Well, if and when you find the citation, I'm sure we will be happy to debate its merits. However Ted, I have to ask. When you were leafing through scientific American, did you happen to notice the DOZENS of scientific articles which DO support Global Warming? I mean here you cite Scientific American as a source (at least hypothetically), yet hardly a month goes by without them adressing, in some aspect the issue of Global warming or some facet of it, always in line with the scientific consensus of human causality. Did you not notice all those articles because you were rushed or it was a bad day? Or do you not read them because they don't agree with you?



Interesting assertion Ted, that the polar icecaps are getting thicker. I'm sure you can evidence such a startling claim as that.

In the meantime, here are a few of the 'nutcase' places that 'nutcase' Gore got his 'nutcase' information about the Polar icecaps melting:

http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/qthinice.asp

"Since 1979, the size of the summer polar ice cap has shrunk more than 20 percent."

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/...p3?img_id=16978

"September 2002 set a new record low at 15 percent below average. It was followed closely by September 2003 and September 2004. So far, 2005 is shaping up to be another record-low sea ice year in the Arctic.

Except for a small area in the East Greenland Sea, Arctic sea ice has retreated almost everywhere in June 2005. The month set a new record low: 6 percent below the long-term mean for June sea ice extent. "

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20..._polar_ice.html

"Scientists have determined that the ice in Greenland and the Arctic is melting so rapidly that much of it could be gone by the end of the century. (See photos from the Arctic.) The results could be catastrophic for polar people and animals, while low-lying lands as far away as Florida could be inundated by rising sea levels."


But I am sure Ted considered such sources at NASA, The National geographic, and other sources (easily found by a 2 second Google search) Including the Times, the herald, USA Today, Nature... oh yeah, and Scientific Amrican, to be 'nutcases'.

Certainly they are all drowned out by the MANY compelling sources Ted has provided evidencing his assertions that global icecap volume is INCREASING...


Oh, wait...

Just to head Ted off from another post from a skeptic source, there is some evidence of thickening of the Antarctic ice dome at higher elevations. I believe this is also true in Greenland too but would have to check. This contrasts with accelerated melting of the ice shelves and speed up of low altitude glaciers. Some skeptics have latched onto the central thickening as evidence against global warming. In reality, it is not. All the computer models I am aware of predicted increased precipitation in the polar areas and that this would be in the form of snow at higher altitudes resulting in some thickening. (See This Realclimate Article and link to the model predictions.

There is a study that says the Greenland glaciers are growing.

Ice Storm

Recent Ice-Sheet Growth in the Interior of Greenland

The funny thing is that when carbon dioxide concentrations are increased, the warming that forces is concentrated in areas of very dry air. This is a known phenomenon. What air is the driest? Very cold air is the driest. Thus we tend to see a warming of the coldest regions of the planet (Siberia, Northwest North America). This has been observed and corresponds well with the theory.

Basically, the warming is not really increasing maximum temperatures, it is narrowing the gap of variability by increasing the coldest temperatures. The current warming trend is making the climate less extreme, not more extreme.

Let's get back to the original topic here:

Should the world invest resources into eliminating the problem or into adapting with the changes?

The warming over the past century has accompanying a planetary population explosion. The world's population has nearly quadrupled. Luckily, crop output has quintupled in the last 50 years--mainly due to technology, but partially due to increased CO2 levels. If adapting is needed, we are ready.

What about the economic impact of Kyoto? Increasingly, scientists are speaking out against Kyoto as both ineffective and economically damaging. Someone earlier cited the New Zealand scientists who came out against Kyoto: link

A few months ago, an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper from sixty scientists called for the Canadian government to re-examine Kyoto. Open Kyoto to debate

The Bush administration formerly pulled away from Kyoto when the hard numbers came out about its impact: 0.07 degrees C.

How much would we have to reduce greenhouse emissions to reverse this anthropomorphic induced temperature increase? 22% to get to Kyoto levels (0.07 Degrees C). Probably 50% or more to reduce CO2 concentrations worldwide.

I believe you mean growing (thickening) ice sheet not glaciers which are flowing faster and thinning. (See This Realclimate Discussion). The following is one of many relevant paragraphs. A similar phenomenon is going on in Antarctica.





Here is what one climate scientist says about Gore's movie. you are free to disagree but with this kind of support I hardly think he ranks as a "nut case."

I “leaf through it” every month and yes there are lots of folks who discuss some aspect of global warming although few are “atmospheric scientists”. I will look for the article. But be honest – will it really mean squat to you? There are 10 “scientists” who believe global warming is caused by human activity for every one that says the evidence is not nearly conclusive.

Here are some:

While it is possible to go on indefinitely about why the Kyoto Protocol is unnecessary and based on “junk science,” I would like to just summarize the major facts that completely undermine it. This is long because it has all of the links. If you are a "believer," I hope that you will pick out at least one factual predicate from the following to discuss in detail.

1. Carbon dioxide changes over millions of years do not correlate with temperature increases, even though CO2 has been 20 times higher than today in the past. “On the time-scale of hundreds of millions of years, carbon dioxide has sharply declined; its concentration was as much as 20 times the present value at the beginning of the Cambrian Period, 600 million years ago [Berner, 1997]. Yet the climate has not varied all that much and glaciations have occurred throughout geologic time even when CO2 concentrations were high.” S. Fred Singer, “Human Contribution to Climate Change Remains Questionable,” EOS, Transactions, American Geophysical Society, Vol 80, page 183-187, April 20, 1999. Only recently has it been possible to obtain sufficient resolution to demonstrate that the increase in CO2 lags by about 600 years behind the rapid warming that signals deglaciation, the end of an ice age and the beginning of an interglacial warm period [Fischer et al., 1999]. Id. Citing Fischer’s study, CO2 Magazine noted: “Over this immense time span, the three most dramatic warming events experienced on earth were those associated with the terminations of the last three ice ages; and for each and every one of these tremendous global warmings, earth’s air temperature rose well before there was any increase in atmospheric CO2. In fact, the air’s CO2 content did not begin to rise until 400 to 1,000 years after the planet began to warm.”

http://www.co2science.org/edit/v2_edit/v2n7edit.htm (1999). In summary, “major past climate changes were either uncorrelated with changes in CO2 or were characterized by temperature changes that preceded changes in CO2 by hundreds to thousands of years.” Testimony of Richard S. Lindzen, MIT, former chairman of NAS Climate Change Panel, before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on May 2. 2001.

http://www.theenvironmentsite.org/Forum/viewtopic.php?t=2879

Q. Do you have a position regarding global warming?

A. I certainly do. The climate warms and cools naturally all the time. It changes from day to day, month to month, season to season, year to year, and so on. At times, there is global warming; at other times there is global cooling. Some climate changes are predictable and some are not. We can predict that the winters are colder than the summers because we understand the mechanism. We cannot predict the climate from year to year, however, because we do not know why it fluctuates. When the climate warms, there could be a number of reasons for it doing so, including the sun. Another possibility is that human activities are adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, and this could produce some warming.
The important question then is: How important is the effect of human activities? And that we cannot tell. We know the theory, which says that human activity could be important, but the theory cannot be trusted until it has been verified. Until now, this theory, which is based largely on a mathematical model, has not been validated against observations. If the theory becomes validated against observations, then we can be more confident about using it to predict the future. But we’re not there yet, and nobody should be basing conclusions and remedies on an unverified theory.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2000/01-...environment.htm




I don’t dispute the caps are melting in places and as you say “much” of it could be melted in a century. AL (nutcase) Gore said clearly they will ALL be GONE in “a few decades”. Want to comment on that or continue with your usual snide remarks at me? Are you saying the dope did NOTsay this?? If so just say so instead of your usual snide personal attacks on me.





