An Honourable Decision.

Wolfgang Wagner was editor of  the Journal 'Remote Sensing' when the journal published a paper by Roy Spencer and William Braswell entitled "On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance." link.

Spencer and Braswell was glowingly received at Watts Up With That (aka WTF), which is to be expected as WTF is heavy on the applause of anything that bolsters their increasingly bizarre stance, but light on the analysis. It was similarly received on Faux News and other wingnut media. Meanwhile more reputable commentators actually read the paper and pointed out the obvious flaws.

Now in an event reminiscent of the infamous Von Storch resignation (Wikipedia) Wolfgang Wagner has felt it necessary to resign his editorship, an event I take no pleasure in. When someone shows they have the honour to resign over such an issue it's clear they're the sort of person who is deserving of trust. It's the ones who don't actually resign that generally need to.

It is however worth taking the time to read Wagner's statement.

Peer-reviewed journals are a pillar of modern science. Their aim is to achieve highest scientific standards by carrying out a rigorous peer review that is, as a minimum requirement, supposed to be able to identify fundamental methodological errors or false claims. Unfortunately, as many climate researchers and engaged observers of the climate change debate pointed out in various internet discussion fora, the paper by Spencer and Braswell [1] that was recently published in Remote Sensing is most likely problematic in both aspects and should therefore not have been published.

After having become aware of the situation, and studying the various pro and contra arguments, I agree with the critics of the paper. Therefore, I would like to take the responsibility for this editorial decision and, as a result, step down as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Remote Sensing.

With this step I would also like to personally protest against how the authors and like-minded climate sceptics have much exaggerated the paper’s conclusions in public statements, e.g., in a press release of The University of Alabama in Huntsville from 27 July 2011 [2], the main author’s personal homepage [3], the story “New NASA data blow gaping hole in global warming alarmism” published by Forbes [4], and the story “Does NASA data show global warming lost in space?” published by Fox News [5], to name just a few. Unfortunately, their campaign apparently was very successful as witnessed by the over 56,000 downloads of the full paper within only one month after its publication. But trying to refute all scientific insights into the global warming phenomenon just based on the comparison of one particular observational satellite data set with model predictions is strictly impossible. Aside from ignoring all the other observational data sets (such as the rapidly shrinking sea ice extent and changes in the flora and fauna) and contrasting theoretical studies, such a simple conclusion simply cannot be drawn considering the complexity of the involved models and satellite measurements......

Source.

There's only one little thing in Wagner's letter that I take issue with:

They're not sceptics. They're denialists.