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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“They said the same thing about Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren in regard to bacterium causing ulcers.”
Discovery period: 1980-1984, Nobel Prize in Medicine, 2005…a mere 20 year lag! I suspect the same with regard to “Climate”. I hope Dr. Spencer survives to pick up HIS N.P.
This stuff makes me realise we need a new Thesaurus, here are some suggestions:
Peer review = a review of grant funded, dubious, scientific papers which can always be relied upon to approved by one’s pals.
Climate science = ‘climate science’, an increasingly discredited cult belief promoted by those needing government financial support to spread their faith.
Climate scientist = ‘climate scientist’, or another expression for someone prepared to secretively manipulate raw data, but not prepared to debate his beliefs with non-believers.
IPCC = Irresponsible Practitioners of the Climate Cult.
The Team = A typical group of professional climate data manipulators.
“The Science is Settled = The mantra of career politicians, desperately seeking additional tax revenues to fund either welfare dependence schemes and/or their own pension funds”.
Natural Climate Cycles = An obvious natural sequence of events seen by the Climate/Alarmist cult as a great heresy.
Integrity = An alien concept in ‘climate science’.
Carbon Dioxide = A gas defined by ‘climate scientists’ as a great evil destined to doom all humanity and totally undesirable in the atmosphere.
Climate Change = Something natural which has been going on for hundreds of millions of years, but which the climate cult faithful insists on being stopped right now.
Luther Wu says:
September 2, 2011 at 12:14 pm
AndyW says:
September 2, 2011 at 9:55 am
You knew where you stood 500 years ago with science and the catholic church .. no longer it seems
Andy
_______________________
In my view, there has been a role- reversal. The AGW community in support of the IPCC position has assumed the role of the Church vis a vis Galileo’s troubles. Anyone with viewpoint not aligned with the orthodoxy is subject to the fury of the new church of AGW.
_____________________
Luther,
I don’t think the Church expressed any “fury” towards Galileo, in spite of his obnoxious insistence that his partially correct theories were without error.
I think there are better analogies to be made vis a vis adherence to the AGW religion, than the tired Church versus Galileo myth.
Chris
No, the war isn’t over. They sense their own demise coming and will try every “trick” to “hide the decline”.
Would be interesting to use FOI to find out whether any publicly funded employees either side of the ocean have been hassling the ex-editor,,,
Most people have a misconception of the relationship between general relativity. Einstein believed (as did Lorenz and Eddington) that general relativity was a form of aether theory. See http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ether_and_the_Theory_of_Relativity for Einstein’s lecture asserting this.
Most people also have a misconception of the relationship between Galileo and the Church. According to the leading Galileo scholar Stillman Drake, Galileo was a “Roman Catholic zealot,” whose problems with the Inquisition were due ENTIRELY to university professors of physics (natural philosophy) who were manipulating the Inquisition, rather than to theologians. See Drake’s book Galileo: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press). Galileo was convicted only because he pleaded guilty to the charge against him, even though he was innocent of the heresy charges, and had a letter from Cardinal Bellarmine (a SAINT no less!) proving his innocence. Read Drake for details, in particular for a conjecture on why the innocent Galileo pleaded guilty. Urban VIII told the Tuscan ambassador to the Vatican during Galileo’s trial that he (the Pope) was Galileo’s friend who was trying to protect him (Drake again).
The true parallels between Galileo and people like Anthony, Spencer, and Singer, are obvious. Perhaps Wagner also, as several commentators have suggested.
Finally, most people have a misconception of the Flat Earth Hypothesis. No educated person in Europe at least since Aristotle (384-322 BC) has believed in a flat Earth. See Thomas S. Kuhn’s book The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought (Harvard University Press) for a discussion. The claim that in ancient times (after the beginning of the Christian era), people believed in a flat Earth, is a myth invented in the 19th century. The Wikipedia article on the history of the Flat Earth Myth is fairly accurate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth Anyone who calls anyone a “flat Earther” is thereby demonstrating himself to be a “flat Earther,” which is to say, an ignoramus.
Chris B says:
September 2, 2011 at 2:43 pm
“I don’t think the Church expressed any “fury” towards Galileo, in spite of his obnoxious insistence that his partially correct theories were without error.”
Cardinal Bellarmine, who would become Pope, told the Inquisitors that they could show Galileo the instruments of torture but not use them. He was placed under house arrest without medical care and forbidden to practice science. That is pretty damn tough, maybe furious.
But this is not the place to debate this matter. As much as I favor discussion of religion, this very important post is not a place to re-fight the Galileo wars.
Did Nature ever retract Mann’s “error”?
Am I the only one thinking, “Good Riddance” ???
