Tuesday, September 18, 2007

If an article in the forest is not cited does it make any noise?

Well, actually we know the answer to that given the loud speaker brought forth by such trash as Zhen-Shan and Xian and the rest of the Schulte 7. Eli, in keeping with his mantra of RTFR did the "global climate change" search today on Web of Science. The mice will be pleased to know there are now 577 papers published since 2003, up a few each couple of days. The guys went and looked first at the top ten, the articles with the most cites

1. Evaluating predictive models of species' distributions: criteria for selecting optimal models
Anderson, RP; Lew, D; Peterson, AT ECOLOGICAL MODELLING
162 (2003) 211
Number of Citations: 127 Citations/Year: 25.40

2. Changes in tropical cyclone number, duration, and intensity in a warming environment
Webster, PJ; Holland, GJ; Curry, JA; et al. SCIENCE
309 (2005) 1844
Number of Citations: 110 Citations/Year: 36.67

3. Soil carbon sequestration impacts on global climate change and food security
Lal, R
SCIENCE 304 (2004) 1623
Number of Citations: 90 Citations/Year: 22.50

4. The changing character of precipitation
Trenberth, KE; Dai, AG; Rasmussen, RM; et al.
BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY 84 (2003) 1205
Number of Citations: 90 Citations/Year: 18.00

5. Global amphibian declines: sorting the hypotheses
Collins, JP; Storfer, A DIVERSITY AND DISTRIBUTIONS
9 (2003) 89
Number of Citations: 90 Citations/Year: 18.00

6. Flexibility and specificity in coral-algal symbiosis: Diversity, ecology, and biogeography of Symbiodinium Baker, AC ANNUAL REVIEW OF ECOLOGY EVOLUTION AND SYSTEMATICS 34 (2003) 661
Number of Citations: 87 Citations/Year: 21.75

7. Modern global climate change
Karl, TR; Trenberth, KE SCIENCE
302 (2003) 1719
Number of Citations: 75 Citations/Year: 15.00

8. Release of methane from a volcanic basin as a mechanism for initial Eocene global warming
Svensen, H; Planke, S; Malthe-Sorenssen, A; et al NATURE
429 (2004) 542
Number of Citations: 71 Citations/Year: 17.75

9. Thermal acclimation and the dynamic response of plant respiration to temperature
Atkin, OK; Tjoelker, MG TRENDS IN PLANT SCIENCE
8 (2003) 343
Number of Citations: 64 Citations/Year: 12.80

10. Rapid turnover of hyphae of mycorrhizal fungi determined by AMS microanalysis of C-14
Staddon, PL; Ramsey, CB; Ostle, N; et al SCIENCE
300 (2003) 1138
Number of Citations: 64 Citations/Year: 12.80

Interested mice can use Google Scholar to find many of these papers (and at a minimum their abstracts), however, Eli draws your attention to numbers 2, 4 and 7. Webster, Holland and Curry did stir up a storm.

But wait John S. asks, how did the Schulte 7 do, didn't they have a lot of citations. Sadly No.

UPDATE: The mice and bunnies were up all night in the lab. Eddie won the gold star, but then as he said:
Couldn't stop myself. Here's what I got.

1. Cao et al (2005). Cited by three other papers:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cites=4678028341612595130
I’m not a climate scientist, so can’t say much about these papers. All three appear to have been translated from Chinese.

2. Gerhard (2004) yields 4 cites, 1 to a sceptic paper in Environmental Geology, the other three to AAPG bulletins.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cites=6587388743221504476

3. Leiserowitz does not belong on this list. It doesn't deal with the "hard" science but with public perception of climate change. (Really, you'd have thought that its publication in a journal called Risk Analysis would have been a tip-off. Not only that, but the 7 papers that cite it also are social science oriented:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cites=6794206332519444725
Moreover, a quick read of the abstract suggests that its implicit aim is to provide more information to those wanting to know how to get people on board the global warming "gravy train". How is this bucking the consensus? (Unless I'm missing something, this one is an embarrassment for Schulte/Monckton.)

