Guest essay by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Environmental Research Letters ought to have known better than to publish the latest anti-scientific propaganda paper by John Cook of the dubiously-named Skeptical Science website. Here are just a few of the solecisms that should have led any competent editor or reviewer to reject the paper:
- It did not discuss, still less refute, the principle that the scientific method is not in any way informed by argument from consensus, which thinkers from Aristotle via Alhazen to Huxley and Popper have rejected as logically fallacious.
- Its definition of the “consensus” it claimed to have found was imprecise: that “human activity is very likely causing most of the current anthropogenic global warming”.
- It did not put a quantitative value on the term “very likely”, and it did not define what it meant by “current” warming. There has been none for at least 18 years.
- It cited as authoritative the unscientifically-sampled surveys of “consensus” by Doran & Zimmerman (2009) and Anderegg et al. (2010).
- It inaccurately represented the views of scientists whose abstracts it analysed.
- It disregarded two-thirds of the 12,000 abstracts it examined, on the unscientific ground that those abstracts had expressed no opinion on Man’s climatic influence.
- It declared that the one-third of all papers alleged to have endorsed the “consensus” really amounted to 97% of the sample, not 33%.
- It suggested that the “consensus” that most recent warming is manmade is equivalent to the distinct and far less widely-supported notion that urgent action to prevent future warming is essential to avert catastrophe. Obama fell for this, twittering that 97% found global warming not only real and manmade but also dangerous.
Yet the most remarkable conclusion to be drawn from Cook’s strange paper is that the “consensus” – far from growing – is actually collapsing.
A little history.
It was Naomi Oreskes, a “historian” of “science”, who started the “consensus” hare running in the literature in 2004 with a non-peer-reviewed essay in Science alleging that not one of 928 abstracts she had reviewed had disagreed with the “consensus” that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations”.
Oreskes’ definition of “consensus”, though less imprecise than Cook’s, falls well short of stating that manmade warming may prove catastrophic.
The conclusion of Oreskes’ essay was that three-quarters of the abstracts she reviewed endorse the “consensus” either explicitly or, by evaluating impacts or proposing mitigation, implicitly. A quarter took no view. None, she said, disagreed with the consensus position.
Schulte (2008) reviewed 539 papers in the three years following the period studied by Oreskes, using the same search term (“global climate change”) and the same definition of consensus. He found that “the proportion of papers that now explicitly or implicitly endorse the consensus has fallen from 75% to 45%.”
Only 2% of the papers reviewed “offer new field data or observations directly relevant to the question whether anthropogenic warming has prevailed over natural variability in the past half-century”.
Just one paper mentioned the possibility of catastrophic climate change, but without providing any evidence for catastrophe. No papers provided any quantitative evidence whatsoever for the consensus as defined, still less for catastrophe.
Schulte concluded: “There appears to be little basis in the peer-reviewed literature for the degree of alarm on the issue of man-made climate change which is being expressed in the media and by politicians.”
On no basis, Oreskes later asserted that Schulte had “misrepresented” her results. In fact he had reported them straightforwardly and had simply carried her method forward for a further three years.
Finally, Cook alleged that a third of the papers he had reviewed explicitly or implicitly endorsed the “consensus”. However, several of the scientists whom he said had endorsed the “consensus” say they had done no such thing.
Even if he had assessed the abstracts fairly, the 33% endorsement of the “consensus” that he reported is significantly less than the 45% endorsement that Schulte reported, and less again than the 75% “consensus” reported by Oreskes:
The “consensus” is indeed collapsing.
One might examine Cook’s 12,000 abstracts to discover how many (or, rather, how very few) explicitly or implicitly endorse the notion that catastrophe will follow if CO2 emissions continue to grow.
However, any such survey would be of no more scientific value than that of Cook. As the planet continues to fail to warm at anything like the rate that the usual suspects have so confidently but unwisely over-predicted, it will eventually become apparent to all that science was not, is not, and will never be done by mere headcount.
References
Anderegg, W.R.L., J.W. Prall J. Harold, and S.H. Schneider, 2010, Expert credibility in climate change, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 107: 12107-9.
Cook, J., D. Nuccitelli, S.A. Green, M. Richardson, B. Winkler, R. Painting, R. Way, P. Jacobs, and A. Skuce, 2013, Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, Environ. Res. Lett. 8: 024024 (7 pp), doi:0.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024.
