I thought I might comment a bit further on the recent Millar et al. paper, [e]mission budgets and pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C, that I discussed in this post. I’ve found the whole public dialogue about this paper very irritating and rather frustrating.
Anyone with even a moderate understanding of the public climate change debate would have seen how this paper was going to be received by some. Models running too hot; alarmist are wrong again, we’ve got much more time; etc. If your paper isn’t actually addressing models and observations, then maybe it would be best if you don’t suggest that there is a model observation discrepancy (or that models are running too hot). If your conclusion isn’t really that it’s much easier and that we have much more time, maybe your paper shouldn’t be presented in such a way as to make it seem that it is, and that we do. You might argue that the latter is what the paper was suggesting, but given that it’s basically modifying the carbon budget from so small that we can’t possibly achieve this to maybe we can achieve this if we try very hard, that all seems rather moot. Also, there are plenty of arguments as to why their new carbon budget is probably more like a best case scenario, than a robust indication that it really is bigger than we had previously thought.
Of course, if the above are your actual conclusions, then you should present them and defend them. If, however, you have to write two clarifications the day after your paper came out, then maybe you weren’t clear enough in the paper itself. I realise, of course, that it is probably impossible to write a paper that won’t be misinterpreted by some; James Delingpole, for example. However, there’s no reason – that I can see – to make it easy.
I understand that researchers want their work to be published and would like it to be noticed and to have impact; there’s nothing wrong with that. However, it’s hard to see why your work being promoted in Breitbart, and having to write a clarification days after it’s published, is something to strive for. There are lots of people who spend time clarifying public misconceptions about climate science, and it doesn’t help when a paper is published that appears to be promoting some of them. There may be some circumstances when you might be pleased when people provide opportunites for more work. This is not one of them.
If you would like to read some more detailed comments on the Millar et al. paper, there are some links below.
Links:
Is there really still a chance for staying below 1.5oC global warming – Stefan Rahmstorf/Realclimate.
Factcheck: Climate models have not ‘exaggerated’ global warming – Zeke Hausfather/Carbon Brief.
Possible good news about climate change leads to confused coverage – Scott Johnson/arsTECHNICA.
Daily Wire article misunderstands study on carbon budget (along with Fox News, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, Breitbart…) – Climate Feedback.
...and Then There's Physics 
ATTP: Well said. I concur.
“I understand that researchers want their work to be published and would like it to be noticed and to have impact; there’s nothing wrong with that. However, it’s hard to see why your work being promoted in Breitbart, and having to write a clarification days after its published, is something to strive for.”
Not just Breitbart. The spin is what made it a big story. That was what made it a Nature Geoscience article. The top scientific journals want their articles to make the press because also scientists learn about many studies from the news and they need citations to maintain their impact factor. A Nature or Science publication helps the career of a young researcher a lot.
We should stop this culture of suspicion so that we are not reviewing each other all the time and then we do, we have time to read the articles and not just look where they were published.
The main scientific publishers seem to be caught in the Zeitgeist and mostly look at their quarterly earnings rather than serving the scientific community, their customers. They hardly provide any service any more, publishing is easy on the net. Scientists write the articles for free, review them for free and are also often are the editors. The main thing the publishers still provide is a brand with monopoly power, which gives them monopoly profits of 30 to 40%.
It is time we take the power back. There are just two groups working on a pre-print server for the Earth Sciences. That takes care of the publishing.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/09/dueling-preprint-servers-coming-geosciences
I am getting more serious about my idea to take the reviewing back into the scientific community. I think we can provide much better feedback on the importance/quality of a paper than the current crude where-did-it-get-published system and put my ideas in a new blog:
https://grassrootspublishing.wordpress.com/
We are better judges what is scientifically important. A news splash is not one of them. I welcome any feedback, help and ideas for improvements.
Victor,
Indeed, and it’s understandable that early career researchers would be keen to get papers published in Nature/Science.
This is one reason why we should stop using things like Impact Factors.
