Opinion by Kip Hansen — 16 August 2023
One would think that the public relations fiasco that stuck climate science (and sullied the reputation of science in general) as a result of ClimateGate back in 2009 would restrain climate scientists from attempting to suppress published peer-reviewed studies that they “don’t like” or the conclusions of which are “not helpful” to their climate crisis advocacy positions.
But, it appears that Michael Mann and his cronies are at it again forcing the retraction of a paper published last January (2022), in the European Physical Journal Plus (EPJP), a peer-reviewed academic journal (one of the 2,900 journals published through Springer Nature). That paper is titled, “A critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming,” by Gianluca Alimonti, Luigi Mariani, Franco Prodi and Renato Angelo Ricci. [hereafter, Alimonti (2022)].
The journal’s website version of the paper currently shows this banner:
The inestimable Roger Pielke Jr. covers the ongoing story on his substack piece: “Think of the Implications of Publishing — A whistleblower shares shocking details of corruption of peer review in climate science” first published on Jul 17, 2023. Do read Pielke’s piece for his insight into all the gory details.
The basics are this:
1. Alimomnti et al. write a paper that “reviews recent bibliography on time series of some extreme weather events and related response indicators in order to understand whether an increase in intensity and/or frequency is detectable.” (link to the paper above and to the .pdf here). In other words, they look at published materials.
2. As they are writing during the summer of 2021, they review papers before that time, including IPCC AR5, and a draft portion of AR6 (not yet published in final form).
3. Their Abstract:
“Abstract This article reviews recent bibliography on time series of some extreme weather
events and related response indicators in order to understand whether an increase in intensity
and/or frequency is detectable. The most robust global changes in climate extremes are
found in yearly values of heatwaves (number of days, maximum duration and cumulated heat),
while global trends in heatwave intensity are not significant. Daily precipitation intensity and
extreme precipitation frequency are stationary in the main part of the weather stations. Trend
analysis of the time series of tropical cyclones show a substantial temporal invariance and the
same is true for tornadoes in the USA. At the same time, the impact of warming on surface
wind speed remains unclear. The analysis is then extended to some global response indicators
of extreme meteorological events, namely natural disasters, floods, droughts, ecosystem productivity
and yields of the four main crops (maize, rice, soybean and wheat). None of these
response indicators show a clear positive trend of extreme events. In conclusion on the basis
of observational data, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing
today, is not evident yet. It would be nevertheless extremely important to define mitigation
and adaptation strategies that take into account current trends.”
[emphasis added – kh]
4. Apparently, it is the bolded conclusion above that the following persons have complained about while calling for the paper to be retracted:
Greg Holland (CV .pdf) ; Lisa Alexander ; Steve Sherwood ; Michael Mann ; Friederike Otto ; Stefan Rahmstorf
5. Here I quote Roger Pielke Jr. from his substack (here):
“To be clear, there is absolutely no allegation of research fraud or misconduct here, just simple disagreement. Instead of countering arguments and evidence via the peer reviewed literature, activist scientists teamed up with activist journalists to pressure a publisher – Springer Nature, perhaps the world’s most important scientific publisher – to retract a paper. Sadly, the pressure campaign worked.”
Does this sound familiar at all? “Kevin and I will keep them out [of the IPCC report] somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” — Phil Jones ClimateGate email.
The full conclusion, which the Climate Crisis Advocates say should not have been published, and thus, must be retracted, is this:
“Fearing a climate emergency without this being supported by data, means altering the framework of priorities with negative effects that could prove deleterious to our ability to face the challenges of the future, squandering natural and human resources in an economically difficult context, even more negative following the COVID emergency. This does not mean we should do nothing about climate change: we should work to minimize our impact on the planet and to minimize air and water pollution. Whether or not we manage to drastically curtail our carbon dioxide emissions in the coming decades, we need to reduce our vulnerability to extreme weather and climate events.”
And
“We need to remind ourselves that addressing climate change is not an end in itself, and that climate change is not the only problem that the world is facing. The objective should be to improve human well-being in the twenty-first century, while protecting the environment as much as we can and it would be a nonsense not to do so: it would be like not taking care of the house where we were born and raised.”
Alimonti and his co-authors wrote and re-wrote addenda attempting to satisfy complaints, but these were rejected despite their validity.
Prominent media (both partner members of the Covering Climate Now climate crisis propaganda news cabal) published attack articles, denigrating the authors and quoting the very same climate scientists that called for retraction. The Guardian (Graham Readfearn) here and Agence France-Presse appearing at phys.org here. So, it is not just Pielke Jr.’s “activist journalists” – it is the media outlets themselves which are climate-crisis activists / propagandists, colluding and cooperating with one another in a concerted attack effort.
The only climate scientists to speak out about this suppression of good science are Judith Curry (in a tweet) and Roger Pielke Jr. (here and here).
It looks like Springer Nature’s journal European Physical Journal Plus (EPJP) is going to move and retract the paper – because they have allowed themselves to be bullied by the same crew (and/or their activist descendants) that brought us ClimateGate fourteen years ago.
Where are the rest of the climate scientists? Hiding behind their academic desks, trembling lest the bullies target them also?
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
First, while I agree fully with the chief findings of Alimonti et al.: There is no climate emergency – there is no climate crisis. I would not have written the same “Conclusion” section found at the end of their paper. However, they have every right to state their opinions clearly and as loudly as they wish – without having their paper attacked and suppressed by the climate crisis bullies.
Mann et al., if allowed to get away with this without push-back, will be re-energized to repeatedly bully journals into withdrawing/retracting papers that fail to support their climate-alarm activist positions.
It is appalling that a Springer Nature-associated journal would allow itself to be bullied in this way. And equally appalling that the larger Springer Nature organization would not step in to prevent this type of cowardly caving-in to pressure from activists.
I know that many active climate scientists read here – though maybe not openly. Won’t you speak out from your own positions?
Are we entering into a new ClimateGate era in climate science, in which the bad actors rule and the majority, all good men and women, fail to call them out?
Thanks for reading.
# # # # #
Mann and Rahmsdorf are channeling Lysenko.
I have the shame of being from the exact same university department (Oceanography – Bangor, North Wales) and courses as Rahmstorf, just a year or two behind.
He of course gets called a “leading climate scientist” and founder of RealClimate while I get labelled as “not a climate scientist” or much worse.
Keep up the good work ThinkingScientist, you are worth a thousand Rahmstorfs or Manns
When did Dr. Mann retract the hockey stick?
As a hockey player still today, MANN would not be safe around me on the ice.
He’ll never retract it. He just retreads it.
The next step will be demanding that anyone who disagrees with them must be fired.
Followed by demanding that they be jailed.
Totalitarians cannot tolerate any disagreement.
Their style is more re-education camps.
That already happens
Suppress dissent and the scientific process dies. Then we’re really in trouble…
We are really in trouble now.
atticman ==> Yes,and we are in trouble. The several climate-crisis propaganda news cabals (there are more than one, three by my count) re actively attacking any science that their masters “don’t like”. It is not a conspiracy — it is a malevolent group intentionally spreading false and dis-information.
Historically, Emperors have always suppressed dissenters.
In the longer term that has to be a good thing and should be made to happen more often.
Then, more and more folks will see it, and them, for what they really are.
Go right back to the very start of every explanation of the Green House Effect.
i.e. Just how did they get away with saying that only one quarter of Earth’s surface is facing the sun?
just how.
That one point alone scuppers the entire thing
IOW Take into account that:
half Earth’s surface always faces the sun,the Albedo figure is that of the Moon, not what you get after ‘climate’ has altered/raised itthe average power is the peak power (solar constant) divided by (two x sqrt(2))(the average of a sine-wave then halved again because Earth rotates)Use a realistic figure for Emissivity – NOT: unity
and bingo, you get almost the exact temperature Earth actually is
There is no need for any green house effect.
Peta….Area of Sun’s 1361 W/m^2 flux blocked by planet Earth = pi x r ^2
Area of planet Earth to radiate the heat back to outer space = 4 x pi x r^2
Nobody says only 1/4 of the Earth faces the sun. They are saying that the area of a sphere is 4 x the area of its flat silhouette.
