Leading scientific journals 'are censoring debate on global warming'

Sunday Telegraph ^ | 05/01/05 | Robert Matthiews

[bubman]

Two of the world's leading scientific journals have come under fire from researchers for refusing to publish papers which challenge fashionable wisdom over global warming.

A British authority on natural catastrophes who disputed whether climatologists really agree that the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity, says his work was rejected by the American publication, Science, on the flimsiest of grounds.

A separate team of climate scientists, which was regularly used by Science and the journal Nature to review papers on the progress of global warming, said it was dropped after attempting to publish its own research which raised doubts over the issue.

The controversy follows the publication by Science in December of a paper which claimed to have demonstrated complete agreement among climate experts, not only that global warming is a genuine phenomenon, but also that mankind is to blame.

The author of the research, Dr Naomi Oreskes, of the University of California, analysed almost 1,000 papers on the subject published since the early 1990s, and concluded that 75 per cent of them either explicitly or implicitly backed the consensus view, while none directly dissented from it.

Dr Oreskes's study is now routinely cited by those demanding action on climate change, including the Royal Society and Prof Sir David King, the Government's chief scientific adviser.

However, her unequivocal conclusions immediately raised suspicions among other academics, who knew of many papers that dissented from the pro-global warming line.

They included Dr Benny Peiser, a senior lecturer in the science faculty at Liverpool John Moores University, who decided to conduct his own analysis of the same set of 1,000 documents - and concluded that only one third backed the consensus view, while only one per cent did so explicitly.

[Blue Eyes]

Bump. Mark for later reading.

[Thebaddog]

How about adding in the Pope's condemnation of Moral Relativism? When there is no right and wrong, there is no truth, and then there can be no scientific facts.

[samtheman]

How anyone with any critical thinking skills could believe the lies of the left is beyond me.

And why? Why do they want to believe so badly? Does each little worthless leftist on the planet secretly imagine that he/she will end up in one of the tiny number of Stalinist Leadership Roles that leftist societies end up with (often just ONE)? Does each little worthless leftists secretly imagine himself/herself bossing all the other little worthless leftists around?

[samtheman]

That's a great story. In similar situations I never fail to bring up Babs (Everybody Else Should Suffer) Streisand and the fact that she jets around the country lecturing us little people on the environment while she keeps her various mansions temperature-constant (at great energy expense) on the off-chance that she might visit one of them. And how typical she is of the Aristocratic Attitude of Environmental Leftists. One of which is a good friend of mine who got a lifetime professorship at a university and promptly bought a house one hour commute away rather than live in the nice liveable small-city that the university is in. They are all hypocrits and liars. Every last leftist one of them. (Even, sadly, my own friends.)

[samtheman]

Even if there is global warming, all you have to do to correct it is to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the earth's surface, by about 1% or 2%. You can do that by placing in orbit "artificial clouds". These can be as thin as tinfoil, and 1500 miles above the earth, so they would never be seen. (That's Dr. Edward Teller's concept, and it's a simple fix. But it doesn't lend itself to the "crisis atmosphere" that some on the left want to create.)

Great suggestion. I've read it before. But of course it's ignored by the lying leftists who don't really want to fix the problem as much as they want to curtail all human economic activity (except for socialist planned economic activity with them as the bosses and us as the slaves).

[InABunkerUnderSF]

Dr Peiser said the stifling of dissent and preoccupation with doomsday scenarios is bringing climate research into disrepute. "There is a fear that any doubt will be used by politicians to avoid action," he said. "But if political considerations dictate what gets published, it's all over for science."

The whole article does read like a chapter our of Michael Crichton's novel "State of Fear".

If I were Dr. Peiser I'd keep away from people bearing Australian Blue Ring octopi.

[liberty2004]

Does each little worthless leftists secretly imagine himself/herself bossing all the other little worthless leftists around

good observations. With my encounters with leftists, I definitely had the impression most of them had some sick fantasy everyone should live a certain way and if "they" only had absolute power, they could build paradise on Earth (of course, with them in charge and killing anyone who thinks differently). The left is definitely consumed with absolute control of the individual.

