Pal-review at work
Pal-review at work: Spencer and Braswell rebuttal published after just SIX WEEKS
Sep 062011
Whereas a sceptical paper could take up to TWO YEARS (e.g. Lindzen and Choi). I guess it’s all a question of who you know and what side you’re on, right?
WUWT has the full story.
UPDATE: Luboš Motl goes to work on the rebuttal here. Enjoy – here’s an extract:
motls.blogspot.com
Well, I am really amazed that people who have self-evidently no idea about physics – and about basic reality such as the impact of clouds on temperature – could have been accepted to the college: Dessler was allowed to study at Rice University. It’s just utterly incredible how hollow skulls like his might have been accepted to a university.
Let me summarize the basic errors in Dessler’s crackpot rants:
- he incorrectly assumes that clouds have to “trap” heat if they want to influence the temperature
- he incorrectly assumes that the cloud cover at a given place isn’t an independent degree of freedom; instead, it is a function of the carbon dioxide emissions
- he incorrectly assumes that it is illegitimate to test the predicted correlations of various physical models by comparing the simulations with the observations; instead, he thinks that it is legitimate to hide his head into the sand and claim that there is nothing to be seen here
- more generally, he seems to incorrectly assume that one may be a complete imbecile such as himself to write relevant papers about the energy flows in the atmosphere.
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/2011/09/pal-review-at-work-spencer-and-braswell-rebuttal-published-after-just-six-weeks/%3C/i%3E%3C/a%3E
Hot off the press: Dessler’s record turnaround time GRL rebuttal paper to Spencer and Braswell
Posted on September 6, 2011 by Anthony Watts
UPDATE: Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. has a comment on the paper here: Comments On The Dessler 2011 GRL Paper “Cloud Variations And The Earth’s Energy Budget also, physicist Lubos Motl has an analysis here. The press release from TAMU/Dessler has been pushed to media outlets on Eurekalert, see update below.
UPDATE2: Dessler has made a video on the paper see it here And Steve McIntyre has his take on it with The stone in Trenberth’s shoe
I’ve been given an advance copy, for which I’ve posted excerpts below. This paper appears to have been made ready in record time, with a turnaround from submission to acceptance and publication of about six weeks based on the July 26th publication date of the original Spencer and Braswell paper. We should all be so lucky to have expedited peer review service. PeerEx maybe, something like FedEx? Compare that to the two years it took to get Lindzen and Choi out the door. Or how about the WUWT story: “Science has been sitting on his [Spencer's] critique of Dessler’s paper for months”.
If anyone needs a clear, concise, and irrefutable example of how peer review in climate science is biased for the consensus and against skeptics, this is it.
I’m sure some thorough examination will determine if the maxim “haste makes waste” applies here for Dessler’s turbo treatise.
Cloud variations and the Earth’s energy budget
A.E. Dessler
Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX
Abstract: The question of whether clouds are the cause of surface temperature changes, rather than acting as a feedback in response to those temperature changes, is explored using data obtained between 2000 and 2010. An energy budget calculation shows that the energy trapped by clouds accounts for little of the observed climate variations. And observations of the lagged response of top-of-atmosphere (TOA) energy fluxes to surface temperature variations are not evidence that clouds are causing climate change.
Introduction
The usual way to think about clouds in the climate system is that they are a feedback — as the climate warms, clouds change in response and either amplify (positive cloud feedback) or ameliorate (negative cloud feedback) the initial change [e.g., Stephens, 2005]. In recent papers, Lindzen and Choi [2011, hereafter LC11] and Spencer and Braswell [2011, hereafter SB11] have argued that reality is reversed: clouds are the cause of, and not a feedback on, changes in surface temperature. If this claim is correct, then significant revisions to climate science may be required.
…
Conclusions
These calculations show that clouds did not cause significant climate change over the last decade (over the decades or centuries relevant for long-term climate change, on the other hand, clouds can indeed cause significant warming).
[ My comment: Thing is, there hasn't been significant climate change over the last decade. As for clouds causing significant warming over decades and centuries, how can Dessler say, since he only studied 2000-2010 data? He's relying on what models say for that last 'conclusion', no doubt, certainly not data. That has to be true because the models that support CAGW rely on the assumption water vapor magnifies the direct warming effect of CO2, which everyone knows is minor. ]
Rather, the evolution of the surface and atmosphere during ENSO variations are dominated by oceanic heat transport. This means in turn that regressions of TOA fluxes vs. ?Ts can be used to accurately estimate climate sensitivity or the magnitude of climate feedbacks. In addition, observations presented by LC11 and SB11 are not in fundamental disagreement with mainstream climate models, nor do they provide evidence that clouds are causing climate change. Suggestions that significant revisions to mainstream climate science are required are therefore not supported.
