Claims of 97% consensus on global warming depend on research described as fraudulent and biased
London, 8 September: A new briefing note published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation examines claims made by a great many commentators across the world, including President Obama and Ed Davey, of an overwhelming consensus on climate change. These depend on research that has been subject to public and entirely unrebutted allegations that it is fraudulent.
Although the authors of the research claim to have shown that most climate change papers accept that mankind is responsible for the majority of recent warming, in fact the underlying study shows no such thing.
One senior climatologist described the paper as ‘poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed’. Another researcher called it ‘completely invalid and untrustworthy’, adding that there was evidence of scientific fraud.
Andrew Montford, the author of the paper, said: “It has now been shown beyond doubt that the claims of a 97% consensus on climate change are at best misleading, perhaps grossly so, and possibly deliberately so. It’s high time policymakers stopped citing this appalling study.”
Full paper (pdf) – Fraud, Bias And Public Relations: The 97% ‘Consensus’ And Its Critics
From the PDF:
While Cook’s approach appears to owe more to public relations or propaganda than the scientific method, there is little doubt that there is a scientific consensus, albeit not the one that the authors of the paper have led people to believe exists. The consensus as described by Cook et al. is virtually meaningless and tells us nothing about the current state of scientific opinion beyond the trivial observation that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that human activities have warmed the planet to some unspecified extent. The figure of 97% is entirely discredited, whatever the nature of the consensus.
However, the allegations that have been made against Cook’s study in recent months, with an array of experts criticising the conception, the methodology and the integrity of the research, put his conclusions in a very different light. With a very public and unrebutted allegation of scientific fraud hanging over it, the case for the 97% consensus looks shaky indeed.
Will anyone listen or pay attention?
No.
http://fossilfreeri.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/consensus_gap.jpg
Gary,
In fact 99.9% of scientists agree there has been global warming. They also agree human activity likely caused some of the warming. The problem is that they do not agree that human activity caused most of it. I would guess that about half think human activity caused less than 50% of the warming, and about a quarter think it is a small %, much less than 50%. Even those that think it is over 50% do not have a single piece of strong evidence, just bad models and a lot of personal opinions.
Shame on these voices of defeatism. Get off your lazy asses and post debunkings to news sites and blogs, every day to put real pressure on alarmists that exposure is eminent as news of real fraud spreads. I’m practically alone out there as far as knowledgable skeptics go. On Phys.org, BoingBoing.net, VICE.com, and Gizmodo.com, all full of alarm, and all full of the exact remaining yogurt demographics who are potential converts to clearer thinking.
Yogurt = young
I’m really fighting this iPhone lately on this site. Full site view fails to restore long lines instead of tall thin paragraphs.
Peter, it is not possible to poll all of the world’s scientists to determine a consensus.
I think we should have someone like Josh prepare a simple bright red 97% Cartoon, marked busted, that we can circulate throughout the internet to get the message across to as many people as possible.
We need to fight fire with fire.
Things like this circulate quickly across the Internet.
Also maybe some skeptical organizations would advertise it on TV or in the print Media
Finally if Anthony sold bumper sticker versions we could all expose this on the streets.
Why Not?
When a tree falls in the forest, it doesn’t matter whether or not it makes a sound if everyone with ears to hear is playing deaf.
Or playing golf!
if a tree falls in the forest and there are only liberals, socialist and communists there to hear it, how long will it for them to agree on what scientific “evidence” they can make up to prove that the tree didn’t fall at all it was cut down by a right wing, racist, fascist, capitalist and that’s why it made a sound, because after all 97% of scientist agree that a tree just falling on its own doesn’t make a sound.
We actually have mechanisms to confront power when they say something that is patently wrong. First, there is a petition to the White House requesting a correction of the public record when the President, Secretary of State, etc say something that is patently false. Need to get a lot of signatures, but that should not be a problem. Second, there is a system to demand that the Science Advisor to the President, Prof. Holdren issue a statement of factual correction based on sound science to misleading or untrue statements coming from his office or from the executive branch of the government. Once again we need a popular “uprising” by citizens who know better. WUWT could help to lead such efforts.
