From Dr. Benny Peiser at The GWPF
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Obama’s Former Science Official: ‘Climate Science Is Not Settled’
It was presented as shocking evidence of the damage being done by climate change: a species driven to extinction because of a decline in rainfall in its only habitat. Now the “rediscovery” of a species of snail is prompting questions about the role played by the Royal Society, Britain’s most prestigious scientific institution, in raising false alarm over an impact of climate change. –Ben Webster, The Times, 20 September 2014
The Royal Society journal refused to publish the rebuttal, saying it had been “rejected following full peer review”. The journal sent Mr Hambler the reviews of the rebuttal by two anonymous academic referees, who had rejected the criticisms made of Mr Gerlach’s paper. However, the Royal Society admitted this week, after questions from The Times, that the referees who had rejected the rebuttal were the same referees who had approved Mr Gerlach’s paper for publication. The society said it had since changed its policy on reviewing rebuttals… The society has refused to publish the rebuttal because it is seven years old. –Ben Webster, The Times, 20 September 2014
Society should listen to the majority consensus opinion of expert scientists. The emphasis I place on consensus of expert scientists is sometimes not understood by those not fully aware of how science works. –Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, Trust in Science, 26 June 2014
The idea that “Climate science is settled” runs through today’s popular and policy discussions. Unfortunately, that claim is misguided. It has not only distorted our public and policy debates on issues related to energy, greenhouse-gas emissions and the environment. But it also has inhibited the scientific and policy discussions that we need to have about our climate future. —Steven E. Koonin, The Wall Street Journal, 20 September 2014
In this age anonymous reviews of science studies are detrimental for the advancement of understanding. Any scope for anonymity will lead to this sort of thing, IMHO.
The society has refused to publish the rebuttal because it is seven years old.
Says it all really.
The New York Times in 1969 had the decency to apologise to Robert Goddard, 50 years after trashing his work, and his “silly” prediction that one day a rocket would carry a payload to the moon. But a science organisation like the Royal Society can’t be stuffed admitting they were wrong.
http://astronauticsnow.com/history/goddard/
They sit on, and repress a paper, then when their actions are uncovered, they refuse to publish the paper because it is too old.
Only in bizaroo world would such logic make sense.
I think this is big stuff, Koonin.
======================
Yeah, I’m getting the impression that the sleeping bear of Science may be awakening.
What passes for modern Science laid another Egg, but I’m still waiting for the chickens to come home to roost.
Don’t count the chickens, count the eggs…..
This is big stuff. But if history repeats itself, Ben Webster’s “punishment” will be to take over for Peter Gleik at the American Geophysical Union. And the beat will go on … to the detriment of science.
While I applaud Dr Koonin’s Op-Ed, and certainly everything he wrote is “true,” there were many omissions of related issues that are also “true.”
Maybe this the beginning of a Climate Science mea culpa, but still too many half truths are being told in the walk back of 2 decades of self serving (many times “rent seeking”) science by climate scientists.
I hope Anthony can find time in the next 24-48 hrs to make Dr Koonin’s WSJ Op-ed its own thread here at WUWT.
I am providing another example to US politicians prior to the US election. Last March, I posted two separate critiques of Marcott’s hockey stick paper in Science. McIntyre did others proxy by proxy. I wrote both Marcott and Pointing out the two huge flaws, one of which probably evidences scientific misconduct. Science acknowledged receipt but never responded. Marcott never responded.
Now that climate.gov is using Marcott (recent WUWT post), Imnotified them using the two detailed essays from the forthcoming book. Also renotified Science, this time with all the detailed evidence internal to the paper and it’s SI. No response from Science other than auto reply material was received.
Response from chief editor of climate.gov: We will only act after Science does, and there is no evidence of a rebuttal, correction or otherwise, followed by veiled insult about amateurs not understanding how science works…
A large number of US politicians will have all the details in time for the this years election campaigns. Now just have to find some newspapers… Ideas welcome.
Send it to James Delingpole of Breitbart London. Don’t bother with the system media.
These orgs won’t do a thing until after the sorry Summit – the boss wouldn’t like it and after all it is through them that the boss even knows the climate changed.
Rud Istvan says:
“We will only act after Science does, and there is no evidence of a rebuttal, correction or otherwise”, followed by veiled insult about amateurs not understanding how science works…
By their criteria, politicians are amateurs, too. Don’t stop writing to Science, but take Dirk’s advice; it will get you farther.
Reason Magazine, send email to Neil Cavuto, hit the red state newspaper, blue states are sheep for the most part. I live in a blue state and I am racist because I disagree with Obama, that how it goes around liberals.
“The journal sent Mr Hambler the reviews of the rebuttal by two anonymous academic referees, who had rejected the criticisms made of Mr Gerlach’s paper.”
“However, the Royal Society admitted this week, after questions from The Times, that the referees who had rejected the rebuttal were the same referees who had approved Mr Gerlach’s paper for publication.”
when are mainstream scientists going to wake up to the fact that climate “science” is doing irreparable damage to the image of science as a whole.
There are other fraudulent sciences. Diet science is probably worse than climate science with all the dieticians doing studies either proposing ways to imement US farm policy or trying to make us all vegan with lies about meat (e.g. meat fat causes higher cholesterol – which is false – it actually lowered it) of course going vegan fits right in with selling more grain by telling us carbohydrates are healthy.