As usual Vermillion is always right. After all lots of people agree that GW is caused by CO2 therfore it must be true.


Well maybe…….


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jh...4/09/do0907.xml

For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).

In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say "how silly to judge climate change over such a short period". Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming. Tosh. Our devotee will also pass by the curious additional facts that a period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940, well prior to the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate.
Does something not strike you as odd here? That industrial carbon dioxide is not the primary cause of earth's recent decadal-scale temperature changes doesn't seem at all odd to many thousands of independent scientists. They have long appreciated - ever since the early 1990s, when the global warming bandwagon first started to roll behind the gravy train of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - that such short-term climate fluctuations are chiefly of natural origin. Yet the public appears to be largely convinced otherwise. How is this possible?

IMO jury is still out. Ans Al Gore........ well you know

TedN5:

Nice try. The point has nothing at all to do with frozen versus liquid water, but instead, everything to do with MASS. If the MASS of ice on Greenland is increasing, then there ought not be any increase in sea level [unless, of course, you wish to claim that the water now ice on Greenland only came from lakes and rivers and not from oceans].

And by the way, and perhaps Vermillion can chime in as well, can you please ask the astronomers whether Martian emitted greenhouse gases are causing the thinning of polar icecaps on Mars? Or is it, as I and some others before me have postulated, all a result of natural solar variability and/or some other natural cycle or process? See:

http://www.innovations-report.com/html/rep...eport-6484.html

And, TedN5, you might also consider:

"Where Rignot and Kanagaratnam went wrong was in estimating Greenland's mass gain via snowfall over the vast interior of the ice sheet during the time that coastal glaciers were accelerating. Instead of relying on measurements for this evaluation, they relied on the calculations of Hanna et al. (2005), who used meteorological models "to retrieve annual accumulation, runoff, and surface mass balance.""

So, don't use Johannessen & Co.'s actual data, use a model instead. And you and some others wonder why we question the credibility of some. And so we also read:

"When actual measurements of the ice sheet via satellite radar altimetry are employed, quite a different perspective is obtained. Zwally et al. (2005), for example, found that although "the Greenland ice sheet is thinning at the margins," it is "growing inland with a small overall mass gain." In fact, for the 11-year period 1992-2003, Johannessen et al. (2005) found that "below 1500 meters, the elevation-change rate is -2.0 ± 0.9 cm/year, in qualitative agreement with reported thinning in the ice-sheet margins," but that "an increase of 6.4 ± 0.2 cm/year is found in the vast interior areas above 1500 meters." Spatially averaged over the bulk of the ice sheet, the net result, according to the latter researchers, was a mean increase of 5.4 ± 0.2 cm/year, "or ~60 cm over 11 years, or ~54 cm when corrected for isostatic uplift."

Consequently, and in direct contradiction of the claim of Rignot and Kanagaratnam, Greenland has experienced no "ice sheet mass deficit in the last decade." Quite to the contrary, it has been host to a net accumulation of ice, which Zwally et al. find to be "contributing -0.03 ± 0.01 mm a-1 to sea-level change." As a result, the net accretion of ice on Greenland over the past decade has actually been ever so slightly lowering global sea level.

As for the future, whereas Rignot and Kanagaratnam contend that "as more glaciers accelerate ... the contribution of Greenland to sea-level rise will continue to grow," Zwally et al. report that "thinning at the margins of the Greenland ice sheet and growth at higher elevations is an expected response to increasing temperatures and precipitation in a warming climate," and this observation suggests that Greenland's accreting-ice trend of the last decade would likely continue in a warming world, which is once again just the opposite of what Rignot and Kanagaratnam contend."

See: http://209.157.64.201/focus/f-news/1594640/posts

In any event, I'll be waiting for the answer to my question about whether Martian emitted greenhouse gases are causing the loss of Mars' polar icecaps...


Edited to add:

As a measure of how ridiculous the whole affair truly is, have you and some others considered the obvious, to wit, that any restrictions on industry emissions in Europe and the US is just going to push steel, aluminum, and other energy intensive manufacturing to China and India? And so the emissions will still happen, just somewhere else? And we'll then have to import what we now buy locally, which will only serve to raise transportation costs and, of course, ships and other means of transport burn the very fuel that you claim is causing the problem...

Vermillion:

Re your journals:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220

"And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are published, standards shift. When I, with some colleagues at NASA, attempted to determine how clouds behave under varying temperatures, we discovered what we called an "Iris Effect," wherein upper-level cirrus clouds contracted with increased temperature, providing a very strong negative climate feedback sufficient to greatly reduce the response to increasing CO2. Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as "discredited." Indeed, there is a strange reluctance to actually find out how climate really behaves. In 2003, when the draft of the U.S. National Climate Plan urged a high priority for improving our knowledge of climate sensitivity, the National Research Council instead urged support to look at the impacts of the warming--not whether it would actually happen."

See: http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220

And why don't you email Peter Duesberg, first human to isolate a cancer gene, and ask him what happened to him when he dared to question the HIV/AIDS hypothesis, specifically, why he got the same response from as our friend above. In the meantime, please see:

http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/pdmaddox.htm

So please spare me the nonsense about SciAmer, Nature, or any journal is purportedly "all good" when it comes to just who gets published and why.

Hate to tell you this, friend, by an impartial science no longer exists in our world. It's all about politics and money now...

That's quite the admission on your part Ted, nice to see you accept the reality of scientific consensus. Now, as to answering my question, why do those 10 articles evidencing global warming and human involvement seem to have no effect on you?

Interestingly of the articles you cited, one was quite to the point, stating that global warming is a reality, and there could be many contributing causes, including human involvement. However, at the time of his comments, (6 years ago) he could not state with any certainty the level of impact of human involvement.

Since that time, his question has been answered, most particularily by the Oxford study of last year, but certainly by half a dozen others. These are why the scientific consensus for human impact on global warming is not ONLY a substantial majority, it is also a growing majority.




Firstly, actually you quite clearly DID dispute they were melting.



If you are now revising or withdrawing that statement, then thats fine, but don't try and pretend it never happened. Also, don't insult me for calling you on statements like that that.

Secondly why do you keep accusing me of insulting you? You did this in another thread as well despite my going out of my way to be polite, something YOU have not been doing. You made an outlandish assertion, called a man a nutcase, and provided no evidence to support either. Is calling you on factually wrong assertions and asking for evidence 'insulting' in your eyes Ted?




What are you talking about?
You stated the icecaps are not melting, I called you on it, pointed out that you provided no evidence to this assertion and provided substantial evidence contrary. Your answer to that: "As usual Vermillion is always right".

Help me out Ted, as I can't be sure. That was obviously either a snide personal attack or an admission of your factual error. Can you tell me which it was?

Now, even though YOU are now dropping your original statement, you throw out comments like the above on, on topics that were not part of the statement at all?

All at the same time as accusing ME of making side remarks?

Here ya go Ted.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=irony



Well, considering the evidence you provided on that was an op/ed peice from a newspaper, I'm not sure exactly how much credence I would give it against the large and growing majority of planetary scientific opinion...

But hey, everyone is entitled to their own opinions Ted, no matter how 'nutcase' they might be...

