Anthony Watts Stokes another crazy conspiracy theory at WUWT

Just when I thought WUWT was getting dull.  Well, it is dull at the moment, but Anthony brightened it up a little bit with another of his conspiracy theories (archived here).  This time it's about Nick Stokes, who has an excellent blog called Moyhu.

I think this is what prompted Anthony's article - or a discussion of same at The Auditors blog. I didn't go to CA - who'd bother?  But Nick's article looks to be related to what was discussed by Big City Lib, so I think I'm on the right track. (I gather Steve McIntyre is another one of the fake sceptics who are working feverishly to help Michael Mann win his court case against Mark Steyn.)

[Update: I succumbed, because I figured some of you will go there anyway.  Might as well offer you the archived copy to save you the trip. Sou.]

Nick Stokes is a very affable chap (and a retired CSIRO scientist IIRC) who comments from time to time at WUWT.  Nick only rarely gets a bit annoyed with people, but I don't think I've ever seen him lose his cool in the way Anthony Watts and Wondering Willis Eschenbach are prone to do.  I glossed over Anthony's mocking taunt because it was just another silly Josh cartoon.  Then I decided to read the comments to see how Nick reacted.

Nick reacted with mild amusement in his usual polite fashion

This is how Nick reacted: Nick Stokes says:

March 3, 2014 at 11:36 am
Verity Jones says: March 3, 2014 at 11:06 am ” I hope he realises this is affectionate teasing.”

Thanks, Verity, yes I quite liked the cartoon. I’m used to being characterised as a Black Knight, so it’s a relief to just have a topological problem.

Sorry to be late to the threadjacking, but as Sherry has now figured, I think, I do live in the land where koalas grow, and it’s 6.30 am. As to being paid, well, I’m afraid Sherry’s “white male between 45 – 65 years old” is a little on the optimistic side. I’m enjoying my retirement.

Anthony Watts was accusatory and full of (wrong) conspiracy ideation

This is how Anthony Watts reacted:

Anthony Watts says:

March 3, 2014 at 7:50 am
@ _Jim I don’t think Nick craves attention, but, as I have observed before, given his tenacity to post hours of such bluster, I think he’s paid to do it. I could be wrong, but it’s either that, or he is terminally afflicted with XKCD disease.

And there's more. Dodgy Geezer says and Anthony replies:

March 3, 2014 at 8:01 am
As far as I can see, Nick is not dishonest. Misguided, maybe. And not a public figure. It seems a little unpleasant to run a cartoon on him.

REPLY: Up until the current CA thread, I would agree about the “not dishonest” part. But even Steve McIntyre called him that now, and Steve does not use such labels lightly. – Anthony

I expect Anthony's cracking an inside joke with his last sentence.  Often Steve McIntyre just insinuates and lets other people use the "labels".  However has no hesitation in suggesting scientists are 'dishonest' and their science a 'scam' and 'fake', especially when he hasn't the wit to work out their research.


And still more. M Courtney says - and see Anthony's reply:

March 3, 2014 at 8:16 am
It doiesn’t seem fair to mock someone because we disagree with him.
Nick Stokes doesn’t lie. Nick Stokes isn’t personally abusive. Nick Stokes doen’t deserve derision.

I do think Nick Stokes is wrong but I want to hear Nick Stokes so as my thoughts are challenged.

Mocking Nick Stokes as though he is Micahel Mann demeans Josh and elevates Mann.

REPLY: I would disagree, look at my early days of getting involved in climate debates. I was pretty much a nobody until I had an idea that ruffled some feathers, then I was labeled and derided in all sorts of ways within a week of posting the surfacestations project. Nick has elevated himself in the climate debate, he is well known by all the players. Not one person in the CA thread or here has said ‘who is Nick Stokes?”. When so many people are familiar with you across continents and venues, I think you’ve reached public persona status. William Connolley would be another example.

Nick is the most polite troll one could hope to encounter, but it makes me wonder if he isn’t paid to do what he does. If he wasn’t polite, and got into flame wars, he would long ago have been banned. Instead, he plods along with tenacity combined with obfuscation to diminish skeptic arguments that can go on for days in threads. Many people would lose patience and tell others to “sod off”, but if your paid position requires your presence to be effective, you’d do everything you could to stay within the rules.

I could be wrong, but that is why I think he is employed to comment on climate threads. Besides, this isn’t derision, it’s satire. Tying oneself up in knots is funny to watch.

I should add in Nick’s defense, he was the only person on the other side (that I am aware of) of the debate to contribute to Robert E. Phelan’s (our wonderful deceased moderator) funeral. – Anthony

Now if one were to speculate that Anthony's conjecture is based on his own knowledge and experience with those who are much more prolific than Nick is at WUWT, one would ask him how much Willis Eschenbach, Smokey, Janice Moore, Greg, ferdberple, Mark Bofill, Dodgy Geezer, M Courtney and all the other regulars get paid :D

Willis Eschenbach spits nastiness and feigns care for the "poor"

And if you thought that was bad enough, read what Wondering Willis Eschenbach has to say.  Willis doesn't like it when Nick points out the holes in his articles.  He doesn't even like it when Nick pays him a compliment.  Willis doesn't like competition full stop.  Especially not competition from someone who does know what he's talking about (unlike Willis).

Willis Eschenbach says, after quoting two people who said Nick was polite and honest and deserves some respect (extract):

March 3, 2014 at 12:05 pm
Nick is doing his best to push policies that he knows hurt, impoverish, and even kill the poor.

You can rub his tummy and blow in his ear all you want, you can say he deserves respect and we shouldn’t poke fun at him.

Me, I stand back, look at what his polite and “not dishonest” claims cost the poor of the world, and spit on him. He deserves no respect at ll, none. He’s doing his best to cast honest men as liars, and liars as honest men. For him, truth is immaterial, as long as he doesn’t have to admit that he is wrong. This is not innocent behavior. It’s not funny or cutesy. It is damaging and destructive.

For me, he’s playing games with his damn word fiddle while Rome burns. I don’t think he even believes many of the ideas he puts forward, and indeed, as you can see by the cartoon, in many cases there’s no way his ideas make coherent sense.

But the ideas he pushes and supports are still hurting, impoverishing, and killing the poor, and while the cartoon is funny, the end results of his actions are not humorous or entertaining in the slightest.
w.

And they have the cheek to get upset when people point out they deny science.  This pair, Anthony Watts and Wondering Willis Eschenbach, are seriously wacked conspiracy theorists with delusions of grandeur and a huge chip on their shoulders.

I won't bother with the rest of the comments.  They are a mix of "Nick's alright for a warmist" and "Nick's a nasty, mean paid shill" and "Nick's dishonest because he believes in AGW".  You can read them here if you want to.

Willis Eschenbach goes for Andy Revkin and misses, but rallies a lynch mob at WUWT

This is a story so often told about how a climate science denier, in trying to play "gotcha", got "gotcha'd" himself.

