2,258 Meaningless Search Results

Rebuttal to "2,258 peer-reviewed climate articles"


James Powell continues to demonstrate his computer illiteracy by doing worthless database searches in an intellectually dishonest propaganda campaign. He updated his previous meaningless analysis in continued blissful ignorance that the 'Web of Science' database does not have a "peer-reviewed" filter and the existence of a search phrase in a returned result does not determine it's context. Thus, all that can be claimed is there were 2,258 meaningless search results not "peer-reviewed climate articles" for a query of the 'Web of Science' database - with 1 chosen by strawman argument.

1. The context of how the "search phrases" were used in all the results was never determined.

2. The results are padded by not using the search qualifier "anthropogenic".

3. The 2,258 results cannot be claimed to be peer-reviewed as the Web of Science does not have a peer-reviewed filter.

4. It is a strawman argument that most skeptics deny or reject that man can have an influence on the climate, but rather if there is any cause for alarm.


1. Context matters

The existence of a search phrase in a returned result does not determine its context. So making any arguments for or against an implied position relating to the use of a phrase by simply looking at numerical result totals is impossible. Powell never determined the context of how the search phrases were used in all the results.


2. Padding the Results

Powell padded his search results total by using the phrases; "global warming" and/or "global climate change" instead of "anthropogenic global warming" [man-made global warming] or "anthropogenic global climate change" [man-made global climate change], which would have significantly reduced the number of returned results. Without the qualifier "anthropogenic", results are included where no claim of explicit endorsement or rejection of ACC/AGW can be made.

Others alarmists have been challenged to search for the phrase, "anthropogenic climate change" using Oreskes (2004) methods and they only got 108 returned results.

"I did the search [in Web of Science] for "anthropogenic climate change" the other day and got something like 108 papers." - Barry Bickmore, Professor at Brigham Young University

These low number of results are not useful to sell the type of propaganda alarmists like Powell are looking for.


3. Peer-Reviewed?

In his methods, Powell filtered his results by the 'articles' document type which includes content that may not be peer-reviewed depending on the specific journal,

Document Type Descriptions (Web of Science)

"Article: Reports of research on original works. Includes research papers, features, brief communications, case reports, technical notes, chronology, and full papers that were presented at a symposium or conference." - Thomson Reuters

Categories like these have been the subject of debate and confusion in relation to their peer-review status,

"...three categories of articles have been published: review articles up to 10 000 words, original articles of 2500–5000 words and brief communications of 1000–2000 words. Only the first two categories were subject to peer review and brief communications were being published without this quality check." - Health Information and Libraries Journal

"Because of trends in submissions, Nature's Brief Communications will bow out at the end of the year. [...] False rumours that the section was not peer reviewed have occasionally circulated." - Nature

"General interest features are not peer-reviewed..." - Journal American Water Works Association

Web of Science Core Collection: Explanation of peer reviewed journals

"It is possible that a few journals in Web of Science Core Collection are not peer-reviewed [...] Although a journal is peer-reviewed, certain document types within an issue may not be, [...] Thomson Reuters does not keep a log or list of which journals do have peer review status."
- Thomson Reuters


4. Strawman argument

Actual skeptic arguments include that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is exaggerated or inconsequential, such as those made by Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D. Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT and John R. Christy, Ph.D. Professor of Atmospheric Science at UHA. Skeptics unanimously reject that there is any cause for alarm.

By fabricating a strawman argument claiming he found only 1 author who "rejected man-made global warming", Powell intentionally ignored actual skeptic arguments and failed to count many papers. Including a 14-paper special edition on climate change in the IPCC cited journal, Energy & Environment (Vol. 24, No. 3-4, June 2013) which included,

Climate Change and Carbon Dioxide: Geological Perspective
(Energy & Environment, Volume 24, Number 3-4, pp. 361-380, June 2013)
- Harry N. A. Priem

Inconsistency of Modeled and Observed Tropical Temperature Trends
(Energy & Environment, Volume 24, Number 3-4, pp. 405-414, June 2013)
- S. Fred Singer

Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change: 2013
(Energy & Environment, Volume 24, Number 3-4, pp. 415-420, June 2013)
- David H. Douglass, John R. Christy

Why Scientists are 'Sceptical' About the AGW Concept
(Energy & Environment, Volume 24, Number 3-4, pp. 551-560, June 2013)
- Arthur Rorsch, Peter A. Ziegler


Conclusion

Powell continues in the trend of propaganda started by Oreskes (2004) which is considered useless by world renowned climate experts,

"Analyses like these by people who don't know the field are useless. A good example is Naomi Oreskes work." - Tom Wigley, Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

He intentionally ignores actual skeptic arguments, which includes the 993-page NIPCC report, Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science (2013) - supported entirely by the peer-reviewed literature and 1000+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skeptic Arguments Against ACC/AGW Alarm.

Instead he hopes his propaganda will be picked up by the media and used by those who are intellectual dishonest and want to be intentionally misleading.

Origin of the Popular Technology.net Peer-Reviewed List

There are various myths floating around online about where the Popular Technology.net peer-reviewed paper list originated, falsely giving credit to people who copied earlier versions of my list and published it as their own. The following is a brief history,

Back in February 2007 I began compiling 'The Anti "Man-Made" Global Warming Resource'. The resource originally had a section dedicated to "peer-reviewed papers" where I would add various papers as I found them. Some basic categories existed and by the end of the year it had just less than 200 papers on the list. However it was effectively a rough draft that was not ready for publication. There were various reasons for this including that not all the journals were confirmed to be peer-reviewed. For instance, papers only published at arXiv.org are not peer-reviewed.

In April of 2008 the list was copied verbatim from the Popular Technology.net forums without my permission to Pete's Place in an article titled, 'Peer-Reviewed Articles Skeptical Of Man-Caused Global Warming'. At first I assumed he would give proper credit to myself and this site but when it quickly began showing up around the Internet as his I briefly commented asking for recognition as the source. I received no reply and his post was not updated to correctly recognize the source. Instead Peter apparently lied to and fooled the Heartland Institute into posting my list as "Compiled by Peter Risdon",

Scores of Peer-Reviewed Studies Contradict Global Warming Alarmism (The Heartland Institute, July 1, 2008)
More Peer-Reviewed Studies Contradict Global Warming Alarmism (The Heartland Institute, August 1, 2008)
Still More Peer-Reviewed Studies Contradict Global Warming Alarmism (The Heartland Institute, September 1, 2008)

I could not believe it and thus set out to compile a larger more inclusive list for publication at Popular Technology.net. When the paper count reached over 450 it was published in October of 2009. The irony here is I was quickly attacked by some as copying the Heartland Institute's list (this false claim is still being repeated to this day). Thanks to the dishonesty of Peter Risdon ripping off my own work, I was now being falsely accused of the same thing. To this day Peter has never updated his plagiarized post.

The only main third party sources initially used to compile the Popular Technology.net list were,

1. Dr. Khandekar's Bibliography of Peer-Reviewed Papers
2. CO2Science's Subject Archive

While I have received some submissions from scientists and skeptics, the bulk of the papers came from hundreds of hours of independent research searching online databases, websites and books.

When you spend enough time on a project you would like the proper credit for doing so.


Update: Using the Wayback Machine it is irrefutable that the list originated in the Popular Technology.net forums. Unfortunately the December 2007 capture is the closest available to Ridley's April 2008 post leaving a four month gap which misses some later additions such as the Cosmic Ray section but the exact formatting style including the categories and quotes cannot be denied.

Are Skeptical Scientists funded by ExxonMobil?

In an article titled, "Analysing the ‘900 papers supporting climate scepticism’: 9 out of top 10 authors linked to ExxonMobil" from the environmental activist website The Carbon Brief, former Greenpeace "researcher" Christian Hunt failed to do basic research. He made no attempt to contact the scientists he unjustly attacked and instead used biased and corrupt websites like DeSmogBlog to smear them as "linked to" [funded by] ExxonMobil.

