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Marco, if you happen to make it over here, I’ll repeat my question.
What is your opinion of Prall, Schneider et al?
The broader issue is the inability of the consensus supporters to ever acknowledge error or even to quit repeating it. You are quite familiar with my criticisms of this paper, but you refuse to address it.
This goes back a long ways, to Svante Arrhenius in fact. Consensus holders have frequently said that Arrhenius projected a 6C rise in temperatures for a doubling of CO2 concentrations. The most recent prominent mention of this was by John Rennie in Scientific American.
And this is despite it being fairly well-known (it’s on Arrhenius’ Wikipedia entry) that he reworked his calculations 10 years later and came up with a 2C projected rise.
But it has not stopped people who obviously know better from repeating what is a deception.
Marco, what is your opinion of the current controversy involving Steig?
Tom Fuller — “And this is despite it being fairly well-known (it’s on Arrhenius’ Wikipedia entry) that he reworked his calculations 10 years later and came up with a 2C projected rise.”
From the Peer-reviewed Ambio journal (2001): “How did Arrhenius conduct his calculations into the “hothouse” effect of CO2? They were, says Gustaf Arrhenius, “done on the same basis as they are done now, only without the aid of digital computers.” He divided the world into small squares and calculated for each one the warming effect, taking into account local conditions and their likely feedbacks. He knew the impact of features such as clouds in his calculations, and that “refinement of these made all the difference between the greenhouse effect becoming positive or negative,” says Gustaf Arrhenius. His devotion to such detail, he says, explains why “his results came close to what dozens of people spend hundreds of hours of computer-time on today.” He concluded that, globally, a doubling of CO2 levels would raise temperatures by 5–6°C. And a halving would reduce temperatures by a similar amount—enough to bring on another Ice Age.”
Ambio-
AmBio,Volume 30, Issue 3 (May 2001) http://ambio.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1639%2F0044-7447%282001%29030%5B0150%3ASSOWTS%5D2.0.CO%3B2
The sentence from Wikipedia that you refer to:
In his 1906 publication, Arrhenius adjusted the value downwards to 1.6 °C (including water vapour feedback: 2.1 °C).
There’s no citation on the Wikipedia page for that, only for Svante Arrhenius’ earlier estimate of 5 – 6 °C. I can’t see it anywhere HERE, either, which is the source for the Wiki higher estimate by Arrhenius. On the Wiki Discussion page the issue is raised, but the reason to keep it seem pretty flawed and vague to me.
what is your opinion of the current controversy involving Steig?
If I may…
I’ve been looking into this and it doesn’t look good for Steig at all! But that’s based on a cursory look. However, the fact that no one sticks up for him is telling. I’m curious as to how this plays out in the long term.
Does this mean the Antarctic hasn’t been warming at all?
—
There, I’m fair. Now it’s your turn, Tom. What you said about Weart and ‘bogus’ was a bit too black and white, yes?
J Bowers: 1.6 degrees for CO2 alone is actually STILL above the CO2 sensitivity accepted today (which is about 1.2 degrees). He has a much smaller water feedback.
Neven and Marco, it was a casual characterization and not a quote. Bogus in common usage means bad, ugly or made up. Weart didn’t say that. He didn’t have to. His polite dismissal of the paper as soon as it was released spoke volumes.
And its lack of defenders (outside of RC and the occasional comment thread) speaks volumes, much as Neven notes of Steig.
Arrhenius didn’t change his numbers in 1901. He writes in 1901 (page 699 bottom):
[…]
(my emphasis) In English. A tripling of CO2 including water vapour feedback yields a 8.2 °C temperature increase, or 5.17°C (8.2ln2/ln3) for CO2 doubling, a halving of CO2 including water vapour feedback yields a 5.3 °C temperature decrease. A tripling of CO2 excluding water vapour feedback yields a 7 °C temperature increase, or 4.4°C (7ln2/ln3) for CO2 doubling, a halving of CO2 excluding water vapour feedback yields a 4.0 °C temperature decrease. Hence the “somewhat lowered effect” of Weart is only for halving CO2, not for tripling, that is a “somewhat increased effect”(!). (7.1 vs. 7.0).
1896: 8K/3xCo2
1901: 8K/3xCO2
1903: 8K/3xCO2
1906: 8K/4xCO2
1906 is from Världarnas utveckling. German translation: Das Werden der Welten(1907), English: “Worlds in the Making “(1908 ). It is a popular science book without formulae. The low value mentioned in “Worlds in the Making” is the dry CO2.
Another source possibly worth checking out is, Ueber den Einfluss des Atmosphärischen Kohlensäurengehalts auf die Temperatur der Erdoberfläche, in the Proceedings of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, Stockholm 1896, Volume 22, I N. 1, pages 1–101
My first cursory look was on sites like the Blackboard and Noconsensus. Now I’m reading RealClimate and I’m at a loss. It’s too bad I don’t know anything about statistics and the peer-review process, otherwise it’d be easier to form an opinion. I guess I’ll have to keep reading.
But for me the main thing is: has the Antarctic been warming or not? I’m going to look into it some more.
J Bowers, I am pretty sure that Arrhenius’ 1906 paper is widely referenced in textbooks, even if it isn’t available on the web. It is certainly widely discussed on the internet, although I doubt if you’d like the places it is discussed, as they are heavily skeptical.
Actually J Bowers, I invented it from whole cloth, and typed it up in fake Geman and posted the PNG on an obscure website. Just part of my nefarious quest for world domination, don’t you know.
I have no idea what Fuller is advocating. Is he trying to argue that we do not need to combat climate change because he thinks climate sensitivity is low? Heck, we’re already seeing the extreme weather that climate change is causing. What does he want? To see ever more extreme weather and wait for even more disasters around the world before any action is taken?
Or is he arguing against getting ‘greener’ energy generation and fighting for an ever dirtier earth?
Or is he wanting governments to give even more tax breaks and subsidies to dirty industries at the expense of human health and food production.
Quite mystifying why he is so intent on trivia while the earth continues to react against all the extra CO2 it’s having to cope with.
Sou, I guess you’re new to these parts. I support a carbon tax, technology transfer to the developing world and I think we need to mobilize to fight global warming.
But I’m a denier because I also see the double dealing and hypocrisy of these guys’ action heroes.
Neven, Antarctica is a large continent. From what I have read, there are at least two papers that demonstrate that West Antarctica is warming (Steig et al and O’Donnell et al). There is a good body of evidence that the West Antarctic peninsula is warming. East Antarctica is not warming AFAIK. Some of the glaciers on the continent are melting.
The ‘fight’ appears to be a manufactured one (fed by O’Donnell and co but not by Steig), possibly viewed as a means of distraction from the Lisbon fiasco.
The other point I deduce is that monitoring of temperature changes in Antarctica is difficult because of the paucity of ground monitoring and the difficulty in maintaining weather stations in such a harsh climate. There are recent satellites collecting data that will help with future measurements.
IMO temperature data is only one measure of climate in Antarctica. Other indicators are as important or more so. Such as behaviour of glaciers, ocean changes, changes in distribution and population size of animal and other life etc. I believe there are currently projects underway to monitor change in sea water temperatures under ice in at least one region of Antarctica. (It’s not an easy place to work in.)
Okay, Tom. So why are you focusing on blowing out of proportion trivial matters that only give support to those who want to stop any action to mitigate climate change and weather disasters?
(Which ‘action heroes’ are you referring to – and who are ‘these guys’?)
Thanks, Sou, I see now that O’Donnell et al. do not contest the warming of West Antarctica. The kerfuffle seems to be about methodology and behaviour. I don’t see how that’s relevant to AGW, but unfortunately it will be spun to make sure it is.
—
Yes, Tom, if you believe AGW could be a serious problem, then the ‘double dealing of action heroes’ is entirely irrelevant. If you don’t believe AGW could be a serious problem, then by all means focus on the behaviour of a small group of scientists. Write a book about it.
But believing AGW could be a serious problem AND focussing on a small group of scientists AND making as much noise as you can about it, distorting the public’s perception of AGW… That just doesn’t make sense. It really doesn’t.
Tom Fuller — “But I’m a denier because I also see the double dealing and hypocrisy of these guys’ action heroes.”
Strange comment to make when all I did was try to find out where the source for Arrhenius’ lower estimate actually comes from because I don’t automatically assume that Wiki is always right (given I’ve had to correct articles there in the past, completely unrelated to climate or even science, which flew in the face of the historical record), and all I’m met with is snide and snark. Thanks for the scans, though, Tom. I don’t speak German, so it’ll take me a while to check the primary source.
Judith Curry makes some interesting points at her blog. At first glance, this seems like some support for Eric.
An important point is that the editor has the final say. Authors can address criticism in the MS or in the response back to the editor – not all criticisms need to be addressed, and a favorable review by the others can sway an editor. the paper did get published, after all.
So what happens when O’Donnell, Condon and McIntyre have questions for an author or decide to submit a paper for publication? Should scientists now assume that there will be breaches in confidentiality?
To me, it looks like O’Donnell was unable to take the scientific criticism at RC and had a “3rd reviewer” meltdown.
ODonnell et al fairly clearly showed that Steig’s extension of peninsular warming to West Antarctica was a statistical artefact, not a real world findng.
Sou, well I am driven by the realization that the people who have impeded progress on global warming don’t have names like McIntyre or Monckton. They have names like Pachauri and Hansen.
The tale of the fight against global warming looks like a looped video of the consensus team kicking ball after ball into their own goal.
John flipping McCain was in favor of Cap and Trade two years ago. Every major party in Britain was in favor of Cap and Trade. It takes unusual stupidity, cupidity, arrogance and ineptness to blow that deal.
But you guys managed to unconvince just about everybody.
If the quantity of carbonic acid in the air should sink to one-half of its present percentage, the temperature would fall by about 4°; and if the carbon dioxide were increased fourfold, the temperature would rise by 8°. Further, a diminution of the carbonic acid percentage would accentuate the temperature differences between the different portions of the earth, while an increase in this percentage would tend to equalize the temperature.
Is that Wiki revised 2° for doubling of CO2 based on a linear interpolation up to 8° for a fourfold increase in CO2?
Tom, thanks for that link. In 1908 (page 48, first paragraph) Arrhenius wrote:
“Anderseits würde eine Verdoppelung des Kohlensäuregehaltes der Luft die Temperatur der Erdoberflache um 4, eine Vervierfachung sie um 8 [graden] erhöhen.”
I know German well enough to translate this as follows (no literal translation possible, too many differences in grammar between English and German).
“On the other hand would a doubling of the CO2 content of the atmosphere increase the temperature of the surface of the earth by 4 degrees, a quadrupling by 8 degrees”.
That’s a climate sensitivity of FOUR degrees, a whopping factor 2 HIGHER than the supposed 1906 calculation. So, I guess you are now going to complain about all those people who repeat the 2 degrees 1906 calculation as being deceptive. Yes? No?
J Bowers, the translation you found leaves out significant parts: in the original German version Arrhenius specifically mentions a doubling resulting in +4.
Tom, regarding Anderegg et al:
What I think is that there’s been a lot of huffing and puffing around that paper, some of which by you. Criticism of the methodology, fine, there likely are issues to discuss and to be improved. However, I saw surprisingly little constructive criticisms. Things like “if you would do this, you would get better answers, and here’s the proof”. Quantitative evidence that the supposed problems had a substantial influence on the end-result were also largely missing (in fact, I only saw some cherry picked n=1 examples). There were, for example, some complaints that using Google Scholar was unfair, but no one showed how this then would have skewed the results.
But what irked me most were the shrill claims of “OMG! BLACKLISTS!”. If you sign a public statement, you openly declare yourself to hold a certain position. Others pointing out that you signed that statement is merely a statement of fact. These shrill cries merely reinforced my notion that the claims of methodological flaws were in reality not so important to those doing the crying: they just didn’t like the results…
Already cleared up I guess, but the temp response due to quadrupling is twice that of a doubling. Linear interpolation doesn’t apply due to the logarithmic response.
There’s still the question though of the 1.6 / 2.1 deg value that supposedly comes from a 1906 publication/book. Was that a genuine estimate? Seems unlikely, of before and after his estimates were much higher, and in his later estimates he didn’t reference his earlier low value? I haven’t gone through the details yet though.
Bart — “There’s still the question though of the 1.6 / 2.1 deg value that supposedly comes from a 1906 publication/book. Was that a genuine estimate? “
Bart, I linked earlier to someone who mentions Arrhenius and dry CO2. Could that make a difference? (I really wouldn’t know, which is why I posted it)
I will comment on Steig and O’Donnell, despite the fact that it is “new” (heck, you yourself have no problems drawing conclusions already):
I find O’Donnell’s claims about Steig’s duplicity utterly unconvincing. I say this as seasoned reviewer and author, and as someone who read the comments from Reviewer A. The suggestion Steig asked O’Donnell to put in a method so he either could reject the paper (if they did not do so), or complain afterwards that it was an inappropriate method, are simply not consistent with the last comments I saw from Reviewer A. The criticism in those last comments are consistent with the criticisms of Steig on Realclimate. Upon which the whole story comes back to a simple scientific debate, with loads of snark either way.
1. Did Arrhenius change his estimate in 1906 to a rather low value, only to double it 2 years later?
2. If he did, why would neglecting that 1906 paper by ‘our’ side be so dishonest, while ignoring the 1908 paper by the ‘other’ side is just fine?
The first is a historically interesting, but ultimately inconsequential issue. The second strikes deep in the heart of Tom Fuller’s argument that failing to inform people about Arrhenius’ 1906 estimate is dishonest. After all, what are we then to make of Tom Fuller (and others) failing to inform people about Arrhenius’ 1908 estimate…
Arrhenius would have revised his estimate in 1906 published the original Swedish version of the book to 4C, down from his earlier 1896 estimate of 5.5C.
The tale of the fight against global warming looks like a looped video of the consensus team kicking ball after ball into their own goal.”
To be fair I was expecting to see this argument appear in about 3-4 years. It is well worth people taking note of it, if there is a noteworthy single year melt in the arctic or sea ice continues hang below 09 type levels and if temperature break the all time high on UAH wel will see from various quarters efforts to shift the blame for not doing anything onto the scientists. The narrative is partially established in the public mind by the idea from those quarters that scientists have been up to no good, so when it becomes clear that we do have a problem the need to shift blame will land on the path of least resistance: those already tarred.
J Bowers, Bart, (maybe Tom):
I’m getting a bit suspicious that the 1.6 and 2.1 numbers are to be added together. That is, 1.6 for CO2 alone, and an additional 2.1 for water vapor feedback, rather than “2.1 with water feedback”. That makes it 3.7, which is getting pretty close to the 4 mentioned in 1908.
Sorry I don’t have time to play today, folks. Will note the revision to the Hansen anecdote and will remember (unlike some of y’all). But do you really think changing it from 20 to 40 years makes Hansen look any better?
Marco, you’re waffling. I offered a detailed critique of the paper at Tobis’s place and Roman destroyed their analysis at RC. It is bunk.
Dorlomin, I’ve been making this argument for two years already.
Marco, that’s interesting. Monckton of Brenchley, of all people, gives a clue at WUWT:
In 1906 Arrhenius – who had by then come across the fundamental equation of radiative transfer, which greatly simplified his calculations and improved their accuracy – recalculated the effect of doubling CO2 on temperature and, in Vol. 1, no. 2 of the Journal of the Royal Nobel Institute, published his conclusion that a doubling of CO2 concentration would increase global temperatures by about 1.6 Celsius degrees (<3 Fahrenheit degrees).
Yet the Gorons continue to cite only Arrhenius’ 1896 paper, with its less accurate and more extreme conclusion. I wonder why.
So that’s from the paper that Tom pointed out: Die vermutliche Ursache der Klimaschwankungen, Medd. Roy. Acad. Nobel Inst. Band 1:2, 1 (1906)
I don’t do German, but does that final paragraph say (via Google Translate);
“Similarly, I calculate that a reduction of carbonic acid to half or twice the gain of the same magnitude would correspond to temperature changes of 1.5 or 1.6”
Question: If someone on Gore’s side is a ‘Goron’, what does that make someone on Monckton’s side?
I’m not getting technical at here. My only reason for posting this is to get past these ridiculous accusations of scientific fraud being levied against yet another climate scientist. Whatever the problems are with the science can work out over time, but with all shit flying around, let’s look at major hurdles to exploration.
Here is Steig in Review 2 (if Steig was reviewer A, which it appears he was.) discussing the reason why ODonnell 10 should make a change in their paper.
These results do not suggest that kgnd = 5 produces excessive
trends in general. More likely is that while kgnd = 5 may produce excessive trends on the Peninsula, it probably underestimates trends in West Antarctica. The authors acknowledge as much in a footnote: “Testing indicates the dependence on kgnd … may be the result of the fixed truncation parameter providing insufficient filtering when the number of predictors is low, and is the subject of ongoing work by the authors.”
Indeed! This would apply precisely to the situation in West Antarctica, and is at least suggestive the lower truncation values used in Steig et al. are actually more appropriate here. While I appreciate that some work may be involved here, it would seem appropriate for O’Donnell et al. to address this main criticism of their work within the current work, rather than leaving it to the future! O’Donnell et al. are effectively arguing
that they may have to comprise the results for West Antarctica, in order to better capture the trends on the Antarctica Peninsula. But the chief point of contention here – the primary results in Steig et al. – is West Antarctica, not the Peninsula.
All the wording is important. There is a reason why Steig asked for this to be done. He reiterates it later:
My recommendation is that the editor insist that results showing the ‘mostly likely’ West Antarctic trends be shown in place of Figure 3. While the written text does acknowledge that the rate of warming in West Antarctica is probably greater than shown, it is the figures that provide the main visual ‘take home message’ that most readers will come
away with. I am not suggesting here that kgnd = 5 will necessarily provide the best estimate, as I had thought was implied in the earlier version of the text. Perhaps, as the authors suggest, kgnd should not be used at all, but the results from the ‘iridge’ infilling should be used instead. The authors state that this “yields similar patterns of change as
shown in Fig. 3, with less intense cooling on Ross, comparable verification statistics and a statistically significant average West Antarctic trend of 0.11 +/- 0.08 C/decade.” If that is the case, why not show it? I recognize that these results are relatively new – since they evidently result from suggestions made in my previous review – but this is not a
compelling reason to leave this ‘future work’.
now let’s look at the response from ODonnell responds:
Toward the end of the review, the reviewer suggests that the editor should require us to display the “most likely” reconstructions in the main text, which the reviewer correctly assumes would be the ridge regression results. We agree that this is the most appropriate choice, and the manuscript has been revised to show the ridge regression results in the main text. The TTLS/TSVD results have been relegated to the Supplemental Information. Additional changes to the manuscript to accommodate using the ridge regression results as the primary reconstructions have been made throughout Sections 6, 7, and
8.
Also note that the ridge results mentioned in the previous response were multiple (not individual) ridge regression results and were not optimized for the number of retained satellite PCs or regularization parameter. As this was originally intended as a secondcheck, we had chosen the faster multiple ridge regression method and used the same parameters for the ridge reconstructions as the TTLS/TSVD reconstructions. We have since performed reconstructions using individual ridge regression and have
optimized the number of retained satellite PCs and regularization parameter for both individual and multiple ridge regression.
For the optimized individual ridge regression reconstruction, the resulting best estimate for West Antarctica is 0.10 oC decade -1 Because the ndividual ridge regression results display equivalent or better verification statistics and least sensitivity to removal of individual station data (including the manned Byrd station) of all of the methods (TTLS, TSVD, multiple ridge regression), this is what appears in the main text.
Now to Steig’s 3rd review:
The use of the ‘iridge’ procedure makes sense to me, and I suspect it really does give the best results. But O’Donnell et al. do not address the issue with this procedure raised by Mann et al., 2008, which Steig et al. cite as being the reason for using ttls in the regem algorithm. The reason given in Mann et al., is not computational efficiency — as O’Donnell et al state — but rather a bias that results when extrapolating (‘reconstruction’) rather than infilling is done. Mann et al. are very clear that better results are obtained when the data set is first reduced by taking the first M eigenvalues. O’Donnell et al. simply ignore this earlier work. At
least a couple of sentences justifying that would seem appropriate.
This is not the authors fault, but rather is a response to reviewers’
requests for a shorter supplementary section. The main thing is that the ‘iridge’ procedure is a bit of a black box, and yet this is now what is emphasized in the manuscript. That’s too bad because it is probably less useful as a ‘teaching’ manuscript than earlier versions. I would love to see O’Donnell et al. discuss in a bit more details (perhaps just a few sentences) how the iridget caclculations actually work, since this is not very well described in the original work of Schneider. This is just a suggestion to the authors, and I do not feel strongly that they should be held to it.
And from the RC post:
O’Donnell et al. choose to use a routine from Tapio Schneider’s ‘RegEM’ code known as ‘iridge’ (individual ridge regression). This implementation of RegEM has the advantage of having a built-in cross validation function, which is supposed to provide a datapoint-by-datapoint optimization of the truncation parameters used in the least-squares calibrations.
Yet at least two independent groups who have tested the performance of RegEM with iridge have found that it is prone to the underestimation of trends, given sparse and noisy data (e.g. Mann et al, 2007a, Mann et al., 2007b, Smerdon and Kaplan, 2007) and this is precisely why more recent work has favored the use of TTLS, rather than iridge, as the regularization method in RegEM in such situations. It is not surprising that O’Donnell et al (2010), by using iridge, do indeed appear to have dramatically underestimated long-term trends—the Byrd comparison leaves no other possible conclusion.
