Boston Globe peddling AGW "Truth"

[Poptech]

Bokonon, I note that you reference to E&E which is basically a conspiracy theory newsletter published from a guys basement, not exactly a good start.

Total lie, it is a fully peer-reviewed journal.

Stop stalling and provide your evidence that it was improper for her to look for papers on global climate change.

Answer the question. What is the name of the paper? Or do you not know?

 

[Poptech]

Sixteen years is a heck of a long time in this field. I take it you were working from a list that was in date sequence?

And I have a hundred papers since 2000.

 

[bokonon]

Sixteen years is a heck of a long time in this field. I take it you were working from a list that was in date sequence?

I believe it was. Oreskes chose the original timespan, 1993-2003.

A couple of references from the end of the list are:

Arctic sea ice thickness remained constant during the 1990s
Winsor P
Geophysical Research Letters 28 (6): 1039-1041 Mar 15 2001

This extensive data set shows that there was no trend towards a thinning ice cover during the 1990s. Data from the North Pole shows a slight increase in mean ice thickness, whereas the Beaufort Sea shows a small decrease, none of which are significant.

Expected threats of global climate change on mosquito and tick-borne arbovirus infections of human beings
Chastel C
Bulletin de l Academie Nationale de Medecine 186 (1): 89-101 2002

Global warming [+ 0,5 - 0,6degrees C during the second half of the 20 th century] seems a reality although climatologists did not reach a common agreement on its actual origin, and this phenomenon may still increase along the 21 th century [+ 1,5 to 6degrees C].

 

[lomiller]

Total lie, it is a fully peer-reviewed journal.

One crackpot reviewing the work of another crackpot and certifying it is not what we are talking about when we say peer review.

Here IMO is a good primer on peer review and journals. You should read it and take it to heart but you probabaly won't.

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4050

 

[macdoc]

Geophysical Research Letters 28 (6): 1039-1041 Mar 15 2001
Quote:
This extensive data set shows that there was no trend towards a thinning ice cover during the 1990s. Data from the North Pole shows a slight increase in mean ice thickness, whereas the Beaufort Sea shows a small decrease, none of which are significant.

except that is miles out of date now....multi-year ice has all but disappeared....you are indeed on tin ice trying to defend an absurd position

•••

Chastel C
Bulletin de l Academie Nationale de Medecine 186 (1): 89-101 2002
Quote:
Global warming [+ 0,5 - 0,6degrees C during the second half of the 20 th century] seems a reality although climatologists did not reach a common agreement on its actual origin, and this phenomenon may still increase along the 21 th century [+ 1,5 to 6degrees C].

and his support for the "did not reach agreement on orgin is where"??

Since you want to argue FOR his reliability does that also mean you accept

Global warming [+ 0,5 - 0,6degrees C during the second half of the 20 th century] seems a reality

we're all ears....

 

[bokonon]

except that is miles out of date now....multi-year ice has all but disappeared....you are indeed on tin ice trying to defend an absurd position

I realize you may have difficulty following a train of thought which is longer than a sentence fragment, but try to remember what position I'm addressing here:

Oreskes' paper claimed there was NO dissent from the consensus view of AGW when she examined abstracts of papers from the decade 1993 -2003.

I cited her paper in support of my belief that there WAS in fact such a consensus, and PopTech said it had been debunked by Peiser.

Peiser claimed to have found 34 papers in that range of abstracts which seemed to him to dissent from the AGW consensus.

lomiller said that all but one of those 34 papers had either not doubted the AGW consensus, or had actually affirmed it.

As is my usual practice, I examined the evidence myself.

Each of the references I presented in the post you quoted was offered as evidence that there were other papers which had in fact expressed dissent.

If there are 30 papers out of 900 which express dissent, where Oreskes says there were none, that calls into question the soundness of the analysis which led to HER conclusion.

I did not cite this reference to support a position on arctic ice, as I have not expressed a position on that topic on this forum.

If you would like to discuss arctic ice, or claim that a consensus on AGW has developed subsequent to Oreskes paper, we can do that.

and his support for the "did not reach agreement on orgin is where"??

If it's not in the paper which the abstract describes, perhaps it is only his opinion. Again, the citation is only here to suggest that the consensus Oreskes claimed was not as unanimous as she made it out to be.

