All you can do is laugh.
Brandon Shollenberger writes at Lucia’s about the new Fuzzy Math consensus “proof” paper from the ever entertaining John Cook at Skeptical Science, rated with the help of 27 of the SkS kidz club. The method is simple:
“Each abstract was categorized by two independent, anonymized raters.”
With a simple premise like that, what could go wrong? Well for starters, they don’t seem to understand what the word “independent” means. Shollenberger continues:
==============================================================
That makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is that people would make topics in the SKS forum like:
Does this mean what it seems to mean?
second opinion??
how to rate: Cool Dudes: The Denial Of Climate Change…
That’s right. The “independent” raters talked to each other about how to rate the papers. This must be some new form of independence I’ve never heard of. I’m not the only one thrown off by this. Sarah Green, one of the most active raters, observed the non-independence:
But, this is clearly not an independent poll, nor really a statistical exercise. We are just assisting in the effort to apply defined criteria to the abstracts with the goal of classifying them as objectively as possible.
Disagreements arise because neither the criteria nor the abstracts can be 100% precise. We have already gone down the path of trying to reach a consensus through the discussions of particular cases. From the start we would never be able to claim that ratings were done by independent, unbiased, or random people anyhow.
One must wonder at the fact an author of the paper calls the work independent despite having said just a year earlier, “we would never be able to claim” it is independent. Perhaps there is some new definition for “never” I’m unaware of.
And it gets even more hilarious. Read it all at Lucia’s.
For those who don’t know Inigo Montoya:
No amount of scorn poured on the methodology of this meta-analysis of climate research is going to change the fact that less than five percent of the published research calls AGW into question.
That relegates the many here who would dispute the AGW theory as fellow-travellers with the tiny minority of scientists involved in the field who express doubts.
No credible scientific research outright rejects AGW, the argument, as with the actress and the bishop, is over how much it will cost.
@izen,
argumentum ad populum and argumentum ad auctoritatem in the one comment. Any more logical fallacies you wish to add?
Don’t you think it is slightly odd that given the non-correlation of temperature increase and atmospheric CO2 increase that there are not more “published” papers calling AGW into question?
@- fadingfool
“argumentum ad populum and argumentum ad auctoritatem in the one comment. Any more logical fallacies you wish to add?”
The argument from authority is only a logical fallacy if there is no expert consensus and the authorities cited are not legitimate experts.
In this case both those criteria are met.
As for the argumentum ad populum, i am NOT claiming that because less than five percent quibble about the reality of AGW it is therefore ‘True’. There are many good scientific reasons why AGW is an accurate explanation of recent climate change. I am simply pointing out that the posters here that reject or doubt AGW are part of a small, and shrinking, minority amongst the scientifically informed.
@izen,
Not true – Argumentum ad auctoritatum is also a logical fallacy if the authority is biased (climategate emails can attest to this) .
Your assumption that the posters here “that reject or doubt AGW are part of a small…. minority amongst the scientifically informed” also does not fit the facts. I could quote recent studies showing the growth of doubt in AGW and link to the survey that concluded that the more scientifcally literate the greater the doubt but I’m philosophically adverse to surveys. Instead I’ll leave you with a simple thought: The AGW meme – Cui bono?
@- fadingfool
“…Instead I’ll leave you with a simple thought: The AGW meme – Cui bono?”
Well in the over century and a half that the AGW meme has become the scientific mainstream I would say that human understanding of the way the climate works has benefited.
But to turn the question around, who benefits from pretending there is much more doubt or uncertainty than is evident from the published research?
And like a defective gene it corrupts the next generation. AGW does a very poor job of explaining how the climate works, if anything it hinders our understanding of the earth (if you removed the CO2 hypothesis you wouldn’t need to re-invent it to explain our climate) . But as to who benefits from doubt – directly no one (try selling doubt on the stock exchange) – indirectly the human race as mitigation techniques are killing the elderly with cold and increasing food prices for the poorest.
Human carbon dioxide emissions are not warming up the planet, anymore than other natural factors warm the planet, Anthropogenic factors are dwarfed by natural factors and there is not going to be any kind of catastrophe at all what’ so ever that will ever be be caused by carbon dioxide.
There is no such thing as a carbon dioxide induced tipping points, runaway greenhouse effect or anthropogenic global warming.
