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ProfMandia at 20:55 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
I think that this is a very good synopsis of the process. Another very good post related to this topic is by Dr. Steve Easterbrook. He allowed me to repost his comments on my blog: How Scientists Think. FYI: Nature only published 6.8% of the submissions in 2009. See the stats for the previous 22 years. Science averages less than 8%. Scott A. Mandia, Professor of Physical Sciences Selden, NY Global Warming: Man or Myth? My Global Warming Blog Twitter: AGW_Prof "Global Warming Fact of the Day" Facebook Group -
chris at 20:45 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Argus at 20:22 PM on 16 June, 2010 Argus, which specific papers (""I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report,") are being referred to here? I don't think it's unacceptable to choose to leave out obviously flawed work from summaries of a scientific field. That happens all the time (every time someone writes a review). So we'd really need to know which particular papers are being referred to here. Of course the language of the email is a little spicy, but's that's emails for you... As for the second point, I think this refers to the Baliunas Soon paper that was "shepherded through" the Climate science review process by a sub-editor. Is that correct? if so again I don't think Jones point is particularly problematic. One of the roles of scientists (which is inherent in the editorial and peer-review processes) is to maintain standards of scientific integrity. If an editorial process is being abused (as was clearly the case in the Climate Research instance) then it's appropriate for scientists to highlight this robustly and to take steps to address the problem. You might remember that most of the editorial board resigned over this bit of chicanery and the Publisher took the rare step of issuing a statement that the paper shouldn't have been published in the form it was. We're taking about one specific and dismal example of an abuse of the peer-review system. It was met with a suitably robust response. I don't find that problematic at all. As you say there is some elements of "infection" within climate science. A very small number of individuals attempt to sneak flawed work into the scientific literature. This happens in all fields in which science has implications that abut the political sphere (see e.g. efforts to publish "Intelligent Design" papers in the scientific literature). These instances should be highlighted for what they are (ultimately these are attempts to cheat Joe Public of his democratic right to the information required to make informed decisions), and opposed robustly by those that have the knowledge to recognise efforts to subvert acceptable scientific practice. -
Berényi Péter at 20:25 PM on 16 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
#147 kdkd at 09:15 AM on 16 June, 2010 Deductive reasoning is the preserve of mathematics, science is the home of induction Incorrect. Induction, along with several other techniques is a heuristic method. It may be useful for finding your path through the bush of alleged facts and to establish some order, but the true test of a scientific theory always relies on deduction. And that's the part where things start to get genuinely scientific. From a small set of basic principles a wealth of sharp propositions can be derived by rigorous deductive reasoning. At the same time results of experiments or observations are translated to the same language of binary logic. If some member of the former set is negated by any member of the latter one, then either there was a problem with the experiment/measurement/observation (the first thing to do is to go back and check it) or some of the premises forming the core of the theory should be abandoned (along with all the propositions that can not be derived without it). The very process of translating measurement results to propositions having the logical form comparable to those derived from theory involves deduction, relying on a smaller set of principles considered firmer than the ones to be tested. See the example above about translating radiance temperatures in narrow infrared bands to atmospheric temperatures using sophisticated models. The whole procedure described above is valid only if no deductive chain contains fuzzy steps. #148 Stephen Baines at 10:15 AM on 16 June, 2010 This argument is semantic red herring. "Robust" existed as a word well before software engineering and is not always used in the way you state. For instance [etc., etc.] Of course it existed. But its specific usage as a terminus technicus comes from informatics. You may notice that without it propositions like "this theory is robust" (i.e. "healthy", "full of strength") do not even make sense. These qualities belong to living organisms and no theory has a biological nature. The usage of the term in this context is clearly metaphoric and if in this case you mix up its specific meaning with the vernacular one, you end up with an untestable poetic proposition whose truth value is a matter of taste. On the other hand the robustness of a piece of software/hardware is testable indeed in the sense its overall performance should be preserved even if parts of it would fail. A very desirable property for software and an undesirable one for scientific theories. The more rigid and fragile a theory is the better, provided of course it happens not to be broken. I show you an example of this kind of robust reasoning, from this fine blog. Robust warming of the global upper ocean The figure is from a peer reviewed paper of the same title (Lyman at al. 2010, Nature).
You may notice the error bars given for different curves by different teams do not overlap. That means these OHC history reconstructions are inconsistent with each other. Individual curves with error bars can be easily translated into propositions (rather long, complicated and boring ones) and if you join these individual propositions by the logical operation of conjunction, the resulting (even longer) proposition is false. As from a false proposition anything follows, of course the implicit proposition of the authors "if these OHC history reconstructions are correct, then OHC trend for the last sixteen years is +0.64 W/m2 on average over the surface of the Earth" is a true one.
It does not make the part after the "then" true. It does not prove its falsehood either. Its truth value is simply independent of what those teams have done, it is indeterminate.
In cases like this the proper scientific method is not to look for robustness in the data and extract it on whatever cost, but to send the individual teams back to their respective curves, error bars included and tell them find the flaw. The error bars indicate that no more than one of the reconstructions is correct, possibly none. The average value of many incorrect numbers is an incorrect one. Further steps like extracting a common trend can only be taken if correct and bogus curves are told apart.
When I was a kid, at high school, robust babbling like this was not tolerated. Sit down, please, F.
