Wikipedia:Scientific peer review/Global Warming

"The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme, IPCC's purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature (3). In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations" [p. 21 in (4)].

IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)].

References and Notes

A. C. Revkin, K. Q. Seelye, New York Times, 19 June 2003, A1. S. van den Hove, M. Le Menestrel, H.-C. de Bettignies, Climate Policy 2 (1), 3 (2003). See www.ipcc.ch/about/about.htm. J. J. McCarthy et al., Eds., Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2001). National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Science of Climate Change, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2001). American Meteorological Society, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 84, 508 (2003). American Geophysical Union, Eos 84 (51), 574 (2003). See www.ourplanet.com/aaas/pages/atmos02.html. The first year for which the database consistently published abstracts was 1993. Some abstracts were deleted from our analysis because, although the authors had put "climate change" in their key words, the paper was not about climate change. This essay is excerpted from the 2004 George Sarton Memorial Lecture, "Consensus in science: How do we know we're not wrong," presented at the AAAS meeting on 13 February 2004. I am grateful to AAAS and the History of Science Society for their support of this lectureship; to my research assistants S. Luis and G. Law; and to D. C. Agnew, K. Belitz, J. R. Fleming, M. T. Greene, H. Leifert, and R. C. J. Somerville for helpful discussions. 10.1126/science.1103618

The author is in the Department of History and Science Studies Program, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA. E-mail: noreskes@ucsd.edu

Another good point is made here, at realclimate.org: Peer Review: A Necessary But Not Sufficient Condition Filed under: Climate Science Paleoclimate Sun-earth connections Instrumental Record— group @ 12:37 pm - http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=109

wherein the author describes a number of scientific papers regarding global warming whose contents, calculations or conclusions were invalid and later retracted or debunked entirely. References:

Benestad, R.E., Are temperature trends affected by economic activity? Comment on McKitrick & Michaels., Climate Research, 27, 171-173, 2004.

Damon, P. E. and P. Laut, Pattern of Strange Errors Plagues Solar Activity and Terrestrial Climate Data, Eos, 85, p. 370. 2004

Douglass, D. H., Pearson, B.D., and S.F.Singer, Altitude dependence of atmospheric temperature trends: Climate models versus observation, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L13208, doi:10.1029/2004GL020103, 2004.

Douglass, D. H., Pearson, B.D., and S.F.Singer, Knappenberg, P.C., and P.J. Michaels, Disparity of tropospheric and surface temperature trends: New evidence, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L13207, doi:10.1029/2004GL020212, 2004, 2004.

Fan, S., Gloor, M., Mahlman, J., Pacala, S., Sarmiento, J., Takahashi, T., Tans, P. A Large Terrestrial Carbon Sink in North America Implied by Atmospheric and Oceanic Carbon Dioxide Data and Models, Science 282: 442-446, 1998.

Friis-Christensen, E., and K. Lassen, Length of the Solar Cycle: An indicator of Solar Activity Closely Associated with Climate, Science 254, 698-700, (1991).

Legates, D. R. and R. E. Davis, The continuing search for an anthropogenic climate change signal: limitations of correlation based approaches, Geophys. Res. Lett., 24, 2319-2322, 1997.

Laut, P., Solar activity and terrestrial climate: An analysis of some purported correlations, J.Atmos. Solar-Terr.Phys.,65, 801-812. 2003

Mann, M.E., On Smoothing Potentially Non-Stationary Climate Time Series, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, 2319-2322, L07214, doi: 10.1029/2004GL019569, 2004.

McKitrick, R., and Michaels, P.J., A test of corrections for extraneous signals in gridded surface temperature data., Climate Research, 26, 159-173, 2004.

Rahmstorf, S., D. Archer, D.S. Ebel, O. Eugster, J. Jouzel, D. Maraun, G.A. Schmidt, J. Severinghaus, A.J. Weaver, and J. Zachos, Cosmic rays, carbon dioxide, and climate, Eos, 85,, 38,41, 2004.

Schimel, D., Melillo, J., Tian, H., McGuire, A. D., Kicklighter, D., Kittel, T., Rosenbloom, N., Running, S., Thornton, P., Ojima, D., Parton, W., Kelly, R., Sykes, M., Neilson, R. and Rizzo, B., Contribution of Increasing CO2 and Climate to Carbon Storage by Ecosystems in the United States, Science 287: 2004-2006, 2000

Shaviv, N, and J. Veizer, Celestial driver of Phanerozoic climate?, GSA Today, 13,, 4-10, 2004.

Soon, W., D. R. Legates, and S. L. Baliunas, Estimation and representation of long-term (>40 year) trends of Northern-Hemisphere gridded surface temperature: A note of caution, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31,, L03209, doi:10.1029/2003GL019141, 2004.

Soon, W., and S. Baliunas, Proxy climatic and environmental changes over the past 1000 years, Climate Research, 23, 89-110, 2003.

Soon, W., S. Baliunas, C, Idso, S. Idso and D.R. Legates, Reconstructing climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years, Energy and Environment, 14, 233-296, 2003.

Wigley, T.M.L, Santer, B.D and K.E. Taylor, K.E., Correlation approaches to detection, Geophys. Res. Lett.,, 27, 2973-2976, 2000.

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