244 thoughts on “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up!”

1. You Can’t Make This Stuff Up! As a topic ? Umhh. let me try that next. Of course my home is a reference site, so I expect search traffic. I haven’t done an analysis of which searches provide the biggest hits, so maybe that will be next. After I use the above… Oops, I just did by linking to you.

2. In the same vein, if you Google global warming is or climate change is , with a space after “is”, you get:

   global warming is:
   fake
   a myth
   not real
   a hoax
   real
   natural
   false
   a lie
   not true

   climate change is:
   natural
   real
   not real
   a myth
   not happening
   a hoax
   fake
   it real
   bull$$$$ (I changed it for sensitive eyes)
   not man made

   As the suggestions in Google are ranked by the number of hits, it would suggest that both warming and climate change are not credible to the vast majority of people doing searches using these terms.

   My apologies to whomever first suggested this. I have forgotten who or where.

3. CoRev–
   Hmmm… I wonder if your linking me will bring me more or less search traffic on that term? On the one hand, Google will take that as a vote that my blog is “about” that. On the other hand…. competition.

   I’ll have to watch my referrers.

4. 1. I have read that it is better to have blog post titles that are clear descriptors of the content rather than being cute. Both that this helps search traffic. And that readers prefer the clearness (like headlines in a newspaper). I did a bunch of reading on the “how to set up and run a blog” topic. (Sorry am too lazy to hunt down, the refs, but they were towards the top of a google search on the general topic of how to set up a blog.) I realize that your individual example argues the opposite, but would caution to also look at a wider sample. Also, fwiw, I find the excessively cute headlines at CA annoy me both in tone as well as inscrutability. I’m sure they give the amen choir some self-stroking though.

   2. Watts has certainly grown as a blog. I think some of that is real traffic, and some is social engineering games.

   3. Agreed on commenting policy.

   4. Frequent updates is also a driver. One where RC falls down quite a bit.

5. TCO–
   1) Better is a value judgment. But, by most reasonable measures of “good” it is better to have relevant titles. But, oddly, if all you want is lots of traffic to report to advertisers, odd irrelevant words and bizarre titles help.

   Otherwise: having irrelevant titles isn’t “good”, even with search. Those 10 people who might arrive here based on that title will probably not stay to read the post! So, other than getting a “hit”, I accomplish little. As you note: it doesn’t help to have people who read react “Huh” once they get into the article.

   2. Why do you think Anthony is social engineering? (Oddly, I’ve intentionally avoided that with this blog.)

   3. I think RC in particular shoots themselves in the foot with their comment policy. VC manages to handle totally vitriolic commenters just fine. Hey. Orin handles you! 🙂

   4. Yes. Frequent updates is a driver. Desmogblog seems fine in that area. But…. the posts are boring. Well, unless you really, really, really, really want to learn who won what climate prize this week. Does anyone subscribe to blogs for that?

   Tetris says that blog is funded by someone. Maybe that’s the reason it’s boring!

6. TCO–
   I have “real” papers, just not on climate. (Example: old paper.)

   I jumped into this as a hobby about 15 months ago. If and when I identify something that I think needs to be archived, I will write it up and submit. However, as you note, it can take a bit of time. Rest assured that your comments, and/or concern for your opinion or preferences do not affect any decision I make in this regard. But… if you want to express it without vulgarity, that’s ok too.

   I don’t know if people ought to do google searches to see what people have written. Certainly, if I were in the publish or perish racket, I would probably not bother. The reason is that it’s unlikely any reviewer would expect it. So, I am entirely aware that blogging about a result will (mostly) remain outside the academic sphere. (That is, unless it short circuits the path to notoriety.)

   As for papers in general: I think, on the whole, too many journal articles are published. The world would benefit if the total number of journal articles dropped to 10% the current level, and more stuff appeared in informal fora.

   But that’s just me.

7. Global Warming + sex gets 5,670,000 hits. Climate Change + sex gets 6,040,000. Not sure what this means, either 🙂

8. If I was cynical, I would suggest that adding “sex” to the terms global warming or climate change, indicates the likelihood of the public thinking its about to get #@!$^ed.

9. jae–

   Was that a general search, or a blog search? Out of curiosity, I searched things like “global warming” and “squirrels”. The number of blog hits roughly doubled over time too. I’m not sure what it means either.

   I found this published in 2007 Grey squirrels – a cause of global warming.

   I think this theory needs further investigation.

10. Lucia:

    The process of driving something to real publication makes the author think about his topic more thoughtfully (than a blog post). Also it is easier for others to engage with the ideas if they are presented with more clarity and thoroughness and in an archived fashion. This should not prevent salon-like discussion of the ideas. Heck, that can still proceed. And will actually benefit from having better source material in the form of the publication.

    —————————

    I once took a seminar class taught by a half-famous historian (wrote books and such). It was one of the few real “seminar” classes I ever took: small and selective, sat around the circular table and debated the topics.
    The topic would be some period or event of American foreign policy (e.g. the Monroe Doctrine or the Open Door Policy,) with 2-3 essays on that area from different schools of thought (Wilsonian, realist, revisionist, etc.)

    The class met every Tuesday and Thursday for 1.5 hours. On Tuesdays, we had to submit a typed 2-page paper that compared and contrasted the essays and argued which ones were right on which aspects. The papers WERE LIMITED to 2 pages (no more than) and were very harshly graded on all aspects of logic, structure and presentation. (At the end of this class, I had made a major jump in my ability to abstract the ideas from the texts and present them efficiently.)

    The discussions were invariably a joy and were some of the most thought provoking and stimulating I ever encountered. Like having the Volokhs stuck at your house in a snow storm, maybe. Anyhow, someone at one time pointed out how much BETTER our discussions were on Tuesdays than on Thursdays. And once it was pointed out, I really noticed it. We were way stronger at discussing things AFTER we had been forced to write about them. I think it is common sense, that the act of the writing had forced us to learn the material better. And that this was reflected in the stronger discussion.

    ——————————

    So replacing high quality write-ups, with worse quality informal discussions is not a good idea. Instead you should still do the good quality write ups, but have discussions in addition. These discussions themselves will be more productive as a benefit of the publication process.

11. TCO–
    No one has advocated blogs replacing formal publication as ideal.

    You describe the method my highschool english teacher used. We were required to read a book outside class, submit a short essay on a topic. Then we discussed the book. Then we had a longer one.

    We never did it any other way in that class, so I can’t compare and contrast. She was a good teacher; everyone liked her.

    With regard to professional publications, most researcher discuss things informally first, then proceed to conference publications, then journal publication. If it’s particularly impactful, they will continue to discuss the article. So, blog posts could be equally useful before or afterwards.

    If you, nearly anonymous TCO would prefer things in different orders etc., or think it might be better otherwise, you are free to say so. Your ideas are rather banal; repeating them doesn’t elevate them.

    In anycase, even if what you discussed was brilliant both in concept and implementation, you are mostly succeeding in interrupting normal ongoing conversations to make very one ride your own hobby horse. So, no matter how you try to justify all this to yourself, you tend to degrade the level of conversation where ever you go.

    Those who wish to publish will. Those who don’t won’t. Those who wish to think out loud before publication will do so. Those who want to think out loud only after publication will do that. (And I suppose you will continue with your little lectures, which mostly everyone will ignore. I plan to do so for a bit now. 🙂 )

12. 1) But, oddly, if all you want is lots of traffic to report to advertisers, odd irrelevant words and bizarre titles help.

    INTERESTING. GRACIAS.

    2. Why do you think Anthony is social engineering? (Oddly, I’ve intentionally avoided that with this blog.)

    SOMEONE SAID THAT HE WAS DOING SO (WITH POLLS AND SUCH) AND HE GIVES ME THE IMPRESSION OF KNOWING HOW TO DO SO. BTW, I FULLY ADMIT MY IMPRESSION IS VERY SKETCHY.

    3. I think RC in particular shoots themselves in the foot with their comment policy. VC manages to handle totally vitriolic commenters just fine. Hey. Orin handles you!

    YES. RC COULD ACTUALLY HAVE A MUCH LARGER FOLLOWING WITH LOOSER COMMENT POLICY (MORE “COMMUNITY”) AS WELL AS MORE POSTS. THAT PLACE IS MORE TALKING TO OR EVEN DOWN THAN TALKING WITH. (BTW, THERE IS THIS WIERD DYNAMIC OF BLOGS WHERE THEY HAVE SOME ASPECTS OF A FORUM.)

    VC ACTUALLY DOES NOT GET THAT MANY MISCREANTS.

    I REALLY THOUGHT THAT MISBEHAVING WITHIN THE MISBEHAVING THREAD WAS ARTISTICALLY “PRETTY”…BUT YOU WERE ONE OF THE FEW WHO APPRECIATED IT.

    btw, THE REDACTED COMMENT WAS THE ONE PRETTY WEDGE ISSUE I’VE FOUND THERE THAT HAD TRACTION (DRAGGING LINDGREN THROUGH THE MUD FOR HIS HACKISHNESS AND GETTING THE COMMUNITY TO RIP HIM.) OK REFUSES TO JOIN IN BECAUSE OF SOLIDARITY AND GENTLEMANLINESS…BUT I WILL BAYESIAN BET THAT HE AGREES WITH ME.

    4. (NO COMMENTS)

13. Lucia:

    a. “The world would benefit if the total number of journal articles dropped to 10% the current level, and more stuff appeared in informal fora.”

    b. “No one has advocated blogs replacing formal publication as ideal.”

    ——————————

    1. Please clarify what you mean with (a) and how it fits with (b). On a simple level, it sounded like (a) was advocating the issue of (b). I’m not saying that you can’t fit the two together. Instead, I need to understand how you do, so that I can understand exactly WHAT your point of view is and then engage with that. Gracias.

    2. Pedantic point on the “no one”. Certainly some people (John A for instance) have advocating (b). If you are saying you haven’t….or noone on this thread has, that’s fine. But in fact, it’s a common point of view to hear within the climatoblogosphere.

14. TCO

    Please clarify what you mean with (a) and how it fits with (b). On a simple level, it sounded like (a) was advocating the issue of (b).

    Observation (a) is something I believed long before blogs sprung up. There are many, many minimum publishable units in journals, and a fragmented junk organized to created the maximum number of articles so as to impress the dean. Huge number of journals have sprung into being since the ’50s, and even high quality journals spun off other lower quality sister journals. Libraries don’t even subscribe to the overwhelming majority of journals.

    Worse, in some fields, we seem to see lots of journal articles where the public would better benefit from laboratory reports. NASA, NCAR etc. all can publish the longer more cohesive lab reports– just as ORNL, ANL, PNNL,NIST etc. do. But in climate science, we see the modelers splinter up the results from a particular run into a bunch of fragmentary journal articles and never write the decent laboratory report type publications that we expect in other fields.

    So, yes, I think it would be better if the total number of journal articles diminished. Blogs don’t replace formal publication. Journal articles are neither the only nor the pinnacle of formal publication.

    Has John A suggested eliminating any and all formal publication? Where?

15. Lucia:

    I do derail conversations and ride hobby horses.

16. Pingback: Four newly discovered causes of global warming: | The Blackboard

17. You have missed the RC actual web readers by an order of magnitude.

    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/cnn-is-spun-right-round-baby-right-round/langswitch_lang/it#comment-109590

    They are almost 5 times wattsupwiththat

18. neparlepas–
    I’m not the one who counts, it’s various agencies. Alexa and Compete are accesible at no cost, so I look at them when comparing how a blog is doing.

    Compete undercounts for all blogs and sites; generally, the fraction of undercount is comparable for blogs or sites with similar topics.

    So, the number for WUWT are probably also undercounts, as are their tallies for me.

    For reference:

    The compete graph tries to report the number of unique visitors a month. If you visit RC every day, you count as 1 unique reader in a month, not 30 visits. These agencies try to report loads of stuff– much of it very approximately. But confusing one metric for another can be a cause of confusion. For example, yesterday, my blog had 3103 visits– but Compete suggests I get 3846 unique visits a month. Both may be true because number of visits a day summed over a month is not the same as number of unique visitors a month. (I could check my monthly stats, but quite honestly, I never do.)

19. Lucia: “Has John A suggested eliminating any and all formal publication?”

    Me: I don’t know.

20. Segue:

    “I’m getting the 10 minute edit thingie”. Am I put on troll patrol? Some general thingie for all? Or something else?

    I hope this is not reprisal for disagreeing with you. I haven’t even said anything about Wal Mart Red Heart buyers or my desire to cross-breed into the Palin clan. Oooops! Darn, backspace key not working! Must enter!

21. TCO–
    Ok… then what the heck did you mean by

    Certainly some people (John A for instance) have advocating (b)

    I’m unware of John A advocating (b), which was “blogs replacing formal publication as ideal.” Of course he may have. But doing (b) would mean replacing formal publication. As far as I am aware, no one has advocated that.

22. Lucia:

    There is actually a lot of cool stuff in or neighboring your 1517 post. I want to engage with it, given how interesting the topics are…although I also feel that it’s almost nescessary to pin you down to advance a conversation. Otherwise, we get the whole “I never said THAT”. Anyhoo… (next post)

23. Everyone gets the 10 minute edit thingie. You can edit typos inside the 10 minute window.

    When you are on troll patrol, you will know it. I have modified it so that you will be able to read the post, but unable to read or post comments.

    I bought more Red Heart yesterday. I had too pay $2.59 a skein at Michaels because Wallmart ran out of the color I needed. It’s cold outside. Sarah Palin will surely avoid you for fear your DNA would lower the IQ level of her household.

24. But I Looooooove Sarah! I could get her to love me. I could, I could, I could.

25. Lucia (1621): You shifted the goal posts with the ‘any and all’. Partial replacement is possible. Plus I just wanted to play your little game (despite, how I hate hate hate it) so you see what it’s like. Do you capisce? May we now declare warm hearted slipper wearing Palin lust…er loving friends and actually discuss some issues? [I want to get into the meat of the LPU topic albiet having reserve gamesmanship (look up the book) reserved on the John A topic.]

26. Lucia:

    I kinda wondered where you were driving with the ‘sorta anonymouse TCO’ remark? Was that a veiled threat to reveal my shenigans to employers? To hurt me personally? To still my criticism? To still my gamesmanship?

    Or is that just a way of alluding to the use of a consistent pseudonym (web persona) versus “anonymous”

27. Here is something cool from the Cargo Science article (and in case you doubt that I big time heart Feynman, I done my time on the mesa, behind double fence and even chatted up Teller)*:

    “One example of the principle is this: If you’ve made up your mind
    to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should
    always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only
    publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look
    good. We must publish both kinds of results.”

    NOW ask yourself!? How often does the deniosphere publish failed attempts to find a problem? How often does it show the end results of initial promising kerfuffles that didn’t pan out? At least some of the time, we should be seeing these? If the issue is real investigation as opposed to PR. Oh…and WHERE IS THE CHEFEN WORK where he said I was full of shit for questioning him and not knowing fancy math and then I was proven right in a leading question (just like with Tamino and Jolliffe). (please ignore the personal nature of the meanders…people…please) And then also Chefen claimed something wrong that he was going to pin down…and it didn’t work out…and now his blog is down! Gone. Non-archived.

    Grrr.

    Jesus wept. (shortest verse in the Bible).

    *I’m drinking. Forgive meandering parantheses. I recognize their wrongness and would excise in an article.

28. Seems to me that blogs have their role, perhaps largely unrealised yet. However, an author brave enough to expose his paper to open scrutiny on a blog that attracts informed readers will surely benefit from that process, and the quality of work will be better assured. Think of it as a better form of peer review. I thought that I had seen some of that on CA, for example in relation to Craig Loehle’s paper, and I look forward to seeing more of it.

    We have also seen it on David Stockwell’s blog where Ferenc Miskolszi’s work seems to get a pretty good work out, with Ferenc participating in the discussion.

    Further, blogs can draw our attention to interesting papers that we might not otherwise have seen.

    An interesting aspect of this is whether an author who exposes his paper to open discussion then re-writes his paper taking on board the comments and discussions with Version 2.

    We have seen the Climate of the Past open comment process, which I followed closely in relation to the Juckes paper, but haven’t kept in touch with since – my impression in that case is that the author chose to ignore a fair bit of the constructive comment, but at least that is evident in the open process.

    Surely all of this is far better than the situation where a scientist prepares a paper that preaches to his own choir, is ‘peer reviewed’ by sympathetic “co-believers” and is published in a journal that fails to uphold its own policies, for example in relation to data archiving.

29. TCO–

    I didn’t shift goal posts. I asked a question. I have no idea what you are suggesting about JohnA’s suggestions about formal publication so I asked.

    Please avoid discussing Palin or your lust in general.

    I was not threatening to reveal you to your employer. I am “alluding to the use of a consistent pseudonym (web persona) versus “anonymous””

30. TCO (Comment#8863)

    And when do the Carbonistas publish results that don’t agree with their dogma? Of course they do, but it’s always couched in terms of just weather noise or adjusted by a new and “robust” statistical method.

31. Lucia:

    1. I will not say any more about how much I heart, heart, heart you know who.

    2. Thank you for the non-threat.

    3. Ok…well you asked a question and I gave an answer. If you want, I will become robotic about Q&A. Or we can actually engage. ;-0

32. BarryW: I am concerned about the level of fairness of the carbonistas. I think you are right to watch out for selective publication from them.

33. TCO

    *I’m drinking. Forgive meandering parantheses. I recognize their wrongness and would excise in an article.

    At 4:49pm central time? Must be a quick drive home.

