Wash. Times loose with facts on claims that climate “alarmists” silence “dissent”

Written by Dianna Parker

Published

The Washington Times falsely claimed both that a paper by economist Ross McKitrick was “excluded” from the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, as evidence of attempts by “alarmists” to “silence” McKitrick for his “dissent” on global warming science, and that the IPCC was the “sole authority upon which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) based its December 'endangerment finding.'” In fact, McKitrick's paper was included in the IPCC report, and the EPA cites several sources as the basis for its finding.

Wash. Times: “Mr. McKitrick's views were indeed excluded from the IPCC report”

From the April 7 The Washington Times editorial:

Scientific journals evaluate arguments of this sort using a peer-review process by which purportedly impartial experts in the relevant field verify the paper's accuracy and suitability for publication. By addressing issues raised by reviewers, researchers are able to present an improved and refined final product. In Mr. McKitrick's case, the process appears to have been abused to stifle dissent.

The leading journals Science and Nature both rejected the paper as too specialized and lacking in novelty. The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society did not respond. Reasons given for refusing the paper in other outlets frequently contradicted one another.

One of the famous leaked e-mails from the former head of the Climatic Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia sheds light on what really happens behind the scenes. “I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report,” professor Phil Jones wrote in reference to a 2004 journal article by Mr. McKitrick. “Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

Mr. McKitrick's views were indeed excluded from the IPCC report, but his paper will now be published in a forthcoming edition of Statistics, Politics and Policy. One of that journal's editors told The Washington Times that the submission was treated as “fairly routine.” That is to say, they treated it as scientists should.

McKitrick paper was not “excluded” from the IPCC report

Jones criticized McKitrick paper in his email. The Times editorial refers to a July 8, 2004, email, in which Jones criticized two papers -- including the one by McKitrick and [now Cato Institute fellow] Pat Michaels -- and said he couldn't “see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

But McKitrick's paper was not “excluded” from the IPCC, as the Times claimed. As the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media explained, McKitrick's paper was included in the IPCC report, “suggesting that no small group of scientists could be final arbiters of what is included in the IPCC reports”:

This [Jones] e-mail refers to two papers, one by Kalnay and Cai (2003) in Nature and one by McKitrick and Michaels (2004) in Climate Research, both dealing with effects of land-use change on temperature measurements. Despite Jones' dislike of the papers and his threat to keep them out of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, both papers were subsequently included in the Assessment, suggesting that no small group of scientists could be final arbiters of what is included in the IPCC reports.

Wash. Times: IPCC is the “sole authority” on which EPA based its finding

From the editorial:

The prophets of global warming continue to lament as their carefully crafted yarn unravels before their eyes. Ross McKitrick, an intrepid economics professor from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, has tugged apart the thin mathematical threads that once held together the story of climate change.

Recent attempts to silence Mr. McKitrick illuminate the extent to which the alarmists have abandoned proper scientific method in their pursuit of political goals.

Mr. McKitrick has spent the past two years attempting to publish a scientific paper that documents a fundamental error in the 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. This U.N. document serves as the sole authority upon which the Environmental Protection Agency based its December “endangerment finding” that will allow unelected bureaucrats to impose cap-and-trade-style regulations without a vote of Congress. The cost to the public in higher gas and energy prices will run in the billions.

EPA cited sources other than IPCC as the basis for its finding

The EPA's endangerment finding on six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, stated that "[t]he major assessments by the U.S. Global Climate Research Program (USGCRP), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the National Research Council (NRC) serve as the primary scientific basis supporting the Administrator's endangerment finding." It gave a detailed explanation of its use of all three sources, and a summary of the three assessments is provided in the EPA's Technical Support Document.