PubMed today launches a pilot version of PubMed Commons,

“a system that enables researchers to share their opinions about scientific publications. Researchers can comment on any publication indexed by PubMed, and read the comments of others.”

In general, we’re big fans of post-publication peer review, as Retraction Watch readers know. Once it’s out of its pilot phase — and we hope that’s quite soon — PubMed Commons comments will be publicly available. So this is a step forward — but only a tentative one. That’s because of the first bullet point in the terms of service commenters agree to:

Only those individuals listed as an author on a PubMed citation may make comments in PubMed;

If possible, provide detailed references to papers (eg. page numbers, figure pointers) and unpublished data; refer to external websites if a longer comment or reference to other work is necessary;

Do not describe or share unpublished work by others;

Comments should not contain discriminatory, racist, offensive, inflammatory, or unlawful language;

Comments should not contain partisan political views;

Comments should not have explicit commercial endorsements.

So PubMed Commons isn’t exactly a town commons, unless you happen to live in a town whose residents are all scientists.

Stanford’s Rob Tibshirani, who was involved in organizing PubMed Commons, wrote in a blog post prepared in advance of the launch:

“One would like the system to be inclusive as possible but many scientists would not be interested in posting comments in a system with a high proportion of irrelevant or uninformed comments. NIH also needed a rule for who could post that would be pretty clear cut and not based on e.g. some judgment of the experience or knowledge of the participants. The decision was made that comments could only be posted by authors of papers in PubMed. This would make the situation symmetric in that all people who comment can have their own work commented on. It would also include a large number of potential participants and would meet NIH’s need for something unambiguous. Unfortunately it would leave out many people who could add valuable input, including many graduate students, patient advocates, and science journalists. I’m a little worried about this restriction, as I want to make the system open to as many users as possible. But hopefully that is a pretty wide net, and it may be widened further in the future.”

We’re a bit worried about this restriction, too.

Tool making and communication skills are easily distinguishing features between human beings and other species on this planet.  When coupled with a natural curiosity and the ability learn from our mistakes, we have lifted most humans from the vulgar realities of our ancestor’s existence.  For those bent on controlling others, tools and communication must be controlled and manipulated.

The ‘great humanitarian’, Vladimir Lenin said “the way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation”.  The great philosopher, Bertrand Russell said “western populations would gladly accept serfdom if it was packaged as saving the Earth”. 

Hubble and the Big Bang

In 1929, when spectral analysis revealed a ‘red shift’ in distant galaxies, astronomer Edwin Hubble speculated that this might be due to acceleration away from Earth and a possible expanding universe.  Before he could reflect on other possible explanations, a radio interview stumbled onto the phrase “Big Bang” and a run-away train left the station.  Dr Hubble was uncomfortable with both the concept and the catchy nick-name, but he had a ‘conflict of interest’ on this issue.

In a Times magazine interview, on December 14, 1936, titled “Science: Shift on Shift”, Dr Hubble makes his opposition clear.  One reason that he was not more forceful was because he was begging the government for funding of the Mount Palomar telescope.  Public interest was necessary during the tight depression era federal budgets to complete this project.

The Hooker 100 inch telescope was then showing farthest light sources to be moving at 25,000 miles per second.  Dr Hubble, during his 1936 interview, stated that he was “willing to abandon the expanding universe to mathematical cosmologists”…pending erection of the 200 inch Palomar telescope…”which may finally settle the question”.

Shall I tell you a secret? The Sun warms the Earth and the Earth warms the atmosphere. Have you got that? It took me a while to ponder over this. I got it from my Climate guru, my personal trainer in all matters scientific. Actually Hans is my third personal trainer, and he will not mind if I say I don’t believe a word he says. That’s right – I don’t believe a word he says, until I have my own evidence for what he explains.

If the Sun warmed the atmosphere, the top of the atmosphere, or at least the top of the Troposphere, would be hot – but it isn’t – at 33,000 feet it is about minus 55C. I don’t have to tell you guys that do I? Just ask anyone who flies and watches the monitor on board. So radiation from the Sun encounters mass and the earth and the oceans warm the atmosphere from the bottom up.

