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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Obviously, the warmists took the S&B paper and subsequent publicity as a major hit to the Team. They responded by having a supporter fall on his sword to generate publicity for the “rebuttal.” The Team realize they are still losing the battle and have started sacrificing their own. They are imploding and they know it. All’s well that ends well. 🙂
Dear Moderator,
Peter Stone & several others are trolls. Can we please require that posts remain reasonably on topic.
For example:
Peter’s last post is a straw man. Peter’s “straw man” supposes that most everyone on this site do not accept that man has an effect on climate. I think nearly all skeptics accept that man has some impact as this is something which is very obvious on a local regional level (such as – coal burning caused airborne soot and likely caused pea-soup fog in London for years during the last century). Also most skeptics accept that if all else is equal then CO2 should potentially have a slight warming affect. The divergence between skeptics and warmists is the degree of relative importance of man-made CO2 effects compared to many other possible factors & feedbacks within a very poorly understood complex system with convection and circulation.
Why should we have to put up with such naive trolls?
Dr. Curry on the Trenberth smear:
http://judithcurry.com/2011/09/05/update-on-spencer-braswell-part-ii/#more-4805
So Mr. Wagner says the following to be the problems with the “paper”:
1) “fundamental methodological errors [and] false claims” – Specifics: none given? I’m sure the public battle will shed light here.
2) “the authors and like-minded climate sceptics have much exaggerated the paper’s conclusions” – Did the authors? That’s not a rhetorical question, where did they do as claimed? I’m looking at the cited sources and I don’t agree so what am I missing? As for “like-minded sceptics” there’s a generalization and guilt by association for-the-lose.
3) “trying to refute all scientific insights into the global warming phenomenon” – I can’t argue that in short so I’ll just leave it as a bullet.
Then we get some of the “good” stuff
4) “The political views of the authors and the thematic goal of their study did, of course, alone not disqualify the paper from entering the review process”, The paper wasn’t disqualified from entering the review process, so why are you mentioning their political views and thematic goal? Are you pointing out a coming change?
5) “it should not be done in isolation” – so it upset too many people who threaten with ostracization rather than debate with intelligent discussion, but maybe we should put at least some of that responsibility on the ones deciding to be upset? I think it’s essential for scientists to be more intellectual and less emotional when dealing with the data and analysis.
6) “three reviewers who probably share some climate sceptic notions” – oh yeah, there’s some more of the TRUTH for ya! They didn’t blindly flush the paper so we can make some assumptions they are in cahoots or just guilty by association. Or they weren’t aware of the literature that “to some extent” makes this paper irrelevant.
7) “editors should take special care that minority views are not suppressed…[not] to reject all controversial papers” – only less than all, right 😉
8) “comparable studies published by other authors have already been refuted in open discussions and to some extend also in the literature” – Argument on this matter has ensued by the appropriate parties, but I do wonder why only “to some extent” it’s been refuted in writing yet somehow consists of “fundamental methodological errors [and] false claims”, and what are the differences between this paper and the “comparable”, but not identical, papers? And what happened to your claim that “The use of satellite data to check the functionality of all sorts of geophysical models is therefore a very important part of our work”?
0 ) “Scopus, Europe’s most important citation database” – Is this the leverage used to bring this about, threatening the removal of the journal from the database, reducing its relevance to the world? Are you telling us where the ostracise card was played with this mention?
Guilty Dogs Bark First and Loudest.
Some doth protest to louldly.
They always re-visit the place where the crime was committed.
Junk-In = Junk-out
Just await the facts, the facts will come to them and the cooling facts will put the cold water on them and end their mad redistribution of wealth cult.
re: Richard S Courtney (September 5, 2011 at 7:31 am) :
Richard,
I’m sure that most people here have excellent troll detectors, and quickly start using the “next” key to bypass further posts by the same troll or responses to their red herrings. On the other hand, they do clutter up threads.
