What is the origin of the false belief – constantly repeated by President Obama, the media and others – that almost all scientists agree about global warming?
Claims continue to be made that “97% of scientists agree that climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.” That’s what Secretary of State John Kerry told graduating Boston College students. It’s what President Obama said in his State of the Union address and a recent tweet.
There’s just one problem – aside from the fact that this assertion is being used to help justify policies and regulations that are closing down fossil fuel power plants and crippling our economy. The claim is completely bogus. As Heartland Institute president Joe Bast and climate scientist Roy Spencer make clear in this article, the papers used to create and perpetuate the 97% claim are seriously and fundamentally flawed. The alleged consensus simply does not exist; much less does it represent anything remotely approaching 97%.
By Joseph Bast and Roy Spencer
The myth of the climate change 97%
What is the origin of the false belief that nearly all scientists agree about global warming?
Joseph Bast and Roy Spencer
Secretary of State John Kerry, President Obama and others frequently claim that climate change will have “crippling consequences,” and that “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree that climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.” In reality, the assertion is science fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and exercises in counting abstracts from scientific papers – all of which have been contradicted by more reliable research.
One frequently cited source is Naomi Oreskes. She claimed to have examined abstracts of 928 articles and to have found that 75% supported the view that human activities are responsible for most of the observed warming over the previous 50 years, while none directly dissented. Ms. Oreskes’s definition of consensus covered “man-made” influences but left out “dangerous” – and excluded scores of articles by prominent scientists who question the consensus. She also failed to acknowledge that a study published in the journal Nature noted that abstracts of academic papers often contain claims that aren’t substantiated in the papers.
Another widely cited source for the consensus view is an article in Eos: Transactions of the American Geophysical Union. It reported the results of a two-question online survey of selected scientists, and claimed “97 percent of climate scientists agree.” Most scientists who are skeptical of man-made catastrophic global warming would nevertheless answer “yes” to both questions. However, the survey was silent on whether the human impact – or the rise in temperature – is large enough to constitute a problem. It also failed to include scientists most likely to be aware of natural causes of climate change.
There is no basis for the claim that 97% of scientists believe that man-made climate change is a dangerous problem.
To read the rest of their article, go to http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303480304579578462813553136
Let the games begin…
97% of democratic politicians are liars, which works our well since 97% of democratic voters lack critical thinking skills
Prof Mike Hulme (founding director of the Tyndal Centre (UEA) joined in criticising Cook et al (and Anderegg
http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/2013/07/23/whats-behind-the-battle-of-received-wisdoms/
Mike Hulme July 25, 2013 at 6:39 am
Ben Pile is spot on. The “97% consensus” article is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed. It obscures the complexities of the climate issue and it is a sign of the desperately poor level of public and policy debate in this country that the energy minister should cite it. It offers a similar depiction of the world into categories of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to that adopted in Anderegg et al.’s 2010 equally poor study in PNAS: dividing publishing climate scientists into ‘believers’ and ‘non-believers’. It seems to me that these people are still living (or wishing to live) in the pre-2009 world of climate change discourse. Haven’t they noticed that public understanding of the climate issue has moved on?
My take on the Doran survey (including sceptical feedback form the actual participants of the survey)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/what-else-did-the-97-of-scientists-say/
And Prof Richard Betts (Head of Climate Impacts, UK Met Office, IPCC AR5 and AR4 lead author )thoughts on the ‘dangerous’ misrepresentation of Cook et al, by Obama’s twitter account.
Richardabetts
@BarackObama Actually that paper didn’t say ‘dangerous’. NB I *do* think #climate change poses risks – I just care about accurate reporting!
Quote from co author Maggie Zimmerman 97.4% Doran Zimmermann EoS paper
“This entire process has been an exercise in re-educating myself about the climate debate and, in the process, I can honestly say that I have heard very convincing arguments from all the different sides, and I think I’m actually more neutral on the issue now than I was before I started this project. There is so much gray area when you begin to mix science and politics, environmental issues and social issues, calculated rational thinking with emotions, etc.”
– M Zimmermann – The Consensus on the Consensus
I was familiar with the Doran and Cook studies, but not of the Oreskes or the PNAS one. I can see why now! Neither of those actually quantified the data. Just hyperjected. But they are good to know if someone should try to sneak them through.
@ut8t5,
I beg to differ: democratic voters are extremely critical when their entitlements are threatened…
97%? FEH! Kim Jong-un got 100% “consensus” in the North Korean “election”.
obama must admire that guy so much…
“The “97 percent” figure in the Zimmerman/Doran survey represents the views of only 79 respondents who listed climate science as an area of expertise and said they published more than half of their recent peer-reviewed papers on climate change.”
Actually, the 97% figure represents the views of only 77 of those 79. Two of the 79 were identified as skeptics and excluded by Professor Doran for his famous 97% calculation.
http://archive.today/6oi3O#selection-243.0-271.78
What amazes me the most…..is that most people don’t think claiming something like that….is as lame as I think it is
If the science was “robust”…they wouldn’t have to claim anything….and they wouldn’t
President Obama warned Friday that storms like Hurricane Sandy will become more frequent as climate change intensifies.
While being briefed by emergency response officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) headquarters, Obama urged the public to prepare now for this year’s hurricane season.
“The changes we’re seeing in our climate means that, unfortunately, storms like Sandy could end up being more common and more devastating,” Obama said.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/207774-obama-climate-change-will-bring-more-hurricanes#ixzz33Ehm8krh
As been said “never let the facts get in the way of a good story.” The 97 percent story simply won’t die because it’s too valuable to the alarmists.
I suspect 97% of alchemists thought they could turn mercury into gold. And probably 97% thought the world was flat a long time before then. So now, 97% of the scientists who think AGW is real agree that AGW is real. Makes sense. Sort of …
The one thing you can accurately predict about the weather is that is going to be unpredictable.
Dr. Spencer is to be thanked for dismantling the “97%” myth so clearly.
Sadly with this Administration in full hunker down mode and controlling the President’s information sources even more tightly, the chances of him hearing that he is repeating old, inaccurate and disreputable claims about climate science and climate risk is practically zip.
Politicians always claim the means justify their ends and if truth is a casualty well that’s just too bad. As a consequence of this cynicism scientific truth is being trampled underfoot and civilization forced into retreat. The finer sensibilities of scientific truth-seekers are being battered in this shallow age of uncritical media and political hack ‘scientists’. But who would ever have thought ‘damned lies and statistics’ could be peddled as science by educated men? They shouldn’t just know better. They should be better.
