The new math – IPCC version

The instances of sleight-of-hand (a/k/a “cheating”) just continue to mount. As Steve McIntyre says, with this bunch you always have to watch the pea under the thimble.

We used to be able to lie only with statistics, but now we can lie with Math as well.
And this goes along with Geroge E. P. Box’s famous comment:
Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.
Box, George E. P.; Norman R. Draper (1987). Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces. Wiley. pp. p. 424. ISBN 0471810339.
Variations:
Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.
Box and Draper, Empirical Model-Building, p. 74
All models are false but some models are useful.
Retrieved from “http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_E._P._Box”

So much for the western Enlightenment when we have our leaders corrected by those guys running a big factory/restaurant called China.

You have to get a hockey stick somehow!

BETTER THAN #CLIMATEGATE! “Confidential document reveals #Obama’s US climate talk strategy” http://bit.ly/cCiisZ

You have to remember their modellers have (studidly, in my view) convinced them that all temp increases from here will be “monotonous”. Believing so leads to this kind of result.
It’s only been in the last couple years that they began straddling this issue, by talking about a temporary pause and then “a return with a vengeance” of warming after that.
I call that a “straddle” because it tries to maintain the illusion of montonous increases by just increasing the timeframe over which they happen. In other words, they are trying to straddle a granularity argument. That increases are monontonous over, say, a 25 year period, but perhaps not for any given 10 year period inside the 25 year period.

I have to say, I don’t fully understand this criticism. Given just the data in hand, it seems reasonable to estimate the rate of change as has been done. It doesn’t prove anything. If the temperature flattens or turns around tomorrow, the benefit of the increased length of data will show the current result to be artifactual, but given the data we have today, is what they did beyond the pale?

This is a non story that, I can only assume, is here to provide today’s opportunity for harumpfing.
Those lines just show the linear trend over a variety of times. I don’t think here anyone can (or will) show either that the trends are wrong, or show where anyone (other than Anthony (who I assume has written this piece)) asserts these trends or graphs ‘prove’ anything.

Please explain what the forcing was that caused the warming from 1910 to 1940?

1910 to 1940 was steeper, and earlier in the current overall trend. To not address this obvious slope in the graph and focusing on the most recent increase is evidence enough for me that the authors have no credibility.

Well of course it is accelerating, the CO2 is increasing at a more than exponential rate.
Show that graph next to a graph of CO2 concentration.
But why bother

Thanks, Chris. As I said, they can’t use this analysis to predict the future (that’s what I meant when I said “it proves nothing”). As you say, only the models do that. But as a simple description of the data, it seems OK.

AGW types love to generate linear fits of cyclical physical processes, using cherry picked start and end dates. My personal favorites are Greenland trends that start in 2003 and end in 2007.

Here’s a plot showing the decrease in warming after 1945
http://www.q-skills.com/tmpvff2.jpg

Peter Hearnden (14:14:44) :
…or show where anyone (other than Anthony (who I assume has written this piece))…

I guess this shows what happens when you “assume”.
There is a link provided, actually.
I assume this is a good example of your observational skills.

To the point, so much of the so called science has been pulled-up and called into question that it has become farcical. For those that can spare the time it is well worth going back and trawling through Climate Audit just to see what has been uncovered and analyzed by the amazing efforts of Steve McIntyre – starting with the trashing of the hockey-stick.

It is much worse than we thought!

Justa Joe, the slope isn’t linear 0.75 because the line has to be adjusted for a continually varying pencil width, humidity induced distortion of the graph paper, and other confounding factors. After homogenization and corrections, the hypotenuse of the triangle will look more like a hyperbola. It’s basic climate science.

Sorry Paul, you get points off for not including your units!

