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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Wow Wolfgang is a fool if he cites papers such as
Relationships between tropical sea surface temperature and top‐of‐atmosphere radiation
Kevin E. Trenberth,1 John T. Fasullo,1 Chris O’Dell,2 and Takmeng Wong3
…with no supporting statement as reason to refute Spencer and Braswell. By the looks of it, the Trenberth paper was written to refute Lindzen and Choi’s earlier paper where they only considered data from the tropics. The Trenberth paper specifically says “This paper explores the meaning of results that use only the tropical region.”
Now unless I’m missing something, that paper seems pretty much irrelevent to the Spencer and Braswell paper and if it is relevent, there ought to be some very specific reason stated as to why.
Wolfgang’s logic is all wrong about whether Spencer and Braswell need to take into account previous mainstream results because that is precisely what they’re refuting themselves.
Pielke said it best when he said “The ultimate arbitrator of the Spencer and Braswell analysis and conclusions will be in the peer-reviewed literature not on weblogs, or whether or not the Chief Editor of a journal decides to resign over a paper.”
Disko Troop says: “davidmhoffer: right on the button. I agree with your analysis. I see this as a more carefully worded resignation than some are seeing. The contradictions are deliberate. He is saying that he did his job, the respected peer reviewers did theirs, but that he is being forced to deny this fact by agencies or persons beyond his control.
You’re trying to make sense out of something that makes no sense, and you may be right. The letter is total gibberish, a veritable dog’s breakfast of illogic. Wagner may have been made “an offer he couldn’t refuse,” and reacted the only way he dared. But there’s also the possibility that the nonsensical nature of the resignation instead reflects the fact that Wagner’s enemies edited it.
From the resignation letter: “…In other words, the problem I see with the paper by Spencer and Braswell is not that it declared a minority view…but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents…
But at the relevant point in the publication process, the only thing that is supposed to matter is the opinion of the reviewers. Imposing a post facto requirement of obeisance to the very arguments the paper was “essentially” intended to analyze is ludicrous.
“the Editor-in-Chief, Wolfgang Wagner, has resigned”
Was he given a choice?
Why, then, was Wagner first appointed Editor of this journal, if not to make decisions and then to stand behind them? What kind of journal is this? Have we a mouse or a man in charge?
Re: Trenberths paper.
[15] The tropical SST time series lags Niño 3.4 SSTs by a few months, is correlated 0.71 at zero lag [Trenberth et al., 2002b] and exhibits about 22% of its amplitude (the standard deviations of tropical SST is 0.21°C and for the Niño 3.4 region 0.95°C). Trenberth et al.’s [2002b] correlations between global mean temperature and Niño3.4 SST for 1950 to 1998 were 0.53 with global temperatures lagging by 3 months.
The dominant interannual variations in TOA radiative fluxes in the tropics occur with ENSO, which involves a buildup of heat during La Niña and a discharge of heat during El Niño [Trenberth et al., 2002a, 2002b].
During El Niño, the warming of the tropical eastern Pacific and associated changes in the Walker circulation, atmospheric stability, and winds lead to decreases in stratocumulus clouds, increased solar radiation at the surface,
Murphy et al. [2009] address changes in the energy budget with surface temperatures for a much larger domain and present a much more complete analysis and discussion of issues, and show that recent observed variability indeed supports a positive shortwave cloud feedback.
correlations between global mean temperature and Niño3.4 SST for 1950 to 1998 were 0.53 with global temperatures lagging by 3 months.
“buildup of heat during La Niña”
“During El Niño…..decreases in stratocumulus clouds, increased solar radiation at the surface,”
a positive shortwave cloud feedback
How did this paper get through peer review? Lots of internal contradictions.
Theo Goodwin says:
September 2, 2011 at 3:02 pm
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.
