Roy Spencer jumps the shark

Roy says:

We are searching for answers at night under the only streetlamp where we can see.

Something about 'we' and 'Tonto' is struggling to the surface of the memory pond. Meanwhile, irony.

["What do you mean 'we', White Man?" was the first joke I ever read on usenet, in sci.env. And it was meant seriously then -W]

And it was meant seriously then

I'm only guessing, but the First Peoples probably haven't revised their view since.

I shouldn't post unreferenced snark here, so I'll wonder in public how RoyPhD accounts for the odd uptick in natural variability afflicting the fag-end of the Holocene:

Pretty pic #1

Pretty pic #2

Old, dull news, I know, but for the thread.

If he jumped the shark in such plain view why did you change what he said in your quote above? Those who alter their opponents argument to make a point automatically lose, don't they?

[I've changed nothing. Its a direct quote from his article. "..." denotes omitted material, as usual. I've suppressed a paragraph break, but I think that's permissible -W]

Spencer says:

We are searching for answers at night under the only streetlamp where we can see

He is perfectly correct and this type of goings-on was accurately described a long time ago (reputed to be by Andrew Lang ):

He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts...for support rather than illumination

I'm glad to see he cited WUWT's story on Murry Salby,from July 2013.

[Good point, I've added that. Let me know when he starts citing Beck -W]

I think Woy jumped a big big shark already here. A shark definitely deserving an hour slot during Discovery Channel's notorious "Shark Week".

[That's pretty nice too, I'll add it to the refs -W]

Roy Spencer: "... we emit twice as much as is needed to explain the atmospheric increase, there is no reason to look elsewhere. Just assume the huge natural sources and sinks of CO2 are in balance ..."

The second sentence seems to contradict the first one.

[Once you're on the far side of the shark - or even, once you're in the air - conservation laws no longer apply -W]

Here is Roy on April 25th this year talking, in a rare bout of lucidity, about the ten sceptical arguments that don't hold water. Number 7:..

7.WARMING CAUSES CO2 TO RISE, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND The rate of rise in atmospheric CO2 is currently 2 ppm/yr, a rate which is 100 times as fast as any time in the 300,000 year Vostok ice core record. And we know our consumption of fossil fuels is emitting CO2 200 times as fast! So, where is the 100x as fast rise in today’s temperature causing this CO2 rise? C’mon people, think. But not to worry…CO2 is the elixir of life…let’s embrace more of it!
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/04/skeptical-arguments-that-dont-hold-…

Does he contradict himself? Very well, then he contradicts himself, he is large, he contains multitudes.

["he is large, he contains multitudes". Nice quote, I like that. Hopefully not in the sense of Mr Creosote -W]

Well, Spencer was Salby (and Essenhigh) long before Salby was Salby, as the 2009 post he conveniently links to demonstrates (http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/01/increasing-atmospheric-co2-manmade…or-natural/). He's wanted to believe in natural CO2 fluctuations for a long time. He doesn't want to either:

a) actually examine or understand the carbon cycle models in any detail, but just hand wave, "well, sure, they _say_ they can explain it, but they are just models, right?"

b) engage with the CO2 ice core record (doesn't even get a mention, as far as I can tell).

Yeah. "skeptic", my rear. Contrarian is such a better term. Or the "d" word, but I avoid that, because why spend time arguing about whether it is a holocaust reference (it isn't) rather than arguing about the actual science.

(once upon a time I drafted a rebuttal to Essenhigh et al., for which I actually did have to dig into understanding the carbon cycle at a slightly more than superficial level. I wanted, but never got around to, make a simple model with all the key bits - Revelle factor, carbon pools for ocean surface, ocean depths, vegetation, annual cycle, and isotopes, so that it would be easy to demonstrate to the carbon contrarians how the standard model explains the observations quite well and it is actually really hard to explain them any other way…)

Nah. Nuked the fridge.

@MMM Spencers new regression analysis is actually even worse than the 2009 one, in that he performs the regression analysis on the detrended signals and then applies those regression coefficients to the original signals. This assumes that the physical process that causes the interannual variation (the wiggles) is the same one that causes the long term trend. Obviously this isn't true as otherwise you would get the same set of coefficients by perfoming the regression analysis on the original data.

This is in addition to the fact that a correlation with the growth rate has no mathematical connection whatsoever with the long term trend in atmospheric CO2 http://www.skepticalscience.com/roys_risky_regression.html .

P.S. I dud publish a refutation of Prof. Essenhigh's paper on residence time, sadly it didn't stop climate skeptic blogs from discussing it (or the NIPCC report making use of it). FWIW, the comment paper is here: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef200914u

I once proposed that the we should have a Salby which would really be binary. If you think that Salby's ideas have any merit whatsoever, then your Salby index is 1 and you've jumped the shark. If you think they have absolutely no merit at all, then you score 0 and are, maybe, on the right track.

1) Sharknados have visited LA and NYC, but they so far have missed Huntsville, AL.

2) Essenfgifh was completely out of field, Spencer has spent decades being wrong, but Salby actually did a lot if credible work (albeit with financial chicanery), for decades. His first textbook was well-regarded and he authored with some distinguished others, although interest in his work wabed after 2001.
Unlike Lindzen (who got committed to low sensitivity 30+ years ago), until July 2011, there was no public evidence of bad science on Salby's part, which makes this an incredibly rare case... Ie, someone who did credible work for decades... And then went off into strange pseudo science.

(Note: I've looked at almost all of his papers from 1989 onward, including citations, and there were interesting patterns.)

Eli pointed out to Roy that WARMING CAUSES CO2 TO RISE, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND is perfectly true for combustion, which is why his idea that anthro emissions being rapidly reabsorbed at ground level is lightheaded.

Over at Roy's place we also have a former professor in Chemical Technology (Pehr Björnbom) who tells me that the oceans can be a net source of the atmospheric CO2 rise...without seeing any change in the amount of CO2 in the oceans. Although I am not sure he even realises that is what he is saying.

Little tidbit of potential interest: Björnbom is active in the same Swedish organisation as Lennart Bengtsson (the former Stockholm Initiative).

As I recall, Björnbom was the one who "replicated" Murry Salby's work.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/07/swedish-scientist-replicates-…

Same Björnbom, yes. I did forget to hotlink the comment:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/08/how-much-of-atmospheric-co2-increas…

This is little golden nugget:
"The net increase of carbon dioxide both in the ocean and in the atmosphere is unchanged in my 50-50 scenario compared to the consensus 100-0 scenario.

The difference in the 50-50 case is that the ocean has absorbed more of the fossil carbon dioxide from the atmosphere but in the same time emitted more natural carbon dioxide to the atmosphere (this is possible because absorption and emission of carbon dioxide into and out of the ocean are taking place in different locations)."

