinformation.  Who hide behind their made-up god and make emotive appeals to the worst side of human nature (greed, selfishness, envy) or prey on the innate good in people (think of the starving millions) to promote their lies about straightforward mainstream science and economics.

How Roy Spencer and John Christy trick Anthony Watts and his deniers once again

Today Roy Spencer put up a chart from John Christy on his blog (archived here) and wrote:

...over the period of the satellite record (1979-2012), both the surface and satellite observations produce linear temperature trends which are below 87 of the 90 climate models used in the comparison.

Let's just do a quick fact check.   First of all, he's wrong.  Even in his wonky chart (scroll down the page to see it) it's only their own satellite record that's "below" "over the period of the satellite record".  The surface temperatures don't drop below the bulk of the models until the tail end of the observations, from around 2008 onwards.  So I looked more closely at his chart and what I noticed was:

• the different series of observations and models unusually all started at almost the same point and
• UAH diverged a lot from the surface temperatures.

Now that's odd, I thought. I've previously compared UAH and GISTemp and noted how similar they are over time.  So how is it that they diverge so much in Roy's rendering?

Then I saw a question by Steven Mosher.  He asked:

October 14, 2013 at 4:02 PMHi Roy,
whats the Y axis? departure from 1979-83 normal?

Sure enough, Roy's Y axis had the label: "Departure from 1979-83 average (deg C)"

Now why would John Christy use such a short period of time as a baseline?  The normal period used is 30 years.  Four years is a very short period for a baseline.  So I ran up a couple of charts and you can see the difference for yourself.

This first one  shows UAH (lower troposphere) has higher and lower extremes than the surface temperature but they track each other fairly closely.  This is using a 30 year baseline from 1981-2010.  Take note of the fact that 1983, John's start year, lies above the trend. (Click to enlarge.)

This next chart is using John Christy's four year baseline 1979-1983.  If you compare the top and next chart below you'll see why UAH diverges so much.  The first three years of UAH are quite a bit above the surface temperature.  They come together more from 1982 onwards.  Using a four year baseline from 1979-83 shifts UAH down lower compared to the surface record. (Click to enlarge.)

Neat trick of Roy and John Christy?  What do you think.  Should we use that trick whenever we want to argue how different the satellite record of the lower troposphere is from the average global temperature of the land and sea surface?

I haven't plotted the model runs that Roy and John did, but I do have some questions for them.  I'll show their chart first, then ask the questions. (Click to enlarge.)

I have four three questions:

• Why did John Christy use a four year baseline period instead of a 30 year baseline as is usual?
• How did John Christy get all the CMIP5 models to start at exactly the same zero degree anomaly point?
• Why did they start at 1983 instead of 1979, which is when UAH started and when their baseline period started?  Oh, that's because they used five year running means - see next point.
• Why did they use running five year means instead of average annual?

Now let's see how the models are reported in the IPCC report. (Click to enlarge.)

From TFE.3, Figure 1: IPCC WG1 Technical Summary (page TS-96)

I must say that John Christy messed up his model runs, comparing John's chart to the IPCC chart above. Unlike in John's chart, there is no point at which the models all converge in the IPCC chart.  As well as that, while the observations are at the low end of the models right now, that wasn't the case back in the 1980s and 90s.  John Christy's chart shows UAH diverging from the get go way back in 1983.

Later addition: --o--The fact that 1983 lies above the trend line (see top chart above) probably means that John's model runs, which start at zero in 1983, are too high.  It's the same problem as discussed elsewhere when people were looking at an early draft of the IPCC report.--o--

Shall we just assume that John Christy and Roy Spencer are having a little fun at the expense of Anthony Watts and other science deniers?  Anthony Watts reposted Roy's article at WUWT and he didn't have any notice to indicate he knew it was a joke.  In fact Anthony seems to think Roy is serious.  He writes:

Reality wins, it seems. Dr Roy Spencer writes:

Well, Anthony it's not reality.  It's just a more mischief from John Christy and Roy Spencer.  It gives Wondering Willis' a chance for payback if he cares to take it.

From the WUWT comments

This article has brought out the lowest common denominator of denier at WUWT.  There is almost no-one querying the chart or making a useful comment.  It's just chanting of "all the models are wrong", "scientists don't know nuffin'" and "it's not CO2".  And Anthony boasts about his website?  Seriously?  Click for archived WUWT version with comments.


JustAnotherPoster says something rather garbled.  In between his "all the models are wrong" chant, something went wrong between the keyboard and brain?

October 14, 2013 at 2:15 pm
As RJB would state. The really clever work now would be to bin all the model that are failures and investigate why the two at the bottom have matched reality and what they have assumed compared with the failed ones.

That’s the Potential published paper work What have the model winners assumed that the model failures haven’t

magicjava asks a good question:

October 14, 2013 at 3:42 pm
Just a quick question. Why are temperatures given as a 5 year mean? Why not plot the actual temperature?

Jimbo is not at all sceptical of John Christy's chart and says:

October 14, 2013 at 3:43 pm
There are 3 words that Warmists hate to see in the same paragraph. These 3 words can cause intolerable mental conflict.
*Projections, *observations, *comparisons.

At one of the IPCC insiders’ meetings they knew full well that there was a problem. Some bright spark must have suggested that they simple pluck a new confidence number out of thin air otherwise they would be doomed (and shamed). Desperate times call for desperate measures. Just look at the graph. You won’t see this kind of behavior in any other science.

shenanigans24 sees what he wants to see and doesn't question anything either:

October 14, 2013 at 4:02 pm
I would say 100% are wrong. The fact that 2 or 3 haven’t overshot the temperature doesn’t make them right. They aren’t following the observed temperature. It’s clear that none of them simulate the actual climate.

richardscourtney says:

October 14, 2013 at 4:21 pm
Friends:
Some here seem to think rejection of the models which are clearly wrong would leave models which are right or have some property which provides forecasting skill and, therefore, merits investigation. Not so. To understand why this idea is an error google for Texas Sharp Shooter fallacy.

Models which have failed to correctly forecast are observed to be inadequate at forecasting. Those two (or three?) which remain are not known to be able to forecast the future from now. One or more of them may be able to do that but it cannot be known if this is true.
Richard

John Franco hasn't yet woken up to the fact that deniers can change their tune on a whim.  He's looking for some denialist consistency and can't find any at WUWT.  He says:

October 14, 2013 at 4:47 pm
I’m still confused why we care about HADCRUT. I thought WUWT demonstrated that half the “warming” came from bad ground stations and other fudge factors. I also thought another article on WUWT demonstrated that that HADCRUT takes advantage of some bad mathmatics to suppress temperatures early than 1960, especially the high temps of the 1940s.