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Argus at 20:22 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
"Wrong", says Chemware (#12) about my reflection on peer reviews (#8), whereas the moderator of this site seems to partly agree with me: ''This is a fair comment. It can be difficult to publish something that goes against the grain ...''. I think climate science may have problems that other sciences do not have - everybody likes a new possible cure for cancer or a new dwarf planet, but the atmosphere within climate research seems infected. Here is a quote from The Washington Post: In one e-mail, the center's director, Phil Jones, writes Pennsylvania State University's Michael E. Mann and questions whether the work of academics that question the link between human activities and global warming deserve to make it into the prestigious IPCC report, which represents the global consensus view on climate science. "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report," Jones writes. "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" In another, Jones and Mann discuss how they can pressure an academic journal not to accept the work of climate skeptics with whom they disagree. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal," Mann writes. "I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor," Jones replies.link to source (bolds by me) -
snapple at 20:11 PM on 16 June 2010Request for mainstream articles on climate
When it comes to reporting on the vast underhanded "plots" of scientists, the 1953 Pravda is not so different than the modern tabloid version. Actually, Pravda is not so different from much of our own media and some politicians. That is what is so disturbing. After the CRU emails were published, the tabloid Pravda (30-11-2009) wrote an article titled "'Climategate' Exposes the Global Warming Hoax": Climategate’ is not an ordinary case of falsifying data by a few rogue scientists. The fraudulent theory of Global Warming has provided the basis for an international political movement which has the stated goal of completely restructuring the entire global economy based on that fraudulent theory. ‘Global Warming’ is a con game perpetrated by dishonest scientists and the government and corporate leaders who provide the corrupt scientists with opportunities for advancement. If we fail to stop the further politicization and institutionalization of the fraudulent theory of Global Warming, we will most certainly experience a future of ‘science’ controlled by government decree and of a world government that facilitates the operations of corporate industries while imposing severe restrictions and arbitrary taxes on the general public. That is a future which would fully justify resistance and rebellion among the international populations who will be the victims of this massive global fraud. If we fail to stop this fraudulent enterprise by legal means, we will certainly have a future of global oppression based on fraud, with its attendant institutionalized crimes, and whatever popular backlash might eventually result. -
John Cook at 19:57 PM on 16 June 2010Andrew Bolt distorts again
UPDATE: I just received this email from Mike Hulme who granted permission to reproduce his reply to John B's comments:John B - The spirit of the paper was quite critical of the IPCC, this was not merely a neutral review
Hulme – the paper is a review of 20 plus years of published literature which has examined the IPCC, its functions, governance, processes and impacts. Whether it is neutral, critical, or appreciative is a matter of reader’s judgement.John B - Second, while Hulme may not have said "the ‘IPCC misleads’ anyone" he did write that "Claims such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous." So the IPCC has not misled but is disingenuous?
Hulme - I did not say or imply the IPCC has misled or was disingenuous. It is claims such as the caricatured one I offer which are disingenuous. It fact, the quoted comment by Kevin Rudd seems a good example of the precise sort of thing I was caricaturing. The precise IPCC AR4 statements ‘the warming of the [climate] system is unequivocal’ and “[most of the observed] increase in global average temperatures since the mid 20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations” were not written and approved by 4000 scientists; they were written by small teams of experts, then reviewed by other experts and then approved by governments. Your commentators may call this pedantic, but I think it is important to point out how knowledge is assessed by experts and how headline statements are crafted. By the way, I think this is an entirely credible process, but people should not claim that it is more than it is.John B - Third, the point "That particular consensus judgement, as are many others in the IPCC reports, is reached by only a few dozen experts in the specific field of detection and attribution studies" is false. THAT is the main issue at hand. Hulme writes "The IPCC consensus does not mean – clearly cannot possibly mean – that every scientist involved in the IPCC process agrees with every single statement in the IPCC!" Well obviously, but nobody suggested that was the case (hello strawman).
Hulme – but what, other than this – i.e., 4000 scientists concluded these specific statements, could Kevin Rudd’s claim imply?JB - But to suggest that only a few dozen out of the many thousands of scientists that worked on AR4 agreed with the key take home message, that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate, or were qualified to do so is silly. (also note Hulme's argument has shifted (we have seen this tactic before too); initially it was that only a few dozen people were qualified to make that inference, but now he is saying not every author agreed).
