mantra wrote on Sep 3^rd, 2011 at 5:02pm:


If you have a sore tooth, you see a dentist, not a taxi driver. If you have a burst pipe, you get a plumber, not an astonomer. If you want to know about climate, it's an even more complex field.  

You trust the people who are experts in the field - and don't read The Australian.  

(That's a general comment, Mantra - not directed at you)

He might be qualified, but he's not one of the frontrunners. Apart from that, this latest paper should not have been published because it was so full of errors.

The Editor in Chief of the journal "Remote Sensing" resigned as a result of that gaffe. It's hardly a recommendation given his history with the satellite data.

The only problem muso, is that some of the sceptic scientists ARE experts in their fields......
Roy Spencer IS certainly a qualified and expert climatologist...

muso wrote on Sep 6^th, 2011 at 2:08pm:


It's interesting that the paper wasn't withdrawn.

pjb05 wrote on Sep 6^th, 2011 at 5:58pm:


That's up to "Remote Sensing". If they let publishers choose their own peer reviewers, it doesn't say much for their integrity.  

Dr Spencer will have his rebuttal heard as there is many errors and assumption in Desslers paper and it will be politically interesting to see if Spencer gets fast tracked for his rebuttal paper, as Dessler was fast track with his paper against Spencer.

Conspiracy Dog-whistling about GRL and the New Dessler Paper

Posted on 9 September 2011 by grypo
The new "in press" paper in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) from Andrew Dessler (SkS coverage here and here) has been the subject of many skeptical blogs in the last few days.  Why? Has a major issue been exposed?  Have they put on their skeptical hats and used their minds to take a serious look at the Spencer/Lindzen papers that Dessler finds to be flawed?  Not really (but attempted and already criticized).  It's a bit early for any substantive criticism, so for now, assumptions, speculation, and conspiracy fill that void. According to some, the problem is that the paper was written, reviewed, and accepted too fast!  So instead of light bulbs, we get conspiratorial alarm bells. Let's look at the quotes.

First, from the usual places, Anthony Watts says:

"This paper appears to have been made ready in record time, with a turnaround from submission to acceptance and publication of about six weeks based on the July 26th publication date of the original Spencer and Braswell paper. We should all be so lucky to have expedited peer review service. PeerEx maybe, something like FedEx?"

Mr. McIntyre:

"It does seem to me that it’s been an awful lot easier for Dessler to publish this comment than it is to publish criticisms of Team articles."

And somewhat surprisingly, Roger Pielke Sr. jumps into the fray:

"[T]he paper was received 11 August 2011 and  accepted 29 August 2011. This is some type of record in my experiences as editor, and indicates that the paper was fast tracked.  This is certainly unusual"

Roy Spencer himself chimes in with his own take on the GRL process:

"At this point, it looks quite likely we will be responding to it with our own journal submission… although I doubt we will get the fast-track, red carpet treatment he got."

And

"I hope that GRL will offer us as rapid a turnaround as Dessler got in the peer review process. Feel free to take bets on that."

But is this unusual? Fortunately, GRL publishes the received and accepted dates (as do most publications), so we can use our own skeptical minds to find out.  So, for the papers accepted within a few days of Dessler 2011 -- the average turnaround time from receipt to acceptance:  about 28 days.  How many days for Dessler's?  18 days.  But was Dessler the fastest, even within the last few days?  It turns out Dessler ties Peter Martin Grindrod and Stephen Fawcett at 18 days for their breathlessly awaited paper, "Possible climate-related signals in high-resolution topography of lobate debris aprons in Tempe Terra, Mars"

As for the rest of the papers on the 'Papers in Press' page (as of 9/5/11), one paper had a turnaround time of 9 days, another as high as 70.  The issue even had some real outliers like 2 days and 120 days.  So perhaps Dr. Pielke or Anthony Watts can indicate to GRL an acceptable turnaround time, as to protect themselves from insinuations of changing their editorial process to "fast track" select individual papers?  