…
They also present results from a more explicit cross-validation test, using various truncation parameters for a ‘truncated total least squares’ (or ‘truncated singular value decompositon’) regressions, as we did in our work. However, these tests, as implemented, are also problematic. O’Donnell et al. actually use cross validation in two steps: first, by filling in missing data in the weather station records and choosing the truncation value (kgnd) that yields the best overall verification statistics. Second, by reconstructing the entire spatial field with another truncation value, ksat. In both cases, the optimization is done on the basis of the entire data set; that is, the ‘best’ parameter depends on what works best on average both in data poor regions (e.g. West Antarctica) and data rich regions (e.g. East Antarctica and the Peninsula). The obvious risk here is that too high a truncation value will be used for West Antarctica. There is rather good evidence to be found in the Supplementary Material in O’Donnell that this is exactly what has happened. The choice of kgnd that yields the best agreement with the iridge calculations (which, remember, is already known to create problems) happens to be kgnd = 7, and it just so happens that this yields the minimum trends.
and the final conclusion
In summary, even if their results are taken at face value, O’Donnell et al. 2010 doesn’t change any of the conclusions reached in Steig et al. In West Antarctica where there is disagreement, Steig et al, 2009 is in better agreement with independent data, and O’Donnell et al.’s results appear to be adversely affected by using procedures known to underestimate trends. Thus while their results may represent an improved estimate for the trends in data rich regions — East Antarctica and the Peninsula — it is virtually certain that they are an underestimate for West Antarctica. This probably means going back to the drawing board to write up another paper, taking into account those suggestions of O’Donnell et al. that are valid, but hopefully avoiding their mistakes.
And this leads to some the prominent bloggers and the paper’s authors saying:
http://climateaudit.org/2011/02/07/eric-steigs-duplicity/#comment-253820
Steve McIntyre
Posted Feb 7, 2011 at 9:19 PM | Permalink | Reply
When Ryan announced the acceptance of O’Donnell et al 2010, Steig posted the following comment at Jeff Id’s on December 2, 2010 – a comment that bears re-reading given that Steig was Reviewer A and had done everything within his power to delay and block publication of O’Donnell et al 2010:
Steven mosher | February 8, 2011 at 1:07 pm | Reply
However,
Steig seems to have recommended a method he believes to be flawed.
That recommendation leads to two paths.
1. The authors refuse to accept the flawed method and dont get published. Mission accomplished.
2. The authors accept the method and Steig is then prepared to rebut the published paper. Mission accomplished.
Clearly when you have an adversarial review the possibility of such a gaming of the system must be taken into account.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/reviewer-a-rod-blagojevich-of-science/
lucia (Comment#68384)
February 8th, 2011 at 8:35 am
S. Geiger–
Unless Steig lied to RyanO, Ryan is safe. The editors know who Reviewer A was. Reviewer A knows who reviewer A was.
I should note that even if Steig played RyanO by lying to him, publishing the reviews does show that reviewer A severely criticized the method Steig now embraces.
http://climateaudit.org/2011/02/07/eric-steigs-duplicity/
jeff Id (Comment#68326)
February 7th, 2011 at 7:01 pm
Ryan,
“Eric said that Review A was entirely his, and, in retrospect, I have no reason to disbelieve him.”
I believe he submitted the review 100%, if Cuccinelli subpoenaed Steig’s emails, I would bet some big cash that there were copy-pastes from Mann. Admittedly it is just a guess though, there was too much Mannian style hostility and phraseology.
Maybe that’s my next blog–phraseology, this climate stuff is too anti-science.
Odonnell
So Eric recommends that we replace our TTLS results with the ridge regression ones (which required a major rewrite of both the paper and the SI) and then agrees with us that the iRidge results are likely to be better . . . and promptly attempts to turn his own recommendation against us.
There are not enough vulgar words in the English language to properly articulate my disgust at his blatant dishonesty and duplicity.
I’m sorry but What? Is it Dr. Steig’s job to make sure that ODonnell doesn’t hit any pitfalls like having to use a statistical method that has been criticized? This isn’t easy. This looks like a very good review (review 1 was very extensive) to try and work through a difficult problem It looks obvious that ODonnell had to use iridge, which he agreed to, but Steig warned him to reconcile this with Mann’s work. Is this not how science gets done? Bart, can you answer this for me? Was this not fair? I don’t see where this insane vitriol and accusations are coming from. Isn’t it time we stop attacking scientists integrity and attempting to erode trust. This happens every week now. IMHO, It’s rather sickening.
Also, I posted this here because 1) it came up and 2) I know Bart, even though he is an advocate for action of emissions, he seems well respected and doesn’t have his honesty questioned incessantly by skeptics. IOW, he is known to be fair. I also know he has been through the review process and probably could help refine this.
Thanks for that, gryposaurus. This is also the reason I came here.
—
Tom, it’s too bad you couldn’t stay and play. Maybe next time we can discuss your internal contradictions:
But believing AGW could be a serious problem AND focussing on a small group of scientists AND making as much noise as you can about it, distorting the public’s perception of AGW… That just doesn’t make sense. It really doesn’t.
Tom, you apparently think that screaming “it’s wrong” and “I’ve done this stuff myself, so I know what’s right” are refutations. I say: go ahead, and publish a proper analysis then! I know you won’t.
I also still haven’t received any explanation as to why Anderegg et al constitutes a “blacklist” (already when I asked you at MT you accused me of having insulted you, and hence not being worth a reply, which I translated at the time as “too difficult question to answer, hence cop out with lame excuse”. I’m getting the same feeling all over again.
But I *am* still interested in your take on Arrhenius 1908 and his +4 per doubling, which contradicts the 1906 number of 2.1 per doubling.
It’s clear he does warn them to address the prior issues raised. A dumb cowboy can see that. He suggests they address it, but does not hold them to it: in other words, if the authors thought their paper was ready for publication as was, peer review could no longer object as the paper was ready for the boos and hoorays of the subscribers.
They hated reviewer A for making them do work, and now they hate him for his failure to make them do the work he suggested. Sounds like they wanted to be done working, so Que Sera, Sera.
Don’t worry, Neven, I’ll be back ;). Obviously I don’t see any huge contradictions in what I believe and what I do, or I would change either my beliefs or my behavior.
And Marco, when I have time I will give you a critique of the paper.
If you use ‘iridge’, you put in a couple of sentences ‘acknowledging’ the underestimation problem (even as you stress that it is best you’ve got).
This is what Steig wanted, it made ‘sense’ to him and gave the best ‘possible results’.
He even understood the authors not being able to do it in as much detail as he would have liked, that being ‘not the authors fault, but rather is a response to reviewers’ requests for a shorter supplementary section’ even though he would ‘love to see O’Donnell et al. discuss in a bit more details (perhaps just a few sentences) how the iridge caclculations actually work’, which was ‘just a suggestion to the authors’, about which he declared he ‘does not feel strongly that they should be held to’.
And then at RC, he criticizes O’Donnell et al for using ‘iridge’, when more ‘more recent work has favored the use of TTLS’ which due to which ‘ O’Donnell et al (2010), by using iridge,’, ‘do indeed appear to have dramatically underestimated long-term trends’.
Steig then goes on to criticize O’Donnell et al for the fact that ‘…O’Donnell et al.’s results appear to be adversely affected by using procedures known to underestimate trends.’
I think Steig, as a scientist, is qualified to make such comments about O’Donnell and their use of ‘iridge’.
But not after being the reviewer of the paper himself, not after suggesting the method himself, not after understanding the issues connected with its use himself, and certainly not after being a reviewer for a paper that directly criticized his own paper!!
And then finally, not to claim that the method he favored be used, as reviewer, apparently confirms to him that his own paper produced results!
Also, this got left out, and should be placed right before the blog responses. Sorry. ODonnell’s response the 3rd review.
More to [what we believe to be] the reviewer’s point, though Mann et al. (2005) did show in the Supporting Information where TTLS demonstrated improved performance compared to ridge, this was by example only, and cannot therefore be considered a general result. By contrast, Christiansen et al. (2009) demonstrated worse performance for TTLS in pseudoproxy studies when stochasticity is considered – confirming that the Mann et al. (2005) result is unlikely to be a general one. Indeed, our own study shows ridge to outperform TTLS (and to significantly outperform the S09 implementation of TTLS), providing additional confirmation that any general claims of increased TTLS accuracy over ridge is rather suspect.
We therefore chose to mention the only consideration that actually applies in this case, which is computational efficiency. While the other considerations mentioned in Mann et al. (2007) are certainly interesting, discussing them is extratopical and would require much more space than a single article would allow – certainly more than a few sentences.
O’Donnell agreed with Steig to use the iridge there. It does not mean that further problems are not associated. Steig did not give ODonnell the perfect fit because this fit does not exist (to Steig). The ne he suggested was only the ‘most likely’. Again, it does not mean that there are not problems with using that one also. This is why science is a slow arduous process. Also, Odonnell has just posted at Lucia’s.
There will be more information to follow, but I need to take a break from this for a while. In the meantime:
.
Carrick: Yes, I will provide the same sensitivity tests for our method as S09 when I have time (next day or two) and put them together in that same post.
.
iRidge: There are some times where TTLS would be preferable to iRidge. This is not one of those times. We were planning to submit a second paper after this one, redoing the analysis with ridge regression, to demonstrate in cases where the eigenvalues of the data are smoothly decaying and the SNR is reasonably high (as is definitely the case with the station data) that ridge is superior to TTLS, and that this result is general. However, we decided to take Steig’s recommendation in the interest of even having a first paper.
If ODonnell could not defend his use of TTLS to the journal editors and went with Steig’s ideas instead, it does not mean that Steig should not discuss it openly. Apparently it would be better for him to keep his mouth shut about it?
I think Steig has managed to focus his light on your ethical blindspot.
Steig reviewer can offer his suggestion as reviewer to use ‘iridge’
Steig can criticize the weakness from using ‘iridge’, rather than TTLS.
Steig can claim that iridge renders his S09 results ‘more robust’.
How can he do all three?
I have seen students being tortured in this fashion at PhD viva voce. I could not understand why.
Having now read through the reviewer A reviews, the responses, and the revisions, it appears to me that O’Donnell is being rather disingenuous with his accusations. Namely, who’s idea was it to use ‘iridge’? Your fist clue comes from Reviewer A’s second review when it says: (emphasis mine)
“Perhaps, AS THE AUTHORS SUGGEST, kgnd should not be used at all, but the results from the ‘iridge’ infilling should be used instead. The authors state that this “yields similar patterns of change as shown in Fig. 3, with less intense cooling on Ross, comparable verification statistics and a statistically significant average West Antarctic trend of 0.11 +/- 0.08 C/decade.”
Going to the first revised manuscript we find:
“Regardless, based on the ridge regression and RLS-without-infilling tests, the magnitude of West Antarctic trends in the S09 reconstruction are larger than would be supported by either explanation.”
And in the author’s response to reviewer A’s first review, there is a similar comment.
So, it is quite clear that O’Donnell et. al. had already used this technique and made claims based on this before it was ever mentioned by reviewer A. The reviewer did not suggest it to them, although he did suggest that if, as they claim, it works better, they should go ahead and use it.
So basically, this whole kerfuffle is based on a demonstrably incorrect accusation.
Are you saying that because something has a weakness, that it can’t be more robust than something else? So a weak result can’t have weaker ones? Why bring up PhD viva voce when discussing simple logic?
Look at reasons he gave for using iRidge over TTLS in regards to West Antarctica in OD10. Look at the reasons for iridges weaknesses.
I haven’t looked into those reviews, so will refrain from an opinion for now. Maybe in a few days. Thanks for collecting relevant parts though; that’s useful.
This is why contrarian types typically don’t publish. They can’t handle having their work scrutinized by experts, and this has resulted in reprehensible allegations, bringing out O’Donnell’s true colors. Given his association with McIntyre, this is no surprise.
This little bit of what Eric wrote I find interesting:
As a reporter wrote to me today “it’s simply impossible for a lay observer to make a judgement on his/her own.” Really?!
I’m surprised that he’s surprised about that, actually. It is difficult for a lay observer to make a solid judgement on such issues (except perhaps that in this case the reviews were made publicly available, so time permitting, everyone could do some fact checking).
Well, Mosher, over at curry’s, is making a big deal over the fact that O’Donnell et al interpreted Eric’s requests that they “should” do this or that as indication that if they didn’t he’d recommend it not be published.
However, when Eric’s demanding, he’s obvious about it … from the review copy above:
“My recommendation is that the editor insist that results showing the ‘mostly likely’ West Antarctic trends be shown in place of Figure 3.”
As I pointed out in response to Mosher over there, it’s essentially the same as the difference between “shall” and “should” in software standards. “shall” means your implementation must do so to be compliant with the standard. “should” means failure to do so won’t disqualify your implementation as being standard compliant but is considered poor practice.
I’ve been looking into this and it doesn’t look good for Steig at all! But that’s based on a cursory look. However, the fact that no one sticks up for him is telling. I’m curious as to how this plays out in the long term.
Well, I think I’m ready to take this back now. It was based on a cursory look, like I said, but I still feel stupid. It has been a while since I was last played by the pseudo-skeptics, but they did it again. Shame on me.
I think it was mainly because I was pleasantly surprised by the positive and gentlemanly way Ryan O’Donnell had acted so far. Sure they had it extra tough to get through the reviewing process (which was only logical given the history of the climate wars), but now that it was done it really felt as if it was a small breakthrough in the deadlock between climate scientists and the more knowledgeable skeptics.
So when he got that angry I was really overwhelmed, especially when I read all the vitriol over at the Blackboard and no one sticking up for Steig (of course, that was because people were waiting for additional information to come out) and even someone like Zeke Hausfather – who I trust – coming out and saying: I generally agree with Ryan O on this one based on what I’ve read so far. But thanks for bearing out the old dead poets society line about assuming. It didn’t help either that I didn’t know much else about the Steig and O’Donnell papers because I just lack the technical knowledge. So I really thought: this time they have struck blood!
I really feel that McIntyre has a toxic influence on followers such as Ryan O’Donnell. It’s a bit like the fictional character Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello. I feel it’s a shame he was one of the co-authors of the O’Donnell paper. He gets to spread his toxins and become legitimized at the same time.
My oh my, Steig doesn’t mince words. But will it have any effect on the Othellos, I wonder.
My perspective on the Steig/O’Donnell fight as a long-time participant in peer review in physics as both author and reviewer, and seeing the editorial side as well:
(1) The responsibility for the content of the published article rests solely with the author. In a scientific journal the author should never be compelled to include any content they don’t believe in themselves. Any author experiencing pressure like that should raise a huge stink – but I don’t think it happens. Copy-editing may make minor changes for clarity, and the editor is supposed to ensure the content basically meets the standards of the journal, but the responsibility for the scientific content is with the author and nobody else.
(2) The purpose of reviewers is both to help editors decide whether to accept an article and to help authors improve their scientific content. Authors can either do exactly what reviewers suggest, they can make other changes to try to meet reviewer criticisms, or they are free to argue to the editor that the reviewer is wrong and they don’t need to change anything. Peer reviewers don’t have to be satisfied before a paper is accepted.
No matter what Steig did, O’Donnell’s complaint makes no sense. He’s trying to abdicate responsibility for his own paper. That just doesn’t wash.
It’s true that the layperson often has trouble making a sound judgment. The bullying and spurious personal allegations from the McIntyre crowd, repeated by many, is sort of a way to influence casual observers. As one comment noted:
“In the world of politics, apparently deliberate personal insults casually interjected into policy debates are the norm. I used to think it was childish, but I now believe it is a deliberate strategy. It often has the effect of unsettling the object of the insult, and this colours their judgment in the debate. Not only that, it sways weak-minded listeners against them. Sadly, too many people applaud the bully.
First, I never suggested to the authors that they use ‘iridge’. This was an innovation of O’Donnell and his co-authors, and I merely stated that it ‘seems’ reasonable. As O’Donnell’s co-authors are fond of pointing out, I am not a statistician, and I did not try to argue with them on this point. I did, however, note that previously published work had shown this method to be problematic:
“The use of the ‘iridge’ procedure makes sense to me, and I suspect it really does give the best results. But O’Donnell et al. do not address the issue with this procedure raised by Mann et al., 2008, which Steig et al. cite as being the reason for using ttls in the regem algorithm. The reason given in Mann et al., is not computational efficiency — as O’Donnell et al state — but rather a bias that results when extrapolating (‘reconstruction’) rather than infilling is done.
Bowers,
Ryan did not state in their Climateaudit post that Eric made them do ‘iridge’. They state openly:
Eric questioned the choice of the truncation parameter [for TTLS], and we presented the work Nic and Jeff had done (using ridge regression, direct RLS with no infilling, and the nearest-station reconstructions) that all gave nearly identical results.
It looks like Steig’s interpretation of events is pretty much in line with what I just stated here. Responsibility rests with the author – and it seems Steig didn’t even see the final version which was much altered from earlier ones.
I agree with Arthur Smith. In their zeal to get the paper published, the authors of O’Donnell et al, complied to every request and got bowlderized for it.
However, if they had stood up for their paper and gotten it rejected (as Eric suggests at RC), and if that is not an example of gatekeeping and conflict of interest, then I don’t know what is.
The trend values are so small, would these differences in methods have made any differerence at all, enough for reviewer A to have ‘turned hostile’?
Why did Steig the reviewer, not offer the criticism of iridge, which he now does as Steig the author (of S09)?
I agree with Arthur Smith. In their zeal to get the paper published, the authors of O’Donnell et al, complied to every request and got bowlderized for it.
Eric never had a chance to review the final paper, the editor decided to go to someone else.
Which was what O’Donnell et al requested.
The trend values are so small, would these differences in methods have made any differerence at all, enough for reviewer A to have ‘turned hostile’?
Y’all seem to think that they were significant enough to show that reviewer A’s original paper was falsified.
Thanks everyone for the additional information. From my reading of the RC post, I couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about. Now I’ve read more here I still cannot understand what the fuss was all about. I suspect it is a rare paper, except perhaps from the most experienced researchers, that does not have a questionable portion.
Re Tom Fuller, he demonstrates a variation of the classic lead in lie often used by deniers: “I used to believe in AGW but then ….” . I don’t know why he trots it out, surely it doesn’t persuade anyone at all, does it? On the contrary, it makes one inclined to dismiss everything he writes. And he continues to write so much. Very tiresome.
Well it’s nice to see we’ve gone from the outright fabrication:
O’Donnell: “Eric recommends that we replace our TTLS results with the ridge regression ones”
to
Shub: “Why did Steig the reviewer, not offer the criticism of iridge, which he now does as Steig the author (of S09)?”
which is still wrong, since the review did cite issues with the procedure covered in Mann et al. and suggested the authors address this. Now Steig’s later blog post does expand on the issue, which I guess is not allowed. In fact, if we follow O’Donnell’s logic, Steig is not allowed to make any further critiques or gain any additional insights of their paper after the initial reviews. If is review was not 100% thorough at the time, he’s engaging in nefarious deeds. And if it is, he’s engaging in more “bullying” and “gatekeeping”, which are charges thrown out by individuals unwilling to admit they’re wrong on anything.
Ultimately, the authors are responsible for their paper. And based on their behavior, it appears they handle criticism no better than tantrum-throwing toddlers.
Shub: “Why did Steig the reviewer, not offer the criticism of iridge, which he now does as Steig the author (of S09)?”
which is still wrong, since the review did cite issues with the procedure covered in Mann et al. and suggested the authors address this.
And they didn’t, at least to his satisfaction, and since Steig was no longer reviewer (in part due to RyanO et al asking he not review), he didn’t know this until it was accepted for publication.
So then he brought it up in his post-publication review.
Why shouldn’t he?
Also, why has RyanO published the reviews from Steig – which he’s probably not allowed to do – but not the final review?
And why did he “out” Steig as reviewer A after promising Steig he wouldn’t do so (let me guess, “to build trust”).
MarkB
Eric suggested the authors address the ‘known issues’ with the ‘iridge’ method, by expending some words explaining those issues, but not that it not be used. There was a choice to be made and Eric influenced that choice.
The problem arises when Eric uses the method’s shortfalls (a method he influenced to be chosen) to claim that his own paper S09’s results are better.
The problem arises when Eric uses the method’s shortfalls (a method he influenced to be chosen)
Ahh, so now it’s not “he suggested”, but “he influenced”.
Forward progress! One yard down, 99 to go.
Eric suggested the authors address the ‘known issues’ with the ‘iridge’ method, by expending some words explaining those issues, but not that it not be used. There was a choice to be made and Eric influenced that choice.
Gosh, the authors say “we think this might be a good idea”, the reviewer says “you might be right, go for it”, and oh my gosh there’s blame assigned to Eric!
And they didn’t address the “known issues” in the paper. That was *totally* their choice, and since they didn’t address them, it’s *totally* reasonable for Eric, in his review, to do so. They can’t say they weren’t forewarned …
Penalty! Halfway to the goal line! 99.5 yards to go, dude.
Sou, the glory of WordPress is that our names appear at the top of our comments, not the bottom. Feel free to skip over my copious commentary and bask in a Fuller-free world.
Hooboy, Tom Fuller is right about this much: there are many people out there eager to assure their readers that Arrhenius settled the question in 1906 and anything to the contrary since has to be unreliable.
Tom Fuller, he demonstrates a variation of the classic lead in lie often used by deniers: “I used to believe in AGW but then ….” . I don’t know why he trots it out, surely it doesn’t persuade anyone at all, does it?
But he also claims that he’s a lukewarmer who believes sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 to be 2.5C, apparently not realizing that this means that:
1. He still believes in AGW, just as he used to
-and-
2. His belief in the sensitivity is very close to the latest GISS Model E figure I remember from Gavin Schmidt, 2.5 vs. Model E’s 2.75-ish. Very much a warmer, this particular luke …
Tom has no serious beef with the science – at least in his filtered vision of the science in which he ignores the conclusions of the papers he reads.
.
Tom just enjoys watching members of the Team kick the soccer ball down field only to have it intercepted by members of the Tribe who pick it up, run back up field with it, and slug the Team kicker in the mouth. He enjoys the hooliganism.
Well, I think I’m ready to take this back now. It was based on a cursory look, like I said, but I still feel stupid. It has been a while since I was last played by the pseudo-skeptics, but they did it again. Shame on me.
I wouldn’t have wasted my time if I didn’t think it was a possibility, but seeing the usual suspects filling in the background noise behind Ryan made me rather weary. It never smelled right. I think Ryan got a little excited and peeved inside his echo chamber, but appears to be ready to retract some of what was said, at least according to Steig.
But it’s cases like yours that worry me and enforce the idea as to why we need to make sure that as the sanity begins to leave the room, we need to keep cool and wait for facts to emerge. The scientists are at a disadvantage and on the defensive all the time, and involved in a game they have no chance of winning in the short run. Noise travels fast. The truth is slow but fortunately never drops the ball.
PDA, is that the new way to go content-free? Post the same comments on every weblog in reach?
Broberg–what do you know of me or what I believe–Have we broken bread together? Have you read anything I’ve ever written off of this thread? Come to think of it, what do you know?
