It is essential to no longer give space to climate deniers:our response to a Valigia Blu reader on the article by the four Italian physicists withdrawn by the publishing house

After the publication of our article on the essay signed by Italian physicists withdrawn by the scientific publishing house Springer Nature, one of our readers reported to us the reply of the first signatory of the study, the nuclear physicist Gianluca Alimonti.In response to Retraction Watch, Alimonti linked a post by Roger Pielke Jr which - explains our reader - "provides a view of the facts from the other side and questions the process that led to the withdrawal of the paper".The comment ends like this:“I mention it for completeness, not because I agree with it.”

The scientific publishing house Springer Nature has withdrawn the study by four Italian physicists which denied the impacts of the climate crisis

Precisely these last words give us the opportunity to state that the time has probably come to leave no room for arguments that stage a scientific debate on climate change that is actually over.In the case of climate change, "providing multiple points of view" for completeness of information is equivalent to giving recognisability, visibility and legitimacy to positions that have no scientific support, and to moving the discussion to a political level.This is also the case with Roger Pielke Jr.'s posts, starting from the language used.

Pielke dedicated two posts on his blog to the story of the withdrawal of the article, a first, dating back to July 17th, and a second of August 26th in which he returns to the question and to the addendum requested and sent by the authors of the study.

Pielke reconstructs the issue through some information given to him by an informant relating to the peer-review process that led to the withdrawal of the article:emails, reviews and internal resolutions.According to Pielke Jr., from the information in his possession there were no elements for the retraction of the article.What happened – he claims – would be a clear example of "abuse of the peer-review process" and profound politicization of climate science.

In summary, according to Pielke Jr., the article was withdrawn following a media campaign (“and behind the scenes”) conducted by what he calls “activist scientists” together with “activist journalists”.To be precise, Pielke Jr.writes:

“Instead of countering arguments and evidence through the scientific literature, activist scientists joined with activist journalists to pressure a publisher – Springer Nature, perhaps the world's largest science publisher – to retract an article.Unfortunately, the pressure campaign worked."

In the next post, Pielke Jr.focuses on the definition of "climate crisis" and goes so far as to say (a concept already expressed in the July post) that the climate crisis is a purely political issue and that some scientist-activists are attempting to dictate a political agenda on the climate.That is, the adequacy or otherwise of the definition of "climate crisis" becomes the vulnerability for questioning the anthropic origin of climate change (and of the mitigation policies - reduction of emissions - put on the agenda by world institutions).

Pielke Jr.'s two postshave obviously fueled the usual suspicions about abuses in scientific publication processes and about the media pressure exerted by those who want to silence discordant voices, giving once again the impression that a scientific debate is underway on climate change which in reality - as we have written several times even on Blue suitcase – it's nice that it's over.

The scientific debate on climate change is over

According to Pielke Jr., the article - which reviewed the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on trends in extreme weather events and the role of human-caused climate change - had no major inaccuracies.At most, he claims, he made comments that were "a little too adventurous", but such that they did not deserve a retraction.

In his posts, however, Pielke Jr.omits (or minimizes) some issues of merit of the essay by Alimonti et alii.which instead are relevant because the adventurous interpretations mentioned by Pielke Jr are the substance of the matter (and which led to the retraction).And we summarize them here:

1) It is true that the essay refers to the IPCC AR6 WGI report, but then ignores what it reports.For example, it reads on the site Skeptical Science, “failed to note that the Executive Summary states that “human-induced climate change is already influencing many extreme weather and climate phenomena in every region of the world.The evidence for observed changes in extreme events such as heat waves, heavy rainfall, droughts and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, has strengthened since AR5 [ed, the previous report from 8 years earlier]".

