BBD,

I don't think you read with attention. I'll leave you to fight your own demons.

Faustian bargains are much on my mind. They are always short-sighted and always end badly. Self-deception is the essential component:

[Faustus:]

Settle thy studies, Faustus, and begin
To sound the depth of that thou wilt profess;
Having commenced, be a divine in show,
Yet level at the end of every art,
And live and die in Aristotle's works.
Sweet Analytics, 'tis thou hast ravished me! [Reads.]
Bene disserere est finis logices.
Is, to dispute well, logic's chiefest end?
Affords this art no greater miracle?
Then read no more; thou hast attained that end

Marlowe Dr Faustus

JC to Trenberth: Please remind me of when you first thought there would be a hiatus in the warming.

BBD,

Apparently you have little or no relationship with scientific publishing and the peer review system. Otherwise you would know that (a) the editors of journals are editors in recognition of their scientific contribution and efforts in producing knowledge and working for the community; (b) the editors and associate editors are encouraged to publish their good papers in their journal to improve the impact of their journal; (c) the papers of the editors are handled by other editors/associate editors and are reviewed by other reviewers.

Thanks for delving into my biography, but you missed to see my contributions about the peer review system per se here: http://itia.ntua.gr/en/documents/?authors=koutsoyiannis&tags=peer_review

For your better information about the difficulties I had (and continue to have) with publishing my papers, you may wish to see all my rejected papers on line: http://itia.ntua.gr/en/documents/?tags=rejected

Eventually all were published and you may easily see that the initially rejected ones are those with the greatest impact (higher number of citations).

I am proud about that and also I am doubly proud that the majority of my papers have been published in journals I serve or have served in editorial positions—because these are the most reputable hydrological journals.

I can understand that what you write about me springs from your ignorance about scientific publishing and not from intention to lie. But, objectively, what you write about me are lies including that I argue that Milankovitch is wrong. Your most amusing lie is your story about my paper “A random Walk on Water” published in HESS, for which you exclaim:

"I cannot recall any example of a conflict of interest in scientific publishing on this scale. "

This conflict-of-interest paper originated from my Henry Darcy Medal lecture in EGU, which was attended by hundreds of colleagues, several of whom sent me their thoughtful comments—see acknowledgments. HESS is the official journal of EGU and invites the awarded scientists to make their lecture stuff into a paper which they publish at no charge. In addition, the journal has a public peer review system (HESSD). So, you had the opportunity to post your critique of my paper in the official journal site. In this way you would become a reviewer yourself and if I could not address your critical comments, perhaps the editor would reject my paper. So, next time you see a paper of mine in HESSD you may not wish to loose the opportunity to beat me; the only prerequisite to insert a formal review comment in HESSD is to tell your name.

I am proud about that and also I am doubly proud that the majority of my papers have been published in journals I serve or have served in editorial positions—because these are the most reputable hydrological journals.

This is a problem. I don't care how much you claim it is not. It is. Nothing you say above convinces me otherwise.

And Prof. Koutsoyiannis, enough of the 'you lie' stuff.

:)

Demetris Koutsoyiannis

I mistakenly said:

The much-discussed 'Random Walk on Water' paper appeared in Hydrology & Earth System Sciences, of which Koutsoyiannis is co-editor.

You are a member of the editorial board, not co-editor. It was late, and the error is mine.

You say:

For your better information about the difficulties I had (and continue to have) with publishing my papers, you may wish to see all my rejected papers on line: http://itia.ntua.gr/en/documents/?tags=rejected

Eventually all were published and you may easily see that the initially rejected ones are those with the greatest impact (higher number of citations).

In a 2005 HSJ editorial* you co-wrote:

The International Association of Hydrological Sciences needs its journal, HSJ, to be successful in both scientific and financial terms. These terms are not independent, as scientific success (quality of papers) is a necessary condition of financial success (or survival) of a scientific journal. The latter is difficult to achieve in the present situation of shrinking funds, subscription cuts in libraries and the advent of several new hydrological journals. The sound quality of HSJ (e.g. as measured by the impact factor) should be enhanced and articles likely to attract citations are welcome.