Acknowledgments: This work was supported by NSF grant AGS-1012665 to Texas A&M University. I thank A. Evan, J. Fasullo, D. Murphy, K. Trenberth, M. Zelinka, and A.J. Dessler for useful comments.
Dessler, A. E. (2011),
Cloud variations and the Earth’s energy budget, Geophys. Res. Lett., doi:10.1029/2011GL049236, in press. [ Abstract] [ PDF paywalled] (accepted 29 August 2011)
Dessler has a pre-print version of the paper on his server here
h/t to Marc Hendrickx
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UPDATE: Here is the press release from Texas A&M via Eurekalert:
Texas A&M University
Texas A&M prof says study shows that clouds don’t cause climate change
COLLEGE STATION, Sept. 6, 2011 — Clouds only amplify climate change, says a Texas A&M University professor in a study that rebuts recent claims that clouds are actually the root cause of climate change.
Andrew Dessler, a Texas A&M atmospheric sciences professor considered one of the nation’s experts on climate variations, says decades of data support the mainstream and long-held view that clouds are primarily acting as a so-called “feedback” that amplifies warming from human activity. His work is published today in the American Geophysical Union’s peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Dessler studied El Niño and La Niña cycles over the past 10 years and calculated the Earth’s “energy budget” over this time. El Nino and La Nina are cyclical events, roughly every five years, when waters in the central Pacific Ocean tend to get warmer or colder. These changes have a huge impact on much of the world’s weather systems for months or even years.
Dessler found that clouds played a very small role in initiating these climate variations — in agreement, he says, with mainstream climate science and in direct opposition to some previous claims.
“The bottom line is that clouds have not replaced humans as the cause of the recent warming the Earth is experiencing,” Dessler says.
Texas is currently in one of the worst droughts in the state’s history, and most scientists believe it is a direct result of La Niña conditions that have lingered in the Pacific Ocean for many months.
Dessler adds, “Over a century, however, clouds can indeed play an important role amplifying climate change.”
“I hope my analysis puts an end to this claim that clouds are causing climate change,” he adds.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/06/hot-off-the-press-desslers-record-turnaround-time-grl-rebuttal-paper-to-spencer-and-braswell/
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Ryan says:
September 6, 2011 at 1:19 am
“peer review in climate science is biased for the consensus”
Is it really biased towards a consensus?
Consensus: An opinion or position reached by a group as a whole
Is that really what has happened here? From what I can see we have a dozen, or maybe half a dozen scientists with a shared agenda that are spreading what amounts to unchallenged propaganda in certain scientific publications. As a result, hundreds of other scientists have not “reached a position” but rather had a position thrust upon them as a fait accompli.
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Magnus Olert says:
September 6, 2011 at 2:13 am
It’s hard to judge a paper based just on the sections Abstact, Introduction and Conclusions. However, there seem to be serious errors in those sections:
1) “…and Spencer and Braswell [2011, hereafter SB11] have argued that reality is reversed: clouds are the cause of, and not a feedback on, changes in surface temperature.” This is not correct, SB11 argues that it goes both ways.
2) “These calculations show that clouds did not cause significant climate change over the last decade ” As far as I understand SB11 it does not argue that clouds has caused a significant climate change over the last decade. It does just say that clouds does affect temperature and that this effect will contaminate your analysis of the cloud feedback if not accounted for.
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Lucy Skywalker says:
September 6, 2011 at 2:18 am
A paper this important to AR5 has no right being behind a paywall. I hope it comes out from behind the paywall. Otherwise it will likely be Wahl and Amman and the hidden corruption of the IPCC process to exclude legitimate challenge (Jones’ famous email requesting Mann to advise Wahl to delete) all over again.
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Dave Springer says:
September 6, 2011 at 2:41 am
I suspect “the team” is in panic mode right now. Lindzen and Spencer are not lighweights and the team knows they are right. Modeling of clouds has always been the Achilles Heel of climate models and clouds (actually water vapor in general) are what turn a rather welcome 1C temperature rise per CO2 doubling into an alarming 3-5C rise per doubling. Without being able to prove that high level of climate sensitivity and with empirical observation not in satisfactory agreement with it the science behind CAGW is simply too deficient to use as a basis for draconian legislation aimed at reducing anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
At this point in time the scientific “consensus” is falling apart, the public smelled the rat when the Climategate emails became public, and the CAGW cause is lost on both fronts. Al Gore has been reduced to a potty-mouth ranting fool. All that remains of it is rapidly declining financial/political inertia.
Climate boffins are ignoring the first rule of holes: when you find you’ve dug yourself into a hole the first thing to do is stop digging.
