Dr. Richard Tol has been tweeting a statistical destruction of the “97% consensus” study, Cook et al. (2013) by educating co-author Dana Nuccitelli as to why his “sample” is not representative.
“In his defense, [Dana] has had limited exposure to stats at uni” – Richard Tol
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| Including “global” before “climate change”, Cook et al. dropped 75% of papers and changed disciplinary distribution. |
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| Including “global” before “climate change”, Cook et al. dropped many papers by eminent climate researchers. |
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| Including “global” before “climate change”, Cook et al. dropped 33 of the 50 most cited papers. |
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| Choosing exclusive WoS over inclusive Scopus, Cook et al. dropped 35% of papers and changed disciplinary distribution. |
As Dr. Tol so eloquently put it,
“[Dana] I think your sampling strategy is a load of nonsense.” – Richard Tol
CV of Dr. Richard Tol:
M.Sc. Econometrics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (1992); Ph.D. Economics (Thesis: “A decision-analytic treatise of the enhanced greenhouse effect“), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (1997); Researcher, Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (1992-2008); Visiting Researcher, Canadian Centre for Climate Research, University of Victoria, Canada (1994); Visiting researcher, Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment, University College London, United Kingdom (1995); Acting Programme Manager Quantitative Environmental Economics, Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands (1998-1999); Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University (1998-2000); Board Member, Centre for Marine and Climate Research, Hamburg University (2000-2006); Lead Author, IPCC (2001); Contributing Author and Expert Reviewer, IPCC (2001, 2007); Associate Editor, Environmental and Resource Economics Journal (2001-2006); Adjunct Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University (2000-2008); Michael Otto Professor of Sustainability and Global Change, Department of Geosciences and Department of Economics, Hamburg University, Germany (2000-2006); Editor, Energy Economics Journal (2003-Present); Visiting Research Scholar, Princeton Environmental Institute and Visiting Professor, Department of Economics, Princeton University (2005-2006); Research Professor, Economic and Social Research Institute, Ireland (2006-Present); Research Fellow, Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP), Center for Global Trade Analysis, Department of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University (2007-2010); Associate Editor, Economics E-Journal (2007-Present); Adjunct Professor, Department of Economics, Trinity College, Ireland (2010-2011); Professor of the Economics of Climate Change, Institute for Environmental Studies and Department of Spatial Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (2008-Present); Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Sussex, Falmer, United Kingdom (2012-Present)
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Thanks. In lay terms, Cook cooked his books. Nice debunking by Tol.
Of course, the main failing of Cook’s study is that it is so brainless. If you want to know
what a climatologist’s current beliefs are, you ASK them, you don’t start riffling thru published works, many not even remotely current, trying to read between the lines to divine what its author’s
beliefs are, or were. Almost two decades of no warming has changed many minds, an effect that
Cook’s study implicitly claims is impossible. Asking questions about “current” consensus using
evidence that is in no way current is an oxymoron.
“[Dana] I think your sampling strategy is a load of nonsense.”
Nonsense with a purpose as well as purposely selected nonsense.
But if this had been his “Climate Science” Ph.D. dissertation, it would have passed with flying colors and put him in the running for a Nobel Prize, complete with on-line down-loadable certificate with a fill-in-th-blank space for his name and an invitation from the IPCC to have this stellar piece of sh…work…included in the next report.
ouch!
that’ll leave a mark
It’s easy to call anyone a cheat. Of course, proving it to all is quite rare, but not finishing it of by calling them out as a cheat, is even rarer still. Classy stuff Dr. Tol
Pointman
This paper of Cook’s is a great opportunity to counterpunch the 97% meme with an accurate survey of a representative sample. It should count only (or separately) “attribution” papers, it should poll authors about the degree of their alarmism (i.e., AGW or CAGW), and it should ask them if their degree of alarm has mitigated in recent years, as new less alarmist papers have come out.
George Mason U. should also be given a grant to conduct a new survey of members of the AGU and AMU. It’s been about six years since the last one.
Pretty impressive that Dr. Tol can shoot down the paper over Twitter. It took McIntyre et al many pages, papers, and even books to deal with the hockey stick.
Dana, should probably be careful who he calls a denier next time,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/23/dana-nuccitellis-twitter-war-with-richard-tol-over-that-97-consensus-paper/
I think if you are going to print out Dr.Tol’s qualifications and CV it is only fair that you should do the same with Dana’s….
People selling climate alarm
want you to believe
that 97% of people reflecting upon the following question would give answer “B”
Question: You are heating a mass. Through direct physical contact, you thermally couple a second mass, you are not heating. The temperature of mass A will subsequently go
(A) down
(B) up
===
Maybe I’m misrepresenting the 97%
Let me rephrase it:
===
You are heating a mass.
You have submerged that mass in a frigid, fluid gas bath, pulling the frigid fluid bath against the you heat, via gravity. Direct-contact thermal transfer is further enhanced by spinning the mass inside the frigid fluid gas bath.
