Dr David Evans claims new climate change discovery

[Aractus]

When I see a "scientist" publish papers like that who is a known proponent of big business, I have to hesitate.

The two scientific papers pertaining to this discovery are undergoing peer-review as reported by PerthNow. Whether that means they have been written and submitted for publication, or (more likely) he has a team working with him to write the papers, they will be the first scientific papers to bare his name as author since 1989. I think people get confused about what peer-review is and isn't. Some people are prolific peer-review writers and write several papers all on the same topic. Then later those papers get counted individually - ah 5 or 6 papers in support of the current theory of CO2 leading climate temperature. In reality it's only one original paper, really, it's just been updated and re-submitted 4 or 5 times.

I can't tell you how annoying this is when I do research for different topics. It makes it very difficult to determine what the balanced view or range of views are on any given topic.

So I'm not surprised many scientists feel frustrated at the process and at the way papers are handled.

The claim is prominent on David's website.

Also take note of the 20-year bet between David and Brian Schmidt. "So my goal was to engage in a bet where if I lost money overall, then that would suggest a real problem with the science of climate change. Certainly if I lost every single one of these bets, with temperatures consistently increasing at a rate of less than 0.09C/decade over 10, then 15, and then 20 years, that might not disprove the climate change theory but it should leave some heads scratching." - Brian in 2007. "The Rashomon aspect comes from whether the bet looks like good news or bad news depending on your focus. I'm winning the first two months of the five year period from 2015 to 2019, which is good for me but not all that definitive. Prior to 2015, comparing years that didn't count, I was losing the bets, and prior to 2014 I was losing them badly." Brian in 2015.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

When I see a "scientist" publish papers like that who is a known proponent of big business, I have to hesitate.[/url]

The two scientific papers pertaining to this discovery are undergoing peer-review as reported by PerthNow. Whether that means they have been written and submitted for publication, or (more likely) he has a team working with him to write the papers, they will be the first scientific papers to bare his name as author since 1989. I think people get confused about what peer-review is and isn't. Some people are prolific peer-review writers and write several papers all on the same topic. Then later those papers get counted individually - ah 5 or 6 papers in support of the current theory of CO2 leading climate temperature. In reality it's only one original paper, really, it's just been updated and re-submitted 4 or 5 times.

I can't tell you how annoying this is when I do research for different topics. It makes it very difficult to determine what the balanced view or range of views are on any given topic.

So I'm not surprised many scientists feel frustrated at the process and at the way papers are handled.

The claim is [url=http://sciencespeak.com/climate-basic.html]prominent on David's website.

Also take note of the 20-year bet between David and Brian Schmidt. "So my goal was to engage in a bet where if I lost money overall, then that would suggest a real problem with the science of climate change. Certainly if I lost every single one of these bets, with temperatures consistently increasing at a rate of less than 0.09C/decade over 10, then 15, and then 20 years, that might not disprove the climate change theory but it should leave some heads scratching." - Brian in 2007. "The Rashomon aspect comes from whether the bet looks like good news or bad news depending on your focus. I'm winning the first two months of the five year period from 2015 to 2019, which is good for me but not all that definitive. Prior to 2015, comparing years that didn't count, I was losing the bets, and prior to 2014 I was losing them badly." Brian in 2015.

Submitted for peer review is irrelevant. 100% irrelevant. However, if they are found to be supported after the peer-review process, I'll take note of them.

It disturbs me a little that you don't know the difference. I could submit 100 papers for peer review, and even if they are accepted by the journals for publication, every one, it doesn't matter until other papers about my paper come out, citing my methodology and/or anything I may have missed in my evaluation and/or experimentation. Granted, I'd rather cite a paper by someone who has written 100 peer-reviewed articles than one who has written only ten, but it's still no guarantee that the papers will be of scientific accuracy or value, in either case.

The real measure of a scientist's accuracy, in the peer review process, is how many other scientists make reference to that person's work when doing their own work for peer review. Whether they are duplicating the results of the original paper or working to do better work using other methodology, good science quickly shows by who takes note of the work.

