Dessler First I would like to apologize for confusion...
Global climate models are accurate enough to be relied upon
Attack on my sources I find it quite hilarious, that Pro attacks integrity of my sources while she depends on sources like Mann et al. (Climategate, "Hide the decline"[1]) or Hansen, who was caught manipulating data [2 and last round] and prevented scientists under him to publish their results that disagreed with him [3] etc. Or IPCC, that misrepresent what the scientists say [4], and RealClimate, which is basically web promoting Mann et al. point of view. It's quite obvious who gets the most money in "climate science" [5]. In fact all those climate scientists funds depend on AGW, so its not skeptics who have the major monetary interests in this phenomenon. I may retract my source of the third quote, but then Pro would have to retract a lot of her sources. Santer Before Santer tries to accuse others, he should correct the way he works with data [6]. His study was refuted by [7]: "Overall, the conclusion of S08 that 'there is no longer a serious discrepancy between modeled and observed trends in tropical lapse rates must be reconsidered in light of upto-date data. The 'potential inconsistency' between models and observations in the tropical region, as reported by Karl et al (2006), remains an issue." Santer is also refuted in [16] (which he tried to delay in peer-review [16b]) and [17] (see part Tropospheric warming below). Hansen Indeed I was not sure what data did Pro compare, I just looked at those closer to each other (land station data). When I wrote about scenario C, I just wanted to make sure that people don't miss what it actually means, since it is closer to measured data than B. Lets look again at the figures in [my previous round source 9], that corresponds to Fig 2 in [Pro's first round source 6]. The Land-Ocean (black curve) nowhere near the scenario B prediction (blue curve) since 2000 aside from two single points 2002 and 2005 where L-O is at local maximum and B is at local minimum. My argument stands. Especially later data from 2006 on make it obvious. Dessler First I would like to apologize for confusion around refuting Dessler. That Spencer et al. 2007 paper directly refutes the previous Dessler's paper and Dessler 2010 fail to address the main issues and instead attacks a straw man. I should have clarified with further information: "To Dessler’s credit, he actually references our paper. But he then immediately discounts our interpretation of the satellite data. Why? Because, as he claims, (1) most of the climate variability during the satellite period of record (2000 to 2010) was due to El Nino and La Nina (which is largely true), and (2) no researcher has ever claimed that El Nino or La Nina are caused by clouds. This simple, blanket claim was then intended to negate all of the evidence we published. But this is not what we were claiming, nor is it a necessary condition for our interpretation to be correct." [8] In contrast to Pro's claim, Dessler didn't make the different conclusion because of larger data set, but because of different methodology, using simple regression. Spencer and Braswell examined the same data set in that same year and came with opposite conclusions [9]. They addressed the time lag in changes by phase space analysis in order to see what is most likely cause and what is effect (which Dessler claims is the other way around). You may get similar regression slope like Dessler derived from the data even for strong negative feedback.[10] "The bottom line is that, you can not use simple regression to infer cloud feedbacks from data like those seen in Dessler’s data plots." [10] To simplify it by analogy, it could be like ice cores "CO2 drives temperature" claim by Al Gore. There was certainly correlation as well, but he ignored the time lag as CO2 follows temperature. Lindzen acknowledged many parts of the criticism and corrected his hypothesis where it was wrong. However, he still refuted conclusions all the papers Pro mentioned [11,12,13]. As I used my space on Dessler, I won't go into details here. Tropospheric warming Conclusions of Sherman and Allen 2008 are refuted [14]. Not only there is much more uncertainty in indirect method based on wind shear due to temperature gradient, they ignored conclusions of previous research on that matter dealing with bias of stronger 200 mbar winds at higher latitudes [15]. Haimberger 2008 is refuted by [16] (addendum to Douglass et al.), because there is bias in homogenization in RAOBCORE 1.4 data as other publications pointed out. “... papers such as Santer et al. 2008 do no testing, but simply assume that all datasets are equal, such as “new” ERSST or “old” RAOBCORE v1.2, v1.3 and v1.4, and thus ignore the publications which have provided the evidence which document significant errors in the ones they prefer."[17] Hansen Pinatubo and Energy imbalance After Hansen was refuted, he made new paper “Earth's Energy Imbalance and Implications” in 2011 [18] and admitted: “We conclude that most climate models mix heat too efficiently into the deep ocean and as a result underestimate the negative forcing by human-made aerosols... Continued failure to quantify the specific origins of this large forcing is untenable, as knowledge of changing aerosol effects is needed to understand future climate change.“ Watts and Tisdale wrote some criticism on some of his new claims [19]. Conclusion My findings on general limitations of climate models are unchallenged as well as some of the quotes on reliability of GCM. I offered refutation to the points Pro chose to defend. Why some of the modelers finds hard to admit the counter-evidence or even cheat? Maybe social study of science by Lahsen 2005 [20] will give us some insight: "...persuasive power of the simulations can affect the very process of creating them: modelers are at times tempted to ‘get caught up in’ their own creations and to ‘start to believe’ them, to the point of losing awareness about potential inaccuracies. Erroneous assumptions and questionable interpretations of model accuracy can, in turn, be sustained by the difficulty of validating the model..." Thanks to Pro for a challenging debate. Sources: [1] Video "Hide the decline" http://www.youtube.com... [2] http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com... [3] http://nige.files.wordpress.com... [4] http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org... [5] http://climatequotes.com... [6] http://www.john-daly.com... [7] http://arxiv.org... [8] http://www.drroyspencer.com... [9] http://www.drroyspencer.com... [10] http://www.drroyspencer.com... [11] http://www-eaps.mit.edu... [12] http://www-eaps.mit.edu... [13] http://eaps.mit.edu... [14] http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com... [15] http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com... [16] http://www.pas.rochester.edu... [16b] http://sppiblog.org... [17] http://icecap.us... [18] http://arxiv.org... [19] http://wattsupwiththat.com... [20] http://www2.geog.ucl.ac.uk...