Some smart-arse disagreed with this. He said to me: ‘Sit on a cold brick wall on a frosty morning and see just how warm the earth is!’ Well that smart arse had a point. So now let me share with you a second secret. The Sun warms the Earth and Oceans and the Earth and Oceans warm or cool the atmosphere.

Ah, that makes a difference, that makes sense, doesn’t it? When the Sun shines down on the sand even on the Riviera, the sands are often too hot for the feet. Even more so in the Sahara. So the atmosphere likewise gets hot and the temperature rises. When the sun goes down the sands cool rapidly, even the Bedouin will make a fire and drink hot tea. When the earth cools down so does the atmosphere.

As public concern over man-made global warming continues to fall independent scientists speak out against relentless pro-green censorship in the mainstream media. Sinking ever deeper into such unethical bias is The Los Angeles Times which will no longer publish letters from climate change deniers, Times letters editor Paul Thornton wrote earlier this month.

Among independent scientists enraged by such a blatant anti-science and undemocratic approach are respected analysts, Professor J. Scott Armstrong and Dr. Martin Hertzberg.

Prof. Armstrong, of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and an expert in the field of Long-Range Forecasting, says that such “Censorship of skeptic global warming views by the press has been going on for many years.” 

While former U.S. Navy meteorologist, Dr Hertzberg, agrees with Armstrong that the climate alarmist case is now shown to be “so weak that even with widespread censorship, citizens are not persuaded.”

Like Armstrong, Hertzberg is delighted to see that more savvy citizens are turning to alternative sources of information and open debate on the Internet to better inform their decisions. 

It is on the world wide web where readers can freely find Armstrong’s study into the reliability of the alarmist claims of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Independently scientists found that the IPCC “violated 72 of 89 relevant scientific forecasting principles” despite claims by the LA Times and others that government-sponsored climatologists are reliable scientific authorities. Armstrong lamented that there is only one published peer-reviewed paper that claims to provide scientific forecasts of long-range global mean temperatures. That paper is a 2009 article in the International Journal of Forecasting by Kesten Green, Willie Soon and Professor Armstrong, himself.

Like hermit crabs, climate alarmists scramble to find new ways to hide, when put in a box

As children playing on the beach, we discovered a fascinating behavioral pattern among hermit crabs. Place a dozen in a cardboard box, and within minutes the crabs exit their shells and try to occupy another. This mild stress-induced response probably reflects their life-long drive to continue growing by repeatedly commandeering larger shells, to protect their vulnerable soft bodies.

Similarly, climate alarmists are now scrambling to find new shelter from the stress coming from a public that increasingly realizes their doom-and-gloom predictions of climate chaos are based on shoddy data, faulty computer models and perhaps outright deception. The alarmist scientists have put themselves in a climate cataclysm box, and are desperate to protect their reputations, predictions and funding.

Despite the absence of warming in actual measured temperature records over the last 16 years, and near-record lows in hurricane and tornado activity, they still cry “wolf” repeatedly and try to connect every unusual or “extreme” weather event to human emissions of plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide. (Actually, people account for only 4{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of all the CO2 that enters Earth’s atmosphere each year.)

Alarmists used their predictions of climate catastrophe to demand that the world transform its energy and economic systems, slash fossil fuel use, and accept lower living standards, in response to the politically manufactured science. Even as growing evidence conflicted with their dogma, the money, fame and power were too good to surrender for mere ethical reasons.

The impact on energy prices, national economies, jobs and people’s lives has been profound and negative. For example, in response to the unfounded alarmism, Germany moved aggressively toward wind and solar energy over the past 15 years – both politically and with taxpayer and investment spending. It also shied away from more nuclear power and saw its economy contract and energy-intensive companies shed jobs and threaten to move overseas. Now Germany is burning more coal and building new coal-fired power plants, in an attempt to reverse the economic disaster its “green” and “climate protection” policies unleashed, but its actions are still sending shock waves at investors around the world.