123andy,
You are perhaps naive in your thinking. Not intended as an insult but a reflection of your perhaps having more positive experiences than negative ones in life.
Politicians, with few exceptions, never admit mistakes. They adjust any statements by anyone to suit their own needs. Any difficult question is met by giving an answer to something else.
Advisers are there for their political skills rather than any technical skills they might once have had. Agreement with the world view of their boss being the most important.
Their isn’t one citizen in ten who understands what’s presented in this forum or sadly even cares.
Change only comes about through stress. Stress those in charge or the citizens who elect them enough and some may see the light.
All we need to do that is bitter winters, drought, unaffordable energy, Muslims at the gates and brownouts interrupting The View and Honey Bo Bo.
Give it a little time.
It’s easy, 123andy: you just have to go over the peer-reviewed literature and demonstrate they’re wrong. I wonder why people haven’t done that yet…
Alexandre,
There is not a single peer-reviewed piece of literature that presents specific data or analysis claiming to give clear support to the human fingerprint on global warming and it’s danger, that cannot be falsified, or at least shown to be not conclusive. The temperature has increase the last 150 years, but it has gone up and down more previous times. There has not been any increase in storms, tornadoes, fires, flooding, etc. in that and previous periods. CO2 has increased, but it has been much higher in the past, with no bad effect. In fact, the only observed effect of increased CO2 is increases in crops. The present period (about 17 years) of no added heating, put all models to the lie. How can you say the peer-reviewed literature hasn’t been shown to be wrong?
Leonard Weinstein,
If it can be proven wrong in a blog comment like yours, then I’m sure it takes one helluva conspiracy NOT to prove it wrong in the scientific literature.
Alexandre,
It is facile to say “it’s easy”. In the real world, how easy is it for an academic to buck the consensus? There are numerous tales of academics being figuratively crucified for straying of the consensus message. Did you no read the climategate emails? Your posts are either disingenuous or naive.
Alexandre…they have demonstrated that the theory is wrong, but that doesn’t matter to those who want it to be right, including politicians, environmentalists, climate scientists whose jobs depend on it and Western Civilization Apologists (a.k.a. liberals) and the media.
But ‘proving’ the theory is wrong is another matter entirely. I cannot prove there is no Santa Claus or tooth fairy. I can demonstrate how any evidence you supply for the existence of Santa Claus and the tooth fairy is wrong, but I cannot prove they do not exist. If you claim that Santa Claus is real, then it is up to you to provide the convincing evidence. If you want to prove that an AGW crisis is or will be real, likewise, it is up to you to provide the evidence. So far, the evidence for the existence of either Santa Claus or an AGW crisis has not materialized, although Santa Claus may have a little more actual data going for him.
Robert Austin,
Which leads us to the conspiracy theory. Virtually all scientific institution in the world and all the published papers in all major journals agrees with something. Yet “the truth” remains unpublishable because some incredible conspiracy coopted all the above.
It’s considering research grants as an economic power that dwarfs the multi-trillion dollar fossil fuel industry. Very believable.
Jim Clarke,
You’re confusing the problem of proving a negative with refuting a theory through counterevidence.
I suspect the world’s scientific societies didn’t look into this matter in any depth and in a balanced way. They, like the AGU and APS, likely asked for volunteers to evaluate the matter, and mostly warmists stepped forward. Then the IPCC’s claims weren’t cross-examined in depth by anyone–they were just rubber-stamped. Skeptics were likely smeared, behind closed doors, as deniers and worse–making it easier to dismiss them.
