That is true Ian, and quality journals do not usually publish material outside the expertise of their reviewers. This is why there are mostly very specific guidelines for the material accepted by a journal. You won't find much about nuclear physics in a journal such as the well known IOP publication "Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics", for example, nor about either of these topics in the American Journal "Radio Physics". Other journals accept a wider range of topics such The Canadian Journal of Physics, but this has always been a respected journal. However, I can't say that no "bad" papers have ever been published in these Journals, and it is really up to the readership to sort the grain from the chaff.

When the Climate Commission wrote the ,"THE CRITICAL DECADE", they used the national tidal centre data showing 7.4 mm/year increase. As has been pointed out , that increase has been affected by the land having water pumped out , thus lowering the land level. The graph from www.jcronline.org---Coastal Education and Research Foundation ---Figure 5 shows no increase above 5.5 mm/yr and the largest increase per year at Fremantle of 4/mm/yr The other interest in this graph is the rate of decrease during1920 to 1980. The lowest level was 0.5 mm/yr in 1980.
The problems of the peer review process has not been addressed by the comments so far. Could the authors contribute their thoughts? As to the media indulgence, it seems from my above comment of the climate commission , that the media are not the only ones that get things wrong.Just as the BOM reports of record heat waves in January, they used 700 sites compared to less than 112 in 1972. How do we protect the public from these poorly reported information?

@Jack Heinemann

I disagree with your point. This is not a journal article.The back story here is important to understanding why Parker/Boretti's poor science is getting fast tracked access to certain journals and is being heavily reported in the Murdoch press.

The journal Natural Hazards which has printed some of Parker's junk science is edited by TS Murty who is one of the coauthors of this 2005 article "The Global Warming Debate: A Review of the State of Science" which has as its conclusion

"Our review suggests that the dissenting view offered by the skeptics or opponents of global warming appears substantially more credible than the supporting view put forth by the proponents of global warming."
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/Debate.pdf

Murty is also quoted thus "“This is the biggest scientific hoax being perpetrated on humanity. There is no global warming due to human anthropogenic activities. The atmosphere hasn’t changed much in 280 million years, and there have always been cycles of warming and cooling. The Cretaceous period was the warmest on earth. You could have grown tomatoes at the North Pole,” he says.”
http://web.archive.org/web/20080419015656/http://magazine.carleton.ca/2005_Spring/1535.htm

As Tamino who dissects Parker's junk, notes the paper was received on the 7th August 2012 and accepted on the 10th August 2012.

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/sea-level-rise-along-the-atlantic-coast-of-north-america-north-of-cape-hatteras/

This is a sample quote from Parker's paper

"some other references in the literature to the approximately 60-year cycle are provided by Burton 2012 and a detailed dissection of Sallenger et al. 2012 is provided by Tisdale 2012"

Note that Burton 2012 and Tisdale 2012 are not papers - they are blog posts the latter from denialist web site WUWT !!!!!!

Mike
This back story is relevant.
Tell me, what were the circumstances surrounding the inclusion of the press release from an environmental activist group about the demise of the Himalayan Glaziers in a past IPCC Report. That got past all the esteemed peer reviewers and got published as a peer reviewed paper by the United Nations.
Any back story to that one?

Didn't think so'

Jack Heinemann,

Very well said and I agree with all of your comments.

Years ago, peer review was mainly to ensure that papers met the criteria of field of interest for a journal, met a "reasonable standard" in presenting new results and correctly referenced appropriate earlier publications on a topic. A reasonable scientific approach and dare I say, reasonable presentation was also of concern.

Whether the research was entirely "correct" was left to the future review by those interested in the topic. Those who clammer for "peer review" and complain if there are errors in published papers, appear to me as not having confidence in their own ability to sort the grain from the chaff.

Criticising the personality and perceived intentions of the author is also a more recent development in some areas of science. As far as I can remember, this was not a feature in regard to publications in physics and probably, hopefully, still isn't

Stewart you are right. If the "academics" and the "smart people' in this area were totally consistent in rooting out a lack of rigour or worse on both sides of this issue we would all be less cynical. The desire to tear apart an paper such as this comes initially from your own engrained bias as a scientist. Why not get critical of the papers your refer to as well that got into the IPCC Report unscathed and go completely ignored by the author of this article?

The breathless rejection of this paper by the Climate Scientists Club, aided by the Conversation editorial staff really is a case of "he who doth protest loudest". For example where is the Karoly paper from late last year which was withdrawn after Watts (not a member of the Climate Scientists Club) found him out. Probably still trying to make the data match his model with one of his well known "adjustments".

AGW alarmists on this blog continually moan about skeptics cherry picking data to create gotcha moments that embarrass them, and yet are more guilty of this practice than anyone.

What a copout.

No one is stopping you from contributing an article to the conversation that discusses the poor science in whatever particular journal article you are unhappy with. I look forward to seeing your reasoned article that explains people on both sides of the climate change debate are full of crap.

Of course if you are going to pass on my suggestion (which seems likely given that most skeptics seems to run and hide when you try to get them to justify themselves) perhaps you could at least agree with the author of this article that the paper in question is rubbish.

I mean you did read the bit about how he ignored uncertainties, performed poor fits and make erroneous conclusions that didn't even come from his invalid analysis...I fail 2nd year students for doing things like this, and one wonders how the author of the article in question actually made it through an undergraduate degree in the first place.

Philip, I did not criticise the author's critique of this paper. Read my post.

The only people who get published on this blog are academic staff from universities and that is not me. It then has to run the gauntlet of editorial review from the Conversation people. So an article from me or any questioning skeptic will not happen.

Ken, any actual evidence for that final sentence?

Michael
As a matter of interest.
How many climate change related research papers have you authored?
I have reviewed your web site and cannot tell from the titles of each.
Looking forward to your reply

"It then has to run the gauntlet of editorial review from the Conversation people. So an article from me or any questioning skeptic will not happen."

Are you suggesting a conspiracy theory here? How original.

Felix MacNeil,

As a matter of "statistical" significance, there have been NO articles on The Conversation to my knowledge questioning the claims made by the IPCC regarding temperature increases (or not), sea level rising (or falling), increased or decreased incidence of extreme weather. This is "Unlikely" to arise simply because no one has written such an article.

Thus there is strong empirical evidence that such an article as suggested by Ken Swanson, would not, indeed, be published.

I have followed The Conversation since its inception and have thoroughly enjoyed the cut and thrust of discussion and debate. But let's not kid ourselves that any articles representing a "right of centre" point of view or anything which conveys a single suggestion that the IPCC may have got it wrong, (in spite of their confident claims that warming would continue, that the droughts would continue, which of course has been debunked by none other than the Worlds Climate Itself), have ever seen the light of day. The argument over the sea level rises is a case in point. The sea has risen over the years at varying rates and will continue to do so until the next ice age.

"Thus there is strong empirical evidence that such an article as suggested by Ken Swanson, would not, indeed, be published".

em·pir·i·cal
(m-pîr-kl)
adj.
1.
a. Relying on or derived from observation or experiment.
b. Verifiable or provable by means of observation or experiment.
2. Guided by practical experience and not theory, especially in medicine.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/empirical

So, the evidence you have accumulated will prove well-written, well-researched articles challenging the science that supports the theory of anthropogenic global warming, will be deliberately suppressed by The Conversation.

Please table your data, including examples of such papers and the evidence they have been suppressed. If you cannot do this, it will be reasonable to dismiss your claim as just another conspiracy theory.

Jeez, Doug. Do you mean to say that you have evidence to support the oft asserted claim on the Conversation that "big Oil', the Murdoc press, Heartland et al are part of a global conspiracy to keep us addicted to fossil fuels?

John, I don't believe I have made that claim. Having said that, it would be reasonable to assume that Big Oil wants us to keep burning the stuff. Heartland have acknowledged they have received funding from big oil interests, so one could draw some inference from that, if one wanted to. I have no idea why the Murdoch press is so pro-fossil fuels and anti-global warming science, but surveys of their reporting have shown Murdoch outlets have a marked bias when publishing articles on those topics. Perhaps it is just coincidence?

Doug,I wonder what the results would be if those same 'tests' of impartiality were applied to the left leaning media like the SMH and ABC? My point was that the alarmist side of this discussion tends to be just as culpable as the skeptical side in making claims of conspiracies and media bias.

"Enjoyed the cut and thrust of debate"??

From what I have observed of you, you like to make a post but never return to debate with those who counter your claims. How is that "enjoying the cut and thrust of debate"?

You are just making statements then running away.

"My point was that the alarmist side of this discussion tends to be just as culpable as the skeptical side in making claims of conspiracies and media bias".

John, there may be truth in what you say, however, the admitted links between Big Oil and AGW-denial outfits like Heartland are well known, as are the studies showing Murdoch bias in favour of articles opposing AGW; on the other hand, the skeptic's claim of a world-wide, multidisciplinary conspiracy of scientists going back to the middle of the 1800's seems to have no evidence to support it.

So, you may be correct in claiming both sides make such claims, but only one side seems to have the evidence.

Doug,

Where is the suggestion that scientists have "conspired" back to the 1800s!! The "conspiracy" suggestion which was quite silly, actually arose out of the equally silly claim that 97% of scientists maintained a "consensus" view of global warming.

Part of the concern of those whose views opposed the IPCC proposals, was that contacts with well known climatologists provided no evidence apart from claims that "the models" provided the "science". I spent a lot of time earlier when I first started thinking about global warming seriously - ten years ago - writing to various groups in Australia asking for references to papers demonstrating that increases in CO2 was the cause of significant warming. NONE was able to do so and apart from untested models there appears to be no such literature which is not purely speculative. Papers by Harries et al. for instance, which was sent to me then, claiming that satellite measurements proved changes in OLR have long since lost all credibility. The results seemed reasonable at best to me when I first read it, even though the errors were obviously larger than claimed and even these were larger than the value of the “changes” which were assumed to have been measured. Serious spectroscopists such as Barrett and Hug, have shown many years ago - 1985, and have written much since - that the spectra of CO2 does not lead to increased warming of the magnitude claimed by the IPCC. This work was conveniently ignored by the "consensus" of scientists who clung to the adage: "We believe that most of the warming...." as I quoted in an earlier comment.

It will be interesting to see what comes out of AR6 IPCC, regarding "hind casting". As explained in AR4, sections 8.1.1.1 and 8.1.2.1, they had NOT done any hind casting and were then "about to start testing models by this ....." or words to that effect. That was an admission that the models had not ever been tested against real data before predictions were made from them that there could be an increase in global temperatures from between 1 and 5 degrees C based on the different results from 23 different models, selected on the basis that they all produced what the IPCC described as plausible results. "Plausible" here meant that they all obtained a positive warming effect. Some models showed cooling but were excluded from consideration according to the IPCC tight criteria.

The suggestion of conspiracy, I believe, grew out of the reluctance by climatologists to reveal their information and to take part in public debate but nevertheless to act as advocates for government rather than simply providers of scientific evidence.
John Nicol jonicol18@bigpond.com

John, you cannot be so naïve as to not know that AGW theory has its roots in the discovery of CO₂'s greenhouse gas properties in the mid-1800's. Many who deny AGW start from their incorrect assertion that CO₂ is not a greenhouse gas. I am sure you are not one of them, are you?

You are also aware of the various studies which have indicated a concensus between about 97% of published papers referring to climate change. Of course, you might believe that the people who did that research are part of the same conspiracy, but that would stretch credibility even further.

You are also aware that nearly** every peak scientific body in the world agrees that AGW is real. (**I say 'nearly', because I do not know of any that do not support AGW, but there may be some.) How many need to agree before you admit there is general agreement between them, i.e: concensus?

Climate science is done by a raft of different disciplines: AFAIK, there is no such science as climatology per se. There is a wealth of publicly available data, analysis and source code for various models on the internet. The "reluctance by climatologists to reveal their information and to take part in public debate" is a nonsense, as readers of Skeptical Science http://www.skepticalscience.com are well aware.