To get to the truth, I emailed the scientists mentioned in the article the following questions;

1. Have you ever received direct funding from ExxonMobil?

2. Do funding sources have any influence over your scientific work?

3. Has your scientific position regarding climate change ever changed due to a funding source?

4. Please include any additional comment on the article,

Their responses follow,




John R. Christy, B.A. Mathematics Summa Cum Laude, California State University (1973); M.S. Atmospheric Science, University of Illinois (1984); Ph.D. Atmospheric Science, University of Illinois (1987); Science Master, Baptist High School, Nyeri, Kenya (1973-1975); Departmental Fellow, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (1983); Senior Research Associate and Instructor, University of Alabama in Huntsville (1987-1989); Research Scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville (1989-1991); Alabama Assistant State Climatologist (1989-1991); NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (1991); NASA Technical Innovation Award, Marshall Space Flight Center; Assistant Professor of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama in Huntsville (1991-1995); Associate Professor of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama in Huntsville (1995-1999); Expert Contributor, Climate Observations, National Academy of Sciences (1995); American Meteorological Society Special Award (1996); Expert Contributor, Satellite Observations for Climate National Research Council (1997); Member, Committee on Earth Studies, Space Studies Board (1998-2001); Professor of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama in Huntsville (1999-Present); Director, Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama in Huntsville (1991-Present); Alabama State Climatologist (2000-Present); Fellow, American Meteorological Society (2002); Expert Contributor, Statement on Climate Change, American Geophysical Union (2003); Distinguished Alumnus, Science and Mathematics, California State University, Fresno (2007); Distinguished Professor, University of Alabama in Huntsville (2008); Member, American Geophysical Union (AGU); Contributor, IPCC (1992, 1994, 1995, 2007); Expert Reviewer, IPCC (2013); Lead Author, IPCC (2001)

1. Have you ever received direct funding from ExxonMobil?

Christy: "No.

2. Do funding sources have any influence over your scientific work?

Christy: "I don't believe so."

3. Has your scientific position regarding climate change ever changed due to a funding source?

Christy: "No."

4. Please include any additional comment on the article,

Christy: "The connection between industrial interests and me is given by describing me as a "Marshall Institute expert". I spoke at a luncheon sponsored by the Marshall Institute, free of charge, to about 30 people. My remarks were incorporated into a booklet. That is the extent of my connection - hardly evidence to accuse one of being an industry spokesman."

David H. Douglass, B.S. Physics, University of Maine; Ph.D. Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1959); Lincoln Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1959-1961); Member, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1961); Assistant Professor of Physics, University of Chicago; Associate Professor of Physics, University of Chicago; Professor of Physics, University of Chicago; Fellow, American Physical Society; Professor of Physics, University of Rochester (1968-Present)

1. Have you ever received direct funding from ExxonMobil?

Douglass: "No funds from Exxon Mobil or any other fossil fuel industry."

2. Do funding sources have any influence over your scientific work?

Douglass: "No."

3. Has your scientific position regarding climate change ever changed due to a funding source?

Douglass: "No."

4. Please include any additional comment on the article,

Douglass: "I have no research funds from the fossil fuel industry or any governmental body."

Bruce A. Kimball, B.S. Soil Physics, University of Minnesota (1963), M.S. Soil Physics, Iowa State University (1965), Ph.D. Soil Physics, Cornell University (1970), Soil Scientist, U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory, U.S. Department of Agriculture - Agricultural Research Service (1969-1991), Certificate of Merit, U.S. Department of Agriculture (1974, 1992, 1998), Associate Editor, Soil Science Society of America Journal (1977-1982), Associate Editor, Transactions of the ASAE (1984-1987), Fellow, American Society of Agronomy (1987), Fellow, Soil Science Society of America (1987), Associate Editor, Agronomy Journal (1989-1991), Research Leader, U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory, U.S. Department of Agriculture - Agricultural Research Service (1991-2006), National Program Leader for Global Change, U.S. Department of Agriculture - Agricultural Research Service (1999), Fellowship, Science and Technology Agency of Japan (2000), Collaborator, Arid-Land Agricultural Research Center, U.S. Department of Agriculture - Agricultural Research Service (2007-Present), ISI Highly Cited Researcher; Expert Reviewer, IPCC (2007)

1. Have you ever received direct funding from ExxonMobil?

Kimball: "No."

2. Do funding sources have any influence over your scientific work?

Kimball: "Of course. There are a number of experiments I would like to do that I have not been able to get funded."

3. Has your scientific position regarding climate change ever changed due to a funding source?

Kimball: "No."

4. Please include any additional comment on the article,

Kimball: "Almost all of my work co-authored with Sherwood Idso has been about the effects of elevated CO2 concentrations on the growth of plants, and I have never published on whether elevated CO2 affects climate. Further, all of the CO2 work was funded by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Energy."

 
Richard S. Lindzen, A.B. Physics Magna Cum Laude, Harvard University (1960); S.M. Applied Mathematics, Harvard University (1961); Ph.D. Applied Mathematics, Harvard University (1964); Research Associate in Meteorology, University of Washington (1964-1965); NATO Post-Doctoral Fellow, Institute for Theoretical Meteorology, University of Oslo (1965-1966); Research Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research (1966-1967); Visiting Lecturer in Meteorology, UCLA (1967); NCAR Outstanding Publication Award (1967); AMS Meisinger Award (1968); Associate Professor and Professor of Meteorology, University of Chicago (1968-1972); Summer Lecturer, NCAR Colloquium (1968, 1972, 1978); AGU Macelwane Award (1969); Visiting Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences, Tel Aviv University (1969); Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (1970-1976); Gordon McKay Professor of Dynamic Meteorology, Harvard University (1972-1983); Visiting Professor of Dynamic Meteorology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1975); Lady Davis Visiting Professor, Department of Meteorology, The Hebrew University (1979); Director, Center for Earth and Planetary Physics, Harvard University (1980-1983); Robert P. Burden Professor of Dynamical Meteorology, Harvard University (1982-1983); AMS Charney Award (1985); Vikram Amblal Sarabhai Professor, Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India (1985); Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship (1986-1987); Distinguished Visiting Scientist, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA (1988-Present); Sackler Visiting Professor, Tel Aviv University (1992); Landsdowne Lecturer, University of Victoria (1993); Bernhard Haurwitz Memorial Lecturer, American Meteorological Society (1997); Fellow, American Academy of Arts & Sciences; Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science; Fellow, American Geophysical Union; Fellow, American Meteorological Society; Member, Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters; Member, Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society; Member, National Academy of Sciences; Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1983-2013); Distinguished Senior Fellow, Center for the Study of Science, Cato Institute (2013-Present); Lead Author, IPCC (2001); ISI Highly Cited Researcher

1. Have you ever received direct funding from ExxonMobil?

Lindzen: "No."

2. Do funding sources have any influence over your scientific work?

Lindzen: "My only funding has been from the government funding agencies: NSF, NASA, and DOE. They actually do influence scientific work."

3. Has your scientific position regarding climate change ever changed due to a funding source?

Lindzen: "No. My objections date back to the 80's."

4. Please include any additional comment on the article,

Lindzen: "I have never received any compensation from the Annapolis Center. I briefly served on the board as a favor to Harrison Schmitt. Since they never asked me to do anything, I resigned."