Skeptics weren’t organized and have access ten years ago, when these position statements were mostly issued, to the skeptical material now available. And they were mostly part-timers, and so less armed for a debate. Only warmist professors and govt. scientists have boned-up on the topic full-time and have a command of the literature, because that’s what they’re paid to do. And the warmist volunteers include a number of fierce true-believer types who lack the objective scientific spirit and make combatting them to revise the statements a daunting prospect for the ordinary person.
Unfortunately those who disagree are now targeted officially as enemies. A very scary thing, these days.
Andrew Montford “It’s high time policymakers stopped citing this appalling study.”
‘high time’ is not enough. Politicians will continue to use this fraawdulent result when it sutis them, unitl it is froced to be withdrawn.
Thousands of skeptic papers, peer reviewed and published. Regarding the “consensus” I suggest you read the Oregon petition.
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
Here you will find many with full answers to where and when published. Also go here… http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nipccreport.org%2F&ei=ghQPVJ_uNYOLiwL-toHgDQ&usg=AFQjCNE7m3pShFo4zyTfjnj3S7_AM3dWwA&sig2=8_-VWrw7ekim3tO0s19YAQ&bvm=bv.74649129,d.cGE
to find many more….
Did you really think they do not exist?
Peter, from the first link, just on the topic of climate sensitivity, here are papers showing a C.S. less then the IPCC, and not catastrophic at all..
The short-term influence of various concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide on the temperature profile in the boundary layer
(Pure and Applied Geophysics, Volume 113, Issue 1, pp. 331-353, 1975)
– Wilford G. Zdunkowski, Jan Paegle, Falko K. Fye
+0.5 °C
Questions Concerning the Possible Influence of Anthropogenic CO2 on Atmospheric Temperature
(Journal of Applied Meteorology, Volume 18, Issue 6, pp. 822-825, June 1979)
– Reginald E. Newell, Thomas G. Dopplick
* Reply to Robert G. Watts’ “Discussion of ‘Questions Concerning the Possible Influence of Anthropogenic CO2 on Atmospheric Temperature'”
(Journal of Applied Meteorology, Volume 20, Issue 1, pp. 114–117, January 1981)
– Reginald E. Newell, Thomas G. Dopplick
+0.3 °C
CO2-induced global warming: a skeptic’s view of potential climate change (PDF)
(Climate Research, Volume 10, Number 1, pp. 69–82, April 1998)
– Sherwood B. Idso
+0.4 °C
Revised 21st century temperature projections (PDF)
(Climate Research, Volume 23, Number 1, pp. 1–9, December 2002)
– Patrick J. Michaels, Paul C. Knappenberger, Oliver W. Frauenfeld, Robert E. Davis
+1.9 °C
Heat capacity, time constant, and sensitivity of Earth’s climate system (PDF)
(Journal of Geophysical Research, Volume 112, Issue D24, November 2007)
– Stephen E. Schwartz
* Reply to comments by G. Foster et al., R. Knutti et al., and N. Scafetta on “Heat capacity, time constant, and sensitivity of Earth’s climate system” (PDF)
(Journal of Geophysical Research, Volume 113, Issue D15, August 2008)
– Stephen E. Schwartz
+1.9 °C
Aerosol radiative forcing and climate sensitivity deduced from the Last Glacial Maximum to Holocene transition (PDF)
(Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 35, Issue 4, February 2008)
– Petr Chylek, Ulrike Lohmann
* Reply to comment by Andrey Ganopolski and Thomas Schneider von Deimling on “Aerosol radiative forcing and climate sensitivity deduced from the Last Glacial Maximum to Holocene transition” (PDF)
(Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 35, Issue 23, December 2008)
– Petr Chylek, Ulrike Lohmann
+1.3-2.3 °C
Limits on CO2 Climate Forcing from Recent Temperature Data of Earth (PDF)
(Energy & Environment, Volume 20, Number 1-2, pp. 177-189, January 2009)
– David H. Douglass, John R. Christy
+1.1 °C
On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications (PDF)
(Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, Volume 47, Number 4, pp. 377-390, August 2011)
– Richard S. Lindzen, Yong-Sang Choi
+0.7 °C
Climate Sensitivity Estimated from Temperature Reconstructions of the Last Glacial Maximum (PDF)
(Science, Volume 334, Number 6061, pp. 1385-1388, November 2011)
– Andreas Schmittner et al.
