A new paper put out by a group of scientists — including Michael Mann of “hockey stick” curve fame — has debunked a controversial National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report from last year claiming global warming has accelerated faster than surface temperature readings have shown. The debunking comes as congressional investigators demand government climate bureaucrats turn over emails and documents related to the “hiatus”-busting study. House science committee Republicans sent a letter to NOAA, slamming the agency for dragging its feet and trying to skirt transparency. –Michael Bastasch, The Daily Caller, 25 February 2016
A new paper published yesterday in Nature Climate Change confirms that the so-called global warming hiatus between 1997 and 2014 was real and that claims that it has been overstated or never existed are untrue. “It has been claimed that the early-2000s global warming slowdown or hiatus, characterized by a reduced rate of global surface warming, has been overstated, lacks sound scientific basis, or is unsupported by observations. The evidence presented here contradicts these claims.” Most of the world’s major news outlets that reported last year that the warming hiatus never existed have so far ignored the new findings. It will be interesting to see how long they will keep mum. —Global Warming Policy Forum, 25 February 2016
Last June, Pennsylvania State University climatologist Michael Mann crowed: “Just out in Science is a new article by Tom Karl of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center and colleagues driving another stake through the heart of the supposed “hiatus” or “pause,” i.e. what I like to call the “Faux Pause.” I expect this article will be attacked by climate change deniers who are unhappy to see the demise of a narrative they helped frame, a narrative that arguably took hold due in part to the “seepage” of contrarian framing into mainstream climate science discourse.” Mann is now a co-author on the new study that pulls that stake out. Has Mann become climate change “denier” now? Hardly. — Ronald Bailey, Reason Online, 24 February 2016
You know all that money we have been spending on developing economic models of the effects of climate change? Well apparently it has mostly been wasted. At least that’s the case according to Lord Stern, whose article in the sociology journal Nature says that we should be moving onto something more reliable. It’s also interesting to see stochastic modelling being touted in a week when climatologists have been outraged by a suggestion that such an approach might be useful in their own field. — Andrew Montford, Bishop Hill, 25 February 2016
Over the last decade, Nick Stern has received tens of millions of pounds in research funding. Why did he not just build the models he wants? Where did all that money go? The leading researchers in the economics of climate change have turned their backs on model building. Research has decidedly moved to empirical analyses. –Richard Tol, Bishop Hill, 25 February 2016
Social psychology is in crisis because no one knows what to believe anymore. The journals are now filled with failed replication after failed replication. Published studies once believed to demonstrate all sorts of amazing world-changing pervasive effects have not been replicated by other researchers. Some of the most famous and most influential effects in social psychology have been called into question not only by failed replication after failed replication, but by revelations of questionable methodological, statistical, and interpretive practices. How will we figure out what, from the vast storehouse of nearly a century of social psychological research, is actually valid and believable? To me, there is a single, crucial ingredient for figuring this out: Diversity of viewpoints and deep skepticism of one another’s claims. Groupthink and deference to prestigious scientific “authorities” and to repeated “scientific” stories resting on empirical feet of unclear firmness is the enemy. –Lee Jussim, Heterodox Academy, 23 February 2016