I think trying to take things back is a good idea, but I don’t really know how to do it in a way that would be effective. I think there has to be some kind of quality control (some form of peer review that occurs before papers are published), but the current system does seem rather flawed. Plus, we’re using an awful lot of public money to pay organisations who do very little other than host our work and, mostly, make it difficult for the public to access.
I’ll have a look, but I don’t know if I’ll have any bright ideas.
I read the entire paper from beginning to end. The writing style left much to be desired. It was as if English was their 2nd language or some such. It was sort of choppy and disjointed throughout.
Agreed.
The key Victor is to build a platform where scientific values and behavior is monetized.
Easy to do with a crypto currency.
Truthcoin.
Readers pay to read.
Reviewers get paid to review and rates are determined by
Reputation.
Authors get paid to write and
The paper as an entity earns money when cited.
Prove a paper wrong and you win it’s money.
One of the questions I found my self asking about this paper is, ‘has it furthered the scientific understanding of climate change?” It seems to have certainly harmed the public’s understanding of climate change, so unless the answer to my first question is ‘yes’, perhaps it would have been best for the authors to have sat on it—if they cared about the urgency of solving the climate change problem of course.
Thank you, mein host. I didn’t feel competent to post an opinion, and now I won’t need to.
Steven Mosher:
I’m not dismissing your idea out of hand, Steven, but how would a reviewer’s reputation be determined?
“take the reviewing back into the scientific community.” I’m looking at that and this post in general, as a consumer of the studies and reports scientists have been putting out for the past four decades plus. Layperson for sure, but avidly interested in learning about this Earth I was born into.
Regarding this post and what you’re driving at, allow me a some thoughts.
Any scientific communication improvement would require the people within the scientific community to recognize some of their own gross errors in communication. Particularly how much they have been manipulated and succumbed to right wing effort to confuse the science of global warming. Unfortunately, I’ve found that like every one else in our modern dog eat dog society, thin skins and self-defensiveness wins over self-skepticism, and processing serious critiques.
For starters making fringe uncertainties the center of discussion > without bringing the geophysical reality (in particular the certainties we possess) back into focus – Has been a ongoing hideous mistake.
Not unrelated is the slippage that allows seasoned professors and PhDs to defend their use of “climate change” as though it were some sort of action instead of the result of “global warming” – which is a result of man fossil fuels burning increasing our atmosphere’s insulation properties.
Global Warning is the active agent, climate change is the result. That’s physics, not rhetoric. To the best of my understanding – if I’m wrong it should be easy enough to explain my error in a constructive down to Earth manner.
Why it matters is because, for instance, writing off the discussion about the obvious transformation of hurricanes over the past decades to climate change – as some sort of culprit – transfer the guilt onto something vague and acceptable to the public’s palette.
Then getting lost in statistical gamesmanship because of the skimpy, spotty, data base – then…, rather than bringing the discussion back to the obvious physics of
heat transfer and it’s implication –
we stay on some never resolved marry-go-round of data blahblah,
data, that’s never complete or exact enough,
data that by it’s very nature never can be as complete or exact as the bar,
everyone has allowed the GOP and the climate science contrarian movement to erect.
I know I seem to offend a lot of serious people whom I’m actually trying to communicate with, I imagine this comment will be no different (if it makes it through moderation), but please no cheap insults unless, you are able to support them with some constructive critique. In that case I’ll take anything you got. My secret weapon, learning is my number one imperative.
Incidentally –
Phil Klotzbach’s response to Citizenschallenge Examined – The Map vs. Territory Problem
http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2017/09/klotzbach-response-to-citizenschallenge.html
Incidentally – Why are climate scientists so easy to accept malicious libel and slander as simply a fact of life – why not fight back? For instance:
#A) Examining Investors Business Daily’s malicious libel against Dr. Mann (1,2,3)
all the way to
#E) Examining Investors Business Daily’s malicious libel against Dr. Mann (28-36 and fini)
{At the same blog.}
At the very least, just using the term “global warming” would go some way toward getting rid of silly arguments that go “there has always been climate change. I accept that”. Saying “there has always been global warming” might not score as many rhetorical points.