This post is a keeper, in that it clarifies without ambiguity, what the argument about the 97% is really about. It’s like the game “Telephone” Someone tells a story with specific details to someone, who passes it on… it grows details out of thin air and sheds factual content as it propagates.
A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on.
An angry person tells 10 people about their experience, and a happy person tells 1 other…
hunter said:
May 30, 2014 at 2:56 pm
…chances of [obama] hearing that he is repeating old, inaccurate and disreputable claims about climate science and climate risk is practically zip.
————
I ‘m sure he knows and is more than happy to propagate climate disinformation. Moreover, I bet he wouldn’t at all mind suppressing dissent.
Wouldn’t surprise me if he were to issue a decree declaring WUWT to be illegal.
Another problem with the questions is that the word “significant” isn’t defined.
Depending on the context, significant could mean as little as 10 to 20%.
I like to think of significant is within 1 order of magnitude… base 10. But that is still subjective I guess.
For instance, if absolute temperature increased by 1 order of magnitude, then we’d be 30C warmer.
I’m with Latitude. For them to have to make the claim to begin with is proof enough the science is junk.
The figures for calculating the 97 percent are 75 out of 77 “qualified” scientists.
Now, say we accept that number, as the number of AGW believers in the scientific community. Next we consider the Petition Project (aka Oregon Petition), a document stating that neither CO2 nor man’s activities have any discernible effect on climate, and signed by 31,000+ degreed practicing scientists.
This works out to 0.22 percent of “scientists” who accept AGW, or a 450-to-1 majority of skeptics over believers.
No matter how you figure it, there is an ENORMOUSLY, OVERWHELMINGLY large majority of theoretical scientists, and especially of applied scientists (astronomers, meteorologists, engineers, geologists, chemists, to name a few). Applied scientists know better than to rely on superstitions as the basis of their calculations; if they did, bridges would fall, buildings would collapse and chemical plants would blow up.
Unfortunately, the same sorts of constraints imposed by reality do not seem to apply to something as nebulous and climate “science.”
Why doesn’t the article, right from the start, mention that the 97% consensus is based on 75 of 77 respondents:
“…the most specialized and knowledgeable respondents (with regard to climate change)… 97.4% (75 of 77) answered yes to question 2.”
Isn’t this the basis for the 97% figure? It doesn’t mention anywhere in the article about 75 of 77 respondents…
Worse then that is the fact we do not know how many climate ‘scientists’ there are , worse than that we have no agree definition of what is a climate ‘scientists’ , remember both railway engineers and failed politicians have been called climate ‘scientists’ . But worse of all is that the 97% fails on the basic maths front , for if you have no idea of the size of the whole group you can simply have no idea what percentage of the whole group a sub-group is to any degree of accuracy worth a dam.
The 97% is crap from the bottom to the top.
Well. I for one am still a strong supporter of Obama for a whoe host of reasons, but I have to agree he and his advisers on climate need to listen to the skeptic side rather than dismissing it. Sadly, he is apparently only listening to the climate doomsayers who grabbed the bit in their teeth thirty years ago and, if they don’t stop soon to rethink the issue, are about to gallop off the cliff as a result.
I suspect that 99.9% of people have never heard of the Petition Project, including President Obama and John Kerry.
“Why has punditry lately overtaken news? Why do lies seem to linger so long in the cultural subconscious even after they’ve been thoroughly discredited? And why, when more people than ever before are documenting the truth with laptops and digital cameras, does fact-free spin and propaganda seem to work so well?” ~Farad Manjoo – True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society~
97% of Lemmings say you should jump off a cliff.
Unfortunately, this should go in the WUWT Resources, perhaps under a new category “Climate Myths”.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/12/30/lawrence-solomon-75-climate-scientists-think-humans-contribute-to-global-warming/
dmacleo says:
May 30, 2014 at 4:13 pm
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/12/30/lawrence-solomon-75-climate-scientists-think-humans-contribute-to-global-warming/
Very good, dmacleo. I had a hard time finding the original 97% figure basis. Even on WUWT.
There are a lot of legal articles about John Cook 97%, but it’s hard to find the 75 out of 77 article/issue.
Regarding two “97%” surveys that warmists more often cite, here is a summary of most of their flaws, by WUWT-commenter Robin Guenier:
This George Mason Univ. poll [run for them by the Harris polling organization in 2007] http://stats.org/stories/2008/global_warming_survey_apr23_08.html surveyed 489 randomly selected members of either the American Meteorological Society or the American Geophysical Union. It did not cherry pick the respondants who gave them the answer they wanted, and it asked more sophisticated questions [than the Doran and Anderegg surveys], below:
Under its “Major Findings” are these paragraphs:
“Ninety-seven percent of the climate scientists surveyed believe “global average temperatures have increased” during the past century.
“Eighty-four percent say they personally believe human-induced warming is occurring, and 74% agree that “currently available scientific evidence” substantiates its occurrence. Only 5% believe that that human activity does not contribute to greenhouse warming; the rest [11%] are unsure.
“Scientists still debate the dangers. A slight majority (54%) believe the warming measured over the last 100 years is NOT “within the range of natural temperature fluctuation.”
“A slight majority (56%) see at least a 50-50 chance that global temperatures will rise two degrees Celsius or more during the next 50 to 100 years. (The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cites this increase as the point beyond which additional warming would produce major environmental disruptions.)
“Based on current trends, 41% of scientists believe global climate change will pose a very great danger to the earth in the next 50 to 100 years, compared to 13% who see relatively little danger. Another 44% rate climate change as moderately dangerous.”
IOW, 59% doubt the “catastrophic” potential of AGW. I suspect that number would be higher now, after six more flat years.
I keep it handy for reference on my site as I would lose it w/o that LOL
http://www.theconservativevoices.com/news/cat/energyandenvironment/the-myth-of-the-97-percent-of-scientists-believe-in-agw-r135
Tom Port says:
May 30, 2014 at 3:34 pm
Well. I for one am still a strong supporter of Obama for a whoe host of reasons, but I have to agree he and his advisers on climate need to listen to the skeptic side rather than dismissing it. Sadly, he is apparently only listening to the climate doomsayers who grabbed the bit in their teeth thirty years ago and, if they don’t stop soon to rethink the issue, are about to gallop off the cliff as a result.
