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.
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Holy sh!+ that’s one lousy wall of unedited text I put up there.
Ah well. Such is the risk of saying heck with Word and just going for it.
[Given that, do you want us to delete all of it? Or any part of it? Mod]
Is the following an accurate (or adequate ?) summary of the (one) survey that actually did get a 97% CAGW-response ?
When the alarmists try and get a consensus from government they say: “there is a consensus amongst scientists”.
When the alarmists try and get a consensus amongst scientists, they say, “there is a consensus amongst climate researchers”.
When the alarmists try and a consensus amongst climate researchers they say “there is a consensus amongst alarmists”.
When the alarmists try and get a consensus amongst alarmists, they say “there is a consensus that more research is needed”.
When the researchers can’t get more funding from government they say “it’s all over for the environment”.
All over for alarmism, that is.
Brendan H says:
May 22, 2013 at 11:39 am
A more likely reading, in my view, is that the parenthesis refers to the preceding clause
============
Not correct – that is not how English is written. The item in the parenthesis immediately following an abbreviation gives the meaning for the abbreviation. This is standard English grammar.
Had the authors wished to refer to the preceding clause, they would have placed the explanation in a clause of its own, separated by commas or semi-colon. The fact that they did not do this, but rather used parenthesis, clearly indicates that they are explaining the abbreviation.
Yeah sure Mod take what I wrote down.
Good grammar and being polite has always been part of the skeptics’ way, and as successful as it’s been, turning back the alarmists, who’d want to change it?
Thanks for looking out.
Anderegg writes to “The Scotsman” newspaper about this very subject, in reply (printed today) to a letter from Prof Anthony Trewavas:
“Health warning
Published on 23/05/2013 00:00
Dr Trewavas (Letters, 11 May), in response to a study that I and others published in 2010, makes a number of incorrect and obfuscating claims that neither invalidate our study’s findings about the overwhelming scientific consensus that human emissions of greenhouse gases are the dominant cause of recent climate change, nor discount the urgency of acting to reduce risks from climate change.
Our study examined the public statements of 1,372 scientists and found, first, that 97-98 per cent of the most actively publishing climate scientists agree that human-emitted greenhouse gases are the dominant driver of recent climate change and, second, that those who doubt this overwhelming evidence are largely not experts by standard measures.
Dr Trewavas asserts that polling data would be better to assess scientific consensus, but blatantly ignores the large body of peer-reviewed studies that do exactly this, all of which find the same level of consensus that we found (95-99 per cent).
For example, yet another peer-reviewed study was published last month that considered 12,000 scientific papers on climate change and found that 99.3 per cent of published papers and 97.2 per cent of those paper’s authors agreed that humans played a dominant role.
Thus, while scepticism is a major pillar of all science, healthy scepticism is far different from ignoring the vast preponderance of scientific evidence concerning the causes of climate change.
This wilful ignorance is well-studied and considered by social scientists to be denial.
Replication and repeated studies (all of which have found the same degree of strong consensus) is another major pillar of science that Dr Trewavas appears to ignore entirely, thereby misleading readers.
Notably, Dr Trewavas does not disagree that human causes have changed our climate. Instead, he argues that uncertainty about future projections means that we should not act to reduce the risks that climate change poses.
As an analogy, let’s imagine that one day you discover a tumour-like lump on your body. You poll thousands of cancer doctors and 97 per cent of them think you have cancer.
There’s uncertainty in their diagnosis – there’s an exceedingly small chance they’re wrong, no-one can tell you when the cancer will metastasise, their projections of the cancer’s spread are based on models, and dealing with cancer will cost money.
This is exactly our situation with man-made climate change. How many of you would act to deal with your cancer?
William Anderegg
Stanford University”
(http://www.scotsman.com/news/letters/health-warning-1-2940299)
@Poptech
“Observation: Reich.Eschhaus is likely a fake screen name for a Skeptical Science contributor and they are using a proxy (hidemyass) to post here.”
Paranoid much?
Also, that’s not an observation. It’s an insinuation. You should learn the difference.
