Von Storch climate res jrnl

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NO MERRI

SEE MAIN CLI RES JRNL S&B

note color below

see pause hiatus BS

9/13

ipcc lead author?

SEE PIELKE

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beatrix alt rt afd?

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bray ~ 97%

https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2016/12/14/fact-checking-the-97-consensus-on-anthropogenic-climate-change/

no graf lnx

Dec 14, 2016

Fact Checking The Claim Of 97% Consensus On Anthropogenic Climate Change

University ofHouston Energy Fellows

Energy

We are thought leaders in energy from the University of Houston.

POST WRITTEN BY

Earl J. Ritchie, Lecturer, Department of Construction Management

This article is more than 5 years old.

The claim that there is a 97% consensus among scientists that humans are the cause of global warming is widely made in climate change literature and by political figures. It has been heavily publicized, often in the form of pie charts, as illustrated by this figure from the Consensus Project.

(Graph by The Consensus Project)

The 97% figure has been disputed and vigorously defended, with emotional arguments and counterarguments published in a number of papers. Although the degree of consensus is only one of several arguments for anthropogenic climate change – the statements of professional societies and evidence presented in reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are others – there is data to suggest that support is lower. In this post, I attempt to determine whether the 97% consensus is fact or fiction.

The 97% number was popularized by two articles, the first by Naomi Oreskes, now Professor of Science History and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University, and the second by a group of authors led by John Cook, the Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at The University of Queensland. Both papers were based on analyses of earlier publications. Other analyses and surveys arrive at different, often lower, numbers depending in part on how support for the concept was defined and on the population surveyed.

This public discussion was started by Oreskes’ brief 2004 article, which included an analysis of 928 papers containing the keywords “global climate change.” The article says “none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position” of anthropogenic global warming. Although this article makes no claim to a specific number, it is routinely described as indicating 100% agreement and used as support for the 97% figure.

In a 2007 book chapter, Oreskes infers that the lack of expressed dissent “demonstrates that any remaining professional dissent is now exceedingly minor.” The chapter revealed that there were about 235 papers in the 2004 article, or 25%, that endorsed the position. An additional 50% were interpreted to have implicitly endorsed, primarily on the basis that they discussed evaluation of impacts. Authors addressing impacts might believe that the Earth is warming without believing it is anthropogenic. In the article, Oreskes said some authors she counted "might believe that current climate change is natural." It is impossible to tell from this analysis how many actually believed it. On that basis, I find that this study does not support the 97% number.

The most influential and most debated article was the 2013 paper by Cook,et al., which popularized the 97% figure. The authors used methodology similar to Oreskes but based their analysis on abstracts rather than full content. I do not intend to reopen the debate over this paper. Instead, let’s consider it along with some of the numerous other surveys available.

Reviews of published surveys were published in 2016 by Cook and his collaborators and by Richard S. J. Tol, Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex.The 2016 Cook paper, which reviews 14 published analyses and includes among its authors Oreskes and several authors of the papers shown in the chart below, concludes that the scientific consensus “is robust, with a range of 90%–100% depending on the exact question, timing and sampling methodology.” The chart shows the post-2000 opinions summarized in Table 1 of the paper. Dates given are those of the survey, not the publication date. I’ve added a 2016 survey of meteorologists from George Mason University and omitted the Oreskes article.

The classification of publishing and non-publishing is that used by Cook and his collaborators. These categories are intended to be measures of how active the scientists in the sample analyzed have been in writing peer-reviewed articles on climate change. Because of different methodology, that information is not available in all of the surveys. The categorization should be considered an approximation. The chart shows that over half the surveys in the publishing category and all the surveys in the non-publishing category are below 97%.

Scientists Opinions of Human-Caused Global Warming

(Graph by IOPScience)

Cook is careful to describe his 2013 study results as being based on “climate experts.” Political figures and the popular press are not so careful. President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have repeatedly characterized it as 97% of scientists. Kerry has gone so far as to say that “97 percent of peer-reviewed climate studies confirm that climate change is happening and that human activity is largely responsible.” This is patently wrong, since the Cook study and others showed that the majority of papers take no position. One does not expect nuance in political speeches, and the authors of scientific papers cannot be held responsible for the statements of politicians and the media.

Given these results, it is clear that support among scientists for human-caused climate change is below 97%. Most studies including specialties other than climatologists find support in the range of 80% to 90%. The 97% consensus of scientists, when used without limitation to climate scientists, is false.

In the strict sense, the 97% consensus is false, even when limited to climate scientists. The 2016 Cook review found the consensus to be “shared by 90%–100% of publishing climate scientists.”One survey found it to be 84%.Continuing to claim 97% support is deceptive. I find the 97% consensus of climate scientists to be overstated.

An important consideration in this discussion is that we are attempting to define a single number to represent a range of opinions which have many nuances. To begin with, as Oreskes says, “often it is challenging to determine exactly what the authors of the paper[s] do think about global climate change.” In addition, published surveys vary in methodology. They do not ask the same questions in the same format, are collected by different sampling methods, and are rated by different individuals who may have biases. These issues are much discussed in the literature on climate change, including in the articles discussed here.

The range of opinions and the many factors affecting belief in anthropogenic climate change cannot be covered here. The variety of opinion can be illustrated by one graph from the 2013 repeat of the Bray and von Storch survey showing the degree of belief that recent or future climate change is due to or will be caused by human activity. A value of 1 indicates not convinced and a value of 7 is very much convinced. The top three values add to 81%, roughly in the range of several other surveys.

A survey of the perceptions of climate scientists 2013 (Graph by DennisBray & Hans von Storch)

Even though belief is clearly below 97%, support over 80% is strong consensus. Would a lower level of consensus convince anyone concerned about anthropogenic global warming to abandon their views and advocate unrestricted burning of fossil fuels? I think not. Even the 2016 Cook paper says “From a broader perspective, it doesn’t matter if the consensus number is 90% or 100%.”

Despite the difficulty in defining a precise number and the opinion that the exact number is not important, 97% continues to be widely publicized and defended. One might ask why 97% is important.Perhaps it’s because 97% has marketing value. It sounds precise and says that only 3% disagree. By implication, that small number who disagree must be out of the mainstream: cranks, chronic naysayers, or shills of the fossil fuel industry. They are frequently described as a “tiny minority.” It’s not as easy to discount dissenters if the number is 10 or 15 percent.

The conclusions of the IPCC are the other most often cited support for anthropogenic climate change. These conclusions are consensus results of a committee with thousands of contributors. Although this is often viewed as a monolithic conclusion, the nature of committee processes makes it virtually certain that there are varying degrees of agreement, similar to what was shown in the Bray and von Storch survey. The Union of Concerned Scientists says of the IPCC process “it would be clearly unrealistic to aim for unanimous agreement on every aspect of the report.” Perhaps this is a subject for another day.