You have repeatedly made this mis-statement at WUWT over the last couple of years…it’s time to upgrade your junior high school geometry a bit.
DM, the sun’s rays fall on a hemispheric shape surface not a disk. Then a correction needs to be made for the angle the rays arrive at. I think PETA is talking about the way it is presented. Which when they divide 1361 by 4 has the same effect as saying the sun only shines on 1/4 of the surface.
However you state it, it is still correct
Are you referring to the cosine function that Jim mentions below?
Sure, same amount of incident energy as strikes a flat surface 1/4 the area of the sphere, which is……but thats not what he states.
I’ll disagree with your math. If the earth was a flat disk, then yes, the area is πr².
However, the earth is not a flat disk, it is a sphere. The area of that sphere exposed to insolation at any one time is 2πr².
In addition, the amount of insolation varies by the cosine function. The earth is not flat or we would not have temperature zones. Using an average assumes all locations on the earth that face the sun receives the same insolation. Just another non-scientific and unreal reduction to simplify the math of radiation.
And it is often forgotten or ignored that 136x W/m2 is an annual average, the instantaneous value varies by about ±10% due to the Earth-Sun distance changing over the course of a year.
Solar radiation is even more complicated by refraction and scattering in the atmosphere (why is the sky blue?).
It’s a simple approach. For more detail…from Rolland Stull’s great METEO textbook….
https://www.eoas.ubc.ca/books/Practical_Meteorology/prmet102/Ch02-radiation-v102b.pdf
The divide by 4 formula is far too simplistic to describe the way energy falls on a sphere. It basically says ignore the intense energy falling on the tropics, you must average it not only with the top and bottom of the sphere where no energy falls, but also with the unlit side of the sphere. There is a more accurate method:
https://tomn.substack.com/api/v1/file/71a8adc6-7aa4-42e4-88eb-caa6d0f04057.pdf
Pages 42-52
Exactly. And, the T⁴ factor really comes into play.
The paper is good insofar as it goes. But it has some very weird omissions. Whilst it calculates an average temperature for an atmosphere free earth on the sunny side it has nothing to say about what happens to the nighttime side. Equally, it looks at radiation physics in the bottom 20m of the atmosphere, and in the high atmosphere where it is dominated by net radiation to space – but has nothing to say about the processes in between, inviting you to believe that there is no radiation leakage from the top of the first 20m – a real greenhouse effect, sealing in the radiation as if under a roof!
I wonder about that too, granted the formula for the area of a sphere is: A=4πr² and it can be said that the sun “sees” a flat disk and it then follows that the average rate of ~1360 w/m² becomes only 340 w/m². BUT the sun doesn’t “See” a “Flat” disk. It sees the surface of a sphere which is only “flat” at high noon, everywhere else you have to deal with the incident angle and how much that affects how much solar radiation is actually absorbed by the surface.
Designate the subsolar point as an origin. Then consider a thin annular section of the surface centred on the subsolar point. Let r be the radius of the earth: the radius of the annulus is r sinθ where θ is the angle subtended from the centre of the earth by a point on the annulus and the subsolar point. Its circumference is 2π(r sinθ), and its area is given by 2π(r sinθ) . rdθ. The effective area presented to the sun depends on cosθ, so we need to evaluate the integral
2π(r sinθ).r cosθdθ over the interval 0 to π/2. Which is πr².
So, Did you agree with me or not?
I provided the math underpinning to your words.
Thanks, did you point out my error i.e., it’s 1360 w/m² not 340 w/m²? Well anyway Thanks (-:
You might want to check your integral limits. 0 to π/2 is only 90°. You are leaving out 1/2 of the earth. That’s where the problem arises.
I am calculating the effective illuminated area. That doesn’t include the area in night, which would be for π/2<θ<π with zero illumination. Remember the annulus extends all around the subsolar point. At θ=π/2 it is a great circle marking dawn and sunset around the world. At θ=0 it is just the subsolar point. If you take out the cosθ factor from the formula that accounts for the apparent angle of the sun in the sky you could integrate
2π(r sinθ) . rdθ from 0 to π to get the area of a sphere or 4πr^2
For better calculations, that take account of the earth’s orbital parameters see the link in my post below. These also explicitly calculate figures for each latitude and shows how they vary over a year’s orbit.
There really is no “effective” area. You are basically making the same assumption as climate scientists and it is not correct. At any point in time, the sun’s insolation contacts each and every square meter of half of the earth’s surface. That insolation goes to zero at the edges just like a cosine function does.
Your math is simply assuming that the surface is a flat surface and misses the “roundness” of a sphere. The surface area of your flat circle will not allow you to “lay” it on the surface of a sphere and cover the entire surface.
You need to answer these basic questions. What is the surface area of half of a sphere? Why does the suns insolation not touch each square meter of that surface? Does the sun’s insolation absorbed by the earth’s surface reduce as a cosine function?
I am calculating for TOA insolation, so factors relating to absorption and reflection in the atmosphere, atmospheric depth, or shading by mountains etc. do not apply. The cosine rule does apply at the TOA to a good approximation. It’s the input of the sun to the earth system.
Your objection that the earth is curved is covered by the principles of calculus, and the variation of the radius of the annulus as r sinθ, which expresses the curvature. The term rdθ in the integral shrinks in the limit to 0, where curvature does not matter in the calculation of the area of the annular ring.
There are of course other ways of calculating the integral using different coordinate systems, but they produce the same result. Or you could reason in the manner of Archimedes who first proved the formula for the area of the sphere long before calculus.
Answering your questions: the area of the hemisphere is 2πr^2, as can be evaluated from the integral
2πr sin θ.rdθ from 0 to π/2
Incidentally rdθ is the exact length of the arc of the curved surface annulus with radii defined by θ and θ+dθ. The chord between the annular radii has length 2rsin(dθ/2). From the Taylor expansion
sinθ~=θ-(θ^3)/3!…
we get the limit as dθ tends to zero that sinθ~=θ, so the chord and the arc tend to the same length.
Barring shadowing by satellites (including lunar eclipses) all the TOA in the hemisphere facing the sun centred on the subsolar point is illuminated.
Absorption at the surface of the earth is modified by the atmosphere via reflection and its own absorption, but that is not what we are calculating. The TOA insolation is the input to further calculation, and at this simplistic level is really only good for basic models of radiative balance. Any serious climate work must start with the much more detailed picture given by orbital parameters including obliquity, eccentricity etc. and how that interacts with the earth and its atmosphere as it is. I have pointed to a good introduction to the calculations involved.
There’s a nice set of charts and next level up formulae here:
https://climate-dynamics.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Insolation.pdf
they take account of the tilt of the earth’s axis and the eliptical orbit and more to look at TOA insolation by latitude, and over time as the orbital parameters change. Variation in solar output not covered.
Peta of Newark: “Just how did they get away with saying that only one quarter of Earth’s surface is facing the sun?”
They didn’t say that. They said “The amount of energy reaching the top of Earth’s atmosphere each second on a surface area of one square metre facing the
Sun during daytime is about 1,370 Watts, and the amount of energy per square metre per second averaged over the entire planet is one-quarter of this (see Figure 1).”.
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ar4-wg1-faqs-1.pdf
From a radiation standpoint, that AVERAGE is not correct. You simply can not ignore the T⁴ that occurs from the insolation. You are in effect dividing what is received at the perpendicular point on the earth by 4. This is a trig problem, not a simple algebraic average. The calculation using an average assumes the poles receive the same radiation as any other place. That simply is not correct.
If the flux from the sun is 1360, and the Earth blocks pi r^2 of the flux, the average has got to be F/A….
The T**4 factor applies to the top of the atmosphere, not to the surface. Only the top of the atmosphere radiates to space. The difference in top of atmosphere temperature does not vary as much from the pole to the equator as does the surface.
Also the top of the atmosphere is not a black body.
The surface is what predominately absorbs insolation from the sun. It then radiates it away. The surface is not flat, and doesn’t allow one to average the insolation that is absorbed. Each point on the surface receives power from the sun. No doubt there are factors that vary the insolation reaching the surface but that is not the issue. The flat plate scenario would mean that the poles receive the same power as the tropics. That just isn’t true. It is a simplification that allows easy math. Hard math is the bane of climate scientists.