Then, of course, there’s always the question of which specific “consensus” Cook et al (and/or his “survey” papers) might really be talking about. For example (my bold):
“Claims such as ’2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous. That particular consensus judgement, as are many others in the IPCC reports, is reached by only a few dozen experts in the specific field of detection and attribution studies; other IPCC authors are experts in other fields.” – Mike Hulme, 2010
[See: Honey, I shrunk the consensus!]
Or:
“[I]t is this line-by-line approval process that results in the actual consensus that the IPCC is famous for, and which is sometimes misunderstood. The consensus is not a consensus among all authors about every issue assessed in the report; it is a consensus among governments about the summary for policymakers.” – Richard Klein, 2011
Or:
“There is, in fact, a broad and overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is occurring, is caused in large part by human activities (such as burning fossil fuels), and if left unchecked will likely have disastrous consequences. Furthermore, there is solid scientific evidence that we should act now on climate change, and this is reflected in the statements by these definitive scientific authorities.” – Greenpeace, 2010
Or:
“Scientific societies and scientists have released statements and studies showing the growing consensus on climate change science. A common objection to taking action to reduce our heat-trapping emissions has been uncertainty within the scientific community on whether or not global warming is happening and if it is caused by humans. However, there is now an overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming is indeed happening and humans are contributing to it.” – Union of Concerned Scientists, 2011
[See: A conversation with an IPCC coordinating lead author]
With so little … uh … consensus … on what this “consensus” might be, it’s little wonder that it’s collapsing, eh?!
ferd berple: ‘The item in the parenthesis immediately following an abbreviation gives the meaning for the abbreviation.’
And vice versa. So looking at the study abstract, we find the wording ‘anthropogenic global warming (AGW)’. This provides a clear signal of the meaning to be assigned to ‘AGW’.
And there is no cast-iron rule that an acronym must be enclosed by brackets; a comma is sufficient. We also find that construction in the text: ‘(anthropogenic global warming, or AGW)’.
As for ‘GW’, what are the author’s intentions here? The first mention of ‘GW’ is in the introduction, and it immediately follows the term ‘global warming’.
Given these three indications, plus the surrounding context I detailed previously, it’s clear that the intention is to distinguish between global warming and anthropogenic global warming.
In common parlance, of course, ‘global warming’ is often conflated with ‘anthropogenic global warming’, but that’s not the context here.
Reich.Eschhaus what other websites do you comment on and under what name?
@Poptech
None of your business. I could as well ask you ‘on what (prescription) drugs you are and in which doses’ but I won’t.
But this ends the discussion here. I will point you, as a sign of good will to this website with an interesting discussion of the Cook study (one that is more interesting than finding 3 skeptics who think there paper is not reflected in the abstract rating, solecisms, and a hissy fit on twitter). Maybe you’ll find some inspiration for another criticism of the study.
http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2013/5/22/on-the-science-communication-value-of-communicating-scientif.html
SkS Reich.Eschhaus, I am not nor have ever been on any prescription drugs. You however are a member of Skeptical Science under a different name. Let your buddies know this is only the beginning.
OT
The discussion on facts stopped before, someone entered into some kind of accusation (?) of me, the reasons of which I am not sure about, nor the consequences of it about anything what I have written here. Moderators, sorry for being off topic.
@Poptech
Do you think there is an SkS commenter in your cellar watching your every move? I didn’t even wanted to know but you eagerly volunteered to state that
“I am not nor have ever been on any prescription drugs.”
That may be the problem here! Your comments for me have a whiff of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusional_disorder
(be careful if you reply, Lewandowsky may read this as well!) Distant diagnoses are quite error prone. Poptech, please contact your local specialist.
/OT
I do believe SS commentators frequent WUWT and you are a member of SS under a different name – I have good evidence to support this but am not revealing it here.
There is no question Lewandowsky has not finished lying and smearing skeptics.
So now I am in the SchutzStaffel? Interesting…
@Mods. What level of accusations do you tolerate and what do you not? Someone should protect Poptech for his own sake.
@Poptech
There is this thing about you not revealing… “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.”
“I have good evidence to support this but am not revealing it here.”
