UPDATE: More inconsistency:
Cook survey included 10 of my 122 eligible papers. 5/10 were rated incorrectly. 4/5 were rated as endorse rather than neutral.
— Richard Tol (@RichardTol) May 22, 2013
===========================================
When asked about the categorizations of Cook et al, – “It would be incorrect to claim that our paper was an endorsement of CO2-induced global warming”
Guest essay by Andrew of Popular Technology
The paper, Cook et al. (2013) ‘Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature‘ searched the Web of Science for the phrases “global warming” and “global climate change” then categorizing these results to their alleged level of endorsement of AGW. These results were then used to allege a 97% consensus on human-caused global warming.
To get to the truth, I emailed a sample of scientists whose papers were used in the study and asked them if the categorization by Cook et al. (2013) is an accurate representation of their paper. Their responses are eye opening and evidence that the Cook et al. (2013) team falsely classified scientists’ papers as “endorsing AGW”, apparently believing to know more about the papers than their authors.
Dr. Idso, your paper ‘Ultra-enhanced spring branch growth in CO2-enriched trees: can it alter the phase of the atmosphere’s seasonal CO2 cycle?‘ is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; “Implicitly endorsing AGW without minimizing it“.
Is this an accurate representation of your paper?
Idso: “That is not an accurate representation of my paper. The papers examined how the rise in atmospheric CO2 could be inducing a phase advance in the spring portion of the atmosphere’s seasonal CO2 cycle. Other literature had previously claimed a measured advance was due to rising temperatures, but we showed that it was quite likely the rise in atmospheric CO2 itself was responsible for the lion’s share of the change. It would be incorrect to claim that our paper was an endorsement of CO2-induced global warming.”
Dr. Scafetta, your paper ‘Phenomenological solar contribution to the 1900–2000 global surface warming‘ is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; “Explicitly endorses and quantifies AGW as 50+%“
Is this an accurate representation of your paper?
Scafetta: “Cook et al. (2013) is based on a strawman argument because it does not correctly define the IPCC AGW theory, which is NOT that human emissions have contributed 50%+ of the global warming since 1900 but that almost 90-100% of the observed global warming was induced by human emission.
What my papers say is that the IPCC view is erroneous because about 40-70% of the global warming observed from 1900 to 2000 was induced by the sun. This implies that the true climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling is likely around 1.5 C or less, and that the 21st century projections must be reduced by at least a factor of 2 or more. Of that the sun contributed (more or less) as much as the anthropogenic forcings.
The “less” claim is based on alternative solar models (e.g. ACRIM instead of PMOD) and also on the observation that part of the observed global warming might be due to urban heat island effect, and not to CO2.
By using the 50% borderline a lot of so-called “skeptical works” including some of mine are included in their 97%.”
Any further comment on the Cook et al. (2013) paper?
Scafetta: “Please note that it is very important to clarify that the AGW advocated by the IPCC has always claimed that 90-100% of the warming observed since 1900 is due to anthropogenic emissions. While critics like me have always claimed that the data would approximately indicate a 50-50 natural-anthropogenic contribution at most.
What it is observed right now is utter dishonesty by the IPCC advocates. Instead of apologizing and honestly acknowledging that the AGW theory as advocated by the IPCC is wrong because based on climate models that poorly reconstruct the solar signature and do not reproduce the natural oscillations of the climate (AMO, PDO, NAO etc.) and honestly acknowledging that the truth, as it is emerging, is closer to what claimed by IPCC critics like me since 2005, these people are trying to get the credit.
They are gradually engaging into a metamorphosis process to save face.
Now they are misleadingly claiming that what they have always claimed was that AGW is quantified as 50+% of the total warming, so that once it will be clearer that AGW can only at most be quantified as 50% (without the “+”) of the total warming, they will still claim that they were sufficiently correct.
And in this way they will get the credit that they do not merit, and continue in defaming critics like me that actually demonstrated such a fact since 2005/2006.”
Dr. Shaviv, your paper ‘On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget‘ is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; “Explicitly endorses but does not quantify or minimise“
Is this an accurate representation of your paper?
Shaviv: “Nope… it is not an accurate representation. The paper shows that if cosmic rays are included in empirical climate sensitivity analyses, then one finds that different time scales consistently give a low climate sensitiviity. i.e., it supports the idea that cosmic rays affect the climate and that climate sensitivity is low. This means that part of the 20th century should be attributed to the increased solar activity and that 21st century warming under a business as usual scenario should be low (about 1°C).
I couldn’t write these things more explicitly in the paper because of the refereeing, however, you don’t have to be a genius to reach these conclusions from the paper.”
Any further comment on the Cook et al. (2013) paper?
Shaviv: “Science is not a democracy, even if the majority of scientists think one thing (and it translates to more papers saying so), they aren’t necessarily correct. Moreover, as you can see from the above example, the analysis itself is faulty, namely, it doesn’t even quantify correctly the number of scientists or the number of papers which endorse or diminish the importance of AGW.”
The Cook et al. (2013) study is obviously littered with falsely classified papers making its conclusions baseless and its promotion by those in the media misleading.
CVs of Scientists:
Craig D. Idso, B.S. Geography, Arizona State University (1994); M.S. Agronomy, University of Nebraska – Lincoln (1996); Ph.D. Geography (Thesis: “Amplitude and phase changes in the seasonal atmospheric CO₂ cycle in the Northern Hemisphere“), Arizona State University (1998); President, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (1998-2001); Climatology Researcher, Office of Climatology, Arizona State University (1999-2001); Director of Environmental Science, Peabody Energy (2001-2002); Lectured in Meteorology, Arizona State University; Lectured in Physical Geography, Mesa and Chandler-Gilbert Community Colleges; Member, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); Member, American Geophysical Union (AGU); Member, American Meteorological Society (AMS); Member, Arizona-Nevada Academy of Sciences (ANAS); Member, Association of American Geographers (AAG); Member, Ecological Society of America (ECA); Member, The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi; Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (2002-Present); Lead Author, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (2009-Present)
Nicola Scafetta, Laurea in Physics, Università di Pisa, Italy (1997); Ph.D. Physics (Thesis: “An entropic approach to the analysis of time series“), University of North Texas (2001); Research Associate, Physics Department, Duke University (2002-2004); Research Scientist, Physics Department, Duke University (2005-2009); Visiting Lecturer, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (2008, 2010); Visiting Lecturer, University of North Carolina Greensboro (2008-2009); Adjunct Professor, Elon University (2010); Assistant Adjunct Professor, Duke University (2010-2012); Member, Editorial Board, Dataset Papers in Geosciences Journal; Member, American Physical Society (APS); Member, American Geophysical Union (AGU); Research Scientist, ACRIM Science Team (2010-Present)
Nir J. Shaviv, B.A Physics Summa Cum Laude, Israel Institute of Technology (1990); M.S Physics, Israel Institute of Technology (1994); Ph.D. Astrophysics (Thesis: “The Origin of Gamma Ray Bursts“), Israel Institute of Technology (1996); The Wolf Award for excellence in PhD studies (1996); Lee DuBridge Prize Fellow, Theoretical Astrophysics Group, California Institute of Technology (1996-1999); Post Doctoral Fellow, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Toronto (1999-2001); The Beatrice Tremaine Award, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (2000); Senior Lecturer, Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (2001-2006); The Siegfried Samuel Wolf Lectureship in nuclear physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (2004); Associate Professor, Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (2006-Present)
No surprises. Move on.
Cook has done his job. He has given the alarmists in the media and politics a reinvigoration of the 97% meme.
He has not served science or the pursuit of truth, but he has given the alarmists more false ammunition to fire in their war against truth.
I am forwarding links to this article to everyone I know.
Well that’s three in the eye for Cook et al
was it only these three that responded or are you hoping/planning for more to come from this line of questioning
Over 97% of the interviewed scientists whose papers were surveyed by Cook et al disagreed with Cook’s conclusions!
Let’s see: Idso, Scafetta and Shaviv. Obviously these are three Big Oil hacks that somehow have managed to slip under the radar. Time to rectify this. /s
Nice work Andrew, thanks.
Must be a 20+ yo picture of Dr. Shaviv. He looks 14….
You know….modeling a rotating sphere, subject to alternating surface solar heating, with 70% oceans and variable cloud cover, both with latent heat transfers….with varying albedo and photosynthesis driven CO2 changes….just to name a few of the bewildering variables is…impossible.
So….let’s reduce this to the grade school level of parameters. The rotating sphere becomes a disc and the day/night insolation cycle is eliminated. This shortcut is “corrected” by then dividing solar input P/4….which could not possible give the observed surface temperature. Therefore,
we declare that there is a MAGIC MIRROR IN THE SKY that has no effect on incoming solar radiation, but can capture and reflect the once solar heated surface energy back to control the Earth’s temperature, and from that the weather, and from that the long term “climate”.
“You don’t have to be a genius” to realize that some of the “metamorphosis” of logic could be flawed. As a matter of fact….it is better that you NOT be a genius or the rampant defects would overpower your group think orthodoxy. The IPCC is irredeemable flawed, as Dr Vincent Gray eloquently details in his New Zealand Climate Newsletter #311 which has just been issued. Disband this rogue science front group for one world bandit government.
We all knew that the paper was Cook-eyed because of the treatment of statistics. Now we see that his raw data are rubbish.
I’ve just posted a comment on Guardian about Poptech’s findings and quotes but I doubt it will see the light of day.
Meanwhile the Guardian is reporting on some pretty eye popping claims – or maybe it’s right in a way but misleading
How much time did Cook spend evaluating each of the 12,000 papers? If he spent 1 minute each, that would be 200 hours. I would consider him scientifically illiterate to think that he can do that with a complex paper. If he spent 10 minutes each, that’s 1 years work – full time. Then he spent a few hours concocting up a survey. Makes you wonder if he even had access to 12,000 papers.
“I couldn’t write these things more explicitly in the paper because of the refereeing”.
This comment from Nir Shaviv is more illuminating than any other. Reinterpret all the abstracts and conclusions in light of continued Team gate-keeping and the so-called consensus diminishes further. not that consensus matters of course, but those that think it do would have even less of a leg to stand on.
And this is just a small sample, I wonder what a broader sample of scientists opinions on their own papers -vs- the Cook ratings will show?
He’s certainly…. cooking up… quite some claims right there.
In the Shaviv response, he writes “I couldn’t write these things more explicitly in the paper because of the refereeing, however, you don’t have to be a genius to reach these conclusions from the paper.”
The fact that scientists must avoid stating the truth in straightforward terms in order to get published is significant. How can science be done openly and honestly when politics dictates what can be published? It can’t.
To be fair, you cannot expect that all Cook assessments are 100% correct in all cases.
The real issues are:
1 – Are these scientists view representative?
2 – What % of the total assessments are incorrect
3 – Does Cook’s results fundamentally reflect mainstream science opinion?
Close scrutiny of Cook will not likely change the general belief. Both Cook and the IPCC have consistently overstated AGW and its effects.
A growing set of data are show ever-widening inconsistencies with AGW theory. AGW will have to be seriously revised or dismissed entirely.
Though human CO2 is affecting climate, the arrow of climate change is probably up to the sun and significant changes it is undergoing now and over the next couple solar cycles or so.
The IPCC’s attribution of 90–100% of warming caused by human emissions begs the question of how, if we contribute 3% of the 3% of the CO2 greenhouse effect that warms the climate, how do they get to the 90–100%? It makes no sense.
Oh, wait! I forgot that they have water vapor harnessed like work horses to CO2 and CO2 is the little boy driving the team, producing a huge positive feedback. All grade schoolers know about the water cycle, which acts as a huge negative feedback mechanism, but it is indeed too much to expect those luxuriously funded hacks at the IPCC to know about such basic things.