I realise he's not actually directly saying the ocean is a net source and sink, but this is what it comes down to.

who knew the New yorker would understand this better than all of us.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/07/28/deniers-2

Tony, that is one of the best links I have seen in ages. As a big fan of the Sharknado movies I say bravo, New Yorker!

Dr Roy's post is now prefaced by a note:

"NOTE: The following post has led to many good comments. The best argument advanced that I am wrong is from a ~1,000 year record of CO2 from the Law Dome ice core (a record I was unaware of) which suggests the recent CO2 increase is almost entirely anthropogenic in origin."

and ends with a couple of Updates, the last of which says:

"Update #2:Just to clarify…even if all of the atmospheric CO2 increase is manmade, I continue to believe it is more beneficial than harmful."

Roy jumped into the shark tank a very long time ago, as in writin Chapter 7 of Scientific Perspectives on the Greenhouse Problem (1990), by Jastrow, Nierenberg, and Seitz og George Marshall Institute.

44
Some meer history is in order, because Spencer & Christy were riding high as Jim Hansen in 1990, having published their contention that the global satellite temperature trend was headed down, not up, in Science in 1989.

It took a decade for their systemic miscalculation to be detected, and the temperature record corrected - they famously retracted their contention that the satellite trend was down, in the same journal in 2004.

but since retracted contention that the

"The best argument advanced that I am wrong is from a ~1,000 year record of CO2 from the Law Dome ice core (a record I was unaware of)"

He is admitting he didn't know about the ice core data?? He's been pontificating about climate issues for how long and he *just* now learns of one of the basic facts relating to climate (the CO2 paleo-data)? How could he even think of writing about what caused the rise in CO2 if he is so ignorant of the foundational information? It only takes a few minutes on Google to find links about historical CO2 levels. He's either really lazy or not telling truth.

He is admitting he didn’t know about the ice core data??

That was my reaction, too. How could he not know about the Law Dome CO2 data? It's a pretty fundamental part of the background for any discussion of modern trends in atmospheric CO2. It boggles my mind that he would feel qualified to speak publicly about this without even bothering to learn the basics.

He’s either really lazy or not telling truth.

It seems improbable that Roy would spontaneously decide to lie in a way that makes him look like an idiot. So I'm thinking that statement should be taken at face value, and he genuinely didn't have a clue about the CO2 record.

I deduced the meaning of the metaphor from the context, but was probably wrong. Isn't the title too bland?

Any thoughts on Scotland Independence?

If her Tweets are anything to go by, it looks like Judith Curry will be the next to jump this same shark. She really likes Salby's stuff, it seems.

I hope you didn't miss the lineup touted for the upcoming
"At the Crossroads:Energy and Climate Policy Energy Summit"
Matt Ridley (“The Rational Optimist”)
Roy Spencer (UAH)
Judith Curry (GaTech)
Hal Doiron (The Right Climate Stuff)
Zong-Liang Yang (U. Texas – Austin)
Eric Groten (Vinson & Elkins)
Marlo Lewis (CEI)
Mike Nasi (Jackson Walker)
Rupert Darwall (“The Age of Global Warming”)
Stephen Moore (Heritage)
Marc Morano (Climate Depot)
Mark Mills (Manhattan Inst.)
Rob Bradley (Inst. for Energy Research)
Peter Grossman (Butler U.)
David Kreutzer (Heritage)
Calvin Beisner (Cornwall Alliance)
Kathleen Hartnett White (Armstrong Center for Energy and the Environment)
Caleb Rossiter (American University)
H. Leighton Steward (Plants Need CO2)
Frank Clemente (Penn State)

billed as, "A groundbreaking gathering of the most acclaimed thinkers, scholars, and policymakers on our historic energy revolution, the global prosperity it will produce, and the federal climate policy that threatens it."

Wow, that is some group ... can compete with a Heartland ICCC.

Marco 2014/08/31 seems to have overlooked my further arguments over at Dr. Spencer:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/08/how-much-of-atmospheric-co2-increas…

Wait, what historic energy revolution? More coal? More solar (but don't mention that greenies have been pushing for it for decades)?

I don't recognise all the names on the list as being anti-science, do they know that they're mixing with infamously anti-science folks like Ridley, Morano, Spencer and others?

Marco 2014/08/31 says:

“I realise he’s not actually directly saying the ocean is a net source and sink, but this is what it comes down to.”

In my last comment from 2014/08/31 in the discussion that Marco refers to I say directly that the ocean is a sink even if only 50% of the increase of the carbon dioxide mixing ratio would be of anthropogenic origin. My argument to prove this possibility is based on the carbon cycle mass balance according to WG1 AR5 from IPCC.

Marco has not replied to my comment that so far remains undisputed.

Marco: #18
I'd guess that Bjornbom is indeed retired, but do you have a source?

I went to look, but didn't see anything, although I ran across:
this.

John Mashey 2014/09/13,

I am born 1941, there is nothing special with me, I am only an old age pensioner, formerly professor in Chemical Engineering at KTH, The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

Here is some more background information:

http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/review-paper-estimation-of-the-cli…

http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/review-paper-estimation-of-the-cli…

Can anybody explain what Pehr is trying to say?

There are 30Gt of anthropogenic CO2 added to the atmosphere every year.
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increases by 16Gt every year.

I don't understand Pehr's model: obviously 14Gt is being added to land and oceans as part of the carbon cycle.

Is Pehr suggesting a model along the lines of the following:
- anthropogenic CO2 equals +30Gtpa
- natural sinks absorb 30Gtpa
- therefore human emissions cause no CO2 rise
- oceans release 16Gtpa
- observed CO2 increase in atmosphere is 16Gtpa, all of it coming from the ocean

Pehr, I don't think your theory will fare well at Climate Change Cluedo - CO2 edition.

OK, I've read what he wrote at Roy Spencer, and he's either a troll or a kook.

He admits that something has changed in the climate cycle, and that change is somehow related to human industry.
*Normal* people realise the change he is referring to is very obviously the very large amount of CO2 being added to the atmosphere by human activity. But not Pehr, no, no, no: that would be an unwarranted assumption, and him asserting that observations of fact are nothing but assumptions creates a justification for him making completely wild assumptions along the lines of:
- the ocean has changed its participation in the carbon cycle and now emits a lot of CO2
- 50% of the observed rise in atmospheric CO2 originates from the oceans
- the oceans remain a net sink

What a load of codswallop. Is there any length some old codgers won't go to to contort facts to suit their bizarre beliefs?

Pehr, maybe you've forgotten how to be a scientist.

