Two days ago I posted on this story in this blog related to APS opening up debate on climate change. It appears Lord Monckton did in fact have his paper, Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered, reviewed by APS, and he drafted revisions per that review, after which the paper was accepted by APS for publication. Yesterday, APS put this disclaimer in red over the paper on their website:
The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions.
Monckton writes:
This seems discourteous. I had been invited to submit the paper; I had submitted it; an eminent Professor of Physics had then scientifically reviewed it in meticulous detail; I had revised it at all points requested, and in the manner requested; the editors had accepted and published the reviewed and revised draft (some 3000 words longer than the original) and I had expended considerable labor, without having been offered or having requested any honorarium.
(h/t: David L. Hagen)
More excerpts from the blog Uncommon Descent are below:
PeerGate review scandal at American Physical Society
The American Physical Society alleged that Lord Monckton’s paper Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered was not peer reviewed when Monckton in fact thoroughly revised his paper in response to APS peer review. Monckton immediately demanded retraction, accountability and an apology.
The Editor of the American Physical Society’s Forum on Physics and Society launched a debate on global warming, inviting Lord Monckton to submit a paper for the opposition. After news that a major scientific organization was holding a debate on IPCC’s global warming, someone at the APS posted an indirect front page disclamation plus two very bold red disclamations in the Forum’s contents, and into the paper itself:
————————-
Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered
The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions.
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley . . .”
————————-
Alleging that a Peer of the Realm violated scientific peer review – when in fact Lord Monckton had spent substantial effort responding to the APS’s peer review – is just not done! As circulated by Dr. Benny Peiser to CCNet, and as noted by Dennis T. Avery at ICECAP,Lord Monckton responded immediately, emphatically demanding redress and an apology as follows:
—————————
Lord Monckton’s letter in response to APS web page statement:
19 July 2008
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
Carie, Rannoch, PH17 2QJ, UK
Arthur Bienenstock, Esq., Ph.D.,
President, American Physical Society,
Wallenberg Hall,
450 Serra Mall, Bldg 160,
Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA 94305.
By email to artieb@slac.stanford.edu
Dear Dr. Bienenstock,
Physics and Society
The editors of Physics and Society, a newsletter of the American Physical Society, invited me to submit a paper for their July 2008 edition explaining why I considered that the warming that might be expected from anthropogenic enrichment of the atmosphere with carbon dioxide might be significantly less than the IPCC imagines.
I very much appreciated this courteous offer, and submitted a paper. The commissioning editor referred it to his colleague, who subjected it to a thorough and competent scientific review. I was delighted to accede to all of the reviewer’s requests for revision (see the attached reconciliation sheet). Most revisions were intended to clarify for physicists who were not climatologists the method by which the IPCC evaluates climate sensitivity – a method which the IPCC does not itself clearly or fully explain. The paper was duly published, immediately after a paper by other authors setting out the IPCC’s viewpoint. Some days later, however, without my knowledge or consent, the following appeared, in red, above the text of my paper as published on the website of Physics and Society:
“The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions.”
This seems discourteous. I had been invited to submit the paper; I had submitted it; an eminent Professor of Physics had then scientifically reviewed it in meticulous detail; I had revised it at all points requested, and in the manner requested; the editors had accepted and published the reviewed and revised draft (some 3000 words longer than the original) and I had expended considerable labor, without having been offered or having requested any honorarium.
Please either remove the offending red-flag text at once or let me have the name and qualifications of the member of the Council or advisor to it who considered my paper before the Council ordered the offending text to be posted above my paper; a copy of this rapporteur’s findings and ratio decidendi; the date of the Council meeting at which the findings were presented; a copy of the minutes of the discussion; and a copy of the text of the Council’s decision, together with the names of those
present at the meeting. If the Council has not scientifically evaluated or formally considered my paper, may I ask with what credible scientific justification, and on whose authority, the offending text asserts primo, that the paper had not been scientifically reviewed when it had; secundo, that its conclusions disagree with what is said (on no evidence) to be the “overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community”; and, tertio, that “The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions”? Which of my conclusions does the Council disagree with, and on what scientific grounds (if any)?
