Do Peer-Reviewed papers exists supporting skepticism of "man-made" global warming alarm?

[Poptech]

@GIGObuster

The key is “did not sufficiently acknowledge the importance of these other human climate forcings” They are saying that the IPCC was missing even more causes of concern, and they also refer to human based ones, still more in favor of AGW, not much so of the IPCC.

No they are saying the IPCC is targeting the wrong causes of concern and placing undo prominence on them and that their conclusions cannot be relied on. Hardly your position.

@GIGObuster

What is mentioned was/is on the public record. There is no conspiracy, they are in the open:

Long video, but one can look at the highlights pointed in the blog with the evidence that Historian Naomi Oreskes brings.

I see so Oreskes (Queen of the fraudulent consensus) is the conspiracy theorist, no surprise there and linked up through Lambert’s alarmist blog. A 2 for 1.

[GIGObuster]

@Poptech

No they are saying the IPCC is targeting the wrong causes of concern and placing undo prominence on them and that their conclusions cannot be relied on. Hardly your position.

Well, lets see again the most supported, in their view, hypothesis

**the human influences
are significant and involve a diverse
range of first- order climate forcings, including,
but not limited to, the human input of
carbon dioxide (CO2). **Most, if not all, of
these human influences on regional and
global climate will continue to be of concern
during the coming decades.

I’m beginning to see a basic error here, you are insisting that they are against the IPCC, but I think they are supporting AGW, being against the IPCC focus does not equal denial of AGW.

@Poptech

I see so Oreskes (Queen of the fraudulent consensus) is the conspiracy theorist, no surprise there and linked up through Lambert’s alarmist blog. A 2 for 1.

You need citations for these accusations, this also shows that you are ignoring that Oreskes points at the evidence and offers citations in her presentation.

[Poptech]

@GIGObuster

I’m beginning to see a basic error here, you are insisting that they are against the IPCC, but I think they are supporting AGW, being against the IPCC focus does not equal denial of AGW.

What does your strawman of “denial of AGW” have to do with anything? Is it possible to have conversation without you using a strawman?

[kaylasdad99]

@GIGObuster

kaylasdad99, as you noticed, he deftly avoided touching what the authors thought were the most likely valid hypothesis. The makers of the list are indeed misunderstanding at best what the authors are saying. Not much left to say really.

Umm, unless Poptech is in charge of writing the abstract pages at the AGU website, I don’t see how that omission can be attributed to him.

Seriously, how did you get the text of the other two hypotheses and the conclusion?

[GIGObuster]

@kaylasdad99

Umm, unless Poptech is in charge of writing the abstract pages at the AGU website, I don’t see how that omission can be attributed to him.

I did not say that was his omission, only that by just concentrating on the first hypothesis we are missing a lot of the context.

@kaylasdad99

Seriously, how did you get the text of the other two hypotheses and the conclusion?

As it turns out, many times one can find in a search the PDF or articles that mention a more complete description of the paper cited, so by googling the first line of the 1st hypothesis the other hypothesis and conclusion appeared.

[kaylasdad99]

Okay, I think I just spotted the misdirection in the magic trick: Very carefully, in the OP, Mr. Poptech states that the position he wishes to refute is that no peer-reviewed papers exist supporting skepticism of “man-made” global warming alarm.

Prominent in the page linked in the OP is a “pull quote”-style quote from a John H. at RealClimate.org that begins:

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told by AGW voices that there are NO qualified skeptics or peer reviewed/published work by them.

Careful reading of these two statements will reveal that while they appear similar, they are actually quite different. Even the OP is at pains to avoid giving us the money quote: “Here are peer-reviewed papers that cast doubt upon the existence of anthropogenic climate change.” At least, in the OP he’s careful not to.

On the page linked in the OP I rather suspect that the person who compiled the list of links was trying to provide support to John H.'s followup assertion:

In truth there is serious work and questions raised by significant work by very qualified skeptics which has been peer reviewed and published.

As to whether that followup assertion has been adequately supported, I cannot say from my own knowledge, as I do not have the science chops to read and comprehend the more than 750 cites linked to, even if I were able to read the entire papers (which in most cases, it appears I can’t). Based on the responses of many smarter-than-me Dopers in this thread, I’m inclined to think not (after all, even I was able to point to a few cases where the question of AGW’s existence appeared to be conceded, or at least, not contested).

But let’s not forget that this is not what the OP is pinging on. His brief is quite simply the question of skepticism of AGW “alarm” being supported in peer-reviewed work. If he can get everybody else howling about something he’s not explicitly trying to support (the existence of peer-reviewed work questioning the existence of AGW), he can get away with crowing that nobody is laying a glove on what he is trying to support (the existence of peer-reviewed work questioning whether public policy should be trying to do something about it).