Yes, it is too small a sample. The effort is enormously appreciate though.
…appreciated …
I suppose this is good, but look at the selection.
Craig D. Idso, “Lead Author, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (2009-Present)” which is by Heartland.
Scafetta, we already know about his work.
Nir Shaviv, it’s been noted he’s somewhat supported Svensmark’s work, which according to Leif Svalgaard is already discredited.
Frankly, you’ve got three scientists that very much do not approve of the IPCC AGW stance, and are willing to discount/discredit/debunk it.
So why are we celebrating this obvious inducement to charges of cherry picking? Where are the complaints from those scientists less critical of (C)AGW, perhaps even some that support it but still found Cook misrepresented their particular papers?
Did deeper, see what’s really there.
now if all the fellas and gals that are NOT happy about how C(r)ooks used their work..all spoke up TO the media??
OR
Insist he removes their work from his list as its being used falsely?
with a note of the retraction to be published as well
what a nice change that would make.
Darn good start here though 🙂
We issued a press release on the Cook et al study:
http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=655
Friends of Science Challenge the Cook Study for Bandwagon Fear Mongering on Climate Change and Global Warming.
Detailed analysis shows that only 0.5% (65 of the 12,000 abstracts rated) suggest that humans are responsible for more than 50% of the global warming up to 2001, contrary to the alleged 97% consensus amongst scientists in the Cook et al study. Citing fear mongering and faulty methodology Friends of Science reject the study and President Obama’s tweet as careless incitement of a misinformed and frightened public, when in fact the sun is the main driver of climate change; not human activity or carbon dioxide (CO2).
Kadaka – You are attacking the victims of misrepresentation and deliberately missing the point. If Cook et al. (2013) falsely claims support for IPCC AGW from the likes of Idso, Scaffetta and Shaviv, can the paper have any credibility at all?
I would like to add a comment to clarify an important issue. Perhaps Anthony may add it to the end of the above report.
The Anthropocentric Global Warming (AGW) theory as advocated by the IPCC since 2001 states that the net anthropocentric forcings have contributed about 90-100% of the total warming since 1900. Claming that the AGW is quantified by the IPCC advocates as 50+% of the total observed warming is very misleading.
The IPCC claim that the AGW since 1900 is quantified as 90+% (and not as 50+%), is clearly evident in figures 9.5a and 9.5b of the IPCC report (Anthony, please show the figure as an image)
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-9-5.html
In Figure 9.5 shows a comparison of GCM simulations made [a] with all used forcings and [b] with natural forcings (solar radiative forcings + volcano) alone. As it is evident from the figure, when the GCMs are forces only with the supposed natural forcings (see Figure 9.5b) the result of the analysis is that natural forcings have contributed less than 10% (or better almost zero) of the total warming observed from 1900 to 2005.
On the contrary, as the IPCC Figure 9.5a shows only the addition of the claimed anthropocentric forcings could let the GCMs to reconstruct the observed 0.8 K warming from 1900 to 2005.
Thus, it is evident that the AGW theory, which is based on these GCM simulations, clearly states that 90-100% of the warming observed since 1900 can be explained only by anthropocentric forcings.
Such claims are supported by all AGW papers based on GCM simulations (e,g. Hansen papers, Schmidt’s paper, etc). For example, Benestad and Schmidt (Solar trends and global warming, J. Geophys. Res., 114, D14101, 2009) claimed the sun could contribute only about 7% of the net warming since 1900.
However, as also demonstrated in my 2007 JGR paper and in my latest paper (open access):
Scafetta N., 2013. Discussion on common errors in analyzing sea level accelerations, solar trends and global warming. Pattern Recognition in Physics, 1, 37–57.
http://www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/1/37/2013/prp-1-37-2013.html
the claim that the sun contributed less than 10% of the global warming since 1900 is compatible only with the hockey-stick temperature graph (e.g. Mann’s graph), which were popular from 1998 to 2005. On the contrary, more modern temperature reconstructions (e.g. Moberg et al (2005), and others) would imply a far stronger solar effect on climate because they show a far greater pre-industrial climate variability.
On the contrary, my papers since 2005-2006 have claimed a much stronger solar effect on the climate, and more recent papers since 2010 have claimed the existence of large natural oscillations likely induced by astronomical forcings such as the quasi 60-year oscillation observed since 1850, which is also a typical solar oscillation together with others and is likely responsible of the quasi 60-year oscillation observed clearly in the AMO, PDO, NAO etc, and the great millennial cycle. Of course he sun can effect the climate in many ways (TSI radiation, UV, cosmic ray etc.)
By taking into account geometrical considerations associated to solar records and harmonic oscillations and by demonstrating that the GCM do not reproduce the natural oscillations of the climate system (one of my 2012 papers) it has been demonstrated that at least 50-60% of the warming observed since 1900 was indeed induced by natural phenomena likely associated to solar/astronomical mechanisms not properly included in the climate models. This necessarily imply that only about 50% of the left over warming could be induced by anthropocentric forcings, although part of the left over warming could have been caused by uncorrected UHI effects.
The above issues are demonstrated and clearly stated in my papers.
Thus, claiming that the AGW is quantified by the IPCC advocates as 50+% of the total observed warming is very misleading.
Science is not a democracy……….
……….I couldn’t write these things more explicitly in the paper because of the refereeing
Anthony wrote:
“And this is just a small sample…”
….of prominent skeptics. I’m not sure that it follows that there must be lots of mis-categorized papers based upon these three, but it does provide clear proof that Cook has no shame.
Dr Shaviv says: “I couldn’t write these things more explicitly in the paper because of the refereeing, however, you don’t have to be a genius to reach these conclusions from the paper.”
How shameful that scientists have to watch their P’s & Q’s, if their research findings fail to conform exactly with the “settled science” of AGW.
bladeshearer said on May 21, 2013 at 7:24 am:
What I am not missing is the call for a solid factual refutation of the climate alarmism. We don’t have their advantage of throwing around sheer emotion, we don’t get to say “You just want to see puppies die!” Appearance matters.
If our best repudiation of Cook’s shonky work, is solely based on those who could easily be viewed as having an ax to grind, then how great of a repudiation is it really?
These three were low-hanging fruit. Let’s line up some tougher-to-get ones.
…To get to the truth, I emailed a sample of scientists whose papers were used in the study and asked them if the categorization by Cook et al. (2013) is an accurate representation of their paper. …
Thought the featured responses seem to be egregious examples, I would like to know:
– How many scientists were in the sample?
– How were they chosen?
– What total number agreed with the assessments, and what number disagreed?
That would be the proper way to display this data….
The ratings are based on the contents of the abstract and while the rating of the Idso paper is questionable, the others seem accurate.
So Idso, Scafetta and Shaviv are ‘lukewarm’, they agree that AGW is a legitimate explanation of around half the observed warming but doubt that ALL the warming can be attributed to the CO2 rise.
Three out of twelve thousand, and part of the handful of the usual suspects who are known ‘skeptics’. Perhaps poptech should check up on Soon, Balinus and De Freitus as well along with Spencer, Christy and Lindzen.
I think that about covers the dozen or so well known mavericks active and publishing in the subject. So it changes the consensus to 0.003% less than before….
The ratings based on the content of the abstract are not necessarily indicative of the content of the paper.
The content of the paper is not necessarily indicative of the opinion of the author.
The opinion of the authors of the selected papers are not necessarily indicative of the opinions of the community of scientists .
The opinions of a community of scientists ain’t necessarily true, and in fact frequently are not.
These facts are why we have a discipline called “science”, and Cook’s crooked attempt at an appeal to authority fallacy is necessarily contrary to that.
Are these are the three deniers that made it 97%?
izen says:
May 21, 2013 at 8:06 am
———————————–
In 2006, Shaviv attributed only about a third of 20th century warming to human activity & 2/3 to natural causes, but with a wide margin of error.
http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar
I recall reading another work (possibly more recent) of his citing 25% human contribution, but can’t find that reference.
From what I can see, Cook’s paper was nothing more than an OP-Ed from his perspective.
Dr. Scafetta correctly points out that Cook failed to quantify his false quantification. It might well be that 97% of the surveyed papers support a 40-70% human component in observed recent warming, or even less, but not the IPCC’s unsupported assertion of 90-100%.
This poll of thousands of geoscientists and engineers found only 36% support for CAGW:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/02/13/peer-reviewed-survey-finds-majority-of-scientists-skeptical-of-global-warming-crisis/
Of the Oregon Petition signatories, about 9000 are PhD scientists and engineers.
There is no consensus, but of course even if it did exist, reality is not bound to adhere to the anti-scientific, ideological and career-enhancing beliefs of “scientists” whose “research” is bought and paid for governments and activist foundations.
@izen – defending the Cook paper merely highlights you as an unthinking activist with zero credibility on this topic. If I were you I’d restrict my comments to items with some kind of defensible position.
Cook et all should never have made their data available to people whose aim is to try and find something wrong with it.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
May 21, 2013 at 7:51 am
partial quote “…… These three were low-hanging fruit. Let’s line up some tougher-to-get ones.”
============================
That is a good approach. Get others stating “on the record” what their papers really mean. The responses may be interesting.
Cook et al …
The picture’s caption said it was from 2009.
This is fabulous work. Well done Andrew!
They crowd sourced it in their “secret” forums and I estimate they spent no more than a minute or two per abstract.
Colorado Wellington says:
May 21, 2013 at 9:13 am
Cook et all should never have made their data available to people whose aim is to try and find something wrong with it.
——————————————
The scientific method is to make your facts and argument public in order to find something wrong with your own and others’ work.
Exactly.
There are plenty authored by known skeptical scientists that are classified as having “No Position”. Such as this other one by Dr. Idso,
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0098847298000471
http://www.skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=search&s=The+Relationship+Between+Near-surface+Air+Temperature
Admit that your first comment was stupid. You claimed that these three samples were meaningless because the authors were known skeptics or because their papers were debunked – as if that mattered at all.
The point of this post was to demonstrate that Cook mischaracterized those papers – which you don’t deny. Stop trying to save face now by asking for refutation of climate alarmism in a post that was merely challenging a fraudulent claim of 97% consensus.
MattN says: Must be a 20+ yo picture of Dr. Shaviv. He looks 14….
“The picture’s caption said it was from 2009.”
Then there’s a portriat of him in an attic somewhere aging badly….
The public IQ test continues. This is one of the most effective WUWT articles ever. Cook’s propaganda is backfiring. There is a cultural time lag as real books and hopefully more documentaries summarize for lay readers, reporters and policy makers such massive disasters like this new 97% big lie and the crazy bad fake hockey stick that lit up Mann’s Facebook this winter which had no hockey stick in any of the input data series.
There’s no “seem” about it. All three authors say Cook mis-characterized their papers. You are guilty of invincible ingnorance.
milodonharlani says:
May 21, 2013 at 9:27 am
The scientific method is to make your facts and argument public in order to find something wrong with your own and others’ work.
Phil Jones over at CRU doesn’t think so and he uses Excel spreadsheets and the scientific method just about every day.
“Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.”
http://climateaudit.org/2005/10/15/we-have-25-years-invested-in-this-work
http://climateaudit.org/2005/03/05/top-eleven-reasons-for-withholding-data-or-code
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/memo/climatedata/uc3502.htm
Just like Cook, another one who believes to know more about the papers than their authors.
Warms my heart to real scientists.
