Guest post by Tom Harris
Besides the obvious bias we have come to expect from most main stream media coverage of climate change, “Climate of Doubt“, aired Tuesday night on PBS’s Frontline, committed one serious mistake that can not be left unaddressed.
Frontline repeatedly implied that there is an overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that our CO2 emissions are driving us to a global climate catastrophe. They cited 97% as the fraction of the climate science community who agreed with climate alarmism.
That number is easily dismissed. It comes from a 2009 online survey of 10,257 earth scientists, conducted by two researchers at the University of Illinois. Strangely, the researchers chose to eliminate almost all the scientists from the survey and so ended up with only 77 people, 75 of whom, or 97%, thought humans contributed to climate change.
Besides the fact that, with tens of thousands of climate scientists in the world, 77 is a trivial sample size, the survey coordinators did not ask respondents how much humans had contributed to climate change. The poll is therefore meaningless.
In reality, no one knows, or even currently can know, what the “consensus” is in the world climate science community. This is because there has never been a meaningful, comprehensive worldwide poll about the topic among the thousands of scientists who specialize in the many relevant disciplines.
Scientific theories are never proven by a show of hands, of course. Otherwise, the Earth would still be considered flat and space travel impossible. It is indeed those who go against the flow—independent, original thinkers –who are usually responsible for our most meaningful advances in science.
But, most reporters, politicians and the public understand little of the scientific method and even less about the exceptionally complex field of climate change science. Consequently, they often look for an indication of ‘consensus’ when trying to decide which science should form the basis of important public policies decisions. Distasteful though this is to pure scientists, it is a reality we need to recognize and it is therefore important to try to decide whether a reliable determination of ‘consensus’ has been made about the causes of climate change.
First, it is important to realize that, of the prominent national and international science bodies that have issued official statements that are in support of the CO2/climate crisis hypothesis, none released results that show a majority of their members agreeing with the assertion.
For example, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) and a leading Canadian energy expert, “Archie” Robinson of Deep River, Ontario, explains what happened with a Royal Society (the world’s oldest scientific organisation) climate initiative supporting the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment Report:
“the president of the Royal Society of London … drafted a resolution in favour and circulated it to other academies of science inviting co-signing. … The president of the RSC, not a member of the [RSC’s] Academy of Science, received the invitation. He considered it consistent with the position of the great majority of scientists, as repeatedly but erroneously claimed by Kyoto proponents, and so signed it. The resolution was not referred to the Academy of Science for comment, not even to its council or president.”
A similar episode happened in the United States and Russia concerning the Royal Society effort and a survey of pronouncements from other science bodies reveals that they are usually just the opinions of the groups’ executives or committees specifically appointed by the executive. The rank and file scientist members are rarely consulted at all.
But what about the supposedly authoritarian United Nations IPCC report that constitutes the foundation of most official climate concerns today? Media and politicians tell us that 2,500 official “expert reviewers” who worked with the UN body on its most recent (2007, the fourth) “Assessment Report” (called “AR4”) agreed with its conclusions. Perhaps most importantly, in Chapter 9 of the IPCC Working Group I report (“The Physical Science Basis”, reporting on the extent and possible causes of past climate change as well as future ‘projections’) appears the following assertion: “Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years.”
Determining how many of the “2500 scientists” are known to actually agree with this statement is difficult, but we do know how many commented on anything in Chapter 9. Sixty-two is the number (see this analysis). The vast majority of the expert reviewers are not known to have examined this or related statements. Instead they would have focused on a page or two in the AR4 report that most related to their specialties, usually having little or nothing to do with greenhouse gases (CO2 or otherwise). And, of those sixty-two experts who did comment this chapter, the vast majority were not independent or impartial since most were employees of governments that had already decided before the report was written (indeed, as MIT Professor Richard Lindzen, a past IPCC lead author, explains, before much of the research had even begun) that human CO2 emissions are driving us to climate catastrophe.
