Consensus is irrelevant in science. There are plenty of examples in history where everyone agreed and everyone was wrong.
While I admit to being quite surprised they’d allow him equal time, I doubt he’ll win any converts as much of the readership thinks 97% consensus is a fact, and they don’t really want to hear anything different. Tol writes:
Most of the papers they studied are not about climate change and its causes, but many were taken as evidence nonetheless.
…
Dana Nuccitelli writes that I “accidentally confirm the results of last year’s 97% global warming consensus study”. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I show that the 97% consensus claim does not stand up.
At best, Nuccitelli, John Cook and colleagues may have accidentally stumbled on the right number.
Read Tol’s essay here: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2014/jun/06/97-consensus-global-warming
What some comments are related to not regulating the coal and oil industries. Well UK did in the 1950s by not burning Anthracite (black coal) in Greater London, to stop SMOGS. And the rest of England now burns wood or oil. Gas as well I suspect. London is near the Thames, and fogs and mists keep pollution down rather than let them escape. We had a big smoke free zone here in Armidale some years ago, and when I drove down into the valley of Armidale early morning one often saw a brown line at the bottom of a white mist or fog. But in summer this was not the case.
Woot woot.
Tol’s dedication is impressive.
:At best they may have stumbled onto the right number???
Stop it! They may boost him to a regular column at this rate.
There never ever been a consensus of 97% scientists among scholars who knows and live up to Theories of Science.
But what’s worse for those who still believes that academic titles no matter in what subject or a high degree or a Professor’s title show proof when and if a concensus ever happens,
what’s worse for them is that they all show complete lack of knowledge of differences in using Fallacies in argumentation which they show above all, on one side and true facts leading up to valid arguments permitting a sound conclusions. One isn’t the other and vice versa……
They’re starting to scratch each other’s eyes out now.
When a single discordant note is heard in that hallowed choir that is The Guardian, you sense that end times are nearing for CAGW!
Siberian Hussey and Rusty Bed-springs won’t like the dissent, they won’t like it one little bit!
This is Dana Nutticelli responding in the comments to Tol’s Guardian Article!
“Of course he wrote it himself, along with the rest of our co-authors. And we couldn’t get it peer-reviewed because the journal only allowed us 1000 words to respond. That wasn’t enough to even scratch the surface of the blunders in Tol’s error-riddled, Gremlin-infested joke of a paper.
Take it up with Energy Policy. We tried to get them to peer-review the whole thing and they refused to giev us more than 1000 words. Tells you something about the journal, doesn’t it”
You can tell that the Warmist Brethren are furious possibly even recursively so!
There is a sociopathic consensus.
The backstory at Tol’s own blog richardtol.blogspot.com gets even more interesting.
The real scientists are the ones who knew better than to reply to Cook’s survey.
A while back at Nottingham University’s – Making Science Public project:
Prof Mike Hulme contributed his thoughts on Cook and Nuccitellis’ 97% paper..
Hulme:
“The “97% consensus” article is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed. It obscures the complexities of the climate issue and it is a sign of the desperately poor level of public and policy debate in this country that the energy minister should cite it. It offers a similar depiction of the world into categories of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to that adopted in Anderegg et al.’s 2010 equally poor study in PNAS: dividing publishing climate scientists into ‘believers’ and ‘non-believers’. It seems to me that these people are still living (or wishing to live) in the pre-2009 world of climate change discourse. Haven’t they noticed that public understanding of the climate issue has moved on?” – Mike Hulme
http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/2013/07/23/whats-behind-the-battle-of-received-wisdoms/#comment-182401
Mike Hulme expanded on his thoughts we he was questioned about them..
Hulme:
my point is that the Cook et al. study is hopelessly confused as well as being largely irrelevant to the complex questions that are raised by the idea of (human-caused) climate change. As to being confused, in one place the paper claims to be exploring “the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW” and yet the headline conclusion is based on rating abstracts according to whether “humans are causing global warming”.
These are two entirely different judgements.
The irrelevance is because none of the most contentious policy responses to climate change are resolved *even if* we accept that 97.1% of climate scientists believe that “human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW” (which of course is not what the study has shown).