Social sciences, and education scientists, and toxicology studies are also mostly bogus, either pandering to the government or trying to create a scare to bring publicity and funding to some Luddite organization.
It is really all this funding from governments that has caused the decline in science. There is more money for dubious studies, there is more money for claims that support government growth (government needs to protect us and make a whole new department for that)
We need to go back to the pre WWII model where scientists worked on their own or found private benefactors and government funding was small.
While I share your views on the fields you mention I can’t agree that private finance is necessarily any less inclined to corrupt – a 30 second look at pharmaceutical trials should provide sufficient proof of that.
Private benefactors sound so cuddly until you realize how many “benefactors” are devout warmists and would no doubt be happy to fund climate “science” and other nonsense.
Reading the FDA’s flip-flopping on TRT for men just reinforces my skepticism on their usefulness.
The difference, artwest, is that there is an actual punishment privately for funding junk: bankruptcy. That’s why private funding ultimately is the only solution, otherwise the shysters can continue their fraud unimpeded.
Mark
Somehow my grammar hit the toilet on that one… I’m sure the one or two people that cared understood.
Mar
I would not class ‘big pharma’ money as ‘private’…
The trouble is that a lot of science is pretty expensive.
I think crowd funding is a better way.
And if scientists can’t get cash that way, they should go and do summat else.
The most tragic thing my BIL – a research geologist said was ‘in the end I am a public sector employee: I cant go too far from the party line’
You can add to your list of bogus sciences radiation biology. This field in which I got my MSc (one of them) and PhD was hijacked by the anti-nuclear lobby. In looking for experimental data on how a particular isotope and its progeny (210Pb-210Po) behaved in human bones and tissues I came across research showing that caribou / reindeer in the far north have up to 3000 × the level of these nuclides in their tissue with no apparent ill effects.
I was told point-blank at a meeting of the agency funding my research to stop the caribou research (or lose funding). In the end I moved out of radiation biology (disillusioned at how politicized it was) into biomedical bone research (osteoporosis etc.) – as indeed several others originally in the nuclear-related biosciences were forced to do.
Government funding produced incredible discoveries that came out of the military.; we got transistors, the net, and cellular technology to name three of thousands. Funding before the late 1950s was largely private and WASPy. Families like the Rockefellers and Mellons and Vanderbilts. They didn’t demand immediate results. The philanthropy was largely a tax write-off at a time of maximum 90% income tax. That’s because they were funding a category of ‘research’, not a specific item or product about to hit the market, so they perceived it as directing at least a portion of their money to something they were interested in instead of paying it in taxes.
Then there are the scientists. Jonas Salk (funded by the Mellons) gave his polio cure away to the world for free. His benefactor didn’t take him to court for doing it. Name one scientist who would do that today with his breakthrough discovery. And the funder who backed him.
Then there’s the incestuousness of the journals, owned or controlled by benefactors with political or financial interests in science. They control who the editor-in-chief is. The greatest lore in a newsroom or publishing house is about toeing the publisher/editor-in-chief’s line vs. keeping your job. They’re as bad as the NYT was during the 2003 Iraq War.
That’s sad.
So, the Royal Society leaves the incorrect study (the wrong, the misguided, the error) to stand as the statement of record, and they refuse to publicly admit the mistake and publish the correction (the accurate, the factual, the correct) due to some technicality? For shame.
Royal Society members who care about science should kick up a huge fuss to change this decision, and remove all responsible from any leadership or authority, or failing that, resign from what can only be called an unscientific, corrupt, tendentious association of cultists.
Agreed, there should be an investigation and questions asked about the reviewers. The RSc is becoming an unscientific political mouthpiece for government policy
The referees had decided it would be too “unsettling” to approve a rebuttal of settled science.
Just curious:
When does a correction to erroneous information or data become a “rebuttal”?
Aren’t they refusing to publish a “correction”?
“Society should listen to the majority consensus opinion of expert scientists. The emphasis I place on consensus of expert scientists is sometimes not understood by those not fully aware of how science works. –Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, Trust in Science, 26 June 2014”
Uh, it would appear that Sir Paul Nurse is one of those not fully aware of how science works based on that statement and the actions of the Royal Society.
Very good, JohnWho, a most pregnant remark. Sir Paul Nurse is one of the reasons why the field of climatology has stagnated for twenty years or more.
Surely that cannot be true, since he has only been PRS since 2010 and does not work in climate science. I’m sure he’d be flattered to hear this, though.
Indeed, would he be flattered? Perhaps you should let the fellow speak for himself.
Those, like Sir Paul, are willing to perpetuate poor science and continue the loss of science credibility.
Yes, there are numerous reasons and Nurse is only one of many who act to repress contrary science.
Yes, I got that too. Consensus has absolutely nothing to do with science. If we had gone with consensus then we would never have known about plate tectonics and stomach ulcers. But Mr Nurse (I refuse to use a title that has been massively over-used in this country) is part of the ‘New Science’ (funnily enough, like the New Scientist magazine) that is pushing science itself toward the realms of religion. You must ‘believe’ because it’s the consensus, and you must disregard the lack of evidence. Oh, what a crying shame for our progress – and science’s distance from religion.
I think Ben Webster made a mistake in the first paragraph quoted above.
The phrase ” the Royal Society, Britain’s most prestigious scientific institution”, should have read “The Royal Society, which used to be Britain’s most prestigious scientific institution”. It’s reputation is now dust and ashes.
