BPSDB A week ago this “450 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of “Man-Made” Global Warming” appeared and I figured it was just a matter of days before it started making the rounds of the climate change Denialosphere. Sure enough it has turned up at Wattsupmybutt so I guess it’s time to state the obvious, that it’s utter nonsense.

Let’s have a look at a sampling of these “450 Peer-Reviewed Papers.” The list includes:

UPDATE: Pielke pulls 21 papers off the list! “they’d better change that to 429 papers, as their list doesn’t represent what they think it does.” Better Recheck That List (Hat Tip to Former Skeptic for the heads up)

NOT peer-reviwed

The following are NOT peer-reviewed Journals



Energy & Environment: 82 papers on the list

E&E is a sort of vanity press for the Deniers, cited by one Wag as “where bad science goes to die.”

Submitted 2 papers on the list

“Submitted” to a peer reviewed journal is not a synonym for “published” in a peer reviewed journal; anything can be “submitted.” (did that really have to be stated?)

Known to be wrong

The following papers are known to be wrong (refutations linked)



A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions (PDF)

(International Journal of Climatology, Volume 28, Issue 13, pp. 1693-1701, December 2007)

– David H. Douglass, John R. Christy, Benjamin D. Pearson, S. Fred Singer

Refutations here.

Ancient atmosphere- Validity of ice records

(Environmental Science and Pollution Research, Volume 1, Number 3, September 1994)

– Zbigniew Jaworowski

Refutations here.

Cooling of Atmosphere Due to CO2 Emission

(Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmental Effects, Volume 30, Issue 1, pp. 1-9, January 2008)

– G. V. Chilingar, L. F. Khilyuk, O. G. Sorokhtin

Refutations here.

Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature

(Journal of Geophysical Research, Volume 114, Issue D14, July 2009)

– John D. McLean, Chris de Freitas, Robert M. Carter

Refutations here.

Greenhouse effect in semi-transparent planetary atmospheres (PDF)

(Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service, Volume 111, Number 1, pp. 1-40, 2007)

– Ferenc M. Miskolczi

Refutations here.

Potential Biases in Feedback Diagnosis from Observational Data: A Simple Model Demonstration (PDF)

(Journal of Climate, Volume 21, Issue 21, November 2008)

– Roy W. Spencer, William D. Braswell

Refutation here

Does a Global Temperature Exist? (PDF)

(Journal of Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics, Volume 32, Issue 1, pp. 1–27, February 2007)

– Christopher Essex, Ross McKitrick, Bjarne Andresen

Refutation here

Hockey Stick: 10 papers on the list

Refutations

Straw Men (and outright lying)



The premise is that that certain things like the Medieval Warm Period or greater snow accumulation are evidence against climate change when they are not. The only thing they are evidence of is that the person making the claim is utterly clueless about climate science.



A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts (PDF)

(Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 34, Issue 13, July 2007)

– Anastasios A. Tsonis, Kyle Swanson, Sergey Kravtsov

With reference to a more recent paper on the same subject, Swanson had this to say “What do our results have to do with Global Warming, i.e., the century-scale response to greenhouse gas emissions? VERY LITTLE, contrary to claims that others” (I wonder what point he was trying to make with the bold, all caps?).

Recent Ice-Sheet Growth in the Interior of Greenland

(Science, Volume 310, Number 5750, pp. 1013-1016, November 2005)

– Ola M. Johannessen, Kirill Khvorostovsky, Martin W. Miles, Leonid P. Bobylev

Quoting the authors ” … they say, the thickening seems consistent with theories of global warming, blamed by most experts on a build-up of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars.

Warmer air, even if it is still below freezing, can carry more moisture. That extra moisture falls as snow below 0°C. ” Greenland icecap thickens despite warming

A doubling in snow accumulation in the western Antarctic Peninsula since 1850

(Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 35, Issue 1, January 2008)

– Elizabeth R. Thomas, Gareth J. Marshall, Joseph R. McConnell

Same as with Greenland above and here.

