Does this new paper support Roy Spencer's theory?

Question

http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/gilbert.p.compo/CompoSardeshmukh2007a.pdf

Here is Roger Pielke Sr.'s take on it: http://climatesci.org/2008/07/21/oceanic-influences-on-recent-continental-warming-an-important-new-research-paper-compo-and-sardeshmukh-2008/

Along with these papers:

http://www.uwm.edu/~aatsonis/2007GL030288.pdf

http://www.springerlink.com/content/j43817g947nq715q/?p=74c308e3f28e408faa09933f517590c9&pi=2

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007GL029698.shtml

http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2FJCLI-3243.1&ct=1

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/295/5556/841

http://www.nerc-essc.ac.uk/~rpa/PAPERS/olr_grl.pdf

Roy Spencer's presentation (the new paper is to be published

soon):

http://climatesci.org/wp-content/uploads/spencer-ppt.pdf

Spencer's paper from earlier this year:

http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F2008JCLI2253.1&ct=1&SESSID=379327ca88ea6b8069ce36ad8d2f9a32

Answer 1

I don't think so.

The Compo paper advances the idea that warming oceans increase humidity over land and increase warming over land.  A form of positive feedback.

Spencer claims that increasing warmth should generate clouds (and note that they'd better be the right kind of clouds, some cause cooling, others warming) as a negative feedback.

Seems to be a conflict here.

Spencer is one of the few reasonable scientific "skeptics".  He's careful to note that his is an alternative explanation of the data, not a refutation of other scientists, and that there's a possibility they're right and he's wrong.  He acknowledges that CO2 does cause warming, but believes negative feedbacks from clouds will ameliorate it.

Some of his critics aren't so charitable:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...

Anyway, I think Spencer's work is interesting, and pushes global warming scientists to examine their work closely, but hardly something for people to hang their hat on yet.  The chance that he's right is pretty small, but it does exist, in comparison to the usual denier nonsense.

As a sidenote, he believes in "Intelligent Design" rather than evolution, which will certainly cause many people to adjust their opinion of him one way or another.  He's also hawking a sensationalistic book these days.

Answer 2

No, the two ideas are unrelated. Compo and Sardeshmukh are likely to be correct regardless of whether Spencer is right or wrong. (And Spencer is likely to be wrong, since he only considered short-term feedbacks of 2 years or less.)

Answer 3

The CIRES paper is very cautious to point out that the ocean warming driving the continental warming could be due to the radiative forcing from CO2.  When the dust has settled down, Compo and Sardeshmukh are going to admit their results in no way contradict the theory that the observed warming is due to radiative forcing from CO2.  

Spencer is playing fast and loose with you.  Did you notice that in the analysis in the beginning of his presentation he uses an ocean mixed layer depth of 50 m and that at the end he uses a mixed-layer depth of 1000 m?  Do you know why he does that?  Because if he uses a deep MLD in the beginning he doesn't get enough variability so his analysis falls apart and if he uses a shallow one at the end he gets too fast a relaxation time and he does't get the trend in temperature right (as the guy on RealClimate.org that Bob linked to points out).  Spencer, being a fundamentalist Christian, *needs* to prove that man can't affect climate.  That's not a good position for a scientist to be in since he's lost his objectivity and now resorts to what amounts to data processing parlor tricks.  

Pielke is looking worse and worse backing up guys like Spencer, but I have to give him credit for sticking to his guns in the face of mounting evidence against him.  Sort of reminds me of the fossil turbulence debates in physical oceanography in the 80's.

edit:  Bob, if you want to ignore why he uses two different mixed-layer depths, you've moved from being a rational skeptic into denial, which says a lot negatively about you, frankly.  There is no reason why you would use two different values unless one value didn't work. And if the same value, high or low, doesn't work in both places, then something is wrong with your physics.  If you are at all objective you would see that.  But like you, Spencer does things like this because he *has* to show anthropogenic climate change is wrong.  He's not acting objectively.  That Pielke backs him up on this, or doesn't notice the sleight of hand, is kind of telling.  But I bet if you had been at the seminar, you would have see Spencer get raked on the mixed-layer depth.