+++++++++++
Maybe we can help, Tom, since you sound reasonable. As a skeptic, I did not like Obama not too long after he opened his mouth during the 2008 election. At first I found him charming, but then I listened to his words, and found him divisive. He stirs racial tensions that were not there, thus creating them, he wants to make our energy prices soar, and he pits have-nots against the haves. He’s incredibly duplicitous.
Anyway – Could you provide the “Host of reasons” you are strong supporter” of Mr. Obama?
“””””…..Richardabetts
@BarackObama Actually that paper didn’t say ‘dangerous’. NB I *do* think #climate change poses risks – I just care about accurate reporting!…..”””””
So since you care about accurate reporting, would you care to say just precisely which changes in climate, that have been shown by experimentally measured (not models) data, to have already occurred, YOU “think” pose risks; and specifically what risks you “think” are posed by these climate changes that HAVE occurred.
How much credibility do YOU place in what YOU “think”.
Just for the sake of reference, I have personally observed various aspects of earth’s climate, for more than 3/4 of a century, and at locations spread over about 3/4 of the earth’s surface; and so far I have not observed, or heard about from others, any change, or any collection or combination of changes, that would cause me to be concerned for as long as one second, to the extent that I would alter anything that I am doing, or recommend to any other person, that they also change, so as to cause a perceptible reduction in any future risk from future changes in climate, that have been shown by peer reviewed research to result in observable changes in climate, whether of negative or positive change in the outcome of such changes.
And the amount of money, I am personally willing to invest, for the express purpose of attempting to ameliorate any such likely changes in earth’s climate, is precisely zero, in US dollars; or in Euros.
I am also willing to invest that same amount of money, for the express purpose of further research into ANY and ALL aspects of climate, and or climate change. I’m also willing to invest a like amount of money into the search for any form of life; intelligent or not, outside of a shell approximately +/- 25 km about mean sea level on planet earth. And I would make a like contribution towards research into the development of controlled thermo-nuclear fusion energy for the purpose of commercial supply of such energy.
@J. Phi;lip Peterson –
I wrote to Obama and reported the Petition Project to him in my letter, and I got a response which implied strongly that he did know of it – and was ignoring it.
“Elsewhere, Craig Idso, Nicola Scafetta, Nir J. Shaviv and Nils-Axel Morner and other climate scientists protested that Mr. Cook ignored or misrepresented their work.”
I am disappointed they did not link to the “Elsewhere” which was here:
http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/05/97-study-falsely-classifies-scientists.html
The 97% “myth” is not a myth. It is a lie. It is a big lie, It is so big it is beyond a big lie.
Instead of complaining about the 97% figure, why doesn’t somebody do a proper survey? Surely with hundreds of billions being spent on climate change, there is someone out there with the resources to do it properly. Until then, we will just keep hearing about 97%, but.complaining that the the study was poorly done will have no effect on those citing it, particularly politicians. Alternative numbers from a better survey might have an effect though.
Such a study need to be graduated, testing questions from “Does the climate change?” through to “Do we need radical global economic action right now?”, and positions in between.
Riddle me this, riddle me that. Deconstructing the consensus using my alter ego, [trimmed].
[Riddle me this: who “trimmed” Mosh’s comment, and with no reason given? ~Snr. Mod.]
If any Warmist disagrees with this statement then please show me the evidence? Heck, it’s failed to cause any statistically significant surface warming for 17 years now. The oceans ate my global warming! This was not predicted, therefore the IPCC is full of shi!t.
So, is it time for a properly designed and conclusive survey to be conducted? Without the tricks and dishonesty.
Nuccitelli’s attack response at ClimateConsensus in The Guardian was suitably scientific!
28 May: Guardian: Dana Nuccitelli: The Wall Street Journal denies the 97% scientific consensus on human-caused global warming
The Rupert Murdoch media continues to deny the reality of human-caused global warming
This week, they published an editorial denying the 97% expert scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming. The editorial may have been published as a damage control effort in the wake of John Oliver’s brilliant and hilarious global warming debate viral video, which has now surpassed 3 million views…
The Wall Street Journal editorial was written by Joseph Bast, president of the Heartland Institutepolitical advocacy group of Unabomber billboard infamy, and Roy Spencer of “global warming Nazis” infamy…
For example, in order to reject the findings of the paper my colleagues and I published last year finding a 97% consensus on human-caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature, Bast and Spencer referenced a critical comment subsequently published by David Legates et al. in an obscure off-topic journal called Science and Education. That paper was based on a blog postwritten by Christopher Monckton, who’s infamous for calling environmental activists “Hitler Youth.”…
If Murdoch’s The Wall Street Journal keeps publishing editorials that flat-out deny reality, especially from people who compare those they disagree with to terrorists and Nazis, it will lose credibility and fall by the wayside as the rest of the world moves on to debate how to best solve the problem.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/may/28/wall-street-journal-denies-global-warming-consensus
Steven Mosher says:
May 30, 2014 at 5:50 pm
Riddle me this, riddle me that. Deconstructing the consensus using my alter ego, [trimmed].
______________________
WTF are you talking about? Speak up! You are either defending the 97% consensus myth, or you are not. None of your Batman nonsense, speak up or GTF down the road.
Eamon Butler says:
May 30, 2014 at 6:00 pm
So, is it time for a properly designed and conclusive survey to be conducted? Without the tricks and dishonesty.
++++++++++
There’s your answer: http://www.petitionproject.org/
Done
Is the alter ego the reasonable guy? I notice [trimmed].
This is not [snipped] so, are you playing more odd ball games? Sounds like you have no alter ego as this is distinctly Mosheresk.
[Reply: see mod comment above. ~mod.]
Mario Lento says:
May 30, 2014 at 6:11 pm
Sounds like you have no alter ego as this is distinctly Mosheresk.
_________________
Mario, you have been paying attention.
Alan Robertson: Yes – specifically your recent post to Mosher… seriously – WTF is he thinking?
97% of scientists agree that climate change is real ? If true, that matches the 97% political funding.
They came,
They lied,
They chose 97%,
They lie still.
Tom out of port, lost in lies.
First you must know a lie from a hole in the ground.
Once you see the hole, step around it, not into the life of the liars.
To vote or not to vote for a lie that is the question.
You have sailed out of Port, forgot your rudder, now listing to Port the rocks will do you soon.
Good bed/fellows for these 97%’ers, Stalin, Mubarak, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao, all these others voted in by 97% and higher %’s. Mubarak got mad as hell when he only got 94% and he put the vote counters in jail for that failure.
Steven Mosher says:
May 30, 2014 at 5:50 pm
—————
Mosher, I know you have it in you!