Nonetheless, it is mildly interesting to note that there’s a correlation between the “danger level” of the material of the thread and the “rank” of troll sent to try and disrupt it. Stone and Drew appear fairly articulate for trolls, so I presume that the topic of this thread is bothersome enough to the Forces of Darkness that they’ve sent a couple of non-coms instead of the usual grunts.
Good to know,
/dr.bill
I think the more parsimonious conclusion was that Wagner was induced/coerced to request RS retract the paper. RS refused, and Wagner had nowhere to go but out.
In regards to this link https://esg.llnl.gov:8443/about/errata.do given earlier, the reason you are getting that message Anthony is that the security certificate being provided for verification has expired.
At that url is a page listing the known data errors WCRP CMIP Multi-Model Data
Early on in this thread I suggested that Wolfgang Wagner had likely scored a massive “own goal”. As events have unfolded since then, Kevin Trenberth has weighed in (see “The science is scuttled” thread at WUWT). This is no longer a massive “own goal”.
Words may fail to describe what has happened. Wagner has, in fact, scored a massive “own goal”, establishing the legitimacy and importance of the SB paper, drawing world wide attention to it, and at the same time attempting to discredit it through what amounts to nothing more than a smear campaign. He has discredited and made a fool of himself, as well as the AGW “science” he purports to defend.
Along comes Trenberth, who has fittingly poured gasoline on himself, lit himself afire, and runs screaming in circles shouting “I made him do it! I made him do it!”
The Three Travesties of Trenberth
1. The missing heat (ClimateGate emails)
2. It escaped to space, the one place he refused to look for it (SB paper)
3. In trying to cover it up, Trenberth has given it the kind of publicity money cannot buy, and pointed the finger directly at himself as the chief architect of the cover up.
What shall we call these? WaterGate and ClimateGate were cover ups too. But neither Nixon nor “the Team” were insane enough to proudly proclaim themselves as the architects of the cover up. They attempted to spin the mess they created into something it wasn’t. Can you imagine Nixon going on national television and proudly proclaiming that he ordered the spying to try and protect democracy?
This is a whole new level of cover up and “gate” just seems an inadequate term.
Bernard J. says:
September 2, 2011 at 10:08 am
Here’s an idea – Spencer & Braswell 2011 was and remains crap, and Wagner is calling it.
Wagner has no expertise to call it anything. In his position the proper thing to do would have been to wait for rebuttals, publish them in the same journal and ask the original authors for a response. That’s how science is done and he should know it.
Of course he may resign any time, but with a personal note of apology to (who else?) Kevin Trenberth (and let him boast about it in public)? WTF!? While admitting his Chinese partners made fool of him… The whole thing is beyond funny, it is hilarious and pathetic at the same time.
After this it takes a generation, at least, to rebuild scientific credibility. The scandal is not restricted to climate science as such anymore, it starts to do real harm to the public perception of “science” in general. It is high time to stop this suicidal madness before it gets too late.
From a post over at Bishiphill; Is AR5 finished before it begins. Here is an interesting excerpt I thought relevant:
It’s a possibility I suppose. We might assume that:
■when the Team said they would get rid of von Storch and he subsequently resigned this was just a coincidence
■when the Team discussed getting rid of Saiers and he was subsequently removed from responsibility for the McIntyre/McKitrick paper, this was just a coincidence too
■the non-appearance of McKitrick and Michaels’ paper in AR4 drafts was not connected to Jones’ suggestion that he would keep it out of the review
■Wagner’s resignation was a reasonable response to a blog post at Real Climate
■etc.
But, you know, I’m just not sure how many coincidences like this we can be expected to bear.
To read the post go to : http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/9/5/is-ar5-finished-before-it-begins.html
I’m not sure how to add a link to these comments.
reply to: Dave Springer says: September 5, 2011 at 5:04 am
Is this a new version of “my Daddy’s bigger than your Daddy?” I mean, come on – I’m all for tearing up Dessler’s science standing or work if it deserves tearing up, but an ad hom by way of TAMU that isn’t even correct? It’s Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University. I’ve no idea of their current standing, but there’ve been many years where A&M was in the top few universities nationally for engineering, science, business, etc. Most Texans are quite proud of TAMU, and no one likes a good Aggie joke better than Aggie’s themselves. One of the most well known Aggie jokes anywhere is “Q: What do you call an Aggie after graduation? A: Boss.” which is invariably followed by a wry chuckle and the response “true!”
