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The Soon and Baliunas controversy involved the publication of a paper written by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas in the journal Climate Research, which prompted concerns about the peer review process of the paper and resulted in the resignation of several other editors and the eventual repudiation of the paper by the publisher.

Publication

On January 31, 2003, a paper, Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years, written by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, was published in Climate Research after being accepted by Chris de Freitas, an editor at the journal who is known as a skeptic of anthropogenic global warming. The article reviewed 240 previously published papers and tried to find evidence for temperature anomalies in the last thousand years such as the Medieval warm period and the Little Ice Age. It concluded that "Across the world, many records reveal that the 20th century is probably not the warmest or a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium".

On March 31, 2003, Soon and Baliunas, with three additional co-authors, published a longer version of the paper in Energy and Environment. The three additional co-authors were Craig Idso, Sherwood Idso, and David Legates.

In the paper, Soon, Baliunas, and their co-authors investigated the correlation between solar variation and temperatures of the Earth's atmosphere. When there are more sunspots, the total solar output increases, and when there are fewer sunspots, it decreases. Soon and Baliunas attribute the Medieval warm period to such an increase in solar output, and believe that decreases in solar output led to the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling lasting until the mid-19th Century. In a statement to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Soon stated that, "When you compare the 20th century to the previous nine centuries, you do not see the change in the 20th century as anything unusual or unprecedented."

Responses

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Following the paper's publication, other scientists criticized the study's methods and argued that the authors had misrepresented or misinterpreted their data. Some of those whose work was referenced by Soon and Baliunas were particularly critical. Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography commented that "the fact that has received any attention at all is a result, again in my view, of its utility to those groups who want the global warming issue to just go away". Malcolm K. Hughes of the University of Arizona, whose work on dendrochronology was discussed in the paper, called it "so fundamentally misconceived and contain so many egregious errors that it would take weeks to list and explain them all."

Paleoclimatologist Michael E. Mann was especially critical of Soon and Baliunas' paper, calling its conclusions, "absurd, almost laughable." Mann said that the paper made no attempt to find if the past warm temperatures it reported were contemporaneous or merely one-off scattered events.

In July 2003, the journal Eos published a paper authored by 13 climate scientists, most of whom had been cited in the Soon and Baliunas 2003 paper (SB03). The key criticisms noted in the Eos paper were that SB03 had conflated precipitation proxies and temperature proxies and that regional temperature changes were taken as global changes. Other objections included the allegation that SB03 reconstructed past temperatures from proxy evidence not capable of resolving decadal trends.

More recently, Osborn and Briffa repeated the Baliunas and Soon study but restricted themselves to records that were validated as temperature proxies, and came to a different result. The Soon and Baliunas paper had been sent to four reviewers during publication, all of whom recommended rejecting it.

Questions have also been raised about connections between the paper's authors and oil industry groups: five percent of the study, or $53,000, was funded by the American Petroleum Institute. Soon and Baliunas were at the time paid consultants of the George C. Marshall Institute. Soon has also received multiple grants from the American Petroleum Institute between 2001 and 2007 totalled $274,000, and grants from Exxon Mobil totalled $335,000 between 2005 and 2010. Other contributers to Soon's research career include the Charles G. Koch Foundation, which gave Soon two grants totaling $175,000 in 2005/6 and again in 2010, and coal and oil industry sources such as Mobil Foundation, the Texaco Foundation and the Electric Power Research Institute. Soon has stated that he has "never been motivated by financial reward in any of my scientific research."

In defending the paper, Soon stated that the critics had mischaracterized the research in the paper. He explained that he had used precipitation data because too many scientists had concentrated on temperature records which, in Soon's opinion, are not the only measures of climate. Added Soon, "Some of the proxy information doesn't contain directly the temperature information, but it fits the general description of the medieval warm climatic anomaly. This is a first-order study to try to collect as much data as possible and try not to make the pretension that we know how to separate the information in the proxy."

