EDITORIAL: Global warming's unscientific methodScience is undermined by scaremongers' abuse of peer-review processFont By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The prophets of global warming continue to lament as their carefully crafted yarn unravels before their eyes. Ross McKitrick, an intrepid economics professor from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, has tugged apart the thin mathematical threads that once held together the story of climate change.

Recent attempts to silence Mr. McKitrick illuminate the extent to which the alarmists have abandoned proper scientific method in their pursuit of political goals.

Mr. McKitrick has spent the past two years attempting to publish a scientific paper that documents a fundamental error in the 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. This U.N. document serves as the sole authority upon which the Environmental Protection Agency based its December "endangerment finding" that will allow unelected bureaucrats to impose cap-and-trade-style regulations without a vote of Congress. The cost to the public in higher gas and energy prices will run in the billions.

One might think that the scientific community would be extra diligent in double-checking the conclusions of a report carrying such weighty real-world consequences. In fact, the opposite happened. Seven scientific journals circled the wagons to block publication of Mr. McKitrick's explosive findings.

The IPCC report argued that temperatures rose one degree Celsius over the course of a century as a direct result of man-made carbon-dioxide emissions. This tiny change in temperature was calculated through the use of an "adjusted" set of global surface-temperature readings. Mr. McKitrick found that factors unrelated to global climate contaminated this data set, resulting in a higher temperature reading. He showed a statistically significant correlation between the change in temperature readings and socioeconomic indicators. It makes sense, for example, that replacing trees and forests with concrete and glass skyscrapers might contribute to the .01 degree annual increase in local temperature readings. This "urban heat island" effect would not be present in readings taken outside the asphalt jungle.

Scientific journals evaluate arguments of this sort using a peer-review process by which purportedly impartial experts in the relevant field verify the paper's accuracy and suitability for publication. By addressing issues raised by reviewers, researchers are able to present an improved and refined final product. In Mr. McKitrick's case, the process appears to have been abused to stifle dissent.

The leading journals Science and Nature both rejected the paper as too specialized and lacking in novelty. The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society did not respond. Reasons given for refusing the paper in other outlets frequently contradicted one another.
One of the famous leaked e-mails from the former head of the Climatic Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia sheds light on what really happens behind the scenes. "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report," professor Phil Jones wrote in reference to a 2004 journal article by Mr. McKitrick. "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

Mr. McKitrick's views were indeed excluded from the IPCC report, but his paper will now be published in a forthcoming edition of Statistics, Politics and Policy. One of that journal's editors told The Washington Times that the submission was treated as "fairly routine." That is to say, they treated it as scientists should.

The soundness of a statistical analysis does not change simply because the numbers point to a truth inconvenient for those seeking to manipulate science to advance political policy. Thanks to the exposure of East Anglia's unscientific method, the public can peer behind the curtains and see that the emperors of warming have no clothes

What to say to a global warming alarmistBy MARK LANDSBAUM
2010-02-12 13:30:12

It has been tough to keep up with all the bad news for global warming alarmists. We're on the edge of our chair, waiting for the next shoe to drop. This has been an Imelda Marcos kind of season for shoe-dropping about global warming.

At your next dinner party, here are some of the latest talking points to bring up when someone reminds you that Al Gore and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won Nobel prizes for their work on global warming.

ClimateGate – This scandal began the latest round of revelations when thousands of leaked documents from Britain's East Anglia Climate Research Unit showed systematic suppression and discrediting of climate skeptics' views and discarding of temperature data, suggesting a bias for making the case for warming. Why do such a thing if, as global warming defenders contend, the "science is settled?"

FOIGate – The British government has since determined someone at East Anglia committed a crime by refusing to release global warming documents sought in 95 Freedom of Information Act requests. The CRU is one of three international agencies compiling global temperature data. If their stuff's so solid, why the secrecy?

ChinaGate – An investigation by the U.K.'s left-leaning Guardian newspaper found evidence that Chinese weather station measurements not only were seriously flawed, but couldn't be located. "Where exactly are 42 weather monitoring stations in remote parts of rural China?" the paper asked. The paper's investigation also couldn't find corroboration of what Chinese scientists turned over to American scientists, leaving unanswered, "how much of the warming seen in recent decades is due to the local effects of spreading cities, rather than global warming?" The Guardian contends that researchers covered up the missing data for years.

HimalayaGate – An Indian climate official admitted in January that, as lead author of the IPCC's Asian report, he intentionally exaggerated when claiming Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035 in order to prod governments into action. This fraudulent claim was not based on scientific research or peer-reviewed. Instead it was originally advanced by a researcher, since hired by a global warming research organization, who later admitted it was "speculation" lifted from a popular magazine. This political, not scientific, motivation at least got some researcher funded.

