You have to wonder how somebody can write (let alone read) the claims made here in the press release by Cook with a straight face. It gives a window into the sort of things we can expect from his borked survey he recently foisted on climate websites which seems destined to either fail, or get spun into even stranger claims. For example, compare these two passages of the press release:
Exhibit 1:
From the 11 994 papers, 32.6 per cent endorsed AGW, 66.4 per cent stated no position on AGW, 0.7 per cent rejected AGW and in 0.3 per cent of papers, the authors said the cause of global warming was uncertain.
Exhibit 2:
“Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary.”
And from that he gets a consensus? What is he smoking? Try getting a quorum or winning an election with those numbers. About that 0.7 percent, this might be a good time to remind everyone of this Climategate moment.
In July 2004, referring to Climate Research having published a paper by “MM”, thought to be Ross McKitrick and Pat Michaels, and another paper by Eugenia Kalnay and Ming Cai, Phil Jones emailed his colleagues saying:
“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [TRENBERTH] and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
This below comes from a pre-press release, published first by Steve Milloy of Junkscience.com. It isn’t on the IOP website yet, nor is Cook’s paper. It seems both are scheduled for May 16th. Since there is no embargo time listed that I’m aware of, and it is in the wild now, it is fair game.
===============================================================
Study reveals scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change
A comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed articles on the topic of global warming and climate change has revealed an overwhelming consensus among scientists that recent warming is human-caused.
The study is the most comprehensive yet and identified 4000 summaries, otherwise known as abstracts, from papers published in the past 21 years that stated a position on the cause of recent global warming – 97 per cent of these endorsed the consensus that we are seeing man-made, or anthropogenic, global warming (AGW)
Led by John Cook at the University of Queensland, the study has been published today, Thursday 16 May, in IOP Publishing’s journal Environmental Research Letters.
The study went one step further, asking the authors of these papers to rate their entire paper using the same criteria. Over 2000 papers were rated and among those that discussed the cause of recent global warming, 97 per cent endorsed the consensus that it is caused by humans.
The findings are in stark contrast to the public’s position on global warming; a 2012 poll* revealed that more than half of Americans either disagree, or are unaware, that scientists overwhelmingly agree that the Earth is warming because of human activity.
John Cook said: “Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary.
“There is a gaping chasm between the actual consensus and the public perception. It’s staggering given the evidence for consensus that less than half of the general public think scientists agree that humans are causing global warming.
“This is significant because when people understand that scientists agree on global warming, they’re more likely to support policies that take action on it.”
In March 2012, the researchers used the ISI Web of Science database to search for peer-reviewed academic articles published between 1991 and 2011 using two topic searches: “global warming” and “global climate change”.
After limiting the selection to peer-reviewed climate science, the study considered 11 994 papers written by 29 083 authors in 1980 different scientific journals.
The abstracts from these papers were randomly distributed between a team of 24 volunteers recruited through the “myth-busting” website skepticalscience.com, who used set criteria to determine the level to which the abstracts endorsed that humans are the primary cause of global warming. Each abstract was analyzed by two independent, anonymous raters.
From the 11 994 papers, 32.6 per cent endorsed AGW, 66.4 per cent stated no position on AGW, 0.7 per cent rejected AGW and in 0.3 per cent of papers, the authors said the cause of global warming was uncertain.
Co-author of the study Mark Richardson, from the University of Reading, said: “We want our scientists to answer questions for us, and there are lots of exciting questions in climate science. One of them is: are we causing global warming? We found over 4000 studies written by 10 000 scientists that stated a position on this, and 97 per cent said that recent warming is mostly man made.”
Visitors to the skepticalscience.com website also raised the funds required to allow the study to be accessible to the public.
Daniel Kammen, editor-in-chief of the journal Environmental Research Letters, said: “”This paper demonstrates the power of the Environmental Research Letters open access model of operation in that authors working to advance our knowledge of climate science and to engage in a public discourse can guarantee all interested parties have the opportunity to review the same data and findings.”
###
* http://www.pewresearch.org/2013/04/02/climate-change-key-data-points-from-pew-research/
From Thursday 16 May, this paper can be downloaded from http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article
Right or wrong, it’s irrelevant. This paper will make the news. The 50 to 1 project, for example, won’t.
Consensus at 100% is as pointless as consensus at 1%. It isn’t science at any level. Because Cook doesn’t get this Cook is an idiot. A flaming giggling idiot. In another life he was probably a cartoonist where anything can happen.
Here is how we know the truth regarding consensus: If the consensus were 100% against him he would plead the worthlessness of consensus as not being science. There can be no doubt regarding that. None. If there were not a nutter like Cook out there the greens would have to invent him. I’m running out of nice things to say.