+1. Yes. a sad day for a once great institution.
So far as climate science is concerned the RS has not done any science for 2 decades. Perhaps a name change to Royal Psuedo-Science should be considered. I would leave the ” Royal” nomenclature because of the big eared chap who would like to be King.
It can get worse: my rebuttal of the Hohenheim time series was refereed by the author himself and – of course – rejected.
Just when I was thinking, “Well, at least they didn’t have Gerlach review Hambler’s rebuttal.” This is just hideous.
Please note: This author=referee incident was not for a royal society journal.
How much longer does this go on before the majority of citizens rate scientists below used car salesmen in honesty?
I’d say that “tipping” point has been passed.
“We have the best majority consensus opinion money can buy – so there is absolutely no reason to criticize us.”
It’s time we started to refer to the RS as The Royal Missionary Society.
It is a pity you cannot read the whole article in the Times as it sums up the whole world of climate science and how it is rotten to the core. I liked Mr Hambler’s comment at the end”crying wolf over climate change in this way diverts attention from more pressing causes of extinction, such as destruction of habitat and invasive species”.
Paul Nurse was also quoted as saying that climate skeptics should be, quote: “crushed and buried”. Frankly, Nurse a disgrace to the entire scientific profession, and he should be sacked before he brings all of science into disrepute.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2743255/Climate-sceptics-crushed-buried-Sir-Paul-Nurse-attacks-politicians-distort-facts-global-warming.html
Happily, the public are just not buying his message, and the comments to this Daily Mail article demonstrate a clear rejection of his wild and provokative comments. And before people deride the Daily Mail once more, it is the largest circulation ‘middle class’ newspaper in the UK (ie: it is not a sensationalist ‘red-top’ newspaper.)
Ralph
Calling climate science “settled,” is an embarrassment to science.
Precisely! Well said.
Anthony et al – Thought you might enjoy this –
That’s terrific!
Superb cartoon! Did this really appear in the Wall Street Journal?
It sad when people become so emotionaly invested into their confirnational bias, that they loose their grip on reality.
Thanks, Dr. Peiser. Good article.
Whilst it to be expected that any individual or group can make mistakes, in the case of publically funded persons or bodies, they must be open to public scrutiny. To say that “people don’t know how science works” is sheer poppycock. If we (the people) “don’t know” then it is your charter to inform – publically.
Too quick to approve, too slow to condemn.
– – – – – – – – – –
That is such an important point that it should have a WSJ article and major blog posts all by itself.
Critical ‘red teams’ are needed because the expectation is zero that the IPCC has the professional scientific integrity to show all research / data, both pro or con, involving the central question of what is the observation based importance in the real climate of AGW theory and hypothesis.
Ideas like ‘critical red teams’ must be a strategy if the general culture is to start to get some objective perspective.
John
Are we talking about climate models? This approach assumes that climate models could show some merit if the deficiencies were corrected. That notion is horseshit. Climate cannot be modeled in the sense that these can produce verifiable projections. Climate modeling is a rathole for public funds and needs to be stopped. I suspect this proposal.
mpainter on September 20, 2014 at 10:36 am
– – – – – – – –
mpainter,
In the lead post there is a link to the Steven E. Koonin essay in the WSJ of Sept. 19, 2014 12:19
John
@mpainter
Are we talking about climate models? This approach assumes that climate models could show some merit if the deficiencies were corrected.
—————————–
Don’t be so uptight about models.
One of the things about science is the stragle of producing models that reflect and match as best as possible the expected reality in a given condition.
While is true that up to now the climate models have totally faild by a huge margin in that regard, still in the principle the models are simply a very efficient way to probably crunch and explore the data in a given subject without prejudice.
While the data up to now has allowed for a wrong aproach with the models, as the things stand, the very climate models that the AGW science relied upon as a means of been proved seem to be and have become the most problematic obstacle for the AGW and the consensus about it. These very models are the most troubling aspect for AGW. These very models seem to be failing their own “masters” by not actually giving them the expected projections anymore. Even with the huge amount of data adjustments, still the models wont be able to produce a result of an AGW projection any more. Unless compleately fictional data entered the models will fail the AGW.
The ACC-AGW is recently caught inbetween a rock and a hard place, the rock been the real actual climate data and the hard place the very climate models,………… you seem to dispise.
One beautiful thing about these models is that the models don’t care and wont ever take in account the 97% consensus claimed. Is compleately irrelevant to the models, as actually it supposes to be in science.
I think that while reality and climate data related to it are forcing a way of change in the subject of climate science the climate models are actually shaking the very foundations of the ACC-AGW.
Is bad when model projections fail to macth reality and therefor fail to prove a “scientific hypothesis” to a certain degree, but is worse by far when these very models start failing to produce any projections at all in support of a hypothesis such as the man-made climate one, and therefor showing no any probability for as such hypothesis to be proven, or in a short and clear way, these very models will disprove the ACC-AGW, I think.
Anyway, I am not critisizing your point made, only showing another angle of aproach……..You could be right with what you think about models, but a total dismisal of a scientific aproach and method through the claim that it seems not to work up to now and not able to give acceptable, correct and closer to match reality projections, to me it seems as no any better than what done thus far with that process……. the climate models I mean..
