An IPCC Cornerstone, 20 Years Old
Posted by jennifer, September 26th, 2005 - under Uncategorized.
Tags: Climate & Climate Change
I received the following note from Warwick Hughes:
The 20th anniversary of Jones et al 1986 seems a good time to assemble all available reviews of these IPCC cornerstones that slipped under the radar of science. I have just posted:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/cru86/ . …
The Hughes et al review begins:
Next year will mark 20 years since the publication of the two landmark Jones et al papers that launched the dataset that underpins IPCC Global Warming as we now know it. For over 200 years Earth has been recovering from the Little Ice Age (LIA) and the associated solar minimums so of course warming has taken place. Our position in continuing to draw attention to the appalling deficiencies in the Jones et al methodologies can be expressed simply by in effect saying the following to the IPCC and their cohorts. You are proposing huge changes to the World economic system, surely the onus is on you to measure global temperature trends using data that does not include many hundreds of temperature records contaminated by local urban heat islands.
Ender,
You said “I am sick to death of people like you refuting peer reviewed work with absolute crap like you do. … PUT UP or SHUT UP.”
Okay, I’ve put up. And your response is to ask what would I put in its place.
Are you now accepting that the peer-reviewed process is flawed?
Or do you believe that it isn’t flawed, in which case you would be refuting these articles, at least one of which appears in a peer-reviewed publication?
If this second option is the case then I want to see some evidence to support the reasons for your refutation lest your claims be regarded as “absolute crap” (to use your own words).
When you’ve provided a satisfactory response to this posting I will consider your question about an alternative.
Malcolm – regards your very valid comments, there’s something else you should be aware of.
The peer-review process is essentially not for the author of the paper but for the journal. Journal editors are rarely skilled enough to determine quality from rubbish. (It’s difficult enough in a journal dealing with a single field so imagine the problems of the general publications such as “Science” and “Nature”.)
The solution to the problem was to send the manuscript to learned people in the field and have them determine the quality of the paper. It almost goes without saying that egos have got in the way and quality papers been discarded because the “experts” reviewing them found that the work challenged their own standing and credibility.
I suspect this has filtered back to the journals themselves now and editors are making decisions based on a combination of threat to credibility, threat to readership, threat to advertising revenues and in some cases the threat to the stockprice of their company.
In the various circumstances that I’ve mentioned in this post and my previous post it is not surprising to find “peer review” being disparagingly labels as “mates review” !
kind regards
John
Dear Jennifer,
I have just put up a new web page adding to my 20th Anniversary review of Jones et al 1986a&b.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/cru86/shinv.htm
This lists the ~300 Southern Hemisphere stations used by Jones et al 1986b each with a population from the GHCN. Now people can see for themselves the proportion of urban warming affected stations in IPCC GW trends. Never before been seen on the www.
This page relates to point 1 of Wigley & Jones 9 points where they claim Wood 1988 was in “Error” in his critique. On the page,
http://www.warwickhughes.com/cru86/wood.htm
I have started commenting on these 9 points of W & J. People can also read my scanned pages of both Wood 1998 and the W & J reply.
Riveting. It is not hard to understand how all this was finessed past Science and poilicymakers 15 years ago.
All for now.
Warwick Hughes
Warwick Hughes – Except of of course these studies that have investigated the UHI and found it not to be what you say – do these appear on your website?
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v432/n7015/abs/432290a_fs.html
“Controversy has persisted over the influence of urban warming on reported large-scale surface-air temperature trends. Urban heat islands occur mainly at night and are reduced in windy conditions. Here we show that, globally, temperatures over land have risen as much on windy nights as on calm nights, indicating that the observed overall warming is not a consequence of urban development.”
and
Peterson, T.C., Assessment of urban versus rural in situ surface temperatures in the contiguous United States: No difference found, Journal of Climate, 16, 2941-2959, 2003.
“Assessment of urban versus rural in situ surface temperatures in the contiguous United States: No difference found” published in the Journal of Climate finds that the effects of the urban heat island may have been overstated and that “Contrary to generally accepted wisdom, no statistically significant impact of urbanization could be found in annual temperatures.”
Perhaps you should put these 2 studies up as well.
This is where you can find a better explanation of the UHI and where I got the data from:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=43#more-43
John – your experiences do not constitute proof that the peer review process is flawed at all. Really it is doing what it is supposed to do – weed out unfit work. The vast majority of science, of which climate science is only a small part, gets done using this process yet on the whole it is only Climate Change Skeptics that think that it does not work.
