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
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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.