Just do it!
Video redacted>
It amazes me, but I suppose it shouldn’t, that Obama and Kerry and Nuccitelli and the other climate liars don’t notice the resemblance between their “97 percent” and the 95-97-99+ percent majorities in “elections” in totalitarian states. Of course the 97 percent is no more representative of actual constituency opinion than those “election” results.
Obviously, Nuccitelli is feeling the heat from the certainty that the Wall Street Journal op-ed is reaching a wide audience. He’s obviously scared to death that the skeptic position is gaining ground in the debate, probably the more so since members of Congress in both houses are becoming more outspoken (witness the cutting of climate change funding out of the Pentagon budget).
It sure would help if Brandon Shollenberger could release the dirt he has on John Cook, though I would never ask Brandon to put himself in legal jeopardy.
Of course, the problem we have everywhere is that we are dealing with absolutely unabashed, unashamed liars. It is getting more urgent that ever that we demonstrate publicly the falsity of their assertions.
97% of alcoholics agree that whiskey is good medicine.
Politicians and the news media are 97% certain. Everything is because of “Climate Change” Add this to the list: Today the first quarter results for the North American economy were announced and noted as being poorer than expected because to the weather in North America disrupting manufacturing and supplies sue to the extreme COLD. They said the cold was due to “Global Warming” and we should expect more of the same in years to come:
http://globalnews.ca/news/1148831/watch-global-national/ See 13:07
Total trash from a brain dead media.
Harold says:
May 30, 2014 at 8:43 pm
97% of alcoholics agree that whiskey is good medicine.
The other 3% enjoy a beer what’s your point?
Latitude says:
May 30, 2014 at 2:18 pm
Yup!
The Friends of Science issued a major report titled “97% CONSENSUS? NO! GLOBAL WARMING MATH MYTHS & SOCIAL PROOFS” at;
http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=744
It gives a lot of information about the faulty consensus studies. We issues several news releases via PRWeb about the report and the nonexistent 97% consensus.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=745
http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=655
http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=657
No one who has been through the school system in the western world over the last 10-15 years has been taught anything other than the CAGW meme. The debate is being lost by the realists and he agenda is being set by those with specific objectives and world view. This article accurately debunks the 97% myth but no one is listening.
“If the lie is big enough…” H Goering
How much credibility do YOU place in what YOU “think”.
Too much. Like all at the UK Met Off, they are troughing to their hearts content. Betts moves this way a little then that way a little but, like the last 20 years of temperature, he never moves enough to lose his funding. Follow Slingo !
Thanks for a very good summary.
I have come to the conclusion that there are two simple questions that can be asked of anyone regarding global warming: do they accept the validity of the 1998 Mann hockey stick, and do they accept the 97% consensus? If the answer to either is ‘yes’, then you know that they either haven’t bothered to find anything out for themselves (and are merely parroting what they have heard elsewhere) or don’t give a damn about facts, they only care about The Cause.
I wrote my own summary of the 97% consensus here , it’s a bit more light-hearted and goes on to include the Recursive Fury farce.
Interesting how it wasn’t that long ago that Mr. Bast was making the same argument against the consensus on second hand smoke that he is making against environmental protection today. http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2007/11/01/wheres-consensus-secondhand-smoke
You all are completely misrepresenting the 97 percent studies on global warming. How about a little intellectual honesty.
theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/may/28/wall-street-journal-denies-global-warming-consensus
The liberal media has definitely destroyed its credibility through its support for CAGW fraud, as matayaya has pointed out.
CAGW support has been created primarily through the use of Tavistock/Aspen Institute brainwashing, or perception management. The promotion of a perception of consensus is the primary method of Tavistock manipulation. It’s been used not only in the misrepresentation of the support of climate scientists for CAGW based on Cook’s 97% consensus fraud, but also in the misrepresentation of the statistical formula defining a confidence interval in IPCC reports as scientists’ “confidence” in experimental results; this isn’t an error on the part of scientifically illiterate IPCC bureaucrats who’ve written the final IPCC reports, but intentional propaganda and an essential means of promoting the scam.
Another of the Republican witnesses at the House hearing with Botkin was Richard Tol. He said this
“I mean it’s pretty clear that most of the science agrees that climate change is real and most likely human-made”
Tol has also previously acknowledged,
“The consensus is of course in the high nineties”
theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/jun/02/republican-witness-global-warming-consensus-real
Regarding the Doran , Kendall Zimmerman paper
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009EO030002/pdf
Aside from the biased questions,
1. Do you think mean global temperatures have risen since the period prior to 1800
2. Do you think human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures?
to get the 97%, they had to rely on “cherry picking”, .
They mailed the “survey” to 10, 257 people and got 4146 responses, so 69% of those receiving a survey mailer could see the biased , worthless nature of the “survey”, and trashed the questionnaire. Naturally, those willing to respond would tend to be biased in favor of the push-pull questionnaire- which was equivalent to a political questionnaire asking
“Do you think President Obama is doing an awful job and should be opposed by congress?
If yes, please donate $50 or $100 to the RNC”
Aside from the biased questions,
1. Do you think mean global temperatures have risen since the period prior to 1800
2. Do you think human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures?
to get the 97%, they had to rely on “cherry picking”, .
Note that even with only two biased, leading questions, only 82% not 100% of the 3146 responders answered “yes” to the second question. By changing the emphasis to the 79 who had published AGW articles, , they fell into the “cherry picking” error.
Once you decide on a question and a group to poll, breaking it down afterrwards is a “NO NO”.
Example: You want to handicap horse races and figure that betting Post position 1 will make you money, since the horse on the inside of the track runs a shorter distance than the others.
When you get the stats, you find out that your theory didn’t pan out,-results were insignificant at the 5% level, but if the inside horse was ridden by the winningest jockey at the track, for the season, the results WERE significant at the 5% level, so you go to the track and lose, not realizing that your final results were likely to happen .
5% (betting the inside horse at post position 1 shows significance at the 5% level by chance alone)
+ 95%(0.05) for a total of a 9.75% chance of getting positive results by dumb luck.
With multiple factors in a horse race, post position, jockey, total winnings, results last race, days since last race, etc- it was easy for me to fall into that cherry picking trap. It DID make me aware of the cherry picking problem through sad real life results.
It also failed to include solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, meteorologists or astronomers, who are the scientists most likely to be aware of natural causes of climate change.