Ross McKitrick, B.A. (Hons) Economics, Queen's University, Canada (1988); M.A. Economics, University of British Columbia, Canada (1990); Ph.D. Economics, University of British Columbia, Canada (1996); Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Guelph, Canada (1996-2001); Associate Professor of Economics, University of Guelph, Canada (2001-2008); Member, Academic Advisory Board, John Deutsch Institute, Queen's University, Canada; Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute, Canada; Professor of Environmental Economics, University of Guelph, Canada (2008-Present); Expert Reviewer, IPCC (2007)

1. Have you ever received direct funding from ExxonMobil?

McKitrick: "No, I have never sought or received funding from Exxon or any other oil company. My research funding comes from SSHRCC, a peer-reviewed federal granting agency, and from internal university funds. In many case I don't have any external funding for research projects since I don't incur any costs. The theory that Exxon generates the academic research that contests climate alarmism is one of those tired cliches that appeals to stupid, lazy people who can't be bothered reading the papers and understanding the arguments."

2. Do funding sources have any influence over your scientific work?

McKitrick: "No of course not. If I was willing to change my views to ingratiate myself with a funding source I would by now be on the global warming alarmist bandwagon."

3. Has your scientific position regarding climate change ever changed due to a funding source?

McKitrick: "No, to the extent my scientific position on climate change has developed and changed over the years it has been due to the research I have seen and done, and the data that has been published. My views, and the arguments that support them, are copiously documented in my writings."

4. Please include any additional comment on the article,

McKitrick: "It is noteworthy that the article omits the fact that I am a tenured full professor at the University of Guelph, and only describes me as a Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute. For an article obsessed with funding sources, they neglect to point out that my salary comes from the University, not the Institute, and my external research funding comes from SSHRCC. With regard to the Fraser Institute, to say it is "Exxon Funded" betrays the ignorance of the article authors. The Fraser Institute is the largest and most influential economic policy think tank in Canada and one of the most influential think tanks in the world. It is supported by annual donations from over 6,000 individuals, foundations and organizations, none of whom have any editorial control over research. I do not know which corporations donate in any given year, since I am not involved in fundraising and it does not affect me, since the Institute does not do any contract research, either for industry or government or anyone else, in order to maintain its editorial autonomy. The Institute has never had any involvement with my academic journal articles, either in the form of funding or collaboration.

The article's dishonesty is also revealed by their comment about the Global Warming Policy Foundation -- "funders unknown". Had they checked http://thegwpf.org/who-we-are/history-and-mission.html they would see that it is funded by individuals and charitable trusts, and does not accept donations from energy firms or from any individual with a significant interest in an energy company."

S. Fred Singer, BEE, Ohio State University (1943); A.M. Physics, Princeton University (1944); Ph.D. Physics, Princeton University (1948); Research Physicist, Upper Atmosphere Rocket Program, Applied Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University (1946-1950); Scientific Liaison Officer, U.S. Office of Naval Research (1950-1953); Director, Center for Atmospheric and Space Physics, and Professor of Physics, University of Maryland (1953-1962); White House Commendation for Early Design of Space Satellites (1954); Visiting Scientist, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Cal Tech (1961-1962); First Director, National Weather Satellite Center (1962-1964); First Dean of the School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences, University of Miami (1964-1967); Deputy Assistant Secretary (Water Quality and Research), U.S. Department of the Interior (1967-1970); Deputy Assistant Administrator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (1970-1971); Federal Executive Fellow, The Brookings Institution (1971); Professor of Environmental Science, University of Virginia (1971-1994); U.S. National Academy of Sciences Exchange Scholar, Soviet Academy of Sciences Institute for Physics of the Earth (1972); Member, Governor of Virginia Task Force on Transportation (1975); First Sid Richardson Professor, Lyndon Baines Johnson School for Public Affairs, University of Texas (1978); Vice Chairman and Member, National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmospheres (1981-1986); Senior Fellow, The Heritage Foundation (1982-1983); Member, U.S. Department of State Science Advisory Board (Oceans, Environment, Science) (1982-1987); Member, Acid Rain Panel, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (1982-1987); Member, NASA Space Applications Advisory Committee (1983-1985); Member, U.S. Department of Energy Nuclear Waste Panel (1984); Visiting Eminent Scholar, George Mason University (1984-1987); Chief Scientist, U.S. Department of Transportation (1987-1989); Member, White House Panel on U.S.-Brazil Science and Technology Exchange (1987); Distinguished Research Professor, Institute for Space Science and Technology (1989-1994); Guest Scholar, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Smithsonian Institute (1991); Guest Scholar, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institute (1991); Distinguished Visiting Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University (1992-1993); Distinguished Research Professor, Institute for Humane Studies, George Mason University (1994-2000); Commendation for Research on Particle Clouds, NASA (1997); Research Fellow, Independent Institute (1997); Director and President, The Science and Environmental Policy Project (1989-Present); Expert Reviewer, IPCC (2001)

1. Have you ever received direct funding from ExxonMobil?

Singer: "Yes. An unsolicited and unexpected donation of $10,000 more than a decade ago."

2. Do funding sources have any influence over your scientific work?

Singer: "None Whatsoever."

3. Has your scientific position regarding climate change ever changed due to a funding source?

Singer: "No."

4. Please include any additional comment on the article,

Singer: "1. We are funded almost 100% by private donations from individuals.

2. I note that Exxon and other companies are funding supporters of AGW with direct grants to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

3. I note the common smear tactic of such terms as 'linked to' in the final analysis, since Exxon pays taxes to government, the multi-billions of tax money suporting AGW science are 'linked to' Exxon etc."

The following gave a general statement,



Indur M. Goklany, B.Tech. Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India (1968); M.S. Electrical Engineering, Michigan State University (1969); Ph.D. Electrical Engineering, Michigan State University (1973); Julian Simon Fellow, Property and Environment Research Center (2000); Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute (2002-2003); Julian Simon Award (2007); Rapporteur and Principal Author, Resource Use and Management Subgroup, IPCC (1988-1992); Reviewer, WGI, II, and III Reports, IPCC (1989-1991); U.S. Delegate, IPCC (1988-1992, 2003-2004); U.S. Technical Advisor, Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for UNFCCC (1990-1992); US Delegate, UNFCCC (2007); Expert Reviewer, IPCC (2005-2007); Assistant Director of Programs & Science & Technology Policy, U.S. Department of the Interior (Present)

General Comment:

Goklany: "As its name reveals, Carbon Brief's entire raison d’etre hinges on the notion that carbon dioxide is a harmful substance. Therefore it is hardly surprising that it would attack any individual or organization that would dare suggest that CO2 is not as harmful as it would have us believe.

Readers can judge for themselves who has a greater financial stake in the man-made global warming issue: I, who has never taken a sous from Exxon-Mobil, or Carbon Brief whose very existence depends on perpetuating the notion CO2 is a harmful, if not downright dangerous, gas.

What's interesting about Carbon Brief's "analysis" is that it is devoid of intellectual content. It doesn't present any science, data or reasoned argument refuting – or even questioning -- the contents of the papers cited in Popular Technology. Instead it uses that time-honored technique used by those who have no arguments: guilt by association. This is first cousin to an ad hominem attack. The irony is that on its web page, ABOUT US, it has a Comments policy which states:

- Stay on-topic: stick to the subject of the blog you are commenting on. Off-topic comments (even if reasonable, polite and interesting) may be deleted. Comments which contain links to inappropriate, irrelevant or commercial sites may also be deleted.

- Advance the discussion: we welcome evidence-based comments and links to useful resources. Persistent comments along the lines of "this is just alarmist/denier nonsense" with no supporting evidence may be deleted.

- Be polite: comments which contain swearing or which abuse other participants in the debate may be deleted. No ALL CAPS shouting please. Particularly:

- No ad hominem attacks: vigorous debate is fine, but not personal attacks or accusations (Underlining is added).

So will Carbon Brief follow through on its policy and delete its blogs that refer to its so-called "analysis"?

Normally when I have the time, I am happy to discuss and debate my views, science, reasoning, etc. But in the case of Carbon Brief, I'll make an exception and refuse to engage, since its "analysis" reveals its lack of intellectual content.