CO2 lags Temperature changes: 7 papers on the list

The CO2 lag is in no way inconsistent with climate science. Actually the lag was predicted by Lorius et al (including Hansen) before it was discovered

If they actually understood the science they would realize that one thing that we would have had trouble explaining is if there was no lag … the Deniers have it totally backwards.

The “Temp leads Carbon” Crock



Medieval Warming Period – Little Ice Age: 21 papers on the list

The Deniers like to claim that the MWP and LIA refute anthropogenic climate change. The logic is basically that “there were fires before matches and napalm, therefore fires are natural and matches and napalm cannot cause fires.” Sorry, that should be “There was warming before humans, therefore warming is natural and …”

“Medieval Warming?” (& the Hockey Stick)

Trivial

Grape harvest dates are poor indicators of summer warmth (PDF)

(Theoretical and Applied Climatology, Volume 87, Numbers 1-4, pp. 255-256, January 2007)

– D. J. Keenan

It has recently been claimed that the April–August

temperature in France, in any given year, can be estimated

from the harvest date of grapes grown there. Based on this

claim, it was asserted that 2003 was the warmest year in the last six centuries. Herein, it is shown that the grape-derived temperature estimates are highly unreliable, and thus that the assertion is unfounded.

How the hell does that support “Skepticism of “Man-Made” Global Warming”?

Dated

Being old does not make a particular paper or study no longer relevant, but it sure makes some papers totally irrelevant. Commentaries on 20 year old techniques and methodologies would be an example.



Overlooked scientific issues in assessing hypothesized greenhouse gas warming (PDF)

(Environmental Software, Volume 6, Number 2, pp. 100-107, 1991)

– Roger A. Pielke Sr.

“The questions which need to answered include the importance of other anthropogenic influences suc as landscape changes and enhanced atmospheric aerosol loading, “

They have been answered. Oh look, the Deniers forgot to mention this bit: “Controls such as conservation and improved energy efficiency, of course, which are benefits to society should be implemented regardless of global climate change,”

Do NOT support Denial



The following papers in no way support Skepticism of “Man-Made” Global Warming”, so they are not “refuted” so much as explained.

Carbon dioxide forcing alone insufficient to explain Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum warming

(Nature Geoscience, Volume 2, 576-580, July 2009)

– Richard E. Zeebe, James C. Zachos, Gerald R. Dickens

Explained here and here.

To understand some of the legitimate science that appears on the list I ask you to consider this hypothetical (and nonsensical) example:

I say airplanes cannot fly because they are made of metal and metal is heavier than air. Here are 10 papers that say metal is heavier than air, and here are 10 more that say airplanes are made of metal. These 20 papers therefore support skepticism about man made airplanes being able to fly.

And it is that lack of logic that puts some of legitimate science on the list; a completely false and idiotic claim.

Mutually exclusive

As discussed here and here, that a number of the papers are mutually exclusive.

Put simply, if paper A is true, then B cannot be. So by accepting some of the papers as valid the Deniers are necessarily saying that others on the list are false. If they are false, why are they on the list? The answer is naturally that Deniers embrace anything that purports to dispute anthropogenic climate change no matter how absurd or contrary to things they already claim are true. Denierism is not a coherent position that juxtaposes one set of hypotheses against anthropogenic climate change. Rather it is the irrational, knee jerk rejection of climate science.

This just a sampling, but this point I decided I had already put more work into the list than the author had and could think of no good reason to do any more. Looking at the third of the list that I did, not one of the papers is current, relevant, peer-reviewed, and supports the Denier claims, not one.

I don’t know about you, but if I dig down 1 m below an outhouse and all I find is exactly what you would expect to find under an outhouse, I am satisfied that the next 2 m will just be more of the same.

If anyone can find anything on the list that actually IS a peer-reviewed paper that is current, relevant, and supports skepticism of anthropogenic climate change, well we should talk about it. Until then, this list seems to be nothing but decomposing shit.

NB: If anyone wants to append comments about any of the papers on the list I will gladly incorporate them into the post. Thanks

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