A new paper by Dr. Richard Tol published today in ScienceDirect, journal of Energy Policy, shows that the Cook et al. paper claiming that there is a 97% consensus among scientists is not just impossible to reproduce (since Cook is withholding data) but a veritable statistical train wreck rife with bias, classification errors, poor data quality, and inconsistency in the ratings process. The full paper is available below.
Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: A re-analysis
Richard S.J. Tol dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2014.04.045
A claim has been that 97% of the scientific literature endorses anthropogenic climate change (Cook et al., 2013. Environ. Res. Lett. 8, 024024). This claim, frequently repeated in debates about climate policy, does not stand. A trend in composition is mistaken for a trend in endorsement. Reported results are inconsistent and biased. The sample is not representative and contains many irrelevant papers. Overall, data quality is low. Cook׳s validation test shows that the data are invalid. Data disclosure is incomplete so that key results cannot be reproduced or tested.
Conclusion and policy implications
The conclusions of Cook et al. are thus unfounded. There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans. I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct. Cook et al., however, failed to demonstrate this. Instead, they gave further cause to those who believe that climate researchers are secretive (as data were held back) and incompetent (as the analysis is flawed).
It will take decades or longer to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to zero—the only way to stabilize its atmospheric concentration. During that time, electoral fortunes will turn. Climate policy will not succeed unless it has broad societal support, at levels comparable to other public policies such as universal education or old-age support. Well-publicized but faulty analyses like the one by Cook et al. only help to further polarize the climate debate.
Full paper available in plain text here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421514002821
And a PDF here:
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Richard D says:
June 4, 2014 at 7:56 pm
”Apparently Dr. Tol will assist Mark Steyn and his lawyers in attempting to take down Michael Mann?”
After this post, I’m questioning the wisdom of putting economist Tol in such a position. I hope he’s not a cat among the pidgeons. Yeah he is skewering the IPCC and all that, but his preoccupation with Cook’s paper and this recent ‘analysis’, that essentially supports Cook and accepts that man (he has no doubt) is warming the planet and we have to decarbonize, wouldn’t give me confidence in his leading the fight. He’s an economist for crying out loud. If put on the stand with his beliefs, how is the future as he sees it not shaped like a hockey stick? Steyn needs someone like McIntyre who has taken the hockey stick apart. Gee, let’s not screw up this great freedom fighter.
There is no doubt this effort by Tol is going to energize the demoralized thermageddon force. We will be seeing posts by the resuscitated proponents of the climate gravy train. Cook himself will be pleased by this.
Please correct my understanding in English, but this comment seems correct:
“There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans.”
Is this just sarcasm? Because, obviously, the overwhelming literature is paid or sponsored to present just that. But this not necessarily mean it is correct… I mean, there is overwhelming literature about werewolves, vampires, etc… And pretty good well thought hypothesis on their physiology too!!
It was said somewhere that if you tell a scientist to find you something, he/she will.
@Francisco – Your understanding of English needs no correction.
It was said somewhere that if you tell a scientist to find you something, he/she will.
===============
There are a near infinite positive examples of anything you want to prove. Which means they are essentially worthless to prove anything. Which is why science relies of falsification.
It isn’t the number of positive examples that are important, it is the number of negative examples. If there are zero negative examples your theory might be correct. If there is one negative example, your theory is wrong.
Unfortunately a large number of soft sciences ignore this truism. They count the number of positive examples as proof that they are correct. Any we end up with “penis envy” as the explanation for male female gender issues.
the wisdom of putting economist Tol in such a position
=========
economics has a long history of forecasting using models. over time they developed a large body of mathematics to evaluate the effectiveness of models. this has allowed economics to identify and reject those models that are worthless.
climate science has no such body of mathematics. the IPCC instead average all climate models to create an “ensemble mean”, without first evaluating which models might be garbage. Thus the problem of garbage in, garbage out, as the IPCC projections are diverging further and further from reality (observations).
the tools to evaluate climate models do exist. however, climate science is not trained in their use. it is economists that receive this training.
there are few cities and farming in the water
=========
thus the effects of climate change are observed primarily over the land.
