The fallacy of "Peer Review", as mis-used by the Global Warming True Believers

Here's a a good example that explains the process.

Excerpt:

"Here is the cookbook for modern climate “science”:

1) Run a “General Circulation Model” (GCM). These are large computer simulations designed to calculate global temperature changes as atmospheric chemistry is altered by human activity.

2) “Downscale” that model to a region or a state. In this case, a fine-scale grid laid across California.

3) Input the output of that model to some regional process, like viticulture or urban death.

4) Submit the result to a major journal for sure publication and a cursory peer review."

there's more.......

"Why could a paper be published in such a prestigious journal that is based upon a model that did not work? Why weren’t the authors cognizant of the Paper of the Year, which just happened to be on urban warming and death statistics? How could the reviewers miss this?

Patrick Michaels has a new book coming out on this issue, called Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media. It describes dozens of papers in the scientific literature that are as flawed as this one.

Why do they continue to appear? The reason is obvious. The scientific community is supported by gloom-and-doom, which gets us money from our single sugar daddy, the Federal Government. No one ever leveraged billions out of or Nation’s Capital (the current annual outlay for “global change” research is 4 billion) unless they threaten the worst. Then the political process takes credit for saving us from certain destruction and gets itself re-elected.

And don’t expect scientific peer-review to stop this process. Those who sit in judgment of science are those who receive the same largesse. Who would rationally derail this gravy train? That is why papers using models that don’t work, or that ignore critical citations that might spoil an otherwise perfectly apocalyptic hypotheses, are the rule rather than the exception. Which is what just happened in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

And then we have perhaps the most outrageous abuse of "peer review" as it pertains to "global warming" in the case of Bjorn Lomborg.

Here's author Michael Crichton to tell the story:

"I believe that as we come to the end of this litany, some of you may be saying, well what is the big deal, really. So we made a few mistakes. So a few scientists have overstated their cases and have egg on their faces. So what. Well, I'll tell you. In recent years, much has been said about the post modernist claims about science to the effect that science is just another form of raw power, tricked out in special claims for truth-seeking and objectivity that really have no basis in fact. Science, we are told, is no better than any other undertaking. These ideas anger many scientists, and they anger me. But recent events have made me wonder if they are correct. We can take as an example the scientific reception accorded a Danish statistician, Bjorn Lomborg, who wrote a book called The Skeptical Environmentalist.
The scientific community responded in a way that can only be described as disgraceful. In professional literature, it was complained he had no standing because he was not an earth scientist. His publisher, Cambridge University Press, was attacked with cries that the editor should be fired, and that all right-thinking scientists should shun the press. The past president of the AAAS wondered aloud how Cambridge could have ever "published a book that so clearly could never have passed peer review." )But of course the manuscript did pass peer review by three earth scientists on both sides of the Atlantic, and all recommended publication.) But what are scientists doing attacking a press? Is this the new McCarthyism-coming from scientists?
Worst of all was the behavior of the Scientific American, which seemed intent on proving the post-modernist point that it was all about power, not facts. The Scientific American attacked Lomborg for eleven pages, yet only came up with nine factual errors despite their assertion that the book was "rife with careless mistakes." It was a poor display featuring vicious ad hominem attacks, including comparing him to a Holocaust denier. The issue was captioned: "Science defends itself against the Skeptical Environmentalist." Really. Science has to defend itself? Is this what we have come to?
When Lomborg asked for space to rebut his critics, he was given only a page and a half. When he said it wasn't enough, he put the critics' essays on his web page and answered them in detail. Scientific American threatened copyright infringement and made him take the pages down.
Further attacks since have made it clear what is going on. Lomborg is charged with heresy. That's why none of his critics needs to substantiate their attacks in any detail. That's why the facts don't matter. That's why they can attack him in the most vicious personal terms. He's a heretic.
Of course, any scientist can be charged as Galileo was charged. I just never thought I'd see the Scientific American in the role of mother church.
Is this what science has become? I hope not. But it is what it will become, unless there is a concerted effort by leading scientists to aggressively separate science from policy. The late Philip Handler, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, said that "Scientists best serve public policy by living within the ethics of science, not those of politics. If the scientific community will not unfrock the charlatans, the public will not discern the difference-science and the nation will suffer." Personally, I don't worry about the nation. But I do worry about science."


This little story exemplifies the absolute corruption of science that passes for "peer review" by those who talk about "scientific consensus" on "global warming".

It's a despicable example of academic and intellectual fraud on the part of the True Believers.

There is more.....MUCH more to be said about this process of corruption.

"Peer Review" is only one small aspect of the attempt to legitimize the flagrant dishonesty being peddled as fact.