Richard, “Eli Rabett” does not believe the “secondary” questionnaire will even be analyzed. There is no second paper in the pipe. There will be far too many questions on the first paper.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/sks-survey-over-haiku/#comment-112920
davidmhoffer says:
May 14, 2013 at 10:29 pm
Visitors to the skepticalscience.com website also raised the funds required to allow the study to be accessible to the public.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
How much does it cost to publish a pdf on an existing web site? Wow, they may have raised a penny!
er….I think they SPENT a penny. Lew would be flushed!
Does he have a list of the 84 peer reviewed papers in his portfolio rejecting AGW outright and the futher 36 items stating cause of warming to be uncertain?
Now, that would be a treasure house to link to.
Exactly.
Some may be convinced in ‘warming’ – but rational, morally correct, logically thinking people who seek the truth will obviously only be convinced when we look outside and see the proof. People are entitled to believe in all sorts of things (incl. Vegetarianism, Promiscuity, UFO’s, God, Gun Laws, European Union and what the Guardian Newspaper says is right), but show us the evidence and we may reconsider our opinion.
I don’t think I can tollerate much more ‘warming’ than we’ve been experiencing of late – after all, so far this year, the UK has experienced really gorgeous sunny ‘spring-like’ days on THREE occasions. Wow. On this day last year on 15th May, we had a hailstorm. This year on 15th May it is cold, dark, overcast and miserably wet with squalls of driving rain. Daffodils are unusually still in bloom. The lawn has only had 2 proper cuts this year and the blossom on our apple tree is struggling to open. So far this year, we have had thirty days with either hail, sleet or snow. It has been the coldest February/March in East Midlands/East Anglia since 1883.
In contrast, for the four consecutive years between 1996 and 1999, I remember that every outdoor team building course I delivered in March/April had beautifully mild and sunny days with delegates wearing summer T-Shirts. The last totally successful and abundant vegetable garden we grew was the Spring/Summer of 2007. Since then, crops have struggled annually for the last six years – whilst weeds (especially stinging-nettles and dandelions) are more prolific than I can ever remember.
Should the weather somehow return to how it was in the late 90’s, I expect we’ll be told by a body of self-righteous tree-huggers that this is again ‘proof’ of CAGW – as it’s much warmer than the cold depressing weather we’re experiencing right now (even with the slightly higher atmospheric amounts of CO2). In the meantime, I’ll make my own mind up based on what I see outside from our window.
pat says:
May 14, 2013 at 8:39 pm
australians are good at “fuzzy math”. the federal budget announced yesterday is a case in point. well-known CAGW-advocate Tristan Edis tries his best to spin the CO2 elements, while hoping the EU “fixes” the carbon market, at precisely the moment the EU is raiding the oil majors for price-fixing!
Well they are chipping in 7B euros via the IMF to help them out…..maybe it’ll stoke the carbon price?
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/australias-7-billion-euro-contributions-very-small-swan-20120422-1xens.html
“LEWD” LEWANDOWSKY AND JOHN COOK-THE-BOOKS
————————-An Eye For An Eye————————
Their time of the month is all of the time
Two screaming shrews too obsessed to observe
Even the modest decorums
Of a pseudo-science
Faux posers, like drag queens on a runway
Theirs the “Fashionism” of the future?
Hissy fit data deviates
Who would dress our children
Projective upon all whom they survey
Theirs a deconstructive analysis
“Souls undone undoing others”
Perverts taught and teaching
The “left” judges all poetry by its subject matter. Write poems about things approved of by the “left” and you are announced a “great poet”. ALL of the “state poetry” produced under Communism has never been considered worthy of translation into English (except to mock it) so it is unfamiliar to us in the West — but a good approximation of it can be found in what our Western academically employed poets are producing.today. Horrible politically correct stuff!
Just as poetry must serve leftist ideology so also must science. Science must follow the party line — or it is not science. Truth is predetermined and the data must be made to fit that “predetermined truth. Sadly Lysenkoism is alive and well in the West.
And so must you follow the party line — or you are not a human being. You can be smeared and lied about and de-humanized — ultimately there are “camps” awaiting primitives like you.
As to my poem above about “Lewd” Lewandowsky and John Cook-The-Books? To capture them I went to where they live — the gutter. I am simply dealing with them on their level. Poetically I feel fallen and dirty but otherwise I enjoyed it. Poetically i took a little trip to the wild side.
Eugen WR Gallun
That is far easier to do when the insiders in the peer review system don’t act as gate keepers. That isn’t the case, though.
