UPDATE: 1/19/14 2;30 PM PST
There is an update to this post here:
Comments on this thread are now closed, continue there. – Anthony
While a journal is forced to self destruct by external pressure from “team climate science”, history and a new paper show us why due process would have been the right way to approach the issue. The phrase “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut” comes to mind.
This story by Jo Nova is making the rounds today:
Science paper doubts IPCC, so whole journal gets terminated!
While the shutdown of the journal Pattern Recognition in Physics that published a special edition on planetary tidal influence on climate is likely a bit of overkill, rebuttals would have been the right way to handle it rather than the Climategate style strong-arm gang tactics exhibited against journal editors as seen here from James Annan:
Kudos to Copernicus for the rapid and decisive way in which they dealt with this problem. The problems at the journal were was first brought to my attention by ThingsBreak just last night, I emailed various people to express my concerns and the journal (which was already under close scrutiny by the publisher) was closed down within 24h.
…I will say that some of the papers in that special journal edition really aren’t any better than curve fitting exercises. That said, I think they are entitled to the due process afforded any peer reviewed science publication. Certainly, we’ve seen some ridiculous examples of “team science” that should have never been published, such as RealClimate co-founder Eric Steig’s overhyped claim to a warming Antarctica that was dealt with effectively via the rebuttal process.
As many WUWT readers know, while years ago I expressed some interest in planetary tidal force effects on climate, I have long since been convinced that there’s zero planetary effect on climate for two reasons: 1) The gravitational effects at distance are simply too small to exert the forces neccessary, and 2) The methodology employed often results in hindcast curve fitting a theory to data, where the maxim “correlation is not causation” should have been considered before publishing the paper.
While the journal Pattern Recognition in Physics self-destructed rather than deal with rebuttal process (apparently at the direction of higher-ups), this paper just published in the journal Solar Physics shows that journal does in fact take the rebuttal process seriously.
Critical Analysis of a Hypothesis of the Planetary Tidal Influence on Solar Activity
DOI 10.1007/s11207-014-0475-0
S. Poluianov, I. Usoskin
Abstract
The present work is a critical revision of the hypothesis of the planetary tidal influence on solar activity published by Abreu et al. (Astron. Astro- phys. 548, A88, 2012; called A12 here). A12 describes the hypothesis that planets can have an impact on the solar tachocline and therefore on solar activity. We checked the procedure and results of A12, namely the algorithm of planetary tidal torque calculation and the wavelet coherence between torque and heliospheric modulation potential. We found that the claimed peaks in long-period range of the torque spectrum are artefacts caused by the calculation algorithm. Also the statistical significance of the results of the wavelet coherence is found to be overestimated by an incorrect choice of the background assumption of red noise. Using a more conservative non-parametric random-phase method, we found that the long-period coherence between planetary torque and heliospheric modulation potential becomes insignificant. Thus we conclude that the considered hypothesis of planetary tidal influence on solar activity is not based on a solid ground.
…
Conclusions
We analysed the procedure of planetary torque calculations from the paper by Abreu et al. (2012) and found that their results can be be affected by an effect of the aliasing distortion of the torque spectrum. We provided torque calculations with different sampling frequencies and found that the spectral peaks claimed by A12 are likely artefacts of the spectral distortion and do not have physical meaning. Then we repeated the analysis by A12 of the relation between heliospheric modulation potential and the planetary torque. We showed that the results of Abreu et al. (2012) are not statistically significant. Thus, the proposed hypothesis of planetary influence on solar activity is not based on solid empirical evidence.
