Climate Change!

[[serious]]

You really are not understanding the 97% is only 75 subjectively chosen "specialists" that is only 0.7% of the participant group.

The word "subjective" has a meaning you know. it doesn't fit when the group is objectively defined within the study. Read the study before criticizing. It's only like a page and a half.

There is nothing standard about choosing specialists based on them declaring themselves so and then arbitrarily biasing your sample requiring 50% of their "recent" (last 5 years) papers being on the subject of climate change.

Actaully, setting a functional definition of such things is VERY standard.

This creates some very disturbing facts,

You are not considered a "specialist" if you did not declare yourself a "climate scientist" even if more than 50% your peer-reviewed publications in the past 5 years have been on the subject of climate change.

assuming standard practice, the definition was set prior to the collection of data. If you are just trying to nitpick the exact definition of what a climate scientist is, fine, but understand that no one else is really going to care. They defined what they considered it right in the paper.

190 scientists were excluded from the final results because they did not indicate they were "climate scientists" even though more than 50% of their peer-reviewed publications in the past 5 years have been on the subject of climate change".

No one was excluded. READ THE STUDY. there is a chart breaking down each group.

You are not considered a "specialist" even if more than 49% of your peer-reviewed publications in the past 5 years have been on the subject of climate change.

yeah, that's kind of how lines work. There's one side, then the other.

You are not considered a "specialist" even if more that 50% of your peer-reviewed publications in the past 6 years have been on the subject of climate change.

lines dude, it's how they work.

It seems you need to read more carefully.

seems you need to read it.

 

[thaumaturgy]

Certainly, please provide the reproducible method to obtain the 724 climate publications for Phil Jones using Google Scholar. Make sure to show your work.

Ummm, not following you here on this one. What does Phil Jones have to do with the PNAS study or it's supporting information?

You can also read my complete refutation of this paper here, "Google Scholar Illiteracy in the PNAS".

You seem overly fond of the word "illiterate". Why is that?

It speaks that both "studies" were intent on arriving at the same worthless number for propaganda reasons.

Ahhh, so when someone runs a statistical analysis on a grouping of both "Convinced" and "Unconvinced" authors (note they relied on 12 lists to find the UE authors whereas they only relied on 5 lists for "Convinced" authors and they still found 903 names among the "convinced" and only 472 names among the "Unconvinced").

Seems that using NEARLY TWICE AS MANY "SKEPTIC" RESOURCES as regular resources would indicate they gave the "skeptic" stance MORE THAN IT'S FAIR SHAKE AT TIPPING THE BALANCE.

(SOURCE)

So if this was an attempt to bias the data, why didn't they use the exact same number as they did for the "CE" scientists as the "UE" scientists? The numbers would have probably come out even more in favor of the AGW stance.

And then you'd likely howl about that.

So maybe you can show us where the statistical analysis is flawed.

 

[Poptech]

The word "subjective" has a meaning you know. it doesn't fit when the group is objectively defined within the study. Read the study before criticizing. It's only like a page and a half.

I have read the study many times. Just because a subjectively defined method was applied objectively does not make the definition of "specialist" any less subjective.

Actaully, setting a functional definition of such things is VERY standard.

So do you believe asking someone if they are a "climate scientist" is a scientific method for determining who is or is not a "climate scientist"?

assuming standard practice, the definition was set prior to the collection of data. If you are just trying to nitpick the exact definition of what a climate scientist is, fine, but understand that no one else is really going to care. They defined what they considered it right in the paper.

This is an assumption and cannot be shown to be true.

Please provide the objective method to determine who is a climate scientist.

I am well aware they subjectively created a definition.

No one was excluded. READ THE STUDY. there is a chart breaking down each group.

Were 190 scientists excluded from the final results that produced a 97% figure because they did not indicate they were "climate scientists" even though more than 50% of their peer-reviewed publications in the past 5 years have been on the subject of climate change"?

yeah, that's kind of how lines work.

So these are factual statements about this "study",

1. The 97% represents only 77 subjectively defined "specialists".

2. 190 scientists were excluded from the final results that produced a 97% figure because they did not indicate they were "climate scientists" even though more than 50% of their peer-reviewed publications in the past 5 years have been on the subject of climate change".

3. You are not considered a "specialist" even if more than 49% of your peer-reviewed publications in the past 5 years have been on the subject of climate change.

4. You are not considered a "specialist" even if more that 50% of your peer-reviewed publications in the past 6 years have been on the subject of climate change.

 

[Poptech]

Ummm, not following you here on this one. What does Phil Jones have to do with the PNAS study or it's supporting information?

Phil Jones was one of the scientists who's "number" of papers was used to produce their study. The data compiled for the paper is not reproducible thus the results are meaningless. Unless of course you can provide the method using Google Scholar to reproduce the 724 figure that they got using Google Scholar for him.

You seem overly fond of the word "illiterate". Why is that?

It accurately explains their ignorance on the limitations of using Google Scholar to produce a scientific study.

Ahhh, so when someone runs a statistical analysis on a grouping of both "Convinced" and "Unconvinced" authors (note they relied on 12 lists to find the UE authors whereas they only relied on 5 lists for "Convinced" authors and they still found 903 names among the "convinced" and only 472 names among the "Unconvinced").

Seems that using NEARLY TWICE AS MANY "SKEPTIC" RESOURCES as regular resources would indicate they gave the "skeptic" stance MORE THAN IT'S FAIR SHAKE AT TIPPING THE BALANCE.

That just demonstrates the poor researching skills of the authors because over 800 UE names can be found using just one list which they incorrectly only applied 206 names. They incorrectly used the IPCC report and 619 lead and contributing authors who signed nothing in support one way or the other as part of the CE group. Just because they are incompetent about choosing lists of names is not any endorsement of the study.

So maybe you can show us where the statistical analysis is flawed.

This is very easy to do. Please provide the reproducible method to obtain the 724 results for Phil Jones using Google Scholar.

 

[thaumaturgy]

Phil Jones was one of the scientists who's "number" of papers was used to produce their study.

And you know this how? Look, I'm not saying Phil Jones papers were not represented, but can you show me in the paper or in the supporting materials where this is somehow relevant (or even discussed).

