USA Today: Could we be wrong about global warming?

He says it's rarely scientists who say things like "science is settled" or accuse those who disagree of being fringe. The ACS letters to the editor were exactly in response to the journal taking the wrong position and saying those same things. Same with PapaG's article.

 

Don't know that it's happened, but surely people get upset if their advice isn't listened to.

 

No, those letters were in response to the editor of the magazine (not a journal) saying those things in an editorial. Chemical and Engineering News is a trade rag, not a scientific journal. The editor is a full-time editor (aka journalist?) not a scientist. This situation fits Minstrel's statement.

barfo

 

He's a chemist. With an agenda.

http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/rudy-baum.asp?cycle=08

 

So? He's not a climate scientist. He's not even a practicing chemist. He's a magazine editor.

barfo

 

Since all you care about is CVs, here's a partial list.

http://www.sej.org/initiatives/clim...xt-file-climate-change-guideskeptics-and-cont
http://www.fnu.zmaw.de/Prof-Dr-Richard-S-J-Tol.5725.0.html
http://coast.gkss.de/G/Mitarbeiter/storch/
http://paoc.mit.edu/paoc/people/person.asp?position=Faculty&who=wunsch
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/schwartz.html
http://www.earth.columbia.edu/eidirectory/displayuser.php?userid=453
http://ccr.aos.wisc.edu/bryson/bryson.html
http://www.econ.yale.edu/~nordhaus/homepage/homepage.htm
http://paoc.mit.edu/paoc/people/person.asp?position=Faculty&who=lindzen
http://cloud.web.cern.ch/cloud/
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/landsea_bio.html.save
http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/Math/Dept/HomePages/Tsonis.html
http://hurricane.atmos.colostate.edu/Forecasts/
http://www.spacecenter.dk/~hsv/
http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/
http://www.nap.edu/readingroom.php?book=biomems&page=rrevelle.html
http://www.academie-sciences.fr/Membres/A/Allegre_Claude.htm
http://www.ntva.no/Arrangement/seminar/cv/friis.htm
http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~shaviv/
http://www.worldlandtrust.org/bellamy/bellamy.htm
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=94
http://www.iarc.uaf.edu/people/indiv/iarc_all_staff.php?photo=sakasofu
http://www.galaxy.gmu.edu/stats/faculty/wegman.html
http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html (read it and weep, and see his qualifications at the bottom of the page)
http://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/griffin_bio.html

 

I included Edward Wegman in the list of links above. He's a statistician. However:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=22003a0d-37cc-4399-8bcc-39cd20bed2f6&k=0

Statistics needed

Prominent statistician Edward Wegman says climate scientists have done an inadequate job of incorporating statistical know-how

February 2, 2007

In the global warming debate, there are essentially two broad camps. One believes that the science is settled, that global warming is serious and man-made, and that urgent action must be taken to mitigate or prevent a future calamity. The other believes that the science is far from settled, that precious little is known about global warming or its likely effects, and that prudence dictates more research and caution before intervening massively in the economy.

The "science is settled" camp, much the larger of the two, includes many eminent scientists with impressive credentials. But just who are the global warming skeptics who question the studies from the great majority of climate scientists and what are their motives?

Many in the "science is settled" camp claim that the skeptics are untrustworthy -- that they are either cranks or otherwise at the periphery of their profession, or that they are in the pockets of Exxon or other corporate interests. The skeptics are increasingly being called Deniers, a term used by analogy to the Holocaust, to convey the catastrophe that could befall mankind if action is not taken. Increasingly, too, the press is taking up the Denier theme, convincing the public that the global-warming debate is over.

In this, the first of a series, I examine The Deniers, starting with Edward Wegman. Dr. Wegman is a professor at the Center for Computational Statistics at George Mason University, chair of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, and board member of the American Statistical Association. Few statisticians in the world have CVs to rival his (excerpts appear nearby).

Wegman became involved in the global-warming debate after the energy and commerce committee of the U.S. House of Representatives asked him to assess one of the hottest debates in the global-warming controversy: the statistical validity of work by Michael Mann. You may not have heard of Mann or read Mann's study but you have often heard its famous conclusion: that the temperature increases that we have been experiencing are "likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years" and that the "1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year" of the millennium. You may have also heard of Mann's hockey-stick shaped graph, which showed relatively stable temperatures over most of the last millennium (the hockey stick's long handle), followed by a sharp increase (the hockey stick's blade) this century.

Mann's findings were arguably the single most influential study in swaying the public debate, and in 2001 they became the official view of the International Panel for Climate Change, the UN body that is organizing the worldwide effort to combat global warming. But Mann's work also had its critics, particularly two Canadians, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, who published peer-reviewed critiques of their own.

Wegman accepted the energy and commerce committee's assignment, and agreed to assess the Mann controversy pro bono. He conducted his third-party review by assembling an expert panel of statisticians, who also agreed to work pro bono. Wegman also consulted outside statisticians, including the Board of the American Statistical Association. At its conclusion, the Wegman review entirely vindicated the Canadian critics and repudiated Mann's work.

"Our committee believes that the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported," Wegman stated, adding that "The paucity of data in the more remote past makes the hottest-in-a-millennium claims essentially unverifiable." When Wegman corrected Mann's statistical mistakes, the hockey stick disappeared.

Wegman found that Mann made a basic error that "may be easily overlooked by someone not trained in statistical methodology. We note that there is no evidence that Dr. Mann or any of the other authors in paleoclimate studies have had significant interactions with mainstream statisticians." Instead, this small group of climate scientists were working on their own, largely in isolation, and without the academic scrutiny needed to ferret out false assumptions.