It also failed to include engineers who specialise in data analysis to search for messages in apparently random data. While this may appear irrelevant expertise to the clearly inadequate ability type who go into climate studies, it is essential that the claim of deviation should be made not from some arbitrary over simplistic basis of the signal’s projected future pattern but from a proper analysis of the signal structure to determine the likely pattern that should be used as a baseline.
In the final analysis if one scientist or even a redundant sewage worker produces a theory that produces a near match but a large percentage even if it is only 55% rather than 97% produce one that is beaten by a three year old throwing a dice as the current theory is, the one person is the real scientist.
[They found that “only 41 papers – 0.3% of all 11,944 abstracts or 1.0% of the 4,014 expressing an opinion, and not 97.1% – had been found to endorse” the claim that human activity is causing most of the current warming.]
Ah, the new 0.3% consensus!
It’s like the Ad man’s trick: 84% of 63 women agree that ‘Wrinkle Go’ wonder cream reduces the effects of aging after two weeks!
Here’s another statistic for you: 99.99% of politicians have an axe to grind.
The scientific irony is that those professing a strong belief in AGW lack the intellectual capacity to notice how unscientific those 97% consensus surveys are, yet somehow have the superior intellectual capacity to ascertain the validity of the science
Just one more example of the “Big Lie Theory” If you’re going to tell a lie………….. make it a big one
Nice try but Oreskes is not the source of Obama’s Tweet and not the sole source for scientists 97%, a much newer study done by Cook et al. 2013 is the source: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article
“The latest and most high profile study to survey the scientific literature was led by John Cook, of the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute and founder of the Skeptical Science website, and published in the journal Environmental Research Letters in May 2013.
Cook et al analysed close to 12,000 global warming studies from 1991 to 2011 to see how many accepted or rejected the fact that human activities are causing climate change. The researchers also asked scientists themselves to look at their own papers and confirm whether they endorsed the scientific consensus.
The central finding, reported widely and even Tweeted by Barack Obama’s campaign team, was that 97 percent of the scientific papers on climate change found that humans were causing it.”
http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/05/30/richard-tol-s-attack-97-cent-climate-change-consensus-study-has-critical-errors
Finally, carbon isotopes C12 and C13 in our atmosphere are the smoking gun indicating climate change is manmade.
[Please re-read the first paragraphs above. Several studies (including Cook and Oreskes and others) are critiqued in detail. .mod]
greenladyjen:
If you believe that 97% nonsense then the ‘green’ propaganda has colonized your mind, and no facts or rational discussion will pierce the bunker.
You couldn’t get 97% of Italians to agree that the Pope is Catholic. But 97% of scientists believe in CAGW? You are being led by the nose and you don’t even know it. Your whole post reeks of confirmation bias: you want to believe, so you cherry-pick whatever narrative they emit, and you’re happy with it.
Your big problem is posting your nonsense opinion here, where intelligent, thinking people sift verifiable facts from endless propaganda. Your mind is closed tighter than a submarine hatch, and glaciers could once again cover Canada a mile deep. You would still Believe, because that is what True Believers do.
No sir my mind is educated with facts I learned from real climate scientists not weather men posing as experts.
The link above is to a legitimate study that was done in 2013. I patiently read this post and pondered the evidence given and decided to do my own research on what was presented. You should try that sometime Dbstealy.
Sorry Greenlady. If you did indeed read and study it, it calls into question your basic math skills, much less any statistical skills you pretend to have. Cook is flawed in 3 basic ways.
#1 – His basic math is off (it should have been 98%)
#2 – Like Doran/Zimmerman, he does not include the neutral samples in his calculation (over 95% alone).
#3 – His classification has been disputed by the authors themselves.
No one quotes the cook study as it is worse than the Doran Zimmerman one.
And finally I suppose it’s just a coincidence that the Heartland Institute that wrote this nonsense has received around $67 million dollars over the past thirty years from donors like Exxon Mobil, the Koch Brothers, and the Scaife Foundation–who are all filthy rich from pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Nope, nothing to see here folks.
How Anthony Watts can claim to be an environmentalist is laughable. Whether there is catastrophic global warming or not, coal and gas pollute our earth and ruin our health–oceans are acidifying due to excess CO2 in the atmosphere.
And what is the worst thing that could happen if we stop using fossil fuels–a clean energy future? What a waste of time all this denying is that could be spent doing something productive.
REPLY: Well dearie greenladyjen, if you have a solar system on your home, LED lighting retrofitted in your home/office, and have an electric car like I do, by all means show them here. Otherwise, kindly STFU about your ridiculous idea that only the anointed such as yourself (with “green” in your name) can have any environmental concern.
As for Heartland, since in your previous comments you say you are big on citations, why not show where that 67 million dollar figure comes from?
And as for “evil” big oil funding, how about the biggest geoscientific organization on the planet, the AGU? Michael Mann, Gavin Schmidt, Kevin Trenberth, and James Hansen are all members of AGU.
See:
Don’t believe me?
Have a look for yourself: http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2013/general-information/thank-you-to-our-sponsors/
– Anthony
$67 million? Kind of pales to the $250 billion – http://joannenova.com.au/2012/08/renewable-energy-is-a-257-billion-dollar-industry-that-makes-only-3-of-our-electricity/
Nope, nothing to see here. Just another mindless troll.
greenladyjen says:
May 31, 2014 at 4:57 pm
So, do you claim “science” can be bought?
How much “science” can 200 billion buy?
If “science” can be bought – by YOUR claim – do I buy more science if I am the government (with a 200 billion dollar budget and complete control over the NSA and government lab funding and research, or if I am a private citizen paying 40,000.00 for a meteorology study?
Who pays YOUR salary – Miss science-has-been-bought-by-the-government?
Those energy firms YOU claim have paid Heartland? They contribute (are extorted by) 15 TIMES as much to Greenpeace, WFF, etc. They also PAY billions more in taxes per year to the government who is paying for this enviro scam.
No. That is not true. Stop lying.
Worst thing? Well, YOU killed 24,000 people last winter in the UK alone. Happy with that? how many more millions of innocents do YOU want to die due to YOUR false claims about energy? YOU are the one who demands billions of humans are kept in poverty and squalor due to YOUR demands for expensive energy and bad food, no water, no sewage, and no food, clothing and shelter. Happy about that are you?
greenladyjen says:
May 31, 2014 at 4:43 pm
No sir my mind is educated with so-called facts I learned from real climate priests of my chosen religious faith not weather men posing as experts.
(Figured you needed at least one honest statement in this piece.)
