| on Apr 17, 2008, 04:53 PM E.S.T.
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As reported on Climate Science, our article Is There Agreement Amongst Climate Scientists on the IPCC AR4 WG1? was rejected by Fred Spilhaus, Editor-In-Editor of the AGU
publication EOS (and subsequently by Nature Precedings). He said that
our article “did not fit EOS policy.” In our weblog we concluded that:
“From this experience, it is clear that the AGU EOS and
Nature Precedings Editors are using their positions to suppress
evidence that there is more diversity of views on climate, and
the human role in altering climate, than is represented in the narrowly
focused 2007 IPCC report.”
Thus it was not a complete surprise that EOS published a clear advocacy article entitled “Improving How Scientists Communicate About Climate Change”by Susan J. Hassol. The long article starts with the text:
“Science meets policy in the most important challenge of our time: global warming.”
and includes the recommendation that:
“Rather than accepting the premise of a poorly framed question,
reframe it. When people ask if global warming can be blamed for a
particular hurricane, heat wave, fire, or flood, a simple “no” does not
respond to the essence of the question. What they really want to know
is whether global warming is having an effect on such events, and the
science suggests that it is. You can reframe such questions to explain
that global warming is increasing the chances of such events occurring,
and you can also explain some of the connections.”
In the same issue, there is an insightful Forum article by Syun-Ichi Akasofu entitled “A Suggestion to Climate Scientists and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” which does provide some balance, but his was not listed as an article. as was Susan Hassol’s contribution.
I have no issue with the publication by EOS of
a contribution by Ms. Hassol. While she is not a climate
scientist, she has been involved with communicting science issues to
the wider community for years, and as been effective in organizing
meetings on climate at the Aspen Global Change Institute [which I have
attended and she did permit the diversity of viewpoints to be presented
in that forum]. Thus, her obvious advocay position should not prevent
her contribution from being published in EOS, but it should be in the
Forum section as was done with Dr. Akasofu.
More importantly, the failure to permit our article Brown, F., J. Annan, and R.A. Pielke Sr., 2008: Is there agreement amongst climate scientists on the IPCC AR4 WG1? to even be published in EOS as a Forum contribution, documents the use by the Editor in Chief of
his position to suppress evidence that climate scientists have more
diversity of viewpoints on the role of humans in the climate system
than reported in the EOS published article by Susan Hassol. Source
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