34. I’m on the East Coast. And I’m in a small city. And I’m at a bar. you want a date?

35. Oh…and we are still going to get into it on the LPU stuff. remember Jack London’s White Fang? With the bull dog chomping on the neck and moving forward? Or when Bigwig took on Woundwort? eye of the tiger…babie:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PhvT5PQszk&eurl=http://perfectionispossible.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/performances-worth-remembering/

36. TCO– I have a date with my husband.

    If you need a date, sign up for this:

    

37. Yer acting like a gurl now.

38. TCO–If you aren’t rich enough to attract women with that dating service, try this:
    

39. BarryW–
    Some bloggers got awfully upset with Schwartz when he published his paper with the result of an analysis saying the earth’s sensitivity might be low.

    The vitriol seemed disproportionate if their only objection was they thought the analysis was imperfect.

40. mondo–
    I agree with you that blogs are excellent places for readers to discuss papers. Dave Stockwell and Steve both do good jobs leading these discussions.

    For these discussions to flourish, comments must be lightly moderated, and some degree of politeness must be enfored.

41. I was thinking Filipinas would be a good match.

42. The trouble with peer review is human nature.

    If a human sees a paper with conclusions that he/she disagrees with he/she will go over that paper with a fine toothed comb and try to find any excuse to reject the paper.

    If a human sees a paper with conclusions that he/she disagrees with he/she will not look as carefully at the paper and will likely miss any problems.

    This is true of all fields and not just climate science. However, the problem is worse in climate science because a significant number of climate scientists seem to think that publishing true facts is wrong if these facts can be used by the “enemy” to delay political action.

    What this means is writing papers for peer review is riskier proposition for most climate sceptics because it takes a lot of work and there is a good chance that it will be rejected on a technicality. I can understand why people like Steve Mc would rather spend their time blogging.

    Blogs are not perfect but they are the only option for getting alternate viewpoints out there. People who reject work on blogs simply because it is not ‘peer reviewed’ are simply trying to find excuses to avoid looking at ideas which upset their preconceptions.

43. Raven: And yet, not only do papers supporting the skeptical position get published (such as Schwartz) but even poor skeptical papers with glaring errors (like Douglass et al.) get published…And, in fact, McIntyre himself has gotten published. How do you explain this? I actually think there are a number of competing effects. Sure, there are some scientists who will put skeptical papers through the ringer; however, there are others who might actually give them a break because they bend over backwards and practice a little “affirmative action” thinking, “What could it hurt to have this opposing viewpoint put out into the literature even if it does turn out to be wrong?”

44. And, Spencer and Christy seem to get a fair bit published too.

45. McI writes MISERABLE drafts. Not as skeptic versus alarmist. But just as writer versus effed in the head moron. I mean he needs some Strunk and White jammed up the hoo hole and lit on fire.

46. Joel,

    I did not say it was impossible to get a sceptical paper published.

    I just said there was a much higher risk of rejection which means people who don’t need to publish for the sake of their careers (i.e. Steve Mc) will find it hard to justify the effort required.

    As far Douglass goes – I don’t agree there is an ‘glaring’ error. I think there is a legimate debate about how best to determine the confidence intervals for models. The method favoured by the modellers (i.e. include runs from 20 different models with different paramaterizations) is as bogus as anything Douglass and co came up with yet that method is given the rubber stamp by reviewers.

    In any case, the limitations of the peer review process and the humans running it mean that you cannot pass judgement on merit of the skeptical case by simply counting the number of peer reviewed papers. Nor can you presume that a skeptical argument has no merit because it was not submitted for peer review.

47. TCO, re #8878

    When I was young, living in a remote wild part of the Australian North, where attractive girls (or any non-attached girls for that matter) were few and far between, some of the lonely guys would go to the Philippines to find a “Filipina” as you put it. This is probably snippable as both sexist and rascist (though neither is certainly my intention), but FYI, the term that was used at that time, and in that context was “Manilla Thriller”, as in, “Old Joe has gone to get himself a Manilla Thriller”.

    Re your #8884, in our culture there is a recognised term for that – “Fith” – which is used in the same way you used it, although amusingly we heard a bloke needing a hip replacement using a modification of the term to describe his ailment.

    Lucia, please snip as you see fit.

48. lucia (Comment#8876)

    Not sure what you’re implying. I looked at the preprint of the paper I think you’re referring to and he bends over backwards to imply that he is still a believer. Even hinting at heretical positions puts you in line for the inquisitor general in believers minds.

    I’m waiting for the reincarnation of Galileo to write the climate equivalent of Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems . Gore can be the Simplicio character. I know I’m just being nasty, but no I’m not a denier, I just don’t buy the apocalyptic rhetoric.

49. BarryW–
    I’m sure Schwartz believes CO2 causes warming. But his paper came out with a very low sensitivity. The number seemed to make some people froth at the mouth.

    Mondo– How can I complain? I put the ads in to taunt poor dateless TCO.

50. Raven,

    Re Douglass: There may be some debate about the details of exactly what is best to do but Douglass’s way is clearly wrong. First of all, it well-understood that if you run a single model several times with perturbed initial conditions, then what you are going to get is an average over the “noise”, things like ENSO, whereas in the real world we are following one particular realization and are not averaging over these fluctuations.

    Second of all, it is a fairly simple exercise to look at, say, the equilibrium climate sensitivity in the various IPCC models (AR4 even has a handy chart of this) and compare the standard deviation and standard error of these values and then to compare them to the IPCC statement regarding climate sensitivity as “likely” (between 67 and 90% chance) being between 2 and 4.5 C. What you find is that if the IPCC really believed that the standard error was the correct measure to use, then they would have no business giving such a large range of likely values; it is only by assuming the standard deviation (and even then, by assuming the IPCC statement is at the 90% confidence end rather than the 67% confidence end) that one can possibly justify such a large range of likely equilibrium climate sensitivity values. [Admittedly, the IPCC didn’t make that statement simply on the basis of model results…In fact, they relied more on studies that looked at empirical data. But, the point still holds that the Douglass criterion is essentially holding the models to a much much higher standard than the IPCC is implying they are believable to, which makes their point pretty silly. Basically, what they are saying is that the models are not believable to a standard that nobody believes them to anyway.]

    I agree with you that one can’t just count peer reviewed papers or even ignore completely non-peer-reviewed arguments in judging the skeptical case. However, for those of us who have actually looked at many of the arguments made in the blogosphere by the skeptics, it is not like we are finding a lot of brilliant work that is not seeing its way to publication. Of course, your views may be different…which is one of the reasons for setting up peer review as at least some sort of standard. In reality, there is no absolutely objective way to evaluate anything. However, there are systems that science has set up and found to be very useful for its advancement and peer review is one of them.

51. Joel wrote: “In reality, there is no absolutely objective way to evaluate anything.”

    In fact, the only way to evaluate something in science is by comparing the idea to reproducible experiment. Period.

    Peer review is simply the printing press to generate the currency which buys tenure. Inflation has long been battering that particular currency.

    Supporters of AGW are fond of comparing skeptics to flat earthers or by raising evolution without noticing that those scientific theories have an enormous body of reproducible experiments that support them. The fact that there seems to be so much at stake in micro-analyzing a model or using FOIA to get this or that lump of data is a clear indication that experimental verification is not close.

    Lucia’s statement that 90% if what is published is dispensable strikes me as an underestimate (and I’m not talking about just climate publications). There’s a joke that I think has been around since the 70s. It’s weak but telling:

    If you take all the published articles and make a stack of them as they are published, the top of that stack would be moving faster than the speed of light. But this is a violation of special relativity, for nothing can move faster than the speed of light. The resolution: The top of that stack is carrying no information.

52. Joel,

    “However, for those of us who have actually looked at many of the arguments made in the blogosphere by the skeptics, it is not like we are finding a lot of brilliant work that is not seeing its way to publication”

    Climate science is 10% data and 90% unverifiable opinion based on statistical analyses. In most cases what the skeptics are saying is not revolutionary (i.e. they are not showing that the basic physics of GHGs is completely wrong) – they are simply pointing out that the data does not really support the opinions of the alarmists whether this opinion is on the uniqueness of the current warming period or the reliaility of the climate models.

    Now Douglass may have bozoed their analysis by choosing the wrong statistical metric, however, that is not what is important about their work. The most important thing was their attempt to come up with a way to exclude models that are clearly wrong when it comes to testing model validity. Now removing models that did not match surface temps when checking the match with the tropospheric temps may not be the best approach but it is a lot more credible than the “toss-all-the-garbage-in” approach used by the alarmists – an approach that will invariably make the confidence intervals larger than they should be.

53. Joe Triscari says:

    Peer review is simply the printing press to generate the currency which buys tenure. Inflation has long been battering that particular currency.

    Actually, I think most scientists would think the climate science field represents a good example of the usefulness of peer review. It doesn’t keep out all the bad stuff but it certainly improves the signal to noise ratio from what you find out on the web / blogosphere.

    Supporters of AGW are fond of comparing skeptics to flat earthers or by raising evolution without noticing that those scientific theories have an enormous body of reproducible experiments that support them.

    I always love statements like this. They basically amount to saying, “It is different because I think there is good evidence for evolution while there is not for AGW.” Well, sorry to break the news to you, but those who are “skeptics” of evolution do not agree with the first part of that statement (including, by the way, climate skeptic Roy Spencer: http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=080805I ) and the larger scientific community that accepts both evolution and AGW as reasonably well-established science doesn’t agree with the second part.

    There’s a joke that I think has been around since the 70s. It’s weak but telling:

    If you take all the published articles and make a stack of them as they are published, the top of that stack would be moving faster than the speed of light. But this is a violation of special relativity, for nothing can move faster than the speed of light. The resolution: The top of that stack is carrying no information.

    Just to give credit where credit is due, I believe that this joke is from physicist N David Mermin. He actually made an “estimate” of when this would occur based on the stacking a year’s worth of the Physical Review journals sampled each decade (e.g., 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980) and noting that the height of the stack roughly doubled every decade. It wasn’t hard to then compute, if this doubling continued, how long it would take before the stack was expanding faster than the speed of light…which is about 500 years in the future.

54. Imagine how much more traffic sites like Real Climate and Climate Audit could get if they addressed other controversial issues like afghan design and haikus! 🙂

55. Joel– Is the stack height only doubling now? What if don’t limit ourselves to Phys Rev, but add in all the new journals?

    I agree that peer review serves a purpose. It also has it’s shortcomings. Is the shortcomings any worse in climate science that other fields? I don’t know.

    If we are going to discuss evolution in a thread about an analysis of search results for “global warming” and “hoax”, I think we need to include an image of an incarnation of the creator. This will increase the number of google search returns for “global warming” “FSM” or “Flying Spaghetti Monster”.

    As many are aware, the pirate theory of global warming is a belief held by Pastafarians. Their evidence is empirical.

56. Climate science is 10% data and 90% unverifiable opinion based on statistical analyses.

    I almost choked on my Dr. Pepper. lol

57. Joel Shore says:

    “Actually, I think most scientists would think the climate science field represents a good example of the usefulness of peer review. It doesn’t keep out all the bad stuff but it certainly improves the signal to noise ratio from what you find out on the web / blogosphere.”

    Peer review in climate science makes the situation worse because it is used as a propoganda tool by those would wish to suppress discussion of skeptical views (i.e. too many people refuse to look at any argument unless it is in the ‘correct’ peer reviewed jounrnals). The only people who think it reduces the signal/noise ratio are alarmists who like the pro AGW bias.

    A good comparison is attitudes to NPR/FoxNews. People will describe either news source a balanced/biased depending on their POV. Same with peer review. The fact that only AGW supporters believe the peer review process is working is evidence of the bias in the peer review process.

    There is no other field where practicing scientists support the suppression of certain viewpoints, even if they agree with them, because they are worried about undermining a political agenda.

    There is no other field where practicing scientists support the use of exagarration and outright lies (e.g. AIT) in order to promote a certain political agenda.

    The denigration of skeptics as flat earthers or creationists is simply a symptom of the deep intellectual rot within the climate science community. Creationism/intelligent design is not science beause it is not possible to measure/quantify/predict the nature of divine intervention. This makes creationism useless as a scientific theory – even is if was actually true. IOW, creationism seeks to limit scientific investigation because we already know “god-did-it” so there is no need to investigate further. AGW seeks to limit scientific investigation because we already know “humans-did-it” so there is no need to investigate further. i.e. creationism and AGW (as currently expressed by the climate science community) have more in common than creationism and AGW skepticism.

    Climate scepticism is about acknowledging the limits of our knowledge and recognizing that we may not be able to justify trillion dollar economic investments given the knowledge we have now. When it comes to making these kinds of investments it is not enough to argue that X% of scientists believe in a certain hypotheses – it is necessary to demonstrate beyong all reasonable doubt to people who are not scientists that the hypothesis has predictive power. Climate science is not doing that. Instead, climate scientists think they can bully skeptical non-scientists into accepting their claims as fact when they are not.

58. Well, the counts in at my site. 2 referrals from your site and 4 out clicks from mine to yours. Sigh, next I’ll have to look through the searches to see if the ?key words? were used.

59. DougW–

    magine how much more traffic sites like Real Climate and Climate Audit could get if they addressed other controversial issues like afghan design and haikus!

    This comment motivated me to set up google analytics! Previously, I only used wordpress blogstats and Izea Real Rank. Both are fun to look at but hardly detailed. (Yesterday, the search term that brought me the most traffic was…. “Lucia Liljegren”. Of those blogs that use Izea Ranks, I evidently ranked #202 last week. Note: Only a small fraction of blogs use this.

    I could explain about these a bit more. Eventually, I will be able to tell you whether the afghan or haiku post get many hits. (Even if they don’t, I suspect including occasional open threads and having non-climate related posts do bring in traffic. People like to talk, and some don’t want to post a comment on the viscous dissipation thread! )

60. CoRev:
    According to WP Blogstats,these searches brought people here:

    Search Views
    lucia blackboard 13 More stats
    uah temperature 4 More stats
    rankexploits 3 More stats
    model projections “ocean heat content” 2 More stats
    global warming 2 More stats
    causes of global warming 2 More stats
    lucia liljegren 2 More stats
    “copenhagen consensus” 2004 2 More stats
    lucia the blackboar 2 More stats
    lucia + blackboard 2 More stats

    Yesterday
    Search Views
    lucia blackboard 14 More stats
    lucia liljegren 11 More stats
    rankexploits 3 More stats
    the blackboard 3 More stats
    cochrane orcutt 2 More stats
    giss solar irradiance 2 More stats
    global surface temperature 2008 2 More stats
    deal with autocorrelation 2 More stats
    how does carbon neutrality work 2 More stats
    cochrane-orcutt 2 More stats

    Notice that most people searching are clearly specifically looking for my blog. If you are wondering why I put my name and the blog name on the figures, it’s to give people a search term to use to find the blog.

    I haven’t been thinking very much about SEO at this blog, but I have thought of it a little.

61. I have a blog that I use to post local history articles – not truely a blog, but a web site with running additions. I certainly want people to read it, but simply getting more hits doesn’t do anything for me. It’s a non-commercial site, so I’m not selling hits to anyone. When people with an interest in my subject do a Google search, they find my site easily enough – I tend to show up near the top of searches. On the other hand, there are potential readers who don’t bother to search on their own, but will read articles if they are directed to my site. This is where aggregators or links from high-traffic sites help. They can turn a potential reader who doesnt’ know you exist into a return visitor. When I get mentioned in a newspaper, the hits go off the chart, and the new viewers are coming because they are interested in the subject. A few of them probably bookmark the site and return directly. Those are the people I care about.

    Take-home message – for a site like this, the best thing for increasing the kind of traffic you want is to get linked by a high-traffic site that has an audience of like- or open-minded readers. As Lucia mentioned above, playing keyword games just gets you hits that bounce off your site.

62. Boris (#8906)

    Here is to you bud! I just had to open up a Dr. Pepper on that comment. Thanks for a bit of levity. I needed that after reading #8826 to #8909 this morning.

63. Posters here are trotting out the usual “peer review meanies keepin us down” arguments. Yet, they can not point to quality unpublished articles. Peer review and just formal publication drives a higher quality (higher SNR, more careful writing, defined statements, etc.) as opposed to the social gamey blog posts. If the man is really keeping you all down, you would be able to show quality pre-prints. Butyou can’t. And the few preprints I have seen have been MISERABLE (just lazy ugly crappy work). Furthermore, publication in EE (Loehle, Douglas) have had big boners in there and shown a lack of care in the logic. Peer review could have helped catch those.

64. TCO–
    Which Douglas was published in EE? Here are the citations to the papers that Santer engaged:

    Douglass DH, Christy JR, Pearson BD, Singer SF. 2007. A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions. International Journal of Climatology 27: Doi:10.1002/joc.1651.

    Douglass DH, Pearson BD, Singer SF. 2004. Altitude dependence of atmospheric temperature trends: Climate models versus observations. Geophysical Research Letters 31: L13208,
    Doi:10.1029/2004/GL020103.

    So, presumably, the peer review for those Douglas papers was what might be expected at GRL and International Journal of Climatology.

    Out of curiosity, how are you getting a hold of pre-prints? Are you confusing pre-prints with drafts circulated informally for comment? Those might very well be very sketchy depending on the what the authors feel comfortable with. Some might circulate nothing more than an outline. Either way, how are you getting a hold of those? Unless the authors specifically sent them to you for comment, why would a busy man like you who complains about the tentative and fragmentary nature of blog conversations like you even bother to read these outlines and drafts?

65. Douglas: You’re right on Douglas.

    On the pre-prints, my point is we ARE NOT SEEING the high quality rejected manuscripts. It’s the dog that did not bark. The few things I did see were first drafts, I guess…but as such were still butt-miserable.

66. Is the stack height only doubling now? What if don’t limit ourselves to Phys Rev, but add in all the new journals?

    Lucia, good questions that I don’t know the answer to. It would be interesting to see if the doubling each decade has continued for the Physical Review journals over the last 20+ years. I doubt that it is more than doubling every ten years (i.e., if the increase is even stronger than exponential)…but who knows?

    And, I have no idea what is happening with other journals / fields but assume that the story is probably pretty similar.

