From Roger Pielke Senior’s Climate Science Blog. There is an Associated Press [AP] news article today by Dina Cappiello, Seth Borenstein and Kevin Freking titled “Poll: US belief in global warming is cooling”.
In this article the reporters perpetuate the myth that
“Though there are exceptions, the vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is occurring and that the primary cause is a buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal.”
This is not true and is a case of the media seeking to make up news.
We have already documented that a significant minority of climate scientists do not consider greenhouse gases as the primary cause for global warming, and, more generally, cause climate change; e.g. see
Brown, F., J. Annan, and R.A. Pielke Sr., 2008: Is there agreement amongst climate scientists on the IPCC AR4 WG1?
and
National Research Council, 2005: Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties. Committee on Radiative Forcing Effects on Climate Change, Climate Research Committee, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Division on Earth and Life Studies, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 208 pp.
In the coming month, we will be presenting another article that documents that the AP authors are erroneous in their claim “that the vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is occurring and that the primary cause is a buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal.”
If the reporters want to be balanced in their presentations, rather than lobbyists and advocates, they would persue the validity of their claim. So far, however, they have failed in this journalistic role.
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On the other hand, the scientists involved have a motivation to find AGW evidence, but not the other way around. There are grants dedicated to this, so to keep their jobs they better publish papers in favor of AGW. There is no money in finding no evidence for AGW, so it’s less likely to be published.
See http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/23798/?a=f
“President Obama said that climate-change skeptics are being moved to the margins, but that a “more dangerous” problem is the myth “that there’s little or nothing we can do–it’s pessimism.”
You are all marginalized. Obama says so. Also there is still hope for cap and trade. There’s that hope and change for you.
Does anyone here know a REAL scientist??? Does such a person even exist??? Except for Andrew, of course, who is undoubtedly the REAL DEAL and should be shortlisted for the next Nobel (Physics/Chemistry/Peace… whatever!)… we just need to get enough of us to write to the committee in Sweden, and they are then obliged to take the recommendation seriously! (And I should know, having successfully predicted the last 7 physics winners, althoughonly 5 of the last chemistry Nobels.)
Comrade Doug, that this is self-evident and obvious to me, but not to the believers, is something that I find almost impossible to understand. I’m not the brightest…!
Shurley Knot (14:20:39) :
“Sorry good people but a scientific consenses is not like a a shared system of political beliefs or the vote. A majority of conservative voters against AWG is a herd. A majority of scientists for AGW is simply the truth as we currently know it. Sorry!”
It’s a good thing this ended with “sorry”, I too would apologise for putting forward so many non sequiturs in such quick succession. Let’s take them in turn.
“[A] scientific consensus is not like a shared system of political beliefs”. A scientific consensus is nothing more or less than a number of scientists who believe the same thing. It is, therefore, just like a shared system of belief in anything else. That the subject of belief is the correctness of a scientific theory or hypothesis does not make a scientific consensus different in substance from any other consensus.
“[A] scientific consensus is not like … the vote.” Isn’t it? Isn’t it just a vote on a single topic?
“A majority of conservative voters against AGW is a herd.” That can be tested by substituting “socialist”, “Christian”, “fascist”, “Hindu”, “Male”, “communist”, “female” or, indeed anything else, for “conservative” and asking whether it changes the substance of the sentence. It does not. Therefore one can simply omit “conservative” and the sentence retains its meaning:- “A majority of voters against AGW is a herd.” Maybe someone else can read something positive into this, to me it is just an insult. Although it does shed light on the frame of mind of the person who says it.
“A majority of scientists for AGW is simply the truth as we currently know it.” That might or might not be so, but it cannot be relevant to anything.
A majority of one group against the catastrophic AGW theory is a herd, a majority of another group in favour is not. Hmmm, I’ll have to think about that.
I’m tipping the majority of climate scientist are not scientist at all but mathmagicians! The last time I checked no one had made a model of earth with an appropriate atmosphere and performed a controlled experiment on the effect of adding CO2. Of course real scientist have never had a vote so how they came to a consensus without asking anyone is a mystery, oh hang on its just a flat out lie!
So if the vast majority of climate scientist believe in AGW and that the AGW hypothesis is proven wrong, that implies that the vast majority of climate scientists are incompetent. Then, the vast majority of climate scientists should be fired!
Phillip Bratby (14:10:08) :
“. . . the Clive James 10min talk about scepticism and concensus is very well worth listening to . . .”
Indeed, very good stuff.
Mt Dad, an extremely intelligent and dare I say wise man, used to say many decades ago that you can preface just about any statement you want to make, however ridiculous, with:
“Many scientists believe…”
True then… still true now. Equally true, he thought, that if someone starts with those, or similar, words that you can discount whatever they say next.
Some things just never change.
Would the AP write “Though there are exceptions, the vast majority of voters voted for…” when writing about any election in the past 50 years? At least there are widely accepted numbers for most elections, but at what percentage would one say “vast majority”? 60%? 70%? 80%? 90%? 95%? 99%?
Shurley Knot (13:41:26) :
So what IS a vast majority?
better than 95% of the peer reviewed literature.
Einstein had a quote about that, when 95% of the papers in German journals rejected to his theory of relativity. Something like, “Why so many? Only one is necessary.”
I would start off by demanding or establishing a definition of “climate scientist”.
AFAIK, there is no such thing as a “climate scientist” per se. Those who call themselves this are usually physicists, astrophysicists, biologists, paleontologists, etc.
Ask Hansen or Suzuki to derive a PMP and I’ll bet they won’t have a clue.
