Editorial board member pissed off over a paper on “the pause”
Story submitted by WUWT reader Duane Oldsen
WUWT readers may remember Dr. Syun Akasofu as the source of a graph tracking the Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation with sine wave shifts in global temperature up and down. 
Dr. Akasofu’s recent submission to the first issue of the new journal “Climate,” a submission in this same vein of analysis, provoked one of the journal’s editorial board to resign in protest.
Dr. Asasofu’s submission was entitled “On the present halting of global warming,” and Dr. Chris Brierley of University College London declared the work to be of such insufficient quality for publication that his resignation in protest was requisite.
Dr. Brierley cites computer models and insufficient evidence in the paper as his reason for rejecting Dr. Akasofu’s submission to ‘Climate’ and thus provoking his resignation from the journal’s editorial board, despite crediting Dr. Akasofu’s hypothesis as valid and reputation as “deserved.”
Dr. Brierley specifically cites a lack of testing of Dr. Akasofu’s assertions in the submitted paper, which Dr. Brierley presents as an extreme abuse of the scientific method.
Dr. Brierley lists extensive critiques of the quality (i.e. lack thereof) of Dr. Akasofu’s work in the submitted paper. If accurate, this would be an effective indictment of Dr. Akasofu’s previous work as well. So both Dr. Akasofu’s source article and Dr. Brierley’s critique deserve attention.
===============================================================
Here is the paper:
On the Present Halting of Global Warming
Syun-Ichi Akasofu
International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks, USA
Received: 28 January 2013; in revised form: 15 April 2013 / Accepted: 15 April 2013 / Published: 3 May 2013
Download PDF Full-Text [810 KB, uploaded 3 May 2013 14:45 CEST]
Abstract:
The rise in global average temperature over the last century has halted since roughly the year 2000, despite the fact that the release of CO2 into the atmosphere is still increasing. It is suggested here that this interruption has been caused by the suspension of the near linear (+ 0.5 °C/100 years or 0.05 °C/10 years) temperature increase over the last two centuries, due to recovery from the Little Ice Age, by a superposed multi-decadal oscillation of a 0.2 °C amplitude and a 50~60 year period, which reached its positive peak in about the year 2000—a halting similar to those that occurred around 1880 and 1940. Because both the near linear change and the multi-decadal oscillation are likely to be natural changes (the recovery from the Little Ice Age (LIA) and an oscillation related to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), respectively), they must be carefully subtracted from temperature data before estimating the effects of CO2
Regarding double-helix: I don’t think there was a prevailing hegemonic consensus on structure of DNA to be overturned.
I hope Dr Brierley’s students find their way to this page, and learn to examine real date rather than computer models, and from that learn think for themselves. It’s scary that so many third-rate academics with no understanding of the scientific method are teaching (and examining) in our universities.
I haven’t read the paper yet, but if he’d just label the linear increase “AGW” then he’d at least qualify as a luke warmer.
One overview remark about the paper: Akasofu’s thesis is eminently and imminently falsifiable which appears not to be a feature of the CAGW theory. Let’s watch. We’ll remind Brierley about this later.
I’m disappointed by Dr Brierley. He’s from my own Unversity ( UNiversity College London) which has always had a reputation for integrity right back to it’s Founder -Jeremy Bentham. The founder must be turning in his box right now. ( Jemery Bentham was embalmed and the body is kept in a glass fronted box it The Quad). The College Beadles will always open the box doors and show the corpse……. Dressed but with a wax head now because the original was too gruesome to remain on display
Tony Berry
Base Rate Fallacy
Akasofu eloquently summarizes the null hypothesis of natural changes with linear warming from the Little Ice Age with superimposed 50-60 year cycle. That sets the baseline against which anthropogenic warming from CO2 must be tested. It is a classic example of applying Einstein’s Razor to the null hypothesis: “Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
Since the evidence is against him, Brierley resorts to logical fallacies.
E.g. see the Base Rate Fallacy
Brierley is making judgements based on complex AGW global climate models with the IPCC warming presuppositions, while rejecting the generic information provided by Akasofus, under the guise of insufficient statistical analysis. Yet the AGW models have a greater lack of statistical validation. See:
Green & Armstrong 2007 Evidence based forecasting for climate change.
Green, Armstrong & Soon, 2009, Validity of Climate Change Forecasting for Public Policy Decision Making, Intl. J. Forecasting, 25:826-832.
Green, Armstrong 2007 Global warming: forecasts by scientists versus scientific forecasts, Energy & Environment 18, 7+8, 995-1019.
Even Armstrong’s naïve no change model is better than Al Gore’s alarmist warming. See:
The Global Warming Challenge aka the Climate Bet.
In popular terminology, see: Legal Advice: Pound the Facts, Pound the Law, Pound the Table
e.g., from 1925:
I have read the paper. In all honesty, I can’t see anything wrong with it except that it is stating the obvious and well known plausible ‘explanation’ of the historical temp data and the pause in rising temps thereof?
