I have other projects to do this weekend, so I’m taking off.
Moderation may be minimal or non-existent at times, so if your comment takes a long time to appear, don’t take it personally. In the meantime, please consider this poll.
I can’t fit the entire question into the poll header, so here it is in full:
If one existed, would you join a professional organization dedicated to offering an alternate to organizations like the American Meteorological Society, American Physical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, etc if this organization offered a peer reviewed journal, reasonable dues, and a healthy dose of climate skepticism rooted in science?
This stems from a conversation I had about three weeks ago, and this weekend seemed like a good time to ask the question.
I’m just an armchair weather and climate gal. I don’t want to join the club but I would hope the journal won’t be behind a paywall.
I’m not a professional, so I don’t think I should cast a vote… but it sounds like a great concept.
What Pamela Said. Or, if it is, it’s because it’s NOT PUBLICLY FUNDED.
The Peer Review would have to be open and transparent.
All “Climate” related factors should be open to discussion. That being said, a much better dividing line between climatology and weather must be defined.
Pamela:
Paywalls are for hiding things that you are afraid to show the world. They are also a form of elitism.
Warren Buffet runs some coal trains now. Bill McKibben summons his activists during connect-the-dots-day. Wonder what James Hansen does over the weekend.
http://grist.org/climate-change/you-shall-not-pass-activists-to-block-warren-buffets-coal-trains/
The American Chemical Society has also bought the AGW package, offering scientistic certainties, grave warnings, eco-solutions, and an ironic encouragement to climate literacy.
I resigned from the ACS years ago because there seemed to be no good reason for membership. But their position on AGW would be cause to leave, were I still a member.
No, I would not. A scientific journal should favor seeking scientific trurth and not promoting a favored position on a political issue implied by the science. We need to support those organizations that care about the truth revealed by use of scientific principles and their correct application and that do not promote one side of the climatology.
Have a bit of a disagreement with our Dr. S about more than obvious strong correlation between the solar magnetic output as represented by TSI and the variability of the Earth’s magnetic field in the Antarctica.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/TMC.htm
This ‘minor discovery’ may have something to say about the sun-Earth-climate link. Also there may be serious consequences for interpretation of the 10Be data from the Dome Fuji ice cores.
Have anybody noticed the new poll of “climate scientists” (actually open to anybody, but…). Interesting comparison with the “97% of Climate Scientists say” line: c 12% of them think the climate will only be <1C hotter by 2050, c25% think it will be between 1-2C hotter…
It seems to me that there appears to be a softening of the alarmism.
http://visionprize.com/results#findings
Is there any organization that cannot be corrupted by political machinations? The question is somewhat related to the principle of minority rights under majority rule, again reminding us why the forefathers of the Constitution made this a Republic instead of a democracy. Does a majority of ACS member really believe in AGW?
I did not participate in your poll for a variety of reasons:
1. I had never considered joining one of the named societies.
2. My experience has been more in the electrical and mechanical engineering fields than the climate science fields.
3. I consider myself a student in the climate sciences. While my knowledge of math and physics seems to have been adequate for electrical and mechanical engineering, I have only become interested in the subject of climate since government in general and the UN in particular have started using it as clubs to beat the population into submission. I had never before encountered problems such as heat transfer by either:
a. IR radiation through an atmosphere that is much thicker than the usual dimensions found in a furnace or boiler
b. heat transfer through an atmosphere by convection where the changes in properties due to height become significant. In an oven less that a twenty foot cube and fans moving air at twenty thousand cubic feet per minute, gravity seldom needs to be considered.
4. Data is data. Original data must always be preserved. If it is omitted, the work is suspect. If it is modified, there must be a thorough explanation of the modification. When I see terms such as homogenization and detrending without explicit definitions without explicit reasons for them, I become very suspicious of the motives. I have encountered fraud more than once and lack of definitions is one of the markers. Of course, since I am relatively new to this study I may not be familiar with terms that have an accepted meaning, but a requirement for either society wide definitions that are well documented or good documentation in each paper would go a long way towards lending respectability to a new society.
5. I will be sixty nine years old this year. I doubt that I will learn enough to contribute significantly to a new society. Of course, if a new society shows significant promise of actually promoting the study of climate and the factors which affect it, I would consider supporting it.
Donald Mitchell
jon shively says:
May 5, 2012 at 12:08 pm
So I assume you wouldn’t join the APS, AMS etc either? Of course you would because you really don’t understand what scepticism is. You’d join them in a shot because they conform to your blinkered ideas.