When one eliminates reviewers with clear vested interest, we end up with a grand total of “just seven who may have been independent and impartial”, according to Australian climate data analyst, John McLean (see his report). And, two of those are known to vehemently disagree with the statement. Prominent climate scientist and IPCC insider Dr. Mike Hulme even admits that “only a few dozen experts in the specific field of detection and attribution studies”, not thousands as is commonly asserted by the IPCC and others, “reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate” (p. 10, 11 of Hulme’s April 12, 2010 paper in “Progress in Physical Geography” at http://tinyurl.com/2b3cq3r). It is travesty that the UN permits this misunderstanding to continue uncorrected.
To meaningfully assert that there is a consensus in any field, we need to actually have convincing evidence. And the best way to gather this evidence is to conduct unbiased, comprehensive worldwide polls. Since this has never been done in the vast community of scientists who research the causes of global climate change, we simply do not know what, if any, consensus exists among these experts. Lindzen concludes: “there is no [known] consensus, unanimous or otherwise, about long-term climate trends and what causes them.” Frontline did a disservice to the public telling them otherwise.
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Tom Harris is Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition – http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/ and an advisor to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
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Heh, Frontline beyond the pale.
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Is anyone really surprised?
the creepy voice of frontline put me off watching the prog years ago. it reeks of “i will mesmerise u and u will believe”.
the msm is in a panic. digging their own graves. they know everything u have written, do not imagine otherwise, yet…still they lie. too much money invested over too many decades in the insane pursuit of making CO2 the new global currency. give it up, MSM.
a few years ago, i asked a 15-yr-old american girl what progs she liked on her 1200 cable channels and she had to think for a considerable time. eventually she named a college soap i’d never heard of, made in canada, and she wasn’t particularly enthused about it anyway.
http://tinyurl.com/Clim97pct
I’ve been saying the same for years. Persons unknown at the UN’s IPCC asserted that there was a consensus. No evidence has ever been presented by the IPCC showing this consensus, or exactly what there is a consensus about, or even what constitutes a consensus. Despite this being an easy thing for the IPCC to do, by surveying its reviewers.
ehhhh
you only need one good scientist who happens to be right….
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
get ready for more brrrr…….(rain/snow)
and get ready for those so called “scientists” to blame that brrrrr.,… on
the poor CO2.
Yep, quite predictable. From the quick notes I jotted down which included the repeated ‘97%’ assertion, I spotted at least a dozen other basic errors. One in particular – the bit about “celebrities’ being in the Oregon Petition Project – is an error I covered two years ago in my American Thinker article that also pointed to other fundamental faults in the long-term smear of skeptic scientists: “The Curious History of ‘Global Climate Disruption'” http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/10/the_curious_history_of_global.html
But I’m sure other much better writers will adequately cover all the other errors and hopefully lodge a decent protest against Frontline about them.
I have always found the 97% claim reminiscent of the old Soviet block elections, 99% turnout 98.9% for the party kind of thing.
Frontline quotes the Anderegg paper, claiming 97-98% of active publishing scientists agree that global warming is real.
They then quote a NAS report which says “Climate change is occurring, is very likely caused primarily by the emission of greenhouse gases from human activities, and poses significant risks for a range of human and natural systems. ”
In fact Anderegg only says the scientists are in agreement with the primary conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible for “most” of the “unequivocal” warming of the Earth’s average global temperature over the second half of the 20th century.
Anderegg does not claim the scientists agree that global warming poses significant risks.
Frontline is giving the impression that 97-98% of all active climate scientists believe this, when in fact the information comes from a database of 1,372 climate researchers and only from english language sources.
What a crock, no wonder so many are so skeptical…
Their major failure is simply inferring that science works by consensus, regardless of what figure it is, or what the consensus refers to. Pretty much like the weight of money (or where it comes from) doesn’t alter scientific truth, either.
