Over at Scientific American, a place that isn’t hardly Scientific, nor American anymore (its owned by Germans IIRC) there’s a big row over Cook’s shoddy “97% consensus” paper in comments, mainly due to some pertinent ones asking some tough questions being deleted wholesale. SciAm is now citing policy as the reason.
What’s funny, contrary to SciAm policy (for vulgarities) is that the F-word is allowed in the article itself, used by Dan Kahan to describe a bumper sticker about that imagined “97% consensus”.
“We live in a world where the people who make the videos like the OFA one have attached a meaning to this argument—97 percent of scientists [believe in human-caused global warming],” he said. “It’s a bumper sticker, and it says “fuck you” on it.”
You’re welcome.
BTW, the “Hockey? bumper sticker to the left is just a happy accident of the bumper sticker generator.
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richardscourtney says:
July 26, 2014 at 3:04 pm
“Robin:
I write to support your post at July 26, 2014 at 2:57 pm.
Our differences are valuable. Attempts to make people, countries and cultures ‘the same’ are an attack on our shared humanity.”
So I take it you’re not a Fabian Socialist?
I left the following polite comment: let us see how long it lasts before They send it down the memory hole:
“Legates et al. (2013) searched the data file issued by Cook et al. (2013) and found that Cook and his raters had marked only 64 of 11,944 abstracts, or 0.5%, as explicitly endorsing the notion that most of the global warming since 1950 was caused by us.
“However, Cook et al., and subsequently Bedford & Cook (2013), stated that they had found a 97% consensus in support of the notion that recent warming was mostly manmade. On the evidence of their own data file, that statement was not true.
“Besides, argument from consensus is one of the dozen commonest fallacies in human discourse, exposed by Aristotle 2350 years ago.
“The truth is that experiment has demonstrated that returning to the atmosphere some of the CO2 that was there in earlier times will make the world a little warmer, all other things being equal. There is no need to plead “consensus”: all one need do is cite, or replicate, the experiment.
“The truth is also that there is not – and, in the present state of the science cannot be – any consensus about how much global warming we have caused or may cause by emitting CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
“After all, the “consensus” models in 1990 told us with what the IPCC described as “substantial confidence” that the rate of warming by now would be twice what has occurred since then. The “consensus” was substantially confident of itself, but it was substantially wrong.
“There has been no global warming for perhaps 18 years (RSS), notwithstanding record increases in CO2 concentration. A dozen mutually inconsistent explanations for this entirely unpredicted pause or hiatus in global warming have been offered.
“Scientific American does its reputation and its readers no service by giving only one side of the climate story (which may yet prove, embarrassingly, to have been the wrong side); and it ought not to delete comments with which it disagrees, and often in a fashion that breaches its own terms of use.
“Is it too much to ask that Scientific American will in future once again live up to its name and what was formerly its reputation, and allow science to be published on all sides of a question, however uncongenial or unprofitable that science may be?
Perhaps it would be fun to have a bumper sticker contest. My entry would be something like:
97% Doesn’t Wash. Ivory Soap does.
Must would just say, “Huh?” But some would realize that Ivory’s logo is “99 and 44/100 pure,” (pure what I don’t know), and understand the double entendre.
FYTW – the universal rule in politics.
Take out your magic marker and replace so with “want to” and end with “over” then it makes sense.
By deleting selected comments, SciAm can achieve a 97% level of agreement (erroneously referred to as consensus)
Here’s a counterpoint to that “Because 97%” bumper sticker.
Left-side text: “97%”
Right-side text: “WRONG”
Center graphic: the IPCC’s early-draft graphic of its four predictions vs. the observed Global Average Surface Temperature Anomaly (GASTA), showing its line near the bottom of the 95% confidence envelope of its projections. (There should be bold text: “95% confidence envelope.”)
These could be sold for $5 apiece, to help finance WUWT, etc. There are places that will print up batches of bumper stickers for a reasonable amount.
[I am posting these comments here as well in case they get deleted at Scientific American]
If you read the Cook et al. (2013) paper and look at their data you find the following facts,
1. 7950 papers (66.4%) expressed no position on AGW.