Cooling and colder winters are not caused by human carbon dioxide emissions, anthropogenic global warming or any other kind of tipping point fantasy.
There is absolutely NO such thing as “Anthropogenic Climate Change”, “Global weirding”, “Global disruption” or any of the ridiculous variants.
But the Cook et al. team also surveyed authors of those papers, asking them to self-rate. Among papers whose own authors said they expressed a position on AGW, 97% said they endorsed the proposition that humans are causing global warming. This 97% (Cook team) and 97% (authors) looks like good agreement.
If you don’t agree about the 97%, can you find many recent peer-reviewed papers that say humans are not causing global warming? Sure there are some; 3% of that sample is about 360 papers. But can you pick up recent copies of Science, Nature, GRL, EOS, BAMS, etc. and find stacks of them? I can’t.
Human carbon dioxide emissions are not warming up the planet, anymore than other natural factors warm the planet, Anthropogenic factors are dwarfed by natural factors and there is not going to be any kind of catastrophe at all what’ so ever that will ever be caused by carbon dioxide.
There is no such thing as a carbon dioxide induced tipping point, runaway greenhouse effect or anthropogenic global warming.
Cooling and colder winters are not caused by human carbon dioxide emissions, anthropogenic global warming or any other kind of tipping point fantasy.
There is absolutely NO such thing as “Anthropogenic Climate Change”, “Global weirding”, “Global disruption” or any of the ridiculous variants.
Pacific Standard swallowed it hook, line, sinker, and boat.
http://www.psmag.com/environment/climate-study-consensus-still-means-consensus-57917/
The “survey” and many posters are asking the wrong question in my view. Let’s assume that the last 250 years are somehow significant and then ask ourselves how much of that warming is natural and how much is man-made.
Can the warming be split into the same ratio as the proportion of man-made greenhouse gasses to natural ones? Is half the warming man-made or 75% or 1%? Unless we can assign some numbers we are all just arm waving.
mandas, you made my day. I hereby nominate you as the WUWT mascot for climate change advocacy. If this isn’t the most illustrative statement of what ails climate change advocacy, I don’t know what is.
F A C E P A L M
Sparks says:
Human carbon dioxide emissions are not warming up the planet, anymore than other natural factors warm the planet, Anthropogenic factors are dwarfed by natural factors and there is not going to be any kind of catastrophe at all what’ so ever that will ever be caused by carbon dioxide.
OK, that declares what you believe. But most of the scientists who have studied this topic believe differently, based on their research.
graphicconception says:
The “survey” and many posters are asking the wrong question in my view. Let’s assume that the last 250 years are somehow significant and then ask ourselves how much of that warming is natural and how much is man-made.
The Cook article actually does address that question. Most of the papers they survey are not attribution studies, but many exist and some are included.
NEVER go up against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line!
mojo says:
May 16, 2013 at 9:49 am
NEVER go up against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line!
—————–
I’ve spent the last few years developing an immunity to iocane powder.
Ha anyone seen the Guardian article on a paper by Nuccitelli? The old 97% trope again?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/16/climate-research-nearly-unanimous-humans-causes?guni=Network front:network-front main-3 Main trailblock:Network front – main trailblock:Position1
Doesn’t it deserve a story, or did I miss it?
BA says:
May 16, 2013 at 8:52 am
“OK, that declares what you believe. But most of the scientists who have studied this topic believe differently, based on their research.”
Any so-called scientist who believes that a catastrophe will happen or can even occur from a miniscule amount of carbon dioxide locked in an a biological cycle with life on earth, in an atmosphere with a composition of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen and 0.9% argon, is not studying hard enough or is a total nitwit.
The facts I mentioned in my comment up thread also show; that I believe that these so-called scientists, that “believe differently” make up fantasies and apply terminology such as “Global weirding” to spin their belief with an emotional plea and distort the meaning of what the term “climate change” actually means (Inigo Montoya).
“It is difficult to say what truth is, but sometimes it is so easy to recognize a falsehood.”
~Albert Einstein.
Sparks says:
[i]Any so-called scientist who believes that a catastrophe will happen or can even occur from a miniscule amount of carbon dioxide locked in an a biological cycle with life on earth, in an atmosphere with a composition of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen and 0.9% argon, is not studying hard enough or is a total nitwit.[/i]
Again, you declare your beliefs (though I saw you shift that goalpost, from “not warming up the planet” to “a catastrophe”). Thousands of real, not so-called, scientists have studied this, I think much harder than you have, and almost all of them (it seems) believe CO2 is warming the planet.