4. Lai et al (2005) has zero cites.

5. Moser (2005) has only 1 cite.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?sourceid=Mozilla-search&q=moser+%22Uncertainties+in+the+human+dimensions+of+global+change+deeply+affect+the+assessment+and+responses+to+climate+change+impacts%22
The gScholar link doesn’t seem to go to the right place, but judging from the abstract, it’s hard to say whether this is a counter-consensus paper. Moser is merely saying that “Uncertainties in the human dimensions of global change deeply affect the assessment and responses to climate change impacts.” Seems non-controversial.

6. I got no cites for Shaviv; can't see where you got the four citations.

7. Finally, the Zhen-Shan & Xian paper, which I think James Annan savaged recently. Cited 3 times by sceptic chop-shops:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cites=3363744258458693716
by Bob Carter in a speech delivered at the Aus/MM New Leaders Conference; by the Independent Summary for Policymakers IPCC Fourth Assessment Report put out by the Fraser Institute and co-ordinated by Ross McKitrick; and in the “Index of Leading Environmental Indicators 2007” (12th ed.) put out by aconvenientfiction.com.

AND … that’s the total.
I got the four cites to a slightly earlier Shaviv paper one of which is the Shaviv paper you looked at. There were (as Eli recalls, and Eli is an OLD Rabett, two self cites, one refutation and one agreement. The agreement is interesting in that the authors know the CR lit, but not the climate lit. Details in the evening (left my thumb drive at home).

40 comments:

Anonymous said...

What were the cite numbers for the Schulte 7? It'd be interesting, too, to see who cited them. I've looked at this sort of thing on gScholar before, and you often get "cites" from liberservative-type think tanks. Hardly peer-reviewed shit.

If I've got some time tonight, I might track them down and post them here.

EliRabett said...

Essentially zeros. Shaviv had four, two of which were self citations, one a refutation and the other an a review which thought the idea had merit (they knew the CR but not C data). Admittedly this was sort of a teaser.

Anonymous said...

Couldn't stop myself. Here's what I got.

1. Cao et al (2005). Cited by three other papers:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cites=4678028341612595130
I’m not a climate scientist, so can’t say much about these papers. All three appear to have been translated from Chinese.

2. Gerhard (2004) yields 4 cites, 1 to a sceptic paper in Environmental Geology, the other three to AAPG bulletins.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cites=6587388743221504476

3. Leiserowitz does not belong on this list. It doesn't deal with the "hard" science but with public perception of climate change. (Really, you'd have thought that its publication in a journal called Risk Analysis would have been a tip-off. Not only that, but the 7 papers that cite it also are social science oriented:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cites=6794206332519444725
Moreover, a quick read of the abstract suggests that its implicit aim is to provide more information to those wanting to know how to get people on board the global warming "gravy train". How is this bucking the consensus? (Unless I'm missing something, this one is an embarrassment for Schulte/Monckton.)

4. Lai et al (2005) has zero cites.

5. Moser (2005) has only 1 cite.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?sourceid=Mozilla-search&q=moser+%22Uncertainties+in+the+human+dimensions+of+global+change+deeply+affect+the+assessment+and+responses+to+climate+change+impacts%22
The gScholar link doesn’t seem to go to the right place, but judging from the abstract, it’s hard to say whether this is a counter-consensus paper. Moser is merely saying that “Uncertainties in the human dimensions of global change deeply affect the assessment and responses to climate change impacts.” Seems non-controversial.

6. I got no cites for Shaviv; can't see where you got the four citations.

7. Finally, the Zhen-Shan & Xian paper, which I think James Annan savaged recently. Cited 3 times by sceptic chop-shops:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cites=3363744258458693716
by Bob Carter in a speech delivered at the Aus/MM New Leaders Conference; by the Independent Summary for Policymakers IPCC Fourth Assessment Report put out by the Fraser Institute and co-ordinated by Ross McKitrick; and in the “Index of Leading Environmental Indicators 2007” (12th ed.) put out by aconvenientfiction.com.

AND … that’s the total. I’d be interested to know whether any climate scientists out there can tell us anything about the reputation of those journals. Otherwise, only two of the Schulte 7 seem to be cited by anything even resembling peer-reviewed journals. One is a social science paper. Two are ignored. One has a dead cite link. The final one is much feted by the sceptics’ parallel universe.

Magnus said...

