Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
a couple of points.
first, Watts is a published scientist. He understands the peer review process and is working with men like Roger Pielke Sr. who have hundreds of peer reivewed papers to their name. You can be sure the peer review process is underway.
First, Watts is not a scientist. He has a B.S. degree in broadcast meteorology, and no longer works in that field. His entire life is currently wrapped up in Wattsupwiththat.com, which is a right wing pundant web site pretending to be a science site, the sole devotion of which is pseudo-scientific attacks on climate science. His only peer reviewed publication was quickly and soundly refuted by N.O.A.A. That he claims association with real scientists is of no consequence. I'm a published professional geologist by education, vocation, and certification, someone who knows and has worked with many scientists from many different fields. But my association with them no more makes me a scientist than Watts' association with any other scientist makes him a scientist.
Quote:
Second, you are making a demand of Watts (go thru peer review) that you dont make of Muller.
Quote:
His paper that he released this week has NOT been peer reviewed. In fact, it is a paper that is very little different from the paper he just got rejected from the peer review process.
Hogwash. Muller's paper, in fact, has already undergone at least one peer review and is currently under a second review. That is perfectly proper and acceptable to me. My first paper took several years to be accepted (because we had discovered eight new fossil species and the publisher wanted to be sure that they were, in fact, new species). There is nothing at all unusual in a paper getting more than one review.
And finally, there is not just one paper, but five, all based on the same database.
Quote:
Oh and Muller's BEST data is in part based on Watts' work... only the Watts work was incomplete when Muller used it.
Do you have any independant confirmation of this? Independant meaning other than Watts' say so?
I didn't have a problem with him going public to open review, rather I had a problem with him going public to promote the "conclusions" of his paper (which he has hit the pavement running with as you can see in all of his media interviews). I think the new paper from Watts did the right thing, he went public, but his push has been to have public review (as have many scientists who have used his site as a testing ground for their papers). The result is that many people out there are finding things that need reworking, adjustment, correction, etc... which in the end will provide a very solid paper during the journal review and further the goal of understanding in that study.
As for the whole CAGW thing, there has been too much politics in the science and it has gotten in the way of proper discovery and understanding. You can't understand something when you force observations to fit a previously established assumption, it contradicts scientific purpose.
The problem you foks don't seem to grasp is that the "public" is not the appropriate venue for peer review of scientific publications. Why? Because we scientists have devoted all our blood, sweat and tears to become expert in our respective fields. It takes many years to reach the level of expertize necessary to conduct proper peer review of any scientific publication. You wouldn't want a brain surgeon to conduct surgery on your based on peer review from floor sweepers, would you? Of course you wouldn't. So why do you expect climate scientists to subject themselves to that kind of pointless public peer review. Public review has always come AFTER publication, not before it. And rightly so.
Soon? No idea on timeline, it is going open public review
Public peer review is not acceptable for the reasons I stated in my previous post. If he expects his paper to have any credibility in the scientific community, it must be reviewed by qualified climate scientists selected by a reputable science publisher. He doesn't get to choose his own reviewers, especially an unqualified public. Anything else is simply not acceptable.
Great, then we can expect Watt's paper to be published in a reputable peer reviewed science journal very soon, RIGHT?
You realize, of course that Watt has a BS. in broadcast meteorology, and is not actually a climate scientist, right?
Well it appears IPCC got their stuff peer reviewed all right but as theis IAC review shows they basically didn't care what anyone who had issues with the report said.
"The "recommendations" issued by the IAC were not minor adjustments to a fundamentally sound scientific procedure. Here are some of the findings of the IAC's 2010 report.
The IAC reported that IPCC lead authors fail to give "due consideration ... to properly documented alternative views" (p. 20), fail to "provide detailed written responses to the most significant review issues identified by the Review Editors" (p. 21), and are not "consider[ing] review comments carefully and document[ing] their responses" (p. 22). In plain English: the IPCC reports are not peer-reviewed.
The IAC found that "the IPCC has no formal process or criteria for selecting authors" and "the selection criteria seemed arbitrary to many respondents" (p. 18). Government officials appoint scientists from their countries and "do not always nominate the best scientists from among those who volunteer, either because they do not know who these scientists are or because political considerations are given more weight than scientific qualifications" (p. 18). In other words: authors are selected from a "club" of scientists and nonscientists who agree with the alarmist perspective favored by politicians."
You can find the IAC report here.
http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/
Here is IPCC shooting down the idea of anonymous peer review.
Public peer review is not acceptable for the reasons I stated in my previous post. If he expects his paper to have any credibility in the scientific community, it must be reviewed by qualified climate scientists selected by a reputable science publisher. He doesn't get to choose his own reviewers, especially an unqualified public. Anything else is simply not acceptable.
His work will be submitted to a journal. Public scrutiny simply allows a much larger audience with many different disciplines and ability to find errors that may be missed. His paper will actually benefit from this and it will reduce the errors in peer review.
