Earlier today I checked in to the WUWT dashboard and was surprised to see that WUWT had the #1 story on all of WordPress.com this morning:
Tonight, checking in again, I discover not only is WUWT still near the top with a follow up story, but the Spencer and Braswell story is dominating the top 10, labels mine:
The last time I’ve seen anything like this, where climate blogs dominated the top ten, was just after Climategate broke. And it’s a significant feat, as these numbers from the wordpress.com home page illustrate:
The best of 367,768 bloggers, 338,405 new posts, 290,328 comments, & 78,762,938 words posted today on WordPress.com.
I’ll bet the editor Wolfgang Wagner of Remote Sensing had no idea this sort of viral reaction would happen. On the downside, it’s a bad move for them and for the integrity of the peer review process, because IMHO, this was handled almost as badly as CRU/UEA handled Climategate itself. As Dr. Roger Pielke Senior says:
The place to refute a published paper is in peer-reviewed papers, not in blogs (or the media). If the paper is not robust, it appropriately should be responded to by paper, not by the resignation of the Editor. In my view, he made a poor decision which has further damaged the scientific process of vetting new research results.
On the upside, this debacle has placed thousands more fresh eyes on the Spencer and Braswell paper, as well as on the folly of the “failed peer review” process claim by the resigned editor of Remote Sensing.
And yet, we have no peer reviewed rebuttal or comment, just a lot of hand waving and noisemaking and claims the paper is “flawed” without any peer reviewed rebuttal to back up those claims. Pielke says:
Moreover, if there is a fundamental flaw in their work, then publishing a Comment in Remote Sensing would have resolved the issue. That is how science is supposed to work. As it is, Wagner has further politicized climate science.
I have a feeling that this won’t end the way Wagner thought it would.
Pielke Sr. has a new post up on an exchange between him and Peter Glieck of the Pacific Institute. It is well worth a read to get some perspective on how the other side thinks.
slow wit here… the guy resigned as a political statement: the science is yet to be bought by politics. you are talking to the wrong people. it doesn’t matter what anyone reads, says, or does.
the real deal is illiterate, deaf dumb and mute. just as well as english is their 3rd language.
you need to get politics and the banks on your side.
I go for an expansion of households – solar hot water, electricity grid solar powered additives, wind next to the rubbish bin. as an oz, water is a passive heat sink. there is 20 % on the cost of a mortgage.
Tesla was about free electricity. is this what you want? what is driving you?
it’s a bad move for them and for the integrity of the peer review process
Understatement of the year!!
It’s the same as a judge resigning because a jury found someone guilty — I told them to find them guilty and did they listen to me? Did they do what I told them? No … so I’m resigning!
What does it tell you about impartiality of the judge? Everything! Moreover it tells you not only that the judge had no respect at all for the jury, and that he was highly partisan in the case, but that because he is so open, its symptomatic of a whole system that has no respect for the jury, is totally partial and totally biased.
You may as well have judges standing of picket lines (any example would just tar judges as being climate “scientists”).
If the models are so accurate, why are they off by so much in their predictions so far.
The earlier model predictions (Hansen 1988 and IPCC FAR) are at about +0.9C today with the prediction starting around 1984-1989.
The later models (IPCC TAR and AR4) are at about +0.65C today with the prediction starting around 2000-2004.
Temps are only at about +0.4C.
http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/3434/ipcchansen1980to2020.png
An objective scientist has to ask why and then publish the results. And many have, not just Spencer.
Ocean Heat Content (and Land and Ice) are only accumulating energy at about +0.355 W/m2 per year while this is expected to be +0.9 W/m2 or so (before any feedbacks are taken into account).
The theory is off by a lot in the last ten years. Obviously, it is either wrong or natural variability plays a bigger role. That is all Spencer’s paper really said. On its face, it is accurate. Why the fury.
I think the reason we’re seeing all the histrionics over this and the prior Lindzen and Choi paper, is because they’re finally getting kicked where it hurts – in their climate sensitivity hypotheses.
Up to now, they’ve been able to hide behind these when all else is failing. But now, with these papers it becomes apparent that they were plucking the figures from the air, and their “models” have been shown to be 70 year old crones. Unless they can refute those papers with observations of their own, then they’re just blowing more smoke.
Perhaps the Law of Unintended Consequences will kick in here? If a critical mass realizes Peer Review is a publishing technique vs. an intrinsic part of the Scientific Method and if Peer Review drops in importance, perhaps “publish or perish” will become less dire. Then university professors could spend more time on other valuable pursuits, like, I don’t know, professing.
Might that not have a beneficial effect on the runaway cost of a college education?
I haven’t spent too much time watching the site stats so I could be missing an interesting tidbit even if it were biting me on the nose.