Let’s do an example. Assume the sun is directly overhead at a point on the equator and it receives 100 W/m². The following is what will be absorbed at each 10N.
0° — 100 • cos (0) = 100 T = 204K
10° — 100 • cos (10) = 98.5 T = 204K
20° — 100 • cos (20) = 94 T = 202K
30° — 100 • cos (30) = 86.6 T = 198K
40° — 100 • cos (40) = 76.6 T= 192K
50° — 100 • cos 5(0) = 64.3 T = 184K
60° — 100 • cos (60) = 50 T = 172K
70° — 100 • cos (70) = 34.2 T = 157K
80° — 100 • cos (80) = 17.4 T = 132K
90° — 100 • cos (90) = ~1 T = 65K
The T⁴ influence arises since the tropics receive the most insolation, the temperature will be higher based on the T⁴ factor. The poles receive little if any insolation and therefore their radiation is much reduced as compared to the tropics. This is what drives the flow of energy from the tropics toward the poles.
Now, I’m not going to insinuate that this is the total solution. There are many, many factors that enter into albedo, emissivity, etc. But, refusing to use proper trigonometry is a pet peeve.
Now calculate what is being emitted on the night side of the earth 180 degrees away.
Do you think insolation occurs on the side away from the sun? I hope not.
BTW, you haven’t seen me reference emmision other than it begins with the insolation absorbed and the temperature reached. T⁴ is not linear. You can not use a simple arithmetic average to distribute either absorption nor emision over a surface subject to different levels of absorption.
If you want accurate evaluations over the surface (rather than the top of the atmosphere) then you must take account of the obliquity of the earth (the tilt of its axis relative to the plane of orbit), its actual distance from the sun as it progresses around its approximately elliptical orbit, the local albedo of the surface – snowbound poles and areas more susceptible to cloud, open ocean, and variations in land cover will all be different), local atmospheric column conditions and so forth. If you wish to compute a value for the temperature of the earth as an average (with or without an atmosphere) then you must take account of what happens at night every bit as much as what happens during the day. If you want to start incorporating a proper radiation and convection model then you will need some degree level physics as expounded for example here:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/503727
That’s an interesting paper, predating Wijngaarden and Happer, and showing that the IPCC over-estimates the effects of CO2.
Excellent explanation of why a spere’s space is 4x its shadow: both mathematical and intuitive depictions. Effectively 25% is absorbing solar radiation, 75% is emitting.
https://youtu.be/GNcFjFmqEc8
Sphere’s “surface”… Darned spell check
The climate change alarmists have to lie and cheat to get their way.
If they didn’t have that, they wouldn’t have anything.
Leftwing billionaires fund this enormous propaganda campaign that is destroying our economies and societies.
The problem is not CO2. The problem is leftwing billionaires lying to the world about CO2.
Kip, on a more positive note, the bullies attempted to force retraction of Skrable et al (2022) They are trying to discredit and disappear a peer reviewed study of CO2 atmospheric concentrations because its findings contradict IPCC dogma.
The paper was published in the Journal of Health Physics, and the editor and the authors have stuck to their guns so far. I was alerted to this by one of the attackers commenting on a post at my blog. My synopsis of the attack and responses is in this post:
https://rclutz.com/2023/07/12/in-defence-of-non-ipcc-co2-science/
The alarmists are at best unscientific, at worst, corrupted
Anyone who can happily end the career of someone else, because of alternate viewpoints, is a human I would never want to be associated, or aligned with
I guess “Climate Catastrophe” is such a weak hypothesis that the true believers must scurry around to censor all competing voices. Weak and scared little people.
Indeed, they have no real science to counter the realists, so simply resort to ad hominem, cancellation, harassment and vitriol
The only way to address bullying is to fight back. One must closely monitor what these people are trying to publish, which due to undue alarmism, will probably contain to say it mildly “non rigorous scientific arguments and data.” Then one must organize several people to put pressure on the journal to block their publications, with scientific arguments of course.
When they notice, that their bullying leads to negative consequences for them, and then only, will they be motivated to stop such undue behavior. One could start by attacking Mann’s famous hockey stick paper to get it retracted, due to numerous flaws and non disclosure of supporting data. The term “peer review” means review by scientists who are doing serious work, and not journalists or NGO’s pushing propaganda.
Eric ==> Sounds easy, doesn’t it. Mann’s hockey stick has been attacked, debunked, destroyed in published papers and in the blogosphere/substack world many many times. It was used again in IPCC’s AR6….
When there is an overwhelmingly strong, politically-enforced, mass-media-backed “consensus” [for this, read “official truth”] we can only expose expose expose– there are some skeptics with enough clout to speak where they can be heard — Editorials in the Wall Street Journal, appearing on Fox news,and other media that has not caved to the pressures of the news cabals.
Even I get quoted or cited here and there.
But it is slow going.
Someone said “A lie runs right round the world while the truth is still tying its shoe laces”.
And once the lie is out it is almost impossibe to correct it.
Another problem that I have found frustrating, is that a lie that takes only a single sentence to state, can sometimes take multiple paragraphs to properly refute.
Debunking can be a full time job.
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane – Marcus Aurelius
Some of the only fights worth fighting are the ones where human truth, honesty and integrity are at stake
About
“Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 AD and a Stoic philosopher. He was a member of the Nerva–Antonine dynasty, the last of the rulers later known as the Five Good Emperors”
He wrote a book “Meditations” and it is fascinationg to see how this Roman emperor thinks.
Yes, that’s my prayer: Please, Lord, don’t let me go insane.
I’m not a climate alarmist so I’m not in the insane category yet. And hope I’m never in that category. I can’t see that happening.
Back when climategate erupted on the scene, I thought that Mann and the “team” would become scientific pariahs for their corruption of what at that time I thought were widely held scientific ideals. Boy, was I naive! Mark Stein’s “A Disgrace to the Profession” was an unanswered indictment but nothing seems to scratch Teflon Mikey.
Nice thought, unworkable in the real world.
The Hockey team’s pressure works because they have the political clout to hurt those who disagree with them.
Your team of outsiders, no matter how right, will just be ignored.
Any journal that proves itself to be susceptible to political pressure, must be abandoned.
Nothing they print can be trusted.
The bgwxyz person who posts to WUWT calls journals which dare to publish outside of the party line “predatory”.
karlo ==> There is a whole discussion to be had about predatory journals. This is not it though. They do exist and I have called out some of them here at WUWT.
The journal publisher, Springer Nature, does not have any predatory journals among is some 2,900 journals, and the journal publishing Alimonti (2022) is a Springer Nature journal.
You know that craps game is crooked? Yeah, but its the only game in town.
Agree, fight fire with fire – show no mercy in ridiculing their absence of empirical science fact, it is the way
This is, of course, a straw man argument. Papers can be retracted for reasons other than fraud or misconduct, such as when egregious errors in methodology or conclusions are discovered. That is what is being alleged by the authors criticizing the paper. Pielke doesn’t acknowledge this and doesn’t cover any of the substantive criticisms these scientists may have made about the quality of the research in the paper, stuffing it all into the rather blithe “simple disagreement” sentiment. He claims to have the leaked documents, so he should just post them to his website.
AlanJ ==> Did you read the Pielke Jr. piece on his substack? Doesn’t look like it. Give Piekle Jr. a good thorough read and check back in.
I read the entire piece, he claims he has the reviews from his anonymous leaker. He should post them in full. He selectively quotes them instead. I suspect there are legitimate criticisms of the paper being made by these authors, but that doesn’t fit the narrative Pielke wants to spin, so he’s omitting the substance from his piece.
So your conclusions are modelled on zero data.
Par for the course.
Pielke is withholding the information he claims to have, so we are left to do nothing but speculate. Your conclusions are based on nothing more than mine.
The only conclusion I presented was that your conclusion is based on zero data. That conclusion is correct.
How do you KNOW that what Pielke hasn’t published supports your conclusion? Is it impossible that it adds no support to your idea, but carries no other particular merit?