I’m no math expert although I took quite a bit in college. But, to Original Mike, I think all you need to do is look at the early run-up people have mentioned from 1910 to 1940. The slope is greater than the recent one. So what’s to disprove the argument one might make that the 1930s were heating up faster than any known time in recent history and now the warming trend has slowed down. The slope from 1940 to now is less than it was during the runup. The problem of overheating is actually decelerating, not accelerating. Using their logic, this is an equally valid argument. Same information, same graph, different conclusion. They are cherrypicking time periods to prove a point they want to be true, when other time periods they could have picked would prove something entirely different. In other words, their comparison is bogus.

Peter Hearnden (14:14:44) :
Your point might be valid, except the IPCC report several times states that the linear trend of short period X is steeper than over longer period Y. In other words the IPCC has repeatedly used these linear trends to “prove” that the temperature is rising faster… the article clearly points out why this is at best a rather deceptive use of linear trends.
The fact is these linear trends are splattered onto the graph in such a way as to create the impression of an increasingly rapid rise in temperatures. It’s an illusion that serves a political purpose. It’s a lie, yet it’s been used to “prove” that temperatures are rising faster than ever before.

Add the trend-line for 2000-2009 and watch the “acceleration” disappear.
Oh wait – that would be deceptive, wouldn’t it?

Yeah BUT ! From 1940 to 1950, the global warming headed off into a real funk, and it looked like we were in for an ice age by 1960.
Somehow, I don’t think those ever increasing slopes upwards that IPCC sees, are any where near a sdangerous (potentially) as a continuation of that dramatic 1940-1950 crash.

Peter Hearnden wrote “I don’t think … anyone can … show … where anyone … asserts these trends or graphs ‘prove’ anything.”
If the trend lines in the graph were not meant to prove anything, why were they inserted at all? Why were they mentioned in the SPM? Merely to prove that the IPCC is about “spin”, not “proof”?

“”” RonPE (14:17:32) :
For small laughs, an engineering prof asked us “What’s the derivative of acceleration?”
Looking us in the eyes, he would say “JERK!” to emphasize the double entendre. “””
Well that prof must have had in mind, that ultimate in catastrophically sluggish functions:- exp(-1/x^2) .
Now that function is zero at x = 0, and also its derivative is zero at x = zero, and so is its second derivative; and its third derivative.
So this poor chap starts off at zero with zero velocity, and zero acceleration; and also zero rate of increase of acceleration.. In fact, every derivative of that function is zero at x = zero; so how in the blazes would that ever get anywhere ?
But somehow, at X = 1, that slowpoke has managed to stagger all the way up to 1/e or 37% (of 1).
Don’t ask me how; I reckon it is magic.

Original Mike and Pat Hearnden… are your comments serious?
If you are, do this little “thought experiment”:
Take the data and pretend you are back in 1940. Do the SAME ANALYSIS and see what you find.
What you will find is the linear trend was accelerating at an EVEN HIGHER RATE back then.
So now ask yourself this question:
If the rate of acceleration of the temperature trend was HIGHER in 1940 than it is today, what does it say about the impact of CO2 on the temperature trend?
Hint: CO2 growth was virtually non-existent prior to 1940.
The bottom line is this:
If you believe this type of trend analysis is correct, then you must also agree that CO2 is NOT the cause.
Can’t have it both ways.

Peter Hearnden (14:14:44) :
Why are you defending the indefensible? Why are you pretending that nobody takes any notice of these graphs? These are both in the WG1 and the Summary for Policymakers. They are clearly designed to alarm the casual observer. You have to be honest and admit this.
Why not also draw a trendline from 1860 and 1910, and show the current rate is nothing unprecendented? The statement “The linear warming trend over the last 50 years is nearly twice that for the last 100 years“ is clearly designed to alarm and motivate policy makers to act. It should say ‘The linear warming trend is similar to the trends observed in 1880 and 1910, and follows the general warming trend observed since 1850.’ Even Phil Jones admitted that these prior periods showed the same rate of warming.
Second to the actual content of the graph, what about the IPCC process. What is the point of having reviewers if the editors can just put in whatever they like in the final draft, without any reviewers reviewing it? This is categorically not an inclusive process.

