On Seeps and SCAMS Part I: Lessons for Climate Scientists

There is a new paper in the literature, or soon to be in the literature, about the impact on climate scientists of denialist propaganda campaigns. The paper is easy to read, being virtually free of specialist jargon. It's written from the perspective of psychology and the lead author is Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, currently at Bristol University in the UK. There is a team of co-authors, some of whom who you'll recognise - Naomi Oreskes, James S. Risbey, Ben R. Newell and Michael Smithson. The paper is to be published in the journal Global Environmental Change, rather than a psychology journal. The reason becomes clear when you read the paper. It's explaining how climate scientists can be adversely affected by denier memes, such as "uncertainty" in climate science. [This is Part I of a three part series. Click for Part II and Part III.]

If you thought that dispassionate scientists, when doing scientific research, are immune from denialist propaganda you'd be wrong. It's not just when scientists talk about climate that they can demonstrate they've been influenced by denialists' campaigns. Even their scientific publications can be so influenced.

Has a "climate journalist" discovered a major blunder?

Update 2: I've written two more articles about this. The main one is about the paper itself and points out some of the errors made at WUWT. The other was an interim follow up to the release of the paper.

Update: the Risbey paper is out (h/t Steve Bloom) and can be accessed here at Nature Climate Change, but you'll need a subscription. Stephan Lewandowsky has been good enough to write about it on his blog.

Sou 3:53 am AEST 21 July 2014

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We'll have to wait and see. Anthony Watts thinks he has found a "major blunder" in a new paper (archived here). This is the same Anthony Watts who was described by his good friend, Willis Eschenbach, as (paraphrased):

Even if Anthony had a year to analyze and dissect each piece...(he publishes on his blog, he couldn't tell if it would)... stand the harsh light of public exposure. 

This same Anthony Watts writes:

As a climate journalist running the most viewed blog on climate, I have been graciously provided an advance copy of the press release and paper Risbey et al. (2014) that is being held under embargo until Sunday, July 20th. I am in the process of helping to co-author a rebuttal to Risbey et al. (2014) I think we’ve spotted a major blunder, but I want to check with a team member first. 

If Anthony Watts is a climate journalist he hides it well. Anthony is hopeless at the job. He posed as a journalist to get a free press pass to AGU13, but the most interesting thing he "reported" was that he could hear the sound of smirks. The rest could not be described as "journalism" by any stretch of the imagination.

This is the same Anthony Watts who had so much difficulty Googling "James Risbey, CSIRO" and clicking on the first item in the list, writing:

Hello Dr. Risbey,
At first I had trouble finding your email, which is why I sent it to Ms.Oreskes first. I dare not send it to professor Lewandowsky, since as we have seen by example, all he does is taunt people who have legitimate questions.

This is the same Anthony Watts who thinks dumb questions are "legitimate".  Anthony doesn't like being "taunted".

Clarification: In case you thought Anthony had been "graciously provided" with a copy of the paper by the journal Nature or one of the authors, you'd be wrong. He said he was emailed a copy by a "journalist". (My guess is the so-called "journalist" is someone like Steve Milloy who blogs junk science.) Sou: 7:45 pm AEST 20/7/14

If you're interested, the question that Anthony posed was related to climate models and the simulation of "spatial patterns of the warming and cooling trends in sea surface temperatures during the hiatus period". There was a special issue of Nature Geoscience this March, which had a number of articles relating to global warming over the past few years. And there've been other papers, such as this one by Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie in Nature.

Getting back to Anthony's question - he said he wants to "check with a team member first".  But that claim is contradicted by the fact that he was so excited that he might have found "something wrong" that he preempted any reply by writing about it on his blog.

True to form, Anthony doesn't wait for the answer, but posts about his "cleverness" on his blog. That's the point. He doesn't care about the answer. All he cares about is that a question at WUWT, any question, no matter if it's dumb or on the ball, is fodder for dumb deniers to claim AGW is a hoax.

We'll have to wait and see if Anthony Watts and perennially puzzled Bob Tisdale have accidentally been right this time. Since we don't yet know what the paper is about (though we can take a stab at guessing the general topic), there is insufficient data to come to any conclusion.

From the WUWT comments

Brad says:

July 19, 2014 at 9:58 am
Anthony,
Very well written!! Nothing “extra” added, simply asking a question.
It will be interesting to see if you get a response, or the release gets pushed back.

Anthony's response to Verity Jones is more evidence that he is not a climate journalist. Otherwise he'd be well aware of the fact that Stephan Lewandowsky and Naomi Oreskes are not climate modellers. Verity says:

July 19, 2014 at 10:06 am
Anthony,
I was going to ask if you were sent the supplementary data that so often accompanies papers published in Nature, but it is unusual for papers relying on separate supplements to refer the reader to them, so I am supposing this is not an oversight of the sender in this case. Very well handled.

REPLY: I asked the journalist if an SI was included, and none was listed. Still such an important label of the best and worst models, central to the claim of the paper, surely would not be relegated to the depths of an SI. – Anthony 

At the time of archiving there were 130 comments. So many strong opinions about a paper that has not yet been released from the embargo. About a paper of which no-one but Anthony and Bob Tisdale know the subject. About the authors of the paper, and about Anthony's cleverness and astuteness as a "climate journalist".

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Whether the Weather

I hope James Risbey doesn't mind my copying his little rhyme, which most internet sources attribute to John Ruskin:

Whether the weather be fine 

Or whether the weather be not 

Whether the weather be cold 

Or whether the weather be hot, 

We'll weather the weather 

Whatever the weather 

Whether we like it or not.

And I've got my own version: 

Some of us will weather the weather, 

some of us will end up under the weather, 

some of us are totally over the weather and, 

whether we like it or not, 

some of us won't weather the weather at all.

Sou 4:29 pm AEST 20 July 2014