UPDATE: Sept 6th Hot off the press: Dessler’s record turnaround time GRL rebuttal paper to Spencer and Braswell
(September 4) Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. continues his discussion at his blog: Hatchet Job on John Christy and Roy Spencer By Kevin Trenberth, John Abraham and Peter Gleick. And I’ve added my own rebuttal here: The science is scuttled: Abraham, Gleick, and Trenberth resort to libeling Spencer and Christy
Dr. Judith Curry has two threads on the issue Update on Spencer & Braswell Part1 and Part2 and… Josh weighs in with a new cartoon.
UPDATE: Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. weighs in with his opinions on this debacle here, additional updates are below from Dr. Spencer.
UPDATE: Dr. Spencer has written an essay to help understand the issue: A Primer on Our Claim that Clouds Cause Temperature Change and an additional update Sept 5th: More Thoughts on the War Being Waged Against Us
September 2nd, 2011 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
SCORE:
IPCC :1
Scientific Progress: 0
It has been brought to my attention that as a result of all the hoopla over our paper published in Remote Sensing recently, that the Editor-in-Chief, Wolfgang Wagner, has resigned. His editorial explaining his decision appears here.
First, I want to state that I firmly stand behind everything that was written in that paper.
But let’s look at the core reason for the Editor-in-Chief’s resignation, in his own words, because I want to strenuously object to it:
…In other words, the problem I see with the paper by Spencer and Braswell is not that it declared a minority view (which was later unfortunately much exaggerated by the public media) but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents. This latter point was missed in the review process, explaining why I perceive this paper to be fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal
But the paper WAS precisely addressing the scientific arguments made by our opponents, and showing why they are wrong! That was the paper’s starting point! We dealt with specifics, numbers, calculations…while our critics only use generalities and talking points. There is no contest, as far as I can see, in this debate. If you have some physics or radiative transfer background, read the evidence we present, the paper we were responding to, and decide for yourself.
If some scientists would like do demonstrate in their own peer-reviewed paper where *anything* we wrote was incorrect, they should submit a paper for publication. Instead, it appears the IPCC gatekeepers have once again put pressure on a journal for daring to publish anything that might hurt the IPCC’s politically immovable position that climate change is almost entirely human-caused. I can see no other explanation for an editor resigning in such a situation.
People who are not involved in scientific research need to understand that the vast majority of scientific opinions spread by the media recently as a result of the fallout over our paper were not even the result of other scientists reading our paper. It was obvious from the statements made to the press.
Kudos to Kerry Emanuel at MIT, and a couple other climate scientists, who actually read the paper before passing judgment.
I’m also told that RetractionWatch has a new post on the subject. Their reporter told me this morning that this was highly unusual, to have an editor-in-chief resign over a paper that was not retracted.
Apparently, peer review is now carried out by reporters calling scientists on the phone and asking their opinion on something most of them do not even do research on. A sad day for science.
(At the request of Dr. Spencer, this post has been updated with the highlighted words above about 15 minutes after first publication.- Anthony)
UPDATE #1: Since I have been asked this question….the editor never contacted me to get my side of the issue. He apparently only sought out the opinions of those who probably could not coherently state what our paper claimed, and why.
UPDATE #2: This ad hominem-esque Guardian article about the resignation quotes an engineer (engineer??) who claims we have a history of publishing results which later turn out to be “wrong”. Oh, really? Well, in 20 years of working in this business, the only indisputable mistake we ever made (which we immediately corrected, and even published our gratitude in Science to those who found it) was in our satellite global temperature monitoring, which ended up being a small error in our diurnal drift adjustment — and even that ended up being within our stated error bars anyway. Instead, it has been our recent papers have been pointing out the continuing mistakes OTHERS have been making, which is why our article was entitled. “On the Misdiagnosis of….”. Everything else has been in the realm of other scientists improving upon what we have done, which is how science works.
UPDATE #3: At the end of the Guardian article, it says Andy Dessler has a paper coming out in GRL next week, supposedly refuting our recent paper. This has GOT to be a record turnaround for writing a paper and getting it peer reviewed. And, as usual, we NEVER get to see papers that criticize our work before they get published.
