BBC Wants Evidence of Climate Science Bias

Amtiskaw writes "Discussion of climate change is rife with claims and counter-claims of partisanship and bias. Some of the most serious of which being that the scientific community is smothering more skeptical research in the field. Now the BBC is asking for evidence of this self-censorship. From the article: 'Journals are meant to publish the best research irrespective of whether it accepts that the sky is blue, or finds it could really be green ... So the accusations that all is not well at the heart of climate science, and that censorship is rife in organisations which award research grants, the editorial boards of journals and the committees of the IPCC, should be examined seriously. Readers are asked to submit evidence of bias, which the the BBC will then investigate.'" Actually, the phrase "rife with claims and counter-claims" is making more of the counter-claims then they are; the vast body of the evidence indicates climate change is real; Lomborg is the only serious counter-claimaint that I am aware of.

Comments

Re:Journalism?

[AndyTheSayer]

I work in a related field, and don't think that any counter-claims are being stifled. Although it is entirely possible they are escaping my notice, I've not heard of cover-ups or censorship happening. I think the truth simply is that there is a general consensus that the IPCC reports are a good summation of our global knowledge--attempting to give equal space for climate change skepticism is unrepresentative of the scientific community, and in my opinion it creates an illusion of controversy when there really isn't controversy.

Evidence Will Be Stifled.

[WED Fan]

Of course, evidence will be provided. Bias will be shown. And then the Office of Officious Stifling of Problematic Counter-Claims will whip into action, after tea, and promptly stifle the case. Unless, of course, no evidence of bias is presented.

Should no evidence be provided, the Bureau of Studious Demogoguery will fly into the thick of it, again, after tea, and immediately claim that lack of evidence is proof that the OOSPCC pre-stifled the evidence. At which point, the Ministry of Moderated Judgementalism will, uncharacteristically before tea, issue a statement that they will review, ponder, and further investigate the possiblity of a need to issue a further statement at some future date, as yet unspecified, as to whether or not to take the BSD's statement at face value, or have tea.

The key problem

[g2devi]

I think the key problem with climate change reporting is that it's portrayed as a "you're with us or with them" point of view and if you don't believe the popular dogma, you're one of "them". The problem is, there isn't only one question. Besides the "is it real?" and "are we responsible?" questions, there's also:

* If it is real, is it permanent and not just an earth/solar cycle?

* If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), is it due to greenhouse gases? (i.e. not deforestation, urban heat islands, the hole in the ozone, or other causes or even a combination of these causes)

* If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), what is the real impact if nothing is done? (Even if the cause is greenhouse gases, it may make more sense to grow the necessary number of forests to absorb the gas as our gas output increases or find some other way to solidify/trap greenhouse gases.)

* If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), can anything be done to reverse it? (If not, then while it's common sense to try to reduce the impact, it makes a lot of sense to either invest in technologies to either live with it or leave earth).

Unfortunately, the issue has become so politicized that these other more important questions are being drowned out or viewed as "avoiding the real issue" by the dogmatists.

Re:Journalism?

[Anonymous Coward]

If he's out of his area of expertise, what about the "vast majority of scientists" that supposedly are on board the global warming train? These geneticists, herpetologists, ichtheologists, nuclear physicists, petroleum engineers, etc. If they've actually weighed in at all, they're certainly out of their areas of expertise.

Re:Journalism?

[CorSci81]

One thing all climatologists do agree on is that global warming is FAR from proven and any clue as to cause and consequence is mere conjecture, the reliability of which is anybody's guess.

As someone who went to grad school in climatology, I have to say, in a word: No. Most of us have personally read the actual scientific studies and not the media "report", and our findings are that climate change really is happening. We also don't disagree with the finding that this is due to humans more than doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere in the past 150 years. This work has been supported by studies in climate science and geology, so it's not just one field of science. These are settled matters within the climate science community, and any efforts to stir up that there's a "debate" is sensationalist media misrepresenting science. What is up for debate is the outcome of climate change and what should (and can) be done. Clearly things are changing, but the picture of how things will change is just beginning to become clear, and so most scientists choose to voice caution: we don't know for certain what is going to happen, but we might want to think about what we're doing because rapid change is likely to be bad (and expensive).

Didn't I hear This Skeptical Piece on BBC Radio? (The piece points out that only the most sensationalist theories from the papers are actually reported by the media, and that the real data is almost never reported. Furthermore, there is a push by global warming scientists to publish irresponsibly the most outlandish theories in their 'abstracts' (which is all the media ever reads) so they can get publicity and therefore grants.).

I'll give you the sensationalism on the part of the media, as far as the rest I'm going to kindly ask you to stop talking out of your ass. Calling the character of climate scientists into question is the most common hack for people who can't produce any valid scientific counter-arguments. A great deal of scientific "reporting" in this area does little justice to the actual science they're reporting on. I'm going to call FUD on the "push by global warming scientists". We go through the same peer review process as any other branch of science, we don't publish our most "outlandish" theories, we publish what we find. Actually, a great deal of restraint is exercised by most scientists due to the political nature of the field. There are of course a couple of people who will do something sensational (i.e. the man who claimed a link between hurricanes and global warming), but this happens in other fields too. When it does, the community usually self-polices: i.e. this man took a lot of flak for inside the community precisely because his work was a little too speculative and did some hard to his credibility with the rest of the community.

