Reposted from the NoTricksZone
By Kenneth Richard on 30. September 2021
Post-publication rejection of peer-reviewed scientific papers precisely because they are “are highly controversial due to their political and social implications” are another means climate activists continue their banishment of dissent on climate change.
Back in 2009 the Climategate e-mails provided written documentation affirming suspicions climate scientists inclined to activism seek to “oust” those who they suspect might be in the “greenhouse skeptics camp” from participating in a scientific journal’s peer-review process.
Further, they would even “redefine what the peer-review literature is” if that’s what it would take to prevent heretical papers from being referenced in IPCC reports.
Image Source: Lowe, 2009
The scientific literature says CO2 changes lag paleoclimate temperature changes
A few months ago we highlighted a peer-reviewed scientific paper about the logical contradiction of a perceived CO2-induced paleoclimate record even though ice cores overwhelmingly support the conclusion temperature changes precede changes in CO2 by hundreds to thousands of years.
Image Source: Richet, 2021
That the ice core record clearly affirms this sequencing (CO2 changes occur at least centuries after temperatures change) is not even controversial. Just a few of the many observational studies supporting the temperature-leads-CO2 ordering include Mudelsee, 2001, Fischer et al., 1999, Monnin et al., 2001, Schneider et al., 2013, Stott et al., 2007, and Shin et al., 2020.
The Copernicus Gatekeepers of Truth
After likely receiving heavy criticism from climate activists for daring to publish a “skeptic” paper in their journal, the Gatekeepers of Truth at Copernicus then “decided” this paper was not sufficiently reviewed by those who reject papers that do not align with the anthropogenic global warming narrative.
Two reasons Copernicus offers for post-reviewing an already published paper stand out:
“The topic and conclusions of the manuscript are highly controversial due to their political and social implications, a fact that author, editor, and referees were aware of, as evident from email records, the manuscript’s cover letter, and referee reports.”
“6 [of the reviewers invited to referee the paper] are publicly known as being in favour of or having ties to an industry benefiting from the manuscript’s conclusion.”
So the author was aware that his paper was “highly controversial” and had “political ad social” implications, and yet he had the audacity to seek publication in their journal anyway. What an odd criticism this is.
While offering no scientific justification for doing so, questioning the background and suspected political affiliations of reviewers is apparently deemed sufficient to disqualify them from reviewing manuscripts. Nowhere do the “acceptable” referees tackle the logical lead-lag cause-effect problem in paleoclimate science. At Copernicus, the science is apparently less important than the occupational and political affiliations of those reviewing manuscripts.
Predetermined rejection
In June and July, new reviewers who were selected by Copernicus because they were predisposed to reject the already-published paper merged their criticism of Richet’s paper into a single document here.
By late August to early September, the foregone conclusion had been realized. Dr. Richet’s paper questioning why it is assumed CO2 drives the present climate changes when it can be demonstrated CO2 did not drive climate change in the ice core record, was rejected.
Dr. Richet: “Should IPCC-revolving scientists be the only holders of truth?”
Dr. Richet wrote a reply to the Copernicus Gatekeepers of Truth who rejected his paper after it had been published. As an Earth scientist (geochemist and thermodynamicist) commenting on the CO2 ice core data, he is claimed to have improperly benefitted from a too-friendly peer-review process because 3 of the reviewers allegedly “have ties to industry benefitting from the manuscript conclusions.” (What “benefit” this is remains unspecified.)
Richet rightly points out that those criticizing his conclusions about the ice core data contradicting the CO2-drives-climate narrative likely have at least indirect ties to the $89 trillion dollars of climate-related “green” industries that necessarily must be spent (2015-2030) to transition to CO2 emission mitigation in the coming decades.
Regarding the disqualification of reviewers with ties to industries allegedly benefitting from the manuscript’s publication, Richet notes that Copernicus, the man, was Church administrator who never published on astronomy until later in his non-scientific career.
Importantly, none of Richet’s opponents were able to refute the central claim that “the interpretation of ice-core results flatly contradicts the fundamental principles of scientific reasoning.”
Finally, Richet asks why it is that only those scientists who align their views with that of the UN IPCC are allowed to decide on matters of “truth” in climate science.
Of course, this question will remain unanswered.
What goes around, comes around – Suck it back row!
One question I’ve struggled with regarding causality: CO2 follows T- rise, is, can this and modest warming caused by the LWIR absorption by CO2 in the atmosphere both be true?
In the case of outgassing from the oceans with warming arising from Milankovic cycles, clearly this is the elephant in the room. This evolution of CO2 arises from it’s lower solubility in warm water. Once in the atmosphere, however,
an entirely different property of CO2 is free to act, that of its ability to absorb IR and delay emission of this energy to space.
Indications from observations are that the latter effect is small and that feedback to any warming is net negative (model projections proved to be 300% too high) so it appears to be a marginal effect. Nevertheless, epistemologically, the simple case of Richet is deficient.
