WUWT may recall the late Dr. Hal Lewis led the way on this last year as I covered at WUWT and in an op-ed at the Christian Science Monitor.
From Climate Depot, who got the exclusive:
Nobel prize winner for physics in 1973 Dr. Ivar Giaever resigned as a Fellow from the American Physical Society (APS) on September 13, 2011 in disgust over the group’s promotion of man-made global warming fears. Climate Depot has obtained the exclusive email Giaever sent to APS Executive Officer Kate Kirby to announce his formal resignation.
Dr. Giaever wrote to Kirby of APS: “Thank you for your letter inquiring about my membership. I did not renew it because I cannot live with the (APS) statement below (on global warming): APS: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.’
Giaever announced his resignation from APS was due to the group’s belief in man-made global warming fears. Giaever explained in his email to APS: “In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible? The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.”
Read the full story here at Climate Depot
Here’s the resignation letter:
From: Ivar Giaever [ mailto:giaever@XXXX.com] Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2011 3:42 PMTo: kirby@xxx.xxx
Cc: Robert H. Austin; ‘William Happer’; ‘Larry Gould’; ‘S. Fred Singer’; Roger Cohen
Subject: I resign from APS
Dear Ms. Kirby Thank you for your letter inquiring about my membership. I did not renew it because I can not live with the statement below: Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.
If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.
In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible? The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.
Best regards, Ivar Giaever Nobel Laureate 1973 PS. I included a copy to a few people in case they feel like using the information.Ivar Giaever
XXX XXX
XXX
USA
Phone XXX XXX XXX
Fax XXX XXX XXX
================================
h/t to WUWT reader David L. Hagen
Good. There really isn’t a competent scientist on the planet who believes a peregrine falcon can dive at 240mph, and there isn’t a competent scientist on the planet who believes we’re doomed by greenhouse gases. –AGF
A change of 0.8°C in 150 years is essentially no change, assuming that measurement is outside the noise. Good move in the name of science.
Kudos to Dr. Giaever.
There isn’t a competent numerical modeller that believes you can model century scale simulations of stiff systems of PDE’s with low accuracy and low resolution initial conditions and with incompletely defined boundary conditions.
There isn’t a competent mathematician who thinks you can infill data across a pole.
Dr. Giaever, I am sorry you have need to dissacociate yourself from APS. I am more disturbed that APS has taken such an indefensible stance on the Science of CAGW. I will assume you know humans are having an effect on the planet but also realize the impact is minimal. I would love to read your thoughts on the whole subject as it would surely be informative. Be prepared to be smeared with the label “Denier” but wear it with pride because the alternative is Pseudoscience.
I don’t know if I were in your shoes, I would have the guts to take the path you have but I hope I would.
Stand by for assassination of Giaever’s character by the RealClimate mob.
What could a Physicist know about Climate Change?
/IPCC Climatologist
Good. It would be better, though, if non-retired scientists started to drop out of associations.
Especially non-retired scientists who control significant amounts of grant money.
If that ever happens, things will start to change.
Cui bono, always cui bono.
A man with the courage of his convictions is a man for all seasons.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” –anon. .
Dr. Giaever has taken a stand against evil. What happened to the APS is evil, the blatant prostitution of Science in the service of Politics. The only question is: Why are there not a hundred Giaevers, a thousand? The world has gone mad:
“…Man himself is the greatest peril to man, just because there is no adequate defense against psychic epidemics, which cause infinitely more devastation than the greatest natural catastrophes.” –Carl Gustav Jung, 1944
From Al Gore’s Letter:
“Your donation will help us spread the Climate Reality message in a unique and effective way. Tell the world: The climate crisis is not a debate. It’s reality. And the time to take action is not the future — it’s right now. The fat lady has sung.”
I guess Dr. Ivar Giaever got Gore’s letter and decided to take his advice. There’s a growing concensus, but not the one Gore would have hoped for I think. I can hear the fat lady ‘warming up’ alright.
“bladeshearerJack Maloney says:
September 14, 2011 at 10:45 am
Stand by for assassination of Giaever’s character by the RealClimate mob.”
That won’t be hard. From his wiki page:
“Giaever is an institute professor emeritus at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a professor-at-large at the University of Oslo (funded by the Norwegian oil and gas company, Statoil”)
I’m sure they’ll be all over that one. Notice that the funding sources for other posts he’s held aren’t listed? I wonder why? Looks like they’ve already picked him out as a trouble-maker, and branded him heretic.
A G Foster says: . . .
I’ve seen the hunting dive of the peregrine falcon. It is impressive. As is this statement by Dr. Giaever. I salute them both.
Respect. How many members are left in the APS?
Character assassination has already been ongoing on his wikipedia page, which says:
Giaever is a fellow at the Heartland Institute.[8] In the 1990s, the institute worked with the tobacco company, Philip Morris, to question the science linking secondhand smoke to health risks, and to lobby against government public-health reforms. More recently, the Institute has focused on questioning the scientific consensus on climate change, and has sponsored meetings of climate-change skeptics.[9]
Oil and gas companies have contributed to the Heartland Institute, including over $600,000 from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2005.[9]
Totally gratuitous linkage to tobacco research, which Giaever had no involvement in, and which preceded his involvement with Heritage Institute. Also, no evidence that Giaever has received a dime from the oil industry, especially since he’s a physicist and doesn’t do climate research. But smears like this are par for the course.
Kudos to Dr Giaever for taking a stand for truth, which the APS has defenestrated in its anti-science statement.
Dr Giaever has a lot of company. More than 30,000 individuals with advanced degrees in the hard sciences, including over 9,000 PhD’s, have co-signed the following statement:
There is no evidence that CO2 causes any global harm, and substantial evidence that added CO2 is beneficial to the biosphere.
Thus, more CO2 is both harmless and beneficial.
Is Al Gore the only Nobel laureate who publicly supports AGW.
Whoops … his is the peace prize. The same one that Obama got for all those drone attacks.
If Freidman in the NY Times is right, Dr. Giaever must have skipped his high school physics class the day global warming theory was covered.
Heroes are where you find them! I wonder, how many others have resigned that we will never hear about? Unsung heroes… is all. GK
Honor, ethics, and character reign.
It’s worse than they thought. It is going to get much worse.
Would jumping the shark apply here? The tipping point has passed
Someone enlighten me. What is motivating Gore? He is a failed politician who has amassed great wealth. Why does he not improve upon his golf handicap and fade into the sunset like all others before him?
I honestly don’t get it. Unless he thinks he can still be President?
Meanwhile here in the UK my energy bills just shot up – again – by between X3 and X5 inflation, depending upon whose statistices you believe.
Sadly, this correspondent is too old to jump off HMS UK. The Political elite have already pre-booked the lifeboats, and my pension no longer stretches to a lifebelt.
We’re doomed Mr Mainwaring – we’re doomed! (Brit readers will understand). http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.snaithprimary.eril.net/fpage/captain.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.snaithprimary.eril.net/music.htm&h=155&w=175&sz=5&tbnid=VFIF_s8FkgkNoM:&tbnh=103&tbnw=116&prev=/search%3Fq%3DCapt%2BMainwaring%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=Capt+Mainwaring&docid=ZBMe-qkKKQf75M&sa=X&ei=bPVwToeIO8Wo8APmwq2jAQ&ved=0CEwQ9QEwBg&dur=5524
jorgekafkazar says:
September 14, 2011 at 11:10 am
“Dr. Giaever has taken a stand against evil. What happened to the APS is evil, the blatant prostitution of Science in the service of Politics. The only question is: Why are there not a hundred Giaevers, a thousand? The world has gone mad:”
Exactly my thinking for years. The silence has been inexcusable.
