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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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..