You have to wonder how somebody can write (let alone read) the claims made here in the press release by Cook with a straight face. It gives a window into the sort of things we can expect from his borked survey he recently foisted on climate websites which seems destined to either fail, or get spun into even stranger claims. For example, compare these two passages of the press release:
Exhibit 1:
From the 11 994 papers, 32.6 per cent endorsed AGW, 66.4 per cent stated no position on AGW, 0.7 per cent rejected AGW and in 0.3 per cent of papers, the authors said the cause of global warming was uncertain.
Exhibit 2:
“Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary.”
And from that he gets a consensus? What is he smoking? Try getting a quorum or winning an election with those numbers. About that 0.7 percent, this might be a good time to remind everyone of this Climategate moment.
In July 2004, referring to Climate Research having published a paper by “MM”, thought to be Ross McKitrick and Pat Michaels, and another paper by Eugenia Kalnay and Ming Cai, Phil Jones emailed his colleagues saying:
“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [TRENBERTH] and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
This below comes from a pre-press release, published first by Steve Milloy of Junkscience.com. It isn’t on the IOP website yet, nor is Cook’s paper. It seems both are scheduled for May 16th. Since there is no embargo time listed that I’m aware of, and it is in the wild now, it is fair game.
===============================================================
Study reveals scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change
A comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed articles on the topic of global warming and climate change has revealed an overwhelming consensus among scientists that recent warming is human-caused.
The study is the most comprehensive yet and identified 4000 summaries, otherwise known as abstracts, from papers published in the past 21 years that stated a position on the cause of recent global warming – 97 per cent of these endorsed the consensus that we are seeing man-made, or anthropogenic, global warming (AGW)
Led by John Cook at the University of Queensland, the study has been published today, Thursday 16 May, in IOP Publishing’s journal Environmental Research Letters.
The study went one step further, asking the authors of these papers to rate their entire paper using the same criteria. Over 2000 papers were rated and among those that discussed the cause of recent global warming, 97 per cent endorsed the consensus that it is caused by humans.
The findings are in stark contrast to the public’s position on global warming; a 2012 poll* revealed that more than half of Americans either disagree, or are unaware, that scientists overwhelmingly agree that the Earth is warming because of human activity.
John Cook said: “Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary.
“There is a gaping chasm between the actual consensus and the public perception. It’s staggering given the evidence for consensus that less than half of the general public think scientists agree that humans are causing global warming.
“This is significant because when people understand that scientists agree on global warming, they’re more likely to support policies that take action on it.”
In March 2012, the researchers used the ISI Web of Science database to search for peer-reviewed academic articles published between 1991 and 2011 using two topic searches: “global warming” and “global climate change”.
After limiting the selection to peer-reviewed climate science, the study considered 11 994 papers written by 29 083 authors in 1980 different scientific journals.
The abstracts from these papers were randomly distributed between a team of 24 volunteers recruited through the “myth-busting” website skepticalscience.com, who used set criteria to determine the level to which the abstracts endorsed that humans are the primary cause of global warming. Each abstract was analyzed by two independent, anonymous raters.
From the 11 994 papers, 32.6 per cent endorsed AGW, 66.4 per cent stated no position on AGW, 0.7 per cent rejected AGW and in 0.3 per cent of papers, the authors said the cause of global warming was uncertain.
Co-author of the study Mark Richardson, from the University of Reading, said: “We want our scientists to answer questions for us, and there are lots of exciting questions in climate science. One of them is: are we causing global warming? We found over 4000 studies written by 10 000 scientists that stated a position on this, and 97 per cent said that recent warming is mostly man made.”
Visitors to the skepticalscience.com website also raised the funds required to allow the study to be accessible to the public.
Daniel Kammen, editor-in-chief of the journal Environmental Research Letters, said: “”This paper demonstrates the power of the Environmental Research Letters open access model of operation in that authors working to advance our knowledge of climate science and to engage in a public discourse can guarantee all interested parties have the opportunity to review the same data and findings.”
###
* http://www.pewresearch.org/2013/04/02/climate-change-key-data-points-from-pew-research/
From Thursday 16 May, this paper can be downloaded from http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article
I have read enough of such papers to recognise that the formulaic hat tip and acknowledegment to AGW is a prerequsite to get it published. Given the climategate comments from those who are “in charge” of “peer review” you can understand why.
In any case the logical fallacy of adding up numbers of papers to achieve a “consensus” is hilarious. These are supposed to be educated people? And all this to force the public into believing it? Come on.
So every single volunteer was a believer (recruited from SKS).
And “consensus” is exactly what part of the scientific method? I wonder if Galileo was aware of this concept.
“Our findings prove …” … That’s where I lost it, still can’t stop laughing ……..
australians are good at “fuzzy math”. the federal budget announced yesterday is a case in point. well-known CAGW-advocate Tristan Edis tries his best to spin the CO2 elements, while hoping the EU “fixes” the carbon market, at precisely the moment the EU is raiding the oil majors for price-fixing!
