Unsettling the settled

Our new paper published in Frontiers (Koutsoyiannis and Tsakalias, 2025)

[There is a Greek version of this post — Υπάρχει και ελληνική έκδοση αυτής της ανάρτησης]

Background

In my post of 30 April “Simple musings on the complex climatic system” I introduced our new research paper, which I co-authored with George Tsakalias. In that post, I made publicly available a preprint of the paper, and I did the same on the ResearchGate platform. The goal was to stimulate discussion and receive feedback from anyone interested, which would help us to improve the paper.

Three days ago, the paper was published in Frontiers.

Main Points

I had discussed the main points of the paper in the earlier post. Since these did not change, I am avoiding repeating them here. Instead, I am reproducing below an image composed of parts of the paper, with special thanks to Kenneth Richard, who compiled and posted it in NoTricksZone under the title “New Study Thoroughly Disassembles The CO2-Drives-Climate Assumption In One Fell Swoop”.

The Appendices

The original preprint contained several Appendices, which, according to the rules of the journal, were moved to the Supplementary Materials. These also include a video with a molecular collision simulation that confirmed our theoretical results, as well as the program that executed the simulation.

The final paper contains an appendix, entitled “On the inappropriateness of the term greenhouse effect”, which was not included in the initial preprint. We added that to respond to criticisms that the terms greenhouse effect and greenhouse gases, which we reject, are fine. From a scientific point of view, they are not. They are only good as politico-ideological slogans, to convince us that we live in a greenhouse, and that our CO₂ emissions enhance this greenhouse and make our lives unbearable.

A summary of this new Appendix is again given as an image compiled by Kenneth Richard, posted it in NoTricksZone and reproduced below.

The Review Process

Years before submitting this paper to Frontiers, I had a bad experience with this publisher, which prompted me to write “An open letter to the Editor of Frontiers”. I had decided not to submit to Frontiers again, but the Topic Editors of the theme “Complexity and Its Implications for Society: Strategies for Management and Resilience” convinced me to reconsider. Overall—and judging from the final outcome—the experience was good this time.

The reviews by the two colleagues mentioned in the first image above¹ were positive and very constructive. However, there was an adventure after the paper was approved and the proof was corrected. It was investigated by the “Research Integrity Team” of Frontiers, and this took more than a month.

Eventually, we received a message from the Chief Editor, who did not approve several formulations in the paper and asked us to change them. The paper went back from the production phase to the review phase. We made the changes suggested, and the paper was re-approved for publication.

From the email exchanges, I understood that two Chief Editors were involved in the final decision. In the Acknowledgments section, we thank the reviewers as well as the Guest Editors and the Chief Editors. And we mean that, because, despite the delay, the Chief Editors’ intervention was constructive. I tend to be provocative in my writing style—which my coauthor wasn’t that happy about—and I believe the removal of some provocative formulations (which can be seen in the preprint) benefited the paper.

That’s about the formal processing of the paper.

In the Acknowledgments section, we also thank colleagues who discussed some issues of the preprint version. Again we mean it, even though some of the comments we received were negative. The criticism we received ranged widely. Some refused that the longwave radiation plays a role in the atmosphere. Others said that the so-called “greenhouse gases” are responsible for the lapse rate (6.5 K/km as a standard) in the atmosphere. We explain in the paper why we think that both of these positions are incorrect.

In Memoriam

Copying from the homonymous section of the paper:

Dedicated to the memory of Anna (Annouska) Patrikiou–Koutsoyiannis, who left this world while this research was conducted.

1. According to the rules of Frontiers, “The names of reviewers and editors appear on published articles, encouraging them to act responsibly and in the best interests of the final article.” However, if a paper is rejected the reviewers remain anonymous, which means that they no longer “act responsibly”.