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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With regard to Richard Black’s article, i find it pretty sensational.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14768574
Again, the BBC acknowledges the existence of skeptics! And again, they call them skeptics instead of deniers!
Surely this is only a change of tactics; but the futerra strategy of “treating climate change as fact” and ignoring the skeptics clearly has failed.
It is still not a factual discussion (Richard Black could have explained WHY Spencer’s paper is wrong by pointing to one of the refutations of his argument); but it looks like we are halfway back to the possibility of a debate.
AND: Richard Black LINKS to Spencer’s blog!
People: The only links Black gives to complicated sciency stuff are to Spencer’s paper and to Spencer’s blog! NO link given to the alleged “refutations” or to AGW consensus sciency stuff! I sense a disturbance in the Force…
“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.”
That will be fun. Dessler will not be able to deliver anything coherent in that time.
John Kehr says it in one with: “If I tally it correctly, engineers, geologists and meteorologists are the three groups that most consistently call BS on global warming. It is the PhD class (and politicians) that is most determined in claiming that it is real. I suspect that the reason engineers so consistently mock global warming is because they are in general, the most practical of the scientifically minded.”
The AGW cult is led by academics and unscrupulous politicians. For those who don’t know, one of the golden rules of business is never to let academics anywhere into the management structure, or the results are guaranteed to be disastrous. There are occasionally a few notable exceptions to this golden rule.
So the bottom line is this: the AGW cult is a multi-government funded organisation run by unscrupulous politicians and management incompetents, adept in data manipulation and distortion. Yep, that’s definitely something to believe in!
This is really, really bad. Anthony, thanks for this excellent coverage and concentration of people who care.
Still, I wonder: how many stories of this kind – or worse stories – you will have to see in order to admit that e.g. Lord Monckton has a point in his comparisons?
Stephen Wilde says: September 2, 2011 at 11:54 pm
Thus the entire AGW theory is flawed.
The theory that CO2 causes warming is fairly well supported by the science, but on that flimsy hook of 0.5 to 1C of warming they hand up to another 5C of warming which they quite literally make up.
There is absolutely no evidence for this massive scaling up (i.e. fabrication) of real science except that the models have to fit the temperature curve … but if they have to fit the past temperature, they have to fit the future temperature curve, and the very fact they don’t fit the 21st century pause in warming is proof beyond all doubt that they are wrong and it was wrong to scale up in the way they did.
Never in the whole of science has a theory that is so widely believed been so thoroughly discredited!
Petyer Miller:
The PhD class whose scientific discoveries of how the natural world works underpin almost ever aspect of modern life.
Engineers are great at engineering, and management great at…well awarding themselves huge bonuses until the excrement hits the fan and the public has to foot the bill for the fiaso because they are “too big to fail.”
Actually a number of my researcher friends went into management roles. One said he could not understand why they though he was so wonderful (he did turn the company around) as because as far as he was concerned it was all common sense.
“Brian says:
September 3, 2011 at 1:31 am”
Whats your point? The current global population could stand on the Isle of Wight. All emissions of methane are DWARFED by emissions of methane from termites. Emissions of aCO2 are DWARFED by emissions of methane and CO2 from forrests. The entire weight of the biomass of humans is also DWARFED by the biomass of insects (Actually, this is an insect/bacteria/virus world weight for weight).
Richard Black at the BBC
“http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14768574”
Note the photo of Dr Spencer, caption
“Dr Spencer is a committed Christian as well as a professional scientist”
“Commited Christian” British journalists use these phrases to imply extreme religious fundamentalism. Thought you’d like to know.
On further contemplation of Mr Wagner’s letter of resignation, it would seem that the modellers have made themselves Emperors of Science. Pity they’ve got no clothes on, something Mr Wagner hasn’t noticed yet, for whatever reason.
New definition of “Pier” review: Anything that refutes global warming… throw off the dock, with cement shoes.
davidmhoffer says:
September 2, 2011 at 10:50 am “The only way that an Editor-in-Chief, or anyone else in a position of authority for that matter, resigns a prestigious position is when they attempt to impose their will on the organization, and fail.”
Spot on!
The resignation letter starts off by stressing the importance of peer review
“Peer-reviewed journals are a pillar of modern science”
Followed by this hesitant admission that warns us a twist is coming
“Therefore, from a purely formal point of view, there were no errors with the
review process”
Then the bad news
‘the editorial team unintentionally selected three
reviewers who probably share some climate sceptic notions of the authors”
Oh no, not sceptics! How did that happen?
But it turns out that this is no biggie
“This selection by itself does not mean that the review process for this paper was wrong.”
Maybe the story will end happily after all….. but wait
“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”
Those reviewers!!! Are they bad? They are very bad.
They must have either
a)deliberately ignored or
b)failed to understand or maybe were
c)unaware of the existence of the discussions in open forums and Trenberth’s paper.
The consequences of their
a) bias or
b)stupidity or
c) laziness
meant the acceptance of a paper that is “fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal.”
But here is the next twist, this debacle has not dulled the immaculate lustre of peer review
“Remote Sensing takes the review process very seriously”
and tops it off with a flourish
“I think Remote Sensing is an excellent journal”
So in this instance an excellent journal that takes the review process very seriously and followed correct formal procedure for selection of reviewers and the review itself still publishes fundamentally flawed papers.