Here is a clue for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor

inventing a new, bizarre and convoluted alternative to the carbon cycle would be interetsing, *if you had any evidence whatsoever that what you are proposing is true*.
But as you have no evidence at all, all you have is an incredibly unlikely excuse for being in denial of reality.

Sigh.
If someone wants to refute very-high-confidence core results if climate science/IPCC, like human origin of most CI2 rise post Industrial Revolution, that is Big News, and:
A) I'm an AGU member and regularly attend Fall AGU, and would certainly attend an oral presentation on that by Murry
Salby, (or anyone else) should one miraculously be accepted.
I am among those quite keen to see Salby make a public talk in US. I'd even be happy if someone like Heartland sponsored a visit, although Salby seems to have descended to PSI Slayers.
B) As a AAAS member, I read Science, which loves groundbreaking papers. If I see this there, I will read it carefully.
C) Well OK, there are a few other venues /journals that would count. Lectures for thinktanks or EE department of military academy ... Not much.

Pehr Björnbom, I stopped commenting because I realized it was futile to get you to understand the mistakes in thinking. Your proposal requires that the ocean takes up a significantly larger fraction of 'anthropogenic' CO2 than that it takes up 'natural' CO2. That is, it must *know* what CO2 was emitted by fossil fuel burning, and what not. There is an alternative option, but that requires not only that CO2 is not well-mixed, but also that the oceans are compartimentalized very heavily in a horizontal direction with the ocean section directly adjacent to land being the sink, and further out being the source. Which just doesn't fit with measured reality.

Also, for others it may be useful to see the final decision regarding that idea you put up at Lucia's:
http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net/4/25/2013/esdd-4-25-2013-discus…

Finally, it may also be helpful for the people here to know that Björnbom has enthusiastically contributed to a Swedish blog called "the climate scam" (recently renamed to "klimatupplysningen"/Stockholms Initiativet). I think the original name says it all about the starting point of Pehr Björnbom in the debate.

Björnbom even recently repeated the false allegation that Salby lost his university job because he contradicted the consensus on the CO2 increase being anthropogenic.
http://www.klimatupplysningen.se/2014/09/12/murry-salbys-paradox-och-de…
People who paid attention know Salby lost his job by not doing his job, which included teaching obligations. I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that my university would fire me (KTH would do the same, for that matter), if I decline to teach, get ordered to teach, and then just leave the country and not show up at the teaching I should have performed.

Note also that certain attacks on Salby himself might have come from this kind of manipulation:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/salbyratio.html
With Curry recently attacking Mann for supposedly inappropriately manipulating graphs, I wonder what she thinks of this type of blatant misrepresentation by Salby.

The guy is also a lamentably outspoken creationist. I made fun of this after he showed up in Congress, in a an all black outfit, by adding a priest collar to a video screenshot:

http://oi61.tinypic.com/2ly3f53.jpg

1) I looked at ~60 of Salby's papers from 1989 onward, ~all.
His best-cited work was in the 1990s, and citations really dropped off for anything submitted after ~2001.
There were way more Conflict of Interest problems than NSF detailed. In particular, Salby was always the P.I. For the grants gotten by his shell company ASA, he was generally the corresponding author, and he wrote the final reports to NASA or NSF... but not once did the actual papers give an ASA affiliation, thus hiding the gimmick. The only way to see this was to look at the actual papers (not just abstracts) for the grant Acks, and dig out final reports, which often lagged by years, and in at least one case, needed a FOIA to get. Some papers were claimed for credit against grants in odd ways.
Still he did reasonable science, even if he broke the rules to get more $, until 2011 when he started this bogus CO2 and ice core stuff, not something he'd published on. Almost nobody (except Dikran Marsupial, and maybe a few more) knew thr field well enough to know that an atmospheric circulation expert (which Salby is) is not necessarily a carbon-cycle and ice core expert ( which Salby isn't: see my review of his book at Amazon. Most if book is fine, about 20 pages is poor.)
2) The cancelled ticket, which the blogosphere interpreted as malice, was almost certainly due to an effect any good systems analyst knows: organizational workflow race condition.
Anyone who looked at MQ's rules and org charts would know that like most schools, (a) misconduct committee is about as far from the (b) accounting/administration/credit card/airline flow as you can get. There are at least 3 databases (MQ personnel, credit card company, and airline).
(b) would have no clue about the process in (a) which inevitably involves a bunch of administrative people in multiple organizations.
(a) especially low-level folks would not know about scheduled misconduct meetings
The error MQ referred to almost certainly was the procedural hole: Salby's credit card should have been suspended immediately in Feb 2013, AND someone detailed to track down any outstanding things like not-yet-used tickets... preventing Salby from flying in the first place. The error wasn't on canceling the ticket, but in not canceling both tickets before he left. But I understand how such happens: this was so weird it would have fallen through cracks: normally people facing misconduct hearings do not buy expensive tickets to be away.
I talked to an airline, 2 VISA folks, and a travel agent, all accustomed to credit card misuses, none of whom had ever seen anything like this with a corporate credit card, and agreement on procedures was nonexistent. Anyway, if you draw the organizational flow graph, there are lots of race conditions, so no surprise. Almost certainly, some administrator finally canceled credit card and eventually the unused ticket, with no clue that Salby was supposed to be back. His schedule must have cut it tight: "stranded" is a strange term for needing to fly from Paris to Sydney. Flights are frequent.

Salby didn't even have a serious reason to go: he had 2 *posters* at EGU, not orals, the other talks were ~university seminars, easy to cancel.

3) IMHO the worst if all was Salby's mistreatment of his grad student Titova.

[The "citations falling off after 2001" rather fits in with what I'd kinda thought. That all somewhat fits in with the idea that he just ran out of ideas. So what isn't really clear is if this has anything to do with the dodginess with the NSF grants, or if that's to the side.

I'm not sure I believe the point about almost no-one knowing that atmos-circ doesn't imply co2-expert: I think most people anywhere close would know that -W]

John, I think (a) and (b) in part of your narrative don't follow their definitions.

(Above was written a
On iPhone when woke and couldn't sleep :-))
Raymond: say more on what's wrong and ill clarify.

WMC: I meant people on the blogosphere: almost everyone assumed: Salby = climate scientist with publications, therefore credible on carbon cycle ice-cores.
Of course, no one who knew Salby would think that, and anyone who knew anything about the various specialties, and took one look at his publications would know that, but almost no one did. He also did a lot of image processing of clouds.

Of course, if an atmospheric physicist shifted fields to carbon-cycle and had a track record of publishing that, that's OK, but Salby had no such track record.

Anyway: the evidence is that most of the blog commenters had no idea of Salby's expertise.

[Ah, blogosphere: OK, agreed. BTW, credit for looking through so many of his papers -W]

Some of us don't think that chemical engineering is actually a science....
Instead, this case can be filed under "another engineer who thinks they know more than anyone else".

