To John Cook – it isn’t ‘hate’, it’s pity, – pity for having such a weak argument you are forced to fabricate conclusions of epic proportions
Proving that crap can flow uphill, yesterday, John Cook got what one could consider the ultimate endorsement. A tweet from the Twitter account of the Twitterer in Chief, Barack Obama, about Cook’s 97% consensus lie.
I had to laugh about the breathless headlines over that tweet, such as this one from the Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet:
Umm, no, as of this writing. WaPo reporter FAIL.
Source: http://twitter.com/skepticscience
But hey, they’re saving the planet with lies, that shouldn’t matter, right? 6535 is the new 31541507 in the world Cook lives in.
Yesterday, in an interview about the Tweet in the Sydney Morning Herald, Cook said:
“Generally the level of hate you get is in proportion to the impact you have,” he said.
No, it isn’t hate, it’s about facts John. This whole story is predicated on lies, and they just seem to get bigger and bigger, there doesn’t seem to be any limit to the gullibility of those involved and those pushing it.
Here’s the genesis of the lie. When you take a result of 32.6% of all papers that accept AGW, ignoring the 66% that don’t, and twist that into 97%, excluding any mention of that original value in your media reports, there’s nothing else to call it – a lie of presidential proportions.
From the original press release about the paper:
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.”
I pity people whose argument is so weak they have to lie like this to get attention, I pity even more the lazy journalists that latch onto lies like this without even bothering to ask a single critical question.
Of course try to find a single mention of that 32.6 percent figure in any of the news reports, or on Cook’s announcement on his own website.
Though, some people are asking questions, while at the same time laughing about this farce, such as Dan Kahan at Yale:
Now, Cook has upped the ante, allowing the average person to help participate in the lie and make it their own, as Brandon Schollenberger observes, Cook has launched a new “Consensus project” to make even more certain the public gets his message:
The guidelines for rating [the] abstracts show only the highest rating value blames the majority of global warming on humans. No other rating says how much humans contribute to global warming. The only time an abstract is rated as saying how much humans contribute to global warming is if it mentions:
that human activity is a dominant influence or has caused most of recent climate change (>50%).
If we use the system’s search feature for abstracts that meet this requirement, we get 65 results. That is 65, out of the 12,000+ examined abstracts. Not only is that value incredibly small, it is smaller than another value listed in the paper:
Reject AGW 0.7% (78)
Remembering AGW stands for anthropogenic global warming, or global warming caused by humans, take a minute to let that sink in. This study done by John Cook and others, praised by the President of the United States, found more scientific publications whose abstracts reject global warming than say humans are primarily to blame for it.
(Update: some folks aren’t getting the significance of Schollenberger’s findings, using Cook’s own data and code, which have been shown to be replicable at Lucia’s comment thread, Schollenberger finds 65 that say AGW/human caused, but there’s 78 that reject AGW. Cook never reported that finding in the paper, thus becoming a lie of omission, because it blows the conclusion. Combine that with the lack of reporting of the 32.6%/66.1% ratio in Cook’s own blog post and media reports, and we have further lies of omission.)
It’s gobsmacking. But, I see this as a good thing, because like the lies of presidential politics, eventually this will all come tumbling down.
Read Scholleberger’s essay at Lucia’s.
UPDATE: Marcel Crok has an interesting analysis as well here: http://www.staatvanhetklimaat.nl/2013/05/17/cooks-survey-not-only-meaningless-but-also-misleading/
Laurie Bowen says:
May 17, 2013 at 11:36 am
“Make your own conclusions . . . . but, I certainly wonder if this tweet even eminated from the hand of the man himself. So much on the internet is a grand illusion. Sad but true.”
One of the TOTUS twins showed it to him so he typed it into his twitter account.
One of the TOTUS twins showed it to him so he typed it into his twitter account.
As what, a follower or owner? A link for your evidence would be nice. Like to say required . . . but, I know how that works.
Laurie Bowen says:
May 17, 2013 at 9:36 am
Yup! “They” say that: “the cream always floats to the top” when “they” always knew (know) B.S. floats too! The rules for telling the difference?…..
