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/
So 32% of respondents responded “no” to “Are You Still Beating Your Wife?”, while only 0.7% answered “yes”. 66% punched the questioner in the face.
The result is clear. An overwhelming majority of married men beat their wives, and 97% of them are liars, too.
Matt Skaggs says:
May 17, 2013 at 12:16 pm
You won’t find a single naysayer now. Same thing with plate tectonics
Same thing with Evolution, Big Bang, Dark Matter, etc…
Gail Combs says:
May 17, 2013 at 12:22 pm
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.
No, not at all. The selection criteria was not AGW, but GW.
If we were to examine 11944 papers on breakfast food, and the results were as follows: 32.6 % said eggs were good, 66.4% didn’t mention eggs, .7% said eggs were bad, .3% said the value of eggs was uncertain. One could correctly say that OF THE PAPERS THAT MENTIONED EGGS, 97% agreed that they were good. That’s all that Leif is saying.
Tom in Florida says:
May 17, 2013 at 1:02 pm
If we were to examine 11944 papers on breakfast food, and the results were as follows: 32.6 % said eggs were good, 66.4% didn’t mention eggs, .7% said eggs were bad, .3% said the value of eggs was uncertain. One could correctly say that OF THE PAPERS THAT MENTIONED EGGS, 97% agreed that they were good. That’s all that Leif is saying.
——————————————————
No 32.6% of the papers said someone else said eggs were good, but most of them did not test the eggs themselves.
General Relativity is the new Special…
OK Warm-mongers – or luke warmers – did you get that? There is no doubt about it: There is no such thing as “CAGW”. (OK – in theory if you add more ‘greenhouse gases ‘to the atmosphere it should warm up..But it hasn’t. For 17 years…) So what’s going on? Maybe your theory is wrong? Ever think about that? It’s maybe just a bit more complicated than that.
OK Now we’ve got that sorted…
Can we get our money back please?
Bloody common sense to most of us I must say.
Sorry Jimmy . . . . Can’t have your money back because “they” stole it fair and square!!!! Besides, the statute of limitation has run out!
Manfred says:
May 17, 2013 at 1:09 pm
“No 32.6% of the papers said someone else said eggs were good, but most of them did not test the eggs themselves.”
True but that doesn’t change the point being made about the percentages.
Oh! Just wait until buyers remorse sets in!
Re: lsvalgaard says:
May 17, 2013 at 9:21 am
“Nevertheless I shall restate the finding as “of papers surveyed that took a position on the issue, 97.9% endorsed AGW [not necessarily CAGW]“. This cannot be argued with, so no need to even try.”
I don’t always agree with Lief Svalgaard. But he’s right. Come on people, what part of [those] “that took a position” don’t you get?
JP
Doesn’t really matter agree with the position John Patsons, the whole issue was a Marketing campaign in order to justify yet another tax that was regressive and would have been laundered to “the haves” by the cap n trade scheme . . . . and sometimes I wonder what this blog is about . . . . addressing the issue as long as the marketing ploy exists . . . . while “the haves” are trying to keep the dying horse alive until they can find a new one.
And it looks like that will be a revival of the “flatter” tax scheme . . . . as the unemployed, poor just aren’t paying their “fair” share.
.
I see now that EVERYBODY has been ‘taken in’ by these tweets as if they were made by Barack Obama, which they ARE NOT.
I know a GREAT majority of you are non-discerning technical-only ‘bumpkins’ when it comes to politics and the trickery and deceit of politicians and the people and organizations with which they surround themselves … so let’s GET EDUCATED about this particular Twitter account by Barack Hussein Obama shall we?
“You’re Not Really Following @BarackObama on Twitter”
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/04/youre-not-following-barackobama-twitter/63930/
Oops – missed a </blockquote> sorry mods.
Bingo!
Another one who ‘gets it’.
.
Tom in Florida says:
May 17, 2013 at 1:02 pm
If we were to examine 11944 papers on breakfast food, and the results were as follows: 32.6 % said eggs were good, 66.4% didn’t mention eggs, .7% said eggs were bad, .3% said the value of eggs was uncertain.
The point is that in the case of the search for “breakfast food”, there is no problem in throwing out the 66.4% which didn’t mention eggs, because the search is general and the thrown out papers probably have no opinion on eggs at all. If you search was for “eggs in breakfast food”, then you can’t throw out 66.4% of the papers, only because the abstracts don’t mention eggs. The opinion on eggs then is in the whole text.
In the case of “global warming” and “global climate change”, the search is not even neutral, as writers as well as readers imply that as AGW, with a few exceptions.
That means that you can’t throw out these papers in your classification, but you must read the whole paper to know the point of view of the paper on AGW.
“A new survey of over 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers by our citizen science team at Skeptical Science has found a 97% consensus in the peer-reviewed literature that humans are causing global warming.”
That’s the title of the paper and like everything having to do with SKS is misleading. It implies that 11,640 of 12,000 agree that humans are causing global warming.
Who cares what it actually says in the small print? Most low information voters are only going to read the headline.
As a diversion here is some proper science from NASA
Using the search function in Cook’s “Consensus project”:
If you type in Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) into the search box, you get 62 matches.
If you type in Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC) into the search box, you get 89 matches.
Out of 12,280 papers!
In reply to:
lsvalgaard says:
May 17, 2013 at 12:01 pm
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.
William:
I provided a quote and a link to a paper that states “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. We find that during the past 11,400 years the Sun spent only of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode”, Nature 2004 using dendrochronologically dated radiocarbon concentrations that analyzed C14 changes.
As far as I known C14 analysis is still valid
In addition I provided quotes and links to other papers which support the assertion that the past Dansgaard-Oeschger cyclic warming and cooling coincided with solar magnetic cycle changes. I provided papers that explain most of the mechanisms by which solar magnetic cycle changes modulate planetary climate.
