UPDATE: While this paper (a rebuttal) has been accepted, another paper by Cook and Nuccitelli has been flat out rejected by the journal Earth System Dynamics. See update below. – Anthony
“0.3% climate consensus, not 97.1%”
PRESS RELEASE – September 3rd, 2013
A major peer-reviewed paper by four senior researchers has exposed grave errors in an earlier paper in a new and unknown journal that had claimed a 97.1% scientific consensus that Man had caused at least half the 0.7 Cº global warming since 1950.
A tweet in President Obama’s name had assumed that the earlier, flawed paper, by John Cook and others, showed 97% endorsement of the notion that climate change is dangerous:
“Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.” [Emphasis added]
The new paper by the leading climatologist Dr David Legates and his colleagues, published in the respected Science and Education journal, now in its 21st year of publication, reveals that Cook had not considered whether scientists and their published papers had said climate change was “dangerous”.
The consensus Cook considered was the standard definition: that Man had caused most post-1950 warming. Even on this weaker definition the true consensus among published scientific papers is now demonstrated to be not 97.1%, as Cook had claimed, but only 0.3%.
Only 41 out of the 11,944 published climate papers Cook examined explicitly stated that Man caused most of the warming since 1950. Cook himself had flagged just 64 papers as explicitly supporting that consensus, but 23 of the 64 had not in fact supported it.
This shock result comes scant weeks before the United Nations’ climate panel, the IPCC, issues its fifth five-yearly climate assessment, claiming “95% confidence” in the imagined – and, as the new paper shows, imaginary – consensus.
Climate Consensus and ‘Misinformation’: a Rejoinder to ‘Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change’ decisively rejects suggestions by Cook and others that those who say few scientists explicitly support the supposedly near-unanimous climate consensus are misinforming and misleading the public.
Dr Legates said: “It is astonishing that any journal could have published a paper claiming a 97% climate consensus when on the authors’ own analysis the true consensus was well below 1%.
“It is still more astonishing that the IPCC should claim 95% certainty about the climate consensus when so small a fraction of published papers explicitly endorse the consensus as the IPCC defines it.”
Dr Willie Soon, a distinguished solar physicist, quoted the late scientist-author Michael Crichton, who had said: “If it’s science, it isn’t consensus; if it’s consensus, it isn’t science.” He added: “There has been no global warming for almost 17 years. None of the ‘consensus’ computer models predicted that.”
Dr William Briggs, “Statistician to the Stars”, said: “In any survey such as Cook’s, it is essential to define the survey question very clearly. Yet Cook used three distinct definitions of climate consensus interchangeably. Also, he arbitrarily excluded about 8000 of the 12,000 papers in his sample on the unacceptable ground that they had expressed no opinion on the climate consensus. These artifices let him reach the unjustifiable conclusion that there was a 97.1% consensus when there was not.
“In fact, Cook’s paper provides the clearest available statistical evidence that there is scarcely any explicit support among scientists for the consensus that the IPCC, politicians, bureaucrats, academics and the media have so long and so falsely proclaimed. That was not the outcome Cook had hoped for, and it was not the outcome he had stated in his paper, but it was the outcome he had really found.”
Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, an expert reviewer for the IPCC’s imminent Fifth Assessment Report, who found the errors in Cook’s data, said: “It may be that more than 0.3% of climate scientists think Man caused at least half the warming since 1950. But only 0.3% of almost 12,000 published papers say so explicitly. Cook had not considered how many papers merely implied that. No doubt many scientists consider it possible, as we do, that Man caused some warming, but not most warming.
“It is unscientific to assume that most scientists believe what they have neither said nor written.”
###
Climate Consensus and ‘Misinformation’: A Rejoinder to Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change
David R. Legates, Willie Soon, William M. Briggs, Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11191-013-9647-9
Abstract
Agnotology is the study of how ignorance arises via circulation of misinformation calculated to mislead. Legates et al. (Sci Educ 22:2007–2017, 2013) had questioned the applicability of agnotology to politically-charged debates. In their reply, Bedford and Cook (Sci Educ 22:2019–2030, 2013), seeking to apply agnotology to climate science, asserted that fossil-fuel interests had promoted doubt about a climate consensus. Their definition of climate ‘misinformation’ was contingent upon the post-modernist assumptions that scientific truth is discernible by measuring a consensus among experts, and that a near unanimous consensus exists. However, inspection of a claim by Cook et al. (Environ Res Lett 8:024024, 2013) of 97.1 % consensus, heavily relied upon by Bedford and Cook, shows just 0.3 % endorsement of the standard definition of consensus: that most warming since 1950 is anthropogenic. Agnotology, then, is a two-edged sword since either side in a debate may claim that general ignorance arises from misinformation allegedly circulated by the other. Significant questions about anthropogenic influences on climate remain. Therefore, Legates et al. appropriately asserted that partisan presentations of controversies stifle debate and have no place in education.
================================================================
UPDATE: – Cook and Nuccitelli paper rejected:
Bishop Hill writes:
The Benestad (Cook, Nuccitelli) et al paper on “agnotology”, a bizarre concoction that tried to refute just about every sceptic paper ever written has been rejected by Earth System Dynamics
Based on the reviews and my own reading of the original and revised paper, I am rejecting the paper in its current form. The submission is laudable in its stated goals and in making the R source code available, but little else about the paper works as a scientific contribution to ESD. While I think as an ESDD publication at least a discussion was had and the existence of the R routines has been brought to the attention of the various interested communities, the manuscript itself is not a good fit for this journal and would need substantial further revisions before being ready (if ever) for this journal.
