Soon and Baliunas controversy: Difference between revisions

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 a revolt by the editors and the eventual repudiation of the paper by the publisher.

In 2003, a paper, Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years, written by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas was published in Climate Research after being accepted by editor Chris de Freitas, who is known as a skeptic of anthropogenic global warming.^[1] 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".^[2] Soon and Baliunas 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 from which the earth has been recovering since 1890.^[3]

Following the paper's publication, other scientists criticized the study's methods and argued that the authors had misrepresented or misinterpreted their data.^[4] 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 [the paper] 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[ing] so many egregious errors that it would take weeks to list and explain them all."^[5]

In July 2003, the journal Eos published a paper authored by 13 prominent climate scientists, most of whom had been cited in the Soon and Baliunas 2003 paper (SB03).^[6] 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.^[7][8] The Soon and Baliunas paper had been sent to four reviewers during publication, none of whom recommended rejecting it.^[9]

Questions also were 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 Marshall Institute, which opposes limits on carbon dioxide emissions.^[10]

After seeing the critiques of the paper, its chief editor Hans von Storch sought to make changes to Climate Research's review process. However, when other editors at the journal refused, von Storch decided to resign.^[1] 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."^[11] Eventually half of the journal's editorial board resigned along with von Storch.^[9] 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"^[12] and complained that he had been pressured to publish the paper and had not been allowed to publish a rebuttal contesting the authors' conclusions.^[13] In a later editorial Otto Kinne, president of the organization that publishes Climate Research, stated that "While these statements [the conclusion of the paper] 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."^[14] 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."^[15] As a result of the scientific criticisms, the paper apparently made little impact on the prevailing scientific opinion, at that time, that the Medieval Warm Period was primarily a regional phenomenon.^[16]

The Soon and Baliunas paper had a significant political impact and has been widely promoted by opponents of regulatory action to tackle greenhouse gases. Following its publication a second version of the article was issued, adding the climate change skeptics Craig D. Idso, Sherwood B. Idso and David Legates as co-authors.^[13] 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.^[15] The Bush administration also attempted to cite the paper in an Environmental Protection Agency report on the state of the environment.^[13]

• Global warming controversy

• "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.