What is Digg?Sponsored by HowLifeWorks
How Much Are You Over-Paying For Your Auto Insurance view!
howlifeworks.com - Car insurance rates have dropped leaving many people paying far more than they need to...
4 Comments
- greenfyre, on 07/19/2008, -1/+3"acknowledges many members of the scientific community don't believe humans are the primary cause of climate change."
Right, that's why they couldn't find a physicist to write an article critical of anthropogenic climate change. 50,000 members and they got a former politician. They couldn't find a single scientist to write a competent scientific article? not one? Out of 50,000, not one?
So "many members ..." is a really really huge number that jsut happens to be smaller than 1?
"if the article wasn't peer-reviewed, what the hell was it doing in your journal APS?"
Because it's not in a journal, it's in a (non-peer reviewed) newsletter, just like you say in your own blog ... "Well, duh?"
"This disclaimer is obviously the work ..." It's signed by the Executive Council - literacy, it can change your life.
Comments on Monckton's letter:
"who subjected it to a thorough and competent scientific review"
No, it was editorial review, and not a very good one either cf " LOBALLY-AVERAGED land and sea ..." http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/mo ... 'Physics and Society' is NOT a peer reviewed journal.
"an eminent Professor of Physics had then scientifically reviewed it in meticulous detail;"
Either Monckton is being completely disingenuous about the review (ie lying) or he actually has no idea what peer review is, which for someone who pretends to know scientific literature borders on admitting total illiteracy. Either way it does not speak well of him.
"the name and qualifications of the member"
It is the entire Executive Council, and their names and qualifications are on the web site
"Having regard to the circumstances, surely the Council owes me an apology?"
The editor of Physics and Society owes both Monckton and the APS an apology, no one else does.
UPDATE: The Science - All Monckton has done is a slight reworking of his old work already debunked 2 yrs ago http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006 ...
There is nothing really new, and it isn't science - greenfyre, on 07/21/2008, -1/+1"so do modify my comments accordingly"
Not on your blog you haven't - greenfyre, on 07/20/2008, -1/+1Well "they" didn't, the editor of one of the sectional newsletters did.
Just what his motivation was is an intriguing question - I would just LOVE to have access to the APS internal email, never mind the ***** that their membership must be raining down on them.
There is at least one hard core Denier in the APS and there may be more, although predictably (as far as I can tell) not one working on anything remotely connected to climate research. Equally I have no doubt that there is a certain amount of low grade skepticism among those far removed from the relevant aspects of the science.
Is Jeffrey Marque a Denier trying to co-opt the APS for his own agenda? Or perhaps he was aware of some grumblings about 'imbalance and wanted to address it. Certainly Gould has been screaming himself silly about it.
Marque may have in all innocence mistaken the volume of dissent for broad skepticism - I know I have seen that in organizations ie 2 or 3 extremely vocal dissenters somehow convince an executive that they are merely the tip of a vast ice berg, when in fact the are a couple of very noisy ice cubes with no depth at all.
This is pure speculation on my part, but I could easily see how Marque, perceiving himself to be under pressure to be fair to "the other side" decides to have this "both sides now" debate. I mean it sounds reasonable, right?
But then you can see how the problems start. He decides to hold this thing and goes shopping for articles, and discovers that the Deniers (however many there are) don't actually know a damn thing about the relevant science and aren't about to write an article in their professional newsletter that exposes them as being clueless.
So what can he do? he trolls around for someone respectable to write the balancing article, and as it happens most of the professional deniers are industry shills and their "science" is a joke. He's stuck. Somehow or other he winds up with Monckton.
Like I said, pure speculation, but to me it is one plausible scenario. I do not take it as a given the Marque was malicious and deliberately hijacked P&S for his own political agenda, although that is another plausible explanation.
Regardless of how they got there, one of the more prestigous scientific institutions on the planet suddenly finds itself the publisher of what climatologist Gavin Schmidt termed "Cuckoo Science". Hell, the 1st 2 paragraphs of Moncktons piece are so flawed as to disqualify the abomination as real science, never mind the rest of it.
Even worse, the dailydreck and Faux News are saying the thing is peer-reviewed and represented a policy change for APS (something which Fox certainly knew to be false, btw) - so the Exec is scrambling to try and set the record straight and maintain their reputation as a serious scientific organization.
Not to mention there is undoubtedly one Class 5 ***** hitting their inboxes as 99% 95%? 90%? (who knows) of 50,000 physicists are demanding to know why the APS is demeaning the science of physics by publishing such crap and 'damn well fix it quick or I resign' type of feedback. That usual gets an Executive Committeess attention.
Regardless of what actually happened I do know I sure would hate to be Marque right now. - DumberOx3, on 07/20/2008, -1/+0I didn't know that "Physics and Society" wasn't peer-reviewed, and so do modify my comments accordingly. Wouldn't you want to know how the decision was made to put up the disclaimer? Singed by the whole Executive Council sounds bizarre--their names and qualifications on the website notwithstanding. Why did they publish the article if there was no support at all for the science behind it, as you say?
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is