+1.7-2.6 °C
Probabilistic Estimates of Transient Climate Sensitivity Subject to Uncertainty in Forcing and Natural Variability (PDF)
(Journal of Climate, Volume 24, Issue 21, pp. 5521-5537, Novmeber 2011)
– Lauren E. Padilla, Geoffrey K. Vallis, Clarence W. Rowley
+1.6 °C
Improved constraints on 21st-century warming derived using 160 years of temperature observations
(Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 39, Number 1, January 2012)
– N. P. Gillett et al.
+1.3-1.8 °C
Bayesian estimation of climate sensitivity based on a simple climate model fitted to observations of hemispheric temperatures and global ocean heat content (PDF)
(Environmetrics, Volume 23, Issue 3, pp. 253–271, May 2012)
– Magne Aldrin et. al.
+1.9 °C
Observational estimate of climate sensitivity from changes in the rate of ocean heat uptake and comparison to CMIP5 models
(Climate Dynamics, April 2013)
– Troy Masters
+1.98 °C
A fractal climate response function can simulate global average temperature trends of the modern era and the past millennium
(Climate Dynamics, Volume 40, Issue 11-12,pp. 2651-2670, June 2013)
– J. H. van Hateren
+1.7-2.3 °C
An objective Bayesian, improved approach for applying optimal fingerprint techniques to estimate climate sensitivity
(Journal of Climate, Volume 26, Issue 19, pp. 7414-7429, October 2013)
– Nicholas Lewis
+1.6 °C
The role of ENSO in global ocean temperature changes during 1955–2011 simulated with a 1D climate model
(Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, Volume 50, Issue 2, pp. 229-237, February 2014)
– Roy W. Spencer, William D. Braswell
+1.3 °C
A minimal model for estimating climate sensitivity
(Ecological Modelling, Volume 276, pp. 80-84, March 2014)
– Craig Loehle
+1.99 °C
Seriously.? Peter you are approaching troll territory. First you challenged me to find just name one paper disputing CAGW. I linked you to “Poptech” because the man took the time to put together an excellent site showing over a thousand papers. It does not matter if you dislike that site, it is irrelevant, for those are genuine papers from PHD scientist, well recognized.
As to Cook and the 97 percent study. Please, do you defend it??
It is propaganda for the brain dead. Specifically regarding the consensus, nothing the alarmist have done has approached the Oregon petition, signed by over thirty thousand scientist, with over 11 thousand PHD’s.
Unlike any meaningless unscientific question about general warming, the Oregon petition specifically states that the overwhelming scientific evidence is that C)2 is not dangerous and net beneficial. So the onerous is on the alarmist to find over thirty thousand scientist who will state that anthropogenic global warming will result in global catastrophe.
You ask “As to Cook and the 97 percent study. Please, do you defend it”.
Peter says…”Yes I do. In the first instance because it fits with my long held views in this matter but David it’s not an article of faith with me.”
========================================================
Please tell me exactly what consensus you think Cook answered. (Hint, Cook does not address a scientific question relevant to CAGW, therefore it is not relevant to public policy in any way.)
Cook has other significant problems, yet those are purely academic, I,e, not relevant for social action as the paper fails to address CAGW.
Peter you also asserted…”The advantage that rated climate papers has over the Oregon Petition is that the papers self select authors qualified in atmospheric science or related areas.”
Sorry, but you will have to prove that assertion. The vast majority of the alarmed “climate scientists” in those deeply flawed scientifically meaningless 97% surveys, are not specialists in the CAUSES of climate change (attribution), but in the impacts of and remedies for such change. Most know zip about atmospheric studies. They may know a little bit about how in such and such region there was a drought, or a flood, and in that region these species were harmed, be it plants, animals, etc, and they then look at some stupid climate model (which according to all the observations are off by a factor of at least three) that says, “It worse then we thought, these events will increase in the future if we do not tax the air you breath now”.
