The elephant in the room is not what effect CO2 has on climate per se, but what effect is the CO2 having on the pH of the oceans. It would appear that a considerable percentage of the man made emissions are being absorbed by the ocean and while this is mitigating against change of global temperatures, it is having a significant effect on other things such as our own coral reefs.

We still need to be taking steps to reduce our carbon emission before some other unforeseen catastrophe overtakes us.

When I read an article like this one, and yesterday's one by the same author, sometimes I spend the time (and it takes quite a lot of time) to investigate, read the cited articles, etc, to try to decide whether it should be taken seriously.

Mostly I don't have the time to do this. Fortunately on this occasion Aitkin has saved me the trouble.

His article is about Dr Roy Spencer. Aitkin praises spencer's website (but doesn't tell us where it is, it's http://www.drroyspencer.com/). In the list of Spencer's research articles (http://www.drroyspencer.com/research-articles/) the first one is Spencer & Braswell (2011). For further info on this, see http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/9/2002/pdf. Note in that document how the journal editor says "I would also like to personally protest against how the authors and like-minded climate sceptics have exaggerated the paper's conclusions ..."

This is actually a common denialist tactic - to take a paper which is of no great significance to the public debate, and pretend that is it hugely significant.

More telling about Spencer's quality as a scientist is http://arthur.shumwaysmith.com/life/content/mathematical_analysis_of_roy_spencers_climate_model. I'd challenge any reader to find a mathematician/statistician who doesn't agree with me that Spencer's blunder is astoundingly naive.

This of course doesn't say that everything Spencer says is wrong. But what does it say about Aitkin? That he is more interested in writing about climate change than learning about it? Or that he simply can't find scientific work by someone with a better reputation than Spencer which supports his point of view?

Either way it seems to justify putting Aitkin on your "don't bother to read" list.

When the author quotes Roy Spencer and the Uni of Alabama we know this is going to be another tirade against AGW.
As the release of the IPCC report comes closer, there is an increase in the shrill screaming of the denialists as they try to hold the ground against the landslide of facts that are overwhelming them.
It will of course be to no avail. It is like trying to fend off the Titanic from hitting a wharf by holding your hand out.

So VK3AUU, one scare story isn't working so let's switch to a second scare story that can be carried on a while longer?

The 15 year pause in temperatures is proving a major problem for the global warming community. To keep up the funding they need observed global average temperatures to start increasing..

Yes, ocean acidification has effectively doubled in just the last 16 years!
So simply doing nothing is not an option!
Lord preserve us from climate skeptics who merely masquerade as credible scientists or cherry pick their data, or worse, hack into the personal musing of some scientists?
Who all to often, in private, play the devils advocate, to arrive at a properly considered, thoroughly examined opinion!
That opinion tells us, we should at the very least choose to use locally available hydrocarbons, rather than those we currently import, to power more than 85% of our traffic. On the credible grounds, that just that much change, will lower our transport carbon footprint by some 75%! Or don't we actually want to save what's left of our reef?
Rhrosty.

When humans have to choose between profit and prudence they choose the former everytime. They are greedy by nature.

Forget all the scenes you've seen of devastation caused by extreme weather! They didn't happen. No matter the deaths and destruction, just tell yourself you imagined them or dreamt them.

Yeah, let's dig all the fossil fuel out of the ground, have ourselves a fun time while the fuel lasts.

Humans are incredibly stupid. That's why we have oodles of nukes I guess, and Wall Street.

Thanks Jeremy for doing the work on this. Don, if you are going to be the mouthpiece for other deniers by simply repeating their work, your own reputation should lead you to be a bit more critical and honest about the quality of the people and the work you quote.

oh dear,
Another day and another anti-science article by Don. I will nt hold my breath that don will provide a balance view on the actual report. Having got the vapours gushing over his anti-science hero's it's more then he could stand.

Roy Spencer now that's funny.....

'Forget all the scenes you've seen of devastation caused by extreme weather! They didn't happen. No matter the deaths and destruction, just tell yourself you imagined them or dreamt them. '

yea David g forget the great flood from a few thousand years back and instead continue your faith produced by the warmist mob (to call them scientist is an insult). Tsunamis, earthquakes etc will continue but it has nothing to do with Green hyprocrites flying the planet scaring people not to do the same. Dream up a new scare as this one has well and truely been exposed.

Jeremy,

You neglected to mention in your "shoot the messenger" comments that Bickmore was himself criticised for adding to Spencer's model to try to discredit it? You also failed to mention that the very forcings that Spencer was demonstrating are now confirmed by the IPCC?

Don't let facts get in the way of your sermon though, we all know what you are, we are just not sure why.

"You say you plugged in the GISS Model E forcings from TOA radiative effects, but surely Spencer's claim is that there are additional forcings resulting from chaotic internal variability - for example, cloudiness variations. Do the GISS forcings include these?

