We’ve seen the “If 99 doctors said…” argument, or facsimiles, used often by global warming enthusiasts in recent months. George Clooney used it when interviewed at the Britannia Awards. (See the Open Letter to Lewis Black and George Clooney.) James Cameron used it in the trailer for the upcoming ShowTime series “Years of Living Dangerously”. (Refer to the open letter to Mr. Cameron and the other executive producers of that show.) And on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart included a clip of Dan Weiss of the Center for American Progress using it (See the Open Letter to Jon Stewart.)
I responded to those arguments and discussed many other topics in the posts linked above, with links to more-detailed explanations and examples…and, of course, with links to my ebooks.
The following is something I wrote for my upcoming book with the working title The Oceans Ate My Global Warming (or another possible title CO2 is Not a Control Knob). I thought you might use for it when you see the “If 99 doctors said…” argument again.
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Imagine you’re running a persistent slight fever. You visit a new clinic. The nurse takes your vitals and enters them into a computer program. A short time after the computer model completes its simulations, the doctor arrives, advises you of the computer-diagnosed ailment, and prescribes controversial high-cost medications and treatment.
You’re not comfortable with the service, diagnosis, prescription or treatment, so you check out online the computer model used by the clinic. It is proclaimed to be wonderful by its programmers. But, the more you research, the more you discover the model’s defects. It can’t simulate circulation, respiration, digestion, and other basic bodily functions. There are numerous research papers exposing the flaws in the model, but they are hard to find because of all of the other papers written by the model programmers extolling its virtues.
Of course, you would not accept the computer-based medical diagnosis from a model that cannot simulate basic bodily functions and processes. But that’s the position we’re faced with climate science.
We need a second opinion for the slight warming the Earth had experienced. Unfortunately, it is not likely to be coming anytime soon, not until there are changes to the political agendas that drive climate science funding.
# # #
Enjoy your Super Bowl Sunday…for those celebrating. For everyone else, enjoy your day.
Gareth Phillips says:
February 2, 2014 at 5:41 am
—
There is an overwhelming body of evidence that the earth has warmed.
Where is the overwhelming body of evidence indicating that CO2 is responsible for the vast majority of this warming?
Here’s an amusingly relevant quote from 64 years ago:
99% of doctors were 100% wrong about stomach ulcers.
Another man seen as fringe until,
Barry Marshall drank bacterium, developed stomach ulcers, and won the Nobel peace price in medicine.(R.6) Incoherent title (en.wikipedia.org)
I like fringe scientists,
“When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.” – Jonathan Swift
THE LIST: scroll down
To add: B Belousov, Carl Woese, Gilbert Ling, John C. Lilly
Arrhenius (ion chemistry)
Alfven, Hans (galaxy-scale plasma dynamics)
Baird, John L. (television camera)
Bakker, Robert (fast, warm-blooded dinosaurs)
Bardeen & Brattain (transistor)
Bretz J Harlen (ice age geology)
Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan (black holes in 1930)
Chladni, Ernst (meteorites in 1800)
Crick & Watson (DNA)
Doppler (optical Doppler effect)
Folk, Robert L. (existence and importance of nanobacteria)
Galvani (bioelectricity)
Harvey, William (circulation of blood, 1628)
Krebs (ATP energy, Krebs cycle)
Galileo (supported the Copernican viewpoint)
Gauss, Karl F. (nonEuclidean geometery)
Binning/Roher/Gimzewski (scanning-tunneling microscope)
Goddard, Robert (rocket-powered space ships)
Goethe (Land color theory)
Gold, Thomas (deep non-biological petroleum deposits)
Gold, Thomas (deep mine bacteria)
Lister, J (sterilizing)
Lovelock, James (Gaia theory)
Maiman, T (Laser)
“Concepts which have proved useful for ordering things easily assume so great an authority over us, that we forget their terrestrial origin and accept them as unalterable facts. They then become labeled as ‘conceptual necessities,’ etc. The road of scientific progress is frequently blocked for long periods by such errors.” – Einstein
Margulis, Lynn (endosymbiotic organelles)
Mayer, Julius R. (The Law of Conservation of Energy)
Marshall, B (ulcers caused by bacteria, helicobacter pylori)
McClintlock, Barbara (mobile genetic elements, “jumping genes”, transposons)
Newlands, J. (pre-Mendeleev periodic table)
Nott, J. C. (mosquitos xmit Yellow Fever)
Nottebohm, F. (neurogenesis: brains can grow neurons)
Ohm, George S. (Ohm’s Law)
Ovshinsky, Stanford R. (amorphous semiconductor devices)
Pasteur, Louis (germ theory of disease)
Prusiner, Stanley (existence of prions, 1982)
Rous, Peyton (viruses cause cancer)
Semmelweis, I. (surgeons wash hands, puerperal fever )
Shechtman, Dan (quasicrystals)
Steen-McIntyre, Virginia (southwest US indians villiage , 300,000BC)
Tesla, Nikola (Earth electrical resonance, “Schumann” resonance)
Tesla, Nikola (brushless AC motor)
J H van’t Hoff (molecules are 3D)
Warren, Warren S (flaw in MRI theory)
Wegener, Alfred (continental drift)
Wright, Wilbur & Orville (flying machines)
Zwicky, Fritz (existence of dark matter, 1933)
Zweig, George (quark theory)
What if 97% of your doctors recommended bloodletting in preparation for the trepanning to let out the evil spirits in your head.
