Guest essay by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Environmental Research Letters ought to have known better than to publish the latest anti-scientific propaganda paper by John Cook of the dubiously-named Skeptical Science website. Here are just a few of the solecisms that should have led any competent editor or reviewer to reject the paper:
- It did not discuss, still less refute, the principle that the scientific method is not in any way informed by argument from consensus, which thinkers from Aristotle via Alhazen to Huxley and Popper have rejected as logically fallacious.
- Its definition of the “consensus” it claimed to have found was imprecise: that “human activity is very likely causing most of the current anthropogenic global warming”.
- It did not put a quantitative value on the term “very likely”, and it did not define what it meant by “current” warming. There has been none for at least 18 years.
- It cited as authoritative the unscientifically-sampled surveys of “consensus” by Doran & Zimmerman (2009) and Anderegg et al. (2010).
- It inaccurately represented the views of scientists whose abstracts it analysed.
- It disregarded two-thirds of the 12,000 abstracts it examined, on the unscientific ground that those abstracts had expressed no opinion on Man’s climatic influence.
- It declared that the one-third of all papers alleged to have endorsed the “consensus” really amounted to 97% of the sample, not 33%.
- It suggested that the “consensus” that most recent warming is manmade is equivalent to the distinct and far less widely-supported notion that urgent action to prevent future warming is essential to avert catastrophe. Obama fell for this, twittering that 97% found global warming not only real and manmade but also dangerous.
Yet the most remarkable conclusion to be drawn from Cook’s strange paper is that the “consensus” – far from growing – is actually collapsing.
A little history.
It was Naomi Oreskes, a “historian” of “science”, who started the “consensus” hare running in the literature in 2004 with a non-peer-reviewed essay in Science alleging that not one of 928 abstracts she had reviewed had disagreed with the “consensus” that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations”.
Oreskes’ definition of “consensus”, though less imprecise than Cook’s, falls well short of stating that manmade warming may prove catastrophic.
The conclusion of Oreskes’ essay was that three-quarters of the abstracts she reviewed endorse the “consensus” either explicitly or, by evaluating impacts or proposing mitigation, implicitly. A quarter took no view. None, she said, disagreed with the consensus position.
Schulte (2008) reviewed 539 papers in the three years following the period studied by Oreskes, using the same search term (“global climate change”) and the same definition of consensus. He found that “the proportion of papers that now explicitly or implicitly endorse the consensus has fallen from 75% to 45%.”
Only 2% of the papers reviewed “offer new field data or observations directly relevant to the question whether anthropogenic warming has prevailed over natural variability in the past half-century”.
Just one paper mentioned the possibility of catastrophic climate change, but without providing any evidence for catastrophe. No papers provided any quantitative evidence whatsoever for the consensus as defined, still less for catastrophe.
Schulte concluded: “There appears to be little basis in the peer-reviewed literature for the degree of alarm on the issue of man-made climate change which is being expressed in the media and by politicians.”
On no basis, Oreskes later asserted that Schulte had “misrepresented” her results. In fact he had reported them straightforwardly and had simply carried her method forward for a further three years.
Finally, Cook alleged that a third of the papers he had reviewed explicitly or implicitly endorsed the “consensus”. However, several of the scientists whom he said had endorsed the “consensus” say they had done no such thing.
Even if he had assessed the abstracts fairly, the 33% endorsement of the “consensus” that he reported is significantly less than the 45% endorsement that Schulte reported, and less again than the 75% “consensus” reported by Oreskes:
The “consensus” is indeed collapsing.
One might examine Cook’s 12,000 abstracts to discover how many (or, rather, how very few) explicitly or implicitly endorse the notion that catastrophe will follow if CO2 emissions continue to grow.
However, any such survey would be of no more scientific value than that of Cook. As the planet continues to fail to warm at anything like the rate that the usual suspects have so confidently but unwisely over-predicted, it will eventually become apparent to all that science was not, is not, and will never be done by mere headcount.
References
Anderegg, W.R.L., J.W. Prall J. Harold, and S.H. Schneider, 2010, Expert credibility in climate change, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 107: 12107-9.
Cook, J., D. Nuccitelli, S.A. Green, M. Richardson, B. Winkler, R. Painting, R. Way, P. Jacobs, and A. Skuce, 2013, Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, Environ. Res. Lett. 8: 024024 (7 pp), doi:0.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024.
Doran, P., and M. Zimmerman, 2009, Examining the scientific consensus on climate change, EOS Trans. Am. Geophys. Union 99: 22-23.
Oreskes, N., 2004, The scientific consensus on climate change, Science 306: 1686.
Schulte, K.-M., 2008, Scientific consensus on climate change?, Energy & Environment 19:2, 281-286, doi:10/1060/095830508783900744.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says:
May 22, 2013 at 5:55 am
… I too well remember the TV ad. I remember ‘Arthur’ who ate with his paw – then we discovered that the ad men were simply coating his paws with the stuff to MAKE him lick his paws!
