Nic Lewis.

Onder de titel, ‘Global Warming: Another Doomsday Climate Model Flunks A Math Test’, publiceerde de ‘Investor’s Business Daily’ een redactioneel commentaar over een ernstige fout in de berekening van de opwarming van de oceanen, gepubliceerd in ‘Nature’, waarin werd gesteld dat deze groter was dan algemeen werd aangenomen.

De fout werd ontdekt door Nic Lewis, die eerder met Marcel Crok een studie had gepubliceerd over de klimaatgevoeligheid (het effect van een verdubbeling van de CO2-concentratie in de atmosfeer op de temperatuur), waarin zij aantoonden dat deze lager was dan algemeen werd aangenomen door de mainstream.

Marcel Crok, Nic Lewis.

Ook wetenschap blijft mensenwerk. En iedereen kan fouten maken. Maar in de klimaatdiscussie wordt door de aanhangers van AGW (‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’) altijd hoog opgegeven van de waarde van peer review. In dit geval hebben de peers echter een behoorlijke steek laten vallen.

Dat zou allemaal nog niet zo erg zijn geweest als vele media er niet als hongerige wolven op waren gesprongen en daarop reageerden met artikelen die de klimaathysterie slechts konden aanwakkeren. En hoe meer hysterie, hoe meer geld er verdwijnt in het zwarte gat van het zinloze klimaatbeleid.

Ik pik een aantal elementen uit het redactionele commentaar van de ‘Investor’s Business Daily’:

Laure Resplandy.

Everyone makes mistakes, but some mistakes are bigger than others. That’s the case with a recent study [by Laure Resplandy et al] based on a climate model that claimed the oceans had retained 60% more warming than previously thought. It made headlines around the world with its alarming conclusion.

The study itself, by no fewer than ten authors, made sweeping claims. The authors wrote that the study held “implications for policy-relevant measurements of the Earth response to climate change, such as climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases and the thermal component of sea-level rise.”

In other words, this study is a game–changer that policy makers ignored at their own — and our — peril.

Media around the world seized upon the report as yet another indicator of climate-change doom and runaway global warming. No surprise, since most of the media faithfully adhere to the Holy Church of Global Warming.

The only problem: The study made a crucial math error, something that happens often in published reports. Its alarming conclusion was all but invalidated ….

We’re not ripping the scientists for this. They made math mistakes, which were pointed out by skeptical British climate scientist Nicholas Lewis. His review found “serious (but surely inadvertent) errors” in the study.

After their own review, to their credit, the authors concurred.

“When we were confronted with his insight it became immediately clear there was an issue there,” Ralph Keeling, a climatologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and one of the co-authors of the study, told The San Diego Union-Tribune. “We’re grateful to have it be pointed out quickly so that we could correct it quickly.”

He added: “Our error margins are too big now to really weigh in on the precise amount of warming that’s going on in the ocean. We really muffed the error margins.”

Deze reactie siert de auteurs in kwestie. Maar helaas, de ervaring leert dat een groot deel van de media dusdanig is geobsedeerd door de de angst voor die verschrikkelijke opwarming van de aarde (die maar steeds niet wil komen), dat moet worden gevreesd dat correctie van hun oorspronkelijk alarmerende berichten niet of onvoldoende zal plaatsvinden.

One, the media — including the Washington Post and the BBC — that so enthusiastically covered the initial release of the paper will not give the corrections of their mistaken reports nearly as prominent display as the original. So, for many readers, the mistaken impression of a world undergoing dramatic warming will linger. … Major media have simply thrown skepticism out the window. What’s left is climate religion.

Lees verder hier.

Zie ook het (héél technisch/wiskundige) artikel van Nic Lewis hier.

James Delingpole schreef er onder meer het volgende over:

There are broader lessons here which — as so often before — are likely to be completely lost on the climate alarmist establishment.

One lesson is that climate skeptics are not scientific ignoramuses. They boast a huge range of independent experts like Nic Lewis who on many occasions have proved themselves more intellectually agile and better informed on climate science than the alarmist “consensus” gatekeepers in academe and at institutions like NASA and NOAA.

Another lesson is — as has been clear since Climategate — the peer-review system for scientific papers, especially if they have anything to do with climate change, is bust. Too often it is just a pal-review system in which chums on the climate change gravy train pass their colleagues’ work for publication nem con. Such is the appetite among alarmists for “evidence” that supports their doomsday thesis that the scarier it is, the more likely it is to get published.

Another lesson is that the mainstream media simply cannot be trusted to apply any kind of professional scrutiny to alarmist papers. No environmental correspondent, it’s true, would have had the advanced math skills that Nic Lewis used to find the paper false.

But the fact remains that there is not one science or environment correspondent attached to any mainstream media publication prepared to do their due diligence on global warming scare stories. They are all so wedded to the alarmist consensus that they scarcely even bother to alter the press release.

Finally, do not expect this humiliating retraction to be given anywhere near the prominence afforded the original story. This is how the climate scare machine works: the hysteria is only ever ratcheted upwards, never dialed down.

Lees verder hier.

Alweer een sprookje minder.

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