Mr. Cook’s work was quickly debunked. David R. Legates (a professor of geography funded largely by Exxon Mobil) and three coauthors reviewed the same papers as Mr. Cook did. They found that “only 41 papers – 0.3% of all 11,944 abstracts or 1.0% of the 4,014 expressing an opinion, and not 97.1%.
So why is this “result” not in the abstract if it is so important?
greenladyjen says:
May 31, 2014 at 4:43 pm
No sir my mind is educated with facts I learned from real climate scientists not weather men posing as experts.
+++++++++++
If this is not confirmation bias, I don’t know what is. And you say you have an education. You’ve decided weather men, are posing as experts, when they in fact have an actual track record and are paid by people to predict the weather. Do you know what the track record is in climate science oh educated [one]??? Do you even have the ability to understand what a track record is?
I think not. But I’m only an educated process control engineer, so I guess that make me incapable of seeing BS right?
Hahaha 97%… that is ridiculous!
Anthony kick ass mate!
It’s not 97% consensus, it’s 97% conformity.
I’m waiting for 50% consensus, that will make more sense.
GLjen,
Plenty of honest, real climate scientists, and physicists, and chemists, and geologists, and others with advanced degrees in the hard sciences post and write articles here. You would do well to listen to them, but you won’t. With your pre-conceived conclusions in hand, you prefer to pontificate.
On your side you have discredited high priests of your religion, like Algore. And Michael Mann, who is far too cowardly to debate peers who don’t buy his upside-down proxies, or his “hide the decline” fabrications.
The charlatans are all on your side of the fence. Care to explain why that is?
You say: …my mind is educated with facts I learned from real climate scientists not weather men posing as experts. OK then, here is a verifiable global temperature/CO2 record for the past ≈17 years:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/trend
These are “facts”: did you notice that the steady rise in harmless CO2 is far too weak to have any measurable effect on temperatures? That one chart debunks everything you believe in. Thus, your belief is religious, nothing more or less. You cherry-pick only those things that support your religion, and ignore all the rest.
There are blogs for the religiously inclined, such as yourself. Please visit them, instead of emitting your pseudo-scientific nonsense here. We know better.
I would like Jen Podvin to be offered a guest column here at WUWT where she can make the best case she can muster and then her education will begin.
Her current University education seems to be lacking. She needs a life altering experience. I believe my suggestion fits the bill.
This just in “97% of the people following this post believe that the Heartland Institute President and Roy Spencer have unbiased opinions”
People should confront CAGW parrots with simple denunciations and scoffs, relying on their own credentials and credibility. Nonconfrontational manners and silence of “skeptics” have been great assets to CAGW shouters. Time to quit giving power grabber CAGW supporters a free ride in public.
Proving for self-loathig global whiners that … “the ends justify the meme’s.” 😉
if you read the scientific magazines you can make your own calculation, so you dont have to believe Bast and Spencer;
Steven Mosher says:
May 30, 2014 at 5:50 pm
“Riddle me this, riddle me that. Deconstructing the consensus using my alter ego,..” [trimmed].
From what I have read of their posts on this site over the years, I believe that both Steven Mosher and Nick Stokes, have more than a basic knowledge of statistics. Perhaps each can come forward now and state whether they subscribe to the statement that “97% of scientists agree that climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.” And if they do not, why.
It will certainly add to their credibility if they can fess-up.
These facts need relaying to both Congress, in the USA, and the House of Commons in the UK.
John Cook has always fascinated me – a while back I went searching for his academic credentials and it was listed on the University of Queensland staff listing where he was credited with a basic Bachelor of Science – Bsc. Now he appears to have moved to the new Global Change Institute whose advisory board reads like a who’s who of lefty warmists including Robyn Williams from the ABC Science Show and our old friend Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg.
http://www.gci.uq.edu.au/about/advisory-board-members
John Cook is listed as a Post Doctoral Researcher yet on the page of researchers all Doctorates are listed as Dr or Professor – he is listed as merely John Cook and his academic credentials are not mentioned.
http://www.gci.uq.edu.au/researchers
Isn’t it obvious? Obama is desperate to move on from his disasters , and inability to force policy through congress, so now he wants to move the spotlight to something else…with the help of the corrupt mainstream media. Thanks to the dumbing down of the population through years of lies it will probably work. The sad thing is that were the other party in control, I suspect the same tactics would be used.
The best thing we can do is to refuse to accept any dictates from Washington and openly disobey any such nonsense . If congress doesn’t approve it, I will not obey it. Enough of this poser in the White House.
For those not from the US, substitute your wannabe dictator.
“DavidCage says:
May 31, 2014 at 10:14 am
It also failed to include solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, meteorologists or astronomers, who are the scientists most likely to be aware of natural causes of climate change.”
I think the original survey DID include those fields, but only 4146 out of 10,257 answered the crappy questionnaire.
Aside from the biased questions:
1. Do you think mean global temperatures have risen since the period prior to 1800?
2. Do you think human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures?
As any idiot can see, those are push-pull questions intended to get a desired result. Even with only 31% responding, 18% of respondents disagreed with item 2. After that result, the authors “cherry picked” those 79 who had published CAGW papers to get that 97% bogus stat.
greenladyjen says:
May 31, 2014 at 4:57 pm
“And what is the worst thing that could happen if we stop using fossil fuels–a clean energy future?”
Bicycles are a clean energy future, if we all rode bicycles there would be no need for polluting cars, airplanes or trains, apart from solar/wind powered ones.
But to suggest that we can discard fossil fuels and power our nations on solar and wind is like saying instead of flying from Sydney to Melbourne we should ride a bicycle down the Hume highway as its a clean energy solution.
Joe says:
This just in “97% of the people following this post believe that the Heartland Institute President and Roy Spencer have unbiased opinions”
…versus 100.0% of people like Joe, who believes his own opinion is unbiased.
=========================
Robert in Calgary says:
I would like Jen Podvin to be offered a guest column here at WUWT…
Great idea, but she wouldn’t dare. It’s pretty clear that she made her hit ‘n’ run comment and ran.
People like jen Podvin have no clue about the central issues, like the scientific method and its corollary, the null hypothesis. What preposterous nonsense would she come up with to try and explain why global warming stopped a long time ago?
People like Joe and Jen just make noise. They have no credibility.
Just remember: “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/business/media/07adco.html?_r=0
/Mr Lynn
Alan McIntire wrote, “After that result, the authors ‘cherry picked’ those 79 who had published CAGW papers to get that 97% bogus stat.”
You skipped a step, Alan.