1% of the frigid gas bath, is comprised of phase-change refrigerant. The refrigerant lifts heat faster through convection than the rest of the frigid, fluid, gas bath, dumping heat to space: makes ice – falls to the ground, to repeat the cycle.
Question: about the paragraphs above: The frigid, refrigeration-cycle augmented, gas bath,
(A) cools the mass submerged in the frigid, refrigeration-cycle augmented, gas bath
(B) warms the mass submerged in the frigid, refrigeration-cycle augmented, gas bath
In the 97%
the answer is *B*
Question 2 about the paragraph above:
The preferred analogy to the mass and it’s relationship to the frigid, refrigeration-augmented, gas bath, is:
(A) The frigid gas bath cools the mass, similarly to blowing a computer chip with a fan
(B)The frigid gas bath warms the mass, like a big, warm, blankie.
====
In magic gas country
the correct answer is *B*.
In the REST of the world
well –
– you figure it out.
Note that the above is only about the representativeness of the sample, which is poor.
I’m now looking at data quality. This is made difficult because crucial data were held back by the authors, or perhaps not collected or stored. (sic). Even with the little data available, there is convincing (to me) evidence of bias.
Oh, and there are some arithmetic errors too.
““[Dana] I think your sampling strategy is a load of nonsense.” – Richard Tol”
That’s a very polite way to say ‘propaganda’…
The thing about the “study” in question is how it uses key words – not substance.
For example, if someone wrote a paper about endangered frogs being run over while crossing a highway, and included the phrase “…and we expect an increase in frog mortality in future decades due to an increase in traffic to the local ‘global climate change’ laboratory,” it would still count.
Wow, I wish I had a CV that looked like that.
Richard Tol (@RichardTol) says:
June 1, 2013 at 8:31 am
Note that the above is only about the representativeness of the sample, which is poor.
“I’m now looking at data quality”.
A difficult task, no doubt, given that one must interpret the writer’s opinion where it may not be directly expressed as well as the time lag noted between the papers and present. The 97% study is patently garbage and irrelevent, in any event, given the built in bias caused by grant dollars, peer pressure and desire for survival within one’s organizational politics.
climate abstracts from 1991–2011….
===
this is a joke, right?
You mean back when temps were going your way……before they flat lined
Poor, poor li’l Dana, he can’t argue the merits so now he’ s reduced to telling Richard Tol to “get some class”
https://mobile.twitter.com/RichardTol/status/340830029741187073
Sure, Dana, after you sneer and smear at everyone you are one of the last people on earth who should pontificate about who has “class”
The approach to Cook, et. al. is hindered by considering it to be an evaluation of either the “scientific record” or the views of “climate scientists.” It is much more understandable and justifiable as an evaluation of the strength of belief of those who maintain the anthropogenic, strongly C02 driven global warming belief (call them believers for now, but there are issues about the degree of belief). If the hypothesis were stated as “Do those who believe feel that the scientific evidence (or climate scientists as individuals) support the belief and at what level?” then one could say that it was a fairly good look at that hypothesis. The study as done clearly only measured how the “reviewers” used in Cook, et. al. view the scientific record. Thus the analytical path of the study simply reflected the process by which believers view the scientific record and come the their conclusion of a degree of certainty.
I fear analysis of how well or poorly the study measured something other than the belief strength of the performers is akin to the punishment of King Sisyphus. An evaluation of the strength of support in the record for even a well stated scientific hypothesis would be difficult and necessarily involve in depth analysis of the detailed content and precedence order of the work. One possible approach might be to do a trend analysis of some sort on paper subject matter to see what subjects were trending.
A more comparative study might be to design a study to survey the strength of belief of “climate scientists” themselves. But that would have to be done by interacting with the investigators and eliciting their views directly, constructing an adequate belief scale, developing a reliable elicitation process, and careful consideration of the population.
In any event, technical aspects in the Cook study that lead to significantly different measures say much more about the strength of belief of “believers” than anything else.
@fah
That is exactly right. 3167 abstracts (out of 11944) were demonstrably misclassified. 99.4% of those were rated as endorsements.
Dr. Tol, I suggest that you should ask for equal space in the Guardian to publish a rebuttal on this paper, since it’s clearly hosed now.
“In his defense, [Dana] has had limited exposure to stats at uni” – Richard Tol
That’s a pretty poor “defense.” Dana had every opportunity to involve someone who knew stats inside-and-out, right? Seems like we’ve seen this sort of issue before (repeatedly) with publications related to climate science.
Cook and Dana deep down believe they only need to include papers they agree with anyway, since they already know what is true. An extreme case of confirmation bias if ever there was one, just choose the papers that suit, the others are all wrong anyway.
“If your sample is not representative (which it isn’t) your conclusions are worthless.” – Richard Tol
What is Dana going to rename his blog at The Guardian when this is over?