Hulme – statements such as “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid 20th century is very likely [greater than 90% likelihood based on expert judgement] due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations” is a very specific piece of knowledge crafting which I – and most other experts engaged by the IPCC - are not qualified to engage in at first hand. Or take another one – ‘it is very unlikely [less than 10% likelihood based on expert judgement] that the MOC [Meridional Overturning Circulation] will undergo a large abrupt transition during the 21st century’. Most authors engaged by the IPCC are not qualified to participate in such specific knowledge crafting. The ambiguity in my original article emerges from the caricatured example of a ‘claim’ which I suggest is disingenuous [OED: ‘not straightforward or candid’], namely when I wrote ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’. This is too general a claim for the specific point I was seeking to make about expert judgement and consensus-making. I should therefore instead have written in the original article, ‘Claims such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists agree that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid 20th century is very likely [greater than 90% likelihood based on expert judgement] due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations’ are disingenuous”. This would have served my point much better – and in fact Kevin Rudd has made it for me And for the record .. I believe that the warming of the climate system is unequivocal and that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid 20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrationsModerator Response: As usual, the readers / commenters at Skeptical Science are uplifting the quality of this conversation that is surprisingly subtle and multifaceted. Their responses and clarifications outdo anything I can muster, e.g., see David Horton at 07:50 AM on 17 June, 2010, NewYorkJ at 04:09 AM on 17 June, 2010, canbanjo at 02:11 AM on 17 June, 2010, and Stephen Baines at 08:30 AM on 17 June, 2010 below. -
Ned at 19:51 PM on 16 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Lon, please. Everybody commenting in this thread understands first-year calculus. Can you address the substantive issue here? The conclusion from your post at WUWT was, in your own words, " the rise in CO2 is a result of the temperature anomaly". The correct interpretation of your model would have been "changes to the rate of increase in CO2 are moderately correlated with temperature" (r2 = 0.36). You write Show me that your model fits the data as well as mine I'm not proposing any model. I'm talking about the actual meaning of your own model, the one you presented at WUWT. If you still truly don't understand the errors in your conclusions, there are lots of people here or at WUWT who can help explain this. If you do get the point now, it would be much better for everybody if you'd just drop the bluster about "preaching heresy" and say so. Since you say that you're planning a followup post at WUWT, here are some points to consider: (1) The actual rate of increase in the atmospheric CO2 concentration isn't linear; it's close to exponential (but actually a bit steeper than exponential). (2) That overall increase is coming from anthropogenic sources, not the ocean. Emissions have been well quantified; about half of the annual anthropogenic emissions accumulate in the atmosphere while the other half is taken up by various sinks in the ocean and the terrestrial carbon system. (3) CO2 is on net moving from the atmosphere to the ocean, not the reverse (see the references to Takahashi 2009 and Sabine 2004 at the top of this thread). (4) What your model actually illustrates -- the existence of a carbon-cycle feedback whereby CO2 warms the climate, and that warming results in the addition of more CO2, further amplifying the warming -- has been known to scientists for at least three decades, and is discussed in the IPCC reports. This is not news. -
snapple at 19:44 PM on 16 June 2010Request for mainstream articles on climate
Pravda is mainstream. It is now a tabloid with girlie pictures and science articles. There is another Pravda that gives the communist line. This mainstream Pravda (11-1-09) has announced that the earth is cooling and is on the verge of another ice age: http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/106922-0/ The earth is now on the brink of entering another Ice Age, according to a large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of climate science.... Sometimes the Russian media say the crafty climate scientists "hid" cooling. Sometimes the Russian media says the crafty climate scientists concealed that it is warming only a little. And anyway, warming will be a good thing because CO2 is plant food. You can hear the same claim in Congress or you can read it in the tabloid Pravda. Pick your poison. -
skywatcher at 19:39 PM on 16 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
johnd - the phrase "we see more heat being trapped by carbon dioxide", I think refers specifically to the fact that we can see in the spectrum of outgoing longwave radiation the spectral signature of CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) changing in a manner that reflects an increase of those specific gases. Hence, we can literally "see" the heat being trapped by these gases. CO2 is more than *just* a driver, it traps a lot of that heat (in addition to driving water vapour). There are good posts on it here, including I think two of scaddenp's refs. And the point of the environmental data (glaciers, cores etc) is to show not only the direction of the clange, but frequently that it is an unusual change in the context of millennia of natural change. They don't alone show that it's humans, but other observations (stratospheric cooling, spectral signatures of OLR and downwelling LR, radiative physics, night-time warming etc show that it's our greenhouse gases and not a natural cause. And certainly not a coincidental recent ocean current change (yes that might add some energy, but did it cross your mind that it might not be very much energy?). #136 BP: So you are now rejecting Spencer (because his data are inadequate), yet now expecting us to believe your hypothesis (which is still basically Spencer's) with no supporting evidence! That's pretty remarkably bold. You cannot 'prove' theoretically an empirical effect without providing some detailed real-world data to show that this theoretical effect is real. I doubt it has even crossed your mind that you might be wrong? even given the robust independent supporting evidence very strongly indicating that you and Spencer are wrong? I'm all for the consideration of alternative evidence, but here there is no alternative evidence to the multiple observations that the world is warming (I agree with johnd on that point at least). -
MrJon at 19:35 PM on 16 June 2010Andrew Bolt distorts again
