Seems I wasn’t the only one

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/11/027788.php

Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming: Why Scares Are Costing Us the Earth

http://www.amazon.com/Scared-Death-Global-Warming-Costing/dp/B0029OW65W/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1290388048&sr=8-2-fkmr2

1 Population growth and famine (Malthus) 1798
2 Timber famine economic threat 1865
3 Uncontrolled reproduction and degeneration (Eugenics) 1883
4 Lead in petrol and brain and organ damage 1928
5 Soil erosion agricultural production threat 1934
6 Asbestos and lung disease 1939
7 Fluoride in drinking water health effects 1945
8 DDT and cancer 1962
9 Population growth and famine (Ehrlich) 1968
10 Global cooling; through to 1975 1970
11 Supersonic airliners, the ozone hole, and skin cancer, etc. 1970
12 Environmental tobacco smoke health effects 1971
13 Population growth and famine (Meadows) 1972
14 Industrial production and acid rain 1974
15 Organophosphate pesticide poisoning 1976
16 Electrical wiring and cancer, etc. 1979
17 CFCs, the ozone hole, and skin cancer, etc. 1985
18 Listeria in cheese 1985
19 Radon in homes and lung cancer 1985
20 Salmonella in eggs 1988
21 Environmental toxins and breast cancer 1990
22 Mad cow disease (BSE) 1996
23 Dioxin in Belgian poultry 1999
24 Mercury in fish effect on nervous system development 2004
25 Mercury in childhood inoculations and autism 2005
26 Cell phone towers and cancer, etc. 2008

None of the 26 alarms were based on scientific forecasting procedures. None of the alarming forecasts were accurate. Governments took action in 23 of the analogous situations and those actions proved to be harmful in 20. The government programs remained in place after the predicted disasters failed to materialize

conclusion? Alarms based on unscientific forecasts are a common social phenomenon. The alarms are
used to support political movements. Dissent is punished. Expensive government interventions
are frequently recommended and often implemented. Once in place they continue even when the
alarming forecasts prove to be groundless, perhaps because a large sector of the economy
depends on jobs created to “protect” against the predicted catastrophe.
The dangerous manmade global warming alarmist movement will ultimately fail, but as
in the past, there will be similar alarms in the future. Many people will be ready to expound on
and believe in forecasts of new disasters. Proper science, which requires fair testing of reasonable
alternative hypotheses and reproducible evidence, is the best defense against such false forecasts.

by Bob Carter and John McLean

March 29, 2010

Climate science censorship in action at the American Geophysical Union

Censorship of the right of reply by the original authors of a scientific paper to criticism is extremely rare, and requires extraordinary circumstances to justify or explain it. In this case, the explanation seems to be improper actions taken, or not taken, by both the FEA authors and the editor of the JGR.

Probably because of their alarm at the impact that the MFC paper was having on public opinion, at about the same time that they submitted their critique to the JGR editor, FEA also took the remarkable step of posting it on the web, formatted in JGR publication style – this posting in effect masquerading as an AGU publication.

Doubly unfortunately for the FEA group, some months after the submission and posting of their critique the Climategate emails were released into the public domain. Amongst these emails were several that contain behind-the-scenes interchanges between the FEA authors, and between them and the JGR editor. Thus has been revealed in full glory the techniques by which the FEA authors strive to undermine or negate papers that throw doubt on their cherished hypothesis that dangerous global warming is driven by human carbon dioxide emissions.

The techniques used by FEA and the AGU editor in pursuing their cause on this occasion have included:

* Pre-publication of a scientific critique in a deliberately duplicitous fashion, formatted to make it appear that it has already been refereed and published in JGR;
* Improper discussion of the paper after its submission between one of the authors and the President of the AGU, with an implied aim of influence;
* Nomination of peer reviewers for the critique who are close professional colleagues of the authors, and who, in contravention of JGR requests for nomination of unbiased referees, were nominated because they were expected to be supportive of the critique;
* A request to AGU (which was granted) that the editor who handled the original MFC paper be replaced by another more senior editor;
* The new editor failing to reject the FEA critique outright on grounds of its undeniable prior publication in AGU;
* The reviewers and editor all failing to discern that the critique doesn’t address the substantive matter of whether the conclusions of the MFC paper were supported by scientific evidence, but instead concentrates on criticizing a statistical procedure that is irrelevant to the conclusions; and finally
* The new editor failing to provide a fair right of reply to MFC in the face of weak, and partly quite incorrect, criticism of their paper.

