By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Shock news from the Heartland Institute’s Ninth International Climate Change Conference: among the 600 delegates, the consensus that Man contributes to global warming was not 97%. It was 100%.
During my valedictorian keynote at the conference, I appointed the lovely Diane Bast as my independent adjudicatrix. She read out six successive questions to the audience, one by one. I invited anyone who would answer “No” to that question to raise a hand. According to the adjudicatrix, not a single hand was raised in response to any of the questions.
These were the six questions.
1. Does climate change?
2. Has the atmospheric concentration of CO2 increased since the late 1950s?
3. Is Man likely to have contributed to the measured increase in CO2 concentration since the late 1950s?
4. Other things being equal, is it likely that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause some global warming?
5. Is it likely that there has been some global warming since the late 1950s?
6. Is it likely that Man’s emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases have contributed to the measured global warming since 1950?
At a conference of 600 “climate change deniers”, then, not one delegate denied that climate changes. Likewise, not one denied that we have contributed to global warming since 1950.
One of the many fundamental dishonesties in the climate debate is the false impression created by the Thermageddonites and their hosts of allies in the Main Stream Media (MSM) that climate skeptics would answer “No” to most – if not all – of the six questions.
That fundamental dishonesty was at the core of the Cook et al. “consensus” paper published last year. The authors listed three “levels of endorsement” supporting some sort of climate consensus.
Level 1 reflected the IPCC’s definition of consensus: that most of the global warming since 1950 was man-made. Levels 2 and 3 reflected explicit or implicit acceptance that Man causes some warming. The Heartland delegates’ unanimous opinion fell within Level 2.
Cook et al., having specified these three “levels of endorsement”, and having gone to the trouble of reading and marking 11,944 abstracts, did not publish their assessment of the number of abstracts they had marked as falling into each of the three endorsement levels. Instead, they published a single aggregate total combining all three categories.
Their failure to report the results fully was what raised my suspicions that their article fell short of the standards of integrity that the reasonable man on the Clapham omnibus would have expected of a paper purporting to be scientific.
The text file recording the results of Cook’s survey was carefully released only after several weeks following publication, during which the article claiming 97% consensus had received wall-to-wall international publicity from the MSM. Even Mr Obama’s Twitteratus had cited it with approval as indicating that “global warming is real, man-made and dangerous”.
The algorithm counted the number of abstracts Cook had allocated to each level of endorsement. When the computer displayed the results, I thought there must have been some mistake. The algorithm had found only 64 out of the 11,944 papers, or 0.5%, marked as falling within Level 1, reflecting the IPCC consensus that recent warming was mostly man-made.
I carried out a manual check using the search function in Microsoft Notepad. Sure enough, there were only 64 data entries ending in “,1”.
Next, I read all 64 abstracts and discovered – not greatly to my surprise – that only 41 had explicitly said Man had caused most of the global warming over the past half century or so.
In the peer-reviewed learned journals, therefore, only 41 of 11,944 papers, or 0.3% – and not 97.1% – had endorsed the definition of the consensus proposition to which the IPCC, in its 2013 Fifth Assessment Report, had assigned 95-99% confidence.
Now that we have the results of the Heartland Conference survey, the full extent of the usual suspects’ evasiveness about climate “consensus” can be revealed.
Cook et al. had lumped together the 96.8% who, like all 100% of us at ICCC9, had endorsed the proposition that we cause some warming with the 0.3% who had endorsed the IPCC’s proposition that we caused most of the warming since 1950.
In defiance of the evidence recorded in their own data file, they had then explicitly stated, both in their article and in a subsequent article, that 97.1% had endorsed the IPCC’s proposition.
Amusingly, 96.8% is 97% of 97.1%. In other words, 97% of the abstracts that formed the basis of the “97% consensus” claim in Cook et al. (2013) did not endorse the IPCC’s definition of the consensus, as the article had falsely claimed they did. However, those abstracts did endorse the more scientifically credible Heartland definition.
Among the unspeakable representatives of the MSM who came to the Heartland conference to conduct sneering interviews with climate “deniers” was a smarmy individual from CNN.
He asked me, in that supercilious tone with which we are all too familiar, how it was that I, a mere layman, dared to claim that I knew better than 97% of published climate scientists. I referred him to Legates et al. (2013), the peer-reviewed refutation of the notion that 97% of scientists endorse the IPCC’s assertion that most of the warming since 1950 was man-made.
