Captain Marvel comes unstuck

While everyone else was out partying on Hogmanay, Bob Ward was hard at work writing tweets about global warming. Let noone say he is not a strangely obsessive personality.

A new paper on climate sensitivity that @mattwridley and other peddlers of denial will pretend does not exist: https://t.co/RJWJFNODkR

— Bob Ward (@ret_ward) December 31, 2015

This was a bit of a silly thing for Bob to say though because I had written a post about the said paper, by Marvel et al, some two weeks earlier, noting that it looked a bit unphysical in places.

Anyway, it turns out that the reason that no more detailed response has appeared was that there was so much wrong with the study that it just took a very long time to collate all the problems into a single document. Nic Lewis has now published his thoughts at Climate Audit. And oh boy is the Marvel paper a shambles. There is so much wrong that Nic has had to make a condensed version available as well, and even that runs to two pages! Perhaps I should just publish his final sentence here.

Their study lacks credibility.

Comments

[Harry Passfield]

Good spot, Skeptical Chymist. For the benefit of bornbyaccident I dug out this quote from Nic Lewis:

I sent Bjorn Stevens a copy of the above wording and he has responded, saying the following:

“Dear Nic,

because I have reservations about estimates of ocean heat uptake used in the ‘energy-balance approaches’, and because of a number of issues (which you allude to) regarding differences between effective climate sensitivity estimates from the historical record and ECS, I am not ready to draw the inference from my study that ECS is low. That said, I do think what you write in the two paragraphs above is a fair characterization of the situation and of your important contributions to the scientific debate. The Ringberg meeting also made me confident that the open issues are ones we can resolve in the next few years.

Feel free to quote me on this.

Best wishes, Bjorn”

Doesn't seem to me that Stevens was too perturbed about what Nic said about ECS.

[Nic Lewis]

Thanks, Harry. And for the record, the very simple energy balance model I used to estimate climate sensitivity is discussed in Chapter 10 of IPCC AR5, and was used by 14 key AR5 lead authors, including Bjorn Stevens, in the Otto et al 2013 ECS estimation study.

[golf charlie]

Nic Lewis, thank you for the clarification.

I expect Onbyaccident will be along in a moment, when he has finished dining out on this latest own goal for the Hockey Team. It is lucky that the Sea Ice hasn't melted as they forecast, otherwise they would be playing water polo.

[Drapetomania]

Thanks Nic Lewis...always good to see one of the $CAGW$ clowns like "Onbyaccident" do an own goal..at the start of my day..makes me smile ... You can apologise now Onbyaccident ...now where did he go...:)

[Russell]

the gentleman resembles an attack dog who leaps into an aggressive confrontation with every sceptical publication regardless of its merits. He also trumpets warmist publications when they arise. It does seem that a large proportion of his victims are dead ducks before he savages them. Many are decoy ducks that are best ignored and the ones he promotes are lame ducks because they fail objective scrutiny.

Definitely Watts' opposite number

[Aila]

Say what, Russell?

[JamesG]

The OBA clown didn't even notice that Marvel et al. disagrees with Stevens about the net effect of aerosols. Such glaring contradictions about the underpinning science don't matter to alarmists if at the end of the day they all stay on message. Of course only a credulous simpleton or a self-deluded luddite could believe that x fossil fuel warming is masked by y fossil fuel cooling where x and y are both unknown - especially since the same charlatans had previously predicted the exact opposite.

[Onbyaccident]

@ Nic Lewis

nope that doesn't stand. Simple models have their place and can be commonly used. But here they are lacking and that has been recognised. The fact that BS was polite to you tells me nothing about your credibility and a lot about his graciousness. The fact that the IPCC may quote them is irrelevant. Of course they would - in essence that is their job. No point lecturing you on the fact that they themselves don't do the research remember. They collate and in that collation wil lie errr simpler climate models. In that collation as far as ECS is concerned (as well as estimates for TCR) lies a range of data points.

The core of what I'm getting at here though is that the few papers that you people (and I dont just point my finger at you here but the broader "skeptic" community) land on as evidence is the one that comes closer to the minimised AGW view. Again I feel that for you this is about ideology and not science ultimately. However it is but one data point amongst many.

[Onbyaccident]

@ jamesG

well well disagrees does it? And I should have a problem with that why? You might as well just write a note saying that you don't understand how science progresses. FWIW I have spent some time looking at this and feel that the BS paper underestimates matters but you know...I welcome his research and his comments on his paper. We know there is more to look into here. Doesn't alter my "luddite message" at all. Step back and take some time to think about things a bit is my new year message to you.

@ Aila

nope don't know what he's banging on about either but do seem to recall some chat with him some time back. No point wasting your time on him/her. This particular attack dog has a PhD in mathematical physics and knows where the sterile ground is so won't be peeing there ;-)

[HAS]

Onbyaccident, I'm with you on this complex model stuff. It seems to me that if you are the GISS-E2-R model developer and want to know the efficacies of the various individual forcings in it, it is axiomatic that you need use the complex model, not a simple one.

As to what to use if you are trying to get a bead on what happens in the real world (and in particular whether efficacies add information) then I do have to concede to Nic Lewis you might find the complex models create more noise than signal.

And sorting the signal from the noise is what this is all about :)

[TinyCO2]

" few papers that you people (and I dont just point my finger at you here but the broader "skeptic" community) land on as evidence is the one that comes closer to the minimised AGW view" Onbyaccident

What? You expect us to do your job too. Would you also like the paties out of government to do a run down of what the incumbent does well too before they set out how they'd do different? Septics do what they can with the resources they have, which is enthusiasm, brains and little else.

[Climate Change Chronicle]

The best bit at that Bob Ward paper citation at the URL was this -

"Purchase article
full text and PDF:
$32"

Bwahahahahhaha !

oh my aching sides !

I suspect that this "paper" like many others is mere
manufactured gobbledegook, designed to be a money
spinner, by forcing libraries and critics alike to stump up
the mazuma to read this errant garbage.

Ward, you are a clown.
Your twitter spam advertising
career has failed to convince.
Don't give up your day job.

[YouKnowNothingBishHill]

Excuse me for responding in your place Onby (welcome back by the way) but @ TinyCO2

I think what Onby was meaning was that it is ironic how papers that come closer to supporting your worldview are supported yet those further away are derided as being incompetent (typically without any supporting peer reviewed evidence). So yes I do actually think he means "do the work".....