Unlike most deniers who say it's all too complex, Latitude reckons climate is very simple and says:

October 14, 2013 at 5:02 pm
Richard, I see it as simply not willing to admit that CO2 isn’t as powerful as they want it to be….
covering it up and justifying it with “aerosols” etc….
That way they can still blame it all on CO2

Wondering Willis Eschenbach's Thunderstorm at WUWT

After a dull patch, Anthony Watts decided to liven up his blog by handing it over to Wondering Willis Eschenbach to say a few words to another WUWT regular, Roy Spencer - who maintains the UAH record of satellite data (of atmospheric temperature).

I'll just pick up on a couple of things in this "Willis blows his top" episode and post links to archived versions for their entertainment value.  You could say that Willis is acting out his Thunderstorm hypothesis.  No sign yet that his heat is dissipating or his governor is kicking in :)

Roy Spencer wrote an article in response to Willis Eschenbach's wonderings on clouds (archived here and here and here), which Willis thought he made up all by himself with data that scientists collected but never used (so Willis seems to think).  Roy says in part (see full archived version here - updated here):

The reason I am picking on Willis a little bit here is that his posts sometimes lead to comments like this:

“Geez – if I was one of the hoard of IPCC enthusiastic fools, this would be downright embarrassing. I sure wouldn’t want my mom to know I was so ineffective that some guy named Willis sits in his den and does more and better work than my entire IPCC crowd of hundreds of scientists, economists, psychologists, train engineers, tree surgeons, etc does in 4-5 years.”

C’mon, folks! Do you really think that of the billions of dollars spent on designing, launching, and keeping these satellite instruments going, that no one thought to analyze the data? Really? That’s why hundreds of scientists and engineers collaborated on such projects in the first place!
Just because you can’t find some technical issue described in blogs doesn’t mean it hasn’t been addressed. It’s in the scientific literature, and in workshop reports, conference proceedings, etc.

Willis doesn't like it and replies, apparently in all seriousness (see full archived version here):

Dr. Roy, the citizen climate scientists are the ones who have made the overwhelming majority of the gains in the struggle against rampant climate alarmism. It is people like Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts and Donna LaFramboise and myself and Joanne Nova and Warwick Hughes and the late John Daly, citizen climate scientists all, who did the work that your fellow mainstream climate scientists either neglected or refused to do. You should be showering us with thanks for doing the work your peers didn’t get done, not speciously claiming that we are likeable idiots like Homer Simpson.

Seriously?  Does Willis seriously think that climate scientists all around the world stop what they are doing to read pearls of wisdom dripping from denier blogs?  How many climate scientists have ever heard of anyone in Willis' list of science deniers?  Maybe a dozen?  Two dozen?  Maybe as many as fifty.  The scientists who blog and tweet may have come across some of the names in passing.  Apart from the handful of prominent scientists who've been attacked by these deniers (and maybe not all of them, at that), I'd guess that the vast majority of scientists who study any part of the earth system have never heard of this lot.  They are too busy doing scientific research. They'd know there are people who are 'deniers' who write letters to the paper but most scientists wouldn't bother with the active science-denying sub-culture on blogs.

Where's the spoon?

Willis goes further and doesn't just want the scientists to give him their data to play with (which they do freely), he wants them to give him a list of scientific papers.  Hasn't he heard of Google Scholar (the layperson's Web of Science)?  Willis writes at WUWT:

So, Roy’s claim seems to be that my work couldn’t possibly be original, because all conceivable analyses of the data have already been done. Now that’s a curious claim in any case … but in this case, somehow, he seems to have omitted the links to the work he says antedates mine.

When someone starts making unreferenced, uncited, unsupported accusations about me like that, there’s only one thing to say … Where’s the beef? Where’s the study? Where’s the data?
In fact, I know of no one who has done a number of the things that I’ve done with the CERES data. If Dr. Roy thinks so, then he needs to provide evidence of that. He needs to show, for example, that someone has analyzed the data in this fashion:

Willis isn't just upset that he's been challenged to do what any student would do first, let alone any scientist - a review of the literature, a check to see what's been done already - before trying to reinvent the wheel.  He demands that someone else spoonfeed him the literature as well.



Willis' dummy spit has provided entertainment to "warmists" and fake sceptics alike. In case there is anyone who wants to wade through it all but doesn't want to have to go to WUWT or Roy Spencers' blogs, here are the archived threads.

• Roy Spencer's original article chiding Willis Eschenbach and making suggestions
• Willis Eschenbach's response rant at WUWT - updated archive here, still later update here
• Roy Spencer's reply to Willis' rant Willisgate: Take 2

From the WUWT comments

Some people are using Roy's post as an opportunity to let off steam about Willis' generally bad behaviour.  Others have dreamt up reasons they think will explain Roy's original article.  How to explain the inexplicable - two sceptics having a disagreement!  Lots are sticking up for Willis against the big bad scientist.  Others are acting as peacemakers. I've just picked out a few - not a representative sample.

M Courtney (and Joe Crawford) think that Roy Spencer is feeling threatened by the brilliance of citizen scientist Wondering Willis Eschenbach and says:

October 9, 2013 at 1:38 pm
Joe Crawford says at October 9, 2013 at 1:30 pm 

Don’t quite know how, Willis, but it sure looks like you unintentionally stepped on someone’s toes. “Maybe you’re getting too close to an area Dr. Roy or one of his grads is researching.”

That has the ring of truth. There are commitments made in academia that cannot be ignored, rightly.

Ronald "OMG it's insects" Voisin says:

October 9, 2013 at 1:21 pm
Willis, you’re way overreacting.

thisisnotgoodtogo only gets a mention because I'm mentioned in the same breath as realclimate.org (Flattery will get you everywhere - haha. The other day in his Hot Sheet Anthony raised me to the status of Michael Mann. Just goes to show how little fake sceptics know!):

October 9, 2013 at 1:42 pm
““Career scientists like myself have not done enough public outreach to describe what they have done. And when we do such outreach, it is usually too technical to understand. We are too busy publishing-or-perishing.”

This sounds plagiarized. From RealClimate. Or Mrs Hot Whopper?

Fieldos says what probably quite a few are thinking:

October 9, 2013 at 1:58 pm
I used to enjoy Willis’ posts, but it’s getting too much. This blog is getting to be less of Watts Up With That? and too much of What’s up with Willis !…

Jeremy gives Willis a backhanded compliment and doesn't understand what Roy Spencer wrote when he says:

October 9, 2013 at 2:27 pm
Roy is wrong to slander anyone not doing “novel” work. There’s plenty of scientists who never do an original piece of work in their lives, their work and expertise have great value.

