We’ve all been subjected to the incessant “97% of scientists agree …global warming…blah blah” meme, which is nothing more than another statistical fabrication by John Cook and his collection of “anything for the cause” zealots. As has been previously pointed out on WUWT, when you look at the methodology used to reach that number, the veracity of the result falls apart, badly. You see, it turns out that Cook simply employed his band of “Skeptical Science” (SkS) eco-zealots to rate papers, rather than letting all authors of the papers rate their own work (Note: many authors weren’t even contacted and their papers wrongly rated, see here). The result was that the “97% consensus” was a survey of the SkS raters beliefs and interpretations, rather than a survey of the authors opinions of their own science abstracts. Essentially it was pal-review by an activist group with a strong bias towards a particular outcome as demonstrated by the name “the consensus project”.
In short, it was a lie of omission enabled by a “pea and thimble” switch Steve McIntyre so often points out about climate science.
Most people who read the headlines touted by the unquestioning press had no idea that this was a collection of Skeptical Science raters opinions rather than the authors assessment of their own work. Readers of news stories had no idea they’d been lied to by John Cook et al².
So, while we’ll be fighting this lie for years, one very important bit of truth has emerged that will help put it into its proper place of propaganda, rather than science. A recent real survey conducted of American Meteorological Society members has blown Cook’s propaganda paper right out of the water.
The survey is titled:
Meteorologists’ views about global warming: A survey of American Meteorological Society professional members¹
Abstract
Meteorologists and other atmospheric science experts are playing important roles in helping society respond to climate change. However, members of this professional community are not unanimous in their views of climate change, and there has been tension among members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) who hold different views on the topic. In response, AMS created the Committee to Improve Climate Change Communication to explore and, to the extent possible, resolve these tensions. To support this committee, in January 2012 we surveyed all AMS members with known email addresses, achieving a 26.3% response rate (n=1,854). In this paper we tested four hypotheses: (1) perceived conflict about global warming will be negatively associated–and (2) climate expertise, (3) liberal political ideology, and (4) perceived scientific consensus will be positively associated–with (a) higher personal certainty that global warming is happening, (b) viewing the global warming observed over the past 150 years as mostly human-caused, and (c) perception of global warming as harmful. All four hypotheses were confirmed. Expertise, ideology, perceived consensus and perceived conflict were all independently related to respondents’ views on climate, with perceived consensus and political ideology being most strongly related. We suggest that AMS should: attempt to convey the widespread scientific agreement about climate change; acknowledge and explore the uncomfortable fact that political ideology influences the climate change views of meteorology professionals; refute the idea that those who do hold non-majority views just need to be “educated” about climate change; continue to deal with the conflict among members of the meteorology community.
From the abstract, it is clear the authors didn’t expect to find this result, as they were likely expecting something close to the fabled 97%. They give this away when they advise in the abstract steps that can be taken to “correct” the low number reported.
The introduction says:
Research conducted to date with meteorologists and other atmospheric scientists has shown that they are not unanimous in their views of climate change. In a survey of earth scientists, Doran and Zimmerman (2009) found that while a majority of meteorologists surveyed are convinced humans have contributed to global warming (64%), this was a substantially smaller majority than that found among all earth scientists (82%). Another survey, by Farnsworth and Lichter (2009), found that 83% of meteorologists surveyed were convinced human-induced climate change is occurring, again a smaller majority than among experts in related areas such as ocean sciences (91%) and geophysics (88%).
So clearly, none of the work to date matches Cook’s pal reviewed activist effort.
The most important question in the AMS survey was done in two parts:
“Is global warming happening? If so, what is its cause?”
Respondent options were:
- Yes: Mostly human
- Yes: Equally human and natural
- Yes: Mostly natural
- Yes: Insufficient evidence [to determine cause]
- Yes: Don’t know cause
- Don’t know if global warming is happening
- Global warming is not happening
Here’s the kicker:
Just 52 percent of survey respondents answered Yes: Mostly human.
The other 48 percent either questioned whether global warming is happening or would not ascribe human activity as the primary cause.
Here is table 1 from the paper which shows the entire population of respondents (click to enlarge):
Note the difference between those who cite some climate publications and those who don’t. People are often most convinced of their own work, while others looking in from the outside, not so much. As we know, the number of “climate scientists” versus others tends to be a smaller clique.
Dr.. Judith Curry writes:
Look at the views in column 1, then look at the % in the rightmost column: 52% state the the warming since 1850 is mostly anthropogenic. One common categorization would categorize the other 48% as ‘deniers’.
So, the inconvenient truth here is that about half of the world’s largest organization of meteorological and climate professionals don’t think humans are “mostly” the cause of Anthropogenic Global Warming the rest will probably get smeared as “deniers”
That’s a long way from Cook’s “97% consensus” lie.
