Wednesday, August 29, 2012

I wanna start a fight

I don't really, but it looks a bit like some people do:


It is shown that the results of a previous analysis, which suggested a likely positive value for the short-term cloud feedback, depended upon combining all-sky radiative fluxes from NASA's Clouds and Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) with reanalysis clear-sky forecast fluxes when determining the cloud radiative forcing (CRF). These results are contradicted when ΔCRF is derived using both all-sky and clear-sky measurements from CERES over the same period.

This reads a bit like a criticism of a previous Dessler paper, and the man himself had plenty to say during the open review process. Which based on my armchair viewpoint, seems to have worked fairly well in this contentious case, which is ranked highly on the "most commented papers" list.  Whether it is the end of the matter, remains to be seen...

Anyway, ESD seems to be turning into quite an interesting journal.

16 comments:

David B. Benson said...

ESD?

James Annan said...

well it's at the links - you don't even have to click, a mouseover should show it :-)

jules said...

Yes, it isn't a real journal if it doesn't have a TLA.

Magnus said...

Fight this for me would you? :( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818112001658?v=s5

James Annan said...

Oh, that is obvious drivel.

"CO2 released from use of fossil fuels have little influence on the observed changes in the amount of atmospheric CO2, and changes in atmospheric CO2 are not tracking changes in human emissions."

That fails the sniff test without even needing to read the paper.

No doubt Curry (and others of that ilk) will be bigging it up, if they hasn't already. It's just the sort of nonsense that she falls for: "Wow...If Salby’s analysis holds up, this could revolutionize AGW science.".

Paul S said...

Jules, Are we going to get any juicy gossip about the 'odd behaviour from some of those involved'?

Magnus said...

Yes, sadly it got published which seams to mean that some journalists can use it and spread the myth that it is faaaar from understood. It really is annoying when things like this get published and no one really wants to waste time to debunk it in the journal.

James Annan said...

Fortunately we don't seem to subscribe to the journal, which lets me off the hook :-)

jules said...

Paul S: Nope. But it is safe to say that ESD is a far cry from the gentle, pedantic world of GMD (Geoscientific Model Development), where I do more editing. I also sincerely wish that the entire peer review of all journals was open access. I see no reason why it shouldn't be.

ob said...

fully agree with: "sincerely wish that the entire peer review of all journals was open access".

Would also be a pleasure to read the review for that CO2-paper (which I regrettably read yesterday).

Steve Bloom said...

Given the apparent tricks used to frame the analysis, it sounds like more the sort of thing Tamino like to sink his teeth into.

Anonymous said...

Magnus, FWIW I put up a demo of why the Humlum et al., 2012, method is incorrect for the question they are trying to answer: http://troyca.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/comment-on-the-phase-relation-between-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-and-global-temperature/

Steve Bloom said...

Odd behavior in this case I suspect amounts to Andy being pissed off that this guy (some sort of grad student in an unrelated filed, AFAICT) got the time of day from anyone. Hard to blame him.

Last sentence in abstract: "Given the large uncertainties generated from this method, the limited data over this period are insufficient to rule out either the positive feedback present in most climate models or a strong negative cloud feedback."

So that's a pretty big climb-down from the abstract as submitted, but of course the usual suspects will spin it entirely differently. The fact that a strong negative cloud feedback can be ruled out by paleo goes a-glimmering.

But the apparent editorial standard for publication (shorter: "publish if not proven to be crap") was a bit of an eye-opener, and probably also explains how the Humlum paper (which appears to be based on a similar approach) slipped through.

Magnus said...

:)

Magnus said...

Seams to be the same journal that let this gem through: http://westerstrand.blogspot.se/2008/09/its-that-time-of-year.html

jules said...

Steve: Publish if not clearly shown to be wrong is about right. Peer review is the beginning of the scientific process, not the end, and it is not the job of editors to censor progress. If we only published stuff that _we_ thought was excellent, then scientific progress would never be made. After all one thing that we scientists are continually confronted with (once we have been doing it a few years :-) ) is how often we are wrong.