The final draft of the paper can be read in entirety here: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.3547.pdf
(h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard for the link)
================================================================
A rebuttal was also published in Solar Physics simultaneously, but it is entirely behind a paywall, so I can’t elaborate any further than providing a link to it: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11207-014-0473-2
But, unlike Copernicus, that decided to pull the entire journal rather than allow the rebuttal process of science occur, Solar Physics saw no need to self-terminate for having published the rebuttal by Abreu et al. authors, and the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. continues to exist despite publishing the questionable and now shown to be flawed Abreu et al. paper http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/abs/2012/12/aa19997-12/aa19997-12.html
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This is the abstract to their final general conclusions “paper” in the special edition:
And later they write
It is going to be difficult to square that with a claim now that “only one paper” focuses on climate.
Alarmists were having an orgy over at Tallblokes even after he asked for civility. So he had to bounce William Connolley. And Wiki still allows him to edit???
tallbloke says:
January 17, 2014 at 4:46 pm
Ohboy, the redirect is gone, the homepage is back. Webcitation.org here we come.
________________________
Roger, at this point, I’m really confused about what is going on. I see your latest posts and the working link. Did public outcry cause a course reversal?
(BTW- good move tossing that
tosserW.C.- he was just stinkin’ up the Talkshop.)If wriggle matching shows correlation it should inspire someone to look for why, even if they disagree with the wriggle matchers explanation(s).
That’s how you get from God dying at the Solstice and being reborn at the equinox, to Ptolemy, then Copernicus, then Galileo, Newton, Einstein, etc….
And Roger, you ought to be kinder with Anthony, who is covering this even though he disagrees with you.
One should note that the publisher’s concerns were with the special issue, but the reference to Suteanu (2013) appears to mean Scafetta is instead talking about the other volume, which the publisher did not express concerns about.
Anthony writes:
“As many WUWT readers know, while years ago I expressed some interest in planetary tidal force effects on climate, I have long since been convinced that there’s zero planetary effect on climate..”
That can change with the right quality and quantity of material evidence. There’s a big difference between identifying consistent functions at different scales, and theoretical curve fitting that doesn’t even suggest any mechanisms.
Unfortunately, Anthony has jumped the gun again!
Another paper by the Abreu group is about to come out in Solar physics which will leave it beyond doubt that planetary processes [most likely a spin-orbit coupling model] play a critical role in modulating the level of solar activity on the Sun.
While we wait here is 100 years of Solar data that matched the VEJ Tidal-Torquing model.
http://astroclimateconnection.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/further-confirmation-of-vej-tidal.html
REPLY: Meh, we’ll see. – Anthony
be even slightly sceptical of CAGW, expect the Inquisition. another example from Rowena:
6 Jan: Guardian: Rowena Mason: Environment secretary may be blind to rising flood risks, says Labour
Maria Eagle says Tory Owen Paterson has questions to answer over his scepticism about climate change science
Paterson, a strong opponent of onshore wind farms, does not deny that climate change is happening but has made several controversial remarks on the subject.
This year he suggested there could be benefits for Britain from climate change, and previously he has said he is sceptical about some of the measures taken to counteract its effects.
“People get very emotional about this subject and I think we should just accept that the climate has been changing for centuries,” he said at the Conservative party conference in October. “I think the relief of this latest report is that it shows a really quite modest increase, half of which has already happened. They are talking one to two-and-a-half degrees.
“Remember that for humans, the biggest cause of death is cold in winter, far bigger than heat in summer. It would also lead to longer growing seasons and you could extend growing a little further north into some of the colder areas. I actually see this report as something we need to take seriously but I am rather relieved that it is not as catastrophic in its forecast as we had been led to believe early on and what it is saying is something we can adapt to over time and we are very good as a race at adapting.”
Shortly after taking the post of environment secretary in September 2012, he told the Farmers’ Guardian: “It is perfectly obvious climate change is there, and there is a human contribution, but I want to be sure the measures we are taking to ameliorate the problem don’t create other problems. So that’s why I am sceptical.”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/05/environment-secretary-blind-flood-risks-labour
18 Jan: Bloomberg: Mathew Carr/Ewa Krukowska: Carbon Posts Biggest Weekly Gain in 4 Months on EU Reform Plan
“The key upside for prices depends on how ambitious is the EU proposal for a structural reform of the carbon market, to be presented Jan. 22,” Dario Carradori, an analyst at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said today in an e-mailed report.