[G Larry]

Snowing again May 1st a.m.

Solves the dilema regarding inside vs. outside projects.

[tahotdog]

How about adding in the Pope's condemnation of Moral Relativism? When there is no right and wrong, there is no truth, and then there can be no scientific facts.

The scientific fact is that if WW-II didn't bring about the great man-made ecological catastrophe, it's never gonna happen.

Now, global chimate shifts due to NATURAL causes are another thing altogether. Those are real, caused by changing conditions in our sun and in the regions of space we pass through. Six or seven thousand years ago there was an age which was substantially warmer than our own and which corresponds roughly with the so-called 'golden-age' of classical literature and the reason it is called a golden age instead of the age when everybody drowned is that it was before the flood and there simply was not as much water on the planet. If such an age were to recur now, the beach front might be in West Virginia or Kentucky.

If such an age ever recurs, we will want out technology to be as far advanced as possible when it does (so we can try to deal with it); the last thing we'll need will be for somebody like Algor or any of the rest of the idiots involved in the Kyoto treaty to have returned us to the horse and buggy age.

[RipSawyer]

Please tell me how to induce some "global warming" in my neighborhood.>>>>>>

The more "global warming" we have, the cooler it is in South Carolina! I love it! It is near noon and the current temperature is 63, normally it would be in the eighties by now.

[InABunkerUnderSF]

The truth is, we don't really know what causes climate change. None of the models that climate "scientists" put forward seem to work more than a year or two out.

One thing worth noting is that if the US had joined the western worlds economic suicide pact known as the Kyoto Accords the most optimistic guess (prediction, projection, prognostication etc.) was that, assuming the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming is correct, the global temperature wold have dropped .3 degrees Celsius.

Three tenths of one degree is not a lot of gain in return for destroying our economy.

[tahotdog]

I'd be willing to bet that figure was .3 of a degree C too high.

[KC_for_Freedom]

Same thing with Scientific American. They published papers to discredit Lomborg's book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist" but would not publish his rebutal. Lomborg noted that two of the critics published in SA are the scientists that are discredited in his book and that on his website he has provided the rebutal to their arguements. SA has gone over to the dark side and is in cahoots with the liberal agenda even though they insist they have not.


SA did publish an energy flow discussion that concluded that the oceans will act as a heat sink for about 100 years, making it very difficult to witness atmospheric heating. (Thus arguing that this is the reason why we cannot see true evidence.) This to me only means that we have to monitor things for about 50 years or so to see if this model's conclusion has any validity.

[SunkenCiv]

Ping!

[erebus]

I don't understand why so many folks on both the left and the right insist on politicizing the SCIENCE of climate change. I understand that things like Kyoto are policy decisions and inherently political, but there is an undeniable trend of people viewing the science of climate change through a partisan prism.
Global warming/climate change isn't and shouldn't be a matter of politics it's a matter of finding evidence and evaluating it as objectively as possible. The fact is that in the scientific community Benny Peiser's objectivity is highly suspect (likewise so is the objectivity of many of of his counterparts in the debate).
Sorry if it's sounds elitist, but climate change is an unbelievably complex phenomenon - but it does occur. How much of the change (if any) in climate is driven by anthropogenic forcings is exponentially more difficult to discern. The objective scientific data (not political leanings) overwhelmingly indicate that human activities are altering global climate. This is why there is a consensus view in the scientific community, not because we're all wacko left-wingers.
The politics of climate change come in with how we as a nation deal with it, not how we interpret the data.
One last quote "There is substantial evidence to indicate that significant global warming will occur
during the 21st century."- where's this from? Greenpeace? Sierra Club? NRDC? Nope, the United States Department of Defense (not exactly a global-socialist organization). [An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security October 2003 By Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall - open source]

[PeaceBeWithYou]

Far from reality, more of a worse case senario, penned not by the DOD, not scientist, but a couple of business planners. Taken way out of context by you. Did you even bother to read it? Or was a quick snip of a few doom and gloom quotes from the middle enough. Give us a freaking break! Go troll somewhere where you won't get nailed on your first post.

