Can global warming skeptics point me to some skeptical peer-reviewed papers?

Question

In my previous question, a global warming 'skeptic' claimed that there are lots of peer-reviewed papers which are skeptical of man-made global warming which I'm ignoring.

I would love to discuss such papers if they truly exist. Can anybody give me some examples? Usually when this question arises I'm the only one who's able to answer it - namely that the Douglass et al paper (which doesn't really dispute AGW) and the Svensmark galactic cosmic ray theory paper (which has many fundamental flaws) are the only skeptical peer-reviewed papers I've encountered in recent years.

Are there others that I'm missing? Or is this particular 'skeptic' bluffing?

Answer 1

It isn't clear what you are looking for.  There are lots of papers out there that question one facet of the theory or another.  But most of these papers are a little lacking in more detailed analysis, or somewhat one-sided.  For example, the Spencer et al. paper (see below) supposedly supports the adaptive iris hypothesis, but the cooling effect found for the tropics is far too small to offset the positive forcing from CO2 globally.  If the adaptive iris effect were going to save our bacon, Spencer wouldn't be waving his hand at a negative trend due to one huge negative outlier in the back half of his dataset, nor would he have to restrict his analysis to such a finite time.  The latent heat flux would have to have increased by nearly 50% to offset the warming from CO2.  (You can see this by estimating the global longwave radiative forcing from CO2 is 1.6 W/m^2 and figuring out how much the upward latent heat transport would have to increase during deep convection in the tropics.)  Papers like those from Shaviv (see below) and McKittrick, you can find deconstructed on realclimate.org.  So as in the example I raised above, as with most "skeptic" papers, although the analysis and data aren't completely wrong, in general they just don't convince that the fundamental details of why CO2 is affecting climate are wrong.  

That is the major problem with *all* the skeptics, even those who claim they are "scientifically focused."  No matter how you juggle the numbers and fiddle the details with solar forcing, cosmic rays, or deep convection in the tropics, you cannot escape the fact that the longwave radiative forcing from CO2 is 1.6 W/m^2 and that this number is huge compared to the forcings that cause natural climate variability.  Unless you are willing to believe that something is terribly wrong with our understanding of electrodynamics and atmospheric physics (see note 1), CO2 has to have an effect on the energy budget of the planet.  

note 1:  The paper by Misckolzci in the Hungarian journal (which I in fact read, which is probably not true of 99% of the skeptics citing it) is not credible.  There is a reason he couldn't get it published in a reputable journal.  For one thing, his claim that he has finally solved the problem of why Earth never experienced a runaway greenhouse effect is false.  There is a perfectly reasonable explanation to do with water vapor that explains why Earth is not Venus.  However, in his theory you can't get a runaway greenhouse effect, so he can't explain Venus (while the current theory explains both Earth and Venus).  His ad hoc reasoning that the clouds on Venus are responsible for the runaway greenhouse leaves a horrible bootstrap problem, since the clouds form due to the runaway greenhouse effect, and if there was no runaway greenhouse effect, the clouds couldn't have formed to cause it.

Answer 2

Douglas et al is a sceptical paper.  A believer has to believe in all five of the following points:

   1. Mankind is increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere

   2. Increased atmospheric CO2 causes the world to warm (by some amount, large or small)

   3. The increases in CO2 from man will cause substantial warming, large enough to be detectable above natural climate variations

   4. The increases in world temperatures due to man's CO2 will have catastrophic impacts on civilization

   5. These catastrophic impacts and their costs are larger than the enormous costs, in terms of poverty and lost wealth, from reducing CO2 with current technologies.

Climate alarmists have adopted a rhetorical trick that no one in the media seems willing to call them on.   They like to wage the debate over global warming policy on points one and two only, skipping over the rest.  Why?  Because the science behind numbers one and two are pretty strong.  Yes, there are a few folks who will battle them on these points, but even very strong skeptics  accept points one and two as proved. Increasing co2 will cause temperatures to rise, but by how much?

Here are some examples of how this trick works.  If, like me, you do not accept steps 3-4-5 in the above logic chain, you will be called a "denier."  When asked what a denier means, a climate alarmist will often position this denial as somehow disputing #1 and #2.  On the other hand, if one publicly accepts #1 and #2, the alarmist will shout "QED" and then proceed to say that strong action on CO2 is now justified.  When an alarmist says that the a consensus exists, he is probably correct on points 1 and 2.  But he is absolutely incorrect that a consensus exists on 3-4-5.

Your hypothesis is that man made global warming will be catastrophic.  Saying that papers like Douglas et al. that dispute point number three are not skeptical is misleading.

Answer 3

To the moon Alice!  To the moon!

Answer 4

LOL!

well, the references are flooding in thick and fast......

edit;

if anyone is going to give us a reasonable answer, its you nice l.

i'll tag this thread and be interested in what you can come up with.

Answer 5

This is a hot and hard topic but I don't really understand it.. anyways my overall opinion about global warming is that it's true. That the theories that scientists have told is makes much sense, I don't see why it doesn't.

Answer 6

Have you forgotten the exchanges in these long since forgotten answers?  You'll have to dig through the answers to mine, but you'll find a bunch of references.  Some of which have been discredited, some of which are still valid and interesting.

I must say I haven't spent a lot of time looking for new papers.  Nor have I been updating the status of the older papers.  I've been busy with a lot of other stuff.  But it looks like I have shown you a number of references that are of the skeptical variety already and that you seem to be repeating questions from long ago without considering the answers you have received in the past.