As a consequence of all this, and perhaps of other actions that have not been exposed, the authors of an independently peer-reviewed paper published in a mainstream scientific journal, and which has important implications for public climate policy, have been denied the opportunity to defend their paper against weak and specious criticism.
——————————————————————————————————————–
CENSORSHIP AT AGU: SCIENTISTS DENIED THE RIGHT OF REPLY

Has the Journal of Geophysical Research been coerced into defending the climate alarmist faith?

by J. McLean, C.R. de Freitas, and R.M. Carter | March 29, 2010

“Having now read the paper [McLean et al., 2009] in a moment of peace and quiet, there are a few things to bear in mind. The authors of the original will have a right of reply, so need to ensure that they don’t have anything to come back on.”

– Phil Jones to Jim Salinger, July 28, 2009

“But as it is written, the current paper [Foster et al. draft critique] almost stoops to the level of “blog diatribe”. The current paper does not read like a peer-reviewed journal article. The tone is sometimes dramatic and sometimes accusatory. It is inconsistent with the language one normally encounters in the objectively-based, peer-reviewed literature.”

– Anonymous referee of the Foster et al. critique, September 28, 2009

“Incidentally I gave a copy [of the Foster et al. critique] to Mike McPhaden and discussed it with him last week when we were together at the OceanObs’09 conference. Mike is President of AGU. Basically this is an acceptance with a couple of suggestions for extras, and some suggestions for toning down the rhetoric. I had already tried that a bit. My reaction is that the main thing is to expedite this.”

– Kevin Trenberth to Grant Foster, September 28, 2009

PREAMBLE
Science is best progressed by open and free discussion in which all participants have equal rights of contribution. This is especially the case when a scientific issue is related to a matter of high public controversy – such as the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming.

In July 2009 we published a paper in the peer-reviewed Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR) in which we described the results of comparing global atmospheric temperature since 1958 with variations in the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climatic framework. Our analysis supported earlier research that demonstrates a close link between these factors, and indicated that a large portion of the variability in global temperature is explained by ENSO variation, thus leaving little room for a substantial human influence on temperature.

On November 20, a newly appointed, replacement JGR editor informed us that a group of scientists led by Grant Foster had submitted a critique of our paper for publication in JGR. We were invited to write a response, which we did, submitting it to JGR on January 14, 2010.

On March 16, the replacement editor contacted us again. He included three referees’ reports, and indicated that on the advice of these referees he was rejecting our response to the Foster et al. critique, and that the response would therefore not be published in JGR. The practice of editorial rejection of the authors’ response to criticism is unprecedented in our experience. It is surprising because it amounts to the editorial usurping of the right of authors to defend their paper and deprives readers from hearing all sides of a scientific discussion before they make up their own minds on an issue. It is declaring that the journal editor – or the reviewers to whom he defers – will decide if authors can defend papers that have already been positively reviewed and been published by that same journal. Such an attitude is the antithesis of productive scientific discussion.

Something smells, and a hint of what is on the wind is contained in the quotations at the head of this preamble.

To set the historical record straight, we relate below in date order the events – as they are known to us – that led to the editorial censorship of our reply to the critique by Foster et al.

Continues………

Applied Science Consultants, Croydon, Victoria, Australia.

General Notes.
1 – The information on these pages is updated when I have time and when there’s something worth posting. I’ll try to ensure that new items appear in the “What’s New” listing so you can keep track of changes.

2 – I’m a member of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, see http://www.nzclimatescience.org/

3 – My public email address is mcleanjoh (at) gmail.com but I don’t check every day for email.

What’s New

28 Oct 2010 Global “Glaciergate” highlights IPCC flaws
28 Oct 2010 Global Lower Tropospheric temperatures to Aug 2010
27 Sep 2010 General We Have Been Conned – an independent review of the IPCC
02 Apr 2010 Australia Addition to Melbourne as an Urban Heat Island
31 Mar 2010 General Censorship at AGU: Scientists denied right of reply
16 Mar 2010 Global Lower Tropospheric temperatures to Feb 2010 now at v5.3
9 Feb 2010 Australian Updated page about Great Barrier Reef sea temperatures
06 Dec 2009 General Posted essay “Climate Science Corrupted”

http://mclean.ch/climate/global_warming.htm

*No airport stations (they’re for aviation).
*No UHI influenced stations
*No subjective adjustments.
*No short-term records.

Look no further than The Central England Temperature dataset.

“‘AGW? I refute it THUS!’: Central England Temperatures 1659 to 2009″ – James Delingpole

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100022226/agw-i-refute-it-thus-central-england-temperatures-1659-to-2009/

Same record, different vert scale and slightly shorter from C3 Headlines.

http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a7f2ff2b970b-pi

Personally I’m a fan of 1m below ground temperature measurement like this example from Griffith, Australia “Heat into the Ground”

http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/04/09/sensible-heat-latent-heat-and-radiation/

Nice smooth sine curves. Where I would find long-term records, I don’t know.