Well, I do IM with Tobis–does that count? Totally different guy in private communications. I like that Tobis a lot better.
What bugs me about Broberg is not his disagreement with anything I say–I expect that here. But how does he think he knows what I ‘enjoy’? I mean, that’s dhogaza type of stuff.
But how does he think he knows what I ‘enjoy’? I mean, that’s dhogaza type of stuff.
I have absolutely no idea what Tom Fuller enjoys, and how could I? He’s totally inconsistent, illogical, uninformed, and unethical … where’s the room for enjoyment?
Well, RyanO and McI have managed to convince Steig that he’ll never cooperate in any way with any publication effort they may pursue in the future, and won’t even talk about it.
Way to go, RyanO and McI. Spirit of reconciliation and all that!
I have a similar feeling as expressed by Neven and Grypo: Ryan seemed a respectful guy, as is Eric, and I actually thought a future collaboration between them would be possible. Bridge building at its best. Based on Ryan’s history, his allegations were not as easy to dismiss. I had no interest in reading all the reviews and replies, nor the extensive other back and forth’s, which would be necessary to come to a solidly based opinion. The risk then is to voice an opinion that is based on proxy arguments, i.e. the person making the argument and other clues (of which there weren’t many). An opinion based all too strongly on who’s making the respective argument has the pitfall of being susceptible to confirmation bias, so even though it can often be a convenient shortcut for quickly forming an opinion, it’s far from foolproof. As Eric’s latest RC post also aludes to, this incident makes it more likely to use such “personal trust” style reasoning though (i.e. based on who do you trust).
The way this argument panned out in the blogs makes it clear that it’s a war of trust and credibility. Who can most effectively garner trust amongst the undecided (if they read such blogs at all; I have the impression these blogs are mainly read by those having strong opinions about climate change already)? In this war, perception matters more than facts, unfortunately. (I don’t like the war metaphor btw, but don’t have another word handy to convey what I’m trying to convey. Suggestions welcome.)
Oh Neven, I feel your frustration… One thing I learned quite early after starting to follow the debates on the internetz is that you NEVER ASSUME the pseudo-skeptics to be correct or fair. It doesn’t matter how persuasive their arguments are on the surface, ALWAYS check their sources and arguments. If you do that, you’ll see the persuasiveness usually becomes yet another spin/cherry pick or whatever. It’s a general rule of thumb and it rarely fails. I would love to be proven wrong sometime though.
McIntyre and Id were warned by John Nielsen-Gammon about revealing the identity of a reviewer in an email sent to them on December 8th last year.
The earliest reference that I can find on speculation about Reviewer A is by McIntyre on December 4th, but making it clear that it was O’Donnell’s suspicion early on.
Steve McIntyre
Posted Dec 4, 2010 at 10:46 PM | Permalink
For what it’s worth, I did not originate the belief that Steig and/or his associates were Reviewer A – Ryan held the view first. Immediately on reading the first review.
If anyone has anything earlier than that date, feel free to chime in.
But Id and McIntyre should have see Nielsen-Gammon’s warning by then. My question is whether O’Donnell was aware of that warning as well, given that it wasn’t [on the face of it] sent to him, too, and he might not have been aware of the rules? A reminder of O’Donnell’s opening to his recent CA post:
Some of you may have noticed that Eric Steig has a new post on our paper at RealClimate. In the past when I have wished to challenge Eric on something, I generally have responded at RealClimate. In this case, a more detailed response is required, and a simple post at RC would be insufficient. Based on the content, it would not have made it past moderation anyway.
Lest the following be entirely one-sided, I should note that most of my experiences with Eric in the past have been positive. He was professional and helpful when I was asking questions about how exactly his reconstruction was performed and how his verification statistics were obtained. My communication with him following acceptance of our paper was likewise friendly. While some of the public comments he has made about our paper have fallen far short of being glowing recommendations, Eric has every right to argue his point of view and I do not begrudge his doing so. I should also note that over the past week I was contacted by an editor from National Geographic, who mentioned in passing that he was referred to me by Eric. This was quite gracious of Eric, and I honestly appreciated the gesture.
However, once Eric puts on his RealClimate hat, his demeanor is something else entirely.
It doesn’t make any sense at all.
Hanlon’s Razor’s telling me that this is all a dumb misunderstanding which has, unfortunately, turned into an easily fanned fire. Of course, I could be wrong, but I won’t give up hope just yet.
Bart, I have pointed out something similar on RC (don’t know if/when it will get published). It’s going to be “he said – she said” and depending on the ‘camp’ you were cheering for, guess who you are going to believe most?
J Bowers, when I read the reviews (of Eric) and responses (to Eric), I could not help but taste a very strong antagonism in both, and they were filled with mutual misunderstandings. It was personal, more than scientific, in several places. I know how easy it can get to be personal, it’s not the first time I had to stop co-authors discussing who that “S.O.B. reviewer” could be, because they tended to take personal feelings about the research and behavior of that person into account in their reply. I’m not free of that either, but at the least aware this behavior may show up.
You don’t need John N-G’s warning that “revealing reviewers’ identity is a no-no” for you to not do it. It is commonly understood.
McIntyre and Id sought his opinion because of the very obstructionism they perceived. They reportedly wrote to the journal editor about it as well (the obstruction).
Only Ryan knew who Reviewer A was. He came to know for sure, on Dec 6th. He did not tell this to any of the other authors.
This is obviously a misunderstanding. Ryan was holding his tongue easily, right until the Realclimate post. He says so himself.
I have similar experiences with peer review as you describe. Often, no words are minced. Can be a very sobering experience the first few times (until you learn how to say “outside of the scope of this work”…).
J Bowers:
I think my comment on “antagonism” could be misunderstood. It’s quite common for scientists to take strong positions and write them down antagonistic in a review. (It’s less common for the response to be equally (or more) antagonistic, but that’s a different story.) That does not automatically mean you think the authors are bad people.
Bart:
I try to teach my PhD students that the most critical reviewer often helps you improve your manuscript most. It may be nice to hear a reviewer say “good manuscript, accept as is”, but if the other reviewer(s) have noted issues, that highly positive reviewer likely never “reviewed” the paper, at best just read it once.
McIntyre and JeffId would not have been asking john N-G for his opinion had they not had plans to print the reviewers’ comments and probably already did known who reviewer A was. IMHO, they were floating a balloon because they wanted to “out” ES and wanted to float a balloon and determine the risks of outing publishing the reviewers’ comments and possibly outing ES.
The fact that ES then wrote a blog post in which he made some criticisms of their paper is not an excuse to abandon all ethical obligations. And for the record, the peer-review review process continues after publication– that is why you want to try and get it right the first time, all people who publish understand that. Sadly that fact and reality is lost on O’Donnell et al., and ultimately the content of the paper lies with the authors.
So McIntyre and Id probably knew before 8 December that reviewer A was ES– the only way to know for sure is if they show us their emails. Another date of possible interest is that the paper was accepted for publication on 30 November 2010– so it seems that as soon as it was accepted O’Donnell were getting ready to go after ES…
They are paying games here, and I for one am not at all impressed, and I doubt very much that the Journal of Climate and Nielsen-Gammon are either.
in the Lisbon Conference you wrote:
“Gee, Marco, why would anyone believe O’Donnell over Steig? Hmm. Maybe because all the relevant materials are online? For everyone to look at and decide for themselves?”
Now, you write:
“Neven, no, I’m still waiting for more information to come out.”
This leaves me with two questions: why do you expect more information to come out? And, since you’re waiting at this point, why did you come out strongly two days ago?
Oh lookee, more from CP comments wondering what Congress is up to reinventing the wheel when many moons ago….
“This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.”
– President Lyndon Johnson 1965
Whaddya know, LBJ knew all along but Upton wants to evacuate Earth and head out into space.
With your help, we can reorient NASA’s mission back toward human spaceflight by reducing funding for climate change research and reallocating those funds to NASA’s human spaceflight accounts…
Oystein, looks to you like an inconsistency in my behaviour looks to me like learning from my mistake–O’Donnell’s materials were coherent and reinforced his point strongly. But I should have waited for Steig’s response.
However, I believe Amac has provided an excellent mid-game summary over at The Blackboard with comment Comment#68919 at 9:48 a.m.
“My conclusion: what the case of Steig 09 and O’Donnnell 10 shows is something in the middle. Peer-review comes across as neither pristine nor defective.
…Broccoli surely knew that Steig would be likely to strenuously object to the publication of a paper that claims his earlier Nature work was grossly in error. He was surely unsurprised by the harsh tone and laundry list of objections in A’s lengthy first review. The conflict-of-interest is not only obvious, it’s what made Steig’s insights valuable in the first place.
…In the end, O’Donnell et al didn’t satisfy Steig’s objections, which IMO would have been impossible: O10′s point is that Steig’s math was wrong, and Reviewer Steig’s point was that Steig was right (which is blogger Steig’s scientific claim, too). O10 got published in a top-tier journal, so the system as implemented by Broccoli worked.
Based on B, C, D, tAV, and O’Donnell’s latest image set, it seems highly likely to me that it will turn out that S09 was wrong and O10 was right. So, again, the PR system is working. Establishment climate science and peer review (e.g. B, C, D, and Broccoli) is not a giant conspiracy.
…So does “gatekeeping” still have legs? I think it does — but overall, I think that this skeptic/dissident argument should lose power as a result of this case.
And the “conspiracy” charge should be discredited.”
That’ll hold me over, at least, until more details emerge.
do you have any thoughts about future CO2-emissions as projected by the IPCC?
What do you think about peakoil and the inability of Saudi-Arabia to increase oilproduction (wikileaks)?
What do you think about peak-coal, which could arrive in 2011 (see Patzek & Croft)?
Are the projections of CO2-emission by the IPCC realistic ?
Yes, I have a few thoughts about IPCC’s CO2 emission scenario’s.
First: they are not projections, they are scenario’s, a big difference.
Second: peak-oil is not the end of oil. It only means production cannot keep up with demand. There is still about half of the oil locked in the earth, it’s just harder to get to.
Third: oil is only one source of prehistoric Carbon. Gas and coal are the other. Especially coal is very abundant, not only the hard metallic coal, but especially of brown coal there are enormous amounts available.
We will have no problem going through 4000ppm is we want to, and stupid enough to do so. So, yes, there is no reason to think that a lack of Carbon will pose a limit on even the IPCC’s worst-case scenario. Economics will probably decide which scenario unfolds, I don’t really have hope that politics will play a positive role leading to a lower CO2 emission scenario.
“What do you think about peakoil and the inability of Saudi-Arabia to increase oilproduction (wikileaks)?”
The level of uncertainties about proven oil reserves is staggering. The P90 estimates fluctuate wildly, and Royal Dutch|Shell found a shortfall similar to Saudi Arabia’s once they’d audited their reserves. Not one OPEC country will allow an independent audit to verify their own reserves.
I recommend a read of this armchair audit by a petroleum engineer with a relevant PhD and 30 publications under his belt. There’s a possibility that oil reserves could be 50% below estimates.
Just thought I’d point out an alternate explanation. It could be that ES’ review were more thorough because he had an interest/knew more about the subject and thus had more to say..
It seems to me that the position “he tried to stop the paper from being published” presupposes that ES didn’t want the paper in print. That’s not a given.
I have as of yet not decided what I think – I’d like to know what reviews generally look like, so if anyone with experience could explain how detailed/not detailed they usually are, and whether more detailed means more adverse etc., I’d be grateful
Oystein, I don’t think ES wanted to stop O’Donnell from writing a paper. It certainly is not unusual for the editor to ask the author of an opposing piece to review, as ES was asked–you’re supposed to be able to beat the best.
Lots of people can give you details of reviews–I cannot, although I have read some and have found them very diverse in terms of length, detail and level of attention.
A lot is hidden in the back and forth, but in terms of iridge, the impression I get is that Eric’s recommendations are:
1. Use your best work and
2. Justify your decision
They only did the first part. Meanwhile, Eric looked into it further (and also had to wait to get the final edition of the paper) and now is saying that it’s a good way to process some data, but probably not the data they used.
Raypierre sais a bit about peer review in a reply at RC:
Scientists submit papers dealing with other peoples’ work all the time. It’s as it should be, since science is cumulative. Some of that is critical, but that does not generally create a “conflict of interest” since most scientists respond well to constructive and correct criticism. But nonetheless, it is absolutely standard and correct practice to send a paper commenting on some work to the author of that work, since (in my experience as an editor of JAS) the author of the criticized work is often in the best position to understand what is going on. But a journal article in almost all fields (astrophysics being an exception) gets several reviews — generally three, sometimes more — and that protects against any possible bias by any one reviewer. It is the editor’s job to weigh the merits of the arguments given by the various reviewers. I also think you misunderstand the point of reviews. It is not to find grammar and spelling errors and routine algebra errors. That’s the job of the authors. The point of the review is to explore broader methodological issues. I have gotten reviews as long as the one Eric wrote on some of my papers, just because the reviewer was interested, even though the paper in question did not involve any hot-button climate issues. (…)
As Marco has also said in this thread and at RC, reviews very enormously in length, detail and level of criticism/praise. You could get a feel for some reviews at the open access/open review EGU journals (e.g. ACPD).
The commentary from non-scientists on this as a bad example of peer review is beyond clueless. Steig here behaved admirably! As did the editor, who picked very wisely in choosing Steig as a reviewer. If Steig wanted to delay the publication here’s what he would have done (editors have to watch out for referees using these tricks of course):
(1) Taken 6 months to respond, while letting the editor know he was working on it (so the editor doesn’t assign to somebody else or go with the other reviews)
(2) Finally send in a very brief review recommending rejection, with one claim the authors got something wrong that appears to completely invalidate their work (like choosing the wrong kgnd, some quantitative error in analysis, etc.)
(3) Upon getting a revised paper that fixes the first problem, repeat 1 and 2 with a second problem. This can be repeated ad infinitum (or at least until the editor catches on)
But less work for a referee is an even easier choice: put no effort into it at all, quickly respond with a blanket rejection recommendation (“this paper is crap”), wait till it gets published (if it does) and then pile on the authors and editors for the inevitable stupid mistakes that the referees didn’t put any effort into helping to catch.
That’s what a negligent referee would do.
Steig was a diligent scientist, his work here is exemplary. That O’Donnell and friends blew it up is a sign of how desperately far removed they are from the practices of real science.
Hans, no I really mean 4000 ppm. 400 ppm is just around the corner (we’ll hit that around the 2020’s peak oil or not). Please remember that almost everything that will burn is made of Carbon and there is really a lot of that around. The tail of brown coal is very very long.
@cynicus: cars don’t ride on brown coal, planes don’t fly on brown coal.
I think people will starve long before they will suffocate in 4000 ppm CO2.
Another question / topic for Bart.
What are your views on solar cycle 24?
NASA’s David Hathaway has again changed his prediction for the maximum sunspotnumber.
Solar cycle 25 and 26 will prove equally difficult to predict.
Are we headed for another Dalton-minimum?
Well, people burned coal, peat and wood long before cars and planes came along. Cars and planes, while useful to our office way of life, are not a condition to human survival. But I agree, many people will very likely starve before we get to 4000 ppm. Btw, I didn’t say we’re *going* to get there, I said we *can* get there if we want and are stupid enough to do so.
A good friend of mine never published his Phd thesis, because someone did exactly what you described. My friend’s data and hypothesis challenged that of the reviewer, and he pretty much wrote in red across the from “this is crap”. being young and inexperienced my friend was mortified and withdrew the paper. His hypothesis has since been independently validated by real-wrold observations. Now that reviewer did behave badly and unprofessionally.
There are no excuses for O’Donnell, McIntyre and jeffid’s despicable behaviour.
and shame on Curry and others for uncritically jumping on the band wagon…they should all be ashamed. So much for the ‘skeptics” claiming to be interested in reconciliation– that was clearly a ruse.
We should not hold out breath waiting from sincere and unequivocal apologies form O’Donnell et al. What a sad and pathetic state of affairs.
O’Donnell has “apologised”…ahem. In the meantime, John Nielsen-Gammon has made it very clear McIntyre et al did the worst of the worst. I think none of the authors will get to publish anything in any AMS journal for a while.
Where did he publish his apology? Hopefully not at CA, that would detract from its sincerity ;) Anyhow, good fore him. Now we wait to see whether or not the long list of others (including Delingpole, Curry, McIntyre, Lucia and Jeffid) have the same fortitude. I’m assuming Watts also jumped on the band wagon? I do not go there unless absolutely necessary.
I spent some time looking at Lucia’s blog. It’s just a soapbox over there with all sorts of ridiculous comments rivaling wuwt. ClimateAudit is full of the same, with a heavy dose of cheerleading and “attaboy”s.
Then we have Revkin’s weak post that makes no attempts to critically analyze the situation, other than to claim including Steig as a reviewer raises questions of the peer review process – a claim not revised after several of us pointed out that it’s normal practice. You would think that someone covering science for decades would know that.
Postnormal science at work? I have to agree with MapleLeaf. What a sad and pathetic state of affairs.
Oh never mind, I just read his “apology”. An apology is not an opportunity to launch amore attacks and rehash old (fallacious) ones for goodness’ sakes.
“a claim not revised after several of us pointed out that it’s normal practice.”
The claim won’t be revised because it’s an effective one. It’s very easy to present Steig being allowed to review the critique as nefarious to those who don’t know any better (by which I mean people who don’t know much about peer review, which is basically almost everyone).
It “sounds like” something that shouldn’t happen when presented in a certain adversarial context – see Delingpole’s article for a good example. He introduces it in such an obvious way that the reader can’t help but think there must be something wrong with it and of course “conflict of interest” is something many people feel like they understand.
So no those interested in winning over accuracy will absolutely not be retracting the claim and those interested in their prejudices over accuracy will absolutely not stop believing it.
Oh never mind, I just read his “apology”. An apology is not an opportunity to launch amore attacks and rehash old (fallacious) ones for goodness’ sakes.
What an absolutely hopeless bunch.
Veterans of the creation science wars recognize this as a “notpology”.
Subsequent to my post on Feb 7, 2010 here, Eric Steig informed me by email that he had not seen our Response to his Third Review, as I had previously assumed. I apologize for my misunderstanding on this point, which was, however, incidental to the major concerns expressed in my post.
I.e. no apology AFAIK on his previous outburst and allegations.
Btw, I found Revkin’s pieces on this affair quite good (except for him misunderstanding peer review, which he has since ‘corrected’ by highlighting the geo-editor’s response).
And people think that the Canucks are too polite ;)
Andy takes one step forward and then two steps back when he defends Mendelsohn and Saher’s “analysis” to the World Bank which “cites Pielke Jnr five times while quoting not one scientific paper focused on droughts” [Climate Progress]. Not to mention Revkin berating Dr. Romm for noticing the distinct lack of depth to the authors’ reference list.
Hmmm, and the public are confused why Andy Revkin?
If I counted correctly, Joe Romm’s post on this had 11 links–to Joe Romm’s other pieces. In fairness, he did link to the paper he criticized twice, and to a number of pieces behind subscription paywalls. I’m sure they provide backup for his point of view.
But for those of us who have discounted Mr. Romm as a paid political operative driving a political agenda (and I’m not disparaging either his motive or his agenda), it doesn’t provide a basis for informed criticism of the World Bank paper.
It doesn’t automatically mean the World Bank paper is correct, but at this point I’m inclined to look at their numbers as ‘having the right number of zeros’, which I think is as much as one can ask for on a subject like this.
Young fields are where arguments are at their most intense. (…)
Everything laid out above tends to draw attention away from the broad and deep body of work pointing to a growing and long-lasting human influence on the climate system.
His whole piece is centred around contrasting the conflicting views at the edge of the scientific development (where the field is still “young”) with the solid based on scientific knowledge that makes up the big picture. I guess you interpreted “young” as referring to the whole of climate science knowledge; I did not. The narrative as I just paraphrased in a very important one to convey, and Revkin did so very well.
Maple, I’m a bit of a pseudo-Canuck myself, having lived there for 6 years ;-)
So much for the ‘skeptics” claiming to be interested in reconciliation– that was clearly a ruse.
I don’t think it was; I just think they have a different definition of the word, one that’s just as flawed as their sense of expertise and importance. They know they’re correct and they know they’re important; reconciliation comes when their opponents also recognize those two things.
Bart and the rabett have been doing a good job on this latest flare up. The rabett is really a duck, like Bart on the surface going smoothly along but underneath going a mile a minute. JeffID should be commended for coming here and airing his side. It is refreshing to hear someone younger like Bart who still sees the good in people. Where as I’m older, crotchety, and more cynical. As far as climate progress being a political site, absolutely. That’s why I hang around there. Arguing politics is something we do for sport. And JR has been throwing a lot of red meat lately. That’s one reason I don’t blog under my real name. When I say something stupid I can run and hide.
The usual crackpots (hint) are venting their brainless heads. It is good to see al the usual suspects gathered together in a cave and grooving with a Pict.
Dhogaza, Marco, Mapleleaf, Arthur, Eli.
I am glad o have myself spared from this nonsense during the last two months. I feel a lot better since.
Tom, what *I* did was follow *your* link to Arrhenius’ original work from 1908, which clearly and unequivocally put climate sensitivity to 4 degrees. That is, the 1906 paper that Gerlich&Tscheuschner show gives a climate sensitivity of 1.6 degrees, but it is trumped by the 1908 paper.
Now, *you* made a large fuss on this thread that so many people neglected the 1906 paper, and only looked at the 1896 paper. Will you now make the same complaints about the “1906”-people neglecting the 1908 publication?
So, Marco, you didn’t look at the link I provided to the quote from 1906?
I provide it because so many of your comrades have been buzzing around the blogs saying that because they couldn’t find it online, he never said it. Of course they’ll all correct their misstatements.
So far, all the comments I’ve read about his 1908 statements come from people who are not German or Swedish speakers who have Google translated one page of his paper.
Maybe Arrhenius changed his mind once again. I don’t know. I do know that for decades textbooks and papers have referred to his 1906 statement with lower values for temperature rise, and I found it amusing that your side was so eager to make it disappear.
So I provide a link and an exact quote. Want it again?
Tom, I am a German speaker (although I sometimes miss the fine details in terms of sarcasm, irony, or when concepts are discussed I have never heard before) and can tell you without any shadow of a doubt, as in “none at all”, that Arrhenius makes it 4 degrees climate sensitivity in 1908. Any and all native German speakers can confirm that to you, if you would need that.