Let me give this leftist smearing tactic thing a go:
Or, did I just give the rabid wiki editors something to work with?
Either way… great stand Dr. Giaever, and thanks for making sure everyone knows about it.
Smokey says:
“More than 30,000 individuals with advanced degrees in the hard sciences, including over 9,000 PhD’s, have co-signed the following statement…”
Smokey – do you have a source so I can document that statement? Like to pass it around…Talk about consensus! Al Gore – eat your heart out.
Also http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/09/distinguished-physicist-william-happer.html
polistra says:
September 14, 2011 at 11:04 am.
You are right. Those that are on politically motivated grants will likely change their colors only when the grant money stops.
I do wish Richard Feynman was around to weigh in on this issue. He’s someone I’d love to hear from. And I’d carry a pitchfork if the Hockey Team tried to assail him.
Brave Dr Giaever. Thank heavens for brave people like Dr Giaever: I can only hope that all the WUWT watchers provide you with comfort and support when the warmists get going.
Well I guess Dr Giaever wasn’t into the new religion of Global Warming so he decided to stop attending the APS church services. Good decision Dr Giaever, cheers!
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/09/distinguished-physicist-william-happer.html
What do these stories say about climate science? They say there’s many, many people with a small p, scientists like prof dr wagner with a small w, constantly buffeted around and forced.into.submission by Dear Kev and his climategate companions. Only retirement provides courage.
IMO, Microbiologist, Gore is motivated by greed, which with many is never satisfied; they never have enough. If he believed CAGW he wouldn’t behave the way he does nor would “carbon trading” be his control scheme of choice.
BTW: Google “cigarette smoke PEL” and you’ll discover that second hand smoke isn’t nearly as dangerous as the anti-smoking lobby has made it out to be.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Is usually attributed to Edmond Burke. My comment though, is that the phrase “good men do nothing” is an oxymoron. I believe that being good an active choice rather than passively doing no evil. Which means I also believe that Anthony is “good”. At least most of the time 🙂
this is an example of ignorance used by AGW proponents. Verify the science behind your comments. (112m/s = 251mph)
A G Foster says: September 14, 2011 at 10:31 am
Good. There really isn’t a competent scientist on the planet who believes a peregrine falcon can dive at 240mph, and there isn’t a competent scientist on the planet who believes we’re doomed by greenhouse gases. –AGF
abstract excerpt
(…)The top speeds reached during a dive depend on the mass of the bird and the angle and duration of the dive. Given enough time, ideal falcons can reach top speeds of 89-112 m s-1 in a vertical dive, the higher speed for the heaviest bird, when the parasite drag coefficient has a value of 0.18. (…)
Tucker, VA (1998) Gliding flight: speed and acceleration of ideal falcons during diving and pull out.
Journal of Experimental Biology 201, 403-414.
One by one they stand up and are counted.
BobW in NC,
Per your request, here is the home page for Dr Frederick Seitz’ Petition Project:
http://oism.org/pproject
http://www.petitionproject.org
Also, here is a letter to the UN/IPCC from 100 more scientists stating that:
And here is Dr William Gray’s paper on the hijacking of the APS:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/On_The_Hijacking_of_the_American_Meteorological_Society.pdf
And a Senate Minority Report with 400 scientists disputing AGW [since expanded to over 700 scientists]:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport#report
I have more of this. Lots more. The facts are out there, but the major media and mainstream organizations like the APS actively fight to suppress any scientific information and facts that debunk AGW. With $6 – $7 billion in federal grants being spread around every year, the silence of the lambs is being bought.
Again, kudos to Dr Giaever for having the courage to take action defending scientific truth. Lots of people talk the talk. Dr Giaever walks the walk.
Smokey and WUWT’s Anthony Watts:
Being able to refute the assertions of the AGW/CAGW crowd with factual, verifiable data is a real joy.
WUWT opens windows and doors to clear out scientific stagnation and misinformation through articles like this one AND (don’t know how to italicize) the expertise and knowledge of commenters, such as yourself, Smokey. We are talking incredible contributions for laymen like I am, who now have access to digestable science and can spread it with links and text to others who don’t read WUWT to inform them. In this, I always refer back to WUWT and always include the link to the article I am citing.
Kudos, gentlemen, and Thank you.
BobW in NC
dfbaskwill says:
September 14, 2011 at 12:11 pm
I do wish Richard Feynman was around to weigh in on this issue. He’s someone I’d love to hear from. And I’d carry a pitchfork if the Hockey Team tried to assail him.
Feynman has always been my number one science hero. Whenever someone pipes up with more nonsense about “consensus” science I like to recall that the last book he had published before his death was titled ” What Do You Care What Other People Think?”
http://www.amazon.com/What-Care-Other-People-Think/dp/0393320928/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316033300&sr=1-2
BobW in NC says:
September 14, 2011 at 12:06 pm
Smokey says:
“More than 30,000 individuals with advanced degrees in the hard sciences, including over 9,000 PhD’s, have co-signed the following statement…”
Smokey – do you have a source so I can document that statement? Like to pass it around…Talk about consensus! Al Gore – eat your heart out.
======================================================
Here you go Bob. It’s commonly known as the Oregon petition.
http://www.oism.org/pproject/
crucilandia says:
September 14, 2011 at 1:12 pm
this is an example of ignorance used by AGW proponents. Verify the science behind your comments. (112m/s = 251mph)
A G Foster says: September 14, 2011 at 10:31 am
Good. There really isn’t a competent scientist on the planet who believes a peregrine falcon can dive at 240mph, and there isn’t a competent scientist on the planet who believes we’re doomed by greenhouse gases. –AGF
abstract excerpt
(…)The top speeds reached during a dive depend on the mass of the bird and the angle and duration of the dive. Given enough time, ideal falcons can reach top speeds of 89-112 m s-1 in a vertical dive, the higher speed for the heaviest bird, when the parasite drag coefficient has a value of 0.18. (…)
Tucker, VA (1998) Gliding flight: speed and acceleration of ideal falcons during diving and pull out.
Journal of Experimental Biology 201, 403-414.
______________________________________________-
And do you think Tucker is reporting observed data? You’d better read more carefully: this is a MODEL! Nobody has more observation than Thomas Alerstam, and he never saw a bird break 90mph. Yet, as an ornithologist who doesn’t want to rock the boat, he remains officially a believer!
Rather, the peregrine falcon myth is another simple example of where “science” has swallowed the pseudoscience, hook, line and sinker. Nobody has data to back up the superbird hilarity–doctored video notwithstanding. –AGF
Maybe Sarah Palin is not so stupid – this is what she said in a speech recently as reported by the New York Times.
“The United States is now governed by a “permanent political class,” drawn from both parties, that is increasingly cut off from the concerns of regular people. Second, that these Republicans and Democrats have allied with big business to mutual advantage to create what she called “corporate crony capitalism.” Third, that the real political divide in the United States may no longer be between friends and foes of Big Government, but between friends and foes of vast, remote, unaccountable institutions (both public and private). ”
Like the APS
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/10/us/10iht-currents10.html?_r=3
It is a shame that these characters, once they resign.. disappear
The gratuitous “Philipp Morris” revelation entered the Neutral Point Of View only on 13 July 2011 by the hands of truth-seeker “Per Anders”. So it’s relatively new; and post-William Connolley.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ivar_Giaever&action=historysubmit&diff=439320490&oldid=436665398
Wikipedia is a lot like Anonymous. Many faces, all alike. But not from “V For Vendetta” but from “Nineteen Eighty-Four”. Music, please.