Preface of the report:

Imagining the Unthinkable

The purpose of this report is to imagine the unthinkable - to push the boundaries of current research on climate change so we may better understand the potential implications on United States national security. We have interviewed leading climate change scientists, conducted additional research, and reviewed several iterations of the scenario with these experts.

The scientists support this project, but caution that the scenario depicted is extreme in two fundamental ways.

First, they suggest the occurrences we outline would most likely happen in a few regions, rather than on globally.

Second, they say the magnitude of the event may be considerably smaller.

We have created a climate change scenario that although not the most likely, is plausible, and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately.

[Jim_Curtis]

I was watching some show about a preserved Mammoth that was buried deep in the ice and they were trying to tell me that an "ice age" did this animal in.

But it must be colder now than when this beast died because it wasn't under ice at the time of its death. The ice would have to melt down to the point where the thing is fully exposed before we are at the temp it was at when it died so we must be in an even icier age than the mammoth was in, it seems to me.

They can't say that it sunk deeper because they take core samples from the ice and use it as a time-line so if they claim that the beast sunk, than their core sample research must be bogus because the ice at the surface could be older than the deeper ice.

[InABunkerUnderSF]

Is there really a "scientific consensus" on global warming or is it just a political position held by most in academia.

I would recommend Bjorn Lonborg's book "The Skeptical Environmentalist" as a good starting point. Lonborg is a gay socialist from Denmark and former official of Greenpeace. His point is that global warming is a political movement, not a scientific fact.

A more enjoyable read is Michael Crichton's new book "State of Fear". This is a work of fiction (arguably influence by Clive Cussler) with footnotes to nonfictional scientific source material, a sensible and amusing author's note at the end and an appendix that compares the global warming phenomenon of the late 20th century to the eugenics movement of the early 20th century. The appendix is in some ways more frightening than the novel. I have a feeling Hollywood is going to have problems making this one into a movie, unless maybe they cut out the part about the Martin Sheen/Ed Begley Jr. composite character being tenderized and eaten raw by the Solomon Islanders.

[erebus]

I wouldn't say that I took the quote out of context. The specific scenario they explored is purposely crafted to be the most dire, yet still plausible event. The statement I refer to is explaining why such a study is necessary in the first place - because climate change (anthropogenic or not) is occurring. This report was commissioned by the DoD, written by outside authors, but given full access to government and DoD climate research. (yes the DoD spends a good bit of $ on internal climate change research). Examples of climate change prognostications that developed exclusively within the DoD can be seen in the current Interagency Coordination Plan by the JCS - that specifically address the changing environmental security future.

The statement that a consensus doesn't exist within the scientific community is the problem with politicizing a nonpolitical issue. Admittedly the largest culprits in this have been academics themselves - early climate researchers who constructed alarmist portents and allowed themselves to be manipulated by the environmental movement have irreparably damaged the integrity of climate change science. However, the writing is on the wall and the data themselves are nonpartisan.

We need partisan interpretations of how to respond to the issue; for that's what creates healthy, hybrid solutions. We don't need a partisan blindness to the existence of the issue because it has been deemed a "liberal" concept.

[PeaceBeWithYou]

It is a lieberal/socialist concept from head to toe.

Is there global warming, you bet, just like there is global cooling, constant change is the norm with climate. Show me where in the past this wasn't true? You can't. The only times it has been near steady state have been during the ice ages.

To accurately model the climate you would need a computer that doesn't exist yet, and may never exist. There are approximately 5 million different variables and thousands of equations. The current modeling is very simplistic, and wrong more than it is right.

Over 30 billion has been spent on Kyoto since Feb. 16, 2005 and that is increasing at about $275,000 per minute, potential temperature saving by the year 2050 so far achieved by Kyoto is .000319917 C. Link

I know you were trolling, but stick around there's some folks here that will open your eyes to the illusions you hold, if you let us.