“The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.” -Paul Johnson
“If 99 doctors…” is a very weak analogy and pretty indicative that the person proffering it knows nothing about the topics. Doctors are practitioners not scientists…they are trained (and obligated) to prescribe treatment based on observations, test results, etc. (aka “facts”). And why their education and certification is based on standardized texts and protocols. The goal is that if I see multiple doctors (e.g. an ER doc, my GP, and a specialist) they should agree otherwise the system would break down.
Hi:
As predicted by state-of-the-art scientific sports models from the turn of the last century, Superbowl XCVIII (98) will be won in an upset victory by the London Beef Eaters vs. the Barcelona Moors to much acclaim on February 3, 2064 at the newly reconstructed Bremer Brücke Stadion, Germany. The margin of victory will be so near the predicted score of 31 to 24 as to raise serious suspicions of tampering, collusion or insider fixing such that the sports book will ask the King’s court for intervention in spite of the scientific models’ certainty. Conditions will be 16 degrees C (66 F), partly cloudy, winds out of the west at 10 KPH (6 MPH) with 95% certainty.
Fortunately, to accommodate both teams, a dome will have been constructed and built to accommodate air-conditioning barely three years earlier, just-in-time for the two teams, one thousand nine hundred and nineteen news people and all thirty-two local fans without a working telly (praise be to Allah, the most merciful).
The grain farmers on the former western Thames will have had the usual two annual record crops of summer corn and winter wheat, for the twentieth consecutive year; from Windsor all the way east to Barrier Park, Eton’s skulls be damned. All this prompting Londoners to paraphrase Browning by singing, “Oh to be in England now that winter’s here, with amber waves of grain”. All this occurring while Americans still embargo British haggis until the Lombardi trophy is returned to its rightful home, the purple mountains majesty above the fruited plain (AKA Denver).
In the mean time, officials are still at loggerheads after 50 years of negotiations as to who decides what to call football or fotbal or even how to spell it, Americans are as adamant and pigskin headed as ever and as expected since Obama outlawed the US legislature in naught 14. God save the King, from sea to shining sea!
In 1949 Walter Hess won the Nobel Prize for the Lobotomy! Yes, the ‘scientific consensus’ was the Lobotomy was a great cure for mental illness
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobotomy
bobl, a better analogy would be to say that MRI/ultrasounds/xrays says its cancer. But the biopsy is what tells us wether its malignant or benign.
“Whenever a doctor provides his diagnosis, ask the following simple question: “Doctor, what else could it be?””
What if doctor tells you it’s top secret, and he could be in trouble for telling it loud?
Information is power, and psychopaths always use their adventages no matter how many lives it would cost.
As a non-climate scientist, I look to Earth’s long history as the strongest evidence that negative feedbacks must overwhelm any posited positive feedbacks built into the models. Otherwise, given the many catastrophic events in Earth’s past, we would have surely gone the way of Venus long ago. We don’t even know of all of the negative feedback mechanisms that exist. Who would have imagined just a couple of years ago that thunderstorms were capable of ejecting gamma rays and antimatter into space!
If 99 doctors told me ephemeral humors were clogging up my humories
(1)I’d check and see how many of them ever had the term “quack” used near them or the people they associated with. In the real world the finest of any art or science associate with the finest: the dopers and cheats associate with the dopers and cheats.
(2)I’d check to see
if even one other field of science tried to tell me about fundamental reality
using “quack” level pseudo-scientific “facts”
they claimed were true in their field,
but not one
single
other field
on earth.
Things like
“Spheres heated to full temp in vacuum,
growing warmer
when the sphere is immersed and spun
in frigid nitrogen/oxygen,
phase change refrigerated with water.
Warmer than when there was heating in vacuum alone.
Warmer than the cold nitrogen bath itself.
In climatology it is regularly taught, that “It is possible to heat an object that was already pre-heated to full temperature in vacuum, by immersing and spinning it in frigid nitrogen/oxygen gas.”
Statements incorporating such bizarre claims are obvious, instant tips:
Is there any real science that teaches this?
If not, then it’s quack pseudo-science.
End of Story.