BTW, OP, I find your use of the term “alarm” as it pertains to any urgency over AGW mitigation to be loaded, dismissive, prejudicial, and heavy-handed. Please knock it off.

[kaylasdad99]

@GIGObuster

I did not say that was his omission, only that by just concentrating on the first hypothesis we are missing a lot of the context.

But you did imply that the fact that the other two hypotheses and conclusion weren’t right on the page that his link went to was “deft avoidance” on his part.

As it turns out, many times one can find in a search the PDF or articles that mention a more complete description of the paper cited, so by googling the first line of the 1st hypothesis the other hypothesis and conclusion appeared.

Oh, I see. Very cool. Thanks for the Protip.

[GIGObuster]

@kaylasdad99

But you did imply that the fact that the other two hypotheses and conclusion weren’t right on the page that his link went to was “deft avoidance” on his part.

He does imply that all the papers are investigated properly, so I investigated what the other hypotheses were, in context the authors of the paper are not against AGW, but that they have a beef with the IPCC for focusing too much on specific gases. In his reply to you this context was missing, even after I had posted the other hypotheses and you had also quoted me so that is why I said “deft avoidance” later.

@kaylasdad99

Oh, I see. Very cool. Thanks for the Protip.

You are welcome.

[ivan_astikov]

I’ve only read the first few chapters in the book The Climate Files by Fred Pearce, which deals with the “hacked climate science emails” saga known as “Climategate”, and already it seems to indicate that “the peer-review system” is not all it’s cracked up to be.

From the Amazon blurb -

Yet although the scandal caused a media frenzy, the fact is that just about everything you may have heard and read about the University of East Anglia emails is wrong. They are not, as some have claimed, the smoking gun for some great global warming hoax. They do not reveal a sinister conspiracy by scientists to fabricate global warming data. They do, however, raise deeply disturbing questions about the way climate science is conducted, about researchers’ preparedness to block access to climate data and downplay flaws in their data, and about the siege mentality and scientific tribalism at the heart of the most important international issue of our age.

[Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party]

@Poptech

I was responding to Capt. Ridley’s Shooting Party and since then you two have jumped in apparently without reading the context of which I was using the 101 results. Instead you create a new strawman argument about me expecting you to find that number low or that I find the number low? I made neither statement. I do find the number which averages out to 16-17 a month much lower than the claim of 750 a month as was implied.

Capt. Ridley’s Shooting Party attempted to make the 750 paper list I presented look insignificant by simply stating misinformation about that many papers endorsing AGW being published each month. His comment has been proven wrong.
All irrelevant to my point. Best case scenario is they all endorse AGW theory in which case Capt. Ridley’s Shooting Party is proven wrong regardless. Strawman: I made no statement that a high percentage of paper should be written expressly about AGW. Strawman: I was not amazed by the Google Scholar results.

Hahahaha. I’m sorry. You’re using Google Scholar to survey scientific articles?

[Revenant_Threshold]

@Poptech

Yes but there are very few terms to show explicit endorsement of AGW theory.

I disagree. Explicit endorsement could be shown by very many terms; there need not be a set phrase at all.

Not for explicit endorsement that would require mentioning support of the theory in some way.

Not so. Explicit endorsement for a facet of the theory, mention of support for that facet, would mean explicit endorsement of the theory.

Papers not in English are translated by various publishers Google Scholar indexes such as some of the global but European based publishers. Google Scholar is the most comprehensive online resource available to attempt to determine this. No resource is 100% inclusive but Google Scholar may be the best.

Papers not in English might be translated, but they might not be translated to the words you’re searching for. I cannot speak to the comprehensiveness of Google Scholar, but I should point out that you, yourself, have already shown off a more comprehensive technique; looking at many different sources for your skeptic list. You don’t simply have to pick one method and ignore all others.

This helps my case.

Yes, it does, as I said. Odd that you disagree with each and every one of my points that works against you, but when I make one that aids your argument it gets a simple acceptance.

Strawman: I never claimed my method for finding pro-AGW papers was comprehensive only good enough to disprove the claim that 750 pro-AGW papers are published each month.

Knowing that there are no 750 pro-AGW papers published each month requires knowledge not simply of how many skeptical papers are published, but how many papers are published overall. If you want to be able to say that there aren’t 750 somethings in a pile of thousands you have know the contents of all those thousands. So yes, your arguments most certainly require that your method is comprehensive, and claim it, otherwise your point makes no sense - if you have 10 balls of an unknown colour, you can’t hold up 3 red ones and declare that this means there cannot be 3 green ones also. You need to know what colour they all are to work it out.

