Dr. Judith Curry writes:
As the IPCC struggles with its inconvenient truth – the pause and the growing discrepancy between models and observations – the obvious question is: why is the IPCC just starting to grapple with this issue now, essentially two minutes before midnite of the release of the AR5?
…
My blog post on the Fyfe et al. paper triggered an email from Pat Michaels, who sent me a paper that he submitted in 2010 to Geophysical Research Letters, that did essentially the same analysis as Fyfe et al., albeit with the CMIP3 models.
…
Assessing the consistency between short-term global temperature trends in observations and climate model projects
Patrick J. Michaels, Paul C. Knappenberger, John R. Christy, Chad S. Herman, Lucia M. Liljegren, James D. Annan
Abstract. Assessing the consistency between short-term global temperature trends in observations and climate model projections is a challenging problem. While climate models capture many processes governing short-term climate fluctuations, they are not expected to simulate the specific timing of these somewhat random phenomena—the occurrence of which may impact the realized trend. Therefore, to assess model performance, we develop distributions of projected temperature trends from a collection of climate models running the IPCC A1B emissions scenario. We evaluate where observed trends of length 5 to 15 years fall within the distribution of model trends of the same length. We find that current trends lie near the lower limits of the model distributions, with cumulative probability-of-occurrence values typically between 5% and 20%, and probabilities below 5% not uncommon. Our results indicate cause for concern regarding the consistency between climate model projections and observed climate behavior under conditions of increasing anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions.
The authors have graciously agreed for me to provide links to their manuscript: [manuscriptMichaels_etal_2010 ] and [supplementary material Michaels_etal_GRL10_SuppMat].
Drum roll . . . the paper was rejected. I read the paper (read it yourself), and I couldn’t see why it was rejected, particularly since it seems to be a pretty straightforward analysis that has been corroborated in subsequent published papers.
The rejection of this paper raised my watchdog hackles, and I asked to see the reviews. I suspected gatekeeping by the editor and bias against the skeptical authors by the editor and reviewers.
Read more: Peer review: the skeptic filter
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Heresy! Burn the Heretics! Burn the Books! Burn the Witch!!!
some things never change. Probably because human nature never changes.
Climate Etc. has a heck of a troll infestation problem. Crazy distribution of quality and garbage comments IMO.
Just helping to hide the decline.
Leaked documents seen by the Associated Press, yesterday revealed deep concerns among politicians about a lack of global warming over the past few years.
Germany called for the references to the slowdown in warming to be deleted,
saying looking at a time span of just 10 or 15 years was ‘misleading’
and they should focus on decades or centuries.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has changed its tune after issuing stern warnings about climate change for years. Hungary worried the report would provide ammunition for deniers of man-made climate change.
Belgium objected to using 1998 as a starting year for statistics, as it was
exceptionally warm and makes the graph look flat – and suggested using
1999 or 2000 instead to give a more upward-pointing curve.
The United States delegation even weighed in, urging the authors of the report to explain away the lack of warming.
————————-
Taken from Daily Mail.
This is sad and shows the extent to which the bullying tactics of the people at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) with regard to their attempts to control peer review and climate research extended. It appears that their successful efforts to have former GRL editor James Saiers fired, as detailed in the leaked emails, had a frightening impact.
I remember when Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) first started publishing papers related to climate. It was the among the first to address the cross-disciplinary nature of climatology, which previously was restricted to just a few climate and meteorological journals.
At the time there were very few journals publishing climate materials, especially historical and paleoclimate reconstructions. It was why the work of Reid Bryson and especially H H Lamb was so ground breaking. The major journal relatively newly on the scene was Stephen Schneider’s “Climate Change”.
I have been accused of not publishing in Nature or Science, but they were rarely publishing climate papers at the time when I was very active in publishing. I can speak about this with understanding because in two of my graduate level climate courses the students had to write articles and determine where they would submit them for publication. I wanted them to learn about the narrow and specialized focus of journals, as well as the procedures of editorial instructions. I also occasionally submitted papers to a journal to determine the limits of their acceptance and to get feedback from the editor or hopefully reviewers so I could adjust and increase potential for publication.