_______________________________
Theo,
See definition below.
fury [ˈfjʊərɪ]
n pl -ries
1. violent or uncontrolled anger; wild rage
2. an outburst of such anger
3. uncontrolled violence the fury of the storm
4. a person, esp a woman, with a violent temper
5. (Myth & Legend / Classical Myth & Legend) See Furies
like fury Informal violently; furiously they rode like fury
[from Latin furia rage, from furere to be furious]
According to Wikipedia:
“After a period with the friendly Ascanio Piccolomini (the Archbishop of Siena), Galileo was allowed to return to his villa at Arcetri near Florence in 1634, where he spent the remainder of his life under house arrest. Galileo was ordered to read the seven penitential psalms once a week for the next three years. However his daughter Maria Celeste relieved him of the burden after securing ecclesiastical permission to take it upon herself.[55] It was while Galileo was under house arrest that he dedicated his time to one of his finest works, Two New Sciences. Here he summarized work he had done some forty years earlier, on the two sciences now called kinematics and strength of materials. This book has received high praise from Albert Einstein.[56] As a result of this work, Galileo is often called the “father of modern physics”. He went completely blind in 1638 and was suffering from a painful hernia and insomnia, so he was permitted to travel to Florence for medical advice.[57][58]”
Apparently AGWism isn’t the only belief subject to exaggeration.
Chris
What communist did to people of character was to make ’em balls-less, but what they did to people without balls to boot was easy neophytes.
That that editor lacks character and balls is one thing, but to so easily become a neophyte for the crazed climate communist hippie circus? Bleh.
Spencer & Braswell 2011 was and remains crap, and Wagner is calling it.
Yeah, sure.
If the Editor in Chief thought the paper was “crap” before his journal published it, it was his responsibility to tell the action editor not to accept it.
Who did Wagner hear from, and what kinds of threats did they make?
It is extremely unusual for an editor to resign over an article that was not retracted and that he did not object to prior to publication.
The editor should not have resigned. It it not up to the editor to accept or reject papers, that is the job of the reviewers and if they said accept, then so be it.
As for the quality or otherwise of the paper itself, the decision on that will be provided by peer review in its proper sense, not newspaper articles and blogs. By “peer review” I mean what happens after publication – too often the phrase is used just to describe the process of getting published, but that is actually the start of peer review not the finish – it is what other workers in the same field say of the paper that ultimately matters, and can sometimes take years to work through.
I can guarantee that Dessler’s upcoming paper in Geophysical Research Letters (appears to be “Are clouds causing climate change?”) will contain enough twists and turns of the data that you will not be able to see what was really done or that the data actually shows the opposite effect.
Let’s get our teeth into it when it comes out because he has been given a free pass so far.
We owe this to Dr. Spencer and to all the editors out there who are even more afraid today to publish skeptical papers because their jobs are on the line.
So the main reason is that a bad paper had slipped through, for which the editor assumed responsibility.
No.
First, Wagner makes no real effort to demonstrate that it was a “bad paper.”
Second, when a bad paper does slip through at a journal (and they do, sooner or later, at every journal), how often does the editor in chief resign?
It shouldn’t be difficult to find out how often official retractions at journals, over the past decade, have been immediately followed by the departure of the editor in chief.
And how often the publication of unretracted but controversial articles has been immediately followed by the departure of the editor in chief.
Sounds to me like his resignation is good for science and for the journal.
— John Andrews, Knoxville, Tennessee
“…the editorial team unintentionally selected three reviewers who probably share some climate sceptic notions of the authors.”
The operative phrase is “who probably share”
So, the editor resigned not because of something he knows to be a fact, but because of something that he believes might be true. It might be true, it might not. So rather than make sure of the facts, he resigned.
Modern science in action. Act on what you believe, rather than investigate to determine the facts. Once upon a time that was called superstition.
All hail the One World Government! The Scientific Dictatorship is here. And it’s for Your Own Good, citizen!
I used to think that Alex Jones was just crazy and was just ranting about Cass Sunstein and his merry band of commies, but now I’m convinced Alex is on to something very real.
Richard Black of the BBC has this article:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14768574
In it he states that “Dr Spencer is a committed Christian as well as a professional scientist”
In the culture of the BBC and the UK ruling elite, outing someone as a Christian is directly analogous to someone being outed as Jewish in 1930’s Germany.
Roy if you’re listening, stay away from the UK.
@Bernard J
So, warminsts have actually started doing science (experimentation, replication), now. I wasn’t aware of this. Up until now it has just been models and gang-repudiation of any actual data refuting the models.
The simple fact backing up a skeptical position is that the climate is only warming at less the half the rate that is predicted in the theory (even including a number of unsubstantiated negative forcings such as aerosols).