The way I see the data on the graph, there is an acceleration for a decade or so near the end, but the rate of temperature change has been accelerating, decelerating and flipping from warming to cooling over the whole timespan and one could show as great an acceleration during earlier periods.
As we know, there has been a deceleration, possibly a reversal, for the last decade or so, which isn’t shown on the graph.
Its not so much that they have invented a new calculus, they have simply cherry picked the data to give the answer they required to support their story. Nothing new there!

Well, I understand what they are trying to show, i.e. that the rate of temperature growth has increased more in the later industrial period.
Statistically, this is not an uncommon treatment (breaking up the series and showing the slope for smaller time units). However, to be consistent, they should compare apples to apples & compare the smaller slopes to each other, not only to the overall slope for all data. This will always give a wrong impression.
For example, if they were to do the same technique for the 25 years including 1915 to 1940 in the Global Mean Temperature graph, I think the slope would be nearly identical to the 25 year period of 1980-2005 (eyeballing it anyway).
Very misleading, if we were to do this for the past winter compared to previous 10 winters, we’d be out buying shares in snowblower and parka manufacturers. Just more evidence of how the AGW priests cook the books to sow panic among the policymakers and public.

Not content with using cherry picked data, aka the hockey stick, AGW have here cherry picked their (faulty) method of measuring acceleration and then ignored the review process – as is standard practice it appears – you could not make this stuff up! It is so bad, nobody would believe it if you told them. You just couldn’t make it up.

Was going to say, (bu**er), but on second thoughts, upon my very word! This is the first time I have seen this “revolutionary new scientific method” demonstrated.
Is it really true you can just make stuff up? [snip] me where is R.Gates when you need it?

It just keeps getting worse. But since these are all now effectively (world) government statistics, should we be surprised?
The economy is on the rebound too. And there’s no inflation.
One irony here is that the Chinese government, which pumps out whatever convenient economic statistics it needs for the moment, found this.

This whole graph is bogus. The entire Michael Mann/CRU/GISS/NOAA effort to reduce climate down to ONE number for every month is a mirage. It means nothing.
After reading Frank Lansner’s How not to compare temperatures I am convinced that all averaging does is flatten and flatten and flatten.
And the ultimate in flattening is to reduce everything to one number – and THEN go off and read something into that number – which doesn’t represent ANY of the data that went into creating that one number.
If you look at the proxy graphs in Frank’s post – which I have reason to assume are typical for all multi-proxy and mega-multi-station graphs – it is obvious that the average doesn’t tell us anything whatsoever about what is really going on. Single proxies and temperature traces are all OVER THE MAP. And each one is fairly NORMAL for that location or proxy.
And when one takes each one of those traces and compares them to that one number, NONE of them agree with the ONE number. The sacred number. The HOLY number.
The useless number.
What the average SHOULD be telling us is that the overall average stays within a narrow band of about 1C either side of some norm – and that is all.
We should then stop right there. And then go off and do something USEFUL.
Reading anything at all into that +0.5C to -0.5C graph is like priests trying to tell how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.
What is the REAL story is in all those huge variations in all those proxies and all those met stations. They tell us that EVERYPLACE ON EARTH is much more variable than that stupid GATA graph. Some places are wilder than others’ but very few follow that graph.
You have one number – what does that do? FOR ANYBODY? It allows someone to scream, “The SKY is Falling!” because of a rise of less than 1C. At EVERY POINT on the globe the temperature changes more than that in one hour and every hour on most days.
What Frank’s graphs show is that the heat is all over the place. When the heat from one area moves to another area, the first area cools and the second warms up – and usually in measurements larger than 1C. But the total heat stays essentially the same. And I challenge anyone to show us all that a 1C change at ANY point on the globe is a disaster.
ALSO: Proxies are single points. To have a single proxy represent the entire globe in past centuries and millennia is just plain WRONG. It is okay to have it there as a reference or a general IMPRESSION. But to have ANY single point or small group of points on the Earth represent the globe for a 100-year period or a 1,000-year period and then tell us it is meaningful as compared to the THOUSANDS of data points we now have (even if those are less than recent decades) is just WRONG.
As I commented on Frank’s post, those proxy datapoints should also show TIME uncertainty bars, because the C14 dates and the counts of the tree rings and ice cores is NOT an exact science, so every data point behind those single-line graphs actually is a horizontal line in itself.
And with all that +/- in BOTH directions, and with all the HUGE fluctuations in local and regional climate, attempting to conclude ANYTHING from swings of 0.01 in the GLOBAL average – other than this: THE GLOBAL AVERAGE IS VERY STABLE.
Mountains out of molehills. Climate catastrophes out of 1C or less waverings in that number. Is there a difference?
NO! THE EARTH IS NOT WARMING.
The otherwise useless “average” is within that narrow band – WHOOP DEE FREAKING DOO.
Around that average all KINDS of huge fluctuations are going on, some here, some there, and varying all the time.
As Dick Lindzen says OVER AND OVER AND OVER, “The climate is changing all the time. What’s the big deal?” But it doesn’t stay one way; it keeps oscillating in its multitudinous ways – EVERYWHERE. Changes come, and changes go.
Let’s all get scared when that ONE useless, meaningless number shifts another 0.2C.
Shame on the AGW people for their tempest in a teapot.