What scientists typically don't  do is put out a press article about their findings, or work with their "Global Warming Skeptics" blogger wife to put this data out there prior to peer review. With mathematical modeling, it's very easy to miss factors and get highly-skewed results, even if that's your main profession (as apparently his once was), which is why we even have peer-review. I'm not saying he's wrong, but some of the things I've seen in the articles, presumably being presented by him, are claims of a highly-dubious nature. (By "dubious", I mean that they seem to parrot many of the claims of conservative organizations I've been seeing for years, in some cases word-for-word.) For instance:

His discovery explains why none of the climate models used by the IPCC reflect the evidence of recorded temperatures. The models have failed to predict the pause in global warming which has been going on for 18 years and counting.

Except NASA says the opposite: (Source = http://data.giss.nasa.gov/)

While climate scientists have been predicting since the 1990s that changes in temperature would follow changes in carbon dioxide, the records over the past half million years show that not to be the case.

Except they do. There are other factors at play in determining global temperatures, to be sure, but we know what they are and can account for them (this is part of why NASA is involved in the climate research field; their satellites are one of the major methods of gathering data not impacted by being on/near the surface).



I think you should watch this video, about how these deniers operate:

[mralstoner]

I'm pro-environment, but agnostic on climate change. I think we have bigger existential problems like Islamo-nutjobs and China. Anyway, here's a watchable interview with David Evans, and another with his wife Jo Nova.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI3doCKhI7Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgMZegvtXB0

[Minimalist]

Remember the heroes who kept wanting to pump lead into the atmosphere?

No.  Not the gun nuts....the other assholes who wanted to pump lead into the atmosphere.

[Aractus]

---

Oh look Chuck, anyone who challenges the established scientific theory is viewed as a crackpot - think Semmelweis for example. The interesting thing about Semmelweis that people often ignore is that he didn't instruct hist students to wash their hands - they already did that. He specifically said soap and water was not good enough to remove the (invisible) cadaverous particles that he hypothesised were poisoning patients in the maternity ward, and that the medical students needed to wash their hands with a chlorinated lime solution instead!! I'll bet you don't wash your hands in chlorinated-lime, Chuck. It was around 30 years until germ theory was developed and accepted, and even then I can point you to scientific peer-review papers that urge the need for caution when assuming generalisability (applying to other medical conditions what has been 'proven only of some'). We look back on them now - and most people see a one-sided point of view that shows the scientific establishment resisting change. OF COURSE THEY RESIST CHANGE! That's what they're supposed to do. But challengers are supposed to be able to present evidence that can advance science - science only advances through falsification.

---

While some visionaries have been mistakenly treated as crackpots, the world would grind to a complete stop and then go off the rails while reversing if every crackpot is accorded the consideration given to visionaries.

You completely missed my point. Semmelweis WAS a crackpot. He was not a visionary - not at all. However the theory of the age - miasma theory - was completely wrong. Semmelweis did not have the correct theory to replace it, but he did recognise the established theory had to be wrong. Even after the direct communicable nature of diseases had been accepted scientists still urged for caution regarding generalisability or the acceptance of germ theory and abandonment of miasma theory: "we are not justified in extending to all contagia what has been proved to be true of some only" (E Buchanan Baxter 1878 Br Med J). And:

In short, the assertion that the contagia of certain communicable diseases are neither soluble, diffusible, nor volatile, is grounded on a substantial basis of observed facts; it is not what Magendie was so fond of stigmatising as a "vue de l'esprit".

All this, however, only goes to show that contagium is particulate; it does not show that it consists of living "germs". It is quite compatible with the belief that the virus of infective inflammation is "simply fibrinous exudation, which, after coagulation, has acquired poisonous properties".

What we see with climate science is a similar phenomena. The WEIGHT of evidence has shifted significantly over the past 10 years. Yet the theory based on the previous weight of evidence has been sustained.

[Edwardo Piet]

I'm not sure how much humans have to do with climate change....... but I'm pretty damn sure it's some:

[Aractus]

I think you should watch this video, about how these deniers operate:

I'm not interested in watching a video about American climate policy.

Submitted for peer review is irrelevant. 100% irrelevant. However, if they are found to be supported after the peer-review process, I'll take note of them.

It disturbs me a little that you don't know the difference. I could submit 100 papers for peer review, and even if they are accepted by the journals for publication, every one, it doesn't matter until other papers about my paper come out, citing my methodology and/or anything I may have missed in my evaluation and/or experimentation. Granted, I'd rather cite a paper by someone who has written 100 peer-reviewed articles than one who has written only ten, but it's still no guarantee that the papers will be of scientific accuracy or value, in either case.

