Global Warming Canards: The Reliability of Global Warming Denialists -- Part 1

Chillbill has taken up the mantle of global warming denialism in response to my series of posts on global warming denialist canards. In doing so he makes allusions to several common canards. One such canard is that global warming denialists will present data that will starkly contradict the findings of mainstream climatologists. The conclusion they wish their reader to draw is that mainstream climatologists have been wrong and therefore the conclusions global warming scientist have reached are wrong.

At first glance that seems reasonable. But does it hold up under scrutiny? What other possible explanations can there be? I can think of two fairly easily:

(1) Mainstream scientists were indeed wrong concerning whatever point the denialists bring up, but that point is only peripheral to the body of the science so the overall conclusions are not affected.

(2) The source the global warming denialists use is the one presenting the wrong data.

I think it is a very good thing to subject the data to scrutiny, but it shouldn't be just the data from mainstream science that is subjected to scrutiny. Global warming denialists SHOULD subject the data they happen to like to the same scrutiny the data they don't like at all. How well do they do? Chillbill cites two published paper (here and here) as "evidence" refuting mainstream climatology. Let's look at them a little more closely and see if the data do what they claim.

The first paper is on the internet at the Petition Project, a global warming denialist website that I briefly discuss here. This "project" claims 30,000+ scientists have signed it. But we don't know how many were real scientists (the site says less than 1/3 of the signees have Ph.D.'s which almost all real scientists do). And even more importantly we don't know how many have any relevant qualifications (the site says only 40 claim climatology as their area of expertise and no mention that I could find how many of them had Ph.D.'s much less actually publish anything in respected climatology journals). Furthermore, we know that several of the names on the list are hoaxes (For instance, they had Spice Girl, Geri Halliwell Ph.D. on the list). Finally, the site actually claims that not only is the high atmospheric CO₂ levels not a problem, it is a benefit for the earth. This "project" is clearly a wackaloon site. Here is the picture I used to summarize my feelings about the project:

That caveat did not stop chillbill linking to paper on that website. Furthermore, chillbill apparently accepted the site's claim that the paper was "peer-reviewed". What type of scrutiny did chillbill subject this paper to? Apparently none.

Before I go further with the evaluation of this particular paper, let's discuss peer-review. What is the purpose of peer-review? It is to ensure that journals publish scientifically strong papers. A scientifically strong paper is one that addresses a question of importance in a particular scientific discipline. It uses appropriate techniques to address the question. The results are properly analyzed. And the conclusion the author(s) derive are appropriate from the results. To ensure that requires that "peers" who are current with the published literature in field, knowledgeable about techniques, and critical thinkers themselves. Who qualifies for this? Scientists who publish in that field.

Suppose cosmologist Stephen Hawking submitted a paper on microbiology. While Hawking's peers may very well be other cosmologists, cosmologists should not be the peers that peer-review that paper. The paper should be reviewed by microbiologists, not cosmologists. Hence any paper that Hawking would submit on microbiology that used cosmologists as peers, would NOT be considered a peer-reviewed paper by microbiologists, since it would be inappropriately reviewed.

The point here is that a paper is not "peer-reviewed" unless appropriate peers are used. Now let's ask if the paper chillbill links to is really peer-reviewed.

Chillbill's link took me to a website that had an HTML formatted paper entitled: ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS OF INCREASED ATMOSPHERIC CARBON DIOXIDE. The authors of the paper are Arthur B. Robinson, Noah E. Robinson, and Willie Soon. But nowhere on that webpage does it state where the paper was published. I followed a link from there to a PDF format of the paper which revealed that the paper was published in the JOURNAL OF AMERICAN PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS in 2007.

What?? Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons?? Who did they use for peer-review? Peer-reviewers are almost always anonymous, so we will never know. But it is VERY UNLIKELY TO HAVE BEEN CLIMATOLOGISTS. Thus, this paper is NOT peer-reviewed, or at least not peer-reviewed appropriately.

But the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons sounds reputable, so perhaps the paper contains something of value anyway. Well ... actually I had never heard of it. Just because something SOUNDS reputable doesn't mean it IS reputable. I decided to look into it a little more.