Dave says:

October 9, 2013 at 1:59 pm
What you talking about Willis -
Dr. Roy’s article is not a hatchet job, it is a cautionary tale and a reminder to cite precedent. All he is doing is advocating good science. Don’t be so thin skinned.

pokerguy says:

October 9, 2013 at 2:05 pm
“Willis, you’re way overreacting.”

He always does. PLus, I don’t think this is the place. Willis, you’re just not as important as you obviously think you are.

So tiresome.

Bruce says:

October 9, 2013 at 9:21 pm
Stop bleating, Roy is right and Watts is is more than indulgent.

Mark Bofill says:

October 10, 2013 at 12:36 pm
Chad,

The most regrettable thing about this whole affair is the publicizing of fights among skeptics. While everyone may have different views about exactly how much or how little man’s activities or CO2 affect climate, I think there is general agreement that the effect is nugatory, and it does not serve our “cause” (to borrow the alarmists’ term) to disagree in this manner.

Yeah, in one sense. In another it’s reassuring. I don’t want skeptics to start worrying about the “cause”; look what it did to the Team. So long as we squabble publicly, it’s easier to believe that when we don’t squabble it’s not a show for company.

Update: And with a hat tip to William Connolley, this one's priceless - from Wondering Willis "I'm Wonderful" Eschenbach, who says he almost single-handedly revealed - ummm, I'd disagree with Willis.  They revealed nothing but what one would expect.  What the emails showed was that scientists do good science, and just like the rest of the normal population, scientists get mighty sick and tired of the tiny percentage of the population who are the illiterati that refuse to accept reality  (extract - from updated archive here).

Willis Eschenbach says:

October 10, 2013 at 9:26 am

Steve Garcia says: October 10, 2013 at 12:31 am

… Nope. The ONLY person who really made a difference was Mr Climategate himself. And we don’t know if he (she?) was a climatologist or a citizen climatologist. It seems virtually certain to ME that he/she could not have had access without being an inside climate person.

...Well, I’m the guy who filed the very first FOIA request to the UEA folks, an act that was the unwitting genesis of the actions described in the Climategate emails.

So while you are right that Mr. Climategate did a great thing by revealing how the UEA folks and the rest lied, cheated and broke the law in response to my FOIA request and others as well … you’re misunderstanding the causality here. Without Warwick Hughes and me and Steve McIntyre and all the others putting the pressure on Phil Jones and the rest of the un-indicted co-conspirators, there would have been nothing for Mr. Climategate to reveal.

Mr. Climategate was just the reporter, Steve. All he did was let people know how the UEA folks were responding to our FOIA requests, with lies and trickery.

You’re mistaking the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself. The reporter that broke the story is important, sure … but the participants in the story, the actual actors, are the reason that the story exists to be revealed.
w.

From the Roy Spencer comments

Don Monfort says (excerpt - click here for the archived copy):

October 10, 2013 at 1:19 PM
Anybody remember the stoopid, vicious and personal attack from Willis against Judith Curry on her blog:

Stephen Wilde says:

October 10, 2013 at 1:38 PM
I’ve personally endured offensive diatribes from Willis far worse than Roy’s measured comments.

I'm guessing Don Monfort and Willis don't see eye to eye, he's back again and this time paints a picture that I figure more than one person will think is on the money:

October 10, 2013 at 9:36 AM
Oh, a lot of the legendary DIY climate science blogger’s sycophants have shown up to defend their hero. You should have known better, Dr. Roy. That Homer Simpson thing really got under Willis’s thin translucent skin. His image of himself is the dude in the Dos Equis ‘most interesting man in the world’ commercial.

I had no idea who Dos Equis "most interesting man in the world" is and maybe you don't either.  It's an advertising gimmick.  Here's an image I found on this site:

Source: EatMeDaily.com

Here's Willis, he even got a mention on DeSmog Blog, so I guess he's been noticed somewhere outside of his wonderings at WUWT.

Source: DeSmogBlog

There are hundreds more comments if you have the stamina and interest.  It gets boring very quickly.

Snipped...

Update: see below - Anthony fell for Russell's trick (like me) and has been goaded into completing the censor circle!  Ha ha - good one, Russell!

On WUWT today, Roger Pielke Sr bemoans as "limiting scientific debate" a decision by AGU to not publish what he refers to as his "minority statement" on global warming.

Dr Pielke tells us that AGU did publish his comment on the AGU policy statement on global warming in EOS, and AGU did provide a link in EOS to his alternative statement published elsewhere, so he's really just nitpicking details.

The WUWT mob denounce it as "censorship" and "gatekeeping".  So when I read this comment with some of it censored by WUWT gatekeepers, I thought, "how ironic"!

Source: WUWT

Snipped! What can one say?

The only other thing I can say is that I can't take you to the AGU policy statement on climate change.  I used to be able to.  Today, no matter how I try, whether through Google, the AGU website itself or via links from other websites like  Rabett Run and the Yale Forum, all that happens is I get redirected to a seemingly irrelevant Wiley On-line page.

UPDATE

Ha ha - there's a postscript to this.  Russell apparently wrote "(SNIP)" himself.  Anthony doesn't take kindly to the joke and bans him, completing the censor circle!

Russell says:

August 23, 2013 at 10:57 pm Though WUWT is at liberty to call blacklisting whitelisting, it invites cognitive dissonance when what is read contrasts so vibrantly with its erstwhile site policy:

“Trolls, flame-bait, personal attacks, thread-jacking, sockpuppetry, name-calling such as “denialist,” “denier,” and other detritus that add nothing to further the discussion may get deleted;

Internet phantoms who have cryptic handles, no name, and no real email address get no respect here. If you think your opinion or idea is important, elevate your status by being open and honest. People that use their real name get more respect than phantoms with handles. I encourage open discussion.” – Anthont Watts

Really?

As the subject is consorship, it is noteworthy that we have just seen a comment denying WUWT’s censorship endorsed by a censor whom Tony also suffers to maintain a sockpuppet on the site– ‘Smokey ‘ and dbstealey are one and the same.

The hypocrisy, it amuses .

REPLY: And yet here you are. D.B. Stealey the moderator is right out in the open Dr. Seitz. We find your vain attempts at playing a professional also amusing.

And Dr. Seitz, you are a liar, and a bad one at that. You put that (SNIP) in the comment yourself just so you could make a false claim, the thing is though, servers keep logs and copies, and your comment had that in there in the beginning. You weren’t even smart enough to mimic moderator signatures with your deception. Here is a screencap I made shortly after your comment showed up, since I knew you’d pull this stunt. Note the “cleared by Akismet” that means no moderator touched it, aka it was whitelisted and showed up just as you typed it. Otherwise it would have an “approved” time stamp. That’s inserted by wordpress.com and I have no control over it.