    And, long live the Flying Spaghetti Monster!!!

67. I actually disagree with you on the issue of LPUs. It’s a philosophical view and independant of the AGW games. I think you should publish everything. The reasons are well articulated in Wilson’s book and in the NASA Katzoff memorandum. Basically, the benefit of doing so is that others may be less likely to repeat your work. Given that most science is government funded and done in the public interest, failure to publish is a wasteful practice. McI has recently opined about wanting a research grant…but I think his failure to publish is a good argument against funding him.

    LPUs also have the benefit of giving some crisp, definite archival of intermediate results…in particular the benefit is that sometimes grand overall projects are not finished. And in that case, no paper comes out from the non-LPUers.

    Publishing also means that others may benefit from aspects of your work, even aspects different from what you thought was important (method versus result, a subarea of your report, etc.) Given abstracting and keyword searches and the “chain of citations”, researchers can find the nuggets from the dross. So the huge pile of papers is not so much the issue as individuals do not read the entire opus…they search for what they want.

    LPUs are actually very beneficial in breaking up complicated interlinked issues to allow separate distinct hypotheses tests…to allow some real advance. In contrast the blogosphere (left and right) is weighted down by people who try connect everything…to let strong points carry weak ones, etc. Furthermore, even if there is some larger “review type” inference, it is usually better established as a result of previously articulated and better determined LPUs, than with a mishmash of new specific results mixed in with more grand sweeping inferences.

68. TCO,

    You are missing the point. The bais in the peer review process means that people don’t even bother to try to write skeptical papers in the first place.

    Think about it: academics only get credit for published papers – not attempts. So given a choice, is an academic who needs published papers going invest time and energy defending a skeptical paper or are they more likely to find ways to spin their research into something that supports AGW?

    You see this with Steve Mc. He does lots of stuff which would be worthy of paper and in a different political climate there would be no shortage of academics willing to do grunt work as a co-author. But we don’t see that so Steve Mc sticks to his blogging and people like you try to claim that the lack of “high quality rejected manuscripts” means there is no skeptical argument worth making. It doesn’t. The effect of the bias in the peer review process is much more insidious than that.

    Of course, I am only taking about bias that results from the peer review process. The funding mechanisms only serve to amplify this bias to the point where very few academics can actually afford to persue skeptical lines of research.

69. I remember as a boy…I used to argue with my father:

    “I misbehave because you beat me”

    “I beat you because you misbehave”

    A standoff. Then in 11th grade, I shaped up. There was almost no conflict after that. Sure, maybe once or twice the old man let loose without justification…but looking back the experience showed me 90% of that chicken and egg question came from the misbehaving, not the beating.

    ——————————–

    1. I have seen McI attempt to write a paper. Have seen his blog posts. Have seen the presentations he put together for meetings or lectures. He did not take adequate effort and they were messes.

    2. McI is completely capable of getting published if he writes clear papers and disaggregates his issues. There are SO MANY outlets as Lucia has already pointed out. Getting rejected for a methodology debate on a single series for Nature…does not show that he could not get into one of the myriad of specialty journals. Even given the interdisciplinary nature of his work gives more journals as outlets.

    3. McI has at times said that he was not being kept down by the journals. At other times, he has let you hoi polloi put a posited argument that he is being kept out unfairly. Until he puts his name behind YOUR claims that in general he is being kept out and shows the papers that he attempted to publish so that we can judge quality and number of efforts, I will not buy this argument.

    4. Even were it possible that McI (or Lucia or Watts) were being kept out of print (which I still disbeleive), they could “publish” clean papers on their own websites. that they have not shows to me that they prefer writing blog posts to papers. It’s not the man who is keeping them down, but themselves. Look Lucia and Watts don’t even try.

    ————————————-

    Where’s the beef, where’s the beef, where’s the beef!? This whole skeptic game is a multi-year tease.

70. TCO,

    I would help if you would actually respond to the argument made.

    First, I agree that writing papers for review takes more work than writing a blog. My point is people won’t make that effort if there is a high likelihood that it will be wasted.

    Second, high likelihood is not the same as never. Sceptical papers do get published but it takes more effort to get them through peer review because the reviewers will be more critical of papers that they disagree with.

    Third, if Steve Mc does not want to bother with writing papers for peer review then that is his choice. He is not an academic trying to get tenure. He is hobbiest with a blog. That does not mean his arguments are less worthwhile.

    Lastly, the fact that hobbiests like Steve Mc (and Lucia and Jeff Id) seem to be coming up with all this material that would make a great sceptical paper yet no one in the climate science academic community figured this out before clearly indicates that climate science academic community is either incompetent or hopelessly biased.

71. TCO ‘Posters here are trotting out the usual “peer review meanies keepin us down” arguments.’

    You are missing the point, diversifiers improve and add value to science and are often heavily criticized by the “consensus club” Tommy Gold and Alven are good case points.Indeed one of the Great controversies is how the “closed shop” of scientific review for publication and funding can lead to the passage of scientific consensus into blind cul-de-sacs of scientific theory .Indeed we can cite many Nobel laureates who when questioning the ‘Paradigm” were treated with contemptuous ridicule from the “consensus club”

    Thomas Gold cited the behavior of the Nasa consensus of ‘in-house peer review”as the closed herd (neutron star rotation).

    “Another area where it is particularly bad is in the planetary sciences where NASA made great mistakes in the way in which they set up the situation. NASA made the grave mistake not only of working with a peer review system, but one where some of the peers (in fact very influential ones) were the in-house people doing the same line of work. This established a community of planetary scientists now which was completely selected by the leading members of the herd, which was very firmly controlled, and after quite a short time, the slightest departure from the herd was absolutely cut down. Money was not there for anybody who had a slightly diverging viewpoint. The conferences ignored him, and so on. It became completely impossible to do any independent work. For all the money that has been spent, the planetary program will one day be seen to have been extraordinarily poor. The pictures are fine and some of the facts that have been obtained from the planetary exploration with spacecraft – those will stand but not much else.”

    Or great men such as Eddington or Chapman publishing complete rubbish in “peer reviewed publications as Chandrasekhar explains.

    “In astrophysics circles this controversy is usually described in terms of Eddington as a great man with deep philosophical beliefs and unorthodox views on how the laws of science might change — i.e., it was not clear whether he was morally right in “putting down” a young man so thoroughly and consistently, but it was not clear either till much later that he was scientifically wrong. However, in 1946 I was a graduate student in physics, not in astrophysics, my thesis advisor was Rudolf Peierls and it was clear that Eddington was wrong right from the start! At least this was the situation with two very specific papers of Eddington’s.

    These two papers (Eddington 1935a and 1935b) were mainly concerned with the laws of physics in existence at the time, especially quantum mechanics and special relativity,… There were two aspects to these papers: (i) they pointed out genuine difficulties that would be faced if one wanted to carry out very rigorous and very accurate calculations, and (ii) an explicit calculation of the equation of state for relativistic electrons as Fermi-Dirac particles which not only gave the wrong result but consisted of sheer nonsense or double-talk or both! An example of (i) was how to treat Dirac electrons under high pressurewhen they are not free particles but are confined by a strong gravitational field. My thesis advisor had solved this problem within a year (Peierls 1936), although it was not a trivially simple calculation. And I have worried off and on over the last 50 years about (ii). Eddington was a great man and on some level of consciousness he must have known he had written nonsense — how could he live with himself and how could two respectable journals publish such papers?

    In a brilliant and slightly paradoxical essay (INFINITE IN ALL DIRECTIONS) Freeman Dyson contrasts two styles of doing science: abstract and concrete, unifying and diversifying, two complementary attitudes,”Unifiers are people whose driving passion is to find general principles which will explain everything. They are happy if they can leave the universe looking a little simpler than they found it. Diversifiers are people whose passion is to explore details. They are in love with the heterogeneity of nature… [and] they are happy if they can leave the universe a little more complicated than they found it”

    And with the Poincare Conjecture and Sciences man of the decade Perelmen showed us this that peer review is still not necessary today.An in addition this week the Journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society will keep there recent tradition of publishing rubbish.

72. I did respond to the argument:

    1. There are a lot of journals out there…if you don’t try multiple places, you can’t say you are being shut out.

    2. If you don’t show the proof (number of attempts and quality of attempts) then you can’t prove that you are being unfairly shut out.

    3. McI has not made the case that you make on the shut out…in fact at times, he’s said the opposite. I won’t take your argument for it, since you are speculating.

    4. Yes, it does mean his ideas are less worthwhile….since they are more poorly expressed, they are more difficult to falsify.

    5. Why not write beautiful papers and then just put them on the site. Since he claims no need for prestige, the foregone prestige is irrelevant. And all the benefits in terms of clear communication would be acheived.

73. My bottom line is put up or shut up. Claiming that the conventional science is wrong, but then failing to clearly demonstrate (by clean papers) your points is gamesmanship crap. It’s almost like the Cold Fusionists who say that the CW is wrong, but also that peer review has it out for them…and then they have their little side journals. And for all this kerfuffle, Steve has not made the claims that you all are making…and has even at times said that he was lax about writing stuff up.

74. TCO

    My bottom line is put up or shut up.

    To which everyone responds…. shrug… They carry on with conversations as it suits them to do and you seem constitutionally incapable of not trying to involve yourself in these conversations.

    The result is: Those you wish to shut up don’t take your yapping about this at all seriously.

    Now, I have a date with some Red Heart Yarn, which I will turn into an afghan while I wait for HadCrut to update. Should Zeke appear, he made an accurate guess about something, and likely he can guess why I am particularly anxious for the HadCrut data to arrive.

75. The points I’ve made are important and well fleshed out ones that are perinent to the meta debate. If you are really interested in things, you would engage, Lucia. No one will force you to of course. But it just shows more how all this stuff is more slef-stroking social games than real discussion of issues. Volokh had a very good point about how there are very very few on the net in blogs or forums who will speak out agains their own side. Instead of truth seeking, it’s more pleasant to have an amen choir. New information and insights and points are only vlaued as they fit the general group social view. This is my point of why I’m disappointed to see you consorting with Watts…who while on “our” side…is really a maroon…and has had several very flawed articles and has refused to fess up to his schooling (like the Basil solar fiasco).

    I think, you think I degrade things. But I also think you’re interested enough, pissed off enough to reply. So…have a drambuie with the Red Heart work and let’s bury the hatchet with you making me slippers and me buying you maringlio (or hwatever it’s called).

76. TCO, you are arguing form over … whatever argument with the your call for “well written”, or as you said: “they could “publish” clean papers…”. Why? Do they need to satisfy you are any other’s form/format demands to make a clear argument?

    I think, not.

    Using an insiders argument that proves those outside are not trying hard enough is silly. You said you disbelieved they (the skeptics) “were being kept out of print”, but that’s not the case. It appears the skeptics are choosing not to jump through the form/format hoops to be turned down because they are not part of the insiders’ club.

    BTW, why should they. They are reaching a far wider and perhaps more important audience. More of the general populace reads their blogs than the mighty journals. AGW, is as much a political argument as it is a scientific one at this point. And, it is being decided at this level, by the folk that really count, voters.

77. How in the world do you come up with the idea Watts is on “our” side. I believe CO2 causes warming and the best explanation of the most the observed warming in the 20th century is greenhouse gases. My impression is Anthony believes the effect of greenhouse gases is small, and most of variations are driven by the sun.

    Maybe I misunderstand Anthony. But I think most my readers know where I stand on this.

    Malabrigio is wonderful. An afghan of the size I prefer (aka “huge”) would required 70 – 80 ounces of the worsted weight yarn in colors that complement each other. ( If you don’t already have a pattern and wish to permit my creative juices to reign free, you would need to send 20 ounces of 5 colors that mix-and-match attractively.)

    I find it difficult to believe you are remotely serious about sending me 70-100 ounces of color-coordinated yarn that retails for more than $11 a 3.5 ounce skein in return for a pair of slippers made from $1.67 worth of Red Heart. No one could be that nutty.

    I drink hot cocoa when I crochet. Penzey’s is my favorite.

78. CoRev: It’s not some sort of snobishness. It really is difficult to engage with poorly communicated points. And they’re not even archived. The real benefits of clear writing would allow better engagement and force even the proponents to think more clearly. and they woujld more accurately show the limits of some of the criticisms. Instead we have this mishmash of PR, of community self stroking with actual analysis.

79. Lucia: I didn’t know it was that pricey. Perhaps you could make something smaller with the Malabriglio? I really do want those slippers.

80. Lucia: “How in the world do you come up with the idea Watts is on “our” side.”

    Me: Oh..I donno, your failure to rip into his mistakes. Your warm remarks about him leading and winning the blog awards. Him guest posting on CA. Your community talking about whether to vote for CA or WUWT as similar choices and lumping your blog in as part of the favored set as well (disappointed not nominated). From all that, I “came up with the idea” that you all are teamies. That you know he is wrong on some basic things and don’t speak out makes it even worse. It becomes clear that team harmony trumps truth seeking. Just like McI auditng S and not D. Or his shameful remarks regarding Loehle.

    I was much more happy to see conservative intellectuals rip Miers to peices. But there were still some idiot Hewitt types who wanted to fall in ranks regardless of real insights and just support a side. And then there were those who just didn’t speak out…or came late to criticism.

    http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104×5050041

81. TCO,

    Steve McIntyre’s results are far more reproducible than anything that gets published. He actually posts code that can be cut and pasted into R to reproduce his plots. Those codes even go out and download data for you.

    You may disagree with his interpretation of the results but unfalsifiability is an especially bold claim coming from a camp that requires FOIA requests to get the basic data with which to reproduce results.

    As for the “put up or shut up” argument, suppose a new peer-reviewed journal appeared that published 90% skeptical articles. All it would take is some funding and an editorial board of professors who are skeptics. Do you doubt that’s possible? Would that be the evidence you need? Or would we start hearing about the motivations and psychoanalysis of all involved?

    I’d never met or heard of anyone who thinks peer review somehow validates truth until the AGW people needed a prop. I can recall being specifically told as an undergraduate that peer review DID NOT mean truth. It was and is a mechanism for journals to protect themselves. Over the years it has come to mean that the article took more effort to publish so therefore it should mean more in a tenure review. How that translates into truth is not clear to me.

    Saying that because there’s a body of peer reviewed articles that means the “science is settled” is just asinine. I brought up evolution because I know what experiments validate that theory. That big body of evidence (reproducible experiments) makes it settled science not the peer reviewed literature. Likewise I know what experiments validate relativity (general and special), quantum mechanics, Maxwell’s equations and sun-centered solar system. They are not valid because of a consensus. They are valid because of reproducible experiments. Period.

    When I go to RC to look for similar evidence for AGW I get nothing even remotely similar. I hear about the output of computer models taken from different labs being averaged (a practice that would be regarded as the height of irresponsibility in any engineering application I’ve ever seen), I hear about PCA on processed tree ring and lake sediment data and I hear condescension about CO2 absorption (Look at HITRAN! Really? HITRAN? What are these strange words you use? You must be so smart!). I see just about every red flag that can come out of junk science being raised.

    As for Steve Watts, his site seems to focus on getting a clear idea of the quality of the network of instruments used to produce a bug chunk of the data that some AGW people use to design and validate computer models. Data that the press uses to claim that action is required RIGHT NOW. Measurement by instruments is the true heart of science (as opposed to peer review). Prediction by computer model is a relatively recent addition that’s useful but hardly a goal. Watts is doing far more to advance science by gathering data on the instrument networks than a thousand computer modelers working on a thousand clusters.

    By noticing that perhaps putting a thermometer next to a Bar-B-Que pit is not so much good scientific practice as farce, he may sting the pride of your community but he certainly has a point.

    Finally, you seem to be concerned about a lack introspection in the skeptic community. There some event ( “the Basil solar fiasco” ) I am not familiar with and you feel it should be central to my opinion about Watts. Perhaps if he wallowed in this (presumed) mistake and then committed ritual suicide, you would find him more credible but I doubt it.

    The AGW community has a history – documented by Steve M – of data mysteriously appearing and disappearing. In another field of science that would be very bad news. I suspect the AGW community should go first in demonstrating how this introspection thing works.

    Joe

82. TCO, now you are shifting your argument to raving generalities about clear writing and difficulty in engagement or lack there of due to clarity. I have not seen this in McI’s nor Watts, and actually the list of sites could go on. It may be a valid point, but is not one to me.

    I look at many, many sites daily, and have noticed a trend from science on the AGW believer sites to rank reaction and defense of the “position.” WORSE, most of them stifle active discussion by censorship, ridicule, and banning of IPs.

    Why??? Is the science so fragile to not be able to withstand an open discussion?

83. For what it’s worth, Physical Review publication statistics are available online here (2007 numbers):

    http://forms.aps.org/general/annstats07.pdf

    Table 1 has the numbers, Figure 1 shows it visually. The period of most rapid sustained growth was probably 1980-1995 where the number of papers published really was doubling every 10 years or so; a lot of that growth was from outside the United States where international physics programs, particularly in Asia (Japan and Korea, etc.), were picking up steam and looked to our journals to publish. From 1994 to 1997 things seemed to steady out at very close to 10,000 articles published per year – international economic conditions, particularly the collapse of the Eastern European scientific enterprise, are presumably the explanation for the stall. The recent resumption of growth has again been largely international – physics articles from China have been going up by over 10% per year in recent years. But the actual doubling time expected going forward is more like the long-run number of 20 years (3 to 4% growth per year), rather than the 10 year doubling that briefly seemed to hold.