Chris,
The issue is that global warming and climate change are really two different, but related, things. Global warming refers to what happens when we add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere; they reduce the outgoing energy flux, causing energy to accrue and, hence, causing the system to warm. This warming of the system then causes the climate change. So, climate change is a consequence of global warming, but this doesn’t really mean that the terms global warming and climate change are inter-changeable.
Lest anyone conflate those two comments – Dr. Klotzbach’s was a refreshing surprise, and though I stand by my critique I’ve gained much respect for Phil’s character.
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Steven Mosher: “The key Victor is to build a platform where scientific values and behavior is monetized.”
I had not thought of paying people for editing and reviewing, but yes one could do that as well within a grassroots publishing model.
I would prefer readers not to have to pay to read. Once you have a paper with copy rights you have a monopoly because the reader needs that one specific paper. Monopolies are not good for the economy and efficiency and certainly not for science. Then we would be in the old failing scientific publishing model again.
I had not thought of it because currently reviewing is just a side job and payments would only be a hassle. I was once offered a payment for a research proposal review from Portugal. They need the money more than I do and I really do not want to waste my precious life on Earth to find out which account of the university they would have had to transfer it to. So I declined the offer.
But if reviewing and editing becomes a main part of your work then this kind of overhead becomes less important. Might be a nice idea. Some more things would need to change in the scientific community. A project scientist is supposed to work on their research project and would not be allowed to do something else during working hours. At the same time the German Science Foundation wants me to work full time on my project; part time is only possible if you take care of a baby.
(In Europe it is childishly easy to make bank transfers, no need for installing complicated software to make payments with a crypto currency without a stable value relative to my rent. It would be nice if the central bank would give out digital money, like the (for example, Amazon) payment cards you buy at the supermarket, but then usable for all payments and not just one store. I do not like giving every single internet store my banking/credit card information, which will get hacked one day.)
citizenschallenge: “Any scientific communication improvement would require the people within the scientific community to recognize some of their own gross errors in communication. Particularly how much they have been manipulated and succumbed to right wing effort to confuse the science of global warming.”
The scientific community has culture that is conductive for scientific progress. It would be bad to give that up.
That may be one reason why political/economic pressure groups who do not like to do something about global warming prefer to attack scientists. A politician or an environmental group would be able to hit back much harder than scientists.
You can hit back.
When a politician makes bogus claims on global warming in the media, it would be best when another politician responds or someone from an environmental group. Or else an informed science journalist who will be better informed on the climate zombie myths than someone doing actual research.
Phil Klotzbach at one time studied under William Gray at CSU who was considered the authority on hurricanes. He has also experienced first-hand how Gray’s hurricane prediction model failed completely after having a run of success. Looking at Fig. 19-13, it was likely overfitting with a limited data set.
That last comment can be argued with. Much of our climate has stationary properties; it’s more likely that we have yet to determine all of the patterns.
@ATTP
+1
I am speaking from a position of a communicator, not a system scientist.
It is more critical than ever that scientists, especially those working on climate research, to bear in mind their work comes under the microscope of the irresponsible and politically motivated.
Climate science is such an emotive subject that publications must take into account the motives of those outside the scientific community. Loosely written headlines or content that opens itself to mischievous elements must be avoided. This is in no way a criticism of Science again but the mode and /or the way it is communicated.
At every opportunity the protagonists of the anti-science brigade will pull at hanging threads and use them to bludgeon the paper publishers and those in the field in an attempt to undermine all work on Global Warming.
Penning an explanatory note after the event is commendable, particularly when written in clear and consise terms. However this is too late and squeezing the devil back into the box once it has created the havoc is unproductive.
Inniculation is an extremely effective tool, but obviously this needs to be done prior to the event. Few journalists or deniers bother to read much past the Title and the Abstract.