Although I cannot, and have not avail myself of Exxon-Mobil's munificence, since the vast majority of my career has been in government, I have no doubt that some of its dollars have found their way into my pocket, via the moneys Exxon-Mobil pays in taxes. I have no idea who or what funds Carbon Brief, but I hope it keeps away from any government largesse: that’s contaminated with tax payments from all kinds of companies that produce and use fossil fuels."

Sherwood B. Idso, B.S. Physics Cum Laude, University of Minnesota (1964); M.S. Soil Science, University of Minnesota (1966); Ph.D. Soil Science, University of Minnesota (1967); Research Assistant in Physics, University of Minnesota (1962); National Defense Education Act Fellowship (1964-1967); Research Soil Scientist, U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (1967-1974); Editorial Board Member, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Journal (1972-1993); Secretary, American Meteorological Society, Central Arizona Chapter (1973-1974); Vice-Chair, American Meteorological Society, Central Arizona Chapter (1974-1975); Research Physicist, U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (1974-2001); Chair, American Meteorological Society, Central Arizona Chapter (1975-1976); Arthur S. Flemming Award (1977); Secretary, Sigma Xi - The Research Society, Arizona State University Chapter (1979-1980); President, Sigma Xi - The Research Society, Arizona State University Chapter (1980-1982); Member, Task Force on "Alternative Crops", Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (1983); Adjunct Professor of Geography and Plant Biology, Arizona State University (1984-2007); Editorial Board Member, Environmental and Experimental Botany Journal (1993-Present); Member, Botanical Society of America; Member, American Geophysical Union; Member, American Society of Agronomy; ISI Highly Cited Researcher; President, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (2001-Present)

General Comment:

Idso: "I presume that all of the original basic scientific research articles of which I am an author that appear on the list were written while I was an employee of the USDA's Agricultural Research Service; and, therefore, the only source of funding would have been the U.S. government. I retired from my position as a Research Physicist at the U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory in late 2001 and have not written any new reports of new original research. Since then, I have concentrated solely on studying new research reports written by others that appear each week in a variety of different scientific journals and writing brief reviews of them for the CO2Science website. In both of these segments of my scientific career, I have always presented -- and continue to present -- what I believe to be the truth. Funding never has had, and never will have, any influence on what I believe, what I say, and what I write."

Conclusion:

The scientists unjustly attacked in the Carbon Brief article are not "linked to" [funded by] ExxonMobil. The Carbon Brief and any other website perpetuating this smear should issue a retraction.

Google Scholar Illiteracy at Skeptical Science

Rebuttal to "Meet the Denominator"


* Google Scholar's interface has changed since 2011

In a desperate attempt to diminish the value of the list of peer-reviewed papers supporting skeptic's arguments, former bike messenger and man-purse maker Rob "Scumbags" Honeycutt from Skeptical Science not only lies but puts on a surprising display of his Google Scholar Illiteracy. He fails to use quotes when searching for phrases, is unable to count past 1000 and fails to remove erroneous results such as, the script for "Batman Returns" - believing it to be a peer-reviewed paper about global warming. It is clear that not only does he not understand how to properly use Google Scholar, he has no idea of the relevance of any of the results he gets.

Update: Rob was forced to concede I was correct (though never owns up to blatantly lying) and has desperately made a flawed updated "analysis". His original inaccurate number of 954,000 results went down to 189,553 results (which he fails to mention in his update) of which 160,130 (84%) CANNOT BE VERIFIED due to the 1000 result limit imposed by Google Scholar. The remaining results are irrefutably filled with erroneous nonsense such as, "Santa Claus, Last of the Wild Men: The Origins and Evolution of Saint Nicholas" that has to be individually removed before any sort of accurate count can be taken (see the updates for more information). None of which was done leaving his post to be worthless and those who cite it computer illiterate.

Update 2: Skeptical Science has censored (deleted) ALL of my hundreds of comments at their site.

1. Rob begins with a strawman argument that the list is only presenting one side of the argument. This has never been denied as one of the reasons the list was created was to show the skeptical side of the argument supported by the peer-reviewed literature. This purpose is explicitly stated on the list,

Purpose: To provide a resource for peer-reviewed papers that support skepticism of AGW or the negative environmental or socio-economic effects of AGW and to prove that these papers exist contrary to widely held beliefs.


2. Rob mentions previous criticisms of the list that have been completely refuted,

Rebuttal to "450 more lies from the climate change Deniers"


3. Rob produces erroneous results using a search query without quotes,

He does an advanced Google Scholar search query for the search words,

climate change

In his blog post he incorrectly lists them as a search phrase using quotes, "climate change". There is no mention that no quotes were used. As you will see this dramatically affects the results.

He then adds two advanced filters,

* Biology, Life Sciences, and Environmental Science
* Physics, Astronomy, and Planetary Science

The results,

climate change (no quotes + filters) - 956,000

When quotes are used you get a dramatically smaller result,

"climate change" (filters) - 635,000

It is clear Rob is only interested in results for the search phrase "climate change" yet by not using quotes he included erroneous results that simply included both words in any context, including having nothing to do with "climate change". Such as,

Managing the Process of Engineering Change Orders: The Case of the Climate Control System in Automobile Development
(Journal of Product Innovation Management, Volume 16, Issue 2, pp. 160–172, March 1999)
- Christian Terwiesch, Christoph H. Loch

Why is Rob counting results about climate control systems in automobiles?


4. Rob arbitrarily pulls out 10% of the results to remove citations failing to understand that these can be automatically filtered using Google Scholar,

What are the results marked [citation] and why can't I click on them? (Google Scholar Help)

"To exclude them [citations] from your search results, select at least summaries from the dropdown menu labeled include citations."

The results without citations,

climate change (no quotes + no citations + filters) - 901,000

"climate change" (no citations + filters) - 600,000

This just further demonstrates his inability to properly use Google Scholar.


5. Rob fails to understand that Google Scholar does not have a peer-reviewed only filter and thus he is counting erroneous results,

What do you include in Google Scholar? (Google Scholar Help)

"Google Scholar includes journal and conference papers, theses and dissertations, academic books, pre-prints, abstracts, technical reports and other scholarly literature from all broad areas of research. ...Shorter articles, such as book reviews, news sections, editorials, announcements and letters, may ...be included."

These non-peer-reviewed sources are easily proven to exist in Google Scholar search results; such as 21,000 from the Guardian, 86,000 from Newsweek and 144,000 from the New York Times.

Thus the only way for Rob to verify his numerical result total from his Google Scholar search is by checking that every single search result is a peer-reviewed paper from a peer-reviewed journal. He clearly did not do this.

Note: It is important to remember that every single result needs to be checked that it is a peer-reviewed paper and not simply in a peer-reviewed journal. As Google Scholar makes no distinction between non-peer-reviewed content that appears in peer-reviewed journals from peer-reviewed content.


6. It is impossible for Google Scholar to be used to verify more than 1000 results for any search query because it is hard limited to 1000 verifiable results,

Can I see more than 1,000 search results? (Google Scholar Help)

"Sorry, we can only show up to 1,000 results for any particular search query. Try a different query to get more results."

Thus it is impossible to verify Rob's claims as searched, making his conclusions meaningless.


7. Rob gets caught lying about how many papers he "perused",

"I did a pretty thorough perusal of the 200 pages of articles and it looks like they are all actual papers and not just references to any blogs or websites." - Rob Honeycutt, Skeptical Science

This is a lie as it is impossible to go past page 100 (1000 results) for any search query using Google Scholar.