It should be mentioned, that all other gases evolved from the ocean as well. Oxygen outgassed into the atmosphere where it did not have a warming effect. Warming also resulted in evaporation, putting more water vapor into the atmosphere where it had a much greater effect than CO2 on warming the atmosphere because of its ability to absorb LWIR.
It is a trivial truth that warming of the seas resulted in evolution of CO2 (and evap of seawater), but that says nothing about the behavior of these components added to the different medium of the air.
That’s the criticism a good reviewer would have made. Nevertheless, Copernicus’s ham-handed totalitarian gatekeeping remains totally wrong.
Civilization depends on the Institution of Science to “get to the truth” in many vitally important matters. Science and the proper implementation of the Scientific Method (used to keep humans out of the process) has been tremendously valuable. However, bad, corrupted science (as in dietary recommendations via unhealthy food pyramids, and recommending processed seed oils and trans fats over other fats, and the Climate Crisis fraud) has already cost humanity millions of lives and $Trillions in money and suffering. Therefore bad science should be the basis for a HUGE Class Action Law Suit against all the purveyors of fraud in Science.
I’m thinking $10 Trillion would be justified for starters.
But somehow, these VERY dangerous and costly fraudsters are totally insulated from justice…and our Tax Monies are $Paying most of these crooks. These corrupt Scientists are “Above the Law”…like all the corrupt and criminal Leftists are nowadays.
And the Justice System and the Sciences have been corrupted by the same people.
I understand where you are coming from, however, as I have said here before the perpetrators will simply resort to the standard fall back position, by stating that they were simply basing their “opinions” on the best available scientific information at the time!!! It’s a little bit like the classic copout line, “I did what I thought was right!”.
I can understand reasonable people believing the man made climate change hoax. But at this point not to have reversed course is indicative of a mental illness. The refusal and censorship of data that has not been manipulated for their purpose is telling. The narcissistic belief that humans effect the climate more than nature is indicative of a narcissistic character complex. This becomes more clear everyday as the climate “protesters” and climate politicians become increasingly a physical representation of various mental illnesses, transgenderism, autism, narcissism, obsessive compulsive disorder etc.
It is a religion now, and soon to be The Religion of the State in America. Never mind it is against the law, laws are for peons, not the ruling classes who grovel at the Alter Of Man Caused Globall Warmining.
There’s very little science left in climate science. The bulk of it is junk science.
When climatology started to allow wholesale alterations of raw data, it became junk science.
Why the low rating?
This is a sheer Machiavellian exercise of political power by people with an agenda.
Those same activists are crying like babies when the general public disbelieves their erudite proclamations over such things as vaccines and masks and gasoline and diesel,, but then they’ll forget that they were the one’s responsible for unscientific, biased, authoritarian, behavior like this.
They can’t remove my blog post on this withdrawn paper, however:
https://www.scienceunderattack.com/blog/2021/6/14/challenges-to-the-co2-global-warming-hypothesis-4-a-minimal-ice-age-greenhouse-effect-79
The journal’s name, Copernicus, should be changed to Inquisitor. Or, perhaps, Big Brother.
This paper by Pascal Richet is excellent.
It’s “postface” deserves repeating in full:
Regardless of any particular interpretation of the climate record, it seems appropriate to give the last word to the famous naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Earl of Buffon (1749). Himself a mathematician by training, Buffon (1749) voiced a strong warning very early on about the misuses of what are now called models by expounding in the Initial Discourse of his monumental Natural History the “difficulties one finds when attempting to apply geometry or calculations to physical subjects that are too complicated.” As he noted, one has “to strip the subject from the majority of these qualities, to produce an abstract being that no longer resembles the actual being” and, after much reasoning and calculation, one projects an “ideal result onto the real subject, and this is what produces countless falsehoods and errors.” Hence, Buffon concluded, “the most delicate and most important point in scientific studies” is “to distinguish well between what there is of the real in a subject from that which we add to it arbitrarily as we consider it: to recognize clearly which properties belong to the subject and which properties we only imagine it to have.”
As quoted in Richet’s excellent paper, the Earl of Buffon in 1749 predicted exactly the dark art of climate modelling two and a half centuries in the future:
Buffon warned of the “difficulties one finds when attempting to apply geometry or calculations to physical subjects that are too complicated.”
He sensed nonlinear chaotic emergent pattern, though did not name it as such. Ahead of his time (his fellow countryman Benoit Mandelbrot would discover this two centuries later).
In making a model, one has “to strip the subject from the majority of these qualities, to produce an abstract being that no longer resembles the actual being”.
And, after much reasoning and calculation, one projects an “ideal result onto the real subject, and this is what produces countless falsehoods and errors.”
Hence, Buffon concluded, “the most … most important point in scientific studies” is “to distinguish well between what there is of the real in a subject from that which we add to it arbitrarily as we consider it: to recognize clearly which properties belong to the subject and which properties we only imagine it to have.”
Can’t put it better than that.
Truth is only what the political activists say, and anything that conflicts with that must be silenced.