I am not the one making that claim, yet I am the only one providing any evidence for or against it. Until you have provided evidence to support this claim it is unfounded.

It is your own evidence that supports my claim. The nature of your overall point requires comprehensiveness, yet, by your own admission, you are prepared to accept less than that when it comes to looking at the opposite of your point. It is a partisan approach.

[GIGObuster]

@ivan_astikov

I’ve only read the first few chapters in the book The Climate Files by Fred Pearce, which deals with the “hacked climate science emails” saga known as “Climategate”, and already it seems to indicate that “the peer-review system” is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Of course, but one has to mention several caveats about Fred Pierce:

RealClimate: The Guardian disappoints

Part 6: Peer review

The discussion of peer review is the most replete with basic misconceptions about the scientific process. Pearce appears to conflate any rejection of a paper or even a negative review for any reason as a prima facie case of mainstream climate scientists … censoring their critics. But in none of the cases highlighted were anyone’s view ‘censored’. To have your opinion published in peer-reviewed literature is not some fundamental right – it is a privilege that depends on your ability to do the analysis and the marshal the logical arguments and data to support your point.

Pearce, surprisingly for someone who has been on a science beat for a long time, states that peer review is the supposed gold standard of scientific merit. This is not the case at all. As we’ve outlined in many articles, peer review is just a first (necessary) step towards scientific acceptance and as the number of badly flawed papers that do appear in the literature attest, it is no guarantee of merit. For it to work of course there need to be some standards that should ideally be met, and this will lead to the rejection of some submissions. Thus automatically equating rejections of bad submissions with squashing of ‘dissent’ is like assuming that anyone who gets an F on a test is being unfairly discriminated against.

Pearce also declares that the mere act of reviewing a paper that is critical of your own work is mired in ‘conflicts of interest that would not be allowed in most professions‘. This is wrong on multiple levels. First of all, peer review of the literature is hardly unique to climate science, and so his claim about improper conflicts of interest is an accusation against the whole of science, not just climatology. Secondly, he confuses the role of the reviewer with that of the editor. Editors often solicit reviews of a critical comment directly from those being criticised, since that is often the easiest way to judge whether the critique is substantive. That is not the same as giving the right of veto to the criticised authors since, of course, it’s the editor’s job to weigh the different reviews from different sources, and use their own judgment as to the merits of the critique. Not asking the original authors for comment can certainly be (and has been) problematic and unfair to them. The problems most often arise – such as in Soon and Baliunas (2003) or McIntyre and McKitrick (2003;2005) when the criticised authors are not involved at all.

In the cases mentioned in this article, there is absolutely no evidence of unfair discrimination. Indeed, in one case of a submission by Lars Kamel, the reasons for rejection are obvious and Pearce appears not to know what the criteria for acceptance even are. He states that “the finding sounded important, but his paper was rejected by Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) that year“. But papers are not accepted or rejected because a finding ’sounds important’, but because that finding is backed up by analysis and logic while acknowledging the prior work on the topic. In this case, the author did not “however, justify that conclusion with any data or analysis“, and so a rejected manuscript would have been very likely, regardless of who the reviewers were. Similarly, the assumption that “some would have recommended publication” purely because it called into question previous work is unsupportable as a general rule. Filling the literature with papers ‘just asking questions’ that ’sound important’ but not demonstrating any actual results is a recipe for wasting everyone’s time with poorly thought out, and even mendacious, critiques of mainstream science from HIV-denial to perpetual motion machines. Papers in the technical literature are not just opinion.

Pearce also assumes (without evidence) that Kamel was discriminated against because Jones “would certainly have been aware of Kamel’s [negative] views about mainstream climate research“. But why should this be assumed? Most scientists (luckily) go through their whole career without wasting their time investigating and cataloguing the cranks in their field. Some climate sceptics get addressed here on RC a fair bit, but it would be a big mistake to think that these people, particularly the more obscure ones, are the subject of water cooler conversations at climate research labs across the world. Indeed, I can find no reference to Kamel on RC at all and I was unaware of his peculiar views until this story emerged. Why Jones should be assumed to omniscient on this topic is unclear.

Pearce quotes McIntyre discussing “CRU’s policies of obstructing critical articles in the peer-reviewed literature” slowing the resolution of unspecified “issues”. This is simply disingenuous – what papers have been obstructed that would have resolved what issues? We are unaware of any such papers, and certainly none from McIntyre. Prior therefore to declaring that “evidence, flawed though it might be, is actively being kept out of the journals” it behoves Pearce to actually find such evidence. Otherwise, the simple non-appearance of these mythical critiques is apparently proof of the corruption of the peer review process.