WMC:thanks. Needless to day, I didn't carefully read every paper, but I read enough to know what they were about (stirring memories of my early days with differential equations & physics, and later days in building supercomputers of which some were used for fluid dynamics), but mostly I was digging out author affiliations and at the end, the Acks of grants and people. Amusingly, both Peter Webster and Judith Curry wre Ack'd, and although in same modest-sized department for 8+ years, Curry wrote she font know him well, but did say he was a good teacher ... Although CU students said otherwise, especially on accessibility.

Salby is interesting because he's probably the best atmospheric scientist to have a decent record, be tenured prof at CU, author with very good people ... And then go completely into nonsense outside his expertise, be repeatedly shown his errors by top experts in carbon cycle and ice cores ... and simply ignore them.

Raymond @ 45 (back on real computer with many pixels)
\yes, you are correct: That should have been:

"Anyone who looked at MQ’s rules and org charts would know that like most schools,
(a) misconduct committee is about as far from the
(b) accounting/administration/credit card/airline flow as you can get. There are at least 3 databases (MQ personnel, credit card company, and airline).

(a) would have no clue about the process in (b) which inevitably involves a bunch of administrative people in multiple organizations.
(b) especially low-level folks would not know about (a)'s scheduled misconduct meetings.
(In particular, various sorts of information are confidential to various different sets of people."

All this is classic organizational behavior: the organization as a whole has most or all fo the information, but no one person has it all. The "most" is because I'm not sure anyone at MQ had the "nonrefundable" status, because that does not necessarily show up on various credit card reports.

"3) IMHO the worst if all was Salby’s mistreatment of his grad student Titova."

1) Much of the blogosphere blamed MQ for mistreating Salby's student Titova, urged her to sue MQ. It didn't take more than a few minutes to figure out how totally clueless this was, and that Salby's behavior was (word I wouldn't use, but among the worst I have heard in mistreatrment of a vulnerable PhD student.)

2) She had already done ozone work in Russia, came to MQ no later than December 2009. By Nov 2010, she was working on an approved dissertation topic on Antartic ozone. She coauthored papers on that with Salby that were published May 2011 and July 2011, and she did internal talks November 2011 and November 2012 ... entirely consistent with normal progress. One would expect her to be finishing dissertation.

Not once in Salby's 2011, 2012 and 203 lectures have I found any mention of her, or words like "our research."
But in his July 2013 email, "our research" or equivalent suddenly appeared 5 times, and he evinced great concerns for her and fact she couldn't talk to him.

She was listed as coauthor of his two *poster sessions* at EGU in Vienna in April 2013 .. .but there is no evidence she was really involved. There are only 2 inreprterations:
a) Salby took her away from her dissrtation work to help on an absurd topic far from here own.
b) She had zero to do with them, Salby just added her name as a "human shield" for sympathy.

Either way, he got himself fired, bad enough for a PhD student, but even worse, tried to drag her into his mess, while crying copious crocodile tears of worry for her.
It's hard to know how MQ could forbid her from talking to him, but a protective order might well forbid him from talking to her...

Of course he'd tried to blame the COI mess with his ASA on his much-junior helper there, so this is nothing new ... but I've never seen anything quite like this.

Senility seems likely, yes?

Dear Craig Thomas,
There is a response for you here:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/08/how-much-of-atmospheric-co2-increas…

The exact link should be:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/08/how-much-of-atmospheric-co2-increas…

Dear Marco, 2014/09/14

The old name of the Swedish blog Klimatupplysningen, when I began writing there, was The Climate Scam but we found this name inappropriate. The blog was a private climate blog that changed ownership to the society Stockholmsinitiativet, and the old name was kept at first. After the change of ownership and with new writers on the blog a majority of the writers requested a change of name.

I want to promote a balanced discussion of climate science and climate policy for my readers. I have found an impressing talk that was podcasted with a Russ Roberts in USA as moderator:

“John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville and Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology talk with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about climate change”:
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/03/john_christy_an.html#

I have written two blog posts based on that talk:
http://www.klimatupplysningen.se/2014/04/11/samtal-klimatprofessorerna-…
http://www.klimatupplysningen.se/2014/06/06/samtal-mellan-klimatprofess…

My view on the problems with climate change is not deviating much from Kerry Emanuel's.

[Then why are you pushing the mad CO2-is-not-anthro stuff? KE doesn't believe that nonsense. If you belive mad stuff that KE doesn't, you shouldn't be trying to associate his name with yours -W]

I think that he is right saying that such a large uncertainty in climate sensitivity is the same as acknowledging that we don't know. If the climate sensitivity is at the low end there is no problem, if it is at the high end it could be catastrophic.

I was surprised that John Christy and Kerry Emanuel have so many views in common and both recommend action in the form of expanding nuclear power in USA. But they had different evaluations of the risk. John Christy doesn't think that there is much risk and that the risk with government actions would be more serious for his grandchildren.

Kerry Emanuel emphasized that there is a small probability for a large catastrophe which means that the risk isn't negligible. My own risk evaluation is more like Kerry Emanuel's and he proposes the kind of actions we are already doing in Sweden (Sweden is said by Swedish politicians to have the highest carbon tax in the world). Sweden's electricity production is almost fossil free. Sweden has rather low carbon emissions per capita, less than China.

1) I've traded email off and on for a few years with Dr. Emanuel, have a copy of his book "What we know about climate change" and met him at ,a href="http://northerncalifornia.alumclub.mit.edu/s/1314/clubs-classes-interio…">this talk a few months ago.
Here's the video.

5:47
Human activities can and do have a strong effect on climate
6:16 Anthropogenic climate change is not controversial among climate scientists
"not controversial among people who actually study climate. I don't mean retired physicists or people who advertise themselves as climate scientists, I mean real climate scientists who spend their careers working on this problem."

42:20 Known risks
Increasing sea level, 1m conservative IPCC, storm surge
Increasing droughts and floods
Increasing incidence of high category hurricanes, floods etc
More heat stress
US Dept of Defense
48:35 How much will climate warm with 2X CO2
Most probable: 2-3C likely OK, but at tail: catastrophic

51:00 BUT we are on track to more than 2X CO2,
52:00 lifetime of CO2
53:00 solutions
CCS
Nuclear (like Jim Hansen and others, actually)
Baseload
58:00 marketing campaign by fossil fuels impeding

Needless to say, he knows perfectly well where the CO2 is coming from.

According to:
Google: "climate scientist pehr bjornbom"

Dr. Bjornbom *is* a climate scientist, at least according to Hockeyschtick, Rupert Darwall in Manhattan Institute's City Journal... and more of the blogopshere.