Hope you get my point.
cheers
Spending billions to model climate when climate processes are imperfectly understood or principles are misapplied through ideological bias and so forth, is an egregious and irresponsible waste of public funds. How many GCM’s do we now have? How many billions? And what have we for our money? We have a setback in our understanding of climate. It is time to dispose of the theoretical approach to climate because this has brought nothing but egregious results.
mpainter
September 20, 2014 at 10:36 am
Yes, we are.
whiten
September 20, 2014 at 12:39 pm
In a general sense, all scientific theories are models of reality, or some portion of it. Einstein, for example, created his ‘model’ of gravity with a pencil, a pad of paper and his own knowledge of mathematics and understanding of the deficiencies of the then current Newtonian model. To be useful, however, a scientific model must predict something and provide the conditions for testing/verifying the prediction(s). If the prediction(s) fail, the theory/model must either be modified, if it can be, or rejected, if it can’t be. Einstein’s General Theory fulfilled these requirements. Climate models do not.
All the predictions of climate models have failed, but instead of throwing out the models and trying again with better and more complete data, climate ‘scientists’ fudge the data and dream up excuses for the failures. The models can’t even backcast successfully, so the historical temperature records have been tampered with in an attempt to validate the models and to create/accentuate a warming trend. Every time the planet refuses to cooperate, past temperatures are ‘adjusted’ downwards yet further to make the current year/month the hottest on record.
Not content to eliminate the 1930s, the LIA and MWP, even the entire Holocene is currently undergoing adjustment to ensure that 2014 is the hottest year since the end of the Pleistocene, following 10000 years of steady temperatures until the last 30. Stay tuned for further adjustments, as 2014 becomes the hottest year in the past million years, or 100 million years, or since the formation of the solid crust.
This is not how science works.
mpainter
September 20, 2014 at 10:36 am
Yes, we are.
whiten
September 20, 2014 at 12:39 pm
In a general sense, all scientific theories are models of reality, or some portion of it. Einstein, for example, created his ‘model’ of gravity with a pencil, a pad of paper and his own knowledge of mathematics and understanding of the deficiencies of the then current Newtonian model. To be useful, however, a scientific model must predict something and provide the conditions for testing/verifying the prediction(s). If the prediction(s) fail, the theory/model must either be modified, if it can be, or rejected, if it can’t be. Einstein’s General Theory fulfilled these requirements. Climate models do not.
All the predictions of climate models have failed, but instead of throwing out the models and trying again with better and more complete data, climate ‘scientists’ fudge the data and dream up excuses for the failures. The models can’t even backcast successfully, so the historical temperature records have been tampered with in an attempt to validate the models and to create/accentuate a warming trend. Every time the planet refuses to cooperate, past temperatures are ‘adjusted’ downwards yet further to make the current year/month the hottest on record.
Not content to eliminate the 1930s, the LIA and MWP, even the entire Holocene is currently undergoing adjustment to ensure that 2014 is the hottest year since the end of the Pleistocene, following 10000 years of steady temperatures until the last 30. Stay tuned for further adjustments, as 2014 becomes the hottest year in the past million years, or 100 million years, or since the formation of the solid crust.
This is not how science works.
mpainter
September 20, 2014 at 12:59 pm
I agree with most of what you say here. Unfortunately, climate science fell overboard in the mid/late 80s. Instead of doing science the CAGW crowd started doing scientism to justify their absurd claims. Models became their weapons of choice only because they could be manipulated to get the desired results. When the planet refused to cooperate with the game plan, they resorted to rewriting history and the temperature record in attempt to bring the models back in line with what is actually occurring. Still didn’t work.
You are correct, a lot of money went down the bottomless pit to no good use. What I find more threatening, however, is that so many governments seem hell-bent on taking the what’s left of the economies of the developed countries down into that same bottomless pit.
“When the planet refused to cooperate with the game plan, they resorted to rewriting history and the temperature record in attempt to bring the models back in line with what is actually occurring.”
Let me rephrase this: …they resorted to rewriting history and the temperature record in attempt to bring what is actually occurring in line with the models.
“This is not how science works”
Except that is the way it is being done in this era
It’s only being done in this era by the sorry products of a dumbed down and politicized educational system. Hopefully, there are enough of us who predate them to get back on course again. Of course, they’re going to outlive us, so we don’t have time on our side! 😉
@Michael Wassil
Let me rephrase this: …they resorted to rewriting history and the temperature record in attempt to bring what is actually occurring in line with the models.
———————————
Hi Michal.
Your rephrase makes it easier for me to reply. 🙂
Yes, you could be right.
But my point of view could be little different than yours in regard to the climate models, not necesarely meaning that is a better or more accurate but simply not exactly the same and different to a degree in principle.
I think we agree that models did run too hot and the predictions failed to match the reality.
So rightly you consider the models did fail….and there is where we differ, I consider that the models did not fail but actually succeded in showing the wrong aproach to climate modeling through the AGW knob (theory).
So far that does not seem a big deal to AGWers as long as they claiming that the too hot predictions are not really that hot and in the prospect of more hot predictions for the future coming out of such models.
There I think the problem with AGWers lies,…… the future predictions,……. with the actual recent real data they can’t make the same models predict enough “too hot” in the future, unless they heavely adjust the past and present data, to the point of fictious data assemblance.
The climate models actually if given enough time and real climate data entered, seem like able to recorrect and readjust to better predictions, to a point that even with the knob of AGW still there not failing to refuse AGW.