Perhaps a preliminary explanatory statement, or if you like ‘health warning,’ should preceded anything that is to be placed into the public domain? There are many ways of achieving this but such investment would be profitable
Two awful pieces in the Sunday Times (Murdoch) today, one by Rod Liddle (already a ‘sceptic’) the other by some clown called Nigel Hawkes. From the latter:
I won’t subject you to any more.
BBD,
I saw Liddle’s one. Hadn’t seen the other.
One’s enough, really. I wish I hadn’t noticed the News Review piece either. I wish Liddle’s sometimes funny contrarianism didn’t extend to climate.
Yes, although I sometimes wonder if it isn’t more of an issue than we appreciate. I really enjoy clever contrarianism. However, when I see someone who does this applying the same kind of framing to climate, I sometimes wonder if maybe the other “funny contrarianism” wasn’t also just nonsense made up to sound clever.
Oh, me too. And not least because on many occasions, I’ve subsequently discovered that it was.
I often think that a science paper should end with a CLAIMS section.
Think of it like a patent which has Claims.
It would also change the way citations work, so you cite the claim in a paper.
have you ever read a citation, and then gone to read the paper and wondered?
where the hell did this paper claim that?
I know, I know, the “claims” are obvious if you read the paper.
Still it would be nice to see the claims specifically called out in a
dedicated section. numbers please
“I would prefer readers not to have to pay to read. Once you have a paper with copy rights you have a monopoly because the reader needs that one specific paper. Monopolies are not good for the economy and efficiency and certainly not for science. Then we would be in the old failing scientific publishing model again.”
err no. you replace the actual corporations with DACs
Essentially you replace existing publishers with Code.
Once that code is established and people buy into it, it just executes
Take an extreme example. lets virtualize Nature Magazine.
and take John Cook’s paper
727938 Downloads.
You pay a dollar a download as a reader.
the split goes, via smart contract
30% to the authors
30% to the reviewers
15% to the “bounty” system
15% to the foundation
10% to the “cited” papers. yes you can pay a paper
The bounty system is used to incent people to challenge the paper and win the bounty.
The foundation: The foundation uses funds to improve the system, to provide
free access for those who cannot pay ( like students etc ) to
pay for science papers in certain cases.
The point is you can set up the publishing entity any way you want, to charge what
ever it wants, and to payout however it wants. Governance ( the rules) are determined
by the system of governance you code. Authors can control the rules, or readers can
or everyone can vote. Vote for free if you like.
The point is you dont need the publisher taking profits. You have a decnetralized autonomous
piece of code governing everything. If you charge too much, no one will read your paper
or be able to cite it. your science goes nowhere. that eco system dies.
Reviwers would have identities, anonymous unique identities. That allows you to
actual evaluate reviewers ( the algorithm can do it ) and give them reputation scores.
“pass” a great paper that everyone cites and you earn reputation points..
your shares in paper profits could even be tied to reputation points. better reviwers
get a bigger share.
So you can set the system up to reward authorship, reviewership, and reward those
who write citable science. You can even set a rule up where, I read your paper
for free, but if I cite it I have to share back profits from my paper.
any set of rules you can describe you can turn into a smart contract that will execute
and make payments exactly as your rules describe.
years from now corporations will be replaced with code
@ Denis Boarder
I agree. There is no excuse for researchers in climate to publish a sloppily-framed or worded paper in 2017. Any lack of clarity, ambiguous wording, poor phrasing, or exaggerations of the flaws and uncertainties of current knowledge WILL be used to generate disinformation. At this point, climate science deniers in the right-wing press are reduced to preying on whatever sick and weak papers they can mine for quotes, or nosing through the leavings of the stronger ones. Write better, and starve them.
Victor Venema (@VariabilityBlog) says:
September 23, 2017 at 3:22 pm
citizenschallenge: “Any scientific communication improvement would require the people within the scientific community to recognize some of their own gross errors in communication. Particularly how much they have been manipulated and succumbed to right wing effort to confuse the science of global warming.”
