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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday March 07 2020, @01:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the sunny-disposition dept.

Paper that claimed the Sun caused global warming gets retracted:

A paper published last June was catnip for those who are desperate to explain climate change with anything but human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. It was also apparently wrong enough to be retracted this week by the journal that published it, even though its authors objected.

The paper's headline conclusion was that it described a newly discovered cycle in the motion of the Sun, one that put us 300 years into what would be a thousand-year warming period for the Earth. Nevermind that we've been directly measuring the incoming radiation from the Sun and there has been no increase to explain the observed global warming—or that there is no evidence of a 2,000 year temperature cycle in the paleoclimate record.

Those obvious issues didn't stop some people from taking this study as proof that past warming was natural, and only mild and unavoidable warming lies in our future.


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @04:04PM (15 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @04:04PM (#967897)

    I guess... every paper accepted is correct, right?

  • (Score: 1, TouchĂ©) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @04:17PM (14 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @04:17PM (#967900)

    You're trolling, but if this was a serious peer reviewed journal, countless man-hours went in to perfecting the paper before submission, followed by the PC poring over them and finally selecting a subset of submissions for publication.

    Serious institutions will readily admit and promise to do better if actual problems in their paper are discovered, but they stand by their work as they are objecting to the retraction.

    One can only guess at the professional and personal pressure that was brought to bear on the editors. Global warmingClimate change is too important for too many people to be questioned is what I get from this.

    Would be nice to know the journal and the author's institution in the summary, as the linked site is refusing service to me.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @04:30PM (7 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @04:30PM (#967901)

      It was published in Nature's Scientific Reports [nature.com] journal. So yes it probably was political pressure more than scientific pressure.

      I wonder how often people who suggested the Earth was *not* the center of the universe were forced to recant. Not to suggest this is the same thing beyond the fact that social pressures have 0 place in science.

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by PiMuNu on Saturday March 07 2020, @10:46PM

        by PiMuNu (3823) on Saturday March 07 2020, @10:46PM (#968008)

        > So yes it probably was political pressure

        It's not quite so clear - the author was also a journal editorial board member.

        https://www.nature.com/srep/about/editors [nature.com]

        Search for Valentina Zharkova, paper lead author.

      • (Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday March 08 2020, @12:04AM (5 children)

        by Bot (3902) on Sunday March 08 2020, @12:04AM (#968018) Journal

        I wonder how often people who suggested the Earth was *not* the center of the universe were forced to recant

        Until somebody explains the CMB anisotropies aligned with the ecliptic as something more than a coincidence (the current explanation), "the earth is at the center of the universe and/or the big bang didn't happen" are plausible positions.

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        Account abandoned.
        • (Score: 2) by dry on Sunday March 08 2020, @12:12AM (4 children)

          by dry (223) on Sunday March 08 2020, @12:12AM (#968023) Journal

          I thought it was pretty well established that the Earth is at the centre of the Universe, just like everywhere else. It's much like I'm at the centre of the Earths surface and so are you as it is the same distance to the edge of the Earth for everyone.

          • (Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday March 08 2020, @06:48PM (3 children)

            by Bot (3902) on Sunday March 08 2020, @06:48PM (#968248) Journal

            The CMB is either not the echo of the big bang, or subject to an unknown process, or the universe radiates in a way aligned with the earth, by mere coincidence or because it is in a special place. Some equations describe things in a location independent way, but this is quite irrelevant as things do not follow laws, laws describe things, usually until they don't.

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            Account abandoned.
            • (Score: 2) by dry on Sunday March 08 2020, @10:09PM (2 children)

              by dry (223) on Sunday March 08 2020, @10:09PM (#968306) Journal

              Do you have a citation for the CMB being aligned to the Earth?

              • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday March 09 2020, @12:40AM

                by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Monday March 09 2020, @12:40AM (#968352)

                No, he doesn't because it isn't. It sounds like he's trying to claim that some god made the Earth, making it special.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2020, @02:33AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2020, @02:33AM (#968387)

                Some people are trying to get it called the axis of evil [wikipedia.org]. Hopefully some editor won't put it on a book cover and we'll be stuck with it like the "God particle".

                As far as the axis of evil goes, it is unexplained, which means that the models don't explain it, but it also means that it includes more mundane explanations such as that it isn't clear whether it isn't an issue with the way the data are processed.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @04:51PM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @04:51PM (#967908)

      countless man-hours went in to perfecting the paper before submission, followed by the PC poring over them and finally selecting a subset of submissions for publication.

      LOL. I can see you aren't part of academia, and have never published yourself. Nature - which is where this was published - is better than most, but papers get less time and attention than theses, and generally have 1-3 peer reviewers. Those peer reviewers are often field experts but not statistical experts and normally don't get their hands on raw data, just the same summaries in the paper that other readers would get. Do you think every peer reviewer knows about Benford's law, and knows when it does/n't apply? Do you think that the thousands of paper retractions last year - many against the author's wishes, most of which are not on the topic of climate - were all falsely retracted?

      You're a fool or a shill or both.

      But your professed naivete was so potent that it did, in fact, make me laugh out loud for real.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Saturday March 07 2020, @08:12PM (3 children)

        by sjames (2882) on Saturday March 07 2020, @08:12PM (#967978) Journal

        It's a common theme with climate change deniers. Clutch desperately at any offered straw. Scream bloody murder if even the slightest criticism is offered against even the wildest alternative theory, all while pretending that the slightest error on the other side is iron clad proof of a global conspiracy.

        I predict two outcomes: In the first, we actually manage to take sufficient action such that not much damage is done. The same deniers will ignore all of that and crow about how they were right, nothing bad happened.

        Second scenario, we don't take action and we end up with huge and expensive problems. In that they claim there was no way to know and that it's not really anybody's fault.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @09:02PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @09:02PM (#967989)

          I think a good 50% of deniers are paid shills or disingenuous and fanatic supporters of GASOLINE! They are the tools who would huff spray paint and sacrifice themselves Mad Max Fury Road style.

          The goal of such shilling is to KEEP the conversation mired down in bullshit instead of brushing it off and developing serious support for carbon taxes. We really need to have a complete cost analysis for human activities, we are destroying the planet and the sociopathic assholes point to the little bits we haven't trashed as some sort of release of responsibility.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2020, @01:29AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2020, @01:29AM (#968034)

          Third scenario, we don't take action, nothing much changes. We both grow older and forget why we ever gave a shit.

    • (Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday March 07 2020, @09:49PM

      by edIII (791) on Saturday March 07 2020, @09:49PM (#967996)

      No, NOT trolling. It was a fair question in response to your implied statement that acceptance=correctness.

      Would you mind answering my friend's question?

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      Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.