Jason Box has made a very critical comment on a new paper in JGR regarding Greenland melting.

Recomended read.

Thanks Oslo, good on Jason Box for calling the authors out on their BS. Someone planning a post here on the topic?. Yooper?.

Thanks for the very interesting link, oslo.

The fact that the authors went ahead with publishing obsolete data tells me that they wanted to make the data fit the graph.  Now, why would they do that, I wonder? :-)

Unless someone has dibs, I'll take it on.  Looks like a fun one!

1 datapoint changes the conclusion?

Looks pretty shaky...

Heard back from Jason; got me set up to begin on the rebuttal/blog post.

Good onya mate!.

Daniel,  Be careful, I think there's some PR blowback danger here, if not preempted.

http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/reviewer-outs-himself/

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The echo-chamber is going to try to nail Jason Box... leaking for personal advantage.  The meme starting to circulate:

  "... for the public record, my anonymous review of a new paper published in Journal of Geophysical Research.

http://www.meltfactor.org/blog/?p=366

A lot is going to be made of making anonymous review public and for his professional stake in the matter.

Don't get me wrong proceed, but do so with caution.  :-)

The authors behaved most unethically in refusing to update their paper with data that would overturn their wrong conclusion.  Their amended paper keeps the wrong conclusion at the forefront in the paper's abstract.  It is this abstract which will bounce around the planet, with the actual paper remaining unread by the sort of undiscriminating readers who get their 'science' spoon-fed to them in blogs such as WUWT.

The journal failed to enforce author ethics.

In these circumstances, every ethical scientist has a duty to be a whistleblower.  Science is supposed to be about a search for truth.  The authors have declined an opportunity to take their researches closer to the truth.  In my book, that makes them not scientists.

I unreservedly commend Dr. Box for his bold - and public - ethical stance.

I plan on putting the Frauenfeld paper within the larger context of the greater stories of Greenland and the Arctic, global warming and the response of those regions to it.  Once that is achieved, I plan on touching on the nature of skepticism in general, and that specifically displayed by Dr. Box in reaction to the Frauenfeld paper.  Those that draw their curves and then only plot the data that agrees with it must necessarily be dragged out into the bright sunlight like the slimy, wriggly, squirming things they are.

I read the Rank Exploits thread.  Kudo's to the Rabett for having the stomache to venture there.  Lucia plays with goat entrails and eye of newt.  Curry without the sheepskin.  But the same entourage of sycophants.  (spits electronically)

From the paper:

"The melt extent observed in 2007 in particular was the greatest on record according to several satellite-derived records of total Greenland melt extent."

Not true if one includes 2010.

"The greatest melt extent over the last 2 1/4 centuries occurred in 2007; however, this value is not statistically significantly different from the reconstructed melt extent during 20 other melt seasons, primarily during 1923–1961."

One last thought, ignoring those 2010 data should have been a deal breaker for publication and the editor should have ensured that those data were included.

What about FKM relating 2000ish happenings with 1950ish happenings ~ totally stripped from the greater global context we are dealing with these days?

CO2 levels,

atmospheric warming,

oceans warming,

etc., etc.

The trajectory of fundamental Earth dynamics...

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PS.  Daniel, I like the frame-work you got going there.

Daniel...  You should get in the point that Pat Michaels is already promoting this flawed paper on the Cato website.

Thanks, Rob; I read as much as I could stand of his tripe before the urge to hurl ruled all...

Pat Michaels' beachfront villa circa 2050.

Blog Post is here:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/thread.php?t=1445&r=0