Some Reading

Eli got Klotzbach Revisited by Jos Hagelaars on Bart's old stomping grounds looking at what the march of time has brought wrt predictions

The expected increase in the differences between the surface temperatures and the satellite temperatures over land has not occurred. To the contrary, 13% more data show that the trend difference over land has decreased by 18% for NCDC/RSS and by 33% for NCDC/UAH.

The trend difference has thus decreased rather than increased, and whereas Klotzbach-2009 and its fans champion the argument that this difference is due to a ‘bias’ in the surface temperature record (some 1700 words were spent on this argument in K-2009), a ‘bias’ in the satellite record may be equally, or perhaps even more plausible.

John Christy has replied to this, saying among other things that

It appears Hagelaars’ key point is that when the data from Klotzbach et al. are extended beyond 2008 to include data through 2012, the discrepancies, i.e. the observed difference between surface and tropospheric trends relative to what models project, are reduced somewhat.” 

And Hagelaars raises an interesting point in his reply to the zombies

My key point is that if K-2009 were correct, the absolute temperature difference between surface and troposphere would be expected to increase over time (due to the fact that the presumed bias in the surface temperature data has not magically disappeared, see e.g. this paper by Watts et al). In contrast, this temperature difference has decreased about 33% for the ‘NCDC minus UAH’ data (which showed the largest discrepancy). This absolute difference was used by Marcel Crok in his book “De Staat van het Klimaat” to suggest that the surface temperatures is biased.

Why this large difference with only 13% (4 years) more data? If anything, it casts doubt on the robustness of the K-2009 results.

The other point I wanted to make is that the apparent discrepancies could also, perhaps even more likely, be due to biases present in the satellite data, as indicated by Santer et al 2005. Also new biases are constantly being discovered, see the Po-Chedley & Fu paper.

Which brings Eli to the question of whether Christy and Spencer have ever released their software.  There are evils that lurk in loops and squirrels unseen by bunnykind.  If not, they better get ahead of the truck, e.g. the new regulations on releasing scientific results.

Ed Darrel is on an obit kick (there are some more immediately below that one) and Evan Jones is trying to defend his and Willard Tony's cherry picking (they appear to have submitted something somewhere).

Science of Doom is playing in Wonderland with radiative forcing.  Seriously great stuff.

Anyone else.  Consider this an open thread