This whole Wagner resignation episode is just more digging. What’s really amusing is that the CAGW faithful have not only failed to stop digging, they’re digging even faster! Amazing. Amazingly STUPID, that is.
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Paul Nevins says:
September 6, 2011 at 5:24 am
How long does it take a reasonably sharp person to recognize that Dressler’s paper is just a set of straw man arguments and does not address the S&B papers main point?
I particularly like
“These calculations show that clouds did not cause significant climate change over the last decade”
A true statement! There hasn’t been any “significant climate change” over the last decade. They can’t seriously think there is anyone reading their paper stupid enough not to know this.
This non work should not be being “supported by NSF grant”.
Also the weasal words “not in fundamental disagreement with mainstream climate models,” make me strongly suspect that a fair evaluation would show that they are indeed in fundamental disagreement. This is being cynical I know, but, the obvious deception in the earlier parts of the conclusion make me question all the conclusions.
Ron Cram says:
September 6, 2011 at 5:27 am
Jim Turner says:
September 6, 2011 at 4:50 am
“….have argued that reality is reversed….”
Doesn’t anyone else think that this is a strange phrase to use in a scientific paper?
Yes, I noticed that too. I was shocked that it was written at all and doubly shocked that no reviewer demanded a sentence structure more in line with scientific practice.
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Ibrahim says:
September 6, 2011 at 6:29 am
I wonder who peer-reviewed this.
Conclusion: clouds don’t, but clouds do.
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davidmhoffer says:
September 6, 2011 at 12:52 pm
Anthony,
Les Johnson did us all a great service by summarizing the sequence of events (to that point in time) which you then posted as the “Journal Deliverance” thread. I’d like to see that approach continue. This thread for example has plenty of good information in it, but unless one has followed ALL the details from beginning to end, much of it is out of context. Some readers have the big picture, but I suspect many are drowining in details and losing site of it. I haven’t them time to give credit where credit is due, nor research the exact dates of each event (perhaps Les would continue his yeoman’s work in that regard?) but here is my summary:
Some of the following is conjecture based on circumstancial evidence, but in my mind, no other logical explanation has arisen:
o Spencer and Braswell published a paper (SB11) which looked at satellite measurements of the earth’s radiative balance and concluded that the climate models were under estimating, to a significant degree, the amount of heat energy being lost to space.
o The paper was properly peer reviewed, flaws discovered in the peer review process which were corrected, and the paper was published in Remote Sensing.
o A few weeks later, the Editor-In-Chief of Remote Sensing, one Wolfgang Wagner, resigned, citing his objections to SB11 as the reason. Upon review, the reasons detailed in his resignation article on the Remote Sensing web site made little or no sense. Not one single fact presented in the SB11 paper was refuted, Wagner confirmed that the reviewers were qualified and from prestigious universities, speculating only that they “may” have held skeptical positions. The wording of the resignation, and the surrounding circumstances, suggest that Wagner attempted to have the SB11 paper retracted, failed to do so, and being unable to impose his will on Remote Sensing, resigned his position as Editor-In-Chief.
o The only portion of Wagner’s resignation that appears to be genuine is his claim that SB11 was not credible because the modeling community was not consulted about the results. While this appears to be a genuine statement on his part, the logic suggested is a fallacy. SB11 was the result of actual measurements. Models are beholden to actual measurements, not the other way around. Models are simulations of the real world, and when measurements of the real world are made, they stand on their own, because they are, in fact, measurments of the real world, not computer simulations of how some scientists think the world really works.
o Upon further investigation, it became apparent that Wagner’s position at Remote Sensing was largely that of figure head. His full time employment and day to day job is with the Vienna University of Technology, where he holds a position that stands at the cross roads of two important disciplines. These are listed on the VUoT web site as “remote sensing” and “environmental modeling and 3D modeling”. Wagner is listed as “physical modeling” and is depicted as the centre piece by which the three disciplines are integrated with each other.
o This makes the following logic chain plausible, and in the absence of any other logical explanation, likely. The SB11 paper presents actual measured data showing that the models are over estimating global warming, discrediting much of the CAGW propoganda in the process. Beholden to the modeling “camp” upon which cooperation with for his day to day job depends, Wagner was pressured into attempting to have the SB11 paper blocked or retracted. Having failed to do so, Wagner resigned, and his resignation article reads far more as an apology to the climate modeling community than as a professional resignation, and is clearly meant as an attempt to appease the climate modeling community which SB11 so clearly destroys the credibility of.