Willis Eschenbach is a self-confessed climate science denier

Today Willis Eschenbach (archived here, later update here, later update here and latest here) had a shot at Andy Revkin for an article about climate science deniers.  He didn't like the word "deniers" probably, though what he wrote was:

I went over to Andy Revkin’s site to be entertained by his latest fulminations against “denialists”. Revkin, as you may remember from the Climategate emails, was the main go-to media lapdog for the various unindicted Climategate co-conspirators. His latest post is a bizarre mishmash of allegations, bogus claims, and name-calling. Most appositely, given his history of blind obedience to his oh-so-scientific masters like Phil Jones and Michael Mann, he illustrated it with this graphic which presumably shows Revkin’s response when confronted with actual science:

"This graphic" being a photograph of a sculpture, showing two of the three wise monkeys, Mizaru and Kikazaru.  Notably Iwazaru is absent from the photo.  Hobbyist science deniers will refuse to read the science or look at what's happening in the world around them.  They'll refuse to listen to scientists.  But just try to get them to shut up!

Credit: Andrew C. Revkin

As you'll have read above, Willis has his nose still buried in the trough of stolen emails, wishing there was something in there that showed his view of science and scientists was correct.  There isn't. Willis obviously sees himself as a climate science denier or he wouldn't have written what he did.  He doesn't like allegations made by other people, or name-calling, but in that short paragraph count the terms:

• media lapdog
• unindicted
• Climategate
• co-conspirators
• blind obedience
• oh-so-scientific masters
• etc

And does Willis seriously think that that Andrew Revkin is denying the actual science Willis is constantly denying?

Willis Eschenbach passes number lookup but fails arithmetic

Thing is, Willis' next comment was about the "about me" section - which looks like it hasn't been changed since 2010 and even then the bit that Willis objected to was probably written earlier.  The bit that Willis objected to was this:

By 2050 or so, the human population is expected to reach nine billion, essentially adding two Chinas to the number of people alive today. 

Willis doesn't know anything about climate science but he can check population numbers.  He wrote:

Revkin’s error is not insignificant. From the present population to 9 billion, where the population is likely to stabilize, is an increase of about 1.75 billion. IF Revkin’s claims about two Chinas were correct, the increase would be 2.8 billion. So his error is 2.8/1.75 -1, which means his numbers are 60% too high. A 60% overestimation of the size of the problem that he claims to be deeply concerned about? … bad journalist, no cookies.

Willis might have the current population numbers correct.  I haven't bothered to check.  However he isn't correct when he talks about "a 60% overestimation of the problem".  He used the wrong denominator. Anyway, he got away with that at WUWT.  He might have come across as more credible if he'd acknowledged that the "about me" was written years ago and would have been correct at the time.   All he's showed is that it's probably the first time he's read that blurb at Dot Earth, and that he's not good at working out percentages.

Willis Eschenbach fails reading comprehension

Willis also might have avoided looking like an idiot if he hadn't made a big blue of an error himself.  In his very first paragraph he wrote about "his latest fulminations", meaning Andy Revkin's.  But Andy didn't write the article Willis took exception to.  Andy said quite clearly that the article was written by David Victor of the University of California, San Diego.  He even tweeted Anthony Watts, who could have corrected Willis' article, but hasn't.  (One has to scroll down the WUWT comments to see this moderate response from Andrew Revkin.)

Why bother with what a climate science denying hobbyist says?

Willis Eschenbach could have come across as more credible in a small way, he could have avoided looking like an idiot.  Then again, who takes seriously a man whose hobby is climate science denial?

The article at Andrew Revkin's blog is about climate science deniers including those like Willis who've taken it up as a hobby.  David Victor makes some good points and some that I don't completely agree with.  It's a solid article though and worth reading if you're interested in people's view of what makes a climate science denier tick.  (It's in fashion at the moment.  William Connolley at Stoat wrote a good article about the same subject just a couple of days ago.)

As one might have predicted, it brought all the ratbag climate science deniers who, by their comments, showed the accuracy of what David Victor wrote.

From the WUWT comments

Andrew Revkin has a reputation for being a moderate in the "climate blog wars".  Sometimes he comes across as a "lukewarmer" though I think he's been giving the science a better hearing of late.  I'm no longer a regular reader of Dot Earth so I can't really say.  So Willis' attack didn't get universal approval from the band of deniers at WUWT.  Nevertheless he manages to rally a lynch mob to verbally attack Andy Revkin and anyone and everyone who accepts climate science and wants a future for the world. Latest archive here, with Willis Eschenbach showing his true (murky) colours over and over again in the comments.

Addendum: With what Anthony Watts is allowing in the comments (eg here), plus his recent article on Mark Steyn, I almost get the impression he is angling to be named in a defamation lawsuit. Or daring one. Maybe he's seeking fame and notoriety or maybe he's feeling left out and ignored by anyone who counts. Or maybe he figures he's safe because he cries poor so often.
Sou 8:45 pm 23 February 2014 AEDST

Eric Barnes says:

February 22, 2014 at  

Alan Robertson says:

February 22, 2014 at 12:03 pm
The sad part of it is, Andrew Revkin is one of the least worst of the alarmists.

Chad Wozniak says:

February 22, 2014 at 12:06 pm
Revkin is a perfect illustration of who the REAL denialists are: the alarmists who ignore the new Holocaust caused by carbon policies (33,000 dead from hypothermia in the UK last year, 2 million Africans dead from starvation thanks to the ethanol program).
@Charles Battig – this is also the program proposed by der Fuehrer’s witchcraft advisor, John Holdren, except that he wants to knock the population down to 1 billion.
Global warming alarmism is MASS MURDER. Global warming alarmism is GENOCIDE.

pokerguy sums up Willis Eschenbach well when he says:

February 22, 2014 at 12:29 pm
“…particularly when he is nothing but a pathetic PR shill for bogus science and disingenuous scientists …”
Seems that everyone you disagree with is a contemptible slime, Willis. I disagree with Revkin on just about everything, and marvel at his apparent credulity in climate matters, but on a personal level he’s never struck me as anything but sincere and well meaning. For a warmist, he’s quite willing and open to discuss opposing points of view.

Roger A. Pielke Sr. says (is he also having a dig at Roy Spencer?):

February 22, 2014 at 12:31 pm
Willis – I strongly disagree with you on your post. While I do not agree with all of Andy’s views, he is one of the most objective and open journalists in the mainstream media. He has provided a much needed forum for debate.
I have no idea why you choose to attack him when there is plenty of science to discuss and analyze.
I also prefer that WUWT not post personal attacks on anyone. This only demeans the website which is otherwise an outstanding forum for a much-needed debate on climate science which is not available at most other venues..
Roger Sr.

b4llzofsteel is no friend of Willis' either and says:

February 22, 2014 at 12:40 pm
Well said Dr.Pielke. Eschenbach is the last person to judge over other persons, while Revkin is certainly pro AGW, he is one of the more moderate people in the discussion.