Is it unlikely that if he is hiding crucial evidence others won’t provide it anyway to disprove his claim? What haven’t you done so, relying on supposition instead?
Oh I don’t know that. He should publish the information he is withholding, then we would all know. That’s why I said he should publish that information in my original comment.
The journal has not made the reviewers’ comments public. Pielke claims he received them from an anonymous whistleblower. I don’t see how else we will get them unless said whistleblower decides to publicly come forward.
The controversy is in the public domain. The publisher, who will certainly have the reviews, can easily ask the reviewers for permission to publish. We don’t have to depend on the whistle-blower. As I have pointed out if there are competent people they can equally provide a public critique independently. That doesn’t depend on the whistleblower either.
Of course the publisher can also publish the reviews, but the publisher is not claiming that the reviews contain no substance, so there is no onus on them to prove that claim. Pielke is claiming the reviews contain no substance, so he does need to prove that.
If there are people who think that Pielke is wrong they have every incentive to publish the evidence. Especially if they support the retraction. OTOH if there are no proper grounds for calling for retraction, they have every incentive to hide that fact.
Pielke alone is responsible for substantiating the allegations he makes. He is claiming that there is no substance behind the paper’s retraction, and he is making this claim on the basis of the reviews which he claims to secretly have in his possession but which he is not sharing publicly. The onus is on Pielke and Pielke only to offer proof of the claims he is making.
Pielke has no more responsibility to publish than does the editor. Your point of view is very biased.
You are saying that Pielke is required to present his evidence. Why do you not require the same from the publisher?
The original reviewers obviously approved publication. They then should publish the reason for retraction.
In the end, your objection shows that you don’t believe Pielke. Why do you believe the publisher that has presented no evidence either!
Tinfoil hats work great I’m told. Almost as good as covid masks.
Alan wears his tin-foil hat inside out !
AlanJ, like all good climate enthusiasts, doesn’t do research, doesn’t read anything not on an approved list, he only does ‘feelz’ based on what other climate enthusiasts ‘feelz’ as well. It’s less tribal, more like a flock of sheep.
I’m actually expressing genuine skepticism and asking for full information, something which must be a foreign concept to you.
AlanJ ==> Feel free to contact Pielke Jr. and ask him about it. He has always proven responsive. Like all authors, blogs/substacks etc. He has/had limited time, limited space (readers won’t read anything long) and limited energy.
Yes, and it would have been nice if the journal editor had made public all the complaints in full, all the reviews in full, all the offered addenda in full, etc. Perhaps you will write them and demand that they do so to the benefit of scientific integrity.
I’ve just reached out to Pielke privately. I am not going to pay him $8 for the pleasure of commenting on his substack site, so hopefully he will acknowledge and respond to my message through his personal site (rogerpielkejr.com).
You are trying to shift the burden of responsibility for Pielke’s claims from the man himself and onto the journal. Pielke is responsible for proving the claims he makes.
Do you not feel that the publisher has a higher level of responsibility to defend their decision to retract the article than a whistle blower has to prove what appears to be something that should be investigated?
The journal has no obligation to defend itself against unsubstantiated attacks from Pielke whatsoever. That is not a burden it carries. The claimant, Pielke, carries the burden for proving the claims he is making. In order to prove the claims he is making (namely, that the reviews did not provide any valid reason for rejecting the addendum or retracting the paper), Pielke needs to publish full the review comments he claims to have in his possession.
There is already abundant public information showing severe flaws in the manuscript – it cherry picks research and mischaracterizes other studies according to the authors of those studies – but Pielke is ignoring all of that and specifically stating that reviews were conducted by the journal, and that they contain no substantive criticism of the retracted paper. He’s saying they have no basis for a retraction, that they just don’t like the paper and are bullying the journal. He has to prove that, and he’s failed to do so, and has now explicitly refused to do so.
Innocent until proven guilty is a basis for one system among many.
AlanJ ==> Pielke has no burden of proof at all. He is reporting an ongoing news story, he cites documents in his possession (from a source which he is not required to identify — he, like me, is acting as a journalist).
Did you email Pielke? His email is public and easily found via Google.
I suppose that if Pielke Jr. were being sued for libel or slander, he would have to produce more data, but he owes neither you or I anything.
Stop bombing this thread now — you’re just wasting bytes and pixels.
He does if he expects the not-so-gullible among us to believe him. If he is content to leave his claims unsubstantiated then I am content to dismiss them offhand, as we should all be.
So you now admit you DON’T WANT full information.
You just want to yap mindlessly , as usual.
Given the nature of the discussion on this thread, I would not share data with the requestor. I assume there was a reason for limiting distribution. In that case $8 would be laughable.
As a quick update, he refused via email to provide the material, falsely claiming he would have to identify the whistleblower in doing so:
So there you have it. He is not going to substantiate the allegations being made. Let’s call it a day.
So you do not take his word that his “recounting is consistent with the full set of materials”.
Neither do you give any recognisance to the fact that “neither the journal nor the publisher has offered any complaint about [Pielke’s] reporting, even when offered the chance.”
Let’s work out what to call you. A denier, perhaps?
Of course not. I am a skeptic. Show me the proof. Isn’t that what this whole site is supposed to be dedicated to?
On that basis no-one should accept any claim at all. If he sent you a copy/paste of the reviews you wouldn’t believe them either: you’d accuse him of inventing them, just like you invented the idea that he hid significant elements in the first place. You are not worth paying attention to.
He is objectively hiding significant elements, that is no invention. I have an email from the man refusing to provide the full body of documents his whistleblower provided. I believe the full body of the reviews likely contain thorough justification for the reviewers’ recommendations, and if that is not the case Pielke could easily shut me down9S by providing them.
If you refuse to accept these claims, how could you possibly accept that any release of data is a “full release” of the data.
Alan J ==> Yes, call it a day.
No are hilarious since he is protecting someone, but YOU don’t care about that which is why you are looking foolish here.
I wonder whether someone has figured out their identity based on this thread. That person will regret leaking if so.
Full disclosure might leave the journal editor might feel dangerously un- anonymous… and un- employed.
If AlanJ is so convinced that Pielke is being dishonest, how could he ever accept that Pielke has given a full disclosure. No matter how much is released, AlanJ and those who pay him will just declare that they still aren’t convinced that everything has been released.
Kevin ==> There are journals that publish,online at least, the reviews and responses to reviews, as a part of publishing a paper. Should be standard practice. I don’t mind reviewers being anonymized — sometimes a friend has to say something hurtful about the paper of a friend….
I have a different approach — when reviewing books,if I don’t like it and have generally good things to say,I don’t publish the review (of course, I have no obligation to do so,I’m entirely a free agent.) Assigned reviewers are obligated to give an honest review and are supposed to stick to the science (although mentioning difficult sentence structure and all that type of editing are also allowed.)
No you aren’t, you are attacking a point of view that you disagree with. That, in and of itself, is fine; however you do not do this by attacking an individual for those views or inferring ulterior or sinister motives on their part. If you wish to challenge the contents of the paper on its merits then do so.
Anyone reading comment threads on WUWT is not a member of “doesn’t read anything not on an approved list”.
Then where in their argument is the data the demonstrates there were any “egregious errors in methodology or conclusions” ?
You can equivocate all you want, but this quote says it all to me.
“Kevin and I will keep them out [of the IPCC report] somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” — Phil Jones ClimateGate email.
Probably in the full context of the reviews Pielke has in his possession but is choosing not to share 🙂
What is the probability of that? If Pielke us withholding key information he can be refuted and ridiculed by someone else publishing it. Either by direct quote from the reviews or their own properly substantiated independent review. You could have tried to do that yourself if you were competent.
We do not have any basis for evaluating that probability. I find it rather difficult to believe that the content of those reviews does not include the basis for their recommendation to reject the addendum and original manuscript, Pielke insists there is no basis, but doesn’t provide the full reviews to let his audience evaluate for themselves.
Try putting aside your personal prejudices and expressing some genuine skepticism. There is no reason Pielke shouldn’t just post the full body of the reviews absent any of his editorializing or selective quotation. None whatsoever.
I have no delusions that I am qualified to critically evaluate the claims being made in the original manuscript. I do trust that the reviewers are qualified, and I’d like to see why they recommended retraction and rejection of the addendum.