Answer 7

I'll dig some up for you Dana.  If you are a scientist (and you appear to be) then you and I both know what "real" research papers look like.  

Although there are some, my principle position is that the interpretation of the data that is in papers currently presented as evidence of AGW is usually fairly weak and highly biased.

I'll get back to you.  I may not do so in time before you close the question off, but I will.    

I have a feeling I am the "skeptic" (why must we put that in quotes?) you are referring to.

EDIT also, any picking apart of pro-global warming papers will take some time.  I am not going to simply repeat other people's arguments.  I take great pride in my scientific reasoning and I don't mess around with it.  It would be easy for me to cut-and-paste from other people's sources, but I am not going to.  If I am not back here before you close this off, I'll post my answer and somehow make it a "question", okee dokee?

Answer 8

I have almost as little regard for a peer reviewed paper as a non-peer reviewed paper.  I would like to read a good paper that details the actual potential negative consequences and benefits of potential global warming except that all you get are list of ridiculous claims or maybes focusing on the consequences, and it is always easy to find so called peers to review it.

Answer 9

Madhav Khandekar has a bibliography of 68 peer-reviewed papers that, he says, dispute parts of anthropogenic global warming. You can find it here:

http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/f...

Answer 10

There probably are some, but i know professors that wont review or publish them because of fear of being black listed in the climate field.  That should tell you something.  I used to work in the climate field.  I dropped out of a Graduate program in climate because of the politics that influences research.  There are billions of dollars in grants for doing research on global warming, and those in power wont risk losing that by going against the global warming lobbyist.  However more true scientist are coming out against global warming.  Look up Richard Lindzen, a distinguished professor at MIT, a Ph.D in physics, he has tons of data and reports to debunk global warming.  And global warming is not globally accepted.  In Russia, their scientist are more concerned with global cooling, as they have recently had some of their harshest winters ever in the last few years.  However a group of Russian scientist were not allowed to present their research at the last IPCC meeting.  And most climate scientist that preach the doom and gloom of global warming should not even be allowed to be called scientist.  Most of them have degrees in fields such as Geography or sciences that only require them to take intro to physics and chemistry, then they suddenly think they are experts in atmospheric dynamics.  Those with Ph.D's in physics and chemistry are starting to come out more showing the 'bad science' that climate scientist are using.

Answer 11

Check out the links on my blog at http://garyganu.blogspot.com

I have 2 articles posted about the global warming hoax

Answer 12

Peer review is a rigged standard it is meaningless.

Answer 13

This a link to a question asked a while back.  The question was looking for peer reviewed skeptically documents.  The best answer provided a skeptical paper that was internally cited.  What really disappointed me was that while most of the document is cited, the author makes some pretty substantial claims without citation.  So this has led me to believe that the paper is propaganda.

Edit:

I got to thinking providing a link to a link is kind of lame so here are both links the question and the document containing skeptical peer reviewed citations.  Keep in mind the document is not peer reviewed only the citations.  Also if you go to the question I provided a list which was given by another answerer of peer reviewed documents in favor of global warming.  Edit: The follow section previously contained a lewd comparision now deleted because of thumbs down, obviously someone has a big car.

Answer 14

You can use google just as well as anyone else.

It has become humorus to me when you people learn the term "peer review" thinking that is end all to end it.

Yet there is NO peer review of cures from the destruction of frozen embros.

Yet if you ask not to use them you parade out all the false hope in the world.

Prominent Hungarian Physicist Dr. Miklós Zágoni, a former global warming activist who recently reversed his views about man-made climate fears and is now a skeptic, presented scientific findings at the conference refuting rising CO2 fears. Zágoni’s scientific mentor Hungarian scientist, Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist, resigned from his post working with NASA because he was disgusted with the agency’s lack of scientific freedom. Miskolczi, who also presented his p... at the conference, said he wanted to release his new research that showed “runaway greenhouse theories contradict energy balance equations,” but he claims NASA refused to allow him.

“Unfortunately, my working relationship with my NASA supervisors eroded to a level that I am not able to tolerate. My idea of the freedom of science cannot coexist with the recent NASA practice of handling new climate change related scientific results,” Miskolczi said according to a March 6 Daily Tech article. (LINK) [Note: Clarification from original posting. Miskolczi worked with NASA, not Zágoni.]…

http://sacredscoop.com/?p=727

If you are willing to look you will find there are many peer view papers against the idea that global warming is man made.

Answer 15

Let's see, there's the link between solar variability and long-term monsoon seasons (indicating changes in the sun affect climate).

http://en.scientificcommons.org/17677255

http://en.scientificcommons.org/17699639

There's also evidence solar activity over the last 70 years is at a 1,150 year high, matching levels not seen for thousands of years (get that, a solar anomaly).

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0...

http://cc.oulu.fi/%7Eusoskin/personal/na...

How does Earth's CO2 level affect the sun, again?

Answer 16

Peer-reviewed says NOTHING about a paper--AT ALL.

The Mann paper was "peer-reviewed" yet was found to be a complete joke by private sector businessmen who actually understand statistical methods.

Find me a paper, Dana, that has been reviewed by statisticians.  Since Global Warming models, predictions, and theories all depend on data sampling, statisical analysis and modeling why are there (practically) no statisticians in the vetting process?