The CNN reporter said that the result in Legates et al. was merely my “interpretation”. So I pointed to a row of internet booths nearby and said, “If I count these booths and find that there are, say, 12 of them, and if you count them and find there are indeed 12 of them, then our finding is not a matter of interpretation. It is a matter of fact, that any third party can independently verify.”
I challenged him to go away, before he broadcast anything, and count how many of the 11,944 abstracts listed in the Cook et al. data file were marked by the authors themselves as falling within Level 1. If he counted only 64, I said, then his count would accord with mine. And our counts would not be an “interpretation” but a fact, whose truth or falsity might readily and definitively be established by any third party performing exactly the same count as ours.
He said he would check, but with that look in his eye that seemed to speak otherwise.
The results of my survey of the 600 Heartland delegates reveal that the difference between the Thermageddonites and us is far less than they would like the world to think. Like most of them, we fall within Cook’s endorsement levels 2-3. Unlike them, we do not claim to know whether most of the global warming since 1950 was man-made: for that is beyond what the current state of science can tell us.
Above all, unlike them we do not misreport a 0.3% consensus as a 97.1% consensus.
You may like to verify the results recorded in Cook’s data file for yourself. I have asked Anthony to archive the file (it resides here: cook.pdf ).
[UPDATE: David Burton writes: I’ve put the Cook 2013 data into an Excel spreadsheet, which makes it a lot easier to analyze than from that cook.pdf file. There’s a link to it on my site, here: http://sealevel.info/97pct/#cook ]
If the reporter from CNN who interviewed me reads this, I hope he will perform the count himself and then come back to me as he had undertaken to do. But I shall not be holding my breath.
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lsvalgaard says:
July 11, 2014 at 12:01 pm
Not a ‘better’ idea, but a half-assed way of avoiding the issue.
====
I agree 100%…..
Working with a wonked out temp history and then trying to claim any science based on that….
….is a classic example of avoiding the issue
It’s the qualifier here: “4. Other things being equal…” that gives me problems, There’s a whole argument just in those four words. Otherwise, well done m’lord.
Very nice analysis!
For anyone who wants to examine Mr. Cook’s data file in a friendlier format, I’ve loaded it into a spreadsheet, which you can find in the “Cook, 2013” section, here:
http://sealevel.info/97pct
The descriptions of the “Category” and “Level” columns are in Mr. Cook’s paper:
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article
Harry Passfield says:
July 11, 2014 at 12:07 pm
It’s the qualifier here: “4. Other things being equal…” that gives me problems,
The qualifier is unnecessary [and unscientific]. Either CO2 causes warming [over what all the other things do] or it does not.
lsvalgaard says:
July 11, 2014 at 11:14 am
Those findings clash a bit with the often made claims here at WUWT that there is no warming at all, that CO2 cannot cause any warming, etc. Perhaps we should have a poll to see how many here answers NO to all six questions…
An interesting proposition….
I could answer ‘Yes’ to the first 5 questions posed by Christopher Monckton.
I have a problem with #6 though.
6. Is it likely that Man’s emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases have contributed to the measured global warming since 1950?
The question asks “ Is it likely….” which to me implies a probability or “How likely is it?”
I could answer ‘Yes’ but would assign a low probability to man’s emissions having a significant contribution to the measured global warming since 1950. The measured data sets since 1950 have so many sources of potential errors (siting, measurement, sensor/housing changes, location moves, UHI encroachment, etc.) combined with man made ‘adjustments’ embedded in them that I doubt man’s small contributions to global warming is separable or meaningful from the ‘noise’ level in the measured data available since 1950.
If ‘likely’ means ‘greater than a 15% contribution to the measured global warming since 1950’, I have to answer ‘No’.
Well done. The questions were put in a way that skeptics could answer yes – without deviating from the manner of the typical consensus survey. The goal was to make a point – and I think it was.
The word “likely” is a loaded term. It’s certainly possible that we’ve added some small, as-yet unmeausured and probably unmeasurable amount of warming.
It’s also possible there are ufos.
Bruce Cobb says:
July 11, 2014 at 12:30 pm
The word “likely” is a loaded term. It’s certainly possible that we’ve added some small, as-yet unmeausured and probably unmeasurable amount of warming.
It’s also possible there are ufos.
So it was a lousy poll, a pure PR-stunt, no science.
Okay, Lief, I won’t duck. Here are the questions and my answers in CAPS.