Please, Kivrot, your evidence athat 'all academic journals are about politics and money is:

-One scientist who got his submission turned down by the most prestigious scientific journal in the world, and is personally sure it is for political reasons, and

-One scientists who tried to get an article completely outside his speciality field published in the most prestigious scientific magasine in the world, and was turned down, and is personally SURE that was done for political reasons.


Nature, as well as most peer-reviewed magasines, publish articles based on content, they do not care who the writer was. If Steven Hawking submits a crap article, it does not get published.

This is not a field I am guessing about by the way, I worked for four years at the single largest academic grant and research funding agency in North America, I have acted as editor on one peer-reviewed journal and external assessor on four more, and have had twelve articles published (hopefully 13 this month) in peer reviewed journals in my field in four countries. My best friend in the world has an article in Nature two months ago in fact (he is a physicist).

For it to be about 'money' there would have to be money involved, wouldn't you think? Yet the vast majority of academic research goes unfunded, there is no funding cabal, and in fact most agencies are more LIKELY to fund proposals which challenge orthodoxy, as that is the nature of academic inquiry. Of the funding agencies I know intimately, there is no political pressure, nor can there be as they are arm's length agencies with no political affiliations and no capacity to alter or affect the granting outcome, nor the publishing outcome. Not only is there no evidence of it being about money or politics, but there is no logic whatsoever in that assertion. It's existence depends on credible people not having the slightest idea how academic research and publishing works.


The idea that journals and grants are somehow 'controlling' or 'directing' academic research in favour of global warming is one giant unevidenced fabrication, created by GW opponents to deal with the inconvenient fact that the majority of the world's scientists strongly disagree with them.

So it's not about money. I said as much in my posts. It's about the "cause" and the "faith".

I personally find it disturbing that the "majority of the world's scientists" buy into a theory that is largely unproven, based on a premise that is not realistic, and advocate a "solution" to a "problem" that can't be determined via any sort of valid science.

Is it possible that science has been infiltrated by radical political activists who have an agenda far beyond "science"?

First off, when you say "the world's scientists", whom exactly are you referring to?

The world's medical scientists? Those who work on genetic research? How about those who study the stars, atomic physics, electronics, nano technology and materials, and oceanographers?

Or, do you (as I suspect) refer to the relatively narrow and politically minded field of "climate change" scientists?

The bottom line is that, contrary to what these scientists say, there is no PROOF that man is causing "global warming" and that this fluctuation of the earth's climate (which is completely within the range of historical variation) is a BAD thing in any event.

I have worked with "scientists" my entire career (over 20 years). Some of them were brilliant. Some of them could barely dress themselves and find the proper exit off the highway to get to the office. Many were in the middle. There is nothing magical about "scientists" in my practical experience. They are no different than anyone else can can get sucked into a culture that is more based on groupthink and "just getting along" as ANY other profession. Peer review? It's the foxes watching the hen house in most cases.

I'm more interested in scientists who have the intellectual curiosity combined with COURAGE to challenge what the "majority" think.

That's how the scientific process is supposed to work... in contrast to the collectivist-minded totalitarian-like "re-education" mentality that infects the ranks of "climate change" scientists and their radical political advocates like the insufferable Albert Gore Jr.

Hypothesis should be put forth and then shot at. If they can withstand the onslaught, then they have some validity.

In the case of global warming, this process isn't even followed remotely. The premise that the earth is a "greenhouse", which is a premise that is faulty on its face, and that the simplistic interaction of CO2 in that "greenhouse" causes climate change should be challenged on all fronts. But, instead, we have a declaration of fact and a denunciation of anyone who isn't on board with that radical hypothesis.

In this case, science has been corrupted. And I find that to be a shame.

Don't tell me, tell Kivrot. Its him who asserts otherwise.



That whole sentence would have been a LOT better had it ended with three critically missing words: "In my opinion".

Because thats what it is. Frankly, having read a great number of these reports, I find that the premise they present is extremely realistic, that the theory, while 'unproven' in the strictest sense, is extremely well evidenced. As for solutions, very few reports on Global warming I have seen advocate a specific solution, that tends to fall to politicians. So lets leave that out of this for the moment.

These scientists, who by the way are not 'Climate scientists' but in fact come from pretty uch every related field imaginable from biology to climatology to meteorology, oceanology and so on, do not think this is real because its 'cool' to do so, they do this because through extensive research on the field, in massive, extensive studies by independent universities around the world, the results have yielded masses of positive evidence. They believe EXACTLY because of the scientific method you assert (somewhat bafflingly) has been 'abandoned' in this case.



Yeah I suppose. Its also possible they have been infiltrated by aliens. Whats of somewhat more significance is what is plausible, what is realistic, and far more importantly, what can be evidenced. None of those three fit your assertion that scientists are suddenly infiltrated anti-science tree-hugging radicals. In fact some of the higher-name advocates of human impact global warming were renowned scientists with infinite international credibility LONG before this debate came along: such luminaries as David Attenborough and David Suzuki...




Please, PLEASE read a few of these studies you dismiss so easily. In fact the current global warming trend is NOT 'completely within the range of historical variation', that has been disproven countless times. Furthermore yes there is no 2+2 proof of the exact extent to which manking is responsible for global warming. But that is not a standard of measurement of any significance here.

Its like debating with creationists, who keep asserting that there is no absolute PROOF of cell-to-man evolution. There is also no 'proof' that Black holes exist, nor 'proof' of the exact speed of light, nor 'proof' that the force of gravity exists. But there is a hell of a lot of evidence, almost ALL of it pointing in the same way.

Where are the independent academic studies disproving or casting doubt on human impact Global Warming? Have there been any? Even one?

The reality is science is based on challenging hypotesies, and this is no different. To assert otherwise is silly, or at least would require some evidence to back it up.




This is getting worse and worse. Where do you get off making such an assertion like that? can you provide the slightest evidence to back it up? keep in mind you have just accused hundreds of thousands of respected scientists of falsifying data, fabricating test results and outright lying. So given the magnitude of this VAST assertion, I assume you have something substantive to back it up?



They are. They are every day, in this field and all others. The real problem is when those who claim to know more about the field than the scientists doing the research can't even be bothered to read any of these studies, don't know anything at all about the research, and make absurd claims like: "The premise is that the earth is a 'greenhouse'", or "The icecaps are not melting, they are thickening" which are utterly and obviously false.


One other thing about grants and peer review in terms of research by the way. Results are never funded. methodology, open questions and structure of experimentation are funded. A research project setting out to 'prove' a theory would not get a single red cent. A research proposal investigating a question, with sound methodology, careful analysis and NON-predetermined results, has a chance.

This whole debate leaves me despairing about human nature. Many people seem to be so adamant about their beliefs that evidence doesn't matter. I for one would be happy to be proven wrong so that I could look forward to a healthy world for my grand daughters. However, the evidence continues to mount in the other direction - rising temperatures continue to track model predictions, discrepancies in satellite and ground measurements get resolved in favor of the consensus view, patterns of temperature in the oceans follow those predicted by climate models, thickening of ice sheets at high altitude and melting at low altitude conform to models, arctic ocean ice is receding and thinning, melting tundra in Siberia and Alaska is occurring as predicted, northward migrations of plants and animals is occurring as would be expected, and more and more extreme weather events are observed some of them as much as a 5 Sigma standard deviation from normal.

