Then there is this editorial comment, from Prof Legates, on the controversy:
http://eteam.ncpa.org/commentaries/global_warming/082203dl.html
August 22, 2003
By: Dr. Legates, Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Delaware. He also serves as a Review Editor for the journal Climate Research.
While most of official Washington was captivated with the fight on the Senate floor to pass an energy bill before they left town for their August vacation, a vicious campaign was underway behind the scenes to smear two prominent scientists for pointing out serious flaws in the science behind the theory of human-caused climate change.
The targets were Drs. Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, both astrophysicists at Harvard, who were characterized as fringe scientists whose work should be ignored. What did they do to attract such characterizations? They had the audacity to pull back the curtain on the wizard of global warming.
The issue focuses on a paper by Drs. Soon and Baliunas that supports the widely held view that the climate of the last millennium has been quite variable and includes a Medieval Warm Period and subsequent Little Ice Age. This is only controversial because it, and the wider body of scientific literature that exists, directly contradicts recent research by Dr. Michael Mann, a leading global warming proponent. Mann argues global air temperatures have been stable over the last 1,000 years, with the exception of the last 100. It is the 'Mann-made' warming to which Soon and Baliunas have objected.
While most of these arguments are confined to academic discussions that the general public would find less than boring, this fight played out recently in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works (EPW). It has also been echoed in several news accounts from academic journals to the New York Times.
Dr. Mann testified before the Senate committee that his research is the "mainstream view" because it is featured prominently in a chapter of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, of which Dr. Mann was also a lead author. Soon and Baliunas challenged Mann's claim by reviewing the large body of literature that shows his claims to be unsubstantiated and his research to be fatally flawed. In truth, Mann's work is the scientific outlier - the one study that does not fit with the wealth of scientific evidence.
Soon and Baliunas argue that Mann's conclusions rest on a dubious manipulation of data. While many of the problems in Mann's work require scientific expertise to understand, one flaw is so basic that everyone can understand it. Mann and his colleagues compiled a historical climate reconstruction - called the "hockey stick" because of its shape - primarily using tree ring records to infer air temperature trends. Their use of proxy data is not novel, but the methods they used and thus the results, certainly are. For example, Mann and his colleagues simply attached the surface temperature record of the 20th century to the end of the proxy record. This is an apples-to-oranges comparison as air temperature readings are not directly comparable to proxy records. However, putting the two different sets of data together in this way makes a stunning visual display for the average reader.
In addition, in his analysis for the Northern Hemisphere prior to A.D. 1400, Mann uses data from nine locations in addition to statistical summaries derived from data for the western US only. Four of these additional locations are in the Southern Hemisphere, including Tasmania and Patagonia.
The widespread acceptance of this revisionist history was possible because the global warming community was eager to accept the "hockey stick" as proof of human-caused climate change.
If it remained merely a disagreement about science and research methods, there wouldn't be much of a story - or reason for concern. Unfortunately, it turned into a scientific lynching of Soon and Baliunas and anyone associated with them. For example, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of Climate Research that published the paper, was criticized for having failed in his responsibilities of quality control, even though the paper passed an extensive peer-review process and the publisher defended de Freitas' handling of the paper. It was argued de Freitas should be removed from his position simply for having published it. Even Mann, in his Senate testimony, dismissed de Freitas' credentials solely because he "frequently publishes op-ed pieces in newspapers attacking IPCC and attacking [the] Kyoto [protocol]." The Editor-in-Chief of Climate Research declared that Soon and Baliunas should be barred from publishing their work in the future.
Why is all this important? Global warming alarmists would have governments impose significant regulations with tremendous economic implications. The Bush administration is under attack simply for stating that the science is uncertain whether human-induced global warming is occurring. At the same time, scientists that add credence to that assertion are being silenced.
Yet if recent global warming is largely a result of natural climate variability, policies to reduce global warming would be unnecessary, costly and ineffective. Before we are asked to incur the pain, we should better understand whether there would be any gain.