Dec 21, 2009
....This defensiveness has now gotten unhealthy for both the science and society. Scientists who attempt to publish material indicating that global warming due to manmade causes is not evident or weak, or who doubt the severity of the problem, are not treated well by some. I have had some first-hand experience with this.
I am known as somewhat of a skeptic regarding global warming effects in the NW--although I do believe that greenhouse gases are a serious problem in the long-run. A group of us noted that the snowpack in the Cascades was NOT rapidly melting away, in contrast to some publications by some local climate scientists and publicized by Mayor Nickels.
The reaction was intense. One of my colleagues, Mark Albright, who was the first to notice the lack of snowpack loss was fired as associate State Climatologist and the media went wild...we called it Snowpackgate...and it got national attention. I was told in the hallways to keep quiet about it...the denier types would take advantage of it!
We then wrote a paper on the subject (the main contributor being Mark Stoelinga) and submitted it to the Journal of Climate. I have published a lot of papers in my life (roughly 100) and I never had problems like we had with this paper. Very biased associate editor and some reviewers. Four review cycles and it was about to be turned down, until we appealed to the editor, who proved fair and reasonable.
This paper has now been accepted for publication, but it really revealed to me the bias in the system. Heere is the paper if you are interested.
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-pdf&doi=10.1175%2F2009JCLI2911.1
Poor papers with significant technical problems, but reflecting the “official” line, get published easily, while papers indicating the global warming is weaker or delayed, go through hurdle after hurdle.
I have heard case after case of similar treatment...so this is no anomaly.
No comments:
Post a Comment