>>>>>>>>>>
Are you in a creamery or a cesspool? Lately science has been starting to more resemble the cesspool instead of the creamery it was.
There is BS floating in the milk bucket! Happens alot . . . . that’s why pasterization was invented.
Pity is not right. A visceral contempt and revulsion is. And a determination to see these people hanged by their lies. No one can possibly pretend there is any integrity sincerity or honesty in these things. They are the – literal – mortal enemy of humanity.
“I challenge Mr. Olivaw to find a case where WUWT has done post facto editing ….”
Of course Mr. Watts himselft would never admit to censoring or any other flaw. Of course every deleted of edited comment is, in his mind, justified. The same, I’m sure, can be said for Cook or any other moderator on SkS and for myself on my own blog.
You’ll have to read what the others are saying in order to learn about what you (and your cultural camp) are doing wrong. Anything else is just taking what someone says at face value and not showing any real skepticism.
REPLY: And we are back to the first question I posed to you, which you answered by actions. Look, we aren’t ever going to agree, so its probably time to end this dance, since there’s nothing your closed mind accepts from anyone here. – Anthony
Most people “believe in God” yet, we do not consider that proof that God exists.
I have yet to see any proof of the Man Made Climate change
. . . BUT, if humans could completely flattened out the Continental divide (say to 100ft above sea level) I would postulate that as proof that it ,(Man Made Climate change), could be done.
Stick that (scenario) in your computer models and see what happens. Just make sure you can stop the run in case of “unintended consequences”.
But, I’m willing to “bet” the consensus would be, “YOU/WE CAN’T DO THAT!!!!”
[snip – over the top and off topic. Policy violation. BHO’s birth certificate, calling Olivaw names, etc -mod]
Latest combined total readership & Internet audience figures for the following two UK newspapers:
Pro CAGW: Guardian 2,370,000
Anti CAGW: Telegraph 2,374,000
Let’s hope the Christopher Booker and James Delingpole (not Geoffrey Lean please) pick up on this and – in full support of Anthony’s stance – counter-argue against the Guardian’s latest spin.
William Astley says:
May 17, 2013 at 11:38 am
Here we report a reconstruction of the sunspot number covering the past 11,400 years. According to our reconstruction, the level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago.
You keep regurgitating the same stuff again and again. This claim is not supported by recent data, so perhaps you heed that.
Jason Miller says:
May 17, 2013 at 11:26 am
To insist they be included would just be padding the numbers with irrelevant data which would lead to false results.
Obviously, but the interpretation of the same numbers just shows people’s bias (32.6+66.4 is 97% for AGW, while 100-32.6 = 67.4% against AGW).
I did a little survey my self using the ADS system:
http://adswww.harvard.edu/
climate change 67425 papers
anthropogenic climate change 5252 = 8%
global warming 17340
anthropogenic global warming 1663 = 10%
so only about 9% of all such papers [covering all times; AGW started in the 19th century, Arhenius] even mention AGW. That leaves 91% that do not. Those should not be included or taken as tacit [implied] endorsement.
32.6 % Believers.
66.4 % Agnostics.
.7 % Atheists.
= 97 % consensus. O. Kay. Sure.
“Agnostic” is a better term than “skeptic” because Climate Disaster Certainty is more religion than science.
Laurie Bowen says:
May 17, 2013 at 12:04 pm
“One of the TOTUS twins showed it to him so he typed it into his twitter account.
As what, a follower or owner? A link for your evidence would be nice.”
See
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/joke?s=t
Obama is to political biasing of climate science assessment as John Cook is to the climate science cult that looks like it is similar to the cult based on John Frum.
John
Ok…ok…ok…
I want a pony,
a red Ferrari (not a cheesy yellow one),
3-day weekends for everybody,
chocolate ice cream for lunch,
air-conditioning (I live in Florida).
Now if I can only get 97.whatever of you to agree, IT’LL ALL COME TRUE! Crap – if I’d known it was this easy, I’d of never gone to college (let alone work).