[I'd hope he had written to these various places complaining about his misidentification. Just as you'd hope Salby would complain when people falsely call him a prof. Sadly, Salby doesn't -W]

Well, yes ,,, but unknown is whether:
a) he told them he was a climate scientist, perhaps by virtue of the article submitted.
OR
b) they just invented that.

Maybe Dr. Bjornbom will return and tell us.

There are some comments on my ESDD paper on “Estimation of the climate feedback parameter by using radiative fluxes from CERES EBAF” in this thread. Since this is a science blog perhaps some of my thoughts on that paper and the interrupted review process is of interest.

Note that this was my first, but not my last, try to publish a geoscientific research work in peer-reviewed scientific literature. Although I was not successful to complete the publication to appear in ESD I have got a useful experience and I have increased my knowledge and understanding in this research field.

There are two important reasons that I decided not to complete the review process.

The first reason is that a new paper by Armour et al. (2013) appeared shortly after I had submitted my paper to ESD. Their results undermine my interpretation of my own results, that is I have to rewrite my paper based on a new theoretical background. Their results suggest to me a fundamentally different interpretation that I have outlined in the following comment:
http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net/4/C137/2013/esdd-4-C137-2013.pdf

The second reason is that the second referee remarked that the topic of my paper is “politically controversial”. I have myself considered that I worked with a fundamental problem (blue skies research), concerning the relation between the anomalies of the global means of the net TOA radiative flux and the surface temperature. Obviously this is not how others consider the topic of my paper.

I have no intention to work with a politically controversial research topic. From my forty years long research career I have no experience in such things and how a paper on a politically controversial topic is to be correctly written.

Reference

Armour, K. C., C. M. Bitz, and G. H. Roe (2013), Time-varying climate sensitivity from regional feedbacks, J. Clim., 26, 4518–4534

John Maschey #55,

Thanks for the link to the interesting video with Kerry Emanuel!

Anthropogenic climate change is not controversial to me. I don't consider myself a professional climate scientist, but I use to say that I do climate research as a hobby. If someone out there would like to call me a climate scientist I don't mind but this is of course an exaggeration, I am more like a graduate student in climate science.

My research career in Chemical Engineering has largely concerned studies on energy technologies justified by the decarbonization of energy production, i.e. climate smart energy technology.

John Mashey, I am sorry for misspelling your name in my last comment.

Oh no, not the Salby stuff recycled again. Speaking of sharks, it reminds a bit of http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1844770/
"Just when you thought you were safe out of the water - SAND SHARKS!"

On the other hand, even if Roy's, Curry's and Salby's "arguments" are shown to be seriously flawed, I wonder if they don't win anyway in the end They get all the attention, and so much wasted energy is spent on debunking them.

Re: Björnbom #54:
"The old name of the Swedish blog Klimatupplysningen, when I began writing there, was The Climate Scam but we found this name inappropriate"

Well, I think the old name is still much more descriptive considering the content and the views of the writers and typical commentators. But yes, it is not very appropriate.

Re: Retirement activities:
Sweden is supposed to be the best country in the world to grow old in: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-24346962
so it is a pity that pensioners spend their time on pseudo-science and supporting anti-climate science campaigns.

Let me conclude the discussion here between me, Marco and Craig Thomas with a short summary.

Our discussion was initiated by my challenging comment over at Roy Spencer on the interpretation of the falling atmospheric O2 mixing ratios:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/08/how-much-of-atmospheric-co2-increas…

In that comment I used for my argument a hypothetical case where the increase of the atmospheric CO2 mixing ratio was assumed to be 50% natural and 50% anthropogenic. Both Marco and Craig Thomas have argued that such a hypothetical case is impossible, while I have maintained the opposite view supporting my arguments with references from the scientific literature.

I recommend interested readers to study the whole discussion between me, Marco and Craig Thomas over at Roy Spencer and make their own conclusions.

[I'm not sure your hypothetical case is "impossible" - it depends what you mean. In some possible theoretical Earth, maybe. On the current Earth, your case is simply uninteresting. We know that, we've know it for ages -W]

Pehr Björnbom, your case was not supported through references from the scientific literature at all. The references you provided directly *contradicted* your case and supported ours!

I also think you should re-read the IPCC AR5 chapter 6 again. Those red lines are not what you think they are (hint: if we release about 9 PgC y-1, the oceans cannot take up 20 and release 17.7 - your looking at cumulative changes in fluxes as a result of increased atmospheric concentrations as compared to pre-industrial levels).

Marco #63,

I disagree on both your two points.

My literature references support my arguments. My interpretation of the IPCC carbon cycle mass balance is in fact the same as you describe and that does support my arguments indeed.

I don't think we can meaningfully proceed further with this discussion, we have to accept that we disagree. Thank you for this discussion.

We indeed cannot meaningfully proceed, because it is clear to *me* you don't understand the IPCC figure, but not clear to you. As long as that discrepancy remains, we could just as well argue with a wall.

Perhaps Dr. Bjornbom would comment on some Swedish/English issues?
1) Klimatupplysningen I think that translates as Cliamte englightenment, both by Google and my old Swedish dictironay.
Is that the best translaton?

2) The HockeySchtick ran Swedish scientist replicates Dr. Murry Salby's work, finding man-made CO2 does not drive climate change and gave a translation, with a little editing of theoriginal article.
a) Are there any corrections to the translation?
b) Has there been any change of mind about anything there?

John Mashey #66,

In fact I admire Murry Salby. This is because I admire good scientific text book writers in general, they are very important for the sustainability and development of Science.

I have read his textbook Murry L. Salby. Fundamentals of Atmospheric Physics, Volume 61 (International Geophysics). Kindle Edition. I have found that he is a very knowledge scientific writer with a good understanding of the topic he is writing on.

That's also why I wanted to understand what was behind Murry Salby's statement about his equation describing the rate of increase in the atmospheric carbon dioxide mixing ratio as a function of the global temperature only. This equation is given in the video with his lecture in Germany and therefore it was possible for me to make the calculations to test this equation visa vi data. I used CDIAC carbon dioxide mixing ratio data, both instrumental and according to Law Dome back to the end of the nineteenth century and temperature anomalies from HadCRUT and found that Murry Salby is right.

[What you've demonstrated is how pointless replication without understanding is. If you blindly repeat MS's calculations, you'll get the same answer. This should be no surprise - no-one is accusing him of faking his calculations. What you're missing is the pointlessness of his calculations, and hence of your replication -W]

I don't claim that we can conclude from this result that the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide in not influenced by anthropogenic emissions. I only claim that Murry Salby in good faith claimed that there is this equation. I also think that he was right to disseminate his result for scientific discussion. This is an interesting result and I also think that his work should have been accepted for publication in order to facilitate the scientific discussion about it. It's not convenient for the scientific community that such a remarkable result isn't available in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

I propose to call this equation Murry Salby's paradox and from a scientific point of view that paradox should be explained. There are some explanations outlined on climate blogs and I have my own preference. However, all that happened in connection with Murry Salby's paradox suggests that there are serious problems with the scientific discourse in climate science.