Andy Revkin (@Revkin) says:

February 22, 2014 at 1:01 pm
Thanks, Roger.
And a note to Willis Eschenbach about carelessness (I agree that my 2007 population math – there from the first day of the blog – badly needs updating; leaving it up unchanged this long was careless).
Despite repeated references to David Victor in the introduction to the Denialism post, you somehow missed that it was the text of a lecture by him at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
All of the assertions you complain about are his.
This is a guest post – kind of like yours here at WUWT.
I’m sure Anthony doesn’t agree with everything you wrote. I don’t agree with everything David said. But it’s important in open forums to air a range of views.
As for your lapdog references, etc., sheesh….
(Accidentally posted under an unrelated WordPress ID a minute ago.)

[Thank you for the response. If so, to maintain traceability and accountability, should the "unrelated" item be deleted? Mod]

dp says:

February 22, 2014 at 1:05 pm
This is 2014 and he is talking about conscripting the people of 2050 to our vision of future needs. That is the equivalent of our being handed a world designed by the futurists of 1978. If one could bring the most brilliant of minds forward from 1978 to today that person would be a babe in the woods around our contemporary technology and the way time has change our world. Nobody would listen.
Mr. Revkin – you sir are an imperious ass and a moron today and you would considered the same in 2050 should any of your vacuous screeds survive.

Max Erwengh is over-optimistic when he says he knows that Willis could do better:

February 22, 2014 at 1:17 pm
Sorry I really don’t see the sense of this post. He made a rule of thumb estimate, and it is a quite acceptable approximation. So, no matter if it is silly to be a afraid about rising population or not, the calculation is fine. And guess what, natural science is all about approximations (ye of course not that silly ones about population growth), we don’t do pure science which applies only to mathematics.
Back to the topic, this is just a very disturbing ad-hominem attack. I know you could do better.

cynical_scientist makes some observations on the use of the word "denier" and variations (see here) and says:

February 22, 2014 at 1:46 pm
What I find most interesting about Revkin’s article is the language. He consistently uses “Denialist”, “Denialism” instead of “Denier”, “Denial”. And it isn’t just Revkin doing it – most of the people he quotes are doing it too. This looks to me like yet another orchestrated language shift along the lines of global warming –> climate change –> climate weirding –> etc. It is bizarre the way they keep switching language. Who decides these things?

Anyway, as people do not speak of Holocaust denialists or Holocaust denialism, this looks to me like an attempt to hide their tracks and make the smear less obvious. The new language is close enough to the old to still be offensive. But the slight distance gives plausible deniability so that if someone takes them to task over the use of the D word they can pretend we are too sensitive and it is all just a coincidence.

(I suspect this is headed for the moderation queue due to use of the D word.)

Bob Tisdale's ENSO, global warming and the third possibility...

Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale has another article about ENSO (archived here).

The third possibility...

This time Bob's asking people for their predictions of when the next El Niño (or La Niña) will happen.  Bob at one point asked what he thinks is a rhetorical question:

DID GLOBAL WARMING CAUSE THE EL NIÑOS OR DID EL NIÑOS CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING?

To which Pippen Kool makes the only sensible response and says:

February 15, 2014 at 11:37 am
I select the third possibility. 

ENSO doesn't cause global warming

Bob is still stuck in his groove of "El Niño causes global warming", repeating his mantra:

...for years we’ve been discussing the naturally occurring, sunlight-fueled processes that drive El Niño events and cause long-term warming of global surface temperatures. 

He still hasn't explained why El Niño only started causing "long-term warming" at the same time as CO2 started increasing a lot.  Why didn't El Niño cause any global warming  over the entire Holocene and earlier?  I've illustrated this in the chart below:

Adapted from Jos Hagelaars

Bob has always tried to argue that El Niño raises global surface temperatures (which it does, for a short time) but that La Niña doesn't balance this out.  In today's article he's arguing that La Niña stopped surface temperatures from going up, which is a bit of progress I suppose.

La Niña's cool surface temperatures.  However even La Niña years are getting progressively hotter.  The chart below shows La Niña's short term cooling effect as well as the fact that La Niña years are getting progressively hotter.

Data source: NASA and WMO

Bob Tisdale's hypothesis is that "El Niño causes global warming".  For that to work, greenhouse gases would have to have stopped working.  Not only that, but Bob hasn't explained how ENSO neutral years are warming the world.  Nor has he explained why La Niña years have stopped balancing out El Niño warming.

Bob's hypothesis contradicts everything that is known about ENSO.

I've written a lengthy article about ENSO already (click here).  It has enough references to help you learn about it, so I'll not go into that all over again.


ENSO shifts heat around

Suffice to say that over millenia, the net effect of ENSO on global surface temperatures has been zilch.  On balance, ENSO doesn't warm up the world or cool it down.  What it is is a shifting of heat (and energy) around between the ocean and the atmosphere.  The El Niño Southern Oscillation doesn't add any heat to the earth system nor does it remove heat (or energy) from the system.  If it had there would have to be a mechanism to explain that.  The extra heat would have to come from somewhere.

The only plausible source of extra heat in the past 150 years would be the sun.  But Bob isn't arguing that the sun  is sending more energy to Earth. If he was he'd be wrong. It isn't.  In fact the world is still heating up even though the incoming radiation has dropped a bit.  Bob's trying to argue that ENSO creates energy out of nothing.  It warms the earth by magic, according to Bob Tisdale.

Bob is also trying to provide fake sceptics with an argument for when the surface temperature suddenly shoots up a lot again.  He's saying it will be because of El Niño.  What he isn't pointing out is that if there is a rise in surface temperature with an El Niño in the next few years, it will most likely be above the temperature of the last El Niño year.  It will be hotter.  That's because the entire Earth is getting hotter.  Earth is accumulating more energy as time goes by.  It's accumulating in the oceans and in the atmosphere and on the land surface.

All El Niño does is shift heat from the ocean to the air.  It doesn't add heat.  It's the extra greenhouse gases that are causing heat to build up in the system.  They slow the flow of radiation out from the surface, so Earth is getting hotter.

Bob Tisdale is a greenhouse effect denier.  He denies physics that has been understood for more than a century and a half.  Anthony Watts promotes lots of greenhouse effect deniers on his blog.

From the WUWT comments

Here's a selection of comments from the archived WUWT article.

Jenn Oates tries on the argument from ignorance. He or she doesn't understand the science therefore no-one does, in her or his mind.  Jenn says:

February 15, 2014 at 3:21 am
I predict that the climate will continue to change as it always has, and that we won’t be able to do very much about it, for two reasons: not only because we’re just one puny species on the face of a big planet, but mostly because we really don’t have a comprehensive understanding of what makes global climate systems tick in the first place.
That’s as far as I’ll go. :)

markstoval is a paranoid "climate science is a hoax" conspiracy nutter and says (excerpt):

February 15, 2014 at 3:40 am
Since the temperature data sets are massively fraudulent, I expect to see massive “adjustments” to the measured temperatures regardless of El Niño or La Niña conditions. The blatant fraud that is “climate science” proves that science is totally unworthy of the confidence that many moderns place in it.