Orthodox Climate Alarmist.
http://www.pocketissue.com/book.aspx?Name=Global+Warming
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/consult/debate/climatechange/summary.asp?cookieConsent=A
Will not be missed
policycritic says:
September 9, 2013 at 6:20 am
Dr Chris Brierley wrote this:
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/consult/debate/climatechange/summary.asp?cookieConsent=A#newiceage
That whole NERC document is shallow, riddled with contradiction and naïve – looks like they got the format from SkS.
Rearrange this well known expression: black kettle pot calling the”
I have read Syun-Ichi Akasofu’s paper, and it is indeed making a simple point, but one should not think that a simple point is simplistic. He has spotted, as have I and many others who have studied the global temperature records, that there is a very long-running very near-linear warming trend overlain by a ~60-year periodicity in phase with, and perhaps caused by, the naturally-occurring up and down phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. He has pointed out that, accordingly, there is nothing in the observed record to lead us to believe that CO2 has proven to be the dominant force warming the planet.
The unspeakable Brierley resigned not because the paper was not complicated enough but because it spoke inconvenient truth, and did so with the simplicity and clarity that are characteristic of Professor Akasofu, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in New York some years ago. Simplicity and clarity should not be taken as naivete.
The two editors of Physics and Society were given the push when I published a paper in Physics and Society – at their request, and reviewed in detail by one of them – in 2008. My paper committed the same sin as Professor Akasofu’s – it dared to question the New Religion. I suggested that climate sensitivity might prove to be low: perhaps less than 1 Kelvin per CO2 doubling. And which way has the literature been moving ever since then?
If anyone ever bothers to write the history of what – for science as a whole – is its most abject failure to date, the silly editors who resigned because they did not like the results they had published will not merit so much as a footnote. Of course, those of us who will have been proven right all along will not merit a footnote either, for future generations will wonder how anyone could have been so silly as to believe the nonsense that we have had to work quite hard to expose.
The race is now on between the onset of the next el Nino, which will cause a transient resumption of the mild warming trend since 1750, and the Paris climate conference at which a supposedly “binding” international commitment to wreck the economies of the West in the name of Saving The Planet is to be entered into. But, since the temporary delegate from the Republic of Myanmar first broke the news in December last year that there had been no global warming for 16 years, the world has begun to notice The Pause. We should not let our guard down for an instant, but, as Professor Will Happer likes to put it, perhaps this is the beginning of the end of the beginning.
“Dr. Brierley cites computer models and insufficient evidence in the paper as his reason for rejecting Dr. Akasofu’s submission to ‘Climate’…”
But…but…but…the computer models are also built on insufficient evidence. In the area of positive feedback loops, the core area of the entire controversy, they are built on NO evidence!
Dr. Brieley apparently believes that good science should be built from physical evidence AND computer models designed with no supporting evidence. If that is the case, the man should have left science a long time ago.
Can’t do “climate science” without a model.
/sarc
Dr. Brierley will now be with the in crowd. He will receive cash awards, get invited to winter climate meetings in warm places and will receive a new appointment as chair of something.
At least that is what the history of this science says.
This paper matches very well part of my own cooling forecast.see latest post at
http://climatesense-norpag .blogspot.com.
Howevr I go one step further and suggest that the high at about 2003 represents a peak in both the 60 year cycle and a solar millennial cycle ie that the long term climb from the little ice age is over and that we may well repeat the temperature trends from 1000 -2003. here are the conclusions of my post.
To summarise- Using the 60 and 1000 year quasi repetitive patterns in conjunction with the solar data leads straightforwardly to the following reasonable predictions for Global SSTs
1 Continued modest cooling until a more significant temperature drop at about 2016-17
2 Possible unusual cold snap 2021-22
3 Built in cooling trend until at least 2024
4 Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2035 – 0.15
5Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2100 – 0.5
6 General Conclusion – by 2100 all the 20th century temperature rise will have been reversed,
7 By 2650 earth could possibly be back to the depths of the little ice age.
8 The effect of increasing CO2 emissions will be minor but beneficial – they may slightly ameliorate the forecast cooling and more CO2 would help maintain crop yields .
9 Warning !!
The Solar Cycles 2,3,4 correlation with cycles 21,22,23 would suggest that a Dalton minimum could be imminent. The Livingston and Penn Solar data indicate that a faster drop to the Maunder Minimum Little Ice Age temperatures might even be on the horizon.If either of these actually occur there would be a much more rapid and economically disruptive cooling than that forecast above which may turn out to be a best case scenario.
How confident should one be in these above predictions? The pattern method doesn’t lend itself easily to statistical measures. However statistical calculations only provide an apparent rigour for the uninitiated and in relation to the IPCC climate models are entirely misleading because they make no allowance for the structural uncertainties in the model set up.This is where scientific judgement comes in – some people are better at pattern recognition and meaningful correlation than others.A past record of successful forecasting such as indicated above is a useful but not infallible measure. In this case I am reasonably sure – say 65/35 for about 20 years ahead. Beyond that certainty drops rapidly.I am sure,however, that it will prove closer to reality than anything put out by the IPCC, Met Office or the NASA group. In any case this is a Bayesian type forecast- in that it can easily be amended on an ongoing basis as the Temperature and Solar data accumulate.