What I find to be remarkable about Cook’s “analysis” is that Idso, Scafetta and Shaviv are known to be critical of what might be called the “strong” AGW view, and have argued that CO2 influence is minor at best. Shaviv, along with Svensmark, has argued for a cosmic ray influence that affects long term (Phanerozoic) climate trends (see for instance Shaviv and Veizer July 2003, GSA TODAY). Dr. Scafetta made his views clear above. Craig Idso is or was affiliated with the Science and Public Policy Institute and can reasonably be termed a luke-warmist at most. The SPPI is pretty clearly sceptical of any strong influence by CO2 on the climate.
The short of this is that Anthony’s “sample” are ALL sceptical or moderately sceptical of any strong linkage between climate and CO2 levels. What’s more this is readily found public information on the internet. So, did Cook deliberately mislead, did his researchers fail to read, or what?
100% of authors cast out cook’s consensus claims, court told.
http://www.desmogblog.com/2012/11/15/why-climate-deniers-have-no-credibility-science-one-pie-chart
Thu, 2012-11-15 10:26
“” I searched the Web of Science for peer-reviewed scientific articles published between 1 January 1991 and 9 November 2012 that have the keyword phrases “global warming” or “global climate change.” The search produced 13,950 articles. “”
“” I read whatever combination of titles, abstracts, and entire articles was necessary to identify articles that “reject” human-caused global warming. To be classified as rejecting, an article had to clearly and explicitly state that the theory of global warming is false or, as happened in a few cases, that some other process better explains the observed warming. Articles that merely claimed to have found some discrepancy, some minor flaw, some reason for doubt, I did not classify as rejecting global warming. Articles about methods, paleoclimatology, mitigation, adaptation, and effects at least implicitly accept human-caused global warming and were usually obvious from the title alone. John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli also reviewed and assigned some of these articles … “”
What I couldn’t achieve with reading skills such as these gods amongst mortals display.
Colorado Wellington says:
May 21, 2013 at 10:03 am
————————————
You are correct. Phil “Spreadsheit” Jones is not a scientist, since he doesn’t practice the scientific method.
A combination of both. Cook and his team members who helped crowd source this are incredibly incompetent and dishonest.
I knew the study was completely bogus when I saw the ridiculously low numbers he had for ones classified as “implicitly minimize/reject AGW” which missed hundreds of papers,
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
This is due to a combination of misclassification and omission. The Web of Science does not search the full paper but only the abstract and they did not search for review papers which are completely valid. Thus many valid papers include the search phrases in the body of the paper but never showed up in this study.
These egregious examples discredit his entire paper.
My last post went into the filter.
I prpoose a a new name for Cook…. ”Chef (of) Shite”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/21/cooks-97-consensus-study-falsely-classifies-scientists-papers-according-to-the-scientists-that-published-them/#comment-1311879
I forgot the /sarc tag.
Also, I should point out the bolding may be too subtle.
What this shyster is claiming is that the three of them read “” read whatever combination of titles, abstracts, and entire articles was necessary to identify articles that “reject” human-caused global warming. “” out of @13,900 articles……
In less than a week.
I base my estimate on the dates and allow some slack for the ‘writing’ of the piece of garbage surrounding the central strawman.
izen, why did Cook and company falsely classify these scientists’ papers? Do they believe to know more about the papers than their authors? How did this pass peer-review?
“Frankly, you’ve got three scientists that very much do not approve of the IPCC AGW stance, and are willing to discount/discredit/debunk it.
So why are we celebrating this obvious inducement to charges of cherry picking?”
I think you’ve missed the bigger picture. These are 3 scientists that would be known to NOT endorse Cook’s 97% value, and yet somehow their true views are lumped into the consensus as if they don’t have a contrary view. How many others of the 97% are mischaracterized? Based on the statements of these three, I have a feeling a lot of the 97% is actually in the “doesn’t take a position” category.
Nice work Andrew. It doesn’t take much solar amplification (much solar effect beyond the miniscule variation in solar irradiance that is the only solar effect included in the IPCC models) for CO2 to be completely benign. High 20th century levels of solar activity had to end sometime, at which point CO2 would be acting to moderate natural cooling. If the CO2 effect turns out to be stronger (contra-indicated by the “pause” in warming now that the sun has gone relatively quiet) it will still be modest, and any modest warming is benign. If CO2 is weaker, then we will soon be wishing it were stronger.
From wobble on May 21, 2013 at 9:41 am:
No.
Not meaningless, but they are known to be skeptical as I worded it, and “debunked” was just me knowing what WUWT references I could quickly find and link to, which just happened to not be totally complimentary.
Duh! Of course he did, we all know that.
And with that, you’ve lost me.
Right or wrong, and normally wrong, we skeptics are held to a higher standard, intellectually and morally. No Gleick’s accepted here. Like an anti-gun group whose “innocent child victim of gun violence” turns out to be a 20-yr old drug-pushing gangbanger who’s a suspect in three drive-by shootings, our “poster children” need to be impeccable or we will be discredited.
So what’s wrong with digging up some examples the opposition can’t claim must be inherently biased?
Three papers down, just 11,000 to go. Tis a mere pin prick methinks. Must admit, I would have put the second abstract in the category chosen by the reviewers. It isn’t hard to see why. Try doing a more random sample – email a hundred scientists from the list, pro, con, whatever shade of skeptic you can find (proper definition please) then report the findings. I am sure we can all rely on some good cherry picking to get the results we want.
By the way, you can repeat the crowd sourcing experiment if you wish to check it. That’s science at work, that is.
What a brilliant article. Thank you. The IPCC will not be happy. Things aren’t looking good for them right now from many angles.
I guess this is what you call “Cooking the books”
Well 3 papers being misinterpreted out of 12,000. Divide by 2 & carry the one, then subtract the ones with no view. I know conclude that 97% of the papers were misinterpreted. I used “Cooked Math” to reach my conclusion. :O)
/sarc
BTW Obama didn’t tweet the link. It says on his account that tweets sent by Obama end with BO. I didn’t see the “BO” on the tweet. I could have missed it. Now Obama can say he knew nothing about the tweet.
If they couldn’t identify these known scientists which are skeptical towards AGW then it is a pale study not showing anything. What is shown is that 97% not in a very obvious way rejects the AGW theory.
John C(r)ook says:
“Articles about methods, paleoclimatology, mitigation, adaptation, and effects at least implicitly accept human-caused global warming and were usually obvious from the title alone.”
Bullshit.
Articles about mitigation and effects assume AGW as a premise, i.e. IF AGW is true as advertised, THEN this is what may happen to X resource, or this is Y action that may be taken to mitigate. This does not “accept human-caused global warming” as anything other than a hypothetical.
The vast majority of articles “accepting human-caused global warming” are of this type, and it means absolutely nothing other than that studying those hypotheticals is where the funding dollars are to be found. It does not mean that the author accepts that the hypothetical is true. He may believe that the hypothetical is unlikely to occur, is an unsupported conjecture, or is absolute bullshit. They all pay the same.
Unless an article has a conclusion about AGW as a finding, that article says nothing, implicitly or otherwise, about the validity of the AGW premise.
This is yet another of Cook’s fallacious methods in support of his fallacious appeal to authority.
Cook is a tiny little pipsqueak of a person who felt it necessary at one stage to team up with Loony Lewandowski FFS. This toilet paper of his is a steroid and angel dust fuelled version of the Lewny’s cheap fraud some time back and should just be flushed away from our consciousness. Waste no more time on him, please.
Not sure what this post is aiming at. In the study
a) the abstracts (around 12000) were rated according to a predefined classification
and
b) the ratings of the abstracts were compared with the article ratings of the original authors (for around 2100 articles they got feedback from the original authors).
b) was done as a check on the abstract ratings and within the study it is clear that there is no 100% overlap between the abstract ratings and the ratings of the original authors of whole articles.
So, what is surprising here?
btw, did you ask more article authors or were these picked on your intuition? Did you ask the authors if they have contributed to the author’s self-ratings? Inquisitive minds want to know!
This is excellent work Andrew, well done. What are the next steps. Should these comments by the authors be taken to the reviewers? Or should a bigger case be built. One thing for certain is that this ‘cook’ non-scientist needs to be exposed to his peers so he may understand the scientific method is for academics not for failed cartoonists.
More pitiful propaganda about the Cook fairy tale paper, courtesy of the New York Times:
[I wasn’t aware that failed cartoonist John Cook is “a physicist” or that he has earned any PhD to be a “post-doctoral fellow” but the NY Times says it so both must be true??!!]
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/science/kepler-telescopes-troubles-a-maya-pyramid-in-ruins-and-more.html?_r=0
Time to show that there is an overwhelming consensus among scientologists that there’s an overwhelming consensus among scientists. That would surely do the trick.
Andrew,
“..I emailed a sample of scientists…”
Interesting “sample”. You insult your reader’s intelligence and undermine your own position with such a blatantly biased sample. If Cook’s methodology is weak, yours is pathetic.
JP
Great stuff, but spoiled by
“making it’s conclusions baseless and it’s promotion…”.
The difference between “it’s” and “its” is something you learn in primary school.
Any semi-literate AGWer will jump on that slip to discount the whole article.
“I emailed a sample of scientists”
For refuting a research article, this will not convince anybody. How big a sample, and how chosen? Were there other answers? All we see here is 3 quotes from people that seem to be picked.
@atarsinc
(see also my comment a few above yours)
“Interesting “sample”.”
Yep! If he wants to do a thorough critic he already blew it there. There are two possibilities to save him. Or he forgets these answers he got and only uses a random sample of the articles, or he writes to all the authors of the 12000 articles (will he do this kind of work?).
“You insult your reader’s intelligence and undermine your own position with such a blatantly biased sample.”
To me it seems he is not insulting everybody’s intelligence here. It appears to me he is trying to imply that the Cook article rated articles differently from the original article authors ratings. Thereby he is distorting the Cook study. For many here in this thread, who I guess didn’t take any time to look at the Cook study (and at the same time may consider themselves “skeptic”), this goes down well. To me it seems he wants to obfuscate what is in the Cook study and give readers the incorrect impression that it rated whole articles, fucked up with that (probably not by accident), therefore can’t be trusted, as all those pesky warmists, must be watermelons, and so forth (yeah yeah, I am exaggerating in the later part of this sentence 🙂 ).
“If Cook’s methodology is weak, yours is pathetic.”
100% agree
Natural Climate change has been hiding in plain sight
http://climatechange90.blogspot.com/2013/05/natural-climate-change-has-been.html
Is that supposed to be argument for why Cook and company believe to know more about the papers than their authors?
Or are you arguing that the methodology used in the paper is worthless and the results unreliable?
Very interesting, Skeptical Science “Crusher Crew” founders are already trying to spam my post.
RoHa, thanks for pointing out the typo and it is corrected.
Keep telling yourself that.
Please provide the definition of the word “sample” how I used it. You don’t want to insult everyone’s intelligence here and pretend to know more about an article than the author? Wait isn’t that what Cook et al. did?
@poptech
“Is that supposed to be argument for why Cook and company believe to know more about the papers than their authors?”
It is about you implying that the Cook article did something what they are very clear about that they did not. They rated abstracts as they said. You imply they rated articles. That’s obfuscation. You omit they asked original authors on their opinion regarding the whole articles as a control on their rating of the abstracts. Why did you not mention that? Did you read the comment I made before the one you responded to? Did you actually read the Cook article? Your post here fails spectacularly as a criticism.
“Or are you arguing that the methodology used in the paper is worthless and the results unreliable?”
You can argue with the methodology all you like. You should however give a fair representation of the methodology when you want to argue about it. You do not. You do not give any idea of your own methodology btw.
According to a survey, 87% of surveys pre-select and categorise the samples to support the statistics they want to come up with.