Reserve Mechanism
The commission is seeking to introduce a reserve mechanism in 2021 that will automatically withdraw or add permits sold at auction, depending on the number of allowances in circulation, according to a draft proposal obtained by Bloomberg News. It also wants an amendment to the bloc’s emissions-trading law to enable sales of some carbon permits in 2020 to be carried over in the following two years.
The commission will next week present proposals for future climate and energy targets for consideration by the bloc’s leaders at a summit in March.
Oversupply will keep carbon prices under pressure until after 2025, Carradori said…
“We believe the most bullish scenario for carbon prices and utilities would be a single target for carbon emissions reduction, as this would indicate that the EU plans to achieve emissions cuts through a higher carbon price rather than through renewables growth,” he said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-17/eu-carbon-has-biggest-weekly-gain-since-september-on-reform-plan.html
17 Jan: Bloomberg: Alex Morales: Climate Protection May Cut World GDP 4% by 2030, UN Says
The second and third parts, to be published in March and April, are still subject to line-by-line revision by governments. A final document synthesizing the three is scheduled for completion in October…
Containing the concentration to 480 ppm “would entail global consumption losses” of 1 percent to 4 percent in 2030. That range would rise to 2 percent to 6 percent in 2050 and then to as much as 12 percent in 2100 when compared with scenarios that don’t involve fighting climate change, according to the document…
At the upper end of those ranges, the cost of fighting climate change could outstrip the cost of dealing with the effects of climate change, according to data in the draft of the second installment of the UN report, which hasn’t yet been finalized.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-16/climate-protection-may-cost-4-of-world-gdp-by-2030.html
tallbloke says:
January 17, 2014 at 5:17 pm
..Our model uses the orbital periods of four planets plus some simple algorithms which simulate increasing and decreasing amplitudes and gets a 91% match with 400 years of solar data in its latest iteration and a 75% match with 1000 years of 14C proxy data. It’s substantially better than any solar internal dynamo model and because the future positions of the planets are known, it can make useful predictions.
Here’s the paper:
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/1/117/2013/prp-1-117-2013.pdf
——————————
aliasing distortion of the torque? What exactly does this mean?
“”””We analysed the procedure of planetary torque calculations from the paper by Abreu et al. (2012) and found that their results can be be affected by an effect of the aliasing distortion of the torque spectrum. We provided torque calculations with different sampling frequencies and found that the spectral peaks claimed by A12 are likely artefacts of the spectral distortion and do not have physical meaning.””””
I’m looking for orbital anomalies, you know perturbations in the orbits of the planets that might represent physical changes in the solar system free falling in a vortex like motion. The system works together on this. So perturbations in the rings (vortex) would have significance in that the background is changing.
While today the BBC begins to speak of very possible decades of cold to come:
(never thought it of the beeb)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25771510
The AGWers engine is beginning to knock, backfire.
Just a note, some astrospheres are more elliptical in shape than others, very much so in fact, that I’m thinking that might have an effect on torques and on solar cycle like evolution.
The problem is obvious, the papers list in many cases one of the reviewers as an author in the same edition and in some cases a known skeptic with another anonymous reviewer. While this is no different than what the alarmists do all the time, skeptics will be held to a much higher standard and should not allow themselves to fall into these traps. Who’s idiotic idea was it to list the reviewers on the papers and thought this would not be a problem?
The best method to use is a double-blind peer-review system. If I was the editor, I would only select reviewers who had no remote affiliation in any way with the author to protect against such easy criticisms.
The problem in the end could of been easily solved by changing editors, review methods and allowing time for the publishing of rebuttals.
