John Christy is one of the scientists I was talking about in More Fires Than Mongols: Illusions of Controversy in Climate Change, one of the few actual climate scientists who deny the basic tenets of climate change science–his rarity meaning, of course, that he and his opinions get endlessly recycled. For every public appearance or quote from individual climatologists who actually agree with the scientific consensus–which is 97.5% of them–professional climate deniers like John Christy will get quoted a hundred or a thousand times by the media.
And then claim he’s being ignored.
John Christy–not one to worry about being recycled too often and all out of proportion to his scientific importance–recently testified before Congress on behalf of the Republican Party, itself the world leader in political climate science denial.
But eminent climate scientist Benjamin D. Santer thinks there may be major scientific flaws to Christy’s congressional testimony, as the following open letter makes clear.
I have had a quick look at John Christy’s recent Congressional testimony. Many aspects of it are deeply troubling. From my own personal perspective, one of the most troubling aspects is that Christy cites a paper by David Douglass, John Christy, Benjamin Pearson, and S. Fred Singer. The Douglass et al. paper appeared in the online edition of the International Journal of Climatology (a publication of the Royal Meteorological Society) in December 2007.
Shortly after its publication, it became apparent that the authors of the Douglass et al. paper had applied a flawed statistical significance test. Application of this flawed test led them to reach incorrect scientific conclusions.
Together with a number of colleagues (including Gavin), I prepared a response to the Douglass et al. paper. Our response was published by the International Journal of Climatology in October 2008. (DOI: 10.1002/joc.1756) I am also appending a “fact sheet” providing some of the scientific context for both the Douglass et al. and Santer et al. International Journal of Climatology papers.)
To my knowledge, the Douglass et al. International Journal of Climatology paper has never been retracted. Nor have the authors acknowledged the existence of any statistical errors in their work. The fact that John Christy has now cited a demonstrably-flawed scientific paper in his Congressional testimony – without any mention of errors in the Douglass et al. paper – is deeply disturbing.
It is my opinion – and the opinion of many of my scientific colleagues – that the Douglass et al. International Journal of Climatology paper represents an egregious misuse of statistics. It is of great concern that this statistically-flawed paper has been used (and is still being used) as crucial “evidence of absence” of human effects on climate.
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Benjamin D. Santer
Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Father Theo's Blog 
atymins13
March 12, 2011
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Michael Cejnar
March 23, 2011
Your critique of the paper may or may not be correct – I would struggle to pass judgment.
But we the public, who are being asked to pay for this cAGW theory on a ‘precautionary principle’ have to make a judgment on who is more trustworthy – based on following the money, conflicts of interest and evident bias.
Unfortunately, the Gavin Schmidt in “number of colleagues (including Gavin)” has no longer any scientific credibility in my eyes due to intractible groupthink, confirmation bias and very biased behaviour on RealClimate. The majority of the public now agree with me.
So, for all our sake, I hope the sceptics turn out to be correct.
fathertheo
March 23, 2011
Actually, Michael, the majority of the public don’t agree with you, neither in Australia, the UK, the USA or Canada. In Canada 80% of the public disagree with you. Your other thinking is similarly wrong.
You say that Gavin Schmidt and colleagues suffer from intractable groupthink, but that is something you always say about climate scientists you disagree with. Almost always in the same words. Many of your fellow climate change denialists say exactly the same thing.
But one of the many problems with that idea is that people don’t get published in scientific journals because they say exactly the same thing as everybody else. You have to do original research to get published, and you have to do lots of it to get published again and again. Some of the leading climate scientists–including ones who worked on the IPCC reports–have their names attached to hundreds, as many as 400, peer-reviewed scientific papers in their field. You can characterize these scientists any way you like, Michael, but I say 400 peer-reviewed papers makes you an EXPERT in the field, and I’d rather listen to experts than to non-experts–especially since the experts offer evidence, their evidence comes from thousands of different sources, and their evidence is self-consistent within justifiable limits of error.
You offer no evidence at all.
And you so-called “skeptics”–far from being self-consistent–can’t even figure out what it is you disagree with about climate science. You just know you disagree.
Sorry, that’s just not good enough.