Thought du Jour

Wolfgang Wagner,a professor of remote sensing at Vienna University of Technology, resigned last week as editor of the scientific journal Remote Sensing. He blames himself for having approved publication, in July, of a flawed paper. The paper, co-authored by climate sceptic Roy Spencer, was ‘off topic’ for the journal, so managed to pass peer review.

The editor of a science journal has resigned after admitting that a recent paper casting doubt on man-made climate change should not have been published.

The paper, by US scientists Roy Spencer and William Braswell, claimed that computer models of climate inflated projections of temperature increase.

It was seized on by “sceptic” bloggers, but attacked by mainstream scientists.

Wolfgang Wagner, editor of Remote Sensing journal, says he agrees with their criticisms and is stepping down. ….

Roy Spencer, however, told BBC News: “I stand behind the science contained in the paper itself, as well as my comments published on my blog at drroyspencer.com.

“Our university press release necessarily put our scientific results in lay language, and what we believe they mean in the larger context of global warming research. This is commonly done in press statements made by the IPCC and its scientists, too, when reporting on research which advocates the view that climate change is almost entirely caused by humans.

“The very fact that the public has the perception that climate change is man-made, when in fact there is as yet no way to know with any level of scientific certainty how much is man-made versus natural, is evidence of that.”

Dr Spencer is one of the team at the University of Alabama in Huntsville that keeps a record of the Earth’s temperature as determined from satellite readings.

He is also on the board of directors of the George C Marshall Institute, a right-wing think tank critical of mainstream climate science, and an advisor to the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, an evangelical Christian organisation that claims policies to curb climate change “would destroy jobs and impose trillions of dollars in costs” and “could be implemented only by enormous and dangerous expansion of government control over private life”.

Richard Black, “Journal editor resigns over ‘problematic’ climate paper” BBC News, 2 September 2011.

Here is Prof Wagner, in his own words:

[T]he problem I see with the paper by Spencer and Braswell is not that it declared a minority view (which was later unfortunately much exaggerated by the public media) but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents. This latter point was missed in the review process, explaining why I perceive this paper to be fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal. This regrettably brought me to the decision to resign as Editor-in-Chief ….

Wolfgang Wagner, “Editorial: Taking Responsibility on Publishing the Controversial Paper “On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance” by Spencer and Braswell, Remote Sens. 2011, 3(8), 1603-1613″, Remote Sensing 3:8 (2 September 2011), pp. 1603-1613.

There is more information (with links) here.

William Braswell, co-author of the controversial paper, is a colleague of Spencer at the Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama.

Climate change skeptic Bjørn Lomborg writes that reports of a major shift in his thinking are premature.

There is no longer any mainstream disagreement about the reality of global warming. The crucial questions concern the economics of our response. But this debate can be just as heated. Ever since I published The Skeptical Environmentalist in 2001, I have always acknowledged that man-made global warming is real. Yet activists have repeatedly labeled me a “climate-change denier.” This is not because I have ever suggested that the basic science of global warming is wrong. Rather, it reflects anger and frustration over my insistence on pointing out that drastic carbon cuts make no sense. ….

The Copenhagen Consensus Center – a think tank where I serve as director – recently asked a large group of top climate economists to explore the costs and benefits of different responses to global warming. At the same time, we convened a second, equally stellar group of economists, including three Nobel laureates, to examine all of the research and rank the proposals in order of desirability. ….

The publication of Smart Solutions to Climate Change [Cambridge University Press] has generated considerable interest, including some from activists who believe that my enthusiastic support of its proposals represents a major shift in my thinking. In fact, I have advocated R&D spending for years. What is new – and exciting – is that with the publication of this research, we may finally be starting a constructive discussion about how we really can respond intelligently to this challenge.

Bjørn Lomborg, “Smarter Thinking on Climate Change”, Project Syndicate, 10 September 2010.

Bjørn Lomborg (1965-) is author of The Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge University Press 2001). He is a political scientist (Ph.D. University of Copenhagen, 1994) who has lectured in statistics and is now Adjunct Professor at Copenhagen Business School.

The Financial Times today published a thorough if depressing description of the final hours of the Copenhagen conference.

It was an extraordinary sight: the leaders of more than 20 countries, including US president Barack Obama and the heads of most of the world’s other biggest economies, herded with an adviser or two each into a small room on Friday morning, poring over a short piece of prose with red pens. ….

What emerged late on Friday night, after hours of hard bargaining, including a showdown between Mr Obama and the leaders of China and the other big developing economies, was a document to be known as the Copenhagen accord . ….

By Saturday morning Su Wei, China’s chief negotiator, was distancing his country from the deal. “This is not an agreed accord, it is not an agreed document, it is not formally endorsed or adopted,” he said. “It is prepared or discussed by a group of people who have been specially invited.” His point was that the accord was not a formal UN decision but a voluntary agreement. He went on to suggest countries that sign up might have reservations, and might resign from it at any point. ….

[The accord] can easily be sidelined, an impression reinforced by China’s words. That leaves the UN with a further six months of tough and possibly hopeless negotiations to win acceptance, to be followed by the nearly impossible task of turning any such acceptance into a treaty. It also leaves the world without a global framework to tackle climate change.

It is these conclusions, after two weeks of unprecedented scenes, that have led some to question whether the UN, with processes vulnerable to delays, grandstanding and blackmail by special interests, is the forum in which to reach a treaty. There is talk from developed country officials of pressing ahead with a much smaller group of the leading economies, such as the Group of 20, responsible for the majority of global emissions – a “coalition of the willing” for the climate.

Fiona Harvey, Ed Crooks and Andrew Ward, “Copenhagen: A discordant accord”, Financial Times, 21 December 2009.

The initial stumbling block for consensus was not China, but four countries –Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua– “implacably opposed to the accord”.