    As to the merits of peer review as the Physical Review journals run it – it is a bit like a court system, but with physical argument and logic as the subject rather than points of law. An editor sits as judge, and several knowledgeable peers of the author act essentially as lawyers – they are asked to read the article carefully and decide whether there is any case against its publication or not. These referees generally take their role very seriously (after all, they sit as authors on the receiving end of such reviews as well). Experienced authors, knowing the rules, also take great pains to write as clearly and precisely as possible, to avoid misunderstandings that can ensnare an article for months. The editor makes the final decision, in some cases even taking the author’s side against referees whose critiques the editor deems irrelevant. The reputation of the journal rests on the results of the editor’s decisions – the quality of the articles that make it through – and in particular the decisions on high profile “extraordinary” papers. Just as with our court system, there are occasional wrong convictions or miscreants who go free, but by and large the world is a far better place thanks to these institutionalized processes than it would be (and was) without them. The progression of science accelerated greatly with creation of such institutionalized systems of review a few hundred years back.

    As with any communications medium, the vast majority of communication in scientific journals is about issues that are “subject to legitimate debate”. Things that are already firmly established aren’t terribly interesting unless perhaps you are a textbook publisher or historian; reproducibility is one key element of science, but there is little publication of such reproduced results unless some new aspect, such as higher precision or different physical constraints, makes it of some legitimate interest. On the other hand, anything that contradicts firmly established results established in preceding decades has a very high burden to being considered believable by editors and referees – there must be either a logical synthesis of the new and the old in some fashion, or significant evidence for why the old results were wrong. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof”, as the saying goes. So the vast majority of what is published is in that middle ground between the well-known and the extraordinary, and being acutely aware of those boundaries is what makes a scientifically trained editor and a peer referee so valuable.

    There is nothing comparable to the institutionalized peer review system anywhere in the blog world.

84. Corev:

    TCO, now you are shifting your argument to raving generalities about clear writing and difficulty in engagement or lack there of due to clarity.
    ———————–
    1. I’m not raving.
    2. Lucia accuses me or repetition. You of shifting. Lucia is the one who is right. You are wrong. I have before pointed out the importance of clear presentation of arguments so that they can be grappled with properly and subjected to tests.
    ——————————

    I have not seen this in McI’s nor Watts, and actually the list of sites could go on.
    ——————————–
    A better comparison would be to published papers. You could also consider some people like Wegman who point out that blogs are poor quality for the examinations at hand.
    ———————————-

    It may be a valid point, but is not one to me.
    ————————————–
    I don’t understand this.
    ———————————–

    I look at many, many sites daily, and have noticed a trend from science on the AGW believer sites to rank reaction and defense of the “position.”
    ———————————
    Compare to papers.
    —————————–

    WORSE, most of them stifle active discussion by censorship, ridicule, and banning of IPs.
    ———————————-
    I agree that happens and it is bad.
    ———————————-

    Why??? Is the science so fragile to not be able to withstand an open discussion?
    ———————————–
    Social dynamics. The answer is not to set up your own little competing arenas of shrieking monkeys, but to write papers.

85. Phys Rev is a great (set of) journal(s).

    Something about the gravity of getting published drives authors to even just better clarity and care in writing. The blog world is much lazier and the blog beast demands multi-day feedings like a newspaper. Publication versus blogs would strip huge amounts of chaff and give more carefully written documents (even things like labelling of graphs) to remove ambiguities.

    That said, even within journal submission, I think that many authors should take more of a strain (basically write their absolute best…as if no one were going to review it for logic or to copy edit it, then any review is additive on such a good start…and it is easier to find slighter flaws). Also, that if you just write very good textual papers, you actually force yourself to look at the work more and understand it better…and reviewers are more likely to let it through.

    Also, I think it is very important to be honest about ANY limitations in your study. If you dissassembled the apparatus and then found some issues later on…fess up. There may still be worthwhile results (better published than buried forever)…but it’s critical to be very straight about the limit. And most readers have sympathy with the issues and appreciate the heads up.

    Similarly it is important to not over-sell the results of your work. This does not mean that you can’t point out more interesting and even speculative inferences (there is value in conveying these on top of just data reporting), but that you have the appropriate level of caveat, of labelling, distinguishing data from trends from strong microscopic explanations from tentative ones, etc.

    http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19640016507_1964016507.pdf

86. Katzoff:

    The purpose of the report is to present information.
    You will hardly disagree with this statement; yet many authors
    seem to subordinate this purpose and quite forget the
    poor reader when preparing a report. For example, when a
    reviewer complains that a certain word seems incorrect, the
    author may proceed to an unabridged dictionary and triumphantly
    point out the rare definition that clarifies his
    sentence. Obviously such an author is more interested in
    demonstrating his erudition than in presenting information
    clearly to his harried reader; for if he had his reader in mind,
    he would try immediately to substitute a more common
    phraseology.

    This example is only one of many that could be given.
    Apparently the presumed purpose to present information is
    frequently forgotten in the author’s desire to show his own
    brilliance, to impress the boss, to impress the secretary, [b]to
    demolish the rival[/b], or to get a raise. Worthy as these objectives
    may be, [b]the basic objective should be to make the
    report clear and informative; furthermore, if this objective
    is attained, the secondary objectives will automatically be
    attained.[/b]

87. [b]test[/b]
    test

88. TCO:

    “I have seen McI attempt to write a paper. Have seen his blog posts. Have seen the presentations he put together for meetings or lectures. He did not take adequate effort and they were messes.”

    Actually the quality of Steve’s presentations has improved dramatically. I imagine it’s a learning curve thing. Also, I’d note that the M&M publications are all very well written.

    If you want an example of bad scientific writing it’s hard to go past Michael Mann. Reading his stuff is like a bad day at the dentist.

89. Can’t stand it no more. IMHO, TCO is still making a total ass of himself by assuming that only he, in all creation, knows the proper path to truth and justice, regardless of the issue. LOL.

90. James Lane:

    “If you want an example of bad scientific writing it’s hard to go past Michael Mann. Reading his stuff is like a bad day at the dentist.”

    And I guess the computer code is even worse.

91. Why a learning curve? The guy is 60 plus years old. Has been out in the business world. Has a “good mind”. Has read a LOT of literature.

92. James: Mike Mann is archived. Steve is not.

93. “James: Mike Mann is archived. Steve is not.”

    Baloney, except for some plays on words, and you know it.

94. I would not be surprised that within a few short years, “papers” published on blogs which freely allow comments* have MORE respect in the scientific community than “papers” in journals. Especially now that some (many?) of the “mainline journals” have become political pawns, and their offerings are no better than those of Newsweek.

    *I’m not including sites that censor adverse comments, such as Reinvented Climae.org

95. Jae: Don’t even start with me. You are a rock. A moron. In the sea of knowledge, you sink like a stone. You are an embarressment to the skeptic community. You worship the sun like a cave person. You are the worst. Please…just take yourself and just leave. You’re incapable of even engaging. Go.

96. Nothing stopping Steve from putting papers on CPD, which follows the format jae-rock advocates (btw, can I count that as advoactating replacement Lucia?) IInstead we got Ooga Chaka baby and little tiffs about the Mann SI (where there is about a sentence of content padded out to a page of blather, inuendo and repeat from past posts).

    What a load of junk. 4 years after the GRL paper and what has been published since? The whole thing is a big tease and a waste.

97. TCOpus

    “Jae: Don’t even start with me. You are a rock. A moron. In the sea of knowledge, you sink like a stone. You are an embarressment to the skeptic community. You worship the sun like a cave person. You are the worst. Please…just take yourself and just leave. You’re incapable of even engaging. Go.”

    LOL. Your bullying tactic is distasteful for everyone. You sunk like a stone a long time ago, you ego-freak.

98. Jae, TCO,
    Can both you boys try to behave? Or am I going to be forced to put both our parameters in the troll filter?

99. Luuuuuuciaaaaa: I’m sure you will do what you want, since it’s your blog, and that’s OK. But I should at least have that last post restored. The guy is a boring egomaniac bully, and you should mark HIM as a troll.

100. Nah. TCO makes some good points. Arrogant, yah . . . but some of the points are good.
     .
     I don’t agree with the assessment that if it ain’t published, it’s crap . . . but he has a point in that a published paper has significantly more impact than blog posts. He also has a point in that the preparation you must do to get published requires more critical examination of your own work than sitting down at a keyboard and typing for 15 minutes. It requires you to (at least attempt to) present your thoughts clearly. After all, if the editors and your contemporaries doing the peer review can’t muddle through it, who are you going to convince anyway?
     .
     Where I disagree with TCO is that blogs are valueless, even for those souls who want to change the world. Many of us aren’t climate scientists. The type of informal discussion on blogs (even discussion that is bone-headed) provides an avenue for us to learn some basic concepts and terminology. Those who get involved in the blogs on a regular basis also eventually drift toward actually reading papers. Blogs are a great way to maintain interest in a topic long enough to actually learn something about it from academic sources.
     .
     Should McI try to get published? Maybe. Or maybe he could throw up enough stuff in the hopes that something sticks. Either way, it’s his choice. If he thinks his blog is suddenly going to make a bunch of climate scientists go “gee whiz we were wrong!”, he’s probably going to be disappointed. But this is Steve’s issue to deal with . . . not TCO’s.
     .
     I honestly don’t understand the vitriol being hurled and McI and Watts. So what if they can’t write great papers? If you think there’s nothing there worth your time, then ignore it and move on. If they’re really that incompetent, how effective will they be at convincing anyone who matters, anyway?
     .
     And if you’re going to claim that McI and Watts are doing society a terrible disservice by combining hoakey math with ambiguous explanations and a snappy title in order to convince the already-convinced denialists, you honestly have bigger fish to fry. You’re wasting your time. O’Reilly and Limbaugh have much larger audiences. McI and Watts are a drop in the bucket.
     .
     So if they want to get published, great. If they don’t, great.
     .
     You don’t like them. We get it. Let’s move on.

101. thanks Ryan.

102. The paper that I hope Steve Mc will write is one dealing with the sensitivity of paleo-reconstructions to the selection of proxies. This would be a great contribution to the literature and would force the paleo guys/girls to justify their selection criteria. Also, he already has all the material that he needs.

     OTOH, Steve does this stuff on his own terms, and I’m not about to tell him what he should or shouldn’t do. As Ryan says, it’s his issue, not TCO’s or anyone else.

103. That’s fine. the rest of the world can take note that it has been 4 years since his single real paper. And that while he demands others archive source data and intermediate calculations, he does not even archive his own criticisms in papers. It’s a big over-rated tease. More and more skeptics are realizing this.

     And then you have Watts, the sun worshipping, station silly billy, who got John Ved good. And you all make allies with him.

104. Headline: Character Assassinations Prove AGW

     My Response: I’m throwing out the notes (‘proofs’ …or so I thought) I made for myself on this subject. I’m headed to Walgreens right now to buy a new notebook.

     I’m starting over. 😉

     Andrew

105. TCO, now this is just plain silly! You said: ” And that while he demands others archive source data and intermediate calculations, he does not even archive his own criticisms in papers. It’s a big over-rated tease. More and more skeptics are realizing this.

     And then you have Watts, the sun worshipping, station silly billy, who got John Ved good. And you all make allies with him.”

     1) Steve McI’s criticisms are archived on the Net for everyone/anyone to see, maybe forever. Can’t say the same for Journals.

     2) More and more skeptics are what? How in the world can you ever prove that?

     3) Are you saying the Watt’s work is not informative to all communities?

     Opinions? We all have them, but silliness is reserved to a special few. Sheesh!!!!

106. 1. “archived on the Net” “maybe forever”. Those are silly.

     2. I can not “prove” it, mathematically and am too lazy to make a plausible case either. It is my impression from discussion, including with quite good scientists who have published skeptic stuff. Of course, some of the hoi polloi amen choir are still singing out praises, but they lack crtitical faculties. I think others like Mosh-pit and JohnV and Lazar have or will see the huge discrepancy in real results versus post mass ans social community self congratulations.

     3. Watts is a good example of overtouting and under delivering. when I see Bessel function knitters hanging out with dumbos like Watts it makes me sad.

107. Lucia “No one has advocated blogs replacing formal publication as ideal.”

     I don’t understand this sentence. What does the “as ideal” mean at the end? Why are you even saying this? Surely, I value publication more than others here do…see a problem with relying on blog posts. Can we not have that discussion? How is your comment additive? And perhaps should you speak more for yourself than for everyone (“no one”)? I hate to parse things and prefer to have discussions of impact like at VC. But I almost feel like I have to with you Lucia, to avoid the “I never said that” rebuttals. Even when we got into this, you seemed to view this sentence as 100% replacement, but it is cetainly ambiguous. And the 100% replacement is a silly abstraction. Surely partial replacements are more intersting as a subject of examination (more likely to occur or be advocated).

108. Lucia:

     “I have “real” papers, just not on climate. (Example: old paper.)”

     I KNOW YA DO. I DID NOT MEAN TO SLIGHT YOU IN DISCUSSING THE REAL ADVANTAGES OF PUBLICATION. I AM NOT SOLELY TALKING TO YOU. ALSO, EVEN PRACTICED AFFICIANADOS OF PUBLISHING SOMETIMES TO NOT APPRECIATE ALL THE TRU RELIGION ETHIC OF PUBLISHING AS ESPOUSED BY WILSON AND KATZOFF. SO I THINK DIGGING INTO IT IS VERY GOOD THING TO DO.

     I jumped into this as a hobby about 15 months ago. If and when I identify something that I think needs to be archived, I will write it up and submit.

     GOOD. I THINK IN PARTICULAR, THAT IT WILL HELP YOU SHARPEN YOUR OWN THOUGHTS TO GO TO THIS EFFORT AND IS BOTH MORE FAIR AND EFFICIENT FOR YOUR “OPPONENTS” TO BE ABLE TO ENGAGE WITH THIS LEVEL OF FINISHED PRODUCT.

     However, as you note, it can take a bit of time.

     I DIDN’T NOTE THAT. IT IS MORE WORK THAN AN OFF THE CUFF BLOG POST, BUT NOT WORSE THAN ANYTHING AT WORK PER SE. JUST MEANS TAKING A STRAIN.

     Rest assured that your comments, and/or concern for your opinion or preferences do not affect any decision I make in this regard.

     🙁

     But… if you want to express it without vulgarity, that’s ok too.

     I WILL TRY TO BEHAVE. I THINK OF THE INTERNET AS SORT OF A PERFORMANCE ART SPECTACLE FOR GAMES. BUT i UNDERSTAND YOU DON’T WANT THOSE WORDS AND WILL TRY TO REMEMBER. IF I SLIP, PLEASE DON’T PERMA-BAN ME.

109. Lucia: I don’t know if people ought to do google searches to see what people have written. Certainly, if I were in the publish or perish racket, I would probably not bother. The reason is that it’s unlikely any reviewer would expect it. So, I am entirely aware that blogging about a result will (mostly) remain outside the academic sphere. (That is, unless it short circuits the path to notoriety.)”

     TCO: Could you take a more definite stand please? You seem to leave yourself wiggle room instead of Jim Rome “having a take”. Here I’ll show you my opinion. Whether reviewers demand Google searching blogs or whether you are in the publish or perish racket is not key, Lucia. What’s key is doing the right thing, ethically and in terms of thoughtfullness to readers and co-workers and in terms of efficiency. My take: science article writers should not need to search Google for Climate Audit posts. Instead the impetus should be on Climate Audit post writers, to clean up their thoughts (much easier and more efficient to read) and put them in the archived literature. Obviously if a writer knows of a previous informal writing, particularly if it has helped him look at the problem, he should acknowledge or cite that. But he should not need to feel a need to cover the blogosphere (proactively) as well as archived literature in his introduction, where he notes previous work on a topic. Furthermore, I think someone advocating the need to Google for Climate Audit is just being silly and has a tin ear for how science is and should be practiced.

110. Lucia: “As for papers in general: I think, on the whole, too many journal articles are published. The world would benefit if the total number of journal articles dropped to 10% the current level, and more stuff appeared in informal fora.

     But that’s just me.”

     TCO: It’s not just you. A lot of people feel this way. Certainly, there is a Pareto curve of impact wrt papers. I think an even stronger statement might be that there should just be a lot less funded research (there is a law of diminishing returns in effect) and the huge number of federally funded engineers and scientists (to include most hard science at universities) is almost like a middle class welfare program.

     All that said, where I differ with you is on the papers. I think clean, simple papers even of “stamp collecting” are valuable and should be done, particularly since the “work” has already been done and we don’t want to repeat it.

     The issue of overly ambitious claims is a different one from the too many papers. This occurs (it’s a human failing). But in general the number of press release Science or Nature papers is small. And even within the LPU type papers (e.g. in Applied Physics Letters which I used to joke should be called Applied Marketing Letters) the issue is really more one of removing some fluff or breast beating…and being simplistically honest about the work done and its implications (and bizarrely this extreme honesty ends up being valued by many, and the breast beating gets seen through by a lot as well).

111. Lucia: Worse, in some fields, we seem to see lots of journal articles where the public would better benefit from laboratory reports. NASA, NCAR etc. all can publish the longer more cohesive lab reports– just as ORNL, ANL, PNNL,NIST etc. do. But in climate science, we see the modelers splinter up the results from a particular run into a bunch of fragmentary journal articles and never write the decent laboratory report type publications that we expect in other fields.

     TCO: I’m a big fan of lab reports and would have high value for the work product you advocate here. I agree that it is a failing of the modeling community. I have a teensy fear that they are a bit living in a Blind Lake (Wilson book reference) type of self constructed world. It’s probably not as bad a rabbit hole as string theory, but it still worries me.

112. maksimovich:

     You posted a long thought out comment. Thank you.

     Perleman is a singular example. And one that I “heart”. However, he did publish his work so that others could look at it. To the extent that he was opaque it made things harder. But I don’t see this as similar to blogging for PR, full of repetition, ad homs, games, ooga chaka, unfinished work, etc. If a skeptic produces a Perelman result and decides to self-pubish fine. But as for now, this is not happening. And I actually think said skeptics would better understand their own work if they defined it with normal papers. And their hoi polloi followers woujld better understand the limited amount of impact, rather than being naively drawn by the games and the sheer volume of low signal noise.