Having regard to the circumstances, surely the Council owes me an apology?
Yours truly,
THE VISCOUNT MONCKTON OF BRENCHLEY
———————————–
Monckton’s demand for redress and an apology from the APS is being picked up on the internet.
How will the American Physical Society respond to Lord Monckton’s procedural and scientific gauntlets?
As of noon on Saturday July 20, 2008, the offending paragraph in the table of contents had been removed. However, this offending paragraph was still very much evident in Monckton’s paper Climate Sensitivity Revisited. It was also evident in the Forum’s full PDF of its July, 2008 newsletter Physics and Society Vol 37, No 3, p 6.
The APS’s PeerGate scandal may well prove to provide much greater publicity and serious examination of Monckton’s thesis than if the disclaimers had never been posted. It also exposes the superficiality of statements by executives of the American Physical Society and other scientific organizations supporting the IPCC’s global warming. Those statements were typically not submitted to the rank and file for scientific peer review, nor were they typically voted on by the rank and file. Whatever will come out of this PeerGate Scandal?
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Roger Carr, I have unapproved your post waiting on Anthony to decide on whether or not to delete personal attack. I’m sure Anthony will deal with it sometime in the am Pacific time.~Charles the moderator.
Drew Latta,
How very insightful, considering most of those generating the data and scientific results have no Ph.D. or qualifications beyond a Baccalaureate Degree. I’ve personally seen quality scientific experiments conducted by and data collected by those without even a high school degree.
That is what I mean: whether Monckton is a “writer” or “journalist” is irrelevant as to the veracity of his article. It is only experimental corroboration or refutation which should be wielded against it, not the fact that he has, or not, a degree in climatology.
We learn from Monckton’s letter that he doesn’t know what peer review is.
Paul, $50 billion in research on warming? Did you have your excrement detector off when that figure came to you?
Monckton of Brenchley.
Thank you for taking the time to respond on this blog. Your participation has definitely enriched our discussions.
I do not know if you have seen some of Lucia’s work at rankexploits; however, you may be interested. http://rankexploits.com/musings/ . The discussions with Gavin Schmidt you may find interesting, as well as some of the work and conclusions.
I feel proud to be here along with the Allies and La Resistance, sometimes risking personal situations for Truth to be heard.
Like Aussie David Evans “I devoted six years to carbon accounting”, I was an AGW activist – because I cared. But after having enthusiastically joined Transition Towns, I kept on researching. Eventually I ventured outside the AGW oasis / fortress, and discovered the true state of climate science. I did a U-turn which rendered me pretty well persona non grata regarding the present conditions for setting-up Transition initiatives. I became a proud supporter of Monckton of Brenchley. I discovered his courteous and thorough scientific reply to Gavin Schmidt’s “Cuckoo Science” attack.
I discovered something else of significance IMHO. Searching Climate Science’s index for a reply to Monckton’s reply “Chuck it Schmidt”, I found nothing. A loud silence. I Googled and still found nothing. Yet if there was any truly scientific point where the skeptics could be answered and silenced, this was surely it, and Schmidt would not have let such an opportunity slip.
No wonder APS are nervous.
It has been a real joy to follow Vilain’s sea change, and John London’s shift – and I guess there have been many others here. This gives me great hope for those who follow the AGW stuff that, deep into the “science”, seems to refute the skeptics’ challenges eg. SkepticalScience.com. How did the Germans feel when they realized they were starting to lose WW2? How many simply did not know of the atrocities? How many tried their best to do good, trapped in an intolerable setup? How many might still experience a change on the “Road to Damascus”? How can we actually help support “detox” for those whose “addiction” to the AGW thesis threatens to be exposed? How can we prevent such mass psychosis happening again?
On some levels I am content to wait it out. Eventually, the cooling PDO will undermine a large portion of the support for AGW (or even GW). Even Gore sees this if one reads between the lines of his recent prophecy (of course he is still headed in the wrong direction).