Since you want to argue FOR his reliability does that also mean you accept

Global warming [+ 0,5 - 0,6degrees C during the second half of the 20 th century] seems a reality

I wasn't arguing FOR his reliability, simply noting that there was a dissenting view in the abstracts which Oreskes failed to acknowledge.

That said, I accept that there may have been a rise in mean global temperature of 0.5 - 0.6^oC in the second half of the 20th century.

we're all ears....

That would explain the analytic skills...

 

[shadron]

Did Oreskes use the search term "Climate Change" or "Global Climate Change"?

Because the fact is papers exist disputing AGW but not all of them if you use selective search terms. Oreskes clearly tried to imply "no disenting papers existed", when this is the farthest from the truth.

Hmmmmm.... do dissenting papers have a policy of avoiding the word "Global"? Is that a conspiracy? Presuming that her choice of search terms may have limited the number of papers to be looked upon, do you claim that there is some sort of sampling bias at work in the search terms? Enough to overturn the conclusions?

 

[lomiller]

Peiser claimed to have found 34 papers in that range of abstracts which seemed to him to dissent from the AGW consensus.

lomiller said that all but one of those 34 papers had either not doubted the AGW consensus, or had actually affirmed it.

As pointed out, Pieser has since retracted that claim

Studying the regional effects of global warming is an implicit endorsement of the underlying theory regardless the findings. The most you could argue of the paper you cited is that it was indeterminate.

In this case, BTW, newer data has completely disproved the paper in question. Ice thickness data collected by US Navy submarines since the 50’s was released a few years ago and it shows a very pronounced long term thinning of ice in the Artic. This is of course still an aside, the paper doesn’t back your position either way and even the authority you are citing has backed away from claiming it does.

 

[bokonon]

As pointed out, Pieser has since retracted that claim

As pointed out, he has said that some of the 34 papers he cited were ambiguous and should not have been included. And, he has noted that Oreskes limited her search to papers which appeared in the abstracts as "type=article," which is not a restriction that applied to his own search.

So 33 of the 34 papers he cited were not in the list Oreskes was considering, though they WERE in the set of abstracts from which she drew her list.

Peiser still says that only 13 of the 900+ papers which Oreskes claimed affirmed the consensus view actually addressed that view one way or the other, and I have not seen her response to this challenge.

Studying the regional effects of global warming is an implicit endorsement of the underlying theory regardless the findings.

Pure nonsense. There may be an implicit endorsement present in the design of a given study, but to claim that merely gathering and analyzing data is such an endorsement is absurd.

The most you could argue of the paper you cited is that it was indeterminate.

Indeterminate as regards global warming, not as regards affirming the consensus view on AGW.

In this case, BTW, newer data has completely disproved the paper in question. Ice thickness data collected by US Navy submarines since the 50’s was released a few years ago and it shows a very pronounced long term thinning of ice in the Artic. This is of course still an aside, the paper doesn’t back your position either way and even the authority you are citing has backed away from claiming it does.

Fine, as I just explained to macdoc, I have not taken a position on long-term thinning of arctic ice.

 

[macdoc]

I could care less YOUR position which has consistently shown your lack of understanding of geo-systems....

Denying evidence collected is just the height of absurdity when trying to maintain credibility in a science forum....

Data Shows Thinning Arctic Sea Ice

http://www.universetoday.com/2009/04/06/data-shows-thinning-arctic-sea-ice/

note date


Key word

data ...

 

[lomiller]

As pointed out, he has said that some of the 34 papers he cited were ambiguous and should not have been included.

When pressed "some" turned out to be 33 of the 34 with the last one coming from a questionable source.

 

[lomiller]

Bokonon, I find your claim unreasonable. Why on earth would anyone conduct research into how global warming is affecting a specific region if they hold the opinion global warming isn’t occurring at all?

 

[bokonon]

When pressed "some" turned out to be 33 of the 34 with the last one coming from a questionable source.

Not true. Either you are being deliberately deceptive, or you have fallen into the trap set by those who were being deliberately deceptive.

Check your sources. I suspect they're parroting this line:

So how many of the 34 articles does Benny Peiser stand by?

How many really "reject or doubt" the scientific consensus for man-made global warming?

Well when we first contacted him two weeks ago he told us...

"Only [a] few abstracts explicitly reject or doubt the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) consensus which is why I have publicly withdrawn this point of my critique.

