Climate Journal Publishes Referees' Report In Response To "Witch-Hunt" Claims 330
Sockatume (732728) writes "The resignation of Prof. Lennart Bengtsson from an anti-global-warming think tank has triggered widespread outrage in the British tabloids, with the University of Bristol Professor blaming his departure on a 'witch-hunt' environment amongst climate scientists and the rejection of one of his papers. The UK's Times quotes a passage from the reviewer comments in support of this, in which it is claimed that the paper was rejected for being 'unhelpful to their cause.' In response, that journal's publisher has taken the rare step of publishing the referees' report in full. The report describes Bengtsson's paper as a 'simplistic comparison of ranges from AR4, AR5, and Otto et al [data sets], combined with the statement they they are inconsistent,' 'where no consistency was to be expected in the first place' and therefore is not publishable research. The referee adds a number of possible areas of discussion which would allow Bengtsson to make the same data into a publishable paper, but warns that publishing it in its current state 'opens the door for oversimplified claims of errors and worse from the climate sceptics media.'"
Re:Witch-Hunt. Right. (Score:5, Informative)
Someone dug up some old comments by the Professor himself expressing his anger that you couldn't just ship all the climate scientists off to East Berlin. I guess he has a great sense of irony.
It's a shame that the GDR disappeared otherwise would have been able to offer one-way tickets there for these socialists. Now there's unfortunately not many orthodox countries left soon and I surely do not imagine our romantic green Communists want a one-way ticket to North Korea. But if interested I'd gladly contribute to the trip as long as it is for a one way ticket. Perhaps you could arrange a Gallup study, since it can not be ruled out that I underestimated rush to the exit5
http://rabett.blogspot.com.au/... [blogspot.com.au]
Re:The Science is settled! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Science is settled! (Score:5, Informative)
"Summarising, the simplistic comparison of ranges from AR4, AR5, and Otto et al, combined with the statement they they are inconsistent is less then helpful, actually it is harmful as it opens the door for oversimplified claims of "errors" and worse from the climate sceptics media side.
One cannot and should not simply interpret the IPCCs ranges for AR4 or 5 as confidence intervals or pdfs and hence they are not directly comparable to observation based intervals (as e.g. in Otto et al).
In the same way that one cannot expect a nice fit between observational studies and the CMIP5 models.
A careful, constructive, and comprehensive analysis of what these ranges mean, and how they come to be different, and what underlying problems these comparisons bring would indeed be a valuable contribution to the debate.
I have rated the potential impact in the field as high, but I have to emphasise that this would be a strongly negative impact, as it does not clarify anything but puts up the (false) claim of some big inconsistency, where no consistency was to be expected in the first place.
And I can't see an honest attempt of constructive explanation in the manuscript.
Thus I would strongly advise rejecting the manuscript in its current form." - http://rabett.blogspot.co.uk/2... [blogspot.co.uk]
Re:The Science is settled! (Score:3, Informative)
The science is settled [npr.org]
He also said the Arctic would be ice-free by now.
Re:Witch-Hunt. Right. (Score:5, Informative)
Here it shows that the author's intention was to create a flawed study with flawed conclusion just to promote a political agenda. So you would think it was about science but it wasn't. Sorry that your hero got caught with his pants down.
Re:The Science is settled! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That's rich (Score:4, Informative)
"Self-introspection" as compared to introspecting other people?
So you don't like these headlines because, what, they're too mean about some of the idiots at the Guardian's competition?
Re:Consensus achieved (Score:5, Informative)
"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" [telegraph.co.uk]
Re:The Science is settled! (Score:2, Informative)
No. I was directly refuting "Nobody said the science is settled". It's not an example of anything other than that.
Re:Witch-Hunt. Right. (Score:5, Informative)
Surely you don't expect journalists of all people to have any inkling about rigorous peer review, quality of research, or any other attribute of publishing in a scientific discipline.
Re:Witch-Hunt. Right. (Score:5, Informative)
It was. The paper was crap, and further revelations put the author's crap paper in greater perspective. He's politically motivated, wasn't interested in a meaningful scientific critique, and has an ax to grind.
Re:The Science is settled! (Score:3, Informative)
Are scientists who TO THIS FUCKING DAY try to falisfy relativity labelled "deniers"?
For the most part, no, because they recognize that relativity already explains a large number of observations. If they succeed in finding a fault, then any theory that supersedes relativity would still have still have to reproduce those observations, and reproduce relativity in an appropriate limit.
There are a select few however that would (and in a case two have) gotten the label of relativity deniers because they reject various experiments already done. They are not out there running new experiments looking for detailed faults in the theory, but instead had a theory the proposed years ago and then come up with some superficial reason to reject any new observation that agrees with their theory.
Re: The Science is settled! (Score:0, Informative)
Overwhelming concensus? What overwhelming consensus?
Oh, you mean the thesis done by a pro-AGW masters student where an optional survey was held on an AGW website, that was deliberately misleading in its wording, and when the desired outcome of a consensus was not reached, fields of science most likely to believe in non-anthropogenic causes (such as meteorology and astronomy) were excluded until a consensus was reached, even though it included the opinion of many non scientists and ultimately only included the opinion of those who had a published paper on climate change (because as we all know publications are open to unpopular anti-AGW papers...LOL), and the thesis was reviewed by exactly one person, her pro-AGW professor, even though time and time again real surveys have shown that no such consensus exists and belief in majority AGW hovers around 50% at best?
That overwhelming consensus?
Re:The Science is settled! (Score:5, Informative)
If that's what you got then you need to read it again. First of all the methodology used was oversimplified. I don't know a lot about the ranges but my understanding is that by using one basic equation was too simplistic. Also the authors didn't describe why they used this approach. There may be plausible reasons to do so but they authors did not elaborate. Lastly the innovation was low meaning they've seen many papers on this before and this new one does not add anything new. Pointing out errors was not the problem; being the umpteenth one to do so but with a flawed approach is the problem.
Re:The Science is settled! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Science is settled! (Score:4, Informative)
The carbon in fossil fuels was removed from the atmosphere over millions of years. The ecosystem had time to adjust. In the cycle of ice ages we've had lately CO2 in the atmosphere would drop to 180 ppm at the height of the glaciations and rise to around 280 ppm during the interglacial periods. That 100 ppm rise took 10,000 years or more. The ecosystem had time to adjust. Since the start of the industrial revolution less than 300 years ago we've been burning fossil fuels that took millions of years to accumulate. In 1830 the CO2 level was still about 280 ppm. Now in 2014 it's around 400 ppm. That's an increase of 120 ppm in less than 200 years. If we took 10,000 years to raise the CO2 levels to 400 ppm it wouldn't be that much of a problem. It's the rate of change that is the majority of the problem.