Earl J. Ritchie is a retired energy executive and teaches a course on the oil and gas industry at the University of Houston. He has 35 years’ experience in the industry. He started as a geophysicist with Mobil Oil and subsequently worked in a variety of management and technical positions with several independent exploration and production companies. Ritchie retired as Vice President and General Manager of the offshore division of EOG Resources in 2007. Prior to his experience in the oil industry, he served at the US Air Force Special Weapons Center, providing geologic and geophysical support to nuclear research activities.

Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website.

University of Houston Energy Fellows

We represent University of Houston students and faculty, appointed as UH Energy Fellows from across the energy-related colleges to ensure the subject is covered from a wide array of viewpoints as we seek to engage the public, other thought leaders and policymakers in a national conversation about energy. The University offers expertise in a range of energy-related areas,including international natural resource law and development, research into the science, engineering, economics, logistics and policy surrounding hydraulic fracturing and unconventional resources, offshore drilling,alternative energy, sustainability and energy conservation. In addition, UH offers the nation’sfirst subsea engineering program, a minor in Energy and Sustainabilityand is a research powerhouse with two energy related federally funded national research centers - one researching high-temperature superconductivity and electric energy storage and one concerned with the sustainable and safe development of energy resources in the Gulf of Mexico. Read Less

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mashey 2012

p141

Z.2005.06-14James M. Taylor heartland

Survey Shows Climatologists Are Split on Global Warming

Alarmist “consensus” does not exist

A survey of climatologists from more than 20 nations has revealed scientists

are evenly split on whether humans are responsible for changes in global

climate. Meme-03

The findings refute699 a widely reported study by a California “Gender and

Science” professor700 who claimed that, based on her personal examination of

928 scientific papers on the issue, every single one reached the conclusion that

global warming is real and primarily caused by humans.

Professor Claims Scientific Unanimity701

In December 2004, Dr. Naomi Oreskes of the University of California at San

Diego received widespread media attention for claiming her review of scientific

literature showed scientists were in unanimous agreement that global warming is

occurring and is being caused primarily by humans.

In an article titled “Undeniable Global Warming,” Oreskes wrote in the

December 26 Washington Post, “There is a scientific consensus on the fact that

Earth’s climate is heating up and human activities are part of the reason. We

need to stop repeating nonsense about the uncertainty of global warming and

start talking seriously about the right approach to address it.”

Climatologists Dispute Oreskes

The May 1 London Telegraph, however, noted Oreskes’ “unequivocal

conclusions immediately raised suspicions among other academics, who knew of

many papers that dissented from the pro-global warming line.” The newspaper

reported thatDr. Benny Peiser, a senior lecturer in the science faculty at

Liverpool John Moores University, “decided to conduct his own analysis of the

same set of 1,000 documents [cited by Oreskes]—and concluded that only one

third backed the consensus view, while only 1 percent did so explicitly.”702

---

notes

699 No, neither Peiser nor Bray did that.

700 Taylor denigrated an award-winning scholar and then relied on Peiser. Oreskes

was an exploration geologist before her Stanford PhD in geosciences and science

history and is Professor of History and Science Studies at UCSD.

history.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/oreskes-naomi.html

Calling her a Professor of “Gender and Science” is an obvious, purposeful attempt

to attack her credibility with the E&CN audience.” When she has spoken at

Stanford, members of the National Academy of Sciences take time to hear her.

701 Consensus is not unanimity and she did not claim the latter. She knows better.

Taylor tries to conflate the study with views of scientists, who have a strong

consensus, but no unanimity.

702 Peiser was a social (sports) anthropologist at a low-ranked UK school.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Peiser

---

The London Times then reported on Professor Dennis Bray, of Germany’s

GKSS National Research Centre.Bray surveyed hundreds of international

climate scientists, asking the question, “To what extent do you agree or disagree

that climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes?” Bray received

530 responses from climatologists in 27 different countries.

With a value of 1 indicating “strongly agree” and a value of 7 indicating

“strongly disagree,” Bray reported the average of the 530 responses was 3.62,

almost right down the middle. More climatologists “strongly disagreed” than

“strongly agreed” that climate change is mostly attributable to humans.

“The results, i.e. the mean of 3.62, seem to suggest that consensus is not all that

strong,” Bray reported in his findings. “Results of surveys of climate scientists

themselves indicate the possibility that Oreskes’ conclusion is not as obvious as

stated.”703

Journals Swayed by Politics

Lorne Gunter, a columnist for the Canadian journal National Post, was more

blunt in his assessment of the survey.704

“It’s a long way from a consensus backing the most extreme global warming

scenarios, as environmentalists and UN officials would have us believe,”

observed Gunter.

“Interestingly but hardly surprisingly, Dr. Bray has had trouble getting his

findings published. Science magazine turned down even a letter-to-the-editor

from him,” Gunter added. “That’s doubly galling because back in December...

---

notes

His study got whittled down to nothing, as he was finally forced to admit.

“Peiser says he withdrew his criticism in March this year.”(2006) --Media Watch.

“Peiser obviously doesn’t know the difference between consensus and uncertainty,

between different kinds of uncertainty, or between research on climate and

research on climate policy.” - Sylvia Tognetti.

notes:

www.desmogblog.com/skeptics-journal-publishes-plagiarized-paper pp.7-8.

703 Even professional poll designers make errors, and Bray and von Storch were

not professionals.See comm.stanford.edu/faculty/krosnick for studies.

The 2003 Bray/von Storch survey was not well designed: the question was

ambiguous and the online poll arrangement allowed for gaming.

www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/a-statistical-analysis-of-theconsensus

I think they did a better job in August 2008:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

‘To the question "How convinced are you that most of recent or near future

climate change is, or will be, a result of anthropogenic causes?" the responses were

34.6% very much agree, 48.9% agreeing to a large extent, 15.1% to a small extent,

and 1.35% not agreeing at all.”’

704 Why does Lorne Gunter’s opinion matter? He is no scientist, but he has a long

history of opinions, www.desmogblog.com/search/node/lorne%20gunter .

---

...Science didn’t hesitate for a second to print a discreditable paper by Dr. Naomi

Oreskes of UC San Diego in which she claimed that in her analysis of 928

abstracts from peer-reviewed climate research papers, ‘Remarkably, none of the

papers disagreed with the consensus position.’” Concluded Gunter, “Actually,

were Dr. Oreskes’ assertion of unanimity true, it might only prove how totally

co-opted the peer journals have become by enviro group-think and how willing

they are to censor dissenting views in an effort to preserve and polish the notion

of worldwide scientific consensus.”

This was a direct and false attack on Oreskes. IRS-3E

---

oxford ency

Hans von Storchis a director of the Institute for Coastal Research of the Helmholtz Center Geesthacht and Professor at the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg. His research interests are coastal climate and impact (wind, storm surges and waves) in recent times and in possible futures, and methodical issues of statistical climatology (such as detection and attribution of anthropogenic climate change, or utility of proxy data). He is also engaged in transdisciplinary research with social and cultural scientists since many years. Hans von Storch has published 17 books, and numerous articles. He is member of the advisory/review boards of Journal of Climate, Environmental Science and Policy and Meteorologische Zeitschrift, Oceanologia, the “Papers on Global Change, IGBP”, WIREs Climate Change, Annals of Geophysics, the Romanian Journal of Meteorology, and organizor of the HZG School on Environmental Research, and correspondant of the Atmospheric Sciences Section of AGU Newsletter.

