Stumble it!If only I could get my paper published…
posted in Global Warming, Politics, Science by themaiden |… then global warming would go away. People would see it for the sham that it is. But… whoa is me!… the man establishment global conspiracy mainstreams scientists are biased against my groundbreaking work, and they won’t publish it. They just won’t. I submit and I submit and I submit and they just won’t publish. And there are a lot more real scientists just like me. We’ve been blacklisted by the journals. We’ve been censored and suppressed. It’s not fair. Meanwhile the climate alarmists just keep on churning out bad science. And I can prove it!
A year ago, Richard Black invited sceptics to put their cards on the table, and send… documentation or other firm evidence of bias. As he explains:
I anticipated drowning in a torrent of accusations of research grants turned down, membership of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) denied, scientific papers refused by journals, job applications refused, and invitations to speak at conferences drying up.
I anticipated having to spend days, weeks, months even, sifting the wheat from the chaff, going backwards and forwards between journal editors, heads of department, conference organisers, funding bodies and the original plaintiffs.
I envisaged major headaches materialising as I tried to sort out the chains of events, attempting to decipher whether claims had any validity, or were just part of the normal rough and tumble of a scientist’s life - especially in the context of scientific publishing, where the top journals only publish about 10% of the papers submitted to them.
Instead, “Four people said they had had problems getting research published, and three sent me the papers in question.” Three? Hmmm…
Now, if I’d offered this challenge I honestly couldn’t take the results very seriously. I don’t have the readership to reasonably expect a large enough exposure to get a fair chance at response. But Black writes for BBC News. It is hard to get better exposure than that without being, say, President of the United States or a barely legal starlet whose nips slip.
Of the three papers black received, one was incomplete, one did argue bias but “said the bias was against scientists “supporting man-made climate change”", but the third was possibly legit but impossible to investigate because the submitter had not kept the rejection letters. Black also notes that “a fifth correspondent said magazines had turned down letters for publication…”
Wow… hardly overwhelming evidence for bias.
Black, though, kept looking and runs through several well-know purported cases of bias, concluding “The sum total of evidence obtained through this open invitation, then, is one first-hand claim of bias in scientific journals, not backed up by documentary evidence; and three second-hand claims, two well-known and one that the scientist in question does not consider evidence of anti-sceptic feeling.”
In another article, Black set out to find out what the skeptics actually believe, so in April 2006 he sent a questionaire to “a group of 61 self-styled “accredited experts in climate and related scientific disciplines” wrote an open letter to Canada’s newly elected prime minister, Stephen Harper…” These are the infamous 61 signatories profiled at DeSmogBlog. Black got 14 responses. I’ve converted the results into a list. The text is all direct quotation from Black article. Only the format is different.
- Ten out of the 14 agreed that the Earth’s surface temperature had risen over the last 50 years; three said it had not, with one equivocal response.
- Nine agreed that atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide had risen over the last century, with two saying decidedly that levels had not risen.
- Eight said that human factors were principally driving the rise.
- Twelve of the fourteen agreed that in principle, rising greenhouse gas concentrations should increase temperatures.
- But eight cited the Sun as the principal factor behind the observed temperature increase.
- And nine said the “urban heat island” effect - where progressive urbanisation around weather stations has increased the amount of heat generated locally - had affected the record of historical temperatures.
- Eleven believed rising greenhouse gas concentrations would not result in “dangerous” climate change, and 12 said it would be unwise for the global community to restrain production of carbon dioxide and the other relevant gases, with several suggesting that such restraint would bring economic disruption.
- One of my more gracious respondents, Arthur Rorsch, suggested that rising CO2 might help “green” the world, with increases in food supply.
- There was general disdain for the Kyoto Protocol, with respondents split roughly equally between saying it was the wrong approach to an important issue, and a meaningless exercise because there was no point in trying to curb emissions.
- There was general agreement, too, that computer models which try to project the climate of the future are unreliable. Several respondents said the climate system was inherently unpredictable and therefore impossible to model in a computer.
- The other questions produced sets of responses which I could not boil down into anything approaching a consensus view.
Now let’s think about this.
Most of Black’s skeptics agree that Earth’s temperature is rising (1), that greenhouse gases are rising (2) and that rising greenhouse gas concentrations should push temperatures up (4).
Now eight– just over half– of the skeptics think that humans are responsible for the increase in greenhouse gases. Couple that with (3) “that in principle, rising greenhouse gas concentrations should increase temperatures” and it looks a lot like a fair share of the skeptics have to agree that humans are causing temperatures to rise.
Eight– again, just over half– blame the sun, which I’ve addressed in a number of places already, notably in Solar activity, peanuts, and pretty pictures.
Nine cite the asinine “urban heat island effect”. Yes, it seems to be generally accepted that there is a ‘heat island’ effect of sorts. Scientists have known about it for a long time and compensate for it. It is not a problem. Skeptics using this argument don’t often mention that “in 42% of cases, the cities were getting cooler relative to their surroundings rather than warmer. One reason is that urban areas are heterogeneous, and weather stations are often sited in “cool islands” - parks, for example - within urban areas“, which makes it a bit difficult to argue that the evidence is radically biased toward higher temperatures. To make things more complicated, though, some wonder if the effect exists at all, or if maybe it is overstated, “Peterson (2003) indicates that the effects of the urban heat island may have been overstated, finding that “Contrary to generally accepted wisdom, no statistically significant impact of urbanization could be found in annual temperatures.” This was done by using satellite-based night-light detection of urban areas, and more thorough homogenisation of the time series (with corrections, for example, for the tendency of surrounding rural stations to be slightly higher, and thus cooler, than urban areas).”
Eleven think that climate change won’t be dangerous, with one thinking that it will actually be beneficial. This topic I’ve already covered, notably in Gambling with our lives but also in Bob Carter’s Mythology: Dangerous Temperatures?
Most of the skeptics agree to a kind of fatalism about emissions (8).
Most distrust computer modeling– probably the weakest link, I admit. Still, I disagree that they are useless– Bob Carter’s Mythology: Digital Fortune Telling.
And, finally, the 14 respondents don’t agree on other issues.
So, rather than ramble on, what do you make of these two reports? Post your comments.
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