DaveE.
I already cancelled my subscriptions to Scientific American and National Geographic because of their knee-jerk liberal pap. I dropped my memberships in the American Society of Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers because of their global warming idiocy, and the National Society of Professional engineers because of their lack of ethics.
I am starved for a scholarly journal to read where science is science, science you can observe and graph, not computer models of questionable provenance.
An open Science society that would provide peer review as well as web/e-review would be the ideal, but so many vested interests, money, influence would be the barrier.
Donald Mitchell says:
May 5, 2012 at 12:26 pm
You know what your problem is? You’re actually competent!
All the best!
Donald Mitchell:
I will be sixty nine years old this year. I doubt that I will learn enough to contribute significantly to a new society.
Listen here, sonny, you’re smarter than that.
: > )
Oh goody, somewhere to post this:
I watched a documentary a couple of days ago on the reason the Maya civilisation collapsed – Dick Gill spent 20 years exploring it and shows it was drought. The Mayan area has no natural lakes, rivers or underground water, relies completely on water collected during the summer rainy season, around 800 AD this failed. During the telling of it he said that normally the rains come because of a particular high pressure system which more or less stays put, somewhere in the Atlantic I think, but that this moved considerably further south than it normally does which altered the climate by making it colder in the north, which in turn didn’t bring the rains up into the area. All this to ask, is this the mechanism which triggers the El Nins? If so, what moves the high pressure system?
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/ancient-apocalypse-maya-collapse/
The graphic and that explantion are towards the end of the docu, sorry can’t say exactly but around forty minutes in.
DirkH says:
May 5, 2012 at 12:00 pm
—
Maybe mckibben should use hansen for a speed bump.
NO, hansen, that is Not a threat.
…if this organization offered a peer reviewed journal, reasonable dues, and a healthy dose of climate skepticism rooted in science?
No. Science does not work that way. Peer review has gotten us some miserable results vice CAGW has it not? Reasonable dues? This speaks to funding as criteria for validity. No thanks. And finally, “healthy dose.” Depends on whether it is a vitamin or radiation exposure. I’d rather not take that chance.
Otter says:
May 5, 2012 at 1:05 pm
“Maybe mckibben should use hansen for a speed bump.
NO, hansen, that is Not a threat.”
Hope somebody told the kids the breaking distance of a coal train.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany
Notice anything wrong about the numbers?
A PS. WordPress changed the settings to automatically notify of comments.
My email is clogged enough already!
DaveE.
[REPLY: Obviously a highly demanded “feature”. Most e-mail clients allow you to create a rule for dealing with certain kinds of spam. Right click on a message and see if it doesn’t give you the option to “create a rule”. -REP]
Might join to read the journal articles but like everyone above I am an amateur in this field so could not contribute. I bet there are plenty of people who would. But there are already so many scientific journals…the only reason to start a new one would be if the peer review system had been kidnapped by a bunch of zealots who suppressed dissenting articles despite their being based on thoughtful analyses of real data…and that couldn’t happen among real and honorable scientists could it? Certainly not. So, would this new society/journal be able to take a balanced view, with articles from both sides? That would give it more credence than if it were just the cool climatologist’s platform. And a journal would provide a better forum for serious scientific analysis among experts than these blogs I suppose, though I hope the blogs would continue to disseminate useful and accessible information to the rest of us. Alternatively you could just wait a while… if nature keeps on being as helpful an ally in this debate as she seems so far, the warmists’ credibility will shrivel, scientific opinion will swing around, and journals open up, without your having to go to the hassle of starting a new society. Equally, if it gets really hot in the next few years your goose will be cooked, along with the planet, society or not. Suspense.
Remove the bit about a healthy dose of climate skepticism rooted in science to a healthy dose of real science and you’ll have a winner.
I already have its online at WUWT . This is why I donate to you as I can.Every magazine I used to subscribe to or purchase retail, to bring me insights to the beauty and charm of scientific equiry, has decayed to preachy gospel rags pushing certainty .Please keep up this quality work as long as you are able.
If I were qualified as a meteorologist and if you changed the question to read that the publication would include peer reviewed papers which meet editorial standards and pass said review with no restrictions in either direction (warmist vs sceptical) I would consider joining.
There would still remain the problem of how to select the reviewers.
Perhaps it would be better to allow publication of all papers online and subject them to e-review prior to print, and after review problems are corrected and the papers pass whatever e-review criteria are required for all papers prior to publication.
Scepticism has grown such that any publication or professional organization may be suspected of having bias