---

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soon_and_Baliunas_controversy

6 eds resigned, incl main

oreskes:

In 2003, Soon and Baliunas published an article, partly funded by the American Petroleum Institute, in a small journal called Climate Research. Presenting a review of existing literature rather than new research, the two concluded “the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium.” They had, in effect, challenged both Mann and the IPCC, and in so doing presented global warming skeptics with a cause to rally around.

Another version of the paper was quickly published with three additional authors: David Legates of the University of Delaware, and longtime skeptics Craig and Sherwood Idso of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change in Tempe, Arizona. All have ExxonMobil connections: the Idsos received $40,000 from ExxonMobil for their center in the year the study was published, while Legates is an adjunct scholar at the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis (which got $205,000 between 2000 and 2003).

Calling the paper “a powerful new work of science” that would “shiver the timbers of the adrift Chicken Little crowd,” Senator Inhofe devoted half of a Senate hearing to it, bringing in both Soon and Legates to testify against Mann. The day before, Hans Von Storch, the editor-in-chief of Climate Research—where the Soon and Baliunas paper originally appeared—resigned to protest deficiencies in the review process that led to its publication; two editors soon joined him. Von Storch later told the Chronicle of Higher Education that climate science skeptics “had identified Climate Research as a journal where some editors were not as rigorous in the review process as is otherwise common.” Meanwhile, Mann and 12 other leading climate scientists wrote a blistering critique of Soon and Baliunas’ paper in the American Geophysical Union publication Eos, noting, among other flaws, that they’d used historic precipitation records to reconstruct past temperatures—an approach Mann told Congress was “fundamentally unsound.”

---

2003 bogus paper allowed B43 pivot?

guardian.com/environment/2010/feb/02/hacked-climate-emails-flaws-peer-review

guard uk no links

...The head of the CRU, Professor Phil Jones, as a top expert in his field, was regularly asked to review papers and he sometimes wrote critical reviews that may have had the effect of blackballing papers criticising his work.

Here is how it worked in one case.

A key component in the story of 20th-century warming is data from sparse weather stations in Siberia. This huge area appears to have seen exceptional warming of up to 2C in the past century. But in such a remote region, actual data is sparse. So how reliable is that data, and do scientists interpret it correctly?

In March 2004, Jones wrote to Professor Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, saying that he had "recently rejected two papers [one for the Journal of Geophysical Research and one for Geophysical Research Letters] from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised".

He did not specify which papers he had reviewed, nor what his grounds for rejecting them were. But the Guardian has established that one was probably from Lars Kamel a Swedish astrophysicist formerly of the University of Uppsala. It is the only paper published on the topic in the journal that year.

Kamel analysed the temperature records from weather stations in part of southern Siberia, around Lake Baikal. He claimed to find much less warming than Jones, despite analysing much the same data.

Kamel told the Guardian: "Siberia is a test case, because it is supposed to be the land area with most warming in the 20th century." The finding sounded important, but his paper was rejected by Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) that year.

Kamel was leaving academic science and never tried to publish it elsewhere. But the draft seen by the Guardian asserts that the difference between his findings on Siberia temperatures and that of Jones is "probably because the CRU compilation contains too little correction for urban warming." He does not, however, justify that conclusion with any data or analysis. Kamel says he no longer has a copy of the anonymous referee judgments on the paper, so we don't know why it was rejected. The paper could be criticised for being slight and for not revealing details about its methods of analysis. A reviewer such as Jones would certainly have been aware of Kamel's views about mainstream climate research, which he had called "pseudo-science". He would also have known that its publication in a journal like GRL would have attracted the attention of professional climate sceptics. Nonetheless, the paper raised important questions about the quality of CRU's Siberian data, and was a rare example of someone trying to replicate Jones's analysis. On those grounds alone, some would have recommended its publication.

Kamel's paper admits the discrepancy "does not necessarily mean the CRU surface record for the entire globe is in error". But it argues that the result suggests it "should be checked in more regions and even globally". Jones was not able to comment on the incident.

Critics of Jones such as the prominent sceptical Stephen McIntyre, who runs the Climate Audit blog have long accused him of preventing critical research from having an airing. McIntyre wrote on his web site in December: "CRU's policies of obstructing critical articles in the peer-reviewed literature and withholding data from critics have unfortunately placed issues into play that might otherwise have been settled long ago." He also says obstructing publication undermine claims that all is well in scientific peer review.

Dr Myles Allen, a climate modeller at the University of Oxford and Professor Hans von Storch, a climate scientist at the Institute for Coastal Research, in Geesthacht, Germany signed a joint column in Nature when the email hacking story broke, in which they said that "no grounds have arisen to doubt the validity of the thermometer-based temperature record since it began in about 1850." But that argument is harder to make if such evidence, flawed though it might be, is actively being kept out of the journals.

In another email exchange CRU scientist Dr Keith Briffa initiates what looks like an attempt to have a paper rejected. In June 2003, as an editor of an unnamed journal, Briffa 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. Please."

Stahle is a tree-ring professor from the University of Arkansas. This request appears to subvert the convention that reviewers should be both independent and anonymous.

Cook replied later that day: "OK, today. Promise. Now, something to ask from you." The favour was to provide some data to help Cook review a paper that attacked his own tree-ring work. "If published as is, this paper could really do some damage," he said. "It won't be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically, but it suffers from the classic problem of pointing out theoretical deficiencies, without showing that their improved [inverse regression] method is actually better in a practical sense."

Briffa was unable to comment. Cook told the Guardian: "These emails are from a long time ago and the details are not terribly fresh in my mind."

Jones did not restrict his harsh criticism of papers he saw as flawed to pre-publication reviews. He and Mann also had a reputation for harsh criticism of journals that published papers they disagreed with.

In March 2003, Mann discussed encouraging colleagues to "no longer submit [papers] to, or cite papers in" Climate Research.He was angry about that journal's publication of a series of sceptical papers "that couldn't get published in a reputable journal", according to Mann. His anger at the journal had evidently been building for some time, but was focused in 2003 on a paper published in January that year and written by the Harvard astrophysicists Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas. The pair claimed that Mann's famous hockey stick graph of global temperatures over the past 1,000 years was wrong. After analysing 240 studies of past temperatures from tree rings and other sources, they said "the 20th century is neither the warmest century over the last 1,000 years, nor is it the most extreme". It could have been warmer a thousand years before, they suggested.