The conspiracy meme only exists because so many scientists working the field of climate research are in agreement. Those who have a different view feel their isolation and find it more comfortable to attribute their fringe existence to a vast international, interdisciplinary conspiracy by their peers, rather than to the much simpler explanation that they are just wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

The contributions of Big Oil to Heartland are in their accounts, a few tens of thousands of $ some years in the past decade. But, the funds were applied to projects not linked to climate change, either at all or very directly..
Have a read here :

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/28/the-gleick-tragedy/
There are 10 or so follow-up articles as more became known. The extent of Heartland's income and spending is detailed therein.

Of note is that Peter Gleick "chair of the American Geophysical Union Task Force on Scientific Ethics" admitted to obtaining material by deception and declined to confirm or deny forgery. He sent an email under the name "Heartland Insider" to Heartland HQ asking a secretary for recent meeting notes and received them. He might yet face criminal charges; he is under investigation as I write (plus or minus a few hours).

There was nothing unusual in the material obtained by deception that links Heartland to Big Oil in climate programs. OTOH, it is well documented that BP and Shell in particular have spent hundreds of millions a year supporting NGOs of a particular bent. You have the story the wrong way round, Doug, substituting villains for goodies.

Makes you want to go and wash your hands.

Doug Hutchinson
Few if any who seriously consider the Green House Effect (GHE) as being over stated by the IPCC, deny that CO2 is a green house gas (GHG) and certainly no scientists would ever make that suggestion. Arguments as to whether the effect is the same as the main isolating process which dominates for a glass house are totally irrelevant – term “green house gas” is well documented and well understood.

I might use your own phrase here and suggest that you Doug, cannot be so naive as to believe that the Green House Effect, as defined by Tyndall, Fourier and Arrhenius, is the same problem in physics as confronts us today.

Their work was carried out long before the availability of sufficiently high resolution spectroscopy to understand the details of the absorption profiles of CO2 and other GHG bands, but was dependent on the broad process of infra red absorption which yes, causes the earth to be warmer than the “uniform temperature, equilibrium value” of 255 K. Most of the 33 K difference between this and the accepted 288 K earth surface temperature arises because of warming from evaporation over the ocean (estimated at 60%), cooling of the land surface by wind (20%) with the classical GHE accounting for another 20%.

The GHE is clearly NOT the same problem as the Enhanced Green House Effect (EGHE), which refers to the effect of increases in CO2 whose main absorption bands are already saturated and cannot be the source of increased warming, as accepted by most climatologists and certainly by any who understand anything about the problem and the spectra of CO2. This is the item which is being debated, not the Green House Effect, even though the word “Enhanced” is often or even usually omitted in the discussion.

Some aspects of the underlying physics are similar for the GHE and the EGHE, such as that absorption at any frequency of radiation from the earth by a gas in the atmosphere will cause an increase in the temperature of the air in that vicinity. Other aspects are quite different and are what lead many of us to seriously debate the propositions put by climatologists.
The EGHE, which is the subject addressed correctly by Barrett, (Professor of Chemistry at Imperial College London and internationally recognised authority on infra red spectroscopy) refers to the effect of increases in CO2 on the absorption levels in the weaker parts of the CO2 spectrum which are not yet saturated and for which the radiation of energy to space from these parts of the spectrum in the middle and higher regions of the atmosphere, may cause increases in cooling which completely off set the additional warming.

One must remember, that at top of the clouds, droplets of water radiate to space, almost as effectively as any solid of the same colour and temperature, providing cooling in the mid portions of the atmosphere, and apart from the radiation of energy from the ground, at wavelengths to which the atmosphere is transparent. However, above the cloud level, the only species which can radiate are the few aerosols which get up there and the green house gases. So the green house gases, in this case CO2 which is dominant above the level of water vapour, provide the major cooling of the earth. Thus they not only are responsible for warming the atmosphere and consequently the earth, but also provide a majority of the cooling! This physical fact is not often discussed.
.

I have no interest in conspiracy theories in the course of any debate. I believe that most people are sufficiently independent to follow their own ideas and contribute as individuals. This not to say that the revelations from the CRU emails did not reveal a tendency for the workers at CRU to try to influence very strongly, the editors of journals – Phil Jones’ famous statement that “Keith and I will ensure that this does not get into the IPCC report even if it means redefining peer review” and the clamour to stop McLean et al’s paper being given any attention as well as ensuring that the Editor of JGR lost his job for publishing that “dog”of a paper, which dared to question their analysis of the SOI effects on global temperatures. They also prevented the editors from allowing McLean the customary right of reply to their own foul paper which incorrectly criticised the main part of his paper by claiming quite wrongly, that he had used untrended data when in fact it was clear he had not. (It was quite revealing that the main graph, Figure 7 of McLean’s paper had been submitted incorrectly in the first submission to AGU for JGR, but he quickly withdrew it since it was not the correct figure. The criticism by Jones and others was of the incorrect figure which they had never seen – or shouldn’t have, unless there was some collusion with one of the reviewers or the editor of the JGR). This was not the CRU’s finest hour and all was later revealed in the emails!! But apart from that little episode, no, I don’t believe in conspiracy. However, as I have said else where, it is quite well known that the 97% figure was plucked out of theair and originally referred to a small coterie of published climatologists in the 20 or 30s by number, for whom the figure was quite correct. It somehow morphed into a reference to all climatologists and then to “all scientists”, the latter being quite specious.

It is also quite incorrect to say that every peak scientific body in the world supports AGW. Certainly the Royal Society did come out with a strongly supportive statement sponsored by Sir John Houghton. It was written, according to the RS by "a group led by Sir David Wallace FRS, Treasurer of the Royal Society, and Sir John Houghton FRS, former chair of Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)."

However, a later revolt by many members has brought it back to earth as was the case in the American Physical Society, although there was considerable resistance from the executive of the APS. It is well recognised that many if not most of the 45,000 members and the British Institute of Physics are unhappy with the way a green clique in that organisation has presented the case for the “official” recognition of global warming by the IOP. So no, while I am aware that most bodies, except of course the Russian, Italian and Chinese societies pay lip service to the global warming claims, many of their constituent members are unhappy with that position.

Yes, I agree that there is no such science as climatology – a term which used to be used in arts department geography where studies were made of the ecomomics of regions having different climates and the role that climate played in determining the location of towns, populations and productive activities. Many if not most “climatologists”, certainly in the Australian Climate Units, seem to have a background in geography.

I note also that you say that there is a raft of data, analysis and source code for various models on the net. I accept that and reiterate that such source code is totally meaningless unless tested against real data. The current constant temperature trend is of course one major problem for the models since only a few years ago they were predicting continued and increased warming, little cold weather and snow in the Northern hemisphere and droughts in Australia. Since none of these predictions have come to pass, there seems to be little use in getting very excited about using a “model”. What I am looking for is some individual analysis of the physics of carbon dioxide which clearly refutes the analysis given by spectroscopists and atmospheric physicists and the paleoclimate data from the past which shows clearly that the cooling and warming of the earth is caused by planetary factors and that carbon dioxide concentrations follow the temperature changes, not the other way around.

I would be interested if you could point me directly to publications or clear scientific articles which contradict what I have said here.
John Nicol jonicol18@bigpond.com

John, you said "Few if any who seriously consider the Green House Effect (GHE) as being over stated by the IPCC, deny that CO2 is a green house gas (GHG) and certainly no scientists would ever make that suggestion". I encounter many who disbelieve that increasing CO₂ will lead to increasing temperature.

You refer to "CO2 whose main absorption bands are already saturated and cannot be the source of increased warming". I suggest you read http://www.skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect.htm and follow the links to the original research it references.

You go on to say of Earth's temperature "Most of the 33 K difference between this and the accepted 288 K earth surface temperature arises because of warming from evaporation over the ocean (estimated at 60%), cooling of the land surface by wind (20%) with the classical GHE accounting for another 20%". Sorry, you lost me somewhere. Why does the ocean evaporate? Because of warmth trapped by greenhouse gasses. If the GHE did not operate, we would be living on a snowball, so I don't follow how you can assign only 20% of the elevated temperature to the GHE. Can you link to a paper on that?

Further, you claim "absorption at any frequency of radiation from the earth by a gas in the atmosphere will cause an increase in the temperature of the air in that vicinity". Only if the energised molecule transfers its energy by collision before it re-emits the IR photon. It is the re-emitted IR that creates the global warming problem.

Skipping towards the end of your long and intriguing comment, I find your claim "that the cooling and warming of the earth is caused by planetary factors and that carbon dioxide concentrations follow the temperature changes, not the other way around". This is the nub of your argument, I think, and it is partly true: in the paleo record, the Milankovitch cycles and volcanism have triggered warming and cooling of the planet, with CO₂ operating as a positive feedback to warming (a warmer ocean outgasses CO₂, which contributes to more warming). The difference is that, today, human emissions of greenhouse gasses are causing a warming forcing greater than the net cooling effect of other natural cycles. It is erroneous to think that we can increase levels of CO₂ and CH₄, for example, without a corresponding increase in global temperature. I recommend you look at http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm

In sum, John, "the publications or clear scientific articles which contradict what I have said here" are freely available. Try Google Scholar, or do some serious reading at http://www.skepticalscience.com or any of the many places on the internet where the science is freely discussed and linked to by the scientists actually doing the research. You will find that many of the points you raised are discussed on those sites and you are welcome to join the discussions.

Jack I wasnt speaking against peer review, I was speaking for it. I was saying that too much 'science' today does not go through that process and people are left with a divergent range of claims from supposedly responsible scientists that are often untested and yes, influenced by parties wanting a particular position to be accepted for the benefit of their particular vested interest.

Any seeming criticism I had against peer review, was the recognition that we can only make assessments based upon what we know and what seems to be correct. But there are always who, without sufficient information to back their claims and therefore often tendered, by the scientific community to be derided for proposing various theories, who have then later been vindicated through increased knowledge. Continental drift, Ice age glaciation, modern human out of Africa scenario are just some examples. But the process wasnt wrong, it just rightly required sufficient evidence to justify the claims. Even Einstein's theories are now coming into question in the Quantum and very large areas of the Universe

What I'm concerned about today is that people are being fed a lot of psuedo-science or science untested, because the means to spread a theory around the world is now so much easier. People dont know what to believe because most only know that a 'scientist' said something and therefore it must be right. Peer review is being bypassed in material being presented to the public as fact.

.

Sorry guys that second sentence paragraph 2 came out senseless. It was meant to read 'But there are always those who, without sufficient evidence to back their claims, propose theories that later become proven. But at the time they are often derided for the proposed theory which seems to go accepted proposals, when the evidence is not there to back up their claims. In other words inspired guesses based upon what they already know but not sufficient evidence at the time to prove it.'

Michael
It would also be avoided if the media reported more of the discussion from both sides such as is going on between you and Stewart Franks today. This seldom happens in the media because of journalistic bias on one side or the other. Given what I have seen in the discussion between the two of you today, the Conversation really should invite Stewart Franks to contribute an article on the subject to keep the debate going. I am almost certain that this will not happen in this forum because of its well known AGW alarmist positioning.

Hooray!

Thank goodness, a research scientist who speaks frankly.

Keep it up Jack.

@Jack Heinemann

So Jack I am sure that you will have no objections if anti-vaccination crank Meryl Dorey from the Australian Vaccination Network publishes in a peer-reviewed biology journal.

You can read some of her comments here.
https://theconversation.edu.au/profiles/meryl-dorey-9557

I mean what's the harm? Her "science" will be easily rebutted.

Of course Dorey will dine out on her "published" status indefinitely. The fact that she has been rebutted will be of no consequence in the essentially political campaign against vaccination that she is running.

This is why the climate cranks are keen to be published - not to persuade fellow scientists - but to give credibility to their oped pieces in the Murdoch press.

There is no climate science debate - there is a political debate over climate science being waged in the right-wing climate science denial blogosphere and press.

It is appropriate to call out when the peer reviewed science journals are being gamed to advance an anti-science agenda.

Scratch a climate science denier and you uncover a conspiracy theorist.