…
“You can hit back.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lordie knows I’ve tried but it always winds up being the sound of one hand clapping.
September 15, 2017
#A) Examining Investors Business Daily’s malicious libel against Dr. Mann (1-3)
http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2017/09/a-investorscom-fraud-libel-mann.html
September 17, 2017
#B) Examining Investors Business Daily’s malicious libel against Dr. Mann (4-9)
September 17, 2017
#C) Examining Investors Business Daily’s malicious libel against Dr. Mann (10-14)
September 18, 2017
#D) Examining Investors Business Daily’s malicious libel against Dr. Mann (15-27)
September 19, 2017
#E) Examining Investors Business Daily’s malicious libel against Dr. Mann (28-36 and fini)
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I would like to see scientists fighting back against those who willingly misinterpret their research. For many months I have been carrying on a one-woman campaign on Breitbart to discredit the blather written by James Delingpole and point out that it’s ignorant propaganda. There are many times I looked to the original research to verify that Delingpole was either lying or twisting the truth, but it was easy for other readers to simply call me of moronic libturd troll and write me off. However, I must have begun to make some headway, for I was recently banned from commenting. If enough of those who were doing the research took the time to personally set the record straight and point out Delingpole’s ridiculous and malicious propagandist errors, it might eventually have an effect. Of course, this would mean trying to communicate with a bunch of people who know little about science, but I believe it can be done.
Delingpole’s blocked me on Twitter. For someone who can be so rude, he’s remarkably sensitive.
I did a bit of this, but it ends up being a bit soul destroying and there is only so many times I could point that what he was saying wasn’t true.
mod squad, let me first thank you for your efforts.
There will be venues where it is more likely to be successful than at Breitbart, however, *especially* when it comes to anything Delingpole writes. People go to Breitbart, and read Delingpole pieces, to get their prejudices confirmed. They really could care less whether it is false, they just want someone else to tell them they are right to feel the way they do.
If the interview with Sir Paul Nurse on the BBC’s Horizon documentary on “Science Under Attack” couldn’t make Dellingpole reconsider his modus operandi, I suspect nothing will.
The documentary is still available via BBC iplayer (and I suspect elsewhere), the interview starts from about 28m 48s, but the whole 50 minutes is well worth it.
There is no value in being an interpreter of interpretations, especially if you don’t even understand the language because you don’t have time to spend reading the journals and don’t think it is your job to do so.
I’ll drop by Breitbart once a month or two and post a comment on how idiotic Delingpole or Rose or whoever is that day, but it’s pointless. Consider it a black hole of willing ignorance and bilious anger, and look on the breit side… as long as its regulars are busy writing and reading comments there, they aren’t fouling other sites.
Excuse me – but James Delingpole is one of the world’s most distinguished blog-scientists, only surpassed in cleverness, knowledge, and skill by: Anthony Watts, Marc Morano, Judith Curry, a Pielke or two, and me.
Alarmo-warmists simply cannot admit the truth – that James is the real victim in all this acrimony.
That BBC interview is a case in point. James was clearly deceived by that socialist propaganda-broadcasting network into an intellectual rape when that Nobel-flaunting ruffian, Paul Nurse, deployed a question that equated denying climate science with denying medical science.
No trigger-warning, even. Of course poor James was rendered speechless.
Because – if a dear relative was suffering from a terminal disease (assuming, for the sake of argument, that such diseases even exist), would you opt for the possibly-expensive, non-guaranteed, autism-causing, tribally-enforced “consensus” therapy recommended by eco-fascist, rent-seeking, bed-wetting “doctors” intent on destroying Western civilisation and everything for which it stands – or for the advice offered by optimistic British aristocrats, some of whom have already found cures for HIV, MS and the common cold?
James doesn’t much like wind turbines, or mainland Europe, and he self-identifies as “a member of probably the most discriminated-against subsection in the whole of British society—the white, middle-aged, public-school-and-Oxbridge educated middle-class male.”
So, of course, you don’t agree with him.