THe models, run with real untampered data, will show how insignificant AGW is by ignoring and reducing the impact of it in the predictions to a point of making it seem redundant.
With enough time the models will be refuting the same way reality and the planet is refusing to cooperate.:)
That is what I think, maybe wrong, but the point of this reply is actually to show the difference on conclusions reached by the different points of view, not actually which point is better or more correct.
from your point of view:
“……….they resorted to rewriting history and the temperature record in attempt to bring what is actually occurring in line with the models.”
from my point of view:
“……they resorted [desperately] to rewriting history and the temperature record in attempt to bring the models back in line with AGW and have the models [forcing the models] still on running too hot with the future predictions.
cheers
whiten
September 20, 2014 at 4:12 pm
Thanks, I would add that all theories/models include and to some extent are based on assumptions. With the current crop of GCMs the big assumption is that CO2 causes warming and is the primary cause. Everything else either increases or decreases the warming effect of CO2. Hence, increasing CO2 will result in increasing temperatures, regardless of other influences which can merely modify this effect. The ‘CO2 warming assumption’ is based on Arrhenius (1896) and is likely wrong. The following is a very good, clear and straight forward refutation; not the only one by any means:
http://greenhouse.geologist-1011.net/
However, even if you accept the CO2 assumption, the GCMs have failed. Or, as you say have succeeded in proving themselves wrong (only in that sense would I agree with you the models accomplished anything useful).
The basic and essential prediction of the theory/model is increasing CO2 will increase temperature. But increasing atmospheric CO2 over the past 18 years by 10% has NOT resulted in increased temperatures. Even the alarmists admit it, which is why they’re running around looking silly to try to find all the ‘missing heat’ which their failed theory says must be hiding someplace, if only they could find it. It’s also why they’re ‘adjusting’ historical temps as fast and as much as they can get away with.
Since the ‘CO2’ assumption is the heart/core of the current GCMs, they have failed and can’t be fixed. They should be discarded and some other theory/model developed which is not based on the ‘CO2’ assumption. There are other candidates out there, some of which have been discussed on WUWT.
Yes the education has become indoctrination, Michael. Thus our institutions degrade. But there is hope..I am told that polar bears relish climate scientists.
What is the point of a GCM that does not project a warming trend? The purpose of these contrivances was to support the global warming alarmism with a pseudo science, since there was no other science to be had.
And that is the whole thing in a nutshell- pseudo science now gone begging.
The letters in “Sir Paul Nurse” can be rearranged to read: snail pursuer or superinsular.
the most disheartening thing in this article is that Nurse believes in consensus science … it blows me away that the man can have such a non-scientific view of science
I managed to get a quote from the little Escargot: “We saw these tree huggers, and we all hid under a rock until they went away. Now our lives are in peril, just like that famous marker tree in the Maldives”
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/maldives3.jpg
The whole story is told by the Swedish sea level scientist Dr. Nils-Axil Morner who was there. This tree grew at the water’s edge and acted as a marker verifying the stable sea level. Some Australians heard about this and destroyed it.
Not that long ago, there was a photograph that was taken in the early 1860’s available on the internet, of a coastal trader sailing ship beached at low tide in Llangrannog bay, West Wales (UK).
The visible tidal range then, to today (150+ years later) is close enough to be able to call it identical.
The village behind the beach is at the same level, and if there had been any noticeable increase in sea level in the intervening years, that village would no longer exist, just like that photograph no longer appearing to exist on the internet.
On the Gower peninsula (South Wales, UK, near Swansea) at Oxwich Bay and round to Three Cliffs, there are highly vulnerable sand dunes, that have been there for several hundred years (during a truly massive storm, the dunes were created. and well to the seaward side of the old shoreline, with salt marshes now between the old shoreline and the dunes). Again, any noticeable increase in sea level during that time, and those dunes would have been long gone.
Interesting. Is there a tidal gauge in the area?
There are other indicators of sea level change. The late, GREAT John Daly showed one sea level marker here from the mid-1800’s, which has never been inundated by sea level rise. [source]
Here is an animation of sea levels in California. Notice the rise? No? That’s because there isn’t one!
Who should we believe? Rent seeking scientists who get paid better and more job security by sounding a false alarm? Or Planet Earth?
Because they cannot both be right.
Check the NOAA mean sea level charts.These show a flat trend for the past 15-20 years. West coast, Gulf coast and East coast as far north as Chesapeake Bay show a steady sea level. The gauges in the Chesapeake Bay area record a rise but this is due to subsidence which is well studied and documented. The point is that no SL rise on these three coastsean stable SRA level worldwide. The reports of rising sea level of 2-3 mm per year are part of the alarmist hoax. Many skeptics don’t realize this is a hoax and swallow the sea level rise.
!&%&+ this !@##; above please read
The point is that no SL rise on these three coasts mean stable sea levels worldwide.
Eric Worral; Had it not been for Operation Paperclip there would have been no need for the Times to apologize. Had we not grabbed the top German war criminals/ scientists it would have been another 50 years before anyone landed on the Moon.
Goddard was not in the same league as the Germans. People such as Arthur Rudolph, Kurt Debus, Walter Riedel, Von Braun and many many others. All of them ardent Nazis.
Nurse is a bureaucrat.
Nothing he bleats about science has any relevance outside the boardroom.
Once the Bureaus gained control of scientific funding, science was done for, cast aside as the minions returned to their favourite pursuits.