Harvard press-released the paper under the headline "20th century climate not so hot", which would have pleased lobbyists against the climate change consensus from the American Petroleum Institute and George C Marshall Institute,both of which had helped pay for the research. Mann told me at the time the paper was "absurd, almost laughable". He said Soon and Baliunas made no attempt in the paper to show whether the warmth they found at different places and times round the world in past eras was contemporaneous in the way current global warming is. If they were just one-off scattered warm events they did not demonstrate any kind of warm era at all. Soon did not respond to Guardian requests to discuss the paper.

The emails show Mann debating with others what he should do. In March 2003, he told Jones: "I believed our only choice was to ignore this paper. They've already achieved what they wanted – the claim of a peer-reviewed paper. There is nothing we can do about that now, but the last thing we want to do is bring attention to this paper"

But Jones told Mann: "I think the sceptics will use this paper to their own ends and it will set [the field of paleoclimate research] back a number of years if it goes unchallenged." He was right. The Soon and Baliunas paper was later read into the Senate record and taken up by the Bush administration, which attempted to get it cited in a report from the Environmental Protection Agency against the wishes of the report's authors.

Persuaded that the paper could not be ignored, Mann assembled a group of colleagues to review it.The group included regular CRU emailers Jones, Dr Keith Briffa, Dr Tom Wigley and Dr Kevin Trenberth. They sent their findings to the journal's editorial board, arguing that Soon's study was little more than anecdote. It had cherry-picked data showing warm periods in different places over several centuries and had provided no evidence that they demonstrated any overall warming of the kind seen in the 20th century.

The emails reveal that when the journal failed to disown the paper, the scientists figured a "coup" had taken place, and that one editor in particular, a New Zealander called Chris de Freitas, was fast-tracking sceptical papers on to its pages. Mann saw an irony in what had happened. "This was the danger of always criticising the sceptics for not publishing in the peer-reviewed literature. Obviously, they found a solution to that – take over a journal." But Mann had a solution. "I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues … to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board."

Was this improper pressure? Bloggers responding to the leaking of these emails believe so. Mann denies wanting to "stifle legitimate sceptical views". He maintains that he merely wanted to uphold scientific standards. "Please understand the context of this," he told the Guardian after the scandal broke. "This was in response to a very specific, particularly egregious incident in which one editor of the journal was letting in a paper that clearly did not meet the standards of quality for the journal."

Naturally de Freitas defends his actions during the incident. "I was never ever found to have done anything wrong, even in the rumpus over the Soon and Baliunas paper. All accusations against me were fully investigated and my performance as editor of this journal was shown to be flawless."

But many on the 10-man editorial board agreed with Mann. There was a revolt. Their chief editor von Storch wrote an editorial saying the Soon paper shouldn't have appeared because of "severe methodological flaws". After their publisher Otto Kinne refused to publish the editorial, von Storch and four other board members resigned in protest. Subsequently Kinne himself admitted that publication had been an error and promised to strengthen the peer review process. Mann had won his argument.

Sceptical climatologist and Cato Institute fellow Pat Michaels alleged in the Wall Street Journal in December last year that the resignations by von Storch and his colleagues were a counter-coup initiated by Mann and Jones. This is vehemently denied by von Storch. While one of the editors who resigned was a colleague of Jones at CRU, von Storch had a track record of independence. If anything, he was regarded as a moderate sceptic. Certainly, he had annoyed both mainstream climate scientists and sceptics.

Also writing in the Wall Street Journal in December, he said: "I am in the pocket of neither Exxon nor Greenpeace, and for this I come under fire from both sides – the sceptics and alarmists – who have fiercely opposing views but are otherwise siblings in their methods and contempt ... I left the post [as chief editor of Climate Research] with no outside pressure, because of insufficient quality control on a bad paper – a sceptic's paper, at that."

The bad blood over this paper lingered. A year later, in July 2004, Jones wrote an email to Mann about two papers recently published in Climate Research – the Soon and Baliunas paper and another he identified as by "MM". This was almost certainly a paper from the Canadian economist Ross McKitrick and Michaels that returned to an old sceptics' theme. It claimed to find urbanisation dominating global warming trends on land. Jones called it "garbage".

More damagingly, he added in an email to Mann with the subject line "HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL": "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer review literature is!"

This has, rightly, become one of the most famous of the emails. And for once, it means what it seems to mean. Jones and Trenberth, of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, had recently become joint lead authors for a key chapter in the next IPCC assessment report, called AR4.......

msn bk: early ~ of hockey stick but later recant/defend? "garbage" in german; hidden step

---

S&B BS

https://www.desmog.com/wp-content/uploads/files/Pal-review-by-John-Mashey.pdf

no lnx

Chris de Freitas, Pat Michaels and their pals

John R. Mashey,

JohnMasheyAT yahoo DOT com, 11/29/11

Table of Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Active editors, tenure by received dates 3

3 People X Articles & Activities, Chronological 4

4 People X Organizations 5

5 Social Network of the pals, a few hints 6

6 Conclusion 7

A.1 – Papers from Climate Research8

A.2 –Chris de Freitas, Papers and Other Activities 15

A.3 –Pat Michaels - Publications 18

1 Introduction

Good peer review is crucial, but not sufficient for credible scientific

publishing. It is merely an early hurdle. Even in carefully-run journals,

mistakes occur, to be found later by the broader reviews following

publication of anything interesting. In most fields, real junk is ignored. In

climate, such junk gets widely endlessly publicized, forcing debunking.

For a few years,Climate Research, a generally-credible journal, published

some weak or even awful articles. The journal had no Editor-in-Chief, so

authors sent manuscripts to an Associate Editor of their choice. Each

selected reviewers, handled the whole process and accepted papers with no

further oversight. From 1990 to 1996, CR published zero papers from

any of the following, called pals hereafter: Sallie Baliunas, Robert

Balling, John Christy, Robert Davis, (Chris de Freitas), David Douglass,

Vincent Gray, Sherwood Idso, PJ Knappenberger, Ross McKitrick, Pat

Michaels, Eric Posmentier, Arthur Robinson, Willie Soon, and GerdRainer Weber.

2 Chris de Freitas became an editor and then accepted 14

papers from the pals 1997-2003....[much more]

11/30/11

Von Storch seemed the obvious choice to become Editor-in-Chief, given

his handling of 110 papers. The identities of the reviewers used by de

Freitas are (properly) unknown, but one might wonder:

 Did dubious papers often get reviewed by pals (or their friends)?

 Were there negative reviews by others and how much did they count?

The table on next page shows the authors, their papers and other activities,

chronologically. The varied year-widths here align this table with the next.

The pals arrived with de Freitas, sent him most of their papers and

essentially departed after the von Storch resignation.

The papers are listed in Appendix A.1 and then briefly analyzed.

...People X Articles & Activities, Chronological

The following lists pal authors, plus Fred Singer and the George Marshall

Institute (GMI) as key connectors.Most are extracted from MAS2010

pp.97-102. Activities are listed in the Index and described there in more

detail. Higher numbers show stronger involvement. Pals’ CR articles are

shown in red, with relevant climate anti-science activities in black, roughly

chronologically, although some activities continued over years, so that

participation does not imply a specific year. Singer was a close ally of the

GMI founders, of whom two were on his SEPP board (Naomi Oreskes &

Erik Conway, Merchants of Doubt, 2010.)

