Regarding sticky: Reviews on Global Warming

In summary, the two reviews posted in the sticky thread seem to be in line with the consensus of the scientific community. Dr. Philip Campbell, the editor-in-chief of Nature, said that the journal was always happy to publish papers that go against perceived wisdom, as long as they are of acceptable scientific quality.
  • #1
pattylou
306
0
Monique: Thank you for posting links to the two reviews on climate change, in the sticky thread. I am heartened to see that in fact, the PF are not comprised of global warming skeptics, as was my first impression. Both reviews lie with consensus opinion. It's been my experience that all "anti" warming reviews and papers tend to come from Shell, Exxon, etc. or those in their employment. Should you come across any reviews that oppose the consensus, I would be interested to see them, and to see who has put them together.

I would like to mention one thing. You introduce these two reviews with the note that there is "controversy" in the scientific community ... and it is my understanding that this is not an accurate reflection of the state of things. For example, see:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

This link relates a survey of climate change literature. Of 928 papers analyzed, not one opposed the consensus opinion. There is no controversy among climate scientists, in my understanding.
 
Earth sciences news on Phys.org
  • #2
To balance Naomi Oreskes work it may be interesting to take note of
this.

However, her unequivocal conclusions immediately raised suspicions among other academics, who knew of many papers that dissented from the pro-global warming line.

They included Dr Benny Peiser, a senior lecturer in the science faculty at Liverpool John Moores University, who decided to conduct his own analysis of the same set of 1,000 documents - and concluded that only one third backed the consensus view, while only one per cent did so explicitly.

Dr Peiser submitted his findings to Science in January, and was asked to edit his paper for publication - but has now been told that his results have been rejected on the grounds that the points he make had been "widely dispersed on the internet".

Dr Peiser insists that he has kept his findings strictly confidential. "It is simply not true that they have appeared elsewhere already," he said.

...

Dr Peiser is not the only academic to have had work turned down which criticises the findings of Dr Oreskes's study. Prof Dennis Bray, of the GKSS National Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany, submitted results from an international study showing that fewer than one in 10 climate scientists believed that climate change is principally caused by human activity.

However this last claim is rather colored. These 10 were only the the "5"'s scores in the polls that gave answers in the range 1-5 from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree". The real outcome was more balanced somewhere in the order of 60-40%. The point remains however that there is no consensus that there is consensus. :yuck: :biggrin:
 
  • #3
From Andre's link

...Dr Philip Campbell, the editor-in-chief of Nature, said that the journal was always happy to publish papers that go against perceived wisdom, as long as they are of acceptable scientific quality.

"The idea that we would conspire to suppress science that undermines the idea of anthropogenic climate change is both false and utterly naive about what makes journals thrive," he said...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...orld.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=22586
 
  • #4
But then again http://www.sepp.org/NewSEPP/StateFear-Deming.htm [Broken] seem to have a different idea:

Personally, I had doubts about the Mann et al. (1999) claims from the beginning. Only a few years earlier, the existence of a world-wide MWP had been documented by an important paleoclimate study, Huang et al.'s (1997) analysis of borehole temperature data. As Lachenbruch and Marshall (1986, p. 696) pointed out many years ago, borehole temperatures are the most robust paleoclimate indicator we have because they are not a proxy, but a direct thermophysical record of temperature changes occurring at the surface.

The Huang et al. (1997) study was originally submitted to Nature. I was one of the reviewers of the manuscript. I told the Nature editors that the article would surely be one of the most important papers they published that year. But it never appeared in print. Nature asked the authors to revise the paper twice and then, after a long delay, ended up rejecting it. While writing this essay, I learned that McIntyre and McKitrick's manuscript had received similar treatment at Nature. Apparently, it is not enough for the editors at Nature to simply reject an article that is politically incorrect, they have to delay its inevitable publication in another journal by tying it up in the review process for several months.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #5
Andre said:
But then again http://www.sepp.org/NewSEPP/StateFear-Deming.htm [Broken] seem to have a different idea:

Is JSE, from Andre's link, considered a reputable source? If so I would like to know since they also publish a good amount of UFO information.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #6
I wonder if it's relevant which publication it's in. There have been doubts about peer review processes anyway. This is an essay allegly written by http://eagle.ncpa.org/jsp/biography.jsp?expert=19 [Broken]. Hence he is responsible for the contents. So the questions are, if this is the truth the whole truth and nothing but and if DD can back up his claims, especially the E-mail part about killing the Medieval Warming Period.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #7
Of course the publication is relevant. For various reasons - some journals are tougher to get into, etc. ??