You keep ‘repeating’ (You used the word ‘regurgitating. You are confusing the consumption of food and the word repeating a logic argument. I keep repeating a logic argument and include supporting peer reviewed observations and analysis as the logic point is germane to this thread and to this forum’s purpose) the comment that the solar activity was not the highest in 8000 years in the later part of the 20th century. You are mistaken.
Do you understand the concept of a debate? You must provide logic to support your position as opposed to name calling and general unsubstantiated statements.
I note the Northern hemisphere has cyclically warmed in the past with the majority of the warming occurring at high Northern latitudes. That is exactly what was observed in the 20th century. That observation supports the assertion that solar activity was high in the 20th century.
I provided a link to a paper by Svensmark that discusses the Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle and the polar see-saw. (Greenland ice sheet warms when the Antarctic ice cools and vice verse. Svensmark’s paper provides direct ice core temperature measurement for the last 6000 years that shows the cycle. Svensmark explains the cycle base on solar modulation of planetary cloud cover.)
Do you understand supporting logic? i.e. An assertion that is supported by multiple logical points is stronger – more likely to be correct – than a single logic point? The 20th century warming pattern, high altitude northern hemisphere is not in agreement with the greenhouse gas mechanism.
Further, I make a testable prediction that the planet is about to cool, due to the abrupt change to solar magnetic cycle. There is now the start of the first observational evidence the planet is cooling.
I believe I have provided six separate logical points that each supports the assertion that the majority to the 20th century warming has caused by solar magnetic cycle changes and I have made a testable prediction. I can provide additional logical points however that would appear to be over kill.
Greenland ice sheet temperatures last 11,000 years. This is a graph from Richard Alley’s paper that shows temperatures on the Greenland ice sheet. The D-O cycle is clearly evident. As noted there is no correlation in Greenland ice sheet temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels in the past. The majority of the warming of the Greenland Ice sheet observed in the 20th century was not caused by the increase in atmospheric CO2. The majority of the warming was caused by the solar magnetic cycle change and is the same mechanism that caused the past D-O cycles.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/nature02995.pdf
Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years by S. K. Solanki, I. G. Usoskin, B. Kromer, M. Schussler & J. Beer
Here we report a reconstruction of the sunspot number covering the past 11,400 years, based on dendrochronologically dated radiocarbon concentrations. We combine physics-based models for each of the processes connecting the radiocarbon concentration with sunspot number. 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. We find that during the past 11,400 years the Sun spent only of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode. Although the rarity of the current episode of high average sunspot numbers may indicate that the Sun has contributed to the unusual climate change during the twentieth century, we point out that solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades.
William: The authors of the above paper only considered total solar irradiation TSI which is not the major mechanism by which the sun modulates planetary temperature in Northern Atlantic regions. The mechanism is modulation of low level and high level clouds.
Sorry, but what is the lie? I looked up the paper, and it says over and over that 97% refers to papers that took a position in their abstract. And also, to 97% of the papers whose authors said that they took a position in their paper. If the study is trying to hide something, why repeat it so many times?
Only 0.7% of scientific papers on climate change reject anthropocentric global warming
fredd says:
May 17, 2013 at 3:11 pm
The numbers are 97.1 and 97.2
Nice meme if you can get it 😉
It saves having to round up to 98% because that would be unbelievable 😉
A marketing survey found that any number ending in seven doesn’t just trump nine but, postulated, beats it to a pulp persuasion-wise on-line – hence the $97, $47 and $27 price tags on Internet marketing products and the incredible popularity of the “$7 script” for re-selling, via affiliation, your digital goods.
“Hide in plain sight” is Google-able.
“A big Lie, repeated often” ditto.
“Sorry, but what is the lie? I looked up the paper, and it says over and over that 97% refers to papers that took a position in their abstract”
Because if you don’t take a position on man-made climate change, that’s still “a position” And those positions were excluded.
“Because if you don’t take a position on man-made climate change, that’s still “a position” And those positions were excluded.”
Not as I read it. Let’s say you have a paper by experts on salmon fishing in Yemen, who say that global warming will be bad for their fish. They could say that based on their knowledge of Yemen’s fine salmon rivers, without claiming to know whether humans cause global warming. Wouldn’t many abstracts be like that? They have no basis to take a position on causes, so they don’t.
When dealing with these particular “lies…and statistics,” we should keep in mind a point made by Dr. Lindzen at the 2009 ICCC, speaking of those scientists who try to assess what “impacts” climate change will have:
“The specialties of the scientists involved lie well outside of climate physics, but
they can find funding and recognition by attempting to relate their specialty to global warming.
Their ‘results’ are to be found in the newspapers every day. Cockroaches and malaria spreading,
sex drive of butterflies diminishing, polar bears in potential danger, etc. From the point of view
of serious science, this group is mostly a nuisance, but they play a major role in the maintenance
of alarm. They also artificially swell the numbers of scientists who endorse the alarmist view.”
Note, Lindzen quote is from the third confernece in June. The second confernece was also in 2009 in March.
Wamron says:
May 17, 2013 at 12:15 pm
“Does anyone think that without losing WW2 the Third Reich would have crumpled under the weight of reason alone?”
Of course. The Nazis were economic numpties. They would have gone the way of the Chavez regime which just ran out of toilet paper, and with the exact same reason.
I’m actually begin to feel contempt for lukewarmers as well as it is by bleeding obvious that there is no significant global warming whatsoever. From what I can tell most of so called NASA solar experts comments regarding the sun have been falsified SSN, Ice, Arctic temps solar magnetism etc so on and on. and I would not rate them even close to Svensmark, LIndzen, Singer, Dyson ect as Scientists. However they does make the odd contribution in the form of useful links to stories.