Does this new paper support Roy Spencer's theory?

"No, the two ideas are unrelated."

Apparently, you don't understand them then.

"Compo and Sardeshmukh are likely to be correct regardless of whether Spencer is right or wrong."

I don't see how that is relevant to the question.

"The Compo paper advances the idea that warming oceans increase humidity over land and increase warming over land."

And that the warming of the oceans is the main cause of the warming of the land (the sort of "hot water bottle effect" that some have put forth), and not the direct effects of CO2 over land.

"Spencer claims that increasing warmth should generate clouds (and note that they'd better be the right kind of clouds, some cause cooling, others warming) as a negative feedback."

I think you need to reread both his paper earlier this year and his new presentation (soon to be paper). He talks of how changes in cloudiness (caused by ocean currents, warming oceans, etc) can cause the the Earth to warm, and that there is a possibility that they have a played a large role in recent warming.

"Seems to be a conflict here."

I see no conflict.

"As a sidenote, he believes in "Intelligent Design" rather than evolution, which will certainly cause many people to adjust their opinion of him."

This really has nothing to do with the accuracy of any of his work on climate/weather.

"The CIRES paper is very cautious to point out that the ocean warming driving the continental warming could be due to the radiative forcing from CO2."

They also note that there is a good possibility that natural influences could have played a large role as well. The fact of the matter is that this paper argues for a lower climate sensitivity--if CO2 has played little role directly in the warming of the continents, then it certainly isn't sufficient to explain the warming of the oceans, and natural factors must have played a larger role than previously thought.

As a side note, Pielke notes that:

"This work also provides support for the perspective on climate sensitivity that Roy Spencer has reported on in his powerpoint presentation last week"

"Spencer, being a fundamentalist Christian, *needs* to prove that man can't affect climate."

Speculating on a "christian motivation" tends to make you look worse, gcnp, than Spencer.

"That's not a good position for a scientist to be in since he's lost his objectivity and now resorts to what amounts to data processing parlor tricks. "

Dr. Pierrehumbert can submit his response to the Journal of Climate (where Spencer's paper was published), where an appropriate response belongs. Until then, a link realclimate isn't a particularly valid rebuttal (though I enjoy reading realclimate from time to time).

"Pielke is looking worse and worse backing up guys like Spencer, but I have to give him credit for sticking to his guns in the face of mounting evidence against him"

Mounting evidence against whom? Pielke? Like what?

Here is a an explanation of Spencer's new paper that is a bit easier to understand (powerpoints themselves, without the actual presentation, are easy to get lost in):

http://www.weatherquestions.com/Climate-Sensitivit...

"edit: Bob, if you want to ignore why he uses two different mixed-layer depths"

Wow, that was quite a response. I haven't ignored it. I will get back to you on it. Is that alright?

Alright, gcnp, I chatted with someone who attended the presentation and they noted that their was little discussion of the difference in MLD, and Spencer certainly wasn't "raked". There was some mention of it and Spencer said something along the lines of

"I was limited to available data in answering different, respective questions."

While I don't find this to be a particularly satisfying answer, I am not about to write Spencer's work off without an explanation.

And I notice you didn't respond to any of the points I did make, but rather the response I hadn't yet given. Does that make you a denier?

Here gcnp, read all three of these in their entirety:

http://www.weatherquestions.com/Climate-Sensitivit...

http://climatesci.org/wp-content/uploads/spencer-p...

http://climatesci.org/2008/04/22/internal-radiativ...

In short, you did some misinterpreting.