Why have not there been any papers that duspute AGW published in journals such as "science" or "nature"?

Question

Ben: how is mars related to earth? there has been no change in solar output so what else could effect both mars and earth?

Answer 1

It just shows why there is a scientific consensus on the subject.  If there were any significant amount of scientific evidence disputing the AGW theory, more scientists would be skeptical of it.

Christy and Singer did get a somewhat skeptical paper published in The International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society.  The deniers made a big deal about this beacuse it was such a rare occasion for a skeptical paper to be in a reputable journal.  However, the paper only stated that the current tropical troposphere temperature measurements seem to disagree with the AGW theory, and arrived at this conclusion by disregarding the large uncertainty in the atmospheric tempeature data.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

The blogs like Inofe's claimed that this paper suggested the current warming had a "natural causes fingerprint", but the paper made no suggestion as to what the "natural cause" might be.

This sort of thing is why it's hard to be skeptical of the AGW theory.  You get one peer-reviewed study disputing one aspect of the AGW theory based on questionable assumptions and not suggesting a plausible alternative theory for the warming, and this is the best the skeptics can do.

The Oreskes study showed how rare peer-reviewed skeptical papers are.

http://norvig.com/oreskes.html

Answer 2

They tend to support AGW for the same reason that Galelao published a paper saying that inspite of his findings, the sun really does orbit the Earth.  Because that suits the prevailing politics.

I've seen a few papers which provide evidence that doesn't support AGW, like warming on Mars for example.  Instead of concluding that only a small portion of the warming on Mars could be attributed to changes in albedo, they always say a substantial amount of the observed warming can be attributed to changes in Mars's albedo, but if you check the numbers in the data, it's a small percentage.  If they were to actually say that, the AGW crowd would get really upset and take direct action against the journal.

(edit) Mars is related to Earth in that if Mars warms for entirely natural reasons, for those of us who are objectivly looking for the truth, that the Earth could warm for the same reason.  You believe solar radiation has not increased even though that is based on the conclusions of one paper from one author even though subsequent work produces different conclusions.  I don't share your beliefs there.

Answer 3

Because either:

1.  The authors do not submit such papers there, or

2.  The papers cannot pass peer review.

Either way, it says a lot.

Answer 4

Because there have not been virtually no skeptical papers published in any peer-reviewed journal (let alone Science or Nature):

http://norvig.com/oreskes.html

The consensus was quantified in a Science study by Prof. Naomi Oreskes (Dec. 2004) in which she surveyed 928 scientific journal articles that matched the search [global climate change] at the ISI Web of Science. Of these, according to Oreskes, 75% agreed with the consensus view (either implicitly or explicitly), 25% took no stand one way or the other, and none rejected the consensus.

Benny Peiser attempted to replicate the study, and found 34 articles that "reject or doubt" the consensus view--that is, 3% rather than the 0% that Oreskes found in her sample. Note that Peiser has altered Oreskes' original category from "reject" to "reject or doubt" so it is logically possible that both are correct. Also, there were several other differences between the studies: Peiser included "all documents" in the database rather than just scientific articles, and he included Social Sciences and Arts & Humanities as well as Sciences. Peiser was kind enough to share the 34 articles that he says reject or doubt. A discussion of the 34 argues that probably two to five of them should count, and the two best examples are editorials, not scientific publications (which is probably why they were not included in Oreskes' study).

When faced with a controversy like this, the great thing is that you can do your own research. If you suspect Oreskes or Peiser (or both) might be biased, you can look at the data yourself.

So that's what I did. Of the 34 articles, I would say that #10 and #27 clearly reject the consensus, but they are editorials, not scientific papers (and #27 is from an oil industry trade association). #1 and #6 doubt, but again are not scientific papers. #7, #17, #31 and maybe #22 doubt, and #15 says that both greenhouse gases and solar activity are roughly equal contributers to warming; so I counted it as "doubt." So overall I would say that Oreskes is correct; that Peiser has not shown a peer-reviewed scientific paper that clearly rejects the consensus. I would also say that Peiser is correct in that he found at least 4 papers that place some doubt on some of the premises of the consensus, but he is widely wrong in claiming 34. Update (June 2007): Peiser has backed off his claims, and now says there is actually only one out of the 34 papers that rejects the consensus, and that one is an editorial, not a scientific paper (and therefore was not included in the Oreskes study).

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There was one paper by Christy and S. Fred Singer that slipped through after the 928 to 0 record was determined.  

Here's S. Fred Singer's CV posted to the Web site of his SEPP organization:

http://www.sepp.org/about%20sepp/bios/si...

Looks to me like Singer's scientific work peaked in the 50's.  He was involved with the oil industry in the 70s and 80s.  His work since the early 1990s seems to be focused on his SEPP advocacy organization, which has accepted funds from ExxonMobil.

So where's any paper, in any lesser publication (aside from oil or coal industry publications of course), that could have been published in Science or Nature instead?

Answer 5

Because there is a scientific consensus on this topic.  

The politicians don't care about that.

Answer 6

because it is a consensus in the scientific community that global warming is anthropogenic. the only so-called 'scientists' who disagree are those sponsored by oil and gas companies.