I am not sure why you believe this to be an argument? So by rating only the abstracts they were not attempting to imply a position to the entire paper and authors?
That is irrelevant to the fact that they falsely classified papers and used these false classifications to draw their conclusions. Cook et al. (2013) is flawed and the results cannot be trusted.
Dr. Scafetta has clarified a matter that has confused me (as a non-scientist).
Until now I have relied on the Wikipedia précis of the ‘Summary for Policymakers’ (2007) viz. “Most [ the majority i.e. over 50% ] of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely [ over 90% sure, whatever that means ] due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations”.
@Poptech
You are clutching at straws! Stop digging!
“”Reich Eschhaus: It is about you implying that the Cook article did something what they are very clear about that they did not. They rated abstracts as they said. You imply they rated articles. That’s obfuscation.”
I am not sure why you believe this to be an argument? So by rating only the abstracts they were not attempting to imply a position to the entire paper and authors?”
They rated abstracts by a scheme as they said they did. There is nothing implied in one direction or the other. They were not ‘attempting to imply a position to the entire paper and authors’ as you correctly say. That is what the whole procedure of asking authors to rate their whole articles is about! As a control to what extent the rating of abstracts is in agreement with the original articles’ authors opinion on their whole article. You obscure this whole procedure. And that’s an argument.
“”You omit they asked original authors on their opinion regarding the whole articles as a control on their rating of the abstracts.”
That is irrelevant to the fact that they falsely classified papers and used these false classifications to draw their conclusions. Cook et al. (2013) is flawed and the results cannot be trusted.”
You are taking the piss? Did you read my first comment? They classified abstracts as they said, and compared their classification of abstracts with ratings to the whole article as given by the original authors. There is no 100% agreement there. So tell me what is flawed? You didn’t show any such thing?
Btw what is your methodology? Do you have one? Can you understand methodology in an article which you do not like?
ursus augustus says:
May 21, 2013 at 1:26 pm
Cook is a tiny little pipsqueak of a person who felt it necessary at one stage to team up with Loony Lewandowski FFS. This toilet paper of his is a steroid and angel dust fuelled version of the Lewny’s cheap fraud some time back and should just be flushed away from our consciousness. Waste no more time on him, please.
Couldn’t agree more, but I cannot resist commenting that his troll comments as “scientific paper” is a total distraction. If he had simply gazed at inkspots to divine his 97% consensus revelation he could not have shown himself to be a better acolyte of Lewandowski.
What is remarkable about it all is that the MSM fawned all over it as if it was relevant, and that actual scientists (as distinct from Cook) admit that they would not get their papers published if they said anything that the peer review thought police would object to. Confirmation that climate science, its “scientific” publications and its reporting by the MSM is completely and thoroughly corrupted. That is worth reflection and an acute awareness in our consciousness. How sad.
atarsinc says:
Interesting “sample”. You insult your reader’s intelligence and undermine your own position with such a blatantly biased sample. If Cook’s methodology is weak, yours is pathetic.
PopTech’s methodology is fine. Bias is not at issue when finding counter-example. To the contrary, it is an efficient and standard SOP for QA/QC exams – you look for error first where you expect to find it. Had Cook performed any QA/QC at all on this half-assed crock of feces, he would have saved himself at least some of the embarassment attendant to foisting this crap on the world. But he didn’t do even enough QA/QC to hide his own dishonesty.
On the other hand, assessing bias is of prime importance to determining the validity of Cook’s … ahem … “methodology”. We know from these counter examples that Cook categorizes blatant skeptics as AGW proponents. We also know that his … ahem … “methodology” … intentionally mischaracterizes mitigation and effects studies as “implicitly accepting AGW” when that is patently false. Bias indeed.
The only question left remaining is whether Cook is incompetently fraudulent, fraudulently incompetent, or just a petulant little cartoonist playing at being a pseudo-scientist.
@JJ
“”Interesting “sample”. You insult your reader’s intelligence and undermine your own position with such a blatantly biased sample. If Cook’s methodology is weak, yours is pathetic.”
PopTech’s methodology is fine. Bias is not at issue when finding counter-example. ”
You are ignoring that the Cook article does compare their ABSTRACTS rating with the article authors self-rating of the WHOLE ARTICLES. From Cook’s article it is clear that the abstract rating does not 100% agree with authors’ article self-ratings (counter examples are thus regarded in the Cook article). Therefore the question of PopTech’s sampling method is highly relevant. The rest of your argument is thus irrelevant.
Reich.Eschhaus says:
“So tell me what is flawed?”
=======================================
You’re kidding. Right?
Cook’s entire claim is fatally flawed. It is nothing but propaganda. Spin.
Reading comprehesion is not your strong suit, is it? I suggest you read the article and comments, and at least try to understand how they easily pick Cook’s juvenile game playing to pieces.
Poptech says:
May 21, 2013 at 4:53 pm
” Wilcon says: For refuting a research article, this will not convince anybody.
Keep telling yourself that.”
I do not see how a hand-picked sample of n=3 (out of what, 4000?) is going to convince anybody who is not already a believer.
Wilcon says:
“For refuting a research article, this will not convince anybody. How big a sample, and how chosen? Were there other answers? All we see here is 3 quotes from people that seem to be picked. “
In order to show that a claim is discreditied it isn’t neccessary to discredit every single item in that claim, but merely to show that part of the basis of the claim is false. In this case it would be obvious to anyone who knows anything about the hype of AGW that simply reading the abstracts of a paper is not going to show everything about that paper.
Here are simply three examples that show that even reading the abstracts should have been enough to correctly classify them, however they were still wrongly categoriesed. The question as to how many others there may be does not need to be asked as this is not a statistical exercise, but one of fact.
When coupled with the incorrect use of statistics by Cook et al, the paper is completely discredited and reflects badly on the authors and anyone else who wishes to associate themselves with it.
@dbstealey
What is it that you want to tell me?
I have been arguing that Poptech’s criticism is no such thing because he ignores/misrepresents/ doesn’t understand/ or whatever the methodology used in the Cook paper.
If PopTech wants to criticise the paper, then Poptech should do it right.
Again what’s your point? Except asking me to look somewhere else and test my reading skills.
SQUIRELL!
@Jantar
“Here are simply three examples that show that even reading the abstracts should have been enough to correctly classify them, however they were still wrongly categoriesed. The question as to how many others there may be does not need to be asked as this is not a statistical exercise, but one of fact.”
So you also ignore that in the Cook article the ratings of abstracts is compared to the self-ratings of the article authors of the whole articles. Why is that? Did you read the Cook article or have you only (very skeptically) read that was posted about it here?
“When coupled with the incorrect use of statistics by Cook et al, the paper is completely discredited and reflects badly on the authors and anyone else who wishes to associate themselves with it.”
Ah well… Ignore my two last questions. I found the answer!
LOL!
Jantar says:
May 21, 2013 at 5:53 pm
“In order to show that a claim is discreditied it isn’t neccessary to discredit every single item in that claim, but merely to show that part of the basis of the claim is false. In this case it would be obvious to anyone who knows anything about the hype of AGW that simply reading the abstracts of a paper is not going to show everything about that paper.”
But that is a straw man, no one has ever claimed that reading and abstract is going to show everything about a paper. The Cook team explained how they based classifications on the abstracts. And then they emailed all the authors asking how they would classify their own papers. 1200 authors wrote back with self-classifications, and often these were more pro-AGW than the Cook team’s abstract classifications. So Cook & co. tell us in the paper about evidence their own classifications are not perfect.
Here we have a post containing quotes from only 3 authors who self-classify their papers as less pro-AGW than the Cook team thought. Of course such exist. How do these 3 compare with the hundreds of authors the Cook team heard from? And we have no information about this tiny sample was picked.
That is why I said this post would convince nobody who was not already a believer.
Reich.Eschhaus says:
You are ignoring that the Cook article does compare their ABSTRACTS rating with the article authors self-rating of the WHOLE ARTICLES.
You are ignoring that Cook’s entire thesis is that rated abstracts = article opinion = scientist opinion = consensus opinion = truth. Every step in that chain is a falsehood.
“From Cook’s article it is clear that the abstract rating does not 100% agree with authors’ article self-ratings (counter examples are thus regarded in the Cook article).”
‘Regarded’. Heh. Cute. Note that Cook claims that the self-rated articles are ever so slightly more likely to be pro-AGW than the abstracts. The counter examples … exemplify the counter.
“Therefore the question of PopTech’s sampling method is highly relevant.”
PopTech’s assessment method is perfectly fine. He compared three authors’ opinions on AGW with the opinion that gets Cooked up for them. 100% wrong. Do the stats on that, and derive an estimate for the population error rate. It is not “vanishingly small”, and it demonstrates Cook’s bias.
And then there is the methodological error of categorizing effects and mitigation studies as “implicitly accepting AGW”. Sorry, but no.
Amateur hour bullshit.
JJ says:
May 21, 2013 at 6:19 pm
“PopTech’s assessment method is perfectly fine. He compared three authors’ opinions on AGW with the opinion that gets Cooked up for them. 100% wrong. Do the stats on that, and derive an estimate for the population error rate. It is not “vanishingly small”, and it demonstrates Cook’s bias.”
Aren’t there some skeptical readers here who have taken a course in statistics? You cannot estimate a “population error rate” from a hand-picked sample. Any more than you can test whether a coin is biased by picking three times when it turned up heads. With random sampling, yes, you could calculate the chance of 3 heads in a row.
That’s why sampling does matter.
@JJ
“You are ignoring that Cook’s entire thesis is that rated abstracts = article opinion = scientist opinion = consensus opinion = truth. Every step in that chain is a falsehood.”
No it is not, they don’t say that. This is self-evident by them asking the rated article’s authors to give an opinion and comparing that to the rating of the abstracts. You’re wrong.
“Note that Cook claims that the self-rated articles are ever so slightly more likely to be pro-AGW than the abstracts. The counter examples … exemplify the counter.”
What’s your point? That the counter examples didn’t respond? And when they did that the conclusions of Cook’s article would be false? Gather the evidence and show it to me! (advice: use a better methodology as PopTech).
“PopTech’s assessment method is perfectly fine. He compared three authors’ opinions on AGW with the opinion that gets Cooked up for them. 100% wrong. Do the stats on that, and derive an estimate for the population error rate. It is not “vanishingly small”, and it demonstrates Cook’s bias.”
There is no known method of PopTech. I suspect he checked out abstract ratings at skeptikal science and picked those which he thought would agree with his line of reasoning. Ha! No need to do stats, he should have used a proper method if he wanted to prove something. He is still wrong about presenting it here as if Cook’s study rated articles when they did not. Sorry! Why do you defend him?
“And then there is the methodological error of categorizing effects and mitigation studies as “implicitly accepting AGW”. Sorry, but no.”
I don’t understand what you are on about. I guess it is off topic.
Why are you trying to spin what is obviously a failure>? From Cook et al, (2013)
“For both abstract ratings and authors’ self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers</b. expressing a position on AGW marginally increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.”
Looks like they were directly talking about the papers.
Well said.
Thread winner. 🙂
You don’t see how providing evidence that Cook et al. (2013) falsely classified papers and pretended to know more about the papers then their authors is going to convince people that the study is flawed? Seriously?
Huge amount of grey area in Cook’s classifications:
Most of us could in many cases say yes to 2 adn 3, without agreeing that climate change was primarily human-caused or necessarily catastrophic…
Some questions asked in Skepticblog are interesting: http://www.skepticblog.org/2013/05/20/consensus-on-climate-change/#comments
Max says: May 21, 2013 at 2:38 am
If you add “…the global temperature record provides little support for the catastrophic view of the greenhouse effect,” that’s under #6.
