DISINFO: "Peer"-Reviewed Climate "Science" & "Scientific" Consensus

When it comes to climate science, the 'companion' definition of 'peer' would be the one to use. When a group of radical partisans collude to hijack the peer-review process, in order to squash research and findings that conflicts with their own agenda, the result is conspiratorial disinformation.



These so-called scientists share their data and methods with each other, but then deliberately withold them from those who might see their flaws. Then they trump up a so-called 'scientific consensus' argument using 1. manipulated data inserted into IPCC-type reports, and 2. their self-fulfilling peer-reviewed literature.

So I'm hoping this thread can focus on the 2 key areas of disinformation the Alarmists still have at their disposal: "peer-reviewed literature" and "scienfitic consensus".

Today Timothy Ball helped lay out the framework of our conspirators:

The Scientists Involved in Deliberately Deceiving the World on Climate

The Public and Mainstream Media Still Don’t Grasp the Implications.
Tentacles of Climategate will reach far as information is divulged. People will rush to get on or off the bandwagon depending on their involvement. As a first hand observer, I must outline the history, identify the people involved and provide context.

As analyzed in our social network, there is a tightly knit group of individuals who passionately believe in their thesis. However, our perception is that this group has a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and, moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility.”

They are still reinforcing each other and refuse to acknowledge the severity of their actions. Mainstream media helps by downplaying the significance or deliberately closing their eyes. It’s deeply disturbing to learn scientists have deliberately twisted science for social and political ends. I watched it happen, now I can set out the history and identify those involved.

Cabal; A Secret Political Clique or Faction
As recently as June 19th 2009, they gathered and reinforced each other at a Symposium to honor (?) Tom Wigley.

I’ve written about poor climate science and political machinations. Now disclosure of the scientists involved at the CRU and beyond allows me to describe who and how they did it with the support of Maurice Strong. He established the political framework through formation of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These scientists provided the science through the IPCC.

Strong took their claims to the green movements through the 1992 Rio Conference. Strong’s powerful connections in Canada were apparently used to involve Environment Canada (EC) in development of the IPCC and CRU connections. These bureaucrats drew in other government agencies who easily convinced politicians desperate to appear green. Gordon McBean, Assistant Deputy Minister (ADM) at EC, chaired the 1985 Villach Austria meeting when formation of the IPCC was planned. Here are the two major players in the CRU scandal, Phil Jones and Tom Wigley, in Villach in a series shown at Wigley’s career Symposium.

NOTE: Tim Ball's article contains many important hyperlinks.

Meet the conspirators:

Figure 1: Phil Jones, Current Director of the CRU and Tom Wigley the power behind the scenes.

Figure 2: Wigley and H.H.Lamb, founder of the CRU

Figure 3: No wonder Prince Charles says we have 100 months left, he has a ‘reliable’ source

Figure 4: Jones, Santer and Wigley at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Figure 5: Major players in early and later days of the IPCC

Figure 6: Critical players in CRU and IPCC

Michael Mann

Maurice Strong

More from Tim Ball's account:

Jones’ innocent look belies his actions. In one email he wrote to Michael Mann: “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow—even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

...Lamb worked every day almost to the end, but the real power was emerging in the person of Tom Wigley (Figure 2). Lamb knew what was going on because he cryptically writes in his autobiography, “Through all the Changing Scenes of Life: A Meteorologists Tale” how a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation came to grief because of, “…an understandable difference of scientific judgment between me and the scientist, Dr. Tom Wigley, whom we have appointed to take charge of the research.”

...Wigley is the grandfather figure and in control throughout as the emails illustrate. They seek his advice as in this email, which ends, “I hope these very hasty ramblings are helpful” The originator was seeking ideas for a National Academy of Sciences plan.

Other comments are more direct and frightening. Bishop Hill summarizes, “Tom Wigley says that von Storch is partly to blame for sceptic papers getting published at Climate Research. Says he encourages the publication of crap science. Says they should tell publisher that the journal is being used for misinformation. Says that whether this is true or not doesn’t matter. Says they need to get editorial board to resign. Says they need to get rid of von Storch too.”