On the other hand, we have a small group of skeptics who disagree with each other but are united in opposition to the majority position. Pat Michaels now accepts that global warming is happening and that it is human caused but doesn't believe it is a big threat. (He didn't accept that it was happening previously). Lindzen accepts some human caused greenhouse gas warming but thinks it will be modest because of his Iris Hypothesis about tropical cloud formation that should lead to a negative feedback. (So far neither he nor anyone else has offered additional support while a NASA study refuted it). Bill Gray fulminates against the consensus but mainly appeals to the authority or his own long experience in studying hurricanes. (He is increasingly isolated even from the other skeptics). Fred Singer, now retired but one of the early critics, hung his hat primarily on the failure of satellite data to show the predicted warming but I don't know his position since ground measurements and satellite measurements have been largely reconciled. John Christy, keeper of the satellite data set, shared Singer's concern about their inconsistency with ground measurements. He has since reconciled with Wetz and others' identification of systematic errors in the data set but remains a critic, now pointing out inconsistencies between northern hemisphere versus southern hemisphere data. Soon and Balinus published a controversial literature review paper claiming solar variation was largely responsible for global warming. Soon also wrote a book on the Mauder minimum. There are others, maybe a total 12 to 15 published scientists, plus a host of non scientists.

The point of all this is to try and show the inconsistency and shallowness of the skeptics position as opposed to the thousands of scientists and hundreds of papers that reinforce each other on the consensus side. If the Iris Hypothesis had been reinforced by the NASA study that looked at clouds or if someone else had picked it up, designed observations, and performed them and got results that supported the theory, then it would receive a lot of attention. Right now its merely the pet theory of a respected but maverick scientist. The same can be said with less justification for the solar hypothesis of Soon and Balinus even though it was financially supported by industry contributions and the paper's publication was so contentious. Other contentions of the critics have been shot down repeatedly.

All of this could be reconciled to the normal push and pull of a scientific field but a group of right wing think tanks, organizations, and web sites largely industry funded, are organized to broadcast the views of these few skeptics and give them equal footing with the consensus view. All they have to do is keep the politicians and the public confused. So far they have been successful, preventing any serious response to GW even though there are energy policy and other reasons for taking the initial steps. I wish the standard of evidence for going to war in Iraq had been 1/10th as high as many posters standard for taking action on GW.



It has become somewhat tiresome answering you and Ted point by point. We only go around in circles since you are ideologically wedded to your positions. However, Here is a discussion of the facts surrounding the variation in Martian ice (dry ice) caps. In fact, I recommend to everyone in this forum, who has a climate change issue, that they go to Realclimate and type in a search criteria and select a relevant article to read if one exists. If you do, you will generally find something that gives the consensus view of the issue and will at least know what you are arguing against.

If we can take a step back from casting aspersions on all climate scientists, it would most helpful.

However, science does tend towards a certain type of group-think in which comfortable, established positions have a great inertia behind them. The scientific community is a relatively closed set and incoming members pass through a certain common element (commonly called universities) in order to enter.

Add to this the perception bias that is inherent in each and every one of us. When one looks at something (be it experimental results or simply someone walking down the street) one tries to fit the observation into the pre-existing worldview. Only if the observation is wholly incompatable with the pre-existing assumptions can the worldview be modified (or discarded).

When scientists try to prove hypotheses (in reality, they attempt to disprove hypotheses), they already have a preestablished notion of the outcome. They expect a certain result. Sometimes, the hypothesis is proven wrong (or flawed) because the observations do not match the expected observations predicted by the hypothesis.

What's going on right now is a veritable deluge of observations. Ice sheets are thickening, iceberg calving is increasing, CO2 levels are rising, global temperatures are hedging upwards.

So we have this theory that man-made greenhouse gases are the main factor behind global temperatures rise. All well and good to this point.

So scientists come up with computer models to determine what effect increasing CO2 levels may have. They use complex formulas to predict temperature rise over the next century and voila: a number comes out. But the model does not accurately predict the observed data from the last century. The model is flawed. Revisions are made to the model to add feedback or forcing or other coefficients to make the model move into closer agreement with observations and voila: another prediction comes out.

Is this second model, which agrees more closely with the observed data, more or less accurate than the first?

The obvious answer would seem to be that yes, this second model is more accurate. After all, it predicts the past behavior while the second does not. The problem is, we cannot have any confidence that the second model is accurate at all and cannot even predict that its future results will be more accurate than those of the first model.

Why? Because the model has been fudged to produce the expected results.

Now, I am not saying that this is how climate modelling has been approached, but it remains true that GCMs have a very bad track record in predicting multidecadal temperature observations.

Now, for most scientific theories, laymen have little interest. Who cares if gravity is caused by spacetime spiralling or mass distorting the time-space curve or gravitons or some other unknown cause. We know what effect gravity has: it pulls us down!!

As global warming is reported in the press, it is routinely sensationalized. This puts pressure on public policy makers to act when the data may not conclusively support that course of action.

For example, the New York Times recently had an article: 2 Studies Link Global Warming to Greater Power of Hurricanes The article does say that no conclusions can be drawn from these "findings" (although the headline seems to indicate otherwise to the uninitiated). A summary of the peer reviewed papers on this subject indicate that no conclusion can be drawn: HURRICANES AND GLOBAL WARMING




A recent study has come out that casts some doubts. Evidence for influence of anthropogenic surface processes on lower tropospheric and surface temperature trends



This paper does not do what some would hope: clear man of any culpability. But it does cast doubt onto the GHG theory as the predominant factor in global warming.

I don't have access to the full study, but this site says that the summary contains the following:


I know someone is going to pounce on me and say: "Aha, you've proven yourself wrong! This study also claims that the rise in global temperatures is anthropomorphic!!"

But my contention all along has not been that there is no evidence of temperature rise or that humans are causing it. What I claim is that we don't know enough about the real causes and the real effects to make any decisions regarding policy.

I agree with Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado:
link

Chill out over global warming



Pielke stepped down from the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) Committee last year. Why? link


In other words, alternative views--even reasonable ones--are being suppressed.

Yes. But it's even worse than that. The DATA itself is questionable. How you make the temperature measurements can play a big role. And "historical" data is relatively short-term (hundreds of years), based on deductions (core samples, etc.) and of questionable accuracy.

The model is WORSE than fudged. It's fudged with a preconceived result already in mind. And, it's still just a snapshot. The models don't go back thousands or even millions of years which is more relevant when considering long-term dynamic trends.



Thanks for confirming my second point. The current Taliban-like culture within the "climate change" community is stifling the scientific process, intimidating people from dissent, and preventing us from discovering the TRUTH.

As I have said time and time again, the scientific process in this case has been subverted and corrupted by radical political activists with an agenda who are using "science" and "scare tactics" to pursue their economic and political agenda.

I think it's interesting how some scientists do not want to touch this subject because the alarmists are militant in their belief on this subject. I wonder if in some ways it's becoming a groupthink. Given the viciousness that some of these guys have to endure I don’t blame them for just sitting it out until the hysteria is over.

I can say the same to you. What I posted was not all 6 years old. Want to show me why they are not right. Simply stated the world has gone through dramatic temperature and CO2 changes LONG before we and the industrial revolution could be blames for it. One theory actually holds that it was farming (starting 8,000 years ago) that interrupted the expected return of an ice age and gave us a warmers world.

http://www.newsfeeds.com/archive/misc-educ...e/msg00372.html


Also Kivort is correct. The scientific community and those that report it favor consensus. The old timer who was interview in SA was asked if, with his view of GW, he gets many interviews. He laughed and said no.

