The publication this week of a paper titled ‘Expert Credibility in Climate Change’ in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences will certainly do nothing to raise the credibility of the authors, those attempting to defend the paper in the media, or climate science itself.
The paper itself is junk science. It attempts to define climate scientists by their belief in global warming as a potential disaster and then attempts to see just how expert they are by looking at how many papers they’ve published and how many times other scientists cite those papers.
The project failed miserably, getting incorrect names, scientific specializations and numbers of citations. Scientists all over the internet are having an ‘I’m Spartacus’ moment, saying that if they are going to get lumped into the skeptic camp, at least the study could have accurately got their names and number of publications correct.
Spencer Weart, author of The History of Global Warming, rejected the paper decisively, saying a first reading showed so many defects that the paper should never have been published. He was not alone.
The second worst thing about this paper is the evil it has the potential to unleash. In the course of preparing this paper, the authors collected the names of signatories to various petitions regarding global warming. Some of them were of a skeptical nature. Some were pretty innocent–saying that the signatories agreed that there was no consensus on global warming’s ultimate effects and scope. But now, this list exists in one place and has a title on it–and no matter how they pretty the title up, it’s essentially ‘Damned Global Warming Denialists Who Should Never Get a Job or Get Published Ever Again.’ And that is how it will be used, despite the pious protestations of some who don’t want to be around to see the dirty work get done.
But by far the worst thing about this paper is what it will do to Professor Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, listed as co-author of the paper, and the man who eased this garbage into print by virtue of being a member of the NAS (which meant he could publish without peer review).
Stephen Schneider has authored or co-authored more than 450 papers (although the data used for the study says 683), mostly about climate change, and he is an expert on the subject.
Schneider started his career boldly. Back when scientists were actively trying to prevent the threat of nuclear war, a group of them (including my personal favorite communicator of science, Carl Sagan) advanced the concept of Nuclear Winter, saying that a nuclear war would result in a prolonged period of blocked sunlight, destroying agriculture and meaning that the survivors would envy the dead. Very dramatic picture and their campaign was effective politics.
But Schneider found the data (and my hero) was wrong, and showed that what had been called nuclear winter would in fact be more like nuclear autumn. Going against the mainstream and many respected scientists, Schneider made his bones.
He did it again. In 1971, he co-authored a paper that suggested that aerosols could cool the atmosphere enough to usher in the next ice age, although he was clear that it would take a lot of time. But by 1976 he had come to the conclusion that CO2 would not only counteract the aerosols, but that it was warming the atmosphere.
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Sad, but how many scientists have sold their souls in the name of AGW?
He failed long before he lent his name to the blacklist. He failed when he sold out his ethics in favor of promoting CAGW.
So if you go out of your way to sign a public declaration of some sceptic viewpoint, trying to draw public attention to your viewpoint, that’s OK. If other sceptics compile lists of sceptics or sceptic publications to try to impress people by showing how numerous they are, that’s OK. But if somebody takes those same lists and does some analysis on them, then suddenly those exact same lists, the ones that sceptics had been previously publicizing to anybody who would listen, become dastardly? That’s so tenuous, it’s comical. And really? Everybody knows people like Lindzen, Spencer, Christy, Svensmark are sceptics, nobody needs any sort of list to tell them that, and yet they are still getting published.
Mind you, I don’t think it’s a very good paper, but this particular response to it just doesn’t make any sense.
Stephen Schneider minced no words in blaming Katrina on global warming :
@carrot eater says:
June 24, 2010 at 8:37 pm
Quoting a comment from the original article:
marty says:
For anyone who stills doubts the maliciousness of this list, I would like to point out other lists that circulate in academia and have had adverse effects on the members careers.
There are several lists circulating on Creationists in science. They pretend to be collectons of people who believe in the bible literally and fix the science to conform to the timetable in Genesis. In reality, it contains anyone who has criticized Darwin, plate tectonics or the big bang. It contains people who have used creationism in the context of Dirac or Obukhov who were hardly religious.
There is another more famous list of antisemetics in academia. Of course all you have to do is criticize any aspect of Israels behavior to get on this list.
I know from first hand experience that both of these lists have been used to deny employment to qualified candidates.
I know 14 people on Prall’s blacklist. They are fine people. They don’t deserve this.
June 24, 4:53 PM
Bear in mind that the primary author of this damnable paper is not even a scientist (he is a computer programmer) and Schneider is a propogandist.
How on earth did this morass of disinformation ever get to be published in PNAS without Schneider’s influence.
Schneider has always been an ambulance-chaser.
His “scary scenarios” comment is typical of his career. First it was Sagan-inspired “nuclear winter” and then it was Hansen-inspired “catastrophic global warming”.
Not clear that he has actually published any real, hard, empirical science on anything. Just lots of scary opinion thing-ies.
As a geologist, I look back over tens of millions of years Earth history and see clear, consistent evidence of far greater climate extremes than today – both hot and cold – and note that nothing approaching a “tipping point” has ever materialized. Things change, but life goes on.
Most of Earth history has been hotter than today, and somehow species have evolved and survived and exploited diverse ecological niches to prosper – or have failed and gone extinct. That’s how it goes.
Schneider and his gang are now attempting to black-list scientists who dare to express skepticism of their Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming paradigm with this pathetic little paper based on opinion-list-searches. How sad. How desperate. How scary for the future of wide-open scientific research (if anyone attaches significance to this sophistry).
Let’s have a wide-open debate on observations, data, facts, and testable theories. No more appeals to authority, name-calling, or fallacious claims that computer model results are “results” or “data”.
C’mon Steve. Man-up! Show us your DATA.
Stephen Schneider is from the 60’s. That will help some people understand where he is coming from.