Good. There really isn’t a competent scientist on the planet who believes a peregrine falcon can dive at 240mph
Heretic! Unbeliever! Don’t you realize that this is simply a result of the Gore effect?
@ Microbiologist (September 14, 2011 at 11:43 am)
[“We’re doomed Mr Mainwaring – we’re doomed! (Brit readers will understand).”]
LOL. Stop panicking Frazer, the Ministry has it all under control! 🙂
.
@ BobW in NC (September 14, 2011 at 1:38 pm)
[“…don’t know how to italicize…”]
Bob, I know how you feel. Google ‘wordpress support’ or ‘html formatting’ or go here:
http://www.w3schools.com/HTML/html_formatting.asp
for examples. Essentially, use enter text here for italics or enter text here for bold.
Hope this helps. I had to search around a bit!
Arfur
I found the CCs from the email interesting: “Cc: Robert H. Austin; ‘William Happer’; ‘Larry Gould’; ‘S. Fred Singer’; Roger Cohen”
Happer is a physicist at Princeton; Singer, the founder of the NWS Satellite Division in the 60s, and formerly environmental science prof. at UVa (until he was pushed out for AGW-heresy).
But will anyone enlighten me about the rest?
@BobW in NC
Ha Ha! That’ll teach me. Sorry, I was being stupid and, of course, the html just formatted “enter text here”. Doh. Go to the link I gave you for proper examples…
More doctored video??
I resigned from APS a while back over the Sokal hoax, and APS trying to find some middle ground. I regret that I have but one resignation to give.
All of the hard core alarmists will wait until all of the AGW-Titanic life boats are full before abandoning ship. Then they will move to demand and claim space on the lifeboats to hide among the more honorable who left earlier.
While at the same time pretending to have led the way overboard as they ridicule the few loons remaining.
Expect only the worst behavior from the AGW loyalists.
BobW in NC says:
September 14, 2011 at 12:06 pm
Yes, as Smokey says, the Oregon Petition is clear witness of scientists against AGW. But warmists like to shout that it’s been debunked. In reality, its own website shows clearly that it has dealt with the trivial “debunking” issues in question.
You have to go that extra mile sometimes.
~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years
Always nice to see it expressed that way.
Rob Munning says:
September 14, 2011 at 3:05 pm
More doctored video??
Spliced and edited, yes, but no evidence of doctoring. I never see the bird and the divers together…do you? In this case only the narrative is invented, unlike the video Ken Franklin puts out, with a special effects artist as his cinematographer. –AGF
Darkinbad the Brightdayler says:
September 14, 2011 at 1:17 pm
One by one they stand up and are counted.
————
In the cc I count 6. Out of the entire membership.
So the agw conspiracy just keeps on getting bigger and bigger.
[REPLY: He explained his choices in his letter. They went to the individuals he was absolutely SURE would use it to advantage. We are looking at one ticked-off Nobel laureate. Now, don’t be so dense. REP, mod}
We need more good people like Dr. Ivar Giaever!
I have reported on the better-known at http://www.oarval.org/ClimateChange.htm
I was very moved by this and feel obliged to repost the comment I made on BishopHill tonight.
“How difficult must it have been for this elderly gentleman scientist to leave an organisation that he built his working life around and that he once loved deeply?
I admire his principles and courage but I can not even begin to imagine the despair that he must have felt when writing this letter.”
Congratulations Dr Giaever on an honorable and principled stand. May you inspire others.
Oh, and BobW in NC (September 14, 2011 at 1:38 pm), Anthony also has some local help, called “Test” in the top bar – here. If your browser does tabs, it’s most helpful to open it in a second tab to use as a reference (how else d’you think I did that neat link?).
it is understandable that the revulsion felt by long term members of aps over these political shenanigans of the wanna be politicians inside the organization. However, what needs to happen is the voting out of office of these idiologs who have gained control of the organization. This cannot happen by quiting. The aps is too important an organization to allow its decline to meaninglessness.
It’s not just the problem with CAGW. While these fools in the leadership are busy promoting algor, they are not doing their job of promoting physics. For example, public universities in TX are losing the ability to offer undergraduate physics degrees because of the mistaken beliefs that programs at smaller schools that have fewer than 5 graduates per year over the longer term are useless. Meanwhile, CSI tv shows are filling the ranks of crime investigation programs and biology programs continue to fill the fast food burger dumps with their graduates. There’s a shortage of highschool physics teachers to introduce physics to the students and no McGiver tv program or real outreach programs to educate college bound students about physics degrees – things the APS should be promoting big time. So now we are in a scientific and technological society and are not training the physicists we need to maintain such a society.
Considering that over 40% of physics degrees in the state are issued from small universities and that students attending these are not going to attend the handful of major universities that will be left. Rather they will choose another occupation. Since physics tends to be a major source of students for nuclear reactor engineering and for health physics, it should be apparent that the future is not going to be so bright if this continues any longer.
RoyFOMR says:
September 14, 2011 at 4:27 pm
I was very moved by this and feel obliged to repost the comment I made on BishopHill tonight.
“How difficult must it have been for this elderly gentleman scientist to leave an organisation that he built his working life around and that he once loved deeply?
I admire his principles and courage but I can not even begin to imagine the despair that he must have felt when writing this letter.”
——————
Well said. Unfortunately, I feel it has happened to many once landmark organizations.
——–
My thoughts published earlier at Bishop Hill:
Dr. Ivar Giaever sir, you have my utmost respect. Part of your legacy will be your honor.
“the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years”
And this is the basis for the AGW panic?
We’re doomed!
Work in progress – I’m 40% thro’ the video “The Changing Climate of Global Warming”
Early impressions. Love the warmistadors suits and clothing. They are so cool.
The sceptics on the other hand seem, for the most part, much lesthe financial under-classs richly-dressed but it must be a malformation of my pituitary sub-pc honesty detector that I’m strangely drawn to the message of the clearly less-afluent sector. In short, my BS detector redlines when I’m listening to climate-consensualists and green-sector warms to the messages sent out by the much poorer-dressed but logically-possesed questioners.
Isn’t it a wee bit odd that the greener one professes to be is more a statement of how many dollars add to that particular colour singularity than any actual semblance of that state?
I’m treading on soft sand now but isn’t it becoming the case that that greenies have become the new capitalists and ‘red-necks’ are now the true environmentalists.
Just asking.
Fred Bloggs says:
No…not even close to the only one:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1997/10/971002070106.htm
http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/nobel-prize-winning-0360.html
Thank you Dr. Giaever – you are a principled scientist.
Of course, I’m still waiting on the climate
hypocritesscientists to stop using all products made from petroleum or any machine which derives energy from petroleum. Hmmm…I wonder what kind of car Kevin Trenberth drives…Yeah. That’ll be the Shame of Science for a thousand years.
Frank K.: It is not hypocritical to use a product that you think should have a price on it that more accurately reflects all the true costs of using that product, so that it will be used more efficiently and so that the proper market incentives exist for the development of alternatives. For example, even some smokers might agree that cigarettes should be taxed significantly.
For those who are praising the “insightful” observation that the temperature has changed from 288 to 288.8 K should at least be aware of the fact that only a few degrees K in global temperature is the difference between our current climate and the worst of the ice ages. “Small” is a subjective term (Most temperature changes seem pretty small compared with absolute 0), and changes in global climate need to be seen in the full context. I’m sorry but its a meaningless observation.