They might as well say: “we’ve got more apples than you, therefore blue is red”.
I found the program enjoyable, and recommend it.
“In reality, no one knows, or even currently can know, what the “consensus” is in the world climate science community. This is because there has never been a meaningful, comprehensive worldwide poll about the topic among the thousands of scientists who specialize in the many relevant disciplines.”
mmmm. Not sure where your going with that one Tom…..
I can do better than 97%. My wife and I think that the kids should go to bed before 8.30pm. We have a 100% consensus bed change. 😉 These ‘researchers’ are just fiddlers on the roof.
I think that you will find that the vast majority of CAGW sceptics also think that “humans contributed to climate change.” The survey was constructed in such a way to deliver a pre-determined desired result.
The 9x% figure carries its own ‘odeur de BS’ with it. That’s the same kind of number of supporting votes tyrants get in faked elections, and people have long known how to interpret them. “BS!” Climate Warmists are blind to such self-discrediting effects though, and blithely “exploit” them wherever possible.
Stupidity is Nature’s only capital crime.
But what about the supposedly authoritarian United Nations IPCC report that constitutes the foundation of most official climate concerns today?
I think that should be “authoritative.” This is a pretty bad error!
As long as there is a system where scientists need grants and those who do not conform do not get them as we know for certain is actually happening in the UK at least then consensus is meaningless attribute. All it means is we have the subject under control rather than we are right.
We see far too many so called surveys where they would not hope to meet the criteria required by any social scientist. Only yesterday there was one where the survey said that 72 % would rather have a wind farm than allow fracking but this was done with a sample that was mostly city people who would possibly have fracking near them but had no risk of a wind farm being put near them. They were also not told the size of the wind farm that would be equivalent to the gas output energy or the subsidy it would require rather than the gas cost reduction the fracking would result in.
As for the science we were told by the same scientists that ten years warming was enough to establish the warming trend existed but fifteen years of not warming is not enough to reject the trend. We are supposed to respect these people?
One lie of a thousand, every day.
It’s enough to make you vexed, isn’t it?
Scientific theories are never proven by a show of hands, of course. Otherwise, the Earth would still be considered flat and space travel impossible. It is indeed those who go against the flow—independent, original thinkers –who are usually responsible for our most meaningful advances in science.
Really? If there was ever a time when the majority of intellectual authorities in the West believed that the earth was flat, it was too early for us to know about it. The claim that authorities used to believe that the earth was flat was dreamed up in the 1820s by Washington Irving and some French writer.
On the other hand, there really was a time when a majority probably believed that space travel was impossible – little more than a century ago or maybe even more recently.
Minor point:
“But what about the supposedly authoritarian United Nations IPCC report that constitutes the foundation of most official climate concerns today?”
Surely should be,
“But what about the supposedly authoritative United Nations IPCC report that constitutes the foundation of most official climate concerns today?”
I wouldn’t mention it, if it didn’t allow the author to be maligned as prejudiced.
Bother, overused bold like my father there.
Wish I had a preview on this thing.
Dave N October 23, 2012 at 11:37 pm
Their major failure is simply inferring that science works by consensus, regardless of what figure it is, or what the consensus refers to. Pretty much like the weight of money (or where it comes from) doesn’t alter scientific truth, either.
It’s even more major that that. Consensus in any field or part of life, not just science, is almost always about what to do about something. We seldom speak of consensus about what is true of something because it would not make sense for a person who disagrees with others to change his mind merely because the others outnumber him.
Here are a few snippets on this topic I’ve copied over the years from WUWT to a Word file. if the Frontline team had done a professional journalistic effort they would have located such material and been much more cautious in their use of survey results.
===============
1.
atmoaggie says:
July 19, 2012 at 11:51 am
I think one very clear distinction should be made about whom is and is not expert in the original question of the survey, relating to the attribution of climate changes.