After narrowing down the initial set of 3146 [responses] to just 79 most-specialized climate experts, Dr. Peter Doran excluded two of those 79 climate specialists from consideration while calculating his “97%” result, because those two were identified as global warming skeptics.
Those two answered “remained relatively constant” to the first question on Ms. Zimmerman’s survey: “When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?”
The respondents who answered “remained relatively constant” to the first question on Ms. Zimmerman’s survey were not asked the second question. That was reasonable enough, because the second question was, “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?” If someone doesn’t believe temperatures have changed, then it makes no sense to ask him what caused them to change.
But the respondents who answered “remained relatively constant” were identified as global warming skeptics, and should have been counted as such. Instead, Dr. Doran excluded them, and calculated his famous 97% by considering just the remaining 77.
Only 74 or 75 of the 79 (93.7% or 94.9%) answered both “risen” to the first question and “yes” to the second question:
http://archive.today/6oi3O#selection-243.0-271.78
[This does, however, explain the 75 – 77 – 79 differences that are seen. .mod]
This whole debate seems pointless! 97%? who cares? The point is are we getting warmer or not?
Look at the history of our planet! Before animal life there were plants. They buried millions of tons of carbon as coal and oil over millions of years to raise the oxygen levels to allow moving life, that needed oxygen to survive, to develop. Digging up all the plants buried carbon will return our planet to it’s primordial origins. Let a simple logical thought enter your head and stop clinging to your love of fossil fuel just because it doesn’t suit you to stop driving your way to the supermarket..
john hourigan says:
June 1, 2014 at 3:35 pm
1. Well, actually, no we are not getting warmer due to man’s release of CO2 into the atmosphere.
From 1945 – 1975, we increased CO2 in the air, and the climate got colder.
From 1975 – 1996, we increased CO2 in the air, and the climate got warmer.
From 1996 – 2014 – and continuning! – we increased CO2 in the air, and the climate did not change.
2. Removing fossil fuels and making energy will more expensive will NOT just affect “our drive to the supermarket.” But instead, you will starve to death in the cold and dark because there will be no food in the supermarket – ANY market for YOU to eat.
3.. YOU (your cause and your hysteria about global warming) IS CAUSING however the death of millions in squalor and poverty, mired in the poor lives condemned by YOU to burn dung for food and walk hours each day to hand-carry a bucket of water back to an empty that has no lights, no fuel, and no hope..
4. Oh, by the way, burning all the available fossil fuels will NOT affect the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. Increasing the amount of CO2 WILL however, greatly increase plant growth – even higher than the 22% it is already rising towards!
I still wonder WHY?
Why do Obama and Kerry LIE??
What reason do they have?
What are thier advisors (probably a lot more lnowledgeable on the subject than they are) thinking when they suggest this path knowing that anyone with sense can see through the empty retoric and actually prove the staements as incorrect??
Why??
One irritation is that most laypeople would suppose 97% of scientists includes all scientists. These must number in the millions in all facets of the sciences. Notice that the adjective ‘climate’ is omitted before the noun ‘scientist/s’.
john hourigan says:
June 1, 2014 at 3:35 pm
“This whole debate seems pointless! 97%? who cares?…”
The problem is that President Obama, John Kerry, probably most of the politicians, the whole EU, the Main Stream Media “care”
They keep using the 97% consensus relentlessly. Plus the schools K thru 12 and the Universities & Colleges. Did I leave anybody out?
Reblogged this on The GOLDEN RULE and commented:
Besides the fact that the ‘warmists’ continue to rely on unsubstantiated ‘science’ and evidence that clearly makes their computer modelling a joke, they persistently trot out the 97% of scientists support global warming claim when in fact very few scientists support man-made global warming, even fewer support man-made global warming alarmist beliefs and programs.
Richard Tol stated “The consensus is of course in the high nineties. No one ever said it was not. We don’t need Cook’s survey to tell us that.”
Here http://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2013/06/10/richard-tols-fourth-draft/#comment-822
Global Warming/Climate Change Zealots totally disregard the Sun. Are we to believe that human action is the sole temperature controlling factor? The ancient Egyptians knew that the Sun was the giver of all life. All of our terrestrial natural energy sources are furnished to us by the Sun. Coal, Peat, Oil, Wood, Natural Gas and solar power are direct result of solar radiation. The Scientific Method has been subverted to such a degree that most get their scientific information from politicians, talking head news readers and bureaucrats whose main interest is the maximization of income (read taxes.) Just my opinion. I could be right.
Read the Siena Group’s Club of Rome report, entitled THE LIMITS TO GROWTH, published in 1971/1972. In that report, “they” talk about using “global warming” as a meme to get humanity to blame itself, for what are actually natural, cyclical changes in weather patterns, and to get humanity to blame itself, for potential (future) natural catastrophes, like hurricanes, tornados, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc. “They” plan these things DECADES in advance. While this Club of Rome report was being distributed, Scientists in the 1970’s were warning of a “coming Ice Age”. Look, “they” couldn’t even reach an agreement back in the 1970’s, so why would it be any different today. Keep in mind, that just because people are in agreement about something doesn’t make it so. 99% of people could be told by the government, and their media, that UP is really DOWN, and that DOWN is really UP. But, that doesn’t make it so. Look into CLIMATEGATE. It’s not science, this “global warming” push – it’s POLITICS.
The parallel with the 13th century is almost too exact. Then, at least 97% of schoolmen believed that they were living in the Last Days. Of course, most of them probably didn’t believe it all that devoutly, but they were willing to go along with it and uninclined to take the risk of arguing. There was even a brand new science – Eschatology – to provide the theoretical underpinnings.
And of course, plenty of people were making a good thing out of it!
“People like jen Podvin have no clue about the central issues”; Jen Podvin has a perfect understanding of the central issue, social engineering – propaganda: If you repeat a lie a sufficient number of times, people will believe it. CAGW has always been exclusively a social science topic, unrelated to the laws of physical science that determine climate. It was first proposed in 1968 by oil industry billionaires with no understanding of science at David Rockefeller’s estate in Bellagio, Italy.
“All across the world, collections of global-warming protestors financed by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gathered on October 24 to call for forceful “climate change” action at the United Nations summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, this December.
The continual charge that so-called “deniers” are financed by oil companies should finally be put to rest, considering that a significant share of the Rockefeller family fortune came and continues to come from oil. Several oil companies have financed past McKibben efforts as well.
