Dear Gaius Publius:
NOAA says:
Over the last three years, Seager said, unpredictable atmospheric circulation patterns, combined with La NiƱa, formed high-pressure systems in winter over the West Coast, blocking storms from the Pacific that would have brought rain to California. The result has been the second-lowest three-year winter precipitation total since record-keeping began in 1895. But that pattern doesn't match what models predict as an outcome of climate change, said Seager. In fact, the study's models indicate that as global warming proceeds, winter precipitation in California is actually predicted to increase, thanks to an increased likelihood of low-pressure systems that allow winter storms to pass from the ocean to the mainland.
You say:
Common sense says climate, dryness of the entire Southwest via heat and lack of rainfall, is a consequence of global warming.
So me, I go with common sense.
I say: NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You don't get to pick and choose your science based on "common sense." That is exactly the same BS the right uses to deny global warming. NOAA may be wrong, but it is making the best scientific projection based on data, not "common sense." Just because it fits a narrative you want does not allow you to ignore it when the scientists don't say things you like.
Sincerely,
fish
7.21.2015
5.13.2015
Response to reviewers
We would like to thank all the reviewers for providing their insights into our manuscript. The critiques have significantly improved the quality of our revised paper. We do appreciate how difficult it must be to generate criticism of our work which is clearly outside of their areas of expertise.
It is now obvious that our explanations for certain experiments were incomplete, otherwise the clear misunderstandings of our results and their implications would never have occurred. In this revised version we have removed difficult to understand words and provided more detailed explanations as to how it was important that one sample was different from another by two orders of magnitude in our measurements. We apologize for failing to emphasize such subtle differences in the original manuscript, and we hope these changes will help prevent future confusion.
We unfortunately chose not to do one of the additional experiments suggested by reviewer #1. While it certainly is true that this experiment would provide independent confirmation of the results, we felt that 12 people working for the next 5 years may delay the impact of our work a little too much for our comfort. We will certainly follow up on this important confirmation as soon as we have 12 people and 5 years to spare. We do not encourage reviewer #1 to hold his or her breath.
It was very helpful for anonymous reviewer #2 to catalog all those citations we missed in our original manuscript. It is genuinely embarrassing that we somehow missed all 15 papers from one research group when we wrote our original manuscript. We have worked very hard to make all those citations relevant in some way in our revised manuscript.
Reviewer #3 is quite certainly correct that other scientific research has been performed in that past, some of it actually in the same field as our work. We do not challenge this assertion. We are not entirely convinced by the argument that just because a paper using genetic analysis was published before ours means that all future manuscripts using genetic analysis are derivative and only represent a small incremental increase in understanding. We will certainly concede that the reviewer is making a valid and true statement that research has been done in the past, but we respectfully argue that uniformly applied, this argument might become somewhat limiting for the publication of many future scientific discoveries. Perhaps a slightly less stringent criteria is warranted in this case.
It was also very helpful of reviewer #1 to remove all Oxford commas from our manuscript and alter the American English spellings to UK standard. His or her efforts have significantly clarified the text making it much more readable to the international community. As UK English is not the primary language for any of the authors, it is difficult for us to write it well. We have made every effort in the revised version to cling to UK standard so as to prevent our manuscript from having the
The peer review process is an essential part of the scientific process and the reviewers have certainly provided us with detailed feedback. Our manuscript can now be described as significantly different that the original one, and despite the lack of changes in the data presented, the conclusions drawn, or the overall scientific impact of the work, the manuscript is obviously much improved. We hope it is now suitable for publication and eagerly await you, the editor's opinion on the suitability of our paper for publication. We know that even though you are not as old as our first published paper, that you still have tremendous insights into what are the truly important questions in science and will recognize how important this work will be to your readership.
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