Is this some sort of weird "post normal science" schtick you have going here?

Jack, might not part of the solution when journalists aim for 'balance' by simply presenting a representative from each of two 'sides' in a debate be to provide, as far as reasonably possible, some indication of the general weight of opinion among competent/publishing researchers in the field?

You could almost certainly find someone with quite impressive qualifications to argue almost any nonsense. You could also probably find some kind of journal with a superficially impressive title to publish it.

The journalist then sits Dr X (string of post-nominals), as published in the International Journal of Very Important Things, on one side of the desk and Dr Y (string of post-nominals) as published in Nature and Science on the other and let them argue. The vast majority of the punters at home really have no way to tell the worth of the qualifications or publications of two speakers nor (probably) the ability to actually weigh up the technical content of their arguments. Therefore they will tend to favour the apparently most confident debater. There tends to be nothing like a good Marc Morano-esque gish gallop to sound impressive to the folks at home while the real expert is sitting there looking a little foolish because s/he is simply nonplussed by the stream of nonsense and wondering where to begin.

However, what if the journalist were to provide at least some broad background on where the numbers among researchers and/or scientific/professional bodies really lay.

Like peer review, it's not perfect. But if the average punter knew that the CSIRO, the BoM, the Academy of Science, 98% of all scientific papers published, etc. agreed with Dr X and only a tiny handful of researchers with bugger-all publications backed Dr Y, it might make it a bit easier to form a sensible judgement.

Ah, Felix. " the general weight of opinion among competent/publishing researchers " I wonder what that really means. I'll leave it to you to
explain how the "general weight of opinion" should be evaluated.

The beginning of the 20th century marks the science of CO2 that is "now in". The science consensus and all the models are based on it.

At the same time, heavier -than-air flight was known by the overwhelming majority of scientists (consensus) to be impossible. And the fools who thought otherwise were to to be pitied for their weak mindedness. And we know what the local media thought of the Wright brothers.

Peer review has its problems; which may have something to do with the IPCC's decision to use as references in their AR4 of 2007 over 5,500 non-per reviewed items. Among those items are press releases, newspaper and magazine articles, discussion papers, MA and PhD theses, working papers, and advocacy literature published by environmental groups.

Indeed, the IPCC was so pleased with the result - the +5,500 non-peer reviewed references were unmarked and mixed in with the peer-reviewed references so one couldn't tell the difference - that they are going to repeat the exercise for their AR5.

I'm waiting to see what the ski instructor's pamphlet will be offered in support of.

So because you cannot communicate your position and argue it effectively even in the pro AGW media like Fairfax, ABC, and Conversation amongst other blogs, you think it acceptable to shut any dissenting views down or legislate for their control/ suppression. To Jack's point, how do minority views and alternatives ever get off the ground if they are snuffed out by the existing orthodoxy.
And who gets to decide what opinion or who's facts are worthy? The members of the Climate Scientists club? Alarmist bloggers like you? Just look at the debate between Stewart and Michael today in this blog. There is clearly grey in this discussion, but both argued strongly and wanted to prevail in the discussion. What chance would Stewart have of getting a run if he had to confront a raft of alarmists on an editorial board. Equally what chance would Michael have if the opposite was the case.
You say 98% of all papers say one thing. Given the construct of how these get peer reviewed and published (by members of the Climate Scientists Club) this is not surprising (see Jack's point earlier). The Karoly paper last year is a case in point where the members of the Climate Science Club had given it a big tick and waved it through. Karoly only withdrew it after McIntyre called him out. But his mates in the club had approved it. One thing is for sure, the club is going to make sure the science around AGW remains firmly in their control. The problem for them though is that the public has lost interest and is not listening to them any more.

Toby, this is just reductio ad absurdum.

The general weight of opinion can reasonably be evaluated in the kinds of ways I suggested - by the balance of published research papers and the views of relevant scitific and professional bodies. The fact that it is, as I noted, imperfect doesn't mean that it is undefinable or useless.

You can always produce the odd counter-factual like the heavier than air flight, but to do so you have to ignore the thousands of 'alternative' ideas that are either completely looney or turn out to be wrong when the evidence is in. This kind of argument ends up in the same place as the nonsense that quantum physics disproves Newtonian physics, when it simply addds to it and qualifies it in specific circumstances, such as sub-atomic scales.

You missed the main point Felix, publications - peer review - consensus - experts; in the final analysis they are mere piss in the wind.

Science is process . . . Models and hypothesis are useless unless they accord with observation.

Theories that predict that both hot and freezing conditions are caused by CO2 are just more piss in the wind.

"Piss in the wind"...was that a quote from Karl Popper?

If I understand this part of the discussion correctly, we need to make the distinction between scientific research and opinion.

To use Mike Hansen's example of the anti-vaxers, Ms Dorey (who is not trained in any form of science) could present her opinion, but has never done any sort of scientific study. If any scientific journal were to give the space to her for an "opinion piece" (highly unlikely, as her opinion carries no weight beyond any other lay person), she would be soundly criticised by informed readers.

I assume that the same applies to all the other sciences and their journals. "Normal" science means doing a study through the application of standard scientific method: defining a research question, applying the appropriate methodology and the appropriate data analysis, then making valid conclusions that are soundly based on the findings of the study.

Isn't that what "normal" scientific research is?

Very true, Sue. Which is why the magic "16-years of no warming" is such a hoot.

No boss would accept such a conclusion from a marketing exec for projecting sales, etc. But deniers will try anything, if only to chaff real conversations about facts. Some get paid to do this.

None, show confidence by placing bets on their statements, and all will be first in line to accept $ compensation for any future losses they may incur from things they say aren't happening.

But, I personally enjoy their wriggling around, because it offers opportunities to make facts available to everyone else.

This is not relied upon, but merely an indication that some other people disagree with your take.
http://www.thegwpf.org/researchers-puzzled-global-warming-standstill/
From the German newspaper Die Spiegel a few days ago, translated.
Many, many more similar are available by search.

We all advise you to invest your retirement funds using exactly the method applied so religiously to the magic "16 years" Geoff. Report back.
;]

Alex,
Let's just talk science. My look at data, in common with many others, says no significant global warming for 16 years. Others include James Hansen, British Met Office, Phil Jones CRU, Christy & Spencer @ UAH through satellites . Do you have a credible reference that notes otherwise? Are you happy to share it?

Goodness gracious! You're kidding, right Michael? Surely the references to "Nova" and "Watts" are not to data published in two of the most unrelenting climate-denial crank sites? Ye gods, that is shocking.

This is also one of his references

"Mörner N-A (2010c) There is no alarming sea level rise! 21st century science & technology. Fall 2010:7–17"

Nils-Axel Morner's claim to fame are that he possesses paranormal abilities to find water and metal using a dowsing rod, and that he has discovered "the Hong Kong of the [ancient] Greeks" in Sweden.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/dec/02/spectator-sea-level-claims

"21st century science & technology" is the quarterly magazine published by the LaRouchite sect.

Astonishing, isn't it? I am surprised the paper didnt also reference Wikipedia

Roger
It can happen.
The demise of the Himalayan Glaziers so strongly asserted in a recent IPCC Report was based on a press release from an environmental lobby group. Reference to Wikipedia is almost "academic" by comparison.

Ken, you're grasping at flaws

--- Nils-Axel Morner's claim to fame are that he possesses paranormal abilities to find water and metal using a dowsing rod, and that he has discovered "the Hong Kong of the [ancient] Greeks" in Sweden.
* Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727), the noted English scientist and mathematician, wrote many works that would now be classified as occult studies. These occult works explored chronology, alchemy, and Biblical interpretation (especially of the Apocalypse)
-wikipedia
Issac Newton dabbled in the occult, therefore anything else he said can be subjected to the fallacy of ridicule...apparently.

Any chance that our knowledge of the physical world has advanced in the 3 and 1/2 centuries since Newton?

Actually you do not have to answer that question - for most climate science deniers who still base their science on their right-wing political allegiances effectively it has not.

Steve McIntyre is a sleuth? Did he use his divining rods?

My understanding is that the Gergis paper contained significant flaws. Whether they intend to resubmit, I don't know, but there is no guarantee that their paper will ever be published.

I think you're so obsessed with demonising sceptics, that you can't bring yourself acknowledge the obvious fact that 'consensus scientists' have also produced flawed papers.

"climate sleuth, Steve McIntrye"!

ROTFLMAO

That's as funny as 'Climate expert Christopher Monckton'.

Steve McIntyre exposed the flaws in Mann's hockey stick paper, was chiefly responsible for the Gergis et. al. paper being withdrawn and wrote a comprehensive critique of Lewandowsky's woeful 'moon-landing' paper. His climate audit website is highly regarded and vastly superior to the bulk of alarmist websites.

Roll around on the floor if you like, but your comments only reveal your ignorance.

McIntyre's scientific output appears to be missing from Google Scholar - any links to his peer reviewed journal articles Geoffrey?

On21 Jan 2013 the DCCSS confirmed to me that the Gergis et al paper was to be resubmitted. It was currently in review. Bet you a quid that they try to get it into AR5 even if it passed the submission date.
The original error that attracted attention was a schoolboy howler that demeaned peer review. There were others. Like talking about Australasia, when practically no proxies come from Australia itself and some are even north of the Equator. Some are from New Zealand, whose original temperature record is ... well .. fiddled beyond recovery.
It is peculiar that my emails from DCCSS are signed "The Climate Change Team". I have asked a couple of times who the Climate Change Team are, because I suspect that it contains an author or a reviewer or both. A document carries no weight if not signed by or otherwise attributed to a natural person, in many jurisdictions.
I mention this because getting a straight answer from this crowd is harder than pulling teeth without a local.
Incidentally, on the subject of peer review, the IPCC references of AR4 were analysed by Donna la Framboise who concluded that rather more than 30% of citations came from grey literature,despite the IPCC trying to fool people that they were all peer reviewed and primary.
For AR5, the problem has been corrected by a behind-the-scenes ploy whereby grey literature is now admitted provided that lead authors or similar approve of it. We are not even sure if the relevant officials at the UN or the Australian Government are aware of this little shifty.
More tooth pulling to find out why we are exposed to shonky groups like Greenpeace, WWF, FOE, Union of Concerned Scientists, Sierra Club, Mickey Mouse Club etc.
My God, what has happened to rigorous science?
Stand up and be counted, slovenly peer reviewers, and hand in your badges on the way out the door.

Love the 'astute' if verbose critiques, Geoff, but especially the Aussie slang, which is intriguing. Your 'science', however, is weak. No slang needed to describe what you put out in place of science & fact.

Example, please?

Others have already done that well, Geoff. But keep trying. It offers a great way to provide folks with accurate info so they can identify fluff when they see/hear it.

Don't cop out, Alex. Point me to an error I have made. That's how topics advance. Can't see where anyone else has found one on this blog.

I am sure the author isn't being denied a right of reply, do you have any evidence that his voice has been silenced?

I have no idea whether or not he has been offered a right of reply, I am just saying he should be offered a right of reply.
Alas my hidden listening devices in the offices of The Conversation seemed to have had a large box of doughnuts placed on top of them and everything is so muffled that I can't pick up whether they have offered him one or not and I lack the extra-sensory perception that you possess.

Sean
Hell will freeze over before the author is given a right of reply in the Conversation.
But I ask the editors of the Conversation. Will the author be given an opportunity?
If not, why not? He has produced a published academic paper in the area of climate science.
Michael Brown by comparison is just an Astronomer.

Bring it on. There is "Want to Write?" button on the front page - or perhaps Ken you could contact Mr Parker.

I would love to have the opportunity to question Mr Parker - particularly as to why he references articles from the Lyndon Larouche movement (in Australia they are the far-right Citizens Electoral Council) in a science article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaRouche_movement#Australia

I agree.
I think Parker should be asked to respond by the Conversation. If he refuses then that should be published on this blog also. But equally I would like Anthony Watts, Steven McIntyre and Christopher Monckton to also be asked to contribute. Then you could tear strips off them if you had the ability to.
The AGW alarmist position is so in the ascendency that any contributions in this blog could never dent the surface.
What are you all so afraid of?

