Climate study gets pulled after charges of plagiarism

For me this article exemplifies a much larger problem than climate change/climate change denial (denial is the correct term, I am a sketpic, I am willing to hear from both sides, do my own research, and make my own conclusions). This article is opening a can of worms that will affect the entire scientific community.

If any 'peer reviewed' papers have managed to slip through with rubber stamps, it stands to reason, that any and all papers that went through 'peer review' (at least this peer review board) are now suspect.

This highlites a growing bluriness between science/religion that is portrayed in the media. If 'peers' are willing to rubber stamp any favourable 'peer's' work...well that is starting to sound a lot like fanaticism...even scientific zealotry if you will.

That would be disastrous to the scientific community and the principals it is founded on.

I hope each scientist that has had a reviewed paper will take a couple of moments to review their review. Make sure they have done their due dilligence to keep the science community as purely scientific as possible.

And back to the climate change debate...

More political theater....

By the way, if he plagiarized the report.... that makes HIM the fraud, not the study, no? I understand that he is trying to take credit for the work of others which is unethical and fraudulent; but the fact that it was plagiarized doesn't seem logically to invalidate the original work....

Or am I missing something?

NYT, OP-ED, Monday, July 26, 2010

Paul Krugman: Who Cooked The Planet

A few quotes:

"But will any of the deniers say 'O.K. I guess I was wrong,' and support climate action? No, and the planet will continue to cook.

So it wasn't the science, the scientists, or the economics that killed action on climate change. What was it?

The answer is greed and cowardice.

If you want to understand opposition to climate action, follow the money. The economy as a whole wouldn't be significantly hurt if we put a price on carbon, but certain industries- above all, the coal and oil industries- would. And those industries have mounted a huge disinformation campaign to protect their bottom lines.

Look at the scientists who question the consensus on climate change; look at the organizations pushing fake scandals; look at the think tanks claiming that any effort to limit emissons would cripple the economy. Again and again, you'll find that they are on the recieving end of a pipeline of funding that starts with big energy conpanies, like Exxon Mobil, which has spent tens of millions of dollars promoting climate-change denial, or the Koch industries, which has been sponsoring anti-environmental organizations for two decades.

Or look at the politicians who have been vociferously opposed to climate action. Where do they get much of campaign money? You already know the answer.

Alas, Mr. McCain wasn't alone; and there will be no climate bill. Greed, aided by cowardice, has triumphed. And the whole world will pay the price."

Originally posted by Maxmars
I understand that he is trying to take credit for the work of others which is unethical and fraudulent; but the fact that it was plagiarized doesn't seem logically to invalidate the original work....

Or am I missing something?

I thought the same thing after reading the OP, but I think you did miss something, another post by the original poster, a few posts later, here.

Those links explain why it's not just plagiarism but also fraud.

reply to post by mc_squared


i wounder if you really know me well enough to say this

Of course the Sun is the source of virtually all heat on this planet - but if you understood how radiative physics work you would also know that the planet has to re-radiate that energy back out. The greenhouse effect changes this radiative balance.

are we discussing radiative or convected heat
or ar we talking about thermodymaic and hydrodynamic heat radiation?
you talk of carbon as a particle that attracts water vapour,
but what about air traffic? jet exaust?
i would think that global warmers would want to look at polution in the upper atmosphere from planes
as contrails are every where these days

ok so one volcano goes off in malasya
it dumps more carbon into rthe atmosphere in one year than we have in centries,
so all the carbon savings in the world is not going to stop
the amount of carbon in the atmosphere
its a natural cycle
we are a very small part of a much larger cycle
can carbon tax stop volcanos?

i dislike how you asume i am not educated enough to voice my opinion

please would ypou explain how carbon taxes effect volcanos and the microscopic particles released by them

xploder

Originally posted by mc_squared
reply to post by XPLodER

 

A price on carbon is designed to get the public to invest in renewable energies.

The Obama administration has been surreptitiously adding to the costs of energy and energy usage through "feasability analysis" and its application in calculating the "social cost of carbon."
Obama secretly sneaks carbon tax on almost everything! None of the revenues are "earmarked" for renewable energy.

Consider the "Volt:" subsidized by us without our choice, "fueled" by coal, purchased by the US or its subsidized lackies (e.g., General Electric), and you see what a farce the "renewables" argument really is. Same is true for solar and wind - without deep-pocket subsidies, they would not exist because they do not make market sense.

If the idea truly is "to get the public to invest," i.e., a market solution, then artificial interference in the market would be unwarranted and unnecessary. This is a matter of the environmental elite "picking the winner," not free markets.
The "price on carbon" you envision is a tax or a penalty, nothing less.