Worse, the problem also applied more generally, to the broader climate-change and meteorological community, which also relied on statistical techniques in their studies. "f statistical methods are being used, then statisticians ought to be funded partners engaged in the research to insure as best we possibly can that the best quality science is being done," Wegman recommended, noting that "there are a host of fundamental statistical questions that beg answers in understanding climate dynamics."

In other words, Wegman believes that much of the climate science that has been done should be taken with a grain of salt -- although the studies may have been peer reviewed, the reviewers were often unqualified in statistics. Past studies, he believes, should be reassessed by competent statisticians and in future, the climate science world should do better at incorporating statistical know-how.

One place to start is with the American Meteorological Society, which has a committee on probability and statistics. "I believe it is amazing for a committee whose focus is on statistics and probability that of the nine members only two are also members of the American Statistical Association, the premier statistical association in the United States, and one of those is a recent PhD with an assistant-professor appointment in a medical school." As an example of the statistical barrenness of the climate-change world, Wegman cited the American Meteorological Association's 2006 Conference on Probability and Statistics in the Atmospheric Sciences, where only eight presenters out of 62 were members of the American Statistical Association.

While Wegman's advice -- to use trained statisticians in studies reliant on statistics -- may seem too obvious to need stating, the "science is settled" camp resists it. Mann's hockey-stick graph may be wrong, many experts now acknowledge, but they assert that he nevertheless came to the right conclusion.

To which Wegman, and doubtless others who want more rigourous science, shake their heads in disbelief. As Wegman summed it up to the energy and commerce committee in later testimony: "I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn't matter because the answer is correct anyway. Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science." With bad science, only true believers can assert that they nevertheless obtained the right answer.

LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com.

- Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute, a division of Energy Probe Research Foundation.

THE CV OF A DENIER

Edward Wegman received his Ph.D. degree in mathematical statistics from the University of Iowa. In 1978, he went to the Office of Naval Research, where he headed the Mathematical Sciences Division with responsibility Navy-wide for basic research programs. He coined the phrase computational statistics, and developed a high-profile research area around this concept, which focused on techniques and methodologies that could not be achieved without the capabilities of modern computing resources and led to a revolution in contemporary statistical graphics. Dr. Wegman was the original program director of the basic research program in Ultra High Speed Computing at the Strategic Defense Initiative's Innovative Science and Technology Office. He has served as editor or associate editor of numerous prestigious journals and has published more than 160 papers and eight books.

 

Mann's Hockey Stick graph:

 

who, me? I believe I've already stipulated that there are qualified climate scientists who don't accept global warming, and I accept them as experts (equal to those who do).

So make all the lists you want, but it doesn't counter anything I've said.

barfo

 

Einstein was a patent clerk.

 

So what? So we should believe what any patent clerk says about science?

Einstein got out of the patent office by proving that he knew how to do science.

As I've said about 100 times now, if someone proves they know something, that's great. But we can't just assume that anyone with a keyboard is an expert, can we?

barfo

 

While I don't believe there's any man-made global warming, I absolutely believe that we can destroy the earth and kill just about all life on it.

I've mentioned CFCs in this thread, as well as clear cutting of the Amazon rain forest. If we dump enough pollution into lakes and streams, those bodies of water will outright die. We treat every germ and virus with drugs and due to natural selection, they are becoming more and more resistant to them; we'll eventually run out of drugs powerful enough to fight them off. We may well create something with our genetic experiments that we can't control.

Those are off the top of my head.

 

You judge books by their cover. All of the scientists who are skeptics have consistently proven they know how to do science.

 

And, as I have said several times in this thread already, I accept their expertise. As long as it is relevant to the question at hand. All scientists are not created equal (speaking of judging books by their covers!).

How do you judge books (scientists), Denny? I think you judge them based on whether they agree with your preconceptions.

barfo

 

Is this list a joke or something, Denny? I clicked on a handful of those links. One guy is a web designer, and another guy died in 1991.

but hey, they all agree with you, right?

barfo

 

I judge them by what they say and write. The scientists, that is. I don't discount a physicist or a chemist or a geologist or an oceanographer. You've dismissed their qualifications out of hand, without reading a thing they wrote.

I do find it relevant that there's a consistent complaint about the deviation from real scientific principles and practice, as well as the things like "now that I don't have a grant, I can speak freely." The branch of science these people specialize has no bearing on what the institution has become.

As for Einstein, I think he was a smart guy and every bit a scientist and expert on physics well before he wrote anything, was published, was peer reviewed.

I admit I am particularly impressed by guys like Steve Christy and Richard Lindzen. Christy is a noted climatologist at Alabama-Huntsville, and his data is one of a few sources of historical climate temperature records/data. Lindzen is a professor of atmospheric science at MIT, and I suspect MIT doesn't let an average Joe be a professor.

Wegman is a stud, too.

 

Oops. Webmasters certainly can't be qualified.

It's not that they agree with me, it's that they're whistleblowers and all the proof needed that the science that says there's man made global warming is convincing.

 

They are "all the proof needed that the science that says there's man made global warming is convincing"?
I'm surprised to hear you say that.

Your qualified webmaster quit doing anything relevant several decades ago.
And what about the guy who died 18 years ago? How do you even know what he thinks about the current science? Do you hear him blow his whistle on moonlit nights?

barfo

Edit: 500th post in this thread, as maxiep predicted! whoo hoo!