Dear W,

I didn't repeat MS's calculations simply because this is not possible from the limited information you can get from the video. I had to design my calculations according to my own ideas and I don't know if MS did his calculations like that or in another way.

["design my calculations according to my own ideas" - I don't know what you mean by that. You previously said "This equation is given in the video with his lecture in Germany and therefore it was possible for me to make the calculations to test this equation". So if you've tested his equation you've replicated his stuff. What you haven't yet realised is that this is entirely pointless. Indeed you don't even seem to understand the very concept of why it could - even in theory - be pointless -W]

Neither was my work pointless. My point was to find out if MS did his claim in good faith or not.

[You've no idea if his claim was in good faith or not. Nor could you possibly test that. All you've shown is that you can get the same answers. As I've already said, no-one doubted that, which is why what you've done is pointless, except for your own entertainment.

Salby's stuff is junk, as I (http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2013/11/09/thrust/) and others have pointed out. You need to engage with those arguments -W]

I propose to call this equation Murry Salby’s paradox

A very fitting name.

Why is Salby so confused? Why does he fall for such an obvious error? Why does he persist in that error when many other people have clearly explained it?

It's Murry Salby's Paradox.

Pehr,

I believe you share with me a profession - chemical engineering – although your contribution there far outweighs my own.

Perhaps considering a simple mass balance would help.

First of all emissions:

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/images/global_fossil_carbon_emissions_google_char…

Then the atmospheric accumulation, measured as concentration.

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/images/icecore.png

The correlation is remarkable. No significant change in CO2 for a millennium, then atmospheric concentrations rise lockstep with emissions. Of course, the graph can be further extended back from other ice cores to show the modern rise is unmatched in a million years.

This data can be combined to calculate the airborne fraction:

http://static.skepticalscience.com/images/CO2_Emissions_Levels_Knorr.gif

Only about half (46%) of emissions have ended up in the atmosphere. Far from a temperature rise causing CO2 to be emitted from natural sources, as Salby appears to propose, the exact opposite has happened – the biosphere has acted as a sink for about half of our emissions.

There are other consilient data, but the mass balance alone plainly refutes Salby and makes an irrefutable case for the anthropogenic cause.

The anthropogenic source of the CO2 is as close to a proven fact as it’s possible to get in science. You diminish our joint profession by supporting these claims.

I finally want to emphasize the main point with my previous comment.

My blog posts at Klimatupplysningen about Murry Salby mainly are to be seen as my personal protests against the unfair defamation campaign that has been directed towards him.

[That doesn't make sense. Your previous posts are about replicating his work. Since that's completely irrelevant to the criticisms of his work, why are you saying this? I'm beginning to think that you don't even understand the criticisms being made of him. Could you link to some of the detailed criticisms that you've read, please -W]

Dear W,

The blog post in which I reported replication of MS's result, which has been linked to above by John Mashey, was about MS as a person and it was, as I said, a protest against the smear campaign directed towards him.

[Ah. So you've never read, or seen, any posts that actually *are* smears against him. You're relying on one very heavily-biased-in-favour-of-denialialism post? That's not how a scientist behaves. Don't rely on secondary sources, particularly those you know are partisan. Go back to the sources.

In the meantime, I see no reply from you about engagement with the actual criticisms of MS's work -W]

This is shown by the following translations of the title and the last sentence of the abstract.

Title:

Murry Salby, climate science innovator who challenges established views

Last sentence of abstract:

But as innovator in a politically controversial science subject Murry Salby is exposed to a smear campaign in which unfortunately also some Swedish scientists are involved.

[These people just make stuff up. Are you really so naive that you just trust stuff without verification? That's not very "skeptical" of you -W]

It may also be remarked that replication of that result of MS isn't a big deal. Any graduate student in climate science with basic skills of using Matlab should be able to do so.

[Yes, that's what I keep saying. Why are you still talking about this uninteresting thing? -W]

Pehr, a simple request to you, if it is so simple:

Calculate the atmospheric concentration of CO2 during the LIA, around 1650 or so. About 1.2-1.3 degrees colder than today. Then do the same for the most recent ice age (about 5-6 degrees colder than today). Subsequently explain how Salby's conclusion (CO2 *levels* are set by temperature) must by necessity no longer hold if we go slightly outside the temperature envelope of the last 60-or-so years.

That's another thing any graduate student in climate science would be able to do. They are also likely to be able to read a graph, and as such argue that in the IPCC figure you would have to change *more than two* numbers. After all, if you make the pre-industrial ocean outgassing 2 PgC/y larger, you would have to make one of the uptake mechanisms (and that can't be the ocean) also 2 PgC/y larger. Otherwise the rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 would already have been about 1-2 ppm/y pre-industrial.

People might check out Cheshire Claim: Rupert Darwall Copies Satellite CO2 Nonsense From Murry Salby.

In the same article, Darwall writes:

"Salby hasn’t been working in a vacuum. Swedish climate scientist Pehr Björnbom has replicated his finding that temperature drives CO2 emission. University of Oslo geosciences professor Ole Humlum published a landmark 2012 paper demonstrating that changes of CO2 follow changes of temperature, implying the same cause and effect."

Darwall's book is praised by Nigel Lawson and James Delingpole, but this week, Darwall is in the US, doing a book signing and speaking in Texas.

John, note:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818113000891
regarding Humlum's analysis. Landmark paper? Landmark wrong, alright!

[Thanks. Added as a ref -W]

Humlum: thanks for reminder, but Rasmus Benestad's posts at RealClimate are probably enough for most people:

Curve-fitting and natural cycles: The best part
"It is not every day that I come across a scientific publication that so totally goes against my perception of what science is all about. Humlum et al., 2011 present a study in the journal Global and Planetary Change, claiming that most of the temperature changes that we have seen so far are due to natural cycles." (more)

and El Nino’s effect on CO2 causes confusion about CO2′s role for climate change .
"... I think that the analysis presented in Humlum et al. (2012) is weak on four important accounts: the analysis, the physics, reviewing past literature, and logic. ...

Furthermore, they failed to note that the forcing is proportional to the natural logarithm of CO2 – ln(conventration in volume). Such are omissions expected from novices (my speculation: this is somehow related to the composition of the author team consisting of a professor in geology, a statistician from a telephone company, and an astrophysicist)."