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‘If it’s consensus, it isn’t science’ says it all.
Is Mr. Cook being thrown under the bus, now that scientists are re-discovering the 60-year-climate cycle? How so very shocking.
Agnatology has been promptly added to my vocabulary.
All of this is of little relevance now – something about closing the barn door…
The sad truth is the claim of 97% achieved its objective, which was political from the start. When it is quoted by the US President it comes with all the unearned authority people ascribe to that position.
Still no mention of the fallacy of assuming the opinions found in a paper written 20 years ago are the same the author holds today?
Any notable names among them?
No, it was supposed to say that it was Mann who caused it by spewing all that hot air!
Lin to the paper mentioned is missing.
How was this accomplished when Cook refused to release all the data and methodologies?
I think using the term ‘most’ or ‘more than’ was ambiguous and confusing, i.e. unscientific. The term ‘most’ as used in the paper could mean ‘at least half’ (the interpretation shown above), but, it could also mean ‘more than any other factor’, which is not necessarily ‘at least half’. ‘Most’ could mean ‘plurality’ rather than ‘majority’. That and ‘man made’ contribution to warming comprises several factors besides CO2 – land use changes, Urban Heat, etc are all ‘man made contributions’ to warming.
“MAK says:
Lin to the paper mentioned is missing.”
Here:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11191-013-9647-9
Second Galvanize comment. Learn a new term a day!
@Tim Ball – I agree it is political. 97% is a marketing tool and that is why Cook even used it when his own figures showed 98%
Rejoinder to Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change
David R. Legates, Willie Soon, William M. Briggs, Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Papers on Agnotology
& on Agnotology & Climate
Correction: Papers on: Agnotology Climate
Daniel Bedford, & John Cook respond: Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change: A Response to Legates, Soon and Briggs
Richard Feynman disagreed:
Do the models match the evidence? Judge for yourself with Roy Spencer’s comparison:
Still Epic Fail: 73 climate models vs measurement – running 5 year means
Richard Feynman (1974) further detailed the high level of integrity required for science. See his lecture Cargo Cult Science, Caltech 1974
Highly recommend reviewing Feynman (1974) in context of Bedford & Cook.
OT Anthony, when I see cheery picking tweets like this from Al Gore and winter is not over yet, people need to know.
https://twitter.com/algore/status/374913063298039808
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/world/nz-has-warmest-winter-on-record/story-e6frfkui-1226709947022
Two and three years ago WUWTers would sometimes comment that a new skeptical paper was “the last nail in the CAGW coffin.” I demurred then, responding that “It’s another arrow in the elephant–but it takes a lot of arrows to kill an elephant.” I now believe that the elephant is getting wobbly on his pins–i.e., that the tide has turned. What a crash it will make when Dumbo topples.
CAGW hypothesis is falling apart at an impressive rate. Is it possible that climate scientists are now involved in what amounts to the game of musical chairs and have begun jockeying for, what they perceive, the reduced number of positions in climate science by publishing simply the facts instead of hyperbole.
I honestly can’t imagine what Cook must be like in person. I know this is slithering sideways on the slippery slope of ad hominem, but honestly, how does he or CAN he stand face-to-face with someone and in all conviction and seriousness, assert such baloneyous claptrap? This seems the stuff of pathology. He is not truthful. Not even CLOSE. Yet there are those enabling types (albeit from an obscure new journal) that will endorse this as some kind of scientific exercise and result. It makes me ill to think that sceptics have to engage this nitwit (we do!) and disprove his assertions. But it takes valuable resources better spent doing real science instead of smashing trash.
What y’all don’t seem to realize is that there is a little known law of nature that applies here known as Cook’s Law: Cartoonist turned climatologist consensus quantification measured in percent adherents = any calculation which results in approximately 97%.
(/sarc)
@njsnowfan
Al Gore would never mention that some of the subtropical and tropical countries of South America – Peru, Bolivia, Brazil – have had one of the coldest winters on record with tens of thousands of livestock freezing to death and scores of people dying from hypothermia, all under several feet of snow where snow has never fallen before. He should mention this, I think, and call it the result of global warming.
Tim Ball says:
“The sad truth is the claim of 97% achieved its objective, which was political from the start. When it is quoted by the US President it comes with all the unearned authority people ascribe to that position.”
Whoever is pulling the President’s strings is a master of Agnotology. He could teach graduate level courses. I know this new paper is not likely to get much press, but now that Cook’s ‘research’ has been exposed as ‘mierda’, hopefully more voters will finally realize just how little the President really knows (or cares) about climate science.
And the only thing Cook’s research conclusively demonstrates is that he is a propagandist. He is not, and likely never was a scientist.
MattN says:
September 3, 2013 at 9:01 am
How was this accomplished when Cook refused to release all the data and methodologies?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Back engineering.
You know what the result was.
You know what the basic assumptions were.
You know what the raw data was.
Not too difficult to re-engineer the methodology of construction.
97% versus 0.3%. Close enough for climate work!
@nsjnowfan
Al probably didn;t see this, either..”Record cold continues in Interior Alaska” …http://www.newsminer.com/news/local_news/record-cold-continues-in-interior-alaska/article_8ea38680-bd2f-11e2-b62c-0019bb30f31a.html