Unless of course you can provide the method using Google Scholar to reproduce the 724 figure that they got using Google Scholar for him.

Where are you getting this 724 number? I looked in the paper and supporting materials. Can you show me the quote from the paper? Maybe I just missed it.

I can't even find Jones mentioned in the PNAS article.

 

[Poptech]

And you know this how? Look, I'm not saying Phil Jones papers were not represented, but can you show me in the paper or in the supporting materials where this is somehow relevant (or even discussed).

Where are you getting this 724 number? I looked in the paper and supporting materials. Can you show me the quote from the paper? Maybe I just missed it.

The paper included: IPCC AR4 Working Group I Contributors (coordinating lead authors, lead authors, and contributing authors; 619 names listed). The data for this can be found by searching Google for:

'"IPCC AR4 Working Group 1 Authors" Prall

It lists Phil Jones with 724 climate publications obtained by searching Google Scholar. This number is not reproducible using the methods provided in the paper. You can see a graph in the paper Figure 2 where this data is used among other places.

I can't even find Jones mentioned in the PNAS article.

It doesn't mention any authors names, it only includes statistics based on data obtained by querying Google Scholar for authors on the lists they chose. This data is not reproducible and filled with erroneous results thus their statistics are meaningless.

 

[CabVet]

It doesn't mention any authors names, it only includes statistics based on data obtained by querying Google Scholar for authors on the lists they chose. This data is not reproducible and filled with erroneous results thus their statistics are meaningless.

Try these, two links away from the paper and all the names are there:

Links to source documents on climate authors' positions

http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/affirmative-signers-on-climate-since-Dec-2009.html

 

[Greatcloud]

http://foresight-of-hindsight.blogspot.com/2012/01/evidence-shows-no-global-warming-for.htm

Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again) | Mail Online

And my favorite website it has everything for the denier/skeptic and shows cosmic ray theory very well and many arguments against AGW.

http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/[bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]%20Essay/Climate_Change_Science.htm

Sun and Cosmic Rays

During the 20th century the Sun has continued to warm and may have contributed directly to a third of the warming over the last hundred years. The change in solar output is too small to directly account for most of the observed warming. However, the Sun-Cosmic Ray connection provides an amplification mechanism by which a small change in solar irradiance will have a large effect on climate.

A paper by H. Svensmark and E. Friis-Christensen of the Center for Sun-Climate Research of the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen has shown that cosmic rays highly correlate to low cloud formation. Changes in the intensity of galactic cosmic rays alter the Earths cloudiness.

An experiment in 2005 shows the effect of cosmic rays in a reaction chamber containing air and trace chemicals found over the oceans. Electrons released in the air by cosmic rays act as a catalyst in making aerosols. They significantly accelerate the formation of stable, ultra-small clusters of sulphuric acid and water molecules, which are the building block for the cloud condensation nuclei.

Danish scientists reported in May 2011 that they have succeeded for the first time in directly observing that the electrically charged particles coming from space and hitting the atmosphere at high speed contribute to creating the aerosols that are the prerequisites for cloud formation. In a climate chamber at Aarhus University, scientists have created conditions similar to the atmosphere at the height where low clouds are formed. This artificial atmosphere was irradiated with fast electrons from ASTRID Denmarks largest particle accelerator. The experiments show that increased radiation from cosmic rays leads to more aerosols. In the atmosphere, these aerosols grow into actual cloud nuclei in the course of hours or days. Water vapour concentrates on the nuclei forming small cloud droplets. See the news release here.

A team of 63 scientists published results in August 2011 of a much more sophisticated experiment which investigated the effects of cosmic rays on cloud formation. The CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets) experiment at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva show big effects of pions from an accelerator, which simulate the cosmic rays and ionize the air in the experimental chamber. The CLOUD experiment is the most rigorous test of the Cosmic Ray hypothesis yet devised. The experiments show that cosmic rays strongly enhance the formation rate of aerosols by up to ten fold, and confirms the earlier results from the Danish experiment. The aerosols may grow into cloud condensation nuclei on which cloud droplets form. See the CERN press release here.

The graph below shows the aerosol particle concentration growth in the CLOUD chamber. In an early-morning experimental run at CERN, starting at 03:45, ultraviolet light began making sulphuric acid molecules in the chamber, while a strong electric field cleansed the air of ions. As soon as the electric field was switched off at 04:33, natural cosmic rays raining down through the roof helped to build clusters at a higher rate. When CLOUD simulated stronger cosmic rays with a beam of charged pion particles starting at 4:58 the rate of cluster production became faster still. The various colours are for clusters of different diameters (in nanometres) as recorded by various instruments. The largest (black) took longer to grow than the smallest (blue). See here. The CLOUD results also show that trace vapours assumed until now to account for aerosol formation in the lower atmosphere can explain only a tiny fraction of the observed atmospheric aerosol production.

 

[thaumaturgy]

Try these, two links away from the paper and all the names are there:

Links to source documents on climate authors' positions

Five thousand scientists worldwide defend the integrity of climate science

Yes, this provides the lists for establishing the positions. But Poptech keeps coming back to 724 publications from Phil Jones as if that is somehow dispositive of the "failure" of the PNAS article, but I cannot find any mention of this figure or Phil Jones by name in the assessment.

How does Poptech determine there is a misuse of Google Scholar? By searching google?

The paper included: IPCC AR4 Working Group I Contributors (coordinating lead authors, lead authors, and contributing authors; 619 names listed). The data for this can be found by searching Google for:

'"IPCC AR4 Working Group 1 Authors" Prall

So I'm still not seeing why the Phil Jones example is even germane to this discussion. He seems to be making inferences based on some other google searches he's done to indict the use of google?

Again, I'm not saying that Google scholar is "perfect" or even the source I might use if I were doing such a study. I don't use Google Patents for my patent searching as it seems to have some strange algorithm for ranking the results, but nonetheless the whole point of the discussion is that so far no studies have found a systemic bias against the agw hypothesis in the scientific community. In fact just the opposite.

Again, I look back on my own experiences in the earth sciences getting my BS, MS and PhD and working for one of the big earth systems/oceanography research facilities here in the U.S. back between my MS and PhD.

