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Journal Editor Resigns Over Flawed Global Warming Paper
Layzej writes "Remote Sensing Editor-in-Chief Wolfgang Wagner resigned earlier today (PDF) over a global warming study published in his journal that was said to cast doubt on global warming models but was later found to be flawed. Wagner stated that the paper most likely contained fundamental methodological errors and false claims. He further expressed dismay over how 'the authors and like-minded climate skeptics have much exaggerated the paper's conclusions in public statements.' The author of the paper, Dr. Roy Spencer, has responded to the resignation."
Climate Change is melting jobs!
"have much exaggerated the paper's conclusions in public statements"
You mean in much the same way climate change promoters exaggerate claims from other papers?
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They got to him!
I don't know why you guys argue about this. The world's gonna end in 2012 anyway, who cares about the climate?
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I am resigned to hyperbole... both for or against global warming.
...maybe that is a good idea...
... who cares?
But, to quit your job because you made a mistake would leave the banking industry with only janitors.
My take on global warming/non-warming
I was taught to not shit were I sleep.
So, he resigned without bothering to find out for sure whether the paper in question contained fundamental methodological errors and/or false claims?
I can see resigning as editor because "I screwed up by allowing fundamentally unsound science into my magazine", but I have a hard time with resigning because it MIGHT have been bad (but he's not sure).
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Well, they'll continue to quote it. For those people, science is about repeating something that someone smarter than you figured out. So, they don't care if it is discredited or flawed. That's also why you can troll them so easily with articles from The Onion.
I don't know why you guys argue about this. The world's gonna end in 2021 anyway, who cares about the climate?
The summary is wrong. Wagner did not say that the paper made false claims. According to his statement, he said:
"the problem I see with the paper by Spencer and Braswell is not that it declared a minority view (which was later unfortunately much exaggerated by the public media) but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents."
He says the paper didn't address the views of opponents to his views. In response, the authors said
"But the paper WAS precisely addressing the scientific arguments made by our opponents, and showing why they are wrong! That was the paper’s starting point! We dealt with specifics, numbers, calculationswhile our critics only use generalities and talking points. There is no contest, as far as I can see, in this debate."
I don't know who's right. It sounds like politics getting in the way of science. Politics has no place in objective science. Conclusions need to be based on observations, not specific observations made to support a favored conclusion.
I'm accustomed to seeing ads for all sorts of IT-related or otherwise nerdly ads -- the kind of thing that might be a good use of advertising money, if only 90% of /.ers weren't using Ad-Block Plus.
But this past week, I've seen a new ad -- an ad for AXE, which as I understand is a hygiene/cosmetic product meant to replace the average male's body odor with a facsimile of the "ideal" male's body odor (from a female perspective), thus enhancing said male's chance of getting laid. However, it has no ability (so far as I know) to summon, teleport, or otherwise cause a strange female to appear in a nerd's mom's basement, which seemingly renders it entirely useless to the bulk of the /. crowd.
Or is incestous seduction of mothers (with the aid of such products) far more widespread, or at least widely desired, than I ever imagined?
Major ice sheets are evaporating, and there's someone in the wild that says, "hay, this is normal, don't worry." And then another person says, "Hay, this is great publishing!" It's like being in a theater and someone yells, "Fire!" and then a chorus of voices blocking the Exits screams, "There is no Fire!"
Just another political brickbat in the climatology-gravy train war at those who would so brazenly question the gravy or the recipe. No doubt some of Spencer's critics are acolytes and professors from the Al Gore School of Energy CONservation.
For most journals this wouldn't be an editor's fault, unless they used bad judgment choosing the reviewers, or ignored negative reviews and published it anyway.
Reviewers wouldn't resign because they're not part of the staff, but the editors should avoid inviting someone to review again if they passed a bad paper. (And that can happen for non-ideological reasons. It's really hard to get qualified people to invest the time required for a thorough review. I've gotten feedback where one reviewer wrote two pages and another wrote two sentences.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Major ice sheets are evaporating, and there's someone in the wild that says, "hay, this is normal, don't worry." And then another person says, "Hay, this is great publishing!" It's like being in a theater and someone yells, "Fire!" and then a chorus of voices blocking the Exits screams, "There is no Fire!"
So who in this story is saying "Don't Worry" and who is "Blocking the Exits" ? I get the part about "Great Publishing" and "Fire" - end-of-the-world stories make great news. But the rest of your comment is way over my head ....
Anyone publishing anything to the contrary will be fired.
Retraction Watch has more on this.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Mike--
We did it! We redefined peer review! From now on reviewers with "climate sceptic notions" will be kept out of the process, despite their qualifications and proficiencies. Can I say Hallelujah? Hallelujah! This is a glorious day for Science!