I thought Spencer's novel claims were about the forcing/feedback distinction, and whether it was appropriate to add upwelling SW and LW at the TOA to derive the TOA forcing when they have different effects at the surface, and he only plugged the data into a noddy model to get a first order estimate of what it meant. He first showed how the conventional feedback diagnosis method applied to the idealised situation with a step-function forcing gives the right answer (saying much the same as you just did), then showed how quasi-random fluctuations in forcing messed this up. Is there much progress to be made in spending a lot of time criticising the noddy estimate, and ignoring what he claims to be the main point?"

OLO seems to be promoting 'anti-IPCC shrill' in the lead up to AR5 - 3rd salvo tomorrow?

I read recently that Don Aitkin claimed to be agnostic on these issues. Who is he trying to fool?

Real agnostics would also disseminate counter arguments, he doesn't.

For Curmudgeon who said;
"The 15 year pause in temperatures is proving a major problem for the global warming community."

No it isn't, look at the time series going back a couple of hundred years - and look at OHC.

Spindoc, the very same Barry Spinx from the right wing Menzies House?

Barry, 'sceptics' having been shooting the messenger (IPCC) ever since FAR - your faux tirade smacks of hypocrisy - as usual.

Insofar as Spencer goes, his need to find an alternative to the significance of human impact (apart from God's work) is well known, at least in the scientific community.

He should keep trying though, not there yet.

ozdoc,

I think it is you who misses the point. For many years the IPCC has been presented to the world as the source of all things we should respect about CAGW. Now that the IPCC and it's predictions are failing, thanks mainly to "science by political consensus". The warmertariat want us to ignore their flaws and return to the very science that failed you in the first place.

It is your science that brought about the demise of Kyoto, the collapse of the emissions trading schemes and the destruction of the global renewables industry, the RENIXX top 30 renewables index collapsed by 90 percent three months ago.

It serves little purpose to try to convert skeptics when you cannot even convince the UN body that sold you a pup in the first place. Stop proselytising and write your complaint to the IPCC.

What is it about "your science has failed you" that fails to penetrate your self indoctrinated ideology?

The other Godwins law, Runner rules:- If Runner agrees with you, your argument is invalid.

Barry (I mean spindoc hehe)

Spin CAGW all you want but it ain't catastrophic - notwithstanding in decades to come things may change.

I don't have a complaint with the IPCC, it's very conservative - particularly in the SPM's. Perhaps you can get our new conservative Environment Minister to write on your behalf?

Besides, it's the scientific papers that I'm involved with and no amount of 'proselytizing' (your word) by political/religious interests or indeed, political scientists like this author, will change that.

I'm looking forward to the third salvo in the IPCC countdown.

I wonder, will it be that well-known possessor of a Classics degree and non-peer reviewed climate expert....Lord Monckton?

The suspense is killing me.

ozdoc,

Glad you mentioned about the " scientific papers" you are "involved" with because there are a couple of questions you failed to address.

The first is the scientific explanation of Blickmans attempt to discredit Spencer as posted earlier to Jeremy, he seems to have gone very quiet and may need your scientific expertise to refute it.

I was also wondering if you are able to explain what you mean by the comment that the IPCC is " very conservative" when all the AR assessments confirm that they are exactly the opposite? Which has been their problem all along.

Finally, would you care to advise on any progress that the global warming industry has made since November 19, 2009? Anything will do, even the most trivial achievement would do.

Some might expect you to respond with even more infantile trivia however, I'm sure that as a scientifically literate and articulate contributor, you will do better than that.

So looking forward to your scientifically rational response, as one scientist to another you understand.

spindoc,

In your comment addressed to me you say "I neglected to mention ... that Bickmore was himself criticised for adding to Spencer's model to try to discredit it". I'm not clear on why this is relevant to my comment, but if it of sufficient interest or relevance to be worth reading, perhaps you might consider providing a reference.

Your third and fourth paragraphs seem to claim that I have said certain things - which is absolutely not true. Perhaps you are confusing me with some other commenter (though I can't see which). In fact there is not a paragraph of your post where I have any idea what you are talking about.

Hi Jeremy,

So glad you got back to us, we were beginning to think you had fallen off one of your high minded posts.

You ask me to provide a reference to the issues I raised? I most certainly can, it was from the link YOU provided. Perhaps you should start reading your own links. That way won't look such an idiot in future?

When you have finished reading your own reference, perhaps you could get back to us with a "scientific" explanation?

If you need any assistance you can always contact ozdoc for some assistance.

Spindoc,
1. Blickman? You are obviously confusing yourself, if not others.
2. The IPCC frames their summaries for policy makers to cater for a diverse range of political views from approximately 190 countries. If you want to understand the science without the conservative guff, read the technical papers. You haven’t.
3. There is no such thing as a “global warming industry” – except in the minds of politically motivated MSM, bloggers and shock-jocks.
4. You are a self-confessed “post-normal scientist”, I am not.

spindoc,

Which page, and whereabouts in it, is the criticism of Bickmore?

I haven't read all the comments on the pages I cited, nor all the pages they link to, nor do I intend to.

If you expect to be taken seriously (and looking at some of your other posts, it's not at all clear) you'll do those who read your comments some courtesy - such as, in this case, pointing out where the material is which you suggest I might or should have included, and to which you seem to be inviting me to respond.