In another push to have someone removed Wigley supports Michael Mann’s attack on the journal editor of Geophysical Review Letters (GRL) who published McIntyre’s 2005 paper. Again Hill’s summary, “Mann has challenged GRL editor-in-chief over the publication. Mann is concerned about the connections of the paper’s editor James Saiers with U Virginia [does he mean Pat Michaels?]. Tom Wigley says that if Saiers is a sceptic they should go through official GRL channels to get him ousted.) [Note to readers - Saiers was subsequently ousted]” This quote illustrates the problem for the public. Unless you understand the science and the events the comments make little sense. Apart from comments like how to avoid Freedom of Information (FOI) requests it is easy to divert attention.

The IPCC Connection:

The UN’s IPCC, spearheaded by the ‘hacked’ CRU, has been the primary driving source of Global Warming Alarmism. This admission by Keith Briffa about the IPCC’s ethics is ‘alarming’:

I tried hard to balance the needs of the science and the IPCC , which were not always the same. [from 1177890796.txt]

Tim Ball:

Wigley is prominent in the IPCC from the start. Graduate students are prominent names in the emails and the IPCC. Phil Jones is the focus as current Director of the CRU, but as Figure 1 shows he was alongside Wigley from the start. Another prominent CRU graduate is Benjamin Santer seen here with Jones and Wigley.

...Santer was lead author of Chapter 8 for the 1995 IPCC Report and involved in the first major controversy. He altered contents of the Chapter so it agreed with the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) without consent of other authors. The emails show how the Reports similarly achieved political not scientific objectives.

...The people in Figure 6 are connected with East Anglia or the IPCC. In another photo (Figure 6) they are unsure of source or time but it puts Wigley and Jones together early with leading figures like Syukoru Manabe, whose computer model was the basis of the IPCC models, and Bert Bolin first chairman of the IPCC (now deceased).

...All the people in the emails are listed in the various author lists of each of the IPCC Reports. For example, the 2007 list includes these names Phil Jones, Kevin Trenberth, Tom Karl, Keith Briffa, Jonathan Overpeck, Andrew Weaver, Martin Parry among others.

Phil Jones:

I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is![from 1089318616.txt]

[edit on 1-12-2009 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

What about the journals?

Michael Mann:

The Soon & Baliunas paper couldn't have cleared a 'legitimate' peer review process anywhere. That leaves only one possibility--that the peer-review process at Climate Research has been hijacked by a few skeptics on the editorial board. And it isn't just De
Frietas, unfortunately I think this group also includes a member of my own department...

The skeptics appear to have staged a 'coup' at "Climate Research" (it was a mediocre journal to begin with, but now its a mediocre journal with a definite 'purpose'). ...
I believed our only choice was to ignore this paper. They've already achieved what they wanted--the claim of a peer-reviewed paper. There is nothing we can do about that now, but the last thing we want to do is bring attention to this paper, which will be ignored by the community on the whole. ...

There have been several papers by Pat Michaels, as well as the Soon & Baliunas paper, that couldn't get published in a reputable journal. This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the "peer-reviewed literature". Obviously, they found a solution to that--take over a journal!

So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering "Climate Research" as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate
research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board...[from 1047388489.txt]

In response, Phil Jones writes:

I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor. A CRU person is on the editorial board, but papers get dealt with by the editor assigned by Hans von Storch.

Timothy Carter:

PS Re CR, I do not know the best way to handle the specifics of the editoring. Hans von Storch is partly to blame -- he encourages the publication of crap science 'in order to stimulate debate'. One approach is to go direct to the publishers and point out the fact that their journal is perceived as being a medium for disseminating misinformation under the guise of refereed work. I use the word 'perceived' here, since whether it is true or not is not what the publishers care about -- it is how the journal is seen by the community that counts.

...Note that I am copying this view only to Mike Hulme and Phil Jones.Mike's idea to get editorial board members to resign will probably not work -- must get rid of von Storch too, otherwise holes will eventually fill up with people like Legates, Balling, Lindzen, Michaels, Singer, etc. I have heard that the publishers are not happy with von Storch, so the above approach might remove that hurdle too.[from 1051190249.txt]

Tim Ball, et al:

“What you’ve got here is confirmation of the small group of scientists who, by the way, Professor Wegman who was asked to arbitrate in the debate about the hockey stick, he identified 42 people who were publishing together and also peer-reviewing each other’s literature.” Dr Ball explains.