1. Does climate change?
A – YES
2. Has the atmospheric concentration of CO2 increased since the late 1950s?
A- YES
3. Is Man likely to have contributed to the measured increase in CO2 concentration since the late 1950s?
A- YES
4. Other things being equal, is it likely that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause some global warming?
A- NO, if any it is very small.
5. Is it likely that there has been some global warming since the late 1950s?
A- YES
6. Is it likely that Man’s emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases have contributed to the measured global warming since 1950?
A- MAYBE, production of ground water from no or slow to recharge aquifers account for 2.6 mm per year of the increase in ocean level. The produced water is used for agriculture (food and fodder), watering yards and makeup water to evaporative cooling towers at process plants and power plants. The water vapor from the evapotranspiration of these human uses of ground water takes place at constant temperature due to changing the potential energy of the liquid water to kinetic energy of the vapor. The vapor rises until it reaches an elevation where condensation occurs. The condensation changes the kinetic energy back to potential energy. Thus, heat has been transferred from the ground into the troposphere. My understanding is that that this process increases the temperature of the troposphere. After one cycle the additional water joins the hydrological cycle. However, the production of ground water is a continuous process rather than a one time release.
The evaporative cooling towers release water vapor from the tops of the towers about 20F above the surrounding air. In addition to the water vapor there is considerable drift (carry over) plus aerosols.
The amount of no or slow to recharge groundwater production is about 900 km3 per year.
————
So, is that 5 unqualified yeses? No, but it is at least 4.75.
Brilliant. Now get off of skeptical blogs, people, singing to the choir, lamenting the hysteria of the masses, and go present these graphics to the masses, online. It’s free! No, they don’t read skeptical blogs much. Too many squiggly line plots and thousand word essays here.
Once again, an erudite presentation. I am, however, disappointed that you would use such limited and arcane a tool set as VB for Applications and Notepad.
JimS says:
July 11, 2014 at 11:38 am
Of those 600 delegates, how many would be bona fide climate scientists?
define ‘bona fide climate scientist’. The term itself is a strawman.
Once again the royal “We” applies and is earned
And once again the media and the world doesn’t care because money and power are more important then truth or individual liberty and pursuit of science for its own sake
Leif,
We sometimes hear from people who say there is no greenhouse effect. Mostly these people seem to mean the “greenhouse effect” is a misnomer, as greenhouses trap heat via convection wheres GHGs work differently. Mostly.
Personally, I’d like to be asked if there’s been warming since the MWP. Using warmer logic, I would answer that since it was warmer during the MWP, the climate is in a cooling trend.
more soylent green! says:
July 11, 2014 at 1:04 pm
We sometimes hear from people who say there is no greenhouse effect.
Just stay on topic: the six answers, please, e.g. in the format y,y,y,n,n,n or whatever you think it should be.
Those findings clash a bit with the often made claims here at WUWT that there is no warming at all, that CO2 cannot cause any warming, etc. Perhaps we should have a poll to see how many here answers NO to all six questions…
I answer YES to all 6, and not only go that far, but even further still. I am, after all, a lukewarmer. But even if the surface record is correct (it isn’t) and 100% of warming since 1950 is anthropogenic (highly unlikely), and is 100% attributable to CO2 increase (it ain’t), there still isn’t any real danger. All it is is +1.1C per century, and not accelerating, so far as I can determine.
PDO phases cancel and aerosols tip the scale against warming trend, if anything (going by CMIP5), being more prevalent at the earlier end of the scale.
So you can say YES six times and go further than that and still wind up on the skeptical side of the aisle (for example, I think AGW is statistically significant.)
@kenw:
“define ‘bona fide climate scientist’. The term itself is a strawman.”
My answer: Someone with a Ph.D. in a physical science, including one or more of the following disciplines:
climate science, atmospheric science, meteorology, physics, geology or oceanography.
The term “climate scientist” is not a strawman at all, in my opinion.
Leif:
6 times yes.
Christopher:
What possessed you to believe that a CNN reporter was even capable of counting to 64? After all, there’s not one repeated number in the sequence, and their only skill set appears to be repeating things….
Anthony I’ll repeat the request I made in email.
It would be cool to have a badge made for all the sites whose owners agree with the 100% consensus.
What would also be cool is a survey posted at each site showing what % of readers agreed with the 100%.
I would have answered NO to question 4 but since I am not an accredited scientist no one will listen to me, but I’m happy to talk science about that.