Build the wind turbines and solar panels in the U.S. and you don't have a problem.

If this is the solution, where are the startups? Wht are the tru next-generation providers dependent upon subsidies instead of equity investors?

Are you seriously arguing that Global Warming is a hoax

AGW is a government, NGO and philanthrpoically-supported hoax to de-industrialize the US. Just ask John Holder jand Henry Chu, two of Obama's green advisors. They admit it and make no secret of their agenda.

to move jobs to China??

Sadly, that is the net effect. How many "Help Wanted" ads have you seen here for wind turbine or solar panel manufacturers?

reply to post by Maxmars

but the fact that it was plagiarized doesn't seem logically to invalidate the original work....

Claims similar to the OP are to scientific or economic or statistical analysis what "ad hominem" are to debate.

You can't challenge the logic and conclusion so you attack the pedigree.

No one says the paper or the congressional report are wrong, just that they are not in correct form.

reply to post by peck420


You're right, but I also don't think this case has really created any revelations about the peer-review process.

I think most scientists out there would agree that peer-review is essential but also certainly not perfect, nothing ever is, and you will still have stuff that slips through the cracks at times.

I'm still browsing through Dr. Mashey's report, but it seems what happened here was that - unlike a traditional review, which is conducted through rigorous standards and independently selected monitors - the authors of this report did indeed select their own reviewers and then put them down as notaries basically.

Some of them were buddies of theirs, and others apparently didn't even know they had been listed as reviewers.

So in short, this whole report stinks to high stinkburg.


Anyway - I agree with you in principle, but I wouldn't use this one bad apple to cast doubt on the whole scientific establishment either (especially considering there are basically two diametrically opposed orchards in this particular case).

I'm glad you can make the distinction between skeptic and denier, because this is kind of my main point in posting threads like this. A vast majority of skepticism in the climate debate has been hijacked by a calculatingly dishonest denial movement. There is TONS of evidence out there on this. Besides, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand why oil companies would have a vested interest in denying climate change. And yet so many people here simply choose to ignore this evidence - in fact to flat out DENY it - and then they proudly proclaim themselves to be skeptics, and get offended when you call them a "denier". Yeesh.

Originally posted by XPLodER
ok so one volcano goes off in malasya
it dumps more carbon into rthe atmosphere in one year than we have in centries,
so all the carbon savings in the world is not going to stop
the amount of carbon in the atmosphere
its a natural cycle
we are a very small part of a much larger cycle
can carbon tax stop volcanos?

i dislike how you asume i am not educated enough to voice my opinion

please would ypou explain how carbon taxes effect volcanos and the microscopic particles released by them

I am highly cynical at this point because of the countless people who have already proudly tried to lecture me on this subject, by turning straight to numerous memes that have been debunked a million times over. This is what you did in your previous posts and this is what you are continuing to do now with this one.

Volcanoes do not dump more carbon in one year than we have in centuries. This is just another ridiculous denier myth:

Do the Earth’s volcanoes emit more CO2 than human activities? Research findings indicate that the answer to this frequently asked question is a clear and unequivocal, “No.” Human activities, responsible for some 36,300 million metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2008 [Le Quéré et al., 2009], release at least a hundred times more CO2 annually than all the world’s degassing subaerial and submarine volcanoes (Gerlach, 2010).

Source: USGS

So I'm all up for having a nice modest, polite discussion. But to do that - how about you quit with the confrontational "OK Mr. Physics" talk, and how about you come off your high horse and stop announcing these memes like they're facts, because this is going to go nowhere.

My point in this thread was that the denial industry is using skeptical people like you to spread all their dishonest propaganda for them - and the more you keep trying to use these little tidbits to just be indignant about what I'm saying and one-up me, the more you're going to prove it.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Yup I'm reading through the review, and there's evidence of a LOT of shady stuff in there. But even if it was "just" the plagiarism thing, I don't see how people can write that off like it's no big deal.

Apparently out of the 91 pages in the report - 35 were plagiarized, except for parts where they were further embellished with errors and dishonest information. This was hardly an "ooops, we forgot to cite one reference" kinda deal.

This has huge ethical implications on the authors. I mean look at how much a place like ATS frowns on plagiarism. In university you can get kicked out for doing it. How does anyone think this is received in scholarly circles then?

