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.
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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.”
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* 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
What is grossly misleading about the use of words such as “endorsed” here, even if Cook’s methodology were not suspect for other reasons, is that a large proportion of that 32.6% do not “endorse” based upon findings of their study. Rather, they do the obligatory hat-tips to climate alarmism and (in many cases) proceed to study some further issue in that ASSUMED context…. i.e., what might the effects be upon such-and-such an ecosystem or patch of the planet IF the claimed CAGW is supposed to occur.
Many of those 32.6% cannot ADD any further scientific weight or substantiation for claims about CAGW — that is assumed as a starting point and then the study goes on to examine something.
Same kind of problem vitiates the work of people like Oreskes et al. (in addition to all the other analytical and methodological flaws of such propaganda studies).
I can see how this idea of consensus science is so handy and gets rid of awkward things. Perhaps we can extend it into math. How many votes can I get for declaring the value of Pi is 4?
Pointman
I haven’t read thought the comments as of yet, but to me this seems like they realize that their 97% meme was proved to be utter bollocks, and they want it back.
I dub it “reconsensustizing”. Take that Miriam-Webster!!
So Myth Busters will sue SS for sullying their name.
And 32% equals an overwhelming consensus of climatology.
Great head line, the overwhelming consensus of 32% of experts, ..
Cook might want to get out while the escape routes remain open.
If a paper does not expressly reject AGW, yet the conclusion contradicts or calls into question a key part of AGW theory, was that paper included in the 66.4%? Likewise, how many papers have we seen with conclusions that do not fit with mainstream AGW theory yet the paper nonetheless includes the requisite endorsement of AGW. Is such a paper included in the 32.6% if the endorsement is not drawn from or supported by the conclusion.
ferdberple says:
May 15, 2013 at 6:40 am
Does anybody here believe such projects will require an EIS before construction?
Right now, even bald eagles killed by wind turbines are exempt from reporting. How much folly do you think they’ll get away with if they start building “something of value” when it hasn’t been determined what that value is?
It will be a lot safer and cheaper to let the politicians and scientists continue to spend money on bloviating and buffoonery.
GeeJam says:
May 15, 2013 at 12:37 am
Appreciating wine is a good analogy of believing in AGW.
It was crap.
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To make the analogy better………………..
It was expensive crap.
“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.”
So there we have it. 97per cent of scientists believe that no global warming over the past 16 years has been caused by humans.
Sure they have a consensus- from those receiving research grants
KLC
Try Steve Goreham’s “Mad Mad World of Climatism” and Donna LaFramboise’s “The Delinquent Teenager …”
The paper was just published online with full open access:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/05/new-paper-finds-only-33-consensus-on.html
Have at it
GeeJam says:
May 14, 2013 at 11:52 pm
On this day this year we had a hailstorm.
May 15, 2013, @4PM, somewhere in Somerset.
Never stated what of AGW they actually support?
1) Were all going to die by CO2.
2) Massive disruption to civilization, causing millions of deaths
3) Significant contribution of the warming from humans.
4) Humans drive the climate.
5) Natural cycles drive the climate with a contribution from CO2.
6) There is very little human CO2 influence.
7) There is a little human influence from human changing environments (deforestation, urban sprawl, weather station changes etc) and a CO2 link can’t be established.
All these numbers support AGW, but the difference between them is huge.
Whatever percentage supports CO2 is irrelevant until what the claims of it actually are.
Then how many are these papers actually supported with scientific evidence that is observed now, not a computer model. This reduces the number to a fraction/zero because they are mainly hand waving with nothing to distinguish between natural and unnatural factors.
Even if it were true, it would not help their case. The overwhelming consensus of leading “experts” in a mistaken viewpoint is normal prior to a paradigm shift.
It’s sort of like a bull market in stocks. Or, the recent catastrophic failure of the mortgage bond market. When everyone is invested in the bubble, it’s time to sell short.
It really shouldn’t come as a surprise. Much of the roots of CAGW alarmism was created by Enron in order to get the carbon trading market going. So he’s just using Enron math:
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.
Is there not a statistician anywhere to be found at the U of Queensland?
In short, they are desperate for the public to believe 1) that there is a consensus among scientists that man is largely responsible for the recent warming and 2) that, in science, consensus matters. Neither, of course is true, but what’s important is what the public believes. In some 30 years though, and especially the past 15 years, they haven’t had a great deal of success, despite the continual caterwauling, clarion calls, and hand-wringing among the MSM. I guess the hope is that if they just keep screaming the same nonsense, eventually people will “see the light” (or something). Albert Einstein’s famous quote about a definition of insanity being doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results comes to mind.
Jeff Vader …….. can I recomend the penne a la arabiata.
Funny, funny man, that.
For a scientific paper to be published in the Soviet Union, it was often necessary to include a pro-forma statement about how the findings of the paper conformed with Marxist-Leninist thought. Should we be surprised that today, in scientific publications on just about all terrestrial topics, similar gratuitous statements are encouraged by the commissars with respect to the theory of anthropogenic climate change?
“Comrade, your findings are very interesting. I think they deserve the widest possible audience in the scientific community. It would be a shame if your work were denied that audience. Do you think that your results are in some way consistent, perhaps in just a small way, with anthropogenic climate change? Many *important* people are keenly interested in that angle. I’m sure you can find the right words.”
This is good news, hopefully Cook found some more papers for the new version of my list,
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
Something is wrong, Cook’s video http://bcove.me/c1li8rcl shows 12,464 papers but the actual paper says: 11,944. As if it was made before they updated their paper. If you look in the paper’s results section they claim to;
“The ISI search generated 12 465 papers. Eliminating papers that were not peer-reviewed (186), not climate-related (288) or without an abstract (47) reduced the analysis to 11,944 papers”
Now I am curious if they originally planned to release this with the original number until I posted my criticism of Powell and they had to go back and change it;
http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/04/13950-meaningless-search-results.html
I am also skeptical how they determined if a paper was peer-reviewed or not because that requires checking every paper vs. every journal’s criteria and this process was never mentioned.
Also does anyone know where their list of papers is?
Something else does not look right. If they only counted 78 papers as “Rejecting AGW” that means they counted papers authored by Skeptics as either “Endorse AGW” or “No AGW position”.
Get the list of papers.
If they mis-classified papers authored by skeptics it is game over.
Anthony, you state: “And from that he gets a consensus?”
Perhaps this will help, from the abstract: “Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.”
Fezzik, tear his arms off. :p
Bloody silly survey really …
Climate science is almost completely funded by the public sector, and with the ‘crisis’ their available research funding has increased by a factor of thousands.
They are almost ALL going to give at least a hat tip somewhere in the text to the prevailing belief which funded their positions.