Brown himself does not seem to be claiming any malfeasance on the part of the journal. He did not claim that the peer reviewers reading his work pushed him to focus more on climate — or that the journal’s editors pressured him to frame the study that way. Rather, he says that the problem is an overall culture of climate science: One that encourages focusing on climate variables (warming temperatures, drying vegetation) over other factors, like fuel loads (the amount of vegetation available to burn) and humans sparking wildfires....
September 13, 2023
"I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell."
Said Patrick T. Brown, quoted in "What happened when a scientist denounced his own climate change research/Patrick Brown said that, in a quest for a 'clean narrative,' editors and reviewers ignore factors beyond climate change" (WaPo).
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29 comments:
Akthouse's twin tags for this story are really the whole story.
There was a purge of journal editors, partially documented in the ClimateGate emails, which we are all supposed to believe revealed nothing.
They always have the same pitch when caught, "Circulez y'a rien à voir."
I read a recent peer-reviewed paper saying 97% of climate scientists agree that they do not want to be defunded. I plugged that into my Bayesian probability filter and said to myself, "that sounds plausible." YMMV.
handmade tale
In economics, a Veblen Good is "a type of luxury good for which the demand increases as the price increases, in apparent contradiction of the law of demand."
Environmentalism is a Veblen Good for bored rich white people.
They don't want scientific rigor because scientific rigor inhibits the policies they demand in the timetable they demand...
BTW, Eco terrorism is bad for the environment but I don't hear any climate activists denouncing it...
Brown will be destroyed for telling the Emperor that he isn't wearing any clothes.
sketchy data, spanning 150 years is the opposite of science. It for sure does not
measure "climate" Climate is measured in 1000 year increments, no decades.
In this instance, a scientist is taking an extremely chaotic system, and eliminating 90% of the variables at work. Why...to get published.
The publish or parish paradigm has been well recognized for over 50 years. It is not news. submitting material the publications want, is the way to get published. They must publish if the want to win grants from the govt. The govt has ID'd climate as a tax generating revenue stream. It is no mystery scientist will create results to win grants.
We talked about incentives yesterday. Guess what? Money is an incentive.
Off topic. The IC/CIA changed their conclusion on the source of covid, because the case officers on the team investigating the origin believed it was lab sourced...but substantial $bonuses, incentivized them to change the report.
Incentives matter.
Eco terrorism is bad for the environment but I don't hear any climate activists denouncing it...
Well, you know, omelette, eggs...
There are scientists who recognize that "climate science" is so flawed as to be irresponsible. Like the 1600 signers of the recent declaration, some are pulling away and risking the wrath of the Chicken Littles.
Perhaps COVID deaths and vaccine consequences have clarified the danger of scientific lockstep.
It seemed Brown was clearly saying his article wouldn't be published unless it met the narrative that Nature and Science wanted to tell, and whether malfeasance or not, it is inappropriate to do and claim being scientific.
A professor in grad school said “Statistics are like the drunk and the lamppost. You can either use them for support or illumination.”
The climate crisis crowd has all but abandoned the scientific method for analysis and are driving everything toward a predetermined narrative.
Back when I started my archaeology major (ca. 1982/3) climate and how it changed and how much it affected the course of cultural change was a constant topic. "Climate reconstruction" was of paramount importance because it was underlying almost everything we did. Half of what we talked about was the difficulty of getting even reasonable climate reconstructions for short periods of time and fairly restricted regions.
Then sometime in the '90s it became totally easy and we could get the temperature of the entire planet down to a few tenths of a degree for every year going back 100k years.
I thought that was a little weird.
Having followed the "science" for over 20 years now, it is obvious to me that climate science is a fraud. Dissent to the narrative is simply not allowed. I have made the point many times that if it appeared that we were re-entering a glacial period like the last ice age, the prescription would be exactly the same- ban cheap and reliable baseload energy and return to a subsistence economy. And everyone knows this, right? Under no circumstances, even completely opposite predictions about future climate would make a difference to the policy path- in other words, the path was chosen first, and climate change is the means of convincing/coercing the public to follow it.
Climate change.
Biggest grift in human history, accounting for more wasted/stolen money than anything else.
The gravy train must not be stopped.
State of Fear was published in 2004. Its author has been dead for 15 years. The concept of "other factors, like fuel loads (the amount of vegetation available to burn) and humans sparking wildfires" is that old as well as Nature's attempt to discredit people that point it out. Yet we call this news.
Jamie said...
Eco terrorism is bad for the environment but I don't hear any climate activists denouncing it...
Well, you know, omelette, eggs...
...but terrorists setting a forest fire in California isn't the environmental equivalent of breaking a few eggs it's carpet bombing all the chicken farms...
RideSpaceMountain said...I read a recent peer-reviewed paper saying 97% of climate scientists agree that they do not want to be defunded
A line so good it almost makes me wish the 97% study wasn't bullshit.
Check out how "climate change" took the year off starting wildfires during Canada's draconian lockdowns. Canada should just lockdown "climate change" again, but leave her citizens free.
https://twitter.com/ztisdale/status/1694098093166174569
"The science is settled".
Winner of the "World's Largest Red Flag award.
So much BS so many bucks spent, so many freedoms curtailed.
Gotta give them credit for mega grifting.
Latest on the permanent drought in California.
Water conservation regulations have been highly successful.
Seems like this should be news.
Here is my comment on the commenters: DITTO TO THE MAX
I'd like to think the rats are leaving the sinking ship of S.S. Climate Panic Monger, but I don't think things are going to change much. There is so much now invested in the grift. A lot more people are going to have to get hurt --physically, economically, politically-- before the grift breaks down and the religious movement loses its force. My guess is, that time is still a decade or more away.
Anybody who hasn't done so, I encourage to read Judith Curry, both at her blog "Climate Etc" and in her recent book. Give yourself time to absorb what is being said (sometimes between the lines) by Curry and others like her (Koonin, Shellenberger, Longhurst, Pielke, Lindzen; even Lomborg).
... because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals... want to tell
The Narrative! Don't dilute the Narrative! We'll all fry in Hell if fossil fuels aren't abolished, never mind they can't be economically replaced by wind and solar, we MUST go wind and solar NOW! Them 97% scientists say so!!!
Stop Me Before I Self-Censor Again!
"Biggest grift in human history, accounting for more wasted/stolen money than anything else."
Hmmm... maybe if you don't adjust for inflation. What about the New Deal and the Great Society? Plus the Wars on Stuff ...
We do like clean narratives and simple stories of cause and effect. Old Ockham is invoked to say that the simplest solution is the best, but reality is often messy and ambiguous.
"He did not claim that the peer reviewers reading his work pushed him to focus more on climate — or that the journal’s editors pressured him to frame the study that way. Rather, he says that the problem is an overall culture of climate science: One that encourages focusing on climate variables (warming temperatures, drying vegetation) over other factors, like fuel loads (the amount of vegetation available to burn) and humans sparking wildfires...."
A distinction without a difference.
Climate Science is done in the same way that a High School kid does statistics. Find a data set, and f*ck with it. (If I multiply the column of data by -1 I find a positive correlation between my pet predictor and the target...)
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