Ok I don’t know if I’m doing good or bad here but my curiosity is getting to big... I have a professor at my university that have published a new idea about why the earth is getting warming. I guess some of you have seen it before, it’s about thermal pollution and his name is Bo Nordell. Now when he isn’t babbling about Dowsing ( http://www.ltu.se/polopoly_fs/1.5014!dowsing.pdf ) or some other important subject he tries to promote his idea about thermal pollution which he has published here: http://www.ltu.se/polopoly_fs/1.5035!nordell%20gpc%20vol%2038%20issue%203-4.pdf

(and here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/wkv36rxuu4561912/ )

It’s obviously flawed but I can’t help to wonder why it never ever showed up on the denierblogs?

EliRabett said...

Hi Magnus,

The base error (page 1, sentence 1) is that geothermal heat flow to the surface is a very small fraction of the absorbed solar heating. This is a traditional denialist error that geologists are prone to and has been called the worst argument about global warming ever. Search for a Louis Hissink if you are looking for further abuse. More later.

Anonymous said...

All more citations means is that socialists are slapping each other on the academic back.

Meanwhile, no citations means that nobody can think of anything better to say, so the paper is the last word on the subject. That is, solid proof.

Get a brain, morans.

Anonymous said...

Heh heh... "get a brain, morans" indeed!

For those who didn't get this little joke, check out the following image for a good chuckle:

http://memewatch.com/thelist/archives/pix/morans.jpg

Anonymous said...

There were (as Eli recalls) two self cites, one refutation and one agreement."

Does that mean one of two self-sites was a refutation and the other an agreement? (stranger things have happened)

Reminds me of a philosophy prof I once had who would carry on both sides of a debate with himself in front of the class.

Magnus said...

Yes well, he himself thinks he solves that by saying that the sun doesn�t matter in the long run it will balance out (incoming and outgoing) so it isn�t important. Pointing out that if the incoming (SWR) changes due to the sun the (OLR) outgoing would change and that the existing variations would give us extreme variations in whether IRL don�t make any impact. I have heard that it took years to stop him from teaching dowsing to the student so making him stop teaching this nonsense will need more then a poor PhD students free time... however showing the students how wrong he is can be quite fun.

Some of the other points he ignores is the fact that there is no reliable number for OLR in 1880 and that the variation in OLR on short timescales are bigger then the numbers he depends on for his �model�. As you can se in the answers to his article online more points have bean made, like for example that he can�t rely on a black box model to calculate the temperature gradient in the atmosphere is also completely ignored... Can�t help but feeling a bit sad for the foreign exchange student that made his masters thesis finding new types of �thermal pollution�: http://www.ltu.se/polopoly_fs/1.5035!summary.pdf

His a nasty tricky man I discovered and deserves a big part of over aged liver pudding!

Luboš Motl said...

What bullshit are you talking about? The most intelligent readers of this blog are able to click at this link to see Shaviv's citations. Shaviv+Veizer have 67, Shaviv cosmic climate 2002 has 52, Milky way and ice ages 2003 have 46 citations, and so on and on. He has hundreds of cits, almost like your humble correspondent.

The most cited paper of yours has 97 cits for 9 co-authors, the following three have 33, 17, 15, and then you're below ten. If I were a scientific germ like you, I would certainly not insult relative big shot scientists such as Nir Shaviv.

Magnus said...

Interesting... or? What does google count as citation? the reliable ISI gives him 0 on cosmic rays and climate anyway...

EliRabett said...

The search is on "global climate change" in WoS from 2003 on. Evidently Shaviv and Veizer (2003) were not captured in that. Go argue with IOS.

EliRabett said...

Oh yeah, watch your language.

Anonymous said...

We're talking about the Schulte 7, Lubos. Do try and catch up.

Anonymous said...

Silly Rabbett! You were wrong about surface stations - we HAVE THE POLAROIDS of HIPPIES WITH STERNO CANS held under the THERMOMETERS - and you're wrong about papers!

I have in my hand the names of 67 dedicated Communists who control all peer review in America. They've sold our industrial base out for Red Gold!

Anonymous said...

At least "scientific germs" have tenure.

What's lower than a germ on the academic scale? A prion?

guthrie said...

No, anonymous 2:36, it's a Lubos.

Anyway, regarding Bo Nordel, I had a scan of his paper, and he comes up with a figure of 0.02 watts/ metre extra from the energy dissipated. The fact that this is about equal to the climate forcing from several halocarbon greenhouse gases, and waaaaayyyyy less than that from Co2 seems not to matter to him, and nowhere could I see any consideration of the actual calculated forcings.