Greg is looking for patterns and trying to find some agreement between the conflicting hypotheses of Perennially Puzzled Bob "ENSO" Tisdale and Wondering Willis "emergent phenomena" Eschenbach, and says:

February 15, 2014 at 3:40 amI’ve isolated a 9.3 year variation in Indian Ocean that corresponds to cyclic changes in the lunar declination angle.

http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=777

This shows warm water being transported in and out of the tropical portion of the Indian Ocean in a 9.3 year cycle. It seems that Willis’ tropical governor warms up the cooler surface when the warm water moves south, leading to a net warming rather than a neutral displacement of heat.

A more complex pattern seems to exist in Pacific and Atlantic that span both hemispheres. There is an interplay of 9.3 and 8.85

http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=754

Now that may come some way to your hypothesis that oceanic variations are behind the warming trend.

dccowboy is none too bright when it comes to climate and says:

February 15, 2014 at 3:50 am
Amusing that the AGW proponents are at all interested in ENSO because, by predicting that El Nino raises global temperatures, they are implicity admiting that CO2 isn’t the ‘driver’ of temperatures they seem to think it is. If CO2 were the overriding ‘driver’ (and if the increase in CO2 drives temperatures higher) wouldn’t it have overcome the effects of both El Nino & La Nina? Still more interesting is the idea that natural processes like ENSO, PDO, AMO have somehow ‘conspired’ to exactly balance the CO2 driven temperature increases for over 17 years. I’m not a betting man, but, I’d be very hesitant to put money on that proposition being true.

Stephen Richards is into making up stuff, on two counts, and says:

February 15, 2014 at 5:53 am
Hansen was forever predicting massive El Niños but they never came .

herkimer thinks there will be global cooling and says:

February 15, 2014 at 8:19 am
In my opinion, a weak El Nino is likely during late 2014 and early 2015 which will not raise global temperatures in any significant way and the pause and subsequent decline in global temperature anomalies will resume there after

kenin swears his oath of allegiance to the scientific illiterati and says:

February 15, 2014 at 8:46 am
I couldn’t care any less about whether or not its nina , nino or even nada; so long as mother nature is in control and not some group of corporations who want to manipulate the oceans and atmosphere. And believe me, they do want to manipulate- that’s why records are kept, so they have something to compare it to. If you want to control something, first you need to understand how it works.

Lets face it… we are such a strange species; look at the crap we waste our time with. Common its weird man; littering the ocean with buoys, cables and watching it closely with satellites…. really for what. Yeah its interesting, I get it, i’m guilty of that too; but! its really all for not. If anything it will be used against us and the earth.

In my next life I want to come back as an elephant. walking the savannas of Africa with my friends and family just being.

Kenin pretty well sums up the denialiati, so I'll leave it there.

Mis-"Quote of the Week" at WUWT!

Anthony Watts put up as his "Quote of the Week".

"Weather practically everywhere is being caused by climate change," Holdren said.

All over the deniosphere from Roy Spencer to Wondering Willis Eschenbach at WUWT and Marc Morano, people have grabbed onto a short phrase attributed to John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The sentence they are mocking they found at The Hill:

Thing is, I couldn't find anywhere else that shows that this is what Holdren said.  It seemed an unlikely thing for him to say.  I wondered. I was sceptical.  Did someone at the Hill put words into John Holdren's mouth?

Indeed they did.

What John Holdren actually said

I found the radio broadcast that included John Holdren speaking on the subject.  What John Holdren actually said was exactly the same as other news sources quoted him as saying.  He is introduced at around 2:28 in the audio clip on this page from kvpr.org.  What John Holdren actually said was (at 2:51):

The global climate has now been so extensively impacted by the build up of human caused greenhouse gases that weather practically everywhere is being influenced by climate change.

So why did the Hill misquote John Holdren?  I don't know.  Maybe because the reporter was ignorant.  But it sure was picked up by both professional and amateur disinformers alike as well as lots of common as muck science deniers.

Other news sources quoted accurately

Other news sources that report Holdren's "call with reporters" carry the quote in context.  For example, from Reuters:

John Holdren, Obama's top adviser on science and technology, said the global climate has been so extensively impacted by "the human-caused buildup of greenhouse gases that weather practically everywhere is being influenced by climate change."

What's the difference?  Well, the difference is between being "caused by" and being "influenced by".   Without a definitive attribution study, the first quote is one you won't hear from a climate scientist.  The second quote is one you'll often hear or a variation of it.

Being pedantic: "climate change" vs "global warming" vs "the build-up of greenhouse gases"?

Since we're focusing on pedantry, I'll also pick a nit with the use of the words "climate change" in this context.  In the second quote, John Holdren is correct if you assume "climate change" is being used as equivalent to "global warming".  More strictly speaking, much climate change is today being caused by global warming.  Even more strictly speaking, global warming is being caused by the build-up of greenhouse gases, which is also causing climate change.  You'll have noticed that John Holdren makes this quite clear when he links the changes in global climate with the build up of greenhouse gases.

All weather today is influenced by today's atomospheric composition and the extra energy in the earth system.  I'd go further than John Holdren.  I'd leave out "practically" and substitute "global warming" for climate change and say that "weather everywhere is being influence by global warming".

What about the misquote that sent deniers into a spin?  Is "weather practically everywhere being caused by climate change?"

One way to look at it is by thinking about what is weather and what is climate.  We usually define climate in terms of weather.  Or, more accurately, in terms of the extreme ranges of weather.  That is, what is the range of weather that can be expected in a particular locale.  What are the expected boundaries within which weather will be generally confined.

Melbourne is described as having a temperate climate or a Mediterranean climate.  The word "temperate" was applied to a zone that lies below the tropics and the poles.  The difference between summer and winter isn't huge and the weather doesn't have the freezing cold winters of the Arctic.  The word "temperate" itself is generally taken to mean "mild".

Melbourne used to have a temperate climate characterised by mild, dry summers and mild, wetter winters. Last century, the extreme heat of the temperatures we've seen this century was as rare as snow in Melbourne.  Not "never" but "rare" (though the most extreme heat we've had this century was "never" experienced last century in Melbourne).

Now during Melbourne summers, heat waves are becoming more common in the low to mid 40s and higher (104-117 Fahrenheit).  Can it still be properly described as "temperate" without changing the meaning of the word "temperate"?  Perhaps we need to find a new word to replace "temperate".

Is the weather being "caused" by climate change?  Or is the changed expectation of "weather" causing a change in the climate?  Arguably, the change in the weather is as a result of global warming.  However, going to the science, Melbourne weather is also being influenced by the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica.  So the change in the weather in Melbourne's  is being caused both by global warming and the hole in the ozone layer.