When I said they were getting thicker I meant in the center. I should have spelled it out more clearly. AL said they were melting everywhere and would be gone in a few decades. I asked you to comment since you think this nutcase is so smart and you consistently duck it. Are you going to respond Vermillion? How can we believe anything this man says when he makes outrageous and unsupportable statements? This is not “stretching the science” this is nonsense.The dope had the audacity to say the increase in hurricanes was due to GW when clearly the experts in hurricanes say there is no way this can be proved at this point. NO WAY.

Vermillion:

Let's see, the one scientist is a specialist in atmospheric science at MIT. The other who you claim is not a specialist in the field, I'm presuming here that you mean Duesberg, well, sorry, but you are plain wrong:

"Retroviral Recombination During Reverse Transcription
DW Goodrich and PH Duesberg

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol 87, 2052-2056, Copyright © 1990 by National Academy of Sciences"

See: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/87/6/2052

HIV is what, a retrovirus? So then Duesberg knows something about retroviruses? And re Peter's credentials, he probably has better than any editor and/or board rejecting his submissions:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller18.html

Oh, and on a sidenote, please recall our prior discussion of HIV/AIDS. I found it not ironic in the least that shortly after our prior discussion, some show on PBS dealing with health/medical problems around the world [drug resistant TB in Chile or Peru (I forget which), river blindness in west Africa, etc.] reported that those responsible for providing us with potable water have saved more lives than have all of our doctors. I agree with the PBS show on that one. As I said, AIDS in Africa is (a) chronic malnutrition, ( lack of potable water, and © repeated exposure to known pathogens such as the Plasmodium Falciparum parasite [think "malaria"]. Apparently, you would instead like to blame a harmless passenger virus with a rather poor rate of transmission via the posited mechanism [i.e., 1 chance in 1,000 of transmission during unprotected vaginal sexual intercourse; compare such transmission rate with that for the flu, the common cold, polio, smallpox, etc., and then consider whether we'd have the flu, the common cold, polio, and smallpox if the transmission rate for the same was as feeble as that for HIV]. In any event, to continue with the topic at hand...

Here is how someone else sees "science" working these days:

http://www.suppressedscience.net/censorship-medicine.html

"Scientists are fatally proud of their reliance on peer-review to ensure that only good science gets funded and published. Yet it has been shown that peer review does not increase the quality of studies11,12 and because the anonymous reviewers generally represent established ideas it is an effective way to suppress innovation 13,14 .

Censorship is most effective when the censor’s hand is invisible. Modern science has developed an effective hierarchy for disseminating ‘acceptable’ information and, perhaps more importantly, for excluding work that threatens mainstream scientists and the governments and industries that fund them. Luckily, there are still publications and websites outside this web of self-censorship. You should take advantage of this information, use it to formulate your own opinions, and discuss them with friends, family and colleagues. Small donations of your time and money can make a tremendous difference to the world’s excluded scientists."

Then there's:

"...What evidence there is does not give confidence but is open to many criticisms. Now, Peter Rothwell and Christopher Martyn have thrown a bombshell [6]. Their conclusions are measured and cautious, but there is little doubt that they have provided solid evidence of something truly rotten at the core of science.

Forget the reviewers. Just flip a coin. Rothwell and Martyn performed a detailed evaluation of the reviews of papers submitted to two neuroscience journals...

Their report should be read in full; however, the conclusions are alarmingly clear. For one journal, the relationships among the reviewers' opinions were no better than that obtained by chance. For the other journal, the relationship was only fractionally better. For the meeting abstracts, the content of the abstract accounted for only about 10 to 20 percent of the variance in opinion of referees, and other factors accounted for 80 to 90 percent of the variance.

These appalling figures will not be surprising to critics of peer review, but they give solid substance to what these critics have been saying. The core system by which the scientific community allots prestige (in terms of oral presentations at major meetings and publication in major journals) and funding is a non-validated charade whose processes generate results little better than does chance. Given the fact that most reviewers are likely to be mainstream and broadly supportive of the existing organization of the scientific enterprise, it would not be surprising if the likelihood of support for truly innovative research was considerably less than that provided by chance."

See: http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/peerrev4.htm

And then there's:

"Although the rationale for peer review is quality control, it's obvious that the process can be used to suppress dissent...
***
One of the more well-known cases of suppression via cutting off research grants involved Thomas Mancuso, an epidemiologist at the University of Pittsburgh. Mancuso was funded by the Atomic Energy Commission to study the effects of low-level ionising radiation on the health of workers at the AEC's nuclear reprocessing plant at Hanford, Washington. The project began in 1965, before the rise of popular concern about nuclear power. In the 1970s the issue of the health effects of low-level ionising radiation had become a hot potato for the promoters of nuclear power.

In 1974, another researcher, Samuel Milham, published findings showing an increased risk of cancer among Hanford workers. The AEC requested that Mancuso repudiate Milham's findings, but Mancuso refused on the grounds that his study was not yet complete. So the AEC organised a review of Mancuso's project. Citing two unfavourable reviews, one of which recommended termination and transfer of the project, the AEC terminated Mancuso's work and transferred the work to Battelle West, a private contractor.

On the basis of this information, there can be little more than a suspicion of foul play. But because of the politically sensitive issues involved, the termination of Mancuso's project was investigated by Congress. It turned out that there were actually six reviews of the project, not just two. Four of the six reviewers were favourable; the AEC had cited only the two unfavourable ones. Furthermore, the director who took over the study at Battelle West was a former employee at the AEC who was the very same reviewer who had recommended termination and transfer.
***
When a particular viewpoint holds sway through an entire field of study, it is difficult indeed for challengers to gain a hearing. The dominance of profluoridation views within the dental profession is a good example. From the 1950s, when fluoridation became accepted and promoted by dental associations in most western countries, until today, it has been extremely difficult for anyone to publish an article critical of fluoridation in any dental journal. This also applies, to a lesser extent, to medical and scientific journals, where profluoridation editors and referees often hold sway as well.
***
George Waldbott, the most prominent and influential opponent of fluoridation in the US for several decades, wrote numerous scientific papers. He also sometimes encountered difficulties getting his articles critical of fluoridation published. One revealing indication of the source of his problems came at a court hearing in Dublin. Being quizzed by a lawyer on his testimony, he was asked "How did it happen that the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Annals of Internal Medicine, the Journal of Gerontology, and Annals of Allergy turned down your articles on fluoride poisoning?" This question was an obvious attempt to undermine his credibility as a competent scientist. But the question revealed something else besides its intent. Waldbott noticed that the four journals mentioned were the only ones that had ever rejected any of his submissions. But how would the lawyer know about the rejections? US Public Health Service officials were there in the courtroom advising the lawyer. Waldbott concluded that the editors must have used USPHS officials as referees and then told the USPHS about the rejections.
***
Mark Diesendorf told me about his difficulties getting antifluoridation articles published. For example, on one occasion he submitted an article to the Australian journal New Doctor, which is mildly critical of the medical establishment. A guest editor rejected it because "it might encourage the antifluoridationists." Mark was told about the rejection over the phone, never receiving a written reply.
***
[and to respond to your criticism, sorry, but...] No conspiracy theory is required. Most profluoridationists genuinely believe that there is little or no substance behind criticisms of fluoridation. You can call this suppression, but perhaps a better description is domination by a standard viewpoint."

