Brandon Shollenberger writes: I’ve been mulling over an idea I had, and I wanted to get some public feedback. What would you think of a public re-analysis of the Cook et al data set?
A key criticism of the Cook et al paper is they didn’t define the “consensus” they were looking for. There’s a lot of confusion as to whether that “consensus” position is weak (e.g. the greenhouse effect is real) or strong (e.g. humans are the primary culprits). The reason for that is Cook et al tried to combine both definitions into one rating, meaning they had no real definition.
You can see a discussion of that here.
I think it’d be interesting to examine the same data with sensible definitions. Instead of saying there’s a “97% consensus,” we could say “X% believe in global warming, Y% say humans are responsible for Z% of it.” That’d be far more informative. It’d also let us see if rating abstracts is even a plausibly useful approach for measuring a consensus.
My current thinking is to create a web site where people will be able to create accounts, log in and rate a particular subsample of the Cook et al data. I’m thinking 100 “Endorse AGW” abstracts to start with should be enough. After enough ratings have been submitted (or enough time has passed), I’ll break off the ratings, post results and start ratings on another set of abstracts.
The results would allow us to see tallies of how each abstract was rated (contrasted with the Cook et al ratings). I’m thinking I’d also allow raters to leave comments on abstracts to explain themselves, and these would be displayed as well. Finally, individual raters’ ratings could be viewed on a page to look for systematic differences in views.
What do you guys think? Would you be interested in something like this? Do you have things you’d like added or removed from it? Most importantly, do you think it’d be worth the effort? I’d be happy to create it, but it would take a fair amount of time and effort. It’d also take some money for hosting costs. I’d like to have an idea of if it’d be worth it.
An added bonus to doing it would be I could move my blog to that site as well. Self-hosting WordPress takes more effort than using WordPress.com, but it allows for far more customization. I’d love that.
So, thoughts? Questions? Concerns?
By the way, don’t hesitate to tell me I’m a fool if you think I’m spending too much time on the Cook et al issue. I’ve been telling myself that for the last two weeks.
Source: http://hiizuru.wordpress.com/2014/05/20/a-re-analysis-of-the-consensus/
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My opinion is that given the vast number of people interested in this at WUWT, we could likely crowd-source this work much more accurately and quickly than Cook did, without having to fall back on a small cadre of “like minded friends”. Both sides of the aisle can participate.
I don’t know what the result will be of such an analysis proposed by Brandon, but I do know that we can get far more participants from a much broader venue (since WUWT has almost an order of magnitude more reach than “Skeptical Science”) and that Brandon’s attention to detail will be an asset.
We already know many of the mistakes made in Cook’s work, so a re-do has the advantage out of the gate. This disadvantage may be that the gatekeepers at IOP may refuse to publish it, and University of Queensland may publish yet another bogus legal threat, since they seem tickled that Cooks 97% is the subject of worldwide gossip – Anthony
This would be a tremendous waste of Brandon’s time and all who participate. My research was in the area of human exposure to air pollution, including particularly from indoor sources. There is a journal and an international society devoted to this concept. About 10 years ago, it became clear to a number of researchers in this area that the research money was being sucked up by climate change. The result was to answer requests for proposals by writing grant applications something like “Effect of climate change on human exposure/indoor air quality/whatever”. Grant awarded, the researchers would study what they wanted to with a short easy estimation of the effect of climate change tacked on, and of course highlighted in the abstract. The point is that no one could determine from the abstract what these scientists really believed about global warming. The effort would be doomed from the start. Let’s move on.
I wouldn’t even bother. Consensus is irrelevant to science. You might as well be asking for a show of hands as to how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Repeating an meritless exercise will not make it any less meritless.
Instead of saying there’s a “97% consensus,” we could say “X% believe in global warming, Y% say humans are responsible for Z% of it.” That’d be far more informative.
How are you going to say “Y% say humans are responsible for Z% of it” when no one today knows with any certainty what Z is? Besides not a good idea anyway. If you get down in the mud with the pig, you will end up as dirty as the pig.
I think the concept is good–collect data to refute the 97% figure. However, refuting opinion is like battling windmills–frustrating with little accomplished. Whatever the result, it will be disparaged and ignored.