The behaviour of journals and especially their editors has been a disgraceful episode in their lack of objectivity essential to good science. There area variety of causes not least the taking over of journals by publishers. Profit became the driving force and sensational papers producing the prevailing political wisdom the hall mark for high sales. Of course, there was also the realization that control of editors was essential if you wanted to control the scientific method – something the CRU people did with frightening efficiency and effect. They also realized that even being editors themselves gave inordinate control. They could hide behind the secrecy of not disclosing reviewers to peer-review each others work. Donna Laframboise, author of two books on the corruption of the IPCC apparently identified this problem for the Journal of Climate.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/08/23/the-journal-of-climate-the-ipcc/
The extent of the damage done by the CRU people and the IPCC is only gradually coming to light, but the few of us who watched the entire research area of climatology hijacked for a political agenda knew what was going on and were easily attacked and marginalized as skeptics and then deniers.
I must say in retrospect I would not resist again knowing the price paid, but I am beyond the point of no return. I am at the point where I realize there is no pleasure in “I told you so.” I am also at the point where I am afraid there will be no accountability for the damage done, the lives impacted and the money wasted. I write this after reading a headline about new EPA regulations shutting down coal plants throwing people out on an increasingly crowded street all based on the false science created by the CRU, the IPCC and the cowering editors of once fine journals.
[“There area variety of causes not least the taking over of journals by publishers… ” is intended to be? Mod]
cooling started three years ago…have fun
WWS,
Historically, heretics were burned at the stake, witches were hung.
It was obviously rejected because it doesn’t support the political agenda of global domination by Progressives,etc. You are familiar with Agenda 21, I presume?
Witches were “hanged”, I think you’ll find.
That’s a sad tale you’ve had to live through, Tim. All you can do is make the dirt you know as public as possible – the public opinion “climate” is growing more amenable by the day.
No, there will be no accountability for the scamsters, for people like that spend their lives jumping from scam to scam, but there will most definitely be Consequences. One set of those consequences is quite amusing and profitable to me, personally, although I can’t say the same for the general public. Allow me to explain:
I make my living from the oil and gas exploration business, which of course is booming here in the US due to the fraccing revolution. (I was in the field for years, but it’s all legal/office work now) I also read that headline about EPA regulations killing coal plants, but I somehow doubt that people outside our industry realize how darkly amusing that is to us who are part of it. We are used to “oil and gas” always being vilified as the Big, Bad, Meanies of the energy world, while for so many years Coal has gotten a special pass, probably because so many good Union members make their living from it. (Oil and Gas is a notoriously non-unionized industry) Funny thing is, most of the greens are now lumping ALL energy producers together as “bad guys” without realizing that the Coal business and the O&G biz are made up of completely different players, for the most part, and in the states, we are all fighting over the same pie. Everything that cuts Coal usage INCREASES Oil and NatGas usage. (Especially NatGas!) That’s because, especially in electrical power generation, there are no realistic alternatives anymore. Nuclear construction is shut down – no more hydro-power plants are being built. (in fact they’re being torn down; look at what the enviros are saying about Hetch Hetchy) New wind installations are dying because they’re money losers, and solar was always a joke. (Geothermal? Have you heard anyone even mention that in years? All of the projects went broke, if you didn’t know) So, if you shut down coal, since oil is too expensive and too much in demand around the world, then Nat Gas is the only game in town. By Government DIktat, virtually EVERY now power plant built in the US for the next decade (if not the next 2 or 3) is going to be Nat Gas fired. Hooray for those of us in the biz – our future is now guaranteed, and it’s a darn good one!
Long story short, in spite of the fact that the greens have hated the oil and gas people from day one, today EVERY new regulation and requirement and regulation makes the oil and gas business richer, bigger, and more powerful every day. Because nobody is going to have anyplace left to turn for energy EXCEPT for what we sell! Thanks, Obama, you’ve guaranteed my and my families, and my friends future. Too bad about your voting public who isn’t going to be in on the benefits, and who are going to pay for all of this in needlessly inflated prices for the next 2 or 3 decades, at least, because there’s not going to be any competition. But that was your choice, not ours.
P.S. Now you know why Chesapeake Energy was making such big donations to the Sierra Club. Looks like money well spent, once you realize what the stakes really were.
“Leaked documents seen by the Associated Press, yesterday revealed deep concerns among politicians about a lack of global warming over the past few years.”
This is far from over. Even if we are on the way to the next glacial period before long global temperatures will surely rise. At which time Alarmist will have a field day. “See, we told you so! It’s worse than we thought.” What’s our plan then?
MattS says:
September 20, 2013 at 10:12 am
The fashion in witch execution varied by time & place. In 17th century America, they were hanged, but in Europe more often burned, like Joan of Arc in the 15th century, or drowned. The “ducking” stool could be used in their trials as well.
PS: Beheading was also possible.