113. TCO,

     You are appealing to authority – people who publish papers. That is a logical fallacy, IF you are trying to state you believe AGW is true. FYI. Is that what your goal here is? 😉

     Andrew ♫

114. I fear that the IPCC – Peer Reviewed Publications hypothesis is subject to the Black Hole of Self-Referral.

115. ANDREW: You are appealing to authority – people who publish papers. That is a logical fallacy, IF you are trying to state you believe AGW is true. FYI. Is that what your goal here is?

     TCO:

     1. No, mostly I make intrinsic arguments. Lucia feels them to be trite or distracting or things that she has already considered. But they are intrinisic, generally, not status-driven. Even where I cite Katzoff or Wilson, it is not because one was a tech director or one a professor, but because both so well summarize what I beleive. I guess there is some expert referal in the terms that these two men in addition to beautiful discussion of efficient and ethical science were also well-vetted practioners. Well…ok. I see that more as “in the trenches” validity than as snobbery.

     2. No…I really am not trying to make a pro-AGW argument, Andy. It’s funny how the “sides” always want to think that way. I actually want the skeptics to be proven right. Just when I see their failure to come up with anything compelling it disappoints me. I mean I wanted Vince Foster to turn out to have been a hit job by Hillary…but the goods were never delivered. Do you capisce?

116. Dan: I fear that the IPCC – Peer Reviewed Publications hypothesis is subject to the Black Hole of Self-Referral.

     TCO: I disagree. I think it is a very practial and proper screening method for the type of work they are doing. Otherwise, they would be inserting all sorts of stuff that really had not been vetted. I actually think they should make it even stronger and just say that they will only consider papers completely published at the beginning of their work. Pre-pubs would not count.

     Lucia has already pointed out the sheer mass of journals avaiulable. If skeptics want their points in play, they can clearly right them down in real reports and get them archivally published. Otherwise, IPCC should not bother to examine. Should not need to Google search CA and read between the Oooga chakas. Should not need to read meandering multi-post trend examinations by Lucia.

117. TCO,

     Thank you for responding. I mean that sincerely because often I ask questions at blogs that never get answered, and am always grateful for the discussion. Hopefully, you can answer one more question:

     When you say you are not making the pro-AGW argument, does that mean you don’t believe it or you do believe it?

     Andrew ♫

118. TCO (Comment#8981) January 18th, 2009 at 10:59 am

     “Should not need to Google search CA and read between the Oooga chakas. Should not need to read meandering multi-post trend examinations by Lucia.”

     Naked straw men; I said nothing about either of these.

119. Andrew: It just means that “I’m not making it”. Like if I say Jason Campbell is a lousy quarterback, it’s not an anti-Redskins comment. The issues are seperable. In fact the social dynamic where people are unwilling or uninterested to subject their own side to scrutiny, where people assume or suspect some devious meta-agenda and don’t want to engage on specific issues…is one of the things that is intellectually flawed in blog discussion.

     But for what it’s worth, I initially thought AGW was hooey. Am starting to think that it is “Bayesian bet likely”. I think that a lot of the science results are overpromoted…that really the basic CO2 warming, some H2O amplification and the observed temp trend is what would make me put money on it. NOT Gavin’s modeling, which is likely non-independant. Also, seeing the dynamic of skeptics unable to really produce real papers makes me think there may be less wrong with the AGW than I initially thought. That said, there are plenty of flawed AGWers and there is a tendancy for them (like the skeptics) to want to beleive their side and for it to influence their work. Some guys like Burger or Zorita or Huybers seem like real truth seekers though and I trust them more to go wherever a nugget of insight leads.

     P.s. I hate it when people don’t answer either. And it is really rare when people appreciate my replying back. More often it pisses them off. But I think they should appreciate the engagement.

120. Dan: Naked straw men; I said nothing about either of these.

     TCO:

     1. I meant them as illustrative examples of the dangers (in efficiency) from not having a screening method. Also as clear examples of leading skeptic blogs and what would be encountered if IPCC were to go there.

     2. Could you respond to the meat of my comment (the need for an efficient hurdle)?

     3. What do you propose as a remedy (for your alleged cliqueishness concern)?

     4. How do you square that concern with the sheer vast number of journals availalbe (thus allowing venue shopping), with some like CPD which even allow pre review documents and expose the peer review, and with the lack of examples of CLEAR WELL WRITTEN rejected publications?

121. TCO,

     My question was looking for a yes or no response, and you didn’t answer it with a yes or a no. But that’s OK, because you did answer. If you don’t want to tell me what you believe, it’s certainly your right to withhold that information. I can ask no more of you at this moment.

     I have to hit the road (to meet someone in person 😉 ), but look forward to the next time.

     Andrew ♫

122. ‘drew: The question is confusing. Like a “have you stopped beating the wife”. Aks me a simpler one, like “do you beat the wife”.

123. Wait…I think I can answer you, Andrew. The answer is “no”.

     Also if you ask me about stopping beating the wife, the answer is “no”. You then have to guess if that means I never did beat her or, or if I am keeping her well paddled.

124. “Also, seeing the dynamic of skeptics unable to really produce real papers makes me think there may be less wrong with the AGW than I initially thought. ”

     Aren’t you ignoring the “real papers” of Christy, Spencer, Idsos, Douglass, Lindzen, Miskolczi, the solar guys, etc.? Are you forgetting that we STILL don’t have a decent description of the physical basis for CO2-caused AGW?

     OK, TCO, now tell us what a “real paper” is.

125. I think the arguments of all those guys in real papers are worthwhile looking at.

126. So the only real differences between a real paper and an (unreal?) one are that the former is peer-reviewed and published in an official journal? I submit that some of the “unreal” ones are better than some of the real ones.

127. TCO,

     You don’t believe in AGW and you don’t beat your wife. Both pieces of information are good to hear. 😉

     Andrew

128. Nova born blog review
     Illuminates the night.
     TCO see?
     ===================

129. My 2 cents –

     I have over a dozen published papers and patents. Every single one started in the coffee room. We discuss a particular problem, until we find a suitable solution.

     We would then go in the field, and find a lot of problems with the initial solution.

     Back to the coffee room.

     Back to the field.

     After 3 or 4 iterations, we usually had a viable solution.

     In every instance, the paper or patent passed peer review, or the Intellectual Property review. Or both.

     But first, it had to pass the coffee room peer review. Which is quite similar to blogs, when you look at it closely. That is to say, a lot of people looking at an idea; some negative; some positive; some irrelevant; and some independent. But most contribute in some way.

130. Les,
     I think you have managed to summarize my view. I’ve never pretended blogs or the coffee room discussions replace journal articles. But, yes, I see the blog as a coffee room discussion.

     Admittedly, in the past, the coffee room discussions were more private and limited to those who were in the coffee room at the time. Possibly, it is the public nature of these discussions that is bothering TCO. Who knows?

     In anycase, I have no issues with the limited number of papers published by SteveM. It is entirely explicable in terms of this simple fact: SteveM’s discussions are generally related to finding that claims of statistical significance in things like the hockey stick are unfounded. This sort of result is almost never published except after a paper claiming significance is first published. So, his work, by it’s very nature, will not result in a paper unless someone else’s incorrect work is first published.
     If work not yet published is cited by the IPCC as supporting some view, Steve still can write a paper rebutting the unpublished article. Moreover, the most suitable place to discuss these sorts of decisions on the part of the IPCC is a blog (or the coffee room.)

     It’s hardly surprising that few are going to want to waste much time stopping to answer TCO’s endlessly repeated questions and complaints to explain why peer reviewed publications might be slow in coming. In many cases, perfectly reasonable explanations for the small number of publications is entirely obvious (except possibly to TCO.)

     If TCO were a funding agency who’d paid for work, people might spend time explaining to him. But… he’s not. He’s just a nearly anonymous climate blog addict, who seems to assume the role of concern troll.

131. Lucia:

     I’m not sure whether you were giving me a time out, or if I am perma-banned. I am at a bar, so perhaps the IP has changed versus home. Just let me know…since I will honor a ban.

     I don’t think it “dominates the conversation” for me to dig into one issue on one thread and basically take on all comers. I’m not spamming other threads. I agree there is this social dynamic where I tend to take a lot of attention…but people can always ignore. It’s at least voluntary that they engage.

     I also think that banning one side of the debate, one side making reasoned arguments, and then you countering the arguments when the bannee can’t reply is…not fair play.

     I value coffee conversation. I value journals. But the problem is that the blog work is getting exaggerated in the minds of the hoi polloi and even by the bloggers themselves. The “coffee” work is displacing real technical reports. And is being touted as more than what it is. Add on to that, that the blogs serve as much more than an electronic salon for half tested ideas…they ARE also used for attempts to influence. My pointing all that out is a reasonable area for discussion. And not all of you value publication sufficiently over coffee housing…but I wax on.

     P.s. I still want those slippers. Men’s size 8EEE. Chop chop. Red Heart is fine, manly colors please.

     P.s.s. I still want to donate some real yarn to you. I don’t care if I’m banned…I’m just such a swaggering Steinbeckesque character I am.

132. TCO– It was a time out. If you were at home or work, you’d still be able to comment.

     How many comments in one hour on Sunday morning? Talking to yourself?

     I’m making an afghan right now. No slippers in Men’s 8EEE. Anyway, my policy on needlework for people who I don’t know from Adam is that they are required to give inducements that value 1.5times my fully burdened charge out rate at my employer. When I tell people how much I would charge, this has always made people who contact me out of the blue to spend a few hour knitting a hat for them. Knitting or crocheting for strangers for modest wages would make me grumpy, so I don’t do it. Either I want to make something for free or I don’t.

133. I’ll send you some malabriglio. Not 200 dollars worth. But some. Then you can make me slipper thingies from acrylic. I won’t send money since we are not strangers but friends.

134. The only way Blogs would be useful for science is if the were heavily moderated and were free of political machinations… Both are unlikely to happen.

135. Nathan (Comment#9040)

     “The only way Blogs would be useful for science is if the were heavily moderated and were free of political machinations… Both are unlikely to happen.”

     Journals are heavily moderated but hardly free of political machinations. At least with blogs the politics is in the open.

136. Raven
     “Journals are heavily moderated but hardly free of political machinations. At least with blogs the politics is in the open.”

     Well Lucia is constantly pretending she doesn’t have any.

     What are the political aims of Nature? What about Geophysical Research Letters? People like to claim there is some agenda behind journals, but seriously what is it?

137. Nathan–
     When have I ever pretended I have no politics? I have political opinions and vote just like everyone I know has political opinions and votes.

     I support trying to identify and promote methods to reduce ghgs. I’m for promoting alternative energy policies and have been since the late 70s. I’m for facilitating construction of nuclear power plants. I’m for legalizing same sex marriage. I’m vouchers to permit parents greater choices in schools. I’m for. . .

138. Nathan,

     It is pretty obvious the jounrnals are businesses seeking readers which means they want to publish material that grabs attention. Often this means they favour anything that predicts doom because bad news sells better than good news. To make matters worse, the politics behind climate change means that some jounrnals are no longer objective on this issue and seek to actively promote climate alarmism.

139. Lucia
     Am I wrong then in understanding that see your posts here as have no political motivation? Remember I wasn’t saying you, personally, claimed no politcial motivation.

     Raven,
     “It is pretty obvious the jounrnals are businesses seeking readers which means they want to publish material that grabs attention. ”
     yes… because journals make so much cash out of selling journals… How much do they make Raven? Any idea? Or are they not for profit enterprises?

     “To make matters worse, the politics behind climate change means that some jounrnals are no longer objective on this issue and seek to actively promote climate alarmism.”
     See, here you need to identify your own AGW conpsiracy anxiety and then attempt to logically and objectively think about this. The Journals have been publishing material on AGW for decades, well before this became political. The Journals aren’t the problem, it’s the Mass Media.

140. Nathan,

     Exhibit A: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3372

     Scientific American now joins the magazines Science and Nature in blasting Lomborg. They all editorialize that his “book is a failure” and call out four well-traveled attack dogs from the Washington big government/greenie/lefty establishment in support.

     The response of these “prestigious” journals to Lomborg was an outrageous example of pro-alarmist bias.

     Exhibit B: http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12376658&fsrc=rss

     The same thing may be happening in scientific publishing, according to a new analysis. With so many scientific papers chasing so few pages in the most prestigious journals, the winners could be the ones most likely to oversell themselves—to trumpet dramatic or important results that later turn out to be false.

     Journals – even non-profit ones – need readers.

141. Raven,
     Big deal. Lomborg is nothing. Who seriously quotes Lomborg when making a science discussion? You are simply relying on the premis that any attack on contrary claims is bias. Have you cosnidered, maybe that Lomborg is just wrong?

     Raven, the BEST way for a science journal to maintain readership is by providing the best science. Their market is science. No one claims that bad papers don’t get published, but that is an entirely different matter. In fact the last line says it all
     “to trumpet dramatic or important results that later turn out to be false. ”
     So the results are found to be false and life goes on. Reputation is everything for journals, there is far more to be gained by publishing results that are consistently good than for simply attracting readers.

142. The absurd over the top response of the jounrnals is the evidence of the bias. The correctness of Lomborg is not really issue. Frankly, the persecution of Lomborg was one things that convinced me that there is something very wrong with our scientific establishment.

143. Raven,
     Sure you can hold your own opinion.
     But your argument makes no sense. You claim that the journals are simply publishing sensational claims to attract readers. If this were the case you’d actually see them publishing anti-AGW papers – this would be far more sensational and attract many readers. Imagine the front page of Nature showing “AGW shown to be flawed” – imagine how many people would buy that? In fact if you look at how the media treats this issue you’ll see a far more effective marketing campaign (which is basically what you claim the Journals are doing). You see the media flipping between points of view… From “Crikey, the world is about to end” to “AGW is a hoax”. In The Australian (yes, I am Australian) today there was a long article on the upcoming Global cooling… Just mind numbingly stupid.

     The best evidence that the journals are publishing the best argument is that they are consistently publishing the same argument. They depend on quality of science to keep their readership so they won’t publish stuff that is of dubious quality.

144. Nathan,

     “But your argument makes no sense. You claim that the journals are simply publishing sensational claims to attract readers.”

     That is what others have found when they looked at the issue. “greenland is melting we are all going drown” stories sell better than “greenland is fine nothing to worry about” stories.

     “The best evidence that the journals are publishing the best argument is that they are consistently publishing the same argument.”

     In your dreams. The bias is self-evident from things like the reaction to Lomborg and McIntyre. If the journals were not biased then there would be a selection of views because anyone who understands anything about climate science knows the science is far from settled.

145. Nathan–
     As far as I am aware, I have no political motivations for posting the results of these analyses. If one exists, it is entirely unconscious.

     What goal could I possibly achieve by posting?

     Also, I have plotted the various temperature metrics together. As far as I am aware, the different metrics are not inconsistent with each other. (Not inconsistent is as far as statitical tests I do can show “consistency”.)

146. “The best evidence that the journals are publishing the best argument is that they are consistently publishing the same argument. They depend on quality of science to keep their readership so they won’t publish stuff that is of dubious quality.”

     A real science journal asks the tough questions, and doesn’t promote one side over the other in an argument…

     …unless the readership already believes one side, and that’s what they like to read about.

     Stating that journals are more right because they say the right things is a logical fallacy. The content needs to be examined by people of differing opinions to see how right it is.

     Andrew

147. Raven said:

     Exhibit B: http://www.economist.com/scien…..p;fsrc=rss

     Did you know that creationists are also using this argument?

     Moreover, Ioannidis would disagree with the way McIntyre and others use his work in relation to climate science (from the above link):

     This is a very important issue that you are raising. I was not aware of this, but it is hard to understand how some people may use my work to fuel attacks against science per se. HIV/AIDS denialism, global warming denialism, and evolution denialism/intelligent design have nothing to do with science, they are dogmas that depend on beliefs, not on empirical observation and replication/refutation thereof. Perhaps we should just take it for granted that such “currents” may try to use anything to support their views.

     I suppose you now want to treat Ioannidis as a hostile witness?

148. Boris,

     Ioannidis is obviously a clueless fanatic if he cannot distinguish between creationism and AGW skepticism. That said, his results speak for themselves and come as no surprise to people who follow the climate debate. After all, MBH98 is a textbook example of a high profile paper that turned out to be false.

149. Boris, I saw your post at CA on this as well, and you’re taking McI’s post too far. McI was unequivocally referring to the need to be able to replicate the results of a study and how, in climate science, this is best served by archiving data sets and algorithms. He was not using Ioannidis’ statements as an argument that AGW is bunk. McI’s post was not an attack on science.

150. Perhaps Ryan is right is McI’s case, but not so in Raven’s.

     Raven, point me to some actual AGW skepticism, because most of what Is see is denial–similar to creationism and extremely similar to HIV/AIDS denialism, especially in the early days. (Not so much now because AIDS “dissidents”, tragically, keep dying.)

     Watts even linked to Uncommon Descent at one point…so perhaps he sees the connection that you do not.

151. Boris,

     Watts and his analysis of the station siting – pure science.
     Steve Mc and his verification and replication of results – pure science.
     Lucia and her tests of models against reality – pure science.
     Spencer and his theories on cloud feedback – pure science.

     Even Archibald with his nonsense theories about barycentric motion is providing clear falsifiable hypotheses which is scientific even if the means of developing the hypotheses is suspect.

     IMO, those people that insist that the ‘science is settled’ and that there is nothing to discuss have more in common with creationists than skeptics.

152. 
     

     Watts and his analysis of the station siting – pure science.

     How do these siting issues affect the final temperature analysis? He’s been up to this for a couple years and there’s no evidence that anything he’s found makes one bit of difference in the trend. He’s doing PR, not science.

     Steve Mc and his verification and replication of results – pure science.

     Real auditors report back when something turns out to be right. Steve McI just moves along to a new controversy. TCO is right about him: a lot of bluster with little to show for it.

