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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To follow up on R.L, in my ignorance concerning the facts re global warming, I was under the impression that was pretty much it, that is the entire argument against the dangers of global warming… that God would protect us. How laughably primitive. Of course you’re entitled to your beliefs, but you do the skeptical cause no good by citing them.
@ur momisugly Keitho
I think Sam Harris has a very valid point that faith in all its forms needs to end. Religion is not a special category. We all wonder what is happiness, what is love, what is a good way to live. Progress in these questions will need ever more rigorous thinking. Harris isn’t anti-religion, just anti-faith. Unfortunately that means throwing out most of every religion, but you can examine each belief and ask, is this healthy? Is it reasonable? Does it work? Various Buddhists schools for example, have varying opinions about what human happiness is, and they all disagree in the details, and each belief has to be tested. And likewise scrutinise the opinions of atheists.
Richard, I was simply responding to a gratuitous assertion with an equally gratuitous response. Just because you want Atheism to be a belief system doesn’t mean it is.
Jeff Alberts:
re your post addressed to me at September 4, 2013 at 7:13 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/03/cooks-97-consensus-disproven-by-a-new-paper-showing-major-math-errors/#comment-1407560
following my post at September 4, 2013 at 2:30 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/03/cooks-97-consensus-disproven-by-a-new-paper-showing-major-math-errors/#comment-1407418
Quad Erat Demonstrandum
Richard
Willis,
This is a science blog. It’s fine if you do not happen to believe in a god. And you are free to state so, but this blog is not the venue for theological discussions. However, you not only state your disbelief in God, but go on to ridicule those who do. Grow up. Didn’t your parents ever teach you manners? There is a term for your behavior: “boorish”. Do you laugh at the mentally disabled as well? I don’t know if you’re married. But let’s assume so. Let’s say your wife is ugly….she’s a real dog. Now the normal person who might happen to meet your wife would not make rude and insensitive comments about her looks to her face. Do i make rude comments about your boring travelogues you post here? No, I just don’t bother reading them because I don’t want to be put to sleep.
As someone who is a frequent WUWT contributor, you should know better. Perhaps you should review the WUWT policy page regarding posts, and lead by example:
“Respect is given to those with manners, those without manners that insult others or begin starting flame wars may find their posts deleted.”
markz says
You are offended because someone does not share your quirky unsubstantiated beliefs, and puts up a logical practical statement of opinion?
I’m not offended because Willis doesn’t believe in God. I even said that is his right. I’m offended by his critique of those who do. Willis is no different than Cook in his logical practical statement of opinion. Cook thinks there is something mentally wrong with folks who don’t believe in CAGW. Willis thinks the same about folks who believe in God..IE mondo goofy.
I’m done with the subject. WUWT is not the place for such debate.
Willis :
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/03/cooks-97-consensus-disproven-by-a-new-paper-showing-major-math-errors/#comment-140713
================================================================
I think that perhaps Willis has been jumped on a bit harder than he deserves. While I believe he is dead wrong concerning God and Jesus Christ, what he actually said concerning Christian scientist (and others that believe in a “god”) was that as long as they are honest with how they handle the science regarding the natural realm he has no problem with what they believe about the supernatural realm.
But maybe I misunderstood him.
– – – – – – –
mpaul,
I appreciate your reply. Always a pleasure. Thanks.
It is inevitable to discuss the nature of religion in general if CAGW bias is shown to have profound parallels with the numerous traditional religions both historically and in ones that are currently existing.
But I think religion is both scientifically and philosophically an unimportant and silly distraction from what is relevant to man’s fundamental nature quo man and to nature quo nature; it does not have essential significance at all to objectively demonstrable pursuit of understanding.
I think religion is irrelevant to science and therefore it is absurd to initiate religious discussions in scientific dialogs. But sometimes in defense of science it is necessary to disentangle religion from its pseudo-science masquerading as science; as is the case of a CAGW religion masquerading as science.
As to your bringing up quantum physics and the human mind; I think there are better possibilities to understand our minds in the ongoing development of real time interfaces between complex computers and human minds. It is there I expect objective understanding of human mind to occur. : )
John
pokerguy says:
September 4, 2013 at 5:00 am
Not a good reason, sir. By your “logic,” we can’t harm the natural world, which is on the face of it absurd.
…….
Where in my statement of the flexibility of nature does it imply that we cannot “harm” the natural world? I referred explicitly to my lack of acceptance of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. I do not believe that we can irreparably destroy nature by our actions but strongly believe that we should all be good stewards of what we have been given (whether by God, fate, chaos, etc)
To categorize my opinion as “Utter tripe” (and from your post at 5:06 AM “laughably primitive” and “you do the skeptical cause no good by citing them”) adds nothing to the conversation but your own vehement anti-God viewpoints.
Nowhere in Cook’s paper is the year 1950 mentioned, nor does the word “dangerous” appear anywhere. If Legates et al are arguing that only papers explicitly stating that warming since 1950 is anthropogenic count count as consensual, then it’s surprising that they found as many as 0.3%. You only have to look at what gets published every month in Environmental Research Letters to realize that the Legates et al conclusion is patently absurd – at least half the papers take AGW a a given fact.