What are you suggesting Ken. That Monckton be asked to write an article on birtherism?

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2012/11/monckton-goes-all-out-birther/

I am not sure that you would be able to persuade your gaggle of climate cranks to write for The Conversation - they are too busy writing opeds for the Murdoch press et al or in the case of Monckton for WND (Wingnut Daily).

This is the nub of the issue - for all your arm waving, it is the cranks who get preferential treatment in the mass media. It has taken web sites like The Conversation to go some way towards addressing the balance.

So take Monckton down any way you can based on what he writes if you can.
If he is such an idiot then it should be easy for you and the many others on this blog that share your view to destroy him. Strangely every time his name is mentioned alarmists ridicule him as an idiot..not a climate scientist...etc but at the same time most are afraid to confront him directly in telecast debates or on blogs like this. He is a good media performer and I think he intimidates sound scientists who could probably towel him up on the substance but who are poor communicators. There are those who could mix it with him though: Karoly, Steffen come to mind.
There is no doubt though that he is a populist. The public can understand what he says even if you disagree with it. To take a tall poppy like him out of the game would advance your cause with the public because at the moment that is what is frustrating you all, the fact the public do not believe you. Take him on, the ABC Fairfax and Conversation will give you great coverage.
And yes Felix, rightly or wrongly in the court of public opinion he has some momentum. Come on "Slay the Dragon".

Monckton doesn't care when he's taken down, 'cause he gets $ from Fox News regardless..
;]
But, in 2009, I somehow got into an email exchange with him, about the absurd presentations he was giving about emissions, etc. It ended up with him saying he'd no longer talk to me.

Apparently, 2 things I said put him off -- a) I offered to bet $5k that over the next 5 years (at $1k/year), world temps would average as high or higher than any of the preceding 8 years; and b) he'd claimed that there was so little CO2 in air (~300ppm) that increasing it even a lot would mean nothing. So I asked him if he'd move his savings account to another bank if it offered him 380/280 times his present bank's interest rate.

He refused the bet, as have all others I've offered it to, even today. And, the logic of the bank choice apparently blew his mind, despit eit being unrealistically linear.

I'd earlier sent him a document that explained why temps for the 'magic' deniers' past 16b 'stable' years were perfectly explained by 4 natural variables (AAAS Presidential Address 2009), and that those relatively stable temps proved warming was going on, because the Milankovitch orbital cycles (~90k years) have tried to get us into another ice age and failed.

I could probably get those old emails off our old computer's disc. It all was a hoot. The doc showing the 4 variable model is available as a PDF, if anyone wants to send an email to my last name at sbcglobal dot net

Why does the CSIRO graph of sea level change look so different to this one?

http://sealevel.colorado.edu/

He gets $ from FOX News.
I did not know that.
Well if that is true then it could mean that all his analysis is being directed by Rupert Murdoch.
It means Murdoch is part of a conspiracy to control Climate Science Research.
You of course have proof of this Alex.
Produce it, the world needs to see it.
I look forward to your response.

So Ken, instead of wasting server & network power as above, you could have just directed your righteous typing to Google "monckton on fox news". Even some Aussie links in the result!

Enjoy!
;]

No No No Alex!
You said he gets $ from Fox News.
Does he?
Perhaps you could substantiate that bit please.
Look forward to your reply.

I look forward to you actually doing some work, Ken, because you can easily determine the shows he';s been paid a fee to appear on yourself.

You could then keep your embarrassment to yourself.
;]

Michael J Brown was asked why the CSIRO graph of sea level change differs from the University of Colorado more primary version.
His answer "The plots only look “so different” if you don’t read their axes properly" is lacking susbstance and is kindy level.
Specifically, between the years 2012-2014, the U of C graph shows a decline in global sea levels of about 7 mm. This is disappeared from the CSIRO graph.
I'll ask the question another way. Does the CSIRO have evidence that this decline was fictional?
Given that Church is a dominant author of papers on Australian sea level change, some Australian scientists like me seek to discover his authority for modification (or not stepping in to correct) the more primary record.

To avoid the kindy approach in future, please know that I am now retired, so I have established such credentials as I have. These include (together with a small team of other scientists over 30 years) the discovery and development of billions of dollars worth of new mineral resources including enough uranium to prevent the emission of over a billion tonnes of CO2 into the air by substitution for fossil fuel. You are permitted to use kindy talk if you can claim over 1% of that success in your own career.

You can also assume that I have adequate graph reading abilities, whereas you answer suggests that you do not..

What is the point of using a CSIRO graph that ends in 2011 when we are at the start of 2013? Besides, do I see that roughly, the CSIRO trend is about 1.6 mm/y and the Uni of Colorado one is 3.2 mm/y? Is there no need to comment on this? And yes, I have read the NASA explanation of satellite Grace detecting that water had been lifted from the sea and dropped on the land.

It's really a matter of principle. The Jason data showed that contrary to common belief, within best estimates, relentless sea level rise was not happening. There was a period of decrease. This knowledge alone should be shared with the public, who at the moment seem to be given news only of the style of "It forever getting worse".

The getting worse syndrome lead to Internet references like this one. There are over 800 linked matters attributed to global warming on this site.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm

It would be funny if it did not bring on carbon taxes and middle-age indulgences like carbon credits.

I've met Lord Mockton (yes, Lord is his established title) and it was a sobering experience. He is one of the few people I have met in recent times who could be classed as genius. Eccentric? Maybe. Correct all the time? Maybe not, buy he usually asks for inaccuracies to be reported back to him, so that he can correct as is proper.
Quick Anecdote. In this photo of the both of us, Chris is the one with the ties showing the periodic table of the elements. I mentioned the Tom Lehrer song from the 60's about recitation of the 92 or so then known elements and Chris repeated it verbatim from memory without a pause. I have not met another person with a mind like that. You should respect the mind, because if any of you were tested against him on general topics, I fear you would lose very badly. It is rather rude to ridicule him, especially about his hyperthyroidism (which I'm pleased to see you have not done - but other blog managers have made fun of it).
http://www.geoffstuff.com/Chris%20MoncktonJ.JPG
BTW, my tie is not some academic thing, it was from the old Raffles Hotel, Singapore.
If you are desperate for a ridicule of something, which is an unhealthy trait, I suggest you look at some of the work from UWA on the pseudo-topic of the pseudo-psychology of climate change pseudo-denialism.

Geoffrey, you say of Monckton "It is rather rude to ridicule him". Not when he is egregiously wrong and deceptive. By the way, how's his cure for the common cold, HIV and MS going? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl2lShU6zD0 (3min in).

Doug,
I would be ashamed to publish snippets of a video in which a person (Lord Monckton here) uses the plural 'we' not in the Royal sense of himself, but in the sense of the community with whom he interacts. In the material you reference, Lord Monckton does not make the claim that he had invented a cure for AIDS or anything else. There are treatments that are approaching a cure for AIDS by lessening its severity and extending the life of those afflicted until death from an unrelated cause happens. In a convoluted way, one could call this a cure. However, nowhere did I see that Lord Monckton claimed to have invented the pharmaceutical(s) himself. You are being disingenuous and I suspect that you know you are.

The man suffers from Grave's disease and has worked with eminent medical researchers to minimise its bad effects upon himself. He is rather well connected to eminent people. At last conversation, he was confident that the medical specialists had managed to stabilise his condition by a mix of novel and known approaches. His exophthalmos appears to be decreasing if you compare older photos.

Under these circumstances, many people would claim in casual conversation "We are getting on top of this problem." I find it particularly distasteful that you choose and expression like this to ridicule an unwell person. I also had hyperthyroidism (but not the Grave's disease progression) from an incorrect dosing of amiodarone. It went close to fatal, then took a year to cure. At times I could not climb a flight of stairs. Yet you find it OK to be jeering about medical topics. That is plain anti-science. You won't find yourself near the top of the respected tree by the end of your career if you have such an attitude to sickness. Like, a sick attitude.

Do take a piece of paper, write down your proudest achievements then place them alongside those of Lord Monckton. Then reflect on relative ability.

http://sphotos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/29582_10151417219425269_1551938044_n.jpg

Geoffrey, "(Lord Monckton here) uses the plural 'we' ". I take that as an inclusive, in the sense of "some others and I". He has included himself as an important member of the group who are working on a cure for HIV, MS etc. If he meant to speak of a group that he merely knows about, he would have used the word "they", not "we". Hence, being the genius you portray him as, he should know how this magical cure is going. I just suggested you ask him how it's going, you being a pal of his and all. You seem very touchy about having his pronouncements questioned: why is that?

Doug,
Like several of your fellow bloggers, you have an ability to imagine that I said something, that I feel a certain way about something, that do certain things that I have never mentioned. For example, I have never used a word like 'pal' in relation to Lord Monkton. Once you realise the frequency with which such straw men are invented on this blog, it is easier to understand how you wrongly feel you have solved a problem (though it is one of your own making) and boldly move to the next. It's tedious to maintain straw men reproduction.
In your medical reconstruction above, I have already mentioned that Lord Monckton is part of a team, if only because he is a patient for some treatments and thus it raises no alarm when he calls the team "we". If he spends part of his wealth on humanitarian programs for people in the AIDS epidemic - and I cannot confirm or deny this - then I suggest he would use "we". People who are sitting back at a distance writing grants papers about how AIDS is enhanced by global warming (and can we have some more funds please) belong to another "we".
I'm not touchy about having his pronouncements questioned. You lot are. He slipped into official proceedings at Doha, picked up a microphone and said “In the 16 years we have been coming to these events there has been no global warming at all…. Even if we were to take action to prevent global warming, the cost would be many times greater than cost of making adaptive measures later. Our recommendation is that we should initiate very quickly a review of the science to make sure that we are all on the right track.” I relate to that. In the mid 1980s I had PM Bob Hawke so embarrassed in a TV extravaganza that he went turkey red in the face and made some very serious threats while I was laughing.

Re Lord Monckton at Doha, would any of you have evidence that he was wrong and you are right? If so, let's hear it. If you can't argue from data, don't knock.

In answer to your question of why I choose to remark upon some properties of Lord Monckton, I suppose the basis of my answer is that it is much more enjoyable to mix with people whose words frequently challenge you, than it is to hang out with people who bore you by reporting old zealotry over and over.

"Christopher Monckton impersonated a delegate from Myanmar at the 2012 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change international meeting in Doha, Qatar. He sat in the Myanmar delegate's seat, was mistakenly called upon to speak, and recited two common pieces of misinformation — that the planet has not warmed over the past 16 years, and that mitigating global warming by reducing human greenhouse gas emissions is more expensive than adapting to the consequences of climate change. Neither point is even remotely true." http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-lesson-for-monckton-and-co.html

Your hero might have feet of clay, Geoffrey. In the real world (you know, the world of actual measurements and research), Monckton is regarded as a fringe-dwelling eccentric, an excellent orator and debater, but thin on reliable science. Google "gish gallop", to get the idea. That is why, despite numerous requests, he does not debate on science sites, where his claims and assertions would be subject to review and criticism. Interestingly, he is a respected contributor at WUWT.

Doug, it may just be that Geoff just envies Monckton having a title better than "Boss".
;]
My 1st exposure to Monckton was a video of him striding regally along a leafy, private schools campus, to an ivy-covered ancient hall, which he entered to face a dozen of so kids in a small auditorium with a slide projector ans screen. This whole "watch the Lord walk" portion was surprisingly long.

Then the slides started flashing -- reams of graphs & lines and axes... each one on the screen for a second or so, seemingly designed to mesmerize the audience into belief that the IPCC was spawn of Rachel Carson and perhaps Goebbels.

Monckton vapidly critiqued something as the slides flashed by, but it was never clear if even he knew what he was saying of substance. The occasional camera pan to the audience suggested they'd lost interest much earlier.

I was truly amazed. I found his email, and we conversed that way for a while, as I tried to figure out who & what he was and what he was about or knew.