Had Kepler’s mom been convicted in western Germany, she would probably have been burned, but in the previous century in Bavaria, drowning in the convenient Danube appears to have been usual.
milodonharlani,
Joan of Arc is not a counter example to my claim. Yes she was burned at the stake, but it was for being a heretic, not for being a witch.
Since when is James Annan a “skeptic”? He couldn’t get them past the skeptic filter?
Martin Lewitt,
Of course he couldn’t. The principle authors were still skeptics.
Gah, preview provided but not taken advantage of. I suck. Mods, would you delete prior post?
It’s sort of interesting when you dig into the story over there and at Lucia’s. As I understand it, someone named ‘Zwiers’ has submitted essentially the same thing and it was published. Even better, one of the hostile reviewers insisted that the uncertainty was being under-represented and that ‘Zwiers’ be called in to resolve the issue!
I thought it was neat to see the knee jerk response of some of the commenters:
“I haven’t read the paper, but my guess is that it just wasn’t very good…”
“I have now read the paper since it has been officially leaked. It is not research quality. It is in fact one of the worst POS papers on earth sciences that I have recently come across. No original work equals not publishable in a research journal.”
“Journals must publish all submitted articles…or Judith sees a conspiracy!!”
more or less all ignoring that Zwiers has published the same thing.
BTW it’s worth it to dig through and find Lucia’s extremely polite and professional demolitions in the comments if you enjoy that sort of thing. I certainly did! 🙂
As near as I can tell, the reviewers are declaring that it is not fair to compare the models to the real world.
MattS says:
September 20, 2013 at 10:52 am
Before formal witchcraft statutes, witches were often convicted of heresy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_executed_for_witchcraft
You’ll see that burning, sometimes in combo with strangulation, was generally the norm in Europe, but subject to regional variation, as beheading in Sweden.
The English wanted to try Joan for witchcraft, but couldn’t, so went for heresy. In effect, it was a witch trial by another name. The punishment was the same.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1431joantrial.asp
milodonharlani,
“The English wanted to try Joan for witchcraft, but couldn’t, so went for heresy.”
Reading your second link, I it doesn’t support your suggestion that the English wanted to try her for witchcraft.
milodonharlani,
I wouldn’t credit the wikipedia list. Looking at it, the very first entry is a straight up heretic.
Johann Albrecht Adelgrief d. 1636 German Executed after claiming to be a prophet.[6]
What was that float vs not-float test thing all about then?
Or maybe it involved dunking? Oh, perhaps a precursor to establishing who was or was not a …
Partial excerpt: Ordeal by water was associated with the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries: an accused who sank was considered innocent, while floating indicated witchcraft. These tests came to be part of what is known as the Salem Witch Trials. Some argued that witches floated because they had renounced baptism when entering the Devil’s service. King James VI of Scotland (later also James I of England) claimed in his Daemonologie that water was so pure an element that it repelled the guilty.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunking
.
albertalad says September 20, 2013 at 10:03 am, “Taken from the Daily Mail”.
Word to the Wise; I really wouldn’t bet my moderately good name on what I read in the Daily Mail.
MattS says:
September 20, 2013 at 11:25 am
I wonder how many instances of burning for witchcraft it would take to convince you that this means of execution was the norm for most countries most of the time in the late Middle Ages & Early Modern periods? Please read all the cases in the link I provided. It should convince you.
On the connection between witchcraft & heresy, please see this case from 14th century Ireland:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petronilla_de_Meath
After it became associated with satanism, witchcraft was heresy, so, as in Joan’s case, it was a distinction without a difference.
As for the Fordham link, you’ll note that it plainly calls her trial a witchcraft proceeding. If what you want is evidence that Henry V’s brother Bedford & the other English in France wanted to try her as a witch, there is this, among many other sources:
http://www.maidofheaven.com/joanofarc_duke_bedford.asp
IIRC my 15th century history correctly, the Duke’s own wife was among the women who confirmed that Joan was a maid, hence under French law couldn’t be tried for witchcraft. So the English & their French & Burgundian stooges went for heresy.
M Courtney says:
September 20, 2013 at 11:36 am
albertalad says September 20, 2013 at 10:03 am, “Taken from the Daily Mail”.
Word to the Wise; I really wouldn’t bet my moderately good name on what I read in the Daily Mail.
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LOl – I am an unashamed skeptic and in most circles these days I rate somewhere between a low down scum and a garden variety slug – or so I have been told, many times. Fox news also carried something similar as well –