     Lucia and her tests of models against reality – pure science.

     The problem with Lucia’s analysis is that it is so short term that it’s pretty meaningless at this point. But who’s against testing models to reality?

     IMO, those people that insist that the ’science is settled’ and that there is nothing to discuss

     I would agree it’s misleading to claim “the science is settled,” whatever that means. I’d probably replace it with something like “the science strongly supports action to reduce GHG emissions.”

     Then again, it’s the skeptic side that keeps questioning
     ice core records
     the source of atmospheric CO2
     the fact that CO2 absorption is not “saturated”
     the role of CO2 in glaciation/deglaciation
     the surface temperature analysis

     which are just some of the areas that we have tons of evidence. It wouldn’t even be so bad if they questioned this stuff (one can learn form asking questions)–but they question it from a position of utter ignorance, failing to exercise due diligence in research and basically believing anything that someone says as long as it implies humans might not be as responsible as the consensus states. Can you blame us if we get tired of rebutting the same old Zombie arguments over and over?

153. hmmm….couldn’t edit that rogue blockquote tag for some reason. edit: ok, now it’s good.

154. Boris–

     Out of curiosity, what would you say if the mean model projections are found inconsistent with observations since 1990?
     Or 1980?
     Or 1970?

     How long is long enough for you?

155. Boris: your

     Then again, it’s the skeptic side that keeps
     questioning ice core records
     No question. CO2 is a lagging indicator of climate. 600 years ±
     400 years

     the source of atmospheric CO2
     No question. The vast majority is natural, part of the carbon cycle.

     the fact that CO2 absorption is not “saturated”
     Of course not. Its logarithmic.

     the role of CO2 in glaciation/deglaciation
     No question. The ice cores show that high CO2 can last 1000’s of years into a glaciation. Or that an interglacial warming is followed closely by an increase in CO2.

     the surface temperature analysis
     No question as to trend. It was trending upward for most of the last century. For the last decade or so, its trending down.

156. boris: your

     Real auditors report back when something turns out to be right. Steve McI just moves along to a new controversy.

     You mean like Stockwell’s and Lubos’s analysis of GISSTemp data using Benford’s law?

     And Steve defending GISSTemp data, by showing statistically that there appeared to be nothing wrong?

     By your definition, that makes Steve a “real” auditor.

157. I have a question to any and all warmers:

     What is the temp of the ‘globe’ right now?

     You should be happy to answer since you know. Lets record the number for posterity. Put your money where your science is and let’s have a number.

     If you are going to play this game with numbers to say things about the numbers, tell me what the number is, please.

     Andrew

158. Out of curiosity, what would you say if the mean model projections are found inconsistent with observations since 1990?

     That would be more significant. The longer the better, obviously. But more importantly, I’d want to know why. For trends since 2001, there are too many things that haven’t had a chance to even out (solar, el nino, other internal forcings).

     Les,
     Good for Steve on that one. I give credit where it’s due. But he holds too many grudges to be of any real use as an auditor.

159. Boris: your

     For trends since 2001, there are too many things that haven’t had a chance to even out (solar, el nino, other internal forcings).

     According to the IPCC, CO2 forcing is now greater than natural forcings.

     Are you wrong, or the IPCC?

160. Boris–
     After identifying that an inconsistency exists, searching for “why” is important. That said, showing inconsistency exists is important in and of itself. If there is no inconsistency, we don’t need to try to discover “why”.

161. Boris: apparently you have also missed Steve’s praise of some data sets, and data. Finland supra long pine, some Asian speleotherms, etc?

     Or do you just object to him finding fault in Hansen, Mann etc?

162. According to the IPCC, CO2 forcing is now greater than natural forcings.

     The key word was “internal.” I actually should have said “internal variability” or “unforced variability.”

163. Boris:

     “I would agree it’s misleading to claim “the science is settled,” whatever that means. I’d probably replace it with something like “the science strongly supports action to reduce GHG emissions.”

     What science? You can’t count the science that merely shows that we had some warming, which ended 10 years ago, because that can easily be explained by natural phenomena and it has happened in the past many times. You don’t dare count the dozens of hockey stick/spagetti-graph studies, since McIntyre has clearly condemned them to the garbage heap of poor science (in fact, EXTREMELY POOR science). So do you count GCMs as science? Nowadays, they are about the only “support” left for the fears that ppm-levels of plant food will cause grave problems. And they are being falsified quite rapidly, IMHO. You guys not only have little “science” to support some CO2 connection to warming, but you will probably soon lose much of your political support, as people continue to notice that it is getting cooler, not warmer. The idiots in the media really hastened that process when they tried to attribute the cold weather on global warming. Even Joe Sixpack is laughing at the “climate scientists” now.

     The Emperor has no clothes, Boris.

164. Raven you should look more closely at marketing strategies, there is nothing to gain in marketing by trumpeting the same story over and over. Watch the newspapers, they do it well, they vacilate from one side to the other.

     If you think that journals will risk their reputation by presenting bad science, then you are mistaken. Journals are under no obligation to provide a ‘balanced’ view or one that promotes both sides of an argument. They earn their reputation by consistently presenting the best science.

     Lucia
     “As far as I am aware, I have no political motivations for posting the results of these analyses. If one exists, it is entirely unconscious.”
     Well fair enough. I guess the question I would ask is why the persistence with promoting blogs like WUWT and decrying Blogs like Open Mind? Is it a case of supporting the underdog?

     Andrew
     “A real science journal asks the tough questions, and doesn’t promote one side over the other in an argument…

     …unless the readership already believes one side, and that’s what they like to read about.”

     Journals don’t ask questions in the way you imply.

     To be honest if you (and Raven) think that there is some conspiracy amongst the Journals (which must be the case if they are all favouring one side), then all hope for you is lost. You have fallen victim to your own paranoia you will be unable to think about this objectively and no argument of mine will convince you otherwise.

165. Lucia I guess the problem I see in your blog is that you claim to understand that GHG’s cause warming and so on, yet when people post really stupid things like Jae above you don’t attempt to point out that their understanding is flawed. You’d rather debate with Boris… It’s very strange.

166. Nathan,
     I like Anthony, and appreciate his politness.

     But what do you mean by “promoting” WUWT? I announced that several climate blogs had been nominated by for a blog award, and congratulated winners. If OM had been nominated and won, I would have blogged about that too.

     What do you mean by “decrying” OM? Somewhere around 6 months ago, I’ve had several replys to criticisms of my posts by Tamino at OM. Is replying to specific criticisms “decrying”?

167. Nathan–
     I went around endlessly with jae long, long ago. I tried to explain that AGW does not violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics and explained why his theory that “hot places are dry” did not disprove global warming. I could search and link.

     More recently he says much vaguer things, and generally posts when zillions of things are coming in. I think Boris and you can handle jae.

168. “then all hope for you is lost”

     That’s the best you can do? Is your position on me based on the fact I have an opinion that differs from yours?

     Andrew

169. Lucia
     Well, apologies. I guess I was reading too much into your blog.

     Andrew,
     There’s nothing for me to adress as your post is simply a statement of you opinion. There is no conspiracy…

170. Lucia:

     “I went around endlessly with jae long, long ago. I tried to explain that AGW does not violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics and explained why his theory that “hot places are dry” did not disprove global warming. I could search and link”

     That is a very unfair and misleading statement. I have NEVER said there has been no global warming, nor have I in any way tried to show that there is no global warming . The debate to which you refer concerned whether or not water exerts a positive feedback to warming. I say it’s negative. And the some important recent papers (like the one by Roy Spencer) are siding with me.

     And Nathan, surely you have to have something to say beyond “momma Lucia, he is saying stupid things.”

171. Nathan,

     “If you think that journals will risk their reputation by presenting bad science, then you are mistaken.”

     “Bad” science is often a matter of opinion. A surprising number of climate scientists seem to think that the hockey stick studies are examples of “good” science despite the mounds of evidence that says otherwise.

     In fact, you are basically agreeing that the jounrnals will be forced to reject what they think will be perceived to be bad science even if they think it is good because it would “risk their reputation”.

172. “your post is simply a statement of you opinion”

     For some reason you chose attack me personally (all hope for ME is lost), when I made no such attack on you.

     Why is that?

     Andrew

173. Raven
     ““Bad” science is often a matter of opinion. A surprising number of climate scientists seem to think that the hockey stick studies are examples of “good” science despite the mounds of evidence that says otherwise.”

     Nonsense. The hockey stick has triggered many firther studies. Even if it is flawed (which has not been demonstrated in the literature), it is still good becaue it prompted a lot of people to investigate further in that area. This is how science works, we build on other people’s work (often despite the errors in the initial work).

     You seem to be implying that the Journals have refused to publish studies that demonstrate the Hockey Stick to be flawed. This is in your imagination. If there was a study which demonstrated a flaw in the Hockey Stick (a serious one, not omething trivial), it would get published.

     This idea that the Journals are somehow protecting an idea or preventing certain ideas being published is simply silly. How could such a vast conspiracy ever work? Who is in charge? Who would be controlling it? This idea seems to simply be a way of excusing the inability of the skeptic side (if you want to have sides) to actually get published. Perhaps the simplest answer is the best, and that is that the science they present is bad. Have you ever heard of Occams Razor?

     Andrew,
     Stop whining. You made a point about something I said, so I countered it. I was actually having a discussion with Raven, when you interjected. If you don’t want to be “attacked” (and how you see this as an attack is beyond me) don’t say anything.

174. Nathan: WOW, have you got a lot of “catching up” to do.

     “. Even if it is flawed (which has not been demonstrated in the literature),”

     See McIntyre and McKitrick 05: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html There are others, too.

     “This is in your imagination. If there was a study which demonstrated a flaw in the Hockey Stick (a serious one, not omething trivial), it would get published.”

     DITTO.

     “This idea that the Journals are somehow protecting an idea or preventing certain ideas being published is simply silly. How could such a vast conspiracy ever work? Who is in charge? Who would be controlling it? This idea seems to simply be a way of excusing the inability of the skeptic side (if you want to have sides) to actually get published. Perhaps the simplest answer is the best, and that is that the science they present is bad. Have you ever heard of Occams Razor?”

     You are indeed naieve. Go through the main posts at Icecap to see how many scientists are too intimidated to offer contrary evidence.

     You need to do a lot more reading, before calling people “stupid.”

175. Nathan,

     “This idea that the Journals are somehow protecting an idea or preventing certain ideas being published is simply silly. How could such a vast conspiracy ever work? Who is in charge?”

     Actually there’s a frequent commenter at Deltoid (or was last time I looked, which is a while ago) who turns out to be an ex-editor of Nature. I won’t mention any names, but I would describe him charitably as a “zealot” and if I was less charitable, a “lunatic”.

     I don’t believe in conspiracies, but it is naive to think that at least some journals don’t have an agenda. Of course that cuts both ways. I think Energy & Environment has an agenda.

     On the subject of controversy, back in the days when I used to read New Scientist I noticed that when they published something in my field (which was then road safety) it was almost invariably something kooky (e.g. motorcycle helmets don’t save lives due to risk compensation). Note that I don’t consider NS to be a “science journal” as such.

176. Nathan,

     I am implying the reaction of the climate science community to legimate criticism of the hockey stick and subsequent studies demonstrates that they are more interested in propoganda than science.

     If they were actually interested in the science you would have seen:

     1) Acknowledgement that MBH98 and subsequent tree ring based studies do not provide useful insights into past temperatures.

     2) Demands that scientists doing this kind of research publish all of the methods and data required to replicate them.

     3) Improvements in the peer review process that would ensure studies with gross errors such as those in Mann 2008 are caught and fixed before publication.

     As far as then motivations for the journal editors. It is a combination of peer pressure, self interest and personal beliefs that results in the bias. The argument that such bias requires an organized conspiracy is a strawman argument.

177. And, Dear Nathan: go to CO2science.org. Click on the Index. Click on a subject of your choice (glaciers, polar bears, Medieval Warming Period (recommended for you), etc., etc. READsome of the summaries. If you think the summary is wrong, then go read the complete article. And then come back here and say you are CERTAIN of anything at all. Anyone who is CERTAIN of calamity is just a nut. History is replete with folks that were certain of calamity, and so far, no dice. History has proven that a thousand times over. If you care to know my opinion (Bible based) it is that we will not even see the calamity coming, until it is far too late. I really doubt that God will destroy us via CO2, though 🙂 You liberals are really handicapped by your failure to understand that there are much higher powers than humans.

178. Raven

     You have decided these are the important issues. All I can stress is that any REAL complaints with the Hockey Stick etc, should be addressed in the Journals. The fact that few have been published indicates that there is little that is REALLY wrong with it. Your opinion may have been changed by someone’s blog or proof or whatever, but it is actually the responsibility of the person demonstrating it is wrong to get it published. It is not sufficient to ‘blog it’

     “As far as then motivations for the journal editors. It is a combination of peer pressure, self interest and personal beliefs that results in the bias.”
     This is not proof that there is an agenda that is pro-AGW. What is the benefit of being pro-AGW if there is no conspiracy? It’s more baseless claims.

     Can you not understand that the most likely reason that papers skeptical of AGW are not published is that they are wrong. Do you see many papers published skeptical of other branches of science? No, mostly because they are simply wrong.

179. Jae, I don’t think I will see any really negative effects of AGW during my life. The worst I think I will see is more heatwaves where I live (we just had one, it was not pleasant) and longer dry spells. I live in Perth Western Australia. We have very large problems with water shortages and long hot spells…

     “You liberals are really handicapped by your failure to understand that there are much higher powers than humans.”
     Ummmm ok… Whatever. I don’t think we will ever agree…

180. Nathan,

     I have the science background that allows me to look at arguments presented and determine for myself whether they are significant or not. I do not feel the need to allow some jounrnal editor to decide what my opinion should be. In my scientific opinion the issues that have been raised are serious and deserve consideration even if they do not necessarily mean that catastrphic AGW hypothesis is wrong.

     The fact that many climate scientists think they can simply ignore these issues and move on is evidence that they are not objective voices in this discussion. What that also means is the ‘truth’ of AGW cannot be determined by looking at the peer reviewed journals.

     That said, blogs and other sources are not necessarily any better which means the only real option is the good olde scientific method: hypothesis, prediction, experiment, verification.

     We are in the middle of an experimental cycle that started with the last IPCC report. It will take a few more years to gather conclusive data on whether the the IPCC models successfully predicted the trend in global temperatures. If the do predict the actual outcome I will adjust my opinions accordingly. Until then, AGW is nothing but a speculative hypothesis with some theoretical merit but has no conclusive experimental evidence.

181. Nathan:

     “Can you not understand that the most likely reason that papers skeptical of AGW are not published is that they are wrong. Do you see many papers published skeptical of other branches of science? No, mostly because they are simply wrong.”

     Just where, oh where do you get these fantasies? First of all, there are many “skeptical” papers in peer-reviewed journals (as if that really matters). Google Roy Spencer, who heads up the premiere satellite temperature monitoring system. Google Lindsen of MIT to see what he says about the politicalization of science. Google Oregon Petition Project to get a list of thousands of scientists that have signed a petition that disagrees with the scam that is being perpetrated by IPCC, goofy Al Gore, and paranoid James Hansen. Google Senator James Inhoff, and read testimonials by over 165 very famous scientists, including some that wre a part of IPPC, to see what a scam this whole thing is. Google the Canadian scientists that pleaded with the administration not to tax carbon. Read the comments of the new Czec European IPPC designate, who strongly disagreees with AGW. Read ClimateAudit.org. for the best “novel” you have ever read about scientists fighting to withhold data and computer programs, to protect their false evidence and abuses of science (and probably their very asses :)). Then come back here and tell us that the “science is settled.”

182. Raven,
     “In my scientific opinion the issues that have been raised are serious and deserve consideration even if they do not necessarily mean that catastrphic AGW hypothesis is wrong.”
     Great, but we were talking about whether the Journals have a bias against Skeptic arguments. Your opinion is fine. It would seem, however, that the Journals don’t agree with you. Now you can choose to think that there is some sort of bias if you like. But this apparent bias can more easily be explained by poor arguments on the Skeptic side.

     Jae.
     I am sorry, there is nothing I can write that will shift your POV. If you accept the Oregon Petition as evidence of something then you sick with it. However, it is not surprising to me that it has been largely ignored and surprising that people still discuss it.
     You are also a supporter of I.D.? It’s interesting to me that the arguments used by I.D. supporters are often repeated by Skeptics of AGW. This seems to indicate an inherent distrust of science, rather than skepticism.
     If you see this as a scam, then vote for someone in parliament who will promote your view. Have a nice day.

183. Google Oregon Petition Project to get a list of thousands of scientists that have signed a petition that disagrees with the scam that is being perpetrated by IPCC, goofy Al Gore, and paranoid James Hansen.

     All you have are conspiracy theories, and it’s pointless to argue with a conspiracy theorist.

     97% of active climatologists agree that human activity is causing global warming

184. Yeah, Boris, if you phrase your poll questions carefully, you can get any results you want. http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate

185. Nathan,

     Take a look at this:

     http://climatesci.org/2009/01/21/an-obvious-double-standard-adopted-by-the-agu-publication-eos/

     A clear demonstration of the pro-AGW bias in peer reviewed journals.

186. A clear demonstration of the pro-AGW bias in peer reviewed journals.

     Huh? Do you think Fergus Brown’s survey is anti-AGW?

     From the initial response, we conclude that:

     1. The largest group of respondents (45-50%) concur with the IPCC perspective as given in the 2007 Report.

     2. A significant minority (15-20%), however, conclude that the IPCC understated the seriousness of the threat from human additions of CO2 .

     3. A significant minority (15-20%), in contrast, conclude that the IPCC overstated the role of human additions of CO2 relative to other climate forcings.

     4. Almost all respondents (at least 97%) conclude that the human addition of CO2 into the atmosphere is an important component of the climate system and has contributed to some extent in recent observed global average warming.