8. A Google Scholar search result that includes the search phrase "climate change" does not mean it explicitly endorses "Anthropogenic Global Warming" theory. Explicit endorsement would require the inclusion of that phrase. How many results Google Scholar shows using this search phrase can easily be determined,

"anthropogenic global warming" (no citations + filters) = 662

However inclusion of this phrase can also mean criticism of the theory. The context of the phrase can only be determined by reading each and every result. Implicit endorsement would require reading each and every result for alternate search queries.


Conclusion:

No meaningful conclusion can be drawn regarding the number of peer-reviewed papers supporting AGW theory using numerical result totals from Google Scholar searches due to the inclusion of erroneous results. Thus no meaningful comparison of these results can be made to the list of Peer-Reviewed Papers.


Note: All numerical result totals from Google Scholar searches can change at anytime.


Update: After repeatedly pressed on how he "perused" 200 pages Rob eventually decided to change it to say, "I did a pretty thorough perusal of 200 articles of the 100 pages of results and it looks like they are all actual papers and not just references to any blogs or websites.". Unfortunately I do not believe this was an honest mistake as he did not immediately admit to the error instead posting six other comments avoiding it. This is not something anyone else would do if they made a legitimate typo. I believe he originally just made up the number so it appears he made a token effort at validation. The word "pages" and "papers" is not easily confused, let alone "pages" and "articles".

Update 2: Comments on the image (I can't make this stuff up),

"I would even go so far as to say by using that image in the context of Rob's name suggests it was a threat of violence by PT against Rob." - Albatross, Skeptical Science

"PT do you realize that if you leave that picture posted in it's current context that it constitutes an act of terrorism." - Ron Crouch, Skeptical Science

Update 3: The moderators at Skeptical Science have conveniently been deleting my comments wholesale instead of editing out whatever part they "claim" violates their policy. This hypocritical policy allows adherents to the site to make personally attacks, state false allegations and make other libelous claims against those they disagree with. Any attempt by the recipient of these attacks to defend themselves is usually deleted. This has created many false criticisms that it appears I did not address.

Update 4: Rob did an updated analysis, searching between 1971-2011 using the search phrase "climate change" and separately "global warming" per individual year, excluded citations and as he claims "checked for various other erroneous results".

Rob has admitted, "Poptech has brought up several valid points" and his new results as he calculated have went down from 954,000 to 189,553. A reduction of 764,447 results.

Unfortunately it is not possible to validate all of his results for the search phrase "climate change" between 1990-2011 and the search phrase "global warming" between 2002-2010 due to the 1000 search result limit imposed by Google Scholar. That makes it impossible to validate 160,130 (84%) of his results to accurately remove erroneous ones. Without accurately removing erroneous results no meaningful conclusions can be based on these numbers.

Rob's new analysis suffers contamination by very erroneous results such as,

Adam, Eve, and the genome: the Human Genome Project and theology [Book] (S.B. Thistlethwaite, 2003)

"This important book combines a basic primer on genetic research with ethical reflection by an interdisciplinary team on key questions and a deeper look, in light of such research, at what it means to be human."

Tom of Twofold Bay [Book] (V. Kattooparambil, 2007)

"This is the story of Tom, Killer whale of Twofold Bay, Eden, friend to George Davidson (bay whaler) and others like him: it is based upon a true story that will live in the memory of the citizens of Eden for eternity, a museum being built in Tom’s honour upon his death."

Around the States in 90 Days [Book] (A. Moseley, 2009)

"Determined to escape a 9 to 5 life but equally determined not to do anything socially worthwhile, Andy Moseley took the only option available to him and packed his bags and left for America. His plan was to see as much of the country as he could in 90 days. Starting in Washington and ending in San Francisco, he passed through Canada and along Route 66 taking in several places not on any logical route across the country, and eventually covering half of the States of America, and a few bits of Canada too."

Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America [Book] (E. Robinson, 2010)

"A Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and commentator explains how years of desegregation and affirmative action have led to the revelation of four distinct African American groups who reflect unique political views and circumstances, in a report that also illuminates crucial modern debates on race and class."

Landfall along the Chesapeake: in the wake of Captain John Smith [Book] (S. Schmidt, 2006)

"In 2002, Susan Schmidt retraced John Smith's 1608 voyage on the Chesapeake Bay. In Landfall along the Chesapeake, a cruising guide for Chesapeake boaters and a field log for naturalists, Schmidt compares the beauty of ancestral legacy and childhood memory to her observations on a 100-day voyage in a 22-foot boat."

Extreme Cuisine: Exotic Tastes from Around the World [Book] (Lonely Planet, 2009)

"Imagine tucking into grasshoppers as you wander the Mercado Benito market in Oaxaca, Mexico, or chowing down on juicy witchetty grubs on your travels through Central Australia - such meals can be the perfect entree to a culture. In this book you'll find over 50 delicacies that creep, crawl, sizzle and spit, where they originated from and where you can experience them. You may not salivate over blood, scorpions, chicken's knees or partially digested coffee beans, but travel long enough and you're bound to meet someone who does. Extreme Cuisine is sure to challenge your idea of what makes good eating."

The Last Stand of Chuck Norris: 400 All New Facts About the Most Terrifying Man in the Universe [Book] (Ian Spector, 2011)

"Just when you thought it was safe to read, Chuck Norris is back with another roundhouse kick to the face. Fans of this bestselling series will rejoice at this newest addition to the hilarious anthology. The Last Stand of Chuck Norris contains 400 all-new, kick-ass facts about the book's indomitable namesake, including:

- Chuck Norris sleeps with a pillow under his gun.
- When Chuck Norris crosses the street, the cars have to look both ways.
- Chuck Norris doesn't do push-ups. He pushes the world down.
- Chuck Norris doesn't need a Twitter account. He is already following you.
- Chuck Norris likes his ice like he likes his skulls: crushed."

Planet Mutonia and the Young Pop Star Wannabes [Book] (T. Kallison, 2010)

"Can you imagine a world without music? That's exactly what happened to young Melody Bell and her two friends, Harmon E. Cord and Justin Tyme. These three youngsters share their common aspirations to one day become celebrated pop stars!"

Are these the high impact journals skeptics cannot get published in?

It would be quite interesting to have Rob explain how these fit into climate science research but I do not find these types of erroneous results surprising as I am well aware of the limitations of Google Scholar for the type of analysis Rob is attempting.

Rob claims to have done a statistical sampling of 200 papers and found 6% were erroneous (his sampling methods are not disclosed) but due to the ranking of Google Scholar results a true random sampling would not be possible with results over 1000. This is because Google Scholar uses a ranking system that heavily weighs citations (among other factors) that would place actual peer-reviewed content towards the beginning of the results and erroneous content towards the end.

How are documents ranked? (About Google Scholar)

"Google Scholar aims to rank documents the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each document, where it was published, who it was written by, as well as how often and how recently it has been cited in other scholarly literature."

Sampling fails here with results over 1000 since more erroneous results would likely fall outside of the sample range, producing misleading statistics.

I want to reiterate that peer-reviewed papers that include the search phrase "climate change" does not mean explicit endorsement of "anthropogenic global warming".

It is thus not possible to validate Rob's new number of 189,553 and no meaningful conclusions can be drawn from his analysis, especially in relation to support for "anthropogenic global warming".

Note: To give a further example of why numerical result totals for Google Scholar search queries are unreliable; I repeated Rob's search for the phrase "Global Warming" (filters + no citations) for the 2010 year. Rob got 25,600 results, while I found only 22,900. This is a difference of 2,700 results by simply searching on different days.


Update 5: The Skeptical Science moderator "muoncounter" demonstrated his Google Scholar illiteracy by censoring my replies for what he falsely claimed, "You got what you searched for; the title of the book is in your search field" in regards to my demonstration of how Rob's new analysis suffers contamination by very erroneous results,

Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America [Book] (E. Robinson, 2010)

It is very clear "muoncounter" doesn't understand how Google Scholar works any better than Rob. Google Scholar search queries are cumulative, which means search results must include all search words and phrases in a search query. This is very easy to demonstrate and irrefutable. When I changed the phrase "climate change" to "global warming" the result disappears. If they were not cumulative then the result would still show up.