A little bit of complexity theory here. Warming and Cooling models could be considered attractors in a self-organizing system.
Maybe 80% of the population lacks the training and education to grasp the technical literature on the topic and so make up their minds using the consensus method of their immediate social circles. This is how Goebbels’ Big Lie worked. Suddenly, enough of their neighbors will start to believe otherwise and it will become socially safe to switch to the other attractor of the debate.
The real challenge is to fight a holding action against majorly stupid actions until the herd switches attractors. It is important to continually pick away at AGW pseudo-sciences, political agendas and mass manipulation of the herd. Each seed of doubt that is sown legitimately based on real science moves the entire herd closer to switching.
Unfortunately, when the switch does occur, along with the herd will come the people that prey on fear such as Fenton Communications (who have a LONG history of this behavior – remember Alar and the Great Apple Scare of ’89? Fenton was hip deep in that one too). So, expect to fend off the cries of doom over global cooling at some point.
Cycles and cycles.
Monckton of Brenchley,
“He regrettably cites one Monbiot, a zoologist, as though he were an authority on the climate:”
I find this statement a bid odd considering that a zoologist actually has more training in science than you do. You are not an authority on climate either.
“In my own papers, some of which are in the peer-reviewed literature”
A Web of Science search only turns up one article by any Monckton on climate change:
Title: Free speech about climate change
Author(s): Monckton, CW
Source: SOCIETY Volume: 44 Issue: 4 Pages: 14-17 Published: MAY-JUN 2007
Times Cited: 0
And this doesn’t appear to be a scientific publication.
Perhaps your publications are not indexed by ISI?
REPLY: let’s see who else isn’t an authority on climate:
Me (Meteorologist)
Boris ( unknown phantom)
Tamino (Astronomer )
Rabett (Chemist)
Hansen (Astronomer)
Gore (Divinity School, politician)
Flannery (Zoologist)
McIntyre (Mathematician)
Connolley (Mathematician)
D’Aleo (Meteorologist)
Lambert (Computer Scientist)
…and others
So Monckton isn’t a climatologist, neither are some of your faves or mine.
The real issue here with Boris and his ilk is that they just can’t stand the fact that Monck was invited to submit a paper to the APS, and the flap is now drawing attention to it. So the AGW proponents (real and phantoms) are in full press to discredit Monckton to minimize the damage.
“malcolm (19:53:48) :
I assume the membership list of the APS is public? Why doesn’t one of the members do an anonymous survey of opinion on AGW? The same could be done with other learned societies. If the elected committees won’t do it, there’s nothing stopping a member with expertise in mail or internet surveys doing the same thing.”
In my email to the APS I asked exactly this question as to why I, and the other members of APS have not been polled if the Council claims such authority for “overwhelming support”. Unfotunately, the APS has the master email list and it would be impossible for a single member to get that list for their own purposes.
I hate to admit it as a Baby Boomer, but as the older physicists have retired and the Boomers moved into postions of authority in the APS, it has become more political and less scientific. It seems to be a generational defect. Many of my colleagues in grad. school had left/radical politics, and like many other academics of that age, seemd to have kept those ideas as they aged. It’s really too bad that it blinds them professionally.
Honest and good discussion. Reminds me of a white haired southern politicals comments after the civil right battle. It was something like this. I may have had to support segregation but I never agreeded with it. I’m glad it’s over.
When ideas are supportred by the main stream of society and supported violently as well it is difficult and dangerous to have a honest and open discussion. As I well know. I’ve had my property damaged for just expressing an opinion contrary to the popular view. Am I sorry I expressed it no!!! would I do it again yes. And I still think the person who snuck on my propert at night while I was out is a coward.
I’m glad a few men with courage are willing to speak out. Hopefully we can have an open discussion and come to a conclusion that is scientifically justified and politically acceptible.
I’ve just had a look at the index page for the July edition of Forum on Physics & Society.
First of all at the bottom of the page you will find a fairly standard statement that appears on other editions. It contains the following 2 snippets:
and
This looks to me to be a perfectly adequate disclaimer of any viewpoints and implies that articles undergo some form of review.