Not sure what happens if you say both things, as in, “Emissions of a broad range of greenhouse gases of varying lifetimes contribute to global climate change, but the global temperature record provides little support for the catastrophic view of the greenhouse effect.”
And
Max says: May 21, 2013 at 2:00 pm
What if the abstract says something like, “The IPCC says global warming during the 20th century is caused mainly by increasing greenhouse gas concentration.” By accepting the consensus without actually researching it, does it increase the consensus?
In mathematics one of most often used techniques is proof by contradiction. That is, when you find just one example that does not support a theorem you have proved the theorem is false. QED.
Cook’s paper has now been turned into nothing but rubbish and his methodology shown to be a couple of steps below ridiculous. Of course, it always was as it was based on the biased ratings of people so engulfed in group think that they couldn’t even see the fallacy of their approach.
Welcome to the world of ridicule.
Poptech says:
May 21, 2013 at 8:00 pm
” Wilcon says: I do not see how a hand-picked sample of n=3 (out of what, 4000?) is going to convince anybody who is not already a believer.
You don’t see how providing evidence that Cook et al. (2013) falsely classified papers and pretended to know more about the papers then their authors is going to convince people that the study is flawed? Seriously?”
Seriously, you have not made any case. Some papers are mistakenly classified on the basis of their abstracts, that was already discussed and quantified in the Cook paper itself. Plus it’s obvious!
They did not pretend “to know more about the papers then their authors.” They were clear in the paper about how they sampled and categorized. They have a large discussion about how the authors know more than their abstract-raters.
So, no I do not think this report quoting 3 authors that you picked will convince anyone who is not already a believer. No doubt there are serious criticisms that can be leveled against the paper, but this is not one.
“Skiphil says:
May 21, 2013 at 2:48 pm”
Cook dropped out of university studying physics to be come a cartoonist. He is not a physicist and certainly isn’t a Dr.
Wilcon, so is the analysis of the 11 944 climate “abstracts” and the conclusions derived from them accurate?
You are not making much sense. So Cook et al. used a flawed method that produces false results and this is somehow scientifically acceptable, let alone passes peer-reviewed? Getting different results by contacting the authors of any sample size of papers should have been enough to reject it from publication.
I couldn’t imagine what would happen if Anthony or Steve McIntyre tried to publish a paper as shoddy as Cook et al. (2013).
I read the article. I read the comments, I reread the article. I reread the three abstracts.
I wish everyone had spent more time on Dr. Scafetta’s comments. His point is that his paper was correctly classified by the Cook team according to the Cook methodology but did not endorse IPCC AGW theory. His very cogent point is that if a paper stated that, for example, no more than 60% of observed warming could be attributed to AGW, then then authors would be labelled deniers and skeptics. However, that same paper would pass the Cook screen that looked for endorsement of AGW theory in that more than 50% is in the Cook range.
Scafetta’s point is that AGW proponents are moving the goal posts. This has been observed elsewhere. If only 60% or 51% of observed warming can be attributed to anthropogenic causes, then climate sensitivity to CO2 is low and we no longer have the C in CAGW.
So, IMHO, the author’s point should have been more like Scafetta’s and used these examples of how Cook’s methodology is misleading.
My read is that two of the papers passed the Cook endorsement screen using the Cook methodology because of the error bars. I have no idea how Idso’s paper passes the screen.
Another very important point is made by
Which states that even using the Cook methodology, the press release does not reflect what the study says. Please read the friends of science press release.
Someone at the University of Queensland is trying to spin his credentials,
http://www.gci.uq.edu.au/researchers/john-cook1
He used to be titled: “Climate Communications Fellow” likely by the same person to make up for his cartoonist background – http://theconversation.com/profiles/john-cook-3280/profile_bio
This should probably be investigated if he is not really a post-doc.
Further on Cook’s classifications:
Note he had 7 categories, which were then rolled into 3 categories
1. Endorsements (including implicit and explicit; categories 1–3
2. No position (category 4)
3. Rejections (including implicit and explicit; categories 5–7).
Brandon Shollenberger (Comment #113188) May 17th, 2013 at 2:13 am (on degree of AGW effect on warming)
The top category (1) covers everything from 50% to 100%.
The other top categories (2 & 3) cover everything from 0% to 100%.
The bottom categories (5 to 7) cover from 0% to 50%.
Note; also according to Shollenberger only 65 of 12,280 papers (he extracted) fell in the top category.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/on-the-consensus/
No it is not. Dr. Scafetta is not “explicitly endorsing AGW” but the exact opposite, he is explicitly trying to minimize it by arguing for a larger solar factor and reduced anthropogenic component. The classification by Cook et al. (2013) is not correct.
You can argue that a certain factor like solar is larger than commonly claimed even if it does not pass the 50% threshold without “endorsing AGW”.
Cook et al.’s use of the word “endorsement” disqualifies all three papers from how they were classified regardless of the error bars.
Reich.Eschhaus says:
……….
So you also ignore that in the Cook article the ratings of abstracts is compared to the self-ratings of the article authors of the whole articles. Why is that? Did you read the Cook article or have you only (very skeptically) read that was posted about it here?
“When coupled with the incorrect use of statistics by Cook et al, the paper is completely discredited and reflects badly on the authors and anyone else who wishes to associate themselves with it.”
Ah well… Ignore my two last questions. I found the answer!”
No, I didn’t ignore the claim that “the ratings of abstracts is compared to the self-ratings of the article authors of the whole articles.” I just showed that the claim was false, as here we have 3 authors who dispute that. Yes, I did read the Cook article as I couldn’t believe that it could be as bad as the reports on it suggested. In fact it was worse.
65 papers that explicitly endorse AGW with greater than 50% caused by man out of 12280 papaers is 0.53%, not 97%.
Richard Tol (Twitter):
@RichardTol Cook survey included 10 of my 122 eligible papers. 5/10 were rated incorrectly. 4/5 were rated as endorse rather than neutral.
https://twitter.com/RichardTol/status/337126632080957441
If nothing else, this thread is a fascinating study of people struggling with faulty logic. Possibly someone could be getting a sociology degree of some sort using this kind of interaction!
Personally, I agree with Richard M:
There is also a famous quote by Einstein regarding this.
Before a valid scientific conclusion can be drawn from data, you must have valid and accurate data. Even these 3, let alone Richard Tol’s and others discussed, invalidate the entire Cook “paper” because they prove the data is faulty.
Honestly, I feel bad for people who still believe in the AGW meme. It will become increasingly difficult to swallow the line as the planet stubbornly continues to refuse to warm. But somehow, now matter how convoluted the justification, they will manage to.
Poptech says:
May 21, 2013 at 8:51 pm
“Wilcon, so is the analysis of the 11 944 climate “abstracts” and the conclusions derived from them accurate?”
The basic conclusion is that the great majority of peer-reviewed papers taking any position on AGW accept it as real. That conclusion is consistent with peer-reviewed studies and other evidence, from literature searches to direct surveys of scientists and statements by all main scientist organizations. So externally, this conclusion fits other data. Internally, the Cook team polled authors themselves, and 1200 authors responded yielding a percentage similar (about 97) to their abstract ratings. So that supports their conclusion too.
Hand picking some examples where authors disagree with the abstract ratings only shows the abstract ratings are not perfect, which the authors already stated and anyone should expect. In fact, the paper clearly explains that hundreds of times they were wrong. Much more often the errors went in the opposite direction from the examples you picked.
But let’s turn the shoe around. I see on your website a list of “1100+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skeptic Arguments Against ACC/AGW Alarm.” If I could pick 3 authors among those 1100+, who turn out to disagree with your classification of their papers, would you admit that your conclusions are inaccurate? Agree that you had “pretended to know more about the papers then their authors”?
CodeTech says:
May 22, 2013 at 2:26 am
“If nothing else, this thread is a fascinating study of people struggling with faulty logic. Possibly someone could be getting a sociology degree of some sort using this kind of interaction!
Personally, I agree with Richard M:
In mathematics one of most often used techniques is proof by contradiction. That is, when you find just one example that does not support a theorem you have proved the theorem is false. QED.”
This might apply to mathematical theorems but not so much the real world. “Summer is warmer than winter in my town” is a perfectly reasonable statement that is not at all contradicted by finding one summer day that is cooler than one winter day.
The whole point of things like averages and percentages is that of course there are exceptions, perhaps very many, and yet still there are real patterns.
Basic theme is we must trust opinion of the experts.
But what makes one a climate scientist?
How well do the authors of these titles below understand atmospheric physics?:
(Titles only. All are Category 2, endorse but not quantify – search term ‘climate’ on SKS http://www.skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=search&s=climate&c=&e=2&yf=&yt= )
1. Biological Diversity And Neptune Realm
2. Biological Diversity, Ecology, And Global Climate Change
3. Climate Change Negotiations Polarize
4. Climatology And Society
5. Global Warming – Evidence For Asymmetric Diurnal Temperature-change
6. Model Estimates Of Co2 Emissions From Soil In Response To Global Warming
7. Photovoltaics And Materials Science – Helping To Meet The Environmental Imperatives Of Clean-air And Climate Change
8. Potential Impacts Of Global Climate Change On Pacific-northwest Spring Chinook Salmon (oncorhynchus-tshawytscha) – An Exploratory Case-study
9. Response To Skeptics Of Global Warming
10. Alternative Energy-resources – A Kenyan Perspective
11. Carbon Tax As A Dynamic Optimization Problem
12. Climate Forcing By Anthropogenic Aerosols
13. Deriving Global Climate Sensitivity From Paleoclimate Reconstructions
14. Ethical Issues Concerning Potential Global Climate Change On Food-production
15. Global Climate Change
16. Global Climate Change – Ecosystems Effects
17. Interactions Between Hydrodynamics And Pelagic Ecosystems –
Relevance To Resource Exploitation And Climate Change
18. The Social And Public-health Implications Of Global Warming And 19. The Onslaught Of Alien Species
20. The Use Of Iron And Other Trace-element Fertilizers In 23. Mitigating Global Warming
21. Time-dependent Greenhouse Warming Computations With A Coupled Ocean-atmosphere Model
22. Agriculture In A Greenhouse World
23. An Empirical-analysis Of The Strength Of The Phytoplankton-dimethylsulfide-cloud-climate Feedback Cycle
24. Co2 And Climatic-change – An Overview Of The Science
25. Global Vegetation Change Predicted By The Modified Budyko Model
I have listed completely the first 25 titles of the search, and italicized those which may have specific knowledge on the topic … but, the rest?
Reich.Eschhaus says:
May 21, 2013 at 5:28 pm
@Poptech
You are clutching at straws! Stop digging!
=================================
This is YOUR straw man Reich .. Cook got it wrong on at least these three papers and there it is likely that there are many more.
So has Cook either misrepresented the papers or if his scoring of the abstracts diverge from the content of the paper then the entire exercise is pointless. Is it not ?
The paper should be withdrawn and for Cook’s sake, before it gets rejected.
No need to drag out the silly nonsense you got from Skeptical Science’s “Crusher Crew” and try and deflect away from their fatally flawed paper – Cook et al. (2013). My list is only classifying if a paper can be used to support a skeptic argument (which may have nothing to do with the author) not what the author’s position is on their own paper. That unlike Cook et al. I actually respect very much. Also my list is simply a resource and it not drawing any “conclusions” as a whole outside of the papers exist and they all can be used to support a skeptic argument. I am not Cook and company so I do not pretend to know more than the authors.
I made an update with the comments from Dr. Tol.
Looks like Cook et al. is sinking fast, if only Obama could get his tweet back before it is too late.
