Klimaatgekte: Washington Post over Klimaatcensuur

[Dr. Marc-Alexander Fluks]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Bron:  Washington Post
Datum: 7 april 2010
URL:    
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/07/global-warmings-unscientific-method/


EDITORIAL: Global warming's unscientific method
-----------------------------------------------
Science is undermined by scaremongers' abuse of peer-review

The prophets of global warming continue to lament as their carefully
crafted yarn unravels before their eyes. Ross McKitrick, an intrepid
economics professor from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada,
has tugged apart the thin mathematical threads that once held together
the story of climate change.

Recent attempts to silence Mr. McKitrick illuminate the extent to
which the alarmists have abandoned proper scientific method in their
pursuit of political goals.

Mr. McKitrick has spent the past two years attempting to publish a
scientific paper that documents a fundamental error in the 2007 United
Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. This
U.N. document serves as the sole authority upon which the Environmental
Protection Agency based its December "endangerment finding" that will
allow unelected bureaucrats to impose cap-and-trade-style regulations
without a vote of Congress. The cost to the public in higher gas and
energy prices will run in the billions.

One might think that the scientific community would be extra diligent
in double-checking the conclusions of a report carrying such weighty
real-world consequences. In fact, the opposite happened. Seven
scientific journals circled the wagons to block publication of Mr.
McKitrick's explosive findings.

The IPCC report argued that temperatures rose one degree Celsius over
the course of a century as a direct result of man-made carbon-dioxide
emissions. This tiny change in temperature was calculated through the
use of an "adjusted" set of global surface-temperature readings. Mr.
McKitrick found that factors unrelated to global climate contaminated
this data set, resulting in a higher temperature reading. He showed a
statistically significant correlation between the change in
temperature readings and socioeconomic indicators. It makes sense,
for example, that replacing trees and forests with concrete and glass
skyscrapers might contribute to the .01 degree annual increase in
local temperature readings. This "urban heat island" effect would not
be present in readings taken outside the asphalt jungle.

Scientific journals evaluate arguments of this sort using a peer-
review process by which purportedly impartial experts in the relevant
field verify the paper's accuracy and suitability for publication. By
addressing issues raised by reviewers, researchers are able to
present an improved and refined final product. In Mr. McKitrick's
case, the process appears to have been abused to stifle dissent.

The leading journals Science and Nature both rejected the paper as
too specialized and lacking in novelty. The Bulletin of the American
Meteorological Society did not respond. Reasons given for refusing
the paper in other outlets frequently contradicted one another.

One of the famous leaked e-mails from the former head of the Climatic
Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia sheds light on
what really happens behind the scenes. "I can't see either of these
papers being in the next IPCC report," professor Phil Jones wrote in
reference to a 2004 journal article by Mr. McKitrick. "Kevin and I
will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the
peer-review literature is!"

Mr. McKitrick's views were indeed excluded from the IPCC report,
but his paper will now be published in a forthcoming edition of
Statistics, Politics and Policy. One of that journal's editors told
The Washington Times that the submission was treated as "fairly
routine." That is to say, they treated it as scientists should.

The soundness of a statistical analysis does not change simply
because the numbers point to a truth inconvenient for those seeking
to manipulate science to advance political policy. Thanks to the
exposure of East Anglia's unscientific method, the public can peer
behind the curtains and see that the emperors of warming have no
clothes.

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(c) 2010 The Washington Times, LLC

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