Editorial tenures, by visible received dates, are shown in gray.

Most are noted in www.desmogblog.com/global-warming-denier-database

...

4 sallie is hub?!

balling. michaels

4 People X Organizations

This lists the 15 pals plus Fred Singer, a connection for many, and Madhav

Khandekar. Most are extracted from MAS2010 pp.96-102. A few were

not involved enough in the MAS2010 story to be listed there, but were

found in a more inclusive 600-person table. Higher numbers imply

stronger involvement, described p.96. Organizations are described in more

detail and listed in the MAS2010 Index, p.4. Some people have published

real science (a necessity to build any credibility and access to the research

community), but all have shown persistent involvement with organizations

that do climate anti-science, most of which also have tobacco connections.

Almost everyone has been involved with CATO, (GMI) or Heartland,

usually more than one. Baliunas, Balling, Michaels, Soon and Singer each

are listed 9+ times.Knappenberger seems the least involved, but was

Michaels‘ student and has worked for him for decades.

Khandekar arrived at the end of the de Freitas era, so was not included in

the pals group, although he surely knew them well. He did not stay long.

Most pals have been involved in many organizations that do climate

anti-science. The same people appear again and again....

6 Conclusion

When de Freitas became editor, CR was ―open for business‖ and it arrived

quickly from the pals, a group of people who have accumulated a long

history of climate anti-science activities, papers and involvement with

organizations that promote anti-science, not just for climate, but often for

other areas.17

Some papers seemed fine, if not necessarily very important, but some very

dubious papers were accepted. Michaels‘ 7 papers accounted for half of

his entire peer-reviewed production during the period.

When de Freitas left, the flow of papers from pals effectively dried up.

One need know nothing about climate science to see the patterns here.

It is a fine example of lax processes allowing a ―rogue editor‖ to subvert

the normal peer review process. The scientists were not only right to be

worried about CR, but may well have underestimated the extent of the

problem.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to various reviewers and help from DeSmogBlog.

Thanks to CR for giving open access to its older papers.

Most all of all, I thank the legions of scientists who tirelessly do the often

thankless task of peer review and do it well. Most of the articles in CR

seemed reasonable, meaning that editors and reviewers did much work on

other people‘s publications. This case seems a real outlier.

In the Eye of the Storm

SCIENCE • 15 Aug 2003 • Vol 301, Issue 5635 • p. 914 • DOI: 10.1126/science.301.5635.914c

cited by heartland?

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-hans-von-storch-on-problems-with-climate-change-models-a-906721.html

Interview: Hans von Storch on Problems with Climate Change Models

Suche öffnen

Climate Expert von Storch

Why Is Global Warming Stagnating?

Climate experts have long predicted that temperatures would rise in parallel with greenhouse gas emissions. But, for 15 years, they haven't. In a SPIEGEL interview, meteorologist Hans von Storch discusses how this "puzzle" might force scientists to alter what could be "fundamentally wrong" models.

20.06.2013

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Icebergs float in a bay off Ammassalik Island, Greenland. Scientists are puzzled as to why global warming has not risen in parallel with greenhouse gas emissions.

Bild vergrößern

SPIEGEL: Mr. Storch, Germany has recently seen major flooding. Is global warming the culprit?

Storch: I'm not aware of any studies showing that floods happen more often today than in the past. I also just attended a hydrologists' conference in Koblenz, and none of the scientists there described such a finding.

SPIEGEL: But don't climate simulations for Germany's latitudes predict that, as temperatures rise, there will be less, not more, rain in the summers?

Storch: That only appears to be contradictory. We actually do expect there to be less total precipitation during the summer months. But there may be more extreme weather events, in which a great deal of rain falls from the sky within a short span of time. But since there has been only moderate global warming so far, climate change shouldn't be playing a major role in any case yet.

SPIEGEL: Would you say that people no longer reflexively attribute every severe weather event to global warming as much as they once did?

Storch: Yes, my impression is that there is less hysteria over the climate. There are certainly still people who almost ritualistically cry, "Stop thief! Climate change is at fault!" over any natural disaster. But people are now talking much more about the likely causes of flooding, such as land being paved over or the disappearance of natural flood zones -- and that's a good thing.

SPIEGEL: Will the greenhouse effect be an issue in the upcoming German parliamentary elections? Singer Marius Müller-Westernhagen is leading a celebrity initiative calling for the addition of climate protection as a national policy objective in the German constitution.

Storch: It's a strange idea. What state of the Earth's atmosphere do we want to protect, and in what way? And what might happen as a result? Are we going to declare war on China if the country emits too much CO2 into the air and thereby violates our constitution?

SPIEGEL: Yet it was climate researchers, with their apocalyptic warnings, who gave people these ideas in the first place.

Storch: Unfortunately, some scientists behave like preachers, delivering sermons to people. What this approach ignores is the fact that there are many threats in our world that must be weighed against one another. If I'm driving my car and find myself speeding toward an obstacle, I can't simple yank the wheel to the side without first checking to see if I'll instead be driving straight into a crowd of people. Climate researchers cannot and should not take this process of weighing different factors out of the hands of politics and society.

SPIEGEL: Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, outside Berlin, is currently Chancellor Angela Merkel's climate adviser. Why does she need one?

Storch: I've never been chancellor myself. But I do think it would be unwise of Merkel to listen to just a single scientist. Climate research is made up of far too many different voices for that. Personally, though, I don't believe the chancellor has delved deeply into the subject. If she had, she would know that there are other perspectives besides those held by her environmental policy administrators.

SPIEGEL: Just since the turn of the millennium, humanity has emitted another 400 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, yet temperatures haven't risen in nearly 15 years. What can explain this?

Storch: So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break.We're facing a puzzle. Recent CO2 emissions have actually risen even more steeply than we feared. As a result, according to most climate models, we should have seen temperatures rise by around 0.25 degrees Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 10 years. That hasn't happened. In fact, the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) -- a value very close to zero. This is a serious scientific problem that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will have to confront when it presents its next Assessment Report late next year.

SPIEGEL: Do the computer models with which physicists simulate the future climate ever show the sort of long standstill in temperature change that we're observing right now?

Storch: Yes, but only extremely rarely. At my institute, we analyzed how often such a 15-year stagnation in global warming occurred in the simulations. The answer was: in under 2 percent of all the times we ran the simulation. In other words, over 98 percent of forecasts show CO2 emissions as high as we have had in recent years leading to more of a temperature increase.

SPIEGEL: How long will it still be possible to reconcile such a pause in global warming with established climate forecasts?

Storch: If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models. A 20-year pause in global warming does not occur in a single modeled scenario. But even today, we are finding it very difficult to reconcile actual temperature trends with our expectations.

SPIEGEL: What could be wrong with the models?

