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)
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.