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Peter Stone said
“Your paper was deemed flawed and not worthy of publication by the editor of Remote Sensing.
He felt “Remote Sensing”‘s error was so egregious in accepting your paper for publication, that he should take the unusual step of resigning. ”
* * *
Peter, I’m afraid you’re not looking at the story with a critical eye, and are just taking it as face-value. Whether this is intentional or accidentally, only you know the truth to it.
Not only did Wagner contradict himself several times in his resignation letter, but his arguments offered within for said resignation are strawmen, and paltry ones at that.
Several studies over the years have proven to be ” not worthy of publication” ( Mann’s hockey stick being one of the best examples) yet you never saw any editors resigning after it was proved he forgot entire periods.
You also fail to mention, ( purposely?) that the resignation letter specifically references a paper by Trernberth et al , with Trernberth being famous for wanting to ” re-define peer review.” Add the fact that the paper referenced has nothing to do with the Spencer-Braswell paper, ( presumbly, since it came out a while ago, and seems to be a rebuttal to Lindzen and Choi’s paper), and you have not only a perplexing paper, but a misleading one as well.
The world is best viewed with open eyes, Peter. ( If you want to open them, anyway.)
I am curious at what point the scientific community will standup for the scientific process. It is ironical that those in the climate community have not thought through the implications of negative feedback, the solar cycle 24 Maunder minimum, and the validation of Svensmark’s mechanism. The planet will cool. Sea level is falling. Another La Nina. The late 20th century warming is over.
Planetary cooling, followed by a Republican president with a Republican congress. Likely there will a couple of changes in government funded climate research.
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf
On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications
We argue that feedbacks are largely concentrated in the tropics, and the tropical feedbacks can be adjusted to account for their impact on the globe as a whole. Indeed, we show that including all CERES data (not just from the tropics) leads to results similar to what are obtained for the tropics alone – though with more noise. We again find that the outgoing radiation resulting from SST fluctuations exceeds the zerofeedback response thus implying negative feedback. In contrast to this, the calculated TOA outgoing radiation fluxes from 11 atmospheric models forced by the observed SST are less than the zerofeedback response, consistent with the positive feedbacks that characterize these models. The results imply that the models are exaggerating climate sensitivity.
However, warming from a doubling of CO2 would only be about 1oC (based on simple calculations where the radiation altitude and the Planck temperature depend on wavelength in accordance with the attenuation coefficients of wellmixed CO2 molecules; a doubling of any concentration in ppmv produces the same warming because of the logarithmic dependence of CO2’s absorption on the amount of CO2) (IPCC, 2007). This modest warming is much less than current climate models suggest for a doubling of CO2. Models predict warming of from 1.5oC to 5oC and even more for a doubling of CO2. Model predictions depend on the ‘feedback’ within models from the more important greenhouse substances, water vapor and clouds. Within all current climate models, water vapor increases with increasing temperature so as to further inhibit infrared cooling. Clouds also change so that their visible reflectivity decreases, causing increased solar absorption and warming of the earth.
If you don’t like the message kill the messenger
I’d be hard put to say it any better than Viv Evans says: September 2, 2011 at 10:49 am and davidmhoffer says: September 2, 2011 at 10:50 am. (I’ve many comments yet to read)
Talk about convoluted logic tho, in so many different ways.
Is he really trying to support the idea that a single well designed study can’t ever knock the linchpin out from under some particular hypothesis or theory?
Perhaps he ought to cosider the following: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-09-bizarre-optical-phenomena-defying-laws.html
I guess he’d best hop right on letting the physics community know to ignore this new research and stop re-writin’ them thar laws, because this paper overturns a boatload of existing studies!
J. Felton,
I am looking at it with a critical eye.
I do not believe, nor is there any substantive evidence, that a global conspiracy of scientists faked data to fool the world public (ClimateGate), nor to I believe there is a vast, worldwide cabal of scientists who are out to get Mr. Spencer.
I don’t believe conspiracy theories. It’s not science. I might as well believe the conspiracy theories of Birthers and 9/11 truthers.
There’s is not vast global cabal of lying scientists who are perpetrating a hoax, or working furiously to “get” Mr. Spenser. That’s tin foil hat stuff.