It’s amusing that the band of self-proclaimed skeptics on this website are trying to tell me I shouldn’t bother asking questions or pointing out the need for more information.
AlanJ ==> The correct target of your ire is the publishing journal and its editors. Demand that they release to the public all the reviews (not names of the reviewers), and the submitted addena, and the reviews of the submitted addenda. Then you can rite a piece to be published here from your evaluation of the full data.
I’ll help you get it published here.
AlanJ, I think given that offer you have to do what Kip suggests; it is either put up or shut up.
Not at all, the target of my ire is Roger Pielke Jr., who is levying significant allegations about a group of scientists for which he has failed to provide adequate substantiation. Selectively quoting from the body of material his whistleblower sent him is not enough.
“he has failed to provide adequate substantiation”
You mean the reason for the retraction, for which Mickey Mann et al have failed to provide adequate substantiation?
Yes we do have a basis for evaluating the probability. Is Pielke likely to be stupid enough to expose himself to ridicule? I suggest the answer to that is that it is not at all likely, though not completely impossible.
Perhaps since you consider yourself to be a believer but not capable of evaluating claims for yourself you are unable to recognise that when challenged to provide more information you have offered none.
Let’s face it – the paper was published last year. Plenty of time for counter argument to be developed and published. Yet you can’t point to any. You just assume it exists to support your prior belief, and do not consider the possibility that it doesn’t. I have considered the possibility, and I have explained why after careful thought I consider it unlikely – namely, that it would be an easy matter to show Pielke’s deception alleged by you, which would expose him to ridicule and undermine his credibility.
Pielke Jr. does not have credibility to undermine, he has a band of loyalists who care very little whether the things he says are true or not (see this entire comment thread) and is largely ignored by serious academics on these matters. He’s trying to market a narrative that his substack subscribers are there for, not provide unbiased reporting.
There have been counter arguments to the paper published – many of the scientists cited say the paper misrepresents their own research or omits significant bodies of literature that undermine its conclusions. Read the quoted scientists in the Guardian article:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/22/sky-and-the-australian-find-no-evidence-of-a-climate-emergency-they-werent-looking-hard-enough
“Pielke Jr. does not have credibility to undermine…”
Whatever Pielke’s credibility, you have none.
Pielke gave reasons in his email to you. The whistleblower’s career could be threatened by full exposure. He doesn’t have permission to publish the comments in full.
Oh but I don’t believe his reasons. There is simply no way Pielke can’t easily anonymize the content of the reviews and post them in full. That could not possibly expose his source any more than the snippets he has already posted.
That really depends on multiple circumstances. In particular, the information itself, without any reference to the person(s) providing it, may make obvious who provided it. Sometime only one, or a small number of people, have access to the original information so it could be from rather difficult to impossible to not expose the person by making the full information available, even barring any reference to the person.
Another consideration that may expose the person, even without any explicit personal information, is an analysis of the writing style and/or an analysis of the information selected for “whistle blowing” which could expose the (possibly already know) mind set of the provider.
As you have stated above, there is nothing Pielke can do to convince you, so why should he waste his time trying, Your hatred of those who oppose your cult has completely rotted your brain.
I’d advise you to grow up, but I doubt you are capable of doing that.
That is a truly stupid article you posted since they ignored the long-term trends in the misleading article.
There is no whistleblower in the Guardian article thus your claims here are useless and pointless.
This is one of the scientists whose work is cited in the retracted paper, explicitly saying her work was misrepresented.
Alan J ==> Stop bombing this thread with repeated attempts to somehow deny the obvious. Quoting climate propaganda printed in The Guardian or by AFP (both partners in the Climate propaganda news cabal Covering Climate Now), both articles linked in the original essay above, is not adding anything, nor does it support your position, it supports Pielke’s!
You have not read the Alimonti et al. paper, you have no idea what data they have used or what they said about any particular data. You are just repeating attacks based on your ignorance of the topic and issues. When you have done so, read the Alimonti paper, and have some inkling of understanding, check back in.
I don’t mind people with objections, but I do mind senseless trolling.
Sorry, I warned you. – kh
Alan, you apparently misread the Guardian quote. “…“totally misrepresented” some of the conclusions from her own papers.” Doesn’t say that her work was cited in the paper. And that is just her opinion vs that of many other authors. Disagreement about scientific conclusions is not reason for retracting a paper.
Sorry — you were warned. – kh
Sorry — you were warned. – kh
Sorry — you were warned. – kh
You warned him that you have no interest in truth, just supporting your cult.
Sorry — you were warned. – kh
Still no Whistleblower mentioned thus your Guardian was a run around was a waste of time which means you have NOTHING.
The Narclim data sets shows no significant future changes in extreme rainfall. And certainly there is none at the moment.
The climate models are in fact all over the place when it comes to rainfall.. just like they are on everything else.
It is the UNSW climate group that misrepresent the actual science…
You can absolutely bet that a climate modeller and zealot would mispresent their own findings… twist them to the idiology.
What this paper does is correct those misrepresentations… and she doesn’t like that fact.
“shows no significant future changes” I certainly hope not! I depend on causality.
“Narclim” is the output (can’t call it data) from many different climate models for Australia.
Hence does not represent any particular reality.
Prof Lisa Alexander can say anything she likes and obviously has done. It doesn’t alter the fact that the IPCC has stated there is no increase in rainfall, no discernible trend in rainfall and has never made any assertion of attribution. Those are the views of Prof Lisa Alexander and she was wrong in attributing them to the IPCC whose reports contradict her statement.
Sorry — you were warned. – kh
“Not only have we seen an increase, but it’s also attributed to human activity.””
… in 8% of sites..
So no increase or a decrease in 92% of sites.
And attribution via farcical climate models… IS NOT SCIENCE
If this is a “professor”, it is in indoctrination and fake non-science.
“ saying her work was misrepresented.”
Yes, by herself. !
LOL, AlanJ citing the Gruniad.
Puts himself into the realm of NEGATIVE credibility. !
Where he has always been , and will always remian
Statements like this from Prof Lisa shows the paltry state of their so-called science…
“ 8% of quality-controlled rain gauges globally showed an increase in extreme rainfall”
So… 92% showed either NO INCREASE or a DECREASE.
Seems she is the one mispresenting reality !
Many of the other comments from the climate scammers use the fake attribution words of “likely” etc..
… showing straight away that they are NOT SCIENCE.
And AlanJ shows that his goal has always been to attack Pielke and his work. AlanJ starts out with the conviction that he is right, because all the people he agrees with, agree with him.
He has openly shown that no matter what Pielke says or does, it won’t be enough, because like the rest of his fellow cultists, the truth has never been his goal. The goal is destroying those who oppose the cult.
Finally, it uses the Guardian to support his position. (I was going to say argument, but nothing AlanJ has written comes close to being an actual argument.)
PS: The “scientists” that AlanJ approves of, aren’t producing any evidence either. Just declaring that Pielke has mis-represented their work doesn’t cut it. Pielke has presented his case, AlanJ and side need to present evidence that Pielke is wrong. AlanJ commits the same sin he falsely accuses Pielke of committing.
Sorry — you were warned. – kh
awwww, you caved in and admitted bias. It was a good run, I took a month off reading here, so I was fooled by apparent earnestness. Good work.
That is not true. Pielke is justifying his decision to protect the anonymity of the reviewer(s). It is best that he err on the side of caution in protecting his sources, just as journalists do routinely.
It rather beggars belief that printing more of the leaked reviews would expose the identity of his whistleblower any more than the chunks he has already published would. It should be quite easy to anonymize any personally identifying information in the reviews and publish them in full.
The lack of skepticism by a group of self-avowed skeptics here is quite fascinating. “We are being told what we want to hear so why would we want to investigate further?”
Why do you go on with bogus arguments over and over, you got the e-mail answer and numerous comments here shows reasons for discretion because the Whistleblower is involved.
I believe the claim of discretion to be a dodge, that is why I am persistent. You cannot possibly believe that Pielke can’t anonymize the reviews HE HAS ALREADY QUOTED FROM without revealing the identity of his whistleblower.