Meanwhile, I don’t think a “Texas University” even exists. University of Texas, sure, or Texas Tech. University, or even Texas State University. I think there used to even be a Texas State School of Mines (per your ‘Mining’) that’s now part of the UT system. But don’t believe there’s a TU.
As a Texas A&M University graduate (of many years past), I thank you for your trust in our abilities in engineering and agriculture and earning-powers as bosses. (Gov Perry, a TAMU graduate in ’69 who then went on to become a successful (ie, not dead) fighter pilot, should he become President, must extend his own reputation as a politician and leader into those arenas.)
tu does exist, but only in the sarcastic minds of Aggies who refuse to accept that “The University of Texas” is not the “the (only) university” in Texas. 8<)
Regardless, the dear Dr. Andrew Dessler is only a professor from Rice University (1986) with a BA, who was later granted a PhD from Harvard (1994). He is no “Aggie” and has not been graduated by anybody at A&M. (Which might be part of the problem here.)
PETER STONE …
If you disagree with the S&B paper and its conclusions – why are you here attacking them personally rather than advocating for a PROPER SCIENTIFIC RESPONSE? Which would be to post a rebuttal – in Remote Sensing.
What is your opinion of the ad hominem attacks by Kevin Trenberth, John Abraham, and Peter Gleick. Do you support them?
If the science is as bad as you all allege, why aren’t you advocating FOLLOWING the PROPER SCIENTIFIC PROCESS and refuting this bad science?
Real Climate has shut down further comments on this story – and seem to be rapidly attempting to bury the discussion … not surprising with the terrible publicity their actions are garnering
North of 43 and south of 44 says:
September 5, 2011 at 11:21 am
“In regards to this link https://esg.llnl.gov:8443/about/errata.do given earlier, the reason you are getting that message Anthony is that the security certificate being provided for verification has expired.”
Lawrence Livermore let a security certificate expire? Odd. My SSL certificate renews automatically. LLNL not paying their bills?
So there’s a bunch of errata. Did you expect an array of remote sensing satellites that are constantly growing old and having nodes replaced to NOT have erratum? Get a clue, dopey.
At that url is a page listing the known data errors WCRP CMIP Multi-Model Data
PETER STONE:
You are allegedly a scientist in the field. An honest question … why is it you are here attacking and denigrating the S&B work rather than responding thru the normal scientific process?
How do you feel about the terrible trio of Trenbarth, Abraham and Gleick’s attacks on the S&B work – and their outright denigration of Spencer – instead of proper scientific rebuttal, especially in light of Trenbarth’s statements (Climategate emails) he would do whatever he could, including subverting the scientific process (yes I’ve paraphrased), to prevent unfavorable work from being published?
What about Dressler’s alleged response – what is your position on their ignoring yet again the scientific process and publishing the response to S&B in a DIFFERENT publication, rather than following the process and posting as a reply in Remote Sensing? Do you approve of and condone this? And if so why?
These are fair questions – I think everyone here would be interested in your learned response.
220mph says:
September 5, 2011 at 4:21 pm
I never visit RC but i had a look and I can’t see any sign of anything to do with this story. Did they have anything on it? Have they deleted it all hoping it will just go away?
Jimmy H
RC discussed the S&B paper – but you have to go to the 2nd page to find it now … and they closed comments on it back on Aug 24th
Trenberth and pals responded to – attacked – the paper in the following story:
http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2011/09/spencer-faulty-science
I strongly suspect they became increasingly distressed at the firestorm their attacks have created and would be quite happy for it all to go away about now …
OK. There are +530 comments above this one. Most of them are supportive of Dr. Spencer, Dr. Braswell, and Dr. Christy and their efforts to get empirical data and subordinate analysis published and seriously considered in the AGW debate. I believe I have read each one but I found few if any suggestions on direct actions that we should be taking to support them! How do we translate all of that positive talk into real action items?