Additionally, the population of papers permitting counter-consensus views will be underrepresented due to the editorial bias of the group-think ministers.
I think the best use of crowd-sourcing may be for fact checking as is done by Anthony and others.
97% is purely for the headlines. The media reps don’t care if it’s wrong or right. “The World is Doomed” is the story. The 97% part supports the story. So someone else comes up with a story that “The World is Not Doomed” and 97% of scientists agree. Will it sell newspapers? No. Will it entice advertisers? No. Then what’s the point?
I have a problem with the term “believe in”. That suggests a matter of faith that something is occurring without requiring any actual evidence of it. If someone just “believes in” the concept, they are likely to be dismissive of evidence presented against their belief and protective of the foundations of that belief lest any cracks appear. I believe that term is the root of the problem with this issue.
Michael 2 says:
Strange mix of responses. Why would anyone oppose doing this?
How about because consensus had absolutely nothing to do with science, and everything to do with politics.
I see limited to no value in this exercise. What would be interesting is in-depth qualitative interviews with the top ten scientists each in physics, geology, meteorology, and astrophysics regarding their views and level of knowledge on this topic. Could be very enlightening and the differences between the groups interesting. Not suggesting anyone tackle this, it would be an enormously difficult task to get quality interviews with these persons.
Windbag: I like the Einstein quote. Thanks
I have now looked at 40 of these papers on a random basis, mostly there is a reference to climate change/global warming in the context of “if it happens, then this may happen if this model is correct”. An example might be: “the southern limits of the present day habitat of the shy green horned Paraguayan mountain toad could be threatened if global warming occurs and if rainfall in the eastern Andes also declines dramatically.
The rest of the papers had the most spurious association with climate change/global warming and why they were included is beyond me.
So I support the proposal in principle, but not in practice, because the findings would be immediately dismissed by alarmists as being biased and ‘unscientific – OK, so this would be an obvious case of the pot calling the kettle black.
I think the solution would be to make a master access file of all the files, including the ones hidden behind a paywall and where there is only an abstract available, then have all the sceptic sites provide easy access to it. Those accessing the site would be asked to try and identify any papers specifically endorsing the concept of a rise in CO2 levels having the direct and/or potentially dangerous consequence of climate change/global warming. The responses would have to be independently monitored and confirmed. A counter would be attached to the site. If the counter reached a figure of more than 300 out of the ~12,000 papers I would be very, very surprised.
If this is done, make sure we break it down along these lines:
Direct Evidence
— provides evidence to support AGW
— Provides evidence against AGW
Opinion
— takes a position supporting AGW
— takes a position opposing AGW
This might show a disconnect between opinions and what evidence is being presented.
Sorry, I am a newbie here, and I am at a loss (this may be a stupid question).
Didn’t the Lord Monckton paper address exactly this?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/03/cooks-97-consensus-disproven-by-a-new-paper-showing-major-math-errors/
How would Brandon’s initiative be different from this?
An interesting idea. I don’t know if existing software can handle the rating, but there is software for websites for rating various things. There are plugins for WP for various things, including things like Types & Views which let you make sites for arbitrary data — but check if you can export the data in the way which you want.
There are plenty of WP services available. At a minimum, you’d want a Cpanel or managed WP service. In addition to the W3 Total Cache plugin, also drop something like CloudFlare.com in front of the site. You might need antispam filtering such as Akismet. The Weaver II theme gives a lot of theme options. If one server won’t be enough, then you’re getting into multiple server details such as this: http://www.rackspace.com/blog/deploying-scalable-wordpress/
Attention all naysayers:
The Achilles heel of the alarmist position (other than bad science etc), is their false claims of “overwhelming consensus.” Pious objections on the grounds that we shouldn’t be playing the same game ignore the harsh political realities. This is war. Want to change the nature of the debate overnight? Then find a way to overturn the notion of a strong consensus re CAGW.
I’d personally favor a survey of scientists by a national polling firm, but I’ll support anything that holds the other side’s feet to the fire on this b.s consensus.