The 1906 paper is a but more obscure, in the sense that Gerlich & Tscheuschner only show the paper up to the 1.6, so we have no idea what follows. The section that *is* shown appears to me to refer to the climate sensitivity for CO2 alone. Not the climate sensitivity *with* feedbacks. That interpretation would put the 1906 paper in line with his earlier work and the 1908 book chapter.
It is also obscure in that “for decades textbooks and papers have…” NOT “…referred to his 1906 statement with lower values for temperature rise”.
And please don’t try the “your side” with me. It would suggest to me you put yourself on the other side, which, in my world, are the science deniers.
Finally, I’m guessing you will now go after any- and everyone who will take Arrhenius’ 1906 prediction as Arrhenius’ final word on the matter?
Marco, I will tell people that his 1906 projection was apparently not his final one and mention 1908. Why is it that I don’t believe you will mention his 1906 projection to those running around the internet saying that because they can’t find it online it never happened?
Tom, rather than rely on G&T as a secondary source, and unlike yourself, I’ll be trying to get the full Arrhenius Nobel Institute paper.
As for trying to throw in a red herring by speculating Google Translate ain’t up to snuff, believe what you want to believe. I have plenty of Swedish mates who I’ll ask to translate the Swedish, but I doubt Google tranlsate messes up about translating ‘doubling’ and numbers like ‘4’ and ‘8’. So far you don’t seem to have followed up on the primary sources at all and are just taking G&T’s word for it that that’s all there is to the 1906 Nobel Institute paper.
I’ll also add that you’ve completely evaded Ernst Hermann’s take on it, where he says the revised 2C figure is for CO2 without moisture (dry CO2).
We’ve cited Arrhenius’ publications of 1906, 1907 and 1908, the first two of which say the same thing (4C for doubling), bar the 1908 English translation which truncates the paragraph but still has the same figure as the others of 8C for quadrupling of CO2.
Tom, “nullius in verbia” applies here: when people claim something, evidence is required. And if that evidence remains rather obscure, it is appropriate to accept that there are multiple interpretations.
And again I’d like to note that it appears more appropriate to interpret the number from his 1906 paper as pointing to the no-feedback response. It would explain everything. In fact, I see in several places that there is a reference to a water feedback of 2.1 degrees (again, apparently in that same paper). Which makes it 3.7 total, and thus pretty close to the 4 in his 1908 paper. Contradiction disappears.
I am most certainly not pointing to the cherry picked parts Gerlich & Tscheuschner decided to cite. Perhaps, one day, I’ll just request a copy of that paper, and get the WHOLE paper online, after acceptance by the Royal Academy of Science of Sweden, of course!
Marco makes the important point that you’re seemingly basing your opinion on a second-hand, fragmentary quotation, from a source (G&T) that is *known* to be unreliable, and dressing it up as if you’re referring to a figure well known and frequently cited for decades.
A cursory google for the title of the cited paper turns up:
Wikipedia
WUWT (by way of Monckton)
You
And various second-hand references to one of the above.
Faced with this anyone ought to be *extremely* skeptical of your interpretation, especially as the perfectly logical explanation offered by Marco is available.
Apply Occam’s Razor:
Arrhenius made one calculation for sensitivity with feedbacks in 1896, another in 1906 that was markedly lower *but by a staggering coincidence* was pretty much the same as his earlier figure for sensitivity without feedbacks, then almost immediately refutes himself with a third publication, restoring the original state of affairs. This chain of events is presented honestly by Monckton and G&T (none really known for being best friends to accuracy) who focus completely on the 1906 snippet to the exclusion of all else.
Alternatively:
All three publications by Arrhenius present broadly the same estimates for sensitivity (either with or without feedbacks), and G&T have presented a selective or misleading quotation, as they did with *several* sources.
Without access to the original paper, the answer must remain a mystery, so kudos to whoever eventually digs up this particular corpse for a post-mortem.
In the meantime I will err on the side of probability, and be skeptical of the claims you’ve presented. I’m surprised you are so attached to them on such flimsy evidence.
DaveH, look past the first page of Google returns. Arrhenius’ 1906 projection of 2.1C (including 0.5C of feedback) is well-established and often-cited.
“However, it is very rarely mentioned that Arrhenius 10 years later published a calculation resulting in a much lower effect of CO2.”
Carl G. Ribbing
Professor, Division of Solid State Physics
The Ångström Laboratory
Uppsala University, Sweden
Fuller, you are now trolling, big time. You know very well how we got onto this tack of the warming expected for doubling of CO2, it was a strawman argument invented by you. Let me remind you what I said:
“And what we are observing now was, for the most part, correctly predicted in Arrhenius at the end of the 19th century, well over 100 years ago”
Tom missed that key word “now”— what I said had nothing to do with EQS. Instead Tom makes a classic strawman argument:
“Usually people like Maple Leaf point out his 1895 prediction of projected warming with a doubling of CO2, and then neglect to mention his revision of 1906.”
So I elaborated to help our confused Tom:
“I was not necessarily referring to temperature predictions per se.”
AND
“So he [Arrhenius] predicted the reduction of DTR, he predicted that the warming would be greatest in winter, that the warming would be greatest at high latitudes, he predicted the positive feedback from ice loss (and the associated lowering of albedo), i.e., he predicted and polar amplification. All these features have been observed in response to the increased radiative forcing from higher GHG levels.”
Yet Tom insists on arguing his strawman about the temperature increases predicted for doubling CO2 made by Arrhenius.
Troll Fuller, I have fed you and patted you on the head, now please go away and stop wasting peoples’ time. Thanks.
PS: To other readers, is there a psychological condition which describes the behavior of Fuller and Condon? It is a serious question.
Fuller — ““However, it is very rarely mentioned that Arrhenius 10 years later published a calculation resulting in a much lower effect of CO2.”
Carl G. Ribbing
Professor, Division of Solid State Physics
The Ångström Laboratory
Uppsala University, Sweden”
What of it? Are you pulling an argument from authority here? I thought you were a journalist, which is incredible since you seem to display no desire to find the primary source yourself and are more than willing to uncritically accept the secondary interpretations of others. Compare to those of us who’ve found FULL texts and the original versions of those texts, as well as translated them ourselves.
I’ll be tracking down a copy of the Nobel Institute paper, but I’ll lay odds that somewhere in it there’s a reference to 4C or thereabouts with feedbacks, or the lower figure has a reference to it being without feedbacks. I’ll also remind you that Arrhenius’ own grandson, Gustav, says it was a high figure. If you want to pull arguments from authority then I don’t see them coming much more authoratitive than a contemporary and family member of the man himself.
The Nobel paper was published in 1906, Worlds in the Making (Swedish original) was published in 1906, and we know that the latter says 4C for doubling as does the German translation of 1907, and for quadrupling we get the same figure of 8C in all three editions up to 1908.
In any case you are once again taking someone else’s word for this – someone who is (once again) not an expert in this field, and who (in the same letter) is very quick to cite Svensmark, Douglass, Lindzen and Spencer. That’s a very specific laundry-list of (sometimes contradictory) contrarians, and one has to question the impartial nature of this particular source.
I can find *no* online source for the paper. All I can find is endless repetition of this same claim, all given a “there is no AGW” spin.
This is not citation. This is an echo chamber. Indeed, the more links I follow, the less credibility the claim has – and the more hollow your “frequently cited” argument seems. It is practically an urban myth at this stage – the claim, and the title of the paper, with no evidence that the claimant has *actually read* the source. How am I to know that the root source of *all* of this is not the G&T paper?
Give me some evidence that you have *actually verified* this claim. Until then, I am even more skeptical than I was before. I mean, right now I could say that the 1906 Arrhenius paper predicts the existence of Pluto – how would you know otherwise?
Tom, I’m with Dave H on the Carl Ribbing-quote as unreliable. Not the quote itself, but the quote being authorative. I am 99% certain Ribbing did not check it, but that he has it from ‘contrarian’ sources. I mean, the guy is even questioning that the CO2 increase over the last 50 years is mainly anthropogenic in nature. A simple accounting excercise (the guy’s a professor in engineering, he should be able to do this enormously simple math) shows that the rise MUST be anthropogenic in nature. There is no other way to explain that the CO2 in the atmosphere increases with a lower amount than we humans put in the atmosphere. Unless somebody suddenly has found a human activity that takes up enormous amounts of CO2…
Short story: The 1.6+0.5 is well-established…in the ‘contrarian’ circles. The other evidence, and one you yourself indeed provided, contradicts that 1.6+0.5, and comes closer to 1.6+2.1. Which puts Arrhenius on the high end of climate sensitivity. Not that that matters much, because everyone agrees he made certain mistakes in his calculations.
British Government Chief Scientific Adviser John Beddington goes on the offensive against pseudo-science, calling for it to be tolerated as much as racism is.
I don’t see why this should be a big deal. Others on both sides of this debate have found errors in Arrhenius. I just find it mildly amusing that y’all would hypothesize that a direct quote in a peer-reviewed paper would be falsified and a Swedish professor of physics would just make stuff up.
All possible, of course, but seems more likely to me that Arrhenius did different calculations at different times with different methods and came up with different results.
More than mildly amusing is the somewhat frenetic attempt to push the 1906 paper down the memory hole.
No Fuller, unlike you, the “journalist”, we’re interested in the full context of the 1906 paper as a primary source, and suspect that the sample you so uncritically accept prima facie from secondary sources is a quote mine.
Your characterisation (“I don’t see why this should be a big deal.”, “mildly amusing”, “frenetic”) is, once again, playground posturing.
If it’s not a big deal, why do you repeat it incessently as if it is the absolute truth? You have already shown you have precisely no idea what the original source says – you’re just repeating it from other sources. Credulously. Start being a little skeptical.
If it’s not a big deal why do you keep framing this as an attempt to hide inconvenient contrary evidence? Everyone here has shown willingness to engage with the substance of the evidence – its just that the evidence so far has virtually no substance between a title, a brief excerpt that is a *very* long way from conclusive, and dozens of verbatim repetitions of one particular slant. I really, really want to see that original paper, to see if this claim holds water. Quite the opposite of the memory hole.
It matters because people *like you* keep repeating this. Google is choked with blogs making this claim, laughing at Arrhenius and his muddle ways as he flip-flops between extremes of climate sensitivity. I, for one, would like to know where the truth of the matter lies – you seem to be content to repeat what you’ve been told and make fun of anybody with a commitment to integrity.
To summarise the spin on this gleaned from the several pages of hits on Google and your own contributions here: “Hey, Arrhenius was *wrong*, or he was right the second time and *you’re all crazy political/religious alarmists*, or he just couldn’t make up his mind and hey *there’s no consensus even back then*, or even if this is all bogus *you’re all idiots for caring so much about it*”.
Also:
> would hypothesize that a direct quote in a peer-reviewed paper would be falsified
No – excerpted incompletely. There is a difference. Given that there are several examples of similar goings on in that paper (a paper which is now legendary in its “not even wrong”-ness, I might add) this is little more than a reasonable interpretation of the available evidence, especially given the corroborating evidence of his earlier and later works. The G&T citation starts to look like an anomaly, so you would do well to check and double check their workings.
> and a Swedish professor of physics would just make stuff up.
No – I have posited that he could easily be repeating (just as you have) a second-hand quote, or even a first-hand cite he has misinterpreted Unless you want to hold your hand up to “making stuff up” I’m merely putting him in the same boat as you, so your dismissive framing holds no water. Without the original we have no way of knowing which to believe, but the consistent bias in the sources so far unearthed is hardly reassuring.
Tom, once again you apply your own narrative to events and keep repeating it in the face of all evidence to the contrary, and all attempts at reason. I present you with a logical alternative to your position, and you disregard it in somewhat offensive terms, choosing to slant my words and ascribe to me positions *I did not put forward*.
You guys are the ones beating this into the ground, not me. Look up thread and at the other one. This started when I asked Maple Leaf which projection of Arrhenius he was talking about. And it’s ground on since then thanks to your determination to eliminate that functionary from the podium in front of the Kremlin.
Tom, you also kept it alive by coming out with things like, “Are you saying it isn’t 2C….?” then throwing out G&T as if it helps your case. In fact, it was seeing how your faith in the 2C figure comes from a selective quote from G&T that made me doubt the 2C even more. Your persistent fallback position to abuse doesn’t help you much either.
You guys are the ones beating this into the ground, not me. Look up thread and at the other one. This started when I asked Maple Leaf which projection of Arrhenius he was talking about. And it’s ground on since then thanks to your determination to eliminate that functionary from the podium in front of the Kremlin.
MapleLeaf, Arrhenius made several projections of temperature rise due to CO2 concentrations. To which do you refer?
Fuller started this on 8th of Feb and Fuller keeps trying to push the meme:
The broader issue is the inability of the consensus supporters to ever acknowledge error or even to quit repeating it. You are quite familiar with my criticisms of this paper, but you refuse to address it.
This goes back a long ways, to Svante Arrhenius in fact. Consensus holders have frequently said that Arrhenius projected a 6C rise in temperatures for a doubling of CO2 concentrations. The most recent prominent mention of this was by John Rennie in Scientific American.
And this is despite it being fairly well-known (it’s on Arrhenius’ Wikipedia entry) that he reworked his calculations 10 years later and came up with a 2C projected rise.
But it has not stopped people who obviously know better from repeating what is a deception.
This started when I asked Maple Leaf which projection of Arrhenius he was talking about.
But I like the calls of those seeking to chase down the meme to its source. A source you seem less willing to find.
Then again if the source is a misquote then it doesn’t exist. But you don’t need that source to push the meme do you Tom. Luke-warmers Way out in front indeed Tom. Way out in front of pushing memes.
Must be trenchfoot getting you, ol Jake. Did you maybe miss this?
MapleLeaf Says:
February 19, 2011 at 23:06
Fuller,
“I play games with your pseudonym, not your name”
I was not talking about me, or pseudonyms– does “junkerman” sound familiar? It should, you used that.
I think what you meant to say is that:
“my opinion is that the pilots are not using the correct navigational instruments.”
You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own science to own facts. And what we are observing now was, for the most part, correctly predicted in Arrhenius at the end of the 19th century, well over 100 years ago. You need to stop obsessing with MBH or Steig or PRall– those are only part of a very big puzzle. And last time I checked, technology has advanced and GPS is a very reliable navigational tool.
Again, you are presenting a false choice. We can reduce GHGs and address environmental concerns– as my example concerning deforestation demonstrated. Also, the inception of the Montreal Protocol did not require the cessation or reduction of addressing environmental issues.”
Funny–thought I had you busted but it turns out I did start this, although not where you think.
I am concerned about Arctic ice. I am concerned about methane release. I am concerned about shifting weather patterns. But until the host of real issues with the science is addressed at my level (interested layman who can follow the equations), it is useless to ask for my support–or even to ask me to defer judgement.
The Consensus Team has played enough word games with the science to stimulate healthy skepticism. I can understand the motivation behind some of it. But they’ve created the environment they are operating in. From deliberate distortions of the work of Svante Arrhenius to red buttons blowing up skeptics, the Consensus Team has landed itself where it is today. And that will not be resolved by the slow motion ping pong match that characterizes progress via peer reviewed literature.
Yup that was me. Sorry if I gave the wrong impression that I did not start it (this time–not the first go-round on this stuff). FWIW, I stand by what I wrote then.
Dipping into the cooking sherry a bit early, aren’t we, jakerman? I provided a quote and a link to as much as is online, as far as I know. The quote was direct and the link is to a peer-reviewed paper in an academic journal. I don’t agree with the results of the paper, but I have no reason to think they falsified the quote.
And here again is the quote:”The current amount of carbonic acid would therefore raise the temperature of the
Earth’s surface for 14; 6
C its disappearance from the atmosphere would result in
a lowering of temperatures about three times as strong as the one, which caused
the ice ages. I calculate in a similar way, that a decrease in the concentration of
carbonic acid by half or a doubling would be equivalent to changes of temperature
of 1; 5
C or +1; 6
C respectively.”
I’m willing to leave this alone. But if you’re going to continue making stuff up, I’ll keep posting this.
If you don’t trust the source or the quote, go get the paper. But don’t say it doesn’t exist.
Nor is that paper the only source for Arrhenius’ projection of 2.1C:
“Furthermore, it is not historically correct that Svante Arrhenius “first suggested in 1896 that… .”In this work Arrheniusreferenced Fourier and Tyndall for their much earlier suggestion that the climate was controlled by the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. In this 1896 article he made the first quantitativeestimate of the climate sensitivity [3]. Considering that the spectral results were poorly resolved and otherwise defect, the result 3-4 oC for doubling the concentration of CO2 was amazingly close to the IPCC claims today. However, it is very rarely mentioned that Arrhenius 10 years later published a calculation resulting in a much lower effect of CO2 .
Carl G. Ribbing
Professor, Division of Solid State Physics
The Ångström Laboratory
Uppsala University, Sweden
And jakerman, remember who brought it up this time.
If Fuller want to push that meme, we know he doing it with the knowledge that he can’t produce Arrhenius’ paper that supports his initial assertions.
Fuller:
I provided a quote and a link to as much as is online
Then shows his his accuracy by linking G&T. Nice.
While Fuller is citing G&T as his source let me remind Tom of his recent quote:
our science is accurate
Just so were are clear you have not been able to produce Arrhenius’ paper supporting your meme.
And GT have very low credibility that paper is ridiculous. It think it was not peer reviewed as it was an invited review paper. I asked the journal editor to confirm this but he yet to reply.
If you want to depend on G&T as your source then that shows you up.
Ribbing doesn’t help you with any source. Perhaps his been taking in by G&T’s meme.
Sorry, Tom, but you’ll have to come with more substantiation when you claim The ‘Consensus Team’ has deliberately distorted Arrhenius. How exactly did they distort Arrhenius? Arrhenius correctly predicted that increasing CO2 would increase global temperatures. He correctly predicted polar amplification. His *numbers* may have been off and some of his calculations incorrect, but he got the general idea right.
And yes, I’m willing to say that a professor in physics is wrong. Take for example HIS distortion of Arrhenius’ 1896 projection, which in reality put the temperature increase for a factor 1.5 (which is not 2) to 3.4. Climate sensitivity in that paper is > 5 degrees
Of course, we now will see Tom Fuller state that the “Skeptic Team” has lost his trust, since it has been caught deliberately distorting Arrhenius’ work. Right, Tom?
Posting the same two second-hand interpretations again and again is no substitute for finding the original and verifying it.
Repetition does not equal truth.
All you’ve done is confirm that you are, in fact, taking someone else’s word for this, while ridiculing anyone curious enough to want to check your facts.
I am doomed to repeat myself as often as you do, it seems. You have provided someone else’s second-hand interpretation, which you accept at face value.
So, not having read the original source, you are taking G&T’s word for it yes or no? And the mention on wikipedia and repetition of this meme throughout “skeptical” blogs constitutes the further evidence you mentioned previously that it is widely cited, yes or no?
Which, to me, looks like *everybody* taking G&T’s word for it.
A second hand source.
One that is known to be highly unreliable.
This just gets worse.
Seriously – do you have *no* curiosity? You’re too busy running off down the street declaring yourself the winner to actually care whether what your repeating is accurate.
Fuller — “The quote was direct and the link is to a peer-reviewed paper in an academic journal. I don’t agree with the results of the paper, but I have no reason to think they falsified the quote. ”
Tom, I just cited a paper, notably the original and complete source, that shows Ribbing was wrong. Your response to that, please?
Remember, you claimed (but provided no evidence) that “the Consensus team” deliberately distorted Arrhenius’ work. So, I would be particularly interested in whether you consider Ribbing’s claim the Arrhenius 1896 paper predicts 3-4 degrees climate sensitivity as “deliberate distortion”, too. And if not, why would this be different from “the Consensus team”?
This still leaves open the question on what you consider distortion of Arrhenius work, and what the evidence is for this supposed distortion being “deliberate”.
4.45pm: Giles Tremlett emails with a curious side-effect of the Libyan protests: Spain is to lower motorway speed limits, cut train ticket prices and use more biofuel under an emergency energy-saving initiative because of soaring oil prices brought on by unrest in Libya.
Yes, J. Bowers, of course there were no problems found with NOAA.
““The Co-Chair of the IPCC AR4 WG1, who was the only NOAA scientist informed of any of the aforementioned FOIA requests, told us that she did not conduct a ‘comprehensive search’ for and forward potentially responsive documents for agency processing. This was based, in part, on her understanding that her IPCC-related work product was the property of the IPCC, due to the confidentiality provisions contained in many of the documents. In addition, she reportedly received verbal guidance from her supervisor and a NOAA OGC attorney that the IPCC-related documents she had created and/or obtained while on “detail” assignment to the IPCC did not constitute NOAA records.”
“We interviewed the two NOAA OGC attorneys whom the Co-Chair and her supervisor referenced during their interviews with us to determine what, if any, advice the attorneys provided to these individuals. Both attorneys specifically told us that they had not advised the Co-Chair or her supervisor on this matter at the time NOAA received the FOIA requests referenced herein. One attorney said that he never spoke to the Co-Chair about that issue, while the second attorney told us that he was consulted only after NOAA had already responded to the FOIA requesters that it had no responsive documents.”
“Based on our interviews of the two NOAA OGC attorneys, we followed-up with the Co-Chair and her supervisor, both of whom again told us that their handling of the aforementioned FOIA requests was based on advice they had received from these two specific attorneys. We requested from the Co-Chair and her supervisor documentation of any discussions with the NOAA OGC attorneys on this matter, which they were unable to provide. As such, we were unable to reconcile the divergent accounts.”
Slim Pickings For Climate Science Critics in Inspector General Report
[…]
– The phrase “warrants further action” was used in the release to describe eight e-mail messages that the inspectors found might potentially point to integrity issues. The problem is that the agency conducted interviews and document reviews and provided explanations in the report — none of which raised red flags. (Inhofe plans to pursue more investigations of these e-mails nonetheless, his release said.
To them, this is clearly part of the Grand Conspiracy to Willfully and With Malice Aforethought Commit Acts of Science. Or something. Anyway, something worthy of Congressional Investigation. Or Worse. (cue Ominous Trumpets)
Look J Bowers, the NOAA was always a bit player in this, and nobody expected any revelations. What came out is just more of the same grubbiness that characterizes every bit of information we learn about the people involved.