“So there’s a classic example of the kind of thing that bothered me. About twenty years ago, I started saying ‘Well why are they pushing the peer review?’… And now of course we realise it’s because they had control of their own process. That’s clearly exposed in these emails.”

“On a global scale it’s frightening because this group of people not only control the Hadley Centre, which controls the data on global temperature through the Hadley Climate Research Unit but they also control the IPCC and they’ve manipulated that. And of course the IPCC has become the basis in all governments for the Kyoto protocol, the Copenhagen accord and so on….”
www.infowars.com...

Professor Wegman's '43':

The block (cluster) structure is very clear. Michael Mann is a co-author with every one of the other 42. The black squares on the diagonal indicate that the investigators work closely within their group, but not so extensively outside of their group. ... However, it is immediately clear that the Mann, Rutherford, Jones, Osborn, Briffa, Bradley and Hughes form a clique, each interacting with all of the others. A clique is a fully connected subgraph, meaning everyone in the clique interacts with every one else in the clique. ...

The cliques are very clear in this layout. In addition to the Mann-Rutherford-Jones-Osborn-Briffa-Bradley-Hughes clique there are several others that are readily apparent. They are Rind-Shindell-Schmidt-Miller, Cook-D’Arrigo-Jacoby-Wilson, Folland-Vellinga-Allan-Knight, Stahle-Shugart-Therrell-Druckenbrod-Cleveland, Sangoyomi-Moon-Lall-Abarbanel, and Clement-Zebiak-Cane. The last cluster is somewhat of the miscellaneous cluster of people who had published with Michael Mann, but not much if at all with each other. ...

The social network analysis of authors’ relations suggests that the “independent reconstructions” are not as independent as one might guess. Indeed, the matrix outlined in Figure 5.8 illustrates the proxies that are used more than one time in twelve major temperature reconstruction papers. The black boxes indicate that the proxy was used in a given paper. It is clear that many of the proxies are re-used in most of the papers. It is not surprising that the papers would obtain similar results and so cannot really claim to be independent verifications.
heliogenic.blogspot.com...

View page 40 of the AD HOC report for social network graphs:
www.climateaudit.org...

Regardless, what do the journals say?

Much trumpetting has been done over a so-called consensus established by Naomi Oreskes. She reported an analysis of “928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 and published in the ISI database with the keywords ‘global climate change’”. There have been many detailed critiques of her paper, but here I'd like to keep it simple and look at it at face value. Alarmists like to claim that essentially all of the papers support the Global Warming argument. In reality however this is not nearly the case.

Only 20% support anthropogenic (man made) global warming. 55% were papers about climate change itself, covering observed and potential effects of global warming. 25% didn't apply.

Key Critical: Just because a the abstract of a paper talks about the warming of the 1990's doesn't mean it supports a consensus on AGW! In reality only 20% of the paper supported the AGW 'consensus', yet Alarmists distort this view and claim that 75% do. Some even attempt to claim that 100% do.

There's no dispute that the climate warmed during the 90's. So if you do a search for 'global climate change' what results would you expect to get other than papers addressing the current warming trend?

In hindsight, it's awful convenient that her study ennded up ending in 2003, as today we know the earth has cooled since then:



Our own PEER review:

What my analysis is lacking is more spefiics about our conspirators, as well as their network of hijacked journals used to spread their disinformation. I have an old thread dealing with the "consensus" of all of the science organizations who stand to profit from climate change:
Catastrophic 'Global Warming' "Consensus" & "Causes"!
But we could also use other older 'consensus' themed threads linked in here for more perspective.