How much does it matter?  It depends on the context.  In science, accuracy and precision are important.  As far as the general public goes, we just want to know what is happening and why.  As far as policy goes, we need to know how to fix it.

The thing is, the weather is changing therefore the climate is changing.  And all these will go on changing as global warming kicks in.

From the WUWT comments

There is the usual spray of conspiracy theorising, nefarious intent-ing, straight up denialism and general denier weirdness in the comments at WUWT.  Here is a sample (archived here):


A couple of people at WUWT also noticed the difference in reporting.  For example, WillR says:

February 14, 2014 at 2:14 pm
This is interesting…
People basing their story on “The Hill” (Blog) are using the word “caused”.
Reuters is claiming he said “influenced”.
Popcorn futures anyone?

tgasloli says:

February 14, 2014 at 4:28 pm
It doesn’t matter that they are idiots–they are idiots with power and power is all that matters.

rabbit says:

February 14, 2014 at 4:36 pm
The meaning is clear. Before mankind started pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, we never had weather. Temperature and precipitation cycled smoothly through the seasons, one day very much like the next.
True fact.

Jean Parisot says:

February 14, 2014 at 5:10 pm
Holdren wants to kill 25M people, and he has an office in the White House. I’m not sure we should be laughing at him, if he were holding a sign on a street corner or teaching at a college – sure laugh, but he’s a little too high up the food chain for laughing.

I'll leave you with this pile of nonsense from Wondering Willis Eschenbach as he tries to put down scientist, Nick Stokes (of Moyhu), almost the only sane voice that remains at WUWT.  (Willis doesn't like Nick because Nick has a habit of showing up the flaws in Willis' wonderings.)


Out of the more than 120 comments at WUWT, Willis singled out this short comment by Nick Stokes, who wrote, quoting Willis:

February 14, 2014 at 12:53 pm
“For the last decade and a half there’s been no statistically significant warming, certainly not enough to cause increased extreme weather.”

Warming is warming. Its effect is totally unrelated to statistical significance.

Willis Eschenbach says (after copying Nick Stokes comment above):
February 14, 2014 at 2:06 pm

Egads, lock up the good silver, it’s the noted agent provocateur, “Racehorse” Nick Stokes.

Anyhow, Nick, let’s parse that claim of yours, shall we? Here are the propositions:

The effect of warming is a function of the amount of warming—more warming, more effect, and vice versa. The effect of no warming is zero. If it doesn’t warm, it has no effect. Warming which is “not statistically significant” is warming that cannot be distinguished from zero warming.

THEREFORE:

Warming which is not statistically different from zero has an effect which is not statistically different from zero, and thus, as I wrote in the head post,
• After seventeen years without statistically significant warming , the effect of said warming is totally related to its statistical significance, and
• Said warming is “certainly not enough to cause increased extreme weather.”
Q. E. D.
…

Now, for the backstory. Folks, Mr. Nick Stokes has a curious distinction. Despite various ones of his many claims being proven wrong by a variety of heavyweight folks in the past, including Steve McIntyre, Nick has never, ever once been caught admitting he was wrong in even the tiniest of details.

For this sterling quality and high achievement, he’s been christened “Racehorse” Nick Stokes, in honor of of the Texas lawyer Racehorse Haynes, who was famous for … well, I’ll let Haynes tell it:

Haynes loves discussing his cases to teach young lawyers about trial practice. In 1978, he told attendees at an ABA meeting in New York City that attorneys too often limit their strategic defense options in court. When evidence inevitably surfaces that contradicts the defense’s position, lawyers need to have a backup plan.

“Say you sue me because you say my dog bit you,” he told the audience. “Well, now this is my defense: My dog doesn’t bite. And second, in the alternative, my dog was tied up that night. And third, I don’t believe you really got bit.”

His final defense, he said, would be: “I don’t have a dog.”

So what I’m trying to say is that Nick will be back to tell us all about how he doesn’t have a dog in 3 … 2 … 1 …
w.

PS—Haynes was famous for successfully defending women accused of going for a “Smith and Wesson divorce” as a result of being abused. Once when he was congratulated on his record in those cases, he said something like “I got all but two of them off, and I’d have gotten them off if they hadn’t kept reloading and firing” …

In the light of Willis' PS - readers may recall this article from Wondering Willis.

As for Willis' "heavyweights" - only in their own mind and that of science deniers who don't read or understand climate science.  McIntyre is just another a conspiracy theorising blogger with obsessive tendencies.  He is not a climate scientist.

Willis Eschenbach wonders how bad is global warming & soothes the scaredy cats @wattsupwiththat

Wondering Willis Eschenbach has signed up to the "it's not bad" denier meme (archived here).  His article has the title: Should We Be Worried? and is aimed at quelling the fears of all the scaredy cats at WUWT.

To do so he decided to call up the monthly UAH charts.  Now monthly charts aren't that easy to read because the noise of the seasons and general fluctuations can make it hard to see the longer term warming signal.

Here is what Wondering Willis concluded from his examination of the data.  I've included the same data as Willis except that I've shown the anomalies as annual averages rather than monthly averages.

The tropics

Here is a chart of UAH lower troposphere temperature in the tropics together with global lower troposphere temperature.

Data Source: UAH

Willis wrote:

To start with, the tropics have no trend, that’s 40% of the planet. So all you folks who have been forecasting doom and gloom for the billions of poor people in the tropics? Sorry … no apparent threat there in the slightest. Well, actually there is a threat, which is the threat of increased energy prices from the futile war on carbon—rising energy prices hit the poor the hardest. But I digress …

Willis is one of those deniers who thinks that burning fossil fuels is the only way that "billions of poor people in the tropics" can produce all those goods that the wealthy people in the mid-latitudes want those "billions of poor people in the tropics" to make for them on the cheap. He is also one of those deniers who thinks the only thing that counts is surface temperature changes.

He's not far off with the trend - 0.06 degrees a decade but with a very low R squared.  At most a slight warming trend over the period since 1979.

Extra Tropics

Here is a chart of UAH lower troposphere temperature in the extra tropics together with global lower troposphere temperature.

Data Source: UAH

Willis wrote:

Southern Extratropics? No trend....Northern Extratropics? A barely visible trend, and no trend since 2000.

Barely visible? There is a marked trend in the northern extratropics (R squared = 0.71), of 0.25 degrees a decade. In the southern extratropics the trend is a less definite 0.09 degrees a decade.

South Pole

Here is a chart of what UAH calls South Pole temperature anomalies together with global lower troposphere temperature.

Data Source: UAH

This is what Willis had to say about it:

South of the Antarctic Circle? No trend, it cooled slightly then warmed slightly back to where it started.

This time he's pretty well right.  I don't think I've ever noticed that remarkable temperature anomaly in 1980, which was 0.86 above the 1981-2010 average.  Now that's an anomaly if ever there was one.