I suspect that there may be a lot of people in the general public who do not know the scientific difference between the terms ‘increasing’ and ‘accelerating, ‘ perhaps thinking that word ‘accelerating’ just indicates increasing at a relatively high or dangerous rate. Of course, anyone who has passed a high school physics course should know or once did know the difference.

In fact, I believe we can assume that the arrow will never reach the tortoise……?
Zeno called out the IPCC 2,500 years ago!

This is not science; it’s deliberate misinformation. People who peddle such information should be put behind bars, not rewarded with more tax dollars. However, since the world is being turned upside down, as per Orwell’s predictions, things will get much worse, thanks to the large proportion of brain dead people in the world. Enjoy the ride as best you can – that’s all we can do.

Love it, Smokey.

The point that is being ignored is that there is a warming trend approximately every 60 years since the invention of the thermometer and written temperature records. [That is about 1860.]
The warming cycles are 1860 to 1880, 1910 to 1940, and 1970 – 1998. The first two were probably not caused by CO2 so why do they think the third one is !
Even Phil Jones of CRU infamy acknowledges this.
Question: Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
Dr Phil Jones: An initial point to make is that in the responses to these questions I’ve assumed that when you talk about the global temperature record, you mean the record that combines the estimates from land regions with those from the marine regions of the world. CRU produces the land component, with the Met Office Hadley Centre producing the marine component.
Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below).
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/14/phil-jones-momentous-qa-with-bbc-reopens-the-science-is-settled-issues/#more-16418

Anu (17:28:19) :
“There’s just no way to fit a linear trend to a parabola, so parabolas cannot be used in science.”
No, it means the only legitimate trend line that can be fitted to a parabola is a parabola.

The basic IPCC theory is that there are NO natural cycles or natural drivers of the climate in action right now (a small solar impact of 0.08C only).
Through this, they can claim the 1975 to 1998/2006 warming was caused by greenhouse gas forcing only.
But we know the ocean cycles of the ENSO certainly impacts temperatures and (I believe) so does the AMO and the Southern Atlantic’s cycles.
These cycles can explain the ups of 1850 to 1880, 1910 to 1945 and 1975 to 2006 and also the downs from 1880 to 1910, 1945 to 1975 and 2006 to 2009. And it works on a monthly basis.
If you remember the global temperature model based on the ENSO, AMO, Southern Atlantic AMO and CO2, it continues to work pretty well and matches the historical temperature record very closely (without any smoothing at all). It is hard to imagine this is a fluke.
http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/9611/hadcrut3modelfeb10.png
The warming trend is less than 2.0C per doubling (even after a projected 30 year lag as the warming in the ocean pipeline catches up).
http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/1367/hadcrut3warmingfeb10.png

George E. Smith (15:21:47) :
“Don’t ask me how; I reckon it is magic.”
Or quantum mechanics, same difference.