As for catastrophes, the Earth has been through many in the distant past. For at least some of those it seems the reason probably does involve what you call “a miniscule amount of carbon dioxide….” Like the grand-daddy of extinction events, the Permian-Triassic.
BA says:
May 16, 2013 at 1:03 pm
Again, you declare your beliefs (though I saw you shift that goalpost, from “not warming up the planet” to “a catastrophe”).
To be fair, it was anthropogenic global warming proponents (who are alarmist of an impending catastrophe) that have declared their beliefs, I as an accomplished Engineer and programmer, qualified horticulturist, amateur astronomer and a highly educated person do NOT agree with these beliefs, get over it and respect my opinion, as for moving goal posts drivel? your original statement “…you declare your beliefs” did that.
“BA says:
May 16, 2013 at 1:03 pm”
Are you suggesting CO2 is DRIVING that warming (And remember its just the “airborne fraction”, the ~50% of the ~3% (aCO2) of 390ppm/v as the AGW hypothesis states)? If you are then your “belief” is wrong as we know changes in CO2 FOLLOW changes in temperatures by ~800 years as well as any “warming” potential of CO2 is largely saturated out by 250pp/v.
@- fadingfool
” AGW does a very poor job of explaining how the climate works, if anything it hinders our understanding of the earth (if you removed the CO2 hypothesis you wouldn’t need to re-invent it to explain our climate) . ”
If you really have a credible explanation for the surface climate that did not require the role of CO2 in converting outgoing longwave photons to thermal energy within the atmosphere you would overturn more than just climate science. The first two Laws of thermodynamics would fall as well.
CO2 is required for simple energy balance since Plass et al worked out the radiative transfer equations in the 1960s. You certainly need the CO2 hypothesis to understand the climate on Venus and Mars. Without CO2 increasing the temperature gradient from the surface to the tropopause it is likely that most of the water vapour would condense out from the atmosphere resulting in a snowball Earth.
Claiming that the AGW theory, developed over the last century and closely integrated into most of the rest of modern science is some kind of Lysenkoist conspiracy is not even slightly credible.
@- “But as to who benefits from doubt – directly no one (try selling doubt on the stock exchange) – indirectly the human race as mitigation techniques are killing the elderly with cold and increasing food prices for the poorest.”
If the stock exchange was convinced that fossil fuels could no longer be used at present rates because of political regulation I think a lot of people would be trying to sell oil and coal companies.
While cold and increasing food prices may be killing the elderly the cold and the increasing food prices are only marginally effected by mitigation techniques. Climate change is the main factor impacting food prices and extreme winters.
Sparks says:
To be fair, it was anthropogenic global warming proponents (who are alarmist of an impending catastrophe) that have declared their beliefs, I as an accomplished Engineer and programmer, qualified horticulturist, amateur astronomer and a highly educated person do NOT agree with these beliefs, get over it and respect my opinion,
I thought this thread was about a study in which a large majority of research papers that expressed a position about current global warming or climate change, attributed it mainly to human activities. I did not see “catastrophe” anywhere in the paper, nor in your declaration that “Human carbon dioxide emissions are not warming up the planet.” So when I mentioned that the surveyed scientists and papers disagreed with your declaration, and you shifted to “a catastrophe will happen,” I call moving goalposts.
Patrick says:
Are you suggesting CO2 is DRIVING that warming (And remember its just the “airborne fraction”, the ~50% of the ~3% (aCO2) of 390ppm/v as the AGW hypothesis states)? If you are then your “belief” is wrong as we know changes in CO2 FOLLOW changes in temperatures by ~800 years as well as any “warming” potential of CO2 is largely saturated out by 250pp/v.
Personally I don’t know, I haven’t done those studies, but it seems that a great majority of the active researchers do believe that CO2 is driving warming. That’s what this study found, anyway. As for your “800 year gap” you’d find a different story if you looked for recent research by the experts who are studying ice core and other proxies to figure out just what happened in those glacial/interglacial transitions.
Likewise, I don’t think you could find many recent papers that accept the “warming potential of CO2 is largely saturated” argument. Though surely there are some, out there in the 3%.