I've been in and among many earth scientists for quite some time and I find very few who expressed anything like serious skepticism of the foundational hypothesis of AGW.

And again, I'm also using my nearly 30 years in the sciences (albeit not directly in climate research) to say that the fundamentals pass the "sniff test".

 

[Poptech]

Yes, this provides the lists for establishing the positions. But Poptech keeps coming back to 724 publications from Phil Jones as if that is somehow dispositive of the "failure" of the PNAS article, but I cannot find any mention of this figure or Phil Jones by name in the assessment.

Was data from Phil Jones used in the paper? I am simply using him as an example that that data used to produce the paper's results is not reproducible. Do you really not understand how the data for the study was obtained? Did you not see Figures 1 and 2 in the paper?

Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate
researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i)
97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the
field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and
scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are
substantially below that of the convinced researchers. [...]

"We compiled a database of 1,372 climate researchers based on
authorship of scientific assessment reports and membership on
multisignatory statements about ACC (SI Materials and Methods).
We tallied the number of climate-relevant publications authored
or coauthored by each researcher (defined here as expertise) and
counted the number of citations for each of the researcher’s four
highest-cited papers (defined here as prominence) using Google
Scholar. [...]

We ranked researchers based on the total number of climate
publications authored. [...]

Materials and Methods

we collected the number of climate-relevant publications for all 1,372 researchers from Google Scholar (search terms: “author:fi-lastname climate”),

How does Poptech determine there is a misuse of Google Scholar? By searching google?

Using Google Scholar is the problem because Google Scholar search queries cannot be used for scientific studies as they are unreliable and filled with erroneous results.

So I'm still not seeing why the Phil Jones example is even germane to this discussion. He seems to be making inferences based on some other google searches he's done to indict the use of google?

Anyone can attempt to reproduce the results they did using their methods and the data is NOT reproducible. Phil Jones is an example of why the data is not reproducible. It is worse than this though as they arbitrarily added his middle initial for their search when their methods state that they only used the first initial and last name.

but nonetheless the whole point of the discussion is that so far no studies have found a systemic bias against the agw hypothesis in the scientific community. In fact just the opposite.

No that has nothing to do with this study or it's non reproducible results.

 

[thaumaturgy]

Using Google Scholar is the problem because Google Scholar search queries cannot be used for scientific studies as they are unreliable and filled with erroneous results.

And this is evidenced by?

When I do a Google scholar search using the terms:

(author: P-Jones climate)
I get 1890 hits (Many of which are clearly not the same Phil Jones we are talking about, for instance "Peter G. Jones" gets picked. This is the "upper limit"

When I do
(author: PD-Jones climate)
I get 537 hits which is much more focused and gets the Phil Jones we normally think of in climate science. Now we have a lower limit.

Since Search #1 is overly inclusive and Search #2 is underly inclusive (since Jones doesn't always maintain his middle initial in citations) it would be a rather easy task to arrive at number of citations for Phil Jones of UAE specifically.

And guess what? 724 is fully contained within these two bounds. I am rather of the assumption that the authors of the paper took this into account.

But again, I'm curious where you keep getting this 724 figure. Where did you find that the authors of the PNAS article found exactly 724 papers attributed to Phil Jones? I'm actually really curious where this specific number comes from.

Anyone can attempt to reproduce the results they did using their methods and the data is NOT reproducible.

As a first pass I'd say it is a pretty reasonable assumption.

Maybe I've just had more experience with "searching" databases. For instance when doing a patent search one usually doesn't just pump and dump the data. It does require that one actually look at the results.

The authors of the PNAS study clearly indicated that they took into accounts multiples of a given hit, so this seems trivially derivable for the data.

Phil Jones is an example of why the data is not reproducible. It is worse than this though as they arbitrarily added his middle initial for their search when their methods state that they only used the first initial and last name.

"Arbitrarily"? Have you ever actually tried to construct a comprehensive search for anything?

I'm curious because in my line of work, when I put on my "whitespace analysis" intellectual property searching hat I often have to construct multiple searches to arrive at single number that is representative of a given search term "hit number".

No that has nothing to do with this study or it's non reproducible results.

Actually it has quite a bit to do with it. I don't make my decisions on whether AGW is likely true or not simply based on a PNAS article. I am using my scientific "common sense" to arrive at a conclusion. The fact that so many scientists have arrived at the same conclusion and these are the folks who study this the most is icing on the cake.

The sum of the lines of evidence (good science that makes sense, lots of high caliber researchers all over the world independently arriving at a similar conclusion, etc.) are indicative of a relatively robust hypothesis.

 

[RickG]

http://foresight-of-hindsight.blogspot.com/2012/01/evidence-shows-no-global-warming-for.htm

Site not found.

Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again) | Mail Online

The Daily Mail, a well known British paper known for their AGW denialism and highly inaccurate reporting of facts.

And my favorite website it has everything for the denier/skeptic and shows cosmic ray theory very well and many arguments against AGW.

http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/[bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]%20Essay/Climate_Change_Science.htm

Access denied. Wow! Do you not ever source the scientific literature yourself? Do you always rely on what other people tell you without actually checking the facts yourself?

Sun and Cosmic Rays

During the 20th century the Sun has continued to warm and may have contributed directly to a third of the warming over the last hundred years. The change in solar output is too small to directly account for most of the observed warming. However, the Sun-Cosmic Ray connection provides an amplification mechanism by which a small change in solar irradiance will have a large effect on climate.

A paper by H. Svensmark and E. Friis-Christensen of the Center for Sun-Climate Research of the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen has shown that cosmic rays highly correlate to low cloud formation. Changes in the intensity of galactic cosmic rays alter the Earths cloudiness.

An experiment in 2005 shows the effect of cosmic rays in a reaction chamber containing air and trace chemicals found over the oceans. Electrons released in the air by cosmic rays act as a catalyst in making aerosols. They significantly accelerate the formation of stable, ultra-small clusters of sulphuric acid and water molecules, which are the building block for the cloud condensation nuclei.