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/seitz_logged.png

So, since you are making things up, and lying about it, kindly take permanent leave from here. – Now run along and photoshop some juvenile ugliness as you are known to do on a regular basis. Do be careful though, since you are using your Harvard email address, network IP, and server for your harangues, I’m not sure that they’ll appreciate that per the Harvard Network AUP.

Now you can say you aren’t whitelisted here sir.
– Anthony

The only surprise is that Anthony blocked out the email address.  I guess he figured he gave enough clues to set his dogs on the scent!

PS I wonder who is the "anonymous coward" of a moderator who hides behind the handle "Akismet"?

PPS Not a single commenter so far has noticed that the policy statement is unavailable.  Shows how much they check stuff out!

PPPS I and HotWhopper have been elevated to "notorious" :)  Nice to know Anthony Watts reads my blog!  Wonder if that is why we haven't heard too much more like "OMG it's insects" lately?  WUWT has been getting rather tame these past few weeks :(  Not getting as hysterical or barking mad quite as often.

REPLY: Russell Seitz of Harvard (who has previously identified himself here) runs one of WUWT’s blog spawn websites – what’s interesting is that he put the (SNIP) in there, that isn’t a moderator signature and there is no record of any moderator interaction with this comment. Looks like the notorious “Sou” at “hotwhopper” fell for the Seitz trick. LOL! – Anthony

PPPPS Looks like I've been "outed" too.  Perhaps by my old buddies who manage HotCopper.  Anthony thinks this was being too "nasty" for the polite folk at WUWT.  Ah well, it was bound to happen sooner or later.  I'm sure I can find him a more flattering photo though :(

Roy Spencer the half-truther and Roger Pielke Jr the global warming advocate

Update: see below.


I just saw Roy Spencer giving testimony to a USA Senate hearing "Climate Change is Happening Now".

Spencer admitted: "there's a lot of half truths in this business".

Then he proceeded to prove his point.

He said that Antarctic sea ice is increasing but left out more than the half the picture, namely that the Antarctic ice melt from land is contributing to sea level rise, and that the Arctic sea ice is decreasing ever so much more than the increase in Antarctic sea ice.  He claimed that he falls into the 98% of scientists who agree that humans cause global warming, asking "how much do humans contribute" while neglecting to point out that the 98% agree that humans cause most of the current global warming.  At least more than half the global warming according to the Cook et al study that Spencer was referring to.

Spencer who claimed to be a scientist who should know about climate, ended up his speech with "at some point we have to ask ourselves is all of this just mostly part of what the climate system does naturally".   Is he saying he doesn't know?

For an avowed Christian Roy Spencer is a terrific half-truther!

Pielke and Senator Whitehouse agree

Here is some more from the same Senate panel hearing.  Senator Whitehouse and Roger Pielke Jr find much to agree upon:

Whitehouse: We agree that climate change is happening.

Pielke: Yes

Whitehouse: We agree that we should both mitigate and adapt in response to that change.

Pielke: Yes

Whitehouse: We both find the IPCC reports credible?

Pielke: Yes.

Whitehouse: Can we also agree that a body of credible research projects that extreme weather events could increase in frequency and intensity due to manmade carbon dioxide emission.

Pielke: Yes, that's certainly the case and if you look at the literature you'll find many such projections. 

But Pielke quickly switches to hurricanes, his favourite topic.  He went on to say it could be a long time before we can categorically say that hurricanes are increasing in frequency or intensity.

Whitehouse then asks that, given that we're already way beyond the norm in terms of CO2 now at 400 ppm, we should anticipate climate behaviour rather than wait for a signal in every single facet of climate?

Pielke says: Yes, absolutely. And goes on to explain that he's written about adaptation for an awfully long time.

Then he builds a big straw man saying people shouldn't do this or that, which they don't do anyway.  Why does Roger do that?  It's because of his ideology.  Why does he say the droughts of the past were worse?  Because he's judging them in terms of human impact not in terms of weather metrics.  We have adapted so we can cope better with worse droughts and floods than occurred in the past.  But not everyone can.

The question becomes: how much more do we want to rely on adaptation when it is within our power to limit what we will have to adapt to?

Whitehouse is knowledgeable about climate.  He's done a lot of reading.  He asked questions that Roger had to agree to if he wanted to maintain a shred of dignity.  Simple grade school questions that any child could answer.  Like warmer oceans energise storms.  More evaporation leads to more intense precipitation.  "Yes, that's absolutely true" was Pielke's response.

Whitehouse is not just knowledgeable about climate, he's also knowledgeable about Roger Pielke Jr and Roy Spencer.

Then the floor is given to Senator Vitter to ask some questions.  Vitter is different to Whitehouse.  Vitter is interested in what he himself "believes", whereas Whitehouse was more concerned with what is happening in the world.  It was kind of funny to see Vitter bringing the discussion back to extreme events right after Pielke had said that the discussion ought to focus on other matters because he reckons it's not yet possible to detect a signal in (some) extreme events - like tornadoes and hurricanes (tropical cyclones).  I'm sure Vitter didn't intend it, but what Vitter got Pielke to say was that there has been a documented increase in some extreme events, like heat waves and intense precipitation.

Vitter comes up with a whole lot of charts saying they are from Pielke's testimony.  As he unveils each one, Pielke says: "That's not from my testimony".  Oops!

On drought: Pielke says: There are trends in some places of increasing drought and in other places of decreasing drought but over the whole world there is no discernible trend.... That is the point, isn't it.  That climates in different regions are changing.  In those places where there is increasing drought, that's what people are concerned about.

On wildfires: Pielke says it's very plausible that there could be an increase in the number of western wildfires for example.

Finally Vitter unveils one of Pielke's charts - on hurricane landfalls: They aren't hitting the land in the USA right now, says Roger.  We've been pretty lucky in recent years, he says.  And globally there is no trend in landfalls either.  Another panelist pointed out that focusing on landfall is misleading as there have been many more hurricanes than normal in the Atlantic in the past couple of years.  It's just that they didn't hit land.

Spencer says creation "theory" is more scientific than evolution!

A bit later, Senator Whitehouse asks Roy Spencer if the theory of creation has a much better scientific basis than the theory of evolution (3h 23m 10 seconds): Spencer's short answer was "yes".

Mixed reaction on WUWT

Despite the efforts of Anthony Watts, there was a mixed reaction on WUWT to the senate panel hearing.  Anthony led off with the headline:

Watch yesterday’s blockbuster performance by Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. and Dr. Roy Spencer at Senate climate hearing

Not everyone agreed that the performance of either was a "blockbuster".