Occam’s Razor is something I put a lot of weight in. Roy Spencer’s paper was deemed flawed and not worthy of publication because it was probably just that….flawed and not worthy. “Remote Sensing” is not even a top notch, prestigious science journal that deals with climate. If Mr. Spencer can’t get a legitimate paper published there that stands on its on, his credibility and competence as a top notch climate change expert is highly suspect. And its ridiculous when anyone who complains that people are out to get him. That’s an excuse children use.
peter stone,
You should really read The Hockey Stick Illusion [available on the right sidebar]. You will be disabused of your notions concerning ‘tin foil hat stuff’.
Here is a short article along the same lines, showing the corrupt peer review shenanigans practiced by the Warmist crowd:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html
The peer review gatekeepers are not honest; they don’t abide by the scientific method, and they are emitting propaganda, not scientific inquiry. Only the naive or ignorant believe otherwise.
peter stone says:
September 2, 2011 at 7:37 pm
I’m surprised your comment didn’t get snipped for being completely OT–that’s how far from reality you are on this one, peter stone.
Fess up–you’re just carrying water for a person or organization that wants to completely obfuscate and deviate from the real issue at hand here. That, sir, is tragically transparent. But you’re free to put your name on whatever you want to write–nobody else here has to sleep on the consequences but you.
Question: was there a timing reason the Spencer paper didn’t reference the Trenberth paper?
Dr. Spencer wrote a paper, someone did not like it; some other guy has to resign!
In fact Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wagner blames Mr. Elvis Wang, Managing Editor of Remote Sensing for selecting the wrong reviewers. Interesting.
“The managing editor of Remote Sensing selected three senior scientists from
renowned US universities, each of them having an impressive publication record”.
Managing Editor
Mr. Elvis Wang
MDPI Beijing Office, Liyuanbeijie Road 186, Suite 307, Liyuan Town, Tongzhou District, 101101 Beijing, China
Tel. +86 10 59011009; Fax: +86 10 59011089
E-Mail: elvis.wang@mdpi.com
Peter Stone said
“I do not believe, nor is there any substantive evidence, that a global conspiracy of scientists faked data to fool the world public (ClimateGate), nor to I believe there is a vast, worldwide cabal of scientists who are out to get Mr. Spencer.
* * *
I agree with you on this point. I’m not saying there is some worldwide conspiracy worthy of an X-Files episode, but I am saying that it is fairly evident, as shown by the actions of a few, that there are those at the top of the climate science food chain who are attempting to hijack and stifle intelligent debate and the basic fundamentals of science.
The actions of the CRU, and several others have proved that ” those that make the rules” ( when it comes to the IPCC anyway) that rational debate is not on their agenda.
You do make a good point about if Spencer’s paper is credible, then peer-review science will vindicate it, ( or condemn it), and it remains to be seen what the outcome will be. This is how science should be done.
Wagner’s resignation mentions a follow up paper, and I will be extremely interested to read it.
That being said, Wagner’s resignation and reasons for doing so, along with what else we know at this point, does not seem to be a simple matter of Wagner disagreeing with the paper and resigning over it.
I cannot fathom for the life of me gentlemen, how on God’s earth the gatekeepers of the Royal Antediluvian White Swan Society could possibly allow this clearly fake Black Swan into the Club and as a result I’m tendering my resignation as Chief Chookchaser before all the white feathers start rolling up in the post. I need a complete rest from all this controversy and so my good Lady and I will shortly be undertaking a long therapeutic sea voyage to Perth in the Antipodes to get away from it all. I wish you all God speed.
vigilantfish says:
September 2, 2011 at 4:39 pm
Thanks. I always enjoy reading you.
peter stone says:
September 2, 2011 at 7:37 pm
Have you avoided reading the Climategate emails, and all the back-and forth in them about subverting the peer-review process?