Addendum: There may be inaccuracies in the lower troposphere readings at high latitudes - see this paper by Richard E. Swanson - h/t Robert Grumbine in the comments.

North Pole

Here is a chart of what UAH calls North Pole temperature anomalies together with global lower troposphere temperature.

Data Source: UAH

This is what Willis wrote:

It cooled slightly over the first decade and a half. Then it warmed for a decade, and it has stayed even for a decade …

Clearly the Arctic is where there has been most warming of the lower troposphere. The trend is 0.45 degrees a decade. That's huge by any measure. And I wouldn't call the 2010 anomaly of 1.21 degrees above the 1981-2010 average as "staying even", would you?

Wondering Willis' Conclusion

Willis provides the required level of comfort to soothe the fears of the scaredy cat deniers:

My conclusion? I don’t see anything at all that is worrisome there. To me the surprising thing once again is the amazing stability of the planet’s temperature. A third of a century, and the temperature of the tropics hasn’t budged even the width of a hairline. That is an extremely stable system.

Now why does Willis decide that the world isn't warming to any great extent? Because he is choosing and selectively interpreting data to try to prove his hypothesis that the Earth doesn't have ice ages and interglacials.  He wrote:

I explain that as being the result of the thermoregulatory effect of emergent climate phenomena … you have a better explanation?

What data does Willis ignore?  All the temperature records prior to 1979, dating back to 1880 and before.  For example the land and ocean surface temperature anomalies.  The chart below shows UAH and GISTemp anomalies.  The surface temperature has gone up by one degree since the lows of the early twentieth century and by 0.8 degrees since 1880.  The lower troposphere has pretty well tracked the surface temperature, spanning minus 0.2 to plus 0.4, with an eyeballed rise of around 0.3 degrees since 1979.

Data Source: UAH and NASA

What Willis also did to pretend it isn't warming is present the data in a particular way to make it look (to uninformed deniers) as if it's barely warming.  He put up the following chart:

Source: WUWT

As if a change of plus or minus 3 degrees over three decades wouldn't be "catastrophic" to use a denier term!  And deniers insist on using monthly data because it helps to hide the signal from prying denier eyes.

A better explanation is the greenhouse effect ...

You may recall that Willis rejects the long term rise in global temperatures and has on more than one occasion claimed that temperatures have been +/- 0.3 degrees over the past century or so.  That's obviously not the case.  The global temperature has been going up, up, up much more than 0.3 degrees Celsius.

Willis asks for a "better explanation" than his "emergent climate phenomena".  How about the greenhouse effect!  That's the mainstream view of what is happening.

With more and more CO2 the temperature goes up. This results in various feedback mechanisms coming into play, such as more water evaporating so even more greenhouse gases causing Earth to warm up, and ice melt plus less spring snow cover so less reflected sunlight meaning more energy accumulating for longer.

From the WUWT comments

There aren't that many comments so far.  Here's a sample (archived here).

TimC doesn't seem to be aware that the land and ocean surface instruments are remarkably close to the satellite measures of temperature (as seen in the chart above) and says:

January 29, 2014 at 3:15 am
My answer to your question: No – and best now to ditch the surface thermometers entirely (with all their problems), and rely on the satellites instead for accurate measurement.
But shouldn’t it have been “What me worry”? …!

jim karock is a fake sceptic and blindly takes Wondering Willis at his word and says:

January 29, 2014 at 3:18 am
Willis wrote: “So that’s 70% of the planet with no appreciable temperature trend over the last third of a century”

JK – I’d love to see how the “experts” turn this into warming with their gridding of the Earth. Is there some trick that makes warming like Mann made hocky sticks from red noise?
What happens if you merely sum those 5 graphs with proper areas weighting?
Thanks
JK

LT says:

January 29, 2014 at 4:30 am
Why is there such a difference between UAH and RSS ?

UAH covers a bit more of Earth. Wikipedia says UAH covers 85 north to 85 south. The RSS data show that RSS only goes from 82.5 North to 70 South.  In any case, they aren't so different as this chart shows:

Data Source: UAH and RSS

A couple of years ago Roy Spencer speculated that the recent discrepancy between UAH and RSS may be in part because RSS is using an older satellite and may not be applying the correct correction for diurnal cycle drift.  Or it could be just the different coverage of the globe.  If anyone else knows more about this, please let us know.

Addendum: I'll repeat here - there may be inaccuracies in the lower troposphere readings at high latitudes - see this paper by Richard E. Swanson - h/t Robert Grumbine in the comments.


This looks like a live one - has anyone come across this chap before?  harrydhuffman (@harrydhuffman) says:

January 29, 2014 at 5:58 am
“Emergent phenomenon” is an argument from incompetent, third-rate thinkers like Richard Dawkins, determined to push Darwinian, or undirected, evolution upon students of science, despite its by now obvious failings; back in the 1980′s, it was called “order out of chaos”, elevated to the airy status of a “meme”, and “chaos theory” was misapplied to support it (for the latter really only supports “order behind the apparent chaos”, not order produced–”surprisingly”, as Eschenbach himself emphasizes–BY chaos, or randomly-working physical processes).

But the idea fails, and fails here on a very basic level. “Emergent phenomenon” does not “explain” the “extremely stable system”–and the outstanding stability SHOULD be emphasized, as I have also done–it cannot, it is in fact logically opposed to it (“emergent phenomenon” is change, as Eschenbach’s examples well show, while “extreme stability” MEANS unchanging).

The truth, as I mentioned when Eschenbach first brought out this recycled idea here, is much simpler (but more surprising, of course, in the tattered intellectual atmosphere of current, officially unquestionable, scientific dogma), and should have been obvious by now, if science had not gone so determinedly wrong following Darwin:

“Emergent Phenomenon”, Or Design?

“Emergent phenomenon” is a desperate renaming of the observable truth, in order to avoid that truth. It is anti-scientific nonsense, which science will have to reject before real progress can be made. It is, in short, the same as saying “magic”, which science once so proudly scorned, and by which it lifted itself up out of the ancient pit of superstition and “sacred writ”.

Here's an archive of Harry's blog.

Something Really Obvious: Wondering Willis Eschenbach doesn't check facts...

Wondering Willis Eschenbach wanders further from reality in a follow up article at WUWT on CERES (archived here, latest update here).

The title comes from Willis himself, who wrote in a response to another comment:

Scientists may be wrong, and often are. But when you think you’ve uncovered a “major error”, something really obvious, well, you should check your facts very carefully before uncapping your electronic pen …

Now I don't know if Willis considers himself a scientist or not.  If he does, then he's not being very scientific. He has concluded that

...the system works as follows. When the GHGs increase, the TOA upwelling longwave radiation decreases because more is absorbed. In response, the albedo increases proportionately, increases the SR. This counteracts the decrease in upwelling LW, and leaves the surface temperature unchanged.