See: http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dis...nts/ss/ss5.html

And then there's:

"We are all well aware of some of the shortcomings in the peer-review process of scientific work. The system has been revealed to be riddled with prejudice, subject to nepotism (Forsdyke, 1993, Calza and Gerbisa, 1995; Perez-Enciso, 1995; Wenners and Wold, 1997), sexism (Wallston and OLeary, 1982; Wenners and Wold, 1997), and influenced by the national language of the authors (Bakewell, 1992; Nylenna et al., 1994), not to mention the problems of broken confidentiality (Maddox, 1984) and conflict of interest (sometimes financial; sometimes scientific competition). Careful analyses of the review process also showed a very poor inter-referee reliability (Zuckerman and Merton, 1971; Cole et al., 1981) - indeed little greater than chance (Gordon, 1977; Inglefinger, 1974; Rothwell and Martyn, 2000) - a clear association with the reviewers experience and age (younger reviewers producing more thorough reviews, Nylenna et al., 1994), a significant tendency to favour positive findings (Mahoney, 1977) and a proclivity towards projects and findings in line with the referees own ideas or their "knee-jerk" adherence to current theoretical dogma (Ernst et al., 1992), a phenomenon labelled "confirmatory bias" (Mahoney, 1977).

The process is hampered by a further bias: the preference for "normal science" (Crawford, 1998). Refereeing tends to favour straightforward, uncontroversial, even prosaic science, over more venturesome and speculative arguments (Allen and Grant, 1998).
***
We are sure that we could all amuse one another with endless anecdotes on errors and misjudgements by referees and editors. Some experimental evidence of the unfairness of peer-review comes from the provocative study of Peter and Ceci (1982). They selected 12 psychology articles by prestigious investigators and institutions and re-submitted them (changing the names of the authors and using fictitious affiliations) to the same 12 top American journals which had originally published them some two years before. Three of these re-submissions were detected as spoofs. Of the remaining nine, eight were rejected, not because of a feeling of dej vu (lack of originality was never mentioned), but on the basis of one or another major flaw in the study design. Surely a matter for more than mere amusement."

See: http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/sc/wa.exe?A2...um&F=Pl&P=13964

And from peer review to global warming, have you ever read, Nigel Calder? His position is that it is solar activity that causes global warming which causes an increase in atmospheric CO2.

And shame that you, from Canada, are apparently unwilling to even address:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financi...559d605&rfp=dta

""Climate change is real" is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural "noise." The new Canadian government's commitment to reducing air, land and water pollution is commendable, but allocating funds to "stopping climate change" would be irrational. We need to continue intensive research into the real causes of climate change and help our most vulnerable citizens adapt to whatever nature throws at us next.

We believe the Canadian public and government decision-makers need and deserve to hear the whole story concerning this very complex issue. It was only 30 years ago that many of today's global-warming alarmists were telling us that the world was in the midst of a global-cooling catastrophe. But the science continued to evolve, and still does, even though so many choose to ignore it when it does not fit with predetermined political agendas [my note, these scientists said "politics", not me, I am merely their "ape"].

We hope that you will examine our proposal carefully and we stand willing and able to furnish you with more information on this crucially important topic."

Tell me, are all those whose names appear on the petition, "quacks?"

And funny that we there was this discussion here on AD about the ad hominem attack. Isn't such the lifeblood of the global warming propopents? From the Canada Free Press:

"Global Warming has become a euphemism for a political agenda. There is Socialism, Capitalism and Global Warmingism. It has become a religion run by fanatics reminiscent of the leaders of the darkest days of the Inquisition that nearly destroyed civil society only a few hundred years ago. We are not to question the great god of Global Warming. Those who do are separated from civil society and labeled as heretics.
***
However, there is great question about the validity of the documents promoted by the Global Warming crowd. There is strong, documented evidence to show they care little about sound science and facts and much more about their political agenda.

For example, in May of 1996, unannounced and possibly unauthorized changes to the United Nation’s report on climate change touched off a firestorm of controversy within the scientific community. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the science group that advises the United Nations on the global warming issue, presented a draft of its report in December 1995, and it was approved by the delegations. However, when the printed report appeared in May 1996, it was discovered that substantial changes and deletions had been made to the body of the report to make it conform to the Policymakers Summery. Specifically, two key paragraphs written by the scientists were deleted. They said:

1. "None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases."

2. "No study to date had positively attributed all or part of the climate change to man-made causes."

That was not the last time data has been manipulated by the IPCC to fit its political agenda. In 2005, a federal hurricane research scientist named Chris Landsea resigned from the UN-sponsored IPCC climate assessment team because his group’s leader had politicized the process. Landsea said in his resignation letter, "It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity had been due to global warming." He went onto say, "I personally cannot in good faith contribute to a process that I view as being both motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound.
***
So why, if scientists are researching the issue and if there is no consensus that global warming is a reality, is this voice not being heard? Why is a near panic building in the news media, on Capitol Hill and in research labs across the nation and in the international community?

Answer: fear and money.

Simply put, scientists know where the grants will come from to pay their salaries. Dr. Patrick Michaels, a leading opponent to the global warming scaremongers, calls it the federal/science paradigm. He describes it this way: Tax $ = Grants = Positive Feedback Loop to Get more Grants.

Says Dr. Michaels, "What worker bee scientist is going to write a proposal saying that global warming is exaggerated and he doesn’t need the money? Certainly no one wanting advancement in the agency! There is no alternative to this process when paradigms compete with each other for finite funding." The only ones who can openly oppose the party line of the day are those who don’t need the grants or who have some other source of funding. There aren’t many.
***
[and sorry, but...] Moreover, Science and its British counterpart Nature won’t publish articles to the contrary of the agenda. If a scientist wants the prestige of being published, then he must carry the global warming banner."

See: http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/deweese051806.htm

Sorry, one more. Back to Nigel Calder. He's not alone. From that same Canada Free Press article:

"We are told, however that man-made carbon dioxide is the source of the global warming problem. As Professor Essenhigh asks, "what has carbon dioxide to do with this"?

He explains, "the two principled thermal-absorbing and thermal-emitting compounds in the atmosphere are water and carbon dioxide. However--and this point is continually missed--the ratio of water to carbon dioxide is something like 30-to-1 as an average value. At the top it is something like 100-to-1. This means that the carbon dioxide is simply ‘noise’ in the water concentration, and anything carbon dioxide could do, water has already done." "So," he asks, "if the carbon dioxide is increasing, is it the carbon dioxide driving the temperature or is the rising temperature driving up the carbon dioxide"? In other words, the carbon dioxide issue is irrelevant to the debate over global warming."

Funny, well, not funny, but that's what one says to be polite, but for one who criticized me for being a religious fundamentalist, it seems that your position is just as certain, just as entrenched, and just as dogmatic as any theology held by any religious fundamentalist, including me. Why is that? Never mind, since that misses the point, as the point is that one doesn't need to be religious to be a dogmatic fundamentalist. And, sorry, but you gave yourself away by denying that there was and is some concern re the legitimacy of the peer review process [the notion of "confirmatory bias" alone should have caused you to at least admit the possibility].

You keep harping on this issue presumably because it has become part of the right wing attack campaign against Gore and his message. Perhaps you would be interested in what the author of the paper in Science that the Exxon funded CEI used as the foundation of their second add. (See this Article for example).



Now I suppose it is possible to find some conflicting evidence about the contemporary status of the ice mass in Antarctica but the situation in Greenland is clear. The larger issue is that the melting will get worse and worse as average global and ocean temperatures increase.