And let me reiterate that I've never said the things that you said I had.

And - relating to some of your other posts - *no-one* is going to read them and think you are any sort of scientist.

Piorot the suspense migbt kill you but climate change certainly won't

imajuia nutter,

Yep...and ciggies are safe to smoke as well.

I love Jeremy's typically condescending post linking to an alleged critique of Spencer's decaying to equilibrium equation where any similar value for forcing produces a similar short return to equilibrium period.

It just is the case in reality over every paleo or climatic period that this is what the Earth does which explains why for the last 600 million years the GMT has not varied by more than about 10C which is incredibly stable.

The only runaway scenarios and effectively infinite equilibrium periods are in the junk models of AGW and the fevered, vulture like pin-heads of the alarmists.

Michael Mann puts it most eloquently:

http://m.livescience.com/39957-climate-change-deniers-must-stop-distorting-the-evidence.html

" It happens every six years or so: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes its assessment of the current state of scientific understanding regarding human-caused climate change. That assessment is based on contributions from thousands of experts around the world through an exhaustive review of the peer-reviewed scientific literature and a rigorous, several-years-long review process. Meanwhile, in the lead-up to publication, fossil-fuel industry front groups and their paid advocates gear up to attack and malign the report, and to mislead and confuse the public about its sobering message.

So in the weeks leading up to the release of the IPCC Fifth Assessment scientific report, professional climate-change deniers and their willing abettors and enablers have done their best to distort what the report actually says about the genuine scientific evidence and the reality of the climate-change threat. [FAQ: IPCC's Upcoming Climate Change Report Explained] "

" This time, however, climate-change deniers seem divided in their preferred contrarian narrative. Some would have us believe that the IPCC has downgraded the strength of the evidence and the degree of threat. Career fossil-fuel-industry apologist Bjorn Lomborg, in Rupert Murdoch's "The Australian," wrote on Sept. 16: "UN's mild climate change message will be lost in alarmist translation." On the other hand, serial climate disinformer Judith Curry, in a commentary for the same outlet five days later, announced, "Consensus distorts the climate picture."

So, make up your mind, critics: Is it a "mild message" or a "distorted picture?" Consistency, they might well respond, is simply the "hobgoblin of little minds" after all — but in reality, that's only if you ignore the foolishness."

Poirot and friends, we are wasting our time. You cannot change stupidity.

David

Wow! This post certainly has produced some opposition, about which more in a moment. But let me thank 'jeremy' for providing what I should have done — the link to Roy Spender's website. I do always provide links, and I don't know how I missed doing so in this case — perhaps because I was travelling.

Jeremy is not persuaded by Roy Spencer or his work, and that's his privilege. I like what Spencer does, because he builds it on data. No doubt he makes errors, as I do, but when he makes a mistake he refers to that after the discovery. If he is challenged, he takes on the challenge. I like that. It is uncommon in climate science.

What is plain (to me, anyway) from the adverse comments here is that the production of the Summary for Policymakers will be greeted with a great deal of approval from those who think that people like me are in the pay of Big Something, or 'dupes'. As it happens, I'm neither, a non-believer, who calls himself an agnostic.

It's probably time I wrote about what it is that makes me an agnostic, and what that is. I can't do it justice here, but it will appear on my website tomorrow, if any of you are interested.

Don Aitkin,

It's not about "belief" (as you, no doubt, are well aware) It's about empirical evidence.

Using the term "believer", I think, is disingenuous. It's designed to subliminally impart the notion that climate science has somehow morphed into a belief system akin to religion. Do you have a similar opinion regarding other areas of science?

".... I like what Spencer does, because he builds it on data...."

Here's a paper that's based on real world data.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20120803_DicePopSci.pdf

jeremy,

"Either way it seems to justify putting Aitkin on your "don't bother to read" list."

Yes, indeed, climate change "sceptics" who are actually qualified and know what they're talking about, seem rather rare.

The ramping up of hysteria by the alarmists and sundry superior types sitting on their perches like Vultures waiting for some bad news about climate so they can say "I told you so" increases as the evidence against AGW becomes overwhelming.

Poirot links to a disgraceful effort by Hansen and some others with a prominent photo of a bushfire to prove the point that AGW is real; is that what you meant by "empirical evidence" Poirot?

All the examples used by Hansen, droughts, bushfires etc as proof of AGW have been demolished elsewhere.

In the real world of empirical evidence another paper showing the total failures of the climate models which underpin AGW:

http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs/Climate%20change/Climate%20model%20results/over%20estimate.pdf

Nothing will change the 'minds' of AGW believers because they believe in AGW; as simple as that; it is a belief and ideology; it was never a science, just an ideology, and a pernicious, anti-human one at that.

"the age of global warming hysteria warming theory, "
which is coming from the denialists of course.

Real Climate - The new IPCC climate report.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/the-new-ipcc-climate-report/

i think it is pretty obvious something is happening; that is why few disagree.

It looks like the IPCC has shot down the AGW deniers yet again.
When are they going to learn what fact based science is all about.

David