“BA says:
May 16, 2013 at 2:45 pm
That’s what this study found, anyway. As for your “800 year gap” you’d find a different story if you looked for recent research by the experts who are studying ice core and other proxies to figure out just what happened in those glacial/interglacial transitions.
Likewise, I don’t think you could find many recent papers that accept the “warming potential of CO2 is largely saturated” argument. Though surely there are some, out there in the 3%.”
Study, at Sks? Another laugh tipping point it seems. You seem to “know” there are new studies that refute the ~800 year lag I state and the “warming potential” of CO2. Care to post links to these studies?
Patrick says:
Study, at Sks? Another laugh tipping point it seems.
The study is in Environmental Research Letters. You can laugh, but do you think their basic conclusion, high agreement among current researchers that humans are changing the climate, is wrong?
You seem to “know” there are new studies that refute the ~800 year lag I state
Why the scare quotes around “know”? Such studies aren’t hard to find. Here are abstracts from two new ones. Apart from the details of their analysis, both offer clear explanations for why figuring out timing of CO2 and temperature estimates from the same ice core has been tricky; and on the difference between global (CO2) and partly regional (temperature) signals in ice cores.
“Understanding the role of atmospheric CO2 during past climate changes requires clear knowledge of how it varies in time relative to temperature. Antarctic ice cores preserve highly resolved records of atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic temperature for the past 800,000 years. Here we propose a revised relative age scale for the concentration of atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic temperature for the last deglacial warming, using data from five Antarctic ice cores. We infer the phasing between CO2 concentration and Antarctic temperature at four times when their trends change abruptly. We find no significant asynchrony between them, indicating that Antarctic temperature did not begin to rise hundreds of years before the concentration of atmospheric CO2, as has been suggested by earlier studies.”
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6123/1060.short
“The covariation of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration and temperature in Antarctic ice-core records suggests a close link between CO2 and climate during the Pleistocene ice ages. The role and relative importance of CO2 in producing these climate changes remains unclear, however, in part because the ice-core deuterium record reflects local rather than global temperature. Here we construct a record of global surface temperature from 80 proxy records and show that temperature is correlated with and generally lags CO2 during the last (that is, the most recent) deglaciation. Differences between the respective temperature changes of the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere parallel variations in the strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation recorded in marine sediments. These observations, together with transient global climate model simulations, support the conclusion that an antiphased hemispheric temperature response to ocean circulation changes superimposed on globally in-phase warming driven by increasing CO2 concentrations is an explanation for much of the temperature change at the end of the most recent ice age.”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v484/n7392/full/nature10915.html
and the “warming potential” of CO2. Care to post links to these studies?
For that I could go no further that this blog (although there are hundreds of published studies).
http://www.pagewash.com/nph-index.cgi/010110A/uggc:/=2fjnggfhcjvgugung.pbz/2013/05/11/gur-fcrapre-punyyratr-gb-fynlrefcevapvcvn/
You fail to understand the nature of scientific publishing. You very seldom see papers published which state that other people’s theories are wrong even when the general consensus behind the scenes is that the theory is a load of crap. Asking to see such papers is completely unrealistic. I could name a whole bunch of completely worthless papers in my area which have never been explicitly refuted in print but which everyone working in the area knows are rubbish. Bad science usually dies by being ignored into oblivion rather than being explicitly refuted in print.
There is a strong bias in science towards papers which put forward explanations. The criteria for publication require that a paper add to our understanding. Subtracting is a type of addition but this is not an easy argument to make to a publisher. It is a struggle to get a paper published which simply says that some other guy’s paper is wrong unless you put forward an alternative. Sceptics tend to put forward few alternative climate models of their own as most believe that our current state of knowledge of this chaotic system is insufficient to allow it to be modelled.
For an example of what a dying scientific theory looks like, take a look at supersymmetry. The theory has made no verifiable predictions and there is no experimental evidence to support it. It is now in the process of withering on the branch. Yet you won’t find very many papers in the literature that state supersymmetry is wrong. Meanwhile there are a bunch of supersymmetry experts out there still publishing and reviewing each other’s papers because academics have to publish to eat. The field will persist as an active area of research until these people retire. I have sympathy for them. It isn’t their fault that the idea they chose to build their careers on didn’t pan out. It looked promising and was worth investigating. So even though the whole field really deserves to be buried under a crossroads with a stake driven through its heart, I am not going to argue with them. I just ignore them.