Cage fight: Ridley vs Romm [Stoat]


W00t, a a Big Fight, or during slightest a a squabble du jour. Does anyone outward a small blogospheric round care? My theory is no. As we pronounced over during Timmy’s recently, my personal “does-the-outside-world-give-a-shit-o-meter” (as practical to a latest septic nonsense to strike a blogospheric fan) is “has anyone attempted to pull it into any of a vital GW form articles on wikipedia”? By that test, a latest things from Lewis scores zero. Even Schwartz managed better.

But (whilst Romm wouldn’t be my choice as a primary ally of Truth and Light) a latest to-and-fro provides an engaging approach to tell who is fibbing to you. To no-one’s good surprise, a answer is… accessible during a finish of this post. Its all out in a open, and verifiable to everybody (the one unverifiable aspect is who has altered their postings given they were initial written. I’ve taken snapshots of how things are now).

Items:

* Joe Romm demonstrates himself to be an indignant know-nothing in his conflict on Matt Ridley’s WSJ minute – Ridley responds – Ridley during WUWT [cite], angry about…

* Error-Riddled Matt Ridley Piece Lowballs Climate Change, Discredits Wall Street Journal. World Faces 10°F Warming – Romm during TP [cite], angry about…

* Matt Ridley: Cooling Down a Fears of Climate Change – Ridley’s square [cite] blasting Lewis’s square about sensitivity.

For a moment, we caring not possibly Lewis’s strange is scold or not (I still consider a wrong, though have finished no genuine analysis, that you’ll have to wait for. I’m still anticipating someone efficient cunning do it – hint, hint). we consider Romm’s title avowal that Ridley has “Discredit[ed the] Wall Street Journal” is dubious, on a drift that it had no repute to remove on a theme of Climate Change. But on…

Part a first

From Ridley:

He [Romm] quotes a scientist as saying

it is unequivocally transparent H2O fog … is an amplifying effect. It is a unequivocally clever warmer for a climate.

I agree. My square states:

water fog itself is a hothouse gas.

So there is no difficulty there. At slightest not on my part.

But this is indeed confused by Ridley, in an critical way. The WV feedback is important, and Ridley can’t be unknowingly of that. By treacherous this with a doubted-by-no-one matter that WV is a GHG, Ridley is throwing adult squid ink. Though I’m indeterminate he unequivocally understands this things during all – there is a satisfactory probability that some of his errors are simply caused by his possess miss of competence.

Part a second

Ridley continues:

However, we do plead a probability that clouds, shaped from H2O vapor, possibly amplify or damp warming – and nobody during this theatre knows which. This is a indicate that my physicist adviser was making: a outcome of increasing temperatures and H2O fog in a atmosphere might be changes in clouds that have a cooling effect. You will find few who remonstrate with this. As a IPCC AR4 said:

Cloud feedbacks sojourn a largest source of uncertainty.

Joe Romm disagrees with this consensus, saying

The net radiative feedback due to all cloud forms is expected positive.

He gives no subsidy for this peremptory conclusion.

Romm, correctly, points out that his “The net radiative feedback due to all cloud forms is expected positive” is taken from a AR5 draft, and says so (at slightest it now says so. Whether it creatively did, we can’t say. However Ridley unequivocally can’t fulminate about “no backing” and “dogmatic”, since it unequivocally is sourced).

What AR5 says (at slightest in part) is:

Therefore, there is unequivocally high certainty that a net feedbacks are strongly certain and a black physique response of a meridian to a forcing will therefore be amplified. Cloud feedbacks continue to be a largest uncertainty… New approaches to diagnosing cloud feedback in GCMs have simplified strong cloud responses, while stability to implicate low cloud cover as a many critical source of intermodel widespread in unnatural cloud feedbacks. The net radiative feedback due to all cloud forms is expected positive, nonetheless a disastrous feedback (damping tellurian meridian changes) is still possible.

The AR4 was reduction certain:

8.6.3.2.4 Conclusion on cloud feedbacks. Despite some advances in a bargain of a earthy processes that control a cloud response to meridian change and in a analysis of some components of cloud feedbacks in stream models, it is not nonetheless probable to consider that of a indication estimates of cloud feedback is a many reliable. However, swell has been done in a marker of a cloud types, a dynamical regimes and a regions of a creation obliged for a vast widespread of cloud feedback estimates among stream models. This is expected to encourage some-more specific observational analyses and indication evaluations that will urge destiny assessments of meridian change cloud feedbacks.

So it appears to me that:

(1) AR5 has strengthened a comment of cloud forcing, that is now suspicion to be expected (which is weak, though a there) to be positive,

(2) AR4 and AR5 both contend cloud feedbacks sojourn a largest source of uncertainty. Ridley is right to quote this, though wrong to indicate that this is a final word a IPCC has to contend on a subject,

(3) Ridley is wrong to contend that by reporting (1) Romm is denying (2) – a dual are wholly compatible. Obviously: they’re in a same IPCC paragraph,

(4) Ridley is wrong to contend that Romm’s avowal is dogmatic, or not backed. Its a quote from a draft, and a entirely corroborated up.

(5) Ridley is wrong to state, of a cloud feedback, that “nobody during this theatre knows which… You will find few who remonstrate with this”. That would have been confirmed from a AR4, though not now.

Finally

I consider a many expected that Ridley is amateurish – if he knows what he is indeed saying, afterwards he knows he is wrong on all these counts, and he knows that anyone efficient will be means to see that. Of course, he might only be personification to a gallery.

If we wish more, in a bit we didn’t worry demeanour during Ridley tries to drag in Schlesinger onto his side. Alas, Schlesinger will have nothing of it, and Romm quotes a minute from Schlesinger: Matt Ridley mentions a commentary of my Climate Research Group’s paper… In his article, Mr. Ridley is only plain wrong about destiny tellurian warming…

Cage Fight: Ridley Vs Romm [Stoat]
Cage Fight: Ridley Vs Romm [Stoat]
Cage Fight: Ridley Vs Romm [Stoat]
Cage Fight: Ridley Vs Romm [Stoat]

Cage Fight: Ridley Vs Romm [Stoat]

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