Add this to the lack of cities at the North Pole, no explanation for cooling whatsitsname, a a lack of reference of real climate papers rather than pretend ones, and you ahve a really poor paper that deserves oblivion. How it got published in the first place I do not know.

Marion Delgado said...

guthrie it's a pity sometimes science ISNT politicized the other way. Renaming, say, a viroid a "motl" would be dreadful science but fairly amusing.

Marion Delgado said...

by the way i agree eli is hardly a presence on google scholar. however, moving along, for this:

author:l-motl

I get this:

Results 1 - 10 of about 67 for motl author:l-motl. (0.02 seconds)

Also for everyone, not just lubos, a lot of papers appear 2, 3, 4 times. same paper.

I think lubos didn't think there was an A motl, etc. out there.

If you don't do author search you include papers like "How Lubos Motl being such a total moronic dick turned me off of string theory" or "Why people who understand theoretical physics can't do statistics or chemistry or time series or pretty much anything once they're out of their element. Case Study: lubos motl" or "studies in immigrant shame: why one family abandoned the name motl"

EliRabett said...

On the contrary Marion, Eli is a big noise on Google Scholar, holding a patent for Tools for Use in Percussive Machines" in other words a drum stick.

Marion Delgado said...

Eli:

So that's how you can afford the Rabbit Cave and the Bunnymobile! If you made Lubos your ward, wouldn't he be too busy running around in mask and tights fighting crime to fight Science?

Marion Delgado said...

By the way i didn't save it somehow but Motl is probably right about hundreds of cites for him, vs. cited. I got 800 hits for "L motl" and subbing out the 67 entries leaves hundreds.

but google scholar searches as numeric evidence of things is weird. I was also amused by tim lambert's having people do their own Schulte (with the same obvious problem Schulte had, of a frivolous definition set).

EliRabett said...

Hi Marion,

I'm not absolutely clear which you are using but Google Scholar still does not get cites right, WOS does. GS is rapidly improving on current lit (the stuff on the web), but still not very useful for citation analysis and it is not clear they want to go there.

Remember GS only looks at stuff that is electronically available, which means it is heavily biased towards current stuff.

OTOH, curse you for the thought of Lubos in tights guarding the carrot patch. He will not thank you either.

bigcitylib said...

Looks like the Shulte article will NOT be published in E&E:

http://www.desmogblog.com/schultes-analysis-not-published-not-going-to-be

But who really cares, it already made Newsbusters

Anonymous said...

"Lubos in tights"?

How about "Lubos in a String bikini"?

That's the memo -- and the nightmare.

Anonymous said...

Eli, I'm sure you'll agree that the image of Lubos in tights is infinitely superior to one of him sans any tights. Count your blessings.

Anonymous said...

If I had onlt two choices, I think I'd rather see Lubos as a "naked singularity" (and how singular that would be) than in a String bikini.

Anonymous said...

Or how about "Lubos in an M-brane"? (he'd probably fit right in at the Academy Awards)

Perhaps he might even start a modeling company: "Motl's Models".

Perhaps he could get his best friends -- Peter Woit & Lee Smolin -- to model with him.

Anonymous said...

LOL all the wabbit has is an excuse for his google fu and "watch your language"

Lubos killed the thread

all we have left after the Eli is taken down to germ level are some ad homs a EU man whore would be ashamed of

Anonymous said...

I'd bet that the the only thing Lubos ever killed with his blogging are his chances for tenure at Harvard.

If his Harvard colleagues actually read some of his blog posts, they would undoubtedly be appalled by his lack of knowledge of basic physical principles.

Witness his claims about "exponentially escalating temperatures" if positive feedback had been involved in the case of past CO2 increases shown by ice cores:

"Everyone who has basic understanding of feedback theory knows that what they talk about is a textbook example of a positive-feedback system, and if the climate were such a system, the mutually supportive interactions would lead to exponentially escalating temperatures in one of the possible directions. That’s clearly not observed in the data and the positive-feedback hypothesis is thus falsified.”

First, as a result of the logarithmic relationship between atmospheric CO2 concentration and temperature increase, there is no exponential escalation in temperature. Each subsequent increase in CO2 of a given magnitude leads to a smaller temperature increase than the last one.