Ned @69
"Why is Salby so confused? Why does he fall for such an obvious error? Why does he persist in that error when many other people have clearly explained it? "

I'm not sure anybody really knows. We do know some facts:
1) Salby is an atmospheric physicist, not a carbon-cycle expert or a paleoclimate researcher. Salby specialized in atmospheric circulation, waves, oscillations,etc.

2) See my review of his 2012 book. Most of the book is fine: lots of differential equations, like you'd expect of fluid mechanics ... plus about 20 scattered pages of nonsense outside Salby;s expertise.
See the Preface: Salby doesn't think much of climate science beyond his own specialties, so of course he doesn't listen to anyone.

3) From his history, he clearly thought he was smarter than anyone around, and he actually set up the shell companies pretty well and got away with it for years. Of course, when they started closing in on him, he had to run to Australia.
(If anyone hears of a public appearance in US, let me know ASAP!)

4) Salby seemed to have a serious chip-on-shoulder problem:
a) Fights with Webster and CU in late 1990s.
b) Multiple lawsuits vs CU, including one that got the judge pretty irritated, to the point he was going to make Salby pay CU's costs.
c) Lawsuit against State of Colorado.
None of these cases went very well, and then of course, his method of going after MQ by sending emails to bloggers seems ... very strange, especially given his history, which was awfully easy to find. Generally, long-tenured full professors rarely suddenly depart (mid-year) from schools strong in their discipline and (in this case) near NCAR and NOAA, useful for collaborations. Although there are plausible reasons for such moves, they are rare. That was a big flag. I'd seen Salby's stuff in 2011, knew it was silly, saw John N-G's amusing comments at Real Climate on Salby's talk, and then ignored it until this popped up in 2013. I knew about many problems within half an hour, but though it might be fun to let the blogosphere froth at the mouth for a few days, and it responded well. :-)

verytallguy #70,

Thanks, but this is well known and is largely beyond the scope of the discussions that I have been involved in here (that is a hypothetical carbon cycle mass balance scenario and the unfair smearing of MS).

Marco #74,

You seem to have forgotten that our discussion concerns a hypothetical scenario, not reality. I assert that this 50-50 scenario is possible.

W wrote “I'm not sure your hypothetical case is "impossible" - it depends what you mean. In some possible theoretical Earth, maybe. On the current Earth, your case is simply uninteresting. We know that, we've know it for ages -W”

I of course also think that the possibility here depends on what you mean. You must always assume some sort of model for the Earth system and then the possibility depends on the assumed model properties. On the other hand I don't agree with W that the case is simply uninteresting. What is interesting or not is a personal matter, what is uninteresting to you may be interesting to me.

Now I will definitely leave this discussion and I will signify that by an eighteenth century piece of music by Carl Michael Bellman performed by Imperiet:

“N:o 81
FREDMANS EPISTEL

Til Grälmakar Löfberg i Sterbhuset vid Danto bommen,
diktad vid Grafven.

Dedicerad til Doctor BLAD.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaM_0PGmqGc

[Its a shame you're leaving with so many questions unanswered. You've still not provided any evidence for the "Salby smearing" you've claimed; you have a rather unscientific inability to back your claims with sources. You don't seem able to understand that the blog sources you do reference are partisan. And you've totally failed to engage with any of the criticisms of Salby's work -W]

[Ha ha. I've just found your http://www.klimatupplysningen.se/2014/09/12/murry-salbys-paradox-och-de… You don't seem to have any answer to #38. did you ban Thomas P? It reads like you did -W]

( Chrome browser's automatic translation feature works more smoothly than the Google translate page - just right-click on text, select Translate.)
The Stockholm Initative's blog has been Climate Enlightenment, a rebranding of the name since 2008, The Climate Scam, whose URL still works. Most of the group is the same as in 2013, it is worth reading the bios carefully, although they do not contain all facts of interest, such as this not by Göran Finnveden , a senior researcher at KTH.

By searching the website for Salby, one finds that Dr. Bjornbom, and co at the Stockholm Initiative have invested great personal credibility for *3 + years* and many posts on Salby being:
a) a great climate scientist by virtue of being a good atmospheric physicist mostly specializing in circulation

b) well-respencted in general, and lately

c) a good teacher

d) a thoroughly honest person

e) poorly-treated by CU, NSF and MQ

f) smeared by people who read his claims against MQ (which were not about science) and looked for relevant history to assess crediibility, which did nto take very long
.
g) showed great intellectual courage
"Murry Salby showed intellectual courage when he challenged the entire climate science and climate policy society by addressing sensitive issues to scientific discussion, which Murry Salbys paradox and other analyzes of him gave rise to. In my last blog post I discussed, based on data from independent sources, how this led to massive personal attacks and other actions against him, which to me is reminiscent of how the dissidents would be persecuted in the Soviet communist People's Republics."

and above all
h) brilliantly right on his science claims

It is unsurprising you were unable to convince Dr. Bjornbom otherwise.
Lennart Bengtsson (who is often mentioned in posts there) could not. See his comments in this discussion in June 2013, especially 52, 92, 112, amidst the SI folks rejecting his comments. He may have fallen into bad company later, but he certainly represented science in this case, to little avail.

#80 John Mashey
Just to make it clear, Göran Finnveden is no climate denier and most probably no member of the "Stockholm Initiative". In the article he is disputing Björnbom's and another fellow emeritus' claim that Spencer/Braswell 2010 shows that that ECS is 0.6C and that their more accurate methods overturns IPCC's results with big political implications. See http://www.nyteknik.se/asikter/debatt/article2479814.ece

Well, I think these ex-scientists authority and depth of understanding of the issue can be roughly estimated from the Salby discussion...

#81 Swedish Chef
Thanks, yes, I agree 100%. I've written half a page on this as part of one of my reports, and probably should have said a little more here to be clear. I'd read the Bjornbom (Emeritus Chemical Engineering) and Ribbing (Emeritus Solid State Physics) piece, Finnvedn's reply, his bio, the Spencer/Braswell stuff and RealClimate comments.

Finnvedin is a senior person in a related discipline. I've been rummaging in Stockholm Initiative, but haven't seen him, and wouldn't. expect to.

" If someone out there would like to call me a climate scientist I don’t mind but this is of course an exaggeration, I am more like a graduate student in climate science."

I know a few such students, so I harbor doubts.

David Archer (a serious carbon cycle expert) has used Global Warming - Understanding the Forecast for undergraduate non-science majors at the University of Chicago.

I checked the discussion here again and have some additional comments.