Yet at the top of this edition (and I cant find anything similar in any other edition) they have a fairly lengthy statement with the following snippets in it:
The front page states that it “provides a medium for Forum members to exchange ideas.”. I guess they are preparing for a lot of disagreement.
Okay, so all technical articles are non- peer- reviewed, in which case why state this again above any particular article?
Hmm, yet another disclaimer. So, your everyday articles could be ranked as “one disclaimer” article with the disclaimer at the bottom of the index page. More controversial articles as “two disclaimer” article with disclaimers at the top and bottom of the index page. And those that might threaten your funding as a “three disclaimer” article with disclaimers on the top and bottom of the index page plus one at the top of the article. What does an article have to do to be a “four disclaimer” article.
Disclaimer: All opinions and views in this post are solely my own and do not represent the views of Anthony Watts, WordPress, Google, Mozilla, Microsoft or any other organisation involved in the storage, presentation, retrieval or viewing of this post.
Paminator: “I have run into this a lot at various other blogs. I think Venus is as much in balance as Earth. Venus has a lot more atmosphere (93 bar) than Earth, which leads to the higher temperature difference between surface and TOA, even with its higher overall albedo (0.7 versus Earth’s 0.3). To move Earth towards a Venusian surface temperature requires increasing the atmospheric pressure on Earth by a factor of 93, or adding 93,000,000 ppm of CO2 to the present atmosphere.”
Don’t forget you’d need to move it ~27 million miles closer to that big ball of fire, too. 😉
If earth continues this cooling trend it will likely put an end to the debate despite what studies are put forth.
I live 400 smokey miles down wind of Anthony at 5800 ft elevation and had a crunchie layer of ice under a lawn sprinkler at 5 am the other morning (mid July) after a day in the high 80s. If we live in a manmade greenhouse, it sure as hell isn’t a very good one.
Sam consider the source.
NASA J Hansen .. employee Gavin Schmidt.
NASA web site contributors Gavin Schmidt and M Mann
GISS Modeler Gavin Schmidt
RC run by Gavin Schmidt and own by M Mann contributor WM Connolly
Wikipedia editor WM Connolly.
When Hansen predicted a 2-3 meter rise in sea level this century, that was neither peer reviewed nor criticized by the portion of the “scientific community” who claim to be sole keepers of the truth about climate.
Has anyone noticed sea level rising by one foot per decade?
The fact that, for 4.5 billions years, dispite large excursions in planetary conditions, the climate has not gone to the positive or negative limit strongly suggests that there are no positive feedback elements in the climate system.
Well, there is one very big example that springs to mind.. The cooling as a result of the Milankovitch cycles is not alone enough to create periodic ice ages. The “consensus” is that ice ages are a result of positive feedback loops from increasing albedo due to increasing ice cover.
The editor at APS has opened Pandora’s box and let out the demons of free inquiry. Thanks to the heavy-handed “disclaimers in red”, the high executives at APS have raised the debate even further into the public realm.
This is reminiscent of the editors of Scientific American doing a transparent hatchet job on Bjorn Lomborg a few years ago. It was obvious what they were doing, but they could get away with it at that time. Now, it would not be as easy.
The skeptics are on the prowl, hungry for red meat.
The wholly warmer orthodoxy will never be the same!
Remember the phony study that was rushed into The Lancet before the last presidential election in the US about the supposed death of civilians in Iraq?
Do I remember? Um, yes.
You should see the new and improved version from Johns Hopkins. They admit they were wrong–it’s twice as bad as they said originally. (That this makes the death rate many, many times the death rate during the Iran-Iraq war seems to make no impression.)
That said… previous, We should have no objections to many of the greens/AGW’s agendas: that is reducing populations, reducing emissions, reducing city sizes ect no problems.
Well, I have severe problems with all of those things. (Soot emissions will decline as India/China modernize, but this will not happen overnight, nor should it. And I think reducing city size is BAD for the environment.)
Sam Vilain: Well said. We on the skeptic side need to be open to both sides of the debate.
