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:The Science is settled! (Score:4, Interesting)
You must be from the American Petroleum Institute...
Ah yes, nothing like an ad hominem attack to soundly refute a claim.
Tell us, what other scientific discipline has ever been "settled"? Look here [ucr.edu] for over a century of experiments on relativity. Are scientists who TO THIS FUCKING DAY try to falisfy relativity labelled "deniers"?
Re:Witch-Hunt. Right. (Score:3, Interesting)
There was an entire film starring Ben Stein that was making that claim about evolutionary biology. Ah my, how the pseudo-skeptic community just recycles previous pseudo-scientific babble.
The sad part is that major newspapers like the Daily Telegraph are carrying this guy's rejection, and of course, will never print the other side of the story; that the paper was just shyte.
Re:Witch-Hunt. Right. (Score:4, Interesting)
What do "motivations" have to do with the temperature? I thought this was supposed to be about "science".
Re:Witch-Hunt. Right. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think his implication is that they would be more comfortable in the employ of the Stasi, which had a pretty good grip on censorship and thought policing. Not that I agree with him, but I think you've misunderstood the statement.
Re:The Science is settled! (Score:0, Interesting)
Nobody said the science is settled.
You have got to be fucking kidding. If there was the ability to search through the text of all the slashdot comments, you would be overwhelmed with the AGW Crowd claiming, "The science is settled".
This rates right up there with "There are no American tanks in Baghdad" or "You can keep your plan".
You people are fucking pieces of work.
Re:Not sure which is worse... (Score:3, Interesting)
As an illustration, you could look at a paper that "proved" that white crows don't exist by taking a bunch of studies counting the black crow population in various areas, a few studies looking for white crows in various areas, and claim that the one study that found white crows in a black crow population was obviously flawed as it didn't line up with all the other studies. The studies were measuring different things in different places, and so shouldn't be expected to line up.
And whether the paper gets published or not, the methodology is flawed and white crows still exist.
Re:The Science is settled! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Science is settled! (Score:5, Interesting)
climate models do not predict observational reality
Models are projections, not predictions. They project what would happen under specific circumstances. They cannot predict when a volcano will erupt, but can help us understand how the climate will respond if one does. In reality, we cannot predict how much CO2 we will emit, or how much aerosols, or whether La Ninas will dominate the next decade. But we can project what will happen for each scenario. You shouldn't presuming that the model for one scenario should give the same results as a model for another, but investigating how and why they differ would be useful. That was the reviewers point.
Re:Consensus achieved (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, what are the odds that science could be wrong about a staggeringly complex physical system which cannot be studied in isolation?
Science is generally not amenable to binary right/wrong judgements. It's more about how well your science models the physical reality you are studying. If climate science contrarians want to discredit the current theory it's not enough to just take pot shots at it trying to tear it down. You come up with something that models the climate better than the current theory.