As an additional example of problematic practice, Pearce highlights a June 2003 email from Keith Briffa, who as an editor ‘emailed fellow tree-ring researcher Edward Cook, a researcher at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, saying: “Confidentially I now need a hard and if required extensive case for rejecting [an unnamed paper] to support Dave Stahle’s and really as soon as you can.”‘. However, without context this is meaningless. People often sign reviews and this could well have been a second go around on a particular paper whose first round reviews would have been seen by everyone concerned. Briffa (like many editors) can have a feeling that a paper should be rejected for multiple reasons but would like to have the reasons gone into in some detail, mostly for the benefit of the authors. This is one reason why reviewing bad papers is so much more work than good ones. Quoting this as if it absolutely demonstrated bad faith or misconduct is simply a smear.

Pearce then accuses Cook of some unjustified quid-pro-quo because he wanted to use some of Briffa’s data to assess the practical implications of a new analysis technique, that Pearce interprets as “attacking his own tree-ring work“. However, this too is a misreading. The work in question has subsequently been revised and the authors themselves have said that the current submission is improved over the initial submission. It goes along with the overall point made above, that pure criticism is not particularly useful – it is much better to demonstrate that some technical point actually matters. This is what Cook appears to be asking for help to demonstrate.

The article then moves on to the issue of the 2003 Soon and Baliunas paper in Climate Research. Pearce nowhere acknowledges that it is (and was) widely regarded as a complete failure of the peer review system. Six (very independent minded) editors resigned from the journal because of the publisher’s inaction on tightening up peer review standards and even the publisher himself declared that the paper’s conclusions were not supported by the data or analysis of the authors. Is this not germane?

Pearce suggests that the reaction to the demonstrably low standards at Climate Research involved “improper pressure“. This has no validity whatsoever. The suggestion was made that maybe people should not submit work to the journal or cite work that appeared there. But how can a suggestion made among colleagues and not transmitted more widely be ‘pressure’ of any sort? People have their impressions about journals determined by many factors, and if they are seen to be publishing bad papers, that will be noted. Compare the reputations of Science and E&E for instance. Which would you rather be published in if you had a good paper?

The one email that Pearce declares “means what it seems to mean” refers to the declaration (along with exclamation point) that Jones would “redefine peer-review!” rather than include two flawed papers in the AR4 report. But it should be obvious that no-one gets to redefine what ‘peer reviewed’ means, and the exclamation point underlines the fact that this was hyperbole. The two papers referred to (McKitrick and Michaels, 2004; Kalnay and Cai, 2003)) were indeed discussed in Chapter 2 of AR4 as the contributing lead author of that chapter Trenberth rightly pointed out. As an aside neither have stood the test the time.

The problem with lapses in peer review (which will inevitably occur) is that they are sometimes systematic, indicating a more institutional problem instead of simply an unfortunate combination of poor reviewers and a busy editor. This appeared to occur at Geophysical Research Letters over the period 2005-2006. There was a string of bad papers published – ones that did not properly support their conclusions and made basic errors in the science. For instance, Douglass and Knox (2005), Douglass, Patel and Knox (2005), Douglass, Pearson and Singer (2004), Douglass, Pearson, Singer, Knappenberger, and Michaels (2004), and Loáiciga (2006).

Science is indeed a ’self-correcting’ process, but someone has to do that correcting, and scientists do get frustrated when they have to spend weeks dealing with the aftermath of bad papers in the media and putting together the comments that almost every single one of these papers generated. (For amusement and for an example of the lack of standards being talked about, look at the response of Bjornsson et al to the Douglass, Patel and Knox paper).

Are scientists supposed not to notice these patterns? Or never discuss them among colleagues? The implication that the mere discussion of the situation is somehow a corruption of the peer review process is completely unjustified. Peer review only holds the status it does because scientists are on guard against failures in the system and try to correct them when they occur.

Update: Coincidentally, David Adams on the Guardian makes many of the same points as we do.

[Poptech]

No one has provided any evidence to support the claim that 750 pro-AGW papers are published each month. I am the only one who even attempted to do so and is currently the best and only evidence against this claim. Until someone provides evidence to support the claim the statement has no weight and is unsubstantiated.

[Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party]

Nobody claimed 750 pro-AGW papers are published every month.