Empire building at your expense.
Science today, really is Post Normal Science, a mockery of even lip service to enquiring minds and the peeling back of the curtain of our ignorance.
Instead we have the arrogance of Authority, consensus is all important.
Reality? Not welcome in the committee room, when it so rudely intrudes the “experts” studiously shun it until they believe it goes away.Then they write wordily missives to each other insisting reality was wrong and was never there anyway.
Sort of like their take on persons skeptical of their all seeing certitude, we do not really exist and we are totally wrong as well….Perhaps susceptibility to wetting ones self over an imaginary doom, brought on by exhaling a magic gas, is a true mental disorder, for I could not have invented the Alarmists. nor their defiance of the actual, which they seemingly can ignore by substituting the modelled.
Which brings me back to the Bureaucrats, persons long noted for their ironclad ability to ignore reality and possibly all victims of oxygen starvation of the braincells brought on by their employment conditions.
When you follow the money, you arrive at this same place.
CAGW fabricated, relentlessly pushed and still protected from criminal court proceedings by our bureaucrats,working together through the UN.
Is there one person who is accountable to, us who pay the bills, anywhere in this great facade?
The Royal Society was once a scientific body respected world-wide. It is therefore a shame that the antics of Paul Nurse and his immediate predecessors have turned it into some sort of sick joke. The words of Shakespeare come to mind
The Royal Society acknowledges that science in a political context operates in a universal frame through social consensus. It’s not a coincidence that there is a popular perception that “expert” and “god” are readily interchangeable, and that people will defer to oracles with the proper material inducements.
I might be being unkind here. But I suspect that Nurse et al. thought ‘Damn’
and wished that little snail had never been re-found
In fact, I suspect that if they had a snail-eliminator, they would have made sure it never reappeared
I wonder if we could ask them
Ya know, when you send them a picture of the little guys from your cell phone, that should be all the rebuttal necessary. How else would you rebut it short of sending a few by fedex. There are no statistics or formulae needed. Now, if this “horny” little escargo is a big deal, lets take some of them to other islands that get rain and solve potential problems (like the gang green going there and stomping on them to correct the rebuttal).
@Earthling September 20, 2014 at 8:34 am
“Calling climate science “settled,” is an embarrassment to science.”
I’m afraid that science can no longer be embarrassed. She has lost her good name and is walking the streets down by the docks…
Headline:
“Snail Found: Climate Science Wrong”
Meanwhile, the climate continues to warm (NOAA August 2014 report).
True but NOAA had to seriously fiddle the numbers to get the result. Their data now diverges from all the others, though I am sure some of the others will now “correct” theirs to catch up.
Abbot, I am afraid that you have been duped again, my friend. Gavin Schmidt of GISS fabricated the whole thing. Check the satellite (RSS or UAH) to get the truth. And Abbot, you need to stay away from those global warmer types. They are all in a state of chronic denial. It will rub off on you. So be careful who you associate with.
The reviewers should be outed and shamed, too. Why is the process in secret anyway. I’m sure Gerlach knew who else had even heard of ‘Rhachistia aldabrae’. I think we need a society that follows these clowns around and falsifies their science on the spot. Now at least the ‘Rhachistia aldabrae experts know the pointy little fellow can take a little dry period. The rest of us know because he wouldn’t be here in the first place if he hadn’t been forged in the natural variability of its weather.
Ya know, ecology is another corrupted discipline that needs a makeover. Professors spend too much time teaching soshulist dogma and hatred for their fellow humans. Comon’ you guys, jettison all this political stuff and stick with the biology, biochemistry, botany, soils and the like. This may be why nothing revolutionary has been discovered in the musty science since Darwin.
@James Abbott September 20, 2014 at 1:39 pm
“..Meanwhile, the climate continues to warm (NOAA August 2014 report)…”
Yes, it’s amazing! The ‘climate’ can continue to ‘warm’ while the actual air observations show it to be slightly cooling. Isn’t post-modern science wonderful?
Dodgy Geezer
No, the surface temperatures show continued warming. Maybe you have been reading too many dodgy graphs.
Try these:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/lo-hem/201406-201408.gif
James Abbott
You keep peddling that ridiculous made-up NOAA data which is refuted by every other data set for global average surface temperature anomaly (GASTA).
And, yes, others have explained to you that the NOAA data is fabricated from nothing.
I link to the explanation provided for you by ‘Anything is possible; yesterday.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/18/open-thread-17/#comment-1740644
But, as you always do, you ignore reality and seek anything which supports your superstitious belief.
Global warming stopped nearly two decades ago. You need to come to terms with it.
Richard
Now do as some others have done and check their current data for up to JUN with their data for the same period as reported in JULY, you will see they CHANGED THE NUMBERS TO FIT THE HYPOTHESIS!!!
Richard
You will run out of road when all the data sets show the same. NASA GISS LOTI will likely show 2014 to be in the top 3 or 4 warmest years, but more importantly, a record high 5 year running mean, albeit marginally.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
Sea surface temperatures are at record levels – as confirmed by Bob Tisdale who stated
“We’re not just talking a record high for the month of August…we’re talking a record high for any month during the satellite era.”
So it looks like in order to maintain your position you will need to somehow, as per your opinion on the NOAA data, claim that each time a data set shows a record high, it is
“fabricated from nothing.”