Danish scientists reported in May 2011 that they have succeeded for the first time in directly observing that the electrically charged particles coming from space and hitting the atmosphere at high speed contribute to creating the aerosols that are the prerequisites for cloud formation. In a climate chamber at Aarhus University, scientists have created conditions similar to the atmosphere at the height where low clouds are formed. This artificial atmosphere was irradiated with fast electrons from ASTRID Denmarks largest particle accelerator. The experiments show that increased radiation from cosmic rays leads to more aerosols. In the atmosphere, these aerosols grow into actual cloud nuclei in the course of hours or days. Water vapour concentrates on the nuclei forming small cloud droplets. See the news release here.

A team of 63 scientists published results in August 2011 of a much more sophisticated experiment which investigated the effects of cosmic rays on cloud formation. The CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets) experiment at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva show big effects of pions from an accelerator, which simulate the cosmic rays and ionize the air in the experimental chamber. The CLOUD experiment is the most rigorous test of the Cosmic Ray hypothesis yet devised. The experiments show that cosmic rays strongly enhance the formation rate of aerosols by up to ten fold, and confirms the earlier results from the Danish experiment. The aerosols may grow into cloud condensation nuclei on which cloud droplets form. See the CERN press release here.

The graph below shows the aerosol particle concentration growth in the CLOUD chamber. In an early-morning experimental run at CERN, starting at 03:45, ultraviolet light began making sulphuric acid molecules in the chamber, while a strong electric field cleansed the air of ions. As soon as the electric field was switched off at 04:33, natural cosmic rays raining down through the roof helped to build clusters at a higher rate. When CLOUD simulated stronger cosmic rays with a beam of charged pion particles starting at 4:58 the rate of cluster production became faster still. The various colours are for clusters of different diameters (in nanometres) as recorded by various instruments. The largest (black) took longer to grow than the smallest (blue). See here. The CLOUD results also show that trace vapours assumed until now to account for aerosol formation in the lower atmosphere can explain only a tiny fraction of the observed atmospheric aerosol production.

"By altering the population of CCN and hence microphysical cloud properties (droplet number and concentration), cosmic rays may also induce processes analogous to the indirect effect of tropospheric aerosols. The presence of ions, such as produced by cosmic rays, is recognised as influencing several microphysical mechanisms (Harrison and Carslaw, 2003). Aerosols may nucleate preferentially on atmospheric cluster ions. In the case of low gas-phase sulphuric acid concentrations, ion-induced nucleation may dominate over binary sulphuric acid-water nucleation."

(Source: 2.7.1.3 Indirect Effects of Solar Variability - AR4 WGI Chapter 2: Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing)

A recent paper I've become aware of (Kirkby 2011) published in Nature seems to be abuzz with skeptics concerning GW and cosmic rays. The interesting thing though is that the paper says nothing about any connections with climate and cosmic rays.

Now, let's compare the Svensmark and Friis-Christensen paper (Svensmark 1998) with actual observations and see if it holds any substance to its claims.

For GCR's to have an effect on climate the following criteria must be met:

Solar magnetic field must have a long-term positive trend.
Galactic cosmic ray flux on Earth must have a long-term negative trend.
Cosmic rays must successfully seed low-level clouds.
Low-level cloud cover must have a long-term negative trend.
Source: Skeptical Science (A detailed look at galactic cosmic rays)


Solar magnetic field must have a long-term positive trend.
Galactic cosmic ray flux on Earth must have a long-term negative trend.
Cosmic rays must successfully seed low-level clouds.
Low-level cloud cover must have a long-term negative trend.
Source: Skeptical Science (A detailed look at galactic cosmic rays)

Solar magnetic field must have a long-term positive trend.
Galactic cosmic ray flux on Earth must have a long-term negative trend.
Cosmic rays must successfully seed low-level clouds.
Low-level cloud cover must have a long-term negative trend.
Source: Skeptical Science (A detailed look at galactic cosmic rays)
​

​

• Solar magnetic field must have a long-term positive trend. That hasn't happened.

• Galactic cosmic ray flux on Earth must have a long-term negative trend. That hasn't happened.

• Cosmic rays must successfully seed low-level clouds. No data supports that. In fact, Norris et al. (2007) shows data to the contrary.

• Low-level cloud cover must have a long-term negative trend. No data supports that.

It just doesn't pan out, but there are fingerprints of other forcings that do. I have an idea, why not look at the science from actual climate scientists instead of blogs and other non credible sources. Dust a thought.

Solar magnetic field must have a long-term positive trend.
Galactic cosmic ray flux on Earth must have a long-term negative trend.
Cosmic rays must successfully seed low-level clouds.
Low-level cloud cover must have a long-term negative trend.
Source: Skeptical Science (A detailed look at galactic cosmic rays)
​

 

[Poptech]

And this is evidenced by?

Reality.

When I do a Google scholar search using the terms:

(author: P-Jones climate)
I get 1890 hits (Many of which are clearly not the same Phil Jones we are talking about, for instance "Peter G. Jones" gets picked. This is the "upper limit"

No this is the method explicitly stated in the paper. Thus no other method is valid. You have just falsified the study.

When I do
(author: PD-Jones climate)
I get 537 hits which is much more focused and gets the Phil Jones we normally think of in climate science. Now we have a lower limit.

This method was not stated in the study and is invalid. This query is still filled with erroneous results,

Those results [537] include the following,

The Pacific: Peace, Security, & The Nuclear Issue - Chapter 3. Militarization of the Pacific [Book] Author: Peter D. Jones

Is this one of the infamous CRU Director Phil Jones' famous climate publications we are not aware of?

Since Google Scholar search results are cumulative this is elementary to prove and irrefutable, simply search for,

"author: PD-Jones climate Militarization of the Pacific"

* Do not put a space between the ':' and 'P'

Since Search #1 is overly inclusive and Search #2 is underly inclusive (since Jones doesn't always maintain his middle initial in citations) it would be a rather easy task to arrive at number of citations for Phil Jones of UAE specifically.

And guess what? 724 is fully contained within these two bounds. I am rather of the assumption that the authors of the paper took this into account.