Grand conspiracy? No. Greasy pole climbers that fudge everything and expect us to believe that doesn’t include the data?
Tom, you may want to look up what the FOIA requests were about. Nothing at all to do with the data. Fudging wasn’t an issue there either, unless you follow the McIntyrian line of taking anything and everything that can be blown up, and blow it up to the maximum possibility. Oh wait, perhaps that indeed describes you quite well. I noticed you still have not responded to the evidence I provided that Carl Ribbing “deliberately distorted” Arrhenius’ 1896 article…
I’m talking about the NOAA employee saying she got advice from counsel and counsel saying she didn’t. Fudge factor #1. And it is that which is typical of this years-long charade.
Lawyers protecting themselves and being overly cautious is no reason to accuse NOAA counsel of fudging. It comes with the territory and is an essential part of the legal profession. (AKA it’s up to you to prove we lawyers are wrong.)
Lol – not necessarily. Just pointing out that you’ve assumed there is a ‘guilty’ party and who that is, unlike the IG who did no such thing.
(According to the IG’s report, there were apparently diverging accounts of when the phone discussions took place, not about whether or not such a phone discussion took place. One lawyer agreed that a discussion did occur and that at the time she or he agreed that the IPCC ‘owned’ the material.)
Bart, what do you think of what Freeman Dyson wrote in the Independent last week? Have you had a chance to look at it?
No, I haven’t. But when I did read things he said about climate change in the past I wasn’t impressed at all. He may be wicked smart, but he doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about in this case. As I believe Jonathan Gilligan pointed out at CaS, his PoV probably comes from an infinite belief that technology will come to the rescue, based on which no problem can be considered problematic. I don’t share his boundless optimism though.
My view on climate change 
February 8, 2011 at 20:58
Marco, if you happen to make it over here, I’ll repeat my question.
What is your opinion of Prall, Schneider et al?
The broader issue is the inability of the consensus supporters to ever acknowledge error or even to quit repeating it. You are quite familiar with my criticisms of this paper, but you refuse to address it.
This goes back a long ways, to Svante Arrhenius in fact. Consensus holders have frequently said that Arrhenius projected a 6C rise in temperatures for a doubling of CO2 concentrations. The most recent prominent mention of this was by John Rennie in Scientific American.
And this is despite it being fairly well-known (it’s on Arrhenius’ Wikipedia entry) that he reworked his calculations 10 years later and came up with a 2C projected rise.
But it has not stopped people who obviously know better from repeating what is a deception.
Marco, what is your opinion of the current controversy involving Steig?
February 8, 2011 at 22:01
Tom Fuller — “And this is despite it being fairly well-known (it’s on Arrhenius’ Wikipedia entry) that he reworked his calculations 10 years later and came up with a 2C projected rise.”
Not according to his grandson, Gustaff Arrhenius, as relayed by Richard Ordway…
The sentence from Wikipedia that you refer to:
There’s no citation on the Wikipedia page for that, only for Svante Arrhenius’ earlier estimate of 5 – 6 °C. I can’t see it anywhere HERE, either, which is the source for the Wiki higher estimate by Arrhenius. On the Wiki Discussion page the issue is raised, but the reason to keep it seem pretty flawed and vague to me.
Can anyone shed some light?
February 8, 2011 at 22:32
Svante Arrhenius, 1906, Die vermutliche Ursache der Klimaschwankungen, Meddelanden från K. Vetenskapsakademiens Nobelinstitut,
Vol 1 No 2, pages 110
February 8, 2011 at 22:48
Tom, is that article available on-line somewhere? Or failing that, could you send me a pdf (assuming you have one)?
February 8, 2011 at 23:06
Tom, shall we first start with your false claim that Spencer Weart called the study “bogus”, upon which you denied you made that claim?
February 8, 2011 at 23:13
what is your opinion of the current controversy involving Steig?
If I may…
I’ve been looking into this and it doesn’t look good for Steig at all! But that’s based on a cursory look. However, the fact that no one sticks up for him is telling. I’m curious as to how this plays out in the long term.
Does this mean the Antarctic hasn’t been warming at all?
—
There, I’m fair. Now it’s your turn, Tom. What you said about Weart and ‘bogus’ was a bit too black and white, yes?
February 8, 2011 at 23:20
J Bowers: 1.6 degrees for CO2 alone is actually STILL above the CO2 sensitivity accepted today (which is about 1.2 degrees). He has a much smaller water feedback.
February 8, 2011 at 23:21
Neven and Marco, it was a casual characterization and not a quote. Bogus in common usage means bad, ugly or made up. Weart didn’t say that. He didn’t have to. His polite dismissal of the paper as soon as it was released spoke volumes.
And its lack of defenders (outside of RC and the occasional comment thread) speaks volumes, much as Neven notes of Steig.
Now Marco–your turn.
February 8, 2011 at 23:24
Hi Bart, just this excerpt:
February 8, 2011 at 23:31
With regards to Arrhenius’ lower estimate:
http://members.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/arrhweart.htm
Another source possibly worth checking out is, Ueber den Einfluss des Atmosphärischen Kohlensäurengehalts auf die Temperatur der Erdoberfläche, in the Proceedings of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, Stockholm 1896, Volume 22, I N. 1, pages 1–101
I’m really not convinced by that Wiki entry.
February 8, 2011 at 23:34
My first cursory look was on sites like the Blackboard and Noconsensus. Now I’m reading RealClimate and I’m at a loss. It’s too bad I don’t know anything about statistics and the peer-review process, otherwise it’d be easier to form an opinion. I guess I’ll have to keep reading.
But for me the main thing is: has the Antarctic been warming or not? I’m going to look into it some more.
February 8, 2011 at 23:37
Duh. Wrong clip pasted in to the end of my last post (1896 paper), and I closed the browser tabs straight after posting.
February 9, 2011 at 00:05
J Bowers, I am pretty sure that Arrhenius’ 1906 paper is widely referenced in textbooks, even if it isn’t available on the web. It is certainly widely discussed on the internet, although I doubt if you’d like the places it is discussed, as they are heavily skeptical.
February 9, 2011 at 00:14
Marco, it’s probably unfair to ask you to comment on the Steig controversy as it’s breaking news.
However, I would like your opinion of Prall, Schneider et al.
February 9, 2011 at 01:47
Tom, have you read it with your own eyes from the primary source?
February 9, 2011 at 01:54
Actually J Bowers, I invented it from whole cloth, and typed it up in fake Geman and posted the PNG on an obscure website. Just part of my nefarious quest for world domination, don’t you know.
February 9, 2011 at 04:40
Tom, spare the details, I’ll take that as a “no”.
February 9, 2011 at 04:50
Tom Fuller:
We’re still waiting …
February 9, 2011 at 05:21
How’s your German, Bower?
http://members.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/arrhenius0308/index.html
February 9, 2011 at 07:43
I have no idea what Fuller is advocating. Is he trying to argue that we do not need to combat climate change because he thinks climate sensitivity is low? Heck, we’re already seeing the extreme weather that climate change is causing. What does he want? To see ever more extreme weather and wait for even more disasters around the world before any action is taken?
Or is he arguing against getting ‘greener’ energy generation and fighting for an ever dirtier earth?
Or is he wanting governments to give even more tax breaks and subsidies to dirty industries at the expense of human health and food production.
Quite mystifying why he is so intent on trivia while the earth continues to react against all the extra CO2 it’s having to cope with.
February 9, 2011 at 08:32
Sou, I guess you’re new to these parts. I support a carbon tax, technology transfer to the developing world and I think we need to mobilize to fight global warming.
But I’m a denier because I also see the double dealing and hypocrisy of these guys’ action heroes.
February 9, 2011 at 08:58
Neven, Antarctica is a large continent. From what I have read, there are at least two papers that demonstrate that West Antarctica is warming (Steig et al and O’Donnell et al). There is a good body of evidence that the West Antarctic peninsula is warming. East Antarctica is not warming AFAIK. Some of the glaciers on the continent are melting.
The ‘fight’ appears to be a manufactured one (fed by O’Donnell and co but not by Steig), possibly viewed as a means of distraction from the Lisbon fiasco.
The other point I deduce is that monitoring of temperature changes in Antarctica is difficult because of the paucity of ground monitoring and the difficulty in maintaining weather stations in such a harsh climate. There are recent satellites collecting data that will help with future measurements.
IMO temperature data is only one measure of climate in Antarctica. Other indicators are as important or more so. Such as behaviour of glaciers, ocean changes, changes in distribution and population size of animal and other life etc. I believe there are currently projects underway to monitor change in sea water temperatures under ice in at least one region of Antarctica. (It’s not an easy place to work in.)
February 9, 2011 at 09:05
Okay, Tom. So why are you focusing on blowing out of proportion trivial matters that only give support to those who want to stop any action to mitigate climate change and weather disasters?
(Which ‘action heroes’ are you referring to – and who are ‘these guys’?)
February 9, 2011 at 11:14
Thanks, Sou, I see now that O’Donnell et al. do not contest the warming of West Antarctica. The kerfuffle seems to be about methodology and behaviour. I don’t see how that’s relevant to AGW, but unfortunately it will be spun to make sure it is.
—
Yes, Tom, if you believe AGW could be a serious problem, then the ‘double dealing of action heroes’ is entirely irrelevant. If you don’t believe AGW could be a serious problem, then by all means focus on the behaviour of a small group of scientists. Write a book about it.
But believing AGW could be a serious problem AND focussing on a small group of scientists AND making as much noise as you can about it, distorting the public’s perception of AGW… That just doesn’t make sense. It really doesn’t.
February 9, 2011 at 15:32
Tom Fuller — “But I’m a denier because I also see the double dealing and hypocrisy of these guys’ action heroes.”
Strange comment to make when all I did was try to find out where the source for Arrhenius’ lower estimate actually comes from because I don’t automatically assume that Wiki is always right (given I’ve had to correct articles there in the past, completely unrelated to climate or even science, which flew in the face of the historical record), and all I’m met with is snide and snark. Thanks for the scans, though, Tom. I don’t speak German, so it’ll take me a while to check the primary source.
February 9, 2011 at 16:02
Judith Curry makes some interesting points at her blog. At first glance, this seems like some support for Eric.
An important point is that the editor has the final say. Authors can address criticism in the MS or in the response back to the editor – not all criticisms need to be addressed, and a favorable review by the others can sway an editor. the paper did get published, after all.
So what happens when O’Donnell, Condon and McIntyre have questions for an author or decide to submit a paper for publication? Should scientists now assume that there will be breaches in confidentiality?
To me, it looks like O’Donnell was unable to take the scientific criticism at RC and had a “3rd reviewer” meltdown.
February 9, 2011 at 16:06
J Bowers: Surprise! This isn’t about you.
ODonnell et al fairly clearly showed that Steig’s extension of peninsular warming to West Antarctica was a statistical artefact, not a real world findng.
Sou, well I am driven by the realization that the people who have impeded progress on global warming don’t have names like McIntyre or Monckton. They have names like Pachauri and Hansen.
The tale of the fight against global warming looks like a looped video of the consensus team kicking ball after ball into their own goal.
John flipping McCain was in favor of Cap and Trade two years ago. Every major party in Britain was in favor of Cap and Trade. It takes unusual stupidity, cupidity, arrogance and ineptness to blow that deal.
But you guys managed to unconvince just about everybody.
February 9, 2011 at 16:09
J Bowers, I apologise–that was abrupt and I really never want to be unintentionally rude. Sorry.
February 9, 2011 at 16:19
Worlds in the making; the evolution of the universe (1908), by Svante Arrhenius (available for free), page 53 (page 48 of Das Werden der Welten):
Is that Wiki revised 2° for doubling of CO2 based on a linear interpolation up to 8° for a fourfold increase in CO2?
February 9, 2011 at 16:22
Tom, thanks for that link. In 1908 (page 48, first paragraph) Arrhenius wrote:
“Anderseits würde eine Verdoppelung des Kohlensäuregehaltes der Luft die Temperatur der Erdoberflache um 4, eine Vervierfachung sie um 8 [graden] erhöhen.”
I know German well enough to translate this as follows (no literal translation possible, too many differences in grammar between English and German).
“On the other hand would a doubling of the CO2 content of the atmosphere increase the temperature of the surface of the earth by 4 degrees, a quadrupling by 8 degrees”.
That’s a climate sensitivity of FOUR degrees, a whopping factor 2 HIGHER than the supposed 1906 calculation. So, I guess you are now going to complain about all those people who repeat the 2 degrees 1906 calculation as being deceptive. Yes? No?
February 9, 2011 at 16:24
J Bowers, the translation you found leaves out significant parts: in the original German version Arrhenius specifically mentions a doubling resulting in +4.
February 9, 2011 at 16:26
Thanks Marco. There are times when I really hate Wiki.
February 9, 2011 at 16:36
Tom Fuller — “But you guys managed to unconvince just about everybody.”
Except China perhaps.
February 9, 2011 at 16:36
Tom, regarding Anderegg et al:
What I think is that there’s been a lot of huffing and puffing around that paper, some of which by you. Criticism of the methodology, fine, there likely are issues to discuss and to be improved. However, I saw surprisingly little constructive criticisms. Things like “if you would do this, you would get better answers, and here’s the proof”. Quantitative evidence that the supposed problems had a substantial influence on the end-result were also largely missing (in fact, I only saw some cherry picked n=1 examples). There were, for example, some complaints that using Google Scholar was unfair, but no one showed how this then would have skewed the results.
But what irked me most were the shrill claims of “OMG! BLACKLISTS!”. If you sign a public statement, you openly declare yourself to hold a certain position. Others pointing out that you signed that statement is merely a statement of fact. These shrill cries merely reinforced my notion that the claims of methodological flaws were in reality not so important to those doing the crying: they just didn’t like the results…
Which brings me to Steig vs O’Donnell.
February 9, 2011 at 16:39
I’ve not previously seen cognitive dissonance demonstrated in quite the way it is being shown on this thread. I wonder can it be treated?
February 9, 2011 at 16:43
J Bowers,
Already cleared up I guess, but the temp response due to quadrupling is twice that of a doubling. Linear interpolation doesn’t apply due to the logarithmic response.
There’s still the question though of the 1.6 / 2.1 deg value that supposedly comes from a 1906 publication/book. Was that a genuine estimate? Seems unlikely, of before and after his estimates were much higher, and in his later estimates he didn’t reference his earlier low value? I haven’t gone through the details yet though.
February 9, 2011 at 17:13
Bart — “There’s still the question though of the 1.6 / 2.1 deg value that supposedly comes from a 1906 publication/book. Was that a genuine estimate? “
Bart, I linked earlier to someone who mentions Arrhenius and dry CO2. Could that make a difference? (I really wouldn’t know, which is why I posted it)
February 9, 2011 at 17:36
I will comment on Steig and O’Donnell, despite the fact that it is “new” (heck, you yourself have no problems drawing conclusions already):
I find O’Donnell’s claims about Steig’s duplicity utterly unconvincing. I say this as seasoned reviewer and author, and as someone who read the comments from Reviewer A. The suggestion Steig asked O’Donnell to put in a method so he either could reject the paper (if they did not do so), or complain afterwards that it was an inappropriate method, are simply not consistent with the last comments I saw from Reviewer A. The criticism in those last comments are consistent with the criticisms of Steig on Realclimate. Upon which the whole story comes back to a simple scientific debate, with loads of snark either way.
February 9, 2011 at 17:42
Bart, there are two issues here:
1. Did Arrhenius change his estimate in 1906 to a rather low value, only to double it 2 years later?
2. If he did, why would neglecting that 1906 paper by ‘our’ side be so dishonest, while ignoring the 1908 paper by the ‘other’ side is just fine?
The first is a historically interesting, but ultimately inconsequential issue. The second strikes deep in the heart of Tom Fuller’s argument that failing to inform people about Arrhenius’ 1906 estimate is dishonest. After all, what are we then to make of Tom Fuller (and others) failing to inform people about Arrhenius’ 1908 estimate…
February 9, 2011 at 18:36
Chronology of different language editions of Worlds in the Making:
Swedish original: Världarnas utveckling (1906)
German translation: Das Werden der Welten (1907)
English translation: Worlds in the Making (1908)
Arrhenius would have revised his estimate in 1906 published the original Swedish version of the book to 4C, down from his earlier 1896 estimate of 5.5C.
February 9, 2011 at 18:49
“They have names like Pachauri and Hansen.
The tale of the fight against global warming looks like a looped video of the consensus team kicking ball after ball into their own goal.”
To be fair I was expecting to see this argument appear in about 3-4 years. It is well worth people taking note of it, if there is a noteworthy single year melt in the arctic or sea ice continues hang below 09 type levels and if temperature break the all time high on UAH wel will see from various quarters efforts to shift the blame for not doing anything onto the scientists. The narrative is partially established in the public mind by the idea from those quarters that scientists have been up to no good, so when it becomes clear that we do have a problem the need to shift blame will land on the path of least resistance: those already tarred.
February 9, 2011 at 19:03
J Bowers, Bart, (maybe Tom):
I’m getting a bit suspicious that the 1.6 and 2.1 numbers are to be added together. That is, 1.6 for CO2 alone, and an additional 2.1 for water vapor feedback, rather than “2.1 with water feedback”. That makes it 3.7, which is getting pretty close to the 4 mentioned in 1908.
February 9, 2011 at 19:28
Sorry I don’t have time to play today, folks. Will note the revision to the Hansen anecdote and will remember (unlike some of y’all). But do you really think changing it from 20 to 40 years makes Hansen look any better?
Marco, you’re waffling. I offered a detailed critique of the paper at Tobis’s place and Roman destroyed their analysis at RC. It is bunk.
Dorlomin, I’ve been making this argument for two years already.
Gotta go! Have fun.
February 9, 2011 at 19:47
Marco, that’s interesting. Monckton of Brenchley, of all people, gives a clue at WUWT:
So that’s from the paper that Tom pointed out: Die vermutliche Ursache der Klimaschwankungen, Medd. Roy. Acad. Nobel Inst. Band 1:2, 1 (1906)
I found a scan of a page that might have another clue from Gerlich (sorry):
http://www.ib-rauch.de/datenbank/vortrag-leipzig.html
I don’t do German, but does that final paragraph say (via Google Translate);
Question: If someone on Gore’s side is a ‘Goron’, what does that make someone on Monckton’s side?
February 9, 2011 at 19:49
A Moron? :-p
February 9, 2011 at 20:56
That’s interesting stuff on Arrhenius’ history. Thanks for digging.
February 9, 2011 at 21:10
I’m not getting technical at here. My only reason for posting this is to get past these ridiculous accusations of scientific fraud being levied against yet another climate scientist. Whatever the problems are with the science can work out over time, but with all shit flying around, let’s look at major hurdles to exploration.
Here is Steig in Review 2 (if Steig was reviewer A, which it appears he was.) discussing the reason why ODonnell 10 should make a change in their paper.
All the wording is important. There is a reason why Steig asked for this to be done. He reiterates it later:
now let’s look at the response from ODonnell responds:
Now to Steig’s 3rd review:
And from the RC post:
and the final conclusion
And this leads to some the prominent bloggers and the paper’s authors saying:
I’m sorry but What? Is it Dr. Steig’s job to make sure that ODonnell doesn’t hit any pitfalls like having to use a statistical method that has been criticized? This isn’t easy. This looks like a very good review (review 1 was very extensive) to try and work through a difficult problem It looks obvious that ODonnell had to use iridge, which he agreed to, but Steig warned him to reconcile this with Mann’s work. Is this not how science gets done? Bart, can you answer this for me? Was this not fair? I don’t see where this insane vitriol and accusations are coming from. Isn’t it time we stop attacking scientists integrity and attempting to erode trust. This happens every week now. IMHO, It’s rather sickening.
February 9, 2011 at 21:44
Also, I posted this here because 1) it came up and 2) I know Bart, even though he is an advocate for action of emissions, he seems well respected and doesn’t have his honesty questioned incessantly by skeptics. IOW, he is known to be fair. I also know he has been through the review process and probably could help refine this.
February 9, 2011 at 21:49
Thanks for that, gryposaurus. This is also the reason I came here.
—
Tom, it’s too bad you couldn’t stay and play. Maybe next time we can discuss your internal contradictions:
February 9, 2011 at 21:49
Tom, you apparently think that screaming “it’s wrong” and “I’ve done this stuff myself, so I know what’s right” are refutations. I say: go ahead, and publish a proper analysis then! I know you won’t.
I also still haven’t received any explanation as to why Anderegg et al constitutes a “blacklist” (already when I asked you at MT you accused me of having insulted you, and hence not being worth a reply, which I translated at the time as “too difficult question to answer, hence cop out with lame excuse”. I’m getting the same feeling all over again.
But I *am* still interested in your take on Arrhenius 1908 and his +4 per doubling, which contradicts the 1906 number of 2.1 per doubling.
February 9, 2011 at 22:06
It’s clear he does warn them to address the prior issues raised. A dumb cowboy can see that. He suggests they address it, but does not hold them to it: in other words, if the authors thought their paper was ready for publication as was, peer review could no longer object as the paper was ready for the boos and hoorays of the subscribers.
They hated reviewer A for making them do work, and now they hate him for his failure to make them do the work he suggested. Sounds like they wanted to be done working, so Que Sera, Sera.
February 9, 2011 at 22:12
Don’t worry, Neven, I’ll be back ;). Obviously I don’t see any huge contradictions in what I believe and what I do, or I would change either my beliefs or my behavior.
And Marco, when I have time I will give you a critique of the paper.
February 9, 2011 at 22:33
(Assuming Steig is Reviewer A)
grypo,
What do you mean by ‘reconcile’?
You use ‘iridge’ or TTLS.
If you use ‘iridge’, you put in a couple of sentences ‘acknowledging’ the underestimation problem (even as you stress that it is best you’ve got).
This is what Steig wanted, it made ‘sense’ to him and gave the best ‘possible results’.
He even understood the authors not being able to do it in as much detail as he would have liked, that being ‘not the authors fault, but rather is a response to reviewers’ requests for a shorter supplementary section’ even though he would ‘love to see O’Donnell et al. discuss in a bit more details (perhaps just a few sentences) how the iridge caclculations actually work’, which was ‘just a suggestion to the authors’, about which he declared he ‘does not feel strongly that they should be held to’.
