Ahhh, now this is interesting, Spencer himself, and another expert who says Spencer's article is good, are now saying, essentially, that the right blogosphere has misunderstood the article and overstated their claims that this refutes global warming theory.
So says AP science... BTW, still media.
http://green.yahoo.com/news/ap/20110...ics_study.html
The critical lines are:
"The author of the scientific study is Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama Huntsville, a prominent climate skeptic.
But even he says some bloggers are overstating what the research found."
"Kerry Emanuel of MIT, one of two scientists who said the study was good, said
bloggers and others are misstating what Spencer found. Emanuel said this work was cautious and limited mostly to pointing out problems with forecasting heat feedback.
He said what's being written about Spencer's study by nonscientists "has no basis in reality.""
Here's the article:
Quote:
Skeptic's small cloud study renews climate rancor
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Posted Fri Jul 29, 2011 3:42pm PDT
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- A study on how much heat in Earth's atmosphere is caused by cloud cover has heated up the climate change blogosphere even as it is dismissed by many scientists.
Several mainstream climate scientists call the study's conclusions off-base and overstated. Climate change skeptics, most of whom are not scientists, are touting the study, saying it blasts gaping holes in global warming theory and shows that future warming will be less than feared. The study in the journal Remote Sensing questions the accuracy of climate computer models and got attention when a lawyer for the conservative Heartland Institute wrote an opinion piece on it.
The author of the scientific study is Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama Huntsville, a prominent climate skeptic. But even he says some bloggers are overstating what the research found. Spencer's study is based on satellite data from 2000 to 2010 and is one of a handful of studies he's done that are part of an ongoing debate among a few scientists.
His research looked at cause and effect of clouds and warming. Contrary to the analysis of a majority of studies, his found that for the past decade, variations in clouds seemed more a cause of warming than an effect. More than anything, he said, his study found that mainstream research and models don't match the 10 years of data he examined. Spencer's study concludes the question of clouds' role in heating "remains an unsolved problem."
Spencer, who uses what he calls a simple model without looking at ocean heat or El Nino effects, finds fault with the more complicated models often run by mainstream climate scientists.
At least 10 climate scientists reached by The Associated Press found technical or theoretical faults with Spencer's study or its conclusions. They criticized the short time period he studied and his failure to consider the effects of the ocean and other factors. They also note that the paper appears in a journal that mostly deals with the nuts-and-bolts of satellite data and not interpreting the climate.
"This is a very bad paper and is demonstrably wrong," said Richard Somerville, a scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. "It is getting a lot of attention only because of noise in the blogosphere."
Kerry Emanuel of MIT, one of two scientists who said the study was good, said bloggers and others are misstating what Spencer found. Emanuel said this work was cautious and limited mostly to pointing out problems with forecasting heat feedback. He said what's being written about Spencer's study by nonscientists "has no basis in reality."
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I bolded the part that says Spencer used a very simple model. That was Real Climate's main criticism, that the model Spencer used was so simple that it couldn't be trusted, and couldn't be used to test the predictions of teh much more complex standard models.
It will be month's yet before the actual climate scientists tests of the paper's main argument are completed.
I read the paper, it's written in mind boggling academic jibber jabber- but I'll say that it ddn't seem to me to be making any major claims, it did not come out and say that it had proven or disproven anything.
If you like we can look at the spencer article itself.
Quote:
Abstract: The sensitivity of the climate system to an imposed radiative imbalance remains the largest
source of uncertainty in projections of future anthropogenic climate change. Here we present further
evidence that this uncertainty from an observational perspective is largely due to the masking of the
radiative feedback signal by internal radiative forcing, probably due to natural cloud variations. That
these internal radiative forcings exist and likely corrupt feedback diagnosis is demonstrated with lag
regression analysis of satellite and coupled climate model data, interpreted with a simple forcingfeedback
model. While the satellite-based metrics for the period 2000-2010 depart substantially in the
direction of lower climate sensitivity from those similarly computed from coupled climate models, we
find it is not possible with current methods to quantify this discrepancy in terms of the feedbacks
which determine climate sensitivity. It is concluded that atmospheric feedback diagnosis of the
climate system remains an unsolved problem, due primarily to the inability to distinguish between
radiative forcing and radiative feedback in satellite radiative budget observations.
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http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-conte...diagnos_11.pdf