PachauriGate – Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman who accepted with Al Gore the Nobel Prize for scaring people witless, at first defended the Himalaya melting scenario. Critics, he said, practiced "voodoo science." After the melting-scam perpetrator 'fessed up, Pachauri admitted to making a mistake. But, he insisted, we still should trust him.

PachauriGate II – Pachauri also claimed he didn't know before the 192-nation climate summit meeting in Copenhagen in December that the bogus Himalayan glacier claim was sheer speculation. But the London Times reported that a prominent science journalist said he had pointed out those errors in several e-mails and discussions to Pachauri, who "decided to overlook it." Stonewalling? Cover up? Pachauri says he was "preoccupied." Well, no sense spoiling the Copenhagen party, where countries like Pachauri's India hoped to wrench billions from countries like the United States to combat global warming's melting glaciers. Now there are calls for Pachauri's resignation.

SternGate – One excuse for imposing worldwide climate crackdown has been the U.K.'s 2006 Stern Report, an economic doomsday prediction commissioned by the government. Now the U.K. Telegraph reports that quietly after publication "some of these predictions had been watered down because the scientific evidence on which they were based could not be verified." Among original claims now deleted were that northwest Australia has had stronger typhoons in recent decades, and that southern Australia lost rainfall because of rising ocean temperatures. Exaggerated claims get headlines. Later, news reporters disclose the truth. Why is that?

SternGate II – A researcher now claims the Stern Report misquoted his work to suggest a firm link between global warming and more-frequent and severe floods and hurricanes. Robert Muir-Wood said his original research showed no such link. He accused Stern of "going far beyond what was an acceptable extrapolation of the evidence." We're shocked.

AmazonGate – The London Times exposed another shocker: the IPCC claim that global warming will wipe out rain forests was fraudulent, yet advanced as "peer-reveiwed" science. The Times said the assertion actually "was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise," "authored by two green activists" and lifted from a report from the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental pressure group. The "research" was based on a popular science magazine report that didn't bother to assess rainfall. Instead, it looked at the impact of logging and burning. The original report suggested "up to 40 percent" of Brazilian rain forest was extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall, but the IPCC expanded that to cover the entire Amazon, the Times reported.

Soren lorenson, since you are obviously willing to to accept Lindzen as an authority on the topic, do you now also accept that AGW is real?

Lindzen certainly does.

you're wasting your time Paella, beo always runs away and hides under his rock when confronted with the hard questions like,
is the earth flat.

Quote:


LOL, their claims go against the finding of 99.9% of the worlds science community.
You've always got to have some nutter who believes them though, this forum has two.
Hi beo and soren.

The last time I commented on the petition was because someone else was being attacked by you mob and couldn't supply info in fact he couldn't even name the petition.  hence my last reply P.

Obviously I knew about it.

I still have no idea where you got that quote from...  if only I had as much time to waste. feel free to post the actual topic, I'll then check out the context and perhaps if i go back far enough it may even be the last time I mentioned it which is when I was providing info for the poor sod being attacked.

I have read all the attacks on the petition and the people who supported it. BTW yes, much of the attacks are biased drivel.  Many written by people driven by their political beliefs against whom they see as a political enemy.

Even source watch (a politically biased "forum") could not avoid biased reporting and it purports to be non-political in its deliberations.

So feel free to post the topic and I'll have a look.

Oh and BTW I did start a topic (cant remember what or when) due to that person being attacked so if that is where you got that quote it only backs up what i already stated.

I don't lie P.

Your personal attempts to prove otherwise are pathetic. This isn't a personal issue with me.  Pity you guys are so much like religious zealots out for blood on it.

Seems you posted whilst I was updating mine...  pity eh.

I would have responded to Mozz wouldn't I.

BTW that topic was in response to you lot attacking Tom or someone.

So I told the truth after all.

Gee who'd have thought.

Denialism is very circular in it's nature, and to be fair, they have to be, they have no new arguments, they just have to keep rehashing the old.
Grendel starting the thread back in December last year about the Oregon Petition being evidence that scientists disagree with the AGW theory was just him re-submitting the same old tripe, which he had posted before, and we had gone through the case against it before, more than once.

You see the only argument they have is that the vast majority of the world's scientists are all working together in a secret cabal, which is in cahoots with an other secret cabal, probably lefties, but definitely unsavoury characters who want to impose a NEW WORLD ORDER onto mankind.

All this climategate crap they carry on with, I mean how idiotic do you need to be to actually be impressed by some dunderhead putting "gate" at the end of every word to insinuate a massive political coverup?
Pretty damned idiotic is my assessment of them.

The trouble with these buffoons is that they actually do honest skepticism a massive disservice, because science, and scientists should always be questioning, and re-checking the work of their peers, because that is how we actually make progress, but with these clowns misappropriating, then misconstruing every challenging idea as removing the keystone of the whole scientific consensus is just making scientists want to be less open about their work, which is the last thing we need.

Denialists are a serious problem because they deter open inquiry rather than champion it as they claim.