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
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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)
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
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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.”
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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.
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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