Several years ago, there was a great controversy at the journal Climate Research regarding the publication of an article by Soon and Baliunas. Three editors, including Hans von Storch, felt that the peer review leading to acceptance of this article was flawed and resigned in protest. I want to compare some of these events to some events in progress at GRL, where the most powerful climate research corporation in the U.S. appears to intervened at GRL, causing them to abandon their usual procedures, after an article by one of its scientists was rejected.
The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) is a corporation carrying out climate research with $200 million in annual revenue. It is a powerful force in the climate research industry. The Technical Support Unit for the IPCC Working Group 1, the working group which authored IPCC TAR featuring the hockey stick graph, is housed at UCAR. In fact the IPCC Working Group 1 website goes so far as to include UCAR as part of its name http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/
Given the prominence of the hockey stick in IPCC TAR and the close connections between UCAR and IPCC Working Group 1, it is perhaps no coincidence that the most vociferous counterattack on certain hockeystick critics (other than Mann himself) have been sponsored by UCAR.
On May 11, 2005, on the day that Ross McKitrick and I were presenting in Washington, UCAR issued a press release announcing that one of its scientists, Caspar Ammann ( a former student of Raymond Bradley) and one of its former post-doc fellows, Eugene Wahl, had supposedly demonstrated that our criticisms of the hockey stick were "unfounded". The press release announced that they had submitted articles to Climatic Change and GRL.
Unfortunately for UCAR, on June 6, 2005, GRL rejected the submission by Wahl and Ammann. This was never announced. The rejection by GRL was not mentioned in two letters to the House Energy and Commerce Committee by Mann and the European Geophysical Union, which cited this press release.
The Comment by Ammann and Wahl was one of four Comments submitted to GRL on our work. Two Comments, one by von Storch and Zorita and one by Huybers, were accepted and, together with our Replies, will be published in the near future. One other Comment, by David Ritson, was rejected.
I can’t imagine that UCAR was very happy about the rejection of Ammann and Wahl, especially with the press release hanging out there. There have been some strange events. In late August, the editor-in-chief of GRL, James Famiglietti, told a reporter at ES&T that he had taken over the Comment file pertaining to our article.
In the last week, a couple of curious events occurred. On Sep. 27, 2005, Famiglietti told us that the rejected Ritson Comment had now been accepted. In breach of AGU policies which require that both a Comment and Reply be sent together for refereeing, Famiglietti had sent the previously rejected Ritson Comment out without a Reply; after getting the Comment accepted, Famiglietti invited us to reply.
On Sept. 29, 2005, someone inquired at realclimate.org about the status of the Ammann submissions, which had gone silent since the May 11, 2005 press release. Mann replied:
[Response: Rumour has it that both manuscripts are pending final acceptance from the respective journals. – mike]
On Oct. 1, 2005, one of our posters noticed that the UCAR webpage for the Ammann and Wahl submission to GRL had been changed – it now showed that the article had been resubmitted on Sept. 25, 2005. So the article had made remarkable progress through the system by Sept. 29, 2005, when Mann reported that it was "pending final acceptance". We have still not seen a copy of the re-submission.
I’m providing here some details of the chronology. The tone that I’m trying to capture (and I may have to edit some more) is irony. Think back to the shrieking by climate scientists about the peer review of Soon and Baliunas. Now let’s see how many climate scientists speak up about Famiglietti directly taking over editorship, rescuing of the UCAR submission from the garbage can saving face for them and completely breaking AGU policies on Comments in order to expedite acceptance of the previously rejected Comments. Continue reading →
UCAR, Ammann and Wahl and GRL
Several years ago, there was a great controversy at the journal Climate Research regarding the publication of an article by Soon and Baliunas. Three editors, including Hans von Storch, felt that the peer review leading to acceptance of this article was flawed and resigned in protest. I want to compare some of these events to some events in progress at GRL, where the most powerful climate research corporation in the U.S. appears to intervened at GRL, causing them to abandon their usual procedures, after an article by one of its scientists was rejected.
The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) is a corporation carrying out climate research with $200 million in annual revenue. It is a powerful force in the climate research industry. The Technical Support Unit for the IPCC Working Group 1, the working group which authored IPCC TAR featuring the hockey stick graph, is housed at UCAR. In fact the IPCC Working Group 1 website goes so far as to include UCAR as part of its name http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/
Given the prominence of the hockey stick in IPCC TAR and the close connections between UCAR and IPCC Working Group 1, it is perhaps no coincidence that the most vociferous counterattack on certain hockeystick critics (other than Mann himself) have been sponsored by UCAR.
On May 11, 2005, on the day that Ross McKitrick and I were presenting in Washington, UCAR issued a press release announcing that one of its scientists, Caspar Ammann ( a former student of Raymond Bradley) and one of its former post-doc fellows, Eugene Wahl, had supposedly demonstrated that our criticisms of the hockey stick were "unfounded". The press release announced that they had submitted articles to Climatic Change and GRL.
Unfortunately for UCAR, on June 6, 2005, GRL rejected the submission by Wahl and Ammann. This was never announced. The rejection by GRL was not mentioned in two letters to the House Energy and Commerce Committee by Mann and the European Geophysical Union, which cited this press release.
The Comment by Ammann and Wahl was one of four Comments submitted to GRL on our work. Two Comments, one by von Storch and Zorita and one by Huybers, were accepted and, together with our Replies, will be published in the near future. One other Comment, by David Ritson, was rejected.
I can’t imagine that UCAR was very happy about the rejection of Ammann and Wahl, especially with the press release hanging out there. There have been some strange events. In late August, the editor-in-chief of GRL, James Famiglietti, told a reporter at ES&T that he had taken over the Comment file pertaining to our article.
In the last week, a couple of curious events occurred. On Sep. 27, 2005, Famiglietti told us that the rejected Ritson Comment had now been accepted. In breach of AGU policies which require that both a Comment and Reply be sent together for refereeing, Famiglietti had sent the previously rejected Ritson Comment out without a Reply; after getting the Comment accepted, Famiglietti invited us to reply.
On Sept. 29, 2005, someone inquired at realclimate.org about the status of the Ammann submissions, which had gone silent since the May 11, 2005 press release. Mann replied:
On Oct. 1, 2005, one of our posters noticed that the UCAR webpage for the Ammann and Wahl submission to GRL had been changed – it now showed that the article had been resubmitted on Sept. 25, 2005. So the article had made remarkable progress through the system by Sept. 29, 2005, when Mann reported that it was "pending final acceptance". We have still not seen a copy of the re-submission.
I’m providing here some details of the chronology. The tone that I’m trying to capture (and I may have to edit some more) is irony. Think back to the shrieking by climate scientists about the peer review of Soon and Baliunas. Now let’s see how many climate scientists speak up about Famiglietti directly taking over editorship, rescuing of the UCAR submission from the garbage can saving face for them and completely breaking AGU policies on Comments in order to expedite acceptance of the previously rejected Comments. Continue reading →