Scientists are human and are subject to human foibles of petty rivalry and stupidity like any other humans. The process of science as it has grown up over the years is not human. Scientists like all professionals have professional integrity. Without this the whole process would fail as would the medical profession and law enforcment. All of these professions depend on 99% of the people in them having integrity. I am an IT professional and could steal a large amount of information as I am in a postion of trust. I never have and never will because I am basically honest. The insinuation that scientists deliberatly alter results to suit themselves is a gross insult to the vast majority of honest hard working scientists that would sooner cut of their arms than falsify results. It is like saying that all cops are on the take. There are bad apples like any profession however to think that all scientists just make up results in really wide of the mark.
BTW I cannot see anything that would indicate that the whole process is flawed. Journals are only a small part of the whole science publishing.
Ender,
My experiences have nothing to do with it!
Are you trying to say that the peer review process isn’t flawed when a peer-reviewed article says that it is?
WILL YOU PLEASE ANSWER MY ORIGINAL QUESTIONS!
You comment “The vast majority of science, of which climate science is only a small part, gets done using this process yet on the whole it is only Climate Change Skeptics that think that it does not work” is just risible.
I refer you to the August 2005 edition of “PLoS Medicine”, a PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL, in which we find “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” by John P. A. Ioannidis.
You can read the whole article at http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 so I’ll just include the opening summary here…
“There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field. In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. In this essay, I discuss the implications of these problems for the conduct and interpretation of research.”
In the body of the above article we find two statements that very clearly apply to papers about Global Warming.
“Corollary 5: The greater the financial and other interests and prejudices in a scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true.”
“Corollary 6: The hotter a scientific field (with more scientific teams involved), the less likely the research findings are to be true.”
You believe in the peer-review process for its integrity and you also say “The insinuation that scientists deliberatly alter results to suit themselves is a gross insult to the vast majority of honest hard working scientists that would sooner cut of[f] their arms than falsify results.”
The above article appears in a peer-reviewed journal and it says that MOST PUBLISHED RESEARCH FINDINGS ARE FALSE, so don’t blame me or try to put words into my mouth!
When you’ve finished explaining how you deal with the first contradiction (ie. that peer-reviewed journals say that the peer-review process is flawed and yet you, a believer in peer-review says it isn’t), can you please explain how you deal with the second contradiction (ie. that a peer-reviewed journal says that most published research findings are false and yet you claim them to be accurate).
I look forward to your clarifications.
John
Dear Jennifer,
Peer Review
I see various posts exploring viewpoints on peer review.
Let me just draw your attention to some data that passed peer review, in a paper by a list of authors that is a veritable “who’s who’s” of the prestigious climate orgs in orbit with the IPCC.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/climate/easterling.htm
Easterling et al 1997 present a global diagram of colour coded grid cell anomalies with 3 panels. One each for max temp, min temp and temperature range (DTR) or max minus min.
Just work your way through my examples demonstrating the lack of logic in many of their grid cells. Remember as you check that the labels for the 3 global map panels are in the BOTTOM LEFT of each panel.
What scrutiny by authors is taking place here ?
What peer review ?
Best wishes,
Warwick Hughes
Gidday Ender,
If you read the posts above you will see I have already shown (27 Sep) how the conclusion by Parker on the absence of the UHI after comparing windy vs calm data is seriously flawed by using a station list that is much more rural than data sets used to generate GW.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/cru86/wind.htm
lists the station list of Jones 1986 for Australia alongside the station list Parker sent me.
I have read Peterson’s paper and I will email him to see if I can get his station names and data.
Have a look at my post on Peer Review where I show a shambles of mistakes in a 1997 paper in Science.
However I would like to remind readers of the subject matter of this thread.
An IPCC Cornerstone, 20 Years Old
The 20th anniversary of Jones et al 1986 seems a good time to assemble all available reviews of these IPCC cornerstones that slipped under the radar of science.
I have just posted: http://www.warwickhughes.com/cru86/
Can somone defend Jones use of ~120 (40%) SH city stations ? See the list with populations (albeit out of date) at;
http://www.warwickhughes.com/cru86/shinv.htm
Now do we see the extent of lies told on this subject for over 15 years.
All for now.
WSH
Warwick – pls progress us – don’t bombard us – enlighten us – do one analysis and report back – how many stations total are flawed and what difference does it make to the warming graph if you do the analysis without them. Is it important to the conclusion or not ?
You see we have other evidence such as MSU satellite data, most glaciers and warmed oceans which says something is happening with warming – so now you are saying that the fundamental data that ironically started it all does match these and is corrupt/mis-selected.
I implore you not to leave us all in suspense- what difference does it make if x% are wrong ? Please do the analysis.