The evidence he provides is that he says he has found "the longwave and the reflected shortwave is strongly negatively correlated, and averages -0.65 globally".  By which I think he means that as outgoing longwave radiation decreases, reflected shortwave radiation increases.

It looks as if Willis is proposing a version of Lindzen's Iris Hypothesis, which was long ago found wanting.  But despite being asked at least twice (once today and once on a previous occasion), Willis hasn't acknowledged that.  He wants to claim the idea for himself.

In his own words, what Willis is arguing is that:

the earth has a strong active thermoregulation system which functions in part by adjusting the albedo (through the regulation of daily tropical cloud onset time) to maintain the earth within a narrow (± 0.3°C over the 20th century) temperature range.

Except he's wrong.  As well as all the papers I've already linked to, Earth's surface temperature hasn't been maintained "within a narrow +/- 0.3°C over the 20th century.  It's risen by 0.8°C since the early 20th century - and by about one degree since 1910.  In addition the oceans have heated, a lot.  About 90% of the extra energy from the increased greenhouse gases has gone into the oceans, which is demonstrated by the rise in sea levels. (As the water heats it expands.)

Willis' "Crackpot" Pseudo-Science vs Observations

Why doesn't Willis show a temperature chart? Because it would show up his ideas as dumb.  For example, compare Willis' ± 0.3°C over the 20th century with observations:

Funny thing, apart from Willis chastising someone else for "not checking facts very carefully" (when you think you’ve uncovered a “major error”, something really obvious), is that no-one has asked him where the energy is coming from that's heating the surface and the oceans and melting ice.  Everyone seems to want him to be correct, so they aren't seeing the big fat flaw in his argument.

And no-one has asked for evidence supporting his cloud hypothesis either.

But a couple of people have questioned him.  For example, one person asked him why he sees clouds as only reflecting incoming shortwave radiation and not longwave radiation from the surface.

Willis is quickly adding runs to his "crackpot" score using the points system idunno linked to.

The global mean energy budget

By the way, in addition to the paper I quoted from yesterday, regarding Willis' previous wonderings, there are sections in the IPCC AR5 WG1 report that deal with top of atmosphere energy fluxes.  For example, in Chapter 2 on page 2-24 there is this paragraph:

The estimate for the reflected solar radiation at the TOA in Figure 2.11, 100 W/m2, is a rounded value based on the CERES Energy Balanced and Filled (EBAF) satellite data product (Loeb et al., 2009; Loeb et al., 2012b) for the period 2001–2010. This dataset adjusts the solar and thermal TOA fluxes within their range of uncertainty to be consistent with independent estimates of the global heating rate based upon in situ ocean observations (Loeb et al., 2012b). This leaves 240 W/m2 of solar radiation absorbed by Earth, which is nearly balanced by thermal emission to space of about 239 W/m2 (based on CERES EBAF), considering a global heat storage of 0.6 W/m2 (imbalance term in Figure 2.11) based on Argo data from 2005 to 2010 (Hansen et al., 2011; Loeb et al., 2012b; Box 3.1).

It's not a simple matter to work this out.  Willis thinks he can overturn all the detailed workings of lots of scientists by crunching some numbers that I suspect he doesn't understand.  Compare Willis' conceptualisation of the energy budget with the diagram from the IPCC report.  Willis' first. His notion is on the far right.  His notion of the science is on the left and in the middle. (Click to enlarge.)

Source: WUWT

Now for how scientists portray the global mean energy budget - Figure 2.11 from page 2-127 of the final draft of WG1. Click to enlarge.

Figure 2.11: Global mean energy budget under present day climate conditions. Numbers state magnitudes of the individual energy fluxes in W/m2, adjusted within their uncertainty ranges to close the energy budgets. Numbers in parentheses attached to the energy fluxes cover the range of values in line with observational constraints. Figure adapted from Wild et al. (2013). Source: IPCC AR5 WG1 page 2-127

Willis Eschenbach wonders about CERES

Ceres circa 235 - 250 CE
Louvre: Borghese Collection; 
purchase, 1807

Wondering Willis Eschenbach is wondering about CERES (archived here, latest update here).  He's written quite a few articles about CERES data at WUWT lately.  I'm wondering if he's bothered to read anything about the data before wondering.  (I'm guessing he hasn't read too many scientific papers on the subject either, because it's not his way.)

For example, the CERES website has data quality summaries, such as this one for top of atmosphere data.  The paper states it "represents the minimum information needed by scientists for appropriate and successful use of the data product".



Today Willis wonders about outgoing longwave and reflected shortwave irradiance:

Now, there are several very curious aspects to this figure. The first and most surprising issue is that the hemispheric values for shortwave, and also the hemispheric values for longwave, are nearly identical from hemisphere to hemisphere. Why should that be so? There is much more ocean in the southern hemisphere, for example. There is solid land at the South Pole rather than ocean. In addition, the underlying surface albedos of the two hemispheres are quite different, by about 4 watts per square metre. Also, the southern hemisphere gets more sunlight than the northern hemisphere, because the earth’s orbit is elliptical.

So given all these differences … why should the longwave and shortwave in the two hemispheres be the same?

Willis answers his own question by writing this:

Given the myriad differences between the northern and southern hemispheres, my explanation of this amazing stability is that a) the temperature of the planet is regulated by a variety of threshold-based processes, and b) the set-point of that regulation is controlled by globally consistent values for the physics of wind, water, and cloud formation.

Now, there certainly may be some other explanation for this amazing stability and symmetry of the climate despite the large differences in the geometry and composition of the two hemispheres. That’s my explanation. If you have a better one … bring it on.

One can only guess what Willis means in his first paragraph above.  He's probably talking about his thunderstorm thermostat hypothesis, but it's pretty well gobbledegook. Especially his bit about "the set-point of that regulation is controlled by globally consistent values for the physics of wind, water, and cloud formation".  Never mind his silly "set point" notion - which is contradicted by paleo records (glacials and interglacials). What about his "Globally consistent values for the physics"? Does he mean that the behaviour of wind, water and cloud formation is consistent with known physics? That's a bit trite, surely.  Or is he trying to say something else. Who knows.

Anyway, I'm not so daft as to try to analyse or even interpret the TOA data from CERES.  One look at the data quality summary and I know I'm quite out of my depth.  It would take me longer than the time I have to start to come to grips with it all.  However, I did take a peek at the charts on the CERES website.  Below, for example, is an animation of the change in TOA net flux (all sky) over a climate year by latitude.

I've got to say there look to be differences between the net flux at different latitudes over the year.  However that's not broken down into longwave and shortwave fluxes.  Even so, if there is a difference then at least one of shortwave or longwave (or incoming solar) must also be different.  You can see the shortwave and longwave variations by latitude here. Click on one of the charts to view month by month as a slide show.