Impact of the criticisms

After seeing the critiques of the paper, Climate Research's chief editor Hans von Storch sought to make changes to its review process. However, when other editors at the journal refused, von Storch decided to resign. He condemned the journal's review process in his resignation letter: "The review process had utterly failed; important questions have not been asked ... the methodological basis for such a conclusion (that the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climate period of the last millennium) was simply not given." Eventually half of the journal's editorial board resigned along with von Storch. Von Storch later stated that climate change sceptics "had identified Climate Research as a journal where some editors were not as rigorous in the review process as is otherwise common" and complained that he had been pressured to publish the paper and had not been allowed to publish a rebuttal contesting the authors' conclusions.

In a later editorial Otto Kinne, president of the organization that publishes Climate Research, stated that "While these statements may be true, the critics point out that they cannot be concluded convincingly from the evidence provided in the paper. CR should have requested appropriate revisions of the manuscript prior to publication." Kinne told the New York Times that "I have not stood behind the paper by Soon and Baliunas. Indeed: the reviewers failed to detect methodological flaws."

The Soon and Baliunas paper had a significant political impact and has been widely promoted by opponents of regulatory action to tackle greenhouse gases. Republican Senator James Inhofe devoted half of a Senate hearing on climate change to a discussion of the article, asserting that its authors had refuted the scientific consensus on climate change; Soon was among those whom Inhofe invited to give testimony at the hearing. The Bush administration also attempted to cite the paper in an Environmental Protection Agency report on the state of the environment.

Email controversy

In November 2009, a database of emails and documents were hacked from a server belonging to East Anglia University. Many of the emails included communication between the climatologists in East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and other scientists, including Michael E. Mann. Several of the emails revealed conversations about Soon and Baliunas' paper as the controversy was ongoing in 2003 and 2004.

In one of the emails in early March 2003, Mann proposes to other scientists that they publicly ignore Soon and Baliunas' paper. Phil Jones, a CRU scientist, however, responds on 11 March that he thought the paper would be used by sceptics to further their agenda and therefore the paper's conclusions should be challenged. Mann's email responses to Jones the same day criticized de Freitas and von Storch and stated that, "I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues... to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board." In a 24 April 2003 email, Tom Wigley suggests that pressure be put on Climate Research's board members to remove von Storch.

In a 18 December 2009 column in the Wall Street Journal, Pat Michaels alleged that pressure from Jones and Mann was responsible for the resignations at Climate Research. Mann, Jones, and Trenberth, however, have stated that they did not carry out the threat against the journal or keep the papers out of the IPCC report. Von Storch has stated that his resignation as editor of Climate Research had nothing to do with any pressure from Jones, Mann, or anyone else, but was instead "because of insufficient quality control on a bad paper"

