Yes, Peer Review CAN Be Improved - Even For Climate Science Journals

The persistent complaint of the mainstream scientific community about climate deniers is the latter seek to tar the entire journal referee process. This is primarily done by way of suggesting (or asserting) that the peer review process is itself "biased" in the sense of giving preference to authors, papers backing up the reality of global warming.  As I've shown in previous posts this is total nonsense.

First, climate change denier papers are generally dismissed precisely because they lack the basics of scientific authority - including: proper data selection, bias-free  analysis, consistent interpretation of data, and appropriate mathematical techniques. Hence, their papers are tagged as the opposite of  authoritative science.

Second, given all climate scientists must compete for scarce funding resources, they are not about to help a competitor - say set to publish a competing model or theory - merely because their research is in line with global warming /climate change..  Thus, if anything,  peer review is likely to be even more rigorous than for deniers.

Having said that there are areas where the peer review process can definitely  be improved, and not just in climate science but across the scientific publication spectrum.. One way would be in the removal of gender bias for selection of peer reviewers, which is now weighted heavily toward males.  At the forefront is a recent study in Nature, showing that women were being used less as reviewers in nearly all age groups compared to expectations based on their higher success rates as authors and their distribution with age in the AGU membership.  The AGU is the American Geophysical Union and comprises the largest professional organization of both climate scientists and space physics researchers.

Along with those findings of gender bias in peer review, overall data clearly show that AGU needs to engage more younger scientists and also more scientists from outside the "First World"..  Thus, the  peer review process is adversely affected in terms of an age bias (favoring older researchers) and also favoritism toward reviewers in more developed nations.  The first is perhaps more understandable given people collectively tend to accept those who are older have more experience, so should be better at what they are tasked to do, including assessing the work of peers.  Older reviewers are also more likely to be fully tenured professors, as opposed to assistant professors.

The second is harder to grasp but  something I have run into,  having completed my postgraduate work at a foreign university (University of the West Indies) rather than an American or European one.  I suppose the applicable assumption involves the wrongheaded take which conflates the offshore medical school (say as found in a number of Caribbean nations) with all Third world foreign universities, i.e. being substandard. So, because some Caribbean  medical schools may be below par the reasoning is that all Caribbean, African or Asian universities (in whatever field)  must be as well.   This is an example of the fallacy of composition, or assuming that because one part of an aggregate (say a Caribbean medical school) has an undesirable attribute, then all foreign universities must as well.

For me, the kibosh landed on this fallacy after my appointment as a peer reviewer by the National Science  Foundation in the 80s  - for space and solar physics papers.  A major reason, of course, was on account of having a specialty in the area of statistical limitations related to solar flare and sunspot phenomena. (Including applications of the Poisson distribution to geo-effective flare frequency.)

If  the trope that foreign (e.g. 3rd world)  universities are inferior were true it would also follow that those who graduate from these universities would not get published as often as their peers in the 1st world. This is demonstrably false when one examines the total constellation of published papers in all scientific fields - and compares the authorship based on proportion of population by national origin.

But the biggest immediate impediment to better peer review is the one governed by gender bias. Most compelling here is the April issue of AGU's largest journal, Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), wherein one read the following statement:

Evaluation of our journals’ peer review practices suggests that women were less likely than men to be asked to review. Please help us improve the diversity of our reviewer pool by including women, young scientists, and members of other underrepresented groups in your suggested reviewers (e.g., age, ethnic, and international diversity).

Other data show a marked increase in the acceptance of the invitation  for women to review, especially by women scientists. This increase likely reflects a broader awareness of the gender bias issue prompted by the Nature paper,  It is important to point out that such awareness was not likely to be found in physics, geoscience, and astrophysics papers even 40 years ago.  This may be because too many women researchers - often in the assistant professor position - were rarely even considered as principal authors in a major paper.  Hardly any principal authors meant even fewer reviewers.