I think anyone who wants to write this off as irrelevant is kidding themselves, and it's further evidence of the total double standard that has been injected into the public debate. People find a typo in an IPCC report and they scream bloody murder. I'll bet a dollar that if this paper had been pro-global warming, then this thread would have 100 flags by now and be full of comments on what scammers the scientists supposedly are.

reply to post by mc_squared


For the record, my skepticism lies not in humans affecting nature (everything affects everything, there is no way that we have not affected nature), but I do belive that we are looking in the wrong direction.

Of all of the harmful chemicals we create, CO2 is the least of my worries.

Back to the topic on hand.

The reason that I believe this will cast doubt on a wide range of scientific studies is the money trail. Climate change is not the only area with severe debate between powerful players. Just how much scientific studies have been compromised in other critical areas? And how many of those areas have used the same techniques to slip studies through? My biggest concern is studies done prior to the internet. It would have been far harder to catch with that many fewer eyes looking.

reply to post by peck420


Yeah well for sure - money tends to corrupt everything. I mean how many times do we hear about some potential cure for cancer that goes nowhere simply because no pharmaceutical company will invest in further research?

But as for the climate debate specifically - for me the question of honesty comes down to a numbers game and some common sense really. On the one side you have something like 97-98% of a scientific consensus. There are a numerous university studies and surveys that have verified this number. You also have, in writing, the official backing of virtually every major scientific organization on the planet. See more info on both these things here for example:

Is there a scientific consensus on global warming?

And to top it all off, as I mentioned on the first page, you have the backing of the basic laws of physics. This can be verified by anyone who puts in the time to learn the fundamentals for themselves. It's not even that hard. I would gladly do a post on this myself if I felt it would actually get read, instead of just shrieked at. But the point is there would have to be millions of people "in on it" if it was all a giant lie.


Meanwhile, on the other side you have this small handful of skeptic scientists - not the "32,000" that turned out to be an embellished hoax. Of the more well known skeptics: e.g. Richard Lindzen, Pat Michaels, Fred Singer - I have looked into all of them and each and every time I've been able to find a money trail leading back to Big Oil. I'm not kidding - every single one. In some cases like Singer these turned out to be the same exact shills who were getting paid in the 80's and 90's to say smoking doesn't cause cancer.

So it's a numbers game - either all these highly credible people are in on this massive collusive conspiracy to get the world to stop consuming fossil fuels and be more responsible for all the waste they create. Or a very small - but very powerful group of people have completely twisted people's perspectives to make it look that way.

I guess it's a subjective thing - but I also think if anyone actually takes the time to look at it objectively it becomes beyond obvious. But then again I'm "biased" so what do I know...

reply to post by mc_squared

On the one side you have something like 97-98% of a scientific consensus. There are a numerous university studies and surveys that have verified this number.

nzclimatescience.net

What should the weather be doing?

Do any of the climate change reports include a statement from our creator?

Originally posted by mc_squared

Originally posted by XPLodER
ok so one volcano goes off in malasya
it dumps more carbon into rthe atmosphere in one year than we have in centries,
so all the carbon savings in the world is not going to stop
the amount of carbon in the atmosphere
its a natural cycle
we are a very small part of a much larger cycle
can carbon tax stop volcanos?

i dislike how you asume i am not educated enough to voice my opinion

please would ypou explain how carbon taxes effect volcanos and the microscopic particles released by them

I am highly cynical at this point because of the countless people who have already proudly tried to lecture me on this subject, by turning straight to numerous memes that have been debunked a million times over. This is what you did in your previous posts and this is what you are continuing to do now with this one.

Volcanoes do not dump more carbon in one year than we have in centuries. This is just another ridiculous denier myth:

Do the Earth’s volcanoes emit more CO2 than human activities? Research findings indicate that the answer to this frequently asked question is a clear and unequivocal, “No.” Human activities, responsible for some 36,300 million metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2008 [Le Quéré et al., 2009], release at least a hundred times more CO2 annually than all the world’s degassing subaerial and submarine volcanoes (Gerlach, 2010).

Source: USGS

So I'm all up for having a nice modest, polite discussion. But to do that - how about you quit with the confrontational "OK Mr. Physics" talk, and how about you come off your high horse and stop announcing these memes like they're facts, because this is going to go nowhere.

My point in this thread was that the denial industry is using skeptical people like you to spread all their dishonest propaganda for them - and the more you keep trying to use these little tidbits to just be indignant about what I'm saying and one-up me, the more you're going to prove it.

volcanic co2 release is very small in the larger contex of an eruption and as i am sure you are aware!!!!!!
why have you omitted the effect of ash particulates?
the very fine particluates that circulate also cotribute to mositure and cloud formation
i am not saying we should not limit our carbon releases
i am saying that carbon is a very very small problem compaired to plutonium
why not tax people to clean up fukashima now
than tax people for future co2 release?

the carbon tax hits the users hard in the pocket while another country suffers no such loss
this makes the carbon taxed country less competitive in an open market environment,

this means its less expensive to do business in the free carbon country and they now have a competitive edge over you and they are still emitting the same overall volume of carbon.

this is a massive economic issue
why make your compeditors so much more compeditive and then seek an open market trade agreement?