I looked at the “Referrers” section thinking that some popular site had links to the story, but the top referrer, climateaudit.org, was responsible for only 430 referrers and none of the links were to this debacle. So it appears that the interest is largely among WUWT regulars.
There seems to be a moderate surge in page views starting on Aug 21, stories from around then include arresting pipeline protesters, the VA earthquake, Row to the Pole photo caption contest, and Irene was beginning to get interesting. I assume Irene drove most of the surge after that.
Yesterday seems unremarkable – only 69 kViews. Last Saturday it was 112, two weeks ago it was 65. That was the day before the surge. Of course, we’re in the midst of a major US holiday, so maintaining the pace from two weeks ago is impressive.
The Wagner story is by far the most popular here, “Breaking” and “Redefining” had 7,899 and 6,412 views, far ahead of “Tropical” 1,895.
One reason for the high ranking has to be few people are following the non-climate blogs this weekend. Still, it is gratifying that so many people who follow blogs that take scientific method seriously are following this story closely. I don’t think we can call this viral, the interest isn’t coming from people who brought into the story from elsewhere. We can call it a wakeup call for the IPCC – I think there’s going to be a lot of people checking every claim in their next report. Why, we might have to redefine peer review!
REPLY: Ric, not sure where you got your numbers, but the “Breaking” story at the top of WUWT has 23,625 views since Friday. And truly, it has gone viral, try to find a climate blog that doesn’t mention it. It has also seen several MSM press stories and a Slashdot story. For Slashdot to post it is exceptional. – Anthony
Wagner’s resignation makes Remote Sensing a better journal.
I mean, really, Gleick is a lucky fellow, like the average canine he can see and adore his Gods (at RealClimate, in his case). And they even talk back to him.
I wish we all had his Faith! What a happy bunch we would be!
“I have a feeling that this won’t end the way Wagner thought it would.”
Maybe this is what he wanted to happen….
Wagner has to be a smart guy, and I’m sure he was under tremendous pressure from the AGW establishment to “get rid” of this paper or else. Doing the things that Roger Pielke talked about would have made that happen, but as it stands now, only the editor has resigned, and the paper still stands. Remember “Peer reviewed” is what the AGW establishment clings to. Although I’m sure there will soon be soon be a study based on “The Models” that will be “Peer Reviewed” that refutes Spencer Brawswell because the models say so.
The cutoff date for IPCC AR5 references is fast approaching. The IPCC-approved grey literature is not a problem, as the NGO’s for whom many of the IPCC authors work, are all busily preparing their policy, err, sciencey, documents.
This paper by Spencer and Braswell will need to be addressed in AR5 unless the following pre-emptive steps are taken:
1. Use IPCC-certified blog sites to condemn the paper as having more errors than an early Mets game.
2. Quickly fire off a rebuking placeholder in the peerreviewedliterature, the contents of which do not matter.
3. Blast press releases through the reliable media conduits to soundly dismiss the S&B paper, using Climate Change Cult Propaganda (CCCP).
4. If S&B decide to respond with a submission, circle the wagons and delay publication until after the AR5 cutoff date.
5. In AR5, only reference the placeholder rebuttal paper.
Mission accomplished, comrades. The climate change cult remains intact.
Here’s a telling part of Warner’s editorial:
“But trying to refute all scientific insights into the global warming phenomenon just based on the comparison of one particular observational satellite data set with model predictions is strictly impossible. Aside from ignoring all the other observational data sets (such as the rapidly shrinking sea ice extent and changes in the flora and fauna) and contrasting theoretical studies, such a simple conclusion simply cannot be drawn considering the complexity of the involved models and satellite measurements.”
The nature of the water vapour feedback would change the magnitude of anthropogenic Carbon loading of the atmosphere significantly. But notice the examples Warner uses.
He talks about sea ice extent which is a product of it getting warmer since the satellite record measured sea ice extent. But Spencer’s own Satellite record measures it getting warmer in the last 30 years and Spencer doesn’t refute that.
Secondly, changes in flora and fauna are expected with extra warmth and a boosting of CO2. So again, no news there.
So what about Spencer’s paper, and not what someone in the media might or might not say, ignores all the other data sets? Could Warner just not come up with better examples?
It is still amazing to me that supposed real scientist, let alone the media, can’t learn enough about opposing views to understand that the arguements of most ‘skeptics’ are about magnitude and attribution not whether its a little warmer, that there is a little less ice, or that CO2 grows plants.
Although it’s not on wordpress, and so doesn’t show up in this look at the story going viral, Roy Spencer has put up an excellent laymans explanation of the core scientific issue on his blog here:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/09/a-primer-on-our-claim-that-clouds-cause-temperature-change/
This is the really important stuff, never mind petulant editors throwing their toys out of the pram.
DN says:
September 4, 2011 at 2:46 am
There is just no improving on your words, and no refuting them, either. ‘Nuff said.
tallbloke says September 4, 2011 at 3:05 am
I think that’s a pretty safe bet. Whatever their “goal” might have been, it seems to have boomeranged.
