A new paper by Dr. Richard Tol published today in ScienceDirect, journal of Energy Policy, shows that the Cook et al. paper claiming that there is a 97% consensus among scientists is not just impossible to reproduce (since Cook is withholding data) but a veritable statistical train wreck rife with bias, classification errors, poor data quality, and inconsistency in the ratings process. The full paper is available below.
Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: A re-analysis
Richard S.J. Tol dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2014.04.045
A claim has been that 97% of the scientific literature endorses anthropogenic climate change (Cook et al., 2013. Environ. Res. Lett. 8, 024024). This claim, frequently repeated in debates about climate policy, does not stand. A trend in composition is mistaken for a trend in endorsement. Reported results are inconsistent and biased. The sample is not representative and contains many irrelevant papers. Overall, data quality is low. Cook׳s validation test shows that the data are invalid. Data disclosure is incomplete so that key results cannot be reproduced or tested.
Conclusion and policy implications
The conclusions of Cook et al. are thus unfounded. There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans. I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct. Cook et al., however, failed to demonstrate this. Instead, they gave further cause to those who believe that climate researchers are secretive (as data were held back) and incompetent (as the analysis is flawed).
It will take decades or longer to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to zero—the only way to stabilize its atmospheric concentration. During that time, electoral fortunes will turn. Climate policy will not succeed unless it has broad societal support, at levels comparable to other public policies such as universal education or old-age support. Well-publicized but faulty analyses like the one by Cook et al. only help to further polarize the climate debate.
Full paper available in plain text here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421514002821
And a PDF here:
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Sproing another leak in SS CAGW “Ship of Fools”
It’s worse than we thought (is that even possible??)
So now we know why Nutty Dana is attacking Tol on the Guardian. No surprise.
Even though the “books were Cooked ” not a damn thing will happen to him ,except that he will probably gain prestege and be lauded . What a sorry state of affairs…..
There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans…
really?
It’s never been about reducing CO2. It’s always been about power. Always.
–Andrew, @LawSelfDefense
Anthony,
The only “veritable statistical train wreck rife with bias… poor data quality” is Tol’s bizarre paper.
Can we get you on record, Anthony, endorsing the math behind it? I know that posting it here is an implicit endorsement of Tol’s mangled effort, but could you step up and say outright how impressed you are? Please?
You are going to be embarrassed for having highlighted this. But that’s ok. Nothing we haven’t seen you do many times before.
By the way, Anthony, those extra ~ 300 papers Tol “found” rejecting the consensus. Care to point us to a few?
REPLY: Here’s the thing, I don’t deal with punks that demand that I do specific things who are too timid to use their own names. Bug off – Anthony
Cue alarmists pronouncing “ScienceDirect” as a “denier” journal in 3… 2… 1…
Hmmm.. The link to the article is broken, or the ScienceDirect site is having issues?
Why would Tol (or anyone else_ have “no doubt in their mind” when they acknowledge some have resorted to such “Well-publicized but faulty analyses”?
It’s not like Cook’s work is the only cooked up AGW stunt.
Is Cook’s stunt fraud?
How many times does that paper have to be disproved?
Not that it matters, it is ingrained into the public consciousness and no amount of disproof will dispel the idea. None. You’re trying to fight emotion with fact. You’ll lose every time. EVERY time.
As Hamilton said, “Your people, sir, is nothing but a great beast!” meaning that the ‘public’ is subject to emotions more so than fact.
Latitude says:
June 4, 2014 at 3:12 pm
There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans…
really?
Of course. The funding for research overwhelmingly supports research that supports the hypothesis, so the literature that flows from said funding will also support the hypothesis. It is just like tobacco in the 1950’s. The funding was all in support of tobacco being harmless, so that is what the research showed. If you show otherwise, you don’t get any more funding. Climate research today is at about the same place that tobacco research was about 1960. The dollars being thrown at it are huge compared to the tobacco scam, so it will take more than a surgeon general’s report to begin a shift.
“A new paper by Dr. Richard Tol published today in ScienceDirect … shows that the Cook et al. paper claiming that there is a 97% consensus among scientists is not just impossible to reproduce… but a veritable statistical train wreck rife with bias, classification errors, poor data quality, and inconsistency in the ratings process.”
In other words, ‘ready for prime time climate science’.
Gag.
From the Conclusion: “climate change is caused by humans”.
Shouldn’t that be, “SOME climate change is caused by humans?”
(A) Welcome to the big leagues, boys.
(B) However, I hope Dr. Tol himself, despite risking funding hits, will eventually stop implying a need to cut emissions drastically and thus ruinously and eventually genocidally, given that the Jesus paper has finally arrived that actually measured the overall greenhouse effect with physical feedbacks and found it to be miniscule despite high theoretical forcing and supercomputer model positive feedbacks:
“Tiny warming of residual anthropogenic CO2”
Abstract: “The residual fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions which has not been captured by carbon sinks and remains in the atmosphere, is estimated by two independent experimental methods which support each other: the 13C/12C ratio and the temperature-independent fraction of d(CO2)/dt on a yearly scale after subtraction of annual fluctuations the amplitude ratio of which reaches a factor as large as 7. The anthropogenic fraction is then used to evaluate the additional warming by analysis of its spectral contribution to the outgoing long-wavelength radiation (OLR) measured by infrared spectrometers embarked in satellites looking down. The anthropogenic CO2 additional warming extrapolated in 2100 is found lower than 0.1°C in the absence of feedbacks. The global temperature data are fitted with an oscillation of period 60 years added to a linear contribution. The data which support the 60-year cycle are summarized, in particular sea surface temperatures and sea level rise measured either by tide gauge or by satellite altimetry. The tiny anthropogenic warming appears consistent with the absence of any detectable change of slope of the 130-year-long linear contribution to the temperature data before and after the onset of large CO2 emissions.”