Science‘s John Bohannon has recently revealed the extent of poor or non-existent peer review in some journals that call themselves peer-reviewed, as Retraction Watch reported on here.

Now, an open-access publisher based in Rijeka, Croatia, called InTech, has cancelled its journal that was targeted and exposed by Science’s investigation. The journal was going to charge 400 euros to publish the paper by Bohannon.

The International Journal of Integrative Medicine has been “discontinued”, does “not accept submissions” and “is no longer active” states the publisher’s website.

The notice, posted just a day after Science published its piece, says:

“We regret to inform you that as of October 4th, 2013, the International Journal of Integrative Medicine is no longer active.

Authors who have paid the Article Processing Charge (APC) when submitting their research paper to this journal, will be refunded in full.

Articles published in the International Journal of Integrative Medicine up-to-date, will remain available online on the journal’s webpage.

For any further information regarding the International Journal of Integrative Medicine, please contact us at [email protected].

In an e-mail from InTech, which I already reported in Croatia’s Jutarnji List, InTech blames its scientific editors who operate outside the actual firm.

Aslak Grinsted has just posted a document, which is said to be “a nice figure which compares the 21st Century sea level projections”. I would say it is another one of all those exaggerations that the IPCC supporters seem to feel that have to produce to save the story.

Firstly, Grinsted claims the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite altimetry data gives the true reading of what has been going on in the last 20 years with global sea level. Therefore he – without any hesitation– proclaims that this value constitutes “an absolute lower limit” of the sea level by 2100.

This is certainly NOT true. The satellite altimetry data have been severely modified by quite subjective so-called “corrections”. Therefore, it cannot be used as a measure of actual sea level changes (e.g. 1, 2).

Secondly, the so-called “ice sheet experts” are said to give values equivalent to a sea level rise from 28 to 145 cm. This is a remarkable exaggeration, which violates physical laws and knowledge accumulated over a very long period of time (e.g. 1).

The only scientifically defendable value of the present rate of sea level changes is somewhere in the sector between ±0.0 to 1,7 mm/year sea level rise (see 1, 2). A value that is far below all the model predictions, as illustrated in the below figure.

Figure 1. Grinsted’s original diagram corrected to show actually observed sea level variations (red box) and its extension of the various model out-puts (yellow line).

Consequently, Grinsted presents a strongly exaggerated and incorrect picture.

The Environmental Movement is an anti-science pseudo religion which believes that humans are destroying “The Planet”, In order to promote this view they have set up organisations for their activists, such as Greenpeace, where every member and official had to propagate the official doctrine, imposed from above.

At the time, employment of scientists had fallen, Generous salaries, promotion and foreign travel was offered to those who would support this programme, combined with a campaign of elimination of critics by influence on Journal Editors, the Universities, Official Scientific Bodies and the international media.

The IPCC has now issued five major Reports. These have been amazingly successful in persuading governments all over the world that they can prevent what is alleged to control “global warming” by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other minor ‘greenhouse gases.’

The IPCC ran into a problem that does not affect an organisation such as Greenpeace, Scientists are usually trained to think for themselves, and some of those who have been recruited to support the “climate change” programme find if difficult not to insert their reservations into the opinions that are proscribed for them.

Two Australian scientists, Dr Robin Warren and Dr Barry Marshall won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2005 for their pioneering cure of peptic ulcers.  What is most revealing about ‘established science’ is that these gifted and dedicated doctors had made this discovery in 1982.  Establish orthodoxy moves at a snail’s pace when confronted with unorthodoxy.

The ‘settled science’ of peptic ulcers for decades was based on gastric samplings that showed an acidic or lower pH than normal.  This indicated that the patient obviously had a dietary imbalance, best cured by alkaline tinctures, or curiously enough, dairy products which were themselves acidic.  It is inexplicable that the science community clung to this false premise for so long.