And then at RC, he criticizes O’Donnell et al for using ‘iridge’, when more ‘more recent work has favored the use of TTLS’ which due to which ‘ O’Donnell et al (2010), by using iridge,’, ‘do indeed appear to have dramatically underestimated long-term trends’.
Steig then goes on to criticize O’Donnell et al for the fact that ‘…O’Donnell et al.’s results appear to be adversely affected by using procedures known to underestimate trends.’
I think Steig, as a scientist, is qualified to make such comments about O’Donnell and their use of ‘iridge’.
But not after being the reviewer of the paper himself, not after suggesting the method himself, not after understanding the issues connected with its use himself, and certainly not after being a reviewer for a paper that directly criticized his own paper!!
And then finally, not to claim that the method he favored be used, as reviewer, apparently confirms to him that his own paper produced results!
February 9, 2011 at 22:43
Also, this got left out, and should be placed right before the blog responses. Sorry. ODonnell’s response the 3rd review.
February 9, 2011 at 22:47
Hm. Confidential email — such a 20th Century notion, eh?
February 9, 2011 at 22:52
O’Donnell agreed with Steig to use the iridge there. It does not mean that further problems are not associated. Steig did not give ODonnell the perfect fit because this fit does not exist (to Steig). The ne he suggested was only the ‘most likely’. Again, it does not mean that there are not problems with using that one also. This is why science is a slow arduous process. Also, Odonnell has just posted at Lucia’s.
If ODonnell could not defend his use of TTLS to the journal editors and went with Steig’s ideas instead, it does not mean that Steig should not discuss it openly. Apparently it would be better for him to keep his mouth shut about it?
February 9, 2011 at 23:11
gryposaurus
I think Steig has managed to focus his light on your ethical blindspot.
Steig reviewer can offer his suggestion as reviewer to use ‘iridge’
Steig can criticize the weakness from using ‘iridge’, rather than TTLS.
Steig can claim that iridge renders his S09 results ‘more robust’.
How can he do all three?
I have seen students being tortured in this fashion at PhD viva voce. I could not understand why.
February 9, 2011 at 23:17
Having now read through the reviewer A reviews, the responses, and the revisions, it appears to me that O’Donnell is being rather disingenuous with his accusations. Namely, who’s idea was it to use ‘iridge’? Your fist clue comes from Reviewer A’s second review when it says: (emphasis mine)
“Perhaps, AS THE AUTHORS SUGGEST, kgnd should not be used at all, but the results from the ‘iridge’ infilling should be used instead. The authors state that this “yields similar patterns of change as shown in Fig. 3, with less intense cooling on Ross, comparable verification statistics and a statistically significant average West Antarctic trend of 0.11 +/- 0.08 C/decade.”
Going to the first revised manuscript we find:
“Regardless, based on the ridge regression and RLS-without-infilling tests, the magnitude of West Antarctic trends in the S09 reconstruction are larger than would be supported by either explanation.”
And in the author’s response to reviewer A’s first review, there is a similar comment.
So, it is quite clear that O’Donnell et. al. had already used this technique and made claims based on this before it was ever mentioned by reviewer A. The reviewer did not suggest it to them, although he did suggest that if, as they claim, it works better, they should go ahead and use it.
So basically, this whole kerfuffle is based on a demonstrably incorrect accusation.
February 9, 2011 at 23:18
Are you saying that because something has a weakness, that it can’t be more robust than something else? So a weak result can’t have weaker ones? Why bring up PhD viva voce when discussing simple logic?
Look at reasons he gave for using iRidge over TTLS in regards to West Antarctica in OD10. Look at the reasons for iridges weaknesses.
February 9, 2011 at 23:19
How about your ethical blind spot, Shub?
February 9, 2011 at 23:28
Shrub,
1)Steig reviewer didn’t suggest iridge, the Authors did.
2)Steig reviewer criticized their failure to adress the weakensses of BOTH iridge and Kgnd.
February 9, 2011 at 23:30
Grypo,
I haven’t looked into those reviews, so will refrain from an opinion for now. Maybe in a few days. Thanks for collecting relevant parts though; that’s useful.
February 9, 2011 at 23:45
O’Donnellgate
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/02/odonnellgate/
This is why contrarian types typically don’t publish. They can’t handle having their work scrutinized by experts, and this has resulted in reprehensible allegations, bringing out O’Donnell’s true colors. Given his association with McIntyre, this is no surprise.
February 9, 2011 at 23:45
It appears that Steig has responded at realcimate. His response points out exactly what I pointed out, he didn’t suggest iridge, the authors did.
February 9, 2011 at 23:49
quel surprise, indeed…
This little bit of what Eric wrote I find interesting:
I’m surprised that he’s surprised about that, actually. It is difficult for a lay observer to make a solid judgement on such issues (except perhaps that in this case the reviews were made publicly available, so time permitting, everyone could do some fact checking).
February 9, 2011 at 23:59
Well, Mosher, over at curry’s, is making a big deal over the fact that O’Donnell et al interpreted Eric’s requests that they “should” do this or that as indication that if they didn’t he’d recommend it not be published.
However, when Eric’s demanding, he’s obvious about it … from the review copy above:
“My recommendation is that the editor insist that results showing the ‘mostly likely’ West Antarctic trends be shown in place of Figure 3.”
As I pointed out in response to Mosher over there, it’s essentially the same as the difference between “shall” and “should” in software standards. “shall” means your implementation must do so to be compliant with the standard. “should” means failure to do so won’t disqualify your implementation as being standard compliant but is considered poor practice.
February 10, 2011 at 00:06
Well, I think I’m ready to take this back now. It was based on a cursory look, like I said, but I still feel stupid. It has been a while since I was last played by the pseudo-skeptics, but they did it again. Shame on me.
I think it was mainly because I was pleasantly surprised by the positive and gentlemanly way Ryan O’Donnell had acted so far. Sure they had it extra tough to get through the reviewing process (which was only logical given the history of the climate wars), but now that it was done it really felt as if it was a small breakthrough in the deadlock between climate scientists and the more knowledgeable skeptics.
So when he got that angry I was really overwhelmed, especially when I read all the vitriol over at the Blackboard and no one sticking up for Steig (of course, that was because people were waiting for additional information to come out) and even someone like Zeke Hausfather – who I trust – coming out and saying: I generally agree with Ryan O on this one based on what I’ve read so far. But thanks for bearing out the old dead poets society line about assuming. It didn’t help either that I didn’t know much else about the Steig and O’Donnell papers because I just lack the technical knowledge. So I really thought: this time they have struck blood!
I really feel that McIntyre has a toxic influence on followers such as Ryan O’Donnell. It’s a bit like the fictional character Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello. I feel it’s a shame he was one of the co-authors of the O’Donnell paper. He gets to spread his toxins and become legitimized at the same time.
My oh my, Steig doesn’t mince words. But will it have any effect on the Othellos, I wonder.
February 10, 2011 at 00:16
My perspective on the Steig/O’Donnell fight as a long-time participant in peer review in physics as both author and reviewer, and seeing the editorial side as well:
(1) The responsibility for the content of the published article rests solely with the author. In a scientific journal the author should never be compelled to include any content they don’t believe in themselves. Any author experiencing pressure like that should raise a huge stink – but I don’t think it happens. Copy-editing may make minor changes for clarity, and the editor is supposed to ensure the content basically meets the standards of the journal, but the responsibility for the scientific content is with the author and nobody else.
(2) The purpose of reviewers is both to help editors decide whether to accept an article and to help authors improve their scientific content. Authors can either do exactly what reviewers suggest, they can make other changes to try to meet reviewer criticisms, or they are free to argue to the editor that the reviewer is wrong and they don’t need to change anything. Peer reviewers don’t have to be satisfied before a paper is accepted.
No matter what Steig did, O’Donnell’s complaint makes no sense. He’s trying to abdicate responsibility for his own paper. That just doesn’t wash.
February 10, 2011 at 00:21
It’s true that the layperson often has trouble making a sound judgment. The bullying and spurious personal allegations from the McIntyre crowd, repeated by many, is sort of a way to influence casual observers. As one comment noted:
“In the world of politics, apparently deliberate personal insults casually interjected into policy debates are the norm. I used to think it was childish, but I now believe it is a deliberate strategy. It often has the effect of unsettling the object of the insult, and this colours their judgment in the debate. Not only that, it sways weak-minded listeners against them. Sadly, too many people applaud the bully.
Comment by One Anonymous Bloke”
http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=6764#comment-200170
February 10, 2011 at 00:37
tonylurker,
your interpretation is wrong.
February 10, 2011 at 01:01
Eric Steig says…
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/02/odonnellgate/
Shub, your interpretation of the interpretation is wrong.
February 10, 2011 at 01:15
Bowers,
Ryan did not state in their Climateaudit post that Eric made them do ‘iridge’. They state openly:
February 10, 2011 at 01:23
It looks like Steig’s interpretation of events is pretty much in line with what I just stated here. Responsibility rests with the author – and it seems Steig didn’t even see the final version which was much altered from earlier ones.
February 10, 2011 at 01:36
I agree with Arthur Smith. In their zeal to get the paper published, the authors of O’Donnell et al, complied to every request and got bowlderized for it.
However, if they had stood up for their paper and gotten it rejected (as Eric suggests at RC), and if that is not an example of gatekeeping and conflict of interest, then I don’t know what is.
The trend values are so small, would these differences in methods have made any differerence at all, enough for reviewer A to have ‘turned hostile’?
Why did Steig the reviewer, not offer the criticism of iridge, which he now does as Steig the author (of S09)?
February 10, 2011 at 01:43
Eric never had a chance to review the final paper, the editor decided to go to someone else.
Which was what O’Donnell et al requested.
Y’all seem to think that they were significant enough to show that reviewer A’s original paper was falsified.
February 10, 2011 at 01:52
Thanks everyone for the additional information. From my reading of the RC post, I couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about. Now I’ve read more here I still cannot understand what the fuss was all about. I suspect it is a rare paper, except perhaps from the most experienced researchers, that does not have a questionable portion.
Re Tom Fuller, he demonstrates a variation of the classic lead in lie often used by deniers: “I used to believe in AGW but then ….” . I don’t know why he trots it out, surely it doesn’t persuade anyone at all, does it? On the contrary, it makes one inclined to dismiss everything he writes. And he continues to write so much. Very tiresome.
February 10, 2011 at 01:59
dhogaza,
Steig’s method is criticized because it spreads increasing temperature trends over the entire continent
Steig’s criticism of O’Donnell’s iridge is that it underestimates the amount of warming.
Reviewer A’s original paper is falsified, because its methods are demonstrably flawed.
February 10, 2011 at 02:04
Well it’s nice to see we’ve gone from the outright fabrication:
O’Donnell: “Eric recommends that we replace our TTLS results with the ridge regression ones”
to
Shub: “Why did Steig the reviewer, not offer the criticism of iridge, which he now does as Steig the author (of S09)?”
which is still wrong, since the review did cite issues with the procedure covered in Mann et al. and suggested the authors address this. Now Steig’s later blog post does expand on the issue, which I guess is not allowed. In fact, if we follow O’Donnell’s logic, Steig is not allowed to make any further critiques or gain any additional insights of their paper after the initial reviews. If is review was not 100% thorough at the time, he’s engaging in nefarious deeds. And if it is, he’s engaging in more “bullying” and “gatekeeping”, which are charges thrown out by individuals unwilling to admit they’re wrong on anything.
Ultimately, the authors are responsible for their paper. And based on their behavior, it appears they handle criticism no better than tantrum-throwing toddlers.
February 10, 2011 at 02:11
And they didn’t, at least to his satisfaction, and since Steig was no longer reviewer (in part due to RyanO et al asking he not review), he didn’t know this until it was accepted for publication.
So then he brought it up in his post-publication review.
Why shouldn’t he?
Also, why has RyanO published the reviews from Steig – which he’s probably not allowed to do – but not the final review?
And why did he “out” Steig as reviewer A after promising Steig he wouldn’t do so (let me guess, “to build trust”).
February 10, 2011 at 02:22
MarkB
Eric suggested the authors address the ‘known issues’ with the ‘iridge’ method, by expending some words explaining those issues, but not that it not be used. There was a choice to be made and Eric influenced that choice.
The problem arises when Eric uses the method’s shortfalls (a method he influenced to be chosen) to claim that his own paper S09’s results are better.
Thanks
February 10, 2011 at 02:31
Ahh, so now it’s not “he suggested”, but “he influenced”.
Forward progress! One yard down, 99 to go.
Gosh, the authors say “we think this might be a good idea”, the reviewer says “you might be right, go for it”, and oh my gosh there’s blame assigned to Eric!
And they didn’t address the “known issues” in the paper. That was *totally* their choice, and since they didn’t address them, it’s *totally* reasonable for Eric, in his review, to do so. They can’t say they weren’t forewarned …
Penalty! Halfway to the goal line! 99.5 yards to go, dude.
February 10, 2011 at 02:32
Sou, the glory of WordPress is that our names appear at the top of our comments, not the bottom. Feel free to skip over my copious commentary and bask in a Fuller-free world.
February 10, 2011 at 02:51
Hooboy, Tom Fuller is right about this much: there are many people out there eager to assure their readers that Arrhenius settled the question in 1906 and anything to the contrary since has to be unreliable.
E.g. http://api.ning.com/files/UpPFlj5HOjf0F3b2tub7YZetpl-MWLzDas887wAOZ-Mah-nAak338f5kHCCf5VAeQP1cPukch4wxg6WWO5Lc6YOTYIYTBRGC/WorkingcopyTheCauseandEffectForumversion300809.pdf
February 10, 2011 at 03:45
But he also claims that he’s a lukewarmer who believes sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 to be 2.5C, apparently not realizing that this means that:
1. He still believes in AGW, just as he used to
-and-
2. His belief in the sensitivity is very close to the latest GISS Model E figure I remember from Gavin Schmidt, 2.5 vs. Model E’s 2.75-ish. Very much a warmer, this particular luke …
February 10, 2011 at 03:55
Yes, but Climategate.
February 10, 2011 at 04:19
Tom has no serious beef with the science – at least in his filtered vision of the science in which he ignores the conclusions of the papers he reads.
.
Tom just enjoys watching members of the Team kick the soccer ball down field only to have it intercepted by members of the Tribe who pick it up, run back up field with it, and slug the Team kicker in the mouth. He enjoys the hooliganism.
February 10, 2011 at 05:00
Neven
I wouldn’t have wasted my time if I didn’t think it was a possibility, but seeing the usual suspects filling in the background noise behind Ryan made me rather weary. It never smelled right. I think Ryan got a little excited and peeved inside his echo chamber, but appears to be ready to retract some of what was said, at least according to Steig.
But it’s cases like yours that worry me and enforce the idea as to why we need to make sure that as the sanity begins to leave the room, we need to keep cool and wait for facts to emerge. The scientists are at a disadvantage and on the defensive all the time, and involved in a game they have no chance of winning in the short run. Noise travels fast. The truth is slow but fortunately never drops the ball.
February 10, 2011 at 06:17
PDA, is that the new way to go content-free? Post the same comments on every weblog in reach?
Broberg–what do you know of me or what I believe–Have we broken bread together? Have you read anything I’ve ever written off of this thread? Come to think of it, what do you know?
February 10, 2011 at 06:52
Just threads you’re on, Tom.
Have you ever broken bread with Rachendra Pachauri, Tom? Michael Tobis? Phil Jones? Luke 6:37, chief.
February 10, 2011 at 07:09
Well, I do IM with Tobis–does that count? Totally different guy in private communications. I like that Tobis a lot better.
What bugs me about Broberg is not his disagreement with anything I say–I expect that here. But how does he think he knows what I ‘enjoy’? I mean, that’s dhogaza type of stuff.
February 10, 2011 at 07:53
I have absolutely no idea what Tom Fuller enjoys, and how could I? He’s totally inconsistent, illogical, uninformed, and unethical … where’s the room for enjoyment?
February 10, 2011 at 08:03
Well, RyanO and McI have managed to convince Steig that he’ll never cooperate in any way with any publication effort they may pursue in the future, and won’t even talk about it.
Way to go, RyanO and McI. Spirit of reconciliation and all that!
I’m sure Judith will blame Steig for this.
February 10, 2011 at 12:35
I have a similar feeling as expressed by Neven and Grypo: Ryan seemed a respectful guy, as is Eric, and I actually thought a future collaboration between them would be possible. Bridge building at its best. Based on Ryan’s history, his allegations were not as easy to dismiss. I had no interest in reading all the reviews and replies, nor the extensive other back and forth’s, which would be necessary to come to a solidly based opinion. The risk then is to voice an opinion that is based on proxy arguments, i.e. the person making the argument and other clues (of which there weren’t many). An opinion based all too strongly on who’s making the respective argument has the pitfall of being susceptible to confirmation bias, so even though it can often be a convenient shortcut for quickly forming an opinion, it’s far from foolproof. As Eric’s latest RC post also aludes to, this incident makes it more likely to use such “personal trust” style reasoning though (i.e. based on who do you trust).
The way this argument panned out in the blogs makes it clear that it’s a war of trust and credibility. Who can most effectively garner trust amongst the undecided (if they read such blogs at all; I have the impression these blogs are mainly read by those having strong opinions about climate change already)? In this war, perception matters more than facts, unfortunately. (I don’t like the war metaphor btw, but don’t have another word handy to convey what I’m trying to convey. Suggestions welcome.)
February 10, 2011 at 13:01
Oh Neven, I feel your frustration… One thing I learned quite early after starting to follow the debates on the internetz is that you NEVER ASSUME the pseudo-skeptics to be correct or fair. It doesn’t matter how persuasive their arguments are on the surface, ALWAYS check their sources and arguments. If you do that, you’ll see the persuasiveness usually becomes yet another spin/cherry pick or whatever. It’s a general rule of thumb and it rarely fails. I would love to be proven wrong sometime though.
February 10, 2011 at 13:43
O’Donnell grabbed me as a reasonable guy when I was reading his initial dialogue with Steig at RC, even a pretty nice bloke. I’m fairly sure that Steig was even open to a collaboration with O’Donnell.
McIntyre and Id were warned by John Nielsen-Gammon about revealing the identity of a reviewer in an email sent to them on December 8th last year.
The earliest reference that I can find on speculation about Reviewer A is by McIntyre on December 4th, but making it clear that it was O’Donnell’s suspicion early on.
If anyone has anything earlier than that date, feel free to chime in.
By December 9th it’s still being speculated at CA that Reviewer A is Steig, and also on December 11th.
But Id and McIntyre should have see Nielsen-Gammon’s warning by then. My question is whether O’Donnell was aware of that warning as well, given that it wasn’t [on the face of it] sent to him, too, and he might not have been aware of the rules? A reminder of O’Donnell’s opening to his recent CA post:
It doesn’t make any sense at all.
Hanlon’s Razor’s telling me that this is all a dumb misunderstanding which has, unfortunately, turned into an easily fanned fire. Of course, I could be wrong, but I won’t give up hope just yet.
February 10, 2011 at 14:00
Bart, I have pointed out something similar on RC (don’t know if/when it will get published). It’s going to be “he said – she said” and depending on the ‘camp’ you were cheering for, guess who you are going to believe most?
J Bowers, when I read the reviews (of Eric) and responses (to Eric), I could not help but taste a very strong antagonism in both, and they were filled with mutual misunderstandings. It was personal, more than scientific, in several places. I know how easy it can get to be personal, it’s not the first time I had to stop co-authors discussing who that “S.O.B. reviewer” could be, because they tended to take personal feelings about the research and behavior of that person into account in their reply. I’m not free of that either, but at the least aware this behavior may show up.
February 10, 2011 at 14:11
Marco, follow the first link in my comment. Why would Steig recommend O’Donnell to National Geographic?
February 10, 2011 at 14:22
Bowers, you are funny man.
You don’t need John N-G’s warning that “revealing reviewers’ identity is a no-no” for you to not do it. It is commonly understood.
McIntyre and Id sought his opinion because of the very obstructionism they perceived. They reportedly wrote to the journal editor about it as well (the obstruction).
Only Ryan knew who Reviewer A was. He came to know for sure, on Dec 6th. He did not tell this to any of the other authors.
This is obviously a misunderstanding. Ryan was holding his tongue easily, right until the Realclimate post. He says so himself.
February 10, 2011 at 14:35
Niggurath, take off your confirmation bias goggles.
February 10, 2011 at 14:47
Marco,
I have similar experiences with peer review as you describe. Often, no words are minced. Can be a very sobering experience the first few times (until you learn how to say “outside of the scope of this work”…).
February 10, 2011 at 15:18
J Bowers:
I think my comment on “antagonism” could be misunderstood. It’s quite common for scientists to take strong positions and write them down antagonistic in a review. (It’s less common for the response to be equally (or more) antagonistic, but that’s a different story.) That does not automatically mean you think the authors are bad people.
Bart:
I try to teach my PhD students that the most critical reviewer often helps you improve your manuscript most. It may be nice to hear a reviewer say “good manuscript, accept as is”, but if the other reviewer(s) have noted issues, that highly positive reviewer likely never “reviewed” the paper, at best just read it once.
February 10, 2011 at 15:57
Tom, any updates to your opinion?
February 10, 2011 at 16:19
@ Marco, I’d have said “adversarial”.
February 10, 2011 at 16:29
J Bowers:
I blame my non-native English speaking status for every now and then chosing words where there may be better choices. “Adversarial” it is.
February 10, 2011 at 16:59
More there:
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2011/02/what-steve-and-ryan-knew-and-when-they.html
A shortcut:
On all my work, my name affirms my Honor.
February 10, 2011 at 17:02
hey Marco, I love using that excuse as well! ;-)
(true as it may be, of course)
February 10, 2011 at 17:59
McIntyre and JeffId would not have been asking john N-G for his opinion had they not had plans to print the reviewers’ comments and probably already did known who reviewer A was. IMHO, they were floating a balloon because they wanted to “out” ES and wanted to float a balloon and determine the risks of outing publishing the reviewers’ comments and possibly outing ES.
The fact that ES then wrote a blog post in which he made some criticisms of their paper is not an excuse to abandon all ethical obligations. And for the record, the peer-review review process continues after publication– that is why you want to try and get it right the first time, all people who publish understand that. Sadly that fact and reality is lost on O’Donnell et al., and ultimately the content of the paper lies with the authors.