Original Mike (13:54:47) :
I hope you’re joking.
Print the graph & by hand draw the trend from 1910 to 1940.
DaveE.

Smokey (17:03:46) :
Beautiful illustration of climate science!!!!
Anu (17:28:19) :
There’s just no way to fit a linear trend to a parabola, so parabolas cannot be used in science.
Certainly not when you attempt a linear solution. Of course, if you flip it just right, you can have a circular argument!!!

Hey, I thought they got rid of that 1940s blip thingy! And it still has a higher slope…hmmm. Interesting…guess they forgot their History Rewriting 101 training.

Lord Monckton discussed this chart in his address in Brisbane. He showed that 1860 – 1880, 1910 – 1940 and 1980 – 2000 all had the same slope yet 1860 – 1880 was pre industrialisation therefore CO2 could not be the cause of the warming.

Putting the linear trend over the record is as stupid as putting one on temperature record starting last midnight and ending tomorrow noon. It will be rising, even all noons and midnights are of the same temperature.
IPCC states “warming during last 50 years is probably mostly man-made”, ignoring the warm phases of oceanic oscillations since 1978 whatsoever. Lets wait until they will be both in cold phase like in 1910 or 1965 and then compare again. On the CET record, the 1910 and 1980 cold dips are equal and 2000 warm peak is almost as high as the 1940 one.

Smokey (17:03:46) : It’s even worse than that: click

Sweet, Smokey! Kinda rounds it off, huh?

At the present time it is 12Celsius. By 2pm it will be 14 Celsius. By the end of this week, based on this trend, our blood will be boiling in our own skulls.
We’re doomed I tell you, doomed!!!
What do you mean that this use of short-term trends is wrong? Tell me where I have told a lie!

Dr. Curry commented on this sort of historical editing in her recent interview.

And we were told that these IPCC reports only contained scientific peer review material not politically modified misinformation.

Ben Kellet said:
“But……….what if the “misrepresented” trend continues…….what if temps continue to accelerate up the way over the next 25 yrs? Will any of you begin to worry?”
“It is wrong to cheat & to misrepresent but I suspect the intention was to emphasise the point that they believe to be true and which just might be true. Not good science but good for getting non scientific decision makers to see things in ways that they understand. ”
Ahh, the old “But what if…” ploy followed closely by the “well, yeah, it’s wrong, but it’s for your own good” ploy. What you’re saying in the end is that the ends justify the means – a direct lift from the works of Machiavelli and a strategy employed by overlords, despots, tyrants and dictators long before and long after signore Machiavelli graced this fair life. “Damn the truth – the truth is what I want it to be! Now, let’s ram this thing through!”
This is science we’re talking about, not political kabuki theatre. Using false and/or deceptive scientific analysis to sway decision-makers based on one’s hunches, biases and personal paranoia is wrong and most people understand that implicitly. Most people understand and accept that if a position has merit, it has merit because it’s based on credible data, numbers and observations which support the conclusion proffered. Now here come this group of scientists who, for whatever reasons, feel the need to ‘sex up’ their data, numbers and observations to make their point. One can’t help but feel that the need to ‘sex it up’ reflects an inherent weakness in the underlying data, numbers and observations.

Original Mike,
The answer to your question is “yes”… You can use the same “trick” using the data from 1920-1945 and get the same slope as they did using this trick at the end of the “graph”.
You can also pick different starting and ending points and have a best-fit line with a negative slope using fragments of this same data. They are trying to assign some sort of grand meaning to a statistical trick which they used which is essentially meaningless.