“Manniac:
“Nobody expects the East Anglian Inquisition!
Our three weapons are fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency and an almost fanatical devotion to the IPCC.”
Brilliant. That’s a keeper :thumbsup:
at one time the party faithful were seeking to force skeptical editors to resign to prevent skeptical articles from being published. now they resigning in protest that skeptical articles are being published.
this is a positive development for science.
Go Home says:
September 9, 2013 at 6:19 am
:I’m waiting for Hansen to be seen picketing the White House ”
I am afraid he would have better luck picketing at the golf course.
Wish I had said that ! Brilliant !
Friends:
It is worth comparing the execrable behaviour Chris Brierly with the courageous behaviour of Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen.
Brierly has resigned from an Editorial Board because he objects to a paper being accepted for consideration for publication. Note, it is consideration for publication of the paper which has prompted his resignation. If the paper were lacking in quality or otherwise flawed then peer review (i.e. consideration for publication) would have revealed the flaw(s) and, therefore, the consideration would have rejected the paper for publication.
By his resignation prior to consideration of the paper, Brierly has demonstrated that it is NOT the quality of the paper which he dislikes. Therefore, his dislike can only be of the author of the paper, Syun Akasofu, or of the information provided in the paper. Neither reason is a proper objection to the paper.
Thus, Brierly’s resignation can only be an attempt to harm the scientific process which requires the full exchange and questioning of information.
Compare that to the behaviour of Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen who is the Editor of Energy & Environment (E&E). For some years she has wanted to retire but an appropriate successor has been hard to find, and this is not surprising. The so-called ‘Hockey Team’ has attacked and reviled her and her reputation. In attempt to stop E&E publishing one paper they tried to get her sacked from her university position.
The reason for these attacks on Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen are clear. With her as Editor E&E publishes both pro and anti AGW papers. The anti papers included the initial papers of McIntyre and McKitrick which disproved the statistical methods used to create Mann’s ‘hockey stick’. And included a paper reporting the misdemeanors of Wei-Chyung Wang in compiling data from China to supposedly disprove UHI effects. And included etc..
When the history of the AGW-scare is written then Brierly will not merit a footnote. He is merely a coward who runs from the truth. But – at the other end of the scale – there is at least one courageous journal Editor who publishes papers on their merit so science can winnow for the truth.
Richard
PS I declare an interest in that I am on the Editorial Board of E&E, but my comment is about proper behaviour by journal Editors and is not about journals.
From Dr Chris Brierley’s page it is one can see just where he stands on the debate
http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/about-the-department/people/academics/chris-brierley
He notes at the end
“I recommend that you look at the results of the NERC climate change challenge and the summary that I compiled about it.”
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/consult/debate/climatechange/summary.asp?cookieConsent=A
Reading this summary one can see his actions are not really surprising.
Does anybody here believe warming from the LIA with or without warming from anthropogenic CO2 can continue indefinitely?
I don’t–and for obvious reasons: sometime in the future, both will plateau at a peak and that will be the end of warming. Perhaps this current suspension of increase we’re calling The Pause is exactly that, or we could see a bit more warming in future cycles. Either way, temperature can’t (due to physical laws) continue to increase forever.
And if catastrophic consequences aren’t achieved before the maximum temperature plateau is reached, the Warmistas will have nothing to harp on about.
(Wait until their spawn runs into the next Ice Age if you want to hear extraordinary wailing; but then, we all will!)
When Brierly cited “a lack of testing of Dr. Akasofu’s assertions” did he have a straight face?
Dr. Brierley appears confused over how you test a hypothesis. Models are not a test. To test a prediction about future climate you need to wait for the future.
Whether Dr. Akasofu’s hypothesis is correct or not will become evident over the next 10-20 years. If observed temperatures continue to diverge from model predictions, the hypothesis will replace CO2 as the explanation for global warming.
The link in my 7:11 comment should be
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
At SkS, Brierley says:
There are no agreed criteria to judge the worth of peer-reviewed papers. Instead I will use a lower standard against which to judge the paper – the marking guidelines for our MSc dissertations at University College London. These state that an “outstanding dissertation (90-100%) should approach professional standards of research and could be publishable virtually without revision as a journal paper”. It is so rare that any work falls into that category that the guidelines only explain the criteria for a distinction (a grade above 70%, with my emphasis):
=====
Let’s run that again. There’s no standard so I’ll use a “lower” one. Err, lower than the one that does not exist? Hmm.
And that “lower” std is: “These state that an “outstanding dissertation (90-100%) should approach professional standards of research and could be publishable virtually without revision as a journal paper”
ie it should approach the standards which do not exist.
So not only is his “lower” than nothing standard meaningless , the “lower” standard refers us back to the first non-existent one. Nice circular logic Dr. Brierley .
And this guy was in a position of assessing whether submitted papers were of the required standard to be published, even though he says he does not know what that is and refers to a “lower” which is to aim to be nearly as good and the non-existent one .
I can only congratulate him on doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. He was by his own account totally ill-equipped to be a journal editor.