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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@Charles – I went to SkS and discovered this:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=faq
Isn’t it sufficient information for your purposes?
Cream Bourbon says:
Well, whatever bricks you have, Tol has certainly not been finding flaws in Cooke!
If you can’t even spell Cook’s name right, your opinion means nothing. It’s just internet noise.
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Margaret Hardman says:
You do your own sample from the same databases of papers he used. It’s that simple.
Wrong as usual, Margaret. The database is only a part of it. There is also Cook’s methodology and other metadata. But Cook hides those, and the reason is clear: if he released everything, his nonsense would be debunked in short order.
Prove me wrong. Get Cook to post everything online. Then we’ll see.
knr says:
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?
It’s not science, it is merely assertion.
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rustneversleeps says:
Gee, I hope someone is archiving this post so it doesn’t quietly disappear!
You keep posting that, and similar comments. No doubt you are a newbie here.
Let me explain something: climate alarmist blogs do what you’re so worried about. Here, veracity is sifted from nonsense in these threads. WUWT doesn’t censor, like SkS, realclimate, tamino, and most of the others do. If WUWT censored, or made posts disappear, no one would be reading your comments. Does that make sense to you?
Let me explain one other fact to you. Aside from all the angst over Dr. Tol’s article by the swivel-eyed alarmist contingent, there is a bigger picture: Planet Earth is deconstructing everything the alarmists believe. Everything. Arctic ice is not disappearing. The ocean is not “acidifying”. Methane is not a problem. Sea level rise is not accelerating. And global warming stopped more than seventeen years ago.
Those are all verifiable facts. Moreover, every alarmist prediction made has failed. Every one of them. Reasonable people will look at that track recored of 100.0% failed predictions, and conclude that the climate alarmist clique does not understand anything about the planet’s climate.
They listened to Al Gore and watched his pseudo-science movie, and they became True Believers. Like you.
Another interesting thing happened along the way. The alarmist crowd’s heroes like Mann, Trenberth, Cook, Schmidt, and the rest, all refuse to debate in any fair, moderated venue. They used to debate. But after losing every debate, now they tuck tail and run. Why would someone hide out from debating if they truly believed what they say? The fact is, they don’t believe it. You do. But they don’t, as they candidly admitted in the Climategate email dump.
You are betting on a losing horse. There is no global warming; it stopped. None of the other scares have happened, either. The alarmist crowd has been flat wrong about everything.
CO2 is completely harmless. No global harm due to rising CO2 has ever been identified. CO2 is harmless. Further, CO2 is beneficial to the biosphere. More is better, at both current and projected concentrations. The planet is measurably GREENING, due directly to the rise in CO2.
The “carbon” scare has colonized your mind, just like it has for lots of folks. You are the victim of a relentless media campaign, with the goal of immense carbon taxes. But the public is coming around, for one reason: they see that exactly none of the wild-eyed predictions have come to pass. If you were resonable and rational, you would be a skeptic, too. Instead, global warming/climate change is your new religion. And religious acolytes never condone one of their own straying from their dogma. So you’re busy demonizing Dr Tol with endless ad hominem attacks — which is all you have. You certainly lack any scientific basis for your beliefs.
Some day I might educate you about the climate null hypothesis. But you will have to earn it with reasoned scientific debate over the [non-existent] scientific evidence for runaway global warming. Personally, I don’t think you’re up to the challenge.
Jim Hunt.
So let’s get this straight…we’ve got UQ issuing legal threats against persons in possession of data that is already in the public domain because…?
We’ve got a Warmist scientist Richard Tol saying that even on the basis of that same information that 97% is ‘bollocks’.
We’ve even got leaked emails between the ‘subjects/judges’ in the experiment discussing how they played guitar and rode exercise bikes as they knocked off a few more papers!
But to allay our natural anxieties you direct us to a guy who keeps photoshopped images of himself in Nazi uniform on his website laying his version of ‘the facts’ out before us.
Has it ever occurred to you that if one were to survey the participants of the General Synod of the Church of England, one might well find that 97% of them believed in God?
Hmm…was hoping for better critiques so far. My take after a quick review of Tol’s paper:
a) Tol is neither a blogger nor an activist. So don’t expect a headline catching conclusion like “97% agree” or whatever
b) Tol overdoes it with the stats. That won’t make it accessible to laymen
c) The crux of the problem with the Cook farce is methodology, mainly
1) self-selecting a favorable population, and
2) incorrectly classifying papers.
3) funding incentives – Tol points to this, but it doesn’t stand out, so most people won’t care
d) someone needed to help him with his conclusion. Pretty weak The most pointed parts are pro-AGW, the rest is rambled..