David Evans is a scientist. He has also worked in the heart of the AGW machine. He consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part-time 2008 to 2010, modeling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products. He has six university degrees, including a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. The other day he said:

"The debate about global warming has reached ridiculous proportions and is full of micro-thin half-truths and misunderstandings. I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic."

And with that he begins a demolition of the theories, premises and methods by which the AGW scare has been foisted on the public.

link

this is interesting reading
xploder

reply to post by mc_squared

My point in this thread was that the denial industry is using skeptical people like you to spread all their dishonest propaganda for them

If that is your point, then you have failed. What "dishonest propaganda" have you revealed?

None. Cry as you will about attribution and authorship, but the substance of the study and the underlying congressional report remain un-challenged.

I wouldn't worry so much about the "denial industry," who rely only upon private funding, as you contend; but upon the publicly-funded AGW advocacy brigades who seek to use others' money to fund their redistributive, globalist agenda, even though they have no valid solutions to offer in exchange.

Where's the greatest threat? I vote for the thieves with their hands in my pockets.

A new trend, though, is that policies that just a few years ago were being touted to fight climate change are being presented as a necessary way to increase energy security. Against the backdrop of the financial crisis, and as public support for climate-change policies scrapes new lows in many developed countries, we hear less from leaders about the threat of global warming, and more about the supposed economic benefits of climate policies.

The Myth of Green Energy Security

If your position is so strong, why can't the AGW religion get its own funding? Where's the equity capital?

reply to post by Erno86


Krugman, of course, follows the redistributive philosophy of "climate science:" Take as much as you can from the industrialists, find a reason afterwards.

A new trend, though, is that policies that just a few years ago were being touted to fight climate change are being presented as a necessary way to increase energy security. Against the backdrop of the financial crisis, and as public support for climate-change policies scrapes new lows in many developed countries, we hear less from leaders about the threat of global warming, and more about the supposed economic benefits of climate policies.

This shift is hardly surprising, given the increasing number of analyses that demonstrate that current – unilateral – climate policies will have virtually no impact on the rise in global temperature.

The Myth of Green Energy Security

Originally posted by jdub297
If that is your point, then you have failed. What "dishonest propaganda" have you revealed?

Are you friggin kidding??

Try here:

Long list of sock puppet talking points versus what the science actually says

And take your pick.

These are the very memes that are regurgitated in and around ATS every single day, including as I have already shown - in this thread.

Meanwhile the Wegman Report was FILLED to the brim with flaws. Not only did it repeat many of the very same memes listed above - do you even know what they plagiarized? Obviously you don't because you haven't read it, you're just making up your own deluded version of events like a typical too-scared-to-face-the-facts denier.


They plagiarized a pro-AGW paper by Dr. Raymond Bradley. But then they just went and cherry-picked pieces of it and twisted it around to look like it had reached the opposite conclusions of what it actually did.

I mean how much more absurdly dishonest do you want it?


But it's hilarious how much you try to skew everything to fit your desperate world view though. I have seen enough of your posts to know your opinion is so deluded and polarized by right wing ideology there is absolutely no point in even trying to have a reasonable discussion with someone like you.

Your posts are insanely hypocritical - all you do is whine about how the science is politicized, but then you regurgitate all these politicized statements from one side of the aisle blaming everything on the other. Meanwhile any fact (like this report being a Joe Barton-commissioned political joke) that challenges your own ideology is written off as "ad-hominem", or whatever crap excuse you can come up with to keep yourself from drowning in cognitive dissonance.

Good luck living in your FOX News echo-chamber denier bubble - I have no interest in wasting my time on polemic lost causes like you.

reply to post by jdub297


One more thing:

If your position is so strong, why can't the AGW religion get its own funding? Where's the equity capital?

Are you not on a conspiracy website? Clearly you are so blinded by your ideology you don't understand how conspiracies tend to work.

Why the hell would the people who have the money to invest - aka the rich and powerful, aka "the powers that be" WANT to invest in something that grants all the little slaves freedom from things like oil?

This is EXACTLY why they instead put all their "private funding" into denying the reality of global warming. Let me quote the most ironically used meme in this whole idiotic debate:

Follow THE MONEY