He got perturbed when he couldn't refute the scientific explanation of the "flat temps" from 1999 to then (2009), and when he realized he didn't understand GHGs and their actual effects on air temps. The last straws were my offering him a $5k bet on future temps, and asking if he'd move his treasures to a bank that offered 380/280 higher interest. He then sent a 'victim' email saying he'd filtered me out of his inbox!

He's only a charlatan to the very gullible, and he's scientist to none.

Maybe Geoff, etc. will use this 6th or 7th pointer to what Monckton couldn't handle to see how well he/they can apply honest science in pace of odd denial...

2009 AAAS Annual Presidential Address by J. McCarthy (reprinted in Science, 18 Dec. 2009, pp1646-1655).

And, the $5k bet (I'm no Romney) is still open! Why are these deniers so chicken?

This is fun!
;]

A number of the players feature here including Natural Hazards editor Murty.

http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=280

ICSC received $45,000 from the Heartland Institute in 2007

Yikes - this is getting truly weird. Citing denier blogs, water diviners and far-right political groups is one thing, but citing yourself under two different identities? What the heck is that?

If he has legitimately changed his name this is hardly an issue.
Presumably female academics who marry and chose to change their name and the name they use on their publications face this all the time.
Are they expected to spend the rest of their life signing their articles Parker nee Boretti in order to satisfy a herd of nervous academics in a group-think panic stampede?
Fortunately it didn't take long for the IPCC 4 climate predictions to fall short - IPCC 5 is preparing the ground to ditch them and by IPCC 6 they will be quietly forgetten, it would be a shame if the sea level predictions of IPCC 4 hung around our necks like a dead albatross only because they are more difficult to falsify.

How much grant money, international travel or other allowances did Karoly, Steffen and McNeil get from environmental groups over last 3 years or so? How many of their ARC grant applications were presided over by members of the Climate Scientists Club?

I will look into it, but the principle is the same.

"Fortunately it didn't take long for the IPCC 4 climate predictions to fall short"

Well Professor Hunter you are going to think me an enormous idiot but I wasn't aware sea levels were included in the collective noun of climate.

My reference to IPCC 4 climate predictions was to this graph buried deep in the draft IPCC 5 report
http://ktwop.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/ipcc-ar5-draft-models-vs-observations.png?w=450&h=341
Of course this only shows it might be falling short, for all we know the temperature might kick up again over the next 10 years. Simply if it follows the same trend it appears to be following, then IPCC 4 will look pretty sick by IPCC 6.

I have no opinion whatsoever about sea levels except to observe that it appears in general environmental scientists have too little understanding of their own fallibility and if their models are relying on temperatures that aren't going to be delivered then they can't possibly be reliable.

Well thankfully you don't have to do that now with the excellent facilities that Skype offer us. No more wasteful burning up of aviation fuel is necessary to spread the word of the dangers we face.

No more forcing yourself to down those cocktails on Pacific beaches or endure the slumming it in Rome hotels. With a solar power laptop and fast-broadband you can participate in scientific discussion and preserve the environment all from your own living room.

Oh dear, is this going to be like Alec Rawls, with more and more strange biographical information being slowly drip feed out?
If you have a dirt file on him wouldn't it be simpler to just lay it all on the table right away rather than drip, drip, drip in the comments? Alternatively if someone is just passing you titbits, could you ask him/her to provide you with the whole file?

Anyway, he might be the High Priest of the Ancient Order of the Buffalo Riding Sun Worshippers of Double Bay - his estimate is still going to be better than IPCC 4 by 2100

So why is it assumed that money from the anti AGW skeptic side of the debate somehow corrupts scientists, and yet money from the pro AGW alarmist side does not?

I did.
I said by the time we got to 2100 I thought that sea level rises would be greater than 5 cms and less than 80-100 cms, but closer to Boretti/Parker's estimate.

That makes his analysis better than the IPCC's. Why fuss about 50 or 78? As Deng Xioping said: "It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white so long as it catches the mouse."

I agree with you Michael that journalists should seek a contrary expert view and do some work in understanding and then writing a balanced opinion. As long as AGW alarmists like you and others are subject to the same contrary scrutiny and we can ensure that the journalists involved write a balanced assessment in that case also.
But we have got to get away from the shut down of opinion from alarmists which says that because members of the Climate Scientists Club do not agree with it, it is not true and so it should not even be discussed and certainly not published anywhere in any form.
You may not realise it, but that arrogant attitude is hurting your cause big time.
An analogy is the case of David Irving the Holocaust denier being banned from speaking in public or denied a visa to come to Australia at all. Rather than draw attention to him, let him speak, let him be criticised and then let the public decide. In the end the public is pretty smart and they will get it. If you censor and suppress they will always doubt you.

FYI, Calif. coastal sea rise is estimated now at 110cm by 2100, relative to 2000. The variation is high, since there indeed are many factors influencing seas in different regions around the world. The IPCC estimates have been notoriously & consistently low.

A recent explanation of differences is in Nature Climate Change 2, 10.1038/NCLIMATEL1597 (2012)

--A trait of pseudo-science is pulling numbers (that feel right) out of thin air.
Climate scientist love their 2 decimal point accuracy for averaged temperatures. It's pretty hard to find thermometers that are actually that accurate: you won't find any of them at weather stations:
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=thermometer%2C+2+decimal+places
Nevertheless, the climate "science" industry loves those 2 decimal places to foster the illusion of precision. Did you ever wonder where they pulled those numbers from, Michael?
You can't get two decimal places by averaging a lot of numbers that use only one.

When you take a collection of temperatures - say 2000 measurements of maximum temperature in Melbourne - and each temperature reading is documented, for very good reasons, to only one digit of precision, you can't average them out to find two digits of precision. Your equipment didn't read those two digits in the first place.
It's not about the reduction of sampling errors in the temperature record through averaging (I understand that point) - it's about the simple arithmetic of averaging the documented figures:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_precision

Firstly, an averaged temperature is like climate, in that it does not exist in reality; it is a mathematical abstraction.
Secondly, Melbourne, Feb 06, 1851, Max 117°F = 47.2222°C, + Feb 08, 2009, Max = 46.4°C. Averaged temperature of the two hottest days on record = 93.6222°C/2 = 46.8111°C
Thus, the two hottest days on record exhibit a cooling trend of approximately 0.542625°C per century. Now, it so happens, ipse dixit, that THIS IS ABSOLUTELY STANDARD PRACTICE - if it isn't done then you are very likely to lose all the available "precision" that comes from converting old temperatures and averaging them with new ones.
I'm not sure why the Bureau of Meteorology limits itself to a SINGLE decimal place when presenting ALL climate data averages, which I consider gross incompetence. And yet, when rounding off the decimals rationally AT THE FINAL STEP IN THE AVERAGING PROCESS, they also do the RIGHT thing, in your OPINION, as I HAD FACTUALLY INDICATED ALREADY.
Please refrain from shouting at me next time.

John Hunter re estimation of error.

Before the 1970s, Australian temperatures were recorded in deg F. Now they have been converted to deg C in the usual way and most often published to one place after the decimal. If you then try to reverse the procedure to get back to deg F, you will find that the equation gives 2 solutions for some temperatures.
It is probablr that about 30% of all deg F readings held by the BOM are round figures and that their reconstruction from deg C is not possible.
Therefore, we can assume that there is at least one example that the numbers are not "random and unbiased".
See for example http://joannenova.com.au/2012/03/australian-temperature-records-shoddy-inaccurate-unreliable-surprise/

Now, if you were a statistician

If you are having a major operation you seek a second opinion. Why on earth would you do that. And if the second guy says no, what do you do.
You employ a certified financial planner who as an expert directs you to investments which look good on his projected modelling. They fail and you lose money. Do you sue him? Do you question him and then go to someone else? Has your confidence in certified financial planners been shaken? Yes to all the above.
You engage an IT expert to set up a LAN for your organization. His reputation and some references say he is good but what he does not tell you is that he only sells certain products and gets secret commissions. You find out later the job could have been cheaper for you. Is your confidence in the expert shaken? Yes
In all these cases it is acceptable to question, to take legal action, for every day people to strongly voice their opinions and to call for these experts to be questioned, scrutinized and then sued and jailed if necessary for their professional mistakes and in particular for any misrepresentation. The government even funds avenues like legal aid, ombudsmen and agencies such as ASIC to ensure this happens.
And then we come to Climate Science. The only people allowed to voice an opinion are members of the Climate Science Club along with their band of merry travellers. Any person who continues to question them and their work are labelled deniers, idiots, stooges in the pay of Murdoch. There are even some in the club who are calling for these questioners to be executed. There are no mechanisms for the science to be challenged by scientists not in the club which are funded by government, no ombudsman nothing. So as a result a growing grass roots movement of skeptics is doing it for themselves.
The economic and social consequences of changes predicated on Climate Science is so great that it must be subject to far greater scrutiny and skepticism that what it is getting now. The in club self serving practices of the Climate Science Club cannot be allowed to continue unchecked.

The point I was making from the very start is identical to the one made by Robert Brown (physicist, Duke University) a few weeks ago at WUWT. It goes like this, quote:
--If there were an honest human being working in climate science today, they would stop posting two decimal points — for example, 287.16 — for the Earth’s mean temperature. They would stop posting one decimal point — 287.2. They would post no decimals at all, and they would add a confidence interval ...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/25/bethlehem-and-the-rat-hole-problem/#comment-1183054
I often resort to emphasis with caps when italics aren't available: I accept that you weren't shouting at me, and apologize. Cheers.

Yes, but it's not decimal points, it's "precision of measurement" that counts and so lets one assign the proper number of significant digits to any data point.

Confidence Intervals are often ok, but they assume a known, stable, uniform, symmetric distribution of all measurements -- e.g.,. Gaussian (normal) distributions. This is as dangerous an assumption as one can make, when the underlying processes that generate the observed data points aren't fully understood.

That's why statistics is a tool we use when we're ignorant of how something we're measuring actually works in both time and space, but we can make some assumptions about the repeated sequences of measurements, like time stability, symmetry, etc.

For example, attaching a device to measure packets on your Internet connection will assemble a list of packet sizes (nytes) and it will not be symmetric in packet lengths, because of how the underlying netork language communicates -- you may see huge packets for file transfers, tiny packets for acknowledgements of delivered data and intermediate-length packets for RSS or Tweets,, etc. The resulting data will have a distribution with two or three peaks -- definitely not Normal nor symmetrical. What does computing an average size and Confidence Interval then mean?

Looking at the details of each packet would give a perfect size estimate for certain kinds of packets, while others, serving different purposes might vary in size by a lot. Thus a qualitative analysis must precede any choice of numerical analyses.

One of the key tasks of a statistician is to decide what the dat looks like and thus what tools can be used to analyze it. Sometimes, only non-numerical analyses are appropriate. Inattention to details like this is exactly where "garbage in, garbage out" comes from.

.

Alex, we agree.
In ore grade estimation in mines, there are complex stats required to estimate grades between drill holes and then to design blocks of a suitable size to send to either waste or processing. A mining company can live or die by the quality of its stats. The methods can be similar to time series temperature analysis if the data are good enough. For but one example.
When geostatistics were being developed by Michel David et al at Fontainebleu, we sent statisticians to France to lean and we took some of David's et als back here to teach us. Out Chief Statistician used to say "Before you start, establish your distribution(s) and select the appropriate analysis methods. Our Chief Mathematician would pull up a sheet of paper and write a triple integral symbol before talking. As Chief Geochemist, I was responsible for quality control including accuracy and precision, as well as the development of new methods. So it's difficult to accept the label of spouting "guff' as someone has suggested.
It's a different arena when you don't get paid if your work fails the company.

From climate studies, there's a nice demonstration about getting the distribution right by Willis Eschenbach who sampled thousands of tropical Argo SST.
http://www.geoffstuff.com/argo-surface-temperatures-by-latitude%5b1%5d.jpg

Note the platykurtic appearance of the result. How many climate workers would assume a normal distribution without even trying to modify the curve into some shape that could be handled?