15 May: Business Spectator Australia: Tristan Edis: The ripple effect of a carbon price hack
The government has more than halved its expected carbon price for 2015-16 to $12.10 per tonne of CO2, down from the $29 it projected last year, in light of the depressed state of the European carbon market. However it continues to maintain an optimistic view on the carbon price outlook beyond this, projecting a linear rise for the years afterwards to $18.60 in 2016-17 and, ultimately, $38 in 2019-20.
Estimating the likely European carbon price in 2015-16, let alone 2020, with any confidence is impossible, because the market outlook could entirely change with a single decision of the European Parliament and Council…
Based on a Reuters Point Carbon poll of carbon market analysts the consensus for 2015-16 is a price well below Treasury’s at $8.50 for 2015. Without any major regulatory changes to the EU ETS it is implausible that the EU carbon price could manage to reach the $38 Treasury has assumed…
Following modest growth in 2014-15, carbon pricing mechanism receipts are expected to fall 27 per cent in 2015-16, following the end of the fixed price period in 2014-15 and the link to the European price in 2015-16. Receipts are projected to fall a further 27 per cent in 2016-17, largely because there are no longer any fixed-price receipts…
Rather bizarrely, the government has chosen to actually increase the amount of assistance allocated to the steel sector (the Steel Transformation Plan) to adjust to the carbon price by $37.5 million. This is especially hard to understand given that one of Port Kembla’s two blast furnaces has been shut, so their carbon price exposure has been dramatically reduced…
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/5/15/carbon-markets/ripple-effect-carbon-price-hack
15 May: Australian: AAP: EU raids oil majors in price fixing probe
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/breaking-news/eu-raids-oil-majors-in-price-fixing-probe/story-e6frg90f-1226642989331
I confess I participated, curiosity. I did note in comments that the results were more likely to show a prevalence for papers supporting AGW to be published rather than anything else.
What I find staggering is that Cook doesn’t get that scientists aren’t just climate scientists. Broaden any “survey” to include geologists, meteorologists, and physicists and what little consensus there is evaporates. So, yes they’ve convinced themselves of their importance but they haven’t managed to convince the rest of the scientific community.
Even IF the numbers were correct and I doubt they are correct, apply that same logic to the time of Galileo:
From the 11 994 papers, 32.6 per cent endorsed the Sun going around the Earth, 66.4 per cent stated no position, 0.7 per cent stated that the Earth goes around the Sun.
Well, there you have it, the debate is over, conciseness is NEVER wrong. ;-))
[snip – you are welcome to rewrite and resubmit this without the flame-bait – Anthony]
“Cook doesn’t get that scientists aren’t just climate scientists.”
and that “climate scientists” just aren’t real scientists.
I am sick of being told “97% agree…”
I want to be told THE EVIDENCE (yes, I am SHOUTING because no warmist ever, anywhere, any time, answers this question) – WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE. Specifically, give me the EVIDENCE so I can evaluate it as a scientist for myself. As for the consensus, on the Myers Briggs test I come out as INTJ – introvert, intuitive, thinking, judging – for which, to quote the description for this type, arguments from authority or consensus hold absolutely no weight. We are 2% of the population, and INTPs are similar – another 2% – for whom your pathetic attempts to convince us from consensus are simply ineffective, like throwing ping pong balls at an aircraft carrier. So, any warmists out there, here is a challenge I am sure Anthony would facilitate – post an article here that concisely summarises the actual evidence that the theory is true.
Specifically, the theory that by CO2’s warming the ocean air slightly, extra water evaporates that multiplies the heat takeup of the CO2 alone, that this causes sufficient warming to be dangerous, and that humans are responsible.
What is not evidence: “it got warmer”, “this was the warmest … in … years”, “there was a big storm” – need I go on?
Bob Diaz: Well, there you have it, the debate is over, conciseness is NEVER wrong. ;-))
Yes. And brevity is the soul of wit….
: > )
Maybe I am missing something here, but is this not the same survey(s) that was/were sent to WUWT, Climate Etc.et al, what, a few months ago now?
Am I supposed to believe that a “survey”(z), such as it apparently wasn’t/weren’t, have/has progressed in a few months to a peer-reviewed paper AND being published in ERL?
That’s astonishing! I can’t say I remember a piece of “research” making it finished to press in just weeks. Did Cook just throw Lewandowsky under the bus with a subsequent survey that almost instantly got published?
It made me wonder (confessing ignorance here) what the state of “Watts et al 2012 draft paper” is at present?
Somebody please tell me how badly I have my wires crossed here……
REPLY: You do, this is an entirely different operation, done entirely with SkS volunteers, it is a prelude to a smear by Cooks recent web survey, where he’ll try at some point in the future to claim something about Skeptics, even though Skeptics have seen just how shonky his survey is, and for the most part have avoided it. – Anthony
This paper is so bad that mocking it may improve its credibility.