On another positive note,  AGU journals continue overall to expand the gender diversity of its reviewer pool, as shown in the graph below:

Although the gender diversity of reviewers has improved, the data so far for 2017 indicate that the GRL statement has not so far led to a significant change in recruiting reviewers for that journal who are younger or who hail from countries outside North America and western Europe. So why the persistence of reverse ageism as well as cultural -national preference for reviewers? We can't be sure but it's most likely because the referee position is still dominated by a certain type (e.g. older white males)  and these will only yield very grudgingly.

To their credit, AGU editors have been conducting workshops on reviewing, including recently at the International Geological Congress meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, and the Japan Geoscience Union–AGU meeting in Chiba, outside of Tokyo, and in visits to universities and research institutions in China. AGU Publications has also conducted several webinars on reviewing, including the most recent on “How to Write Effective Reviews (and Improve Your Own Manuscript),” and will expand these efforts further.

The AGU also plans to continue to collect and report data on reviewer diversity in its scientific publishing and provide regular updates.  The payoff will ultimately be greater peer reviewer diversity - not only by gender- but also by age and national origin.  This is bound to enable more diverse papers in all disciplines to see publication. 

This does not mean the number of  climate change "skeptic" or "iconoclast" (aka denier) papers will see more publication, unless and until they can adhere to the rigors of science.  It might actually be better, since the deniers are really about economics, they seek to get published in that domain.  They can then focus their mental energy on the economic reasons for resisting climate change and the need to reduce carbon emissions - which is what their specious science is really about.

AGU Needs To Sever Ties With ExxonMobil's "Blood money"

When I joined the American Geophysical Union more than 30 years ago, I did so to be part of a professional organization of scientists at the forefront of research from space physics to climate change.  Indeed, from the time the AGU position on climate change first came out, followed by a mild revision, e.g.


http://sciencepolicy.agu.org/files/2013/07/AGU-Climate-Change-Position-Statement_August-2013.pdf


It has been encouraging to see at least one major scientific organization out in the open stating clearly the extent to which climate change-global warming is real and a threat to all of us on this planet.

Therefore, it was somewhat shocking to read in a recent issue of Eos: Earth & Space Science News (December, page 8, 'AGU Should Sever Ties With ExxonMobil') that the research organization to which I belong has actually been taking money from the most arrogant and deceptive climate change deniers for the past 15 years.  This according to the three authors of the article: Michael Mann, Naomi Oreskes, and Kerry A. Emmanuel.

As the authors note:

"For decades, ExxonMobil has engaged in a campaign of disinformation: funding individuals and organizations committed to portraying climate change as highly uncertain, if not a hoax; questioning the motives of climate scientists; and targeting researchers for personal attacks aimed at discrediting their findings.

ExxonMobil executives have repeatedly suggested in speeches, in interviews, and in “advertorials” that climate science was too unreliable to be trusted as a basis for policy making. Flying in the face of peer-reviewed economic studies, they have also insisted that the costs of mitigating climate change would be greater than the benefits.

Accepting ExxonMobil money violates AGU’s own policy on accepting funding from groups that peddle misinformation. Given these facts, it baffles us that the American Geophysical Union (AGU) continues to accept money from ExxonMobil. The more than half a million dollars of ExxonMobil money that AGU has accepted over the past 15 years violates AGU’s own policy on accepting funding from groups that peddle misinformation.

Last month, AGU reaffirmed its perplexing stance. On 23 September, its Board of Directors chose not to sever ties to ExxonMobil funding, despite receiving a detailed report from AGU members that demonstrates that ExxonMobil is still in the business of disinformation."


These opening sentences left me with mouth agape and in near disbelief. How on earth could an organization to which I'd committed more than 3 decades of time, energy (and money!)  have made such an awful, near sighted decision? I mean, why accept "blood oil money" from a bunch dedicated to denying what your own position statement displays?  Have even the most venerable professional scientific organizations been perverted by "Trumpdom"? Well, of course, that can't be a factor given it's been going on for 15 years. This elicits the question of whether the money given was that important to AGU carrying out its mission.