In climatology it’s regularly taught that it is possible to suspend reflective insulation
between a fire illuminating a rock, making that rock hotter because of energy kept from the rock.
Is there any other field which teaches it’s possible to suspend reflective insulation between a light from a fire, and a rock, and cause less light to reach the rock,
but make every heat sensor on the surface of the rock show more energy from the fire arriving on the rock?
Of couse not. That’s two strikes – big strikes – easily compared to real science –
– making it quack pseudo-science.
I’d check those doctors’ thinking against the real scientific facts of the universe.
against the dictionary definitions of “delusional” and “quack” and “charlatan” and “fraud.”
Particularly I’d look at them against the definitions of those words.
(3)I’d check to see what people generally thought of what being a doctor in that field actually meant to others. How good is their reputation for being right vs being corrected by people so often, they have code words they don’t tolerate associated with them or they storm out –
“code words” and phrases like ”fraud,” ”scam,”
”against laws of physics”
“against laws of science”
“against laws of thermodynamics”
“against laws of nature”
“against universally known law”
(4)I’d check to see what the quality of the review boards who ok’d the doctors’ credentials and work. If their review boards are widely reputed to be simply con games, I’d look for evidence.
If I saw evidence of them knowingly participating in scam science or, knowingly covering up errors, I’d know they were practicing scam pseudo-science.
(5)I’d check to see if they actually could predict what the instruments of their self professed field would do under test conditions.
If simply asking them to predict which way a thermometer would go under certain conditions made them lock up like petrified deer in midnight headlights – I’d seek expertise from a real doctor.
Just because you’re a witch doctor
Just because you’re with a witch doctor
Just because you’re a government doctor
doesn’t mean you’re a real doctor.
If 99 economists said that raising the minimum wage destroys jobs…
If 99 economists said that trying to stop the global climate cycle was more expensive than adjusting ourselves to it…
rogerknights: And the coloring of the dog’s fur resembles a couple of continents.
February 2, 2014 at 5:41 am
“… the overwhelming body of evidence points in one direction and that is what I will believe until substantial studies show any different conclusions.”
This is an odd statement. Perhaps Mr. Phillips can tell us what “evidence” points to AGW? I know of computer models, which are not evidence. I know of physics, which may or may not be appropriately applied but we know are incomplete and not evidence. I know little is understood about natural variability, again not evidence. I know clouds and water vapor, both natural and which should be major drivers of GW are poorly understood and certainly not evidence in support of AGW. I know there is considerable disagreement (lack of understanding) over the CO2 cycle and man’s contribution, which is again not evidence. There is no data that I am aware of which supports the theory of AGW. Hardly an endorsement of “evidence points in one direction.” And I assume we are talking about AGW caused by manmade CO2 and not other issues such as carbon black or albedo changes caused by man which perhaps should be discussed more.
Unfortunately we now find newspaper editors becoming climate experts and misleading all their readers just like George Clooney is doing. This is an article called “ Frigid weather doesn’t negate a warming trend “ which appeared in USA TODAY recently.
http://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/4345412-frigid-weather-doesn-t-negate-warming-trend/
I found this USA TODAY article biased and factually lacking. Global annual temperatures have not risen now for 16 years and there is a global warming halt since 1998. Northern Hemisphere winters have been cooling for the same period. Winters in Contiguous US have been cooling in every state since 1998. The same is happening in Canada. So this frigid weather is not just weather as the Viewpoint article implies but part of a winter climate change that has been happening for nearly 2 decades. The Northern Hemisphere Oceans are cooling especially the North Atlantic and the North Pacific which has ben cooling since 2005. Cooler ocean cycles can run for 30-35 years as we saw in 1880-1910 and again 1945-1975. Some scientists are predicting that during the next 20-30 years we will have colder weather, especially the winters. As we have seen across many parts of United States ,they are having shortages in natural gas and propane for winter heating. Many regions have inadequate road clearing infrastructure and emergency procedures to deal with the winters like they used to have during 1945-1980. Articles like this are not helpful as they give the public and the business community a false sense of climate anticipation. We should prepare for global cooling, not global warming as this current winter clearly shows. These colder winters do negate the warming trend that has been non existent for 16 years now and this is likely to continue for several decades at least and possibly until 2030/2040.
Coach Springer says ‘99% of doctors were into bleeding as a cure’. To be more precise, they were called surgeons, who were the medical establishment till the seventeenth century when they got academically trained doctors as rivals. They had a very good reason to trust blood letting, because after this treatment almost all patients recovered. This was not because of the pretty innocent blood letting but because sick people usually recover by themselves. The surgeons had overwhelming evidence for their therapy. Of course, they could not do anything about pestilence because this was usually considered a punishment by a supernatural being.
Bob,
You wrote this?
Must’ve sprained your typing finger(s.)