I know you have to publicly insist that you believe this foolish thing to keep up appearances, but c’mon, you and I both know you aren’t a sucker.
Alan J ==> You have had an email conversation with Pielke himself, he states he can’t and won’t post fuller details or documents, as it would expose the whistleblower. His position is exactly in line with the stance of all major new organizations. You don’t like it,so you are trying to bully him by bullying all of us here.
Last chance here today….I will read any further comments,but if they are the same old silliness, I will delete. Call it a wasted day — you haven’t learned anything.
It is clear you have no idea what Whistleblower laws are about which is why some of us here think you are being dumb..
“know you aren’t a sucker”
But we know you are, Alan !!
In other words, you are going to stick with your beliefs regardless of what evidence you are shown.
AlanJ desperately wants the name of the whistleblower…
… so he can gain some brownie points with the climate cult leaders by passing that name on, and getting him/her fired.
“bogus arguments over and over,”
Because bogus arguments is all he has. !
It beggars belief that after what you wrote about Pielke earlier, that anyone could possibly believe that there is anything Pielke could say or do that would persuade you.
Yep. I tend to think anonymous sources are made up to justify a writer’s opinion – but I know that I don’t know. One can only think, unless one were there to hear it.
“There is no reason Pielke shouldn’t just …”
Really? No reason?
“I have no delusions “
Your whole AGW zealotry is a delusion !!
IOW you got nothing but conjecture for which there is no evidence. How scientific of you.
Do you believe that the review process is important to reviewers?
Once upon a time, Mann, Rahmstorf and accomplices attacked a paper from Shaviv and Veizer on the base of a press release, they claimed bad research and wrong data.
First, Rahmstorf asked his colleges for help because the announced paper could derogate “the cause”
Source climategate emails.
Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticise? Marcus Aurelius
Better remove all freedom of movement, liberty then in order to save gaia…right…RIGHT?
In this case, it was retracted because Mickey Mann and his cultists didn’t want it put into publication. They did not want the TRUTH to be exposed.
They invented “errors” to use as a crutch.
Mickey Mannis the very last person to talk about “errors”?
If errors stop publications, then his Hockey Stick would never have been published.
It was one big error from start to finish.
“such as when egregious errors in methodology or conclusions are discovered.”
Except in this case, they weren’t.
It’s just that the gatekeepers don’t want rational science-based science published, because they know they cannot repudiate it.
Every statement in the conclusion published is totally correct, especially the one in bold…
In conclusion on the basis of observational data, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident.
Papers are not retracted because they are wrong. What you do with a paper that is wrong is, write a rebuttal. Papers are retracted because of fraud or real provable errors in the facts cited. Not because someone differs from the conclusions they draw from the facts cited.
The question about this paper is simple. What is it about it that has led the journal (and the complainers) to think that retraction may be appropriate. Why is the solution not for the critics to simply write a response and the journal to publish it?
I have no idea what is happening here, but this is what I would like to know, and what the journal is not telling us.
Pielke strikes me as an honest and competent man who, like Judith Curry, has been the subject of a tide of vilification and personal abuse simply because he takes a different view of climate than that of the activists.
He may be right or wrong in his conclusions, but the solution is to rebut them in the media.
Something tells me AlanJ would be completely satisfied if the journal permanently retracts the study without releasing any of the documents he demands of Pielke or any other documents they use to justify the retraction.
I guess the way you do science without debate is you bully and censor to support a narrative. It’s no wonder Richard Lindzen recommended cutting research funding for climate science.
I’m at a loss- I never trusted public science and I’ve met too many corrupt private practitioners. The story of Diogenes looking for one honest man and God of the bible finding cities without a single righteous person provide perspective – ever has it been.
Kip,
Can you elaborate on your comment that you would not have written the same Conclusion that they did? How would it have been different? Thanks!
Bill ==> Thank you for the question. If you have been following me here for years, you are (or would be) aware of my approach — I only occasionally get this riled up.
I’ll give you the short answer: Alimonti et al. wrote in their “Conclusions” section their opinions about a much wider topic than the paper covered — policy recommendations, their worries about the current direction of climate policies, etc. And, if that’swhat they collectively “concluded”, well, then, let them say it. But I would have stuck with the findings of my literature review and left it alone.
“Climate science™” paper are regularly full of opinions based on absolutely nothing remotely scientific…
At least this opinion has a sane rational background to it.
bnice ==> Oh, definitely — opinions are allowed as long as they are stated as such (or obvious by language). For instance: “We find that the suppression of fossil fuels is a bad idea.” I would not allow it — it claims a scientific finding (and this study did not investigate the results fossil fuels suppression).
But “We think that suppressing fossil fuels use will harm societies.” would be perfectly allowable.
A pox on those who use pastel colored type to make their speech ‘pretty’ instead of solid colors which makes it readable.
The type color and the triple spacing make it very hard to read.
(…and the content)
rhb2 ==> Well, if it is difficult for you to read, you have my apologies.
The paper was not retracted due to fraud. And neither was it retracted due to inaccuracy.
However, it was not retracted due to disagreement, either. The reviewers did not disagree with the paper, factually.
Reviewer 1 is quite clear:
The paper is factually correct and reflects the position of mainstream science, as defined by the IPCC, including the latest IPCC report, AR6, which was published after this paper.
The paper was retracted because it was inconveniently true.
Was the paper retracted? I just accessed it, it is there, with the “editor’s note” as shown at the beginning of this post. Unfortunately, the editor does not tell us who disputes the paper.
Curious ==> That’s why there needed to be a whistleblower to send the materials to Pielke Jr.
Dr. Michael Mann is at his best when staying anonymous.
MCourtney ==> Yes ,that is Pielke Jr.’s point as well. And I agree. And it is that aspect that is reminiscent of Climategate == not bad data,not bad research, not bad findings, —-BAD IMPLICATIONS of publishing.
Didn’t that invested Al Gore chap pontificate about some inconvenient truth? They wouldn’t acknowledge the truth if it hit them head on, the fantasy is far more lucrative
The whole aim of journal publishing is NOT to present absolute scientific certainty.
The purpose is to decide if to enter the article into the scientific discussion.
If someone “disagrees” with it once it is published there are channels that allow for this to be done.
Thing is, this is a paper that Mickey Mann et al definitely DO NOT want put up for scientific discussion…
… because they know they would not be able to counter it with any rational science.
Michael Mann quoted as saying:
“Either the consensus of the world’s climate experts that climate change is causing a very clear increase in many types of weather extremes is wrong, or a couple of nuclear physics dudes in Italy are wrong.”
By the same argument, because Richard Feynman was not a rocket scientist he couldn’t possibly get to the bottom of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster AND be able to point out why NASA’s risk assessment was so wrong.
Those outside groupthink are often right.
My money would be on the nuclear physics dudes, not some jumped up charlatan mental pipsqueak of a mathematician who thinks he’s a climate scientist.
Given a choice between a physicist and some so-called climate scientists, I would take the physicist every time.
Gotta remember, Mickey Mann is a low-end mathematician who doesn’t even know which way up proxies are meant to be, and invents spurious anti-statistical methods to create fake graphs.
I would take the word of basically ANYONE over an incompetent LIAR and con-man.
Thinking ==> One of the authors is a respected Italian climate scientist. Will Happer and Richard Lindzen and John Clauser are physicists and agree with Alimonti — there is no climate emergency.
As Willis showed a couple of weeks back, even the IPCC does not agree with Mann.
So Mann has to argue that he must be right because those he recognizes as experts, agree with him.
Argument by authority, it’s easier than doing actual science.
BTW, there is not, and never has been a consensus.
But there is, however, a criminal conspiracy involving, if not led by Mann.
con·sen·sus
noun
My climate opinion was never requested, but AG got about half the popular vote for president and is still doing well financially. 90-whatever percent was probably nonsense, but half the population, including most math-limited university staff generally agreed with him.
Very eloquently put – I’m unsure he should be referred to as a Mathematician either, or did you mean magician?
“Either the consensus of the world’s climate experts that climate change is causing a very clear increase in many types of weather extremes is wrong”
Yes Mickey Mann… real DATA proves they are wrong.