The paper in question was written by Roy Spencer. Aside from his views on climate change he's also a vocal proponent of intelligent design. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Spencer_(scientist)#Views_on_intelligent_design and what he calls "the theory of creation". While in a strict formal logic setting ad hominem attacks are not useful, they are a relevant heuristic to decide if someone knows what they are talking about. In this context, it seems pretty clear that Spencer lets his ideological allegiances dictate beliefs instead of careful scientific thinking. There's a certain point where you just stop assigning large amounts of weight to claims made by an individual because they've demonstrated repeated failure before. Spencer is past that point.
He is also an intelligent designer.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
For all the drama of the editor's resignation letter, he seems to be awfully vague about any actual flaws in the paper. Citing argument against it somewhere on the intarwebs as a reason not to publish it is like asserting that no pro-AGW papers should ever be printed because of wattsupwiththat.com.
Any relatively intelligent warmists want to break down for us specific flaws in the paper?
Major ice sheets are evaporating, and there's someone in the wild that says, "hay, this is normal, don't worry." And then another person says, "Hay, this is great publishing!" It's like being in a theater and someone yells, "Fire!" and then a chorus of voices blocking the Exits screams, "There is no Fire!"
Ever wonder why Greenland is named "Greenland"? Maybe the Earth's climate goes through cycles... nah, that's too crazy of an idea..
The following is taken from Desmogblog
Spencer and the “Interfaith Stewardship Alliance”
Spencer is listed as a “scientific advisor” for an organization called the “Interfaith Stewardship Alliance” (ISA). According to their website, the ISA is “a coalition of religious leaders, clergy, theologians, scientists, academics, and other policy experts committed to bringing a proper and balanced Biblical view of stewardship to the critical issues of environment and development.”
In July 2006, Spencer co-authored an ISA report refuting the work of another religious organization called the Evangelical Climate Initiative. The ISA report was titled A Call to Truth, Prudence and Protection of the Poor: an Evangelical Response to Global Warming. Along with the report was a letter of endorsement signed by numerous representatives of various organizations, including 6 that have received a total of $2.32 million in donations from ExxonMobil over the last three years.
Satellite Research Refuted
According to an August 12, 2005 New York Times article, Spencer, along with another well-known “skeptic,” John Christy, admitted they made a mistake in their satellite data research that they said demonstrated a cooling in the troposphere (the earth’s lowest layer of atmosphere). It turned out that the exact opposite was occurring and the troposphere was getting warmer.
“These papers should lay to rest once and for all the claims by John Christy and other global warming skeptics that a disagreement between tropospheric and surface temperature trends means that there are problems with surface temperature records or with climate models,” said Alan Robock, a meteorologist at Rutgers University.
Spencer and the Heartland Institute
Spencer is listed as an author for the Heartland Institute, a US think tank that has received $676,500 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
The Heartland Institute has also received funding from Big Tobacco over the years and continues to make the claim that “anti-smoking advocates” are exaggerating the health threats of smoking.
Spencer and the George C. Marshall Institute
Spencer is listed as an “Expert” with the George C. Marshall Institute, a US think tank that has received $630,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
Naomi Oreskes, who wrote Merchants of Doubt has quite a bit to say about the George C. Markshall Institute and their anti-science "scientific research."
CONGRATULATIONS, OBSCURITY, YOU ARE THE FIRST TO BE BANNED FROM THIS SITE. THE CHARGE IS EITHER (1) CHRONIC IGNORANCE, OR (2) MALICIOUS OBFUSCATION. YOUR CHOICE.
Reading the whole discussion is like watching the dick-waving comments go back and forth on Youtube, or like watching a transcript from a Bill O'Reilly episode where the guest speakers just yell at each other until someone gets their mic cut off.
This kind of petty bickering has got to stop if we're ever going to make any progress in this country again. We have to stop putting value in the antics of drama queens. It may have been cute in high school politics but this kind of crap is going to render our country irrelevant if it keeps going on much longer. (And for the pedants and assholes, I am American, so I use the term, "our country," to refer to the United States).
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Two words: Cripple Fight.
If only 'twere possible for them both to be wrong. Actually, I'd settle for "wrong for the right reasons" and vice versa, which I think is where we're about at.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It is called Greenland because all the people in Iceland didn't want people immigrating to their island.
... You fail geography forever.
(Regardless of how factual the "false advertising" myth may or may not be, Greenland got its name barely a thousand years ago, which in terms of major climate cycles is last week.)
Just stick your head out the window. How many once in a hundred year storms, hurricanes and floods within a 10 to 15 year period do we need before we accept things are different? Hell how about in a single year! The Phoenix area is still running over a 110 degrees and it's September, It was 115 yesterday where I am and it's supposed to be nearly that until the middle of the month. Most of the anti global warming people are even admitting the change. Their position though is we didn't cause it, we can't change it either way so let's deregulate. We can play dualing papers until doomsday but the truth is on the 6:00 news. If the anti climate change people want to pray for something it shouldn't be deregulation it should be for New Orleans which right now has a monster tropical storm headed for it.
What an obviously falcious argument. Of course the climate goes through cycles.