This was well before the days of digital video and cameras, however, my family had two calicos – siblings – who would sit at the dish on the back porch and scoop up a mix of dry food and the morning’s left-over oat meal and eat off their paws. We used to feed all the dogs and cats (four and six respectively) on the porch each morning. They were all working animals tasked with keeping rodents down, coyotes amd other pests away, and herding the cattle. So, the take away is that cats may very well on occasion eat with their paws. They were the only two I have ever seen do so. But, merely because an incident is described as “urban” legend or has been simulated in an ad, doesn’t mean it never could or has happened in reality, especially if you leave the urban for rural.
Lord Moncton is always a good read. I have been doing a little research of my own and have uncovered a dirty little secret relating to aggregate polar sea ice extents. Please follow the link below to corroborate my findings. Essentially, the data on the UIC sea Ice page indicates a net gain in sea ice since 1980.
Link: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
There are interactive spaghetti graphs for both the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extents. Have a look at 2013 day 138 and you will clearly see that there is a net gain in aggregate ice level relative to the arctic high day 138 (1985) and the Antarctic low day 138 (1980).
Current Antarctic = 8.783 Million sq/km…Antarctic low = 6.238 million Sq/km.
Current Arctic = 11.43 million sq/km…Arctic high = 12.855 million Sq/km.
I thought there was no “global temperature”? If some places warmed, some cooled and some remained the same, then there is no “global warming”. Period.
The concept of global average temperature is a valid one and can be (non-uniquely) defined. The evidence that the global average temperature by pretty much any reasonable definition has increased post Little Ice Age — which was more or less tied with the coldest stretch of the entire post-Younger Dryas Holocene — is very strong. There is, therefore, very little doubt that the world has experienced a fair bit of global warming over the last 300 years, rebounding from an 11,000 year low. There is equally little doubt that the bulk of this warming occurred before CO_2 became an issue at all, and an unknown but probably large fraction of the warming that has occurred since CO_2 became an issue was similarly “natural” as opposed to anthropogenic.
What is also reasonably well known is that increasing CO_2 in and of itself should cause a direct increase in global average temperature all things being equal. In a complex nonlinear system, they never are equal, however, and a great deal of the argument is about what the feedbacks are, and what the competing, equally important drivers are, outside of CO_2. Feedback could be anywhere from actively negative, so more CO_2 does anything from actually cool (unlikely, IMO) to leave the climate completely neutral (slightly unlikely), to “zero” (no feedback) and hence likely to warm the planet roughly 0.1 K per decade over the rest of the century if it keeps going up as predicted, to actively positive, so one sees 0.2 to 0.3 K per decade instead of 0.1. Hansen has (for years) pushed 0.3+, which would indeed likely be catastrophic. The latest AR5 report (as I recall) is “projecting” 0.2, which would possibly have negative side effects but not be catastrophic. The latest data — as Monckton notes, neutral to slightly negative over somewhere between 12 and 16 years, depending on how one picks ends and fits — is actively constraining the probable limits of the positive feedback ever lower, and increasing numbers of climate scientists are coming around to the notion that the number could be between 0.1 (no feedback) to 0.2 (weak positive feedback).
If the climate stays in neutral for another 2-3 years, or if it actually gets cooler (both quite possible given a that we are likely at or past the solar maximum peak for this cycle and there may be a connection between this and the climate) then most reasonable scientists are going to be looking hard at the no feedback alternative, which is definitely not catastrophic and may not even be net negative in impact. OTOH, if it spikes 0.4-0.5 degrees and sticks (restoring a growth rate over the last 30 years plus of over 0.2 degrees per decade), it would tend to support the stronger positive feedback scenarios.
I personally would argue that we don’t know what will happen. We simply don’t know enough to do the computations (as is proven by the inability of our computations to predict what we’ve seen so far at all accurately). We are pissing into the wind here. Nature will — as nature usually does — let us know, in due time, what the answers really are, but in the meantime the best that can be said is that it is foolish to completely ignore the risk of catastrophe, and equally foolish to take measures that amount to an ongoing guaranteed catastrophe (not just a risk!) to avoid that risk. It is true that all young males run a risk of catastrophic testicular cancer, a disease that can kill them. It is equally true that the best way of dealing with this risk is not to cut off all of their balls.
rgb
Mods
This post:
William Wright says:
May 22, 2013 at 6:30 am
looks like it has been generated by a virus.
[Reply: Could be. But we need more evidence than that. — mod.]
“it will eventually become apparent to all that science was not, is not, and will never be done by mere headcount.
Although this was, as expected, a great post, nothing I’ve observed in history makes me as sanguine as Lord M. about what “will eventually become apparent to all.”
fred berple: ‘The parenthetical is clearly a reference to the abbreviation immediately preceding.’
Not necessarily. A more likely reading, in my view, is that the parenthesis refers to the preceding clause, ‘human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW’. The quoted words are commonly understood to mean anthropogenic global warming, or AGW for short, and where ‘GW’ stands for ‘global warming’.