This seems to be a rather silly argument that mostly demonstrates that the denialators don't understand the meaning of the word consensus. It always has and always will mean a 'majority opinion' - and given the nature of science and scientists reaching any kind of consensus is quite an achievement and is thus something that always needs to be considered seriously.Moderator Response: great point. I hadn't bothered to look up "consensus" but here is it: "Consensus is defined in English as, firstly - general agreement and, secondly - group solidarity of belief or sentiment. It has its origin in a Latin word meaning literally to feel together." Also, you are so right about academics/scientists ever coming to consensus on ANYTHING! Consensus in a faculty meeting on the most trivial issue? Forget about it! (JB) -
chris at 19:29 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
CoalGeologist at 16:43 PM on 16 June, 2010 "While the author concedes that peer-review is not perfect, I feel it's important to acknowledge a bit more candidly that the system has the potential to fail, both by generating "false positives" (approving non-deserving papers for publication) as well as "false negatives" (rejecting valid papers for unfair or invalid reasons)." That's an interesting one CoalGeologist: My feeling is that false positives usually don't have a particularily deleterious effect, although in rare cases (outright fraud that leads to a huge amount of wasted time, and badly done, but over-publicised research like the one underlying the MMR jab-autism scare in the UK) they clearly can. The smattering of false positives that dribble into climate-related journals or genetics/evolution journals (to pursue "intelligent design" politcs) and so on that serve political agendas are annoying, but only becasue they tend to promote a huge amount of hot air in non-science outlets like the blogosphere. They don't really affect the scientific process. It's very difficult to pick up outright fraud, but I do think some efforts could be made to intercept the occasional paper that clearly shouldn't have been published and is obviously (even if editors and reviewers don't notice) only submitted to promote non-scientific agenda positions (we could name some of these papers specifically!). I'm not sure that "false negatives" really exist. Of course papers are continuously being rejected from journals, in some cases unfairly, but that's not the end of the road. One simply takes the reviewers comments on board if there's anything useful in them, and submits the paper elsewhere. A paper that is sound will always be publishable somewhere. In fact with the modern emphasis on metrics (impact factors, citation counts etc.) there is a tendency for papers to go down a route which might involve something like: (i) hopeful submission to Nature (quick rejection) (ii) let's try Science (quick rejection) (iii) perhaps we can get it into PNAS (nope) (iv) O.K. we'll send it to the normal "house journal" of our field where it probably should have been submitted in the first place. There is certainly a smattering of very good papers that are undesrvedly rejected from good journals and end up in run of the mill journals. However if these papers are truly important then they will be noticed and their impact will be recognised. -
snapple at 19:24 PM on 16 June 2010Request for mainstream articles on climate
Russian scientist Andrei Kapitsa claims that warming causes CO2, not that CO2 causes warming. http://www.hinduonnet.com/2008/07/10/stories/2008071055521000.htm Kapitsa says climate scientists put the cart before the horse. Isn’t he mistaking a feedback for the main event? He is from a prominent science family in Russia. Read about his father Pyotr and brother Sergei on Wikipedia for a start. -
snapple at 19:14 PM on 16 June 2010Request for mainstream articles on climate
Here is an article by an old Russian scientist Andrei Kapitsa. He gives the denialist line in Russia and his views are promoted by Russian writers in foreign newspapers--such as India. Senator Inhofe cites Andrei Kapitsa. His father Pytor was very famous. His brother Sergei was a TV science personality. http://www.hinduonnet.com/2008/07/10/stories/2008071055521000.htm Here is another Inhofe adviser, Andrei Illarionov. He is with the Cato Institute and the Institute for Economic Analysis in Russia. He used to have a much better job, adviser to Putin, but supposedly had a falling out because he is such a free market, democracy loving, libertarian fellow. He has been a powerful opponent of the Kyoto Protocol. He also worked for Chernomyrdin, who was a boss of the oil and gas monopolies. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/12/11/a-few-notes-on-climate-change/ If you read Kapitsa and Illarionov, you will see all the denialist themes. -
chris at 19:05 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
A couple of people have pointed out that peer review doesn't stop once a paper is published. I would go further and say that peer review starts long before most papers are submitted, and that there is an additional crucial element to publishing scientific papers: (i) The work submitted in a manuscript doesn't flow linearly from bench to paper. In pretty much all cases the work has undergone major elements of peer review before it is submitted to a journal. The work will have likely gone through the hierarchy of peer-review involving presentation at lab meetings, presentation at departmental or faculty seminer series, presentation in poster or platform form at scientific meetings and perhaps also presented to a grant awarding committee. All of these constitute tests of the inherent validity of the work prior to submission, and contribute to polishing of the presentation, identifying errors, inconsistencies or alternative interpretations that might lead to additional experiments and so on, before a manuscript is submitted. So in general most serious scientific work is submitted with the expectation that it will be accepted (even if it may have to undergo revisions acording to referees and editors critiques). (ii) A fundamental element of science and scientific publishing relates to the basic integrity of the scientist and this consitutes a major element of quality control. Basically scientists want to find out stuff and have strong desire to get to the truth (the "truth" often being a rather proximal "truth" that relates to a particular sub-element of a scientific field). When I referee a paper I do this with the expectation that the authors have made a genuine attempt to do careful experiments and to interpret their data faithfully. I might not agree with their methodologies and interpretations, but I never consider that the authors are trying to sneak a paper into press under false pretences [we know from examples of major scientific frauds that this does happen and the (front-line referee-based) peer-review process isn't very good at picking this up]. The latter is interesting, since it's clear that in climate-related science and other areas of political contentiousness (e.g. intelligent design) people do try (and can suceed) to sneak bad science into the scientific literature. -
tobyjoyce at 18:54 PM on 16 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