— Email from Benny Peiser to Media Watch"

And when we pressed him to provide the names of the articles, he eventually conceded - there was only one.

(Ad Hoc Committee on Global Climate Issues: Annual report, by Gerhard LC and Hanson BM, AAPG Bulletin 84 (4): 466-471 Apr 2000)

You see what they're doing here?

They begin by talking about "34 articles," but they're really talking about the abstracts. And, in those abstracts, only 1 of the 34 papers is tagged as an "article".

They quote Benny Peiser answering a question about the ABSTRACTS -- only a few EXPLICITLY reject the consensus, he says.

Then it's back to talking about ARTICLES, and there is no quote provided. Why? Because they want you to think that Peiser conceded there was only one ABSTRACT which really rejects or doubts the consensus for man-made global warming.

If you read the actual email exchange, you'll see that Peiser's response to MediaWatch is actually:

As I explained above, I included *all* documents (i.e. 1247) whereas Oreskes only used "articles"
It implies that, given this methodology, the 34 articles you found that "reject or doubt the view that human activities are the main drivers of the observed warming over the last 50 years may not have been included in the 928 articles randomly selected by Prof Oreskes. Is this possible?
Yes, that is indeed the case. I only found out after Oreskes confirmed that she had used a different search strategy (see above). Which is why I no longer maintain this particular criticism. In addition, some of the abstracts that I included in the 34 "reject or doubt" category are very ambiguous and should not have been included.

Since only one of the abstracts is tagged as an "article", when he is pressed to "name the articles" he can only cite one. MediaWatch is being disingenuous here, hoping that people will assume that Peiser is conceding that only one of the papers rejects or doubts "the view that human activities are the main drivers of the observed warming over the last 50 years," but he is obviously only being scrupulous about claiming that the other papers are articles.

As I say, when I see people playing these kind of deceptive word games, I know that science isn't driving the discussion. In this case, for MediaWatch, science isn't even in the back seat, it's locked in the trunk, or dragging along behind, chained to the bumper. They're deliberately using "article" and "abstract" as though the terms are interchangeable, when (in this context) they are not.

Bokonon, I find your claim unreasonable. Why on earth would anyone conduct research into how global warming is affecting a specific region if they hold the opinion global warming isn’t occurring at all?

You're begging the question. Someone who is conducting research to quantify the changes in the arctic ice sheet isn't necessarily studying "how global warming is affecting a specific region," they're gathering data. WHAT that data will show can only properly be assessed after the data has been collected.

Scientists spent billions to send robots to Mars to look for water. That doesn't necessarily mean that everyone thought they would find it, just that doing science often means designing experiments and collecting data hoping to learn facts and develop understanding.

 

[lomiller]

I don’t get it, are you trying to say the people challenging climate change avoid "articles" in favor of other publication types?

You find plenty of scientists looking for water on Mars, not so many studying the changes that are occurring on Mars do to water. (Well, you may now. I haven’t been keeping up but I thought significant amounts of water have been discovered on Mars?)

 

[mhaze]

Not true. Either you are being deliberately deceptive, or you have fallen into the trap set by those who were being deliberately deceptive.

Check your sources. I suspect they're parroting this line:




You see what they're doing here?

They begin by talking about "34 articles," but they're really talking about the abstracts. And, in those abstracts, only 1 of the 34 papers is tagged as an "article".

They quote Benny Peiser answering a question about the ABSTRACTS -- only a few EXPLICITLY reject the consensus, he says.

Then it's back to talking about ARTICLES, and there is no quote provided. Why? Because they want you to think that Peiser conceded there was only one ABSTRACT which really rejects or doubts the consensus for man-made global warming.

If you read the actual email exchange,......

Good analysis.

 

[bokonon]

I don’t get it, are you trying to say the people challenging climate change avoid "articles" in favor of other publication types?

Actually, in looking into this more deeply, my analysis is probably incorrect.

I started going through the "gang of 34" listed here, attempting to cross-reference them with the original abstracts archived here.

Many of the items in the list don't seem to be in the archive (I assume the year of publication would determine which of the annual archive pages it would be in), and most of the items which ARE in the archive are tagged as articles.