So I looked into David Deming. Your link takes me to the National Center for Policy Analysis. They claim:

The National Center for Policy Analysis' E-Team, is one of the largest collections of energy and environmental policy experts and scientists who believe in sound science and that economic prosperity and protecting the environment can go hand and hand. The Team seeks to correct misinformation and promote sensible solutions to energy and environment problems.

I find little to disagree with, there! Yet despite these nice words, the topics under discussion on this page:

http://eteam.ncpa.org/policy/Global_Warming/Science/ [Broken]

Are all one-sided. NCPA doesn't appear interested in making good policy ---- they appear interested in finding information that supports the policy that they want. Policy making is not an easy task. You certainly don't make policy by pre-arranging the data you want! So why is NCPA, whose very name indicates analysing policy, only linking to anti-warming sites?

This is an example of what I mean in another thread when I say that I am not interested in being swamped in questionable sources. Your approach doesn't help your goal.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #8
I’m sorry if you don’t appreciate my methods. But it’s a bit tough indeed to find the right attitude in delicate matters like this. So I just try to live up to the scientific method, which may not be all that popular at times:

Rule one: Science is processing facts, not opinions. Rule two: never confuse the opinion of the majority with the truth. Rule three: the scientific acceptance standards are independent of the attractiveness of the conclusions. Rule four: Never let the mere urgent interfere with the truly important. Rule five: find and remove the fallacies.

Are all one-sided. NCPA doesn't appear interested in making good policy ---- they appear interested in finding information that supports the policy that they want.
So it's all about politics and nothing about science? What if you compared to the Third Assessment Report (TAR) of the IPCC, some one-sideness too, perhaps.

Anyway, Deming makes some serious acquisitions here directly aimed at the IPCC, especially the killing of the Medieval Warming Period (MWP) part. Notice how he almost managed to do that without ad hominems and other red herrings. Only one escaped unfortunately:

But a lawyer's job isn't to discover truth, it's to win an argument. Neither is an advocacy organization interested in truth--they are committed to advocating a certain position regardless of the facts.

That’s an circumstantial ad hominem, He should not have done that but if you’d compare it with the usual http://archive.greenpeace.org/climate/industry/reports/sceptics.html [Broken] then it is not too bad.

About the killing the MWP, I was following that closely. I was aware of the literature about the MWP and I shared the feeling of Deming: “we’re being conned here, shamelessly”. Never before in the history of science, has such a controversial hypothesis with such a shipload of disproving evidence, been endorsed so quickly and with such a triumph. This mere fact has made a lot of sceptics, me included. You simply cannot do that for the sake of the mere urgent, sacrificing the truly impoprtant, the truth. Now we see the dismantling but the damage has been done. It will take another generation or two before we are back to normal.

Now back to Deming. He had better substantiate the acquisitions or shut up and apologizes. But if he does, then we have a nasty situation don’t we? Not only has the hockeystick been falsified from all kind of angles (Soon and Baliunas, McIntyre and McIttrick – twice, Von Storch and Moberg) but it could also have been a deliberately constructed political tool to persuade the masses.

Sorry for all the ranting. But I'm very unhappy with the global warming myth and all the damage it does to the world.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #9
Andre said:
I’m sorry if you don’t appreciate my methods. But it’s a bit tough indeed to find the right attitude in delicate matters like this. So I just try to live up to the scientific method, which may not be all that popular at times:

Rule one: Science is processing facts, not opinions. Rule two: never confuse the opinion of the majority with the truth. Rule three: the scientific acceptance standards are independent of the attractiveness of the conclusions. Rule four: Never let the mere urgent interfere with the truly important. Rule five: find and remove the fallacies.
This all seems superfluous to anything I said.
So it's all about politics and nothing about science? What if you compared to the Third Assessment Report (TAR) of the IPCC, some one-sideness too, perhaps.
More swamping with virtual data.
About the killing the MWP, I was following that closely. I was aware of the literature about the MWP and I shared the feeling of Deming: “we’re being conned here, shamelessly”. Never before in the history of science, has such a controversial hypothesis with such a shipload of disproving evidence, been endorsed so quickly and with such a triumph. This mere fact has made a lot of sceptics, me included. You simply cannot do that for the sake of the mere urgent, sacrificing the truly impoprtant, the truth. Now we see the dismantling but the damage has been done. It will take another generation or two before we are back to normal.
A scientific approach should certainly not require a generation or two. You can run the models in a matter of days with different variables included or excluded. We can determine immediately if the presence or absence of the MWP has any bearing on the projections, and if so, to what extent. Any bias has no place in science.

Sorry for all the ranting. But I'm very unhappy with the global warming myth and all the damage it does to the world.

Well, you can't expect me not to ask for some references on *that.* Exactly what damage has been done?
 
  • #10
Exactly what damage has been done?

The Kyoto clock says "cost about US$ 60,758,560,000
while the potential temperature saving by the year 2050 so far achieved by Kyoto is
0.000630089 C"
 
  • #11
How does "cost" translate into "damage?"

And how does this stack up against the "cost" of warming (which you even acknowledge is happening)?

And why bring Kyoto's potential temperature affect into it? Red herring to this discussion.
 
  • #12
How does "cost" translate into "damage?"

Funds not available for mitigating real problems.

And how does this stack up against the "cost" of warming (which you even acknowledge is happening)?

There is nothing humans can do to change changes in climate since CO2 is not causing any significant climate change.

It may be advisable not to mention red herrings.
 
  • #13
Andre said:
Funds not available for mitigating real problems.


There is nothing humans can do to change changes in climate since CO2 is not causing any significant climate change.

It may be advisable not to mention red herrings.

Can you give some specific examples of problems that have remained unmitigated as a result of the "Kyoto watch?"

Would you agree that humans can potentially have a beneficial effect on climate whether we are responsible (as we appear to be) or not? I assume you are aware of some of the predictions (despeciation, economic havoc, rising sea level, etc) for what may happen as the warming trend continues.
 
  • #14
Can you give some specific examples of problems that have remained unmitigated as a result of the "Kyoto watch?"

As long as there are economic fugitives knocking at our doors for a better life in the west, there are problems to mitigate. If that doesn't happen anymore then go ahead and waste your money on a non problem.

Would you agree that humans can potentially have a beneficial effect on climate whether we are responsible (as we appear to be) or not?

The best whe can do is clean the air of haze and soot and stop polluting emissions. change in CO2 output is counter productive.
 

1. What is global warming?

Global warming refers to the long-term increase in Earth's average temperature. This is primarily caused by the release of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere, trapping heat and leading to a warming effect.

2. What are the main causes of global warming?

The main causes of global warming are human activities, such as burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and agriculture. These activities release large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, contributing to the warming effect.

3. How does global warming affect the environment?

Global warming has various impacts on the environment, including rising sea levels, changing weather patterns, more frequent and severe natural disasters, and loss of biodiversity. These effects can have serious consequences for ecosystems and human societies.

4. Is global warming really happening?

Yes, global warming is a scientifically proven phenomenon. Multiple lines of evidence, including temperature records, satellite data, and observations of natural systems, all point to the fact that the Earth's average temperature is increasing.

5. What can we do to address global warming?

There are many actions that can be taken to address global warming, both at an individual and societal level. Some examples include reducing our carbon footprint through energy conservation and use of renewable energy sources, advocating for government policies to reduce emissions, and supporting conservation efforts to protect natural systems that can help mitigate the effects of global warming.

Similar threads

  • Sticky
  • Earth Sciences
Replies
1
Views
14K
Replies
2
Views
6K
  • Earth Sciences
Replies
13
Views
5K
  • Earth Sciences
Replies
4
Views
6K
  • Earth Sciences
Replies
2
Views
17K
  • Earth Sciences
Replies
10
Views
4K
  • Earth Sciences
Replies
17
Views
6K
Replies
89
Views
34K
  • General Discussion
Replies
17
Views
9K
Replies
11
Views
2K
Back
Top