@Tandem78 – So “science” papers take a supposition as an established fact? When did “science” create so many new “facts”? A rare commodity in science until Climate Science came around.
When did Climate science jump over Hypothesis and Theory to create these “facts”?
Tandem78,
The only thing “patently absurd” is your Belief that AGW is significant enough to measure. It is not.
AGW [if it even exists, and I suspect that it does to a minuscule degree] is not testable science, because it is not measurable. To be considered real science, things like AGW need to be measurable, quantifiable and testable.
For all practical purposes, “carbon” fills a religious need for the same folks who ridicule organized religion. You need your Belief every bit as much as a Christian or Islamic believer needs their religion. AGW fills that need.
– – – – – – – –
SBarhydt,
To be ‘Anti-God’ one would need to have faith in the existence of God. It does not appear to me that pokerguy has that faith and I certainly don’t.
Suppose one who isn’t religious is presented by ‘Pro-God’ proponents with their supporting arguments from ancient / modern traditional religious intellects. As is often the case, that non- religious person may reasonably see nothing in the presentation that supports religious claims. That non-religious person is not ‘Anti-God’; nor is he an ‘Atheist’; nor is he an ‘Agnostic’; nor is such a non-religious person really a religious person because some religious person absurdly claims it takes faith to have non-faith.
Science is wisely seldom distracted by all this supernatural / superstitious irrelevance. When science is distracted by it, it is to swat down things like the pseudo-science based CACW religion pretending to be a science.
John
I guess your beliefs stretch further than the facts. I merely demonstrated that gratuitous assertions deserve no in-depth response. Q.E.D. yourself.
richardscourtney says: September 4, 2013 at 2:30 am
I agree with your last paragraph, Richard. I think people (generally) come ‘pre-programmed’ with a need to believe in something, and to follow a cause (perhaps an evolutionary development which results in successful, mutually supporting co-operative societies? – ie in hard times, co-operative similarly thinking groups survived, solitary individualist types even living in small family groups may not have, even if they were stronger. (Thinking of Neanderthals here).
But athiesm as a religion? I can’t manage to conceive of a god in my mind, be he embodied or disembodied. What is he made of? Where is he exactly? Where did he come from? Who made him? How does he wield his great power? What exactly is this power? If he did exist why would he focus any attention on this minuscule sphere in this gigantic universe? Even if we are the subject of an alien 3rd year university science experiment we are stuck with the same questions.
For example: If someone should tell me the world actually sits on the back of a large elephant, – even with no knowledge of the universe or gravity there are questions to be asked. Have you seen this thing? How do you know? What does it stand on? ….etc…
So, were I to ask those questions, would you say I had a religious belief in a-elephantism?
Atheism is simply a word, a somewhat inadequate label, and though I sometimes apply that label to myself if asked, it does not actually sum up what my beliefs are, rather it sums up what they are not.
Wait, I thought it was all an urban heat island effect. Does this mean that urban heat island thing of Anthony’s was all tosh?
Richard Tol, one of my fave economists, suggests that I differ with his contention that 7% of the data in Cook et al. (2013) are erroneous. However, with respect, I have not considered the question whether the data were erroneous except in respect of 0.2% of the abstracts, which had been miscategorized as explicitly endorsing the notion that most post-1950 warming was manmade when they did not endorse it.
I simply took the authors’ own datafile and counted (both by a computer algorithm I had written and by hand using the text search in Notepad) how many papers they had assigned (whether rightly or wrongly) to each of their 7 or 8 “levels of endorsement” of “consensus”. The authors’ own categorizations, thus counted, showed their principal conclusion to be artful nonsense calculated to mislead.
Professor Tol’s most interesting comment earlier in this thread implies that Cook et al. have not given him all of the data that he requested when he sought to falsify their result by attempted replication. He also implies that the University of Queensland has not instantly told its “researchers” to release the data immediately upon request, and that the Institute of Physics has refused him outright.
These delays and refusals are serious. The University of Queensland is taxpayer-funded, as are the repellent Cook and Nuccitelli. If they are doing “research” on the taxpayer’s dime, are coming to conclusions which – even on the little data that are available – would be among the falsest and most bogus in the history of science (if the paper had had anything recognizable to do with science in the first place), the question of fraud against taxpayers arises.
My respectful suggestion to Professor Tol is that he should write politely but firmly to the authors of the bogus paper, to the Institute of Physics and to the University of Queensland, giving them 14 days to hand over all of the requested data, failing which he will put the matter in the hands of the Australian police with an allegation of fraud.
The carefully-concealed errors in the paper, especially when taken together with the University’s refusal even to reply to my own questions about the methodology even before it was published, as well as its refusal to order the immediate release of the authors’ data to Professor Tol, would be likely to persuade any jury that a fraud has taken place, for the points at issue are not complex matters that could be debated either way. They do not depend upon obscure and, to the lay juror, incomprehensible equations.