I also fail to understand Giaever’s question “how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?”. Its been done by many different methods, ranging from grids of thermometer readings to satellite data. These have very different and complementary systematics and yet give impressively consistent results. The error on these temperature measurements is small enough to measure a net warming over the last 50 years to a few sigma confidence. I would suspect that Spencer and Christy, two favorites and regulars on WUWT, would no doubt be glad to explain to this poor fellow how you can measure the whole temperature of the whole earth. They’ve spent a large part of their careers doing it.
Finally, it appears the Giaever has not read the complete, up-to-date statement of the APS. In 2010, they appended their original statement with commentary, conceding that the term “incontrovertible” was strong (“because by its very nature science questions prevailing ideas.”), and instead specifying the actual measured value of the temperature change (with its uncertainty) and a source.
Matt, may I translate? Thank you:
“We were caught lying, and so we were forced to retract.” ~ APS.
And regarding the bunkum of a global temperature, here is Prof McKitrick’s peer reviwed [and never falsified] paper: click
What is the “right” global temperature? Give us a number. Invent one if you like.
Or, you might want to read the first sentence of Dr McKitrick’s Conclusion.
@ Smokey, I think a more accurate translation would be
“We used too strong of an adjective, so here is the actual number and its respective uncertainty”
I agree with the claim that the term “incontrovertible” is strong, but even the vast majority of skeptical climate scientists (for example, Lindzen, Christy, Spencer) all concede a measurable warming. The later of those three are responsible for making the measurements that you claim “do not exist”.
As for the McKitrick paper, I should qualify that temperature reconstructions are measurements of the temperature *anomaly*, not some sort of absolute temperature measurement.
To quote NASA-GISS
“Our analysis concerns only temperature anomalies, not absolute temperatures. The temperature anomaly tells us how much warmer or colder than normal it is at a particular place and point in time, the ‘normal temperature’ being the mean over many (30) years (same place, same time of year). It seems obvious that to find the anomaly, you first have to know the current and normal absolute temperatures. This is correct for the temperature at one fixed spot (the location of one thermometer), but not true at all for regional mean temperatures.”
While there may be some interesting ideas in this paper you linked (I will have to read through it), I find it a rather bold claim to suggest that a warming effect from a change in the earth’s energy balance cannot be detected.
Joel Shore says:
September 14, 2011 at 7:26 pm
So you drive a car too, Joel? Thought so…
Frank K,
Joel Shore says:
“It is not hypocritical to use a product that you think should have a price on it that more accurately reflects all the true costs of using that product, so that it will be used more efficiently and so that the proper market incentives exist for the development of alternatives.”
Like windmill sellers, eh?
And Matt says: “I agree with the claim that the term ‘incontrovertible; is strong…”
Strong?? That word is a scientific LIE.
Liars lie. Deal with it. The AMS is run by liars.
Microbiologist says: “…What is motivating Gore? He is a failed politician who has amassed great wealth….I honestly don’t get it. Unless he thinks he can still be President?”
I think he’s hoping for a seat on the Supreme Soviet of the People’s Republic of America. No election will be required.
Kevin Kilty says: “I resigned from APS a while back over the Sokal hoax, and APS trying to find some middle ground…”
I’d like to hear more, Kevin. I’m familiar with the brilliant Sokal hoax–I go back once every year or two and re-read the whole story. It shows, if nothing else, that Science is ready to fall on its sword: “[Sokal] also fumed over ‘how readily they [Social Text] accepted my implication that the search for truth in science must be subordinated to a political agenda.”
Ms. Kirby is a demonstration of the fact that when you make an administrator out of a scientist, you’ve made a scientist disappear.
____
Oh, Arfur, the reason your explanation of italicization and bolding didn’t work is that the carets you used actually work as intended, rather than displaying. You have to use special coding to make them show as text.
Like this: <i>Enter text here </i> <b> Enter text here </b>
Alternatively, install the Greasemonkey Firefox Add-on and then the CA Assistant script. It even allows blockquotes, links, and previews.
Joel Shore says:
September 14, 2011 at 7:26 pm
Shows how much you know about economics, Joel. I don’t think automakers are making, selling, and pricing SUVs (or should) so that they can make all-electric vehicles someday, nor do I think that oil companies are (or should) price their products so that windmill makers can have their massively inefficient and uneconomical businesses (is there a buyer for Solyndra, anyone?). That is true delusion.
Larry;
If Joel’s admonition, “a product that you think should have a price on it that more accurately reflects all the true costs of using that product” were followed with solar and wind, both products’ sales would immediately shrink back to 1% of 1% of 1% of current levels, where they were before–in their tiny niche markets.
Matt
Because there’s no physical definition of an average global temperature,
there can be no physical definiton for differences in average global temperature,
which is all that your ‘anomaly’ is.
The significance of the ice ages wasn’t some lower value of a nonexistent quantity,
but the permanent phase change of vast quantities of water.
As for your ‘global warming’ fantasies, they’re nothing but delusions about partial differential equations you imagine you’re solving numerically.
Put up a weather station that actually measures air temps to 0.1C,
then compare them with the junk piles the Establishment relies upon,
so you realize that a thousand junk piles can’t provide accurate ‘anomalies’.
(I expect that like most Warmistas you assiduously ignore SurfaceStations.org.)
By the way, ‘Climate’ and ‘Climate Change’ are totally synonymous
Scott Covert says:
September 14, 2011 at 10:44 am
I don’t know if I were in your shoes, I would have the guts to take the path you have but I hope I would.
It doesn’t take guts. It takes integrity – and Mr Giaever clearly has this in spades.
Smokey says:
September 14, 2011 at 9:23 pm
“Like windmill sellers, eh?”
Heh!! I knew there was a Solyndra angle in there somewhere. Of course, for the half billion dollars we wasted on Solyndra, just THINK of all the fabulous “Climate Products ™” we could have purchased! Oh…yeah…I guess, like Solyndra, we’ve already purchased those too… never mind.
Larry in Texas says:
September 14, 2011 at 11:45 pm
Larry, just remember that when people like Joel want to artificially increase the price of energy, THEY won’t be the ones affected. They have jobs, earn good money (usually at the taxpayer’s expense) – it won’t hurt them. They can afford $10/gallon gas. It’s the poor – the people struggling to make ends meet – who will be harmed. But, then again, since when did the climate elites care about anyone but themselves and their agendas?
Next time Rick Perry gets asked about what scientists share his view of global warming he can say “Nobel Prize winning physicist Ivar Gaievar, for one, who recently resigned from the American Physical Society because he could find no evidence to support their hyperbolic certainty of anthropogenic climate change”.
Thanks to all for providing me with the information I need.
Something just occurred to me re: the 30,000 scientists with degrees in the hard sciences (9,000 with PhDs) mentioned by Smokey who have signed the Oregon petition: Jon Hunstman in the first GOP debate stated that “98%” of climate scientists support AGW. So – do these 30,000 individuals represent the 2% who don’t? Think on that…
Du er en modig og fornuftig mann Ivar. Tusen takk.:-)
Beste hilsen fra Island.
Agust
BobW in NC says:
September 15, 2011 at 6:23 am
Thanks to all for providing me with the information I need.
