Letter Jon Richfield to Dr. Benny Peiser CCNet

Dear Benny,

I followed the link from Andrew Revkin and I am not sure that I did not read more into it than Andrew intended me to.

The blog entry certainly was trenchant, and the attached threads if anything more so. All very entertaining if that is the sort of thing that entertains one. In all it vividly recalled Bierce’s definition: “CONTROVERSY, n. A battle in which spittle or ink replaces the injurious cannon-ball and the inconsiderate bayonet.” Spittle had the upper hand in that blog, I should say.

However, the point I wish to make here hardly surfaced in the blog though it is the most important theme of this entire matter. If AGW or any other form of climate change begins to bite, the question of Humanity’s continued survival eventually will assume a fascination all its own, but for the present there are more immediate concerns, in particular the question of the survival of integrity and sense in science, and the role of peer review.

Consider: “Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University said that if Mr. McIntyre wants to be taken seriously he has to move more from blogging to publishing in the refereed literature...” and “‘Skepticism is essential for the functioning of science,’ Dr. Mann said.’It yields an erratic path towards eventual truth. But legitimate scientific skepticism is exercised through formal scientific circles, in particular the peer review process… Those such as McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted.”

Such stern sententiousness, irrespective of its source, should shame the most unregenerate cavillers to kennel, except those who pause slitty-eyed, to reflect on what he actually meant. “Peer review process”, hmmm...? Those operating almost entirely *inside* of this system *are* to be trusted, are they? The same system that passed all sorts of publications of the most assorted standards during the last century or so, not to mention certain particularly embarrassing examples very recently?  Publications that led to blushes inversely proportional to how effectively and for how long the parties concerned could distract attention from them? The same peer review process that has served as the most powerful tool for intimidating, quashing, and crippling the slightest dissent from the approved line? For punishing anyone who breaks the ranks of the favoured? For emasculating or deferring publication of the research of upstarts? The most powerful weapon for delaying outsiders’ discoveries to the point of loss of priority of publication, or even to fatal obscurity?

Surely not! Which is fortunate, because that is not the point that I had referred to. Plenty of abler critics have raised similar objections more bitingly than ever I could.

No, the peer review that I write to praise and not to bury is the peer review that for generations of scientists has been the sentinel and shield against erosion of standards. It has been a sheet anchor both of the elite and the merely workmanlike journal, the means of assuring the editorial staff that the work they publish is sound, non-trivial, constructive, an advance on preceding work, a stone in the edifice of growing human knowledge. It has been an aid to efficiency, speeding the selection and augmenting the quality of the product of the researchers’ labour and ingenuity; and of course (though perish the thought of any such sordid considerations crossing the mind of the authors) enhancing the kudos appertaining to the publication of the item.

Good stuff. Very good indeed. And yet I cannot rid my mind of a framed engineering degree on the wall of the office of an erstwhile young colleague of mine. It was in a large company, employing many graduates, and yet he was the only one that I remember nailing his colours to the er, wall in such a way. Any time the standard of his work or his good sense got challenged, he would point at his degree in rebuttal.  Unanswerable of course.

And yet he did not last long, strangely.

Am I the only one to see this anecdote as relevant? Sorry. . .

Peer review as it should be used in a perfect world should not be a major concern of the author (except when a generous reviewer offers assistance or admonition, typically anonymous).

Peer review also should not be a major concern of the reader. If I read material dealing with a field I am so unfamiliar with that I cannot even follow the train of logic, then I act in bad faith and bad sense if I accept or condemn it on the grounds that it was or was not peer-reviewed.  If however I can follow the logic, but without being able to challenge actual facts or observations, then I am able, with appropriate reservations, to accept, challenge, or reject the logic in good faith, but I still cannot justify my opinion by reliance on any peer review process. If I can claim to be fully conversant with the field, then I can accept, challenge, or reject any part, context or aspect of the work. If in doing so I need to defer to the dread dignity of peer reviewers, than how can I claim competence in the field at all? If I need to ask how it was reviewed before I consent to trust the work, then why am I reading such stuff, when there are plenty of Mills & Boone books to challenge my intellect?

Peer review or no review, it is for all readers to accept or reject research results according to what they find personally convincing. In good sense or good faith no research worker can justify a decision to accept or challenge work according to whether it had been peer reviewed.

*That is not what peer review is for.*

To criticise or praise a *journal* because of its eschewal or quality of peer review is reasonable in suitable contexts; even if one assumes that the editor is omniscient, it may be comforting to reflect that independent review guarantees lack of bias. However, to challenge the work of an *author* because it had not been favourably peer reviewed, is the most breathtakingly abject tactic I have seen, short of running to mummy because these nasty people had been disagreeing with ums. The more I contemplate it, the less it makes sense.