[heatmiserfl]

@Poptech

This is subjective nonsense and they failed to provide evidence that their subjective criteria did not unfairly remove skeptics from consideration. If they got the same results with 10 they should have used 10 but this is still nonsense and does not demonstrate expertise. Volume or papers published or volume of citations does not demonstrate expertise.
ISI does not index all peer-reviewed journals and uses a subjective inclusion process.
Of course they are controversial, rather meaningless for the reasons I described.
There is no consensus and this paper does not demonstrate one. It demonstrates Google Scholar illiteracy.

1. They used the 20 or 10 cutoff to only include people who did climate research. Most researchers who have their own group will have acquired 20 papers in that field. It’s not an outrageous cutoff.

2. ISI has all the journals in my field. Even someone obscure journals. Me thinks your problem with it is that it only includes legitimate peer-reviewed journals.

3. As I already noted, anyone can start by looking at their citations but people who have been following this for a while are aware of the consensus. Only dishonest ‘skeptics’ try to claim that there is no consensus.

[tomndebb]

@Poptech

No one has provided any evidence to support the claim that 750 pro-AGW papers are published each month. I am the only one who even attempted to do so and is currently the best and only evidence against this claim. Until someone provides evidence to support the claim the statement has no weight and is unsubstantiated.

You know, you have wasted about a third of this thread playing this game of attacking a statement that was never made. This is far too long.

You are now prohibited from discussing any aspect of how many pro-AGW papers are published each month, since you continue to attack that straw man.

Here is the initial exchange. From this you have destroyed most of your own thread:

@Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party

So you can stitch together a list of 750 dubious articles on AGW. So what? About 750 articles on the subject get published on it every few months. It means nothing.

@Poptech

The 101 Google Scholar results for the last six months that I presented was to prove that his statement about 750 papers endorsing AGW getting published each month was false.

[ /Moderating ]

[heatmiserfl]

@DMC

Dude, four of the “peer reviewed” articles that you claim are from our very own intention, and have already been beaten to a bloody pulp. We know that E&E is crap, and we also know what “Brief Communications Arising” means in the journal Nature. Hell, one of his that you listed is just a response to someone else’s review in E&E. You’re really reaching hard.

Oh yes, good ole intention. The construction engineer for a resort operation in Tuvalu. You know, one of the islands that is literally being consumed by rising ocean levels. Come buy resort property on a Pacific island. No global warming here. Nope! Intention is all over the internet. Me thinks intention gets a salary from certain folks to do what he does.

I remember reading his Brief Communications Arising. These are not research articles. These are comments on research articles. Intention is not a scientist so he would never do a research article.

As I recall, his communication was about one (yes, i said one) graph in a paper on rising temperatures (or something). To remove noise, the authors did a simple linear least squares. This would remove any bias and see the general trend over many years. The genius intention just had to show them. Good golly, he used a moving average to fit the data. Wow! Suddenly, he saw a dip in the temperatures and stated that the rise in temperatures was only temporary. Even eye-balling the moving average, anyone used to looking at data would still see the general upward trend. But not intention. Oh no. He couldn’t stop looking at that dip and he just had to alert the scientific community. This was one graph folks. But, hey, gotta show the controversy.

[Poptech]

@heatmiserfl

1. They used the 20 or 10 cutoff to only include people who did climate research. Most researchers who have their own group will have acquired 20 papers in that field. It’s not an outrageous cutoff.

This is subjective as it is clear you can do climate research by publishing a single paper. A larger volume of papers published does not prove someone has more expertise. The authors intentionally cut off climate researchers who they categorized as skeptics.

@heatmiserfl

2. ISI has all the journals in my field. Even someone obscure journals. Me thinks your problem with it is that it only includes legitimate peer-reviewed journals.

ISI does not index all peer-reviewed journals and their is no objective procedure to determine a “legitimate” peer-reviewed journal.

@heatmiserfl

3. As I already noted, anyone can start by looking at their citations but people who have been following this for a while are aware of the consensus. Only dishonest ‘skeptics’ try to claim that there is no consensus.

Citations are a determination of popularity not scientific validity. There is no consensus and one has never been demonstrated. Only those seeking to push propaganda even mention it.

[Poptech]

@GIGObuster

Of course, but one has to mention several caveats about Fred Pierce:

www.realclimate.org/

Yes of course the alarmist shills at RealClimate cannot have the Guardian - the UK’s bastion of left-wing ideology step out of line. The problem is people are now aware of Fenton Communication’s socket puppet site:

The Truth about RealClimate.org

[Poptech]

@heatmiserfl

I remember reading his Brief Communications Arising. These are not research articles. These are comments on research articles. Intention is not a scientist so he would never do a research article.

Brief Communications are peer-reviewed.