References:
[1] Meteorologists’ views about global warming: A survey of American Meteorological Society professional members doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00091.1 http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00091.1
[2] Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article).
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The post says “They give this away when they advise in the abstract steps that can be taken to “correct” the low number reported.“. I couldn’t find the word “correct” or anything that looked like this idea in the abstract or the paper. The nearest I could find was. “MS and other organizations seeking to enhance the climate change readiness of the meteorology community should find ways to acknowledge and deal with the conflict“. The paper did read like it was written by warmists, though.
Near the finish it said “:MS and other organizations seeking to enhance the climate change readiness of the meteorology community should find ways to acknowledge and deal with the conflict“. Judith Curry has put forward suggestions for this, I think she called it “mediated discussion”.
The paper also said “ it is imperative that members of the scientific community – and the professional societies that represent them – take all reasonable measures to ensure that what is
known about the risks [of harm by climate change], and about options for managing those risks, are shared with decision makers“. This is where they really show their warmism. The paper is all about uncertainties, yet they have leaped straight to risks.
I think most skeptics would agree that some portion of global warming is human-caused. They might even agree that it’s mostly human caused.
But where I think they would disagree is whether it’s catastrophic or even undesirable. Would I welcome a climate 2-3 deg warmer here in NJ? Absolutely.
Ahhh, but these are just Meteorologists, they are not Climate Scientists.
They know nothing about the practice of Climate Science: a highly specialised science which requires years of “training” before one can understand the mechanism of how increasing CO2 can be used to cause an increase in funding.
It is the same as asking Football players to comment on the Higgs Boson.
[/sarc]
Interesting that Robert Way of the recent Arctic temperature re-writing paper is also an author on the “97% consensus paper”.
“Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature” John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli, Sarah A Green, Mark Richardson, Bärbel Winkler, Rob Painting, Robert Way, Peter Jacobs and Andrew Skuce
Ric Werme says:
One flaw in the study is that it excludes the people who have left the AMS in disgust over the executive committee position paper.
One among many.
It also doesn’t include the people still in the AMS who understand the potential ramifications of making your ‘non-consensus’ views known via a survey like this.
At best, 52% of 26% or about 14%, buy the party line.
86% either don’t believe it, or don’t care enough about the impending destruction of the planet to raise their voice about it.
The only science I’ve ever seen…..
Where they can identify a cause for something that is not happening
Margaret Hardman says:
November 20, 2013 at 11:48 am
The real driver behind this study is to understand “members of this professional community are not unanimous in their views of climate change, and there has been tension among members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) who hold different views on the topic.”
The reason for the tension is the AMS policy statement on climate change which many members think overstates the problem. E.g., from http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2012climatechange.html
It would have been interesting to find how many of those who think that humans are causing warming think that human produced CO2 is the main cause.
I know someone who thinks that changing the plant cover, from trees to farm land for example, is much more important than CO2 in influencing climate change. He thinks that CO2 is a negligible cause compared to the change of land use.
Just his opinion, of course.
I agree with him, though.
Also note that only 4% say it is not happening.
Sure. Because in order to believe that, one has to doubt all of the efforts to reconstruct past temperatures including the thermometric record, from the LIA to the present. It’s interesting that as many as 4% say it isn’t happening. Perhaps they are saying it isn’t happening still, or perhaps they think that the digested thermometric record transformed into a GASTA by interested parties is dubious when the total warming observed in GASTA (presented without error bars) is smaller than the error bars in GAST (the average surface temperature itself, not the “anomaly”).
The latter isn’t a completely untenable view. Weather records, as opposed to “climate anomalies”, do not provide particularly strong evidence that the 1990s were warmer than the 1930s, when almost exactly half of the state record high temperatures were set in the US. This has to be compared to the three state high temperature records set in the twenty first century so far.
Perhaps the US is not the world, but it has been a leader in science and measurement for well over a century, and its records are far better and more accurate than those accumulated over much of the world outside of Europe. Even in Europe the record is complicated by a lack of reliable long time trend observations, so that many of the records are quite new simply because the country the record belongs to is quite new.
rgb
The rule remains, garbage in garbage out.
Another rule, do not use polls of fools as useful.
Further to some comments above, I am surprised that some of you do not regard meteorologists as climate scientists.
If not, what are they?
Oldseadog says:
November 20, 2013 at 12:08 pm
Good point. My cousin, an emeritus statistics prof, thinks that humans must have some measurable effect, just from UHIs & other heat-generating activities, without considering GHGs.