Note: I tried multiple times to post this to their site (each was deleted). Thus they left me no choice but to further embarrass them.

Google Scholar illiteracy in the PNAS

A recent paper published in the PNAS, "Expert credibility in climate change" is being used as propaganda to claim that 97% of all climate scientists agree with the IPCC and the need for government action on climate change. An analysis of this paper does not support these conclusions.

Note: All Google Scholar numerical result totals will change over time and sometimes every time you search.

PNAS reviewers and author's William R. L. Anderegg, James W. Prall, Jacob Harold and Stephen H. Schneider are apparently Google Scholar illiterate since searching for just the word "climate" with an author's name will bring results from non-peer-reviewed sources such as books, magazines, newspapers, patents, citations, duplicate listings and all sorts of other erroneous results. Such as 16,000 from the Guardian, 52,000 from Newsweek and 115,000 from the New York Times. There is no "peer-reviewed journal only" search option in Google Scholar.


Cherry Picking:

It is clear the authors cherry picked away skeptics using subjective criteria,

"we imposed a 20 climate-publications minimum to be considered a climate researcher."

So if a scientist published only 19 or less papers on the climate he is not considered an "expert". They did this intentionally as they noted,

"researchers with fewer than 20 climate publications comprise ≈80% the UE group."

Volume of publications does not indicate scientific truth nor does it denote expertise. It cannot be ignored that skeptics extensively publish peer-reviewed papers so they have to use this propaganda to subjectively define "experts". An objective criteria for determining if an author has done climate research would be if an author has or has not published a paper on the climate. Expertise is simply an opinion and who is considered an expert will change based on who you talk to.


Climate Patents:

By default Google Scholar is set to search both "articles and patents" yet no mention of searching only for articles is in the paper.



So why were they searching for patents and how is a patent that contains the search word "climate" a relevant "climate publication"?


Verification:

An attempt to reproduce the results using their methods was unsuccessful,

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

Using their search terms: "author:fi-lastname climate" I searched Google Scholar for the infamous CRU director Phil Jones,

author:P-Jones climate

Results: 6,580

The first result listed is "Very high resolution interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas" by author Peter G. Jones of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, Cali, Colombia.

The third result listed is "Organizational climate: A review of theory and research" in Psychological Bulletin by author Allan P. Jones of the Department of Psychology, University of Houston.

The seventh result listed is "Psychological climate: Dimensions and relationships of individual and aggregated work environment perceptions" in Organizational Behavior and Human Performance by author Allan P. Jones of the Department of Psychology, University of Houston.

Clearly these were not papers by Phil Jones of the CRU on climate change.

Looking on Prall's list of IPCC AR4 Working Group 1 Authors referenced from their Supplemental Information you see Phil Jones listed with 724 climate publications not the 6,580 that I found using their search method. A link is provided under "GS queries" for Phil Jones labeled "CLIM", clicking on this link brings a surprising revelation, the search term is changed to "author:PD-Jones climate". When their paper explicitly said "author:fi-lastname climate" and no mention is made of including the middle initial. It appears Prall added the middle initial arbitrarily to the authors on the list further undermining the consistency of their results. Using this search term I again searched Google Scholar,

author:PD-Jones climate

Results: 5,370

The sixth result down is "Climate since A. D. 1500", a 1992 book by Phil Jones not a peer-reviewed paper.

Chapter 13 from the same book is found later in the same results as a separate listing, "13 Climatic variations in the longest instrumental records", thus counting the same book twice.

The book's introduction is also found later in the same results "Climate since AD 1500: Introduction", now counting the same book three times but it gets worse,

Citations for this book are counted over 20 times in Google Scholar, further inflating the erroneous results. No mention of turning off citations is in their paper as this feature is on by default in Google Scholar and in the "CLIM" link from Prall's page.

The climate total number of 724 for Phil Jones on Prall's list is unverifiable using the methods outlined in their paper and appears to be made up.

It is clear they used the total number of climate publications because this is explicitly stated in their paper,

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

However no verification of these results was done by the authors as they only mention,

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

It appears they only verified the top four results for their "citation analysis" not for the total amount of results using the search word "climate" for each of the 1372 authors. As demonstrated here, without complete verification it is not possible to draw any meaningful conclusions that include erroneous results.

Conclusion: the study is worthless due to Google Scholar illiteracy and Cherry Picking.


References:
Google Scholar at the Academy (National Post, Canada)

Rebuttal to "Crock of the Week - Flogging the Scientists"

Peter Sinclair AKA "Greenman" a cartoonist and Al Gore disciple has been hard at work creating YouTube videos that smear skeptics and their arguments. The following is a complete rebuttal to his "Crock of the Week - Flogging the Scientists" video.


1. Sinclair claims that as a "non-scientist" he has found that the most "reliable" scientific information comes from "respected" peer-reviewed science journals. The problem with this statement is the use of subjective criteria. First he is admitting to be a "non-scientist" so why would anyone take his advice on where to find "reliable" scientific information or on what journals are more "respected"? Regardless what is considered "reliable" or "respected" is purely subjective and cannot be objectively determined. Now it is true that within the scientific community more scientific credibility is applied to "peer-reviewed" publications which is why skeptics have extensively published in peer-reviewed journals. Being peer-reviewed however does not mean something is a scientific truth, only that it has passed a certain level of scrutiny within the scientific community. There are documented cases of the corruption of this process,

A Climatology Conspiracy? (David H. Douglass, Ph.D. Professor of Physics; John R. Christy, Ph.D. Professor of Atmospheric Science)
Caspar and the Jesus paper (PDF) (Andrew W. Montford, B.Sc. Chemistry)
Circling the Bandwagons: My Adventures Correcting the IPCC (PDF) (Ross McKitrick, Ph.D. Professor of Environmental Economics)
The Double Standard in Environmental Science (PDF) (Stanley W. Trimble, Ph.D. Professor of Geography)


2. Sinclair then uses a strawman argument by comparing peer-reviewed journals to the conspiracy website InfoWars, the conservative news site WorldNetDaily and the UK's conservative newspaper the Daily Mail. Despite these site's excellent coverage of Climategate (even conspiracy sites get some things right) they are never confused by prominent skeptics with peer-reviewed journals.


3. In an attempt to attack the Daily Mail article, "Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995" Sinclair uses an article from what he calls, the "conservative" Economist magazine. The problem is the Economist magazine is not conservative,

"...the Economist's philosophy has always been liberal, not conservative" - Former Economist Editor Bill Emmott

This appears to be a failed attempt by Sinclair to pretend a conservative source agrees with his position.


4. Sinclair uses a quote from the original BBC interview with Phil Jones that actually makes the skeptics case,

BBC: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?

Phil Jones: Yes

This question originated with Dr. Richard Lindzen, Ph.D. Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT who has been trying to make a point about the ridiculously small fractions of a degree in temperature change that are being debated. When standard error bars are applied to these, you are left with no statistically significant warming in 15 years. Without statistical significance you cannot rule out that any recent positive warming trend did not occur by chance or in this case, measurement error.


5. Sinclair then dishonestly implies that Dr. Lindzen is "denying" the mild warming trend over the last century which is blatantly not true,

"Most of the climate community has agreed since 1988 that global mean temperatures have increased on the order of one degree Fahrenheit over the past century," - Dr. Richard Lindzen

6. Sinclair harps on a recently retracted paper on sea-level rise that for obvious reasons was widely discussed on skeptic websites prior to it's retraction. The retraction he claims was based on the findings of a recent PNAS paper by Steven Rahmstorf who's 2007 paper on the exact same subject in the journal Science was discredited,

- Comment on "A Semi-Empirical Approach to Projecting Future Sea-Level Rise" (PDF)
(Science, Volume 317, Number 5846, pp. 1866, September 2007)
- Torben Schmith, Soren Johansen, Peter Thejll

"We revisit the application of the statistical methods used and show that estimation of the regression coefficient is not robust."