Something just occurred to me re: the 30,000 scientists with degrees in the hard sciences (9,000 with PhDs) mentioned by Smokey who have signed the Oregon petition: Jon Hunstman in the first GOP debate stated that “98%” of climate scientists support AGW. So – do these 30,000 individuals represent the 2% who don’t? Think on that…
===========================================================
Bob, before you take your argument out to the ethersphere, we should refine it a bit. First, notice how Huntsman worded his statement. The words climate scientists is what you want to look towards. The Oregon petition makes no distinction. They are simply scientists. So, the alarmists arguments are that the 30,000 are not climate scientists. Then, let’s look at the 98% figure. That one is entirely fictional. It is likely, however, that he’s trying to quote a poll conducted by a fellow named Doran. See http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
There we’ll see a “97.4%” figure. Amusingly, the 97.4% immediately precedes the raw numbers, “75 of 77”. So, the alarmist community went from the bogus “thousands of scientists” to 75. Interestingly, the questionnaire was sent to “10,257 Earth scientists”.
I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention a “study” conducted by some alarmists of the scientists engaged in publishing. It seemed little more than a practice of self-affirmation with very little science/math behind the proposition, but you should be prepared to respond to it if you’re going to discuss the views of the majority of scientists/climatologists. There are plenty of examples well documenting the gate-keeping behaviors of the warmista. I’d provide a link, but I’ve seemed to have misplaced it at the moment.
Best wishes,
James
(how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?)
I really wish there were more people willing to challenge the legitimacy of “global” records of temperature. Even scientists who are skeptics of AGW turn right around and refer to the “global temperature anomaly”, or “the northern hemisphere temperature” in their own analyses. How can people credibly talk about such things?
Along with Ross McKitrick http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/globaltemp/globaltemp.html Giaever seems to be one of the few people unwilling to overlook this.
There is incontrovertible evidence that a lot of graduate programs in the sciences will close in the near future if a new source of funding is not found. Getting ahold of the government teat for support of government control of energy would surely take care of that funding shortfall for decades to come. Many people in academic science are desperate and will do anything to gain the desired funding.
Evidence that the sceptical viewpoint is not lost even on the “common man” I saw just a few days ago during a trip to Germany. In the mens restroom of a small “Gasthaus” (restaurant) I saw a standard poster on the wall (as translated from German):
Underneath the three urinals were labeled by the owner (tongue firmly in cheek) :
The doors of the three “other” stalls were labeled:
“For example, even some smokers might agree that cigarettes should be taxed significantly.”
Joel Shore
You obviously do not live in Canada where a pack of smokes is roughly $10 a pack and gas is $4.50 a gallon. They are taxed to death.
No wonder Americans have been avoiding Canada as a tourist destination.
Fox news is giving Dr. Giaever prominent and favorable treatment. Hopefully others will follow suit.
Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Resigns Over Global Warming
Wow, the Flat Earth Society is alive and well, I see.
mikemonaco,
The Flat Earth Society has never changed. They still believe in catastrophic AGW.
All this is handwaving. The ONLY thing that will stop these crazy, uneducated cretins (ie EPA, Australian Warmists, misguided greens etc) is legal sanction and monetary restraint.
Smokey says:
Your translation skills are very poor indeed. A better translation is, “The word ‘incontrovertible’ is ill-defined and may be taken by some to be too strong. So, it is better to describe in more precise terms exactly what is known regarding the warming.”
Bill Parsons says:
Some papers are never falsified simply because they are so silly that they are simply ignored by the scientific community. That is the category that the Essex et al. paper falls into.
First of all, their conclusion that the average global temperature is not a rigorously thermodynamically defined quantity is a strawman. It is still a useful quantity to measure. If you want to get technical about it, temperature is only rigorously thermodynamically-defined for a system in equilibrium and since no real physical system is ever in thermal equilibrium, temperature can never be rigorously defined. And, yet, we still find it very useful to measure temperatures.
So, the question comes down to whether the quantity is useful to look at…and, specifically, if different definitions of the temperature anomaly that are reasonable can lead to very different conclusions in regards to the temperature trend.
If you look at Figures 2 and 3 in the Essex et al. paper incautiously, you might be tempted to conclude that they have shown that the average decadal temperature trend from a set of stations can indeed dramatically depend on the way one averages. And in a sense they have, but only by going to utterly ridiculous ways of averaging.
In particular, note their x-axis in Figure 2: They take r-values from -125 to 125, where the r-value is essentially a moment of the distribution. So, r=1 corresponds to the standard arithmetic mean, r=2 corresponds to what is called the “root mean squared”, and even r=4 could conceivably be justified if, e.g., you wanted to average the amount of radiative energy emitted by that region of the atmosphere (which depends on the 4th power of the temperature). However, I don’t see how they can justify the much larger positive and negative powers of r as being at all reasonable. In fact, the reason that their graphs in Figures 2 and 3 seem to asymptotically approach certain values for the decadal trend is that these values are in fact the trend values you get if you look only at the lowest-temperature data point for each month over that period (which is picked out for large negative values of r) or if you look only at the highest-temperature data point for each month over that period (which is picked out for large positive values of r). [A similar story holds for their s-means of Fig. 3 except that now their range of s is even more extreme than their range for the r-means so you see an even broader range over which the decadal trend has essentially hit these asymptotic values!] This is clearly a very stupid way to perform an average!
Using their own example (since they were kind enough to post the data they used on the web), I have reproduced their graph and find that even for r=4, the decadal trend in temperature for their 12 stations (0.056 C per decade) is only a little reduced from the r=1 values (0.060 C per decade)…And, if anything, the change would be much less dramatic if the average were performed over many stations! (Having fewer stations means that there are larger gaps in the temperature data and hence their goofy averaging method more easily picks out essentially just one station for each month.)
Overall, their basic argument seems to hinge on the proposition that if one cannot rigorously (e.g., thermodynamically) justify one particular average as being correct, then any way of doing it is as good as any other. I can only imagine how much of modern science would be thrown out the window if we applied this logic across all of science…We’d be back in the Dark Ages!
The conclusion of the Essex et al. paper ought to be that averages should be done meaningfully…and if you do a really stupid sort of average, like one that completely weights just one station over all of the others…then you will not get a good result. Who’d have thunk it!?!
Joel Shore @ 2:27 pm 9/15 – you use an awful lot of words Joel, but any thinking person with even a basic education can easily determine that there is no such thing as a global average temperature. There are not enough thermometers in existence to calculate the average temperature of Lake Superior, or the air above it at any given time, let alone the entire planet. Those who claim otherwise just want to get their hands on lots of easy money from the government to study a problem only they & their mates are qualified to detect – just like the fabled “emperor’s new clothes”.
Ray: You don’t have to measure everywhere to get a good average value, particularly when the quantity in question is correlated over reasonable distances. It turns out that temperature itself is not that well-correlated (imagine the temperature at the top of Mt. Washington vs the temperature at a location in the valley a few miles away) but temperature anomaly is. That is why it is the temperature anomaly that is measured.
Joel, there are simply not enough locations where measurements are made to satisfy this punter that an accurate global average temperature anomaly can be calculated. And an anomaly based on the average of 30 years data is simply not long enough! A little bit of reading reveals there are any number of cyclic variations in atmospheric & oceanic conditions. Variations which range from the 12 hourly tides, 24 hourly day/night changes, to cycles over 100 years long. How many more unknown cycles are there? Can your climate heroes give us a definitive answer? No, I thought not. And guess what, that yellow ball in the sky during the warm part of each 24 hour period on this planet is the controlling influence over the whole shebang.