Still a 53% in support of a political doctrine that is based on lies.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/11/20/obamacare-and-global-warming-are-the-same-program/
The cruelest lies are often told in silence. -Robert Louis Stevenson, novelist, essayist, and poet (1850-1894)
48% of the sane have to convince 53% morons that they have it wrong.
Tough job.
It was never about the numbers, it was always about power and control.
Which is why the narrative will not change, no matter what the actual numbers are. There will always be a new excuse or a new “hidden raw data” study.
Why couldn’t the “Yes : Mostly Human” be “Yes: Mostly CO2 From Human’s” or something to that effect? Do humans not have a warming affect by other activities? Maybe the 52% would have been lower.
A whopping 11% either don’t know if GW is happening or flatly don’t believe it. That’s more than one in ten who are, by definition, deniers! (I.e. they deny that the science is settled.)
This is a little startling considering that deniers are supposed to be a tiny minority.
Ric Werme says:
November 20, 2013 at 12:06 pm
Margaret Hardman says:
November 20, 2013 at 11:48 am
So what you’re saying is that a certain percentage of an national organisation of meteorologists, not climate scientists, have said something a bit different to a survey of abstracts of published papers on climate change.
The real driver behind this study is to understand “members of this professional community are not unanimous in their views of climate change, and there has been tension among members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) who hold different views on the topic.”
—
The whole “97%” meme is inane on its face. What researcher, who wishes to continue to get their steady stream of taxpayer-funded grant money, is going to say the following in their paper abstract:
“While climate change is NOT a problem in the foreseeable future, and efforts to affect climate through geoengineering are likely to fail, our research indicates that…”
And many abstracts in supposedly reputable journals are now becoming increasingly manic…witness some of Jim Hansen’s recent work like the dreadful “Climate change and trace gases.” (2007). Here’s the abstract…
Paleoclimate data show that the Earth’s climate is remarkably sensitive to global forcings. Positive feedbacks predominate. This allows the entire planet to be whipsawed between climate states. One feedback, the “albedo flip” property of water substance, provides a powerful trigger mechanism. A climate forcing that “flips” the albedo of a sufficient portion of an ice sheet can spark a cataclysm. Ice sheet and ocean inertia provides only moderate delay to ice sheet disintegration and a burst of added global warming. Recent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions place the Earth perilously close to dramatic climate change that could run out of our control, with great dangers for humans and other creatures. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the largest human-made climate forcing, but other trace constituents are important. Only intense simultaneous efforts to slow CO2 emissions and reduce non-CO2 forcings can keep climate within or near the range of the past million years. The most important of the non-CO2 forcings is methane (CH4), as it causes the 2nd largest human-made GHG climate forcing and is the principal cause of increased tropospheric ozone (O3), which is the 3rd largest GHG forcing. Nitrous oxide (N2O) should also be a focus of climate mitigation efforts. Black carbon (“black soot”) has a high global warming potential (~2000, 500, and 200 for 20, 100 and 500 years, respectively) and deserves greater attention. Some forcings are especially effective at high latitudes, so concerted efforts to reduce their emissions could still “save the Arctic”, while also having major benefits for human health, agricultural productivity, and the global environment.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha02210k.html
—
Hey kids, let’s all do the “Albedo Flip”! 😛
1821….
110 Weather Channel
…the rest for NOAA, NWS, etc
All with a very strong agenda….
I’m surprised they even got 52%
rgbatduke says:
November 20, 2013 at 12:09 pm
I see that NOAA has disallowed the 1898 high for Oregon of 119 degrees F, replacing it with a 1998 reading of 117 degrees.
I also notice that NOAA lists 1994 for Texas’ high, although that 120 degree reading is a tie with August 12, 1936 in Seymour. The summer of ’36 was a hot one in the US, as you know.
Old Sea Dog; where do you get the idea that this site doesn’t consider meterologists to be scientists?
88% of those in geophysics agree?
If they are including geologists, then that figure is an outright lie, as geologists are the strongest single sceptic profession. As for geophysicists – why the heck should they know anything about climate, especially climate history?
Anyhow, if those employed in government, or quasi-government organisations are stripped out (after all, they have an obvious vested interest in seeing climate alarmist theories continued) then the 97% figure could easily be reversed with the vast majority being sceptic.
It seems worth pointing out that you should all actually read the paper. It’s really not as supportive of this site’s alternative hypotheses as many here seem to believe. It is linked above though, which is one good thing about the story at the top of these comments.
E.g., “In conclusion, given the potential for human society and the earth’s eco-systems to be harmed by climate change, it is imperative that members of the scientific community – and the professional societies that represent them – take all reasonable measures to ensure that what is known about the risks, and about options for managing those risks, are shared with decision
makers who should be considering that information.”
Many climate scientists’ careers and lavish funding DEPENDS on continued global warming.