So McIntyre and Id probably knew before 8 December that reviewer A was ES– the only way to know for sure is if they show us their emails. Another date of possible interest is that the paper was accepted for publication on 30 November 2010– so it seems that as soon as it was accepted O’Donnell were getting ready to go after ES…
They are paying games here, and I for one am not at all impressed, and I doubt very much that the Journal of Climate and Nielsen-Gammon are either.
February 10, 2011 at 18:01
A comment from Scrooge over at CP, on the latest Congressional justifications for castrating American progress on earth sciences and the EPA:
“So once again we have someone who says we have to reinvent the wheel just so he can understand it.”
http://climateprogress.org/2011/02/10/mo-brooks-nasa-climate-change/
Also of interest:
Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science. Robert L. Park, Ph.D
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/signs.html
February 10, 2011 at 18:44
Neven, no, I’m still waiting for more information to come out.
February 10, 2011 at 19:01
Do you think there will be a lot more information?
BTW, you were the first thing I thought of when I woke up this morning! Don’t tell my wife. ;-)
February 10, 2011 at 19:18
Neven – eww.
February 10, 2011 at 20:11
Tom,
in the Lisbon Conference you wrote:
“Gee, Marco, why would anyone believe O’Donnell over Steig? Hmm. Maybe because all the relevant materials are online? For everyone to look at and decide for themselves?”
Now, you write:
“Neven, no, I’m still waiting for more information to come out.”
This leaves me with two questions: why do you expect more information to come out? And, since you’re waiting at this point, why did you come out strongly two days ago?
February 10, 2011 at 20:21
Oh lookee, more from CP comments wondering what Congress is up to reinventing the wheel when many moons ago….
Whaddya know, LBJ knew all along but Upton wants to evacuate Earth and head out into space.
“This one’s broken. Can we have another, please?”
February 10, 2011 at 20:29
Apologies, it was Mo Brooke, not Upton.
Here’s the letter asserting NASA needs to get back to its primary mission and ditch all that inconvenient climate change research.
Click to access NASA_letter_re_climate_change_funds_020811.pdf
Which ends…
February 10, 2011 at 21:00
Oystein, looks to you like an inconsistency in my behaviour looks to me like learning from my mistake–O’Donnell’s materials were coherent and reinforced his point strongly. But I should have waited for Steig’s response.
So now I’ll wait some more.
February 10, 2011 at 21:06
However, I believe Amac has provided an excellent mid-game summary over at The Blackboard with comment Comment#68919 at 9:48 a.m.
“My conclusion: what the case of Steig 09 and O’Donnnell 10 shows is something in the middle. Peer-review comes across as neither pristine nor defective.
…Broccoli surely knew that Steig would be likely to strenuously object to the publication of a paper that claims his earlier Nature work was grossly in error. He was surely unsurprised by the harsh tone and laundry list of objections in A’s lengthy first review. The conflict-of-interest is not only obvious, it’s what made Steig’s insights valuable in the first place.
…In the end, O’Donnell et al didn’t satisfy Steig’s objections, which IMO would have been impossible: O10′s point is that Steig’s math was wrong, and Reviewer Steig’s point was that Steig was right (which is blogger Steig’s scientific claim, too). O10 got published in a top-tier journal, so the system as implemented by Broccoli worked.
Based on B, C, D, tAV, and O’Donnell’s latest image set, it seems highly likely to me that it will turn out that S09 was wrong and O10 was right. So, again, the PR system is working. Establishment climate science and peer review (e.g. B, C, D, and Broccoli) is not a giant conspiracy.
…So does “gatekeeping” still have legs? I think it does — but overall, I think that this skeptic/dissident argument should lose power as a result of this case.
And the “conspiracy” charge should be discredited.”
That’ll hold me over, at least, until more details emerge.
February 10, 2011 at 21:18
Hi,
do you have any thoughts about future CO2-emissions as projected by the IPCC?
What do you think about peakoil and the inability of Saudi-Arabia to increase oilproduction (wikileaks)?
What do you think about peak-coal, which could arrive in 2011 (see Patzek & Croft)?
Are the projections of CO2-emission by the IPCC realistic ?
February 10, 2011 at 21:55
Yes, I have a few thoughts about IPCC’s CO2 emission scenario’s.
First: they are not projections, they are scenario’s, a big difference.
Second: peak-oil is not the end of oil. It only means production cannot keep up with demand. There is still about half of the oil locked in the earth, it’s just harder to get to.
Third: oil is only one source of prehistoric Carbon. Gas and coal are the other. Especially coal is very abundant, not only the hard metallic coal, but especially of brown coal there are enormous amounts available.
We will have no problem going through 4000ppm is we want to, and stupid enough to do so. So, yes, there is no reason to think that a lack of Carbon will pose a limit on even the IPCC’s worst-case scenario. Economics will probably decide which scenario unfolds, I don’t really have hope that politics will play a positive role leading to a lower CO2 emission scenario.
February 10, 2011 at 21:55
“What do you think about peakoil and the inability of Saudi-Arabia to increase oilproduction (wikileaks)?”
The level of uncertainties about proven oil reserves is staggering. The P90 estimates fluctuate wildly, and Royal Dutch|Shell found a shortfall similar to Saudi Arabia’s once they’d audited their reserves. Not one OPEC country will allow an independent audit to verify their own reserves.
I recommend a read of this armchair audit by a petroleum engineer with a relevant PhD and 30 publications under his belt. There’s a possibility that oil reserves could be 50% below estimates.
The Guardian has a new piece on the very subject: Peak oil: We are asleep at the wheel
February 10, 2011 at 22:03
Tom,
Just thought I’d point out an alternate explanation. It could be that ES’ review were more thorough because he had an interest/knew more about the subject and thus had more to say..
It seems to me that the position “he tried to stop the paper from being published” presupposes that ES didn’t want the paper in print. That’s not a given.
I have as of yet not decided what I think – I’d like to know what reviews generally look like, so if anyone with experience could explain how detailed/not detailed they usually are, and whether more detailed means more adverse etc., I’d be grateful
February 10, 2011 at 22:10
Oystein, I don’t think ES wanted to stop O’Donnell from writing a paper. It certainly is not unusual for the editor to ask the author of an opposing piece to review, as ES was asked–you’re supposed to be able to beat the best.
Lots of people can give you details of reviews–I cannot, although I have read some and have found them very diverse in terms of length, detail and level of attention.
February 10, 2011 at 22:45
I guess you mean, 400 ppm.
@J Bowers: thanx 4 those links
February 10, 2011 at 22:50
Pough has a good take on Steig/O’Donnell at Stoat. Recommended reading:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2011/02/are_the_wackos_wacko_enough.php#comment-3263668
Ends with:
February 10, 2011 at 23:26
Øystein,
Raypierre sais a bit about peer review in a reply at RC:
As Marco has also said in this thread and at RC, reviews very enormously in length, detail and level of criticism/praise. You could get a feel for some reviews at the open access/open review EGU journals (e.g. ACPD).
February 11, 2011 at 00:05
The commentary from non-scientists on this as a bad example of peer review is beyond clueless. Steig here behaved admirably! As did the editor, who picked very wisely in choosing Steig as a reviewer. If Steig wanted to delay the publication here’s what he would have done (editors have to watch out for referees using these tricks of course):
(1) Taken 6 months to respond, while letting the editor know he was working on it (so the editor doesn’t assign to somebody else or go with the other reviews)
(2) Finally send in a very brief review recommending rejection, with one claim the authors got something wrong that appears to completely invalidate their work (like choosing the wrong kgnd, some quantitative error in analysis, etc.)
(3) Upon getting a revised paper that fixes the first problem, repeat 1 and 2 with a second problem. This can be repeated ad infinitum (or at least until the editor catches on)
But less work for a referee is an even easier choice: put no effort into it at all, quickly respond with a blanket rejection recommendation (“this paper is crap”), wait till it gets published (if it does) and then pile on the authors and editors for the inevitable stupid mistakes that the referees didn’t put any effort into helping to catch.
That’s what a negligent referee would do.
Steig was a diligent scientist, his work here is exemplary. That O’Donnell and friends blew it up is a sign of how desperately far removed they are from the practices of real science.
February 11, 2011 at 05:47
Does anyone have a copy of the original version of the O’Donnell, et al paper and the rewrites?
February 11, 2011 at 10:59
Hans, no I really mean 4000 ppm. 400 ppm is just around the corner (we’ll hit that around the 2020’s peak oil or not). Please remember that almost everything that will burn is made of Carbon and there is really a lot of that around. The tail of brown coal is very very long.
February 11, 2011 at 17:44
@cynicus: cars don’t ride on brown coal, planes don’t fly on brown coal.
I think people will starve long before they will suffocate in 4000 ppm CO2.
Another question / topic for Bart.
What are your views on solar cycle 24?
NASA’s David Hathaway has again changed his prediction for the maximum sunspotnumber.
Solar cycle 25 and 26 will prove equally difficult to predict.
Are we headed for another Dalton-minimum?
February 11, 2011 at 18:47
Well, people burned coal, peat and wood long before cars and planes came along. Cars and planes, while useful to our office way of life, are not a condition to human survival. But I agree, many people will very likely starve before we get to 4000 ppm. Btw, I didn’t say we’re *going* to get there, I said we *can* get there if we want and are stupid enough to do so.
February 11, 2011 at 19:55
Arthur excellent post. I agree on all counts.
A good friend of mine never published his Phd thesis, because someone did exactly what you described. My friend’s data and hypothesis challenged that of the reviewer, and he pretty much wrote in red across the from “this is crap”. being young and inexperienced my friend was mortified and withdrew the paper. His hypothesis has since been independently validated by real-wrold observations. Now that reviewer did behave badly and unprofessionally.
There are no excuses for O’Donnell, McIntyre and jeffid’s despicable behaviour.
and shame on Curry and others for uncritically jumping on the band wagon…they should all be ashamed. So much for the ‘skeptics” claiming to be interested in reconciliation– that was clearly a ruse.
We should not hold out breath waiting from sincere and unequivocal apologies form O’Donnell et al. What a sad and pathetic state of affairs.
February 11, 2011 at 20:15
O’Donnell has “apologised”…ahem. In the meantime, John Nielsen-Gammon has made it very clear McIntyre et al did the worst of the worst. I think none of the authors will get to publish anything in any AMS journal for a while.
February 11, 2011 at 20:19
Wow, Marco. Thanks for the update.
Where did he publish his apology? Hopefully not at CA, that would detract from its sincerity ;) Anyhow, good fore him. Now we wait to see whether or not the long list of others (including Delingpole, Curry, McIntyre, Lucia and Jeffid) have the same fortitude. I’m assuming Watts also jumped on the band wagon? I do not go there unless absolutely necessary.
February 11, 2011 at 20:23
I spent some time looking at Lucia’s blog. It’s just a soapbox over there with all sorts of ridiculous comments rivaling wuwt. ClimateAudit is full of the same, with a heavy dose of cheerleading and “attaboy”s.
Then we have Revkin’s weak post that makes no attempts to critically analyze the situation, other than to claim including Steig as a reviewer raises questions of the peer review process – a claim not revised after several of us pointed out that it’s normal practice. You would think that someone covering science for decades would know that.
Postnormal science at work? I have to agree with MapleLeaf. What a sad and pathetic state of affairs.
February 11, 2011 at 20:23
Oh never mind, I just read his “apology”. An apology is not an opportunity to launch amore attacks and rehash old (fallacious) ones for goodness’ sakes.
What an absolutely hopeless bunch.
February 11, 2011 at 20:38
I just read Revkin’s new piece, which corrects his claim on peer review. Good for him.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/on-peer-review-and-climate-progress
February 11, 2011 at 22:17
@MarkB
“a claim not revised after several of us pointed out that it’s normal practice.”
The claim won’t be revised because it’s an effective one. It’s very easy to present Steig being allowed to review the critique as nefarious to those who don’t know any better (by which I mean people who don’t know much about peer review, which is basically almost everyone).
It “sounds like” something that shouldn’t happen when presented in a certain adversarial context – see Delingpole’s article for a good example. He introduces it in such an obvious way that the reader can’t help but think there must be something wrong with it and of course “conflict of interest” is something many people feel like they understand.
So no those interested in winning over accuracy will absolutely not be retracting the claim and those interested in their prejudices over accuracy will absolutely not stop believing it.
February 11, 2011 at 22:22
“I just read Revkin’s new piece, which corrects his claim on peer review. Good for him.”
Ha well I did say those not interested in accuracy! Good for him, others of course still persist with it.
February 11, 2011 at 22:36
Mapleleaf:
Veterans of the creation science wars recognize this as a “notpology”.
February 12, 2011 at 00:10
O’Donnell at WUWT:
I.e. no apology AFAIK on his previous outburst and allegations.
Btw, I found Revkin’s pieces on this affair quite good (except for him misunderstanding peer review, which he has since ‘corrected’ by highlighting the geo-editor’s response).
February 12, 2011 at 00:26
Reaslly, Bart? You agree with him (among other things) that climate science is “young”? There’s such a thing as being too polite IMHO.
February 12, 2011 at 02:05
And people think that the Canucks are too polite ;)
Andy takes one step forward and then two steps back when he defends Mendelsohn and Saher’s “analysis” to the World Bank which “cites Pielke Jnr five times while quoting not one scientific paper focused on droughts” [Climate Progress]. Not to mention Revkin berating Dr. Romm for noticing the distinct lack of depth to the authors’ reference list.
Hmmm, and the public are confused why Andy Revkin?
February 12, 2011 at 02:35
If I counted correctly, Joe Romm’s post on this had 11 links–to Joe Romm’s other pieces. In fairness, he did link to the paper he criticized twice, and to a number of pieces behind subscription paywalls. I’m sure they provide backup for his point of view.
But for those of us who have discounted Mr. Romm as a paid political operative driving a political agenda (and I’m not disparaging either his motive or his agenda), it doesn’t provide a basis for informed criticism of the World Bank paper.
It doesn’t automatically mean the World Bank paper is correct, but at this point I’m inclined to look at their numbers as ‘having the right number of zeros’, which I think is as much as one can ask for on a subject like this.
February 12, 2011 at 11:00
Steve,
Revkin wrote:
His whole piece is centred around contrasting the conflicting views at the edge of the scientific development (where the field is still “young”) with the solid based on scientific knowledge that makes up the big picture. I guess you interpreted “young” as referring to the whole of climate science knowledge; I did not. The narrative as I just paraphrased in a very important one to convey, and Revkin did so very well.
Maple, I’m a bit of a pseudo-Canuck myself, having lived there for 6 years ;-)
February 12, 2011 at 21:35
I don’t think it was; I just think they have a different definition of the word, one that’s just as flawed as their sense of expertise and importance. They know they’re correct and they know they’re important; reconciliation comes when their opponents also recognize those two things.
February 12, 2011 at 22:54
Reconciliation == surrender or be put to the sword.
February 14, 2011 at 18:21
Bart and the rabett have been doing a good job on this latest flare up. The rabett is really a duck, like Bart on the surface going smoothly along but underneath going a mile a minute. JeffID should be commended for coming here and airing his side. It is refreshing to hear someone younger like Bart who still sees the good in people. Where as I’m older, crotchety, and more cynical. As far as climate progress being a political site, absolutely. That’s why I hang around there. Arguing politics is something we do for sport. And JR has been throwing a lot of red meat lately. That’s one reason I don’t blog under my real name. When I say something stupid I can run and hide.
February 19, 2011 at 04:43
The usual crackpots (hint) are venting their brainless heads. It is good to see al the usual suspects gathered together in a cave and grooving with a Pict.
Dhogaza, Marco, Mapleleaf, Arthur, Eli.
I am glad o have myself spared from this nonsense during the last two months. I feel a lot better since.
February 20, 2011 at 14:19
Tom, what *I* did was follow *your* link to Arrhenius’ original work from 1908, which clearly and unequivocally put climate sensitivity to 4 degrees. That is, the 1906 paper that Gerlich&Tscheuschner show gives a climate sensitivity of 1.6 degrees, but it is trumped by the 1908 paper.
Now, *you* made a large fuss on this thread that so many people neglected the 1906 paper, and only looked at the 1896 paper. Will you now make the same complaints about the “1906”-people neglecting the 1908 publication?
February 20, 2011 at 14:20
Harry, very classy. Now, do you also have something factual to share, or are you just venting?
February 20, 2011 at 17:41
So, Marco, you didn’t look at the link I provided to the quote from 1906?
I provide it because so many of your comrades have been buzzing around the blogs saying that because they couldn’t find it online, he never said it. Of course they’ll all correct their misstatements.
So far, all the comments I’ve read about his 1908 statements come from people who are not German or Swedish speakers who have Google translated one page of his paper.
Maybe Arrhenius changed his mind once again. I don’t know. I do know that for decades textbooks and papers have referred to his 1906 statement with lower values for temperature rise, and I found it amusing that your side was so eager to make it disappear.
So I provide a link and an exact quote. Want it again?
February 20, 2011 at 18:03
Tom, here’s the pattern of thread disruption:
Eight comments on the topic, to the point, including two extremely detailed, annotated posts by a practicing scientist in the field.
Fuller shows up, calling his interlocutors “alarmists” whose ideas are “madness.”
Maple Leaf, MarkB, Sou, dhogaza, jakerman, JBowers and BernardJ respond.
Fuller introduces a completely off-topic diversion about a number in a 105-year-old paper, calls more people names, and then plays the victim.
Thread derails.
February 20, 2011 at 18:04
Tom, I am a German speaker (although I sometimes miss the fine details in terms of sarcasm, irony, or when concepts are discussed I have never heard before) and can tell you without any shadow of a doubt, as in “none at all”, that Arrhenius makes it 4 degrees climate sensitivity in 1908. Any and all native German speakers can confirm that to you, if you would need that.
The 1906 paper is a but more obscure, in the sense that Gerlich & Tscheuschner only show the paper up to the 1.6, so we have no idea what follows. The section that *is* shown appears to me to refer to the climate sensitivity for CO2 alone. Not the climate sensitivity *with* feedbacks. That interpretation would put the 1906 paper in line with his earlier work and the 1908 book chapter.
It is also obscure in that “for decades textbooks and papers have…” NOT “…referred to his 1906 statement with lower values for temperature rise”.
And please don’t try the “your side” with me. It would suggest to me you put yourself on the other side, which, in my world, are the science deniers.
Finally, I’m guessing you will now go after any- and everyone who will take Arrhenius’ 1906 prediction as Arrhenius’ final word on the matter?
February 20, 2011 at 18:05
Pda, your wrong and mistaken characterization says far more about you than it does about me.
To borrow one of your mantras, citation please?
February 20, 2011 at 18:07
Marco, I will tell people that his 1906 projection was apparently not his final one and mention 1908. Why is it that I don’t believe you will mention his 1906 projection to those running around the internet saying that because they can’t find it online it never happened?
February 20, 2011 at 19:40
Tom, rather than rely on G&T as a secondary source, and unlike yourself, I’ll be trying to get the full Arrhenius Nobel Institute paper.
As for trying to throw in a red herring by speculating Google Translate ain’t up to snuff, believe what you want to believe. I have plenty of Swedish mates who I’ll ask to translate the Swedish, but I doubt Google tranlsate messes up about translating ‘doubling’ and numbers like ‘4’ and ‘8’. So far you don’t seem to have followed up on the primary sources at all and are just taking G&T’s word for it that that’s all there is to the 1906 Nobel Institute paper.
I’ll also add that you’ve completely evaded Ernst Hermann’s take on it, where he says the revised 2C figure is for CO2 without moisture (dry CO2).
We’ve cited Arrhenius’ publications of 1906, 1907 and 1908, the first two of which say the same thing (4C for doubling), bar the 1908 English translation which truncates the paragraph but still has the same figure as the others of 8C for quadrupling of CO2.
February 20, 2011 at 19:44
Tom, “nullius in verbia” applies here: when people claim something, evidence is required. And if that evidence remains rather obscure, it is appropriate to accept that there are multiple interpretations.
And again I’d like to note that it appears more appropriate to interpret the number from his 1906 paper as pointing to the no-feedback response. It would explain everything. In fact, I see in several places that there is a reference to a water feedback of 2.1 degrees (again, apparently in that same paper). Which makes it 3.7 total, and thus pretty close to the 4 in his 1908 paper. Contradiction disappears.
I am most certainly not pointing to the cherry picked parts Gerlich & Tscheuschner decided to cite. Perhaps, one day, I’ll just request a copy of that paper, and get the WHOLE paper online, after acceptance by the Royal Academy of Science of Sweden, of course!
February 20, 2011 at 20:00
I’m not claiming it. I’m noting it. It’s been cited for decades.
February 20, 2011 at 20:08
Marco, funny you think I wouldn’t tell people about the 1908 projection by Arrhenius. I gave you the link…
February 20, 2011 at 20:30
@Tom Fuller
Marco makes the important point that you’re seemingly basing your opinion on a second-hand, fragmentary quotation, from a source (G&T) that is *known* to be unreliable, and dressing it up as if you’re referring to a figure well known and frequently cited for decades.
A cursory google for the title of the cited paper turns up:
Wikipedia
WUWT (by way of Monckton)
You
And various second-hand references to one of the above.
Faced with this anyone ought to be *extremely* skeptical of your interpretation, especially as the perfectly logical explanation offered by Marco is available.
Apply Occam’s Razor:
Arrhenius made one calculation for sensitivity with feedbacks in 1896, another in 1906 that was markedly lower *but by a staggering coincidence* was pretty much the same as his earlier figure for sensitivity without feedbacks, then almost immediately refutes himself with a third publication, restoring the original state of affairs. This chain of events is presented honestly by Monckton and G&T (none really known for being best friends to accuracy) who focus completely on the 1906 snippet to the exclusion of all else.
Alternatively:
All three publications by Arrhenius present broadly the same estimates for sensitivity (either with or without feedbacks), and G&T have presented a selective or misleading quotation, as they did with *several* sources.
Without access to the original paper, the answer must remain a mystery, so kudos to whoever eventually digs up this particular corpse for a post-mortem.
In the meantime I will err on the side of probability, and be skeptical of the claims you’ve presented. I’m surprised you are so attached to them on such flimsy evidence.
