Wikipedia:Scientific peer review/Global Warming

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I've followed the concept of Global Warming since it's inception more than 20 years ago. Throughout it's development, it's been a media darling, and backed by numerous ecology groups as a spearhead for their efforts. Nevertheless, while the issues, data, and conclusions have been seriously inflamed to sell countless papers, magazines, TV spots, and page hits, the idea itself has remained somewhat of a pariah among serious climatologists, many of which either still hold out the question or refute Global Warming altogether. While numerous media and journals continue to claim that "most scientists are in agreement," and "the vast majority of data shows" with respect to Global Warming, the truth is that numerous experts in climatology continue to provide mass data which counters the GW claims of increasing temperatures, rising oceans, and the effects and sources of greenhouse gases such as CO2.

Rather than list the references here, I refer readers to Michael Crichton's "State of Fear," (ISBN0 00 718160 4)(Crichton is a fiction author, not a scientist) which discusses all sides of the Global Warming debate, including nearly all of those in the Wikipedia article. He leaves no stone unturned, having provided more than 140 references throughout his book, all of which are conveniently listed in his Bibliograpy at the end of the book. A sizeable number of the references include websites where the data can be verified online.

Since the references themselves have already undergone significant peer-review in the scientific community, and since those references relegate Global Warming to little more than media hype and an opportunity to funnel billions of dollars into needless research (the suspected motive for much of the hype from some scientists' corners), the entire Global Warming article in Wiki remains in the same serious state of doubt as has the Global Warming theory among serious climatologists.

Thus, I put it to those supporting Global Warming to refute, intelligently, the detailed analyses conduction over the last decade as referenced in Crichton's book. Dr1819 13:01, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, SoF is a waste of time, which makes this review a waste of time too. If you have any specific questions or points to raise, please do so. But do it on the GW talk page, not here. Or you could even try to improve the SoF page William M. Connolley 15:05, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
You are referring me to buy a book? I checked my local librairies. They did not have it. You should, in fact, list referneces here. Or on the GW talk page. Specifically references to "mass data which counters the GW claims of increasing temperatures, rising oceans, and the effects and sources of greenhouse gases such as CO2" would be helpful. BTW, absolute worst case scenario is the oceans rise 5 feet by 2010, from what I've read here on Wikipedia. Far from catastrophic, but ought to be quite a concern to caostal communities. No? TimL 19:25, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
such as those in Louisiana. DGG 20:08, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Edit: Butshebites 12:39, 16 June 2007 (UTC) [BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change Naomi Oreskes*]http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

"The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme, IPCC's purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature (3). In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations" [p. 21 in (4)].

IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)].

References and Notes


A. C. Revkin, K. Q. Seelye, New York Times, 19 June 2003, A1. S. van den Hove, M. Le Menestrel, H.-C. de Bettignies, Climate Policy 2 (1), 3 (2003). See www.ipcc.ch/about/about.htm. J. J. McCarthy et al., Eds., Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2001). National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Science of Climate Change, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2001). American Meteorological Society, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 84, 508 (2003). American Geophysical Union, Eos 84 (51), 574 (2003). See www.ourplanet.com/aaas/pages/atmos02.html. The first year for which the database consistently published abstracts was 1993. Some abstracts were deleted from our analysis because, although the authors had put "climate change" in their key words, the paper was not about climate change. This essay is excerpted from the 2004 George Sarton Memorial Lecture, "Consensus in science: How do we know we're not wrong," presented at the AAAS meeting on 13 February 2004. I am grateful to AAAS and the History of Science Society for their support of this lectureship; to my research assistants S. Luis and G. Law; and to D. C. Agnew, K. Belitz, J. R. Fleming, M. T. Greene, H. Leifert, and R. C. J. Somerville for helpful discussions. 10.1126/science.1103618

The author is in the Department of History and Science Studies Program, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA. E-mail: noreskes@ucsd.edu

Another good point is made here, at realclimate.org: Peer Review: A Necessary But Not Sufficient Condition Filed under: Climate Science Paleoclimate Sun-earth connections Instrumental Record— group @ 12:37 pm - () http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=109

wherein the author describes a number of scientific papers regarding global warming whose contents, calculations or conclusions were invalid and later retracted or debunked entirely.