Wagner states “But, as the case presents itself now, the editorial team unintentionally selected three
reviewers who probably share some climate sceptic notions of the authors”
Apart from the obvious comment that reviewers sharing the alarmist views of authors has never presented any apparent problem – indeed, it is deemed essential by Jones, Trenberth et al – the proposition that, by random chance the editors may have selected 3 sceptics strongly contradicts the widely circulated claim that 97% of climate scientists agree with CAGW. Surely finding 3 sceptical scientists, and no alarmists, in a random (or any) sample of 3 should be next to impossible if only 3% of qualified scientists are “sceptics”
FerdinandAkin says:
September 2, 2011 at 10:41 am
Hockey team fires goalie for allowing score.
Nice!
Did captain Mann lead the pack?
In between waves of nausea and disgust, I keep hearing the words of Phil Jones of the CRU climategate scandal (where he promises to keep out two research papers from the IPCC report):
The team has certainly demonstrated their prowess and a willingness to subvert for ideological purpose. Only the agenda is important and the end justifies the means. Saving the planet justifies all atrocity. Soldiers of gaia, must crush the infidels and burn the heretics. To fail gaia is to fail god. Reality must conform to model output… (beep) Reality must conform to model output… (beep) Reality must conform to model output… (beep) Reality must conform to model output… GK
Peter Stone, et al.,
Mr. Wolfgang Wagner, the articulate former editor-in-chief of the journal Remote
Sensing just couldn’t/can’t/won’t find or share the words to describe or pinpoint
exactly where the Spenser & Braswell study went wrong.
He can’t and hasn’t faulted the NASA-collected remote sensor data or the database
encompassing that data.
He seems to be at a total loss to direct our individual and the scientific community’s
collective attention to what constituted the “fundamental technical errors” that
are buried so deep in Spenser & Braswell and which the three reviewers and the entire
Remote Sensing editorial board allowed to slip by after the paper had been
revised as per the reviewers’ requests.
He can’t be bothered to advise the world on the specifics of what he alleges to be
“false claims” within the Spenser & Braswell paper which he felt would
justify a retraction of the paper by either the journal or the authors. He can’t even
tell us where or how he found the “proof” he felt documented anyfalsification
in any single instance in data handling, statistical treatment or conclusions in the
Spenser & Braswell paper.
He leans heavily on what several unspecified non-peer reviewed blogs and bloggers
have written about Remote Sensing, the Spenser & Bradwell paper, or the authors,
or all in combination.
2011 A.D. seems to the year the vineyards of AGW orthodoxy have produced a great
deal of robust whine.
Persons such as Dr. Wolfgang Wagner seem destined to have their unfortified spirits
crushed and blended into the vat to create the public relations equivalent of MD 2020.
It’s popular in some places and among some segments of the public. For others,
many slighlty more discriminating palates, when AGW support is bottled and sold
this way it just leaves a nasty aftertaste.
Drink up me hearties, yo ho!
Have a safe holiday weekend.
Did the office of Attorney General for Wales open up again?
Has anyone deconstructed Wagner’s statement to read every second line? There could be code there…
http://www.notboring.com/jokes/work/2.htm
Mooloo said (2 September 2011, at 6:42 pm):
Oh, there is evidence. Try reading the first two paragraphs of Wagner’s resignation letter:
Mooloo also said:
Erm, to use your own words, “[p]lease don’t speculate like that, without some evidence”.
Anthony Watts (edited reply at 2 September 2011, 10:08 am):
Actually, “Ockham” is the precedent version of the spelling, and is almost exclusively used in the area of England where the village is located. The village was known as Bocheham at the time of Domesday, and in some quarters for a time afterward as Hockham, but neither version is associated with the Razor. The spelling Occam is the most recent variant and the least relevant to the context, and for this reason I do not use it.
Yes, I mixed up the ‘h’ and the ‘a’, but given that is was about 3:00 am in my time zone when I typed that post it’s only puerile churlishness on the parts of those commenters who think that that typo has any bearing on anything.
But getting back to plate tectonics for a moment. My understanding was always that this theory was developed in the middle of the 20th century, when science had already tested and accepted elements of Wegener’s separate continental drift theory. Part of Wegener’s problem was that some of the mechanisms that he proposed – astronomical precession and “Polflucht” (quod vide) – were demonstrably wrong.