Tol is finding out what happens to those that dare stray form the true path of righteousness, even if by only one inch , the attack dogs of the dogma will be straight unto you to pull you back into line asap , even if those dogs are rather old and toothless and not a little mad.
How is this science by any stretch of the imagination?
So Tol has shown that the method of measuring the degree of scientific consensus in the published literature used by Cook et al is not as accurate or reliable as claimed.
Getting people to read the abstracts of 12,000 papers and grade the degree of support for AGW in the paper has a greater error margin and underestimates the actual degree of consensus significantly compared to the real degree of support for AGW given by the authors of the papers.
Who when asked showed that the actual support by the scientists publishing research is around 97%
According to Tol the Cook et al method of assessing this fails to measure this accurately and underestimates it by around 6%.
Warm on warm violence …
I’d say amateur hour if I did not know that all of them get paid …
Conneley AKA rustneversleeps said:
June 4, 2014 at 4:17 pm
“Still hopeful that some brave souls will step forward with direct comments (compliments even!) about Dr. Tol’s math that suggests the Cook et al (2013) paper suggests the consensus might be as low as 91%. You agree with his math?
(Of course, even though Dr. Tol makes some badly wrong assumptions that leads to his results going off the rails, he doesn’t even really believe his findings anyway. He’s on record saying:
Published papers that seek to test what caused the climate change over the last century and half, almost unanimously find that humans played a dominant role.
and
(CAn I have this below in bold?)
[b]The consensus is of course in the high nineties.[/b]
but cut him some slack there, because at least he has the kahunas to try to do the math and try to challenge Cook. So I am specifically asking for your inisghts on how well he did his math. Just for the record. Thanks.)”.
So there we have it, spelling mistakes and all. From the arch climate septic himself. A boil chafing in the bum crack of humanity. Even this denier of the true climate admits Kooks paper is not accurate therefore not worthy.
That is if consensus was science. But it’s not.
ferdberple says:
June 5, 2014 at 8:18 am
Climate science seems to rely primarily on a large amorphous body of political science methods to identify which models are useful.
Wow. Just wow. Let’s reason this out folks.
First- Let’s establish a logical line between the two most logical end points in the case of Cook.
On one end, we put the option A. Option A is the worst of the worst in any of the following categories: he’s batcrap crazy, he has a brain disorder, he has the math skills of a 4 year old, he has zero critical thinking skills. Option A is basically “Incapable of producing accurate results due to things beyond his control”.
At the other end, we put option B. Option B is the worst of the worst in the opposite manner:
he’s evil, he’s a freaking genius who knows that his studies are garbage, but his intention is to disrupt all rational, factual scientific discussion for some reason, he’s on the payroll of some “One World” group etc. Option B is basically “Purposefully producing inaccurate results to serve another purpose”.
Of course there is a myriad of space between the two logical ends….more unintelligent that evil, but still both….more evil but with a strong bent of not-so-smart in there too. You get the idea. But here’s my point:
If his actual, factual place on the scale is on the side of A, then there’s nothing we can do to change his mind, affect his conclusions, or convince him or anyone else who falls on the A side of the scale that’s he’s wrong.
If his actual, factual place on the scale is on the side of B, there’s STILL nothing we can do to change his mind or the minds of the other B side individuals….BUT if any part of him is motivated by a desire to disrupt all rational, factual, scientific discussion, then he is SUCCEEDING IN SPADES!!! Even in HERE! And THAT irritates the crap out of me. We CAN stop him from achieving that. We need to brush this little smarmy, mind-game playing, “experimental climate communicator” under the rug and then STAND on him. Along with all of his companions and his little dog Dana too.
Every so often I get this prickly feeling on the back of my neck and the hunch that we are ALL being used as observational RATS in one of his and Lewd’s social experiments, and that they use our reactions to produce their next round of unabashed, shiney, propaganda marketing widgets. I’m not arrogant enough to state that my hunch is correct to ANY degree…but I can share it.