References:

Benestad, R.E., Are temperature trends affected by economic activity? Comment on McKitrick & Michaels., Climate Research, 27, 171-173, 2004.

Damon, P. E. and P. Laut, Pattern of Strange Errors Plagues Solar Activity and Terrestrial Climate Data, Eos, 85, p. 370. 2004

Douglass, D. H., Pearson, B.D., and S.F.Singer, Altitude dependence of atmospheric temperature trends: Climate models versus observation, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L13208, doi:10.1029/2004GL020103, 2004.

Douglass, D. H., Pearson, B.D., and S.F.Singer, Knappenberg, P.C., and P.J. Michaels, Disparity of tropospheric and surface temperature trends: New evidence, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L13207, doi:10.1029/2004GL020212, 2004, 2004.

Fan, S., Gloor, M., Mahlman, J., Pacala, S., Sarmiento, J., Takahashi, T., Tans, P. A Large Terrestrial Carbon Sink in North America Implied by Atmospheric and Oceanic Carbon Dioxide Data and Models, Science 282: 442-446, 1998.

Friis-Christensen, E., and K. Lassen, Length of the Solar Cycle: An indicator of Solar Activity Closely Associated with Climate, Science 254, 698-700, (1991).

Legates, D. R. and R. E. Davis, The continuing search for an anthropogenic climate change signal: limitations of correlation based approaches, Geophys. Res. Lett., 24, 2319-2322, 1997.

Laut, P., Solar activity and terrestrial climate: An analysis of some purported correlations, J.Atmos. Solar-Terr.Phys.,65, 801-812. 2003

Mann, M.E., On Smoothing Potentially Non-Stationary Climate Time Series, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, 2319-2322, L07214, doi: 10.1029/2004GL019569, 2004.

McKitrick, R., and Michaels, P.J., A test of corrections for extraneous signals in gridded surface temperature data., Climate Research, 26, 159-173, 2004.

Rahmstorf, S., D. Archer, D.S. Ebel, O. Eugster, J. Jouzel, D. Maraun, G.A. Schmidt, J. Severinghaus, A.J. Weaver, and J. Zachos, Cosmic rays, carbon dioxide, and climate, Eos, 85, , 38,41, 2004.

Schimel, D., Melillo, J., Tian, H., McGuire, A. D., Kicklighter, D., Kittel, T., Rosenbloom, N., Running, S., Thornton, P., Ojima, D., Parton, W., Kelly, R., Sykes, M., Neilson, R. and Rizzo, B., Contribution of Increasing CO2 and Climate to Carbon Storage by Ecosystems in the United States, Science 287: 2004-2006, 2000

Shaviv, N, and J. Veizer, Celestial driver of Phanerozoic climate?, GSA Today, 13, , 4-10, 2004.

Soon, W., D. R. Legates, and S. L. Baliunas, Estimation and representation of long-term (>40 year) trends of Northern-Hemisphere gridded surface temperature: A note of caution, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, , L03209, doi:10.1029/2003GL019141, 2004.

Soon, W., and S. Baliunas, Proxy climatic and environmental changes over the past 1000 years, Climate Research, 23, 89-110, 2003.

Soon, W., S. Baliunas, C, Idso, S. Idso and D.R. Legates, Reconstructing climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years, Energy and Environment, 14, 233-296, 2003.

Wigley, T.M.L, Santer, B.D and K.E. Taylor, K.E., Correlation approaches to detection, Geophys. Res. Lett.,, 27, 2973-2976, 2000.



The editors suggest the following Related Resources on Science sites: In Science Magazine LETTERS Consensus About Climate Change? Roger A. Pielke, Jr.; and Naomi Oreskes (13 May 2005) Science 308 (5724), 952. [DOI: 10.1126/science.308.5724.952]

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