One more note, they describe the heliosphere in terms like comet shaped, with a long heliotail. I’m thinking that in the last two solar cycles, the heliosphere, became more ‘elliptical’ in shape. And if solar cycle 25 is even less solar activity than 24, the heliosphere will become more ‘elliptical in shape.
New article ..
Configuration of the local interstellar magnetic field
Frisch, Priscilla C.; Andersson, B.; Berdhyugin, A.; Funsten, H. O.; DeMajistre, R.; Magalhaes, A.; McComas, D.; Piirola, V.; Schwadron, N.; Seriacopi, D.; Slavin, J. D.; Wiktorowicz, S.; IBEX Team
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014AAS…22345420F
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #223, #454.20
The discovery of the Ribbon of energetic neutral atoms by the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) provides a new and unexpected diagnostic of the direction of the local interstellar magnetic field (ISMF). The IBEX Ribbon forms where the interstellar magnetic field draping over the heliosphere is perpendicular to the sightline. We have shown that the direction of the interstellar magnetic field close to the Sun, obtained from starlight polarized in the interstellar medium (ISM), is consistent with the ISMF direction that is traced by the IBEX Ribbon. In this presentation we show that new optical polarization data indicate that the local ISMF has a smoothly varying component stretching from the first to the third galactic quadrant. Both the ISMF direction and the kinematics of local interstellar gas within tens of parsecs support an interpretation where the local interstellar clouds are a fragment of the expanding Loop I superbubble.
I think that Anthony get a little bit too excited. This is a blatant case of censorship.
As Anthony states, proper rebuttals of the issues addressed in the papers would have been the right scientific way to do this. But this option was evidently dismissed. Too dangerous to write rebuttals that are then soundly rebutted by a proper reply.
As the things are now, only one paper published in PRP has been fully rebutted. I will talk about this below.
About the papers of the special issue that only briefly address the climate issue (I have published two papers in the special issue and only one section in one of the two addresses the interpretation of climate change), none has been rebutted. So, contrary to Anthony statement there was no “planetary theory fiasco” but only a political decision by the publisher to terminate the publications of this journal that evidently do not fit his scientific views that clearly opposes having as editors of a journal people that he defined as “climate skeptics”. He was very clear. In brief, “climate skeptics” cannot serve as editors of a science journal belonging to Copernicus.
However, all papers are free and can be downloaded from the web-site of the journal
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/1/issue1.html
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/2/issue1.html
The special issue is here
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/special_issue2.html
My papers are here to everybody to read:
1) Multiscale comparative spectral analysis of satellite total solar irradiance measurements from 2003 to 2013 reveals a planetary modulation of solar activity and its nonlinear dependence on the 11 yr solar cycle
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/1/123/2013/prp-1-123-2013.pdf
2) The complex planetary synchronization structure of the solar system
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/2/1/2014/prp-2-1-2014.pdf
Ironically, paper number 2 is a review of multisecular literature that starts with Copernicus’s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium of 1543. Poor Copernicus! He is revolting in his tomb. The paper can be hardly rebutted without rejecting also Copernicus, Kepler and so on up to modern times. Please read it, it is quite informative.
About Anthony’s bias based on his two points, my reply are the following:
“1) The gravitational effects at distance are simply too small to exert the forces neccessary,”
This issue is extensively discussed in my publication:
Scafetta N., 2012. Does the Sun work as a nuclear fusion amplifier of planetary tidal forcing? A proposal for a physical mechanism based on the mass-luminosity relation. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 81-82, 27-40.
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/pdf/ATP3610.pdf
Moreover, if Anthony had read my papers, he would know that also an electromagnetic influence may be possible. This is made of electric current connections between the planets and the sun, which do not depend on the distance.
“2) The methodology employed often results in hindcast curve fitting a theory to data, where the maxim “correlation is not causation” should have been considered before publishing the paper.”