It is not easy without looking at every single result individually something the authors did not do as their methods explicitly stated they just used the result totals for Google Scholar search queries,

Materials and Methods

we collected the number of climate-relevant publications for all 1,372 researchers from Google Scholar (search terms: “author:fi-lastname climate”)

Those totals are not reproducible and are filled with erroneous results.

But again, I'm curious where you keep getting this 724 figure. Where did you find that the authors of the PNAS article found exactly 724 papers attributed to Phil Jones? I'm actually really curious where this specific number comes from.

From their own database! Try searching Google for "IPCC AR4 Working Group 1 Authors" Prall and you will find it.

Maybe I've just had more experience with "searching" databases. For instance when doing a patent search one usually doesn't just pump and dump the data. It does require that one actually look at the results.

Except they did NOT look at the results.

The authors of the PNAS study clearly indicated that they took into accounts multiples of a given hit, so this seems trivially derivable for the data.

Quote in the study or their supporting documentation where they make this claim.

"Arbitrarily"? Have you ever actually tried to construct a comprehensive search for anything?

I am a computer analyst and am fully aware of the limitations of search query results in Google Scholar. Their whole study and conclusions are based on data that is NOT reproducible given the methods they use. They incompetently chose to use Google Scholar without understanding it's limitations for use in a scientific study.

Actually it has quite a bit to do with it. I don't make my decisions on whether AGW is likely true or not simply based on a PNAS article. I am using my scientific "common sense" to arrive at a conclusion. The fact that so many scientists have arrived at the same conclusion and these are the folks who study this the most is icing on the cake.

The sum of the lines of evidence (good science that makes sense, lots of high caliber researchers all over the world independently arriving at a similar conclusion, etc.) are indicative of a relatively robust hypothesis.

Now you are dodging the argument because this worthless PNAS study is thrown around all the time to tout a bogus 97% figure as evidence of "consensus'.

 

[RickG]

Reality.

I am a computer analyst and am fully aware of the limitations of search query results in Google Scholar. Their whole study and conclusions are based on data that is NOT reproducible given the methods they use. They incompetently chose to use Google Scholar without understanding it's limitations for use in a scientific study.

So you have no training or experience in any field of the physical earth sciences, yet you are highly critical of climatology. I see.

Okay, then I have a challenge. Using your preferred search engine(s) and technique, give a description of how you would search for information on past climates of Antarctica. Include key words and list 10 sources to review. Be our teacher.

Now you are dodging the argument because this worthless PNAS study is thrown around all the time to tout a bogus 97% figure as evidence of "consensus'.

You do know (I hope) that the Anderegg 2010 paper dealt specifically and only with published peer reviewed climate science. Conversely, your 900+ list includes many articles and journals well outside the field of climatology and even science for that matter.

 

[Poptech]

So you have no training or experience in any field of the physical earth sciences, yet you are highly critical of climatology. I see.

I made no claim to be a climatologist. It was actually the ignorant use of computer science by those promoting ACC/AGW Alarm that got me started in researching this topic.

Okay, then I have a challenge. Using your preferred search engine(s) and technique, give a description of how you would search for information on past climates of Antarctica. Include key words and list 10 sources to review. Be our teacher.

The last thing I am going to do is help alarmists learn how to properly use search engines. What I will do is correct them anytime they ignorantly attempt to use them as science as Anderegg et al. did.

You do know (I hope) that the Anderegg 2010 paper dealt specifically and only with published peer reviewed climate science. Conversely, your 900+ list includes many articles and journals well outside the field of climatology and even science for that matter.

That is impossible since Google Scholar does not index only peer-reviewed science. Their search queries were filled with erroneous results that not only had nothing to do with the author they intended but also included off topic and non peer-reviewed content.

Just like the WGII and WGIII sections of the IPCC report the 900+ list includes papers from peer-reviewed social-science journals. But unlike the IPCC report all of the counted papers on the 900+ list were peer-reviewed.

 

[thaumaturgy]

No this is the method explicitly stated in the paper. Thus no other method is valid. You have just falsified the study.

Not necessarily. It is not necessarily limited to simply the first initial, but could also include the first initial(s), could it not? they only say "-fi", which is not necessarily singular or plural. (And as I note later on, even by your own citation you can easily see that Prall lists the search terms often using two first initials.)

The Pacific: Peace, Security, & The Nuclear Issue - Chapter 3. Militarization of the Pacific [Book] Author: Peter D. Jones

-sigh-. Now when I offer to do a whitespace patent search for one of my fellow research scientists and I provide them with trash do you think I have done my work?


And in fact here's the wording the authors use:

Between December 2008 and July 2009, we collected the number of climate-relevant publications for all 1,372 researchers from Google Scholar (search terms: “author:fi-lastname climate&#8221, as well as the number of times cited for each researcher’s four top-cited articles in any field (search term “climate” removed). Overall number of publications was not used because it was not possible to provide accurate publication counts in all cases because of similarly named researchers.(pg 3)

Note that they collected the climate-relevant publications from their Google scholar search which is predicated on the "fi-lastname" search criterion. This would seem to be language inclusive of some sort of at least minimal review of the contents. And again, the overall number is not used for the reasons even you noted.

* Do not put a space between the ':' and 'P'

Yeah, figured that out when the stupid forum put a sunglass-wearing smiley face when I attempted to transcribe my searches in my previous post.)

It is not easy without looking at every single result individually something the authors did not do as their methods explicitly stated they just used the result totals for Google Scholar search queries,

But they did verify the authorship of a selection of the top cited papers by a given author (see page 3 of the report). And it is not clear that they exercised no review of the returned results (as explained above).

From their own database! Try searching Google for "IPCC AR4 Working Group 1 Authors" Prall and you will find it.

What I find interesting is this link does not appear to be cited in the PNAS paper itself. I was indeed able to find it, but not using the PNAS documentation.

While I'm not saying this is particularly meaningful, it appears to me that you are going "off the reservation" to find this list. That is why I asked so many times where you got that figure. Because:

A. It is nowhere in the PNAS article
B. It is not in the "SI" (Supporting Information) document
C. The link that one finds for Prall's Univ. of Toronto database is also not in the PNAS article or SI document.

