At http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/05/cet-vs-meto-a-problem-with-tempera… is a bit of a cheeky pieces that asks why the Met Office temperatures for the peripheries of Britain are somewhat warmer than the central region of the country. The Central England Temperature series shows cooler temperatures than the Met Office data which may indicate its super computer has an inbuilt AGW bias. It is amazing this has not been rectified as they have repeatedly been criticised for using a data series that is not up to scratch.
At www.drroyspencer.com/2011/09/a-primer-on-our-claim-that-clouds-cause-tem… is Spencer's rebuff of the criticism levelled at him by Trenberth and Abrahams et al. More recently, Dessler has had a paper published criticising the Spencer and Braswell paper more conclusively – so go to Spencer-s web site and get his take. It is unlikely Spencer or Braswell will get the chance to respond in a major climate journal as the AGW team are in total control of the peer review process. This is a tactic they have used on many other occasions to block criticism – basically they do not want to discuss the science because they are embarrased that they will end up looking like fools. They have to suppress the opposition for as long as they can, hoping beyond reason that a super El Nino or something like that will arrive and temporarily exonerate them.
Over at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/05/journal-deliverance-the-true-story… we have a guest post by Les Johnson. He has discovered why Wagner resigned as editor of Remote Sensing after its publication of the Spencer and Braswell paper – after apologising to Trenberth in his letter of resignation. Trenberth was in no way involved in the paper so it came across something like a fishbone stuck in the throat – noticeably out of place. It seems that there is a rather nice web of connections and at the root of it all – money.
This story has dominated the blogosphere over the last couple of days – there are so many sites running that one can go to one site and be led by links to lots of others. One might start at the web sites of Roger Pielke Senior or that of his son (see http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/09/retraction-remote-sensing-and-… and http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/rpy-spencer-has-posted-…) or quickly log into anthony watts blog at http://wattsupwiththat.com where there are several posts on the subject (in the first week of Spetember) in a story that is set to run for a while yet. Hundreds and hundreds of comments can be trawled through at this site – the most popular sceptic blog of them all. For a British angle go to www.bishop-hill.net where once again this subject is dominating a series of posts – and lots of comments. It seems to me there are a lot of silver surfers out there wide awake until the wee small hours and they even seem to switch on their computers first thing in the morning to have another session. Surely, people in work don't have the time to wade through all the comments. Its even worse at Judith Curry's web site. As a climate scientist herself she has a lot of visitors and this subject has comments well over a thousand (from both sides of the fence, one side desperate to see nothing amiss and the other responding with glee at their discomfiture) (see www.judithcurry.com).