This reeks like I know it all but can’t tell because of [add your favourite conspiracy theory]. Show me the evidence! I imagine you somewhere in a cellar desperately trying to find some kind of connection between me and SS and SkS… Get help!
Mods? Awaiting moderation? What? It is Poptech insinuating things, I am only reacting… (delete this when my previous comment is released)
Paranoid much?
@Mods, is it … that triggers moderation? I’ll try again with a link (to see what happens, curious though that Poptech is allowed to mention SS)
So now I am in the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutzstaffel
? Interesting…
@Mods. What level of accusations do you tolerate and what do you not? Someone should protect Poptech for his own sake.
@Poptech
There is this thing about you not revealing… “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.”
“I have good evidence to support this but am not revealing it here.”
This reeks like I know it all but can’t tell because of [add your favourite conspiracy theory]. Show me the evidence! I imagine you somewhere in a cellar desperately trying to find some kind of connection between me and SS and SkS… Get help!
So now I am in the SS? Interesting…
@Mods. What level of accusations do you tolerate and what do you not? Someone should protect Poptech for his own sake.
@Poptech
There is this thing about you not revealing… “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.”
“I have good evidence to support this but am not revealing it here.”
This reeks like I know it all but can’t tell because of [add your favourite conspiracy theory]. Show me the evidence! I imagine you somewhere in a cellar desperately trying to find some kind of connection between me and SS and SkS… Get help!
Mods, I need clarification…
[Reply: Comments are not censored here. You have every right to reply in your own words. — mod.]
Surely there’s no problem with SkS folk posting here, as long as they behave regarding site policy. I mean, heck; the only reason I never post on SkS is because I don’t want my posts monkeyed with, but I certainly read there.
Well, not the only reason, but you know what I mean…
~shrug~
“[Reply: Comments are not censored here. You have every right to reply in your own words. — mod.]”
Sure, but I was wondering what caused the “awaiting moderation” thing? Care to fill me in on that? Otherwise delete everything from after the 6:19 pm remark. You could leave this here and explain what triggered the ‘awaiting moderation’ response in the first place? Thanks mod!
[Reply: There is a list of words that diverts a comment into the ‘awaiting moderation’ queue, or into the spam folder. But WordPress also has its own triggers, which they do not share. WUWT is well known for its avoidance of censorship. So long as site policy is not violated, comments are posted. Readers are then free to respond. — mod.]
[PS: this will not become a debate. You are free to comment, or not. Your choice. — mod.]
The decline in papers explicitly supporting AGW is just part of the story. Some of the original bold conclusions have been replaced by more tentative conclusions. A good example is hockey stick studies. Compare the original Mannian Hockey stick on the front cover of the “Hockey Stick Illusion” (see right column) with the following key summary from the withdrawn Gergis paper of last year
In Mann the picture is one of unprecedented C20th warming. In Gergis it is far more ambiguous.
Another example is temperature trends, both of the surface and upper sea levels. Until a decade or so ago there were strong warming trends in both. Now the trend is flat.
Another example is the melting polar ice caps. Look up Velicogna and Wahl 2006, Velicogna 2009 and Sheppard et al 2012. With more data and better quality analysis we get a more nuanced picture.
What proper understanding requires is to go beyond the the superficial messages (which abstracts proclaim) and put the science in proper context of what is being said. In terms of evidence for a future climate catastrophe it means looking at issues of magnitude, likelihood, speed of change, distance in the future and the weighting that we can give to the evidence. It is the skills of an economic historian, or of a police detective piecing together a case from fragments of circumstantial evidence for corroboration. In fact the problem is more difficult than the detective, as the is not a single closed question (Whodunnit?) but assessment of the size of the problem. The likes of John Cook trample the evidence, to discourage people from asking questions and improving the quality of output. In any professional field – law, medicine, accountancy, engineering,….. – they would be disbarred.
In attempting to document Monckton’s quotes I come up empty handed. Have the publications been altered? (all are electronic) Has anyone archived the original versions? Where can I find them? –AGF
agfosterjr, it is from the conclusion of his paper,
http://news.heartland.org/sites/all/modules/custom/heartland_migration/files/pdfs/22924.pdf