I doubt it, given that a half million bucks over 15 years is, let's be clear, essentially "chump change" compared to the tens of millions collected in regular professional fees, membership fees. I mean, we're talking about  $33,300 a year. Is that really all it takes for a scientific organization to sell its principles, its very "soul"?   

These questions are even more to the point given, as the authors point out (ibid.):

"ExxonMobil’s systematic attacks on climate science are well documented. They have been detailed by our fellow scientists, as well as us—indeed, we ourselves have been targets of ExxonMobil’s repeated attacks. ExxonMobil’s assault on climate science has been documented in the scholarly research of historians and sociologists who have taken up the issue of attacks on science as a question of academic scholarship. The attacks have also been heavily explored by journalists, science advocacy organizations, and filmmakers.

What’s more, ExxonMobil’s attacks on climate science are not a thing of the past. A report by AGU members sent to AGU’s Board on 25 March 2016, ahead of their 6–7 April Board meeting, documented an exhaustive body of evidence supporting the fact that ExxonMobil “continues to generate its own misinformative comments, fund groups that promote climate science misinformation, and financially support more than 100 climate-denying members of Congress.”

Moreover, “despite stating publicly in 2008 that it would no longer support climate science misinformation, ExxonMobil has continued to make public statements disparaging the validity of climate science and to financially support others who do the same.”"

The most trenchant point of all is perhaps:


"The fact that AGU accepts this money is a clear violation of AGU’s Organizational Support Policy. The policy states, “AGU will not accept funding from organizational partners that promote and/or disseminate misinformation of science, or that fund organizations that publicly promote misinformation of science.”

Adding:

"It is precisely because ExxonMobil so clearly fails to meet the standard of this policy that more than 100 leading AGU members, including the three of us, were signatories to an open letter last February urging AGU to sever its ties with the company. The letter noted that “AGU has established a long history of scientific excellence with its peer-reviewed publications and conferences, as well as a strong position statement on the urgency of climate action. But by allowing Exxon to appropriate AGU’s institutional social license to help legitimize the company’s climate misinformation, AGU is undermining its stated values as well as the work of its own members.”

AGU must understand that this is not merely a matter of cosmetics or optics. The fact that money - in any amount - is being accepted from ExxonMobil, actually undermines credibility in AGU's position statement and its commitment to serious climate science.

At the same time this schizoid behavior may need a broader explanation. As Naomi Klein has noted ('This Changes Everything') while insurance and re-insurance companies are at the forefront of concern over climate change, i.e. Ms. Klein quotes  (p. 49)one Swiss re-insurer (Swiss Re Americas):

"What keeps me up at night is climate change."

Many still contribute "substantial sums of money" to climate denier think tanks like the Heartland Institute. Ms. Klein offers no convincing reason for such contradictory behavior, but it could well be explained by a divergence between individuals in a company and the opinion of the whole Board of Directors.  In any case, as climate change disasters ramp up this split will have to end, given insurers will be bleeding more and more money.

In any case, one hopes AGU will soon see the gross error of its ways and send these ExxonMobil spinners and their money packing.

See also:

www.ucsusa.org/decadesofdeception

CO2 Emissions Drop to 20-Year Low. A Cause to Rejoice?

A barely noticed (especially by climate scientists) report by the U.S. Energy Department Information Agency this month, stated that energy-related CO2 emissions in the U.S. for the first 4 months this year, fell to 1992 levels.

The report went on to indicate that the primary factor and reason is that cheaper (and cleaner)  natural gas led many power plants to switch from much dirtier coal burning (which also generates mercury in the atmosphere).

Evidently, many of the world's climate scientists didn't see the drop coming because it occurred as a result of "market forces" (according to an AP report) "rather than direct government action against carbon dioxide" - say by imposing carbon taxes, or gasoline taxes.