Doran, P., and M. Zimmerman, 2009, Examining the scientific consensus on climate change, EOS Trans. Am. Geophys. Union 99: 22-23.
Oreskes, N., 2004, The scientific consensus on climate change, Science 306: 1686.
Schulte, K.-M., 2008, Scientific consensus on climate change?, Energy & Environment 19:2, 281-286, doi:10/1060/095830508783900744.
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“human activity is very likely causing most of the current anthropogenic global warming”
Isn’t human activity responsible for 100% of anthropogenic warming?
See, this is why I keep up via WUWT – great clarification by Christopher Monckton, brilliant zinger by Bill Marsh.
And of course, I don’t think any “skeptic” ever said there was NO effect, I mean the UHI alone is a no brainer. Now that the pendulum has swung, or is swinging, to the side of reason, maybe some real Science will get done on climate issues… ie, no more ridiculous tree ring hockey sticks and counting who’s on which side.
The Cook et al. “consensus” is collapsing fast. Dr. Tol just weighed in,
http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/05/97-study-falsely-classifies-scientists.html
They may as well have sampled the TV listings over the last ten years for soap operas who’s summaries may endorse the view that “domestic violence is on the rise”, a fictional result based on a fantasy to obtain a pre-defined result.
In the near future, children won’t know what science is.
From Wikipedia:
The well-known advertising slogan for Whiskas was “eight out of ten owners said their cat prefers it”. After a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority, this had to be changed to “eight out of ten owners who expressed a preference said their cat prefers it”
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That bit of false advertising is so well known that it’s donated its slogan to a comedy show.
So who do we complain to about this 9.7 out of 10 claim, which appears to be made on exactly the same basis? Surely, if it’s considered too misleading to sell cat food with, it’s also too misleading to set global economic policies by?
Until we can get outright bullsh*t like this mob publishing total lies..
Greenland melting a sign of things to come
Michael D Lemonick
A new study indicates that the widespread melting in Greenland in 2012 was not a one-time phenomenon. (australias Climate Spectator webpage)
———
widespread melting? it got over zero for four or so hrs?
webcam pics show it looking very snowed in and seriously bad for farmers waiting to plant.
but that gets NO mention..
Abc was all over c(r)ooks media effort like poop on a blanket..
fact checking?
would be great to see some!
“Chilling temperatures and forecasts of snow have forced Giro d’Italia organisers RCS to rethink the final week of the Italian Grand Tour.” SBS Australian Cycle News today.
Obviously the organisers must have believed the consensus when they planned the route.
Thank you for the early citation to Karl Popper. I believe that a proper foundation in the philosophy of science would obviate most of this non-science nonsense. The rest of the non-science might be subject to by E. T.Jaynes’ Probability Theory, particularly ‘Converging and Diverging Views’ (section 5.3).
WWF: IPCC expected to predict global warming by 2040 says Alexei Kokorin. The new Maxwell Smart has arrived or Jon Lovitz for the younger folks
http://www.thegwpf.org/
If the trends (in climate and abstracts) continue, there may be many who will be sorry they jumped on the AGW bandwagon.
Bill Marsh says:
Bill, the rest was contributed by Sasquatch, Yeti, and other humanoids.
With apologies to any twitter account holders, I found this statement very amusing and somewhat representative: “Obama fell for this, twittering “.
As for the consensus, real scientists do not work from a conclusion back to the data, and that is why the “mention” of a very unscientific meme is falling.
“human activity is very likely causing most of the current anthropogenic global warming”
Isn’t human activity responsible for 100% of anthropogenic warming?
You beat me to it. Monckton misclassified this one — it isn’t just “vague”, it is a tautology.
But the really, really amazing thing is that only “97% of all scientists” agreed with it! Damn! Who do the remaining 3% think caused anthropogenic global warming? And why (as you point out) does this sentence contain the word “most”? Do some scientists among the 97% actually think that humans didn’t cause all of the AGW (without necessarily committing itself to a hard estimate of the fraction of the total warming observed over the last 300 years that is, in fact, anthropogenic in nature and origin)?
I’m rather skeptical, but even I think that mankind caused 100% of mankind-caused global warming, provided only that there is a nonzero amount of mankind-caused global warming to have been caused by mankind. To avoid the issues of dividing by zero and multiple causes, I’d say that this is tautologically true even mankind is also causing 100% of anthropogenic global cooling via e.g. aerosols (note that the statement above doesn’t refer to net AGW, so it may well refer only to the fractionated contributions to the overall climate that are warming) or even if there is no AGW in the first place (100% of nothing is nothing, still true).