Sometimes we find this difficult because we consider ourselves abused by the other side of the debate. Heck, if it turns out AGW is true (and yes, I doubt that it’s a serious problem), we need to determine that. Likewise, the reverse.
We need to restrain ourselves, especially when the AGW side wishes actually to debate in a reasonable manner.
One of the reasons I so deeply favor this site is that the tone is usually more restrained than elsewhere. (And I’d like to see it stay that way.) I don’t think the AGWisapinkoplotyou suckeryou.com sites really get us anywhere in the debate.
and a similar shift in the Atlantic.
AMO or NAO?
Sam Vilain: Well said. We on the skeptic side need to be open to both sides of the debate.
Evan Jones (09:12:11) : Sometimes we find this difficult because we consider ourselves abused by the other side of the debate.
With recent changes like the PDO flip and this interminable solar minimum the ol’ planet is responding quite nicely. I’m surprised at how well the AGW stance is holding up despite column after column cracking in its foundation. It will fall, and it may be rather spectacular when it does. In the meantime, I’m going to stay on the high road where the view is better.
Well, okay, maybe I’ll lob a rock or roll a boulder once in a while, but I’ll aim for the data and not the people (with a couple exceptions).
Evan Jones (08:58:59) :
That said… previous, We should have no objections to many of the greens/AGW’s agendas: that is reducing populations, reducing emissions, reducing city sizes ect no problems.
Well, I have severe problems with all of those things. ”
I have to agree with Evan, I have serious issues with this too. If you want to follow a proper and correct green agenda, then look into things like recyling, preserving wildlife, prevention of unreplacable deforestation etc etc. Things that are of benefit to the planet and its occupants (not just humans)
Ray Reynolds (07:04:34) :
I live 400 smokey miles down wind of Anthony at 5800 ft elevation and had a crunchie layer of ice under a lawn sprinkler at 5 am the other morning (mid July)
Would that have been Wednesday night by any chance? That was a topic of conversation around the water fountain on Thursday morning here in the UK, believe it or not.
Lord Monkton has done a brilliant job. Indeed, he is a torch-bearer for those of us who wish to see the truth triumph over propaganda.
Although on blogs like this battles may be won, conquering those who spread propaganda in the wider media arena may be that much more difficult.
As an example, the BBC – once a bastion of independent thought – is completely sold on AGW. To that end they commissioned a global warming “drama” which will transmitted here in the UK this week. I urge you to visit the relevant BBC webpage
http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/burnup/
I am unsure if the video trailers on the right hand side work if you live outside the UK. If you are fortunate (or, rather unfortunate) you may be able to watch the behind-the-scenes clip and listen to the writer, Simon Beaufoy.
Quote: “if it [climate change] reaches a tipping point, whereby you cannot reverse the warming of the planet, then we are facing a catastrophe, there’s absolutely no question about it”.
“…it’s incredibly difficult to write about carbon dioxide which is effectively a substance you can’t see, you can’t smell it, you can’t touch it, it’s like an invisible enemy.”
Millions of people will see this piece of propaganda dressed as “drama”. How many will meekly accept its subversive message?
And why should I be forced, through the TV licence, to make a financial contribution to it?
Gerry Marsh’s paper is highly interesting and stimulating.
He rightly points out the fact that our climate is indeed NOT stable. In fact, the glacial ages have all the characteristics of a bistable system: two stable states, one cold, one warm. A tiny change in solar irradiation (or other forcings for that matter) is sufficient to make it switch between states.
What is stimulating here is the link between the carbon cycle and those unstable periods (glacial ages). It made me wonder how geological transformations (continents drifting, and more recently the closing of the isthmus of Panama ) can affect the carbon cycle, and lower the CO2 concentration to the point where the climate reaches a point of instability. I really like the idea of a higher level of CO2 to stabilize the climate. At first sight it seems to make some sense. It certainly has the merit of offering a new perspective on what is called “stability”, a concept that is used and abused by the AGW alarmists. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to realize that the current “stable” climate of the past few thousand years is of insignificant duration on most geological scales.