The real measure of a scientist's accuracy, in the peer review process, is how many other scientists make reference to that person's work when doing their own work for peer review. Whether they are duplicating the results of the original paper or working to do better work using other methodology, good science quickly shows by who takes note of the work.

Are you sure you understand how peer-review works? Peer review works by having your submitted article sent to your academic peers by the Journal editors for review prior to publication. Your article gets accepted and published only AFTER it has been peer-reviewed.

What scientists typically don't  do is put out a press article about their findings, or work with their "Global Warming Skeptics" blogger wife to put this data out there prior to peer review. With mathematical modeling, it's very easy to miss factors and get highly-skewed results, even if that's your main profession (as apparently his once was), which is why we even have peer-review. I'm not saying he's wrong, but some of the things I've seen in the articles, presumably being presented by him, are claims of a highly-dubious nature. (By "dubious", I mean that they seem to parrot many of the claims of conservative organizations I've been seeing for years, in some cases word-for-word.)

Oh bullshit. NASA has a whole section of their website devoted to press releases. Did you hear they "found flowing water on Mars"? You didn't learn that from peer-review ... the claim was published on their website. What about something more recent: Scientists discover new rat species in Indonesia (source). “We knew immediately it was a new species and then the only question was rather [whether] it was a new genus or whether it was related closely to anything already described.” Here's a video of them making this claim:

http://youtu.be/gZPUDUKuCNI

I guess they're not real scientists - according to you - since they made a press-release about their findings instead of writing a journal article and waiting for it to be published?

For instance:

His discovery explains why none of the climate models used by the IPCC reflect the evidence of recorded temperatures. The models have failed to predict the pause in global warming which has been going on for 18 years and counting.

Except NASA says the opposite: (Source = http://data.giss.nasa.gov/)

Your graph ends in the year 2000, so how does it tell anything about the accuracy of prospective climate modelling?

While climate scientists have been predicting since the 1990s that changes in temperature would follow changes in carbon dioxide, the records over the past half million years show that not to be the case.

Except they do. There are other factors at play in determining global temperatures, to be sure, but we know what they are and can account for them (this is part of why NASA is involved in the climate research field; their satellites are one of the major methods of gathering data not impacted by being on/near the surface).

Great an unlabelled graph. You do know that the RED line is CO2 and the BLUE is temperature, right? There is an 800 year lag - difficult to see on that compressed graph. This is discussed in dozens of Journal articles, only one of which in recent years has claimed there's a problem with the data suggesting that there is not an 800-year lag.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

I think you should watch this video, about how these deniers operate:

I'm not interested in watching a video about American climate policy.

It's not a video about American climate policy. It's a video about how climate denial (and other science-muddling) professionals operate on behalf of corporations so companies can continue to make a profit by delaying regulation legislation from passing, influencing both popular and political opinion.

Why would I suggest a video about American climate policy?

Submitted for peer review is irrelevant. 100% irrelevant. However, if they are found to be supported after the peer-review process, I'll take note of them.

It disturbs me a little that you don't know the difference. I could submit 100 papers for peer review, and even if they are accepted by the journals for publication, every one, it doesn't matter until other papers about my paper come out, citing my methodology and/or anything I may have missed in my evaluation and/or experimentation. Granted, I'd rather cite a paper by someone who has written 100 peer-reviewed articles than one who has written only ten, but it's still no guarantee that the papers will be of scientific accuracy or value, in either case.

The real measure of a scientist's accuracy, in the peer review process, is how many other scientists make reference to that person's work when doing their own work for peer review. Whether they are duplicating the results of the original paper or working to do better work using other methodology, good science quickly shows by who takes note of the work.

Are you sure you understand how peer-review works? Peer review works by having your submitted article sent to your academic peers by the Journal editors for review prior to publication. Your article gets accepted and published only AFTER it has been peer-reviewed.

1) That only addresses the difference between published and cited, and

2) That ignores that, especially in smaller journals, the process of getting published can be loose at best.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2586872/

The principal implication of our findings, when taken together with the previous studies cited above, is that journal editors should not assume that their reviewers will detect most major flaws in manuscripts. The study paints a rather bleak picture of the effectiveness of peer review. Improvements after training were minor despite using the types of papers easiest to review for errors, our reviewers being better trained and qualified than those at many smaller journals, and despite focusing on technical errors that are easier to detect than more fundamental errors involving flawed assumptions and theoretical models. Clearly, using more than one reviewer may increase the total numbers of errors detected, though some errors are likely to remain undetected. [...]