BUT, that aside:

if you look on Prall's list itself YOU CAN SEE UNDER THE PAPS subheading for Phil Jones that he used PD Jones (two first initials) which results in 425 hits.He also does a complete search for all PD Jones and gets many more.

So even by your own reference Prall is showing exactly how the search was conducted.

Except they did NOT look at the results.

To be fair to them they explicitly state the potential shortcomings of this method and they did indeed check the authorship of the four top cited articles by any given author to establish "prominence". And, again, the verbiage they use would allow for some sort of "looking at the results"

Between December 2008 and July 2009, we collected the number of climate-relevant publications for all 1,372 researchers from Google Scholar (search terms: “author:fi-lastname climate&#8221, (pg 3)

(Emphasis added. This language indicates the data was collected from a pool --not that the entire pool was used without any sort of review...and in fact that review is suggested in the earlier part of the same sentence "climate-relevant publications".

Quote in the study or their supporting documentation where they make this claim.

In the SI part of the document:

After removing duplicate names across these lists, we had a total of 903 names.

Now you are dodging the argument because this worthless PNAS study is thrown around all the time to tout a bogus 97% figure as evidence of "consensus'.

No, I'm not really dodging it. I'm just not putting all my eggs in one basket. Science seldom uses only one data point to draw a conclusion.

I am no different.

I like this data point but it by no means forms the basis of my "belief" in AGW as a likely hypothesis.

 

[Poptech]

Not necessarily. It is not necessarily limited to simply the first initial, but could also include the first initial(s), could it not? they only say "-fi", which is not necessarily singular or plural. (And as I note later on, even by your own citation you can easily see that Prall lists the search terms often using two first initials.)

Please, now you are spinning - it is not plural and if he used the middle initial it would be "fi-mi-lastname". He arbitrary used the first and middle initial and that is not the methods documented in the paper.

-sigh-. Now when I offer to do a whitespace patent search for one of my fellow research scientists and I provide them with trash do you think I have done my work?

I am well aware Anderegg et al. did not do their work. They do not include the lists of papers that support their totals, they instead used numerical totals from Google Scholar search queries that are not reproducible and deviate from the methods explicitly outlined in their paper.

And in fact here's the wording the authors use:

Between December 2008 and July 2009, we collected the number of climate-relevant publications for all 1,372 researchers from Google Scholar (search terms: “author:fi-lastname climate”), as well as the number of times cited for each researcher’s four top-cited articles in any field (search term “climate” removed). Overall number of publications was not used because it was not possible to provide accurate publication counts in all cases because of similarly named researchers.(pg 3)

Note that they collected the climate-relevant publications from their Google scholar search which is predicated on the "fi-lastname" search criterion. This would seem to be language inclusive of some sort of at least minimal review of the contents. And again, the overall number is not used for the reasons even you noted.

It makes no mention of review. They mention "climate-relevant" because the search query included the word, "climate". If verification was done they would make this explicit as they did with the citation analysis (the only valid part of their paper). The reasons I noted apply to the results that include the word, "climate".

But they did verify the authorship of a selection of the top cited papers by a given author (see page 3 of the report). And it is not clear that they exercised no review of the returned results (as explained above).

I am well aware of this and state this in my article. The citation results had the word "climate" removed and they only verified the top 4.

Between December 2008 and July 2009, we collected the number of
climate-relevant publications for all 1,372 researchers from Google Scholar
(search terms: “author:fi-lastname climate”), as well as the number of times cited for each researcher’s four top-cited articles in any field (search term “climate” removed). [...]

We verified, however, author identity for the four top-cited papers by each author.

Those results are not the same as those that included the word "climate".

This caveat is damning to your argument,

Overall number of publications was not used because it was not possible to provide accurate publication counts in all cases because of similarly named researchers

They clearly realized there were erroneous results when just doing an author search and falsely believed this was not the case when adding the word "climate". If they were exercising "review" of any kind this would be irrelevant but they were not, they were simply using the result total spit out by Google Scholar. I have falsified this assumption by them using the search query,

"author: PD-Jones climate Militarization of the Pacific"

* Do not put a space between the ':' and 'P'

Thus falsifying their data and the bogus statistics they are based on.

What I find interesting is this link does not appear to be cited in the PNAS paper itself. I was indeed able to find it, but not using the PNAS documentation.

While I'm not saying this is particularly meaningful, it appears to me that you are going "off the reservation" to find this list. That is why I asked so many times where you got that figure. Because:

A. It is nowhere in the PNAS article
B. It is not in the "SI" (Supporting Information) document
C. The link that one finds for Prall's Univ. of Toronto database is also not in the PNAS article or SI document.

I am well aware they do not provide direct links to it in the paper. As usual with these "studies" no one attempted to verify the data. The page is James Prall co-author of the PNAS paper and it is clearly the list of, "IPCC AR4 Working Group I Contributors (coordinating lead authors, lead authors, and contributing authors; 619 names listed)". The "Links to source documents" off the SI is on the same personal website of Pralls and the page explicitly states "a peer-reviewed paper drawing on my lists has just been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

if you look on Prall's list itself YOU CAN SEE UNDER THE PAPS subheading for Phil Jones that he used PD Jones (two first initials) which results in 425 hits.He also does a complete search for all PD Jones and gets many more.

So even by your own reference Prall is showing exactly how the search was conducted.

The PAPS queries is simply using the undefined Google Scholar search filter of "Search only in Physics, Astronomy, and Planetary Science". That search query was not used in the paper. Obviously they did a complete search as that is where they obtained the citation results. None of this changes the fact that the methods outlined in the paper did not include the middle initial and regardless included erroneous results.

To be fair to them they explicitly state the potential shortcomings of this method and they did indeed check the authorship of the four top cited articles by any given author to establish "prominence". And, again, the verbiage they use would allow for some sort of "looking at the results"

I am not debating the citation analysis which is the only valid part of the whole paper.

Between December 2008 and July 2009, we collected the number of climate-relevant publications for all 1,372 researchers from Google Scholar (search terms: “author:fi-lastname climate”), (pg 3)

(Emphasis added. This language indicates the data was collected from a pool --not that the entire pool was used without any sort of review...and in fact that review is suggested in the earlier part of the same sentence "climate-relevant publications".