Gary says:

July 19, 2013 at 4:25 pm  Pielke concedes things that he shouldn’t such as agreeing with Whitehouse that the IPCC reports are credible. Some parts are, but some parts assuredly are not. Spencer’s monologue on Cook’s bogus research sounds like he agrees with it. I’m disappointed in the performance of both witnesses. Whitehouse will take their statements to reinforce his position rather than change his position to a reasonable one.

Kev-in-Uk says (excerpt):

July 19, 2013 at 4:47 pm  I have to say, that I wasn’t overly impressed with Pielke Jnr. To me he seemed to be almost crying ‘I’m a warmist but I don’t have the data to support that’? or perhaps, he simply accepts, like most of us – that human co2 is likely to cause some climate effects – but we dont yet know how much?

TrueNorthist says:

July 19, 2013 at 6:07 pm  I am left wondering where the blockbuster performance was. I thought perhaps that I had selected the wrong video but no, it was Pielke and Spencer so it must be the right one. What I took away from this was that Pielke Jr agrees entirely with the IPCC and that Dr Spencer is a creationist. Sorry, but if this is what passes as blockbuster stuff then we should all start getting our heads around paying carbon taxes.

albertalad's comment was snipped by the WUWT mods

July 19, 2013 at 5:39 pm [snip]

Janice Moore lets us in on what the lad said, quoting him as writing:

July 19, 2013 at 6:49 pm  “Spencer’s testimony was destroyed by his stance on evolution – it made him seem like a lunatic!” [Alberta Lad at 5:39 PM 7/19/13]

milodonharlani thinks the Republicans chose Spencer and Pielke Jr deliberately to undermine their denial - (or perhaps he doesn't realise they were nominated by the Republican senators).  He says:

July 19, 2013 at 6:52 pm  Naturally Spencer was chosen from among thousands of qualified skeptics precisely because he questions aspects of evolutionary theory. And Pielke, jr because he’s a lukewarmist, at best. This gives the appearance of balance & fairness without endangering the orthodoxy.

pokerguy says:

July 19, 2013 at 6:56 pm  milodonharlan, exactly right. Total bag job. Spencer should have declined. Where was Judith Curry?  Celebrating this as a skeptic victory is pathetic.

Much of the rest of the discussion was about exactly how loony Spencer appeared to be - was it a lot or a little.  I gather from the WUWT comments that to some extent it depends on whether one is a fundamentalist Christian or not.

UPDATE: (Sun 21 July 13) Catmando at Ingenious Pursuits has written a thoughtful article on Roy Spencer's ideas and intelligent design.

A Battle of the DuKEs: Climate science deniers are getting all tied up in knots

Rgbatduke (aka Robert G Brown of Duke University aka the DuKE), Monckton, Spencer & Christy and now Willis Eschenbach and WM Briggs having a right old ding-dong battle.  It's another battle of the DuKEs.

Here is where it started, here is a continuation, and then WM Briggs "statistician to the stars" dealt a blow to deniers by saying what Professor Brown wrote was complete and utter nonsense.

This is the latest (h/t Nick Stokes).

"Wondering" Willis Eschenbach told WM Briggs what he thought of his tearing down of Professor Brown's rant.  This is part of what Willis wrote:

I know you’re a great statistician, and you’re one of my heroes … but with all respect, you’ve left out a couple of important priors in your rant ….

1. You assume that the results of the climate model are better than random chance.

2. You assume that the mean of the climate models is better than the individual models.

3. You assume that the climate models are “physics-based”.

As far as I know, none of these has ever been shown to be true for climate models. If they have, please provide citations.

As a result, taking an average of climate models is much like taking an average of gypsy fortunetellers … and surely you would not argue that the average and standard deviation of their forecasts is meaningful.

(Odd that Wondering Willis doesn't know that "climate models" are based on physics - or at least the ones I believe he's referring to are.)

Robert G Brown is embarrassingly wrong...wronger than televised wrestling

Here are some excerpts from WM Briggs' response to Willis.  This is about as big a slap down as one climate science denier (WM Briggs) can give to two others (Willis and the DuKE) and probably bigger than a science denier would give to a scientist (my bold):

1. Do ensemble models make statistical sense in theory?

Yes. Brown said no and wanted to slap somebody, God knows who, for believing they did and for creating a version of an ensemble forecast. He called such practice “horrendous.” Brown is wrong. What he said was false. As in not right. As is not even close to being right. As is severely, embarrassingly wrong. As in wrong in such a way that not one of his statistical statements could be repaired. As in just plain wrong. In other words, and to be precise, Brown is wrong. He has no idea of which he speaks. The passage you quote from him is wronger than Joe Biden’s hair plugs. It is wronger than Napoleon marching on Moscow. It is wronger than televised wrestling....

...3. A model does not have to explain the physics to be good.

Stop and re-read that before continuing.

Poor Wondering Willis.  He probably won't know what hit him.

The rigorous statistics of "it looks like"...

Now let's go back to WM Brigg's point 2. He wrote (my bold):

2. Are the ensemble climate models good? As I said originally, not for long-range predictions, but yes for very short-range ones. If Brown wants to claim long-range models are poor, even useless, then I am his brother. But if he wants to say that they do not make statistical sense, then I am his enemy. Being “good” and making “statistical sense” are different and no power in Heaven or on Earth can make them the same.

I tried to find where WM Briggs said anything about "long range predictions vs short range predictions" in his original article and its updates.  About the closest I could find was this:

TWO Are the ensemble models used in climate forecasts any good? They don’t seem to be; not for longer-range predictions (and don’t forget that ensembles can have just one member). Some climate model forecasts—those for a few months ahead—seem to have skill, i.e. they are good. Why deny the obvious? The multi-year ones look like they’re too hot.

Well, that's weird.  WM Briggs argues at length based on "statistics" but then dismisses climate models because "it looks like they're too hot".  That doesn't sound to rigourous an assessment, does it.  And he talks about climate model forecasts of  "a few months ahead".  I don't know of any such climate model forecasts.  Climate models by definition model climate, not a few months of weather.

The "short-termism" of climate science denial

This is how WM Briggs is wrong.  He said that ensemble climate models are good for short range predictions.  But climate models model climate, not "short range predictions".  Climate is long range, not short range.  Climate models do not make any claim of being "right" in the short term.  That is, the noise of weather dominates in the short term.  In the short term, the noise masks the signal.  What the models are designed for is to help understand what the various elements of the earth system will be like over coming decades to centuries, not over the coming days, weeks or months.  As noted on realclimate.org:

Short term (15 years or less) trends in global temperature are not usefully predictable as a function of current forcings. 