And more broadly, the sprawling scientific knowledge about climate and its changes cannot helpfully be reduced to a single consensus statement, however carefully worded. The various studies – such as Cook et al – that try to enumerate the climate change consensus pretend it can and that is why I find them unhelpful – and, in the sprit of this blog, I would suggest too that they are not helpful for our fellow citizens.” – Mike Hulme
http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/2013/07/23/whats-behind-the-battle-of-received-wisdoms/#comment-182771
I put the above in a comment at the Guardian, reproduced here lest it disappears (as happens on occasion under Dana’s articles)
http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/36646747
Why should we listen to Dr. Tol? He’s not a climate scientist.
Is a /sarc off tag needed?
Sandi says:
June 7, 2014 at 12:38 am
The real scientists are the ones who knew better than to reply to Cook’s survey.
They are the cowards that allow the scam to continue.
Hilarious! Some of Dana’s comments are getting removed under the Guardian’s moderation policies. He’s clearly not a happy boy.
“Stephen Richards says:
June 7, 2014 at 1:08 am
They are the cowards that allow the scam to continue.”
There is nothing like free gravy. Gravy can make anything, even crap, taste wonderful!
Why have I got this feeling that Dana and The Guardian will part ways in the not too distant future?
Dana Nuccitelli is trolling the heck out of the comments section, and I believe I detect Cook running a sock puppet there too.
Hushbunny said
“What some comments are related to not regulating the coal and oil industries. Well UK did
in the 1950s by not burning Anthracite (black coal) in Greater London, to stop SMOGS.
And the rest of England now burns wood or oil. ”
Actually the clean air act of 1956 was aimed at preventing the burning of lignite or brown coal within designated smoke control areas. Outside those mainly urban areas you could burn anything you liked. Anthracite and coke largely replaced brown coal until natural gas from the North Sea came along in the early 70’s. The burning of solid fuel, oil and wood is pretty much restricted to rural areas where gas is not available. Anthracite is.s still an approved fuel in smoke control areas.
Tol : “In his defence, Nuccitelli argues that I do not dispute their main result. Nuccitelli fundamentally misunderstands research. Science is not a set of results. Science is a method. If the method is wrong, the results are worthless.”
Well that takes out 97% of climate “science”.
I wonder what the correlation of the remaining 3% is with the 3% that did not agree with Nutterchelli and cartoonist Cook’s parody of the scientific process.
The 9% claim is BS form the top to the bottom , it fails so badly it cannot even met basic requirements of logic nor maths . In any other area of science would be consider that evidenced that is equal to ‘nine out of ten cats prefer ‘ would be an unacceptable joke. But in climate ‘science’ its consider unquestionable truth.
The only good news bring that such a joke of an area must be easy to get degrees in , as long as you make sure you support ‘the cause ‘ , so at least its students get an easy life. Although in the future when the ‘the cause ‘ falls they got no hope of getting any other type of work in science perhaps they could try to be party clowns?
According to Richard Tol, the Guardian allowed him a right to reply to two previous hatchet jobs on him (Four others are under investigation by the Press Complaints Commission).
Even then, the Guardian heavily edited his reply.
Tol’s full reply is here.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/06/07/richard-tol-responds-to-guardian-hatchet-jobs/
Consensus is irrelevant in science. There are plenty of examples in history where everyone agreed and everyone was wrong.
And for everyone one of those instances, there are many, many more where everyone agreed and everyone was right. This quotation from Bertrand Russell sums it up:
A good discussion of real skepticism here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/12/how-to-be-a-real-sceptic/
Tol neglected to point out how old a lot (most?) of these papers were. Like who cares what
someone believed 20 years ago? Not even the IPCC still believes what it used to.
Cook is cartoonist by trade. What do cartoonists do with a subject.
They take oddities and defects, distort and exaggerate them to create a caricature of the subject, usually to comical effect.
This is what Cook has done with climate science. His work is a parody of climate science.
As such is it probably insightful and amusing.
What is rather troubling is some feeble minded individuals seem to mistake for the real thing, completely missing the cutting satire intended by the artist.
Also important to keep in mind remarks from Tol’s conclusion in his paper:
“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.”
91% or 97%, even in Tol’s eyes it is still a consensus that is probably correct, despite the examples from history where “everyone agreed and everyone is wrong”.