According to Michael Mann, a professor at Penn State University and Director of its Earth System Science Center, the shift is "a reason for cautious optimism" about ways to deal with climate change. He suggested that "ultimately people follow their wallets in dealing with climate change".

Maybe. While it is indeed true that coal -fired power plants produce more than 90 times as much sulphur dioxide (SO2) and five times as much nitrogen oxide and twice as much CO2 as those running on natural gas, we must bear in mind that most of this natural gas was obtained via shale gas drilling and fracking, which has often taken a fearful toll on water sources. (Especially at a time when nearly 57% of the U.S. watershed is already contaminated by assorted nasties such as potassium percholorate, aka rocket fuel. Cancer anyone? Breast? Prostate? Pancreas? Liver? We must be aware here that the "pocket book" saving elicited may return to bite us in a different way - as in higher medical and other costs!)

So the question remains: does this news warrant real celebration that we've suddenly won the war against global warming? Not really. First the data extracted pertains to only the first four months of this year. A better barometer would be for the entire year - so let's wait and see how the figures look for all of 2012. Next,  even a 20-year low for the whole year doesn't make much of a dent in the total CO2 already accumulated.

Recall the segment of The American Geophysical Union position statement(cf. Eos, Vol. 84, No. 51, December, 2003, p. 574):

"Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have increased since the mid-1700s through fossil fuel burning and changes in land use, with more than 80% of this increase occurring since 1900. Moreover, research indicates that increased levels of carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of thousands of years."


  This is cognizant of the fact that CO2 accumulates because earlier depositions remain even as new burdens are added yearly! Thus, the CO2 warming we’re now experiencing is not the result of just one year – but 100 years’ progressive accumulation. The process may be described something like a series with terms being added, viz: to describe the CO2 content in the atmosphere by the end of this year, we must initiate the series with x= 1 (for 1912), viz.

CO2( 2012) = x_1 + x_2 + x_3 + x_4 +.............+ x_100

E.g. terminating at the last term 100 years later. Here each ‘x’ denotes the CO2 burden added for each year in succession.


Thus, the CO2 effect for a given year is not just for that year, but rather inclusive of the cumulative additions for all the years - starting up to 100 years before!  In more precise terms, a 4 month abatement that represents a "20-year low" - relative to say 1992, will register in the total scheme of accumulation as barely more than 1/300 of the total aggregation. By way of reference,  Terry Gerlach  in his paper Volcanic Versus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide  appearing in Eos: Transactions of the American Geophysical Union( Vol. 92, No. 24, June 14, 2011, p. 201) showed that typical yearly volcanic contributions amount to some 0.26 gigaton per year of CO2 compared to 35 gigatons per year for primarily anthropogenic sources. As noted therein:

"For a few hours individual volcanoes may emit as much or more CO2 than human activities. But volcanic emissions are ephemeral while anthropogenic CO2 is emitted relentlessly from from ubiquitous sources.."


Which means human activity is a vastly more significant source of CO2 and the major reason we are approaching a CO2 concentration (taken to be from 550- 600 ppm)that marks the threshold to the runaway greenhouse effect. Thus do we have an "ACM" or anthropogenic carbon dioxide CO2 multiplier calculated from time series data on anthopogenic CO2 emission rates.

Or to put it into a more concrete frame of description: the reduction of CO2 in the U.S. this year arising from 4 months of 'market forces" (i.e. driven by power plants changing to natural gas fracked from shale) was almost certainly nullified and eliminated by the gigatons of CO2 generated in the past three months from the massive forest fires burning in the American West - and now raging in the Pacific Northwest, after the ravaging fires that swept Colorado (and New Mexico)  in June.

This means things can only get worse and what we really need (by the end of the calendar year) is a total assay of all the CO2 generated in the country, from all sources,  not just minor "savings" for four months. To do anything less is to encourage people to live in that proverbial abode called a "fool's paradise".