“lsvalgaard says:
July 11, 2014 at 11:14 am
Those findings clash a bit with the often made claims here at WUWT that there is no warming at all, that CO2 cannot cause any warming, etc. Perhaps we should have a poll to see how many here answers NO to all six questions…
###############
I think what you will find is that many people will try to weasel out of answering the questions simply
yyyyyy
Ahem. 99.7%+0.5%=100.2% Hope this helps.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article;jsessionid=7BF9E32CE357E2E9709C7A97F0AFB536.c3
Table 2. Definitions of each level of endorsement of AGW.
Level of endorsement Description Example
(1) Explicit endorsement with quantification Explicitly states that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming ‘The global warming during the 20th century is caused mainly by increasing greenhouse gas concentration especially since the late 1980s’
(2) Explicit endorsement without quantification Explicitly states humans are causing global warming or refers to anthropogenic global warming/climate change as a known fact ‘Emissions of a broad range of greenhouse gases of varying lifetimes contribute to global climate change’
(3) Implicit endorsement Implies humans are causing global warming. E.g., research assumes greenhouse gas emissions cause warming without explicitly stating humans are the cause ‘…carbon sequestration in soil is important for mitigating global climate change’
(4a) No position Does not address or mention the cause of global warming
(4b) Uncertain Expresses position that human’s role on recent global warming is uncertain/undefined ‘While the extent of human-induced global warming is inconclusive…’
(5) Implicit rejection Implies humans have had a minimal impact on global warming without saying so explicitly E.g., proposing a natural mechanism is the main cause of global warming ‘…anywhere from a major portion to all of the warming of the 20th century could plausibly result from natural causes according to these results’
(6) Explicit rejection without quantification Explicitly minimizes or rejects that humans are causing global warming ‘…the global temperature record provides little support for the catastrophic view of the greenhouse effect’
(7) Explicit rejection with quantification Explicitly states that humans are causing less than half of global warming ‘The human contribution to the CO2 content in the atmosphere and the increase in temperature is negligible in comparison with other sources of carbon dioxide emission’
I downloaded supporting file from position paper site above:
Category
2,Impacts
3,Mitigation
4,Methods
5,Paleoclimate
8,Not climate related
9,Not Peer-Reviewed
10,No Abstract
Endorsement
1,Explicitly endorses and quantifies AGW as 50+%
2,Explicitly endorses but does not quantify or minimise
3,Implicitly endorses AGW without minimising it
4,No Position
5,Implicitly minimizes/rejects AGW
6,Explicitly minimizes/rejects AGW but does not quantify
7,Explicitly minimizes/rejects AGW as less than 50%
Year,Title,Journal,Authors,Category,Endorsement (file layout definition imbedded in file)
Now to tally them up:
Endorsement counts: (total number of records 11,944)
1 64
2 922
3 2910
4 7970
5 54
6 15
7 9
8 0
9 0
0 0
11944
So according to Cook’s own file 7,970 took NO POSITION
lsvalgaard says:
July 11, 2014 at 11:14 am
Those findings clash a bit with the often made claims here at WUWT that there is no warming at all, that CO2 cannot cause any warming, etc., etc.”
Perhaps more common here than “CO2 cannot cause any warming” is another suggestion. An interesting 7th question might have been:
Is it possible [not likely] that atmospheric CO2 concentration naturally lags surface temperature?
Im just a layman, but I have poured over all the available works I could access. Im not convinced # 6 is a yes at all. Ultimately Id have to give it a very light mild yes, but Im not even convinced of that entirely.
My interpretation of co2s ability is that it is likely minute in practice. The ice core data does imply that co2s effect isn’t very strong. Youll see temps fall while co2 is still peaking over levels some claim it should over power all other factors, only to track temps down later. The best case for co2 having an effect at all to me was always that temps DO seem to fall slower then they rose. Which implies some level of buffering effect to this laymen, but not much.
In lab conditions colloidal silver is unstoppable it kills 650 plus diseases. In practice though, in an actual human body the results are hardly stellar.
this is how I relate to the claims of co2. In a lab, we all know how much energy increased co2 is said to retain. In practice though? I do not see that the data backs it up.
When you look at somewhat inflated temp trendline, the ocean cycles, the potential the sun played a role, and the NOAA paper on water vapor that showed a massive increase over the same period we had warming, and a drop since (the period we have not been warming) , plus wrap this up with how I interpret the ice core data, Im left thinking there is little room for co2 to be playing a role. I expect its very small or non existent.