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217979214500957
In this case it’s delightfully devilish for Dr. Tol to toe the line completely, to have maximum impact *within* climate science, helping to reform it, and Dr. Tol is after all not a physical scientist but a econometrician who is an expert on applying statistics, mathematics and computational methods in economic theory. So he may not have experienced the sense of jaw dropping shock I did when as an experienced laboratory researcher I started reading the output of climate “science” and noticed that no, they were simply not following the scientific method of tasking themselves with rooting out errors in their own work, at all, nor in their peer review of papers.
(C) When Dr. Tol asserts, “I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct.” then I must point out that the scam nature of IPCC level “science” revolves around a hockey stick team that to this day is ramping *up* the brazenness of the fraud rather than cleaning house since, really, they are themselves the only housekeepers so far, and their Soviet worthy lies now stand fully exposed as of their latest 2013 “super hockey stick”:
http://s6.postimg.org/jb6qe15rl/Marcott_2013_Eye_Candy.jpg
After recognizing this undeniable headline grabbing scam, I cannot take at face value his statement of having little reason to doubt a consensus, for any school child may now be savvy to the manipulated nature *of* that consensus, just looking at Willis Eschenbach’s plot of the Marcott 2013 input data. Here Dr. Tol is, after all, quite ironically claiming he has no reason to doubt the 97% consensus opinion, as he simultaneously debunks that such a consensus exists at all, even in climate science, and as any economist knows best of all, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Regarding “It will take decades or longer to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to zero—the only way to stabilize its atmospheric concentration.”
It might be better to say:
“It will take decades to centuries to drastically reduce human technology based sources of CO2 emissions (we still need to breathe, don’t we?) but since these emissions are only about 3 to 5 % of all emissions, this will only represent a 3 to 5% reduction of CO2 entering the atmosphere. This has little bearing on the stabilization of atmospheric concentration, since natural sources of CO2 can overwhelm those of human origin”
Gee, I hope someone is archiving this post so it doesn’t quietly disappear!
Everyone here ok with the “sophisticated” math that Dr. Tol is asking you to accept? ‘Cause you have looked under the covers and are persuaded it’s a rock solid piece of research?
Step up with Anthony and signal your personal endorsement of it! Don’t be shy! You know it to be true! Just step up and say something like “I have never seen such an elegant statistical analysis in my life!” or something like that.
Be bold and take a stand! Like, say, like Dr. Tol did in his conclusions!:
“There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans.”
On the one hand Tol debunks Cook et al, then immediately expresses the overt warmist case “There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans.” and “It will take decades or longer to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to zero—the only way to stabilize its atmospheric concentration.”. He might as well just agree with Cook’s consensus and have done with it.
subscribing to comments
Good for Tol. Steve Mc pleaded with me to withhold a second letter aimed at Cook, the first posted here and elsewhere previously. I replied that disagreed with Tol’s strategy, but would agree to a two week hold on tactics, despite what RT himself suggested. So, with more polish, will be fired off tomorrow. And perhaps JoNova, the Bish, and WUWT might take additional notice.
Sorry, also wondering about the “polarization of the climate debate” comment? There has been only one side doing the polarizing.
This is also pointless as the POTUS quoted the 97% crap already and the damage has been done. This is just another distraction from the important questions that remain unanswered.
You earn a living doing this Dr. Tol?
DCA
Dana’s panties must be in a mighty knot today as the ASG has put their inability to reach consensus in writing for all the world to see! He’s going to be pissy about EVERYTHING until someone gives him a lolly or gets him down for a nap…..
Lost a post here somewhere….
Anthony-
Remember when there was a discussion thread in here about coming up with a “logo” or something to counteract that stupid red 97% dot of death? The one you posted here with BUSTED over it is PERFECT. Short. Understandable. TRUE. And will make the Hardly Boys wet their pants. It might even make them think TWICE before they develop any more shiny marketing, brainwashing widgets. I won’t hold my breath…but BUSTED can be applied to all of them and sent right back out.
rustneversleeps (June 4, 2014 at 3:52 pm): “Gee, I hope someone is archiving this post so it doesn’t quietly disappear!”
Paper is paywalled for me. Did you read it for free? What exactly do you believe is wrong with it?
Still hopeful that some brave souls will step forward with direct comments (compliments even!) about Dr. Tol’s math that suggests the Cook et al (2013) paper suggests the consensus might be as low as 91%. You agree with his math?
(Of course, even though Dr. Tol makes some badly wrong assumptions that leads to his results going off the rails, he doesn’t even really believe his findings anyway. He’s on record saying:
Published papers that seek to test what caused the climate change over the last century and half, almost unanimously find that humans played a dominant role.
and
The consensus is of course in the high nineties.
but cut him some slack there, because at least he has the kahunas to try to do the math and try to challenge Cook. So I am specifically asking for your inisghts on how well he did his math. Just for the record. Thanks.)