Denihilist,
Even if you assume that 14.2C was the baseline temp in 1850, and that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 at that point was about 250ppm (which i think is about correct), then an increase in CO2 from 250ppm to 390ppb should have still caused a 2.5C rise in temperature, for a current average temp of around 16.7C.
In REALITY, we are MAYBE (if you believe the thermometers, which is another question entirely) at about 14.7C which is not perceptibly different to ANY LIVING CREATURE from 14.2C. it is certainly nowhere near 16.7C.
So where is this phantom 2C of warming which we should have already had according to the IPCC calculations?

http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=PqmNabJ
Weeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

I also have a problem with drawing straight lines through data that obliously doesn’t follow a straight line. Where should the line go on this data?
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/Temp_0-400k_yrs.gif
If you ran it through the average it would say temperature should be 4 or 5 C colder than today. That would put us into an ice age. The only portions of the graph that are somewhat straight are the at the beginning of the interglacial warm periods when temperatures are shooting up like a rocket. If you projected any of those out to today it would show that todays temperatue should be 50 degrees C higher at least. But obviously that didn’t happen.

“By just looking at the graph, or by using old-fashioned calculus developed by Newton and Leibnitz, you might think that the slope of the graph is similar at both ends.”
I have a nit to pick with the the above sentence. Studies on the Archimedes Palimpsest show that the some of the essential concepts of *integral* calculus were formulated more than 2000 years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_palimpsest#Mathematical_content
There is only one known copy of this work that has survived into the 20th Century. However there’s speculation that Isaac Barrow–mathematician, Archimedes scholar, and mentor of Newton–may have read another copy. If so, this would shed some light on Newton’s famous shoulders-of-giants quote.

David Middleton (13:55:42) :
Try looking at the cited paper:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2008/2008_Hansen_etal.pdf

Charney defined an idealized climate sensitivity problem, asking how much global surface temperature would increase if atmospheric CO2 were instantly doubled, assuming that slowly-changing planetary surface conditions, such as ice sheets and forest cover, were fixed. Long-lived GHGs, except for the specified CO2 change, were also fixed, not responding to climate change. The Charney problem thus provides a measure of climate sensitivity including only the effect of ‘fast’ feedback processes, such as changes of water
vapor, clouds and sea ice.

or

Atmospheric composition and surface properties in the late Pleistocene are known well enough for accurate assessment of the fast-feedback (Charney) climate sensitivity. We first compare the pre-industrial Holocene with the last glacial maximum [LGM, 20 ky BP (before present)]. The planet was in energy balance in both periods within a small fraction of 1 W/m2, as shown by considering the contrary: an imbalance of 1 W/m2 maintained a few millennia would melt all ice on the planet or change ocean temperature an amount far
outside measured variations [Table S1 of 8]. The approximate equilibrium characterizing most of Earth’s history is unlike the current situation, in which GHGs are rising at a rate much faster than the coupled climate system can respond.

Claims for the last 20,000 years do not apply to the last 540 million years – during this period, the Sun has increased in brightness more than 5%, plants have evolved (and the landmasses were covered with forests), and the continents have drifted – all major changes to the Earth climate system.
http://www.scotese.com/newpage12.htm
Milankovitch cycles and supervolcanoes also have large effects on the climate at these 500-million year time scales (see Permian extinction event 250 million years ago).
The problem before us is perturbing the existing Earth climate system with an appreciable fraction (34.5%) of total atmospheric CO2 on very short time scales – 1 to 2 centuries. And possibly increasing that perturbation to 100% this century.
☁
☀
☆
☉

bubbagyro (11:16:38) : ...developed over the years, to guard against foul play,

So it’s useless here, then…

Richard:
I was referring to:
The Chinese Government suggested deleting this, pointing out that:
‘These two linear rates should not compare with each other because the time scales are not the same’.
Irrespective of slipping it past the main review, the Chinese comment gave somebody the opportunity to correct it. Did they understand the ciriticism? There is clearly a conscious effort to deceive, but what is not clear is where, and who honestly believes. This is a document is intended for politicians – are they demanding cover or being deceived?