Are we interested in classifying all “climate scientists” as such? Or limiting that to those that have researched and published specifically about the causes of climate change?
I fail to consider researchers that solely publish the hyperbole of future climate (hand waving) to be qualified in relative attribution. Those that just use GCM output to predict the movements of flora, fauna, and viruses, for example, without any questioning of the GCM output, itself, are simply not at all qualified to consider attribution.
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2.
hro001 says:
August 2, 2010 at 8:06 pm
According to Mike Hulme (June 2010), such a “consensus judgment” was reached by “only a few dozen experts” [of the IPCC].
http://hro001.wordpress.com/2010/06/18/honey-i-shrunk-the-consensus/
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3.
Tom Black says:
August 3, 2010 at 7:56 pm
CNN reported this as scientists from all over the world, and the alarmist bloggers quote it all the time, in fact most are from the US.
Of our survey participants, 90% were from U.S. institutions and 6% were from Canadian institutions; the remaining 4% were from institutions in 21 other nations.
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4.
Brian H says:
July 19, 2012 at 2:59 am
Part of the travesty is the assumption that there is such a critter as a “climate scientist”. This concocted construction has zero academic or other history, and if any set of qualifications and expertise for it were to be drawn up it would encompass everything from mathematics to physics to statistics to hydrology to chemistry to biology to model development to geology and much more. No human with all the requisite skills and background exists.
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5.
In http://climatequotes.com/2011/02/10/study-claiming-97-of-climate-scientists-agree-is-flawed/, Lichanos, 7/17:
Those who are committed to the AGW view, agitate for it vigorously because they fear the sky is falling. Those who are not…think their own thoughts and maybe write columns or serve on review boards. Is one supposed to write a paper for a peer-reviewed journal, the content of which would be to point out the sloppiness of other scientists? No. Thus, as Oreskes pointed out in her summary of her survey of literature on the topic, there was not a SINGLE article in her sample rejecting the AGW view. Not surprising. Professional scientists have better work to do.
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6.
The authors of the original Wall Street Journal opinion piece duly responded making the same complaint about the misuse of the ’97% of scientists’ phrase as mine:
“.. The Trenberth letter states: “Research shows that more than 97% of scientists actively publishing in the field agree that climate change is real and human caused.” However, the claim of 97% support is deceptive. The surveys contained trivial polling questions that even we would agree with. Thus, these surveys find that large majorities agree that temperatures have increased since 1800 and that human activities have some impact.
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7.
daveburton says:
July 18, 2012 at 11:24 am
That “97%” claim is significant, not for what it what it reveals about the science of climate change, but for what it reveals about the Climate Movement spin machine. It turns out to be a classic example of the Big Lie. Here are some articles about it:
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/01/03/lawrence-solomon-97-cooked-stats/
http://climatequotes.com/2011/02/10/study-claiming-97-of-climate-scientists-agree-is-flawed/
http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?extend.3684
http://sppiblog.org/news/the-97-consensus-is-only-75-self-selected-climatologists
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8.
James Sexton:
In true ironic fashion, in an attempt to clarify the criteria for disproving the fallacious consensus, they quote from the abstract of Anderegg.
Anderegg, we will recall, used an arbitrary criteria to establish not the actual numbers of alarmists vs skeptics, but rather their level of expertise. (papers published+citations) with the word “climate” in the paper. (Yes, vapid in and of itself, I know, but that’s for another day.) The ironic part is that while attempting to establish a base group of people for comparison (convinced vs unconvinced) they came to the ratio of 903:472. That is to say, 903 alarmists and 472 skeptical scientists. When whittled down by applying the criteria of needing at least 20 papers published using the word “climate”, they came to the ratio of 817: 93. Still that’s only 91%. Anderegg only gets to 98% by using his criteria and finding the top 50 scientists.
I believe all relevant links (or links to the relevant links) are in this post …. http://suyts.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/truth-market-scam-invalidates-doran-dont-fall-for-the-scam/
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9.