- Comment on "A Semi-Empirical Approach to Projecting Future Sea-Level Rise" (PDF)
(Science, Volume 317, Number 5846, pp. 1866, September 2007)
- Simon Holgate, Svetlana Jevrejeva, Philip Woodworth, Simon Brewer

"Although we agree that there is considerable uncertainty in the prediction of future sea-level rise, this approach does not meaningfully contribute to quantifying that uncertainty."

7. Sinclair then goes off promoting Al Gore like fear-mongering of over 6 ft of sea-level rise by the end of the century, ignoring both the IPCC and a recent review of the science in an article in the journal Nature,

"This issue was highlighted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 2007 assessment report. They concluded that 'understanding of these effects is too limited ... to provide a best estimate or an upper bound for sea level rise' in the twenty-first century. Excluding these effects, they projected a sea level rise of 0.26–0.59 metres [10-23 inches] by the 2090s for their highest-emissions scenario.

The available evidence still doesn't allow us to say with certainty whether sea level rise could exceed the IPCC's projections.

...Although increases of up to two metres this century can't be ruled out, this does not mean that they are inevitable or even likely."

Other peer-reviewed papers show even less to worry about,

New Perspective on Global Warming & Sea Level Rise: Modest Future Rise with Reduced Threat (PDF)
(Energy & Environment, Volume 20, Number 7, pp. 1067-1074, November 2009)
- Madhav L. Khandekar

"It is concluded that the best guess value of Sea Level Rise for the next 100 years is a relatively modest 23 cm +/− 5 cm [9 +/- 2 inches] which poses little threat to coastal areas of the world either at present or in future."

8. Sinclair repeats the big lie that the Climategate emails do not undermine climate science. The significance of the emails and how they undermined the credibility of the climate science community and thus the science itself was exposed in a 2010 U.S. Senate report,

The CRU emails show scientists,
- Obstructing release of damaging data and information;
- Manipulating data to reach preconceived conclusions;
- Colluding to pressure journal editors who published work questioning the climate science “consensus”; and
- Assuming activist roles to influence the political process


9. Sinclair lies that the South Dakota legislature passed a resolution urging schools not to teach the science of climate change, when the resolution says no such thing. It explicitly states that they recommend some points be included with the instruction of global warming. You can pause the video and read this for yourself. The wording of the resolution is also poor and it is fairly clear the legislature meant astronomical not astrological and geothermal not thermological. All the more reason politicians should consult scientists if they are not sure about scientific terminology.


10. Finally Sinclair lies about Marc Morano's comment about public flogging when the website it was quoted from explicitly says, "He doesn't wish anyone harm". For someone who likes to use clips from Monty Python Sinclair sure has a hard time identifying sarcastic remarks from those he is trying to smear.


References:
A note from Richard Lindzen on statistically significant warming (Watts Up With That?, March 11, 2008)
A sea of uncertainty (Nature, April 6, 2010)
Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995 (Daily Mail, UK, February 14, 2010)
Climate of Fear (PDF) (The Wall Street Journal, April 12, 2006)
'Consensus' Exposed: The CRU Controversy (PDF) (83 pgs) (United States Senate, February 2010)
The New Big Lie: Climategate Emails Are Not Significant (Canada Free Press, December 14, 2009)

Rebuttal to "Crock of the Week - 32000 Scientists"

Peter Sinclair AKA "Greenman" a cartoonist and Al Gore disciple has been hard at work creating YouTube videos that smear skeptics and their arguments. The following is a complete rebuttal to his "Crock of the Week - 32000 Scientists" video challenging the petition of 31,486 scientists who reject global warming alarm.


1. Sinclair claims the late Dr. Frederick Seitz was a distinguished scientist who somehow lost all credibility when his work involved the private sector. As if working with the private sector automatically discredits you on any issue. The truth is Dr. Seitz was always a reputable scientist. His credentials are impeccable,

Frederick Seitz, A.B. Mathematics, Stanford University (1932), Ph.D. Physics, Princeton University (1934), Proctor Fellow, Princeton University (1934–1935), Instructor in Physics, University of Rochester (1935–1936), Assistant Professor of Physics, University of Rochester (1936–1937), Research Physicist, General Electric Company (1937–1939), Assistant Professor of Physics, University of Pennsylvania (1939–1941), Associate Professor of Physics, University of Pennsylvania (1941-1942), Professor of Physics, Carnegie Institute of Technology (1942-1949), Research Professor of Physics, University of Illinois (1949-1965), Chairman, American Institute of Physics (1954-1960), President Emeritus, American Physical Society (1961), President Emeritus, National Academy of Sciences (1962-1969), Graduate College Dean, University of Illinois (1964-1965), President Emeritus, Rockefeller University (1968-1978), Franklin Medal (1965), American Institute of Physics Compton Medal (1970), National Medal of Science (1973), (Died: March 2, 2008)

His obvious credibility is likely why alarmists feel the need to desperately try and smear him. It is clear they cannot have someone with Dr. Seitz's impeccable credentials doubting their call for global warming alarm.


2. Sinclair attempts to smear Dr. Seitz about his involvement with the tobacco industry. The truth is much different,

"To find out if the startling claim was true -- that Seitz "directed a 45M tobacco industry effort to hide health impacts of smoking" -- I called him at his apartment in Manhattan. Unless there is more to the story, the accusation appears to be a willful distortion, if not an outright lie.

"That's ridiculous, completely wrong," Seitz told me. "The money was all spent on basic science, medical science," he said.

According to Seitz, the CEO of RJ Reynolds -- the tobacco company -- was on the board of Rockefeller University while Seitz was a full-time employee there. "He was not a scientist," Seitz said of the executive, but he believed in supporting the University's dedication to basic research -- in a little over a century, Rockefeller University has had 23 Nobel Prize winners affiliated with it, in fields of medicine and chemistry. RJ Reynolds allocated $5 million a year to Seitz to direct basic research.

To figure out how to distribute the money, Seitz says he assembled some top folks in different fields of scientific research -- such as James Shannon, the director of the National Institutes of Health for 13 years, and Maclyn McCarty, the legendary geneticist -- to help direct the funds.

What kind of research did they support? Seitz mentioned the work of Stanley Prusiner, who won the Nobel prize for his research into prions (Prusiner even thanks Seitz and RJ Reynolds in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech which you can read here).

When I asked Seitz if he ever spent money to try to debunk a link between smoking and ill-health, he said no. When I asked him if he himself had ever denied a link between smoking and cancer, Seitz (who, remember, is almost 100 years old) again said no and told me "my father was a 19th century man, and even he told me from when I was young that there was a connection between smoking and cancer" and that "we often talked about the hazards of smoking." In other words, Seitz was aware of the ill-effects of smoking for a very long time, and has never tried to deny that."


3. Sinclair ironically uses a memo from a tobacco industry executive to try and discredit Dr. Seitz as incompetent. Apparently what the tobacco industry says is only truthful when it attacks a scientist Sinclair disagrees with. So which is it Sinclair, are we supposed to believe the tobacco industry or not?


4. Sinclair lies that Dr. Seitz's 1996 editorial in the Wall Street Journal about the IPCC deleting key sections from the final report is not true. The fact is Ben Santer who was the IPCC lead author in question recently admitted to deleting information from the final report.