Richard S Courtney (01:23:02) :
OK. I undertand that reasoning. It is that the value of research work is determined by the background of a researcher and the reputation of the journal in which the work is published.
So, using that reasoning, I now know that aeroplanes cannot fly because the principles of aeronautics were devised by two bicycle salesmen who published their work in a journal on bee-keeping because ‘reputable’ scientific journals rejected it for publication. Your argument has convinced me so, clearly, that thing I can see in the sky is Superman and is not a Boeing 747.
Knowing that, I can forget problems of AGW resulting from increased aviation. Thankyou for putting my mind at ease about this.
Incorrect premise, incorrect conclusion.
The Wright brothers were inventors, not scientists. They went out of their way to be secretive – their goal was patents, and profits, not publishing their results. Although they were avid readers of past research (work on the Chanute-Herring biplane hang glider, and aeronautical data on lift that Lilienthal had published, for example), they had no interest in publishing their work.
Here’s what they were after – patent # 821,393:
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT821393&id=h5NWAAAAEBAJ&dq=821,393
I will give credit to the beekeeper, A. I. Root, for recognizing greatness when he heard/saw it:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wright/reporter.html
But you are completely wrong that the Wrights “published their work in a journal on bee-keeping because ‘reputable’ scientific journals rejected it for publication.”
A. I. Root was just being a journalist, using the “Our Homes” section of his obscure beekeeping journal to share exciting news for his readers:
The following comes from the “Our Homes” section of Gleanings in Bee Culture, January 1, 1905, edition, pages 36 to 39, alongside articles such as “How I Manage Swarming” and “Judging Honey at Fairs.” This excerpt, and the one that follows, has been edited for punctuation, to remove asides, and to break Root’s very long paragraphs into more manageable ones; otherwise they appear as he wrote them nearly a century ago.

What hath God wrought?—NUM. 23:23.
Dear friends, I have a wonderful story to tell you—a story that, in some respects, outrivals the Arabian Nights fables—a story, too, with a moral that I think many of the younger ones need, and perhaps some of the older ones too if they will heed it. God in his great mercy has permitted me to be, at least somewhat, instrumental in ushering in and introducing to the great wide world an invention that may outrank the electric cars, the automobiles, and all other methods of travel, and one which may fairly take a place beside the telephone and wireless telegraphy. Am I claiming a good deal? Well, I will tell my story, and you shall be the judge. . . .
…
When it first turned that circle, and came near the starting-point, I was right in front of it; and I said then, and I believe still, it was one of the grandest sights, if not the grandest sight, of my life. Imagine a locomotive that has left its track, and is climbing up in the air right toward you—a locomotive without any wheels, we will say, but with white wings instead, we will further say—a locomotive made of aluminum. Well, now, imagine this white locomotive, with wings that spread 20 feet each way, coming right toward you with a tremendous flap of its propellers, and you will have something like what I saw. The younger brother bade me move to one side for fear it might come down suddenly; but I tell you, friends, the sensation that one feels in such a crisis is something hard to describe.

Not exactly scientific research, but a good read nonetheless.
Why were the Wright brothers so secretive ?
Listen to the beekeeper once more:

I may add, however, that the apparatus is secured by patents, both in this and in foreign countries; and as nobody else has as yet succeeded in doing anything like what they have done I hope no millionaire or syndicate will try to rob them of the invention or laurels they have so fairly and honestly earned.

The Wrights built on the published work of others, but had no desire to give away their own ideas – not exactly “scientists”:

They not only studied nature, but they procured the best books, and I think I may say all the papers, the world contains on this subject. When I first became acquainted with them, and expressed a wish to read up all there was on the subject, they showed me a library that astonished me; and I soon found they were thoroughly versed, not only in regard to our present knowledge, but everything that had been done in the past.