Here, Jim, this is how:

Spencer:
“I have a paper [PDF] in this week’s Science discussing the water vapor feedback. It is a Perspective, meaning that it is a summary of the existing literature rather than new scientific results. In it, my co-author Steve Sherwood and I discuss the mountain of evidence in support of a strong and positive water vapor feedback.
… just about everybody now agrees water vapor provides a robustly strong and positive feedback. Roy Spencer even sent me email saying that he agrees.”

http://www.grist.org/member/view-all/posts/1595

Carter:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/11/23/what-bob-carter-and-andrew-bolt-fail-to-grasp/

Meehl:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/325/5944/1114
“how the relatively small fluctuations of the 11-year solar cycle can produce the magnitude of the observed climate signals in the tropical Pacific associated with such solar variability.”

http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/is-our-whole-dissembly-appeared/

——

Tsk.

And Meehl et al. propose a mechanism that may explain the mechanism for the known small effect. It doesn’t change the size of the effect — small, compared to CO2 forcing.

Jim, you really should cite your sources. You’re quoting from what, CO2science? If you’d look at the actual papers it would be much harder to fool yourself, or anyone else.

We’d like to be able to rely on you for facts.

There are people who have pointed out problems with Lindzen’s point of view. You can start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen#Climate_change_science. Now, you can attack the attackers, and we can attack your attack on the attackers. So in the end, it’s really going to be up to you which set of arguments you are going to believe.

The number of Lindzen’s in the world is very small. Lindzen’s arguments have not persuaded most scientists.

So it’s really up to you who you want to believe…Lindzen or everyone else.

Monsoons and tipping points. “Thin Ice” a book, has plenty of history of civilisations along the west coast of South America who suffered and ultimately died out because of long El Nino periods. The Lenton paper isn’t just a vague guess. I referred you to a publically available website. The full paper is on PNAS and referenced at the bottom of the page. I’ve just checked and it is open access and provides more information on why it considers ENSO shifts likely:

http://www.pnas.org/content/105/6/1786.full.pdf+html

On caring. Some scientists, like some non-scientists don’t care about the fate of people or other animals and you don’t have to be caring or compassionate to do brilliant science. But I don’t care for such people. Perhaps my assessment of Plimer was hasty, but it wasn’t just based on that debate, but on other writings and media appearances. In any event, I think you are right and I will try to refrain from intemperate comments in future.

My original question, based on the certainty and vehemence of your response to the Brook-Plimer debate, was the monsoon failures you mentioned, particularly with regard to what empirical observations can you provide to substantiate this assertion.

The tipping point article, while very interesting, contains no empirical evidence, only conjecture. Is there any empirical measurements or observations to substantiate your bold statement.

“Firstly, John, good on you for coming to the aid of the young guy with the “denier” question.” I don’t know what you mean.

But then, many people prefer sweet lies to bitter truths …

Is there an MP3 available of the debate? If positive, can I get a copy?

Andrew

30-7-09

This looks like yet another paper in the series “sensitivity is proportional to 1 / (1-f) and we can’t rule out f close to 1 so sensitivity could be large”. Dig deep enough and you find this same uncertainty underlying every poorly-constrained sensitivity estimate. It doesn’t mean sensitivity is likely to be high, it just means we have to constrain it by other means. BTW, Other papers (eg Douglass and Knox) tell a very different story about sensitivity from volcanic eruptions.

…and his iris idea, which has been demolished in the literature.

No it hasn’t. And he hardly relied on it in the paper. At its loosest the “Iris idea” is nothing more than negative cloud feedbacks.

He also fails to explain why other estimates of sensitivity based on observed data are wrong.

Which other estimates of sensitivity based on observed data? I’ve not seen anything that did not suffer from the aforementioned difficulties (except, as you say, the estimates based on the Quaternary, but they have their own problems – I’ll get to that).

Also, some of the models do not include all forcings so cannot be compared directly with observations.

Maybe, but every model gives the opposite sign to the data.

The effects of ENSO are not factored out,

Maybe. But again, every model gives the opposite sign to the data.

nor does he consider that model results may reflect ENSO errors and not be relevant to longer time scales.

Again, ENSO is unlikely to be the models’ saviour when every single one gets the wrong sign. Your NCAR friend needs to back up his claim.

Clever stuff — but all his previous clever ideas have been subsequently shot down

All his previous clever ideas have been subsequently shot down? Oh sure, they hand out MIT professorships to idiots all the time.

On the Quaternary studies. The fundamental problem with those studies is they assume sensitivity is independent of climate state, viz: a 3C rise for doubling of CO2 (factoring out ice albedo) over 100,000 years does not imply climate sensitivity today is 3C. At the start of the temperature rise the Earth is colder (and drier) – there could be far greater positive water-vapor feedbacks from increased forcing than at the end (where we are now) when the Earth is already warmer and wetter. Integrating over 100,000 years does not tell you today’s sensitivity.

On conspiracy. The question regarding biases in the kind of research which gets published got quite a few nods of agreement in parts of the audience. I think the proposition that global warming science would be found wanting if not for editorial bias in the peer reviewed journal is a conspiracy theory and rubbish. Which is not to deny that funding biases may not be operating. I have little evidence for or against a funding bias, but have sat on committees reviewing research and seen funding biases a plenty. This is quite different from an editor choosing to publish a bad paper or choosing to reject a good paper.

On monsoons. If ENSO is altered in either frequency or intensity then changes in monsoon behaviour could bring drought in SE Asia

http://researchpages.net/ESMG/people/tim-lenton/tipping-points/

Mark Bowen in “Thin Ice” surveys some of the evidence of past extended El-Nino conditions which have had massive impacts in South America.

Plimer discussed historical climate change like it was changing curtain colors. I hope he is simply ignorant (pig or otherwise) and not uncaring.

The two aren’t mutually exclusive, John Smith. Just saying.

I suspect that Plimer is not pig ignorant but rather that you disagree with him. You do not help in getting your point across with this type of language.

“I note that he cites Lindzen and Giannitsis, which was shown to be flawed …

Clever stuff — but all his previous clever ideas have been subsequently shot down.”

Regarding that point on other estimates of sensitivity, one of the most robust is the Quaternary data, which indicates a fast-feedback sensitivity of 3 +-0.5 C, and this is the evidence I’ve looked at most (being closest to one of my areas of research interest). It seems quite convincing (with ice sheet albedo providing a similar forcing).