2. Only 65 papers (0.5%) explicitly endorsed and quantified AGW as +50% (Humans are the primary cause).
When a sample of authors were contacted they responded that their papers were misclassified,
http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/05/97-study-falsely-classifies-scientists.html
These are very significant findings that need to be taken into account.
I am sorry to say but the media has not done their homework on the Cook at al. (2013) study.
These are some examples of papers they use as part of the “97% consensus”;
“Extensive Introduction Of Ultra High Strength Steels Sets New Standards For Welding In The Body Shop”
Endorsement Level: 2. Explicitly endorses but does not quantify or minimise
http://www.skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=search&s=Extensive+Introduction+Of+Ultra+High+Strength+Steels+Sets+New+Standards+For+Welding+In+The+Body+Shop
“Conceptual Design And Simulation Analysis Of Thermal Behaviors Of Tgr Blast Furnace And Oxygen Blast Furnace”
Endorsement Level: 1. Explicitly endorses and quantifies AGW as 50+%
http://www.skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=search&s=Conceptual+design+and+simulation+analysis+of+thermal+behaviors+of+TGR+blast+furnace+and+oxygen+blast+furnace
“Cook, 42, began Skeptical Science (SkS) in 2007 as a database of peer-reviewed studies rebutting climate skeptics. ”
This statement is inaccurate. Skeptical Science was started in 2007 with the intention of being a list of rebuttals to skeptic arguments not a database of peer-reviewed papers, it has never been that.
https://web.archive.org/web/20071213154822/http://www.skepticalscience.com/
Here is how John Cook described himself in 2007,
“This site was created by John Cook. I’m not a climatologist or a scientist but a self employed cartoonist ”
https://web.archive.org/web/20071213172906/http://www.skepticalscience.com/page.php?p=3
“Once results were in, Cook put together a publicity strategy.”
This statement is completed inaccurate. It was revealed through leaked forum posts that John Cook came up with a publicity strategy before they even had any results,
http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/06/cooks-97-consensus-study-game-plan.html
“To achieve this goal, we mustn’t fall into the trap of spending too much time on analysis and too little time on promotion.” – John Cook (2012)
“Because, 97%” = ^A 97% consensus means that the remaining 3% are cranks.^
“So F___ Y__” = ^Contrarians are perverse people who should be put down.^
Isn’t Michael Mann one regular contributing author in this Un-Scientific American? At least they got rid of Bora Zivkovic.
I just read through the comments at the end of the article in Scientific American. Poptech’s recent comments were still there, but I could find no comment by Monckton of Brenchley. Strangely, there were two replies to Lucia but no trace of the comment they were replying to. They are clearly trying to achieve consensus on their article by deleting contrary opinions. Somehow, they believe such manipulation of data is supposed increase our confidence in their conclusions. But their willingness to lie and cheat for the “cause” only serves to increase my suspicion that they are doing similar kinds of manipulations with the climate data.
“Another reason, he [Cook] believes, is that American minds have been poisoned by climate contrarians like Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist under President George W. Bush, who advised skeptics to create an illusion of scientific discord and challenge established climate scientists.”
This conspiracy theory, which is akin to those who do not believe we landed on the moon, is another reason Cook should not be taken seriously. Consensus proponents frequently use an old 2002 memo by Luntz as evidence of him being at the head of a giant conspiracy to obfuscate their messaging but this is both laughable and unsupported by any evidence. You can easily find skeptic arguments for a lack of consensus predating the Luntz memo by many years,
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA177.html
http://capitalismmagazine.com/1998/05/more-than-15000-scientists-protest-kyoto-accord-speak-out-against-global-warming-myth/
They’re getting ready to use the law tohave us all put in mental institutions with a new psychiatric definition just being added to the diagnostics manual- it’s called Oppositional defiance Disorder, and I kid you not they intend to use it to shut us skeptics up.Look into it.
“Before we listen to any scientists we need to research into who funds them and what their political agenda is. It’s as easy as looking at the references and footnotes they offer and the media channels or blog sites they use to get their message out. This is part of the process of peer review and one of the most important observations. When scientists allow corporate influence to skew their conclusions they deserve to be chastised in the peer review process.”