“… and whether pigs have wings.”
Consensus by cool aid.
Appreciating wine is a good analogy of believing in AGW.
In the mid 80’s, I was told that 1982 was an exceptional year for claret. Our son was born in 1982, so, believing in what I was told, I popped in to Fortnum and Masons in London and paid £90 for a 2nd growth Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou from the Saint Julien region of Bordeaux.
I stored the bottle in a dark corner under the stairs until, on his 18th birthday, we opened the bottle (now worth three times the price I originally paid in the 80’s). After allowing the claret to breath, we carefully poured ourselves a glass of this very special deep-coloured, powerful, ripe, exquisitely well-balanced wine. We smelled the aroma and took a big mouthful.
It was crap.
Sampling bias. Sampling bias. Sampling bias. 100% of 3 responses indicated Sampling bias.
We jest but don’t forget there are billions at stake in this ‘AGW’ game. Lives even. Which makes the work of Anthony and his ilk all the more vital.
Cook’s use of the term ‘scientist’ is an affront to all real scientists in this instance.
‘Grant Addicted Individuals’ would be much better, or perhaps the time-proven ‘Natural Climate Change Deniers’.
Nevertheless, the devil is in the detail: Most sceptics believe that there is such a thing as AGW, but that it is largely unquantifiable and of minor consequence. However, the continued health of the Climate Warming Industry depends on being able to muddle the scary concept of CAGW (which clearly does not exist) with the mildly interesting and inconsequential one of AGW.
Isn’t there any way we can stop people from trying to sell statistics as science?
Were those attribution studies that examined the cause, or mostly merely impact or mitigation studies that merely endorsed (parroted) the man-made / consensus conclusion? If the latter, which is likely, then So What?
GeeJam says:
May 14, 2013 at 11:52 pm
The MET show UK May CET temperature anomaly to 7th as +1.3C whilst Philip Eden, using a set of sites sympathetic to those used for the bulk of the record, shows +0.5C.
Despite your observations of a remarkably cool month so far, the MET show an anomaly of +0.3C to the 13th May (Eden has yet to update). http://www.climate-uk.com/index.html
Here in Scotland today, the slopes at Aviemore are still open to skiers and snowboarders, and they are actively encouraging visitors in numbers.
How tiresomely ignorant and devoid of science. If I recall correctly, after Einstein had fled from Germany and the Nazis, he was informed that a hundred ‘Nazi’ scientists had come forward to debunk his eminent work on relativity. His comment: “they only needed one paper.”
…doomed to repeat the mistakes of history…quite a lot in common with the book burning crowd.
PS: Were those attribution studies that examined the cause, or mostly merely impact or mitigation studies that merely endorsed (parroted) the man-made / consensus conclusion? If the latter, which is likely, then So What?
Other questions re the attribution studies:
1. How significant did they rate the manmade contribution?
2. In recent years, as warming has stalled, has this man-has-done-it rating declined (and by how much), and/or do fewer papers make this attribution?
3. How many papers are alarmist—i.e., foresee the warming continuing or accelerating in the future from the manmade contribution?
4. Has the alarmism of recent attribution papers increased or decreased? (We know that major recent papers have dialed back the climate sensitivity number.)
@intrepid wanders
I hope you’re right.
Being an Australian, I apologise unreservedly to all of Anthony’s readers for having this cr*p foisted upon them.
“0.7 per cent rejected AGW ”
Looks like more untruthful claims, since the question about the content of the paper abstracts (not the papers) was whether it was judged to “minimise” AGW, not whether it “rejected” it.
No author is likely to state that his paper minimises anything, since that word implies bias and an attempt to play down something.
This is Cook’s own bias showing: for him AGW is FACT and anything that does not promote it must be “minimising” it rather than making a fair scientific assessment and concluding it is of minor importance.
So he asks one question, then reports the answers having re-interpreted the question. As such he is misrepresenting the results of his survey.
I note in passing that his original claim of 22000 papers is now down to 11500. Though that is surely way in excess of the number of papers for which he obtained an authors self-assessment and is not a truthful figure of the “random” selection of papers sent to survey respondents.
Leading questions, falsely reported responces. Looks like he’s Cooked the results.
32.6% endorsed human-caused global warming.
67.4% did not endorse human-caused global waming or stated no position.
That is the result.
John “cook the books” Cook doesn’t even understand he just cooked the goose for the 97% consensus proposition. 66.4% having no position CANNOT be counted in a “consensus” total or just be ignored. No position is part of the result. We just need to keep restating these numbers every time this myth comes up again.