Poptech says:
May 22, 2013 at 3:56 am
“No need to drag out the silly nonsense you got from Skeptical Science’s “Crusher Crew””
Huh? I got what from who? You have jumped to a wrong conclusion.
“I am not Cook and company so I do not pretend to know more than the authors.”
But Cook and company do not pretend to know more than the authors, either. They say and show that the authors know more. So this is another false accusation you have made, like your “Crusher Crew” thing above.
Wilcon says:
Aren’t there some skeptical readers here who have taken a course in statistics?
Your comments indicate that you are not in a position to make such a complaint.
You cannot estimate a “population error rate” from a hand-picked sample. Any more than you can test whether a coin is biased by picking three times when it turned up heads. With random sampling, yes, you could calculate the chance of 3 heads in a row.
In what way do the three authors that PopTech contacted not constitute an appropriate sample?
Answer carefully. Hint: Categorizing authors is not analogous to flipping a coin.
JJ
JJ says:
May 22, 2013 at 5:38 am
“Wilcon says:
Aren’t there some skeptical readers here who have taken a course in statistics?
Your comments indicate that you are not in a position to make such a complaint.”
You are mistaken, I have taken a course in statistics.
“In what way do the three authors that PopTech contacted not constitute an appropriate sample?”
They appear to be hand-picked by Poptech to support his argument. That is the opposite of random sampling and invalidates any attempt to calculate statistical significance. You do not know this?
“Answer carefully. Hint: Categorizing authors is not analogous to flipping a coin.”
I did not compare categorizing authors to flipping a coin. Where did you get that? I compared hand picking your sample to hand picking your coin toss results. Say, you toss 100 times, then hand pick which 3 of those 100 outcomes you want to count. You decide to pick 3 that came up heads. Sure enough they are heads, maybe revealing something about your thought process but not about whether the coin was biased.
Probability of 3 heads in a row, tossing a fair coin at random: .5^3 = .125 (12.5%)
Probability of 3 heads if you look through a bunch of outcomes and pick 3 that came up heads: 100%
Proves nothing except you did not take statistics.
Words are important, The Cook study did not falsely classify these papers. The point is that the Cook methodology applies a definition of “endorsing AGW” that is so broad as to be effectively meaningless as almost every skeptic acknowledges there is probably some tiny amount of AGW out there. Using the Cook definition, just about everything published on WUWT “endorses” AGW. So to take another definition of AGW not used by the study and apply it to the study results is a methodological concern.
The friends of science post highlights the fact that only 0.65% of the papers reviewed explicitly state AGW is responsible for more than 50% of the observed warming. The stunning result from the study is how few papers take a position on the “C” in Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW)
Reich.Eschhaus says:
@JJ
“You are ignoring that Cook’s entire thesis is that rated abstracts = article opinion = scientist opinion = consensus opinion = truth. Every step in that chain is a falsehood.”
No it is not, they don’t say that.
Of course they do, dear. They say that in the abstract and in the “paper”, and repeating that over and over is the raison d’etre of the whole exercise. C(r)ook has ginned up an appeal to authority fallacy.
There is no known method of PopTech.
You have very specific complaints, for someone who admits that he does not know what he is complaining about. Perhaps you should gather some more information before making unsupported conclusions.
I suspect he checked out abstract ratings at skeptikal science and picked those which he thought would agree with his line of reasoning. Ha!
I also suspect that he checked out the abstract ratings of authors that he knew to be AGW sceptics. That is a valid methodological choice. It permits some interesting conclusions, however inconvenient you may find them to be. Depending on the balance of the methodological choices, some very interesting conclusions might be drawn from this. You should ask PopTech to flesh out his description of his methods.
No need to do stats, he should have used a proper method if he wanted to prove something.
No need to find out what the methodology is, before declaring it improper, eh? Classic.
“And then there is the methodological error of categorizing effects and mitigation studies as “implicitly accepting AGW”. Sorry, but no.”
I don’t understand what you are on about.
Read my posts. May 21, 1:01 pm, for example.
Of course, the fundamental point is that C(r)ook is making an appeal to authority fallacy. That he achieves that dishonest end by equally dishonest means is just gratuitous.
JJ
Wilcon says:
“In what way do the three authors that PopTech contacted not constitute an appropriate sample?”
They appear to be hand-picked by Poptech to support his argument. That is the opposite of random sampling and invalidates any attempt to calculate statistical significance. You do not know this?
No. You do not know this. You are making assumptions.
Say, you toss 100 times, then hand pick which 3 of those 100 outcomes you want to count. You decide to pick 3 that came up heads. Sure enough they are heads, maybe revealing something about your thought process but not about whether the coin was biased.
Is that what PopTech did? Or did he hand pick authors that he knew to be sceptics, and investigate how they were categorized by C(r)ook’s fallacy?
Proves nothing except you did not take statistics.
Finding proof for false statements is something at which you lot are quite good.
JJ
JJ says:
May 22, 2013 at 7:00 am
“Wilcon says:
Proves nothing except you did not take statistics.
Finding proof for false statements is something at which you lot are quite good.”
Do you mean by that, you really did take a course in statistics? Then how did you manage to make this statistically nonsensical statement, about a sample you just admitted was hand picked? Feel free to show how you “do the stats,” with calculations and assumptions for deriving that “population error rate” you mention.
“PopTech’s assessment method is perfectly fine. He compared three authors’ opinions on AGW with the opinion that gets Cooked up for them. 100% wrong. Do the stats on that, and derive an estimate for the population error rate. It is not “vanishingly small”, and it demonstrates Cook’s bias.”
Wilcon says:
Then how did you manage to make this statistically nonsensical statement, about a sample you just admitted was hand picked?
You do not have sufficient information to claim that statement is “statistically nonsensical”, and that was precisely my point in making it. It is a point that I made explicit in my last post, and a point that you are now running from like a frightened schoolgirl. Man-up, and examine your assumptions. You may startt by answering the questions put to you that call out those assumptions, such as the previously asked and yet unanswered:
“Is that what PopTech did? Or did he hand pick authors that he knew to be sceptics, and investigate how they were categorized by C(r)ook’s fallacy?”
Furthermore, “hand picked” can be a valid methodology for making certain inferences, including some statistical inferences. You do not seem to understand this, instead using that term as some sort of epithet which you imply is universally damning. Perhaps another statistics course would be advisable.
The information that PopTech has provided (and that Richard Tol has now expanded upon significantly) is important. Cook’s method excludes relevant publications, and gins up a consensus fallacy (egregious all by itself, absent the dishonest means he uses to achieve it) from people who are decidedly not part of that “consensus”. That Cook’s work is factually wrong (as well as philosophically vacant) is established by Poptech’s work. The only remaining question is the degree to which it is wrong.
Consistent with the information we currently have about PopTech’s methods are scenarios that demonstrate significant bias by Cook. I understand why you would rather cut off examination of those scenarios by waving “hand picked” around your assumptions, but it is not valid.
Of course, neither is the appeal to authority fallacy that the team of C(r)ook’s has foisted upon us, so invalidity evidently does not bother you…
I find it very reassuring to see actual scientists quoted with reference to attributions made on their behalf supporting Cook’s survey. I wish we could hear more from these scientists – people with genuine integrity prepared to stand up for truth in science (some truths that even we sceptics may find uncomfortable) – because I would much rather hear the opinions of honest men than those of straw men.
I congratulate the writer from Popular Technology for his journalistic integrity in seeking out a response from these scientists. This is how it should work, but tragically never does in the mainstream media.
JJ says:
May 22, 2013 at 8:34 am
“Wilcon says:
Then how did you manage to make this statistically nonsensical statement, about a sample you just admitted was hand picked?
You do not have sufficient information to claim that statement is “statistically nonsensical”, and that was precisely my point in making it.”
Yes, I do. We both agree that the sample is not random, that it was selected in a purposive way related to the outcome in question. It is statistically nonsensical to declare you can derive a population estimate of agreement with Cook from a tiny sample selected in a way that biases the likelihood of agreement with Cook.
“Is that what PopTech did? Or did he hand pick authors that he knew to be sceptics, and investigate how they were categorized by C(r)ook’s fallacy?””
It doesn’t matter, inference is not valid under your phrasing or mine.
“Furthermore, “hand picked” can be a valid methodology for making certain inferences, including some statistical inferences. You do not seem to understand this, instead using that term as some sort of epithet which you imply is universally damning.”
I am not using it as an epithet. Rather, I understand the connection between random sampling and estimates of population parameters. In quoting me you forgot to repeat my question to you. I am curious because you keep implying you know something about statistics but then show just the opposite.
“Feel free to show how you “do the stats,” with calculations and assumptions for deriving that “population error rate” you mention.”
Can you do that, or were you bluffing?
Skiphil says:
May 21, 2013 at 2:48 pm
More pitiful propaganda about the Cook fairy tale paper, courtesy of the New York Times:
[I wasn’t aware that failed cartoonist John Cook is “a physicist” or that he has earned any PhD to be a “post-doctoral fellow” but the NY Times says it so both must be true??!!]
Cooks bio at sKs says: “He originally studied physics at the University of Queensland. After graduating, he majored in solar physics in his post-grad honours year”
He never said he has a BS or phd in anything. He could have flunked physics, got a BA in art (hence a cartoonist) and then tried solar physics agian and failed again.
Has anyone check with UofQ is to verify what he graduated in?
Poptech says:
May 21, 2013 at 9:01 pm
Re: Cook’s creditials.
http://theconversation.com/profiles/john-cook-3280/profile_bio
It says he only has a “Bachelor of Science Honours”. Maybe he has an honorary doctorate?
Wilcon says:
Yes, I do. We both agree that the sample is not random, that it was selected in a purposive way related to the outcome in question.
I do not agree to that. Insofar as we know from the information before us, the sample was collected in a purposive way that was related to determining bias in the original work, and which was not related to the outcome of that question.
It is statistically nonsensical to declare you can derive a population estimate of agreement with Cook from a tiny sample selected in a way that biases the likelihood of agreement with Cook.
You do not have any information stating that the sample was selected in a way that biases vs agreement with Cook’s categorization. You made that up. Did they teach you how to fabricate data in your stats class? Was that a “Climatometrics” class, by any chance? 🙂
“Is that what PopTech did? Or did he hand pick authors that he knew to be sceptics, and investigate how they were categorized by C(r)ook’s fallacy?””
It doesn’t matter, inference is not valid under your phrasing or mine.
It does matter. Inference is valid under my phrasing.
Rather, I understand the connection between random sampling and estimates of population parameters.
No, you really do not. In particular, you do not appear to understand that directed examination of the categorization of the sceptic authors from C(r)ook’s list is valid. You also do not appear to grasp that a random sampling of that sub-population with respect to the matter of the question has been achieved … unless:
1) PopTech only selected authors he knew to be miscategorized and discarded those found to be properly categorized. You have no warrant to assert this, as PopTech has made no statements to that effect. Further, he is present and participating on this thread, and available for you to ask of him such questions rather than making unsupported assumptions.
Or, perhaps you believe that PopTech’s three authors are not a random sample of sceptic authors, because:
2) C(r)ook’s categorization of the selected authors is biased in some way. Is that what you contend? Do tell.
Random sample or not, the information that PopTech has provided (and that Richard Tol has now expanded upon significantly) is important. From it, we know that Cook’s method excludes relevant publications, and gins up a consensus fallacy from people who are decidedly not part of that “consensus”. That Cook’s work is factually wrong is established by Poptech’s work. The only remaining question is the degree to which it is wrong.
Of course, the degree to which Cook’s work is fallacious is already established – 100%. The degree to which he is also factually incorrect is merely a sideshow.