Glad you seem to agree that "selecting distributions" is always key, Geoff. Hope you apply that to a rethinking of the silly "16-year" no-warming fibbery.
;]

Alex, I did not say that selecting distributions was always the key. I wrote, "Before you start, establish your distribution(s) and select the appropriate analysis methods."
Do you have a problem with that?
Still awaiting a reference that does NOT non-warming for past 16 years.

Michael,

On that subject you might be interested in this comment by Steve Jewson, who has several dozen published, peer-reviewed statistical papers, many on climate temperature analysis. Let me know if you find argument with his comments about climate people about pulling numbers out of the air:

Sorry to go on about it, but this prior thing this is an important issue. So here are my 7 reasons for why climate scientists should *never* use uniform priors for climate sensitivity, and why the IPCC report shouldn’t cite studies that use them.

It pains me a little to be so critical, especially as I know some of authors listed in Nic Lewis’s post, but better to say this now, and give the IPCC authors some opportunity to think about it, than after the IPCC report is published.

1) *The results from uniform priors are arbitrary and hence non-scientific*

If the authors that Nic Lewis lists above had chosen different coordinate systems, they would have got different results. For instance, if they had used 1/S, or log S, as their coordinates, instead of S, the climate sensitivity distributions would change. Scientific results should not depend on the choice of coordinate system.

2) *If you use a uniform prior for S, someone might accuse you of choosing the prior to give high rates of climate change*

It just so happens that using S gives higher values for climate sensitivity than using 1/S or log S.

3) *The results may well be nonsense mathematically*

When you apply a statistical method to a complex model, you’d want to first check that the method gives sensible results on simple models. But flat priors often given nonsense when applied to simple models. A good example is if you try and fit a normal distribution to 10 data values using a flat prior for the variance…the final variance estimate you get is higher than anything that any of the standard methods will give you, and is really just nonsense: it’s extremely biased, and the resulting predictions of the normal are much too wide. If flat priors fail on such a simple example, we can’t trust them on more complex examples.

4) *You risk criticism from more or less the entire statistics community*

The problems with flat priors have been well understood by statisticians for decades. I don’t think there is a single statistician in the world who would argue that flat priors are a good way to represent lack of knowledge, or who would say that they should be used as a convention (except for location parameters…but climate sensitivity isn’t a location parameter).

5) *You risk criticism from scientists in many other disciplines too*

In many other scientific disciplines these issues are well understood, and in many disciplines it would be impossible to publish a paper using a flat prior. (Even worse, pensioners from the UK and mathematicians from the insurance industry may criticize you too :)).

6) *If your paper is cited in the IPCC report, IPCC may end up losing credibility*

These are much worse problems than getting the date of melting glaciers wrong. Uniform priors are a fundamentally unjustifiable methodology that gives invalid quantitative results. If these papers are cited in the IPCC, the risk is that critics will (quite rightly) heap criticism on the IPCC for relying on such stuff, and the credibility of IPCC and climate science will suffer as a result.

7) *There is a perfectly good alternative, that solves all these problems*

Harold Jeffreys grappled with the problem of uniform priors in the 1930s, came up with the Jeffreys’ prior (well, I guess he didn’t call it that), and wrote a book about it. It fixes all the above problems: it gives results which are coordinate independent and so not arbitrary in that sense, it gives sensible results that agree with other methods when applied to simple models, and it’s used in statistics and many other fields.

In Nic Lewis’s email (number 89 above), Nic describes a further refinement of the Jeffreys’ Prior, known as reference priors. Whether the 1946 version of Jeffreys’ Prior, or a reference prior, is the better choice, is a good topic for debate (although it’s a pretty technical question). But that debate does muddy the waters of this current discussion a little: the main point is that both of them are vastly preferable to uniform priors (and they are very similar anyway). If reference priors are too confusing, just use Jeffreys’ 1946 Prior. If you want to use the fanciest statistical technology, use reference priors.

ps: if you go to your local statistics department, 50% of the statisticians will agree with what I’ve written above. The other 50% will agree that uniform priors are rubbish, but will say that JP is rubbish too, and that you should give up trying to use any kind of noninformative prior. This second 50% are the subjective Bayesians, who say that probability is just a measure of personal beliefs. They will tell you to make up your own prior according to your prior beliefs. To my mind this is a non-starter in climate research, and maybe in science in general, since it removes all objectivity. That’s another debate that climate scientists need to get ready to be having over the next few years.
.................................
Nic Lewis was an author of a paper rebutting Stefan Rahmstorf's Time magazine cover paper on Antarctica heating. His list of authors mentioned by Jewson as pulling numbers out of the air is:

Forest et al (2002)
Knutti et at (2002)
Frame et al (2005)
Forest et al (2006)
Forster and Gregory (2006) – results as presented in IPCC AR4 WG1 report (the study itself used 1/S prior, which is the Jeffreys’ prior in this case, where S is the only parameter being estimated)
Hegerl et al (2006)
Forest et al (2008)
Sanso, Forest and Zantedeschi (2008)
Libardoni and Forest (2011) [unform for Kv, expert for S]
Olson et al (2012)
Aldrin et al (2012)

Care to correct the accusation?

Keep in mind that a person can be more intelligent than you, even though you label that person as a skeptic.

Michael,
Wasting time on what?

If you accuse me of wasting time, then you must have some idea of what is supposed to be done in that time. From my viewpoint, you have been given public funds to allow discussion of aspects of science. Not you money, public money. Because it's not your money, you have no authority to dictate who says what. Nor do you have authority to complain about the length of contributions.

Comments like yours are capable of being collected and taken to higher places as illustrations that money is being wasted and that science censorship can be alleged in the contributing universities.
(The use of 'deniers' is currently under legal study and quite a few people are considering proceeding further. Better you don't do it again).

I have not said that I cannot read labels on plots. I said the opposite. You are the one who chose the 'deceptive' plot and I picked you up on it. There is a more explicit, but less convenient one, from the same source. http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_hist_last_15.html

This explains my objection in shorthand to "hide the decline", about which a song has been written.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMqc7PCJ-nc

You cannot seem to grasp that I am using data, not so much to reanalyse the data, but to show the purposes to which it is being put. There is not much joy in using science like propaganda. It's like a joke that you've heard many times before.

The 1000+ word article is a throwing down of a gauntlet to see what time is reserved for your income. If you are serious about wasting time, you will spend some of your own to refute the several rather important points in the quoted text. You see, if I had not quoted the entire text, your tactic could well be to claim that I cherry picked quotes from it and dismiss it on those lazy grounds.

So, how about a mature response to the thousand + words? I'll not be fussed if you finally come up with a response by the end of 2013.

Oh Michael, it is quantitatively incorrect for you to claim that "We have answered the many queries from Geoffrey".

You can redeem yourself by listing as follows:
1. Geoffrey's Question ">>>>>>
Our response: "<<<<<<<

2, Geoffrey's Question">>>>
Our response"<<<<<<< etc etc. if there are more.

You will find that I have made examples and observations more often than asking questions. On one occasion I conceded that I was wrong and apologised. I have no dog in the fight about global warming, real or unreal, I merely wish to help improve the low standard of climate work in general because I consider that it is dragging down the reputation of science.

OTOH, I have several times claimed (with references to authors) that there has been no global warming for 16 years and I'll add with one sigma uncertainty. This seems to alarm you guys to the point of awkward silence.

So my first question is, what is the most accepted estimate averaged over the main groups of experts on global warming, to the period ending about Dec 2012 and starting 16 years earlier? Averaging is not exactly appropriate, but it will serve as a basis for dissection. Also, it's so easy to explain the data to pollies and decision makers, but I'd be misleading them if I showed data that is not accepted by the main players, would I not?

If you want to self-flagellate, you can try to provide examples of where I have misunderstood science data or history. This is notwithstanding your quotation of sources like skepticalscience blog which must be grateful to have some of you guys as readers because it does not have many. Not a valid answer on your part. Need data, not belief.

Geoffrey, you said "OTOH, I have several times claimed (with references to authors) that there has been no global warming for 16 years and I'll add with one sigma uncertainty. This seems to alarm you guys to the point of awkward silence". The awkward silence is not from alarm, it is from embarrassment that they are stuck in a conversation with someone who is proving unable (or unwilling) to understand simple concepts.

It's OK to be wrong, as long as one admits one's error when it is pointed out. I know, because I often have my limited understanding corrected by people wiser than me.

Thanks Doug, I guess I'll try again, for the 5th or so time, to see if Geoff really is concerned with science facts & finding out why the magic "16 years of no warming" actually indicates warming. Apparently it's necessary to repeat facts again and again to the Boss, because he's too busy typing to study, but here's again the ref I'll happily explain -- go it Geoff?

2009 AAAS Annual Presidential Address by J. McCarthy (reprinted in Science, 18 Dec. 2009, pp1646-1655).

last name at sbcglobal dor net for a PDF, Geoff! Hey, a rhyme! Maybe you can handle it better than Monckton did.
;]

Michael,
I am disappointed that you misquote me so often. I did not claim that the plot in question was any type of distribution. I merely said that it had a platykurtic appearance. That is, flat-toppped like a plateau. I apologise if you have not seen the word before, but then several eminent statisticians like Briggs and Wegman and McIntyre have noted weakness in statistics as used by climate people.
I am disappointed that you have failed to list a single error of mine (although I did agree to one). If you can't construct a list of errors, it would be ethical to cease referring to a list of errors. Ethics rank high in my book.

Aw shucks, John Hunter, why end the discussion on averaging and temperature records just as it warms up? Afraid you might read something unpalatable?
I mean, you've stated "But thankfully, as you have indicated, the Bureau does do the right thing ..... they do have basic analytical and statistical skills." as if this was the final word. Well, it's not.

The BOM home page can be accessed online. They have one set of temperature records for Australia that are mainly primary readings homogenised; but they have another set a few months old named Scorn. At a given time and place, the two official versions will disagree by up to 0.8 deg C, because of the human hand of adjustment. Given that 0.8 deg C is a common figure quoted for global warming in the last century, the difference is not insignificant.
Now, I know that you mentioned precision and what is mostly bias provides the between-set differences.

There are other problems. For some decades, in at least one capital city, newspapers were provided with temperatures from BOM Glaisher screen enclosures, while the BOM recorded Stevenson screens. There can be up to a degree difference between the two at the same location, the BOM say.

The question is, how can you claim that the BOM are doing the right thing and that they have basic analytical skills? The evidence to question this is in this set of words and this is just a beginning.

I'm interested in how you conclude that BOM temperature reporting to one significant figure after the decimal is justified. My impression is that the Australian historic error envelope is of the order of +/- 0.5 deg C at 95% confidence, getting larger with older data, which rather rules out much significance in a place after the decimal.

Your earlier statement about averaging and precision should also have carried the rider that the numbers being averaged are independent of each other. Daily temperatures are not.

Still want to end the discussion? There's a lot more fun yet.

For Ian Smith,
Don't jump to conclusions when you have no evidence. I supplied a great deal of data to the BEST project. They have not finished their work. They have not yet incorporated some severe corrections into their data base. There are several chapters that need revisiting by people with more expertise than they have demonstrated.
There is little to gain by an argument that several agencies can reproduce (roughly) similar results for global temperatures. This is because they all start with the same set of numbers from the primary source at the thermometer. It merely means that their fiddles are more or less similar.

The point in pursuing this topic is that if one claims global warming, one has to show accurate and reproducible temperature rise. The records are not accurate. Look at this for Australia alone, just one quote from Blair Trewin of the BOM.