     FWIW, I agree with Annan that the Brown survey should have been published in EOS. The survey shows that the IPCC did a good job of summarizing the science. I’m not sure why denialists would want to promote that information.

187. Raven
     That proves nothing… Except Pielke Snr is sulking. Did he submit it to any other Journal?

     And note what you are describing isn’t about scientific papers.

     Hey, don’t let me change your mind about a conspiracy theory. But that is what you are proposing. That the Journals are all deliberately excluding anti-AGW articles and papers… It’s a monumental conspiracy! And one that does not exist.

188. Looks like Annan is sulking too.

     http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2009/01/your-opinions-please.html#comments

     I guess 60-70%% thinking IPCC got it right or underestimated the risks wasn’t considered as impressive or newsworthy as a “consensus” of 97%.

     I’m wondering why they didn’t add decimal places (like “97.3452% of climate scientists agree….”).

189. Nathan: “All I can stress is that any REAL complaints with the Hockey Stick etc, should be addressed in the Journals. The fact that few have been published indicates that there is little that is REALLY wrong with it.”

     Just how many articles are required to demonstrate an idea is wrong? Is it more when the idea is used in a Powerpoint briefing?

190. Nathan: “All I can stress is that any REAL complaints with the Hockey Stick etc, should be addressed in the Journals. The fact that few have been published indicates that there is little that is REALLY wrong with it.”

     I GAVE you a link to a peer-reviewed article in a mainstream journal that demolishes the Hockey Stick, if you understand the article. It is simply surreal that there are still thoughtful folks out there that would support those terribly flawed studies. Take away one or two proxies and all that is left is noise.

191. LUCIA: You owe me an apology for flippantly misrepresenting my position!

192. Jae
     Obviously that article doesn’t do what you think it does. Just because you claim it demolishes the Hockey Stick, doesn’t mean that it does. That you think the Journals would willingly perpetuate an error is surreal.

     “The debate to which you refer concerned whether or not water exerts a positive feedback to warming. I say it’s negative. And the some important recent papers (like the one by Roy Spencer) are siding with me.”
     Hmmm So why was the Cretaceous so hot? How can you explain the ‘Hothouse’ Earth without water vapour being positive? Wouldn’t that simply mean that the sensitivity of climate to CO2 is greater and we will be in even more trouble by emitting more?

     Joe
     It would only take one paper. But that paper would need to be CORRECT. This is the issue. People around here are working from the assumption the Hockey Stick is wrong, however this is not borne out by the literature. The original Hockey Stick paper has spawned many attempts to investigate recent (last few thousand years) global mean surface temperature reconstructions. This is what happens with good science. Good science provokes more investigation, bad science is ignored.
     “Is it more when the idea is used in a Powerpoint briefing?”
     I have no idea what you mean by this last statement.

193. Nate:

     “It would only take one paper. But that paper would need to be CORRECT. This is the issue. People around here are working from the assumption the Hockey Stick is wrong, however this is not borne out by the literature. The original Hockey Stick paper has spawned many attempts to investigate recent (last few thousand years) global mean surface temperature reconstructions. This is what happens with good science. Good science provokes more investigation, bad science is ignored.”

     I guess you are being very selective about what you consider relevant “literature” here. There are HUNDREDS of papers that demonstrate that the Medieval Warming Period was as warm, if not warmer, than the current warming period (well current till 10 years ago, anyway). That fact, alone, discredits the hokey-stick studies, none of which shows a significant MWP. See here, under the MWP heading: http://www.co2science.org/subject/m/subject_m.php.

     You have obviously spent too much time at ReinventedClimate and are stuck in a rut. You need to put in some time at ClimateAudit.org. I’m an old scientist and have read a lot, but I have never witnessed any worse “science” than is displayed by the hockey-stick studies: post-hoc selection of data series, deliberate omission of series that “don’t show” what is wanted,” use of novel, undocumented, and unproven statistical methods (even improper use of proven procedures), splicing different series together, making up data which are missing, truncating data which isn’t “cooperative,” etc. etc. etc. (I won’t even get into the petty withholding of data and code and ad-hom nonesense by some of the “scientists.”) I’m pretty sure that EVERY ONE of those incestuous studies can be shown to be nonsense by simply removing one or two hockey-stick shaped proxies (usually certain bristlecone pine series, which even a National Academy of Science Panel said shouldn’t be used).

     You are really fighting a losing battle by defending those studies. Better move on.

194. @jae
     Speaking of ReinventedClimate, a new study claims Antarctica has actually warmed the last 50 years, not cooled.
     http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/state-of-antarctica-red-or-blue/

     Yet Spencer Weart has already assured us all the models have been right all along in predicting a cooling Antarctica, when it was cooling. Apparently cooling anywhere is not good PR nowadays.

     http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/02/antarctica-is-cold/

     “The pioneer climate modelers Kirk Bryan and Syukuro Manabe took up the question with a more detailed model that revealed an additional effect. In the Southern Ocean around Antarctica the mixing of water went deeper than in Northern waters, so more volumes of water were brought into play earlier. In their model, around Antarctica “there is no warming at the sea surface, and even a slight cooling over the 50-year duration of the experiment.” (4) In the twenty years since, computer models have improved by orders of magnitude, but they continue to show that Antarctica cannot be expected to warm up very significantly until long after the rest of the world’s climate is radically changed.”

     “Bottom line: A cold Antarctica and Southern Ocean do not contradict our models of global warming. For a long time the models have predicted just that.”

     Ah, aren’t hypotheses that cannot be falsified great?

195. DG,

     I think we are treading dangerously close to the “He was for it before he was against it” territory, which from my experience tends to be more spin than fact. Why do you assume that climate forcing in the Antarctic is monotonic? Climate models do indeed do a good job of modeling the Antarctic cooling from the 70s to present, just as they do a passable job of modeling longer-term warming. The primary explanation for both is that a) the ozone hole added a reasonable significant negative forcing from the late 70s to present and b) climate models never predicted the sort of dramatic warming we are seeing in the Arctic to occur in the Antarctic. The new Steig et al article does not change the fact that the Antarctic has cooled in recent years, it just extends the temperature record back to show that the slight observed cooling is part of a longer-term warming trend. That said, the real interesting take-away is the rate of warming in the West Antarctic.

     Also, can we refrain from excess snark like “ReinventedClimate”? It really does not help keep the dialogue constructive.

196. Zeke–
     I had missed the ReinventingClimate snark. Thanks for asking DG to stop that.
     DG: Don’t argue by name calling. Made up names are still names.

     Zeke (again):

     Climate models do indeed do a good job of modeling the Antarctic cooling from the 70s to present,

     I think the difficulty for those advocating the accuracy of models is that the cooling has been replaced by warming. Presumbaly, in any particular region and time span, models either predict warming or cooling, but not both. (Of course, we can go to subregions, or smaller spans of time– but in which case we need to say that.)

     It may well be that the Antarctic is doing precisely what models predicted. But in that case, it would have been better if Weart had written a more nuanced article that explained more precisely what they predicted, in what way the predictions were consistent or inconsistent with data as thought to exist back in Feb 2008. He could also have discussed the uncertainty in data which arises from poor spatial coverage. He could have said the models predict warming– but so slowly it would be difficult to detect.

     He could have said many things.

     Had this more nuanced article been written, RC could now write an article that explained how the discovering that parts of the continent formerly thought to be cooling are actually warming, and told us if the new knowledge about the warming compares to model predictions.

     But, as it stands, the impression given by Weart article at RC published in 2008 was this:

     a) Denialists say Antarctica has been cooling.
     b) Scientists believed that Antarctica has been cooling.
     c) Models predicted this cooling and had done so for decades.

     Now, we learn it’s warming.

     I’ve no doubt we will be told the warming is also consistent with model. But, if both warming and cooling both said to be consistent, people are going to wonder what modelers mean by “consistent”.

197. This is doubtless the best humour I’ve seen on this blog:

     Sarah Palin will surely avoid you for fear your DNA would lower the IQ level of her household.

     Think 75% of the USA population realised what that level IS … LoL

198. Lucia,

     I do agree that Weart could have written a more nuanced article. Though in his defense, he did specify that models had predicted cooling “for the past quarter century”. Bear in mind that even with the new results, the Antarctic has been cooling for the past 30 years or so. If you combine rapid ocean mixing (as a regulator of warming rate) with a discrete negative forcing starting in the 70s due to ozone depletion, I imagine that it does a pretty good job of modeling how Antarctica was warming before it was cooling.

     If Gavin is still hanging around, perhaps he could direct us to specific model outputs and how they looked in the 1950-present period. With the publication of Eric’s paper, I’m sure its only a matter of time before people compare the revised temperature records to specific model outputs.

199. Sekerob: here’s some more humor for you:

     It was reported that more than two million people gathered in Washington, D.C. for the Inaguration, and only 14 had to miss work.

200. lucia: you still owe me an apology.

201. The IPCC is pretty unequivocal about Antarctic ice extent, though.

     A reduction in Antarctic sea ice volume of about 25-45% is predicted for a doubling of CO2, with sea ice retreating fairly evenly around the continent (Gordon and O’Farrell, 1997). This CSIRO model assumes a 1% yr-1 compounding increase of CO2, corresponding to global warming of 2.1°C. Using a similar but modified model that has a higher albedo feedback and predicted global warming of 2.8°C, Wu et al. (1999) calculate a reduction in mean sea-ice extent of nearly two degrees of latitude, corresponding to 45% of sea-ice volume. These estimates do not represent the equilibrium state, and sea ice can be expected to shrink further, even if GHGs are stabilized.
     Climate Change 2001
     Working Group 2
     16.2.4.2. Sea Ice in the Southern Ocean

     Pity that the Antarctic ice extent shows a slight increase in the satellite record.

     This increase in ice, could also be used as an argument against any significant warming of the continent.

     “Who are you going to believe? Me, or your own eyes?”

     I can’t remember who said that. It was either G. Marx or M. Mann.

202. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v415/n6871/abs/nature710.html

     From the abstract.

     Continental Antarctic cooling, especially the seasonality of cooling, poses challenges to models of climate and ecosystem change.

203. And the next year they found a forcing mechanism that could help explain the challenge posed by Antarctic cooling.

     http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/296/5569/895

     From the abstract

     “Climate variability in the high-latitude Southern Hemisphere (SH) is dominated by the SH annular mode… It is argued that the largest and most significant tropospheric trends can be traced to recent trends in the lower stratospheric polar vortex, which are due largely to photochemical ozone losses. During the summer-fall season, the trend toward stronger circumpolar flow has contributed substantially to the observed warming over the Antarctic Peninsula and Patagonia and to the cooling over eastern Antarctica and the Antarctic plateau.”

     I’m not going to argue that climate models prior to the inclusion of ozone depletion-related cooling could accurately model antarctic temperatures. I was just pointing out that a long-term warming trend with some post-1970s cooling is perfectly consistent with our best knowledge of the forcings effecting Antarctic climate today.

     I do think there is a bit of an unfortunate habit not to be frank about the occasional area where models seem to be wrong or incomplete. You can see this in Weart’s odd reference to a Schneider and Thompson model from 1981 that predicted a slight antarctic cooling (which, given the state of GCMs in 1981, appears to a bit of clutching at straws).

204. jae–
     I emailed you privately. I think you may wish to review your various theories arguments on the thread of one of my first posts:

     http://rankexploits.com/musings/2007/new-climate-blog/#comment-76

205. Zeke–

     I do think there is a bit of an unfortunate habit not to be frank about the occasional area where models seem to be wrong or incomplete.

     I think this is one of the methods they use to they shoot themselves in the foot.

     In principle, the shortcomings should be corrected over time. But in practice, people who were reading the various blogs etc. remember the straw clutching, the about faces when data are fixed etc.

206. Lucia: no email so far, but I think you may also wish to review my various theories arguments on the thread of one of your first posts:

     http://rankexploits.com/musing…..comment-76

     I repeat my comment No. 9130:

     “That is a very unfair and misleading statement. I have NEVER said there has been no global warming, nor have I in any way tried to show that there is no global warming . The debate to which you refer concerned whether or not water exerts a positive feedback to warming. I say it’s negative. And the some important recent papers (like the one by Roy Spencer) are siding with me.”

207. Lucia,
     I promise not to call RC names anymore and blame JAE for my momentary lapse of judgement. 🙂

     My sarcasm is because no matter what happens, there seems to never be accountability when RC makes authoritative statements that turn out to be wrong, which is more often than their most ardent supporters will ever acknowledge.

     Zeke please note it does cover 50 years. Weart is saying for a quarter century the models have predicted cooling, not that it has cooled for the last quarter century:

     In their model, around Antarctica “there is no warming at the sea surface, and even a slight cooling over the 50-year duration of the experiment.”

208. Jae,
     You never answered how you explain previous “hot house” climates on Earth without having a positive water feedback. How is it the Cretaceous and even as far back as the Late Permian were so hot if there is no positive water feedback?

209. Jae–

     I did not say you claimed there was no global warming.
     Anyone can visit the thread I linked and read what you said.

210. Dammit, lucia, read your comment 9127:

     “I went around endlessly with jae long, long ago. I tried to explain that AGW does not violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics and explained why his theory that “hot places are dry” did not disprove global warming. I could search and link. ”

     Now, I WILL accept an apology.

211. Nathan:

     “Jae,
     You never answered how you explain previous “hot house” climates on Earth without having a positive water feedback. How is it the Cretaceous and even as far back as the Late Permian were so hot if there is no positive water feedback?”

     Well, you are suffering from a disfunction in logic. There are probably HUNDREDS of theories about previous “hot house” climates that don’t include CO2. This is a planet in orbit around a varing Sun in a varying galaxy in a varying Universe in ???? (only God knows). And now, you really have to ask yourself why CO2 levels have FOLLOWED (as in not lead) temperatures by 600-1000 years in the past (Overlay the curves in CrazyGore’s famous graph).

212. Jae,
     That’s an appeal to the unknown… Not a very appealing option.

     “And now, you really have to ask yourself why CO2 levels have FOLLOWED (as in not lead) temperatures by 600-1000 years in the past (Overlay the curves in CrazyGore’s famous graph).”
     Yes, yes, yes… The same old rubbish gets repeated… Yawn.

213. Jae, I shouldn’t let you off the hook so easily.
     Your answer to how the end Permian and Cretaceous hot houses is to claim that there are other ways to heat the Earth, including increased solar (your “varying sun” claim). Theories on Star formation indicate that as stars age they get hotter. The current TSI from the sun is far higher now than several hundred million years ago, or even 65 Million years ago … Yet the Earth’s temp is far lower- so it’s not the Sun. As to your varying galaxy and varying universe claims, what on Earth (or rather off Earth) could the galaxy and rest of the Universe do to raise temps?

     “There are probably HUNDREDS of theories about previous “hot house” climates that don’t include CO2.”
     Like what? Indeed that wasn’t even my point. You were claiming we have to exclude H2O as a greenhouse gas, so you now claim we have to leave out CO2 and H20 as greenhouse gases… That leaves a lot of work to be done by methane and nitrous oxides, doesn’t it?

     Perhaps you should try and learn about paleoclimates…

214. Jae– To demand your apology, you are changing AGW into GW and then saying you didn’t claim GW happend. Read the thread and refresh your memory about all the things you said. I’m not discussing this in comments any more.

215. Nathan– Actually, the point about CO2 leading T is not just a “yawn”.

     As Gore uses that graph, he strongly suggests that the graph itself proves that CO2 is causal. While positive feedback does exist in many places, and may explain why a lag occurs despite the fact that CO2 causes warming, the graph itself cannot prove positive feedback. As far as I am aware, there is still no quantitative explanation that shows that CO2 should lead, nor by that much. So, to some extent that falls in the unexplained.

     If the lag is used to disprove AGW, that is improper. But by the same token, if anyone suggests that graphs proves or strongly supports that CO2 causes warming, they are going way to far. They need to provide additional information. Specifically: You get back to the radiative physics.

     In the end, the graph adds practically nothing to support the basic argument for AGW which is based on radiative physics. If the someone, somewhere came up with a decent quantitative model to show the lag really should exist, and the magnitude observed is reasonable, that would go far in rebuffing doubts based on the graph. Saying “yawn” will never do so because that’s utterly inadequate.

216. lucia:

     “I’m not discussing this in comments any more.”

     Boy, does that sound familiar. Send an email and let’s get this straightened out, OK?

217. Nat:

     “You were claiming we have to exclude H2O as a greenhouse gas, so you now claim we have to leave out CO2 and H20 as greenhouse gases… That leaves a lot of work to be done by methane and nitrous oxides, doesn’t it?

     Perhaps you should try and learn about paleoclimates…”

     I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about here. Forget it, OK?

     Whatever the “scientific experts” say from now on is probably immaterial, anyway, as long as there are no great warming events and as long as the economy is in a mess (which is guaranteed by what I see happening). In fact, they (and much of science) will be figuratively tarred and feathered, if it gets much colder. The big bad catastrophic cat’s out of the bag, as far as the public is concerned. No more scare. The naked emporer is shivvering in the global cooling 🙂 The extremests were far too extreme this time, IMHO. LOL.

218. Lucia, I haven’t seen “An Inconvenient Truth” and have no particular desire to. I don’t personally have any opinion about Al Gore – being Australian he’s never been particularly relevant. I said “Yawn”, because that argument (as Jae used it) bores me, and as you say can’t be used to disprove AGW. But serisouly, who cares what Al Gore says?

     Jae,
     A long time ago, the Earth’s climate was a lot hotter. In fact for most of the Phanerozoic (around the last 550 million years) the climate has been hotter. It is extremely difficult to explain how this can be true without having a greenhouse effect and one that involves water as a positive feedback. Variations in output from the sun cannot explain these hot periods as the sun was cooler in the past, as the sun ages it gets hotter.