This is in key with my own understanding of the publishing business. Which is why I am concerned that your most controversial papers appear in HSJ and HESS, on which you serve as co-editor and editorial board member respectively.

I see this as a conflict of interest: editors are answerable to publishers. Publishers are answerable to shareholders and bankers.

You clearly see no conflict of interest, but do not explain why none exists.

Why do you not publish in mainstream climate journals? Are you arguing that you are subject to one or more of the 'potential problems in the peer-review system' set out in your Table 2?

-----------------------

*Kundzewicz, Z. W., and D. Koutsoyiannis, Editorial - The peer-review system: prospects and challenges, Hydrological Sciences Journal, 50 (4), 577–590, 2005

BBD

Thanks for the “climate change”. I will give you several hints so that you can reply your interesting questions yourself.

First, let us not exaggerate the role of bankers in scientific publishing procedures. Most of scientific journals are published by scientific societies perhaps in alliance with non-profit organizations and charities, albeit sometimes also with big publishers. On the other hand, the editors may (directly or indirectly) be subject to pressures by politico-economic interests and the establishment in science -- see the last paragraph in Roger Pielke Sr.’s post in http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/a-literature-debate-on-the-quality-of-global-clmiate-model-multi-decadal-predictions/

Whether a paper is controversial or not should not be a criterion to approve it for publication. The criterion should be whether it is correct and novel or not. However, good and novel papers challenging established beliefs have lower probability to get accepted for the obvious reason that a reviewer does not like his beliefs to be challenged. Thus, authors who write “controversial” papers have greater difficulties to publish their research results. See additional information in my lecture in http://itia.ntua.gr/975/

I suggest the following “experiment” to shed light on your questions.

1. Take one of my initially rejected papers, entitled “Statistical analysis of hydroclimatic time series: Uncertainty and insights” co-authored by Alberto Montanari.

2. See in my web site, http://itia.ntua.gr/781/ the citations it received; there are also links to sources of citations where you can see if its content was challenged or found to be mistaken by any of the citing papers.

3. Download its “prehistory” from the same site.

4. Read all about its rejection in Geophysical Research Letters (I hope you agree that this journal is a mainstream journal that has published several papers on climate--Note that the journal it eventually published it belongs to the same organization as the Geophysical Research Letters). I leave it to you to conclude whether rejection was justified or not.

5. From the rejection files locate the name of the editor who rejected it. Then go to the journal’s web site, http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/ . In the top line there is a FindFast utility. Put there the last name of this Editor, select the journal “Geophys. Res. Lett.” and click on “Go”.

I hope you will see in this way that it is trivially common that editors publish papers in journals in which are editors. It could not be otherwise: should the editors of what is regarded as the best journal in a field be punished and banned from publishing in the best journal? As I explained in my earlier comment there is no conflict of interest because the editors’ and associate editors’ papers are handled by other editors and associate editors and sometimes their papers get rejected.

Two last pieces of information:

(a) Hydrology is not alien to climate. You may see that most of the climatic doomsay is related to hydrological processes and states (floods, droughts, water resources extinction, etc.).

(b) The Hydrological Sciences Journal has a tradition in publishing climate related papers. You may see that the IPCC team on Freshwater has chosen this journal to publish their official summary of their AR4 chapter on Freshwater (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1623/hysj.53.1.3 ). Also, it has a tradition in encouraging discussion of different opinions (see e.g. the discussion of the IPCC team paper in http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1623/hysj.54.2.394 and the authors’ reply in http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1623/hysj.54.2.406 ).

So, BBD,

Let me repeat:

You could not confront/reconcile Koutsoyiannis' idea which Spence pointed out, with what you've imbibed from 'mainstream' journals (aka Hansen, Michael Mann etc). You stumbled onto to Koutsoyiannis' publications list, noticed that the papers were in hydrology journals, and then it dawned on you that these ideas you could not digest could be spun as not being submitted to 'mainstream criticism' etc.