This is just as silly as the original “97% consensus” survey, which asked if the scientists in question thought that the world had warmed (well, duh, look at the thermometric record for the last 150 years) and if humans had contributed to the warming (sure, why not, maybe, probably, possibly — few scientists would go on record as certain that they did not cause some of the warming observed). Ask a question that you are certain will get a positive answer. Cheat when analyzing the data when it turns out that it really gets a primarily neutral answer by rejecting all neutral answers from the sample. Implicitly tag on the presumed adjective “catastrophic” (which wasn’t at all in the original question, tautological or not) and finally interpret the positive answer to the exagerrated tautological question as support for a complex and expensive political solution to a problem that, in fact, the data does not support at anything like the 97% level.
Sigh.
rgb
Its definition of the “consensus” it claimed to have found was imprecise: that “human activity is very likely causing most of the current anthropogenic global warming”.
That got through “peer review”?
I would agree – it is very likely that that phrase is possibly falling in the “significantly probable” category.
And I say that with near certainty.
🙂
I interpret Cook’s paper as saying, that even though there is not a consensus (only 33%), and technically, yes, science doesn’t progress by ‘consensus’ in any case, (which too often masquerades as political indoctrination) we can’t get governments to do something about AGW and its effects unless there is an overwhelming consensus among scientists, so we have to fudge the statistics and the conclusions of the scientists in order to get governments to do something, as well as continue to tell the believers in dangerous AGW what they want to hear.
He is so befuddled and mixed up, in promoting an agenda (that is the official purpose of his appointed position), that there seems little hope for him.
By filtering the abstracts down to those that include one of the two phrases ‘global warming’ or ‘global climate change’, the results are skewed. The abstract is not likely to contain those phrases unless some attribution or worthy mention was felt necessary due to objective or subjective opinion.
Rather like surveying dog breeds by reducing the studies to those which contained ‘fluffy’.
It would likely prove that 97% of dogs are Poodles.
Joe, please don’t use Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a joke.
Maybe a influence do to political alignment in the university environment.
“SURVEY: Zero conservatives selected to deliver 2013 commencement speeches at Ivy Leagues”
http://www.campusreform.org/blog/?ID=4763
The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says:
May 22, 2013 at 5:32 am
Joe, please don’t use Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a joke.
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For most things I’d agree with you but it’s remarkably reliable for quick references to something like a Whiskas advertising slogan. Especially one that I remember from growing up, and remember the subtle change (and the reasons behind it) from when it happened!
Besides, the quote was in no way essential to the point I was making that this “ignoring the ambivalent ones” is a recognised deceptive, use of statistics. Quite how something so well known gets through “scientific” peer review is mind boggling!
rgbatduke says:
May 22, 2013 at 4:59 am
Re tautology. Worse, a scientific journal accepted this for publication! Clowns will continue to produce such rubbish, but who selected the clowns for reviewing the paper and how did clowns come to take over the editorial function. I think a new journal formed to publish the papers rejected by the clowns would show promise.
Joe, oh I know, but the more people use it the more it will absorb credibility. It’s just best to never go there for anything, despite how tempting it is to get a quick explanation. The Net is just great, but it’s spoilt by something like Wikipedia, which provides incorrect explanations and puts up massive barriers in the way of changing it. I assume you’re a fellow Brit, and I too well remember the TV ad. I remember ‘Arthur’ who ate with his paw – then we discovered that the ad men were simply coating his paws with the stuff to MAKE him lick his paws!
My apology to professional clowns whose honorable objective is to amuse and entertain – society can’t do without you.
The Wikipedia is the first repair for ignorance. If you know something that should be included or changed, then step away from the not-so-smart phone and fix it. Beyond that, believe nothing that one reads or hears without validating it yourself unless it fits your pre-existing worldview.
About tautology and the logic of science, is not a true statement a tautology conveying little sense. Better is a falsifiable assertion of non-existence. “A is A” Well, duUh, everybody knows that!
Collapsing? It never existed in the first place except in the fevered imaginations of the CAGW Believers. It was manufactured simply as one way to propagandize the masses, most of whom wouldn’t be savvy enough about science to know that even if it did exist, it didn’t matter one whit. I guess one could say that the Consensus Myth has collapsed. Lies carry the seeds of their own destruction.