>I've finally had a chance to have a look at this - it turned out to be
> more complicated than I thought because a change which I thought had
> been implemented several years ago wasn't.
>
> Up until 1994 CLIMAT mean temperatures for Australia used (Tx+Tn)/2. In
> 1994, apparently as part of a shift to generating CLIMAT messages
> automatically from what was then the new database (previously they were
> calculated on-station), a change was made to calculating as the mean of
> all available three-hourly observations (apparently without regard to
> data completeness, which made for some interesting results in a couple
> of months when one station wasn't staffed overnight).
>
> What was supposed to happen (once we noticed this problem in 2003 or
> thereabouts) was that we were going to revert to (tx+Tn)/2, for
> historical consistency, and resend values from the 1994-2003 period. I
> have, however, discovered that the reversion never happened.
>
> In a 2004 paper I found that using the mean of all three-hourly
> observations rather than (Tx+Tn)/2 produced a bias of approximately
> -0.15 C in mean temperatures averaged over Australia (at individual
> stations the bias is quite station-specific, being a function of the
> position of stations (and local sunrise/sunset times) within their time
> zone.

Have a look at some consequences at http://us.yhs4.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=A0oGdNBe0gBRqywAMTil87UF?p=Blair%20Trwein%20error%20mistake%20temperatures%20&fr=altavista&fr2=sfp

You would not run your household finances on data as shaky as these. If you went to your bank manager and claimed that you were gaining in wealth and showed him such a table of errors, he might be inclined to be sceptical.

BTW. I am me. I don't use pseudonyms or hide behind the petticoats of ladies.

Do you reject the finding of this paper which claims no significant change in the diameter of the earth based on the modern network of satellites? It's from a prestige source.
http://www.geoffstuff.com/Wu%20et%20al%20value%20of%20G.pdf

If the diameter of the earth has not changed, how has sea level risen?

John Hunter
But isostasy is real. OK?

How do you change the shape of solid earth without changing a diameter somewhere? Do all gains balance all losses on every diameter you can draw? Are you considering ice on land as solid earth or not?

These are not straws. They lead to fascinating concepts that are poorly understood, best understood by geologists who have specialised in isostasy. It's a side interest for me, but I have read a reasonable amount of literature and corresponded with some prominent authors, simply to see who might be telling porkies.

e.g. Would you say that a sea level rise of 30 metres (Al Gore) would have no effect on solid land diameter ?

John Hunter,

First, I thank you for your civility, which unfortunately is not matched by all.

Second, I belong to no team. I'm an isolated 71 year old who writes here what he chooses with no directions from any team leader or team whatsoever.

In this case I am prepared to concede that you are probably correct and I am not. The Wu et al paper (abstract) goes "... the mean radius of the Earth is not changing to a measurement uncertainty of 2 sigma of 0.2 mm /year".

I read that as the mean of multiple radius measurements along a transect, you read it as the mean of all transects, which I concede is more correct.

Would others please note that it is possible to admit an error? You actually feel better for it.

However, the point remains that there are public scenarios of projected sea level rise of metres. This will cause changes in the radius of the Earth at places such as those with a large loss of ice from land. Land will rebound. It is less clear if there is a compensatory rise somewhere else so the net radial change is zero. To answer that, one would need to incorporate many sub-ocean measurements that simply do not exist.

The two main promoted mechanisms for sea level rise are thermal expansion (there has been insignificant increase in known ocean heat content in the last 15 years) and ice melt, which is also temperature dependent in part. I am not surprised at the results of Wu et al because radial change would be more detectable after a long period of large temperature change, caeteris paribus, along some transects.

The subject of landform isostasy was commenced by geologists and is present in early text books. Observational isostasy in Great Britain is, for example, covered in "The Physical Geology and Geography of Great Britain" by Ramsay, 1923.

So you would condemn Gergis et al 2012?
"Evidence of late 20th century warming...." Journal of Climate. Under repair.

Sue,
There should be no need for peer review of a settled science.
Except that, as science progresses over time, new & better instruments are developed, people think more, then they realise that earlier papers require a corregidum. This needs peer review.
Climate work is replete with examples like 'hide the decline' where a retraction or correction should have been issued by now. Indeed, the whole field of dendroclimatology is affected by first, an unexpected divergence some decades long and second, a flat global temperature for a decade or more that invites a resampling and recalibration of virtually all past dendro work.
Again, the corrected papers need peer review. Not just an endorsement of the greatness of the authors, but worked examples of the code using different inputs to see that it runs as claimed, when presented.

The review "Surface Temperature Reconstructions...." mentioned above is notable for its persistent denial or short shrift given to dissenting papers from acknowledged authorities.
There are many examples that could be given. However, it is rather pointless to do this in the context of the proper conduct of science when statements such as this are given. "All proxy records of climate are obtained from samples that are not randomly selected (Cronin 1999)." (Chapter 4).
The passage of time and the gaining of wisdom will show its deficiencies.

Hiding in the hot air, eh Geoffrey? No guts no glory.
;]

Thanks, Gus

I don't know what you mean by "a settled science" - peer review relates to the evaluation, by true peers, of published research. One cannot review an entire science - I thought we were discussing the review of pieces of research.

As I said before, publication was originally the way that people put their work out into their professional community, where it was read, discussed, evaluated and either accepted, partially accepted or rejected by that informed community.

I would not seek to peer review research outside my area of expertise - despite knowing about research methods and critical review of research, true peer review requires an understanding of the practice, body of knowledge and existing research within that area. So, it a new study shows something incongruous, it can be compared to the previous ones.

Sue, and if there are no previous ones?

Very many advancements start from a single person with a new idea. Society has to accept new ideas. They should not be rejected because they don't seem to be mainstream.

That is why this comment was so anti-science
"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep
them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"
Phil Jones to Michael Mann, Climategate emails, July 8th 2004.

Unfortunately, a few of the contributors here seem a little infected by this mind set, preferring to name people as skeptics without even considering if their contributions have value.

Alex, I have no idea what you mean or why you wrote it.

Michael, and what do you say about the early papers of Nobel Laureates Warren & Marshall?

"Dissenting"? "To be regarded as sceptical outpourings"?

What mechanisms can you name that assess the relative merits of new papers with new concepts?

One day you guys will move from Boy Cubs to Scouts, but first you have to pass tests that your eyes are open.

Geoffrey - you say "Very many advancements start from a single person with a new idea." Reality is actually the opposite - advancement for all of humanity occurs by long slow work building on previous ideas. Totally new ideas, not based on previous knowledge, are very unusual. Where they do occur, they require testing, by methodology that should be openly evaluated and assessed by informed peers. If the idea is supported by the evidence, as seems feasible, then more evidence should be sought and gathered to support it.

There are very few totally original ideas that end up being supported by evidence. Where they are, then the new information is incorporated within the body of knowledge for that discipline.

One such idea often cited in medicine is the identification of Helicobacter pylori as an infective organism in peptic ulcer disease. The concept became accepted after it was tested rigorously and found to have strong evidence in support. The proponents were not rejecting all previous science, however - they used standard gastroenterological, bacteriological and antibiotic knowledge to both develop and test their ideas.

Sure Sue.
That explains why so many fundamental principles in science are described by a person's name. Reynold's number, Newton's Law, Schrodinger equation, Beer-Lambert Law, Romanovsky-type mixtures, Fritsch process, Stefan-Boltzmann, Hartman's procedure, and so on and on and on.

I do not disagree that much advancement comes from, even needs, team effeort. We seem to differ on how often the primary idea arises from a person or two. But then, such concepts might not match "From each according to his means, to each according to his wants". Let's share our science, by all means, by making public research very open of the public who paid for it. But let's admit individual mistakes by the individual.

Who on Earth gave you the false idea that I or colleagues are "rejecting all previous science?" That is a comment from make-believe world and you made it, not me.

I've written to two successive Presidents of the Australian Academy of Science asking what mechanisms or procedures they have set in place to allow the passage of the left field paper that comes good. No adequate answer has been received.

You might find it interesting to read http://science.org.au/fellows/memoirs/carey.html I knew Sam reasonably well and we often discussed his science.

There is an Australian list of more such examples and there is an international one on the Net. I won't reproduce then here as 1000 words approach.

Problems arise, not unreasonably, when underqualified people attempt to dominate others with better performance or intellect. That was Sam's problem.

His path was not a rematch of Warren & Marshall, but the main topic of rejection by the establishment was a point in common. Peer review is simply not doing well enough and in climate work it's fast becoming the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Mann et al merely tried to hide the medieval warming period and the little ice age. That's a more impressive trick. But it did not work..

Michael J Brown,
By similar criteria, you should not use Michael Mann's paper(s) on the hockey stick.
A correct scientist would be clamouring for retraction. Of Mann et al.

Can I assume, then, that you have not read the comprehensive rebuttals by McIntyre & McKitrick?

I know which science I favour. The rigorous set of the latter. Based on scientific merit, not wishes.

It is difficult to comment on a topic when the current methodology produces inconsistencies. Better to say nothing until it's better understood.
My personal reasoning on Boretti was coloured by some work of Chris Gilham of Perth, summarised as
"A myth was started in early December 2012 that sea levels off the Perth coastline have been rising at 9-10mm per year since 1993, three times the global average. The West Australian newspaper published a page 3 story quoting a State of Australian Cities report that Perth sea levels have been rising far quicker than anywhere else, which Federal Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese described as “disturbing” and “extraordinary”. The foreboding news was quickly propagated by other mainstream media and the sea level myth took hold. Closer analysis of the claim shows it is based only on a selective comparison of 1993 and 2010 sea levels off Perth that are monitored by tide gauges in Fremantle and Hillarys. The averaged mean sea level at Fremantle in 1993 was the lowest recorded since 1941, which makes it an extraordinary year for comparison since this critical fact is ignored by a Federal Government department, a Federal Cabinet Minister and the media. The mean sea level at Fremantle and Hillarys was higher in 1999 than in 2010, the most recent year of publicly available data, and a comparison of averages in the first and second halves of the 18 years since 1993 shows sea levels have risen about .61mm per year at Fremantle and 2.2mm per year at Hillarys."

If you can explain why these rates of change at two stations so close together are so different, you might sympathise with Boretti's uncertainty and lack of clarity. Also, I've has a quick search for a comment 2 years ago by the US Navy Admiral now retired who was in charge of USA tide gauges. His statement was that there has been no change detected by these 100 or so tide gauges, on average, over several decades.

If you are not hands on in the business of tide gauges, but do have some understanding of isostasy in its variations sub-forms, you might take a reasonable approach of holding fire until some more clarity emerges from incoming research.

I readily concede the inconsistencies you highlight in Boretti's paper, but find them no more alarming than the discrepancies seen in climate work as a whole. Let's wait to see what evolves. At present, just about every paper I have read on sea levels has problems of some sort.

Yes, Geoff, "It is difficult to comment on a topic when " you don't know what you're taliking about!

Keep it up. These are great opportunities to expose whatever you wish to expose of your lacks.
;]

Third time Alex, you've failed to provide an example of where I've been wrong. You're into the naughty corner now. Don't expect a response to your future unhelpful snides. Grow up.

Ooooh the "Boss" is perturbed.
;]

John, I spend hours most days doing my analysis. Much of it gets mired down when I discover the paucity of data of adequate quality to continue. Here's an example of why it can be off-putting. When you get this far and read about competent statisticians wanting to report temperature to one place after the decimal, well .... would you publish?

http://www.geoffstuff.com/spaghetti%20Darwin.jpg

So I go off and research other fields where the data are more rigorous than in the climate field. Much more satisfying, because you often meet people who understand and join in to help.

John,
It's a matter of where the blog puts responses and time lags. Gets out of sequence.
Gave the Darwin example of why it's more fruitful to go where there is more robust science. You reach a limit on how much time you want to spend on data of the type I illustrated. I keep going because people actually make expensive decisions based on junk like that.