Imaginative as it is, it is still an evasion. It was an attempt to get away from scientifically squaring with what DK has to say.

Secondly, throwing an accusation that someone published a paper in a 'non-climate-mainstream journal' is a canard let me remind you - which is a standard trick in the warmist playbook and not the sceptics'.

Thirdly, one can appreciate how scientists could have their own little corner where they use their influence to get papers published. But such a paper once published, being a thing that would have otherwise never seen the light of the day, should simply wither on the vine given its irrelevancy - given that it was published solely due to his influence. That, would have been a true indicator of a conflict-of-interest, and an abuse of position.

Has that happened in this case? No.

I just went to Google Scholar and looked at the citations for Koutsoyiannis, D., Climate change, the Hurst phenomenon, and hydrological statistics, Hydrological Sciences Journal, 48 (1), 3–24, 2003, given that it has been published a while back. I has accumulated close to 100 citations. Many are self-citations. Many others are not, as well. Citations are seen in an air traffic metrics paper, rainfall trend estimators, paleodrought, financial time series analysis etc. Looks pretty good. Just as one would expect in any science paper.

If you think that Koutsoyiannis is writing controversial scientific papers that fetch his journal lots of citations and that is a 'conflict-of-interest', I think you are just complimenting him.

The worst kinds of peer-review abuse have been carried by the Team, *because* they thought exactly like you, and had the kind of influence they had. ('OMG! a sceptic has published and he is attracting citations! Run to the hills! Circle the Wagons!) If they had been more open to debate and discussion, instead of treating scientific literature like a religious canon, this problem wouldn't have occurred. When Soon and Baliunas published their paper, Mann should have been a man and just sent his response to the journal, instead of going on his conspiracy rampage.

Today he is having to deal with the courts and lawyers.

Demetris Koutsoyiannis

How does RF from CO2 integrate with your ideas on climate variability as set out in your Random Walk paper?

Demetris Koutsoyiannis

I'm also having trouble reconciling your 2010 paper Orbital climate theory and
Hurst-Kolmogorov dynamics with the view that weak Milankovitch forcing is amplified by (among others) feedbacks from CO2 and CH4 which in turn are greatly amplified by ice-albedo feeback. This mechanism is how I understand Milankovitch forcing to be capable of leading to glacial terminations.

It is, however, as dependent on the role of GHGs as modern understanding of anthropogenically forced climate change.

You say that the variability of the Antarctic ice sheet can be described as the sum of the eccentricity- and obliquity-fitted harmonics (deterministic part) and a HK process (stochastic part).

I'm unclear as to whether you are arguing that GHGs are not especially relevant in paleoclimate or modern climate change.

A clarification on your view of the role of RF from GHGs in determining trends in climate behaviour would be very helpful at this point.

Shub

Secondly, throwing an accusation that someone published a paper in a 'non-climate-mainstream journal' is a canard let me remind you - which is a standard trick in the warmist playbook and not the sceptics'.

Several papers. And this is a statement of fact, not a 'canard'.

Let's give Prof. Koutsoyiannis the opportunity to clarify how his interpretation of climate variability fits with the current consensus on the role of GHGs, especially CO2.

I am deeply frustrated that I have had to spend all day in the bloody car instead of continuing this discussion. But even so, let's wait a little longer.

You are giving him an 'opportunity'?

You explain your conflict-of-interest nonsense first.

Shub

Why don't you give over for a minute and let Prof. Koutsoyiannis respond?

BBD, Shub,

I am happy that we have resolved the “ad hominem” part. As per the “opportunity” to discuss the scientific part, I am afraid it must wait some time. We have produced some results related to your questions, but I do not wish to discuss them before we have them officially published. In this case the peer review may take some months or years, considering the necessary rejections.

"...considering the necessary rejections."

ROFL. ROFL.

Demetris Koutsoyiannis

Oh, that's a shame. I will await the publication of your paper (in HSJ?) with great interest.