There is very little warming in the tropics and especially in the tropics troposphere where the effect is supposed to be easy to detect by now.
Where is the warming?
Make editors resign. Publish a thousand its worse than we thought articles. Show me the fracking warming and all these feedbacks that are supposed to be there instead and then there is no debate. Its just not there (or, more accurately, only a small fraction of it is).
Mr. Spencer,
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.
If your paper was scientifically flawed, please don’t be so defensive about it. If your scientific research is robust and worthy of publication, prestigious peer reviewed scientific journals should be happy to publish them.
I seriously doubt there is some global conspiracy or vast cabal of scientists who are out to make your research look sub-par. It is simply not professional or mature to complain about some vast global cabal out to get you. That’s not even worthy of serious consideration.
Cheers.
Some people are speculating rather too wildly about Wagner’s motivations. For example suggesting that he fell on his sword for accepting the article. Please don’t speculate like that, without some evidence.
Perhaps Wagner fought long and hard to get the journal to retract the article, but the editorial board would not permit that. So he had to go.
Perhaps the journal’s owners are realising that their readers tend to be sceptical of the AGW position (being hard physicists) and find themselves in a tough position: they want to be taken seriously by all in the climate fraternity, but cannot retract without pissing off half their punters so they will not retract (or even publish rebuttal) leaving Wagner the door.
So many possible reasons are possible.
Looks like the overpaid government-funded climate thugs have struck again. I really don’t care any more – climate science has been soiled by “the team” and will never again be taken seriously by the public. I just hope we have enough sense to chop off the funding before these people can waste more of our tax dollars…
I wonder if the 3 reviewers can now sue Wagner and/or the journal for reputational damage. I’d certainly consider it if I were them.
Anthony,
Not to worry, you have made it inside their wire, now that your in you in fact have them surrounded from the inside with facts. Retreat now by them will not help as the facts will expand in all directions as they attempt to flee.
Someone here suggested that this has all the hallmarks of a staged event, considering the speed with with the Guardian and BBC were able to publish articles on it. It seems logical. I Know the Europeans don’t really understand us and we certainly don’t understand them but they’ve got to realize the next election in the US might usher in Republican control of both houses of congress and if a Republican president gets elected, it will likely be with the enthusiastic support of Christian evangelicals. Shenanigans like these are more likely to make doubters of the consensus climate science into despisers. That’s not a smart position to put yourself when budget cutting will most likely define the next congress as opposed to spending.
The biggest problem with any peer review system is that it is intrinsically censorious. It’s used in academic disciplines that can’t complete the third leg of the scientific method stool – physical experiment. In this case the physical experiment is replaced with rhetorical experiment, and he who convinces the majority, the peers, wins the argument.
However this is not science, and this lamentable state of affairs started decades ago when the West’s education systems started the deleterious process of in course assessment and expected students in the social sciences to do hard physical science subjects. No prizes for guessing which subjects those gravitated to – human geography in which climate science could be associated with.
Peer review in the physical sciences is about ensuring no plagiarism occurs, otherwise the hypothesis is tested by physical experiment from which there is no argument – it passes or fails, no ifs or buts.
The resignation letter speaks to coercion:
“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 in the journal Remote Sensing. As I stated in my editorial at the launch of this new open access journal [6] one of the premier goals of remote sensing as a discipline is to better understand physical and biological processes on our planet Earth. The use of satellite data to check the functionality of all sorts of geophysical models is therefore a very important part of our work. But it should not be done in isolation by the remote sensing scientists. Interdisciplinary cooperation with modelers is required in order to develop a joint understanding of where and why models deviate from satellite data. Only through this close cooperation the complex aspects involved in the satellite retrievals and the modeling processes can be properly taken into account.”
He is insinuating that he was criticized for allowing in a skeptic paper and for not “coordinating” with the modelers. This must really hurt, as he seems to be suggesting that satellite data cannot be discussed on its own–the very antithesis of stated purpose of the journal above. He is signalling, I think, a willingness to blow the whistle and get the whole episode off his chest. That’s my read. Perhaps Anthony or Steve McIntyre should give him a call or pay him a visit–he may have a story he wants to tell.