Sad!
to paraphrase Kurt Andersen, the right doesn’t like experts, because they interfere with their ability to believe or pretend that fictions are facts, to feel, or believe, instead of knowing, the truth.
Their gut tells them that free markets always are best, tax breaks for the rich create jobs, growth is good, consumption and profit are noble actions, exercise just runs down your body energy and shortens your life like draining a battery, and various comfortable convenient actions and beliefs must be the Truth – but science keeps “Proving” them wrong.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/
A “perfectly scientific theory may be based on data that have no physical existence,” he insisted.
The return of the Stadium Wave or the return of the negative AMO or any other fantasy that will cause cooling in the 21st century: CargoCult Etc., home of the Feynman spoon benders.
JCH said:
These two recent posts on the AMO and PDO suggest an interesting common-mode mechanism.
http://contextEarth.com/2017/10/03/amo/
http://contextEarth.com/2017/10/05/pdo/
Curry is pretty much a plodder as a climate scientist, as that Stadium Wave paper and all the other research she has worked on suggests. Yet the correlation behind the Stadium Wave is straightforward — these oceanic indices show correlations as long as a time shift is introduced to align them. What can cause these time shifts?
At the GWPF Tsonis has an article where is talks about a recent paper by a scientists named Wang. Have you read that?
JCH,
If you mean me, then – no – I haven’t read that paper, but I have had a brief look at the Tsonis report for the GWPF.
The problem with cycles is that they *are* there. But you can’t ignore the physics and just rely on cycles — or deny the physics and rely on cycles. Unfortunately it gets to the point where any explanation that includes cycles gets denigrated out of hand by those that figure it’s just another theory that wants to deny CO2’s impact.
WHUT’s ENSO work shows that clearly. The trend in warming has almost nothing to do with warming – and WHUT’s theory completely supports CO2 as the temperature driver. BUT ENSO *is* responsible for the halts, spurts, starts and stops. I.e, it explains most of ‘natural variation’ and does so with a deterministic model. We should be able to predict ENSO – especially the larger increases and decreases that have the most impact.
Thanks Kevin for the alert to this wild research in Science
https://m.phys.org/news/2017-10-earth-climate-topological-insulators-common.html
That’s what makes it fun, people taking chances and sharing ideas based on related physics
mod squad says:October 5, 2017 at 6:05 am: “I would like to see scientists fighting back against those who willingly misinterpret their research.” Awesome idea.
Unfortunately, it ain’t gonna happen.
No one has the stomach for direct confrontation with those liars. I say that based on a couple decades of fruitless effort. It’s very tragic.
Here’s some thoughts:
“Climate Fears and Finance” – A look at CRC’s Dr. S.J. Allen’s fraud. (9/29/17)
http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2017/09/cataloguing-capital-research-center.html
“Finishing my Investors Business Daily takedown was the usual let down. No one seems concerned or interested. No one wants to be bothered. In my short email exchanges with Dr. Mann, I could almost hear him thinking: ‘Buddy, I got a bottom drawer full of this and worse! What do you want me to do about it?’ Thing is, that’s right. He’s got far more important work to do with that ‘incredible brain’ (was linked to his CV), his time is too precious to be squandered on such contrived delusionals.
Still, people should care. In particular, I can’t grasp why there are so few knowledgable students who care about their futures and honesty enough to confront such trash in comments sections where ever that sort of fraud gets astro-turfed.
Why aren’t hundreds writing the sort of take-downs I am – say what you will about my quality or tone, these dissections are to the point and packed with valid information that climate science contrarians always run and hide from. Nor are they tough to put together, if you have a familiarity with the topic, a curiosity to search out more information and wrestle with arguments. They also make excellent personal learning tools. ”
But what about students and informed citizens, where are they???
Mod Squad if you are looking for someone with the stomach to intellectually confront climate science contrarian, and if you have a plan please do let me know. I’ve pretty drained and depressed, actually back into trying to peal up off the floor again – but could be revived …..
citizenschallenge at gmail
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