One swallow does not make a summer – do you have enough swallows !! You could also replicate Parker with your data set.
And if Warwick does not get published with his findings he has totally wasted his time. It will not influence policy by being buried in some web site. It will be seen as a lone wolf howling at the moon.
And on John on peer review – yes on reflection you are right – so lets leave scientific decisions to the mob as peer review is totally flawed. So out with all the paleo science too – that’s all wrong as well. Ice cores, sediments, fossils – all wrong too. If it’s been in a journal you cannot trust it. John has exposed a massive hoax. Somebody should tell a House Committe or something.
So it’s all been fun knowing you – I’m off to a and exorcism this morning and a witch burning with friends after dinner.
Warwick Hughes – I requested wind data from the BOM earlier this year. It cost about $60. Why don’t you do the same for the temperature data and do an analysis using statitics to show the heat island effect for Australia at least. If it is marked as you say then it should stand out by comparing daily temperatures with nightly temperatures from rural and urban stations.
But of course this is not going to happen is it?
Phill,
Can’t you post something better?
According to my information the corrected MSU satellite data reveals higher than previously but still below what the physics predicts. Various glaciers have been reported to be in retreat as eary as 1850 and others since the 1950s (and that’s only two reports I’ve seen in passing). Both those periods were pretty cold and carbon dioxide levels were about 280ppm. Warm oceans? yes, funny about that, it happens after a period of heating in the tropics and then slowly moves towards the poles.
Warwicks notion is very sound. Jones and Wigley claim RECENT significant warming (ie 1975-200) but what about the UHI effects thez were including in their data?
Sure, they claim to have allowed for it and the investigation of the effects of wind on UHI showed no material difference. Tell me, from which direction were the winds blowing for the period which was investigated and were those winds cold, cool, warm or hot, and did they bring rain which might cause cooling?
Or did the AVERAGE of the winds from all those directions produce an AVERAGE that was no different? (ie. did the wind affect some locations positively and others negatively?)
Your dummy-spit on the issue of peer-review I think says a lot. It seems that if you can’t advance an argument with data you resort to ridicule. Did you also “accidentally” bump board games that you were losing when you were a child?
Hi Ender – I’m still waiting (and maybe others are too). Where’s the answers to my questions??
John – The reference you supplied is certainly very interesting. It falls short of the mark becuase the author primarily intended it to apply to the biomedical field as his qualifications show:
“John P. A. Ioannidis is in the Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, University of Ioannina School of Medicine, Ioannina, Greece, and Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies, Department of Medicine, Tufts-New England Medical Center, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America”
Now despite his obvious qualifications I do not think that he speaks and writes for physics, geology, astronomy, biology, ….. zoology that science composes. For that the study would have to be multi-disciplinary. I think to claim from one biomedical researcher writing that peer review is flawed in one discipline that all peer review in all scientific disciplines is flawed is a gigantic leap and not justified. I am sure if you emailed the author, as I am going to do, that he would be horrified that you would take this leap.
Now the biomedical field is one that there has been considerable scientific fraud as there is enormous pressure on scientists to produce results of tests that agree with major drug corporations profits. In that the quote that you mention is very accurate as good science usually goes out the window when large amounts of money are involved.
In fact this is almost exactly what is happening in the climate field. Large fossil fuel corporations are pressuring scientists, and any scientist will do, to produce conclusions that fit with continued use of fossil fuels. You are probably an unpaid part of this major effort and really you should be getting part of the gravy rather than doing it for free.
The quotes you supplied are interesting however I cannot answer your questions because the information you supplied is really more damning of your side of the equation.
Ender
1.RE your quote…”.good science goes out the window when large amounts of money are involved”. Exactly, and peer reveiw doesnt stop bad science happening, being published & adopted as gospel.
2. AGW is also awash with relatively large amounts of research money, ergo, bad science is happening in AGW.
3. Peer review as a principal is being used across many scientific disciplines.Medicine seems to have developed and surrounded it with better protocols. It is valid to learn from what others are doing. Only a fool would not do so.
4 I know this is slightly tangential but I keep recalling the way Ignaz Semmelweiss was treated by the scientific establishment in the 1850-60′s.This man proved statistically that going from a cadaver room, to room full of patients without washing ones hands was not a good idea, yet the establishment, ie his peers, gave him a rubbishing when all he was asking (via his scientifc paper presented to the Imperial and Royal Academy of Sciences in 1860), was that the poor darlings should wash their hands. They refused, and as a result thousands of women continued to die. Thankfully we have improved a little since those days.