Carrot eater,
Your argument fails. If a scientist signed a petition circulated before the IPCC frame of reference used as the adjudicating criterion for inclusion as a UE (Unconvinced Expert) in the paper, he or she is being judged as not agreeing with something that hadn’t yet been written.
Further, if a scientist signs a relatively innocuous petition that says that a consensus on global warming has not been reached in 1988, that scientist is now lumped with all skeptics.
And don’t say this won’t happen and won’t be abused. There are science blacklists now against those who purportedly don’t believe in evolution (although many do, but disagree with some of the polemics used against Christians) and those who are considered anti-Semitic (although many of them are nothing of the sort, but have had the temerity to criticize Israeli policy at some point in their careers. Some of the scientists on this list are Jewish.)
This is cheap, scummy, politically motivated McCarthyist garbage, and what it speaks volumes of those who defend it.
They are obviously getting desperate at this point. They don’t have much time. I can see November from my house.
Stephen H. Schneider is second on this list of Warmist advocates;
http://www.openletterfromscientists.com/list-of-signers.html
having co-written written this Warmist propaganda letter;
http://www.openletterfromscientists.com/index.html
which “was sent to federal agencies” on Friday, March 12, 2010.
Jim Cole says:
June 24, 2010 at 9:01 pm
Schneider has always been an ambulance-chaser.
In Search of the Ultimate Disaster.
I may have a lower view of him than Tom Fuller. Stephen Schneider appears to have left off the possibility of reasoning over global warming. His tone in this video is of finality, it seems:
carrot eater says: “yatta-yatta, yatta-yatta…Everybody knows people like Lindzen, Spencer, Christy, Svensmark are sceptics, nobody needs any sort of list to tell them that, and yet they are still getting published. yatta-yatta, yatta-yatta.”
They may now gradually find it harder and harder to get published. Less famous, younger scientists on the list may become unemployable more rapidly. But the most evil effect lies in forcing other scientists to be silent, lest they be added to the list, or, worse, to alter their results so as to appear to be “good scientists.” There are stark historic parallels; I need not enumerate them.
The sanctimonious mask of green righteousness has come off, revealing a hideous face of despotic terrorism beneath it. Now is the time to remember: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
Better one light that failed than the many that will get switched off if this AGW BS is allowed to run its course.
The list is shameful and unworthy of someone purporting to be any kind of scientist.
I think the real point is that since the Warmists blocked dozens, if not hundreds, of articles by ‘skeptics’ with their peer review censorship (‘peer’ meaning fellow believer and likely collaborationist) , that the ‘skeptics’ must be dullards. Because they could not get published.
Not that the Warmists can not tolerate debate.
Is anyone but me thinking that we have gone well outside of science and entered politics?
Hmmmm.
“the man who eased this garbage into print by virtue of being a member of the NAS (which meant he could publish without peer review).”
“publish without peer review”!
Well, that’s ironic. And it certainly does explain some other things in the PNAS.
This junk paper is recognized as junk even among the “convinced”…
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/notes-from-the-whaling-and-warming-wars/?sort=oldest&offset=2
It was designed from the very beginning as a blacklst, I dare to say. All manifestos, lists of “sceptic papers”, books on “deniers” could not be used toi deny employment and/or grants, for sure not directly, because it might result in discrimination suits. Now – like in case of eugenics – PNAS has confirmed with its authority that “deniers and sceptics” are less productive scientifically, that they can not obtain grants. So many employment commitees will have a “hard and scientific proof” that it is justifiable to deny employment to so poorly promising guys. You origin in “bad folks”you stay with them, it opens road to – lets call it – apartheid in climate science. Nice design 🙂
CE – “…and does some analysis on them”. The data collection methodology and “analysis” in that paper is appalling. If that’s your idea of analysis you need to go back to school. But perhaps you know better than those two sceptics, Weart and Steig.
It shows the very low standards now accepted in some parts of the scientific world that this “paper” would be published by NAS. It should have been in Hustler, Mad, or some other satirical publication.
Some more videos where Steven Schneider appears:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwvUz0mtrOk&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUtzMBfDrpI&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nprY2jSI0Ds&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
Ecotretas
Whatever goes around comes around.
When people survey the wreckage of the economy as they shiver in the dark, it is reasonable to suppose that they may be just a tad hacked off at the AGW fabulists and eco-fascists that are the architects of this whole sorry scam.
When that happens and the peasants turn up with flaming torches and pitchforks, I trust that someone will be around to give them copies of this paper. That will help people identify who it was that was more interested in advancing their career and taking cushy well paid sinecures playing with computer models, completely careless of truth and the consequences of their junk science lies.
CE,
Having seen the methodology for the creation of lists and ranking of people published in PNAS, the questions is NOT about the scientists currently on the lists. The question is what does this say to the next generation of scientists.
personally if I were a grad student i’d sign every AGW petetion I could.
Anyway, what really interest me are the NON signers. The category that nobody
is looking at. Hulme is a Non signer
What does it mean to be a NON signer? that’s the fasinating category.
Not sure that such a long black list is so bad. It confirms that if we kick off a new peak peer review journal that it will b big, diverse and well resourced. A journal that makes accurate predictions will beat one that makes dud predictions. An expensive journal is only important if governments and libraries buy it. It is also important if its cheap, accurate, imaginative and sells well to the public. If governments accept it as evidence in government enquiries and court cases. If it is not accepted a journal can quickly disappear. Does anyone remember the soviet science and news magazine Sputnik? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_(magazine)
Or the dozen or so journals titled ‘Soviet Journal of…’ Some still exist but under new names and editors. The journals Science, Nature, etc are on shaky ground.
If a developed country backs a more open but more cautious journal then industry, sound science and scientists will gravitate to that country. It, and its journal, will advance.
“publish without peer review”
I believe Galileo, Newton and Einstein did that too