Did you object to this when Muller released his BEST paper and it was plastered all over the media as they used it to proclaim conclusions in support of political ideals? Remember, it was rejected in "peer review". Were you in those threads getting upset about that? Did you do the same when Hansen released his work prior to peer review? Did you do the same for all of the other authors who did such publicity stunts to promote their political ideology? I don't remember you being as such then?
Point is, there is nothing wrong with public review. Those who seem to have the biggest problems with it are those who have something to hide. Heck, none of this would be a problem if it wasn't for the fact that Public research, funded by the public was being obfuscated from the public when the public had every right legally to look at that research.
I don't suppose you had objections to those public researchers hiding their raw data and methodology? I mean, I guess we are supposed to simply bow down to them being experts and all? You know, because anyone who might look at it is simply a "floor sweeper" and couldn't possibly understand the complexities? Try telling that to McIntyre and McKitrick who were responsible for finding the errors in several works that were pal-rev... I mean peer reviewed.
1. Thanks to everyone who has provided widespread review of our draft paper. There have been hundreds of suggestions and corrections, and for that I am very grateful. That’s exactly what we hoped for, and can only make the paper better.
Edits are being made based on many of those suggestions. I’ll post up a revised draft in the next day.
So apparently they are finding some errors, and providing suggestions. I would say that is a win/win don't you think?
Not only that, but you are getting a lot of discussion on certain things:
Quote:
TOBS is a controversial adjustment. Proponents of the TOBS adjustment (Created by NCDC director Tom Karl) say that it is a necessary adjustment that fixes a known problem, others suggest that it is an overkill adjustment, that solves small problems but creates an even larger one. For example, from a recent post on Lucia’s by Zeke Hausfather, you can see how much adjustments go into the final product.
The question is: are these valid adjustments? Zeke seems to think so, but others do not. Personally I think TOBS is a sledgehammer used to pound in a tack. This looks like a good time to settle the question once and for all.
Steve McIntyre is working through the TOBS entanglement with the station siting issue, saying “There is a confounding interaction with TOBS that needs to be allowed for…”, which is what Judith Curry might describe as a “wicked problem”. Steve has an older post on it here which can be a primer for learning about it.
Notice there isn't any dismissals, attacks, and appeals to authority? This is how science is supposed to work as a scientists is interested in finding the reality of their given study, not in using a shoe horn to turn make believe into it reality.
How can this not help a paper?
If the only response is "they are not experts", well that is a generalized dismissal as we found that many of those "experts" have been corrected in their approaches because they lacked understanding in a discipline that others are "experts" in, you know... such as the mathematicians making comments concerning the "math" that the "climate scientist" is applying? That is, unless we are saying a climate scientists is also an expert mathematician, physicist, etc... ? Ive looked at some of the "climate science" degrees, and to be honest, they are rather weak in their education of the hard sciences, so maybe... just maybe... those "climate scientists" could gain benefit from such? No?
His work will be submitted to a journal. Public scrutiny simply allows a much larger audience with many different disciplines and ability to find errors that may be missed. His paper will actually benefit from this and it will reduce the errors in peer review.
So it's okay for Watt to do it but not Muller? Look, it is a VERY BAD idea to release ANY scientific paper to the public before it has received appropriate professional review. All it does is highlight mistakes and invites misconceptions, misinterpretations and criticisms that should be delt with BEFORE the paper is released for general review. It does nothing to improve the quality of scientific enquiry, and will likely cause a lot of damage. I don't believe I am alone in this view. In fact, I am certain that I am not. Science is not and never has been a democratic enterprise.
There is practically no time of observation bias in urban-based stations which have taken their measurements punctually always at the same time, while in the rural stations the times of observation have changed. The change has usually happened from the afternoon to the morning. This causes a cooling bias in the data of the rural stations. Therefore one must correct for the time of observation bias before one tries to determine the effect of the urban heat island.
I don't know the blogger's qualifications, so feel free to attack the post on the author rather than the substance.
So it's okay for Watt to do it but not Muller? Look, it is a VERY BAD idea to release ANY scientific paper to the public before it has received appropriate professional review. All it does is highlight mistakes and invites misconceptions, misinterpretations and criticisms that should be delt with BEFORE the paper is released for general review. It does nothing to improve the quality of scientific enquiry, and will likely cause a lot of damage. I don't believe I am alone in this view. In fact, I am certain that I am not.
No, it's not, it's standard in many hard sciences, it exposes it to a wider audience, both scientist in and out of the field and non-scientists. Plus, the review process is lengthy. If the public misinterpets from the early release, that's not really the scientists fault.
There is practically no time of observation bias in urban-based stations which have taken their measurements punctually always at the same time, while in the rural stations the times of observation have changed. The change has usually happened from the afternoon to the morning. This causes a cooling bias in the data of the rural stations. Therefore one must correct for the time of observation bias before one tries to determine the effect of the urban heat island.
I don't know the blogger's qualifications, so feel free to attack the post on the author rather than the substance.
NOAA provided a more than acceptable rebuttal of Watt's paper on weather station placements. The only ones pushing this nonsense is Watt, et al.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