@dbstealey
“If you can’t even spell Cook’s name right, your opinion means nothing. It’s just internet noise.”
Pedantic and logical fallacy. A typo does not invalidate what someone is saying. A bit like Tol’s paper.
@dbstealey
CO2 is completely harmless.
No scientifically literate person would make such a statement with such 100% certainty. Would you sit in a room full of only CO2? Of course not.
@Cream Bourbon – would you sit in a room of 100% O2? Go for it. I will send flowers to your grave.
Re: Charles Nelson says: June 6, 2014 at 7:49 pm
No Charles, I’m not “directing you to a guy”. Did you check the link? There appears to be details of all the papers that were rated, and the ratings they were given. If you so desire you can DYOR and come to your own conclusions. However I suspect “fatigue” might set in before you finish the task!
Cream Bourbon says:
Would you sit in a room full of only CO2? Of course not.
I see that stupid logical fallacy all the time.
“Would you sit in a room full of only H2O? Of course not.”
See?
CO2 is as harmless as H2O. Going from 3 parts in 10,000 to 4 parts in 10,000 doesn’t make any difference. Global warming stopped a long time ago. If CO2 mattered, the planet would be warming. It isn’t.
Aphan (June 5, 2014 at 11:03 am) “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.”
Nope. Their widgets are mostly aimed at the “uneducated”. It’s working too.
@dbstealey
“Would you sit in a room full of only H2O? Of course not.”
You have missed the point completely and there is no logical fallacy there. Would you say H2O is completely>/b> harmless? Presumably no you would not. So why do you say it about CO2?
Slightly off topic a fascinating recent interview with Dr. Tol:
Thanks @Poptech. As you say “Slightly off topic” but nonetheless fascinating!
Do you suppose the interview reveals Prof. Tol’s underlying reasons for engaging in the current “cat fight” with Cook et al.?
“The environmental movement, and the academics who work on climate change as well, have gotten into this mode of telling ever scarier stories in the hope of waking people up and seeing the need for greenhouse gas emission reductions. It hasn’t worked for 20 years, and I don’t see why it would work this time. If you look at what emissions have done over the past twenty years, they’ve gone up rather than down!”
@Cream Bourbon:
You’re splitting hairs. Let me put it another way, maybe then you will understand:
CO2 is as harmless as H2O.
Your alarmist pals want us to believe that CO2 is a problem. But all available evidence shows that it isn’t a problem. You’re scaring yourself over a non-issue.
Thank you for the thorough debunking of this infamous Cook paper. To criticize the ‘methodology’ of such a farrago of half-baked ‘research’ is a public service, saving the rest of us from having to bother. Clearly it is just a self-serving pile of manufactured claims pretending to be a scholarly ‘study’—there is no method, except contrivances for deceit.
I have been alternately reading and skimming these WUWT threads on Cook and his defenders for some time now, wondering what all the fuss was about. The paper is obviously a transparent attempt to come up with an impressive-sounding number to defend the mythological ‘consensus’ about anthropological ‘global warming’. So I guess we should be concerned because the ‘97%’ number gets bandied about by politicians and the useful idiots in the press. But it seems to me it would be better left ignored. Just point out that the ‘study’ was a fraud, an exercise in making stuff up. Snake-oil salesmen make stuff up all the time. “More doctors smoke _____ than any other cigarette.” “In ____ years ____ % of all species will be extinct.” So do the Climatists make stuff up, a lot of stuff.
In point of fact, camp followers of the Climatist dogma will accept any ‘consensus’ number that appears to validate their beliefs. And they will only stop accepting it when they die or experience a crisis of confidence in the inherent ‘rightness’ of their cause. They will not listen to critiques of ‘the obvious’.
The place to undermine the Climatists is in the schools. Challenge the curricula that promotes climate Alarmism. Turn the argument that demonizes CO2 on its head, pointing out that it is a wonderful, beneficial gas, without which all life on Earth would perish, that it is nothing to fear, and cannot change the climate. The paleo-climatic facts are well known, and if they were taught, they would give the lie to the Climatists and all the fatuous claims about the snake-oil ‘97%’.
/Mr Lynn
Erratum: Second paragraph, second sentence: ‘anthropological’ should be ‘anthropogenic’. /Mr L
Jim, no problem. I am sure that had something to do with it but more importantly Dana foolishly trying to attack him.
“Consensus” is not a term that should ever apply to science. Consensus is a political concept, not a scientific one. Science is based upon evidence, not consensus. The problem for the AGW community is that the evidence does not support their hypothesis. So they must instead employ “consensus” measures that include ridicule and public pressure against those who challenge their assertions.