If you go ahead, I’d suggest that only papers that provide clear evidence of AGW are included.
The vast majority come under the mitigation/impact areas, and therefore have no relevance.
I doubt if many papers at all will give the sort of exact proportion due to man, so we are back to subjectivity.
I cannot believe that any possible outcome from destroying one paper claiming a 97% consensus will actually improve the science on the fundamental question at hand.
Attacking the 97% claim simply diverts skeptic resources from scientific review of papers making pro-AGW claims. Finding and publishing any flaws in those papers would do far more good than knocking the credibility of papers about the credibility of the pro-AGW consensus.
Let’s get to work.
In addition to the one-through rating project, however you design your formal study, design the rating site so it can keep running. Let casual visitors later create an account (even if it’s one which might go away if you’re running low on storage), rate random papers, and they can see how their own ratings compare to previous ratings.
If you plan on doing an attitude survey why not ask a relevant range of scientists the following question:
If by including a reference to hypothetical negative effects climate change in your paper guaranteed funding, would you include such a reference?
Waste of time. Consensus isn’t science. As others have mentioned, there is publication bias as well as bias in selecting the papers to be reviewed, etc., etc. What exactly are we trying to prove, that the 97% number was gamed? Well, duh!
As long as the definitions are crystal clear, this seems to be a good idea, at the first glance, to me. Go and ask the IPCC loudly and in public what, in their opinion, such crystal clear definitions are. I’m convinced that there will be either no answer: that’s bad for the Cook’s book or they will impose definitions impossible to comply with: bad for the Cook’s book as well. I bet the IPCC can’t find a consensus….
Any other ideas?
How about this:
More than 31,000 U.S. scientists and engineers have co-signed that statement. There have never been enough alarmist scientists and engineers to come anywhere close to those numbers.
Cook presented a bogus survey, then claimed that “97% agree” that climate catastrophe is imminent. But the actual consensus, for whatever that is worth, is clearly with climate skeptics. In reality, the alarmists comprise a relatively small clique, with the major news media on their side of the false narrative.
Would I spend the time necessary to once again debunk Cook? Probably not. Instead, I would constantly beat his side over the head with the OISM Petition, and challenge them to round up more co-signers than that, who believe that AGW is a major problem. Insist that they get hard copies; no emailing or telephone conversations. Do it just like OISM did it.
I suspect the response would be a chorus of crickets.
If I get this right, you seem to think that Cook’s original idea was good to start with: to demonstrate there is a ‘consensus’ (whatever that is supposed to mean) amongst science papers (whatever they may be defined as being).
Well, I think the original idea was cr*p and, moreover, you are in danger of just trying to apply more lipstick to a pig. And when you’ve succeeded at that…….?
I would like to see if I can get 97% consensus on this…
HAS THE EARTH WARMED?
Yes and no depending on the time frame. The past 17 years we have seen no warming and maybe a little cooling.
Over the past 360 years since the Little Ice Age Climatic Minimum the climate has warmed.
Since the Holocene Climate Optimum about 8,000 years ago the planet has cooled especially in the far north.
Since the Younger Dryas stadial, or Big Freeze, about 12,000 years ago the climate has warmed a fair amount.
Since the worst of the last Glacial Period about 22,000 years ago it has warmed a lot.
Since the beginning of the current Ice Age 2.6 million years ago the Earth has been overall steadily cooling with many ups and downs.
Since the Eocene Optimum about 52 million years ago temperatures have dropped a large amount.
Looking at a graph of temperatures over the past 500 million years we see the Earth’s climate has gone from hotter than the Eocene Optimum to very cold many times. It is near record cold presently for that time period.
Over the last 4.6 billion years periods of major glaciations such as we are now in have been the exception. Most of the time it has been considerably warmer.
If you are interested you can experience the current Ice Age by traveling to the Arctic, Antarctic or Greenland where you will find permanent ice sheets. Snowy winter is our yearly reminder of where ice sheets will, in time, form again.
““97% consensus,” we could say “X% believe in global warming, Y% say humans are responsible for Z% of it.””
X should be about 97 percent.
Z is unknowable. The papers give little indication of percent belief.
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