Fifteen years or less!  Not "a few months', not even "a few years".  It would be fair to say there is more difference between models and model runs on a daily or weekly basis than there is on a longer term basis.  This is an extract from the full comment from the article on RealClimate.org (my bold):

In interpreting this information, please note the following (mostly repeated from previous years):

• Short term (15 years or less) trends in global temperature are not usefully predictable as a function of current forcings. This means you can’t use such short periods to ‘prove’ that global warming has or hasn’t stopped, or that we are really cooling despite this being the warmest decade in centuries. We discussed this more extensively here.
• The CMIP3 model simulations were an ‘ensemble of opportunity’ and vary substantially among themselves with the forcings imposed, the magnitude of the internal variability and of course, the sensitivity. Thus while they do span a large range of possible situations, the average of these simulations is not ‘truth’.
• The model simulations use observed forcings up until 2000 (or 2003 in a couple of cases) and use a business-as-usual scenario subsequently (A1B). The models are not tuned to temperature trends pre-2000.
• Differences between the temperature anomaly products is related to: different selections of input data, different methods for assessing urban heating effects, and (most important) different methodologies for estimating temperatures in data-poor regions like the Arctic. GISTEMP assumes that the Arctic is warming as fast as the stations around the Arctic, while HadCRUT4 and NCDC assume the Arctic is warming as fast as the global mean. The former assumption is more in line with the sea ice results and independent measures from buoys and the reanalysis products.
• Model-data comparisons are best when the metric being compared is calculated the same way in both the models and data. In the comparisons here, that isn’t quite true (mainly related to spatial coverage), and so this adds a little extra structural uncertainty to any conclusions one might draw.

There is a paper by Santer et al (often misquoted by deniers) in which it is found that to determine a change in climate based solely on trends in global surface temperature generally requires multiple decades, not months or years.  In their analysis, a period of 32 years yielded a clear signal over the noise.  In the abstract they maintain you need at least 17 years.  This is from the paper's conclusion (my bold):

The clear message from our signal-to-noise analysis is that multi-decadal records are required for identifying human effects on tropospheric temperature. Minimal warming over a single decade does not disprove the existence of a slowly-evolving anthropogenic warming signal.

From what I have read, all current climate models project these (among other things) over the longer term to varying degrees depending on the emissions scenario:

• Average global surface temperature will rise
• Sea level will continue to increase
• Ice will continue to melt - including Arctic sea ice and the worlds glaciers and ice sheets.

You can see this in the latest annual update on realclimate.org, which looks at the extent to which models are getting it right.  

For example, here are the projections from the IPCC AR4 report, that shows the models are intended to project climate, not short term weather, looking ahead one hundred years or so:

Source: IPCC AR4 WGI

And looking ahead several centuries to a millenium:

Source: IPCC AR4 WGI

Climate science deniers ignore what is "right" about the models.  They all show surface temperature continuing to rise, for example.  And they estimate the expected rise within a specified range for explicit scenarios of future emissions.  They can provide explicit estimates of climate sensitivity and transient climate response - within a range.

(And just in case there is anyone who thinks the world has stopped warming, check this out before you go making as big a fool of yourself as the DuKE, WM Briggs and Wondering Willis.)  

Denier models are very short term and embarrassingly wrong

Denier "models" on the other hand, tend to the short term and "project" weird and silly stuff like this, from David Archibald.  His "model" projects that before seven years is out, by 2020, the average surface temperature will have dropped below the lowest temperature in the entire Holocene:

Why deniers deny science...

It's enlightening watching the deniers fight it out among themselves.  They all bring their own "wrong" to the table.  One thing many of them have in common is embodied in this comment from DAV on WM Brigg's blog (my bold):

Policymakers are relying on these models to represent the RANGE of possible future climates that are consistent with known physics and chemistry.

To do what, exactly? Are they making preparations or just looking for a revenue source?

The thing many climate science deniers have in common is an unwillingness to accept that the deleterious affects of climate change carry a cost.  That will apply regardless of whether we do nothing or do something beforehand (like shifting to clean energy) or wait till after the damage is done (like paying flood levies to repair broken infrastructure).

PS We can add Judith Curry to the list of deniers promoting the DuKE from Duke's rubbish.  She aligns herself with the denialiati every chance she gets.  (No link from me this time.  I can't usually be bothered with Curry tripe, with some exceptions like here and here and here and here.)

PPS (23 June 2013)  Looks as if WM Briggs is trying to backtrack from his comment about short term climate models by saying he meant the models used for weather forecasting and seasonal outlooks.  I know they are called "climate" models too, although they model weather, not climate.  And they are constantly updated with real data through data assimilation unlike the climate models rgbatduke was writing about.  So this "fervent, ill-educated activist" is sticking to her guns.  WM Briggs was wrong, plain and simple in what he said.  His article was in relation to IPCC models, which are a somewhat different beast, used for a different purpose and having different features.  The climate models being discussed here are built to learn about climate not to forecast weather.

Anthony Watts attacks Christy, Spencer and Monckton

How Anthony Watts and rgbatduke attempt to expose the chicanery of Christy, Spencer and Monckton

Anthony Watts puts up an article slamming the chart of Roy Spencer and John Christie and Christopher Monckton's charts all in a few words.  All his commenters agree they are nonsense.  They've run out of arguments against "warmists" so now they are attacking each other.  Good to see.

Here's the slam from rgbatduke:

This is reflected in the graphs Monckton publishes above (Sou: see below), where the AR5 trend line is the average over all of these models and in spite of the number of contributors the variance of the models is huge. It is also clearly evident if one publishes a “spaghetti graph” of the individual model projections (as Roy Spencer recently did in another thread) — it looks like the frayed end of a rope, not like a coherent spread around some physics supported result.

Note the implicit swindle in this graph (Sou: he is referring to Monckton's chart as shown below) — by forming a mean and standard deviation over model projections and then using the mean as a “most likely” projection and the variance as representative of the range of the error, one (Sou: ie Monckton) is treating the differences between the models as if they are uncorrelated random variates causing >deviation around a true mean!.

Say what?

I kind of like they way rgbatduke wishes climate behaved the way a single particle behaves in a laboratory-controlled physics experiment.  If only.  (By the way, I'm not twisting this in any way.  rgbatduke is referring directly to the workings of Christy, Spencer and Monckton.  He may think he's criticising the IPCC but they are not IPCC charts.  It's not the IPCC that used the data that way.  It's only Christy, Spencer and Monckton who did the charts and calculations in the way they did.)

The rest of his article reads as if it's written by a person (maybe a physicist) who doesn't know anything about climate science.  rgbatduke says as much, admitting his "comparative ignorance".  It comes across as the logical fallacy of personal incredulity.