/s
Forging a consensus is the oldest political trick in the history of science. To denounce Einstein they wrote a book “100 against Einstein.” Would these same people thus denounce Einstein as anti-science?
steven says on February 2, 2014 at 7:16 am
“As a non-climate scientist, I look to Earth’s long history as the strongest evidence that negative feedbacks must overwhelm any posited positive feedbacks built into the models.”
Good comments Steven. The following comment is from 2011.
Please note Counterproof 3:
“If Earth’s climate system were so volatile, humanity would probably not have survived to this time, and yet behold, here we are.”
___________
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/05/08/lawrence-solomon-are-high-co2-levels-once-again-saving-the-amazon-forest/
We truly understand so very little about the science of “global warming”.
First, global warming theory starts with the observation that CO2 has (mostly) been increasing in the atmosphere since at least 1958, when rigorous measurement methods began at Mauna Loa. The first hypothesis Is that humanity is the primary cause of this increase in atmospheric CO2, due to the burning of fossil fuels.
Counterproof 1: Natural seasonal CO2 fluxes are much greater than humanmade emissions. CO2 lags Earth temperature in time at all measured time scales, that is, CO2 trend changes occur after, not before, temperature trend changes, so Hypo 1 states that the future is causing the past, a very significant flaw. Furthermore, there were brief periods of annual atmospheric CO2 decline during this period, consistent with global cooling that occurred up to about 1975. This all suggests that temperature may be the primary driver of CO2, rather than humanity.
Second, it is a commonly-accepted hypothesis, based on physical principles, that increased atmospheric CO2 will cause some global warming. The basic physics suggests a hypothetical doubling of CO2 will cause average global warming of about 1 degree C, hardly catastrophic, since this hypothetical doubling of CO2 is not imminent.
Counterproof 2: See Counterproof 1. These observations further suggest, ironically, that temperature may be the primary driver of CO2, rather than CO2 driving temperature.
Third, the global warming catastrophists further hypothesize that there are huge amplifiers in the natural climate system that will cause this 1 degree C hypothetical warming to be amplified many times by the natural climate system, and their climate computer models use this further “amplifier” hypothesis to predict catastrophic global warming consequences for Earth should society continue to burn fossil fuels.
Counterproof 3: There is absolutely NO EVIDENCE for these alleged huge positive amplifiers, called “positive feedbacks”, in the natural climate system. In fact, there is significant evidence of “negative feedbacks” that would diminish the hypothetical 1 degree C global warming “climate sensitivity” to a figure of 0.5C or less, based on satellite temperature measurement data that has been available since 1979. The predicted catastrophic global warming just is NOT HAPPENING AS PREDICTED by climate catastrophists. There is also the common sense argument: If Earth’s climate system were so volatile, humanity would probably not have survived to this time, and yet behold, here we are.
So what is actually happening?
IF the catastrophic global warming hypothesis is wrong, as strongly suggested above, what is an alternative hypothesis that better fits the observed data?
First, global temperatures and natural seasonal effects (such as photosynthesis and oxidation, Henry’s Law, etc.) drive atmospheric CO2; atmospheric CO2 does not drive temperature. Humanmade CO2 emissions may play a significant role in atmospheric CO2 concentrations or they may not, but they are certainly NOT the dominant factor.
Second, global temperature change is a predominantly a natural phenomenon, driven primarily by minor changes in solar output and other extraterritorial factors, and other purely natural variations. Earth warmed naturally from about 1850 to 1945, cooled from about 1945 to recently, and is EARTH NOW BEGINNING TO COOL AGAIN, PART OF A NATURAL CYCLE THAT IS POORLY UNDERSTOOD.
Science’s predictive abilities are quite poor in this subject area, and climate science has been badly degraded by the political agendas and greed that driven global warming hysteria.
99 doctors would have said it is good for you to smoke. Now they would not. The arrogance of “doctors” is astounding. Yes, of course we should listen to what they say. But no, they are not always right, in fact sometimes they are completely wrong. The same goes for “scientists”.
” but from what I can see, the overwhelming body of evidence points in one direction and that is what I will believe until substantial studies show any different conclusions.”
I prefer to look at the actual temperatures, not thousands of studies based on the rubbish that they get out of models.
It is simple. Look at the data. Is the earth behaving as the CAGW hypothesis predicted? No it isn’t. That in itself shows that thousands of papers, all based on “accepted” assumptions based on the output of models, are wrong.
Mushroom George used the blood letting example.
Yes, 99 out of 100 doctors in the 1700s would have recommended blood letting. So the analogy is what would you have done if you were diagnosed with a throat infection and doctors wanted to let out nearly a gallon of bad blood as treatment? It’s thought that George Washington wouldn’t have died of a throat infection had he lived in the late 1800s when the blood letting was being discredited.
Climate Science is at the same stage as medicine was when blood letting was a recommended remedy.