This again is erroneous. The methodology employed at least in my papers is equivalent to the methodology used for predicting the ocean tides on Earth. Here harmonic models that use astronomical harmonics are used to reconstruct the solar and climate patterns. At least my models are tested on their hindcasting forecasting capability and are successful for centuries, and are supported by several physical arguments.
See here for the correct forecast of the temperature I made in 2010:
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model_1
Anthony simply does not understand the tidal ocean model by Kelvin et al.
But now lets go back to the main point. Above I said “As the things are now, Only one paper published by PRP has been fully rebutted. I will talk about this below.” Which paper am I talking about?
Well, it was a paper by Benestad:
Comment on “Discussions on common errors in analyzing sea level accelerations, solar trends and global warming” by Scafetta (2013).
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/1/91/2013/prp-1-91-2013.pdf
Here Benestad tries to rebut my paper:
Discussion on common errors in analyzing sea level accelerations, solar trends and global warming
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/1/37/2013/prp-1-37-2013.pdf
Benestad’s comment was soundly rebutted in my reply:
Reply to Benestad’s comment on “Discussions on common errors in analyzing sea level accelerations, solar trends and global warming” by Scafetta (2013)
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/1/105/2013/prp-1-105-2013.pdf
The issue discussed here was the fragrant mathematical errors made in a paper by Benestad and Schmidt (2009) on JGR that was extensively discussed also on WUWT:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/04/scafetta-benestad-and-schmidt%E2%80%99s-calculations-are-%E2%80%9Crobustly%E2%80%9D-flawed/
Thus, I think that Anthony got it wrong. This journal, PRP, was terminated simply because it was too dangerous to allow a scientific dialectic of rebuttals and replies. To do that one needs editors that publish the rebuttals but not the reply which would not have happened with the current editors. So, the publisher decided to close the journal. But no paper published there has been rebutted, only Benestad’s one was. So, those papers stand as they are.
Anthony, it would be nice if you start reading these papers.
REPLY: I’ve read your papers in the past, and decided they were junk. I don’t expect these to be any better, but I’ll have a look. – Anthony
Halpern, I agree with we should get rid of all government funding of science and universities.
http://www.coas.howard.edu/chem/jhalpern/
REPLY: I’ve read your papers in the past, and decided they were junk. I don’t expect these to be any better, but I’ll have a look. – Anthony
********
Anthony, thank you for promising to give a look.
Of course I think that you did not understand those papers that you read in the past. You just believed in Leif that has been soundly rebutted paper after paper.
It can happen. Just keep an open mind and understand that this is frontier science as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo Newton etc was at their time.
Remember that Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton etc science was considered “Junk” at the beginning also by smart people. But then things changed in time as people understood things better.
Important is to keep an open mind.
By the way, I have a new just published paper:
ACRIM total solar irradiance satellite composite validation versus TSI proxy models
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10509-013-1775-9
Regardless, the only good news is, it looks like the papers are not going anywhere,
“Following best practice in scholarly publishing, published articles cannot be removed afterwards.”
???
roger, clearly a typo and should of been “flagrant”.
Why are all my posts being moderated?
rogerknights says:The issue discussed here was the fragrant mathematical errors made in a paper by Benestad and Schmidt (2009)
rogerknights. I do not write in English but in Italian translated into English. Found out in Italian/Spanish/Latin what “fragrante ” means. In English may be “blazing” “blatant” etc.
Ok it was “flagrante” my error
Ah, c’mon, ‘fragrant’ is wonderful.
===========
Anthony’s REPLY to my post at:
January 17, 2014 at 6:20 pm
Meh, we’ll see. – Anthony
Anthony,
I respectfully ask you to go to
http://astroclimateconnection.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/further-confirmation-of-vej-tidal.html
And look at the figure in the blog post.
While you are doing this think of the young student looking at
the respective coastlines of South America and Africa and
wondering if they were at one time in contact.
I have added my thoughts here: http://peacelegacy.org/articles/breaking-peer-review-corruption-scandal-climate-science