Before I get to Willis' specific question, here are a couple more diagrams, showing the TOA net flux (all sky) on a regional basis. First for February (click to enlarge):

Next for July:

There's another NASA web page that has an animation of the net radiation over the globe from July 2006 to October 2013. It's mesmerising.  As stated on the website, "averaged over the year, there is a net energy surplus at the equator and a net energy deficit at the poles. This equator-versus-pole energy imbalance is the fundamental driver of atmospheric and oceanic circulation."

Here is a chart showing the annual solar insolation over the year by latitude.

The total energy received each day at the top of the atmosphere depends on latitude. The highest daily amounts of incoming energy (pale pink) occur at high latitudes in summer, when days are long, rather than at the equator. In winter, some polar latitudes receive no light at all (black). The Southern Hemisphere receives more energy during December (southern summer) than the Northern Hemisphere does in June (northern summer) because Earth’s orbit is not a perfect circle and Earth is slightly closer to the Sun during that part of its orbit. Total energy received ranges from 0 (during polar winter) to about 50 (during polar summer) megajoules per square meter per day.
Source: NASA

The page from which the above diagram came discusses the radiation budget in terms of incoming, reflected and net radiation.  It also uses one of Willis' favourite analogies (which I think he thinks he invented), the heat engine.  It's part of a series of articles at NASA's Earth Observatory website, on the topic of Climate and Earth’s Energy Budget.  It would pay for anyone taken in by Wondering Willis to read it.  Willis might learn something himself, if he chose to.

How Wondering Willis mucked up somewhere

Now back to Willis' question.  He asked why longwave and shortwave are the same for each hemisphere.

I came across a paper by Voigt et al (2013), which says that both hemispheres reflect nearly the same amount of short wave irradiance but that the long wave irradiance is quite different between the two hemispheres.  So it looks as if Willis has done something wrong in his analysis.  He got the shortwave bit right (at least insofar as the two hemispheres are almost identical), but didn't pick up the difference in longwave irradiance.  Here is the abstract from Voigt13, which probably raises more questions than it answers (my paras):

While the concentration of landmasses and atmospheric aerosols on the Northern Hemisphere suggests that the Northern Hemisphere is brighter than the Southern Hemisphere, satellite measurements of top-of-atmosphere irradiances found that both hemispheres reflect nearly the same amount of shortwave irradiance.

Here, the authors document that the most precise and accurate observation, the energy balanced and filled dataset of the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System covering the period 2000–10, measures an absolute hemispheric difference in reflected shortwave irradiance of 0.1 W m−2.

In contrast, the longwave irradiance of the two hemispheres differs by more than 1 W m−2, indicating that the observed climate system exhibits hemispheric symmetry in reflected shortwave irradiance but not in longwave irradiance.

The authors devise a variety of methods to estimate the spatial degrees of freedom of the time-mean reflected shortwave irradiance. These are used to show that the hemispheric symmetry in reflected shortwave irradiance is a nontrivial property of the Earth system in the sense that most partitionings of Earth into two random halves do not exhibit hemispheric symmetry in reflected shortwave irradiance.

Climate models generally do not reproduce the observed hemispheric symmetry, which the authors interpret as further evidence that the symmetry is nontrivial. While the authors cannot rule out that the observed hemispheric symmetry in reflected shortwave irradiance is accidental, their results motivate a search for mechanisms that minimize hemispheric differences in reflected shortwave irradiance and planetary albedo.

Below is Figure 1 from Voigt13 showing the hemispheric difference for the 12 month running mean of reflected short wave and outgoing long wave radiation.  Notice the different y axis on each. (Click to enlarge.)

Voigt, Aiko, Bjorn Stevens, Jürgen Bader, Thorsten Mauritsen, 2013: The Observed Hemispheric Symmetry in Reflected Shortwave Irradiance. J. Climate, 26, 468–477.
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00132.1

From the WUWT comments

There are quite a lot of comments. I haven't read them all but so far all but one seem to assume that Willis is correct and there is something "wrong" with the data or there is an explanation for Willis' contention that there is no difference in outgoing longwave or reflected shortwave irradiance between the two hemispheres. (Archived here, latest update here.)

AlecM talks about CO2 as a "working fluid" and says:

January 7, 2014 at 12:04 am
A remarkable study. The explanation s that there is a very stable set of control systems in the atmosphere which use CO2 as the working fluid thus reducing CO2-AGW to near zero.

The other issue is that the ‘forcing’, black body real surface energy flux and ‘back radiation’ ideas in Climate Alchemy are bad physics and must to be junked before the theory can advance.

AndyG55 refers to Willis' notion of a "regulator" of his thunderstorm thermostat hypothesis says:

January 7, 2014 at 1:46 am
Willis, could it be something to do with atmospheric pressure being the regulator?

AndyG55 says earth needs more incoming than outgoing energy for it to function (my bold italics):

January 7, 2014 at 2:04 am
I have to say I would be amazed if there was a balance of zero.

Plant life consumes energy, and the biosphere is growing.

Every movement of any tree or structure by wind causes changes within that tree or structure that are locked there for its life. The whole of Earth is constantly being eroded by energy changes, rocks crack, metals corrode. How much energy is dissipated in a large wave? Where does it go to?

No, here MUST be more energy coming in than going out for the Earth to function.

tty says the opposite to AndyG55, that there's more energy leaving than entering:

January 7, 2014 at 3:09 am
Actually slightly more energy must be going out than coming in, since geothermal heat is continuously being created by radioactivity. There may also be some residual heat from the early stage of planet formation, plus a little bit being liberated by tidal braking of the Earth’s rotation. In all about 0.1 wm-2.

There was someone posting stuff that no-one could follow (me included), which probably prompted this comment by jaffa, who says:

January 7, 2014 at 5:31 am
It’s like I’m stuck inside David Icke’s head.

Ross McKitrick says:

January 7, 2014 at 5:49 am
Willis says: “Now, there certainly may be some other explanation for this amazing stability and symmetry of the climate despite the large differences in the geometry and composition of the two hemispheres. That’s my explanation. If you have a better one … bring it on.”

Shouldn’t be too hard. All anybody has to do is solve the equations of motion of two nonlinear fluid systems coupled on a rotating sphere and subject to differential heating, turbulent mixing, random phase changes, low frequency inputs on unknown time scales and radiative transfer processes across the spectrum. I keep hearing that this is “simple physics”.

Andres Valencia is the only person I've come across in the discussion, who questions Willis' conclusions and says:

January 7, 2014 at 7:18 am
Thanks Willis. Good questions.
Why should the longwave and shortwave in the two hemispheres be the same?
Are they the same?
I’ll keep tuned to your inquire.

Willis Eschenbach himself gets more and more irate with a particular commenter over the course of the discussion, at one point writing (excerpt)

January 7, 2014 at 9:01 am
...EITHER PROVIDE PROOF OF YOUR FALSE CLAIMS, OR STAND CONVICTED OF BEING A HILARIOUSLY CHILDISH LYING SACK OF PORCINE EXCREMENT!
Is that clear enough for you, you libelous scumbag?

w.

That's not very nice, Willis, is it.