Interestingly it was the American Association of Petroleum Geologists and a number of individual prominent geological types who most vociferously opposed Wegener. It seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same… Personally, I’m surprised that the geology discipline was so slow to investigate Wegener’s ideas, as there is nothing particularly amazing about the observation of the pattern of continental tessellation. Heck, even at the age of six and never having heard of continental drift, I used to look at my parents’ globe and wonder if all of the land masses used to fit together…
However, the comparison of the Wegener case with Spencer’s take on global warming is instructive. Spencer’s notions are akin to Wegener’s Polflucht speculations, which were quickly demonstrated as nonsense, and the final understanding of plate tectonics is similar to the current understanding of ‘greenhouse’ gas action, both of which were arrived at using decades of basic physics understanding and careful observation and experimentation.
As with the Galileo metaphor, the denialist camp is somewhat muddled in its revisionist interpretations of scientific history and progress.
The real problem for the editor was not the views of the referees but this:
“This selection by itself does not mean that the review process for this paper was wrong. In science, diversity and controversy are essential to progress and therefore it is important that different opinions are heard and openly discussed. Therefore editors should take special care that minority views are not suppressed, meaning that it certainly would not be correct to reject all controversial papers already during the review process. If a paper presents interesting scientific arguments, even if controversial, it should be published and responded to in the open literature. This was my initial response after having become aware of this particular case. So why, after a more careful study of the pro and contra arguments, have I changed my initial view? The problem is that comparable studies published by other authors have already been refuted in open discussions and to some extend also in the literature (cf. [7]), a fact which was ignored by Spencer and Braswell in their paper and, unfortunately, not picked up by the reviewers. In other words, the problem I see with the paper by Spencer and Braswell is not that it declared a minority view (which was later unfortunately much exaggerated by the public media) but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents. This latter point was missed in the review process, explaining why I perceive this paper to be fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal. This regrettably brought me to the decision to resign as Editor-in-Chief―to make clear that the journal Remote Sensing takes the review process very seriously.”
As far as the exagerration goes I had this to say on Andrew Bolt’s website using a screen name (real names are forbidden there)
Brian S replied to AS
Wed 27 Jul 11 (11:14am)
…As with yesterday’s section, it pays to read the actual paper rather than rely on the spin of the skeptic blog.
What this is about difficulty in determining the extent that feedback mechanisms play a part in temperature changes. The time lags discussed refer to this. The final sentence of the paper spells it out:
[O]ur central point, though: that the presence of time varying radiative forcing in satellite radiative flux measurements corrupts the diagnosis of radiative feedback.
It is important to note that the entire context of the paper is that of transient forcings such as variations in cloud cover and ocean layer transfers which increase and decrease over time.
This is not a feature of greenhouse gas emissions.
The paper says nothing about how the magnitude if the temperature rise depends on these uncertainties. Indeed it is not even sure that the sensitivity will be lowered.
From the conclusion:
Thus, we must conclude that time-varying radiative forcing exists in the satellite observations, as evidenced by the radiative gain/loss couplet patterns seen in Figures 3 and 4. Diagnosis of feedback cannot easily be made in such situations
I’d like to ask a slightly tangential question.
What does the readership of Remore Sensing have to say?
I don’t know how large the circulation is, but one would think a journal on remote sensing would be of interest to a very Very VERY technical readership with much stronger than average (even amongst scientists, let alone the general population) understanding of remote sensing instrumentation and the interpretation of the resulting data as it applies to the real world. These aren’t people designing curtain rods!
I wonder what THEY would have to say about the article itself. But I wonder still more about this:
How does the readership of Remote Sensing feel about being told that the data they collect from the instrumentation they design and test and put into production in real world scenarios is, according to the past editor-in-chief of Remote Sensing, meaningless, unless in agreement with purely theoretical models? I’m certain the readership of Remote Sensing would be very surprised to learn that there is no point in them building sophisticated instrumentation to measure much of anything as the answers are already known via theoretical models.
This thing is so confusing that I’m not even sure if that last paragraph should have a /sarc at the end.
No, sir. You are not, for reasons others have already cited.
Peter Stone: “nor to(sic) I believe there is a vast, worldwide cabal of scientists who are out to get Mr.(sic) Spencer”
Unlikely to be vast but it most certainly exists so your beliefs are self-evidently formed without an elementary basis of knowledge.