Your point is ???
I wrote and deleted a gender based assessment of “a couple of nuclear physics dudes“.
Certain language and attitude are accorded to certain voices, not mine.
For the very first time I agree with a quote from Mann! Now let’s carefully evaluate the scientific arguments from both sides and settle this.. so far it seems the data supports at least some of the claims of these Italians, so it’s about time for the distinguished climate scientists to put up (and getting specific) or shut up.. I saw Otto making a claim about heat waves on phys.org which at least for US data was indisputable wrong! Maybe Mann is spot on here!
P.S. It might also be time again to tell Mann about McKitrick’s findings from last year..they provide good reason to doubt the attribution argument Mann is spinning here!
“One would think that the public relations fiasco that stuck climate science (and sullied the reputation of science in general) as a result of ClimateGate….”
On the contrary, Phil Jones etc. were innocent victims, their impeccable work and reputations attacked by malicious cyber terrorists determined to see the world burn.
If you don’t believe me, see the BBC dramatisation ‘The Trick’. The full thing may not be available currently, but there are enough clips floating around to get the gist!
We may know the truth, but as far as most of the rest of the world is concerned….
You really should have put a sarc tag on this. It’s not as obvious as you may have thought.
Good to see that some take notice of the “Streisand Effect”:
“Two other scientists quested by the AFP, Peter Cox and Richard Betts, both of the University of Exeter, explicitly opposed the idea of retraction. Cox noted that retraction could “lead to further publicity and could be presented as censorship.”
Perhaps Richard Betts has been wisely taking notice of the hornets nest stirred up in the UK by the Farage de-banking scandal. Only two Chief Executives of banks gone so far (Nat West and Coutts). Expect more heads to roll when Farage has finished with them.
Thinking ==> Cox is quite correct — it would and is leading to further publicity and bullying the journal into retracting it would be censorship. Score one for Cox.
Perhaps Richard Betts, involved as he is with the Hadley centre, is well aware how things can escalate and backfire quickly.
Media articles frequently use the word “scientists” as a source for their information. This is meaningless. Names must be attached to opinions and ideas. A similar situation exists with stories about corporate successes or failures. The unnamed “analysts” evidently predicted the quarterly results and the if the company reached them. Maybe the analysts themselves are failures. Their names are seldom given, their record never.
The man on the cul-de-sac doesn’t have any knowledge of the authors of scientific papers or the “peers” who review them and their qualifications. He’s relying on the media to give a truthful interpretation of the strengths and weaknesses of their arguments. That hasn’t happened. The media are partners with NGOs and government agencies that perpetuate climate fantasy. The majority of academia is in on the fraud. It’s possible that skeptics may have to witness the burning of dump trucks full of money in failed and imaginary solutions to a non-problem. The media will change its tune then.
Names should be attached to peer reviews as well, in my opinion. I always have my name put on the review.
Too many reviewers hide behind anonymity and they shouldn’t be able to.
(Yes I know I post anonymously, but its just on a blog and I have a day job!)
If you wish to be anonymous as a peer reviewer, there’s something not quite right about that – integrity in professional life must be sacrosanct
“…relying on the media to give a truthful interpretation…”
I loved the old TV show Mythbusters for the oft-repeated line “well there’s your problem”.
Anyone that believes the world MSM hasn’t been bought and controlled by the Marxists is naive. They accomplished it over a century and are using it to divide the world through fear.
All started with the Frankfurt School in 1923 – it’s been a long march through the institutions since
In the process proving: If you make a flimsy enough product then nobody will pay for it. MSM exists for gyms and airports and retirement homes.
There is I would say more than enough evidence from other field besides climate to conclude many of the journals are just captured corrupt gate keeping mechanisms. Except in the few instances when they do publish a small number of counter point positions.( A token at best, a evil straw man like tactic and manipulation at worse)
The most egregious example currently is the psychology and psychiatry journals and dogmatists official ( and legal!) standard of care that has found it’s way in to manuals for the profession. Think transgender surgery: 16 year old girl says “I think I’m a boy” Oh and I would like to inject massive amounts of testosterone and have all the breast tissue cut out of my body” Shrink : Well step right up young man!”The Doctor now ( at least in some places) must affirm the 16 year old position and desire for”treatment. “
Insanity. So now we have entire professions captured and neutered and rendered ineffective on every level.
In many places, they are declaring that even grade school children have a right to “gender affirming” care and they have a right to keep knowledge of this care from the parents.
A woman in California was recently fired from her job because she spoke up at a school board meeting and objected to such policies.
Here’s my most recent encounter with alarmists. There’s a Facebook group run by climate alarmists called “Climate Change – an open discussion”. My post with links to scientific evidence was banned. Yet one of them just posted a YouTube video: “URGENT APPEAL OF CLIMATE SCIENTIST TO MANKIND – with this blurb: “An hour ago, a scientist associated with CERN and intelligence service has addressed the humankind and the presidents of all countries!” https://www.facebook.com/groups/climatechangediscussion/posts/6658175660909280/ – who is a registered lobbyist with the White House
The alarmists’ new definition of science seems to what lobbyists tell them.
Once science becomes politicised, it’s corrupted and has zero value
Is Facebook MSM? The term “MSM” gets applied broadly and I have not settled on whether to read it literally as “mass media” or figuratively as “news sources from _that_ world view”. FB seems to meet all qualifications except a connotation of “old, associated with gravelly-voiced newscaster men in suits or associated with New York or Hollywood or the printing press”.
Kevin, I think Facebook can be considered MSM at this point. It’s been around a while now, and I would say it’s certainly “mainstream”.
Tony G ==> Facebook is SOCIAL MEDIA — the voices of many many people. The Facebook push features are algorithm controlled — partly by your interests and FB associations (likes, past clicks, etc). PUSH spreads “preferred viewpoints” the viewpoints preferred by the elites and FB owners/managers. So,yes FB is biased,but only in the algorithms and push features. What you or anyone else says, individual FB pages, are not MSM by any measure.
Full Disclosure — I do not use FB — I have a FB page that says “I do not use FB” — I do not read the FB pages of others. I have family members that use FB to stay in touch with one another — which I think is nice — but for me, FB has far too many downsides. I have a FB Fence (called Facebook Container) add-on in my browser to prevent FB from following my daily browsing…which it tries to do, even on non-FB ages….
This isn’t bullying. This is outright censorship fostered by attempted institutionalizing of right-thinking.
A pox on these people using coercive measures to bend their agenda into consensus science.
When does this behaviour become too much and publications like EPJP refuse to play the game.
I believe ^this^ has damaged any good name they may of had previously. Going forward I shall see their publication as something manipulated to foster an agenda and not peer reviewed science, no matter the conclusions of the papers submitted.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”.
J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Philip ==> The worst is that the larger organization, Springer Nature, is allowing one of its junior journals to be bullied and coerced into a retraction.
It would seem so but since if they are not providing the information is it not as possible that they had very good science related reasons?
How can one argue that the old ways were not best? A paper is published. There are major disagreements.
A paper explicitly stating the disagreements with the published paper is written and submitted to the publisher.
That paper is delivered to the original author(s) for analysis and comment, which are fully written up and sent back to the publisher.
Once both sides have said all they have to say, a paper containing both sides of the argument is published, referencing the original paper that is in controversy. Is that not the way scientific publishing was previously conducted, going back to the original Royal Society, unless obvious fraud was detected?
Andy ==> Pielke Jr.apparently has copies of most of the related documents forwarded by a whistleblower. “is it not as possible that they had very good science related reasons? Pielke indicates not.
Yes,the proper way to handle this would have been for the detractors to write and submit a paper presenting their counter-view.
Not only for the detractors to submit their arguments in detail but the original authors given a chance to answer those arguments in detail and both sides to be published in the same edition, if not as two parts of one article. We’ve all seen what was done with Lindzen’s cloud iris hypothesis paper and the several articles that have been self published, or submitted to blogs like WUWT because they could not access establishment publications. Some of those were so point by point decimating of their critics claims that the alarmists would have had nowhere to hide.
consensus isn’t science, it’s just opinion
From my own position the answer is a huge boiling yes looking at the decade we are living in.