Storch: There are two conceivable explanations -- and neither is very pleasant for us. The first possibility is that less global warming is occurring than expected because greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have less of an effect than we have assumed. This wouldn't mean that there is no man-made greenhouse effect, but simply that our effect on climate events is not as great as we have believed. The other possibility is that, in our simulations, we have underestimated how much the climate fluctuates owing to natural causes.

SPIEGEL: That sounds quite embarrassing for your profession, if you have to go back and adjust your models to fit with reality…

Storch: Why? That's how the process of scientific discovery works. There is no last word in research, and that includes climate research. It's never the truth that we offer, but only our best possible approximation of reality. But that often gets forgotten in the way the public perceives and describes our work.

SPIEGEL: But it has been climate researchers themselves who have feigned a degree of certainty even though it doesn't actually exist. For example, the IPCC announced with 95 percent certainty that humans contribute to climate change.

Storch: And there are good reasons for that statement. We could no longer explain the considerable rise in global temperatures observed between the early 1970s and the late 1990s with natural causes. My team at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, in Hamburg, was able to provide evidence in 1995 of humans' influence on climate events. Of course, that evidence presupposed that we had correctly assessed the amount of natural climate fluctuation. Now that we have a new development, we may need to make adjustments.

SPIEGEL: In which areas do you need to improve the models?

Storch: Among other things, there is evidence that the oceans have absorbed more heat than we initially calculated. Temperatures at depths greater than 700 meters (2,300 feet) appear to have increased more than ever before. The only unfortunate thing is that our simulations failed to predict this effect.

SPIEGEL: That doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

Storch: Certainly the greatest mistake of climate researchers has been giving the impression that they are declaring the definitive truth. The end result is foolishness along the lines of the climate protection brochures recently published by Germany's Federal Environmental Agency under the title "Sie erwärmt sich doch" ("The Earth is getting warmer"). Pamphlets like that aren't going to convince any skeptics. It's not a bad thing to make mistakes and have to correct them. The only thing that was bad was acting beforehand as if we were infallible. By doing so, we have gambled away the most important asset we have as scientists: the public's trust. We went through something similar with deforestation, too -- and then we didn't hear much about the topic for a long time.

SPIEGEL: Does this throw the entire theory of global warming into doubt?

Storch: I don't believe so. We still have compelling evidence of a man-made greenhouse effect. There is very little doubt about it. But if global warming continues to stagnate, doubts will obviously grow stronger.

SPIEGEL: Do scientists still predict that sea levels will rise?

Storch: In principle, yes. Unfortunately, though, our simulations aren't yet capable of showing whether and how fast ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica will melt -- and that is a very significant factor in how much sea levels will actually rise.For this reason, the IPCC's predictions have been conservative.And, considering the uncertainties, I think this is correct.

SPIEGEL: And how good are the long-term forecasts concerning temperature and precipitation?

Storch: Those are also still difficult. For example, according to the models, the Mediterranean region will grow drier all year round. At the moment, however, there is actually more rain there in the fall months than there used to be. We will need to observe further developments closely in the coming years. Temperature increases are also very much dependent on clouds, which can both amplify and mitigate the greenhouse effect. For as long as I've been working in this field, for over 30 years, there has unfortunately been very little progress made in the simulation of clouds.

SPIEGEL: Despite all these problem areas, do you still believe global warming will continue?

Storch: Yes, we are certainly going to see an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or more-- and by the end of this century, mind you. That's what my instinct tells me, since I don't know exactly how emission levels will develop. Other climate researchers might have a different instinct. Our models certainly include a great number of highly subjective assumptions. Natural science is also a social process, and one far more influenced by the spirit of the times than non-scientists can imagine. You can expect many more surprises.

SPIEGEL: What exactly are politicians supposed to do with such vague predictions?

Storch: Whether it ends up being one, two or three degrees, the exact figure is ultimately not the important thing. Quite apart from our climate simulations, there is a general societal consensus that we should be more conservative with fossil fuels. Also, the more serious effects of climate change won't affect us for at least 30 years [2043 off by 1/2 20 yrs?!]. We have enough time to prepare ourselves.

SPIEGEL: In a SPIEGEL interview 10 years ago, you said, "We need to allay people's fear of climate change." You also said, "We'll manage this." At the time, you were harshly criticized for these comments. Do you still take such a laidback stance toward global warming?

Storch: Yes, I do.I was accused of believing it was unnecessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is not the case. I simply meant that it is no longer possible in any case to completely prevent further warming, and thus it would be wise of us to prepare for the inevitable, for example by building higher ocean dikes. And I have the impression that I'm no longer quite as alone in having this opinion as I was then. The climate debate is no longer an all-or-nothing debate -- except perhaps in the case of colleagues such as a certain employee of Schellnhuber's, whose verbal attacks against anyone who expresses doubt continue to breathe new life into the climate change denial camp.

SPIEGEL: Are there findings related to global warming that worry you?

Storch: The potential acidification of the oceans due to CO2 entering them from the atmosphere. This is a phenomenon that seems sinister to me, perhaps in part because I understand too little about it. But if marine animals are no longer able to form shells and skeletons well, it will affect nutrient cycles in the oceans. And that certainly makes me nervous.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Storch, thank you for this interview.

Interview conducted by Olaf Stampf and Gerald Traufetter

Translated from the German by Ella Ornstein

omg: IPCC chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri

IPCC chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri is pictured next to an unidentified Arab official during a meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

truggling to keep a discredited global warming crisis afloat, United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chair Raj Pachauri this week denied the well-documented plateau in temperatures during the past 15-plus years. Pachauri’s denialism contradicted his own admission earlier this year that there has been a 17-year plateau in global temperatures.

The IPCC is in full damage-control mode after it leaked advance copies of an upcoming Summary for Policymakers to what it assumed would be friendly journalists. The journalists, however, quickly realized the IPCC Summary for Policymakers contained several embarrassing walk-backs from alarmist statements in prior IPCC reports.

Two of the most embarrassing aspects of the Summary for Policymakers are (1) IPCC’s admission that global warming has occurred much slower than IPCC previously forecast and (2) IPCC is unable to explain the ongoing plateau in global temperatures. IPCC computer models have predicted twice as much warming as has occurred in the real world, and virtually none of the IPCC computer models can replicate or account for the recent lack of global warming.

Rather than acknowledge that perhaps IPCC overshot its predictions in past reports, Pachauri doubled down on denialism, claiming there has been no slowdown in the pace of global warming.

“I don’t think there is a slowdown (in the rate of temperature increase),” Pachauri told BBC News Monday

. Pachauri’s astonishing denialism not only undercuts IPCC credibility, it also contradicts his own words earlier this year in an interview with the Australian MURDOCH. “The UN’s climate change chief, Rajendra Pachauri, has acknowledged a 17-year pause in global temperature rises,” the Australian’s Graham Lloyd reported in February after interviewing Pachauri.