Gidday Phil and Ender,
Perhaps you are clairvoyant because I have had ready for a few months now and have just posted at;
http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/index.htm
EXACTLY the study you have asked for. Showing the rural temperature trend for Eastern Australia compared to other series promoted by the BoM and of course the Jones et al trend.
The 64 station series is an example of the sort of station data that must be used to compile global trends if they are to have any credibility.
Ender says. But of course this is not going to happen is it?
Let me assure you Ender, a lot of stuff will happen.
All for now.
WSH
Warwick – very good work – I stand corrected however I just would like to note a couple of things.
1. 64 stations? This seems like a very small number when there are in NSW alone at least 300 climate measuring sites. I see why you picked the sites that you did however there are many more small towns that this. Also hand picking sites might be construed as selecting sites that show your results. You should be able to use all the data from all of the sites with appropriate filtering.
2. You then apply this 21 site data to the whole eastern seaboard which also seems a bit of a stretch when there are rural stations such as Ballina which despite large urbanization still remains a small center or Alsonville or Batemans Bay, or Bombala. From personal experience all these places are very unlikely to have an UHI.
3. The Spencer and Christy MSU dataset you used has been updated. As you know Spencer and Christie combined 2 MSU instruments to form a 3rd virtual instrument. They have recently changed their data so you will need to redo the calculations to take account of this.
http://ams.allenpress.com/amsonline/?request=get-document&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0426(2000)017%3C1153:MTTDCA%3E2.0.CO%3B2
How did it go when submitted for publication?
John – no dummy spit – I’m laughing – your position is illogical on peer review.
I notice no reponse on the cherry picking yet. And the 2005 temperature seems pretty warm. We’ll see eh ? Anyway don’t forget to hand in your stats assignment to see if you pass 101.
On glaciers – do some reading for heavens sake !!!! Then we’ll talk.
You may have to contradict the world body on the topic…
Warwick – what I find very strange is the temperature trend maps on the BoM’s website, alone attest to the fact that UHI have nothing to do with the warming as greatest warming has occurred in areas with the lowest population densities (the subtropical arid zones – which just so happen to be those which are predicted to warm most rapidly under global warming).
Why is that ?
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/trendmaps.cgi .
See max, min and diurnal. Are the BoM’s maps wrong ?? Are you aware of the Bureau’s pain-staking efforts with checking reference stations and churning through miles of records and meta-data? So something here doesn’t add up ? Poor dear readers out there – all so confused.
Also the PLoS article is an opinion piece, an essay published without peer review. Also have you actually read the article? And understood it? If anything the article supports peer review and the act of publishing – in essence the more people working in a field, the more peer reviewed papers published then the more likey that a published finding is ‘true’.
In the area that the author is writing about, biomedical research in general and genomics in particular, he’s saying that, statistically, a single study with few replicates in the early stages of a research area where low levels of differences are measured has a lower chance of being ‘true’ than does a number of studies with many replicates in a more mature area of research. Also this article is a statistical exploration of the issue isn’t a real world analysis of published papers. He does not analyse any other field of research (outside of biomedical research)and with good reason – a number of the problems and the designs of the experiments discussed do not exist outside of biomedical research – they can not be applied to other areas such as liquid crystals and climate studies or the thousand other areas of scientific endevour.
Malcom – on point 3 – the PLoS article is specifically related to medical research so are you going to review your ‘Medicine seems to have developed and surrounded it with better protocols’ statement? Or do you believe that the current system that modern medicine is on the right track?
There have been over 100000 papers published on climate change over the last 20 years – the body of scientific evidence supports that human induced climate change is real and is happening now – this isn’t just Mann et al’s paper but thousands of others as well – do you really think that they are all wrong? Global conspiracy?
And your example in 4 is very well chosen because he wasn’t rejected at the ‘peer review’ stage ie he was published wasn’t he? It was the people who ignored his published findings that caused the deaths of thousands – your example shows what happens when people ignore peer-reviewed published work.
SimonC. Semmelweiss wasnt “published” in the modern sense.I believe that it was public pressure that saw him being invited to give a paper to the Imperial Academy of Sciences. He refused, and a friend presented the lecture for him, but got it wrong. Semmelweiss was persuaded to redo the lecture a year or so later. At every stage he was resisted by his peers, so some 10 eyars later he wrote a book and from then on it was slow going to persuade people he was correct.
So I think it is drawing along bow to say it was an example of what happens when “peer reviewed” material is not listened to.
My point regarding the poor dears couldnt even be bothered to wash their hands to test his theory for themselves goes to show how hide bound we can be in protecting an established view,particularly amongst so called peers.
Sorry, I’ve been busy elsewhere for a few days.
