Odd -- Willie Soon is the lead author on an Earth-Science Reviews paper titled "Re-evaluating the role of solar variability on Northern Hemisphere temperature trends since the 19th century," and they list him as "corresponding author." But unlike all their other papers, they don't actually give his email address.
Instead, the usual links to the corresponding author just go around in a loop.
Strange. Why wouldn't Willie Soon want to correspond with people who are reading his paper, if he was didn't have something to hide?
6 comments:
It's sad to see how the discussion about causes of climate change have been destroyed by political agendas and propaganda.
You may have noticed what Soon et al. write in the acknowledgment:
"All of the research in this collaborative paper was carried out during the authors’ free time and at their own expense, and none of the authors received any funding for this research"
Given the systematic attempts at discrediting Willie Soon based on his research funding, rather than his scientific work, he may have good reasons to state this.
Unfortunately, it seems like science is the looser in the propaganda war. However, the truth in science is not a majority decision, and science is never settled (which some seems to believe). Science is, and should be, a never ending discussion, using scientific arguments.
Sometimes we should remind ourselves what Einstein said, when he was faced with the pamphlet "100 authors against Einstein". Einstein replied: "Why 100? If I'm wrong, one is enough". 97% consensus is not important, if they are all wrong.
I'm looking forward to follow the continued research in the field of climate change, and I try to evaluate the arguments from those who believe C02 is the main cause, as well as those who blame it on the sun >:)
Cold As Heaven
Soon's work has been scientifically discredited too. For example
"Hot Words: A claim of nonhuman-induced global warming sparks debate," Scientific American, June 24, 2003 (Web) and August 2003 (print), pp. 20-22.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hot-words-2003-06-24/
It's the lousy nature of his work that makes his funding sources, and his refusal to disclose them, all the more outrageous.
"...and science is never settled (which some seems to believe)."
Really? Then you must wonder if your computer is going to boot up every morning, given the possibility of the "settled" laws of quantum mechanics having been overthrown every night.
That fact that computers work doesn't mean that quantum mechanics is settled. It means that our understanding of quantum mechanics is good enough to make semiconductors and computers, like classical mechanics is good enough to compute the orbits of the planets. But both non-relativistic quantum mechanics and classical mechanics is insufficient to explain the experiments performed at CERN. Then we need to apply quantum field theory. And not even quantum field theory is settled; there are still issues related to renormalization, grand unification ...
That's just an example of what it means that "science is never settled". A scientific theory can only be strengthened by surviving continuous attempts at falsification. Science can never be settled by means of political agendas and propaganda. Therefore, we should support the scientists who try to falsify the AGW models. This will eventually strengthen the AGW models, if they are correct.
PS. I did my MSc many years ago in quantum field theory. Then I did my PhD in geophysics, and now I work for BigOil. Does it mean that all my research and everything I say about science in general should be discredited?
PS2. I'm not a fanatic supporter of neither AGW models nor alternative climate hypotheses (such as the one by Henrik Stensmark). I'm just curious to see which will be falsified first.
Cold As Heaven
Likewise, the physics behind the greenhouse effect is equally settled -- we know the laws of blackbody radation, we know the absorption and emission laws of atoms and molecules, we know the laws of thermodynamics.
This is fundamental knowledge, very very far from the edges where questions remain about entangled particles or the limits of the Standard Model. Nothing being done in physics or chemistry research today is going to change this fundamental knowledge.
AGW is not going to be falsified, ever, any more than plate tectonics will. Obviously there are still questions about how much warming will occur and how fast, but carbon dioxide is never again going to be an innocent gas, and oil is never again going to be seen as an unalloyed good that doesn't carry huge negative externalities.
I was hoping to read a condemnation of Soon's paper. It certainly isn't getting much press.
The authors' argument seems to center on the distortion of measurements by "urbanization bias" and the failure of research stations to take this into account. Are you saying he's just ignoring data sets that do not substantiate his thesis?
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