o Not long after Wagner’s resignation, Kevin Trenberth, a leading light in the climate modeling community, initiated a smear campaign against Dr Roy Spencer. The smear campaign included any number of criticisms of Spencer, Braswell, and (for some unknwon reason as he was not involved in SB11) Dr Christie. But astoundingly, not a single word about the science itself in SB11. More astoundingly still, Trenberth was not content to simply smear Spencer, Braswell, and Christie. He went on to brag about having recieved a personal apology from the Editor-In-Chief and the Publisher of Remote Sensing.
o Kevin Trenberth is, amongst other things, the chair (by acclamation, which shows his clout in the modeling community) of the prestigious GEWEX intitiative which seeks to model moisture levels on a global basis. Wagner in turn heads the soil moisture global modeling initiative at VUoT, which is directly beholden to GEWEX for day to day cooperation and integration of data with modeling, and without GEWEX support, Wagner’s soil moisture database would be in jeapourdy from a credibility stand point, if not from a fudning stand point.
o Logic dictates that this chain of events supports still more conclusions for which there is no alternative explanation that reasonably fits the facts and sequence of events. For starters, the wording of Trenberth’s smear campaign suggests that the Editor-In-Chief and the Publisher are two different people, when in fact, they are one and the same. Only a single apology was recieved, and it was from Wagner and only Wagner. The editorial board of Remote Sensing has clearly decided to stand behind their publication in general, and SB11 in particular. TRenberth in the meanwhile gloats that he has recieved and apology from Wagner, implies that it is from more than just Wagner when it clearly isn’t, and through his various comments, seems to be taking pride in destroying both SB11 and Wagner without raising a single solitary scientific fact in the process. Wagner’s resignation and apology are both panic stricken attempts to appease someone with more power than himself and regain that person’s favour.
o Trenberth’s one and only sop to actual science is to claim that the forthcoming paper from Dresller would eviscerate SB11. So now, here in this thread, we have excerpts from the paper, and the weight of many extremely qualified researchers to rely upon for analysis. The short version? Dressler’s paper makes a mockery of science, the scientific process, and flies in the face of the facts themselves.
o The Dressler paper is founded upon criticism of statements and claims never made by SB11. In some places it actually refutes itself. The analysis is restricted to a time period in which almost no measurable change in temperature has occurred, and concludes that SB11 is wrong as a result, and the models right. the simplest of persons should be able to see straight through this concoction of misrepresented facts and logic. The models have all predicted massive temperature increases over that exact time period, and have ALL BEEN WRONG. To suggest that measurements showing WHY they are wrong can be negated by the fact that the time period in question exhibted no significant change IN DIRECT OPPOSITION TO WHAT THE MODELS PREDICTED is repugnant beyond words. They may as well have told a man dying of thirst in the middle of the Sahara that it is pouring rain, and when he gasps that he sees no rain, just blue sky and sand, respond back that his perception of the real world must be wrong, and had he bothered to consult with the models, he would be able to understand, silly fool that he is, that it is in fact pouring rain.
o WaterGate was a cover up which lent its name to many cover ups since then, possibly the most notable being the ClimateGate emails. But this entire affair goes well beyond a cover up. Wagner’s resignation and his apology to Trenberth are clearly the results of a cowardly attempt to appease the climate modeling community in general, and Trenberth in particular. In doing so, Wagner has destroyed his own credibility as a scientist, and exposed the power that Trenberth and his allies are prepared to wield in order that their climate models be accepted as reality, while reality itself is discredited. In neither WaterGate nor ClimateGate however, did the authors of the dirty deeds gloat, in fact brag, publicly, about what they did. Trenberth’s smear campaign, and Dressler’s idiotic attack on things that SB11 never said, while strictly avoiding what SB11 DID say, are not a cover up. They are a demand that the man dying of thirst in the Sahara believe that it is raining because their computer models say it is, and that he should apologise to them for both dying and being thirsty.
o Trenberth has publicly admitted that his models cannot account for “the missing heat”, a matter which he dubbed a “travesty”. Faced with clear measurements of exactly where the missing heat is going, the one option that Trenberth refuses to consider, that the heat is escaping to space instead of being retained as his models claim, Trenberth has stooped low enough to scratch the belly of a snake. He, along with Dressler, have proclaimed the very lack of warming that disproves their dearly beloved models is at the same time proof that their models are right in the face of actual measurements showing not only that they are wrong, but where the “missing heat” they themselves admit has gone. Nixon had the guts to proclaim on national television that he wasn’t a crook. Not even Nixon would have had the guts to proclaim himself a crook, and innocent as a consequence of being a crook.
o This is no “gate” nor “travesty”. Stronger words than that are needed.
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William says:
September 6, 2011 at 7:12 pm
Dessler did not submit their paper to the journal that published Spencer’s paper “Remote Sensing” as that would have provide an opportunity for Spencer to appropriately refute and address any legitimate criticisms.
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