Roy Spencer and WUWT Cut and Run on own Greenhouse Gas Challenge

Dr. Roy Spencer threw down his “put up or shut up” challenge (May 10, 2013) to Principia Scientific International (PSI) demanding PSI prove they possessed a better climate model than the discredited greenhouse gas “theory.” PSI’s model accounts for all the incoming and outgoing solar energy on Earth without any need to factor in the alleged heating effect of carbon dioxide (CO2). As such, PSI promptly did “put up” and now Roy has been shut up.

 

Because Joe Postma’s detailed reply on behalf of PSI [1] has met with stony silence we thought it opportune to better explain why the Spencer CO2 challenge has backfired. We take a look below at the essential points in this debate. We indicate why, absent Spencer’s response, he and his beloved “theory” are seemingly outdone.

 

 

The consensus view held by most government climatologists since the late 1980’s is that the greenhouse gas effect (GHE) is real and “settled science.” At the extreme end of the spectrum are the alarmists, such as James Hansen, Michael Mann, etc, who have claimed the current rise in CO2 levels will trigger the GHE into causing dangerous global warming. Meanwhile leading lights in the skeptics’ camp, Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen, Anthony Watts, etc. hold moderate views believing any increase in CO2 will only cause “some warming.” What makes PSI the heretics in this debate is that we assert that CO2 is empirically proven to be a cooling gas. As such it can contribute no warming whatsoever. Backing our claims are our eight peer-reviewed papers (see under ‘Publications‘ on our site).

 

Dr. Spencer has disputed PSI’s science for several years. But as Postma’s rebuttal showed, Spencer appears not to have even read it. As more scientists have increasingly agreed with PSI’s position Spencer has felt the need to publish his own theoretical model of the GHE. Of course, the mere fact Spencer feels he must resort to his own pet theory of the GHE proves how little faith he has in that of others.

 

But strangely for a so-called “skeptic” of the “science” of the alarmists Spencer still relies on the calculations of key doomsayers, Kiehl and Trenberth, with his latest model (diagram below).

 

 

On this Dr. Spencer hangs his scientific hat and stridently asserts:

 

“The Slayers have had ample opportunity to answer my challenge: take your ideas, put them into an alternative time-dependent model for surface temperature, and run it from any initial state and see if it ends up with a realistic temperature.”

 

Swiftly trumpeting Spencer’s challenge was popular science blog, WUWT, owned by Anthony Watts. Well, to the dismay of Spencer and Watts PSI promptly answered their challenge. We have now been waiting the better part of two weeks for Spencer’s and WUWT’s comeback.

 

Now as time drags on without any acknowledgement from Spencer and Watts both are looking increasingly foolish on this point. These denizens of the skeptic cause seem to have been blissfully unaware that PSI has been advocating a new and alternative time-dependent model for two years (see diagram below). Our model of the atmosphere was announced with the PSI usual fanfare in July 2011 and October 2012 (also, see here and here). Links to these have been posted among those “hundreds of comments” Roy says he gets from us on his blog. As such, this proves PSI’s long standing charge that neither Spencer or Watts have ever wanted to genuinely engage in open and honest examination of new science critical of the basis of climate alarm.

 

 

Nonetheless, Dr. Spencer innocently (or intentionally) continues with his misrepresentation of PSI’s position. Dr. Spencer alleges PSI claims “the atmosphere does not have so-called “greenhouse gases” that emit thermal infrared radiation downward.” That is also untrue. PSI acknowledges those gases are real. What we actually say is that the alleged properties of “heat trapping” and/or “delayed cooling” of solar radiation Spencer and others claim for those gases have never been shown to exist in nature.

 

Frankly, Spencer and Watts don’t seem to understand what a “time-dependent model” means. Below is PSI’s visual aid for a dynamic model of the Earth, presented almost two years ago by Joseph E. Postma and it is a true  “time dependent model” unlike Roy’s.

 

 

We have repeatedly challenged others to comprehend that this model means that you cannot legitimately average sunshine down to a freezing cold value it never actually is. But despite two years of waiting no one has yet refuted the PSI model. But aside from all the models and complex technical reasons why there can be no GHE there are also common sense proofs evident to anyone possessing a skeptical outlook. For example, scientists and non- scientists know that real sunshine can generate clouds and does generate copious quantities of them.

 

But in Spencer’s (and GHE climatology’s world) their models never do, because climatologists crassly treat sunshine as freezing cold. Cold sunshine means no evaporation of surface water and thus no clouds. Frankly, the GHE models are self-evidently wrong by definition, as further shown below.

 

 

Joe Postma had the honor of drafting our first rebuttal to Spencer’s challenge because he was the creator of our model in 2011. We now invite readers to contrast and compare Spencer’s model with our own above.

 

 Spencer’s model is actually static (unlike Postma’s 24 hour version)

 Spencer’s model omits the effects of latent heat (unlike Postma’s)

  Spencer’s model assumes a flat Earth, cold sunshine, no clouds (Postma’s is 3D, with hot sunshine)

 Spencer’s model not tested against real-time observational temperature data (unlike Postma’s).

 

 

Spencer admits that CO2 does have cooling properties in the atmosphere. Spencer tells us, “But the upper atmosphere cannot cool unless greenhouse gases are present!” As such, Spencer has it both ways: CO2 cools the upper atmosphere yet heats nearer the ground. The mechanism whereby CO2 “knows” it should cool at high altitude yet only cause warming nearer the ground is glibly asserted time and again but never been proven. Nonetheless, to GHE believers this proposition must be accepted as “a given” – no scepticism allowed.

 

But you don’t need to be a scientist to see that the overwhelming weight of empirical evidence, as per the Vostok ice core data contradicts those who claim CO2 causes warming. [2] These ice cores show temperatures related to CO2 concentrations over the past 400,000 years proving that CO2 levels lag rises in temperatures, never the reverse. As such, variation in CO2 levels is only a symptom, never a driver of climate change. That simple fact alone is mighty compelling evidence for the null hypothesis. But PSI goes further, far further, in our skeptical refutations of the GHE “theory.”

 

As PSI’s Alan Siddons laments:

 

“All of us on our side have researched and deeply pondered the actual principles of radiative heat transfer. On the other side, however, the “experts” we argue with, like Spencer, Lindzen, Monckton, Watts, just insist that a body’s radiant energy can be doubled by directing that energy back to it — even though the simplest of experiments will shows that this is false.

 

Siddons and other PSI researchers have shown that returning light to a light source does NOTHING to the light source because no additional energy has been generated [see graphic below]. Yet “experts” like Spencer have thus far held the world’s respect.”