Roger Knights (me):
I’d agree if the poll had asked if “action is justified now,” because I’d agree with a “no regrets” policy of encouraging nuclear power and natural gas, encouraging better building insulation, using plasma furnaces to burn our garbage and capture power thereby, and perhaps “boron cars,” as described in the book, Prescription for the Planet.
Many skeptics believe that “human activity” has a significant upward effect on temperature, but they’re thinking of land-use changes. The survey question looks like it was “loaded” to catch them in its sieve.
Climatology has become so identified with the CACA Cult (CACA=Catastrophic Anthropogenic Clmate Alarmism) that few would enter the field without also being believers, or without having undergone indoctrination in its tenets. Alarmism isn’t the conclusion of most of these scientwists, it’s their launch pad.
I suspect that most climatologists went into the field because it gave them an outlet for their greenie finger-pointing. Climatology has become a branch of environmentalism, with its “don’t touch nature” bias and its knee-jerk precautionism. Similar biased selection occurred in the field of recovered memory therapy.
If they were skeptical and did enter the field, they would be unlikely to get grants, and so would be hard up for material to publish. If they nevertheless did write skeptical critiques of warmism, they’d have a hard time getting them published. (See the recent trouble Spencer had getting his paper published, or McIntyre et al.)
OTOH, an alarmed alarmist is going to churn out all sorts of unlikely doomsday scenarios and get them published. (E.g., warming is causing bats to die off–a now-debunked thesis published twice in Nature, while papers skeptical of that idea were rejected.)
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10.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/what-else-did-the-97-of-scientists-say/
Guest Post by Barry Woods
[Contains good material and quotes, for example:]
So is Zimmermann defining expertise or introducing a selection bias here? It has not gone unnoticed that perhaps those scientists that self identify as climate scientists, are perhaps those that are more activist minded for a consensus.
It is quite possible for example, in this survey for scientist or even colleagues with identical qualifications, to self identify differently. Thus in this survey respondents could even be co-authors of a paper, but this survey would categorise one as more expert than the other. Who knows if this happened or not, the fact that it is possible demonstrates the flaws in the thinking.
Additionally those that are in the 97% group are deemed to be more expert in climate science, keeping more abreast of the ‘whole’ field than the others.
“..The participants in this group are actively publishing climate scientists, and those most likely to be familiar with the theory and mechanisms of climate change, as well as have a thorough understanding of the current research and be actively contributing to the field..” (Zimmermann feedback)
This I think is a huge assumption, ‘climate science’ is a huge multidisciplinary field.
Is a geologist that identifies as a ‘climate scientist’ any more an expert on astrophysics, atmospheric physics, statistics, etc than those classified as have less expertise in the categories identified above.
Additionally the responses may merely capture (only the last 5 years publishing Q5) those junior more activist post docs, etc that self identify as climate scientist, where perhaps the older more published ‘expert’ colleagues describe themselves by the qualifications, not as climate scientists. And of course, by the very nature of the survey, (which was commented on in the feedback) surveys of this type are potentially self selecting by the probability that those that are most concerned are more willing to take part.
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11.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/25/where-consensus-fails/
Where Consensus Fails – The Science Cannot Be Called ‘Settled’
Guest Post by Thomas Fuller
Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch have just published the findings of a survey conducted with practicing climate scientists. The survey was conducted in 2008 with 379 climate scientists who had published papers or were employed in climate research institutes and dealt with their confidence in models, the IPCC and a variety of other topics. The survey findings are here: http://coast.gkss.de/staff/storch/pdf/GKSS_2010_9.CLISCI.pdf
Most of the questions were asked using a Likert Scale, which most of you have probably used in filling out one of the numerous online surveys that are on almost any website. “A set of statements was presented to which the respondent was asked to indicate his or her level of agreement or disagreement, for example, 1 = strongly agree, 7 = strongly disagree.