Ever notice that people who smoke die? And so do people who don't smoke!! Case proven, smoking has nothing to do with health issues!!!!!
Resign vs. retract. Was the resignation due to a 'lazy' selection of reviewers on a politically hot (no pun intended) topic?
Are Spencer's results based on an allegedly "overly simplistic model"?
Yes the earth goes in cycles, however there is an increase of temperature OUTSIDE those cycles. That is man made climate change.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
... has actually been discovered and revealed in this recent journal article just a couple weeks ago.
use a few Holocaust deniers and white supremacists instead? their reputations are a little bit higher.
Popular fable in Brazil:
Once in a circus a lion escaped from its cage.
Amid the great confusion, with everybody sitting up and trying to leave, one man discovered the planks on which everybody seated had clamped the cloth of his trousers. He need people to sit down, so he could get free.
Then he yelled: "Sit down, it's a tame lion."
---
I simply cannot believe these lame warming deniers, to me they have special interest in Earth's long term damage.
PS: "Cloth". Yeah, right.
That almost all of thousands of papers dealing with global climate warming have dealt with the cause. You sir are full of shit. I understand you want to leverage your knowledge, but you've out leveraged yourself here: Archimedes is frowning at you.
"Ever wonder why Greenland is named 'Greenland'?"
Marketing.
Ever wonder why Greenland is named "Greenland"? Maybe the Earth's climate goes through cycles... nah, that's too crazy of an idea..
Actually, the likeliest and most often cited reason the place's obvious misnomer is because Erik the Red was trying to entice more Scandinavians to migrate there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Greenland#Norse_settlement
Not that I disagree with you about Earth's climate going through cycles.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
I *so* agree with you. As "adults" we like to believe in all the crazy people out there, not aware that we /all/ suffer under the weight of delusions. The buddhists refer to this as the 2nd noble truth, which is part of the *core* buddhist teaching. (All buddhist teachings fit into the 4 nobles truths.) The origin of suffering *is* about false beliefs, and how they 'cause us to suffer in samsara forever.
Politics suffers under a chronic failure to listen, and the most puerile level of argumentation demands to be taken seriously, least one is accused of being an ideologue. In fact, accusation, guilt trips, misdirection, and claiming the morale high-ground is just how you get things done.
I guess this is why Plato talked about the Noble Lie, although I abhor the very notion.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
"Maybe the Earth's climate goes through cycles... nah, that's too crazy of an idea.."
yeah, and every single one of those cycles had specific physical causes. If technological civilization had been around, they would ahve figured out why.
We do have such knowledge and data now. We also know the specific cause, and we have ruled out all sorts of other causes.
You can't just say "whah it could be the purple flying monster effect" and "we don't know anything about climate", when the work of decades of scientists and the physical laws we know which predict successfully everything else we can measure about the planet say the same bleeping thing.
You need to show an alternative which has BETTER explanatory power and better empirical justification from measurements. Not just throw out "oh in the past climate changed" which is true, and the implication that if it's also changing now humans have no responsibility for it, which is preposterous.
It's like saying that because trees fell down in forests in the Jurassic, then a team of loggers with power saws can't be responsible for felling a forest grove, despite clear evidence from satellites that they were there, and they were using power tools, and the phsyics of the power tools has been discovered, and we measured the exhaust from the use of their power tools.
I.e. "Oh it could be a natural tree-falling-down-cycle!" is plainly idiotic. And this is EVERY BIT THE SAME as climate change denialism with our current state of knowledge.
Who did the review? Climate skeptics that are friends of the editor. How do you think they find reviewers?
For every study that says global warming is real there is funding behind it and researchers who need more funding to keep doing what they're doing. The same can be said for studies disproving global warming theories. At this point Occam's Razor could be applied. Is it more likely that humans are affecting the climate or is it more likely that Nature with far more power than humans have yet achieved is the cause?
There's more real science on Sanford & Son than there is in global climate change.
pretty soon you're talking Nature scale stuff.
I suspect these are already missing, because as of now, I'm not seeing anything resembling coherent arguments against the paper (just what seems like teenage angst). That might be due to the parent's supposed deletions, my not-a-climatologist partial ignorance, the confrontational nature of discussion on Spencer's blog, or any combination of the above..., so could someone please summarize?
Redaction is the process of putting black bars over or otherwise removing information which remains classified when declassifying a document for release to the public. There isn't any classified information in the paper, and it was released to the public under a creative commons license, so redacting the document would just be silly.
"As the case presents itself now, the [peer review] editorial team unintentionally selected three reviewers who probably share some climate sceptic notions of the authors"
That would be actually be a good argument, if it wasn't for the case that the opposite (all reviewers sharing pro-AGW notions of the authors) is true on a very regular basis without this fact being considered grounds for criticism.
fixt
Redact
verb (used with object) 1. to put into suitable literary form; revise; edit.
If you edit a journal and issue a paper that you later determine should not be published, the editing out of that paper would be a redaction. It would also be a retraction, but redaction is perfectly appropriate.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.