As a comparison, perhaps they can use another paper that came out in 2009.  This paper called into question decades of established science about the range of climate sensitivity, critical of Charney from the 70's, Plass from the 50's, and Arrhenius too, from the late 1800's.  The author of that paper:  Richard Lindzen.  How long did it take for Lindzen to get a paper of such monumental import through GRL review and get a response? 28 days. Six more for acceptance after a revision, and published a month later.  

For others, I can't speculate as to the difficulty of getting published in a timely manner without a specific paper, journal, or situation to discuss.  But, one reason that skeptical papers may take longer getting through peer review is that they often challenge work that has been established and validated against measurements and analysis for many decades.

So was Dessler 2011 fast-tracked because it is a "Team" publication of established science? Looking at the numbers, this appears like the least likely explanation and nothing more than a political dog-whistle, or a call to those "skeptics" most willing to believe the vast conspiracies revolving around establishment climate science.  Perhaps since Dessler was already well aware of Spencer's and Lindzen's arguments, he was rather more than prepared to write up the rebuttal soon after the release of Spencer's paper in Remote Sensing.  Or, as Texas State climatologist, John Nielsen-Gammon puts it to Roger Pielke Sr.:

"It didn’t take my colleague Andrew Dessler long to work out a demonstration that Spencer’s new paper is wrong."

In short, there is no evidence to the claim that GRL "fast tracked" this paper due to preferential treatment over other papers, even within the same acceptance window of a few days.  Quite the contrary.  So perhaps the "skeptics" should follow Dessler's example and examine the scientific content of the paper, rather than weaving conspiracy theories

But isn't that the point??
If SB2011 is as 'fatally flawed' as everyone is claiming, it should warrant retraction..

There are of course many, many more papers that are wrong, mistaken and/or ‘bad’ (in the sense defined above) and yet very few retractions occur. I think (rightly) that people feel that the best way to deal with these papers is within the literature itself, and in this case it is happening this week in GRL (Dessler, 2011), and in Remote Sensing in a few months.

astro_surf wrote on Sep 9^th, 2011 at 5:34pm:


Actually I did read it...
And my point remains the same.....If the 'best way' to deal with these papers is within the literature, what was the point of the editor's resignation, other than grandstanding????

If the editor in chief of every publication resigned when a paper was challenged, and then refuted in later studies, there'd be NO editors at any journal.....

Which operative???

Roy Spencer

Roy Spencer is somewhat of a serial mistake scientist.  Over the past 20 years, he has continually tried to show that global warming is either not happening or is not of concern.  The problem is, he has been shown to be wrong time and time again.  He has left it up to others to fix his mistakes.  He has made multiple errors with satellite measurements – in fact, he originally said the earth was getting colder.  After scientists discovered he had made errors, he corrected his work and his new results show the earth is warming.  He also made mistakes with his climate modeling that forced other scientists to write corrections.  In the end, Roy has been forced time and time again to admit his errors.

Spencer doesn’t really view himself as a scientist.  Recently, he stated that he views himself a little like a “legislator,

paid by the taxpayer to minimize government.

”  This is curious as his job is to do science, to provide the public with accurate information and let others handle policy.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Roy_Spencer_quote.htm

Astro, I read almost all of the articles you link.....At very least I scan through the more biased ones, like realclimate.org....

If the paper was retracted then the deniers would be screaming blue bloody murder about being "censored" by "the Team". Much better to let the paper stand for the abomination it is and let it be torn to shreds in the literature. The deniers are looking for a martyr, they'd love to see this paper retracted.

gizmo_2655 wrote on Sep 10^th, 2011 at 1:31pm:


No it doesn't. And you can't you you "every man" schtick here because the everyman isn't the target audience. The target audience is a professional class that understand full well that operatives like Spencer are not a 'side'. The only message here is that the editor knows he is a dupe and that his journal had been played for fools.

unlike those you lot are arguing about.  

YAWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't speak for anyone else but I just like laughing at deniers.

Laughing at them is hardly the most constructive thing to do.