It is clear they did not do a review because they were aware of the presence of erroneous results when searching for total number of publications per author and this is the reason they did not use those. They falsely assumed this was not the case when they include the search word, "climate". As I have shown above this is not the case.

In the SI part of the document:

After removing duplicate names across these lists, we had a total of 903 names.

No, that is them removing duplicate names off their source lists for author names NOT their Google Scholar search queries.

I like this data point but it by no means forms the basis of my "belief" in AGW as a likely hypothesis.

You like worthless statistics based on data that is not reproducible and filled with erroneous results?

 

[RickG]

I made no claim to be a climatologist. It was actually the ignorant use of computer science by those promoting ACC/AGW Alarm that got me started in researching this topic.

So we have an admission that you do not have any background in any field of physical science. Nevertheless, you believe climate scientists are ignorant. Thanks for being clear on that.

The last thing I am going to do is help alarmists learn how to properly use search engines. What I will do is correct them anytime they ignorantly attempt to use them as science as Anderegg et al. did.

Actually my intention was to demonstrate your lack of skill when it comes to a subject you are completely unfamiliar with. Note that I chose a topic that had nothing to do with your list or its claims, but rather a topic in climatology relating to past climates in Antarctica. The point is, if you are not extremely familiar with a subject, it doesn't matter what kind of tools you have for searching information. Your results are going to be erroneous or misleading at best because you do not know all the right questions to ask.

That is impossible since Google Scholar does not index only peer-reviewed science. Their search queries were filled with erroneous results that not only had nothing to do with the author they intended but also included off topic and non peer-reviewed content.

Non peer review results were excluded. Something you may not actually understand is that they actually read the papers, not just the abstracts as you did, even if you bothered to do that.

Just like the WGII and WGIII sections of the IPCC report the 900+ list includes papers from peer-reviewed social-science journals.

That is because the actual physical science is done in WGI is by climatologists. Work Groups II & III are policy makers.

But unlike the IPCC report all of the counted papers on the 900+ list were peer-reviewed.

No, quite a few of the 900+ appeared in peer review journals but were not peer reviewed. You already tried to pass that off by quote mining the Journal Nature's peer review policy, but I called you on that and posted the part of it you conveniently left out. Several I found were even opinion pieces in law journals. That's some search engine you have there.

 

[thaumaturgy]

Please, now you are spinning - it is not plural and if he used the middle initial it would be "fi-mi-lastname". He arbitrary used the first and middle initial and that is not the methods documented in the paper.

Actually if you look at the PRALL list you provided it is quite clear THEY USD "PD JONES".

Click on any of the links within the Google Scholar search column and you will see it explicitly there. It reproduces the search. Look at the top and you'll see: "PD Jones"

And I fail to see how it is arbitrary.

As for you "fi-mi-lastname", I will point out that since this is not a search constructed in which "field designators" need be explicitly stated (as you find in some database queries) there is no exact limitation that "fi" can only be first initial.

And clearly, as your own reference shows, this is indeed how they approached it.

I am well aware Anderegg et al. did not do their work. They do not include the lists of papers that support their totals, they instead used numerical totals from Google Scholar search queries that are not reproducible and deviate from the methods explicitly outlined in their paper.

You make it sound like they merely plugged in "P Jones" and read the "hit count" in the upper right hand corner of the screen and called it a day!

Here, again, is what they explicitly state:

Between December 2008 and July 2009, we collected the number of
climate-relevant publications for all 1,372 researchers from Google Scholar​

(search terms: [FONT=AdvOT118e7927+20][FONT=AdvOT118e7927+20]“[/FONT][/FONT]author:[FONT=AdvOT118e7927+fb][FONT=AdvOT118e7927+fb]fi[/FONT][/FONT]-lastname climate[FONT=AdvOT118e7927+20][FONT=AdvOT118e7927+20]”[/FONT][/FONT])

When I click on Prall's "Climate"+authorD-Jones search (HERE) I get a list that when I click through it at least for the first many pages I see almost exclusively Phil Jones climatology articles. So it seems that the technique is relatively robust.

Now of course a rational view of what they did would include an assessment of the fact (as you yourself have provided in your Prall link) that they used 3 search versions on Phil Jones. One was "all" "author : PD-Jones", one was the same search only in Physics, Astronomy and Planetary science, and one was the same with the term "climate" in the search.

As you are no doubt familiar with Venn diagrams I shouldn't need to explain that this can result in a simple process of determining using these three a relatively robust number of documents that fulfill the requirement of "climate relevant" document that are all attributable to Phil D. Jones of UEA.

The fact that they didn't explain this step by step to you is not indicative of the very real possibility that that is exactly what they did.

I honestly think you are trying to find a reason to knock this out by relying on the hopes that the researchers are simply stupid. Which is nowhere in evidence.

As I said, they clearly explain it to you when they state:

Between December 2008 and July 2009, we collected the number of
climate-relevant publications for all 1,372 researchers from Google Scholar​

(search terms: [FONT=AdvOT118e7927+20][FONT=AdvOT118e7927+20]“

author:[FONT=AdvOT118e7927+fb][FONT=AdvOT118e7927+fb]fi[/FONT][/FONT]-lastname climate[FONT=AdvOT118e7927+20][FONT=AdvOT118e7927+20]”[/FONT][/FONT])

[/FONT][/FONT]

It makes no mention of review. They mention "climate-relevant" because the search query included the word, "climate".

-sigh-

I don't know how to help you if you wish to find gross error. I will suggest you actually look on the lists provided by Prall that you introduced.

But I will also caution you that this is a statistical analsysis and the authors themselves clearly and repeatedly stated the potential shortcomings even going so far as to explicitly state some of the potential problems you mention.

In a statistical study the point being to find as "robust" an analysis as you can. This does not mean (nor is it ever suggested in science) that a data sampling is "perfect". It simply cannot be.

However since you have Prall's list you are free to click on every one of these and run the numbers yourself.

You can easily with just a few weeks worth of efforts count every single hit from the search that Prall links to and show how far off from the value that the number is.

(Make sure to limit the publication dates to only those before July 2009.)