While Pachauri and the IPCC bureaucracy double down on denial, some IPCC scientists are acknowledging the scientific truth. IPCC Lead Author Hans von Storch, a climate scientist and professor at the Meteorological Institute at the University of Hamburg, acknowledged the ongoing temperature plateau in a June interview with der Spiegel.

“So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break,” IPCC Lead Author Hans von Storch told der Spiegel in a June 2013 interview. Storch said the IPCC will have tone down its climate models unless warming quickly and rapidly accelerates ”According to most climate models, we should have seen temperatures rise by around 0.25 degrees Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 10 years. That hasn’t happened. In fact, the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) — a value very close to zero,” Storch told der Spiegel. “This is a serious scientific problem that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will have to confront when it presents its next Assessment Report late next year.”

“At my institute, we analyzed how often such a 15-year stagnation in global warming occurred in the simulations. The answer was: in under 2 percent of all the times we ran the simulation. In other words, over 98 percent of forecasts show CO2 emissions as high as we have had in recent years leading to more of a temperature increase,” Storch explained.

A cynic may point out that presenting objective scientific evidence was never the goal of the IPCC and global warming alarmists. Instead, it can be correctly noted, the goal is to scare people into implementing the energy restrictions and wealth redistribution prescribed as a cure for the mythical global warming crisis. As prominent global warming scientist/activistSteven Schneider advised:

“We’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage.So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”

For IPCC chair Raj Pachauri, there is no balance. There is merely denialist propaganda that he hopes will blind people to the fact that global warming has, at a bare minimum, slowed down dramatically during recent years.

The problem for Pachauri and the IPCC is the IPCC’s own scientists, such as Hans von Storch, directly contradict Pachauri’s denialism. And it is not just scientists pointing out Pachaui’s denialism. Even the IPCC’s reliably sympathetic media allies are unwilling to run with Pachauri’s whopper about no recent slowdown in global warming. For example, here are a few recent headlines from some of the most alarmist-friendly media outlets in the world:

“Researching global warming’s pause,” reads a BBC News headline.

“A cooler Pacific may be behind recent pause in global warming,” reads a National Public Radio headline.

“Why has global warming paused?” asks a *Christian Science Monitor* headline.

“What to make of a climate-change plateau,” reads a *New York Times* headline.

“Global warming has ‘paused’ because of natural causes but will continue to rise, scientists claim,” reads a UK*Daily Mail* headline.

To be sure, these reliably activist media outlets are not abandoning their catastrophic global warming agenda, but even they are forced to acknowledge what objective scientific evidence shows and what IPCC chair Raj Pachauri denies; global temperatures have plateaued for more than a decade and there has been, at a bare minimum, a pronounced recent slowdown in global warming.

Raj Pachauri and the IPCC are falling into the same trap that discredited Al Gore. Exaggerating the pace and impacts of global warming may provide some short-term propaganda value, but these tall tales will ultimately backfire. People are not stupid. Al Gore may have brought belief in a global warming crisis to new heights following his Hollywood movie production An Inconvenient Truth, but it took an informed public mere months to discover Al Gore and his global warming whoppers were nothing more than the. Raj Pachauri and the IPCC are foolishly drag racing down the same deceptive path. One cannot watch this propaganda train wreck unfold without expectations that Pachauri will soon offer a mini-pony with every copy of the.

IPCC chair Raj Pachauri may want us to deny objective scientific facts, but the IPCC’s own scientists, the general public and even Pachauri’s reliable media allies know better.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/09/26/as-its-global-warming-narrative-unravels-the-ipcc-is-in-damage-control-mode/

james taylor iccc cites bray and storch rept that sci in doubt;

http://heartland.org/sites/all/modules/custom/heartland_migration/files/pdfs/20732.pdf

desmog; post climategate?

4. “I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal” (from me)

This comment was in response to a very specific incident regarding a paper by Soon and Baliunas published in the journal “Climate Research”.

An editor of the journal, with rather contrarian views on climate change, appeared to several of us to be gaming the system to let through papers that clearly did not meet the standards of quality for the journal.The chief editor (Hans von Storch), and half of the editorial board, resigned in protest of the publication of the paper, after the publisher refused to allow von Storch the opportunity to write an editorial about how the peer review process had failed in this instance.:{ editor note: DeSmogBlog has a :(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}:[full rundown of this story here:{]}:

Please see e.g. this post at RealClimate. (3rd bullet item–see the various links, which lead to letters from chief editor Von Storch, and an article by the journalist Chris Mooney about the incident).

Scientists all choose journals in which we publish and we all recommend to each other and our students which journals they should publish in.

People are free to publish wherever they can and are free to recommend some journals over others.

For an example of this behavior in daily life, people make choices and recommendations all the time in their purchasing habits. It is highly unusual for a chief editor and half of an editorial board to resign and that indicates a journal in turmoil that should possibly be avoided. Similarly, authors are allowed to cite any papers they want, although usually the editor will note incorrect or insufficient citing.

I support the publication of “skeptical” papers that meet the basic standards of scientific quality and merit.

I myself have published scientific work that has been considered by some as representing a skeptical point of view on matters relating to climate change (for example, my work demonstrating the importance of natural oscillations of the climate on multidecadal timescales).

Skepticism in the truest scientific sense of the word is good and is indeed essential to science. Skepticism should not be confused, however, with contrarianism that does not meet the basic standards of scientific inquiry.

oreskes:

In 2003,Soon and Baliunas published an article, partly funded by the American Petroleum Institute, in a small journal called Climate Research. Presenting a review of existing literature rather than new research, the two concluded “the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium.”They had, in effect, challenged both Mann and the IPCC, and in so doing presented global warming skeptics with a cause to rally around. Another version of the paper was quickly published with three additional authors: David Legates of the University of Delaware, and longtime skeptics Craig and Sherwood Idso of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change in Tempe, Arizona. All have ExxonMobil connections: the Idsos received $40,000 from ExxonMobil for their center in the year the study was published, while Legates is an adjunct scholar at the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis (which got $205,000 between 2000 and 2003).