I do have one question though. When is the “recent warming”? Is that the warming before the last 16 years of no warming according to the land record? Or before the last 23 years of no warming according to the satellite record? What time period do they define as “recent”?
OK, that’s four questions. But no single question was more than 25% of the total number of questions meaning that 75% of the questions were collectively more than one question. But I further analyzed one single question outside of the 75% and a survey of independent reviewers (me) agreed that of the 25% analyzed, there was only one questions, and 100% of reviewers (me) agreed with this.
This is SCIENCE….chocolate covered elephant dung is ART….
Welcome to Modern Art & Science….no questions accepted.
So, they are trying to herd the population back into fear by reinforcing the idea of consensus amongst “scientists” who “know”. It must be so annoying when the population doesn’t behave itself. All they do is meander about, asking awkward questions. The first “consensus” worked for a time, so they’ll try that again – louder. Shame it’s getting colder. Ah well.
Visitors to the skepticalscience.com website also raised the funds required to allow the study to be accessible to the public.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
How much does it cost to publish a pdf on an existing web site? Wow, they may have raised a penny!
Note that the published paper does not use the much-criticized survey. It is probably the same set of papers and the same questionnaire, but the paper is based on 24 respondents. I guess that, after they completed that survey, they decided to open it up to everyone — and there is a second paper coming that compares the answers of the 24 to the answers of the likes of me.
Hmmmm…..
It appears their “concensus” is declining…. significantly….
And somehow they figure that’s good news?
(Reminds me of those “increasing temperatures” that really aren’t. Never let a touch of reality ruin your cause, right?)
davidmhoffer May 14 9:49 says
“This paper is so bad that mocking it may improve its credibility.”
Haha! Good one. But sadly true.
Given that skeptics are evil — then anything that ticks off such evil people must be of value. Hence the credibility of the paper is increased — or at least in the eyes of total morons it is increased.
Eugene WR Gallun
So 97% of 4000 papers endorsed AGW but of the “over 2000” papers surveyed only 32.6% did? I don’t understand that math. Or did he include the 66.4% with no position in a “those who are not against me are for me” approach?
I guess this just goes to show that one-star public access journals will publish anything, especially if their editors get some free publicity out of it.
In 5th century BC, the Greek philosopher Empedocles postulated we could see things due to rays coming out of our eyes. When someone asked why we could not see in the dark, Empedocles modified his theory to say that the rays from our eyes could only work when they interacted with rays from a light source such as the sun. One could prove this by drawing a heavy curtain across the window during the day, and noting that as soon as the room was dark, one could no longer see, proving that the rays from your eyes needed to interact with light from the sun to work.
John Cook has the same problem as Empedocles.
Fuzzy math? Lol I call it the Cook Voodoo Math Machine. Just like this one: ” In a passage reminiscent of a notorious feminist description of Newton’s Principia (a “rape manual”), Irigaray argues that E=mc2 is a “sexed equation”. Why? Because “it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us” Just as typical of this school of thought is Irigaray’s thesis on fluid mechanics. Fluids, you see, have been unfairly neglected. “Masculine physics” privileges rigid, solid things.
The privileging of solid over fluid mechanics, and indeed the inability of science to deal with turbulent flow at all, she attributes to the association of fluidity with femininity. Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids… From this perspective it is no wonder that science has not been able to arrive at a successful model for turbulence. The problem of turbulent flow cannot be solved because the conceptions of fluids (and of women) have been formulated so as necessarily to leave un-articulated remainders.”
Cook and Irigaray should party together. Funny eh? Idiots!
Peter Ward;
Or did he include the 66.4% with no position in a “those who are not against me are for me” approach?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Not quite. What he did is to ignore them entirely.
32.6% pro + 0.7% against + 0.3% uncertain = 33.6%
32.6/33.6 = 0.970
uh huh.
If I polled all members of the Spanish Inquisition on February
16th, 1616, about the correct answer to the question “Does
the universe go round the World or does the World go round
the Sun?” I could easily expect at least a 97% consensus the
World was the centre of the universe. ( 97% if the wine was
particularly good that year and one member was too drunk to
take the survey.) Historically, the consensus was 100%.
But: the consensus still didn’t make Galileo wrong. For the record,
the Roman Catholic Church posthumously apologised to Galileo in
2000, only 384 years later.
Nature could very well make it very obvious in the next 25 years
that whatever consensus Mr. Cooke claims is patently baloney.
Perhaps the river Thames will freeze over … again.
I’ve got my popcorn ready.
Davidmhoffer says:
“Not quite. What he did is to ignore them entirely.
32.6% pro + 0.7% against + 0.3% uncertain = 33.6%
32.6/33.6 = 0.970”
Yeah I didn’t get the math either, but if he has done the above he should be dismissed, he can’t understand basic logic.