Anyway, here are some reactions:

Ian W says:
June 18, 2013 at 5:24 pm  An excellent post – it would be assisted if it had Viscount Monckton’s and Roy Spencer’s graphs displayed with references.

mark says:
June 18, 2013 at 5:43 pm damn. just damn.

Chuck Nolan says:
June 18, 2013 at 6:02 pm I believe you’re correct. I’m not smart enough to know if what you are saying is true, but I like your logic.  Posting this on WUWT tells me you are not afraid of critique. Everyone knows nobody gets away with bad science or math here.

Abe says:
June 18, 2013 at 6:04 pm WINNER!!!!!  The vast majority of what you said went WAY over my head, but the notion of averaging models for stats as if they were actual data being totally wrong I totally agree.

Rob Ricket says:
June 18, 2013 at 8:03 pm  What a brilliant application of scientific logic in exposing the futility of attempting to prognosticate the future with inadequate tools. It takes a measure of moral courage to expose fellow academics as morally bankrupt infants bumbling about in a dank universe of deception. Bravo!

Jeef says:
June 18, 2013 at 7:32 pm  That. Is. Brilliant.  Thank you.

Only a couple of people seemed to understand what rgbatduke wrote.  

Once again, Nick Stokes asks some pertinent questions (my bold):
June 18, 2013 at 6:22 pm  As I said on the other thread, what is lacking here is a proper reference. Who does this? Where? “Whoever it was that assembled the graph” is actually Lord Monckton. But I don’t think even that graph has most of these sins, and certainly the AR5 graph cited with it does not. Where in the AR5 do they make use of ‘the variance and mean of the “ensemble” of models’?

Monckton pops in and thanks Nick Stokes for being gracious and coming to his defense.  

No, that's not what he does.  Monckton calls Nick Stokes a liar and a troll and and then goes on to say he did exactly what Nick Stokes and rgbatduke said he did. He writes: "in my own graph I merely represented the interval of projections encompassed by the spaghetti graph and added a line to represent the IPCC’s central projection."  That's precisely what rgbatduke was referring to when he originally wrote in reference to Monckton's chart, of the:

"implicit swindle in this graph — by forming a mean and standard deviation over model projections and then using the mean as a “most likely” projection and the variance as representative of the range of the error, one is treating the differences between the models as if they are uncorrelated random variates causing >deviation around a true mean!"

Monckton somehow "forgets" to mention the variance he shows on his chart (see below).

Monckton also admits to using a confidential draft AR5 chart, which if he was an expert reviewer he pledged to keep confidential.  The AR5 chart itself has errors AFAIK and the public version will no doubt be different.

Monckton shows his lack of moral fibre and his lack of grace.  His behaviour shows he is not an upright citizen, an honest man of his word or a gentleman.  Monckton is a bombastic ignorant fool who has lost his entertainment value.  I've noticed that some people who are in the wrong are incapable of admitting it, and have a tendency to get very aggro.  As if they think it will fool anyone but other fools.  Monckton also has a very compartmentalised brain. It holds his lies and truths in different compartments but he can spout either or both at the same time, usually mixed with his misplaced self-righteous venom.

A final mention to Tsk Tsk who observes the strawman (my bold):

June 18, 2013 at 7:01 pm  Brown raises a potentially valid point about the statistical analysis of the ensemble, but his carbon atom comparison risks venturing into strawman territory. If he’s claiming that much of the variance amongst the models is driven by the actual sophistication of the physics that each incorporates, then he should provide a bit more evidence to support that conclusion.

Here are the charts prepared by Christy, Spencer and Monckton that so offended rgbatduke, all the WUWT deniers and Anthony Watts, but which they are only now saying so.

Spencer and Christy's Spaghetti

Monckton's Swindle

Here are my previous articles on:

• Spencer and Christy's exercise
• Monckton's diatribe

Here is a figure from the 2007 IPCC report - Summary for Policy Makers. The left panel is emission scenarios, the right panel shows multi-model means of surface temperature for different scenarios. The bars at the right show the "best estimate" surface temperature and likely range for 2090-2099.  The best estimate is not the same as the model means you'll notice. Click to enlarge.

Figure SPM.5. Left Panel: Global GHG emissions (in GtCO2-eq) in the absence of climate policies: six illustrative SRES marker scenarios (coloured lines) and the 80th percentile range of recent scenarios published since SRES (post-SRES) (gray shaded area). Dashed lines show the full range of post-SRES scenarios. The emissions include CO2, CH4, N2O and F-gases. Right Panel: Solid lines are multi-model global averages of surface warming for scenarios A2, A1B and B1, shown as continuations of the 20th-century simulations. These projections also take into account emissions of short-lived GHGs and aerosols. The pink line is not a scenario, but is for Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Model (AOGCM) simulations where atmospheric concentrations are held constant at year 2000 values. The bars at the right of the figure indicate the best estimate (solid line within each bar) and the likely range assessed for the six SRES marker scenarios at 2090-2099. All temperatures are relative to the period 1980-1999. {Figures 3.1 and 3.2}

How much out of whack is the UAH temperature data set? (Revamped)

POSTSCRIPT: See postscript below (added 7:09 pm Monday 7 June 2013 AEST)

UPDATE: See addendum below (added 10:27 pm Friday 7 June AEST)


Has the day of reckoning arrived?

I see that Anthony Watts has a post up on WUWT with a chart from Roy Spencer and John Christy that compares UAH data to CMIP5 model runs.  It's titled: Climate modeling EPIC FAIL – Spencer: ‘the day of reckoning has arrived.’

Roy Spencer has the same article on his blog, but the comments are dominated by hard-core deniers (like "Cohenite" - an Australian lawyer who is one of the more extreme and obnoxious deniers with nothing to say and who uses a lot of words to say it). I gave up trying to glean anything useful from the discussion there.  Needless to say there's almost nothing useful in the comments on WUWT.  (I noticed the Roger Pielke Sr had piled on in his usual clumsy fashion.)

I originally miscontrued the WUWT article and charts as referring to global surface temperatures. However, in the comments below, Ryan pointed out my error.  The examples on WUWT are only for the tropics and only for the mid-troposphere in the tropics.  I was going to leave my post with all the edits as is, but it's too messy.  So I've revamped it.

Here is the chart posted on WUWT. (Click to enlarge.)

I found this paper by Stephen Po-Chedley and Qiang Fu that seems to be more or less on topic, though it appears to be discussing the difference between tropical upper troposphere and lower middle troposphere.  They indicate it's not known if it's the models or the data.  The paper also references other papers on the topic, so it seems to be a well-known issue at least as it relates to the tropical upper troposphere relative to the lower-middle troposphere.  Here are some excerpts  (my bold and para breaks):

Recent studies have examined tropical upper tropospheric warming by comparing coupled atmosphere–ocean global circulation model (GCM) simulations from Phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3) with satellite and radiosonde observations of warming in the tropical upper troposphere relative to the lower-middle troposphere. These studies showed that models tended to overestimate increases in static stability between the upper and lower-middle troposphere.