JJ, you not only understand no statistics, you don’t even know what “random sampling” means.
Which explains why you can’t back up your own declaration that started this exchange.
“Feel free to show how you “do the stats,” with calculations and assumptions for deriving that “population error rate” you mention.
Can you do that, or were you bluffing?”
You were bluffing.
“PopTech has made no statements to that effect. Further, he is present and participating on this thread, and available for you to ask of him such questions rather than making unsupported assumptions.”
I did ask him. May 21, 2013 at 4:15 pm. At that point I was still prepared to believe he had tried more legitimate sampling and just left out any description, but Poptech gave no answer. He stayed around to argue for a while, so I drew conclusions from his silence regarding the main point.
@JJ
@PopTech
@Man Bearpig
@Jantar
From the Cook paper:
“A direct comparison of abstract rating versus self-rating endorsement levels for the 2142 papers that received a self-rating is shown in table 5. More than half of the abstracts that we rated as ‘No Position’ or ‘Undecided’ were rated ‘Endorse AGW’ by the paper’s authors.
Table 5. Comparison of our abstract rating to self-rating for papers that received self-ratings.
Position Abstract rating Self-rating
Endorse AGW 791 (36.9%) 1342 (62.7%)
No AGW position or undecided 1339 (62.5%) 761 (35.5%)
Reject AGW 12 (0.6%) 39 (1.8%)”
Paper authors that reject AGW in opposition to the abstract ratings are accounted for (a small percentage) as well as paper authors that endorse AGW in opposition to abstract rating (substantial percentage). I rest my case.
azleader says: @ May 21, 2013 at 7:06 am
The real issues are:
1 – Are these scientists view representative?
2 – What % of the total assessments are incorrect
3 – Does Cook’s results fundamentally reflect mainstream science opinion?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
No the real issue is how much does the IPCC POLITICAL mandate:
plus the gatekeeping preventing the publication of anything that does not endorse this mandate retard the advancement of the science of climate and how dangerous is that to civilization given we are at the end of the Holocene and may or may not be near glacial inception.
SEE:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/05/on-“trap-speed-acc-and-the-snr/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/30/the-antithesis/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/02/can-we-predict-the-duration-of-an-interglacial/
Let’s start from the top:
Cook is stating there is a 97% consensus on human-caused global warming.
He preselects his study group by using the phrases “global warming” and “global climate change”
This means any paper on climate that does not use “warming” or “climate change” is automatically tossed out. This alone invalidates the whole study because of the built in bias of the study subjects. It is like looking at blogs/articles on food and only choosing those with “Vegetarian” or” Vegan” and then stating 97% of the human race does not eat meat.
Next Cook then uses as a sorting criteria categorizing all those papers that do not explicitly say in their abstracts they refute AGW as supporting AGW.
Since most of the skeptics here at WUWT are willing to state there is some modification of the climate by greenhouse gases that is a pretty all inclusive sorting criteria. Add in the absolute necessity of the “Get Out of Jail Free Card” phrases like The changes so far are not enough to reverse the course of global warming, but there are some other significant side-effects… needed to get a paper published and the 97% or some other high number was a slam dunk.
This type of poll reminds me of the the Blair-Rockefeller poll headlined Tea Party Distinguished by Racial Views… where all the questions determining “Racial Views” started with the phrase “Do you think it is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure that….” (see TABLE 2. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TEA PARTY WHITES & NON-TEA PARTY WHITES NATIONWIDE)
Everyone knows Tea Party members wants a smaller FEDERAL government and that they feel much of the responsibility for governing is Constitutionally that of the state not the federal government. Therefore you can guarantee a Tea Party member will answer NO to every question starting with “Do you think it is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure that….” and it has to do with the word FEDERAL and not racism tucked into the rest of the sentence.
This poll was run by Dr. Rafael A. Jimeno, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Political Science University of Arkansas BTW and therefore he should have known how to run an unbiased poll. However this is the poll handed to the media that was used to declare the Tea Party racist in all the major news outlets.
Cook pulled exactly the same type of trick with his poll.
I have nothing but contempt for people who run bias polls just to grab headlines for political purposes. (No I am not a Tea Party member just curious.)
I highly doubt it and that should not qualify you for such a position.
I did not discard any responses as these are the only ones I received. I emailed many more scientists but have not yet received their responses. I felt this was enough to make this point as this time. Dr. Tol’s is a completely independent inquiry by himself. I am not revealing what else I may be working on here since the Cook et al. team is monitoring these comments.
It is worse than that – the papers must include the phrases; “global warming” or “global climate change” in the title or abstract, be indexed in the Web of Science database, cannot be (scientifically valid) “review” papers and cannot be published in a social science journal.
For instance these phrases could be included in the full paper and not be included in this “study”.
Here’s how Dana responds on twitter:
Dana Nuccitelli @dana1981
@RichardTol Have to say I’m disappointed. Didn’t have you pegged as a denier before. Fine to dislike our paper, but don’t lie about it.
Wilcon says:
JJ, you not only understand no statistics, you don’t even know what “random sampling” means.
To the contrary, I understand precisely what random sampling means. I understand how it operates to support statistical inference, and the degree to which various tests of statistical significance are robust against that assumption. You either lack this understanding, or are attempting to exploit a lay audience.
I did ask him. May 21, 2013 at 4:15 pm. At that point I was still prepared to believe he had tried more legitimate sampling and just left out any description, but Poptech gave no answer.
He has now. The information that he has provided thus far does not support your assumptions as to his methods. Of course, you are making those assumptions to attack him, in defense of someone who:
* admits his methods include intentionally mischaracterizing mitigation and effects studies as “implicitly endorsing AGW”,
* somehow missed more than 90% of Richard Tol’s relevant papers, and miscategorized 80% of the few that were included, and
* performs these and other shenanigans in service of a fallacious “appeal to authority” and “bandwagon” propaganda campaign.
So, it is clear that your commitment is not to scientific knowledge, but to political expedience. You are highly likely to continue to proceed with presenting assumptions about PopTech’s methods as fact, instead of ascertaining the truth.
Random sample or not, the information that PopTech has provided (and that Richard Tol has now expanded upon significantly) is important. From it, we know that Cook’s method excludes relevant publications, and gins up a consensus fallacy from people who are decidedly not part of that “consensus”. That Cook’s work is factually wrong is established by Poptech’s work. The only remaining question is the degree to which it is factually wrong, in addition to being 100% fallacious.
JJ
One thing I noticed with this study you can see on tables 3 and 4.
Table 3. 1/3 of the papers studied were consensus 2/3 no stance.
Table 4. Of the surveys they sent out 2/3 of the ones that came back were from the consensus group. 1/3 were from the no stance group.
That means that the consensus group was 4 times more likely to return their survey.
This just confirms what we saw with the conspiracy paper where not a single skeptic blog joined the survey.
Cook has such bad will built up with skeptics that he cant possible get accurate survey’s of skeptics
JJ, very well said.
Tom, these are my thoughts exactly. The self-surveys are very likely biased to those scientists who support an alarmist position like the Skeptical Science team and should not be used as evidence of an unbiased sample. Anyone who is not an alarmist and is aware of Skeptical Science’s their dishonest methods, which includes censoring of scientists comments would never participate in any of their surveys.
JJ says:
May 23, 2013 at 6:08 am
“To the contrary, I understand precisely what random sampling means. I understand how it operates to support statistical inference, and the degree to which various tests of statistical significance are robust against that assumption. You either lack this understanding, or are attempting to exploit a lay audience.”
My understanding is you can’t do what you declare. Three times now I’ve invited you to show how you could, as you asserted, “do the stats” and calculate a “population error rate” from this nonrandom sample of n=3. Three times you’ve dodged the question, leading me to guess you are bluffing.
Now you double down. Can you show your understanding of the “various tests of statistical significance” that “are robust against that assumption” (of random sampling) by applying them to this nonrandom n=3 sample? Was that another bluff?
You have a real chance here to show which of us understands statistics.
Poptech says:
May 23, 2013 at 11:16 am
“The self-surveys are very likely biased to those scientists who support an alarmist position like the Skeptical Science team and should not be used as evidence of an unbiased sample. Anyone who is not an alarmist and is aware of Skeptical Science’s their dishonest methods, which includes censoring of scientists comments would never participate in any of their surveys.”
A bored student could turn all your words around, into an argument why your n=3 survey results are biased. The inverse rhetoric would not be conclusive either, although thousands of responses and a published description of methods give Cook the edge for now.
The test for any scientific result is not publication but replication. What have others found, and what will others find, using open and careful designs of their own? My impression that the consensus really is one comes from reading journals, going to meetings, talking to scientists. My impressions are anecdotes not data, but they seem consistent with data described in the published studies.
If you have different impressions, do the research, publish the paper, and open all your own methods up for discussion.
Dr. Tol is ripping into Dana on Twitter,
“@dana1981 Semantics. You misrated my papers.” – Dr. Richard Tol
“@dana1981 Not at all. You generated data. The data that I understand are all wrong. The errors are not random.” – Dr. Richard Tol
“@dana1981 I think your data are a load of crap.” – Dr. Richard Tol
“@dana1981 I think your sampling strategy is a load of nonsense.” – Dr. Richard Tol
Wilcon says:
Can you show your understanding of the “various tests of statistical significance” that “are robust against that assumption” (of random sampling) by applying them to this nonrandom n=3 sample?
What nonrandom sample? Once again, that has not been established. That is just more of you making assumptions instead of inquiries. And your perseverance on N=3, as if that were meaningful in some negative way, indicates that you really don’t understand the maths involved.
Random sample or not, the information that PopTech has provided (and that Richard Tol has now expanded upon significantly) is important. From it, we know that Cook’s method excludes relevant publications, and gins up a consensus fallacy from people who are decidedly not part of that “consensus”. That Cook’s work is factually wrong is established by Poptech’s work. The only remaining question is the degree to which it is factually wrong, in addition to being 100% fallacious.
If you had any integrity, you would stop making up assumptions about PopTech’s methods, and acknowledge the invalidity of the methods to which Cook (in a mixture of ignorance and hubris) freely admits. That would include not only his methodological and statistical failings, but the epistemic errors as well – most glaringly the anti-science fallacy that is the basis of the entire exercise.
My impression that the consensus really is one comes from reading journals, going to meetings, talking to scientists. My impressions are anecdotes not data, but they seem consistent with data described in the published studies.
Given that you support Cook’s false and fallacious methods without question here, it is quite likely that you apply them yourself when forming your impresssions. As you do with Cook, you probably ignore self-selection bias, you likely deny the possibility of gatekeeping and blind yourself to the self-censoring that it engenders, you probably intentionally misinterpret silence or use of a hypothetical as “implicit endorsement”, and freely equivocate on the substance of the matter to which your imaginary consensus is allegedly agreeing. And you probably also publically support the notion of consensus as scientific, simultaneously applying social pressure to the end of creating a “consensus” while cynically denying that origin. Cook does all of these things, and you peep not.
Applying the same bad methods to the same dataset should give consistent results. That you believe that the consistency in results that comes from the consistent application of bad methods magically validates the methods is simply another example of the problem …
JJ
JJ says:
May 23, 2013 at 3:14 pm
“What nonrandom sample? Once again, that has not been established. That is just more of you making assumptions instead of inquiries.”
Wow, you ducked the question a fourth time! Wouldn’t it be more honest to admit you were bluffing, in all those places where you declared
– Poptech’s sampling was random?
– You did so know what “random sample” meant?
– You could “do the stats” and calculate a “population error rate” from his 3 responses?
– You understand “various tests of statistical significance” that “are robust against that assumption” (of random sampling)?