Second, the process is inherently self-limiting because, according to the Stefan Boltzmann law, the total radiation per unit time per unit surface area increases as the temperature goes up. In fact, because radiation is proportional to the 4th power of the temperature, there is a very strong damping effect.

There is no "exponentially escalating temperature".

Basic physics prevents it.

Anyone with a basic understanding of freshman physics should be able to recognize this.

This apparently does not include Motl.

EliRabett said...

7:04, please take your meds and check in with your mom.

EliRabett said...

5:30 - Please the Lord NO!

Marion Delgado said...

how about d-braned theories for inarticulate p-branes?

Marion Delgado said...

anonymous 7:39 that's because, after all, the commonest way to get good at one thing in science is to not bother trying to be good at everything. I doubt they'd be appalled. Probably just say "typical." It's people with particular expertise in what he's bloviating on ala Limbaugh who seem to be most amused/offended by his rants.

On the other hand, It'd be amusing to see a string theory paper written the way Lubos approaches climate science et al.

"It's been suggested historically that this was a further extension necessary to reconcile I, IIA, IIB, HO, HE, but since one of the people suggesting it is a communist [1] and the other is probably a pacifistic communist [2], my supergenius (supersymmetry plus my own genius) theory which replaces all the dimensions and numbers with pleasant scalars and regular curves (following an idea anticipated in The Fountainhead) is clearly superior. Socialism loses again! The alleged consensus against my theory is simply an artifact of the bias induced by open source publications in hermeneutics."

Anonymous said...

"after all, the commonest way to get good at one thing in science is to not bother trying to be good at everything."

Marion, you may be right about the general case. I remember a while back that Eli shredded a paper co-authored by a university physicist (in Germany, I believe) which used Celsius instead of Kelvin temperatures in the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. So I guess nothing should surprise me.

But I sincerely hope you're wrong about the specific case of Harvard. Harvard is supposed to have one of the best physics departments in the US (if not world).

Personally, I don't believe anyone should be granted a PhD unless they understand basic physics like the Stefan-Boltzmann law -- and can correctly apply it in cases like that above.

Anonymous said...

One of the nice things about working on String Theory is never having to admit you're wrong, because there is no wrong -- and no right.

I think that's precisely why some people find it alluring.

People who would (and do) look like idiots talking about basic physics can appear to be geniuses talking about something that has no connection to reality.

As long as there is lots of obscure math involved -- describing lots of extra dimensions wrapped up in little balls so tiny that you can not detect them (conveniently) and other such nonsense, no one can call you on it. Even if they try, you can just wave your hands and go on to the next vacuous derivation.

Marion Delgado said...

by the way, since we all need a laugh nowadays, this from Cosmic Variance:

"I find it outrageous that people who don’t even try to contribute anything to science - and who build on purely negative support of various crackpots and science-haters - should have a better access to scientific resources than, for example, graduate students who work hard and struggle with serious scientific questions." - Lubos Motl

Marion Delgado said...

anonymouse 4:46: I sincerely hope your characterization of string theory is off base somewhat.

I wish you'd go look at the controvery over whether Lotfi Zaydeh's "theory of fuzzy subsets of real sets" (which we know of as fuzzy math, derived fuzzy logic, fuzzy subsets) was new math or just a restating of other math.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/einstein07/einstein07_index.html

Brian Greene isn't dead wrong here. that string theory might devolve into having been a reformulation of field theory with additional assumptions that weren't useful would indeed make it wrong, ultimately. But it would still be useful. Also, believe me, the people working "in" string theory so to speak, other than the most speculative and purely theoretical (accepting the infinite landscape as fact, for instance) did follow strong constraints on right and wrong. A great deal of the physics lectures and presentations i've attended or watched on video were string theory supportive and they certainly were dealing with real physics. It's mostly parsimony that gets string theory.

Motl does seem not normal mentally and not in a good way - even his advocacy on string theory seems more emotional and competitive than contemplative. Still, go to Not Even Wrong and you see a milder but still discernible mirror of that attitude.

Anonymous said...

Marion.

String Theory [sic] can't be proven wrong -- it's not falsifiable.

String theory is simply not a scientific theory and therefore has no value as such.

AS Feynman said years ago: "String theorists don't make predictions, they make excuses."

Anonymous said...

My take on the Zhen-Shan and Xian paper:

The empirical, the mode, and the decomposition.