If that proves to be the case, can I suggest its not me that needs a reality check.
Someone should point out that we are looking at “preliminary” data. I believe that most of the time, what NOAA provides as “preliminary” data ultimately is higher than the final data. Maybe someone could verify this?
And duped once more my friend, because SST is due to insolation and not GHG and certainly not CO2, unless you can figure out a way to get CO2 to warm H2O.
Abbot, the above was for you. Will you dodge this one too?
James Abbott,
You keep posting those zero baseline graphs. They are propaganda; they fool the eye by making it falsely appear that temperatures are accelerating.
Instead, use a trend graph. NikFromNYC posted a good example, which shows how your zero baseline graph fools you into believing something that isn’t true:
http://s16.postimg.org/54921k0at/image.jpg
The first graph is a zero baseline. It makes it appear as if temperatures are accelerating. But using an honest temperature trend graph like the second one, we see that temperatures are only trending up from the depths of the LIA; they are not accelerating.
NASA/GISS, NOAA, NSIDC and all the other government agencies use zero baselines. They do it delibeatately, because they show [non-existent] acceleration in temparatures.
Use your head. Think! There are motives at work, and your wallet is the target.
James Abbott
You say this idiocy to me
If and when the data sets show a trend at 95% confidence then I will accept that a period of warming or cooling has initiated. Until then all that can be said is that
GLOBAL WARMING HAS STOPPED.
I am not interested in your choice of processed data. Anybody can find a method which will alter the data so the alteration shows whatever they want. Take your smoothed data where there are gullible fools who will take notice of it, but don’t try to peddle it here.
And you need to learn the difference between ‘warm’ and ‘warming’.
A “record high 5 year running mean” says absolutely NOTHING about warming.
And it does not matter if it turns out that “2014 to be in the top 3 or 4 warmest years”: 2014 is among my top 3 or 4 tallest years but I stopped growing more than half a century ago.
Richard
What is seen in the plot, adjusted as it is, is still 1910-1945: about 0.6 degC, 1970-2006: about 0.6 degC.
There is no change. The trend established coming out of the LIA is the same as it has been, and is not a product of rising CO2 levels.
“..Meanwhile, the climate continues to warm (NOAA August 2014 report)…”
At half or less the predicted rate.
Dr. Spencer already highlighted the best most likely reason for the ocean warming … wind.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/SSMI-wind-speed-thru-Aug14.jpg
So let me get this straight, according to the Royal Society, this snail is extinct, yet they will neither publish a critique of the paper, nor publish a correction. (They could paraphrase Mark Twain’s observation that rumors of his demise were premature, that would be a sufficiently British way to admit they blew it.)
Does this mean they will reject any contemporary studies of this snail? (You submission has been rejected because your snail is extinct and we’re getting damned tired telling all of you that.)
Can someone submit a paper documenting a new species of snail noting that a similar one has been document as extinct, so it can’t be that one?
Ah well, it’s good job security for Dellers.
@James Abbott September 20, 2014 at 2:03 pm
“..No, the surface temperatures show continued warming. Maybe you have been reading too many dodgy graphs…”
Don’t be silly. Present real data. It’s not difficult – a lot of people have told you how.
I too think the Koonin piece in today’s Wall Street Journal is a pretty big deal. His credentials are impeccable, which makes it hard for the warmists to use the ad hominem attack. His style is measured but relentless, so he can’t be accused of an intemperate or half-coherent rant. His substantive points are devastating to the modelers and all those who use the models’ projections to declare catastrophe and demand blind obedience. Little by little the tide may be turning.
I am not impressed by the Koonin piece who is peddling the sos about water vapor being a positive feedback. That notion is responsible for the egregious modeling we have seen. My take on Koonin is that he is slick and trying to hoodwink us.
dbstealey
I have no idea what you are talking about.
The plots I have presented show anomalies from means over defined periods.
It is an absolutely standard way of presenting data, particularly climate data. Climate, as I am sure you know, is defined as 30 year means of physical parameters such as temperature and precipitation.
So the zero line is clearly not arbitrary, it represents the mean, which is defined.
I wonder if you actually read and understood the comparison of plots you show – moving the zero line makes no difference at all to the trend – anyone who understands those plots can see the trend is the same – warming !
richardscourtney
if you are
“not interested in (my) choice of processed data”
and I have consistently used the recognised global data sets, please tell us which data set you believe to be acceptable (apart from how tall you are) ?
If you cannot accept that a 5 year running mean reaching a record warm position, on a data set going back over 130 years is of note then you are just in denial.
Dodgy Geezer
So you don’t think NOAA is “real data” ? You take the same approach as richardscourtney – any data which shows warming/ice melting/sea level rise, etc must be false, any data which shows cooling/increasing ice/sea level fall, etc must be true.
That is just anti-science.
But that’s the problem isn’t it – so many people that claim they know about climate science don’t appear to know much about the scientific method full stop. Its the most basic principles of science taught to school children that you have to measures things fairly, cannot cherry pick your measurements, cannot prejudge your findings.
If the NOAA data was showing cooling I would say so – but its not, its showing warming and that is instantly objectionable to climate sceptics.
The NOAA data is fixed. It has been cooked, you poor dupe. Abbot, you need to learn to recognize propaganda.
“Climate, as I am sure you know, is defined as 30 year means of physical parameters such as temperature and precipitation.”
