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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I write to support richardscourtney’s comment at 3:04 pm. Robin, you are doing a great job. I follow your work, and incorporate it into my thinking and conversations as much as possible. Please keep it up.
I never cease to be amazed at the “sun”.
Every morning it appears and then every evening it disappears.
There must be an endless supply of the bloody things!!!!!!!
” …and 10 other scientists who blog under the collective name of Skeptical Science.”
This is absolutely bogus,
Most of the people from the blog “Skeptical Science” are not scientists.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/team.php
Bärbel Winkler is a volunteer at a local zoo in Germany.
“Bärbel Winkler lives and works in Germany. She has always had a lot of interest in environmental issues and has been active as a volunteer at the local zoo”
Rob Painting is a former police officer,
“Rob is an environmentalist, scuba diver, spearfisherman, kayaker and former police officer. Has researched climate science, in an amateur capacity,”
I want to enter.
Mine is “Ignore Previous Bumper Sticker.”
I was banned from SCIAM for pointing out that Michael Mann did not actually win the Nobel Prize. And I never even used the “F-bomb”. Maybe that was my mistake?
97%? Not trying! The Soviets used to get 99%.
Walter Reade (@WalterReade) — thanks for posting a link to the G+ thread. I saw the (largely ignored) link you posted to the raw data used in Cook et al “Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature”.
I did some spreadsheet analysis using that data. For the interested, here’s a screenshot of the results: http://postimg.org/image/wlzed6p2x/
A better bumper sticker if I may: “97%? Horse Hockey!”
My analysis supports Cook et al paper’s conclusion. However, there is one bit of data I don’t really understand.
Endorsement (what I refer to as “rating” in my spreadsheet) number 4 is the only endorsement segmented into two parts:
4a. Does not address or mention the cause of global warming
4b. Expresses position that human’s role on recent global warming is uncertain/undefined
IS this usual for research papers? They seem to refer to two different endorsements. Why did Cook group them?
(If this has been asked and answered before on WUWT, my apologies. Please point me to the link.)
Okay. I got it. Section 2 para. 4 explains why category 4 was split.
However, I’m still trying to understand why endorsement “4b” didn’t count in the final tally. The first matching metaphorical pattern that comes to mind is “atheist, agnostic, theist”. In this case, the agnostics don’t get counted.
I found more answers on WUWT here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/03/cooks-97-consensus-disproven-by-a-new-paper-showing-major-math-errors/
Okay. Color me confused.
Section 3, para. 1:
“To simplify the analysis, ratings were consolidated into three groups: endorsements (including implicit and explicit; categories 1?3 in table?2), no position (category 4) and rejections (including implicit and explicit; categories 5?7).”
And in Table 3 column 1 titled “Position”, 66.4% of abstracts are under the label “No AGW position”. This represents endorsements 4a and 4b.
But in Table 2, the description of 4b. is: “Expresses position that human?s role on recent global warming is uncertain/undefined”.
Table 3 groups endorsement 4b into category “No AGW position” while Table 2 defines endorsement 4b as a “position” and further uses language which implies, if not outright defines, AGW, i.e. human, recent global warming.
The words anthropogenic and human are substituted in this Wikipedia entry Human impact on the environment. (“Human impact on the environment or anthropogenic impact on the environment includes …”)
I don’t get it. Sixty-six percent of the self-rated data gathered from the authors is in category 4. Why group 4a and 4b?
I guess the self-rating cleared up the issue I have with 4b being grouped into 4.
What should christians believe says a contributer. I suggest Christians should believe the Bible. The Biblical position (Job chapters 37/38) and the incident of the storm on the sea of Gallilee clearly show that, that it is God himself,not humans who control the climate. The Creator himself and atmospheric scientists are in total agreement. climate change is natural and not man made.
LOL!!! That stupid bumper sticker is grammatically the definition of: post hoc, ergo, propter hoc; the biggest logic fallacy in the known universe….
What’s even more hilarious is its use of the 97% meme, making it an obscene logic fallacy wrapped in lie…
This is the level to which the CAGW hypothsis has fallen….