And one more thought…if there is even a REMOTE possibility that Anthony posted Tol’s paper here without reading it or examining it for flaws first, because he simply liked the conclusion and hoped to add it to the huge pile of bricks that already undermine the Cook et Pal study, then I’d expect Anthony to be the kind of honest, upright man we all think he is and come clean. We’re all human and we all do “stupid” on a regular basis, but we all respect someone who admits they were wrong over someone who pretends to be perfect.
But there are a myriad of other totally logical reasons that Anthony could have posted Tol’s paper here, warts and all. I personally hope he is conducting his own social experiment to see if WE are so tied to our own DOGMA that we’d just cheer and pat Tol on the back, or agree with him without even reading it, or gloss over it’s flaws like mind numbed sheep. (You know….the ones the opposition SAYS we are). I hope Tol was even in on it! Maybe it was some kind of grand test to see if we would really be consistent and subject “one of our own” to the same kind of scrutiny that we do everyone else.
In that case, it would appear that 97% of WUWT followers were consistently critical, or reasonably suspicious, or withheld judgement until they could read and digest the Tol paper-in a manner wholly. Such behavior is consistent with intelligent, cautious, healthy critical thinking skills. 3% represented the “fringes” made up of trolls, infiltrators, and baaaaaaaaaaaack slapping sheep.
I am certainly no expert in statistical analysis, yet I had no problem determining Cook’s paper was crap. I suspect the reason Dr Tol decided to pursue this line is because of the nasty twitter response from Cook and the SkS crowd back when he publically pointed out they had mischaracterized some of his papers in their survey study.
One of the surest “tells” in the climate debates are when people reference or are uncritical of the work of Cook and Lewandowski. (You paying attention Rust?)
Wow. Just wow. Let’s reason this out folks.
First- Let’s establish a logical line between the two most logical end points in the case of Cook.
On one end, we put the option A. Option A is the worst of the worst in any of the following categories: he’s batcrap crazy, he has a brain disorder, he has the math skills of a 4 year old, he has zero critical thinking skills. Option A is basically “Incapable of producing accurate results due to things beyond his control”.
At the other end, we put option B. Option B is the worst of the worst in the opposite manner:
he’s evil, he’s a freaking genius who knows that his studies are garbage, but his intention is to disrupt all rational, factual scientific discussion for some reason, he’s on the payroll of some “One World” group etc. Option B is basically “Purposefully producing inaccurate results to serve another purpose”.
Of course there is a myriad of space between the two logical ends….more unintelligent that evil, but still both….more evil but with a strong bent of not-so-smart in there too. You get the idea. But here’s my point:
If his actual, factual place on the scale is on the side of A, then there’s nothing we can do to change his mind, affect his conclusions, or convince him or anyone else who falls on the A side of the scale that’s he’s wrong.
If his actual, factual place on the scale is on the side of B, there’s STILL nothing we can do to change his mind or the minds of the other B side individuals….BUT if any part of him is motivated by a desire to disrupt all rational, factual, scientific discussion, then he is SUCCEEDING IN SPADES!!! Even in HERE! And THAT irritates the crap out of me. We CAN stop him from achieving that. We need to brush this little smarmy, mind-game playing, “experimental climate communicator” under the rug and then STAND on him. Along with all of his companions and his little dog Dana too.
Every so often I get this prickly feeling on the back of my neck and the hunch that we are ALL being used as observational RATS in one of his and Lewd’s social experiments, and that they use our reactions to produce their next round of unabashed, shiney, propaganda marketing widgets. I’m not arrogant enough to state that my hunch is correct to ANY degree…but I can share it.
And one more thought…if there is even a REMOTE possibility that Anthony posted Tol’s paper here without reading it or examining it for flaws first, because he simply liked the conclusion and hoped to add it to the huge pile of bricks that already undermine the Cook et Pal study, then I’d expect Anthony to be the kind of honest, upright man we all think he is and come clean. We’re all human and we all do “stupid” on a regular basis, but we all respect someone who admits they were wrong over someone who pretends to be perfect.
