Year In Review: Science Stories Of 2010 : NPR
FLATOW: I noticed on your DotEarth site, speaking of the wacky weather we've had at the end of the year, people have been trying to decide: Is this global warming? Is it not global warming? Is it a sign? How do you get a cold, cold, snowy winter into a global warming scenario?
Mr. REVKIN: Well, you know, God, this gets batted around. I did a piece two or three years ago, when there was snow in Johannesburg, "Can a Climate Campaign Survive a Cooling Test," essentially saying weather - not just weather, climate, has implicit natural variability in it on very - all kinds of time scales: years, months, decades.
And anyone who thinks there's a smooth curve into the future, which is kind of the way science kind of portrays these things with graphs, you kind of get the expectation that warming is just that. But there's a lot of wiggles on the way.
...
FLATOW: So you're saying that peer review is going to be a wider audience than just the peer reports.
Mr. REVKIN: Well, I think there's layers. Peer review is becoming a layered process more than it ever was, where it usually was behind closed doors, just happening as an idea was tested, put in a journal.
And now with the Web, it's - there's dynamic, real-time peer review, as well, and more and more, scientists are putting their ideas out in that realm simultaneously. And that, you know, I think in the long run, it's going to be okay.
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