DEFINITIONS, PLEASE
“the vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is occurring”
We really should just call this the Warmists Pater Noster, combined with a Genuflection. In imitation of a faithful Muslim, True Believers are required to face the North Pole 5 times a day while reciting this mantra.
They MUST do this or their very Salvation is in jeopardy, you see.
“Understanding E = mc2
Ed. note: A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hearing William Tucker speak at a conference in Washington, DC. His explanation of E = mc2 was the best I had ever heard. Even better, Tucker explained how Einstein’s equation applied to renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydro. His lecture was a revelation. It showed that the limits of renewable energy have nothing to do with politics or research dollars, but rather with simple mathematics. During a later exchange of emails with Tucker, I praised his lecture and suggested he write an article that explained E = mc2 and its corollary, E = mv2.
To my delight, he informed me that he’d already written such an essay and he agreed that we could publish it in Energy Tribune.
I love this essay. And I’m proud that Tucker has allowed us to run it.
-Robert Bryce”
“E = mc2
When I was in college, I took a course in the great political philosophers. We studied them in order – Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx.
In my mind, I had placed them with the historical eras they had influenced – Hobbes and the 18th century monarchs, Locke and the American Revolution, Rousseau and 19th century Romanticism, Kant and the 19th century nation-states, Marx and 20th century Communism.
Then one day I saw a time-line illustrating when they had all lived and died. To my astonishment, each had lived a hundred years before I had placed them in history. The implicated seemed clear. “It takes about a hundred years for a new idea to enter history.”
Almost exactly 100 years ago, Albert Einstein posited the equation E = mc2 in his “Special Theory of Relativity.” The equation suggested a new way of describing the origins of chemical energy and suggested another source of energy that at that point was unknown in history – nuclear energy. Nuclear power made its unfortunate debut in history 40 years later in the form of an atomic bomb. But 100 years later, Americans have not quite yet absorbed the larger implications of Einstein’s equation – a new form of energy that can provide almost unlimited amounts of power with a vanishingly small impact on the environment.
E = mc2. Who has not heard of it? Even Mariah Carey named her last album after it. “E” stands for energy, “m” for mass, and “c” is the speed of light – that’s easy enough. But what does it really mean? (The answer is not “relativity.”)”
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=2469
H/T:
“We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/012496.html#comments
Seth Borenstein is the worst. Didn’t need to read past the by-line.
Define scientist. Is it important if a cancer research scientist say he affirms AGW? He’s a scientist!
Phillip Bratby (14:10:08) :
“. . . the Clive James 10min talk about scepticism and concensus is very well worth listening to . . .”
Excellent.
If you can’t get it on BBC iPlayer (outside UK). It is reproduced here in full:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/views/a_point_of_view/
Barry Foster (11:41:02) :
OT. Lower troposphere in freefall at the moment http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps+002
Oh B.S.
The weather cools, and you call it a free fall.
Why don’t you just call it a death spiral?
This may not be a consensus but it seems to be a lot of scientific organizations that have said climate change is happening due to CO2 from mankind:
• American Association for the Advancement of Science
• American Chemical Society
• American Geophysical Union
• American Institute of Biological Sciences
• American Meteorological Society
• American Society of Agronomy
• American Society of Plant Biologists
• American Statistical Association
• Association of Ecosystem Research Centers
• Botanical Society of America
• Crop Science Society of America
• Ecological Society of America
• Natural Science Collections
• Alliance Organization of Biological Field Stations
• Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
• Society of Systematic Biologists
• Soil Science Society of America
• University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
Not to mention the National Academy of Sciences and The Royal Acadamy of Sciences.
Maybe not a “consensus” but that’s a helluva lot of science organanizations. Of course they all work for the illuminati so who’s counting right?
Mildwarmer (15:41:31) :
Does anyone here know a REAL scientist???
No offense but I’ve often wondered that about many of the posters here at WUWT. Where are the (climate) scientists?
FYI: I’m not a scientist (I’m an economist) but I do know several scientists.
Jody (18:01:50):
“Does anyone here know a REAL scientist???”
Um… Jody, did you notice who the article was about that you commented on?
And FYI, no officer in those organizations that you cut ‘n’ pasted will debate their position. None of them.
Grant money and other incentives go a long way toward buying endorsements and positions.
Yes, Dr. Pielke is a “pureblood” climatologist.
But, say, Steve McIntyre is not a climate scientist. But he sure as heck has had a very important impact on climate science. Anthony, whose observations have also had made a big bang, is a meteorologist. (Come to think of it, James Hansen is not a climate scientist, either.)
Climate science, being both immensely complex and complicated, is quite interdisciplinary. It even requires historians and archaeologists.
One would think that the tekkies over at CNET would be green to the core, and Obama cheerleaders. Not so, as this article and the comments included therein demonstrate. This was about Obama’s speech at MIT about green energy, etc.. http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10381804-54.html . Maybe there is hope after all. 🙂
Just a heads up, there’s at least 4 recognizable magnetic regions on the solar disk facing Earth right now and one of them is starting to produce sunspots. The end of solar minimum is much more likely than ever before.
Smokey, sorry for the confusion….I was talking about the comment posters not the article posters.
I cut ‘n’pasted, sure, but it doesn’t dispute the fact that all those orginizations back AGW. Whether or not they’ll debate is debatable.
As you say grant money and endorsments will go a long ways, No doubt, But as Evan points out Steve McIntyre is debating the “science” of global warming. It seems to me if I were a scientist in this field and I wanted to make a name for myself I’d be trying to prove AGW wrong whenever I could. Certainly the republican party would endorse that right? Unfortunately it seems that every single scientific org. is finding evidence that supports AGW.
I just don’t buy the conspiracy theory b/c there is too much money out there to support opposition to the AGW theory so it doesn’t make sense.