     The present cold period we live in is atypical for the Earth’s climate, mostly it seems to be due with the geographic location of Antartica and restrictions on ocean circulations (the Panama Isthmus especially), but also because the CO2 levels for the past 30 odd million years have been low (when compared with, say the Jurassic).

219. Nathan–

     But serisouly, who cares what Al Gore says?

     The reason people care what Al Gore says is that he is widely covered by newspapers here in the US, takes many speaking engagements and his film has aired widely.

     So, even if you don’t see it in Australia, that graph is used in a certain way. Al’s use strongly implied the graph itself proves CO2 causes warming. Despite the use of some fudging words, the whole set up implies the graph is some sort of strong proof.

     By itself, the graph does very little to adanvance the story.

     So, while it may be true that no one should listen to Al Gore, his is quite active in the debate. Consequently, people do respond to the arguments he makes either directly or by implication.

     I am, btw, in the US. So, even if it is true that Al Gore’s words do not reach as far as Australia, we are hearing them here.

220. Lucia, I didn’t bring up Al Gore or the CO2 graphs. I have no particular desire to debate either. Personally I have no problem with the CO2 lag, I don’t see it as a problem with AGW theory.

221. Nathan:

     “And now, you really have to ask yourself why CO2 levels have FOLLOWED (as in not lead) temperatures by 600-1000 years in the past (Overlay the curves in CrazyGore’s famous graph).”
     Yes, yes, yes… The same old rubbish gets repeated… Yawn.”

     A bit like the OJ defence saying “Judge, the prosecution just keeps going over and over about this double homicide”.

222. James,
     Why is it relevant?
     Is this proof by irrelevant analogy?

223. Nathan you are really mixing up things .
     1)
     Solar irradiance is a red herring even if everybody knows that it has beeen slowly increasing over those last 5 billions of years .
     The parameters of the Earth’s orbit aren’t .
     You and nobody have the slightest idea what the orbital parameters of the Earth were 500 millions years ago .
     The incertitude on the Earth position is complete after about 10 millions years .
     Less so on orbital parameters but it stays important .
     2)
     The biggest regulating factor of the climate is cloudiness . Cold Earth – many clouds . Hot Earth – few clouds .
     The cloudiness is in turn heavily impacted by the distribution and sizes of land and sea surfaces . Other factors play a role none of them correctly described . Cosmic rays may or may not play a role .
     We don’t need to mention the ground albedo that is unknown anyway .
     .
     3)
     Both temperature and atmospheric composition are unknown for the far past . Estimations of “global” temperatures are only a wet dream .
     Everybody can construct his own pet theory about how and why the climate varied on scales of 100 millions of years .
     Only the most extreme would be rejected even if statistically still possible (f.ex little green men did it :)) .
     The current mode in (some) scientific circles is that GHGs are the cause of everything from the number of eukaryotes 1 billion year ago to the cancer in humans today .
     So while you are free to believe anything you want about GHGs even 500 millions years ago , don’t try to sell it like if it was a proven falsifiable theory .
     Unless IPCC said that it was so .
     Ah well … yawn .

224. Nathan:

     “James,
     Why is it relevant? Is this proof by irrelevant analogy?”

     If CO2 lags temperature, that’s a problem for the theory. But you respond with a yawn. That’s why my response was relevant. However I doubt Lucia would wish us to continue this debate here.

225. James–
     As long as there is no name calling, I don’t mind if threads like “you can’t make this stuff up!” go off on tangents.

     In any case, whether Nathan thinks the CO2 lag important or not, it’s at least a bit important because
     a) The full case for AGW is a preponderance of the evidence case. (Many science issues are.)
     b) The CO2-Temperature correlation is something brought up by those who believe the recent warming is due to man. Of course counter arguments are presented.
     c) When judging a preponderance of the evidence case, we judge every piece of evidence brought forward.
     d) For some people the CO2-Temp correlation makes a difference in their ultimate judgment.

     So, yes, the issue is relevant to the debate generally. (Nathan is allowed to consider it an unimportant point. But his desire to simply debate the CO2 lag– which is inconvenient to his position– by pointing out Jae is not the first to notice this little glitch– won’t make the CO2 lag issue go away.

     He’s be better off to simply admit that the lag doesn’t disprove AGW because we have a qualitative explanation (i.e. “handwaving” ) explanation for why it may exist even if CO1 causes warming. He could also admit the graph doesn’t give extremely strong support. Then we’d be done with it.

     Instead, he wants to clutch at straws by beginning with an argument by “yawn” and then, after a series of silly arguments — trying to suggest we can’t hold him accountable for his silly “yawn” counter argument because he didn’t bring up the initial argument.

     But of course we can respond to what Nathan said. There is no rule that Nathan can rebutt Jae, and then no one can engage Nathan’s rebuttal because Nathan didn’t bring up the issue in the first place!

     (BTW: I add handwaving not to denigrate, but simply to point out that when people like the explanation, the call it “qualitative”, and when they don’t like an explanation, they use the term “handwaving”.)

226. The reason for the CO2 “lag” is that CO2 release is a positive, amplifying, feedback at least on orbitally-induced warming, over a multi-century time-scale. The correlation between temperature and CO2 in the paleo-record is not a simple “cause/effect” relationship one way or the other (Al Gore may have presented that too naively), but a feedback relationship. That relationship provides important constraints on climate sensitivity that are certainly worth paying attention to. So whether or not Gore presented it correctly, the paleo-climate correlation is very important.

227. Arthur–
     I understand that is the qualitative explanation given for the CO2 lag. I also find the explanation plausible and it makes sense to those who accept the idea that increasing ghg’s do cause warming and warming causes the oceans to release CO2.

     But, by the same token, for this issue to go away, someone needs to come up with a quantitative explanation using realistic constitutive relations for the rate of release of CO2 as a function of Temperature and realistic constitutive relations for the increase in Temperature as a result of CO2. The model then has to provide a lag time on the order of that seen . The model must then explain how and why temperatures drop when CO2 is still high.

     I realize this is a lot to ask as such an explanation is difficult to come up with. If it were remotely easy, we’d have it already, and the RC post discussing this would, presumbly have linked to some paper, book or resource that provides this discussion. But as it stands, to those who doubt that ghg’s cause warming, the explanation is about as good as “cosmic rays” — which is also qualitative (i.e. “handwaving”). (Fewer people find cosmic rays plausible, which is a factor against it — but otherwise, the “theory” is similarly qualitative.)

     With regard to the specific discussion here: people like Nathan need to understand that this CO2 remain an open issue until the positive-feeback theory progresses from qualitative to quantitative. (Nathan has developed the bad habit of responding to real questions for which he doesn’t have answers by suggesting that the fact that many ask the question, and the answer is a bit gushy, means the question is a stupid one. )

228. Lucia,

     I get impression that some quantitative modeling has been done, given the common refrain that:

     “While we don’t know precisely why the CO2 changes occur on long timescales, (the mechanisms are well understood; the details are not), we do know that explaining the magnitude of global temperature change requires including CO2. This is a critical point. We cannot explain the temperature observations without CO2. But CO2 does not explain all of the change, and the relationship between temperature and CO2 is therefore by no means linear. That is, a given amount of CO2 increase as measured in the ice cores need not necessarily correspond with a certain amount of temperature increase.”

     http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/

     There is certainly a great deal of uncertainty remaining (as there is with virtually all paleoclimatic proxy analysis). Unfortunately, I’m stuck behind the paywall for journal access at work, so I can’t look too deeply into any quantitative modeling right now.

     Also, if you will permit me a bit of gratuitous self promotion, I wrote a somewhat simple article on the duel role of CO2 as a feedback and a forcing that might help people understand the basics: http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2007/10/common-climate-misconceptions-co2-as-a-feedback-and-forcing-in-the-climate-system/

229. Zeke, why do you think that text suggests any quantitative model that explains the lag has been done? All I see is the explanation that the temperature rise cannot be explained without the CO2– which I accept as true.

     But, to understand why this question persists, you need to look at how the discussion sounds if someone believes (for whatever reason) that CO2 is not the cause of the temperature rise. Does the graph disprove their belief? Not really. Owing to the lag, graph definitely supports the idea that rising temperature results in CO2 release. To “prove” the positive feedback, you then need to believe CO2 causes temperature to rise based on something other than the graph.

     So, you are at an impass. Those who already believe CO2 causes temperature to rise conclude there is a positive feedback. Those who don’t…. well, they continue to believe in something else. It may even be positive feedback. (You’d have to ask them. Maybe they think melting ice makes the difference. Maybe they think more H20 does it. I have no idea– you have to ask them.)

     I think if you want to “What about the lag” question to go away, you need to be able to answer this:

     According to the positive feedback theory, how long should the lag be? 1 year? 10 years? 100 years? A millions years? Does the value match the data?

     Ideally, the theory should have pre-existed the data. But, failing that, any theory based on plausible sounding rate equations would help a lot.

     By the way, Boris and I went over this a bit earlier on. At one point, Boris thought Hansen predicted the lag before it was observed. That point would have weighed strongly in favor of the positive feedback loop as something people believed before the data came in. Unfortunately, as we dug for papers, that idea seemed not to jibe with the timing and authorship of various papers. I could use the Admin search tools to try to find that. (Finding things in comments can be a pain in the ****).

230. Lucia,

     Fair enough. I guess that while the role of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses as a feedback to Milankovitch forcings during glacial and interglacial transitions provides a compelling explanation for observed changes, there is no proof that it is the only explanation per se. You are right that if you don’t agree that CO2 is a climate forcing at all, this graph provides no real proof (though its important to note that the radiative physics in question are not seriously doubted even by most skeptics). If we do accept that greenhouse gas emissions cause temperatures to rise, ice core data does give us some information about the magnitude of temperature changes associated with particular atmospheric GHG concentrations, which helps bound our estimates of climate sensitivity.

     My main concern is with those who make the overly simplistic argument that the role of CO2 and other GHGs as a feedback in the paleoclimate somehow precludes their role as a modern forcing agent (e.g. CO2 can’t cause warming because CO2 lags temperatures). There is no contradiction between CO2 as both a forcing and feedback. In fact, if CO2 has a major role in the paleoclimate, it almost necessarily needs to act as a feedback, given there are few natural processes that could cause a discrete CO2 or GHG forcing (the cathrate gun hypothesis is the only thing I can think of offhand, but even that is likely a feedback to an exogenous temperature forcing).

231. Zeke:

     “We cannot explain the temperature observations without CO2. ”

     Can you explain the LACK of heating over the past ten years WITH CO2? Can you explain the cooling over the last 5 years with CO2?

232. Lucia,

     I actually agree that Hansen predicted a lag before it was known because the theory would make no sense unless there was a non-zero lag between the first temperature rise and the CO2 feedback.

     However, as you so aptly put it, the real issue is the magnitude of the lag since 800-1000 years is long even for climate related phenomea. If the ocean linked time constants in the climate system are really that large then how can we possibly draw any conclusions from the last 100 years?

     Furthermore, the lag is not the only thing that needs to be explained quantitively. If CO2 is a strong positive feedback mechanism then we should see warming accelerate as soon as CO2 starts to rise. An ordinary eyeball test on the ice core records does not reveal any obvious acceleration but it is not clear whether that is a data resolution problem.

233. Ummm, Zeke: you need to add a couple of blue lines to that graph to more fairly represent the last 10 years. And the UAH or RSS satellite data would be much more appropriate for the timeframe you show (surely, you didn’t pick GISS just to prove something 🙂 ). And just how long of a cooling period would it take before you start wondering if CO2 is not such a primary forcing agent?

234. It’s just hard to get my head around the idea that there could possibly be h a very strong CO2+HOH vapor feedback-warming mechansim, if we can go for 10 years without seeing any effects at all. One just has to admit that there is some other mechanism out there that is at least as strong, if not stronger. It ain’t volcanoes in this time period. Is it ENSO? Cosmic rays/sunspots? We just do not know, yet, and IMHO, it is premature to be condemning plant food.

235. Jae–
     A ten year negative trend achieved without without cherry picking the start date will mean more than an 8 year negative trend without cherry picking the start date.

     The main difficulty with using 1998 as a start date is that it is cherry picked. Other than being a super-el-nino, there is nothing special about 1998. It’s not the beginning of a decade. It’s not a date when SRES were developed. It’s not a date when anyone issued any sort of projection.

     All statistical tests become distorted if you can pick the data set based on the features of the data itself.

236. Speaking of the Irish, I saw a very cute and entertaining video on Lubos’ site, in which our new President is portrayed in a song as Irish (O’bama, O’Hare, O’Malley, etc.). Needed that after reading all this serious stuff.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xkw8ip43Vk&eurl=http://motls.blogspot.com/search/label/climate

237. Lucia
     “Instead, he wants to clutch at straws by beginning with an argument by “yawn” and then, after a series of silly arguments — trying to suggest we can’t hold him accountable for his silly “yawn” counter argument because he didn’t bring up the initial argument. ”

     i beg your pardon? What a very strange thing for you to write.
     clutching at straws? Ha ha haaaaaaa… Silly arguments?
     You go too far.

     “But his desire to simply debate the CO2 lag– which is inconvenient to his position– by pointing out Jae is not the first to notice this little glitch– won’t make the CO2 lag issue go away. ”
     I had no desire to debate it.
     I was debating a point with Jae and he brings up an irrelevant point (the CO2 lag) to the discussion and I indicate this is not something I felt necessary to debate.
     Then suddenly everyone weighs in (yourself included) bringing up Al Gore and all sorts of things that were still irrelevant to the disucussion I was having with Jae, which I then indicate is something that is irrelevant to the discussion. And THEN you start telling me that I brought it up, which I didn’t. You have misrepresented what went on, and i have no idea why you would do that.
     I never made ANY arguments about the CO2 lag or about Al Gore, I said that for me, they weren’t important.

238. Nathan–
     I didn’t say you brought the topic up. I said you engaged jae’s argument. You did so by responding as follows:

     Yes, yes, yes… The same old rubbish gets repeated… Yawn.

     Once you engage an argument, coming in later and insisting your point was the topic is irrelevant (in your mind) is even sillier.

     If you initial thought is jae’s point is irrelevant (to whatever you think the two of you are discussing) you either

     a) say so. This permits the two of you to either discover you are debating entirely different topics or discuss whether or not the point is irrelevant or

     b) ignore the irrelevant topic.

     Engaging the topic — which you did is silly. Engaging the topic giving a ridiculously poor counter argument is sillier. You did the second.

     You are now presenting counter arguments to arguments no one has advanced. You might do well to learn to focus a bit more.

239. Lucia,
     I never argued it. And I did say that I didn’t want to argue it.
     You cannot say that my yawn comment was an argument, you don’t have the right to determine what is and is not an argument.

     “If you initial thought is jae’s point is irrelevant (to whatever you think the two of you are discussing) you either

     a) say so. This permits the two of you to either discover you are debating entirely different topics or discuss whether or not the point is irrelevant or

     b) ignore the irrelevant topic.

     Engaging the topic — which you did is silly. Engaging the topic giving a ridiculously poor counter argument is sillier. You did the second. ”

     Don’t tell me how to respond to people’s posts, I will answer however I choose. We were discussing how he could account for previous hot house climates without using a positive feedback for H20.

     “You are now presenting counter arguments to arguments no one has advanced. You might do well to learn to focus a bit more.”

     Nonsense. You advanced arguments I didn’t make.

     ““But his desire to simply debate the CO2 lag–”
     I had no desire to argue it, still don’t, and you have misrepresented what went on. Perhaps you should read the transaction again.

240. Lucia,
     perhaps to resolve this I will show you what happened and why I said what I did.
     Here is the part in question:
     “jae (Comment#9265) January 22nd, 2009 at 8:43 pm

     Nathan:

     “Jae,
     You never answered how you explain previous “hot house” climates on Earth without having a positive water feedback. How is it the Cretaceous and even as far back as the Late Permian were so hot if there is no positive water feedback?”

     Well, you are suffering from a disfunction in logic. There are probably HUNDREDS of theories about previous “hot house” climates that don’t include CO2. This is a planet in orbit around a varing Sun in a varying galaxy in a varying Universe in ???? (only God knows). And now, you really have to ask yourself why CO2 levels have FOLLOWED (as in not lead) temperatures by 600-1000 years in the past (Overlay the curves in CrazyGore’s famous graph).

     Nathan (Comment#9266) January 22nd, 2009 at 8:58 pm

     Jae,
     That’s an appeal to the unknown… Not a very appealing option.

     “And now, you really have to ask yourself why CO2 levels have FOLLOWED (as in not lead) temperatures by 600-1000 years in the past (Overlay the curves in CrazyGore’s famous graph).”
     Yes, yes, yes… The same old rubbish gets repeated… Yawn.”

     So, perhaps in this context it is clear.
     I raised the issue with Jae that if the water feedback was negative it would be hard to explain the previous hot house climates. He replied by saying there probably hundreds of theories… Then brought up the CO2 lag.

     I replied by saying his “hundreds of theories” idea was just an appeal tothe unknown, as by his statement it was apparent he didn’t know any particular theories. I then replied with exasperation at his CO2 lag comment as this is a common ploy when people are debating AGW. When they find they have run out arguments they bring up the CO2 lag as though that is something that demonstrates AGW is flawed. My “same old rubbish” comment was in relation to that. I was saying that the same old lines get repeated whenever people skeptical of AGW run out of arguments. They bring up the CO2 lag as though it is a flaw in the theory.

241. Hey, Nate: Let’s just start all over again, and forget all the past discussions. Just state your question/issue. What is your main point here?

242. Nat: just for kicks, tell us with a straight blog face that you believe even half of the following citations: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm

243. Jae, we were originally discussing the value of blogging and the value of Journals… Which led into Raven claiming the Jounrals showed bias…
     I think that was the original discussion.

244. Pingback: You Can’t Make This Stuff Up! (II) | The Blackboard

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