Joel, you are not going to defend practices such as measuring temperatures at the airports of Antarctic stations & extrapolating the anomalies over the rest of the continent are you? Or doing the same at a coastal town in the Arctic & extrapolating it 1200 km out to sea? Where you warmists lose the argument is that you do not demand of your heroes that they back up their claims with the replicatable methods & data they use, nor do you condemn the unscientific conduct of those heroes such as I outlined above.
Ray Boorman,
If Joel Shore had an acceptable Correction to the McKitrick paper he would surely have submitted it, smart guy that he believes he is. Instead, Joel impotently argues on WUWT against the McKitrick et al. peer reviewed-paper, which concludes with:
Try to be tolerant of Joel Shore. He is a first order True Believer in CAGW. Unfortunately for Joel, he has no direct, empirical, testable evidence disputing the fact that CO2 is both harmless and beneficial. None at all.
So Joel gets all wordy, trying to baffle us with BS. That might work on pseudo-science alarmist blogs. But it doesn’t work on WUWT – the internet’s “Best Science” site.
You mean like bristlecones and Yamal?
Eminent Physicists Skeptical of AGW Alarm
“I’m a skeptic. …Global Warming it’s become a new religion. You’re not supposed to be against Global Warming. You have basically no choice. And I tell you how many scientists support that. But the number of scientists is not important. The only thing that’s important is if the scientists are correct; that’s the important part.” – Ivar Giaever
Ivar Giaever, M.E., Norwegian Institute of Technology (1952), Ph.D. Theoretical Physics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1964), Engineer, Advanced Engineering Program, General Electric Company (1954–1956), Applied Mathematician, Research and Development Center, General Electric Company (1956–1958), Researcher, Research and Development Center, General Electric Company (1958–1988), Guggenheim Fellowship, Biophysics, Cambridge University (1969-1970), Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize (1965), Nobel Prize in Physics (1973), Member, American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1974), Member, National Academy of Science (1974), Member, National Academy of Engineering (1975), Adjunct Professor of Physics, University of California, San Diego (1975), Visiting Professor, Salk Institute for Biological Studies (1975), Professor of Physics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1988-2005), Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Applied BioPhysics (1991-Present), Professor Emeritus of Physics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2005-Present)
Joel Shore says:
September 15, 2011 at 6:46 pm
……….It turns out that temperature itself is not that well-correlated (imagine the temperature at the top of Mt. Washington vs the temperature at a location in the valley a few miles away) but temperature anomaly is. …………
==========================================================
Uhmm, no, it isn’t. For instance, observe the Rocky Mountains during the winter. Fronts get stuck there often. One area, cold as hell, just to the east……not so bad. Your distance/anomaly correlation only works in some spots. Others, not so much.
Joel, quit believing everything you hear. Observe stuff for yourself every once in a while. Assume the posit is incorrect and set about to prove it wrong.
Joel,
If you took 365 photographic exposures of my backyard, and tried to overlay the negatives, the resulting image would be pretty fuzzy. There is no one representative image in that multiple exposure, and it would be a fool’s errand to try to extract it from the blur of dots on the film.
Taking a daily temperature reading in my backyard, at a height of 5 feet off the ground, over a 365-day period, from June 21 to June 21, might allow you to draw a graph of temperatures at that exact spot. But the following year’s graph will look different. And if you continued to graph daily temperatures, it’s likely the trend lines between summer solstices would vary significantly from one year to the next. Perhaps, averaging all the numbers over a decade, you get a trend line going down. But this is still a “short term” (and geographically limited) database for the scientists who want to make prognostications about not only my entire back yard, but the world.
Different scientists are claiming insights into what the next decade, next century, and next millennium will be like. And they aren’t limiting their insights to fuzzy generalities, either. Like Nostradamus, they are predicting how high the seas will rise, what parts of the ice fields in Antarctica and Greenland will vanish, and, within a few degrees of uncertainty, what (specifically higher) temperatures we’ll achieve by certain dates in the future. To draw a trend line that is that predictive of the future, you must start with very exacting records of the past, and make some pretty heroic assumptions about your predictive ability. Putting aside the technical problems of maintaining such long, accurate records over the desired period, and the human fallibility in skill and veracity in handling the data — it seems to me the real problem begins with where these scientist start their trend line.
One artist of paleo-climates, CR Scotese, graphs temps in a world which, over the last 600 million or so years, has fluctuated between 10 and 25 degree centigrade, temperatures which have induced global ice-house and hot-house conditions. In the time period shown here http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm five ice ages have occurred. My understanding is that, even in the present ice age “recovery” we’ve seen temperatures both much warmer, and much colder than the present day.
Drawing a trend line through any of these exteme periods (or just through selective phases in the last century) naturally yields different angles, and therefore seriously skews predictions about the temperature in my back yard next year, next decade, and in the next century.
McKitrick says:
I can believe that data gathered from the past can yield both snapshots and general trends about the past climate, but that it’s value in making predictions about the future is limited. Put another way, the angles created by scientists and statisticians, based on scant evidence, is more of a “forcing” than any actual climate factor.
You might think you have found a way of dealing with this problem mathematically. But you have a long way to go before you can convince even the average American that they need to pay up big time for government policies based on this kind of selective mining of past climate data.
0.8 degrees over ~100 years. That’s a rise of 0.008 degrees/year. How many assumptions have to be off in the order of 0.001 of a degree for a distance of 1200 kilometers over a period of 100 years to change that number?
That’s not to say distance isn’t important, it is! Two temps reading right next to each other compared to a temp reading 500 miles away is silly. But, the two temp readings don’t have a relationship to the one 500 miles away. Averaging, in any fashion, is totally inadequate for this consideration.
Actually, it’s 97%. Of 79. Equals 77. That’s the sample size in the student paper that everyone is referring to.
bladeshearerJack Maloney says:
September 14, 2011 at 10:45 am
Stand by for assassination of Giaever’s character by the RealClimate mob.
————
Just noticed this on the guardian from a blogger called gpwayne, in response to a mention of Ivar Giaever:
—
“It is sad to see scientists become victims of their age – Plimer, Bellamy and Lovelock immediately come to mind, the latter being a very sad case because I had so much respect for his work, and none at all for his recent, ‘grumpy old man’ outbursts.
As you rightly point out, denialism is the refuge of the retired, middle-management types whose lives do not seem to have gone as well as they might like, leading it seems to the kind of cynicism and bitterness that fuels so much of the smug denialism we are subjected to in CiF and elsewhere (although at least it hasn’t penetrated our political classes in the way it has in the US)…….
Giaever may have done great work in his own field, but when he starts dismissing science without doing the work (and publishing it), he’s just another daft punter with too high an opinion of himself.”
—
looks like we didn’t have to wait too long…
It occurred to me that I haven’t seen any news of a prominent “denier” changing sides and accepting the consensus on CAGW. Has anyone else seen news of this sort?
And this fellow has a real Nobel Prize, not the green knock-offs they have been handing out lately.
DMA: Have you seen a prominent creationist change sides and accept the scientific consensus on evolution? I would suggest that it is pretty rare for pretty much the same reasons. That being said, Ronald Bailey of Reason Magazine has come around to a certain extent.
And, within the scientific community, there has been a slow but dramatic shift in the views on climate change over the years: When Hansen made his claim in 1988 that the warming that was occurring was due to greenhouse gases, many scientists thought such a claim was premature, but few would argue that Hansen was wrong now.
That’s because they won’t get funding or papers published if they don’t believe.