The authors were extremely careful not to reveal just how very few of the abstracts they had read they themselves had categorized as explicitly endorsing the definition of scientific consensus in the introduction to their paper. Instead, by using multiple definitions of consensus and arbitrarily removing two-thirds of the sample because the abstracts had inconveniently not expressed any opinion on global warming, they had turned a 0.3% consensus into 97.1%. There is nothing in this shoddy tale that a jury would fail to understand. A conviction would, in my submission, be very likely.
Chris G says: September 4, 2013 at 7:52 pm
Wait, I thought it was all an urban heat island effect. Does this mean that urban heat island thing of Anthony’s was all tosh?
Well, Chris, I hate to be the one to break to you, but the world is a complicated place.
It is quite possible for two or more independent assertions to be true at the same time.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/03/cooks-97-consensus-disproven-by-a-new-paper-showing-major-math-errors/#comment-1408208
All Richard was pointing out is that “Atheism” is a belief. It is. That there is no God cannot be scientifically proven anymore than a scientist take something that is alive, separate the life from it, put that life in a test tube and analyze it.
Some atheist resist the idea that they actually DO believe something that is scientifically unprovable.
@Lord Monckton
You find an error rate of 33% in the final ratings of a small fraction of the data.
Cook & co report an error rate of 33% in the initial ratings (and his data show the same), but their reconciliation and rerating procedure would have reduced the error rate to 7%.
Comparing the abstract ratings to the paper ratings finds disagreement in 63% of the cases. (This is validation according to Cook & co.)
I don’t know the true error. My 7% is very generous to Cook & co.
I’ve written to the authors, U Queensland, ERL and IoP, to no avail. U Queensland has yet to reply. My career would be over if I would take them to court. Academics love a good fight, but only among themselves. As evidence, I submit the strong reaction to Frank Ackerman’s accusation that I threatened to sue him; I never did, by the way.
“AGW [if it even exists, and I suspect that it does to a minuscule degree] is not testable science, because it is not measurable. To be considered real science, things like AGW need to be measurable, quantifiable and testable.
For all practical purposes, “carbon” fills a religious need for the same folks who ridicule organized religion. You need your Belief every bit as much as a Christian or Islamic believer needs their religion. AGW fills that need.”
AGW is one of many attempts to put political chains/control on the “free World”. This started way back in history by replacing individual idea of God with a collective one. Then the keepers of the collective belief had control over “Gods” will and could instruct the masses. What’s new here is that the idea of Global environment and climate Catastrophe is being attempted Global on all people’s of the free World. They want to control all people of the Free World.
“All Richard was pointing out is that “Atheism” is a belief. It is. That there is no God cannot be scientifically proven anymore than a scientist take something that is alive, separate the life from it, put that life in a test tube and analyze it.
Some atheist resist the idea that they actually DO believe something that is scientifically unprovable.”
I think there is an original idea of a God. And I think it started as an individual God. When I try to talk with God I always end up with talking to myself. In order to control the masses in tribes, cities, countries, empires etc the idea of an individual God had to be replaced with a stronger collective one. With the enlightenment we get the collective ideology ideas as a substitute for the older Collective religious ideas?
So for me on religion and ideology the debate is over. I have my own individual idea of a God and ideology. 🙂
Friends:
At September 4, 2013 at 2:30 am I wrote
My post stated what I consider to be important in this discussion and why it is important.
Please note that I stated in parenthesis what I requested NOT be discussed because it was predictable that proselitysing atheists would want to proclaim it.
Sadly, my request for the pertinent issue to be discussed was ignored because proselitysing atheists displaced it with their attempts to promote their religion.
OK. They have had their fun, so I ask that they desist.
And I ask that the pertinent issue be discussed.
Richard
I have been asking Dana Nuccitelli and the Guardian for a comment on the rejection of the Benestad (Cook, Nuccitelli) et al paper on “agnotology” and the discredited Cook et al paper. Guess what, I got moderated several times. How long will the Guardian use the 97% banner above his articles? I think I can guess. It is also interesting to see the number of sceptic comments on the Guardian Cif these days when Dana drops in another of his pieces.
Monckton had a close look at the abstracts rated 1. I find that the abstracts rated 6 or 7 are the odd ones out. See http://richardtol.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/bootstrap-results-for-initial-ratings.html
– – – – – – –
Education without partisanship?
Sounds like this venue.
A significant achievement of WUWT is a long term continuous balanced and rational education. Certainly that educational result will be enhanced in a thread like the current one by warmly encouraging vigorous exploration of all views of reasonably contextual topics. Without fear or favor.
One aspect of Cook’s treatment of climate science and CAGW, as critically analyzed by Legates et al (2013), is whether it can reasonably be considered a religion instead of science in varying senses? To do that the general treatment of the differences between religion and science is in order.
That seems a fairly widespread dialog of relevant interest in the general climate science and policy blogosphere. It is relevant.
I suggest it not only continue but that it should expand.
John