So effectively your solution is to ignore their scientific arguments and instead resort to logical fallacies such as argumentum ad hominems. Why is it so difficult for consensus proponents to accept that there are highly credentialed scientists who do not share their scientific opinion on AGW?
97% like a Soviet election….
Folks, it is important to understand the Team AGW doesn’t care whether or not Cook fudged his numbers. All that matters is that he got the right answer. You can walk them through Cook’s raw data step by step and show them what he did, and they’ll just start talking about meta-analysis or some other diversion.
I just had this conversation on a G+ thread. First, the OP said my claim was false. After I presented the evidence, he said he’d have to find the time to take a look (even through it takes less than 5 minutes to do a pivot table). Then he suddenly wasn’t interested in the specifics of the consensus; he just wanted to talk about it philosophically. Heh, right.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+FilippoSalustri/posts/fwrXFwgznYq
(Repeating what Poptech lead with above:
July 26, 2014 at 6:41 pm
Now look at thesame words, with only a small difference:
See, if the controlling money and the poltical dictates are from an all-powerful, all-knowing government, these government-paid so-called “scientists” are assumed to be holy and pristine, above all corruption and influence. But let a single dollar of earned private money come into the picture?
Tanya Aardman says:
July 26, 2014 at 6:38 pm
That will be an own goal Tanya, typical of the Lewandowski/Cook lack of understanding that such labels can be applied just as equally to themselves, with 97 % confidence!! Expect screams of rage and anger when the inevitable happens!
Moderators, originals landed in moderation – sorry I misspelled my email address. delete the originals please.
If you are pricing something for the bargain mentality, $99 is overdone, $95 is weak, $97 is perfect.
Just as CO2 climate science, with its miracle ingredient approach, takes inspiration from infomercials, Cook gets his magic numbers from the science of midnight-to-dawn television spruiking.
One minor irony is that the ‘because whatever’ construction is actually weak. It’s basically ‘shut up, he explained’. So there’s that.
======================
In the near future it will be impossible to find those 97%. ” It wasn’t me, I was a skeptic all along. “… There will be a lot of scientists trying to distance themselves from this.
Does a blank sun (no sunspots) cause angst among some? “Not at all, 2014 was the warmest on record” . El Nino, wherefore art thou?? Art thou hiding something from us El Nino?
for the CAGW crowd, anything goes:
26 July: HuffPo: Would Jesus Accept Climate Science?
by Robyn Camparo Purchia, Founder, EdenKeeper.org
Not only is the science scary and the challenge daunting, but it calls into question the very way we live our lives.
Perhaps that’s why climate science is causing a schism of sorts among American Christians…
On one side you have Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, spokesman for the conservative group, Cornwall Alliance, and former professor of historical theology and social ethics at Knox Theological Seminary, who claims that climate science is alarmist junk. Then on the other side, you have Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University and an Evangelical Christian, who educates people on the dangers of climate change…
Whom should a Christian believe? Should they assume all climate scientists are just furthering a government agenda when they conclude that climate change is real? Or should they accept the science?…
I imagine sitting in a room. Next door I can hear my neighbor yelling for help. One person in the room with me says, “Oh don’t worry. They’ve shouted for help before and it’s turned out to be nothing. There’s no observable proof that they’re actually in trouble this time.” The other person in the room says, “Well, it might really be something this time. Maybe you should check it out.”
What would Jesus do? Would he go check on his neighbor? Or would he wait for blood before acting?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robyn-camparo-purchia/would-jesus-accept-climate-change_b_5621672.html
the writer:
LinkedIn: Robyn Camparo Purchia
At the Sierra Club, New York League of Conservation Voters, Hillary Clinton Senate Campaign, and the Public Interest Research Group, I participated in campaigns, engaged in strategic development, and mobilized the media and coalition groups. As a member of the media for the Village Voice and Columbia Spectator, I learned to write compelling news stories…
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/robyn-camparo-purchia/a/4a0/349