…despite the complete media blackout on the connection to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund through the Sustainable Markets Foundation, critics have seized on the funding as evidence that the real goal is not simply to save the planet. “I’m thinking that anything that has to do with Rockefeller’s money is never in the best interests of people or the earth,” explained a blogger at Aletho News. “Do these tens of thousands participating in the ‘350’ social engineering ‘events’ really understand the background of their financial leaders or are they, as Rockefeller’s buddy Kissinger might say, ‘useful idiots?’“ The writer also points to a myriad of global-warming propaganda grants — each over $200,000 — made by the Rockefeller Fund.
“We had no idea we would get the overwhelming support, enthusiasm and engagement from all over the world that we’re seeing,” explained Bill McKibben, a climate-change activist who founded the Rockefeller-funded organization 350.org that coordinated the day of protests. “It shows just how scared of global warming much of the planet really is, and how fed up at the inaction of our leaders.
Americans need to educate themselves about the facts surrounding the whole “climate change” debate before the nation is saddled with the economy-destroying measures being cheered on by alarmists and other environmental extremists financed by elitists like the Rockefellers.
Oct 27, 2009
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/6737-rockefellers-fund-global-warming-protests-as-earth-cools
Al Gore and Obama were co-founders of the Chicago Climate Exchange.
“Gore and David Blood, the former chief of Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM), co-founded London-based GIM in 2004. Between 2008 and 2011 the company had raised profits of nearly $218 million from institutions and wealthy investors. By 2008 Gore was able to put $35 million into hedge funds and private partnerships through the Capricorn Investment Group, a Palo Alto company founded by his Canadian billionaire buddy Jeffrey Skoll, the first president of EBay Inc. It was Skoll’s Participant Media that produced Gore’s feverishly frightening 2006 horror film, “An Inconvenient Truth”.
The Small Business Administration estimates that compliance with such regulations (on carbon emissions) costs the U.S. economy more than $1.75 trillion per year — about 12%-14% of GDP, and half of the $3.5 trillion Washington is currently spending. Still, the U.S. Government Accounting Office can’t figure out what benefits taxpayers are getting from those many billions of dollars spent each year on policies that are purportedly aimed at addressing climate change.
In 2007, following an investigation of the movie, Sir Michael Burton, a judge in London’s High Court, ruled that it can be shown in secondary schools only if accompanied by guidance notes for teachers to balance Mr. Gore’s “one-sided” views. Judge Barton pointed out that its “apocalyptical vision” was politically partisan, and not an impartial analysis. He stated: “It is built around the charismatic presence of the ex-vice president Al Gore, whose crusade is to persuade the world of the dangers of climate change caused by global warming…It is now common ground that this is not simply a science film- although it is based substantially on science research and opinion, but it is [clearly] a political film.”
Larry Bell 11/03/2013 http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/11/03/blood-and-gore-making-a-killing-on-anti-carbon-investment-hype/
Reblogged this on caprizchka and commented:
Is feminist scientist an oxymoron? Do we really need to push more women into coveted university slots just because they have an interest in STEM? Picture this: “One frequently cited source for the consensus is a 2004 opinion essay published in Science magazine by Naomi Oreskes, a science historian now at Harvard. She claimed to have examined abstracts of 928 articles published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and to have found that 75% supported the view that human activities are responsible for most of the observed warming over the previous 50 years, while none directly dissented.
Ms. Oreskes’s definition of consensus covered “man-made” influences but left out “dangerous” – and excluded scores of articles by prominent scientists such as Richard Lindzen, John Christy, Sherwood Idso and Patrick Michaels, who question the consensus. Her methodology is also flawed. A study published earlier this year in the journal Nature noted that abstracts of academic papers often contain claims that aren’t substantiated in the papers – but she failed to acknowledge or address this.
Another widely cited source for the consensus view is a 2009 article in Eos: Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, by Maggie Kendall Zimmerman, a student at the University of Illinois, and her master’s thesis adviser Peter Doran. It reported the results of a two-question online survey of selected scientists. Mr. Doran and Ms. Zimmerman claimed “97 percent of climate scientists agree” that global temperatures have risen, and that humans are a significant contributing factor.”
Friends of Science have done a detailed deconstruction of the 4 main cited ‘97% consensus’ surveys and found that these are social proofs. No one wants to be odd man out, so the figure creates social pressure to conform. http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/97_Consensus_Myth.pdf
97% consensus Debunked: http://darkgreendevils.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/the-great-eco-wall/
I suggest reading the Cook et al. paper for yourself. It’s methods and findings are very clear.
“Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. … Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW,
97.2% endorsed the consensus.”
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/pdf/1748-9326_8_2_024024.pdf
And to the person who suggests “big oil” is paying for climate science because they support an AGU meeting, you have no idea how professional scientific organizations work (and why would oil companies support the 97% consensus, anyway, unless they agreed with it?) Scientists pay membership and conference fees to attend, and such sponsorships offset a small fraction of the costs. Personally, I think it’s promising that “big oil” is now openly sponsoring conferences like AGU, unlike the secretive private financing that the likes of Joe Bast are receiving.
bmunroe Cook et al (2013) uses the 1996 Houghton definition of AGW which conveniently includes fossil fuel use, land disturbance and other human factors. Cook et al also used the p*rno definition of AGW 9in their own words): “We’re basically going with Ari’s p*rno approach I probably should stop calling it that) which is AGW = ‘humans are causing global warming’. e.g. – no specific quantification which is the only way we can do it considering the breadth of papers we’re surveying.” Many scientists included in Cook’s survey as agreeing with AGW are vehemently opposed and said so publicly after the report came out. Not onlythat, it turns out the number of scientists who specifically stated human activity is less responsible for warming far exceeded the scientists who agree with AGW. http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/that_97_per_cent_claim_four_problems_with_cook_and_obama/
bmonroe,
It’s interesting to watch people who have bought into the new CAGW religion. They lose all common sense, and they believe anything that their high priests tell them, no matter how silly it sounds to normal people.
There is hardly a statement that can be made where you would get “97%” to agree. That number is complete nonsense, especially considering the fact that the alarmist cult has never been able to get anywhere near to the OISM’s 31,000+ scientists and engineers, who stated in writing that CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere. If any of those 31,000 was ever contacted by Cook, their response was rejected in the interest of Cook’s propaganda.
If Cook wanted to be credible, he would have invented a different number, like “two-thirds”. At least that would have the ring of truthiness. But 97%?? Nonsense. And you know it…
…if you don’t know it, you are hopelessly deluded. That may well be the case. When propaganda like that colonizes your mind, there is no need to think any more. You just become a parrot.