While we’re at, a special page for Gareth Renowden again from C3 Headlines

“Climate Model Predictions vs Reality” from C3 Headlines

http://www.c3headlines.com/climate-model-chartsgraphs.html

Featuring “James Hansen’s Climate Model Failures Since 1988″. The “Accumulated Ocean Heat” comparison is topical too.

The most important climate property for establishing the “greenhouse” theory is temperature

It is the public perception that the globe is warming. Yet there is no technique currently available to us to discover whether this is true, to a known level of accuracy. It is just not possible to place temperature measuring equipment in a random and representative fashion over the entire surface of the earth, Even measuring the surface temperature in one single place cannot be done in a satisfactory manner. This point is eloquently made by Hansen11 and elaborated by Pielke et al.12

Yet it was Hansen himself13 who was responsible for the suggestion that “temperature anomalies” could be established by making use of temperature measurements at weather stations. He proposed a system of dividing the globe into latitude/longitude boxes, averaging temperature measurements from approved stations within each box, and by comparing the “anomaly” figures for each year it would be possible to establish a temperature “trend” for the entire earth’s surface

There are many objections to this procedure. The greatest is that the original observations, which would have consisted of daily records carried out by many people in many places, appear to be lost. At least they are not publicly available. The Mean Global Surface Temperature Anomaly Record (MGSTAR) cannot be checked by using the original observations.

Locations ot weather stations are grossly unrepresentative of the earth’s surface. They do not include the 71% that is ocean. Inclusion of sea surface temperatures have been made by the CRU14 but these measurements are even less accurate than the surface measurements and Hansen at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and the other US system the Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN) have never accepted them. .

Few people seem to understand how limited are actual temperature measurements made at weather stations and under what conditions. The equipment has tended to include a Stevenson Screen, situated 2 meters or so above the ground, containing liquid-in-glass thermometers read only once a day. Some of the early readings are single figures, but most were of the maximum and the minimum figure. If read in the morning the maximum would be for the previous calendar day.

Until recently, there has been no method for continuous measurement. The “mean daily temperature” that is the basis for the Hansen/CRU/GHCN temperature anomaly record has been the average of the daily maximum and minimum.

Surface temperatures at different times in any one place do not form a symmetrical sequence. The daytime temperatures are dependent on the sun and its changing elevation, but at night there is no sun and the temperature regime is entirely different, There is no definable average temperature for this skewed distribution

Even if there were an acceptable average, it cannot be related to the mean of a mximum and minimum, which is all we have of a “mean daily temperature” .A study I made recently15 compared the Maximum/Minimum mean with the 24 hourly mean for a summer and a winter day for 20 weather stations in New Zealand I found that the difference between the two means could be as high as ±2ºC This figure would be expected to be higher for places with a greater temperature variation and for many past temperatures.

The procedure adopted to obtain the Mean Global Surface Temperature Anomaly Record (MGSTAR) calculates multiple simple arithmetic averages of distributions of figures that are not symmetrical, at every step,. .Each of these individual “mean daily temperatures” has to be averaged with all the others in the chosen box, then monthly, then yearly, then subtracted from the average figure for the whole lot, for a reference period. The figures for each box are then averaged to give the MGSTAR. The uncertainties for each of these processes are certainly very high, but they are ignored completely when compiling the MGSTAR.

D’Aleo and Watts16 have recently provided a long list of sources of inaccuracy with surface temperature records. Watts has carried out a comprehensive survey of US weather stations which showed that 82% of them are incapable of measuring temperature to better than one or two degrees,

It must surely be concluded that a “trend” of less than one degree in 100 years in the MGSTAR is far lower than the likely accuracy of the method, and is therefore unreliable,

It is interesting that in a discussion of the uncertainties in the CRU temperature anomaky record, Brohan et al17 admit that there are “unknown unknowns” which they are unable to quantify, citing the well-known expert on this subject, Donald Rumsfeld

The attempted simulation of the MGSTAR by the IPCC has difficulties beyond those related to the very low accuracy of the record itself. In the first draft of the 4th IPCC Report this simulation attempt occurred in Chapter 8 “Evaluation of Climate Models”. This attempt included natural climate effects such as volcanic eruptions and changes in the Sun. I commented that the simulation did not include the most important influences on the MGSTAR, which are the ocean oscillations and the urbanization influence around weather stations. I felt so strongly about this issue that I repeated it in an additional comment.

When the Report was finished3 I was glad to see that my comment had been headed fprthe attempt to simulate the MGSTAR had been removed from Chapter 8. I felt that I had made a useful contribution. But then, I found that it had been included in “Frequently Asked Questions No 8.1 and also in the Preliminary “Technical Report” where I had somehow escaped making comments. But my comment still stands. The simulation is defective.

check it out; by one of your heroes!