Re sea levels, I've read papers from all the people you mention, bar one. Some have too much emphasis on end justifies the means at the expense of hard data, others are hardly significant enough for a paper. Most end with a question or uncertainty. Should publish when all your facts are in, preferably, especially when it is trumpeted that the science is settled.
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e.g Kurt Lambeck is a 2009 co-author in Journal of Quaternary Science, 25, 19-25, with the PALeo SEA level working group: Abe-Ouchi, A., Andersen, M., Antonioli, F., Bamber, J., Bard, E., Clark, J., Clark, P., Deschamps, P., Dutton, A., Elliot, M., Gallup, C., Gomez, N., Gregory, J., Huybers, P., Kawamura, K., Kelly, M., Lambeck, K., Lowell, T., Mitrovica, J., Otto-Bleisner, B., Richards, D., Siddall, M., Stanford, J., Stirling, C., Stocker, T., Thomas, A., Thompson, W., Torbjorn, T., Vazquez Riveiros, N., Waelbroeck, C., Yokoyama, Y. and Yu, S.) 2009. The sea-level conundrum: case studies...... Includes this, which is hard to understand:

"Therefore, we suggest that option 1 (exponential sea-level rise) is extremely unlikely. …An exponential increase in rates of sea-level rise with respect to temperature would result in 21st-century sea-level rise an order of magnitude larger than estimates using alternative patterns of response – it is an important result that the palaeo-sea-level data rule out such a response."

Yet I can easily find a half dozen papers claiming sea level rise is accelerating.

Peltier 2004 and Woodworth 2009 are in the IPCC AR5 draft with the usual stuff. Fremantle gets a mention at fig 3.12 but it stops at year 2010. I'm interested in the negative excursion later because I find anomalous results are commonly information-rich.

Not very exciting thought to follow again.

I'm talking about the difference between 1993 and 2010 with their temperatures more accurately represented as averages of their respective nine year halves. It's more accurate if only because 1993 was the lowest Fremantle sea level since 1941, probably thanks to Pinatubo (likely 92, 94 and 95 influence also).

Add .61mm to Fremantle each year from a first half averaged 1993 and by 2010 it'll equal the average of the latter half. Add 1.2mm each year and it won't.

If we're to accept a 9 division difference is Fremantle 1.2mm and Hillarys 4.5mm per year, then it's good to see at least a concession that period averages are about half the claimed 1992 rates of 5.3mm and 8mm. You'd be better off sticking to the 1993 start year instead of 1992 because then you can achieve annual linear trends of 8.3mm and 10mm per year.

You're still stuck with Fremantle 1999 being .078m higher than 2010 despite 12 years which had a massive C02 increase and supposedly the hottest decade ever. The 1999 sea levels at Fremantle and Hillarys correspond with land temps at their highest in 98/99. As with global temps, both tide gauges have fallen, risen, fallen since 1999 and, with the exception of subsiding Hillarys in 2008, still haven't matched 1999. Remember, 2000 was also very high sea levels.

Keeping in mind the published evidence that Hillarys inland subsidence was more like 6.1mm per year from 2000-2005, not just 4.6mm or 3mm, it begs the question re how much land subsidence may have influenced the Fremantle levels. A totally stable plate despite a metropolis built on it and also sucking groundwater? As I understand it, Hillarys is corrected by .1mm per year for land subsidence.

There are plenty of discrepancies and inconsistencies at both stations, as with weather stations. Sea levels undoubtedly have risen over the past 100 years but legitimate questions remain about historic recordings, claimed rates of increase and inaccurate projected levels.

John, My oldest son did a B.Surv at Curtin and knows Prof Will Featherstone who many would concede is an authority on levels on the Perth coastal plains. Will noted recently to the effect that it would be possible to re-level the topography in question (son says 0.5 mm closure Fremantle to Hillaries should be possible), but as Will says the cost of the excercise would be out of proportion to the benefit it could be foreseen to bring.

If you were of geological background, you might be aware of complications like perched water tables, rates of inflation and deflation of sediments with hydration/dehydration, rate of dust accumulation, effect on height from harvesting/planting of vegetation, different rates of altitude change depending on whether you draw from a perched table or the basal one, lateral sediment slip, dissolution of carbonate particles, calcrete formation, and a whole host of other effects that complicate the picture.

You would be doing the public and town planners a disservice if you endorsed the simple but impossible concept that the sea level, over a long term, can rise faster in one place than another a few tens of Km away. Water tends to find its level. My earlier objection was underscored by the news release I quoted, concerning politicians. They can't make proper decisions on faulty data.

Anthropogenic land subsidence in the Perth Basin: challenges for its retrospective geodetic detection (2012)

http://www.cage.curtin.edu.au/~will/Featherstone53-62.pdf

"Fourteen years of data give a subsidence rate of -4.6 mm/yr, but this increases to -6.1 mm/yr during the 2000–2005 period of increased groundwater extraction. This demonstrates that the rate of subsidence is not linear, which needs to be taken into account by GPS analysts who do not necessarily have such local knowledge."

Is There Evidence Yet of Acceleration in Mean Sea Level Rise around Mainland Australia? (2010)

http://www.jcronline.org/doi/full/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00141.1?prevSearch=author%3A+Watson%2C+P.+J.+and+Contrib%3A+Watson%2C+P.+J.&searchHistoryKey=

"However, none of the long record Australian gauges (Fremantle, Fort Denison, and Newcastle) are currently fitted with CGPS or integrated with regular geodetic levelling to an array of deep benchmarks to accurately measure vertical landform movements. Analysis of ITRF2008 data for two surface monitoring stations within ≈30 km of the Fremantle tide gauge indicates measured vertical velocities of at least −2.6 mm/y over the past decade in the Perth region (see Table 3), similar to results attained previously by Dawson (2008). Although these measurements are some distance from the Fremantle tide gauge, they confirm concerns that subsidence in the Perth region, due principally to increased groundwater extraction, might be reflected (at least in part) in the latter portion of the tide gauge record. Given the likelihood of subsidence contaminating the historical record at Newcastle and possibly the later (or after the mid-1990s) portion of the Fremantle record, it would be essential to upgrade the Fremantle, Fort Denison, and Newcastle tide gauges with collocated CGPS to enable direct measurements of land movements at each site in order to improve our regional understanding of eustatic sea level rise."

Groundwater use sinking Perth (The West Australian 12 Dec 2012)

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/15610336/groundwater-use-sinking-perth/

"Sea levels in Perth appear to be rising faster than elsewhere because the city's heavy reliance on groundwater is causing it to sink, scientists believe. Just days after a Federal Government report claimed Perth's sea levels had risen at three times the global average, prominent research and scientific institutions pointed the finger at the city's thirstiness. Commonwealth survey body Geoscience Australia used GPS monitoring to conclude Perth's land heights had fallen up to 6mm a year on the back of increased extraction from the Yarragadee aquifer. Pumping from the aquifer, which is below bedrock deep under the city, has increased greatly since the 1990s as its importance to Perth's drinking supplies has grown."

Note from the latter, albeit press, that the newspaper still didn't correct its p3 story a week earlier asserting that Perth sea levels have risen 8-10mm per year since 1993.

I assume you've studied these papers before.

When told that a level starting 1993 and finishing 2010 has risen an average annual .61mm or 1.2mm, "most people" don't grab a calculator and work out the mid-point of the two half averages. They assume levels rose by x figure each year between start and end. One description caters for the assumption "most people" make and the other is misleading, albeit technically correct from an academic's perspective.

If we're to use the 9 division, do you accept Fremantle at 1.2mm and Hillarys at 4.5mm pa, not the claimed 5.3mm and 8mm? I'm not altogether fussed about the difference between the two but I am fussed that the estimate of Hillarys vertical land motion resembles guesswork and that Fremantle is unadjusted regardless of land subsidence.

Hi Michael,

Yes, I saw that. It's a pity Angus Holland's otherwise excellent review of the sugar and health debate - "Sweet Assassin" - was spoiled by his misreporting of the Australian Paradox dispute. Angus falsely reported that:

"Using Australian Bureau of Statistics data, she [Professor Jennie Brand-Miller] and Dr Alan Barclay, the Australian Diabetes Council's head of research [both operators of the University of Sydney's pro-sugar low-GI business that involves stamping particular brands of sugar and other sugary processed carbohydrates as healthy - http://www.gisymbol.com.au/cmsAdmin/uploads/Glycemic-Index-Foundation-Healthy-Choices-Brochure.pdf ], showed that sugar consumption in recent years in Australia had actually dropped, while the incidence of obesity had increased".

Of course, it's not possible for the University of Sydney or anyone else to document a decline in sugar consumption "in recent years" using ABS data because the key ABS sugar series was discontinued as unreliable after 1998-99, more than a decade before the extraordinarily faulty Australian Paradox paper was published.

The fact that the sugar-consumption measures on which the faulty paper is based were either discontinued as unreliable or trend up not down in the authors' own published charts is the essence of my correct Australian Paradox critique.

Amusingly, while the Australian sugar industry is a business partner of the University of Sydney in its low-GI enterprise, its recent spectacularly unsuccessful attempted rescue of the University’s “shonky sugar study” cratered rather than rescued the University’s scientific integrity.

That is, the University of Sydney’s false claim that sugar consumption experienced a “consistent and substantial decline” between 1980 and 2010 has been completely contradicted by the new sugar-industry commissioned, funded and “framed” sugar series, as illustrated in the chart at http://www.australianparadox.com/pdf/JBM-AWB-AustralianParadox.pdf

The irony is that the University of Sydney claims that this new sugar-consumption series - originated by the sugar industry - is both "independent" and reliable!

On the issue of scientific fraud, it is clear that the University of Sydney is promoting false information in its disingenuous defence of the “shonky sugar study”: thus the only issue is whether the ongoing misinformation is deliberate or whether this entire Australian Paradox episode simply reflects persistent incompetence by the University of Sydney’s high-profile “scientists” and food-industry service providers.

All this and much more on this "unsettling" matter is documented on my revamped website, www.australianparadox.com

Michael,
That is downright wrong. Probably, all scientific journals started off small or "minor". Some grew, some did not. You are illogical when you state without qualification that "Most scientists are sceptical when very major results/claims appear in minor journals".

Have you polled "most scientists?"

Although it's not a Journal, more a photo mag, I've written to the Managing Editor of National Geographic pointing out that we have clarified a number of errors in their Nov 2006 edition devoted to Global Warming and that we'd like to help with a corrected version 10 years later in 2016. Could incorporate data like Jason, Grace, etc. Could correct the staunchly defended mistake that Himalayan glaciers will be largely gone by 2035. (The original was a minor, unreviewed grey paper by an obscure Indian researcher who wrote 2350). The IPCC chief himself went viral defending the error as correct. Michael, this is not a small error, it is serious stuff.

Would you and your colleagues wish to participate in correcting the more obvious errors to assist Nat Geo, a mag that I like? That's an invitation to be less in disagreement.

Michael, do a search of Climategate 1 & 2, looking for peer review, to find what are probably gem quality statements for all of science so far in recorded history, of climate workers deliberately setting out to maliciously alter peer review, to turn peer review into pal review. Also, do read the Report of the Inter Academy Council into the IPCC.

If you want to attack rogue editors, look for the evidence. The Hockey stick team have reviewed each other's papers, chosen reviewers of their liking, closed down a legit journal, forced resignations from editorial staff, have leaked reviewer's comments to each other, have influenced reviewers before publication, have hinted at withholding funds from researchers unless they write the "right" results, have insulted journals which printed dissenting papers ..... It's all there in Climategate, as written by the offenders in person.

You know what? Two of the most persistent Journal offenders are "Science" and "Nature", which once enjoyed fine reputations and still do in some fields that avoid climate work. Mine is not a subjective comment. The actual tricks are also described within Climategate, often naming the people involved.

Michael, your comments above are in danger of putting you on a junior level of similar transgressions.

Interesting that Boss Geoff, not a scientist, makes claims like "...mistake that Himalayan glaciers will be largely gone by 2035"

When the facts appear quite problematic -- facts Geoff could easily access. Just some....

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121116124650.htm
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/12/academy-finds-mixed-climate-impacts-on-himalayan-glaciers-water-supplies/

And, since mountains & snow & climate & man have many complicated interactions, here's a good example of how true scientists admit to making wrong predictions..
www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2011/03/snows_of_kilimanjaro_defy_global_warming_predictions.html

The bottom line is that global warming changes the amount of water in air and air circulation, so some historically-icy places will melt, others will expand, and the total effect will be loss of cold-trapped water.

Nat Geo might be happy to correct errors, in one direction anyway, now that Murdoch owns it.
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