Consider this the initiation of a WUWT brainstorming session! What can we do to support them? Please offer any and all achievable actions that we, as irascible individuals and as a motley group, might take to support Spencer’s, Brasswell’s, and Christy’s positions and drive their opposition into increasingly difficult to defend positions! How can we effectively help them?
Brainstorming Rules:
No suggestions are too outrageous.
Humor is welcome!
Do not attack other peoples suggestions.
After sufficient suggestions are captured, prioritize based on effectiveness and simplicity of implementation.
Experiment with different actions, that better suit individual talents.
Take Action and Measure Results.
Oh man!
Now we got “rules” … Measurements? Prioritizes? Experiments? Simplicities?
What is dis? “Science” or sumthin’ like that?
/sarchasm – That gaping whole between a liberal and the real world.
Dave Springer says:
September 5, 2011 at 4:34 pm
North of 43 and south of 44 says:
September 5, 2011 at 11:21 am
“In regards to this link https://esg.llnl.gov:8443/about/errata.do given earlier, the reason you are getting that message Anthony is that the security certificate being provided for verification has expired.”
Lawrence Livermore let a security certificate expire? Odd. My SSL certificate renews automatically. LLNL not paying their bills?
So there’s a bunch of errata. Did you expect an array of remote sensing satellites that are constantly growing old and having nodes replaced to NOT have erratum? Get a clue, dopey.
At that url is a page listing the known data errors WCRP CMIP Multi-Model Data
________________________________________________________________
Hey Dave stick a sock in it,
I was just telling Anthony what was at that URL and why he got the message he got.
For your information I expect all kinds of errors in anything done by a group that hasn’t a clue about possible sources of errors outside of normal measurement gotchas (and with some of these clowns I’m not so sure they understand measurement errors).
We don’t need no stinkin’ rules – there are plenty already in place.
You can demand that the warming mafiosi simply follow the existing scientific process … if you disagree with a published work such as this – then submit a rebuttal TO THE PUBLICATION that published the paper … that scientific process allows and encourages open debate – encourages review from all … provided the authors release the information necessary for others to replicate their work – something else the climate cabal seems to have an issue with …
For pure stupidity and ignorance, it’s going to be hard for Warmistas to surpass this statement any time soon: “…This is…the way science works: someone makes a scientific claim and others test it. If it holds up to scrutiny, it become part of the scientific literature and knowledge, safe until someone can put forward a more compelling theory that satisfies all of the observations, agrees with physical theory, and fits the models.” –Peter Gleick
Mac the Knife says:
September 5, 2011 at 6:07 pm
OK. There are +530 comments above this one. Most of them are supportive of Dr. Spencer, Dr. Braswell, and Dr. Christy and their efforts to get empirical data and subordinate analysis published and seriously considered in the AGW debate. I believe I have read each one but I found few if any suggestions on direct actions that we should be taking to support them! How do we translate all of that positive talk into real action items?
Seriously, the idea is exactly right: But note that Dr Christy wrote in above to this thread, and I’d expect the others affected would be readers as well. Dr Spencer contributes regularly to this site, so he definitely has access.
Encourage them, write to them with your words of encouragement. (Martyrs do not like dying alone with only their courage as a witness! Note: They may still die, but they need to know they are not alone.)
Write to the journal in question. Paper copy and on-line. Protest their prejudices. (Idiots and prejudiced editors do not like being exposed in public! They may still be prejudiced and be idiots, but they know they are being exposed.)
Write to the other “science” journals. Make THEM realize that many read their works, and their efforts to hide things behind the mantra of “my knowledge” (or “my group’s theory” is the “only knowledge” is dead wrong.