See also

• Global warming controversy
• Hockey stick controversy

References

1. ^ Mooney, Chris (2004-09-13). "Déjà vu All Over Again". Skeptical Inquirer.
2. ^ Monastersky, Richard (2003). "Storm Brews Over Global Warming" (PDF). The Chronicle of Higher Education. 50 (2): A16. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
3. Soon, Willie (January 31, 2003). "Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years" (PDF). Climate Research. 23. Inter-Research Science Center: 89–110. doi:10.3354/cr023089. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
4. Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, "20th Century Climate Not So Hot," (Press release), March 31, 2003, retrieved on 24 August 2010. Harvard press release documented in secondary source: Pearce, Fred, "Emails reveal strenuous efforts by climate scientists to 'censor' their critics", The Guardian, 9 February 2010, retrieved on 24 August 2010.
5. ^ Vanderheiden, Steve (2008). Atmospheric justice: a political theory of climate change. Oxford University Press US. pp. 35–36. ISBN 9780195334609.
6. Powell, Alvin (April 24, 2003). "Sun's warming is global: CfA lecture links solar activity and climate change". Harvard University Gazette. Retrieved 2007-04-17.
7. Hoggan, James; Littlemore, Richard (2009). Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming. Greystone Books. pp. 104–5. ISBN 9781553654858.
8. Appell, David (2006). Human, Katy (ed.). Critical Perspectives on World Climate. The Rosen Publishing Group. p. 171. ISBN 9781404206885.
9. Pearce, Fred, "Emails reveal strenuous efforts by climate scientists to 'censor' their critics", The Guardian, 9 February 2010, retrieved on 24 August 2010.
10. http://holocene.meteo.psu.edu/shared/articles/eos03.pdf
11. Mann, Michael E. (February 9, 2006). "A New Take on an Old Millennium". RealClimate. Retrieved 2007-04-17.
12. Osborn T.J., Briffa K.R. (2006). "The Spatial Extent of 20th-Century Warmth in the Context of the Past 1200 Years". Science. 311 (5762): 841–844. Bibcode:2006Sci...311..841O. doi:10.1126/science.1120514. PMID 16469924.
13. ^ Pearce, Fred (2 February 2010). "Climate change emails between scientists reveal flaws in peer review". The Guardian accessdate=10 September 2010. {{cite web}}: Missing pipe in: |publisher= (help)
14. Sanchez, Irene (2005-11-13). "Warming study draws fire". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved 2009-05-30.
15. Gardner, Timonthy (2011-06-28). "US climate skeptic Soon funded by oil, coal firms". Reuters.
16. Gardner, Timonthy (2011-06-28). "American climate skeptic Soon funded by oil, coal firms". Chicago Tribune.
17. Vidal, John (2011-06-27). "Climate sceptic Willie Soon received $1m from oil companies, papers show". The Guardian.
18. Cauchi, Stephen (2004-01-17). "Global warming: a load of hot air?". The Age.
19. "Some Like It Hot | Mother Jones". Retrieved 2009-12-01.
20. Kinne, Otto (5 August 2003). "Climate Research: an article unleashed worldwide storms" (PDF). Climate Research. 24. Inter-Research Science Center: 197–198. doi:10.3354/cr024197.
21. ^ Revkin, Andrew (2003-08-05). "Politics Reasserts Itself in the Debate Over Climate Change and Its Hazards". The New York Times.
22. ^ Pearce, Fred, "Emails reveal strenuous efforts by climate scientists to 'censor' their critics", The Guardian, 9 February 2010.
23. Pearce, Fred, "Emails reveal strenuous efforts by climate scientists to 'censor' their critics", The Guardian, 9 February 2010; date of Jones and Mann emails of 11 March documented in: Montford, A.W. (2010). The Hockey Stick Illusion. London: Stacey International. pp. 403–404. ISBN 978-1-906768-35-5..
24. Montford, A.W. (2010). The Hockey Stick Illusion. London: Stacey International. pp. 406–407. ISBN 978-1-906768-35-5..
25. Ball, Tim (November 30, 2009). "The Scientists Involved in Deliberately Deceiving the World on Climate". Canada Free Press. Retrieved August 30, 2010.
26. "Climate Science and Candor". Wall Street Journal. November 24, 2009. Retrieved August 30, 2010.
27. Minority Staff (2010). ‘Consensus’ Exposed: The CRU Controversy (Report). U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Retrieved August 30, 2010.
28. Michaels, Pat, "How to Manufacture a Climate Consensus", Wall Street Journal, 18 December 2009; Michaels statement characterized as "allegations" in: Pearce, Fred, "Emails reveal strenuous efforts by climate scientists to 'censor' their critics", The Guardian, 9 February 2010.
29. Von Storch, Hans, "Good Science, Bad Politics", Wall Street Journal, 22 December 2009.

External links

• "Reconstructing Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1000 Years: A Reappraisal" (abstract), by Soon W.; Baliunas S.; Idso C.; Idso S.; Legates D.R: Energy & Environment, Volume 14, Numbers 2-3, 1 May 2003. Full text. The companion paper to the controversial Climate Research paper discussed here.

• Scientific controversies
• Climate change
• Climate history