Dr. Roy Spencer
I have been lax. My apologizes to all my readers. I was hit by a double threat. First, I was concentrating on project related details and second, I some how managed to be laid low by a pinched nerve at the L4 level. Needless to say my science concentration was physiologicaly focused. I am now an expert, not only on sleep deprivation (from university/child tending) and being a pain in the ass, but have one too. Now on the mend, I can again direct my attention outward, toward those grand philosophical questions of man and universe and stop obsessing about my gluteus maxims.I was most interested in reading some of the discussions generated around a recently published paper by Spencer and Braswell, “On the Misdiagnosis of Climate Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance.” This is worth a read. I remember commenting to a friend “this will get them all going.” It did too. The best part is, you don’t even need to be a physicist to understand it, dispute the apparent misunderstanding of many so called scientists (or those who should have a fundamental understanding of thermal dynamics).
As always Dr. Spencer is lucid and to the point. Spencer and Braswell demonstrate that, “when using satellite evidence of episodes of radiant energy accumulation before temperature peaks…and then energy loss afterward. Energy conservation cannot be denied by any reasonably sane physicist.” That is simply why the Thermal Dynamics has these things called laws. Note please, “sane” is Spencer’s word, it call it dishonesty.
This harkens back to any number of other essays in this series that demand the models used for climate studies and any other models of science, for that matter, be calibrated against reality. I personally have been grappling with the known lag between heating and cooling events in places like the oceans and the known or suspected time lag. We have been around the block, well several blocks, examining the foolishness of applying deterministic models and untested assumptions, to dynamic situations. This is simply another example.
I think what gets my goat, is when so called climate scientists complain that Spencer and others have not proven “their” models are inadequate or even misleading. These people claim the mantle of science and use such loaded terminology inappropriately and inaccurately, as to spout little but propaganda in a pseudo-religious mantra. Nothing has been proven and please remember, nothing can be prove in science. Only law courts and lawyers, are so well endowed with hubris to think that can do so.
No true scientist would ever claim such. Demigods, politician and many suffering from Cognitive Dissonance do this all the time. As I said before, if you do not follow the principals of the scientific method then you loose the right to call yourself a scientist.
I think Dr. Spencer is best quoted here (he is way more polite then I am). “Did we “prove” that the IPCC climate models are wrong in their predictions of substantial future warming?
No, but the dirty little secret is that there is still no way to test those models for their warming predictions. And as long as the modellers insist on using short term climate variability to “validate” the long term warming in their models, I will continue to use that same short term variability to show how the modellers might well be fooling themselves into believing in positive feedback. And without net positive feedback, manmade global warming becomes for all practical purposes a non-issue. (e.g., negative cloud feedback could more than cancel out any positive feedback in the climate system).
If I’m a “denier” of the theory of dangerous anthropogenic climate change, so be it. But as a scientist I’d rather deny that theory than deny the 1st Law of Thermodynamics.”
I an not a “denier” I am a AGW atheist! No true scientist can be other in his scientific life. It is not what our faith tells us or dictates, it is what the empirical evidence illustrates, that founds science. We have been over this before too. A quick reminder. Science works on deductive reasoning and abhors the a priori. Religion is inductive in reasoning and must begin from the priori position. I am a AGW atheist.
In my privet life, the god(s) I may or may not worship are separated from science. Remember science and religion address fundamentally different questions and require different reasoning. They are mutually exclusive of each other. The philosophy of science is singularly focused on the subject of how things work. It is incapable of addressing anything other then that.
Keep a skeptical eye and remember, mother nature plays with loaded dice.