That is a very poor analogy as creationism is a religious not scientific issue, they do not have any support for their arguments in the peer-reviewed literature while climate skeptics do,
900+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skeptic Arguments Against ACC/AGW Alarm
Poptech,
A quick search reveals that, in fact, creationists make similar claims about there being peer-reviewed papers that question evolution or support an intelligent design viewpoint. Here is one list that they’ve compiled: http://www.discovery.org/a/2640 and here is a post talking about a paper by a NAS member that is “critical of Darwinism”.
There may not be quantitatively as many such papers; on the other hand, I am not sure that creationists have a whole journal that has basically dedicated itself to publishing anything, no matter how bad, as “Energy & Environment” has for global warming skeptics. And, that list you have there has cast a pretty broad net in what you categorize as papers that support skeptic arguments.
And, as for creationism being a religious issue, that is not how Roy Spencer sees it ( http://www.ideasinactiontv.com/tcs_daily/2005/08/faith-based-evolution.html ):
Jeff Alberts says:
…which is, of course, the exact same sort of arguments that creationists make.
Joel, they make these claims but you will not find any actual peer-reviewed papers in science or non-religious social-science journals supporting creationism. I am well aware of what the Discovery institute claims but their list does not support their claim as those papers are either in worthless creationist journals not recognized by any scientific community or the paper makes no mention of creationism. Your argument does not apply to Global Warming skeptics.
Energy & Environment is a legitimate scholarly peer-reviewed journal,
http://science.thomsonreuters.com/cgi-bin/jrnlst/jlresults.cgi?PC=MASTER&ISSN=0958-305X
I am well aware of Dr. Spencer’s position on the issue and do not agree with him on it.
Poptech,
It seems rather extreme to have a criterion that the paper must mention creationism explicitly. I think there is a general agreement (at least among lots of folks) that talking about a biblical creation is not really scientific, which is why the papers that they cite tend to be labeled as supporting creationism because they point out flaws in evolutionary theory.
Certainly, many of the papers that you list among your 900 do not explicitly support a particular view regarding the cause of the warming that has occurred but that doesn’t seem to stop you from listing them. You have also listed papers that are utter embarrassments like Gerlich and Tscheuschner’s garbage, several of the embarrassing papers by Jaworowski, and so forth. How about listing the subset of those papers that you consider to be actually sensible and truly challenging to the current scientific consensus on climate change?
Here’s some facts about the quality of “Energy & Environment” as a journal: http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2011/04/energy-and-environment-900-papers
Joel Shore says on September 17, 2011 at 7:27 am
Ahhhh, still trying to paint skeptics of the AGW religion as somehow equivalent to, or worse than, creationists, I see.
For the record, once again, I find the theory of evolution to be a compelling explanation for the diversity of life on this planet and think that it does not address abiogenesis, and view the whole AGW religion as precisely that: unscientific nonsense with a profoundly political purpose.
Richard,
Needless to say, just like you think AGW is a religion, so too do creationists think that evolution is a religion: http://creationists.org/evolutionism-is-a-religion.html
That is why we have scientific organizations like the National Academy of Sciences to adjudicate between science and pseudo-scientific nonsense. Unfortunately, the people who are on the losing side of that adjudication just “blame the refs”.
Which has been completely refuted,
Rebuttal to “Energy and Environment – “journal of choice for climate skeptics” Analysing the 900+ skeptic papers part III”
It is important to get your facts straight before Googling for propaganda.
But that is my whole point. There are no peer-reviewed papers in scientific or non-religious social science peer-reviewed journals that explicitly supports creationism because it is a religious belief. Pointing out a flaw in evolution theory does not support another theory. It simply supports skepticism of evolution.
Strawman, my list of 900+ papers makes no such claim. The list is explicitly titled: “900+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skeptic Arguments Against ACC/AGW Alarm”. Alarmist arguments are many so the list tries to cover the most common as well as supporting competing theories which still falls under the same title. For instance, there are hundreds of peer-reviewed papers on the list supporting a cosmic ray/solar theory of climate change. While you have ZERO supporting creationism.
G&T’s and Jaworowski’s papers were peer-reviewed in scholarly journals and thus included on the list. The listing of papers has nothing to do with your personal opinion on them. My opinion on individual papers is irrelevant as that is not the purpose of the list. The was created as a resource and to demonstrate that these papers exist. If a scientist has a problem with a paper then they should submit a response for publication in the same journal so the author can respond. I have seen no evidence of any such consensus.
Poptech:
That is not much of a refutation. I would call it a nitpicking. For example, the fact that the article claimed “almost 15%” of the papers on the list are from E&E when the exact figure is 14.1% is supposed to debunk the claim?
Fine…So, if I amend my claim to say that “skeptics of AGW” make many arguments very similar to “skeptics of evolution” then you would like it better than calling the skeptics of evolution “creationists” (which nearly all of them are)? So, do you believe we should set public policy regarding the teaching of evolution on the basis of the fact that such skeptical articles on evolution exist?
Any paper that suggests that the sun plays a role in climate change…or that cosmic rays play a role…does not necessarily contradict the notion that most of the change that we have seen in the latter half of the 20th century through now is due to increasing greenhouse gases. Nobody doubts that the sun plays a role in climate change in general.
And, what it demonstrates is that a journal like E&E will publish complete garbage and that if authors shop around for journals well outside of the climate community, they can succeed in getting complete garbage published.
“The claim … is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years”
Use of the phrase “degree Kelvin” by a Nobel Laureate in physics?” I’ll remember that next time I am criticized for that slip of the tongue.
If you cannot be statistically accurate don’t use statistics. That (14.1%) was to demonstrate the incompetence of the author of the source you picked. Either way that was simply one small part of the refutation and the key part there was that there are over 769 papers from 256 other journals besides Energy & Environment on the list.
I do not believe the federal government should set public policy on education. As I believe states should be free from the federal government to set their own non-religious school curriculum for public schools and parents should be free to send their children to whatever school they wish. In no way do I support teaching religious beliefs such as creationism or intelligent design in public schools or any science class (public or private). I have no problem with these being taught in religion class in private schools. If a peer-reviewed science paper exists in a science journal challenging some aspect of evolution then I have no problem with that being brought up for discussion in the science class. The fact is none exist in the context of being pro-intelligent design/creationism.
Actually is does support skeptic arguments that contradict the notion that most of the change has been due to AGW, since it supports the argument for a larger influence of natural factors such as the Sun or Cosmic Rays.
You have failed to demonstrate any such thing about E&E. If a scientist has a critique of any paper then they should submit it for publication in that journal. E&E has published these in the past with a rebuttal from the original author. It has irrefutably been demonstrated that E&E is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal.
Poptech says:
I hardly think that referring to a value of 14.1% as “almost 15%” indicates statistical incompetence.
No…It doesn’t. Nobody argues that natural factors have not played a role in climate change in the past. To argue that natural factors can actually account for most of the warming since the 1950s, one actually has to demonstrate this…i.e., one has to show that the magnitude of the effect, and the actual solar / cosmic ray trends are such that this can be accounted for.
Believe it or not, scientists have better things to do with their time than rebut nonsense that appears in a journal of extremely low stature. In most cases outside of climate science, bad science is not rebutted but is just ignored. It is only in the politicized world in which climate science lives that this bad science gets publicized within the ideological echo chamber and takes on a life of its own even though the scientific community knows it is garbage.
Your own statement from the editor of the journal says:
So, in other words, at best what one can hope for (i.e., if she does not simply make the editorial decision herself) is that she will send the papers to a ‘climate skeptic’ for review, meaning that she is restricting review to a minutely-small proportion of the scientific community that actually publishes in the field of climate science! No wonder E&E has earned the horrible reputation that it enjoys. By the way, would you care to tell us how many libraries around the world carry this journal?