Phil,
Please explain why my position is illogical on peer-review and why you continue to believe its integrity-
I’m aspecially interested when we’ve been told in a peer-reviewed journal that publication is influenced by those who do or don’t review an article and in another that the editors, not the peer reviewers, will reject more articles in future.
As David Henderson put it in Evidence Submitted to the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic
Affairs, “Building in peer-review is no safeguard against dubious assumptions, arguments and conclusions if the peers are all drawn from the same restricted professional milieu.” Sounds entirely reasonable to me.
Phill, would you like to explain – and show evidence to support your explanation – that this is not the case?
Ender, regards the article from John P. A. Ioannidis you say “… I do not think that he speaks s and writes for physics, geology, astronomy, biology, ….. zoology that science composes”, pray, give us the benefit of your wisdom and explain why YOU THINK this doesn’t apply to science fields.
To me the point Ioannidis is indirectly making is that peer-review does not work and that distortions and outrights lies do get published as peer reviewed papers.
Back to my original question which you are finding it so difficult to answer – Are you trying to say that the peer review process isn’t flawed when a peer-reviewed article says that it is?
(Or perhaps I should change that and say that THREE peer-reviewed artcles indicate that the process is flawed!)
John
John – can’t you see it – you are quoting a peer reviewed journal as an argument. But you’re arguing aginst peer review. Except the peer reviewed papers you like. You just cherry pick evidence as you see it. Don’t bother quoting Ioannidis if you don’t believe in peer review.
And why quote the House of Lords Committee – unelected politicians – come on ? What rot would you expect … I reject your bunch of politicians (by your own rules not mine).
As I said – you have adopted anarchy as an argument given you have dispensed with peer review. So we now have you and your mates to believe with cherry picked arguments and nonsense.
Now – how’s the maths assignment ? Get your 1988 to 2004 “trend” marked as a statistically signficant trend by any maths teacher lately !
Anyway refer you to the more recent Crichton II thread – David says it all …
Phill,
It’s you who has to explain you position, not me.
You claim that peer-reviews are reliable and I am presenting peer-reviewed articles that question that position. Now either you accept them because they are peer-reviewed or you don’t accept then, and if it is the latter then you are showing that you reject peer-reviewed articles.
What of the earlier two articles? You’ve been very silent on them.
Are you willfully misinterpreting what I’ve said or is this your normal tactic when under pressure?
1. I did NOT quote the House of Lords Committee; I quoted a relevant part of David Henderson’s submission to it.
2. I have NOT “adopted anarchy as an argument given that [I] have dispensed with peer review”. I’ve said nothing at all about anarchy. This seems more of your attitude that I must propose an alternative for everything on which we disagree. There is no “must” about it!
3. What are you talking about with your “1988-2004″ comment? I can see nothing in this thread that mentions it apart from your posting. Are you waffling again or just trying to deflect from the issue of peer-review?
4. David says stuff-all in that thread on Crichton. He’s got a bunch of waffle that reminds me of you and Ender in his first post and in his second he’s piously hopeful in one statement and I think deliberately distorting the issue in the other. Knowing that David I am not surprised.
Now about these peer-reviewed papers that contradict the perception of the peer-review process. Do you accept them or are they wrong?
And stop dodging the issue or I will repeat the question whenever I see a postng from you.
John
Phill,
I had a thought … just maybe your 1988 to 2004 was supposed to be 1980 to 2004, the period that I mentioned in a letter to The Age.
Yep, 25 years with no discernible warming in Victoria and Australia’s temperatures pretty much unchanged except for some very clear natural events (eg. El Nino).
Was I declaring this a trend? No! (Do you misinterpret statements all the time or only when you disagree with the comments?)
I was making the point that the often-heard claim that warming is increasing – or sometimes “dramaticly increasing” is simply not true according to meteorological observations.
If there’s no warming then you can’t argue that humans are causing warming, can you?
John – I’m sorry Ender and I have gotten it so wrong. We obviously have no clue and misunderstood your position.
Pleae give is a very succinct summary of the what you see in the last century or so with temperature – land/ocean, rainfall trends, El Nino/La Nina, glaciers, MSU data, hurricane/typhoon/cyclone intensities , arctic & Antartic melt (or otherwise). Drivers of current climate.
Just a brief summary for the readers. We have obviously misunderstood your position and need to be educated. Ender and I obviously have failed to grasp the broad scope of what you’re saying. Obviously we have totally misinterpreted the data and information.
At this point we’re lost. Pls educate us.
1988 was typo should have been 1998.
1998-2004 … referred previous discussion another thread