How did we reach such a low point when the letter started so brightly, recall…
“Peer-reviewed journals are a pillar of modern science”
I bet he’s positioning himself to stand as a Green MP or maybe move sideways into IPCC…or it’s a flamboyant gesture, some Warmists have not yet learned stop drawing attention to themselves!
Ipecac – Holly Inquisition!
Looks like Joe Romm is accusing Dr Spencer of stacking the deck!
•Joe Romm says:
September 3, 2011 at 8:21 am
The “more to this story” is that Spencer probably got to name his reviewers (not uncommon) and the editors weren’t sophisticated enough to figure out they weren’t representative of the full spectrum of scientific understanding (that is uncommon).
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/09/02/310889/editor-denier-bunk-resigns-spencer/?replytocom=345562#respond
It is rather interesting to note that the managing editor at ‘Remote Sensing’ is based in Peking, seeing that the Chinese are not exactly bowing to the IPCC political proposals.
Another point caught my eyes, and that is how the MSM and some blogs are reporting on Prof Wagner’s resignation. They have been turning it into a critique of Dr Spencer, and simply state that S & B11 is ‘a bad paper’ – no reasons given.
This, I’m afraid, means that the AGW believers will now point to these reports as ‘facts’ – never mind that they aren’t scientific rebuttals.
The whole resignation looks more and more to have been a political production with AGW mass appeal, rather than about the science.
The closeness to the forthcoming AR5 must have played a role here. However, It would seem that The Team assume wrongly that everybody has forgotten about the Climate Gate e-mails.
Well, we haven’t …
It is difficult for me to imagine the power of the forces which compelled this resignation, Wagner’s acknowledgement of the potency and influence of The Dark Side.
One reads history, tends to dismiss holy wars, inquisitions, anti-science dogma: *that was *then*!
Today, we are smart, enlightened, above all that.
Whew! Forget waterboarding. I’m waiting for drawn & quartered for the infidels to be reinstated.
The forces of evil don’t give up quietly. ….Lady in Red
Why not publish to an established journal that deals directly with climate science like the Journal of Geophysical Research?
mwhite says:
““Commited Christian” British journalists use these phrases to imply extreme religious fundamentalism. Thought you’d like to know.”
It seems that Mr. Spencer has stepped on some big shoes with his work and rhetorics is going to be ugly.
Myself being a skeptic and atheist I still can’t see why somebodys personal belief would discredit scientific work. That would mean that only atheists could make “correct” science on every specific issue. That is a very very dangerous attitude to have. Journalists implying this are either idiots or dishonest, or both.
With recent studies by Kirkby, Lindzen, Spencer etc. I can’t believe how many journalists and politicians still believes this AGW nonsense about CO2 as dangerous pollutant.
I predict that the CERN group will not be publishing the results of their research in this toilet fodder rag.
otter17 says:
September 3, 2011 at 6:08 am
“Why not publish to an established journal that deals directly with climate science like the Journal of Geophysical Research?”
They wouldn’t know the concept of measuring things.
But we must never lose sight of the fundamental truth that Spencer and Braswell have to overcome in all of this controversy-
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence because they usually contradict claims that are backed by extraordinary evidence. The evidence for the extraordinary claim must support the new claim as well as explain why the old claims that are now being abandoned, previously appeared to be correct.”
From that scientific axiom it’s so simple for even the layman to instantly recognize why so many of you people here are in constant denial about all the extraordinary claims and extraordinary evidence. Shame on you all for not being diligent enough to come up with the extraordinary claims and extraordinary evidence to back them first!
DirkH says:
September 3, 2011 at 7:04 am
“otter17 says:
September 3, 2011 at 6:08 am
“Why not publish to an established journal that deals directly with climate science like the Journal of Geophysical Research?”
They wouldn’t know the concept of measuring things.”
By which i mean, climate scientists wouldn’t know it. It might be that the particular journal you mention might have knowledge about it due to its non-climate-science related activities. But as consensus climate science is all about computer model output and refuting real world data, the climate scientists will of course not know how to measure or not measure a thing.
Makes me even more eager to hear what Dessler will say.
Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!
All the fuss over a “peer reviewed” science paper.There is something in there they are so afraid of.But not to be properly responded to.Just sling the mud and hope that will make for a credible response.
Mature scientists who does NOT agree with it.Would just roll up their sleeves and write up a counterpoint paper and get it published.
When careers are at stake, science goes out the window.
It’s happened in every field of science and no doubt it will happen again.
The disputed resignation reasons can be addressed most fruitfully as follows:
1. Ask the reviewers whether in their opinion the paper they reviewed ‘ignored contradictory evidence’ etc etc.
2. Ask the reviewers whether they agree with the resigning editor.
3. Ask the reviewers whether science which condtradicts postuated models is real science, fake science or bad science. Or any of those depending on the quality of the data and the models….
What we have here is trial by media.
It is an entirely inappropriate way to proceed.
Particularly when the media decide on a political line to run and then seek quotes from people prepared to back it.