On the other hand I wasn’t bluffing. What is random sampling? (Short version) simple random sampling means that every element of the population has an equal chance of selection at each step. So there are two elements, (1) a defined population, about which we might want to draw inferences, and (2) some method to assure that each element has an equal chance of being chosen.
@Poptech, do your n=3 respondents represent a random sample? From what population? How did you give all elements of that population an equal probability of selection?
The abstracts part of the Cook study, as I read it, had a clearly defined population (papers found by searching Web of Science for two key phrases) and sampling scheme (all). That should be a pretty representative sample for that population, although anybody can argue they want a different population.
Their author survey appears to start out from a reasonably clear population as well: (all?) first or corresponding authors with email addresses among those abstracts. Not all of them replied, however. Nonresponse was probably nonrandom, and how much this biased the conclusions should be an empirical questions. Maybe not much, since the self-rating and abstract-rating percentages are similar.
Perhaps Richard Tol or somebody can design a better sampling scheme, that he can test to find out whether it gives different results.
As of right now I am not revealing anything more about my methods because it relates to other projects I am working on outside of that those 3 are the only responses I received so far and I have emailed many more scientists. The data for Cook et al. (2013) has been shown to be wrong and thus puts in question the entire study’s accuracy.
Their author self-survey only returned 14% of those they contacted. I am very confident non response to the self-survey was due to the AGW position held by the author. The differences in the self-ratings should have been a warning that their own ratings were wrong.
populartechnology says:
May 23, 2013 at 4:19 pm
“The data for Cook et al. (2013) has been shown to be wrong and thus puts in question the entire study’s accuracy.”
All data contains errors. How much error, and how does it affect the conclusions? To answer that you need data or analysis too. Being careful about errors.
“The differences in the self-ratings should have been a warning that their own ratings were wrong.”
They said that in the paper. The difference suggested their own ratings were too conservative. Which makes sense since they were just based on the abstracts, and full papers give more information. It makes no sense to imagine the abstract ratings were error free, and the paper clearly admits that.
“I am very confident non response to the self-survey was due to the AGW position held by the author.”
Maybe your confidence is correct, but the author survey results still agree with the abstract ratings in support for AGW. And also with previous studies done by others, using different sampling and methods.
You have a better way, do the work and publish the paper so people can check. It’s not impressive here that you launch an attack against their methods, then hide your own saying “I am not revealing anything more about my methods” when questioned.
The names of the scientists are not hidden so their statements can be verified. I am not publishing a paper so I don’t have to do anything, let alone give out information relating to future projects I am working on. You just like Skeptical Science will have to sweat it out.
The author’s surveys only support the notion that they falsely classified scientist’s papers since they are not identical. Wrong information does not become correct because certain percentages are similar.
populartechnology says:
May 23, 2013 at 6:20 pm
“You just like Skeptical Science will have to sweat it out.”
Relax, I’m not sweating anything out. It will be interesting to see your research, when you bring it into the light.
“Wrong information does not become correct because certain percentages are similar.”
Of course not. But multiple methods reaching similar conclusions tend to undermine the individual critiques. If you are planning original research and not just more fault-picking, and you think it will reach different conclusions — that too will face tests of replication.
I disagree that multiple methods reached similar conclusions as Cook et al.’s method was not identical to the author’s self surveys.
Cook’s methods have already failed very basic tests of replication.
It is absolutely hilarious some of the papers I am finding classified as “endorsing AGW”.
Wilcon says:
Wouldn’t it be more honest to admit you were bluffing, in all those places where you declared
– Poptech’s sampling was random?
I did not say that once, let alone in “all of those places”. You people have a real problem with intentionally mischaracterizing what other people say.
“On the other hand I wasn’t bluffing.”
Yeah, ya are. Combined with a big dose of lying.
What is random sampling? (Short version) simple random sampling…
… is not the only kind of random sampling. Keep reading. You’ll get it eventually.
… means that every element of the population has an equal chance of selection at each step. So there are two elements, (1) a defined population, about which we might want to draw inferences, and (2) some method to assure that each element has an equal chance of being chosen.
And everything that you know about what poptech has done is consistent with that. Yet you bluff and bluster and pretend otherwise. Dishonest.
Maybe your confidence is correct, but the author survey results still agree with the abstract ratings in support for AGW.
No they don’t. Cook himself claims a minimum 50% error rate in the abstract ratings vs the author survey for a substantial subpopulation of his “survey.” He is very careful not to provide the specifics of that error assessment, lest the reader be able to draw proper inferences. However, from the information that he does provide we are able to determine that a minimum of 70% of sceptic papers in that subpopulation were miscategorized. This corroberates PopTech’s finding, and renders your dishonest objection to his work that much more egregious.
Meanwhile, C(r)ook’s paper is still founded in an anti-scientific fallacy. And he still supports it with methodological, statistical, and epistemologic err. He still intentionally mischaracterizes silence or use of a hypothetical as “implicit endorsement”. He still equivocates on the meaning of the subject matter of the imaginary consensus. And you still turn a blind eye to the C(r)ookery, while attacking others with bluff, bald assertions and lies. This is the stuff of the “consensus”.
JJ
JJ says:
May 23, 2013 at 11:04 pm
“Wilcon says:
Wouldn’t it be more honest to admit you were bluffing, in all those places where you declared
– Poptech’s sampling was random?
I did not say that once, let alone in “all of those places”. You people have a real problem with intentionally mischaracterizing what other people say.”
Ah, you cut off the rest of my list, so it looks like “all those places” refers to just one thing and you can call me a liar. And by cutting off three points you ducked yet again (five times now?) an invitation to show knowledge instead of airily declaring that you have it.
This was my real quote:
“Wow, you ducked the question a fourth time! Wouldn’t it be more honest to admit you were bluffing, in all those places where you declared
– Poptech’s sampling was random?
– You did so know what “random sample” meant?
– You could “do the stats” and calculate a “population error rate” from his 3 responses?
– You understand “various tests of statistical significance” that “are robust against that assumption” (of random sampling)?”
So you can’t support any of those statements you made, but I’m a liar because you didn’t say Poptech’s sampling was random?
JJ says:
May 22, 2013 at 10:56 am
“You also do not appear to grasp that a random sampling of that sub-population with respect to the matter of the question has been achieved … unless:”
Since you plainly don’t believe your “unless” parts, I took your statement to mean what it says. You thought that random sampling has been achieved. Although nothing of the sort has been done, not even Poptech will claim that. Your statement revealed you did not understand what random sampling is, despite claims to the contrary, so I defined the simplest case. You responded that simple random sampling
“… is not the only kind of random sampling. Keep reading. You’ll get it eventually.”
Enlighten me, I kept reading and don’t get it. Here you have yet another chance to show instead of declaring that you understand anything about statistics. What kind of non-simple random sampling do you see behind Poptech’s n=3? Do you think it was it cluster sampling, or stratified, or systematic with a random start point? Or a multistage combination? Something even more complex? What device assured random selection?
The sampling issue is not minor, it goes to the heart of whether Poptech’s approach has any merit as research. So far there’s no hint about his sampling, and that n=3 sample looks totally biased. But the Cook paper certainly has weaknesses, and I’m all in favor of replications to address those.
populartechnology says:
May 23, 2013 at 7:38 pm
“I disagree that multiple methods reached similar conclusions as Cook et al.’s method was not identical to the author’s self surveys.”
This comment makes no sense, of course the methods are not identical. That’s why I called them “multiple methods.”
I meant to say Cook et al.’s results were not identical to the author’s self surveys.
Dr. Morner weighs in,
http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/05/97-study-falsely-classifies-scientists.html
Dr. Morner, your paper ‘Estimating future sea level changes from past records’ is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as having; “No Position on AGW”.
Is this an accurate representation of your paper?
ROFLMAO! This has to be painful for Cook and Company,
https://www.google.com/search?q=97%25+consensus
Once upon a time, the consensus opinion was that the earth was flat.
Wilcon says:
Ah, you cut off the rest of my list, so it looks like “all those places” refers to just one thing and you can call me a liar.
Sweetheart, you claimed I said something that I did not. That is what makes you a lair. Listing one of those lies was sufficient to demonsrate that fact.
… I’m a liar because you didn’t say Poptech’s sampling was random?
Yes, that is correct. You are a liar, and that is but one example. That you are fundamentally dishonest is also shown in the fact that you support C(r)ook’s use of fallacious agruments in the first place. When one starts off backing a lie, it is inevitable that more will follow.
So far there’s no hint about his sampling, …
How nice of you to finally admit that you have no basis for the claims you have been making. That has been a fundamental thesis in my discussion with you. Perhaps now you will stop telling lies to argue against it. I would not put money on that, however.
The sampling issue is not minor, it goes to the heart of whether Poptech’s approach has any merit as research.
Nonsense. The “sampling issue”, and the lies you tell in support of it, is simply a distraction to draw attention away from the stench coming from the pile of feces that the C(r)ook’s have put on the world’s doorstep.
Random sample or not, the information that PopTech has provided (and that Richard Tol has now expanded upon significantly) is important. From it, we know that Cook’s method excludes relevant publications, and gins up a consensus fallacy from people who are decidedly not part of that “consensus”. That Cook’s work is factually wrong is established by Poptech’s work. The only remaining question is the degree to which it is factually wrong, in addition to being 100% fallacious.
PopTech’;s work is supported by the information that C(r)ook was not able to hide when he wrote his appeal to authority fallacy. C(r)ook himself claims a minimum 50% error rate in the abstract ratings vs the author survey for a substantial subpopulation of his “survey.” He is very careful not to provide the specifics of that error assessment, lest the reader be able to draw proper inferences. However, from the information that C(r)ook does provide, we are able to determine that a minimum of 70% of sceptic papers in that subpopulation were miscategorized . This corroberates PopTech’s finding, and renders your dishonest objection to his work that much more egregious.
Meanwhile, C(r)ook’s paper is still founded in an anti-scientific fallacy. And you still support it. And C(r)ook’s paper still props up that fallacy with methodological, statistical, and epistemologic error. And you still support it. C(r)ook still intentionally mischaracterizes silence or use of a hypothetical as “implicit endorsement. And you still support it. C(r)ook still equivocates on the meaning of the subject matter of the imaginary consensus. And you still support it.
You still turn a blind eye to the C(r)ookery, while attacking others with bluff, bald assertions and lies for saying things that are consistent with the 50-70% minimum error rate to which C(r)ook himselfv admits. This is the stuff of the “consensus”.
JJ
More dissent from Cook et al. (2013)…
http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/05/97-study-falsely-classifies-scientists.html
Dr. Soon, your paper ‘Polar Bear Population Forecasts: A Public-Policy Forecasting Audit’ is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as having; “No Position on AGW”.
Is this an accurate representation of your paper?
rebuttal from the folks who wrote the consensus paper-
http://www.skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=faq
“How did you independently check your results?
Nobody is more qualified to judge a paper’s intent than the actual scientists who authored the paper. To provide an independent measure of the level of consensus, we asked the scientists who authored the climate papers to rate the level of endorsement of their own papers. Among all papers that were self-rated as expressing a position on human-caused warming, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. This result is consistent with our abstract ratings, which found a 97.1% consensus… each abstract was rated by at least two separate raters, with any conflicts resolved by a third reviewer… The entire database of 12,464 papers is available in the Supplementary Material. We have also published all our abstract ratings, which are also available via a search form… We have also created an Interactive Rating System, encouraging people to rate the papers themselves and compare their ratings to ours.”
Ben, how is that a rebuttal? They falsely classified these scientists papers and the false classifications were published and conclusions derived from them.