Remote Sensing Editor-in-Chief Wolfgang Wagner has resigned, ostensibly because “…the editorial team unintentionally selected three reviewers who probably share some climate sceptic notions of the authors…”
Well…. put him in a sundress and call him ‘Suzy’! He really DID screw up didn’t he?! He failed to stack the review committee with AGW proponents and some science crept in to the Remote Sensing journal. Oh, the HORRORS! For dereliction of duty, off with his Editor In Cheat head!!! /sarc
From my little knot hole, this looks like a ‘win-win’ situation to me…..
There is some extra news coming out over this. From Retraction Watch that presents some additional insight with this discussion.
In Geophysical Research Letters there WILL be a refutation by Prof Andrew Dressler of the Spencer-Braswell paper next week.
As Geophysical Research Letters did not publish the paper initially, they don’t need to give Spencer and Braswell the last word (a rebuttal).
As Remove Sensing now says the Spencer-Braswell paper is a bad paper (but did not retract it) either Remove Sensing will deny Spencer and Braswell a response to “criticism” from Geophysical Research Letters or allow a limited response under a disclaimer that Remote Sensing says this is a bad paper or some such.
Cheers
At his website, Roger Pielke, Sr., writes:
“Also, if Spencer and Braswell “essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents”, they would be clearly (and easily) refuted in a Comment in Remote Sensing. This would be an embarrassment to Spencer and Braswell, but that is how the scientific method works.”
The normal procedure would be for some Warmista to publish a comment in Remote Sensing. Warmista are anything but normal and anything but scientifc. Check out Pielke’s essay. It is good.
There have been a couple of comments alluding to one explanation. The good editor may have recvd a credible death threat against himself or his family. How could this conspiracy theory be refuted?
A “resignation” certainly gets one’s attention. But, it was an overly drastic action, in this case. Heck, if you think you made a mistake (as we all do occasionally), you own up to it and promise to do better next time.
At best, maybe he was “tired” of being editor. This was an “opportunity”. At worst, it makes the pro-AGW movement even more suspect as a “racket” that uses “muscle” to “punish” transgressions rather than ” objective science” to “edify” the ignorant.
Might have known that Richard Black would leap on this with a complete train-wreck of an article for the BBC (note, it’s not his blog, but the lead story in the Science/Environment section of the BBC website).
Something else that speaks volumes: any story on the BBC site has a “Related Articles” section, linking to similar, connected, or back-story articles. There is no article on the release of the original paper.
To Ravensclaw, then if these are the options it looks like a set up so Spencer et al. cannot reply.
Interesting biography:
http://www.ipf.tuwien.ac.at/index.php/staff/187-biography-of-wolfgang-wagner.html
Pielke Sr. got it right. This looks as if Wagner is a Ring leader (pun intended)
Of course, the usual suspects (in this and other fields) don’t see this as being an own-goal, because they have that peculiar mental illness known as doublethink. In their minds, everything their opponents do is unacceptable because their views, opinions or just facts presented by them are plain wrong. On the other hand, any manipulation, deceit, stonewalling, cover-up or out-and-out lie is completely justified by being right. In fact, it’s not even that it’s justified; they see it as normal.
Means to an end.
Something is very wrong here.
Not only is every single one of Wagner’s points incredibly wrong, ( eg. He complains about the ” exaggeration of the paper in the media” yet he has no problem with left-wing MSM constantly bombarding us with nonfactual information supporting AGW,) but the whole letter is written in such a style that to someone like me, ( who has personally been involved in investigations in determining credibility and motive, as a result of my occupation in law enforcement,) that I’m fairly confident that the entire letter, and subsequent resignation has been STAGED.
glacierman said
” I wonder what his position in the IPCC will be.”
An excellent point, I’m sure he will reappear somewhere soon.
A classic case of offering the patsy a ceremonial revolver to “do the right thing.” It could reverberate back to the days Wagner spent as a fellow at Goddard Space Flight Centre.
“Therefore, from a purely formal point of view, there were no errors with the
review process. But, as the case presents itself now, the editorial team unintentionally selected three reviewers who probably share some climate sceptic notions of the authors.”
Ha! The were no errors with the review proecess, therefore there must have been errors with the reviewers! For not holding to the Dogma! Heretics!
I am reminded of the early days of Christianity, after it had gained ascendency – the countless meetings of the high and mighty to declare the dogma and the anathema. On a more modern note, I am reminded of Lysenko and his academic aparatchiks.
Isn’t this the second journal editor to be forced out by the team?
grrrr###
I am really ticked off with this. Seriously.
this is how I see it:
Innocent magazine editor (the editor, not the magazine) publishes Anathema; he is brought down by the Dogmatics and forced to recant. By doing so, he is allowed to keep A job, and probably continue to receive the mercey of Funding. No other scientific journal will now dare publish Spencer again. QED. Mission Accomplished.
glacierman says:
September 2, 2011 at 10:03 am
I wonder what his new position in the IPCC will be.
Prone.
So one of the reasons Wagner resigned is because 56,000 people downloaded the paper last month??
Here’s the link.
http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/8/1603/pdf
Even if you already have a copy, download it again, and again and again.
Let’s make a statement.