Says who? There is no such definition. It is merely a convenient cherry pick of intervals over which to make comparisons.
And, the reason for that cherry pick is obvious: 30 years was the exact interval needed to maximize the ersatz AGW signal in the latter third of the 20th century, as it covered the upswing of the natural ~60 year cycle. We are now roughly 1/3rd of the way into the downswing of that cycle. In 20 years, when you have the full downswing of the natural cycle in view, I doubt you will be so keen on this definition.
@James Abbott says:
If the NOAA data was showing cooling I would say so – but its not, its showing warming and that is instantly objectionable to climate sceptics.
—————————–
I think you maybe overestimating while saying “objectionable”, seems more like “questionable” to me, in no contradiction at all with what a sceptic means.
I read some of your comments and replies here, and I could not see your point made [you tried to make]………till I read the above.
Was your intention and your point in showing that by swiftly injecting the “objectionable” instead of “questionable, as it should have been, you are arguing and imposing again the old mantra “the sceptics are wrong because they are deniers” ? Is it that where you were driving at? I fail to see any other point in your arguments about these latest NOAA real data, you brink to light.
If I am mistaken and there was or is any other point you were making or trying to, please let me know if you can…
cheers
James Abbott
Your misrepresentation of data sets is bad but your misrepresentation of me is despicable. I can only assume you have done it because you know you are wrong so are trying to hide the fact that you are wrong.
Your reply to my pointing out your misrepresentations of the data says in total
Which data sets you used – be they “recognised” (by whom?) or not – has no relevance. At issue is that YOU HAVE CHANGED THE DATA. Your processed data has no interest to anybody with more than two brain cells to think with. As I said
I would accept any data set so long as it is measurements and not imagined numbers (such as the NOAA data set you cite) and is not altered by you.
I don’t deny that your 5-year running mean has a high recent value and I said I don’t. I fail to understand how that puts me “in denial”. I SAID YOUR RUNNING MEAN IS NOT RELEVANT TO DISCERNMENT OF GLOBAL WARMING. It is not. As I said
GLOBAL WARMING STOPPED NEARLY TWO DECADES AGO. BE PLEASED.
And you say to Dodgy Geezer
How dare you!? You nasty little oik! You accuse ME of being “anti-science” because I promote use of real data and proper data analysis, and that I – not you – am ignorant of the scientific method whilst you alter data to make it look like what you want it to say!
You cannot choose one mostly fabricated data set and ignore all others then alter data and claim “you have to measures things fairly, cannot cherry pick your measurements, cannot prejudge your findings”. Well, you can and do, but it is outrageous that you assert I am guilty of your faults.
I told you how to analyse a GASTA data set to determine if global warming has stopped without any cherry picking or prejudgement: i.e.start from now and assess back to determine when there is a linear trend different from zero at 95% confidence. You have ignored that and asserted I am guilty of your behaviour.
Richard
James Abbott says:
dbstealey
I have no idea what you are talking about.
I’m not surprised. But no one else seems to be confounded like that, so I assume the mental barricade is on your end.
Simples: a zero baseline chart shows imaginary, non-existent acceleration of global warming. A trend chart does not. Both use the same data.
It is as easy to lie with charts as it is to lie with statistics. That’s what these government agencies are doing. In your case, it looks like they convinced you that global warming is accelerating.
But it’s not — as even the IPCC now admits. Is your belief so ingrained and impervious to reason that you actually believe that global warming is accelerating? Really? In that case, there’s nothing much to say. Your mind is made up and closed tight. Reason can no longer enter.
In Australia at least, the procedure for how a journal responds to criticism of a paper that it had published is to publish the critique, and ask the author of the original paper to respond, which is then also published, etc., etc. AFAIK, there is no role in this process for “peer review” after the publication of the original paper – nil, zilch. Does anyone know what procedure is normally followed by the R.S., or elsewhere? If different, why would it make an exception now?
Nurse is a tragedy for the future of science. His statement that “Society should listen to the majority consensus opinion of expert scientists” is beyond belief. Nobel Laureates are obviously not what they used since Feynman’s most memorable wisdom was “”Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts”.
Sad day for science when someone like Nurse, through his statement, is able confirm the transformation of the once esteemed RS from being a scientific society into a politicized society in line with the notorious tradition of Lysenkoism.
The Royal Society is 350tears old. The last 20 in total oblivion and denial.
I meant to type ”years”.
Maybe I was correct the first time.
Most real scientists, of whom Nurse is one, do not base their science on models.
They do not base their forecasts on artificial constructs.
Most do not make forecasts at all but might come out with testable hypotheses.
Do not therefore blame Norse for actually believing that “climate scientists” are basing their forecasts on the observation of data rather than reconstructing the data to fit their hypotheses.
James Delingpole has a good write-up on this:
Snailgate: The Slime Trail Left By the Royal Society’s Vanishing Credibility
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/21/Snailgate-the-slime-trail-left-by-the-Royal-Society-s-vanishing-credibility
“Snailgate”!
Another blight on those who leave science and promote the CAGW meme.
“Nullius in verba” is the motto of what prestigious scientific society???
I hear that the restaurant at 6-9 Carlton House Terrace is to be renamed the Gastropod……
Richard Feynman warned of this in 1974 when he talked of ‘Escargot Cult Science’….:o)
I’ll get my coat……..
Thank you for that.
They need to retract the paper because its premise and conclusion are completely wrong.