Important Climategate ATS threads:

Hadley CRU hacked with release of hundreds of docs and emails (ATS master thread)
Its Conclusive: CRU Climate Data Manipulation At Its Worst!
Climategate, Copenhagen, and The New World Order
Obama’s Science Czar John Holdren involved in unwinding “Climategate” scandal
Climate change data dumped
Climategate: GOP Opens Probe Into Climate-Change E-Mails
“these will be artificially adjusted”: Global Warming FRAUD Source Code furthers email meltdown

[edit on 30-11-2009 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

Maurice Strong, the 'dude' that wants China style Govt. and start Slave Camps. oops. the camps are there, just need the Slaves !!

'lets kill 50 million like China did, it got peoples attention'..

Maurice Strong:

Licences to have babies incidentally is something that I got in trouble for some years ago for suggesting even in Canada that this might be necessary at some point, at least some restriction on the right to have a child.
www.brainyquote.com...

[edit on 30-11-2009 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

Concensus is a big word being thrown around trying to convey the lie that "all scientists agree with the AGW claims" when they don't.

There is also the fact that "concensus" on itself doesn't mean "to be right".

It was the scientific concensus centuries ago that the Earth was the center of the Universe, and the Sun was smaller than the Earth, and it revolved around the Earth with all other cosmic objects revolving around Earth.

It was the concensus among scientists centuries ago that if a train moved at a speed faster than 35 mph, the oxygen would be sucked up from the train and passengers would suffocate and die.

It was the concensus among docotrs centuries ago that plagues could be cured by bleeding patients, which caused the deaths of patients.

Concensus, doesn't make ANYONE right. The facts, and evidence does.

People don't seem to understand the power of money through grants, even for scientific groups like AGU, which existanc depends on those who are paying the grants, and funding.

It is policy for scientific groups like AGU to ask for the input from it's scientist members when the organization makes an announcement, but in the case of their statement on AGW, the AGU council which consists of 15-18 scientist leaders, did not ask for the input from it's 50,000 + scientist members.

Several members pointed this out, such as Roger Pielke, Willie Soon, and David R. Legates among others, and they protested against the decision made by the AGU council because they didn't ask for input from the mayority of the scientist members.

Groups like AGU also resort to other tactics in trying to suppress dissent, and any information that can refute the AGW claims.

I apologize for the size of the following excerpt, but it is important as it shows some of the tactics used by the council of AGU to suppress dissent among scientists regarding Climate Change.

Saturday, November 28, 2009
Galileo silenced again
The American Geophysical Union is sending science back four hundred years

By Willie Soon and David R. Legates

Four centuries ago, “heretics” who disagreed with religious orthodoxy risked being burned at the stake. Many were the dissenting views that could send offenders to a fiery end.

In 1633, the astronomer Galileo Galilei may have come within a singed whisker of the same fate, for insisting that the sun (and not the Earth) was at the center of the solar system. In the end, he agreed to recant his “heresy” (at least publicly) and submit to living under house arrest until the end of his days.
Growing evidence ultimately proved Galileo was right, and the controversy dissipated. Theology gave way to nature in determining the truth about nature.

We wish that were the case today. Unfortunately, lessons learned 400 years ago have yet to be adopted where the Church of Anthro-Climatism is involved. Burning dissenters at the stake may no longer be an option - perhaps because it would send prodigious quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. However, many other ingenious punishments are often meted out, to ensure that dissent is kept within “acceptable” limits, or dissenters no longer dissent.
Just recently, as scientists who specialize in environmental science, climatology, and solar variability, we welcomed the acceptance of our scientific session, Diverse Views from Galileo’s Window: Researching Factors and Processes of Climate Change in the Age of Anthropogenic CO2. The session was to be hosted at the upcoming Fall 2009 Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco.

Our session was to focus on “knowledge that spans an extremely diverse range of expertise” and provides “an integrated assessment of the vast array of disciplines that affect and, in turn, are affected by the Earth’s climate.” Our ultimate goal was to stimulate discussion at this professional meeting, prior to the upcoming UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fifth assessment report.

We developed this session to honor the great tradition of science and scientific inquiry, as exemplified by Galileo when, 400 years ago this year, he first pointed his telescope at the Earth’s moon and at the moons of Jupiter, analyzed his findings, and subsequently challenged the orthodoxy of a geocentric universe. Our proposed session was accepted by the AGU.