From there they project that frogs will get bigger, or frogs will get smaller, or penguins will get to warm, or polar bears will drown, or forests will burn up, or oceans will rise 20’, or bees will die, or earthquakes will increase (really) ,etc,etc,etc. (This is not hyperbole, as the broken climate science peer review process has produced papers stating all of the above, and a far longer list of absurdity then written here)
Categorically different, the petition states that “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of . . . carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”
We could go on, but the larger point is plain. There is no basis for the claim that 97% of scientists believe that man-made climate change is a dangerous problem.
John Cook, an Australia-based blogger, and some of his friends reviewed abstracts of peer-reviewed papers published from 1991 to 2011. Mr. Cook reported that 97% of those who stated a position explicitly or implicitly suggest that human activity is responsible for some warming.
Cooks paper, which you support, is scientifically meaningless, besides being wrong on many other levels.
Peter,
1. Please quote from Cook et al. (2013) where they self selected authors qualified in atmospheric science or related areas before rating papers.
2. Why did Cook et al. (2013) falsely classify papers believing to know more about them than the authors?
http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/05/97-study-falsely-classifies-scientists.html
3. Can you explain how rating a paper based on Automobile fender designs helps determine a consensus?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=search&s=Life+Cycle+Engineering+Case+Study%3A+Automobile+Fender+Designs
4. Dr. Tol has completely refuted the methodology of Cook et al. (2013) as effectively worthless and he has never done a published consensus study to determine what level one might exist at.
5. How would rating published papers determine a “consensus” since prolific authors would be counted many times?
In 1632 100 percent of all Popes were confident that the universe revolved around the earth. Galileo was arrested and his books banned by the authorities because his views were different.
250 years later Neapolitan Bonaparte was given the powers of a dictator in France by a vote of 3,000,000 to 1500. He had an approval rating of over 99 percent. The power of the pen and the guillotine were proven to be effective consensus tools.
250 years later 97 percent of scientists have found consensus on global warming. I’m not sure what it means, but it seems clear that consensus has a 250 year cycle.
In conclusion, we must act now, because it may be 250 years before we have consensus again. The saddest thing of all is seeing NASA politicized.
http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
If I start a blog and make up some really cool numbers, maybe one day my comments will headline at NASA.
Not meaning to pick nits but it should be Napoleon Bonaparte rather than Neopolitan (ice cream)
And your 250 year cycles require 500 years for 2 cycles but it has only been 382 years since 1632
A good thought except 1632+250+250=2132. This hypothesis needs revision.
I am with you, you proof is undeniable! confiscate everything and kill off everyone we don’t need, Mother Earth is at [stake] the scientist say so!
The likes of Cook and Obama are about “Sound Bites”.
Retractions, corrections, etc, are meaningless. The goal is to the get the soundbite trumpeted across the media waves, then move on. As a result, you will continue to hear about the 97% consensus. …. even after it has been quietly retracted.
Quite true. The world lives by myths, sound bites and factoids, not real knowledge. We have to, because 90% of our brains are unused. 🙂
I know of one case where a public figure had been misquoted by the press. He corrected the record, in public, on CNN. His correction had zero effect, and the false quote is repeated to this day.
“We have to, because 90% of our brains are unused.”
There is no “we”. I use 100 percent of mine (*). YMMV.
* Just not all at the same time.
The idea that we only use 10% of our brain is one of those myths:)
NOT TRUE. The US does protect the borders!!!
Just last month a group of boy scouts were held at gun point when they attempted to enter Alaska.
Obamer is the man.
Sorry, this got posted here by mistake.