2) The article focuses mainly on the so-called “detection and attribution”, i.e. a two-step process in which a change in a climate variable is first detected and then an analysis is carried out to evaluate whether this change can be attributed to an influence anthropic.The article considers only five types of extreme events, ignoring that there are many other potential impacts of climate change.For example, rising sea levels, changing weather patterns, wildfires, ocean acidification, impacts on ecosystems, and even the possibility of compound events.As climate scientist Friederike Otto (one of those that Rielke Jr.defines “activist scientists”) in the article, not even heat waves were taken into consideration in detail, “where the trends observed [with respect to the connection with climate change] they are so incredibly obvious”.Instead, reference is made to hurricanes, droughts, floods, extreme events where there is greater debate.Furthermore, the article reiterates a thesis that has been denied several times, that according to which the increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 would have a positive impact on agricultural production, thanks to its "fertilizing" effect on plants.This, according to the authors, should make us reflect on the "implications of increasing atmospheric levels of CO2".But, if it's true that has been observed an increase in plant cover on Earth, which can be attributed to rising CO2 levels, other research they highlighted that this effect is already running out.Plant organisms not only need CO2, but also water and various nutrients.Furthermore, if the overall impact of the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is to be assessed, it is not possible to separate a single, limited, positive effect from all the other negative effects, starting from the increase in temperature, which in turn also have effects on plant organisms and agricultural production.

In any case, he reports again Skeptical Science, although “drought is a complex phenomenon and not easy to study, it is clear that climate change is worsening drought and that anthropogenic influences are influencing the frequency, duration and intensity of global droughts (Chiang et al.2021)”.Regarding hurricanes, “the latest IPCC WG1 report states that «the frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation events have increased since the 1950s over most land areas for which observational data are sufficient for a trend analysis (high confidence), and human-induced climate change is probably the main factor."

3) Regarding the definition of “climate crisis”, the latest IPCC report went so far as to state that it is now unequivocal that human influence has been warming the atmosphere, ocean and land since pre-industrial times (Eyring et al.2021).To understand whether or not this implies a climate crisis or climate emergency, a judgment is needed about current impacts, potential future impacts and what may need to be done to limit the overall impact.And not just an assessment of human influence to date.He's always writing Skeptical Science:“If the authors believe that the label ‘climate crisis’ is inappropriate, they are making a subjective choice that – today – is at odds with the opinions of many other experts, organizations and even some governments.”

In other words, as he points out the climatologist Antonello Pasini, “the authors of the research did 'cherry picking', that is, choosing works and time series that justified their thesis and neglecting many others, and finally they drew general conclusions which however, at this point, are unreliable or, worse yet, you get it wrong."

This in merit.Compared to method and the peer-review process, the question is perhaps upstream.The article probably shouldn't have been published, there was a mix-up with the first reviewers.But we are talking about a journal that is not primarily concerned with climate change, but covers vast areas of "applied" physics, such as geophysics and astrophysics, as well as general relativity and cosmology, mathematical and quantum physics, classical and fluid mechanics, as well as technical of physics applied to energy, the environment and cultural heritage.The review process was entrusted to a nuclear physicist, Jozef Ongena, as can be seen from Pielke Jr.'s posts.Pasini always writes, “usually, the editors of a magazine like The European Physical Journal Plus they have difficulty knowing and 'enrolling' real climate experts as reviewers and therefore, probably, the review process may not have involved real experts.Choosing magazines like this for the publication of their articles is a path commonly taken by 'climate sceptics' to avoid peer review by real experts in the field."

Could we leave the article with its critical issues and see what it generated?The fact is that the publishing house, a leading one in the academic sector, wrote among the reasons for the retraction that "The addendum was not considered suitable for publication" and "the retraction was the most appropriate course of action to maintain high the levels of scientific content published in the journal".However, the article remains on the site and anyone can read it.

The story he tells us that journal editors should be a little more careful when publishing articles with potentially controversial analyzes and conclusions.This isn't to say that they shouldn't be published, just that it's worth making sure they are thoroughly and carefully reviewed before publishing them.

Climate crisis and energy transition:the new denialist tactics dismantled one by one

Finally, a word about Roger Pielke Jr, “the honest broker”, as his blog is titled.Roger Pielke Jr.fundamentally it does not deny the fundamental physical mechanisms of climate change, but focuses heavily on the politicization of climate change and to convey the idea that there is still a scientific debate on the anthropic origin of global warming.As writes climatologist Michael Mann, Pielke Jr.he is “a denier with a veneer of academic credibility, of inestimable value to the forces of climate inaction…”.He has also been chosen as a star witness by Republicans in nearly every congressional hearing on climate change.

Preview image via The Fixed Kyoto