5. Sinclair attempts to discredit the creator of the Oregon petition, Dr. Arthur B. Robinson for being an independent scientist who advocates for homeschooling and suggests nuclear war is survivable, a position also held by Manhattan Project member and father of the hydrogen bomb, Dr. Edward Teller. The irony is Dr. Robinson's "homeschooled" children got accepted into colleges such as MIT, Caltech, Iowa State University and Southern Oregon University. With his son Noah E. Robinson receiving his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Robinson himself is a credentialed scientist,

Arthur B. Robinson, B.S. Chemistry, Caltech (1963); Ph.D. BioChemistry (Thesis: "Experiments on the synthesis and spectral characterization of cytochrome-related molecules"), University of California, San Diego (1968); Assistant Professor of Chemistry, University of California, San Diego (1968-1972); Founder, Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine (1973); Vice President and Assistant Director, Linus Pauling Institute (1973-1975); President and Research Director, Pauling Institute (1975-1978); President and Research Scientist, Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (1981-Present); Editor and Publisher, Access to Energy (1993-Present); 68 Refereed Research Papers in Scholarly Journals (e.g. Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)


6. Sinclair lies that Dr. Seitz's letter included with the Petition was intended to represent the position of the National Academy of Sciences, when it states no such thing. The only reference to the National Academy of Sciences is Dr. Seitz being a past president. Apparently Dr. Seitz is not allowed to use his actual credentials when signing a letter,

Frederick Seitz, A.B. Mathematics, Stanford University (1932), Ph.D. Physics, Princeton University (1934), Proctor Fellow, Princeton University (1934–1935), Instructor in Physics, University of Rochester (1935–1936), Assistant Professor of Physics, University of Rochester (1936–1937), Research Physicist, General Electric Company (1937–1939), Assistant Professor of Physics, University of Pennsylvania (1939–1941), Associate Professor of Physics, University of Pennsylvania (1941-1942), Professor of Physics, Carnegie Institute of Technology (1942-1949), Research Professor of Physics, University of Illinois (1949-1965), Chairman, American Institute of Physics (1954-1960), President Emeritus, American Physical Society (1961), President Emeritus, National Academy of Sciences (1962-1969), Graduate College Dean, University of Illinois (1964-1965), President Emeritus, Rockefeller University (1968-1978), Franklin Medal (1965), American Institute of Physics Compton Medal (1970), National Medal of Science (1973), (Died: March 2, 2008)


7. Sinclair lies that the original version of the petition's included scientific paper "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide" which explicitly said "Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine" and "The Marshall Institute" (ironically highlighted by Sinclair) was intended to look like it was from the NAS. This claim was refuted by Dr. Robinson,

"Robinson admits it is no coincidence that the article, which he designed on his computer, looks like one published by the academy. 'I used the Proceedings as a model.' he says, 'but only to put the information in a format that scientists like to read, not to fool people into thinking it is from a journal."

"The Malakoff Science article also includes a picture of the first page of our 8-page article. The photo clearly shows no journal name, no submission date, no submitting scientist (required by the Proceedings), and "January 1998'' printed in a format never used by a journal. The article is also twice as long as permitted in the Proceedings (in which I have published several papers) and has other textual and format differences that I introduced to make it easier to read. It actually never occurred to me that this format complaint would be made - probably because I actually expected more."

further refutation by Dr. Robinson,

"The review article sent with the petition could not possibly have been mistaken for a PNAS reprint. I have published many research papers in PNAS. I am very familiar with reprint formats.

The PNAS claim originated because Frederick Seitz - past president of the National Academy and past president of Rockefeller University signed a letter that was circulated with the petition. (Dr. Seitz, like everyone else who has actively opposed the "enviro warmers" has been smeared with many false claims.) Also, the first signers of the petition were several rather famous members of the National Academy."

The paper in question was later peer-reviewed and published,

Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (PDF)
(Climate Research, Volume 13, Number 2, pp. 149–164, October 1999)
- Willie H. Soon, Sallie L. Baliunas, Arthur B. Robinson, Zachary W. Robinson


8. Sinclair lies that various fake names were submitted to the petition. This claim was refuted by Dr. Robinson,

"Only one false name has ever appeared on the petition. It was put there by Ozone Action (now Greenpeace USA) and removed immediately thereafter. ...No one has been listed who did not actually sign - except the Ozone Action signature, which they sent with false credentials, a false address, and a false signature."

The other names Sinclair mentions are legitimate scientists,

"In a group of more than 30,000 people, there are many individuals with names similar or identical to other signatories, or to non-signatories – real or fictional. Opponents of the petition project sometimes use this statistical fact in efforts to discredit the project. For examples, Perry Mason and Michael Fox are scientists who have signed the petition – who happen also to have names identical to fictional or real non-scientists."


9. Sinclair lies that only 39 scientists on the petition claim to be "climate scientists". What Sinclair apparently does not know is that very few scientists have an actual degree in climatology and the petition is simply counting the number of degrees each scientist has. Climate science is a field that includes scientists with varied credentials not explicitly "climatology". Some of the most prominent alarmist scientists do not have a degree in climatology,

Gavin Schmidt, Ph.D. Applied Mathematics (NASA GISS, RealClimate)
James Hansen, Ph.D. Physics (NASA GISS)
James Lovelock, Ph.D. Medicine
Joe Romm, Ph.D. Physics (Climate Progress)
John Holden, Ph.D. Theoretical Plasma Physics
Joshua B. Halpern, Ph.D. Physics (Rabett Run)
Kerry Emanuel, Ph.D. Meteorology
Lonnie Thompson, Ph.D. Geological Science
Michael Mann, Ph.D. Geology (RealClimate)
Michael Oppenheimer, Ph.D. Chemical Physics
Michael Tobis, Ph.D. Atmospheric and Oceanic Science
Rajendra Pachauri, Ph.D. Industrial Engineering,(IPCC Chairman, 2007-Present)
Richard Alley, Ph.D. Geology
Richard C. J. Somerville, Ph.D. Meteorology
Robert Watson, Ph.D. Chemistry (IPCC Chairman, 1997-2002)
Stefan Rahmstorf, Ph.D. Oceanography
Steven Schneider, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering and Plasma Physics
Susan Solomon, Ph.D. Chemistry
Tom Chalko, Ph.D. Laser Holography


10. Sinclair attempts to imply that because the petition explicitly categorizes the qualifications of signers by their degree field this is somehow a problem. The medical science field he criticizes is clearly separate and includes 3,046 signers. After criticizing the petition for including MDs he then asks if you would ask someone with a BA degree to diagnose you for lung cancer? The petition has nothing to do with lung cancer and I believe most people would ask the MDs on the list that he ironically criticizes for their inclusion.


11. Sinclair then brings up a claim of a hypothetical lawsuit against Al Gore. The reason for this is Peter Sinclair AKA "Greenman" was trained by Al Gore,

"Sinclair studied with Al Gore in dealing with the issue of global warming and is an award-winning animator, illustrator and syndicated cartoonist."

12. Sinclair finally just flat out lies and says "there are no 30,000 scientists" after failing to prove this or any of his other bogus claims. Instead he chooses to just use propaganda clips related to smoking throughout his video, which has nothing to do with global warming or the petition. Maybe Peter should stick to what he is really interested in, campaigning against smoking.


References:
A Major Deception on Global Warming (Wall Street Journal, June 12, 1996)
A Scientist Finds Independence (American Spectator, February 2001)
Art Robinson Reponds to Petition Slander (Global Warming Debunking News and Views)
Exclusive: Lead Author Admits Deleting Inconvenient Opinions From IPCC Report (Prison Planet, December 17, 2009)
Frederick Seitz 1911-2008 (University of Illinois, March 4, 2008)
Past NAS President Frederick Seitz Dies at 96 (National Academy of Sciences, March 7, 2008)
President Emeritus Frederick Seitz dies at 96 (Rockerfeller University, March 4, 2008)
Vanity Scare (TCS Daily, April 14, 2006)