What Warren/Marshall research was able to show was that the bacterium, H. Pylori, was the cause of the ulcer and the increased acid was from the bacteria’s waste.  Millions suffered needlessly for decades while ‘experts’ dithered and obstructed this important medical breakthrough.

The established experts were unable to accept the overwhelming evidence of successful treatment based on this theory.  To prove his findings, the courageous Dr Marshall infected himself with H. Pylori and then cured himself with his own antibiotic treatment.  It is the determined skeptic that delivers the hope and promise of science to humanity.

Given the low level of the lay public’s understanding of science, it is a real challenge to provide meaningful debate to the established leadership and not over-reach the populace.  Along with the restraints of article brevity, all concepts must be simplified and each article self supporting.  This articles is best viewed in context with the previous companion article.

Heat is energy in transit from warmer systems to colder systems.

My name is Judy Ryan. I am a retired epidemiologist in Canberra, Australia. I became a global warming skeptic in June 2012 during a course run at the University of the Third Age by Marjorie Curtis. Marjory is a retired geologist and encouraged our class to write letters to the media questioning the science behind Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW). She was unaware at the time of just how well that idea would resonate with me and what the result would be. Needless to say, Marjory and I have become good friends and she is the co-signer on the public letters that I write to prominent climate alarmists. (CA’s)

Climate skepticism was regarded by many as a key factor in the result of the recent Australian elections. But our enduring goal is to defeat scientific corruption, then delay its recurrence for as long as possible. We realize that if we let this global warming scam die gracefully, its perpetrators may insidiously start on the next one. 

Marjorie and I decided to focus on the issue of possible scientific corruption in our public letters because (1) scientific discussion with CA advocates can inadvertently lend credibility to the underlying scam, (2) it is easier for the general public and the media to understand, and of much more interest to them.

Scientific research has changed the world. Now it needs to change itself

A simple idea underpins science: “trust, but verify”. Results should always be subject to challenge from experiment. That simple but powerful idea has generated a vast body of knowledge. Since its birth in the 17th century, modern science has changed the world beyond recognition, and overwhelmingly for the better.

But success can breed complacency. Modern scientists are doing too much trusting and not enough verifying—to the detriment of the whole of science, and of humanity.

Too many of the findings that fill the academic ether are the result of shoddy experiments or poor analysis (see article). A rule of thumb among biotechnology venture-capitalists is that half of published research cannot be replicated. Even that may be optimistic. Last year researchers at one biotech firm, Amgen, found they could reproduce just six of 53 “landmark” studies in cancer research. Earlier, a group at Bayer, a drug company, managed to repeat just a quarter of 67 similarly important papers. A leading computer scientist frets that three-quarters of papers in his subfield are bunk. In 2000-10 roughly 80,000 patients took part in clinical trials based on research that was later retracted because of mistakes or improprieties.

What a load of rubbish

Even when flawed research does not put people’s lives at risk—and much of it is too far from the market to do so—it squanders money and the efforts of some of the world’s best minds. The opportunity costs of stymied progress are hard to quantify, but they are likely to be vast. And they could be rising.

How do we know Anthony Watts of WUWT supports junk climate science? Just take a look at his latest foray on Twitter for the proof. Below are copies of an exchange (October 18, 2013) between Anthony Watts and Simon Conway-Smith as featured on the climateofsophistry.com blog. In them Mr. Watts is making some bold but irrational claims about the supposed greenhouse gas effect (GHE) and carbon dioxide (CO2) warming.

To us at “Slayersland” or more correctly, Principia Scientific International (PSI), these tweets demonstrate that Watts doesn’t understand the concept of the null hypothesis. He seems incapable of applying it to discredited ‘science’ that asserts carbon dioxide is a gas adding/trapping heat in our atmosphere making it warmer. Watts and others are still hanging on to the belief, despite growing evidence to the contrary, that CO2 must cause warming.

But as Conway-Smith suggests, the black and white facts of the past 17 years are proving to be an inconvenient truth. Global thermometers show no warming trend despite huge increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Doesn’t that then prove the null hypothesis – CO2 is not a warming gas?

