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Climate Journal Publishes Referees' Report In Response To "Witch-Hunt" Claims
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.'"
And the National Review is calling it McCarthyism.
Sorry, but refusing to provide a public forum for crackpots is not a witch-hunt, or McCarthyism. It's science. The journal didn't publish the paper because the referee said it was an unsalvageable piece of crap, which is precisely how peer review is supposed to work.
It is not out of context. The complaint from the referee if you read the complaint is that it was simplistic.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
I read an interview of him, and the rejection of the paper was a small part of his complaints. He is basically saying that anyone who questions anthropogenic global warming dogma is ostracized. This is the basis of McCarthyism and witch hunts. It also questions the foundation of the global warming "consensus" so often cited. The fact is that questioning orthodoxy is part of the scientific process. Ironically then, those who attempt to ostracize global warming skeptics for being "anti-science" are the ones themselves being anti-science.
Who cares what Al Gore said ? He's not one of the scientists.
I think this is a bit oversimplified... I'd like to expand it to reflect what the referee stated....
When the overwhelming majority of experts in any field are leaning in one direction, to claim that they're incorrect without rigorous application of the scientific method but instead just making vague claims of overlap and inconsistency regarding the models you don't support and stating that the results don't line up with your preferred model, is not legitimate science. Legitimate politics, yes.
Science works by taking the accepted model and proving where it fails by quantitative and qualitative analysis. The method he was using in his paper is closer to using the Bible to prove that the world is flat when the prevailing theory is that it is a somewhat squished and misshapen globe.
Mind you, the world MAY be flat, but to prove that, you'd have to show where the prevailing models fall down, and show how your own model stands up where those others fail. Qualitative AND quantitative, people. He seemed to be flip-flopping between the two from the report.
It is not that science is rejecting scepticism. Heck, scepticism is fundamental to science. The issue that legitimate climate sceptics face is that they are trying to disprove a large body of evidence that is both diverse and mature. If sceptics want to prove their point, they have to collective evidence that is also diverse and mature. That is no simple feat.
That is also making a huge assumption: that the climate sceptics are legitimate. I'm sure that some sceptics are, particularly when it comes to critiquing particular pieces of evidence. On the other hand, they seem to be a tiny minority. Most of the debate that I see comes from people who have little understanding of science, nevermind climate science.
The arctic is not yet ice-free, but it's getting there. If you would like to look at the raw data, I suggest Arctic Sea Ice News from the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
In the same way that one cannot expect a nice fit between observational studies and the CMIP5 models.
This is a point that is radically misunderstood by almost all sides of the political debate around anthropogenic climate change. Think about what it implies: climate models do not predict observational reality. That, and only that, is why one cannot and should not expect a nice fit between the model and the reality.
This is OK, mind: non-predictive modelling is extremely useful, and there is very little doubt that human activity is adding about 1.6 W/m**2 to the Earth's heat budget (somewhat less than 0.5% of the total, equivalent to an orbital perturbation of about half the distance to the Moon). But climate models do not tell us in any meaningful or useful sense how the ocean/atmosphere system will respond to that additional heating.
There will be a response, but estimating its type, distribution and magnitude well enough to be considered predictive is well beyond current model capabilities. I haven't looked at AR4 or 5 code, but AR2 had approximations that made me cringe, up to and including fixing up energy conservation at the end of each time-step by adjusting cell temperatures.
Climate skeptics--the sane ones at least--are aware of this and take the strong claims of predictive power in the models with a large grain of salt. They also tend to assume that "you can't prove there will be a disaster" means "there won't be a disaster", which is utterly unwarranted.
Climate believers also ignore the poor predictivity of the models, which is unfortunate, because the logical response to that poor predictivity is to invest in robustness and flexibility rather than specific solutions, because we don't know what the specific future conditions will be.
Climate believers also undermine their case by an excessive focus on "abstinence only" policies, and are for some reason unwilling to contemplate any response to climate change that involves things like nuclear power and geo-engineering research. It's almost as if they think the climate-driven destruction of civilization is such a huge issue that we must be willing to do anything to stop it... except change anyone's mind on the relative value of nuclear energy.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.