An understatement and an overstatement in the same post. The understatement is that that implementing the IPCC's recommendations would only cost us "some" of our economic growth. The overstatement is that our "survival" is being threatened by this warming. In fact, absent some major techonological breakthrough, implementing these drastic reductions would be tremendously expensive, especially to lesser-developed economies. We could easily face a situation where all our efforts would fail to prevent the warming from occurring, but our crippled economy would make us, and particularly our less fortunate brethren around the world, less able to adapt to the expected changes. On the other hand, if we maintain a robust economy, we could very well find that adaptation is a lot cheaper than prevention.

I find myself in a bizarre situation here, one I have never encountered before on this board.

You are of course, completely wrong about peer review. You can of course continue to search the web for disgruntled people who have all sorts of reasons and theories about why their articles were not published, on sites such as 'suppressed science.com' which you used earlier, and you are still wrong.

The problem I have is that it is exceedingly difficult for me to demonstrate this in an online debate. Forgive the hubris for this statement, but I am about as close to an absolute expert on the system of peer review as you are likely to find, having both been an academic and submitted to peer review journals (as many have), also as both a reviewer and an editor on several peer reviewed journals, and lastly as a manager in the single largest academic public grant funding agency in north America. Not only that, but due to some of the criticism from disgruntled academics shouting 'conspiracy!' the organisation did a twice annual external review of its peer-review system, and finally a layered independent study of peer review in 2001. for that study, they took 70 refused applications from disgruntled scientists, rendered them all completely anonymous, and 10 accepted applications, and sent out the package of 80 files to 50 different people in all walks of life: Academics, non-academic specialists, scientists, public servants, and a few essential laymen. They were told to approve as many of the articles for publication as they wanted, no number, suggestion or quota, they could accept them all or reject them all.

The average of the 50 people was to accept 9 of the accepted ones, reject all of the refused one and one of the accepted ones. The most distant of the samples from the mean chose to accept only 2 of the 60 (both ones that had been accepted). Of the 50 refused files, 44 of them were not recommended by a SINGLE ONE of the 50 reviewers.

Furthermore, one of the files which ended up belonging to one of the most vocal disgruntled scientists had on one single page, 21 spelling mistakes, and no suggested methodology of research. Disgruntled does not equal justified Kivrot.

I can't cite webpages on this for you Kivrot, if you are even in Ottawa when I am there I can show you my copy of the report. But I can tell you my organisation is not alone. Every major peer reviewed grant agency or journal conducts routing blind tests of their methodology, Nature does it every single year. These are independent external studies, not internal. When changes are suggested, they are implemented.


Peer review is used by every major national granting council in the first world, it is used by every major academic and non-academic field-sensitive publication, from physics to software review. This is done not because of a lemming-like need to follow trends, but because it has been proven consistently again and again to be the absolute best method to allow free flowing ideas while maintaining a certain standard of quality.

Criticism of peer review only ever comes up from people who have personal opinions which go against the prvailing opinion of scientists. The two single largest groups in North American who criticise scientific peer-review are anti-Global-warming advocates and Creationists. I suppose if you cannot defeat an argument, your only option remaining is to poison the well...

Does that mean there have never been errors of judgement in Peer review? Of course not, my organisation alone (the largest public one, but one out of over 120 agencies in North America) dealt with over 40,000 applications per year. Certainly mistakes happen on rare occasions. And you know what? there is an independent appeals process set up top deal with it, which works quite well.

If you have no experience of the system, have never worked on either side of the system, and are basing your entire assertion on the web-postings of disgruntled people who have not been published in Nature or Science (despite the fact that as I said, some 95% of applications to Science are rejected) then I suppose its reasonable for you to have this lopsided opinion. This, in the end is the critical failing of internet debate.

I can't prove it to you Kivrot, so I am going to do the next best thing and just drop it. You can respond with more disgruntled scientists, taking their word for why they think they were rejected if you like. I won't answer or contradict these quotes. However, you will still be quite wrong.




I'm sorry, I am forced to repeat myself here. This kind of argument can only come from somebody with no knowledge whatsoever of the system.

Anyone who writes a grant proposal saying global warming is exaggerated, or global warming is certain, will NOT GET FUNDED. NO grant agency funds results, people who are trying to prove X, whatever X is will never get funded. Research and methodology is funded, political axes to grind are not.




Really. So (just to be crystal clear), you are asserting science and Nature do not publish research or articles that go against majority opinion or are controversial? They will not publish research which in any way opposes any aspect of global warming? I just want to be VERY clear on what you are asserting here...






You throw these little jabs into a lot of your posts there Kivrot. Funny about the whole fundamentalist zealot thing, because you certainly seem to put yourself up as quite the martyr.

In reality of course, I never criticised you for being a fundamentalist zealot, or anything even close. What i DID do, was object to you using repeated scriptural quotes as arguments on this board, and to your constant and incredibly irritating habit of referring to me as "Atheist you" every time you referenced me, something that finally stopped only after I eventually altered the mods.

Vermillion:

"Within the scientific community, peer review is the chief method for evaluating both research grant applications and manuscripts for journal publication. The existence of bias in peer review is generally acknowledged (see Henneberg 1997), but conclusive evidence of unfairness is hard to come by. Moreover, there is no widely accepted alternative to peer review for assessing the merit of proposed or completed scientific work. Thus, a recent article in Nature (Wennerås and Wold 1997) is of interest because it not only provides evidence of massive gender bias in the the peer review of research grant applications to Sweden’s Medical Research Council (MRC), but suggests what may prove to be a more trustworthy and democratic method than the traditional form of peer review for assessing the scientific competence of research grant applicants."

See: http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-08/ns_slee.html

"The problem with peer review is that we have good evidence on its deficiencies and poor evidence on its benefits. We know that it is expensive, slow, prone to bias, open to abuse, possibly anti-innovatory, and unable to detect fraud. We also know that the published papers that emerge from the process are often grossly deficient. Research presented at the conference showed, for instance, that reports of randomised controlled trials often fail to mention previous trials and do not place their work in the context of what has gone before; that routine reviews rarely have adequate methods and are hugely biased by specialty and geography in the references they quote (p 766); and that systematic reviews rarely define a primary outcome measure."

See: http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/archive/7111/7111e3.htm