Poptech:
By the way, have you noticed that when you look at your ThomasReuters link that supposedly shows it to be a “peer-reviewed scholarly journal”, it lists under “coverage”:
By contrast, Journal of Climate and Geophysical Research Letters list under “coverage”:
Do you think that journal classified as a social science journal is the best place to publish, and have peer-reviewed, technical articles on climate science?
Sure it does. If you are going to use statistics, get the numbers right. It also demonstrated that he failed to count the papers on the list, which is a fatal flaw with those that attempt to criticize it.
These are all arguments of degrees. As the argument on this point varies for “most” from 50.1-99.9%. Those are vastly different positions. Papers that support skeptic arguments for a larger natural influence also argue for a reduced anthropogenic influence.
You have failed to demonstrate any such thing about E&E. If a scientist has a critique of any paper then they should submit it for publication in that journal. E&E has published these in the past with a rebuttal from the original author.
This is a nice excuse but is baseless and meaningless. Let me know when the scientists address their arguments in the peer-reviewed literature.
She made no such claim that they are the only reviewers on papers. E&E has not “earned a horrible reputation”, alarmist scientists and climate activists have simply tried to smear the journal.
Energy & Environment is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary scholarly journal (ISSN: 0958-305X)
– Found at 173 libraries and universities worldwide in print and electronic form. These include; Cambridge University, Cornell University, British Library, Dartmouth College, Library of Congress, National Library of Australia, Ohio University, Pennsylvania State University, Rutgers University, University of California, University of Delaware, University of Oxford, University of Virginia, and MIT.
I am not sure if people think they are talking to someone else when they have a conversation with me? These conversations are like a perpetual merry go-round that could be avoided if people simply read the notes preceding and following the list.
Yes I am WELL AWARE of this and I have always known that E&E was an interdisciplinary scholarly journal. No argument has ever been made otherwise. What I stated was 100% correct, Energy & Environment is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal.
I think it is the best place to publish climate papers that also include social-science issues or have policy implications.
So, you are telling me that the editor, trying to defend her journal, made the statement that
But that she really meant something like “lots of people review the papers and a few happen to be skeptics”? Yeah…That’s a likely interpretation!
I don’t know where this list comes from but it appears to be a list of all universities that have the journal from any years. I just went to the Cornell catalogue and it says their subscription was cancelled in 1995; Penn State apparently canceled theirs in 2008. Also, for journals who get an electronic subscription, one would want to determine if they are paying separately for it or if it is getting bundled in as a package deal with other journals published by Multiscience.
That’s a pretty broad criterion. And, I am sure if James Hansen got a paper published in a journal that is listed only in social science databases, you would take the science in it very seriously unless a rebuttal to it appeared?
She did not state they are the only reviewers or even that they always review such papers. All that can be interpreted from that statement, is one out of the likely three reviewers on those specific papers may be a respected climate skeptic. All E&E reviewers have the relevant credentials to peer-review the content of the papers they are selected for.
It is fascinating you have a problem with one of the reviewers being a credentialed climate scientist who happens to be a respected skeptic. Do you have the same problems with the reviewers of AGW proponent papers? Because most pro-AGW papers are reviewed by other AGW proponents.
Yes the list comes from WorldCat and it shows any library that has any issue on file. All of which is irrelevant in today’s online word.
I don’t take James Hansen’s papers seriously wherever he publishes them.
[i]Orson Olson says:
September 14, 2011 at 3:02 pm
I found the CCs from the email interesting: “Cc: Robert H. Austin; ‘William Happer’; ‘Larry Gould’; ‘S. Fred Singer’; Roger Cohen”
Happer is a physicist at Princeton; Singer, the founder of the NWS Satellite Division in the 60s, and formerly environmental science prof. at UVa (until he was pushed out for AGW-heresy).
But will anyone enlighten me about the rest?[/i]
Larry Gould is a physicist and husband of an acquaintance of mine from another list. He is one of those actively involved in the effort to get the APS to change its policy statement.
Orson:
Here’s some info on Robert Austin: http://www.aps.org/about/governance/councillor1.cfm and http://austingroup.princeton.edu/ As I understand it, he was the APS Councillor who actually brought up the issue of changing the APS policy statement at one of the meetings of the APS Councillors.
Poptech says:
I don’t have a problem with that…but I also think that this is an extremely generous way to interpret her statement. While her statement is strictly not logically incompatible with your interpretation, it is certainly a bizarre interpretation of what she said, requiring us to believe that she specifically made an argument that tends to undermine her claims of how objective the peer review process is when it is in fact much more objective than she has led us to believe. It is sort of akin to believing that if some place advertises that “all our teachers have at least bachelor’s degrees in what they are teaching” that you might in fact be taught by a Nobel Laureate.
I have to say that I also question the judgement of who is a “respected skeptic” coming from an editor who has Richard S Courtney ( http://www.desmogblog.com/richard-s-courtney ) as a member of the editorial board.
Well, the fact that you refuse to take seriously any work of one of the most respected scientists in the field while actively advertising papers such as G&T’s and Jaworowski’s speaks volumes as to where you are coming from.
There is nothing bizarre or generous about it, as that is all that can be objectively concluded from her statement. The statement you are focusing on was part of a larger argument defending her “political agenda”. Her reference to “respected skeptics” would likely be scientists like Dr. Lindzen, or Dr. Christy. No one would question scientists like these having the scientific credentials to review climate papers. I have spoken to authors who have had papers published in E&E and they stated that the E&E peer-review process was comparable with other scholarly journals. They found it to be very helpful in correcting and pointing out mistakes in their papers.
You need to stop relying on propaganda from sites like DeSmogBlog,
http://www.populartechnology.net/2011/04/truth-about-desmogblog.html
Have you attempted to speak with Mr. Courtney? As he would be glad to correct all the nonsense off the link you provided.
He is only “respected” by alarmists, I consider him a shrill alarmist scientist who is pushing a political agenda. My list attempts to be comprehensive and does not discriminate based on what alarmists complain about (which is everything). It’s purpose is to both demonstrate that these papers exist and to provide a resource for skeptics.
Poptech says:
Well, if she does send papers to a much broader community of climate scientists than just skeptics, why doesn’t she say this in her own defense? If she doesn’t, I am back at my original question of why you think it is reasonable to have papers reviewed only by the tiny minority of actively-publishing climate scientists who share a certain point-of-view?
Unless you use “alarmists” as a synonym for all but the select few of the scientific community who share your ideological and scientific views, then that statement about him is not correct. You don’t win prestigious awards from AAAS, APS, AGU, AMS, and NASA ( http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/hansencv_201106.pdf ) without being well-respected within the scientific community.
You may not like his point-of-view or agree with all his scientific work, but to deny he is generally highly-respected in the scientific community is simply denying reality.
I think what it demonstrates is to what extremes AGW skeptics have to go to find papers that they claim agrees with their point-of-view.
Because her response you are quoting was to charges of having a “political agenda” not the question you are asking. Politically she is a social democrat which makes the whole charge to begin with laughable.
I have seen no evidence that she doesn’t. So you believe all pro-AGW papers should have a skeptic as a reviewer?
Winning an award has nothing to do with how “well-respected” you are with scientists who did not give you the award. You are making unsupported claims.
I have not surveyed the “scientific community” nor have I seen any such survey to determine how respected he is in the “scientific community”.
There is nothing extreme about the existence of scholarly peer-reviewed papers that support skeptic arguments. They simply exist and there is nothing you can do about it.