We revisit this issue using atmospheric GCMs with prescribed historical sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and coupled atmosphere–ocean GCMs that participated in the latest model intercomparison project, CMIP5. It is demonstrated that even with historical SSTs as a boundary condition, most atmospheric models exhibit excessive tropical upper tropospheric warming relative to the lower-middle troposphere as compared with satellite-borne microwave sounding unit measurements. It is also shown that the results from CMIP5 coupled atmosphere–ocean GCMs are similar to findings from CMIP3 coupled GCMs.

The apparent model-observational difference for tropical upper tropospheric warming represents an important problem, but it is not clear whether the difference is a result of common biases in GCMs, biases in observational datasets, or both.

And more here from the same paper.  Seems to me Christy and Spencer need to be a bit cautious or they might end up with egg on their faces.  I notice Christy and Spencer have stuck a couple of balloons in their charts, so what they might be doing is a blog justification, saying their satellite readings are accurate.  However this paper was written in the knowledge that radiosonde data also differs from the models:

The effect of internal uncertainty related to the dataset construction is large (Christy et al 2003, Zou et al 2009, Mears et al 2011), so it is possible that the differences between GCMs and observations are byproducts of the merging procedure for satellite observations. It is unclear why the interannual amplification ratio should be different from the decadal amplification ratio, but MSU observations show less amplification on decadal time scales (figure 4). We also note that NOAA T24 has larger upper-middle tropospheric warming compared to RSS and UAH (tables 1 and 2) and that other analyses that use temperature trends derived from wind measurements have found that historical tropical tropospheric warming is largely consistent with GCM results (Allen and Sherwood 2008). In general, the comparison of model and observed trends over a relatively short time period has large uncertainties, so some of the discrepancy noted here may also be related to the length of the datasets.

Brian over at Eli Rabett's place also speculated about the above paper and the accuracy of the UAH temperature data set back when it first came out.

In the comments BBD points out that UAH is similar to surface-based data series for the tropics.

This is a bit off topic, but RealClimate had an article "Verification of regional model trends" only a short while ago. It's worth a read.  Basically the models are getting better but are still not reliable for many things at the regional level.  Here is an excerpt:

All these studies reach similar conclusions. For temperature: the ensemble is reliable if one considers the full signal, but this is due to the differing global mean temperature responses (Total Climate Responses, TCR).

When the global mean temperature trend is factored out, the ensemble becomes overconfident: the spatial variability is too low. For annual mean precipitation the ensemble is also found to be overconfident. Precipitation trends in 3-month seasons have so much natural variability compared to the trends that the overconfidence is no longer visible.

Addendum

What game is John Christy playing?

It's worth reading the comments below.  For example, BBD has pointed out that Christy compared his tropical mid-troposphere data with the most extreme scenario, RCP 8.5 among other useful observations. Wotts up with that blog made an interesting comment about questions raised by David Appell.

John Christy seems to be playing a game.  Maybe it was a reaction to the above paper and maybe to the 97% consensus paper and the Marcott et al study also.

What game is Roy Spencer playing?

While Spencer is playing the conspiracy theorising game (à la Lewandowsky), whining on his blog:

Hundreds of millions of dollars that have gone into the expensive climate modelling enterprise has all but destroyed governmental funding of research into natural sources of climate change. For years the modelers have maintained that there is no such thing as natural climate change…yet they now, ironically, have to invoke natural climate forces to explain why surface warming has essentially stopped in the last 15 years!

Forgive me if I sound frustrated, but we scientists who still believe that climate change can also be naturally forced have been virtually cut out of funding and publication by the ‘humans-cause-everything-bad-that-happens’ juggernaut. The public who funds their work will not stand for their willful blindness much longer.

First, as Barry Bickmore demonstrates, it's ridiculous to suggest that any climate scientists, whether a 'modeler' like him or anyone else, maintains there is no such thing as natural climate change.  How does he think scientists have worked out what forces and feedbacks affect climate?  It's just as ludicrous to suggest any particular aspect of climate studies are rejected on the basis of whether it is a 'natural' force or a 'supernatural' force :D  Okay - maybe a study with the objective of determining how God influences climate wouldn't get much of a hearing.  Spencer discounts the entire field of climate science if he thinks 'natural forces' aren't the basis of it all.  Whether it's the way greenhouse gases affect climate, studies of clouds, oceans, the biosphere or any other aspect.  All of it is "natural".  What is arguably unnatural is the way humans are affecting the 'natural' climate by digging up carbon and putting it into the air at such a fast rate. Probably more in a single year than one or two supervolcanoes would emit.

Not only that, but one has to ask Roy Spencer, just what do his satellites cost the taxpayer?  What about the salaries of himself and John Christy and any offsiders they may have, their administrative support and corporate overheads, and all their accommodation, equipment, conference attendances, travel allowances and the like?

Chart Comparisons

I've put together some charts comparing UAH near surface** to UAH mid-troposphere** and GISTemp**.  Click to see larger versions.

1. Northern Hemisphere

2. Southern Hemisphere

3. Tropics - note GISTemp tropics is 24N-24S, whereas I believe UAH is 30N to 30S, but I'm not sure about that.

I can't say much about them except to note that UAH in the southern hemisphere in particular (and the tropics to a lesser extent) has much greater extremes than does GISTemp (1979-83, 1998-99, 2008 and 2010).  This surprises me, because I would have thought the southern hemisphere ocean would have modified the swings a great deal.  In fact if you look at the southern hemisphere overall, UAH looks to be quite a bit different to GISTemp.  

Also, the early years in UAH don't accord with GISTemp very well in the tropics or the southern hemisphere.

PS I'm not in a position to know how accurate UAH data is over time.  However the suggestion that Christy used RCP 8.5 on purpose, and possibly when it's not appropriate to run it back to a single point and aligning it with the UAH point, is persuasive.

I also note that in all three of the above charts, in the early part and in 1979 in particular, GISTemp is quite a bit lower than UAH, whereas in later years they line up better.  Thus UAH temps haven't risen as much since 1979 as the surface-based instrumental record.  What Christy did was align the model mean with the first UAH temperature data point (1979).  If those first satellite calculations were in fact lower (with a similar trend to the land-based records), then the UAH temperatures would line up with the model means more closely.  That again suggests the comparison that Christy makes may be invalid. (Sou 7:09 pm Mon 10 June 2013 AEST.)

**Data sources: GISTemp, UAH mid-troposphere, UAH near surface