"Confirmatory bias is the tendency to emphasize and believe experiences that support one's views and to ignore or discredit those that do not. The effects of this tendency have been repeatedly documented in clinical research. However, its ramifications for the behavior of scientists have yet to be adequately explored. For example, although publication is a critical element in determining the contribution and impact of scientific findings, little research attention has been devoted to the variables operative in journal review policies. In the present study, 7S journal reviewers were asked to referee manuscripts that described identical experimental procedures but which reported positive, negative, mixed, or no results. In addition to showing poor interrater agreement, reviewers were strongly biased against manuscripts that reported results contrary to their theoretical perspective. The implications of these findings for epistemology and the peer review system are briefly addressed.
***
The tragic effects of confirmatory bias are not, however, restricted to clinical disorders. In fact, as has been argued elsewhere (Mahoney, 1976), the most costly expression of this tendency may well be among scientists themselves. To the extent that researchers display this bias, our adequate understanding of the processes and parameters of human adaptation may be seriously jeopardized. If we selectively "find" or communicate only those data that support a given model of behavior, then our inquiry efforts will hardly be optimally effective. Despite the fact that confirmatory bias in scientists was first noted by Francis Bacon (1621/1960) over three centuries ago, precious little research has been devoted to the topic and the few extant studies have hardly challenged Bacon's observations. One study found that the vast majority of scientists drawn from a national sample showed a strong preference for "confirmatory" experiments (Mahoney & Kimper, 1976). Over half of these scientists did not even recognize disconfirmation (modus tollens) as a valid reasoning form! In another study the logical reasoning skills of 30 scientists were compared to those of 15 relatively uneducated Protestant ministers (Mahoney & DeMonbreun, 1977). Where there were performance differences, they tended to favor the ministers. Confirmatory bias was prevalent in both groups, but the ministers used disconfirmatory logic almost twice as often as the scientists did.
***
Two general conclusions may be drawn from the present study. Within the constraints of its subject population and methodology, it was found that (a) referee evaluations may be dramatically influenced by such factors as experimental outcome, and ( inter-referee agreement may be extremely low on factors relating to manuscript evaluation. What are the implications of these findings? The answer to that question is neither simple nor straightforward. First, how should we deal with the apparent prejudice against "negative" or disconfirming results? I have argued elsewhere that this bias may be one of the most pernicious and counterproductive elements in the social sciences (Mahoney, 1976). One possible solution might be to ask referees to evaluate the relevance and methodology of an experiment without seeing either its results or their interpretation. While this might be a dramatic improvement, it raises other evaluative problems. How does one deal with the fact that referees may show very little agreement on these topics? Training them might produce better consensus, but consensus is not necessarily unprejudiced. Referees might achieve perfect agreement by simply sharing the same ideological or methodological biases.
***Confirmatory bias is not, of course, the only potential source of prejudice in peer review. A recent experimental study has, for example, shown that citing your own ''in press'' publications may significantly enhance your chances of earning a reviewer's approval (Mahoney, Kazdin, & Kenigsberg, 1975). The ironic feature of confirmatory bias is the fact that it is fundamentally illogical. Positive-result and negative-result experiments are not equivalent in their logical implications. In fact, while they have unquestionable bearing on the subjective aspects of belief, successful experiments have no necessary logical bearing on the truth status of their source (i.e., a theory or hypothesis). As counterintuitive as this may seem, it is a clear consequence of logical analysis (cf. Popper, 1972; Weimer, 1977; Mahoney, 1976). It is only negative-result (contrary-to-prediction) experiments that carry logical implications. The reasons for this are simple and are outlined in the above-mentioned sources. Despite this clear mandate from logic, however, our research programs and publications policies continue in their dogmatically confirmatory tradition. They offer ample testimony to Bacon's (1621/1960) astute observation that "the human intellect . . . is more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives.""

See: http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~wstarbuc/Writing/Prejud.htm

Oh, and by the way, please also see: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-215499

"In countries where the diet, especially that of growing children, is grossly deficient in protein, severe malnutrition ranks as an important cause of immune deficiency. Antibody responses and cell-mediated immunity are seriously impaired, probably because of atrophy of the thymus and the consequent deficiency of helper T cells."

And see also: http://www.postgradmed.com/issues/2002/07_02/dube.htm

"Protein malnutrition is the leading cause of immunodeficiency outside the Westernized world."

And see further: http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cf...-2004/story.htm

"Scholes said protein deficiency was another problem. "One of the key things to come out of this is that we have documented severe protein deficieny north of the Zambezi (river)," Scholes said.

He said the minimum requirement for healthy development in adults was 52 grammes of protein per day. But overall in the region it has fallen to 49 grammes from 57 in 1976."

Now, recall that study from Ghana that I posted prior, what seems like eons ago, with the result being that only 40% of those meeting the UN's HIV/AIDS case definition tested positive for antibodies to HIV [meaning that 60% of those meeting the UN's HIV/AIDS case definition did not test positive for antibodies to HIV].

So, Vermillion, in the interest of objective science, with no political agenda and no confirmatory bias, which is it? HIV/AIDS in Africa? Or protein deficiency leading to immune system compromise, specifically some rather drastic effect on those T-helper cells that some claim results from HIV infection, even though 60% of those meeting the UN's case definition are HIV negative? And by the way, I am still waiting for that epidemic of heterosexual AIDS. Given that there is an epidemic of other STDs, hard to imagine why there is no AIDS epidemic...

And your argument isn't with me, it's with Gordon Stewart:

http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/gsparadigm.htm

"Instead, since 1990, Nature, Science, the New England Journal of Medicine, the British Medical Journal and other mainstream, peer-reviewed journals have preferred to reject papers by others besides my colleagues and me containing verifiable data that throw doubt on the claim that AIDS is capable of causing epidemics in general populations of developed countries by heterosexual transmission of HIV, and also falsify the hypothesis that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS. The Lancet has published some short letters but has consistently refused to publish fuller reasons for dissent. This is interesting in a journal which, since 1945, has regularly accepted papers from me on other subjects, and often invited me to draft editorials and assist with reviews. Twice I have been invited by the Royal Statistical Society to present my views and then turned down peremptorily. On many occasions, I have been asked by the BBC and other networks to talk about AIDS only to find, at the last minute, that my appearance was canceled. This happened also when a program with several distinguished experts participating made by Meditel Productions for Channel 4 was unaccountably stopped.
***
There are many reasons for the censorship I have encountered. Different reasons for different people -- scientists profess scientific explanations for rejecting articles, editors profess editorial reasons, such as, "it's no longer news." In all, however, colleagues and I attempting to publish have met an unholy alliance intent on rejecting any papers that offer serious criticisms of the orthodoxy. There are, naturally, vested interests involved; many bodies and individuals receive high rewards for their work within orthodox AIDS science. Underlying much of this, the pharmaceutical companies have their own obvious agenda.

The mainstream journals and media to which I refer pride themselves on their independence and support for open debat[e], but whenever they are presented with reasonable doubts about AIDS, they close ranks like regimented clams."

And for someone closer to where you live, Etienne de Harven:

http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/edhrecol.htm

"Dominated by the media, by special pressure groups and by the interests of several pharmaceutical companies, the AIDS establishment efforts to control the disease lost contact with open-minded, peer-reviewed medical science since the unproven HIV/AIDS hypothesis received 100% of the research funds while all other hypotheses were ignored. The general public and the medical community were made to believe that the presence of circulating antibodies is diagnostic of this disease, that Koch's postulates were outdated, that 90% of all cases of an infectious disease can be observed in males, that viremia can be measured by PCR enhancement of RNA fragments even when viral particles are not demonstrable, etc., etc...

Most conveniently, it was totally forgotten that heroin addicts were known for many decades to expose themselves to immuno- deficiencies, that nitrite inhalants have multiple toxic effects, that the extreme toxicity of AZT was known for over 20 years, that known retroviruses never have any cytolytic effects, etc., etc...

And to ensure that the AIDS establishment could profitably continue to flourish, research on any dissenting (i.e. non-HIV) hypothesis was carefully prevented by tight control of research funding and by the extreme difficulty of publishing anywhere any dissenting views... In the late 1980s, I was considering adding to my research program in Toronto more EM observations on samples from AIDS patients. Unfortunately, by that time the media and the CDC had so perfectly orchestrated the panic of a plague-like epidemic that I was quickly made to understand that my assistants would all transfer out of the lab if I had insisted to activate such a program... The HIV seropositivity test was still at that time regarded as providing reliable diagnostic data. Since then, Papadopulos and the Australian team have demonstrated that this is very far from the truth...(18)."

And, Vermillion, if all is alive and well in the land of peer review then please explain why:

"Nutritional AIDS dominates the scene in South Africa today as indeed it did during Apartheid. In the middle 50's and 60's, 50% of black children were dead before the age of 5. The causes of death were recorded as: PNEUMONIA, HIGH FEVER, DEHYDRATION and intractable D