But there are a myriad of other totally logical reasons that Anthony could have posted Tol’s paper here, warts and all. I personally hope he is conducting his own social experiment to see if WE are so tied to our own DOGMA that we’d just cheer and pat Tol on the back, or agree with him without even reading it, or gloss over it’s flaws like mind numbed sheep. (You know….the ones the opposition SAYS we are). I hope Tol was even in on it! Maybe it was some kind of grand test to see if we would really be consistent and subject “one of our own” to the same kind of scrutiny that we do everyone else.
In that case, it would appear that 97% of WUWT followers were consistently critical, or reasonably suspicious, or withheld judgement until they could read and digest the Tol paper-in a manner wholly. Such behavior is consistent with intelligent, cautious, healthy critical thinking skills. 3% represented the “fringes” made up of trolls, infiltrators, and baaaaaaaaaaaack slapping sheep.
And as a lighter aside-Pam Gray…I’m STILL laughing out loud-
“Tol is that mad scientist trying to make ugly walk again.”
Whether Tol is mad or not remains to be seen, but Cook’s paper sure is “UGLY WALKING”.
Everything is possible in “worse than we thought” Lala Land.
Man Bearpig says:
June 5, 2014 at 3:57 am
Heh. With just as much evidence as the bulk of it.
May I repeat something Brandon Shollenberger once said-
“This study (Cook et al 2013) found ~4,000 abstracts that say humans cause some amount of global warming. Only 143 of those indicate how much warming humans are responsible for. Of those, 65 say its a lot, 78 say it isn’t much.”
65. SIXTY FIVE. 60+5!!!!! That is how many abstracts of 11,994 that said that humans were responsible for “a lot” (I’ll guess that means more than 50%) of the current warming!!!
In the end, that is ALL COOK HAS.
rustneversleeps sure came with an attitude- i suspect he was enflamed by the uncritical mooing of some of the first commenters at wuwt.
tol is a shill for the warmists. he has no honest job. he is a trougher.
and he’s just walked us down the same garden path yet another time.
thus occupied, we do nothing of consequence. they only need to buy a little more time to roll over us while we discuss nonsense.
What I think MOST upsets the alarmistas about all this, is that they somehow let 3% or more papers through their gatekeeping.
One of the biggest problems I see with rating these papers is that they used papers starting in 1991. That’s 23 years ago!
This would be like doing a study rating 100 meteorologists forecasts for Friday, June 6th. We will do/did 20 each day, starting on June 1st.
Do you think maybe the more recent forecasts might reflect updated guidance and better skill???
Many of those papers came out well before the warming slowed/stalled. Many came out before global climate models were shown clearly to be much too warm………….regardless of some scientists sticking with the models-some have looked at empirical data.
Apparently, if you think the science has been settled for decades, then it doesn’t matter. In the last decade, one side has been speculating about the various forces that have temporarily offset greenhouse gas warming…………and they still are not sure/had any proven.
Just that uncertainty by itself, here in 2014 makes it absurd to give a paper in the 1990’s, the same weighting as one done more recently.
A skeptic of course, by definition would know this. However, by design those insisting the science is settled, in order to prove this they need to project increasingly high numbers of certainty/confidence and agreement.
The objective then, is to show the high(er) numbers rather than to show the proof.
But this is wrong. If the proof was becoming increasingly evident, then the evidence itself would serve the purpose to prove the science, instead of conducting research to see who agreed on the science, starting back in 1991.
Instead of providing the evidence
Richard Branson “weighs” in on the consensus on twitter.
https://twitter.com/richardbranson/status/474597309456465921
(Hope to be back later to answer the fan mail.)
Steven Burnett says:
June 4, 2014 at 5:46 pm
A very nice piece of reasoning and writing. You left out one important point. Any analysis of a “consensus” among people is social science. It is irrelevant to climate. Thus the Cook paper is also pointless.
They are censoring all comments at the Guardian. I have had multiple comments deleted and now am unable to reply at all. Dana is a scared little child who cannot debate.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/jun/05/contrarians-accidentally-confirm-global-warming-consensus
Yep Poptech, mine too. Dana actually made the comment that he “preferred to be accurate” about something so I asked him to be TRULY accurate about what his paper SAYS and does NOT SAY. Nope.
He makes me ill.