Examine claiming no ‘local weather disaster’ retracted ‘not as a result of it was mistaken… however as a result of it expressed views which might be politically unhelpful’ – Watts Up With That?
By KLIMA-DEPOT
By Marc Morano
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/the-top-five-climate-science-scandals
Abstract:
From Roger Pielke Jr.: I define a scandal as a matter of fact in which the science is objectively flawed – in substance and/or procedure – and which the community has not been able to correct but should. …
Alimonti’s revocation due to an unpopular view
The scientific community has shown its willingness to retract a climate science article—in this case, not because it was factually incorrect, but because it expressed views that were politically unhelpful. In 2022, a group of Italian scientists published a paper summarizing the IPCC's conclusions on extreme weather trends, which is consistent with what you've read here at THB. The article didn't break new ground, but it was a useful review of the literature. Despite this, several activist journalists and scientists called for it to be retracted—and remarkably, the journal Springer Nature, which published the article, complied. I heard from a whistleblower who shared all the dirty details, which you can read here and here.
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The interns created a “dataset” and we used it for research
I recently documented how the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)—supposedly one of the leading science journals—published a paper that used a “dataset” cobbled together by some interns for the marketing of a now-defunct insurance company. In fact, no such dataset exists in the real world—it is a fiction. The paper is the only normalization study that supposedly identifies a signal of human-caused climate change in disaster losses, and so it was highlighted by both the IPCC and the US National Climate Assessment. This context makes its correction or retraction politically problematic. When I informed PNAS about the fake dataset, they refused to look at it and stood behind the paper. Read about the backstory and how PNAS blocked any re-examination.
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- A love affair with extreme emissions scenarios
The top of the table will come as no surprise to long-time THB readers. Extreme emissions scenarios, which project implausible and even apocalyptic futures, are very popular in climate research and assessment. This area continues to be dominated by a scenario called RCP8.5, which projects coal use to increase by more than 10x by 2100 (see figure above and all credit goes to my colleague Justin Ritchie). However, as the community accepts the ridiculousness of RCP8.5, efforts are underway to replace it with another extreme scenario. At the moment, this appears to be SSP3-7.0, which also predicts a massive increase in coal use (~6x) and a world of about 13 billion people in 2100, far more than the UN has projected.
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- A big mistake in the IPCC
The IPCC is a huge undertaking, and if it didn't exist, we would have to invent it. It's not surprising that some errors can creep into the assessment. What matters is what happens when mistakes are made. I found a major error in the IPCC AR6 synthesis report involving confusion about hurricane intensities – it was a simple error to do with misunderstood technical terminology (hurricane fixes, i.e. measurements, were reinterpreted as hurricanes).
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