Calling the paper “a powerful new work of science” that would “shiver the timbers of the adrift Chicken Little crowd,” Senator Inhofe devoted half of a Senate hearing to it, bringing in both Soon and Legates to testify against Mann. The day before, Hans Von Storch, the editor-in-chief of Climate Research—where the Soon and Baliunas paper originally appeared—resigned to protest deficiencies in the review process that led to its publication; two editors soon joined him. Von Storch later told the Chronicle of Higher Education that climate science skeptics “had identified Climate Research as a journal where some editors were not as rigorous in the review process as is otherwise common.” Meanwhile, Mann and 12 other leading climate scientists wrote a blistering critique of Soon and Baliunas’ paper in the American Geophysical Union publication Eos, noting, among other flaws, that they’d used historic precipitation records to reconstruct past temperatures—an approach Mann told Congress was “fundamentally unsound.”

resigned after publishing BS

Response of journal editors

On 20 June 2003 the publisher of Climate Research, Otto Kinne, agreed to askde Freitas for copies of the reviewer's evaluations: after studying the response, he advised the editors of his "Conclusions: 1) The reviewers consulted (4 for each ms) by the editor presented detailed, critical and helpful evaluations. 2) The editor properly analyzed the evaluations and requested appropriate revisions. 3) The authors revised their manuscripts accordingly. Summary: Chris de Freitas has done a good and correct job as editor."^[28]

The journal had 10 editors, each acting independently in accepting manuscripts from authors. One of the editors, Clare Goodess, recalled that many of them were "somewhat confused and still very concerned about what had happened". The paper "had apparently gone to four reviewers none of whom had recommended rejection", and "The review process had apparently been correct, but a fundamentally flawed paper had been published." She and Hans von Storch knew of three earlier papers edited by de Freitas where concerns had been raised about the review process.^[22]

To meet the concerns, Kinne introduced a new system where instead of editors acting independently, Hans von Storch would be upgraded from editor to editor in chief as of 1 August 2003.^[22]At first von Storch thought the objections to the Soon and Balunas paper should be presented in a comment which they could consider for publication, but when he saw a preprint of the Eos rebuttal of the paper he decided that "We should say that we have a problem here, that the manuscript was flawed, that the manuscript should not have been published in this way. The problem is that the conclusions are not supported by the evidence presented in the paper."^[12]

On 28 July von Storch drafted an editorial stating that "the review process of CR failed to confront the authors with necessary and legitimate methodological questionswhich should have been addressed in the finally printed paper", and proposing a new system in which all new papers were to be sent to the editor in chief rather than directly to individual editors as previously.^[29] While Kinne agreed that the Soon and Baliunas paper should not have been published as it was, he did not accept von Storch's proposal and wanted prior agreement from all the other editors before von Storch's editorial was published. When von Storch found that some of the other editors thought the Soon and Baliunas paper was acceptable, he "concluded that we have different standards", and suspected that "some of the skeptics had identified Climate Research as a journal where some editors were not as rigorous in the review process as is otherwise common.".^[12][14] He felt that "editors used different scales for judging the validity of an article. Some editors considered the problem of the Soon & Baliunas paper as merely a problem of 'opinion', while it was really a problem of severe methodological flaws. Thus, I decided that I had to disconnect from that journal, which I had served proudly for about 10 years."^[30]

Hans von Storch resigned on the same day, 28 July,^[29] and condemned the journal's review process in his resignation letter: "The review process had utterly failed; important questions have not been asked ... the methodological basis for such a conclusion (that the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climate period of the last millennium) was simply not given."^[31] Clare Goodess also resigned later that day.^[22] ^http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soon_and_Baliunas_controversy

[before retractionwatch?]

wiki

Hans von Storch (born 13 August 1949 in Wyk auf Föhr, Schleswig-Holstein) is a German climate scientist. He is Professor at the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg, and (since 2001) Director of the Institute for Coastal Research at the Helmholtz Research Centre (previously: GKSS Research Center) in Geesthacht, Germany. He is a member of the advisory boards of the journals Journal of Climate and Annals of Geophysics.

Contents

Opinion on global warming

He said that global warming exists:

"Based on the scientific evidence, I am convinced that we are facing anthropogenic climate change brought about by the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere."^[2]

He is also known for an article in Der Spiegel he co-wrote with Nico Stehr, which states that:

"Scientific research faces a crisis because its public figures are overselling the issues to gain attention in a hotly contested market for newsworthy information."^[3]"The alarmists think that climate change is something extremely dangerous, extremely bad and that overselling a little bit, if it serves a good purpose, is not that bad."^[4]

In December 2009, he expressedconcern about the credibility of climate scientists and compared Global Warming alarmism to the German Waldsterben (Forest dieback) hype of the 1980s:^[5]

Research about the forest die back in Germany may serve as an example at the other end of the spectrum. The science of forest damages was in the 1980s heavily politicized, and used as support for a specific preconceived "good" policy of environmental protection. The resulting overselling and dramatization broke down in the 1990s, and news about adverse developments in German forests is now a hard sell in Germany. An observer wrote in 2004: "The damage for the scientists is enormous. Nobody believes them any longer." Of course, the damage was not only limited to the forest researchers, but also to other environmental scientists and politicians as well.

In January 2011, Storch was counted among the100 most influential Germans by the Focus magazine for being a "climate realist".^[6]

Climategate Controversy

Hans von Storch, who also concurs with the mainstream view on global warming,^[7] said that the University of East Anglia (UEA) had "violated a fundamental principle of science" by refusing to share data with other researchers. "They play science as a power game," he said.^[8]

Climate Research controversy

Main article: Soon and Balliunas controversy

In 2003 von Storch was appointed as editor-in-chief of the journal Climate Research (having been on the editorial board since 1994), with effect from 1 August 2003, after a controversial article (Soon and Baliunas 2003^[9]) had raised questions about the decentralised review process (with no editor-in-chief); and the editorial policy of one editor, Chris de Freitas.^[10] Von Storch drafted and circulated an editorial on the new regime, reserving for himself the right to censor manuscripts accepted by the editors, but following the publisher's refusal to publish it unless all editors serving on the board endorsed the new policy, von Storch resigned four days before he was due to start his new position.^[11] Four other editors later followed. Von Storch later told the Chronicle of Higher Education that climate science skeptics “had identified Climate Research as a journal where some editors were not as rigorous in the review process as is otherwise common.”^[12]

Publications and awards

In late 2004 his team published an article in Science that tested multiproxy methods such as those used by Mann, Bradley and Hughes, 1998, often called MBH98,^[13] or Mann and Jones^[14] to obtain the global temperature variations in the past 1000 years. The test showed that the method used in MBH98 would inherently underestimate large variations had they occurred; but has subsequently been challenged: see hockey stick controversy for more detail.

To reach this conclusion, von Storch et al. used a climate model to generate a series of annual temperature maps for the world over the past several centuries. They then added white noise to the proxy data and applied the methods used in MBH98, a variation of principal component analysis, to the computed temperature maps and found that the amount of variation was considerably reduced.^[citation ^needed]

In April 2006, Science published a comment, authored by Wahl and collaborators, asserting errors in the 2004 paper, stating that "their conclusion was based on incorrect implementation of the reconstruction procedure" a mistake with Repercussions;^[15] and a disputing VS Reply. In this reply, VS and his team demonstrated that caveats raised in the Wahl comment did not invalidate their original conclusion. The inadequacy of the MBH98 methodology for climate reconstructions was later independently confirmed in other publications, for instance by Lee, Zwiers and Tsao, 2008^[16] or by Christiansen et al., 2009.^[17]

Von Storch received the IMSC achievement award at the International Meetings on Statistical Climatologyin Edinburgh in 2010, to "recognize his key contributions to statistical downscaling, reconstruction of temperature series, analyses of climatic variability, and detection and attribution of climate change."^[18]

Donald Duck