CAGW certainly seems to have entered the beginning of its end…
And so it goes… Until reason and freedom are restored….
alas, Scientific American was hijacked by fanatics long ago…..
it has been many years since either SA or its blogs were worth reading
nowadays they have to brutally censor comment threads to try to keep their docile captive audience from knowing better
Sticking that to the bumper of an evil fossil running car would make even Al Gore appear considerate. So, it must be an electric car with a sticker “yes to nuclear” next to it?
Dave said on July 26, 2014 at 1:52 pm:
Your father must have been a very smart man. That saying is repeated on college campuses everywhere by instructors of Women’s Studies.
I would go for a more practical bumper sticker:
97% of Scientists Agree:
You’re Too Close
Ages 10 to 20, I read the pop science magazines each month. Every issue we were always on the verge of a scientific break-through or global catastrophe. Years later I perused those old issues and I don’t think I found a single prediction that ever came to pass. I threw the lot in the rubbish.
rogerknights: Thank you for your bumper sticker translation in response to my question ‘What exactly is the bumper sticker trying to say? Can someone translate this into proper English?’
I showed my wife the picture of the sticker and her comment was ‘Well – it just shows the type of people we’re dealing with, doesn’t it?’
@Matt L – Excellent! Yes, it is that easy to walk people through the analysis.
I’m posting the G+ comment in full here, for those who aren’t interested in filtering through 100+ comments.
I was asked for a reference showing Cook manipulated the data. I responded below.
—–
The reference is Cook’s data. I’ll walk you through it so you (or anyone else) can verify my claim.
(1) Cook defines the consensus as “human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW (anthropogenic global warming, or AGW)” [See the last sentence of the first paragraph of his paper.]
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/pdf/1748-9326_8_2_024024.pdf
(2) Cook asked authors to rate their papers on the position they took with respect to AGW.
The raw data is found here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/docs/self_vs_abstracts_private.txt
A rating of 1 = “Explicitly states that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming”
(3) Once you remove the papers that did not take a position, you end up with 241 out of 1374 where (18%) of authors self-rated their position as humans causing most warming.
[note, where there was a fractional score >= 0.5, I rounded towards a stronger AGW position]
The majority (80%) of the authors self-rated as affirming AGW, but without taking a position on the degree it contributes to GW. [In other words, this is the consensus!]
(4) Cook concludes, “Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus.”
I hope the legerdemain is obvious.
Recent example of “97% consensus” : it’s used to say Wyoming state is condoning “ignorant” science teaching for its kids : http://www.publicschoolreview.com/articles/703
Cook et al’s “consensus” is spreading like cancer.
Sciam has become a lawless, censorious, promulgator of religious dogma.
© 2014 Scientific American, a Division of Nature America, Inc.
On their About Scientific American/history page they honor the following Americans as valued contributors; former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, former Secretary of Defense Les Aspin.
Also in 1986 Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, a German-based family owned syndicate, bought Scientific American, Inc. In June 2009, Scientific American joined Nature Publishing Group (NPG) to form the heart of NPG’s newly-formed consumer media division. Scientific American and NPG are both part of Macmillan Publishers Ltd, a Holtzbrinck shell company designed to insulate Holtzbrinck from legal liability and taxes.
Georg von Holtzbrinck signed up wth the Nazi Party early. Profited from propaganda supporting the Nazi State. Bought up Jewish publishing houses at discount. And used Jewish slave labor without the mitigating balm of conscious displayed by other Germans, such as Oscar Shindler.
Forgot the link supporting the Nazi collaborationist bit.
Here it is. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/14/business/another-german-publisher-mulls-its-wartime-past.html
Look, if you are going to open a discussion with a complaint about how you were done wrong by a censorous lot, it ill serves you to censor that censorous companies true history due to squeemishness or what have you.
The family owned publisher of Sciam was a Nazi party member, a war profiteer, which took advantage of the State murder to collect up the assets of Jewish publishing houses, and used slave labor.
Rolled straight through the eugenics to take up the global warming.