Like I keep saying..if you (sceptics) think FACTS will ever change anything..you aren’t living on the same planet that I see around me.
How did the Big Lies of the NAZIS fall? It took a war!
Does anyone think that without losing WW2 the Third Reich would have crumpled under the weight of reason alone?
Thats basically the standpoint I see everyday on this site.
No I DO NOT want a war. I want to see people engage in the same cultural conflict that the Left, the PC and the CAGW gang are so good at and which sceptics so signally have failed to challenge them at.
I repeat, facts count for squat. Perceptions are everything.
When J. Harlan Bretz declared that the topography of eastern Washington state was formed by a gigantic flood, he did not face face 97% opposition. He faced 100% opposition, and he was ridiculed and called things a lot worse than denier. Most inconveniently for his detractors, he turned out to be right. You won’t find a single naysayer now. Same thing with plate tectonics. That is the real problem with this type of study…not only are facts not determined by consensus, they are not even influenced by them!
…and BTW, Marquess of Queensbury rules are for losers.
Jolan says:
May 17, 2013 at 10:23 am
Is Obama really that thick, or does he have an ulterior motive?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The end goal of a Carbon Tax is three fold.
1. New Tax Money that is keyed to the entire economy. This is a tax on EVERYONE.
2. It makes USA manufacturing even more uncompetitive compared to that of China and forces more people onto the government dole where they will be more inclined to vote democratic. (At least that is the thought.)
3. It cripples the USA even more and brings us a step closer to ‘Global Governance’
4. It makes owning a home or small business too expensive for most people. This falls in line with Agenda 21 and the Biodiversity Treaty where over 1/2 of the USA is turned into a nature preserve administered by the United Nations. The goal is to herd Americans into cities and “micro-unit” mini-apartments where they become a captive labor force and market for large corporations.
In the mean time keeping the CAGW scam alive keeps the $$$$ flowing from the general public into the financiers wallets via windmills, solar panels and the resulting need for smart meters.
A whole new industry has been manufactured out of thin air. ( Broken Window Fallacy anyone?)
This new industry is completely useless without CAGW as a political ‘Cause’. Also the biggest $$$$ are made when you get into a brand new market and not when you are dealing with a mature market. If that new market is mandated and subsidized by government all the better. Just ask Archer Daniels Midland Co.
It doesn’t matter how many papers endorse AGW. It only matters whether papers provide evidence for or against AGW, not that they take it as their starting assumption. A scientific hypothesis is not proven by the number of papers favouring it, a scientific hypothesis is disproved by the one paper that shows it cannot be true.
The real take away from this study is 66% of the scientists who wrote papers on AGW or CAGW refused to endorse CAGW despite all the political presure to do so.
Many studies “endorse AGW” by simply assuming AGW as presented by the IPCC is correct and building upon. What gives you zero information about the issue if the AGW assumption is correct or wrong.
If I understand Cook’s process correctly…if I am of the opinion that there is a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow; and if I can show that 97% of people who believe in myths also agree with me, then, for sure, there must be tons of gold at the end of rainbows.
“Does anyone think that without losing WW2 the Third Reich would have crumpled under the weight of reason alone?”
Nope, just another repeat of a cycle in human behavior . . . kinda like winter happens on a regular basis.
It reminds me of the old Trident gum commercial: four out of five dentists recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum. What does that really mean?
Then there was the tagline: For families who care about their teeth.
My little sister at the time looked at me pointing to the family in the commercial: “They care about their teeth”.
John Cook is only missing a tagline…for people who care about their climate
JohnB
Jolan says:May 17, 2013 at 10:23 am
“…they will be more inclined to vote democratic.”
No, Jolan, they are not being more “democratic”. They are being Democrat. Helluva difference.
Crap has to fly. How else can it hit the fan?
The headline could just as easily read:
“A survey of 11,994 scientific papers by a team led by Mr Cook and published by Fairfax Media this week found nearly two-thirds of researchers did not endorse the idea that humans were the cause for global warming in their papers.”