To give a credible point of view by using the word “boiling” I have to take a step back to 2019. In 2019 a trending vitamin-D story was censorshipped by facebook: “When it had been shared on Facebook by about half a million people, it apparently kicked off a censorship alarm as being too popular to be allowed to have that many views” … “By mid-afternoon Friday we were alerted by some of our readers that they were being threatened by Facebook for “posting false claims” when they tried to share the story”.
In 2022, Melissa Fleming UN´s Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, said “We own the science” … “and we think that the world should know it”
As Richard Feynman once wrote, “Science is the Belief in the Ignorance of the Experts.
Forget following arrogant clowns defining themselves as “the science.”. MSM-science is historical speaking about power only a very little grain of the truth. The question is, how can we communicate this to “ordinary” people falling under the category which I will call “wikipedia-human-beings”..!!
…another commenter connecting Facebook and MSM. KH’s original post is about a journal’s publication process, but psychology and linguistics are on display. Darn it, I stuck with engineering because psychology and linguistics were so unscientific while at the same time so temptingly _almost_ scientific.
Science is dying and/or dead.
I think with one exception — materials science. When trying to come up with a new material with specific properties, the material either meets the requirements or it doesn’t. However, in a lot of fields, like climatology, astronomy, and even physics (think String Theory) researchers are able to speculate about what may happen so far in the future that they won’t even be alive when it is possible to evaluate the speculation. Thus, an important step in the Scientific Method is not being completed before publication.
There certainly is much fantasizing in what have been called the hard sciences, and considerably public moneys poured in some of those fantasies, but the big difference is where there is public policy constraining the lives of the general population.
Speculation in itself doesn’t seem destructive and creativity has to come from somewhere.
There are other exceptions. Imagine if all the string theory research money were redirected to electricity generation research? The words “too cheap to meter” were once famous.
Are we entering the “de-enlightenment”.
The age of un-reason?
Yes, driven by far left Marxist bilge, our only historical hope, is that the pendulum will swing to balance
We are in the middle of an age of human-written software. Parents frantically pushing math and science “STEM” studies onto their children while expecting the next generation to keep the same worldview as the last might be surprised.
Not in my world
The censors and and global tyrant types move at lightning speed. While the honest scientific minority , conscientious, ,astute careful and fair moves at a turtles pace. And the sheep wake up at the slowest of pace too and by that time it is almost to late.
It is a real problem. An age old problem. What to do about it?
As Churchill said “when you’re going through hell, keep going”
Story tip:
Is It Time to Ban Electric Vehicles?
The New York Fire Department recently reported that so far this year there have been 108 lithium-ion battery fires in New York City, which have injured 66 people and killed 13. According to FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh, “There is not a small amount of fire, it (the vehicle) literally explodes.” The resulting fire is “very difficult to extinguish and so it is particularly dangerous.”
Last year there were more than 200 fires from batteries from e-bikes, EVs, and other devices.
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/it-time-ban-electric-vehicles
Every fire is a nail in the nut zero con – we can only hope the collateral damage is just things, not people
I’m not an advocate of EVs and I do value individual lives but 66 injured people per year is way below noise level in NYC. By some measures carrot peelers will be more dangerous.
ClimateGate has been memory holed.
The vast majority of the population has never heard of it.
Of those who have heard of it, they have bought into the lie that it was a small number of stolen e-mails taken out of context.
When you own the media, you own the past.
That was a big part of George Orwell’s futurist nightmare “1984” with its sinister government ministry Minitruth. And by controlling media you control language and can make certain kinds of thought impossible or outlawed. That was the point of Minispeak.
Then it is incumbent on we realists to continue to correct the record
We are rapidly reaching the point where the so called journals are useless. If we haven’t already.
Once they demonstrate that they can be intimidated and are willing to let outside agitators control what is and isn’t published, then the time has come to find other means of publishing.
I’ve stated it before and I still believe it.
Sites like WUWT provide much better and more thorough reviews of papers, than do any of the old fashioned paper journals.
The whole point of reviewers is to help maintain the reputation of lucrative businesses. They cannot afford the appearance of publishing unreliable research. Therefore, they are vulnerable to outside pressure. When other researchers depend on the existing paradigms for their status and salaries, they have a vested interest in using any means at their disposal to suppress anything that threatens their reputation. Hence, we can expect those like Mann to continue their anti-science behavior.
I agree that when people with expertise are prepared to expose their support and criticism at this site it is excellent. Debates can be of high quality. Sometimes lower quality input can be a distraction, but that comes with free speech.
Much useful information is often provide in comments to the articles but, quite often, a great deal of useless claims and diversions are also mixed in, making for difficult plowing. Of course, some of articles are just dead wrong, so comments that expose that are important.
I’d rather sift through posts that I consider worthless, than have someone else decide for me which posts are worthy of my time and which aren’t.
“If we haven’t already.“
Personally, I would never entertain a publisher that acted in such a biased and unscientific protocol way
When one is dealing with a topic that is still under scientific analysis, like climate change, then all reports should be considered equally valid for unbiased peer review and publish – readers can then assess it themselves
Climate alarmism is based on a minority consensus, opinions, nothing more
The science is far from settled, either way
No one ever questions Newtons Laws of Motion, because they were proven, empirically, by multiple, independent assessors, to be 100% fact
Climate science is such a dynamic, multi input topic, that it needs true unbiased, empirical rigour in its evaluation, by all scientists working together, to sort, with absolutely zero political or business interests contaminating the observations and data
Modelling is itself so infantile at present, working with many unknown quantities, that it should be constrained to verification of laboratory or in the field results only, until it is competent enough to be used in assessment
The alarmist mantra of simply shutting down opposing views is akin to the medieval witch trials, which were based on bias and religion, rather than common sense and scientific rigour
The problem is not with climate modeling itself but in mixing it with politicians and political activists. Modeling of complex situations can be a useful way of getting a handle on a problem, even when the modeling is incomplete because understand of the the topic is incomplete.
______________________________________________________________________
YET? It’s been over 40 years, 50 if you count the “Global Cooling” non-sense.
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“The right response to the non-problem of global warming is
to have the courage to do nothing.” Christopher Monckton
Steve ==> They can say “yet” — at least it is true. It has been widely “projected”, but has not happened — yet. They are, of course, speaking of the aspects of climate change being currently touted and which they investigate.
And “Any good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.”
Steve ==> Better not with MY ham sandwich, I’m eating it as I type here.
There is a possibility that sometime in the future, either the impact of CO2 will become large enough, or our instruments discerning enough that the signature of global warming will be detected.
However, it is equally obvious that any “impact” that takes 50 to 100 years in order to become large enough to be detectable, will never be a danger to anyone or anything.
One would think that the public relations fiasco that stuck climate science (and sullied the reputation of science in general) as a result of ClimateGate back in 2009 would restrain climate scientists from attempting to suppress published peer-reviewed studies that they “don’t like” or the conclusions of which are “not helpful” to their climate crisis advocacy positions.
Why would one think that Kip? Do you think that they really care about integrity or science?
There were no real consequences for that they did. They view those that disagree or dispute their claims as enemies and their funding apparently did not suffer. Nothing damaging or punitive was done to them and the only way one gets through to those without consciences or who do not value integrity is by causing them pain or damage personally or professionally in some way.
rah ==> always hoping for a better outcome.
Somewhat like FBI snipers who shoot inconvenient people and are then rewarded with promotions.
“There were no real consequences for that they did.“
Reminds of the early days when Mann was suing those who disagreed with him.
(and fighting tooth and nail to hide his emails and data)
Bullying is violence, and violence and leftism go hand-in-hand.
“Without violence nothing is ever accomplished in history.” – Karl Marx
Sorry but bullying is cowardice – it’s very definition implies an unequal ‘ganging up’ on an inferior target, one who is unwilling or unable to fight back or who is simply overwhelmed by such an attack.
Not “inferior”… just 6 or 7 to two…
If anyone is the “inferior” in this, it is Mickey Mann. (and his cohorts)
They cannot allow rational scientific discussion… very sad and pathetic.
Poor choice of words then; I meant in the context of outnumbered or overwhelmed, not inferring a lack of quality.