Consider what such justification for rejection amounts to: some third parties somewhere, who hadn’t been asked to vet the work, but who might or might not have approved it if they had been asked, had not actually said anything about the work. Right? So because the work was not considered by those third parties, it thereby is errr. . . to be neglected without rebuttal by those in response to whose work it had been presented? Why should we respect authors who had been unable to assess the merits of criticism of their work or defend their work independently of peer reviewers? In the example under consideration, the criticism after all, did not involve novel work or novel techniques, but a critique of (peer reviewed) work. What role is peer review of the critique to play in such a case? What sort of peril would such peer review be intended to avert? Even in the top scientific journals, letters to the editor in response to peer reviewed articles are not in general peer reviewed.  Right?

Never mind! Let’s get back to the real world.

This much at least should be clear: science is passing through a most painful phase. (At least I hope that “passing” is not too optimistic a word!) As scientists we have a century or so of frequently (not invariably) inappropriate reliance on a cumbersome system. We have to deal with problems of ethics, politics, information explosion, population explosion, and technology explosion. In my opinion the peer review system *in its current form* has outlived its usefulness, in many respects even its viability. Whether the next generation is to rely on something totally new or on an amended review system, I cannot say, but what served for say the 1950s is hardly likely to serve for the 2050s. Some developments apparently in process within some Internet publications, in which pre-publications are exposed to public execration or appreciation before the final editing, may point the way to the future, but whatever form it takes, something new is needed.

Whether it turns out to be in the interest of the editorial staff, the author, or the reader, the fact remains that peer review as she currently is spoke, notionally is primarily for the benefit of the editorial staff, only contingently for the benefit of the author, and usually irrelevant to the reader, whether friend or enemy.  But those who appeal to the process for shelter from unwelcome assessments of their work, or their duties to their readers; for some reason recall to me two lines of Burns written in a slightly different context:

From Envy and Hatred your corps is exempt,

But where is your shield from the darts of Contempt!

In case that strikes you as insulting, I invite you to consider it in the perspective of the insult to the reader at whom certain helpful remarks were directed—remarks of the form: “Those such as McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system [of the peer review process] are not to be trusted.” We readers apparently are seen as stupid enough to swallow the hockey stick without choking on the mediaeval optimum or little ice age, but too stupid to gag at the implications of the physics of photon absorption, the history of volcanic influences on the climate, the principles of sample significance, or the implication of withheld data—and far, far too stupid to read a statistical argument?

*Unless it is peer reviewed?*

No wonder Mann’s best friends turned on him and bit him.

Jon

See PDF here.

By Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post

It’s hard to be green when you’re red-faced all the time. It’s easy to be red-faced when your cause is global warming doomsterism.

This week, the doomsters were embarrassed to learn, once again, that the planet was not in grave peril. Antarctica, their greatest candidate for catastrophe, was not melting at an ever-faster rate, according to a report in Geophysical Research Letters, but at the slowest rate in 30 years. To add to their frustration, they couldn’t even lash out at the lead author, Marco Tedesco of the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department of City College of New York - the doomsters had praised his previous reports showing high rates of Antarctic melt.

The latest news from the Arctic - delivered daily via satellite - is no better. Two years ago with the Arctic ice in rapid retreat, the doomsters, convinced of the coming of an ice-free Arctic, could scarcely contain themselves. Now, with the Arctic ice in rapid return, their anticipation of disaster seems more a cruel hoax of Nature. The doomsters now dread to track the satellite data beamed down to us courtesy of the International Arctic Research Center and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency - you can see why they cringe each day by going to the satellite website and following the red line.

The red faces aren’t all caused by Nature’s refusal to cooperate in Earth’s demise.  The clean carbon folks have recently discovered that they’ve been in bed with organized crime. Scotland Yard and Europol, among numerous other law enforcement agencies across Europe, are hot on the trail of scam artists believed to have made off with 1-billion pounds by illicitly trading carbon credits. In Australia, authorities are investigating claims that a supplier to Carbon Planet, a carbon trading business, has been using fake carbon trading certificates to persuade forest dwellers in Papua New Guinea to sign over the rights to their forests under a UN scheme called REDD, for “Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation.’’ Australia’s REDD-faced Climate Change Minister Penny Wong may now be unable to tout Carbon Planet - about to list on the Australian stock exchange on the promise of A$100-million in REDD assets - at the upcoming climate change meetings in Copenhagen. Other dodgy carbon dealings led to the suspension of the UK branch of SGS, one of the world’s largest clean energy auditors, and of the Norwegian certification company DNV.

If universities could blush, Stanford would be setting the skies ablaze with its latest embarrassment, an attempt to censor a global warming documentary about to be released that had filmed one of its professors, global warming catastrophist Stephen Schneider. “You are prohibited from using any of the Stanford footage you shot, including your interview of Professor Stephen Schneider,” Stanford demanded in a letter. “Professor Schneider likewise has requested that I inform you that he has withdrawn any permission for you to use his name, likeness or interview in connection with any film project you may undertake.”