The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is the journal of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. The journal was formerly known as the MEDICAL SENTINEL. Here is its mission statement in full"

The Medical Sentinel - the official, peer-reviewed journal of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) - is committed to publishing scholarly articles in defense of the practice of private medicine, the tenets and principles set forth in the Oath of Hippocrates,
individually-based medical ethics, and the sanctity of the patient-doctor relationship.

The Medical Sentinel is dedicated to the pursuit of liberty, free markets, and integrity in medical research, particularly research impacting on current socioeco-nomic and political issues affecting public policy in general and health care in particular. Political correctness, dogmatism and orthodoxy will be challenged with logical reasoning, valid data, and the scientific method (when applicable) in the pursuit of free inquiry, the free exchange of ideas, and the eternal quest for truth.

The Medical Sentinel will strive to counteract misinformation, correct errors of fact and logic in the medical literature, and to aptly defend patient-oriented, individually-based, free market medical care.

Er ... how does an article on global warming fall within the purview of "defense of the practice of private medicine, the tenets and principles set forth in the Oath of Hippocrates, individually-based medical ethics, and the sanctity of the patient-doctor relationship". It doesn't. Things just don't add up here. Well, it turns out this is a journal for wackaloons and not reputable at all.

Here is an article they published arguing against evolution and in favor of a "Triune creator". Here is an article advocating HIV denialism. It is not hard to find others equally loony. So what about the authors of the paper that chillbill linked to? Are they wackaloons too? The authors claim to be associated with the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. After checking them out, I certainly think so, but I'll let you judge for yourselves here.

But, so what? Even wackaloons can sometimes be right ... right? We shouldn't dismiss this as crap without at least considering what they have to say. ... Actually, I at this point I felt very much like doing just that. I'm not a big fan of wasting my time. But I skimmed over it anyway. I picked up on a few problems even with my limited knowledge of climatology:

(1) Robinson, Robinson, and Soon (RRS; the authors of the paper) use only the data from the Sargasso Sea to determine paleoclimates. It doesn't directly measure temperature. Instead it looks at the ratio of stable isotopes in organic sea floor sediments. This information correlates with temperature and therefore can be used to approximate temperatures from the past. This is called PROXY DATA and is common in climatology. However, all proxy data is subject to uncertainties. For instance, dating the sediments assume a constant rate of sediment formation. This is not always the case. Mainstream climatology tries not to rely on a single set of proxy data. Increased accuracy happens when many different proxies are used since errors tend to cancel each other out. Why didn't RRS use the full range of proxies?

(2) Several of the graphs seemed to be translated from graphs I have seen in other sources (the reason for this in a bit).

(3) The time-scales on several others seemed to be cherry-picked. I thought that if you expand the time scales the results that mainstream scientists claim would become more apparent.

(4) The graph comparing climate change over the last 3000 years to daily and seasonal temperature changes gives no meaningful information.

I decided to stop and check to see if mainstream climatologists have come out with a response to RRS. Since this is a non-peer-reviewed paper published in a wackaloon journal by wackaloons, I thought it would be too much to hope for a response in the mainstream science. However, there is so much hype from denialists there are a number of websites devoted to responding to the misinformation by mainstream scientists. In my opinion, the best is www.realclimate.org. Sure enough a little searching showed that they had produced a partial response (they didn't make a comprehensive response because looking at bullshit that can't be taken seriously is tiring). In order to keep this blog as short as possible I will leave you with the above link if you want to look at their critique more closely.

However, I found out that RRS DID have many of their graphs offset with respect to the time axis. In climatological literature looking at paleoclimates the abbreviation "bp" is often used. It stands for "before present". However, the convention in climatology is that means "before 1950". RRS graphed it as though it meant "before 2000". So they were off by 50 years. This is a silly error that would have obviously been picked up if the paper had received appropriate peer-review.

I had originally planned to include the second of chillbill's papers into this blog but due to the length, I think I'll end this blog here. I'll discuss the other paper in a separate blog.