So, I don't know what Peiser meant when he said here,

As I explained above, I included *all* documents (i.e. 1247) whereas Oreskes only used "articles" (however, there are only 905 abstracts in the ISI databank)

Footnote 5 in the original reference by PopTech said this:

5.) C. M. Ammann et al., for instance, claim to have detected evidence for "close ties between solar variations and surface climate", Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 65:2 (2003): 191-201. While G.C. Reid stresses: "The importance of solar variability as a factor in climate change over the last few decades may have been underestimated in recent studies." Solar forcing of global climate change since the mid-17th century. Climate Change. 37 (2): 391-405.

I checked out that footnote reference at the time, and the Ammann paper looked like this in the abstract:

127. AU Oh, HS
Ammann, CM
Naveau, P
Nychka, D
Otto-Bliesner, BL
TI Multi-resolution time series analysis applied to solar irradiance and
climate reconstructions
SO JOURNAL OF ATMOSPHERIC AND SOLAR-TERRESTRIAL PHYSICS
DE wavelets; time-scale decomposition; sunspot number; solar cycle length;
natural climate variability; external forcing
ID SURFACE-TEMPERATURE; NORTHERN-HEMISPHERE; LOWER STRATOSPHERE; MAUNDER

MINIMUM; SUNSPOT NUMBERS; LAST MILLENNIUM; CYCLE LENGTH; VARIABILITY;

UNCERTAINTIES; SUN

AB A better understanding of natural climate variability is crucial for
global climate change studies and the evaluation of the sensitivity of
the climate system to imposed perturbations. External forcing factors
might contribute substantially to both high and low frequency
variations in climate but a clear separation of their impact from
internally generated fluctuations is difficult. We employ wavelet
decomposition to identify common characteristics in forcing and
climatic time series of the last four centuries. Here, we focus on
solar irradiance variations by applying this statistical method to a
selection of widely used proxy-based reconstructions. Major variability
components are isolated through time-scale decomposition. Two classical
solar modes (85 and 11 years) are not only identified within the
limited time period covered by the solar datasets, but their relative
influences on climate as represented by hemispheric surface temperature
reconstructions are also estimated. While the low-frequency component
shows close ties between solar variations and surface climate, a
relationship between the 11-year sunspot cycle and temperature
reconstructions is more difficult to attribute. However, the
statistical multi-resolution analysis appears to be an ideal tool to
uncover relationships and their changes at different temporal scales
normally hidden by the strong background noise in the climate system.

(C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

JI J. Atmos. Sol.-Terr. Phys.

PD JAN

PY 2003

VL 65

IS 2

while the Reid paper's abstract looked like this:

12. AU Reid, GC
TI Solar forcing of global climate change since the mid-17th century
SO CLIMATIC CHANGE
LA English
DT Article
ID IRRADIANCE VARIATIONS; SURFACE-TEMPERATURE; MAUNDER MINIMUM; ICE-AGE;
LUMINOSITY; CYCLE; MODEL; RECONSTRUCTION; VARIABILITY; NORTHERN
AB Spacecraft measurements of the sun's total irradiance since 1980 have
revealed a long-term variation that is roughly in phase with the
11-year solar cycle. Its origin is uncertain, but may be related to the
overall level of solar magnetic activity as well as to the concurrent
activity on the visible disk. A low-pass Gaussian filtered time series
of the annual sunspot number has been developed as a suitable proxy for
solar magnetic activity that contains a long-term component related to
the average level of activity as well as a short-term component related
to the current phase of the I I-year cycle. This time series is also
assumed to be a proxy for solar total irradiance, and the irradiance is
reconstructed for the period since 1617 based on the estimate from
climatic evidence that global temperatures during the Maunder Minimum
of solar activity, which coincided with one of the coldest periods of
the Little Ice Age, were about 1 degrees C colder than modem
temperatures. This irradiance variation is used as the variable
radiative forcing function in a one-dimensional ocean-climate model,
leading to a reconstruction of global temperatures over the same
period, and to a suggestion that solar forcing and anthropogenic
greenhouse-gas forcing made roughly equal contributions to the rise in
global temperature that took place between 1900 and 1955. The
importance of solar variability as a factor in climate change over the
last few decades may have been underestimated in recent studies.

C1 UNIV COLORADO,COOPERAT INST RES ENVIRONM SCI,CIRES,BOULDER,CO 80309.

RP Reid, GC, NOAA,AERON LAB,325 BROADWAY,BOULDER,CO 80303.