What caused Stanford and Schneider to go ballistic over the release of the documentary, Not Evil Just Wrong, by independent Irish filmmaker Phelim McAleer? He asked Schneider about his many predictions of global cooling catastrophe in the 1970s. 

Why did the filmmaker back down, even though he had obtained permission for the interview? In legal proceedings, a well-heeled bully has no difficulty beating up a poor guy with only right on his side. Not that the filmmaker lacked either spine or recourse. He then documented the bad behaviour of Stanford and Schneider by having an actor read Schneider`s words before a blank screen. After its release, on Oct. 18, the sky over Stanford will turn an even deeper hue of red.

This week of embarrassment for the global warmists does not look all that different from most weeks. Overzealous scientists and their enablers have a habit of selecting the data they like and setting the rest aside. Some - Schneider among them - have even justified exaggerating the dangers in the cause of making the public take note. When they get caught they often resort to obfuscations and cover-ups.

And red faces become the norm.

See how Phelim is blocked by the enviromentalists from asking questions at the premiere of the Age of Stupid in this video here. It is described here.

Read more here.

By Indur M. Goklany

The Economist’s print edition has published my letter taking it to task for a pretty uninformed piece it published on the impacts of climate change last month. Although the editors changed the title, dropped the references which I furnish reflexively, and is somewhat briefer, the printed version is for the most part quite faithful to the spirit of the original.  I am furnishing the original below for the benefit of your readers who may be interested in checking my statements and going beyond the “he said, she said” nature of most exchanges on the opinion pages of newspapers and magazines.

*********************

A badly developed climate backgrounder

SIR - The Economist’s article, A bad climate for development (September 17), which also serves as a backgrounder for an online debate on climate change, is not only selective in the information it presents, it is riddled with speculation and unsubstantiated claims.

For example, its chart 3 presents portions of two of three panels in figure 2.1 of the World Development Report 2010.  But the panel that it chooses not to display shows that deaths from all climate related disasters have actually declined at least since 1981-85 despite (a) an enormous increase in the population at risk, namely, the world’s population, and (b) the fact that older data has a greater tendency to underestimate the number and casualties of extreme weather events. The original source of the data (Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, CRED) states that the increase in the data until 1995 “is explained partly by better reporting of disasters in general, partly due to active data collection efforts by CRED and partly due to real increases in certain types of disasters."[1] They also state that they are unable to say whether the latter increases are due to climate change.

Secondly, the backgrounder cites estimates sponsored by the World Health Organisation and published in Comparative Quantification of Health Risks that attributed 150,000 deaths and a loss of 5.5m disability-adjusted life years - a measure of the global burden of disease - to climate change in the year 2000.  But these studies also show that at least twenty other risk factors contributed more to death and disease.[2] That is, there are many more important health problems facing the world than climate change.

Thirdly, the article goes on to claim that the indirect harm to public health from the impact of climate change on water supplies, crop yields and disease is “hugely greater.” But what’s the evidence for this? 

In fact, access to safe water, improved sanitation, crop yields, and life expectancy has never been higher in the history of mankind.[3] This is true for both the developing and developed worlds. Much of this has been enabled, directly or indirectly, by economic surpluses generated by the use of fossil fuels and other greenhouse gas generating activities such as fertilizer usage, pumping water for irrigation, and use of farm machinery. And crop yields, in particular, are also higher today than ever partly because of higher concentrations of CO2, without which yields would be zero.

Fourthly, the backgrounder claims that global warming is causing both droughts and floods. Regardless of whether this is the case, deaths from droughts have declined by 99.9% since the 1920s, and 99% from floods since the 1930s.[4] In fact, since the 1920s, average annual deaths from all extreme weather events have dropped by 95 percent while annual death rates, which factor in population growth, have been reduced by 99 percent.

One item, however, where I agree with the backgrounder is that projections of the future impacts of climate change are “no more than educated guesses” although, as Alexander Pope might have said, a little education is a dangerous thing.

Indur M. Goklany

Notes:

[1] Revkin AC. 2009. Gore Pulls Slide of Disaster Trends. Dot Earth Blog. February 23, 2009. Available here. Visited September 10, 2009.

[2] Goklany IM. Climate change is not the biggest health threat. Lancet 2009; 374: 973-74.

[3] Goklany IM. The Improving State of the World: Why We’re Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet (Cato Institute, Washington, DC, 2007).

[4] Goklany IM. Death and Death Rates Due to Extreme Weather Events:  Global and U.S. Trends, 1900-2006, in The Civil Society Report on Climate Change, November 2007, available here.