Andrew Montford, the author of the paper, said:
Some confusion here. I don’t think you mean to say that Montford is author of the fraudulant paper.
123andy “We actually have mechanisms to confront power when they say something that is patently wrong. First, there is a petition to the White House requesting a correction of the public record when the President, Secretary of State, etc say something that is patently false.”
I think you first need to get the Cook paper withdrawn; only then you can say the 97% claim is “patently false.” Rebuttals, even peer reviewed, don’t really count as long as the Cook paper stands.
It will be used if it has traction. All it would take are a few reporters that would quote this and several other studies that have thoroughly debunked this paper. But they are unwilling because it gives ‘the enemy’ a good argument.
Ideologues are not interested in truth.
But Cook looks snappy in his not see uniform.
IMO, if this is not a scientific paper published in a scientific journal, we should not refer to it as a “paper”, like is done in the title of this article. It is misleading. If we call it a paper, everyone understands we refer to a paper in a scientific journal, and this is not the case. It may be perfectly correct and accurate in its findings, but it is not what the average reader understands that “a paper” is.
So right.
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive.”
Delingpole has an article on this same topic:
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/08/Obama-s-97-Percent-Climate-Consensus-debunked-demolished-staked-through-the-heart
Aren’t “public relations” and “truth” oxymoronic?
I have not seen a better summary of what is wrong with the Cook’ed 97% paper than psychologist and Ph.D. candidate José Duarte’s take down on his blog and posted at WUWT Aug 29, 2014 and Aug. 6, 2014 He is stunned that something so purposely politically biased could be published and defended as science.
I wonder if this 97% is also blamed on global warming?:
“Research reveals approximately 2,200 California blue whales now cruise the eastern Pacific Ocean off the coast from the equator all the way up to the Gulf of Alaska. That constitutes an estimated 97% of historical levels of blue whale populations, according to recently released University of Washington research.”
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-California/2014/09/08/Blue-Whales-Reproducing-Brimming-at-Historic-Levels
Thanks, Andrew Montford and the GWPF. Very good article.
97% of scientists don’t agree on anything at all, and if they did, it doesn’t matter; Science is not a democratic election, it’s about getting it right (so that predictions based on it prove correct).
I have not yet seen any description of the published dates of the papers that Cook used to provide
his data. Problem number one would be that many of the published studies are old – perhaps even before the “pause” became widely known, and therefore of little or no value in determining “current scientific opinions.” The second criticism I have not yet heard is why Cook did not simply telephone interview a sample of climate scientists and ask direct questions, rather than the bizarre, indirect and fuzzy fashion he used. Here we see Cook as an incompetent opinion surveyor because of his brainless technique..
“Here we see Cook as an incompetent…”
On the contrary. He and his pyschologist co-author brilliantly created a “meme” that is known worldwide.
While a more nuanced truth will eventually be known, the lag in truth allows for quite a lot of mischief to take place during the time when the public believes it really is 97 percent of all scientists in any field. That is why so much urgency on “do it now!” exists before the half that still believes it starts to lose faith.
I’m somewhat confused. Either I need more caffeine or perhaps whom posted the article above needs the caffeine?
The subject(s) described distantly with nouns lacking definitive identification completely baffles me as sentences fly by and then include the dear Bishop’s name; surely Andrew’s paper is not the subject discussed?
Is this what is intended?
Or one could instead substitute the author’s initials and date published for each paper described; just to keep us silly obsessive readers straight.
PS I noticed that John Slayton mentioned a similar issue above; but far shorter and more succinctly.
Whoops; my bad, just because I prefer to start at WUWT.
I just was at the Good Bishop’s place and he has a similar article up, only it is clearly described as published by the GWPF; making GWPF the ones with odd written communication skills. Perhaps the article started out in another language and was poorly translated?
