Judith Curry
JC comments: Without making a personal judgment
regarding the merits of Asten’s proposal or the suitability of his
article for Eos, there are two things here that greatly concern me.
The first is that the AGU Policy Statement on Climate Change is being
used as a rationale for editorial decisions in AGU publications. My
displeasure about the AGU policy statement on climate change is
discussed in these two previous posts:
The letter from the Editor to Asten realizes my worst fear about the
AGU statement on climate change: that it will be used as a basis for
making editorial decisions to reject papers or to not even send them out
for review.
The second is this statement: “I understand that you have a
perspective that does not align with the consensus presented in AGU’s
position statement.” There is nothing in Asten’s submitted essay that
is overtly ‘skeptical’; rather he is arguing that AGU needs to
facilitate a broader spectrum of scholarship and dialogue on this topic.
However, if you google ‘Michael Asten’, he clearly shows up as a
scientist that is skeptical of climate change. It seems that the Editor
of Eos also did the same googling, identified Asten as a skeptic, which
motivated the content of the Editor’s letter. So this was as much
about the ‘person’ as about the content of Asten’s essay.
And finally, this isn’t just some naive, rogue editor. After all,
the editor engaged in “thoughtful and lengthy consultation with
colleagues and AGU staff”
I received the initial email from Michael Asten about this on May 16.
With Asten’s permission, I forwarded his email to Peter Webster, who
is President of the AGU Atmospheric Sciences Section and a member of the
AGU Council. He asked me to hold off on a blog post, while he tried to
get the AGU to deal with this issue internally. He sent emails to the
AGU leadership, voicing his concerns about using the AGU policy
statement as a basis for rejecting an article, and requesting permission
to send an email to the Council voicing his concerns about AGU’s
editorial policies in this regard. He was denied permission to
communicate with the Council regarding this issue, and was told that he
had no standing to communicate with the Eos editor over this matter
since he was not an author on the paper in question. (note Peter Webster
gave me permission to report on this interaction with the AGU
leadership).
Apart from the extremely disturbing editorial process, the concerns
raised in Asten’s essay are important ones – he is concerned that the
scientific dialogue on climate change at the AGU is too narrow, and
about the impact of this on graduate students and young scientists.
I am a member of the AGU, and am currently a member of the Fellows
Committee that selects Fellows for the Atmospheric Sciences Section. In
the near term, I will remain a member of the AGU and I am highly
supportive of Peter Webster’s efforts to work within the organization to
effect change. But I am increasingly conflicted about my membership in
the AGU, with its irresponsible advocacy that is compromising its own core values."
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