NR 46
TC 41
PU KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBL
PI DORDRECHT
PA SPUIBOULEVARD 50, PO BOX 17, 3300 AA DORDRECHT, NETHERLANDS
SN 0165-0009
J9 CLIMATIC CHANGE
JI Clim. Change
PD OCT
PY 1997
VL 37
IS 2
BP 391
EP 405

There's a "DT ARTICLE" tag in the Reid entry, which is not present in the Ammann entry. I assumed (incorrectly) that this pattern was repeated for the other abstracts, and would explain Peiser's "not an article" comment.

So, apparently I was just blowing smoke. If Peiser really said "only one" article is valid, I can't explain it.

I have literally wasted hours trying to get to the bottom of this, and frankly, it's just not worth that kind of time to me. So to hell with Peiser, and if you want to claim "consensus," you won't get any argument from me.

But "consensus" still doesn't necessarily mean "correct."

 

[Poptech]

if you want to claim "consensus," you won't get any argument from me.

Papers clearly exist and have existed disputing AGW contrary to Oreskes and her search using "global climate change". I have clearly proven that and Pieser's point still stands:

"I have stressed repeatedly, Oreskes entire argument is flawed as the whole ISI data set includes just 13 abstracts (less than 2%) that explicitly endorse what she has called the 'consensus view'. In fact, the vast majority of abstracts do not mention anthropogenic climate change." - Benny Peiser

The whole debate over how many papers exist using confined search terms is irrelevant to papers existing. Oreskes conclusion is propaganda based on omission:

"Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position." - Oreskes

Yes papers do exist that disagree with AGW, except of course if you use selective search terms. As an example this paper exists in her date range:

Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (PDF)
(Climate Research, Vol. 13, Pg. 149–164, October 26 1999)
- Arthur B. Robinson, Zachary W. Robinson, Willie H. Soon, Sallie L. Baliunas

 

[Poptech]

One crackpot reviewing the work of another crackpot and certifying it is not what we are talking about when we say peer review.

One crackpot calling a journal they don't like "crackpot" in a pathetic attempt to discredit it does not make for truth.

Here is a good primer on peer review...

Peer Review and Scientific Consensus (Robert Higgs, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Economics)

 

[BenBurch]

But "consensus" still doesn't necessarily mean "correct."

Agreed! Believe it or not.

I think in this case it does, but if real evidence appears that says otherwise, I change my position faster than you can change your socks.

 

[Poptech]

There is not "consensus" on AGW

Hmmmmm.... do dissenting papers have a policy of avoiding the word "Global"? Is that a conspiracy? Presuming that her choice of search terms may have limited the number of papers to be looked upon, do you claim that there is some sort of sampling bias at work in the search terms? Enough to overturn the conclusions?

You obviously have no remote understanding of searching electronic documents. Depending on the search engine and search parameters using quotes could mean the exact phrase and not evidence that papers not included in the results did not include the word "global" (I checked and papers disputing AGW exist that include that word) - all of which is irrelevant. Oreskes paper is worthless as it's conclusion is based on omission. Papers clearly exist in her date range disputing AGW, yet her paper is constantly used as propaganda that none exist or existed. That is a lie.

"Oreskes entire argument is flawed as the whole ISI data set includes just 13 abstracts (less than 2%) that explicitly endorse what she has called the 'consensus view"

Other studies have been done providing further evidence refuting her lies.

Scientific Consensus on Climate Change? (PDF)
(Energy & Environment, Volume 19, Number 2, pp. 281-286, March 2008)
- Klaus-Martin Schulte

Fear of anthropogenic “global warming” can adversely affect patients’ well-being. Accordingly, the state of the scientific consensus about climate change was studied by a review of the 539 papers on “global climate change” found on the Web of Science database from January 2004 to mid-February 2007, updating research by Oreskes, who had reported that between 1993 and 2003 none of 928 scientific papers on “global climate change” had rejected the consensus that more than half of the warming of the past 50 years was likely to have been anthropogenic. In the present review, 31 papers (6% of the sample) explicitly or implicitly reject the consensus. Though Oreskes said that 75% of the papers in her former sample endorsed the consensus, fewer than half now endorse it. Only 7% do so explicitly. Only one paper refers to “catastrophic” climate change, but without offering evidence. There appears to be little evidence in the learned journals to justify the climate-change alarm that now harms patients.

Conclusion = There is not "consensus" on AGW.