It is not unreasonablele to surmise that 75+% of scientists with Ph.D.’s do not agree that CAGW is true. In other words, they do not believe that extra atmospheric CO2 is the preponderant cause of dangerous runaway global warming — since all the actual evidence shows that this is not the case. Is there no way we can put paid to the consensus nonsence and actually prove by a proper study or proepr surevey — that this is ths case. Most physicists, geologists, and other scientists and engineers — with graduate degrees – know to me prsioanly fall ito this category.
You know what really bugs me about the Cook et al paper? The way they put everything in a single bag, use yes or no answers in such a grey area. I happen to think green house gases cause SOME warming. It looks to me that about half of the warming experienced in the last 100 years may have been caused by us. Not all of it was CO2. Some of it was methane, a huge portion of which was being emitted in the Soviet Union before it collapsed.
I’m not one of Cook’s Scientists, and I didn’t get my papers read to see what I thought, because I don’t write about the climate. But as Joe Duarte pointed out in his blog, the paper reported on research which didn’t hold water. That thing leaked like a sieve.
And then they get their propaganda rolling and build to the crescendo of lies we hear coming from Obama. I’m so upset at the President for spouting so much nonsense and wrecking foreign policy the way he does next time I’m voting Republican. Somebody has to get punished for this load of b..ls…t
how is this a new paper? It is a briefing note from a think-tank that has not been peer reviewed.
97% of the time, alarmists come up with statistics that support alarmism.
?? I would say about three percent of the time; 97 % of the time they come up with models that predict disaster, but these fail about 100 % of the time.
Alexandre
September 8, 2014 at 9:37
am
It’s easy, 123andy: you just
have to go over the peer-
reviewed literature and
demonstrate they’re
wrong. I wonder why
people haven’t done that
yet…
_____
but ‘Alexandre’
‘that peer-reviewed literature’ WAS NEVER been demonstrated to be RIGHT !
That’s why the ongoing presentations of FAKED CONSENSUS claims.
there’s a lot of spin doctos in the US I hear – and I enjoy watching You: that really does it!
Regards – Hans
read ‘spin doctors’; thx
Surely if 97% of climate scientists agree with man made climate change they are in no position to carry out an objective peer review and we have by their own admission a right to an open public trial of both them for their integrity and and their work for its accuracy.
Other branches of science like the laws of motion and thermodynamics have even higher levels of agreement and are still willing to even let school children repeat the experiments in class to demonstrate the validity of the science. Even a trivial test shows a near zero correlation between theory and practice in the case of climate theory .
– – – – – – – – –
#1 – I think Andrew Montford’s premise is his statement ”. . . there is little doubt that there is a scientific consensus . . .”
#2 – I think Andrew Montford’s conclusion is his statement ”. . . [Cook et al 2013] tells us nothing about the current state of scientific opinion beyond the trivial observation that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that human activities have warmed the planet to some unspecified extent.”
#3 – I think Andrew Montford’s applied reasoning that links his premise to his conclusion are these two critical analyses/ assessments: ”. . . with an array of experts criticising the [Cook et al 2013] conception, the methodology and the integrity of the research . . . and ”With a very public and unrebutted allegation of scientific fraud hanging over it [Cook et al 2013] . . .”.
My view about the overall argument in Montford’s paper is that he is correct in both his applied reasoning (#3 above) and his conclusion (#2 above) however the premise (#1 above) needs to be modified to be consistent with the conclusion. I explain why. Because the conceptual idea of ‘scientific consensus’ in his premise is not necessarily commensurate with the conceptual idea of ‘current state of scientific opinion’ in his conclusion, then his paper’s overall argument is confused. To remove confused argument then Andrew Montford needs to define what his concept of ‘scientific consensus’ was in his premise versus what his concept of ‘current state of scientific opinion’ in his conclusion.
Does Andrew Montford conceptually equate his words “scientific consensus” with his words ‘‘current state of scientific opinion”? I think it would be a little problematic if he does because in that case it would explicitly yield that opinions would form scientific consensus which does not address a views that observationally verified positions form scientific consensus. There should be clarification.
John