The value of 4 can be considered as an expression of ambivalence or impartiality or, depending on the nature of the question posed, for example, in a question posed as a subjective rating such as “How much do you think climate scientists are aware of the information that policy makers incorporate into their decision making process?”, a value of 4 is no longer a measure of ambivalence, but rather a metric.”
The total number of respondents is large enough to make statistically significant statements about the population of similarly qualified climate scientists, and the response rate to the invitations is in line with surveys conducted among academics and professionals. What that means is that we can be fairly confident that if we conducted a census of all such scientists the answers would not be very different to what is found in the survey’s findings.
Typically in a commercial survey, analysts would group the top two responses and report on the percentages of respondents that ticked box 6 or 7 on this scale. Using that procedure here makes it clear that there are areas where scientists are not completely confident in what is being preached–and that they don’t like some of the preachers. In fact, let’s start with the opinion of climate scientists about those scientists, journalists and environmental activists who present extreme accounts of catastrophic impacts.
The survey’s question read, “Some scientists present extreme accounts of catastrophic impacts related to climate change in a popular format with the claim that it is their task to alert the public. How much do you agree with this practice?”
Less than 5% agreed strongly or very strongly with this practice. Actually 56% disagreed strongly or very strongly. Joe Romm, Tim Lambert, Michael Tobis–are you listening? The scientists don’t like what you are doing.
And not because they are skeptics–these scientists are very mainstream in their opinions about climate science and are strong supporters of the IPCC. Fifty-nine percent (59%) agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “The IPCC reports are of great use to the advancement of climate science.” Only 6% disagreed. And 86.5% agreed or strongly agreed that “climate change is occurring now” and 66.5% agreed or strongly agreed that future climate “will be a result of anthropogenic causes.”
Even so, there are areas of climate science that some people want to claim is settled, but where scientists don’t agree.
Only 12% agree or strongly agree that data availability for climate change analysis is adequate. More than 21% disagree or strongly disagree.
Only 25% agree or strongly agree that “Data collection efforts are currently adequate,” while 16% disagree or strongly disagree.
Perhaps most importantly, only 17.75% agree or strongly agree with the statement, “The state of theoretical understanding of climate change phenomena is adequate.” An equal percentage disagreed or strongly disagreed.
Only 22% think atmospheric models deal with hydrodynamics in a manner that is adequate or very adequate. Thirty percent (30%) feel that way about atmospheric models’ treatment of radiation, and only 9% feel that atmospheric models are adequate in their treatment of water vapor–and not one respondent felt that they were ‘very adequate.’
And only 1% felt that atmospheric models dealt well with clouds, while 46% felt they were inadequate or very inadequate. Only 2% felt the models dealt adequately with precipitation, and 3.5% felt that way about modeled treatment of atmospheric convection.
For ocean models, the lack of consensus continued. Only 20% felt ocean models dealt well with hydrodynamics, 11% felt that way about modeled treatment of heat transport in the ocean, 6.5% felt that way about oceanic convection, and only 12% felt that there exists an adequate ability to couple atmospheric and ocean models.
Only 7% agree or strongly agree that “The current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of turbulence,” and only 26% felt that way about surface albedo. Only 8% felt that way about land surface processes, and only 11% about sea ice.
And another shocker–only 32% agreed or strongly agreed that the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases emitted from anthropogenic sources.
As Judith Curry has been noting over at her weblog, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the building blocks of climate science. The scientists know this. The politicians, propagandists and the converted acolytes haven’t gotten the message. If this survey does not educate them, nothing will.
Excellent paper, Tom.
Now try to get the MSM to publish it, or even give an unbiased comment on it.
If that happens then we really are getting somewhere.
Mods: My long comment didn’t get an acknowledgment response. Please don’t let it fall thru the cracks.
I’ve read the questions. Of the respondants, 97 % of Climate Scientists share Anthony Watts position on the survey questions.