@Passing Wind, Its seems you take Monckton at face value - a "public educator" who slips into error occasionally. Certainly, Al Gore is such a person. I think Gore tries to make his presentations based on the best of the available and most recent science. I know he has been accused and found wanting, but his intentions are honourable, and there is solid opinion that his "mistakes" are not mistakes at all. Monckton stands accused of being a dishonourable public educator in that he twists the evidence (even contrary evidence) to suit his point. Monckton makes very slick sales presentations, and he is very good at it. He must rehearse a great deal to attain the fluency he achieves. Here is a case in point. If Abraham was able to check Monckton's presentation against the recent science, then why wasn't Monckton? Keigwin, if he was aksed, would surely have pointed him to more recent studies which modified his 1996 conclusions. At best, Monckton is sloppy and dishonest by grabbing at the first paper which supports his point, without evaluating the range of available evidence and consulting the relevant scientists. Monckton's ignorance of the science is hidden behind the exterior flash of his presenting skills. -
MattJ at 18:53 PM on 16 June 2010Andrew Bolt distorts again
Rapid correction of such distortion is not good enough: we need to create a powerful disincentive against dissemination of such disinformation, powerful enough to give the media reason to hesitate to spread it. As things are now, they have the opposite: powerful incentive to prostitute themselves to the purveyors of disinformation. As to how to create this disincentive, well, that is the hard part! All my ideas are still very undeveloped, such as bombarding the web-sites of offending media outlets with emails/posts with well-informed protest every time they spread the disinformation. But certainly any such well-informed protest will find articles like this Skeptical Science article very helpful. -
Stephen Baines at 18:32 PM on 16 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Lon, there's no need to repeatedly tell people to review their calculus. What you've done just isn't that complex. But it isn't that transparent either, at least the final form of the derivative isn't. You should be trying to help us understand, rather than making arrogant comments. In any case, the existence of multiple terms doesn't really negate the concerns about your approach. Given that the last 30 years the increase in CO2 has been close to linear, you have still removed the vast majority of the variation in the original data by taking the first derivative (the linear term). I don't see how you can claim to explained the increase in CO2 via temp given that that most of the variation is removed. A statistical approach can only get you so far. Noone disputes that variations in temp should have some influence on the partitioning of CO2 between atmosphere ocean and land, and long term increases in CO2 should have an affect on temp. As others have said, that is one of the bases of the presumed CO2 induced climate feedbacks. Your analysis may have picked up the high frequency variation in CO2 driven by temp, but it ignored the trend that appears to be driving our current climate. Your anlaysis does nothing to negate the real facts in support of a human source for increasing CO2: humans have produced almost double the CO2 that has accumulated in the atmosphere, the changing stable isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2 indicates a plant source, O2 has not also risen (as would be expected if CO2 was coming from a warming ocean) and net flux of CO2 is into the ocean, as indicated by its acidification. -
Paul D at 18:21 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Probably the only 'peer' review that actually wins is the proof over time that the science works, or works in the context of it's use. The story of Harrisons clocks to solve the longitude problem is a classic example. Not exactly science, but shows that eventually the correct solution is found. Physics in particular is littered with ideas that were initially rejected then accepted. But the key point is that in Harrisons case the Naval Board accepted his solution as did the scientific community accept the various Physics ideas. What didn't happen: The Naval Board was not disbanded because they were to conservative. The Physics community didn't get their funding cut because they initially rejected an idea. What is clear is that if an idea in science works, then it will be around for hundreds of years, probably thousands. Not because of democracy or because of a political campaign in favour of one theory or another. Peer review in a journal is probably the starting point, but it isn't the final outcome. -
Doug Bostrom at 17:37 PM on 16 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Please review your freshman year calculus. I'm probably not the only one to think this remark obnoxious, same as "deal with it" except repeated on this thread so often already as to be boring. Cliches about physicists duly noted, arrogance is actually not a flattering posture. -
Lon Hocker at 17:26 PM on 16 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
All: You might be interested to know that I first observed this correlation by integrating the temperature data to model the CO2 value. It's still posted on my site 2BC3.com/warming. I offered no explanation then because I hadn't come up with one! You are right, Willis' explanation does not agree with mine. Stephen Baines: Taking the derivitive promotes the parabolic term to the slope. Please review your freshman year calculus. Think Tailor series: the derivative of X**n is n*X**(n-1). Doug: Thanks for pointing out the C12/C13 data. I'll likely try to make a clearer explanation in a later post in WUWT, but if you buy that there is an equilibrium amount of CO2 in the air related to the ocean temperature, then when the ocean heats AND folks add CO2 to the air, the ocean will release less by the amount that folks add. Not surprisingly the atmosphere will hold CO2 that was added. Thanks all for your comments. I know that I am preaching heresy, but sometimes the "established" science is wrong. -
Stephen Baines at 17:02 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
@CoalGeologist Good points. However, I wonder if, with the expansion of scientific ranks since the 60s, the ability of single strong voices to drive the terms of the debate throuh peer review has declined somewhat. It may be that the much larger number of scientists adds another kind of inertia to the system (more people to convince, slower dispersal of ideas), but it is a different one to that typified by the plate tectonics debate....maybe. -
chris1204 at 16:51 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Doug @ 17 Chris, you should probably stop now. What a good idea :-) -
CoalGeologist at 16:43 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
While the author concedes that peer-review is not perfect, I feel it's important to acknowledge a bit more candidly that the system has the potential to fail, both by generating "false positives" (approving non-deserving papers for publication) as well as "false negatives" (rejecting valid papers for unfair or invalid reasons). The number of false positives and false negatives is not nearly as high as Argus's eyes (all of which seem to be both myopic and jaundiced) might perceive (@#8). But whatever the failure rate might be, it's non-zero. It is these very flaws that are most troubling to many AGW skeptics. Most branches of science can provide their own examples of die-hards clinging to old ideas, while stubbornly resisting new ones. A famous example in geology is the debate over the theory of plate tectonics during the 1960's & 70s. The key point is that the peer review system does not need to be successful 100% of the time in order to yield valid results in the long run. Despite any flaws on a case-by-case basis, 'science' as a whole will eventually reject non-viable hypotheses and faulty data, in favor of better hypotheses and better quality data. It's simply Darwinian selection applied to scientific hypotheses. -