What scientists typically don't  do is put out a press article about their findings, or work with their "Global Warming Skeptics" blogger wife to put this data out there prior to peer review. With mathematical modeling, it's very easy to miss factors and get highly-skewed results, even if that's your main profession (as apparently his once was), which is why we even have peer-review. I'm not saying he's wrong, but some of the things I've seen in the articles, presumably being presented by him, are claims of a highly-dubious nature. (By "dubious", I mean that they seem to parrot many of the claims of conservative organizations I've been seeing for years, in some cases word-for-word.)

Oh bullshit. NASA has a whole section of their website devoted to press releases. Did you hear they "found flowing water on Mars"? You didn't learn that from peer-review ... the claim was published on their website. What about something more recent: Scientists discover new rat species in Indonesia (source). “We knew immediately it was a new species and then the only question was rather [whether] it was a new genus or whether it was related closely to anything already described.” Here's a video of them making this claim:

{snip}

I guess they're not real scientists - according to you - since they made a press-release about their findings instead of writing a journal article and waiting for it to be published?

I said "scientists typically don't", not "real" scientists. Try not to straw-man.

We have dedicated entire threads to the fact that NASA pimps their work in a desperate attempt to maintain funding. As for the biological finding, he's not making such a radical new finding that he's claiming to throw all of biology into an uproar over it. Can you really not grasp the difference between saying, "Hey we found a new species that may or may not be a new genus of rat. Neat!" and "Hey, everything scientists knew was wrong!" in a pre-peer-review public article?

For instance:

Except NASA says the opposite: (Source = http://data.giss.nasa.gov/)

{snip}

Your graph ends in the year 2000, so how does it tell anything about the accuracy of prospective climate modelling?

That's why I linked to the GISS website on the NASA page, which contains dozens of other graphs and listings of their data and conclusions, right above the graph I chose. I picked that particular one because it shows the radical upspike trend most clearly.

Except they do. There are other factors at play in determining global temperatures, to be sure, but we know what they are and can account for them (this is part of why NASA is involved in the climate research field; their satellites are one of the major methods of gathering data not impacted by being on/near the surface).

Great an unlabelled graph. You do know that the RED line is CO2 and the BLUE is temperature, right? There is an 800 year lag - difficult to see on that compressed graph. This is discussed in dozens of Journal articles, only one of which in recent years has claimed there's a problem with the data suggesting that there is not an 800-year lag.

All true; but I picked the 400,000+ year graph to show that there is indeed a direct (if delayed) correlation between the figures. Most of the papers on the subject have concluded that there are "buffer" elements in play which absorb the impact of the increased CO2 for a while, like melting ice/glaciers, ocean pH changes, plant growth, etc. The 800-year figure may be the natural number, but of course nature has never before had to deal with the sudden massive spike in CO2 caused by the hydrocarbon-producing and forest-clearing activities of humanity, so they also concluded that we are unlikely to experience the same degree of lag as has been historically observed.

[Aractus]

400,000 years is quite recent history. Humans have been alive and well throughout most if not all of that time. Your graph shows that temperatures in human history have been between 2-4 degrees warmer than present in the past.

The last time CO2 levels were higher than 400ppm was 23 million years ago - and before that they were substantially higher than they are today, but without the temperature increasing to the levels projected by the IPCC.

As for your comment on peer-review process; the quality of the Journal does depend of course - however you have no evidence that Evans is having his papers published in a non-reputable Journal.

[Thumpalumpacus]

400,000 years is quite recent history. Humans have been alive and well throughout most if not all of that time. Your graph shows that temperatures in human history have been between 2-4 degrees warmer than present in the past.

I don't think the comparison here is apt. Small bands of hunter-gatherers can shift food sources and relocate without too much turbulence. But nowadays, with a highly developed civilization and billions of people reliant on agribusiness (which is in the reliant on a small group of staple crops which are highly specialized and therefore more vulnerable to environmental flux) means that should a 2-4*F rise occur, it could potentially be catastrophic.

This isn't considering the fact that huge numbers of people who live on coastlines would be displaced by a rise in ocean level. This also doesn't consider the oceanic acidification that would result from an atmospheric rise in CO2.