In response to its acceptance, we were joined by a highly distinguished group of scientists - including members of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, France and China, as well as recipients of the AGU’s own William Bowie, Charles Whitten and James MacElwane medals. Our participants faithfully submitted abstracts for the session.

But by late September, several puzzling events left us wondering whether the AGU truly serves science and environmental scientists - or simply reflects, protects and advances the political agendas of those who espouse belief in manmade CO2-induced catastrophic global warming.

On September 14, Dr. Nicola Scafetta of Duke University contacted us, to say the AGU had cancelled his previously-approved 12-paper session on Solar Variability and Its Effect on Climate Change, since it did not have enough papers. He asked if the papers from his session could be merged into our session; since they fit our theme well, we accepted his papers.

The merger was approved by the AGU Planning Committee. Thus our Galileo session now had grown to a total of 27 papers and was approved as a poster session at the Fall Meeting. However, a few days later, after first approving our session and after we had assigned time slots for these new papers at AGU’s request, the Planning Committee revoked its approval and summarily dissolved our session. Now the committee claimed our session was “thematically divergent,” and divided the papers in our original session among six different sessions.

To cover its tracks, the committee created a new session called Diverse Views from Galileo’s Window: Solar Forcing of Climate Change with 15 papers - including the 12 from Dr. Scafetta’s original session that it had cancelled. That reduced the focus of this session to just solar forcing of climate, and eliminated discussions of the impact of anthropogenic CO2 that we had planned for our original session. The remaining papers from our cancelled session were moved to five other sessions, thereby undermining our original intent: comparing solar variability and manmade carbon dioxide as factors in planetary climate change.

In responding to us, the Planning Committee defended its actions by asserting: “none of [the papers in our session] have to do with the Galilean moons of Saturn [sic], which have to do with climate change or solar activity.” That claim reflects either a poor grasp of our purpose or a failure to read our proposal - and leads the question, Why wasn’t this issue raised when they originally decided to accept our session?

Our session proposal had clearly intended to honor Galileo’s observations of Jupiter’s (not Saturn’s) moons, which had led him to challenge the orthodoxy of the geocentric universe. We wanted to highlight how current research into the climatic effects of anthropogenic CO2 is challenging the supposed “scientific consensus” that humans are causing catastrophic climate change.

This arbitrary dissolution of our original session has serious implications for proper scientific enquiry. Our request that the session be reinstated has gone unheeded, despite the fact that the AGU has reinstated at least one cancelled session in the past. We have repeatedly been told that the decisions of the Planning Committee are final, though it has made clearly contradictory decisions regarding our session.

Reduced sunspot activity and solar energy output, stable or even cooling planetary temperatures, concerns over the high cost of proposed cap-and-trade legislation, political developments in Washington and Copenhagen, and other factors have caused more people to question manmade global warming disaster claims. This has led to consternation among scientists and organizations that have supported those claims.

However, as scientists, we are profoundly concerned by this behavior from a professional society that is supposed to serve science and its members. The AGU certainly had the right to reject our proposed session at the outset or before the solar variability session was merged with it. But given the topic of our session and the good faith approach we have taken in accepting papers from the cancelled solar variability session, it seems odd (at the very least) that our session was summarily dissolved, and that the AGU refuses to discuss the matter.

The AGU action is hardly reasonable. Indeed, it is counter-productive to the scientific method and to promoting open scientific discussions. It smacks of censorship. Something is rotten in Copenhagen, Denmark. Scientific inquiry has once again been silenced...just as it was 400 years ago. The AGU should be ashamed. Its members should be outraged.

Dr. Willie Soon is a scientist who studies solar and climate co-variability. Dr. David Legates is a scientist who studies climatology and hydrology. Both are members of the American Geophysical Union.

www.icecap.us...

I have posted in the past other threads that show the same thing is happening in other scientific groups.

Remember that these groups only exist because of GRANTS, and the GREEN movement, and the AGW camp has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry which even has politicians like Al Gore in it's pockets.

Ten years ago people like Al Gore were worth $10 million dollars, today he is worth over $100 million dollars thanks to his false claims on AGW.



[edit on 1-12-2009 by ElectricUniverse]