Let's say you do the count and you find that it actually contains a few "false" hits. Let's say you find 3 hits that are not PD Jones of UEA but Paul Dingleberry Jones of Larry's Clown College and the article is about the climate of sadness clowns live in. Out of total of 724 you have found an error of 0.4% !!!!!

Now take into account you will have to repeat the exercise on all of the other authors and let's assume you find that a couple authors are undercounted by 0.4%.

This is kind of how data collection works. In huge samples which are part of larger populations you have to accept that there are "errors".

It's kind of why the whole article is FOUNDED ON STATISTICS. (What do you think the Mann-Whitney U Test is all about? It is a non-parametric hypothesis test to assess whether one sample contains larger values than another, note the p-values on these various tests!)

Thus falsifying their data and the bogus statistics they are based on.

So you found one erroneous "hit" (did it show up in the Prall list? You have to make sure that the same hit came up in the original authors' work for it to be a problem for them).

So now you have found...wait for it....0.14% error!

Are you expecting absolute 0.0...0% error? Perfect data?

Interesting. Because even the authors never claimed that. But I can understand. Like when debating creationists you realize they want "perfect" data but since that never happens (hence the need for statistics...like...well, Mann-Whitney U tests) I guess all of science is doomed.

I am well aware they do not provide direct links to it in the paper. As usual with these "studies" no one attempted to verify the data.

LOL. I can see you have never published in the sciences. In the days before the huge reach of the intarwebs I published stuff whose data was only in my lab notebooks. If you wanted to see the data you'd have to write me and ask me for it and I would provide it to you assuming I had the time. If an official investigation was ongoing I would have the data but you really should stick to the kind of publications you do for your critiques.

You like worthless statistics based on data that is not reproducible and filled with erroneous results?

If I relied on only one data point that would be a fair cop. But since I've already explained by background and the mass of information I base my acceptance of the hypothesis on I will traverse your "suggestion".

 

[Poptech]

So we have an admission that you do not have any background in any field of physical science. Nevertheless, you believe climate scientists are ignorant. Thanks for being clear on that.

That is incorrect, I have university training in the physical sciences. What I believe is that certain climate scientists are ignorant in relation to computer science which is shown to be true by an article in Nature,

Computational science: ...Error …why scientific programming does not compute. (Nature, Volume 467, pp. 775-777, October 2010)

Researchers are spending more and more time writing computer software to model biological structures, simulate the early evolution of the Universe and analyse past climate data, among other topics. But programming experts have little faith that most scientists are up to the task. [...]

...as computers and programming tools have grown more complex, scientists have hit a "steep learning curve", says James Hack, director of the US National Center for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. "The level of effort and skills needed to keep up aren't in the wheelhouse of the average scientist."

As a general rule, researchers do not test or document their programs rigorously, and they rarely release their codes, making it almost impossible to reproduce and verify published results generated by scientific software, say computer scientists. [...]

Greg Wilson, a computer scientist in Toronto, Canada, who heads Software Carpentry — an online course aimed at improving the computing skills of scientists — says that he woke up to the problem in the 1980s, when he was working at a physics supercomputing facility at the University of Edinburgh, UK. After a series of small mishaps, he realized that, without formal training in programming, it was easy for scientists trying to address some of the Universe's biggest questions to inadvertently introduce errors into their codes, potentially "doing more harm than good". [...]

"There are terrifying statistics showing that almost all of what scientists know about coding is self-taught," says Wilson. "They just don't know how bad they are."

As a result, codes may be riddled with tiny errors that do not cause the program to break down, but may drastically change the scientific results that it spits out.

Ouch.

Actually my intention was to demonstrate your lack of skill when it comes to a subject you are completely unfamiliar with. Note that I chose a topic that had nothing to do with your list or its claims, but rather a topic in climatology relating to past climates in Antarctica. The point is, if you are not extremely familiar with a subject, it doesn't matter what kind of tools you have for searching information. Your results are going to be erroneous or misleading at best because you do not know all the right questions to ask.

You have demonstrated no such thing and I can find information on any topic very easily. Oh I see you don't think I know or can locate climatology related terms. It is very east to locate a climate glossary online. Searching for past climates, you can literally use phrases like "climate history" or pick a specific geological epoch. I literally can find anything I want.

Non peer review results were excluded. Something you may not actually understand is that they actually read the papers, not just the abstracts as you did, even if you bothered to do that.

That is incorrect. No review of the results was done to remove erroneous results. The Anderegg study simply used numerical result totals from Google Scholar search queries.

That is because the actual physical science is done in WGI is by climatologists. Work Groups II & III are policy makers.

Strawman argument, no claim is made otherwise nor is it that the list only includes physical science papers. What is claimed is that they are all peer-reviewed. The majority of the list is physical science papers.

No, quite a few of the 900+ appeared in peer review journals but were not peer reviewed. You already tried to pass that off by quote mining the Journal Nature's peer review policy, but I called you on that and posted the part of it you conveniently left out.

You have failed to show that a single paper or journal was not peer-reviewed on the list.

You didn't call anyone out on anything. What you have done is embarrass yourself by falsely claiming that "Letters" are not peer-reviewed in the journal Nature. I didn't leave anything relevant out, your lack of reading comprehension skills is absolutely embarrassing. The part I did not include was irrelevant because it dealt with all forms of public correction which had NOTHING to do with Letters being peer-reviewed.

Manuscript formatting guide

1. Formats for Nature contributions

Nature's main formats for original research are Articles and Letters. In addition, Nature publishes other submitted material as detailed below (Section 1.4).
1.2 Letters

Letters are short reports of original research focused on an outstanding finding whose importance means that it will be of interest to scientists in other fields.

Peer-review policy (Nature)

General information

The following types of contribution to Nature journals are peer-reviewed: Articles, Letters, Brief Communications, Communications Arising, Technical Reports, Analysis, Reviews, Perspectives, Progress articles and Insight articles. All forms of published correction may also be peer-reviewed at the discretion of the editors.

Are you going to continue to deny that Letters are peer-reviewed in the journal Nature?

Several I found were even opinion pieces in law journals. That's some search engine you have there.

You have failed to show any of those were not peer-reviewed let alone opinion pieces.