February 20, 2011 at 20:58
DaveH, look past the first page of Google returns. Arrhenius’ 1906 projection of 2.1C (including 0.5C of feedback) is well-established and often-cited.
“However, it is very rarely mentioned that Arrhenius 10 years later published a calculation resulting in a much lower effect of CO2.”
Carl G. Ribbing
Professor, Division of Solid State Physics
The Ångström Laboratory
Uppsala University, Sweden
February 20, 2011 at 21:06
Fuller, you are now trolling, big time. You know very well how we got onto this tack of the warming expected for doubling of CO2, it was a strawman argument invented by you. Let me remind you what I said:
“And what we are observing now was, for the most part, correctly predicted in Arrhenius at the end of the 19th century, well over 100 years ago”
Tom missed that key word “now”— what I said had nothing to do with EQS. Instead Tom makes a classic strawman argument:
“Usually people like Maple Leaf point out his 1895 prediction of projected warming with a doubling of CO2, and then neglect to mention his revision of 1906.”
So I elaborated to help our confused Tom:
“I was not necessarily referring to temperature predictions per se.”
AND
“So he [Arrhenius] predicted the reduction of DTR, he predicted that the warming would be greatest in winter, that the warming would be greatest at high latitudes, he predicted the positive feedback from ice loss (and the associated lowering of albedo), i.e., he predicted and polar amplification. All these features have been observed in response to the increased radiative forcing from higher GHG levels.”
Yet Tom insists on arguing his strawman about the temperature increases predicted for doubling CO2 made by Arrhenius.
Troll Fuller, I have fed you and patted you on the head, now please go away and stop wasting peoples’ time. Thanks.
PS: To other readers, is there a psychological condition which describes the behavior of Fuller and Condon? It is a serious question.
February 20, 2011 at 21:29
Fuller — ““However, it is very rarely mentioned that Arrhenius 10 years later published a calculation resulting in a much lower effect of CO2.”
Carl G. Ribbing
Professor, Division of Solid State Physics
The Ångström Laboratory
Uppsala University, Sweden”
What of it? Are you pulling an argument from authority here? I thought you were a journalist, which is incredible since you seem to display no desire to find the primary source yourself and are more than willing to uncritically accept the secondary interpretations of others. Compare to those of us who’ve found FULL texts and the original versions of those texts, as well as translated them ourselves.
I’ll be tracking down a copy of the Nobel Institute paper, but I’ll lay odds that somewhere in it there’s a reference to 4C or thereabouts with feedbacks, or the lower figure has a reference to it being without feedbacks. I’ll also remind you that Arrhenius’ own grandson, Gustav, says it was a high figure. If you want to pull arguments from authority then I don’t see them coming much more authoratitive than a contemporary and family member of the man himself.
The Nobel paper was published in 1906, Worlds in the Making (Swedish original) was published in 1906, and we know that the latter says 4C for doubling as does the German translation of 1907, and for quadrupling we get the same figure of 8C in all three editions up to 1908.
February 20, 2011 at 21:43
@Tom Fuller
Either I’m confused, or you are:
> well-established and often-cited.
> very rarely mentioned
In any case you are once again taking someone else’s word for this – someone who is (once again) not an expert in this field, and who (in the same letter) is very quick to cite Svensmark, Douglass, Lindzen and Spencer. That’s a very specific laundry-list of (sometimes contradictory) contrarians, and one has to question the impartial nature of this particular source.
I can find *no* online source for the paper. All I can find is endless repetition of this same claim, all given a “there is no AGW” spin.
This is not citation. This is an echo chamber. Indeed, the more links I follow, the less credibility the claim has – and the more hollow your “frequently cited” argument seems. It is practically an urban myth at this stage – the claim, and the title of the paper, with no evidence that the claimant has *actually read* the source. How am I to know that the root source of *all* of this is not the G&T paper?
Give me some evidence that you have *actually verified* this claim. Until then, I am even more skeptical than I was before. I mean, right now I could say that the 1906 Arrhenius paper predicts the existence of Pluto – how would you know otherwise?
February 20, 2011 at 22:16
Tom, I’m with Dave H on the Carl Ribbing-quote as unreliable. Not the quote itself, but the quote being authorative. I am 99% certain Ribbing did not check it, but that he has it from ‘contrarian’ sources. I mean, the guy is even questioning that the CO2 increase over the last 50 years is mainly anthropogenic in nature. A simple accounting excercise (the guy’s a professor in engineering, he should be able to do this enormously simple math) shows that the rise MUST be anthropogenic in nature. There is no other way to explain that the CO2 in the atmosphere increases with a lower amount than we humans put in the atmosphere. Unless somebody suddenly has found a human activity that takes up enormous amounts of CO2…
Short story: The 1.6+0.5 is well-established…in the ‘contrarian’ circles. The other evidence, and one you yourself indeed provided, contradicts that 1.6+0.5, and comes closer to 1.6+2.1. Which puts Arrhenius on the high end of climate sensitivity. Not that that matters much, because everyone agrees he made certain mistakes in his calculations.
February 20, 2011 at 23:03
British Government Chief Scientific Adviser John Beddington goes on the offensive against pseudo-science, calling for it to be tolerated as much as racism is.
http://www.researchresearch.com/index.php?option=com_news&template=rr_2col&view=article&articleId=1032320
Dellingpole’s upset, so Beddington must be doing something right ;)
February 21, 2011 at 00:56
I don’t see why this should be a big deal. Others on both sides of this debate have found errors in Arrhenius. I just find it mildly amusing that y’all would hypothesize that a direct quote in a peer-reviewed paper would be falsified and a Swedish professor of physics would just make stuff up.
All possible, of course, but seems more likely to me that Arrhenius did different calculations at different times with different methods and came up with different results.
More than mildly amusing is the somewhat frenetic attempt to push the 1906 paper down the memory hole.
February 21, 2011 at 01:41
No Fuller, unlike you, the “journalist”, we’re interested in the full context of the 1906 paper as a primary source, and suspect that the sample you so uncritically accept prima facie from secondary sources is a quote mine.
February 21, 2011 at 01:47
@Tom Fuller
Your characterisation (“I don’t see why this should be a big deal.”, “mildly amusing”, “frenetic”) is, once again, playground posturing.
If it’s not a big deal, why do you repeat it incessently as if it is the absolute truth? You have already shown you have precisely no idea what the original source says – you’re just repeating it from other sources. Credulously. Start being a little skeptical.
If it’s not a big deal why do you keep framing this as an attempt to hide inconvenient contrary evidence? Everyone here has shown willingness to engage with the substance of the evidence – its just that the evidence so far has virtually no substance between a title, a brief excerpt that is a *very* long way from conclusive, and dozens of verbatim repetitions of one particular slant. I really, really want to see that original paper, to see if this claim holds water. Quite the opposite of the memory hole.
It matters because people *like you* keep repeating this. Google is choked with blogs making this claim, laughing at Arrhenius and his muddle ways as he flip-flops between extremes of climate sensitivity. I, for one, would like to know where the truth of the matter lies – you seem to be content to repeat what you’ve been told and make fun of anybody with a commitment to integrity.
To summarise the spin on this gleaned from the several pages of hits on Google and your own contributions here: “Hey, Arrhenius was *wrong*, or he was right the second time and *you’re all crazy political/religious alarmists*, or he just couldn’t make up his mind and hey *there’s no consensus even back then*, or even if this is all bogus *you’re all idiots for caring so much about it*”.
Also:
> would hypothesize that a direct quote in a peer-reviewed paper would be falsified
No – excerpted incompletely. There is a difference. Given that there are several examples of similar goings on in that paper (a paper which is now legendary in its “not even wrong”-ness, I might add) this is little more than a reasonable interpretation of the available evidence, especially given the corroborating evidence of his earlier and later works. The G&T citation starts to look like an anomaly, so you would do well to check and double check their workings.
> and a Swedish professor of physics would just make stuff up.
No – I have posited that he could easily be repeating (just as you have) a second-hand quote, or even a first-hand cite he has misinterpreted Unless you want to hold your hand up to “making stuff up” I’m merely putting him in the same boat as you, so your dismissive framing holds no water. Without the original we have no way of knowing which to believe, but the consistent bias in the sources so far unearthed is hardly reassuring.
Tom, once again you apply your own narrative to events and keep repeating it in the face of all evidence to the contrary, and all attempts at reason. I present you with a logical alternative to your position, and you disregard it in somewhat offensive terms, choosing to slant my words and ascribe to me positions *I did not put forward*.
February 21, 2011 at 03:05
J Bowers and Dave H,
You guys are the ones beating this into the ground, not me. Look up thread and at the other one. This started when I asked Maple Leaf which projection of Arrhenius he was talking about. And it’s ground on since then thanks to your determination to eliminate that functionary from the podium in front of the Kremlin.
February 21, 2011 at 03:52
Tom, you also kept it alive by coming out with things like, “Are you saying it isn’t 2C….?” then throwing out G&T as if it helps your case. In fact, it was seeing how your faith in the 2C figure comes from a selective quote from G&T that made me doubt the 2C even more. Your persistent fallback position to abuse doesn’t help you much either.
February 21, 2011 at 04:19
Fuller:
Tom Fuller Says:
February 19, 2011 at 23:15
February 21, 2011 at 04:25
Hey jakerman, did you miss one or two comments from the rest of the crazies in between?
February 21, 2011 at 05:18
Hey Tom, just correcting one of your errors.
But I like the calls of those seeking to chase down the meme to its source. A source you seem less willing to find.
Then again if the source is a misquote then it doesn’t exist. But you don’t need that source to push the meme do you Tom. Luke-warmers Way out in front indeed Tom. Way out in front of pushing memes.
February 21, 2011 at 05:21
sorry, doughboy, you lost me here. What exactly are you trying to say?
(It’s a long way to Tiperrary…)
February 21, 2011 at 05:24
Must be trenchfoot getting you, ol Jake. Did you maybe miss this?
MapleLeaf Says:
February 19, 2011 at 23:06
Fuller,
“I play games with your pseudonym, not your name”
I was not talking about me, or pseudonyms– does “junkerman” sound familiar? It should, you used that.
I think what you meant to say is that:
“my opinion is that the pilots are not using the correct navigational instruments.”
You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own science to own facts. And what we are observing now was, for the most part, correctly predicted in Arrhenius at the end of the 19th century, well over 100 years ago. You need to stop obsessing with MBH or Steig or PRall– those are only part of a very big puzzle. And last time I checked, technology has advanced and GPS is a very reliable navigational tool.
Again, you are presenting a false choice. We can reduce GHGs and address environmental concerns– as my example concerning deforestation demonstrated. Also, the inception of the Montreal Protocol did not require the cessation or reduction of addressing environmental issues.”
(Mademoiselle from Armentieres, parlez vous?)
February 21, 2011 at 05:26
Tom, last time I looked at the when it started It thought the 8th of Feb came before the 19th.
Perhaps its just my problem with adherence to facts.
February 21, 2011 at 05:59
Funny–thought I had you busted but it turns out I did start this, although not where you think.
I am concerned about Arctic ice. I am concerned about methane release. I am concerned about shifting weather patterns. But until the host of real issues with the science is addressed at my level (interested layman who can follow the equations), it is useless to ask for my support–or even to ask me to defer judgement.
The Consensus Team has played enough word games with the science to stimulate healthy skepticism. I can understand the motivation behind some of it. But they’ve created the environment they are operating in. From deliberate distortions of the work of Svante Arrhenius to red buttons blowing up skeptics, the Consensus Team has landed itself where it is today. And that will not be resolved by the slow motion ping pong match that characterizes progress via peer reviewed literature.
Yup that was me. Sorry if I gave the wrong impression that I did not start it (this time–not the first go-round on this stuff). FWIW, I stand by what I wrote then.
No pressure.
February 21, 2011 at 06:23
Following Fuller’s meme, I support those who sought to find if such claims had any basis. Well done on chasing that weasel down the hole.
If Fuller want to push that meme, we know he doing it with the knowledge that he can’t produce Arrhenius’ paper that supports his initial assertions.
BTW Fuller’s appraoch is an example of what Fuller calls “accurate” science.
February 21, 2011 at 06:36
Dipping into the cooking sherry a bit early, aren’t we, jakerman? I provided a quote and a link to as much as is online, as far as I know. The quote was direct and the link is to a peer-reviewed paper in an academic journal. I don’t agree with the results of the paper, but I have no reason to think they falsified the quote.
You’re just making stuff up at this point. Here again is the link: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
And here again is the quote:”The current amount of carbonic acid would therefore raise the temperature of the
Earth’s surface for 14; 6
C its disappearance from the atmosphere would result in
a lowering of temperatures about three times as strong as the one, which caused
the ice ages. I calculate in a similar way, that a decrease in the concentration of
carbonic acid by half or a doubling would be equivalent to changes of temperature
of 1; 5
C or +1; 6
C respectively.”
I’m willing to leave this alone. But if you’re going to continue making stuff up, I’ll keep posting this.
If you don’t trust the source or the quote, go get the paper. But don’t say it doesn’t exist.
Nor is that paper the only source for Arrhenius’ projection of 2.1C:
“Furthermore, it is not historically correct that Svante Arrhenius “first suggested in 1896 that… .”In this work Arrheniusreferenced Fourier and Tyndall for their much earlier suggestion that the climate was controlled by the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. In this 1896 article he made the first quantitativeestimate of the climate sensitivity [3]. Considering that the spectral results were poorly resolved and otherwise defect, the result 3-4 oC for doubling the concentration of CO2 was amazingly close to the IPCC claims today. However, it is very rarely mentioned that Arrhenius 10 years later published a calculation resulting in a much lower effect of CO2 .
Carl G. Ribbing
Professor, Division of Solid State Physics
The Ångström Laboratory
Uppsala University, Sweden
And jakerman, remember who brought it up this time.
February 21, 2011 at 07:42
Fuller writes
If Fuller want to push that meme, we know he doing it with the knowledge that he can’t produce Arrhenius’ paper that supports his initial assertions.
Fuller:
Then shows his his accuracy by linking G&T. Nice.
While Fuller is citing G&T as his source let me remind Tom of his recent quote:
Just so were are clear you have not been able to produce Arrhenius’ paper supporting your meme.
And GT have very low credibility that paper is ridiculous. It think it was not peer reviewed as it was an invited review paper. I asked the journal editor to confirm this but he yet to reply.
If you want to depend on G&T as your source then that shows you up.
Ribbing doesn’t help you with any source. Perhaps his been taking in by G&T’s meme.
February 21, 2011 at 08:53
Sorry, Tom, but you’ll have to come with more substantiation when you claim The ‘Consensus Team’ has deliberately distorted Arrhenius. How exactly did they distort Arrhenius? Arrhenius correctly predicted that increasing CO2 would increase global temperatures. He correctly predicted polar amplification. His *numbers* may have been off and some of his calculations incorrect, but he got the general idea right.
And yes, I’m willing to say that a professor in physics is wrong. Take for example HIS distortion of Arrhenius’ 1896 projection, which in reality put the temperature increase for a factor 1.5 (which is not 2) to 3.4. Climate sensitivity in that paper is > 5 degrees
Click to access Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf
(see for example Table 7)
Of course, we now will see Tom Fuller state that the “Skeptic Team” has lost his trust, since it has been caught deliberately distorting Arrhenius’ work. Right, Tom?
February 21, 2011 at 09:09
@Tom Fuller
Posting the same two second-hand interpretations again and again is no substitute for finding the original and verifying it.
Repetition does not equal truth.
All you’ve done is confirm that you are, in fact, taking someone else’s word for this, while ridiculing anyone curious enough to want to check your facts.
February 21, 2011 at 09:16
Dudes, you have a cite to a published paper. Ignore it as you please–but I’m laughing at you all the way down the street.
February 21, 2011 at 09:33
Tom, your cite to G&T Guess and look who’s laughing!
Mr Tom “our science is accurate” Fuller. How you shoot yourself in the foot.
;)
February 21, 2011 at 10:57
@Tom Fuller
I am doomed to repeat myself as often as you do, it seems. You have provided someone else’s second-hand interpretation, which you accept at face value.
So, not having read the original source, you are taking G&T’s word for it yes or no? And the mention on wikipedia and repetition of this meme throughout “skeptical” blogs constitutes the further evidence you mentioned previously that it is widely cited, yes or no?
Which, to me, looks like *everybody* taking G&T’s word for it.
A second hand source.
One that is known to be highly unreliable.
This just gets worse.
Seriously – do you have *no* curiosity? You’re too busy running off down the street declaring yourself the winner to actually care whether what your repeating is accurate.
February 21, 2011 at 14:53
Fuller — “The quote was direct and the link is to a peer-reviewed paper in an academic journal. I don’t agree with the results of the paper, but I have no reason to think they falsified the quote. ”
Straw man. Who said they falsified the quote?
February 21, 2011 at 19:18
Tom, I just cited a paper, notably the original and complete source, that shows Ribbing was wrong. Your response to that, please?
Remember, you claimed (but provided no evidence) that “the Consensus team” deliberately distorted Arrhenius’ work. So, I would be particularly interested in whether you consider Ribbing’s claim the Arrhenius 1896 paper predicts 3-4 degrees climate sensitivity as “deliberate distortion”, too. And if not, why would this be different from “the Consensus team”?
This still leaves open the question on what you consider distortion of Arrhenius work, and what the evidence is for this supposed distortion being “deliberate”.
February 25, 2011 at 12:23
Inspector General’s Review of Stolen Emails Confirms No Evidence of Wrong-Doing by NOAA Climate Scientists
“Report is the latest independent analysis to clear climate scientists of allegations of mishandling of climate information”
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110224_climate.html
http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2011/02/climategate-yet-more-bupkis.html
February 25, 2011 at 18:54
Interesting one:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/feb/25/libya-turmoil-gaddafi-live
February 25, 2011 at 21:26
Yes, J. Bowers, of course there were no problems found with NOAA.
““The Co-Chair of the IPCC AR4 WG1, who was the only NOAA scientist informed of any of the aforementioned FOIA requests, told us that she did not conduct a ‘comprehensive search’ for and forward potentially responsive documents for agency processing. This was based, in part, on her understanding that her IPCC-related work product was the property of the IPCC, due to the confidentiality provisions contained in many of the documents. In addition, she reportedly received verbal guidance from her supervisor and a NOAA OGC attorney that the IPCC-related documents she had created and/or obtained while on “detail” assignment to the IPCC did not constitute NOAA records.”
“We interviewed the two NOAA OGC attorneys whom the Co-Chair and her supervisor referenced during their interviews with us to determine what, if any, advice the attorneys provided to these individuals. Both attorneys specifically told us that they had not advised the Co-Chair or her supervisor on this matter at the time NOAA received the FOIA requests referenced herein. One attorney said that he never spoke to the Co-Chair about that issue, while the second attorney told us that he was consulted only after NOAA had already responded to the FOIA requesters that it had no responsive documents.”
“Based on our interviews of the two NOAA OGC attorneys, we followed-up with the Co-Chair and her supervisor, both of whom again told us that their handling of the aforementioned FOIA requests was based on advice they had received from these two specific attorneys. We requested from the Co-Chair and her supervisor documentation of any discussions with the NOAA OGC attorneys on this matter, which they were unable to provide. As such, we were unable to reconcile the divergent accounts.”
February 26, 2011 at 02:18
As Joe Romm put it…
http://climateprogress.org/2011/02/25/climate-science-vindicated-for-umpteenth-time/
And Andy Revkin…
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/slim-pickings-for-climate-science-critics-in-inspector-general-report/
Over to Micheal Tobis (just for Tom Fuller)…
http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2011/02/climategate-yet-more-bupkis.html
But the harassment of scientists will no doubt continue.
February 26, 2011 at 05:07
Look J Bowers, the NOAA was always a bit player in this, and nobody expected any revelations. What came out is just more of the same grubbiness that characterizes every bit of information we learn about the people involved.
Grand conspiracy? No. Greasy pole climbers that fudge everything and expect us to believe that doesn’t include the data?
Yup.
February 26, 2011 at 09:21
Tom, you may want to look up what the FOIA requests were about. Nothing at all to do with the data. Fudging wasn’t an issue there either, unless you follow the McIntyrian line of taking anything and everything that can be blown up, and blow it up to the maximum possibility. Oh wait, perhaps that indeed describes you quite well. I noticed you still have not responded to the evidence I provided that Carl Ribbing “deliberately distorted” Arrhenius’ 1896 article…
February 26, 2011 at 14:00
@Tom Fuller
“Greasy pole climbers that fudge everything and expect us to believe that doesn’t include the data?”
At this point in 2011 which data is either available and known to be fudged or unavailable and suspected to be fudged?
February 26, 2011 at 18:56
Tom Fuller — “Greasy pole climbers that fudge everything and expect us to believe that doesn’t include the data?”
Tom Fuller, have you expanded into PR?
February 27, 2011 at 00:19
I’m talking about the NOAA employee saying she got advice from counsel and counsel saying she didn’t. Fudge factor #1. And it is that which is typical of this years-long charade.
February 27, 2011 at 01:08
Lawyers protecting themselves and being overly cautious is no reason to accuse NOAA counsel of fudging. It comes with the territory and is an essential part of the legal profession. (AKA it’s up to you to prove we lawyers are wrong.)
February 27, 2011 at 01:44
Are you saying that lawyers would alienate their client and perjure themselves as officers of the court? I sure wouldn’t bet on that.
February 27, 2011 at 04:02
Lol – not necessarily. Just pointing out that you’ve assumed there is a ‘guilty’ party and who that is, unlike the IG who did no such thing.
(According to the IG’s report, there were apparently diverging accounts of when the phone discussions took place, not about whether or not such a phone discussion took place. One lawyer agreed that a discussion did occur and that at the time she or he agreed that the IPCC ‘owned’ the material.)
February 28, 2011 at 20:13
Tom wrote (different thread; removed there):
No, I haven’t. But when I did read things he said about climate change in the past I wasn’t impressed at all. He may be wicked smart, but he doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about in this case. As I believe Jonathan Gilligan pointed out at CaS, his PoV probably comes from an infinite belief that technology will come to the rescue, based on which no problem can be considered problematic. I don’t share his boundless optimism though.
March 3, 2011 at 09:57
Barry Bickmore has a three part extended critique of Roy Spencer’s ‘Great Global Warming Blunder’ (H/T to Tim Lambert):
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3