Doug Bostrom at 16:40 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Don't journal editors lose their jobs when their journals lose money? No. They lose their jobs if they harm the reputation of the journal, or fail to enlist reviewers or the like. By "journal" we're not speaking of Newsweek. Chris, you should probably stop now. -
Doug Bostrom at 16:31 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Chris, many journals in fact do attempt to keep the authors of papers under review unknown to reviewers but it's a tricky thing because of self-cites and the like. Lots of journals don't bother with the attempt. Meanwhile, your unfounded speculations about misconduct by reviewers do not remotely resemble a case that commercial considerations drive reviewer behavior. -
Stephen Baines at 16:26 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Argus, you presume that people cannot look past their "own ideas" to see the data for what it says. My experience says otherwise. Generally, the reviewers I have dealt with are more than fair. There have been notable exceptions, but the fact that they stick out in my mind is telling as well-- they are relatively few and far between. The social pressure on scientists to discharge their duty appropriately in peer review (or in editing) is actually quite strong. Nobody wants to be taken for a fool. And vindictivenes also has serious costs. I think Stephan acknowledged that the system isn't perfect, but in the end the proof is in the pudding and there is little doubt it has generated some very useful knowledge. It's certainly less biased than decision making based on the maximization of sales. -
Steve L at 16:19 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Rebuttals and commentaries that reveal flaws in earlier papers can drive up citation counts (rather than the original authors getting egg on their face, they can receive a benefit of including a flaw in their analysis). It seems that oftentimes authors intend to leave something incomplete, and assumption unchecked, anything that will give them a chance to re-analyze the same data with a little tweak to show that they're making progress. I hardly ever produce publishable work, so maybe I'm just ignorant, but it seems to me that peer review isn't all that good a spam filter. (Note: my opinion on this is probably coloured by the fact that my field isn't very competitive.) -
Chemware at 16:18 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
@Argus Wrong. Otherwise, Einstein's "Jewish Science" would never have got published, and we never would have heard of Relativity. In fact, I would not be reading your post, because it relies on technologies developed from quantum mechanics - one of the weirdest, new and most controversial areas of science ever developed. Even Einstein railed against it ("God does not play dice!"). However, if you do try to publish a paper about how the moon really is made of green cheese, then you had better have some pretty sound evidence why the previous 10,000 or so peer-reviewed papers all got it wrong. Same for climate change. -
chris1204 at 16:16 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
PS: Citation analysis is the latest fad - indeed, there are league tables for journals and the frequency with which their articles are cited. So 'no commercial interest?' Don't journal editors lose their jobs when their journals lose money? Mind you, peer review is probably as good a system as any. Just don't turn it into an article of faith -
chris1204 at 16:09 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
'The editor of the journal sends the paper to several other scientists. Their job is to independently, and usually anonymously, evaluate my work and to determine whether my experiment was sound and is worthy of being published.' Now you would think reading this that the peer reviewer does not know who the author of the article under review is. This is not so. Moreover: 'First of all, there is no commercial consideration involved in the publication decision—none, zero, zippo, zilch.' Really? Doesn't keeping a rival's work out of the public eye give you a competitive edge when you go hunting for grants? BTW, I didn't think the Ioannides paper was 'strange.' -
johnd at 16:06 PM on 16 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
scaddenp at 14:31 PM, Phil, nobody is suggesting the undersea current referred to has just appeared, only it being identified, and being mapped and quantified more recently. No doubt there are many more questions that they will be seeking answers to other than those I posed. It is at about 3500m and some of the water displaced from the northern basins returns to the Antarctic waters. Being warmer than the water that displaced it, there will be a transfer of energy. Strong export of Antarctic Bottom Water east of the Kerguelen plateau -
Glenn Tamblyn at 16:04 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Stephen Baines @5 Your comment about the 2 stage nature of peer review is very apt The first stage of peer review is like getting a pass to enter the exam room. Then you have to pass the exam which is the peer review of ALL your scientific colleagues. The entire readership of the journal. Therefore perhaps the best test of the merit of a piece of work is not simply its publication, but the extent to which has subsequently been cited by others, and not in rebuttal. Citations analysis might be a useful tool for examining the importance of published works for & against AGW. And the extent to which AGW Sceptical papers actually gain any traction. -
Argus at 15:58 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
To me, the peer review system, as described here, seems to be a system that assures that every new article that gets published, agrees with the present consensus. In other words, new or controversial ideas will have a hard time to get past a band of reviewers who prefer their own ideas.Moderator Response: This is a fair comment. It can be difficult to publish something that goes against the grain, challenges a bit shot or a major paradigm, etc. But it isn't impossible. (JB) -
OPatrick at 15:51 PM on 16 June 2010Andrew Bolt distorts again
I do wonder about Hulme's "Giving the impression that the IPCC consensus means everyone agrees with everyone else – as I think some well-meaning but uninformed commentaries do (or have a tendency to do)". Are there really commentators implying this, or is it just another example of what seems to be becoming a common 'there are those who exaggerate on both sides of the debate' type argument? I am not convinced that this argument is sound - for example I remember a year or two back when a Greenpeace quote about melting arctic ice was taken out of context to suggest some extreme alarmism. This reverberated around for some time even though it was patently and demonstrably a false accusation. Why would such a weak example need to be so prominently aired if such alarmism was so common? Can anyone find examples of this 'well-meaning but uninformed' commentary? I can't remember coming across any - most of the comments I read tend to be nuanced and if anything overstate the uncertainty. -