Fabricated? Show proof

[Anonymous Coward]

What I find from Wikipedia is the following:

In 1974 Frank Sherwood Rowland, a Chemistry Professor at the University of California at Irvine, and his postdoctoral associate Mario J. Molina suggested that long-lived organic halogen compounds, such as CFCs, might behave in a similar fashion as Crutzen had proposed for nitrous oxide. James Lovelock (most popularly known as the creator of the Gaia hypothesis) had recently discovered, during a cruise in the South Atlantic in 1971, that almost all of the CFC compounds manufactured since their invention in 1930 were still present in the atmosphere. Molina and Rowland concluded that, like N2O, the CFCs would reach the stratosphere where they would be dissociated by UV light, releasing Cl atoms. (A year earlier, Richard Stolarski andRalph Cicerone at the University of Michigan had shown that Cl is even more efficient than NO at catalyzing the destruction of ozone. Similar conclusions were reached by Michael McElroy and Steven Wofsy at Harvard University. Neither group, however, had realized that CFC's were a potentially large source of stratospheric chlorine -- instead, they had been investigating the possible effects of HCl emissions from the Space Shuttle, which are very much smaller.)

The Rowland-Molina hypothesis was strongly disputed by representatives of the aerosol and halocarbon industries. The Chair of the Board of DuPont was quoted as saying that ozone depletion theory is 'a science fiction tale...a load of rubbish...utter nonsense.".[2] Robert Abplanalp, the President of Precision Valve Corporation (and inventor of the first practical aerosol spray can valve), wrote to the Chancellor ofUC Irvine to complain about Rowland's public statements (Roan, p 56.) Nevertheless, within three years most of the basic assumptions made by Rowland and Molina were confirmed by laboratory measurements and by direct observation in the stratosphere. The concentrations of the source gases (CFC's and related compounds) and the chlorine reservoir species (HCl and ClONO2) were measured throughout the stratosphere, and demonstrated that CFCs were indeed the major source of stratospheric chlorine, and that nearly all of the CFCs emitted would eventually reach the stratosphere. Even more convincing was the measurement, by James G. Anderson and collaborators, of chlorine monoxide (ClO) in the stratosphere. ClO is produced by the reaction of Cl with ozone -- its observation thus demonstrated that Cl radicals not only were present in the stratosphere but also were actually involved in destroying ozone. McElroy and Wofsy extended the work of Rowland and Molina by showing that Bromine atoms were even more effective catalysts for ozone loss than chlorine atoms and argued that the brominated organic compounds known as halons, widely used in fire extinguishers, were a potentially large source of stratospheric bromine. In 1976 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences released a report which concluded that the ozone depletion hypothesis was strongly supported by the scientific evidence. Scientists calculated that if CFC production continued to increase at the going rate of 10% per year until 1990 and then remain steady, CFCs would cause a global ozone loss of 5 to 7% by 1995, and a 30 to 50% loss by 2050. In response the United States, Canada, Sweden and Norway banned the used of CFCs in aerosol spray cans in 1978. However, subsequent research, summarized by the National Academy in reports issued between 1979 and 1984, appeared to show that the earlier estimates of global ozone loss had been too large.

The only thing I find unsubstantiated is your assertion that the facts were fabricated. Accusing Prof Rowland and Molina of using fabricated evidence is a serious charge that must be backed up by solid evidence.

Otherwise, I will assume that you are engaged in politically motivated slander.

Re:Journalism?

[Decaff]

What happens, then, if it's difficult to get a contrarian article into a peer-reviewed journal? That's often the case, as it happens. For someone with results that cut against the grain, it can take years to break through the peer review wall, assuming you're able to keep going that long

That is not why people don't get into peer reviewed journals. Good peer reviewed journals publish 'against the grain' papers all the time. What prevents publications getting into good journals is if their analyses are questionable or their results aren't repeatable. In most areas of science, journals are hungry for interesting papers. Research that simply repeats existing findings gets boring and of no interest.

This isn't unique to climatology - I've seen other situations in which a highly charged issue that has many believers on one side can squeeze out any last dissent.

Again, that is not why people get squeezed out. It is not a matter of 'believers', it is about the quality of research.

At best, the standard for publishing a contrarian view is much higher

And that is as things should be. As Carl Sagan said, extraordinary views require extraordinary evidence. Contrary views should require out-of-the-ordinary evidence.

at worst, reviewers can reject these articles out of hand. This makes it extremely difficult for a budding researcher to get established in a tenure-track position, and then to get tenure.

In quality journals, editors don't accept such out-of-hand rejections. There are much-used appeal processes, and the opinion of a reviewer who simply rejected an article 'out-of-hand' would not last long. Reviewers have to justify their rejections in the same way as the authors of papers have to justify their findings.

I know this because I have worked to get controversial papers through review processes, and I have also acted as a peer reviewer.

Right or wrong, there's a serious problem when no one is even taking a serious Devil's Advocate position on things, and I've not seen that.

This is just not true. The entire peer review process is a Devil's Advocate process. The phrase 'peer review' explains it - papers aren't being reviewed by friends of the author, but almost always the reviewing panel includes those who are competitors of the author, often competing in the same country for the same funding!

The peer review process works because it is so much a Devil's Advocate process, and publications have to pass through that.