Meanwhile – speaking of numbers and “going viral” … the fallout from Wagner’s ludicrous resignation seems to have buried any scrutiny of Al Gore’s latest and greatest attempt to “win the conversation” using (according to Matt Nisbet) “a potentially innovative if not also troubling strategy” to spread the
gospelword during his planned Sept.14 “climate crisis” propaganda blitz.Gore’s “friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your account keys” plea is tantamount to a plan to spam via Twitter and Facebook using the accounts of his
As Charlie Martin wrote (Aug. 26):
YMMV, but this strikes me as being a highly unethical “strategy” on the part of the Gore machine that deserves some MSM attention and scrutiny.
@Dave Wendt September 3, 2011 at 11:38 pm
It almost sounds as if Wagner never really read the paper.
THIS from Wagner is as b.s as you can get:
No, no. no. The satellite researchers don’t need to “develop” anything vis-a-vis the modelers, not if develop means fudge the data to fit the models. It is the modelers who need to tweak the models to fit the real world data from the satellites. You don’t take real world and massage it to fit the models. If we did, quantum physics would be based on Archimedes. For many centuries scientific inquiry was fitted around Archimedes’ “model” of how things worked. It was only in freeing science from Archimedes’ ideas that science ever took any steps forward. And what led the way? Empiricism. The ideas/paradigms/models are not the driving force – empirical observations are. Except in a politicized academia.
It is SO obvious that Wagner was “gotten to” – as in leaned on. And buy whom? It sounds like the peer review process has been redefined, as the Climategate email writers asserted they should do. When someone threatens something and then that something comes to pass, where would YOU point the finger?
The issue of skeptics peer reviewing the paper is an interesting one.
I think that a well informed skeptic should peer review every warmist paper and a warmist should peer review every skeptical paper.
Like the judicial truth often emerges from the conflict of views.
I seem to remember a debacle concerning DR Mann which could have been avoided by a skeptical peer reviewer or two.
Eric Calais is supposed to be taking over as editor at Remote Sensing…
Eric Calais is editor at GRL
You would think a business that is based on selling subscriptions and advertising based on those subscriptions, would have a better business model.
If they would open up the flood gates, turn it into a real debate……their business would boom
@Harry Dale Huffman September 4, 2011 at 3:11 am:
This was one of the very first things that alarmed me about AGW – the number of articles with nasty headlines and then in almost every case the scientists’ quotes (deep in the articles) had lots of “we think”s, “possibly”s, “maybes,” and other qualifiers. When the scientists did not immediately correct the misleading headlines, it was obvious they were plenty happy at the shrillness being purveyed.
As was said to Tailgunner Joe McCarthy, “Sir, have you no shame?”
Yes, Harry, so much garbage – fed to an unsuspecting public, and done knowing the public trusts the word of scientists. If anything, Climategate and Wagnergate have cured many of that trust. If it ain’t continually earned, it ain’t worth much, no how.
What Wagner said is incongruous.
Might a hypothesis that he did so for the purpose of bringing light to the usurpation of the review process then bring congruity? He was pressured by the system and this was the only way out, perhaps?
(just throwing it out there)
Nullius in Verba (September 4, 2011 at 1:43 am) :
You have a way with words, Nullius. 🙂
DN (September 4, 2011 at 2:46 am) :
Well said indeed!
/dr.bill
@KnR September 4, 2011 at 2:21 am:
This is a valid and important point about Wagner. How can an editor of a peer-review journal be so unspecific on this? If he says there are prior papers, and he seems to be paraphrasing them, what in God’s name is he doing not quoting and sourcing them? This is what scientific journals DO, for Pete’s sake.
THIS was an editor? Oy vey!
Talbloke
Thanks for that prompt to Dr Spencer. Went there and increased my understanding of this debate tenfold
Thanks again
The response to G&T will be that if you take the actual measured data and then they will take all the models and chop them into sections, they will compare each section against the measured data and test the fit.
They will present the best 20 fits, out of 10^9 different combinations and permutations of modeled data they actually tested, against the real data. This comparison will show that these 20 modeled periods correlate with the actual data at a p<0.001, hence the models are robust and fit the data perfectly.
They will conclude that G&T could not get a good fit because they used a simplistic model, where as the complex models used by REAL Climate scientists produce fantastic fits and so we should kick G&T into the curb and give wealth and power to the 'Team'.
A scientific article goes viral (56,000+), gets attention across the MSM … and the responsible editor complains about it? Is the world upside down now?
Then he’s obviously forced to step back, irrationally, and what happens?
Even more publicity for Spencer & Braswell.
The good news: Sceptics don’t need a PR department.
The AGW PR machine works well for us.
Thanks guys from over there. Keep going.