AR5 Continues to Let The End Justify the Unscrupulous Means

Someone said economists try to predict the tide by measuring one wave. The IPCC essentially try to predict (project) the global temperature by measuring one variable. The IPCC compound their problems by projecting the temperature variable with the influence of the economic variable.

Use of circular arguments is standard operating procedures for the IPCC. For example, they assume a CO2 increase causes a temperature increase. They then create a model with that assumption and when the model output shows a temperature increase with a CO2 increase they claim it proves their assumption.

They double down on this by combining an economic model that projects a CO2 increase with their climate model projection. To make it look more accurate and reasonable they create scenarios based on their estimates of future developments. It creates what they want, namely that CO2 will increase and temperature will increase catastrophically unless we shut down fossil fuel based economies very quickly.

All their projections failed, even the lowest as, according to them, atmospheric CO2 continued to rise and global temperatures declined. As usual, instead of admitting their work and assumptions were wrong, they scramble to blur, obfuscate and counterattack.

It is a common mistake among many to think science is exclusive – it shouldn’t be. The scientific method is very much inclusive, it is INTENDED to empower the people. Luther Haave, Richard Courtney and myself produced the below description of the method, which to date has not been questioned to my knowledge.  The full version is at globalwarmingskeptics.info.

Excerpt:

Some scientists have become advocates of the hypothesis of an enhanced greenhouse effect. Kary Mullis, won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1993, and he writes in his book, Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, of such advocates:

“Scientists who speak out strongly about future ecological disaster and promote the notion that humans are responsible for any changes going on are highly suspect. Turn off the TV. Read your elementary science textbooks. You need to know what they are up to. It’s every man for himself as usual, and you are on your own.”

This paper attempts to aid non-scientists to assess scientific opinions on climate change and to discern the advocates whom Mullis condemns. The assessment requires no scientific knowledge except a basic understanding of the scientific method as explained by Karl Popper.

Popper argued that all science is based on hypotheses that must be tested to destruction. Sound evidence which does not fit with the hypothesis must logically cause it to be rejected. However, the other side of the same coin is that no hypothesis can ever be said to be proven. Over time, the body of evidence consistent with a successful hypothesis builds up to the extent that it becomes regarded as a theory, for example the theory of General Relativity, or Tectonic Plate theory.

Thomas Kuhn provided a different view of how scientists work. He introduced the concept of “normal science‟ to cover the situation where scientists work on various topics within a central paradigm. In contrast to Popper, the Kuhnian view is that “wrong” results (i.e. those which are in conflict with the prevailing paradigm) are considered to be due to errors on the part of the researcher rather than findings which damage the consensus view.

However, as conflicting evidence increases, a crisis point is reached where a new consensus view is arrived at and this generates a so-called paradigm shift. Simply, Kuhn says scientists are human and have human prejudices. Advocates of the man-made global warming hypothesis promote Kuhn’s view and repeatedly cite “consensus” as evidence. Simply, they proclaim that the number of “experts” who hold an opinion is “evidence” that the opinion is correct.

But opinions are formed by many things – including personal prejudices – so “consensus” is no help to persons who wish to discern the expert opinions that most closely match physical reality. Popper’s philosophy of science is more useful for those who want to decide between competing scientific opinions.

The Hockey Schtick blog highlights a new paper published in Geophysical Research Letters. It finds the natural North Atlantic Oscillation [NAO] controls temperatures of the Northern Hemisphere 15 to 20 years in advance, a lagged effect due to the large thermal inertia of the oceans. The authors find the NAO index can be used to predict Northern Hemisphere mean temperature multidecadal variability and the natural oceanic Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) 15–20 years in advance. A simple linear model based upon this theory predicted the ‘pause’ of global warming since about 2000 that IPCC models failed to predict, and projects Northern Hemisphere temperatures will “fall slightly” over the 15 years from 2012-2027. 

The NAO, in turn, has been linked to solar activity.