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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2005-05-01

Gotta Love The Open-Minded "Scientist"

From the Telegraph:

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

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

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

So, not only are they clearly editorializing on the subject without good scientific evidence to back it up, but these two journals are actively trying to silence the opposing point of view. Sounds like bad science, bad journalism, bad public-policy advocacy. . .and all rolled up into one tidy little package.

But what is the reality of the evidence on this topic?

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

Oh, now that's not very good. I think Dr. Stannard might have given me a pretty bad grade if I'd tried to slip a lab report past him with that kind of evidentiary support. So, what would cause such an horrific error?

Prof Roy Spencer, at the University of Alabama, a leading authority on satellite measurements of global temperatures, told The Telegraph: "It's pretty clear that the editorial board of Science is more interested in promoting papers that are pro-global warming. It's the news value that is most important." . .

In January, Dr Chris Landsea, an expert on hurricanes with the United States National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, resigned from the IPCC, claiming that it was "motivated by pre-conceived agendas" and was "scientifically unsound".

Imagine my surprise.
Posted by: Michael / 5/01/2005 12:30:00 AM

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