In that case, there is no tautology. My reading is supported by a previous phrase in the Introduction: ‘the fundamental cause of global warming’. This wording implies a distinction between global warming and anthropogenic global warming.
Further support is provided by a subsequent phrase (under ‘Methodology’) which says, ‘(e.g., humans are contributing more than 50% of global warming, consistent with the 2007 IPCC statement that most of the global warming since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations)’.
The meaning of this wording also depends on a distinction between ‘global warming’ and ‘anthropogenic global warming’.
My apologies to Arthur…and Kattomeat.
Duster, the ad men admitted doing it in this case.
I am particularly grateful to Professor Brown for his distinguished summary of the climate sensitivity question. If only all scientists were so careful, this absurd scare would never have gotten off the ground.
rgbatduke says:
May 22, 2013 at 4:59 am
“human activity is very likely causing most of the current anthropogenic global warming”
Isn’t human activity responsible for 100% of anthropogenic warming?
Well, it depends on how you define “human”. Isn’t the average person of non-African descent supposed to have about 3% Neanderthal genes? In that case it is probably wrong to put 100% of the blame on homo sapiens. Let the Neanderthals take their share!
The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says:
Duster, the ad men admitted doing it in this case.
No question about that. I just wanted to emphasize a cat or cats may surprise us. Watching our calicos eat turned into a family spectator sport with lots of head-shaking on the part of my parents. You might deduce from this that we had no tv. You would be right.
@Phlogiston says:
I agree, reads like someone on drugs or computer generated time wasting spam or ‘Bull’ – about as scientific as the consensus study.
Or it could be an alarmist not on drugs? : )
Many of these will be in need of the 5th amendment soon as they are on National TV on CSPAN before the U.S. Congress.
The constitution they will use and that is ok.
Many of these will be in courts and the 5th amendment will not be avaidable to them there.
Michael Mann will be very much like Ms Lerner of the IRS he will give out his view on it all and cause himself to not even have the protection of the 5th amendment.
To bad so sad.
This all stinks of desperation. No other branch of science seems fixated with consensus or seems to need it.
From the Cook paper comparing their abstract ratings with the authors’ article self-ratings:
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%)
If the consensus really was collapsing, I expect we would see signs in new declarations by the big scientific organizations, or by leading climate scientists who until recently thought that AGW is real. And a shifting mix of journal papers. Unless that is happening, talk of collapse seems like wishful thinking because the consensus still holds.
By definition, the majority of scientists are just average?
“By definition, the majority of scientists are just average?”
What definition is that??
Olaf Koenders says: “In the near future, children won’t know what science is.”
Not true science, anyway. Good comment, Olaf.
Reich.Eschhaus,
You should read what ‘cd’ says in the comment right above yours:
“This all stinks of desperation. No other branch of science seems fixated with consensus or seems to need it.”
That’s about it, isn’t it? Cook cannot provide scientific evidence to support his catastrophic global warming beliefs, and the planet itself is clearly showing that he — and you — are wrong: even as CO2 keeps rising, global warming has stopped. But you continue to keep digging even after you have clearly lost the argument.
Furthermore, there is no ‘consensus’ among scientists that any measurable human-caused global warming exists. In fact, the only consensus that we know of shows that real scientists think that CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere: tens of thousands of scientists have stated exactly that — in writing.
I know I won’t convince you, or Cook, because you both live in your own little world. But in the real world there is no consensus among honest scientists that proof of AGW has been found. For you, AGW is a religious belief. And as we see, rational debate cannot overcome your religion.
@dbstealey
I was just inserting a few data points from the Cook paper in this thread. You decided to react on that in a “rant-like” fashion. Desperate? Who?
Reich, not even close to a rant.
Reich.Eschhaus,
And you’re holding on for dear life.
Christopher,
I’m with you on this debate, but you have to see the irony in the above quote, which is itself an argument from consensus or, at least, an argument from authority.
Observation: Reich.Eschhaus is likely a fake screen name for a Skeptical Science contributor and they are using a proxy (hidemyass) to post here.
It is becoming known by more people that the solar flux is operating on large cycles with smaller cycles within and is responsible for the state of our climate. When people go off on the climate fraud it is now laughable with the amount real science now out there on the subject.
I discovered Igmass about a year ago and it was interesting in their 1st report how they correlated solar and mag field flux through the ages with earthquake and volcanic eruption frequency. Their work could open the possibility for the prediction of natural disasters if the global and orbital sensorium is expanded appropriately with a real time interpretation capability.
Recently I tried to access the Igmass main site and was directed to a warning page saying that it was malware so then clicked a shortcut I had saved from a inside page. I did get in but the log in button takes you to Russian porn and the Igmass links are mostly dead.
Igmass has been hacked and I suspect that they won’t be coming back online until the fraud is fully exposed. True science is very dangerous to the oligarchy as it poses a danger of being the nails that seal the coffin of the climate fraud.
If someone can help me get the Igmass 2nd report it will be much appreciated.