Comment from an attendee at Roy Spencer's seminar yesterday at Boulder, Colorado; taken from Steve McIntyre's CA blog.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3258#comment-277300

"Orson says:

July 17th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
I managed to make Roy Spencer’s presentation today at CIRES, University of Colorado at Boulder. (cf #79, Jim Arnt) He elaborated on his work since last year on climate sensitivity, and it is now in press at Journal of Climate.

He comes to a 0.25 C per century delta-T estimate. Mind you, this is derived on only six years of data. Clearly, more and better will yield more and better representations of reality. What stands out starkly is that we have the first realistic modeling of the global climate system in Spencer’s work. As I commented during Q&A, “there is lots left to explore.” Dr Spencer agreed.

He pitted his empirically derived model against selected IPCC models. None of the latter stood up well.

Two points of humor: he named (something important-I’ll check notes later) “the Hansen effect.” The “Smoking gun” in his title was to tweak Hansen for his infamously titled paper wherein he projected catastrophe.

He asked if anyone from (nearby) NCARs climate modeling program was in attendance? No voices or hands went up. He quipped something about some people having a problem with reality….

His line of thought conveyed how a meteorologist thinks practically about climate and its subtleties, as opposed to most modelers, typically trained in math (Connelley) or physics (astro- in Hansen’s case) or other fields, who think more categorically, unable to see tenuous connections in brut nature that meteorologists only find natural.

For instance, the modelers assume the climate system is naturally in equilibrium unless disturbed from the outside, like from mankind. His satellite evidence shows how climate trends tend to persist, on up to decadal timescales, because of internal forcings. But climate never actually equilibriates as these modelers presuppose.

In just the last days or weeks, he has integrated some insights on ENSO and other known oceanic circulatory phenomenon as climatic drivers that he has been pulling together since January on natural climate drivers". (continuing tomorrow)

Q&A and Sams - I linked to a report on Monckton's paper and quoted it's opening remarks that were in quotations, all I said was "you should read this"

Science is NOT about consensus and positions, it's about facts which are a moving target as the science evolves, therefore for the Governing Body of a Society to "reaffirm it's position" is less about science and more about politics.

Furthermore the editorial of their "Newsletter" Physics & Society July 2008 states the following:

"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. Since the correctness or fallacy of that conclusion has immense implications for public policy and for the future of the biosphere, we thought it appropriate to present a debate within the pages of P&S concerning that conclusion. This editor (JJM) invited several people to contribute articles that were either pro or con. Christopher Monckton responded with this issue's article that argues against the correctness of the IPCC conclusion, and a pair from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, David Hafemeister and Peter Schwartz, responded with this issue's article in favor of the IPCC conclusion. We, the editors of P&S, invite reasoned rebuttals from the authors as well as further contributions from the physics community. Please contact me (jjmarque@sbcglobal.net) if you wish to jump into this fray with comments or articles that are scientific in nature. However, we will not publish articles that are political or polemical in nature. Stick to the science! (JJM) "

The statement "there is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion" immediately infers that at least this editor believes there is NO consensus amongst scientists.

Sams, I'll be keen to read your contribution to Monckton's paper, just remember they will not publish articles that are political or polemical in nature. Stick to the science!

GLarsen: "Comment from an attendee at Roy Spencer's seminar"

Congratualtions! Someone here may have finally come up with one qualified climate scientist that disagrees with Anthropomorphic Climate Change (ACC).

Now contrast that with the thousands represented here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_global_warming

and have a look at real climate science journal, such as this here:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/100247/
(many have abstracts available)

and you will see that the vast majority of climate scientists have acknowledged ACC and have moved on to study the impact and ways of dealing with it. If you think they are wrong then publish or perish.

BTW, climatesci.org. is an highly biased WordPress blog, not an academic journal as it tries to appear to be.

on the other hand you could check the website of The US Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works and see their list.

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=37ae6e96-802a-23ad-4c8a-edf6d8150789

GLarsen, i remember you saying four or five months back ... "Clouds for example are modelled as positive FEEDBACKS; does this make intuitive sense?"

I said at the time, if that is the whole hypothesis and the basis of the UN IPCC models, then if true, earth would have overheated eons ago just on water vapour. Forget CO2. The application of such positive feedbacks is neither logical nor intuitive. They can of course be politico/religious beliefs. My efforts to post on the UNreal climate site quite some time ago now, about the importance of understanding relationships with clouds, albedo effects and how positive feedbacks make for an unstable situation, were basically deemed as blasphemous. i.e. This heretic was excluded from posting there again.

How such politico/religious beliefs can take hold of science has been one of my major philosophic questions. e.g. As a thirteen year old it was glaringly obvious that the bigbang model was a paradox but astoundingly fifty plus years later it still has overwhelming scientific consensus. Unsurprisingly, UNrealclimate with the likes of Schmidt, Ladbury and this Pierre joker will deem you a heretic if you challenge the bigbang belief.

If we ignore the complexity produced by infinity, of course we can imagine some perfect objects, perfect motions and idealised states but we can never actually find them. The point is that this old mode of belief belongs to a now obsolete assumption of finite universal causality. It is this closed, fixed-in-place mindset that Roy Spencer has exposed as emphatically a disorder of perception which can certainly only lead people astray on some pathway to disenchantment.

Only by adopting infinite universal causality can humanity collectively ensure a continued appreciation of the beauty of existence.

G Larsen, thanks for that link to Spencer's slides. I was waiting for something to finish and started browsing through it. I was surprised at how simple it all was, particularly the math he was using. I guess I should not of been surprised at how bad the data was they have to work with, but I was. All in all it was a pleasant read.

As for whether he is right or not - as I said I am in no position to judge. I can only wait and see what his peers have to say. You might want to look at the sorts of models his is competing with. As usual there is a broad overview of them on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_climate_model

Don Aitkin: "I have too much to do to take on such a project."

I don't doubt it. The request was tongue in cheek. You could well of asked me to do the same, and I would of given the same response. The point I was making is that until someone does produce a study showing there has been a change of heart, its all just hearsay. You could blunt that criticism to some extent by posting a few links.

Sams: "David Evans: 'I am the rocket scientist' ... A very lofty self-appraisal,"

That's a poorly aimed pot shot. I wish other climate commentators adopted David's tone, and were as honest as he is about the weaknesses in their positions. In fact, I'd recommend everyone planning to comment on scientific issues to read what David's posts - just to see how it should be done.

Janama: "http://epw.senate.gov/ ..."

Ahh yes, a blog from that bastion of science, the Bush Administration. You really know how to pick your sources, Janama.