The blogospheric dissection of the papers by Spencer and Braswell and by Dessler continue apace. In fact the pace is a bit of a problem, as I have been left rather behind - radiative physics is an area I need to get up to speed on. This is a pity because it looks as though today's excitement is all going to be focused the effect of clouds on the earth's energy budget.
Firstly there is this comment by Bart at CA. Then there's this post by Tallbloke, which is essentially just a reposting of a comment by Bill Illis at WUWT.
The Bill Illis/Tallbloke piece seems rather more straightforward to me - if I understand it correctly, it shows that the variability in the amount of heat escaping the earth is driven to a large extent by changes in cloud cover. As one commenter puts it:
But the [climate models] only assign a single, constant value for all clouds, at all latitudes, for all periods of day and night, for all seasons of the year, across all elevations for all values of humidity and rainfall and percent CO2.
Right?
I can see that this is a problem, although perhaps I haven't quite got my head around the implications yet.
The Bart comment at CA is, however, more tricky and I haven't made head or tail of it yet. Given that there seems to be general agreement that it may be significant, maybe readers here can explain.