Professor Lennart Bengtsson has been mentioned several times. He is a very renowned Swedish climate scientist and

[So, why don't you listen to him on the subject of CO2? -W]

member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He is also the main author of the statement on Climate Science of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences from 2009:
http://www.kva.se/globalassets/vetenskap_samhallet/miljo_klimat/yttrand…

When this statement was published there also appeared an opinion piece in a leading Swedish newspaper:
http://www.dn.se/debatt/extrema-ovader-hanger-inte-ihop-med-ett-varmare…

Lennart Bengtsson has become a target of smear campaigns. I also protest against those campaigns, not the least a campaign on a Swedish climate blog in which another member, but not a climate scientist, of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences participated, in my opinion in a disgraceful manner (I don't mention the name here).

I fully agree with Professor Dame Julia Slingo:
“End personal attacks on scientists – regardless of their views”
https://metofficenews.wordpress.com/tag/julia-slingo/

[You want to have a word with Anthony Watts and his constant smears against Michael Mann, and indeed pretty well everyone else. Or are you not interested in that kind of smear?

http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2014/05/14/ha-ha-lennart-bengtsson-leaves… -W]

Pretty funny for someone who posts at klimatupplysningen, which contains plenty of smears.

Just one example (since William mentioned Mann):
"Kan vi överhuvudtaget lita på dessa konspirerande, manipulerande och, ja, fuskande, klimatforskare som hyllats så av IPCC, kolleger, politiker och massmedia?"
(google to find the link yourself, it's specifically about Mann and Jones)
"Conspirational, manipulative, and, yes, cheating, climate scientists..."

Oh wait, no, I should add a second example. When Mann says "On the other hand, serial climate disinformer Judith Curry, in a commentary for the same outlet five days later, announced", according to Björnbom himself "Michael Mann vill tydligen associera Judith Curry med seriemördare" - i.e., "Michael Mann clearly wants to associate Judith Curry with serial killers."

In other words, William, I think Björnbom may first need to talk to himself and then his friends at klimatupplysningen, before he talks to Anthony Watts.

W, I am probably not especially consistent regarding who to defend or not to defend in connection with smear campaigns. What happens between Watts and Mann I am not really following but may have some entertainment value. However, as a feminist I have probably a bias in favor of Judith Curry when Michael E Mann is attacking her.

I especially appreciate Murry Salby and want to defend him because I have his textbook “Fundamentals of Atmospheric Physics, Volume 61 (International Geophysics)” and I am really impressed by his skilful authorship, his knowledge and his deep understanding of atmospheric physics.

I want to defend Lennart Bengtsson because all what he has done for numerical meteorology and all his contributions to climate science and many other things, just an example here in a comment by Andy Lacis:
http://judithcurry.com/2014/05/24/are-climate-scientists-being-forced-t…

Lennart Bengtsson has definitely other opinions than me on some issues in the society but that doesn't change my great respect for his lifetime achievement as a scientist.

What an odd argumentation. You defend the lies people (including Salby) spread about his termination at Macquarie because he wrote a good textbook?

You see, Pehr Björnbom, the supposed 'smear campaign' against Salby was nothing but a pushback with facts against the many claims Salby was fired because of his scientific ideas. That his ideas on the carbon cycle don't withstand scrutiny, and that people point this out, is not a smear campaign. That Salby himself and so many others claimed he was fired because of those ideas *are* a smear campaign. It is willful disregard of the truth: he didn't do what his contract told him to do - to teach - and he violated financial rules (which apparently was not the first time he did so in his career). As I noted earlier, most universities would fire such a person.

Pehr Björnbom There is no Salby paradox, unfortunately his analysis is simply faulty. He looks at the correlation between the atmospheric growth rate and "surface conditions" (temperature and soil moisture IIRC). However, the atmospheric growth rate is obtained by differencing the atmospheric concentration, which means that the long term trend in atmospheric CO2 becomes a constant offset on the growth rate. Correllations are completely insensitive to additive constants on either of the signals over which they are evaluated, which means that a correllation between growth rate and temperature has no mathematical connection whatsoever with the long term rise. Of course you can repeat Prof. Salby's analysis, but that doesn't mean it is meaningful. I wrote a blog post on this at SkepticalScience, which you can find here:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/salby_correlation_conundrum.html

and I'd be very happy to discuss the details with you there.

Unfortunately Prof. Salby seems unaware of the work that has been done on the cause of the modulation of the growth rate by temperature (actually mostly ENSO) first noted in the 70s by Barcastow. You can find a more recent paper on this topic here:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2004GB002273/abstract

If there was a paradox, it has already been resolved long ago.

Gavin Cawley
2014/10/09

Dear Dr. Cawley,

I would be happy to discuss this with you. However, at first please study my reconstruction of Murry Salby's hypothesis, as I have understood it from the video. You will find my calculations here:
http://www.klimatupplysningen.se/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Rekonstrukt…

The text is in Swedish but I am sure that, by using Google, you will have no problems to follow my fairly simple calculations. You will find that the equation displayed by Salby in the video, describing the rate of change of the carbon dioxide mixing ratio as a function only of the temperature anomaly, in fact quite well describes the observations according to the Keeling curve and the Law Dome ice core data.

As I write in the discussion, if this would be possible to explain as a true effect of a real physical mechanism it would challenge the consensus that the carbon dioxide increase is anthropogenic. However, if this instead can be explained as an artifact it is justified to call it Murry Salby's paradox.

I think that this is in fact a paradox and I have a preferred explanation how this paradox is arising, although I don't want to mention it now and here.

Best regards,
Pehr Björnbom

To potentially spare some peoples time...
Björnbom's "replication" has already been explicitly shown to be nonsense more than a year ago: http://uppsalainitiativet.blogspot.se/2013/07/bjornbom-bommar-igen.html
One typical characteristic of pseudo-science is that it goes around and around and around.... but never make any real progress.

But Pehr, if the 15Gt/year rise in atmospheric CO2 has no anthropogenic cause,
- where is the 26Gt/year that is released by humans going?
- where is the 15Gt/year coming from?

Craig, Pehr Björnbom has already tried to explain that elsewhere: you just change one number in the carbon cycle.

Of course, he still doesn't realise that he is then arguing that CO2 was declining at around 2 ppm/y pre-industrially...

Craig Thomas #91,

My comment #89 was a reply to Dr. Gavin Cawley's comment #88. My last sentence was:

“I think that this is in fact a paradox and I have a preferred explanation how this paradox is arising, although I don’t want to mention it now and here.”

This statement was meant to tell the readers that I think that the increase of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is influenced by human carbon dioxide emissions. That is the reason that I call Dr. Murry Salby's finding Murry Salby's paradox. His finding appears to show that there is no anthropogenic cause of the carbon dioxide increase but this may be an artifact and it is possible to explain how this paradox arises.

It seems to me that your questions to me are irrelevant in this context considering that you are implying that the carbon dioxide increase has no anthropogenic cause.