Tom Dayton at 15:45 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Stephen Baines's reply that the paper richard Hockey cited is "odd" is more polite than I would have replied. Perhaps we can avoid repeating the details of critiques that have been published elsewhere, such as the one by Goodman and Greenland in PLOS (2007). Stephan Lewandowsky certainly is well qualified to reply. (Hi, Stephan! I don't remember if we ever met, or if Frank's frequent mention of you is why I remember you. I left OU in the Fall of 1989.) -
Bern at 15:28 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Actually, I think analogising peer review to a spam filter is quite apt. My spam filter gets rid of a lot of dross (one account gets ~40+ messages per day advertising mail-order degrees, fake rolexes, anatomical enhancements, and assorted pharmaceuticals). I check the spam box regularly, looking for false positives. I've found, on average, about one every 6 or 7 months (a false-positive rate of about 1 in about 7000, compared to a negligible false-negative rate - I've flagged messages as spam three times in the 6-year life of that account). On the other hand, the "filtered" email also contains a lot of stuff that, while not actually spam, is still kind of pointless and a waste of my time (do I really need to see another bunch of lolcats?). So while the 'filter' gets rid of the obvious rubbish, it doesn't necessarily only admit pearls of electronic wisdom. Similarly for peer review. Nobody claims that it's perfect (as pointed out in the article, it gets the occasional 'false positive', and also lets some questionable stuff slip through), but it's by far the best system we have for large-scale review of scientific publications. Feel free to suggest a better system - I'm sure you'd receive appropriate accolades if you came up with one that did a better job! @richard.hockey at #3: that paper seems to be referring to problems in medical research, specifically looking at papers publishing results of research that has not been replicated. I'm not sure it's applicable to science in general, but I'm also not at all qualified to make that call! ;-) -
Stephen Baines at 15:23 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Richard.Hockey What an odd paper! It's assessment of what constitutes "True" vs "False" is based solely on an uncorrected statistical p-value of 0.05. Of course, p-values involving multiple comparisons are often corrected in a number of ways to make them more conservative, and effect sizes are often taken into account. The author doesn't seem to acknowledge this. Every test that yields a successful p-value is not set in stone and accepted as fact. Scientists are human so personal biases are involved too. The point of peer review is to average out such biases as much as possible. Also every positive result is taken as provisional by anyone with a brain, which generally includes most scientists. This paper ignores the second stage of peer review...the judgement by the larger peer community after publication. Scientists account for the amount of data and the skill of the researchers when making judgements about which papers to focus on. It helps if those papers echo others (which is a less probable event being a conjoined probability function). I wonder if the idea that specific findings meeting the p<0.05 standard are right or wrong is unique to applied/regulatory specific fields such as clinical medicine. -
Tom Dayton at 15:17 PM on 16 June 2010It's the sun
climatepatrol, the Earth's energy imbalance is still increasing, which it cannot be doing if the your hypothesis is correct. See the post Climate Time Lag. -
chris1204 at 15:13 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Phillipe @ 2 And often psychoactive drugs do not work exactly the way they're supposed to. Same for therapy. We don't pretend otherwise. But we don't howl down psychiatrists who admit this. But some (by no means all or even most) proponents of AGW do behave more like Scientologists than scientists. -
Doug Bostrom at 15:10 PM on 16 June 2010Andrew Bolt distorts again
Failing any evidence of the existence of draconian censorship, rank editorial misconduct or other significant corruption, obsessing about raw pro versus con personality counts in the pool of IPCC scientific resource talent is definitely a grade above the "Oregon Petition" but hardly seems worth much ink. The objective of the IPCC reports is a reasonable synthesis of the best published thinking on climate and anthropogenic influences on climate, not to produce an opinion poll based on what participants in the IPCC process itself think or believe. A critical review comment can and ideally should be reasonably elaborated, hefty enough to make a usefully airtight argument in its own right but at the end of the day it's not a form of publication. Short of reviews being peer-reviewed themselves, they're (again, ideally) a brand of highly informed opinion. So perhaps we should forget about the existence or nonexistence of dissenting opinions expressed by reviewers, IPCC section authors and editors and instead stick with the relative weight of available instances of substantiated dissent. That is to say, was any published research significantly falsifying the theoretical and observational underpinnings of the apparent effect we're having on climate left out of the IPCC reports? If not, where's the problem? -
Bern at 15:03 PM on 16 June 2010Andrew Bolt distorts again
To be honest, I rarely read the opinion pieces in The Australian, or any other Murdoch-owned paper, these days. I kind of know what they're going to say as soon as I read the title or the opening paragraph to find out what the subject is. It is curious, though, that Rupert Murdoch seems to have 'coincidentally' employed so many editors and commentators who just happen to be 'skeptical' about AGW. I guess, though, that they're just pandering to their specific audiences for those outlets. Mr Murdoch himself allegedly has a pro-AGW opinion - "Climate Change poses clear, catastrophic threats". That same article states that Fox & other parts of News Corp are going green(er), using renewables & offsetting emissions. It seems disingenuous (there's that word again!), though, to claim to be 'doing your bit' by offsetting your personal emissions while repeating some of the most blatant 'denialist' distortions to hundreds of millions of others. -
climatepatrol at 14:57 PM on 16 June 2010It's the sun
Dear scientists I am not a scientist, just into financial analysis and statistics with a strong intrest into how the sceptical science progress works with regard to AGW. I would like to challenge you with the following hypothesis with regard to the amplitude of solar forcing in the current climate system. Estimations of climate sensitivity based on top-of-atmosphere radiation imbalance, (Atmos. Chem. Phys., 10, 1923–1930, 2010 www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/1923/2010/ © Author(s) 2010) is the most recent study that I believe will solve much of the problem about the portion of solar forcing as stored in the present climate memory (soil, cryosphere, oceans, etc.). From the abstract: In this study, the TOA imbalance value of 0.85 W/m2 is used. Note that this imbalance value has large uncertainties. Based on this value, a positive climate feedback with a feedback coefficient ranging from −1.3 to −1.0 W/m2/K is found. The range of feedback coefficient is determined by climate system memory. The longer the memory, the stronger the positive feedback. The estimated time constant of the climate is large (70120 years) mainly owing to the deep ocean heat transport, implying that the system may be not in an equilibrium state under the external forcing during the industrial era. For the doubled-CO2 climate (or 3.7W/m2 forcing), the estimated global warming would be 3.1K if the current estimate Correspondence to: B. Lin (bing.lin@nasa.gov) of 0.85 W/m2 TOA net radiative heating could be confirmed. With accurate long-term measurements of TOA radiation, the analysis method suggested by this study provides a great potential in the estimations of middle-range climate sensitivity. From the results: Coupled ocean-atmosphere GCM simulations (Hansen et al., 2007) show that the climate response for an instantaneous 2×CO2 forcing reaches 60% of the equilibrium response after 100 years and 90% after 1000 years. The former system response corresponds to a time constant of 109 years, which is consistent with current estimates, while the latter indicates another even bigger time constant of the climate system of about 434 years. This longer time scale may be related to thermohaline circulations of the deep ocean, whose physical processes are beyond the scope of current study. It has been discussed that the mainly short-wave radiation originating from direct solar radiation heats the ocean more efficiently than long term radiation from the atmosphere. I don't want to enter into a debagte about that again. So let's assume, the memory for both solar and greenhouse forcing is about the same over time. Solar forcing at the beginning of the industrial area was about 1365.3 W/m2, it then increased steadily to reach about 1366.2 W/m2 in 1960. The 2000 forcing is about 1365.8, which makes it an average forcing of about 1366 W/m2 during those 40 years. This means a sustained natural forcing of about 0.7W/m2 above year 1880 affected the climate system between approx. 1950 - 2005. Therefore, even though we are now in a sustained solar minimum, the memory of the climate system resulting from about +0.7W/m2 solar irradiance is now 60 years old. If, according to AOGCMs, only 60% of the equilibrum response is reached after 100 years for CO2 doubling, I deduce at least the same (if not longer periods) are required for an equilibrium response to solar forcing. Assuming, it is the same, it is safe to assume that at least 40% of the current, estimated radiative imbalance of 0.85W/m2 since 1880 is due to solar forcing. Why? 0.28W response is given after 100 years and later, this leaves a minimum of 0.35W in the memory after 60 years, in 2010. This leaves 0.5W/m2 owing to human forcings, not 0.85W/m2 as "committed" atmospheric warming resulting from human activities for the future. Since, with its logarithmic effect, we reached roughly 1.6W/m2 forcing since the beginning of ia. Subtractingg 0.5W/m2, this leaves 1.1W/m2 to increase temperature of the atmosphere. So with model average beeing S=3°C for 2xCO2eq (3.7W/m2), temperature increase owing to human radiative forces should be roughly +0.9°C from surface to TOA. Even IF this is the case and can be measured soon, it will take 1000 years to reach 90% of the 3°C increase for 2xCO2, remember? -
richard.hockey at 14:52 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
A very naive view of peer review. But I guess its the best we have. Have a look at this recent article on PLOS. "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" by John P. A. Ioannidis. http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0020124 -
Philippe Chantreau at 14:37 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
Yes Chris. And often psychoactive drugs do not work exactly the way they're supposed to. Same for therapy. Does that mean we should buy into the propaganda piece against psychiatry that scientologists circulate? -
Doug Bostrom at 14:31 PM on 16 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Lon, you -don't- see a temperature trend in the data you use? Your own paper says "Figure 1 shows a plot of the Ocean Temperature Anomaly from the satellite data shows a general rising trend. Shown along with the temperature data is a simple linear model showing the temperature rise as a linear function of CO2 concentration. -
scaddenp at 14:31 PM on 16 June 2010How climate skeptics mislead
Johnd. The IPCC WG1 discusses all the anthropogenic gases. N2O is 0.16W/m whereas CO2 is 1.66W/m2. Methane is 0.48W/m2. I fully agree that action is required on ALL. The cold current discovery - no I dont see how this is moving energy from ocean to surface. Are you postulating that this current just appeared in recent years? We have good data to 700m and reasonable data to 2000m. To affect surface temperatures, you have to find the energy flow in there. As to TOA - well I guess the important point here is the nature of radiative balance in terms of it cause. -
Stephen Baines at 14:29 PM on 16 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Lon, you yourself (#52) said above that the linear trend is converted to a constant when you take the derivative of the time series in CO2. There is no slope, just a constant, so no trend over time. Everyone here is agreed that you can't explain away the increase in CO2 using temp if you remove the CO2 trend first. What gives? We're confused. Also, why not try your analysis without taking the derivative first? And how do you reconcile this analysis with change in isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2 and observed acidification of the ocean? -
chris1204 at 14:24 PM on 16 June 2010Peer review vs commercials and spam
A very starry eyed perspective on peer review. It often doesn't work that way (though that's the way it's supposed to work).Moderator Response: chriscanaris it actually usually does work precisely like that. If anything the article underplays how nasty and tough peer review is. Reviewers are ruthless and sciences is a highly competitive profession. (JB) -
Doug Bostrom at 14:23 PM on 16 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Come to think of it, I suppose Hocker's in disagreement with Eschenbach, so forget the Grand Unification. Meanwhile there's at least one person here who's going to disagree with Lon's hypothesis because OHC measurements are "wrong", suffering from splicing problems. Berenyi Peter, where are you? Lon, you say a warmer ocean ocean is releasing C02 as a result of an increase in temperature. I take it you disagree with isotope ratios as a means of identifying the provenance of C02? Or do you see the C02 in the ocean as being very poorly mixed? -
Philippe Chantreau at 14:22 PM on 16 June 2010Andrew Bolt distorts again
The Executive Summary might be a problem but something must be put together for policy makers, who usually lack scientific understanding in ways that seem "beyond redemption." Joe Barton has demonstrated, in congressional hearings, his cluelessness about continental drift. In the US, the vast majority of lawmakers and politicians are lawyers. Fred Thompson's inane comments on Mars are another case in point. Many other countries are plagued by the same problem. Putting things together so they understand is as difficult as doing it for the general public.
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