Claims of 97% consensus on global warming depend on research described as fraudulent and biased
London, 8 September: A new briefing note published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation examines claims made by a great many commentators across the world, including President Obama and Ed Davey, of an overwhelming consensus on climate change. These depend on research that has been subject to public and entirely unrebutted allegations that it is fraudulent.
Although the authors of the research claim to have shown that most climate change papers accept that mankind is responsible for the majority of recent warming, in fact the underlying study shows no such thing.
One senior climatologist described the paper as ‘poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed’. Another researcher called it ‘completely invalid and untrustworthy’, adding that there was evidence of scientific fraud.
Andrew Montford, the author of the paper, said: “It has now been shown beyond doubt that the claims of a 97% consensus on climate change are at best misleading, perhaps grossly so, and possibly deliberately so. It’s high time policymakers stopped citing this appalling study.”
Full paper (pdf) – Fraud, Bias And Public Relations: The 97% ‘Consensus’ And Its Critics
From the PDF:
While Cook’s approach appears to owe more to public relations or propaganda than the scientific method, there is little doubt that there is a scientific consensus, albeit not the one that the authors of the paper have led people to believe exists. The consensus as described by Cook et al. is virtually meaningless and tells us nothing about the current state of scientific opinion beyond the trivial observation that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that human activities have warmed the planet to some unspecified extent. The figure of 97% is entirely discredited, whatever the nature of the consensus.
However, the allegations that have been made against Cook’s study in recent months, with an array of experts criticising the conception, the methodology and the integrity of the research, put his conclusions in a very different light. With a very public and unrebutted allegation of scientific fraud hanging over it, the case for the 97% consensus looks shaky indeed.
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97% of the time, alarmists come up with statistics that support alarmism.
?? I would say about three percent of the time; 97 % of the time they come up with models that predict disaster, but these fail about 100 % of the time.
Alexandre
September 8, 2014 at 9:37
am
It’s easy, 123andy: you just
have to go over the peer-
reviewed literature and
demonstrate they’re
wrong. I wonder why
people haven’t done that
yet…
_____
but ‘Alexandre’
‘that peer-reviewed literature’ WAS NEVER been demonstrated to be RIGHT !
That’s why the ongoing presentations of FAKED CONSENSUS claims.
there’s a lot of spin doctos in the US I hear – and I enjoy watching You: that really does it!
Regards – Hans
read ‘spin doctors’; thx
Surely if 97% of climate scientists agree with man made climate change they are in no position to carry out an objective peer review and we have by their own admission a right to an open public trial of both them for their integrity and and their work for its accuracy.
Other branches of science like the laws of motion and thermodynamics have even higher levels of agreement and are still willing to even let school children repeat the experiments in class to demonstrate the validity of the science. Even a trivial test shows a near zero correlation between theory and practice in the case of climate theory .
– – – – – – – – –
#1 – I think Andrew Montford’s premise is his statement ”. . . there is little doubt that there is a scientific consensus . . .”
#2 – I think Andrew Montford’s conclusion is his statement ”. . . [Cook et al 2013] tells us nothing about the current state of scientific opinion beyond the trivial observation that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that human activities have warmed the planet to some unspecified extent.”
#3 – I think Andrew Montford’s applied reasoning that links his premise to his conclusion are these two critical analyses/ assessments: ”. . . with an array of experts criticising the [Cook et al 2013] conception, the methodology and the integrity of the research . . . and ”With a very public and unrebutted allegation of scientific fraud hanging over it [Cook et al 2013] . . .”.
My view about the overall argument in Montford’s paper is that he is correct in both his applied reasoning (#3 above) and his conclusion (#2 above) however the premise (#1 above) needs to be modified to be consistent with the conclusion. I explain why. Because the conceptual idea of ‘scientific consensus’ in his premise is not necessarily commensurate with the conceptual idea of ‘current state of scientific opinion’ in his conclusion, then his paper’s overall argument is confused. To remove confused argument then Andrew Montford needs to define what his concept of ‘scientific consensus’ was in his premise versus what his concept of ‘current state of scientific opinion’ in his conclusion.
Does Andrew Montford conceptually equate his words “scientific consensus” with his words ‘‘current state of scientific opinion”? I think it would be a little problematic if he does because in that case it would explicitly yield that opinions would form scientific consensus which does not address a views that observationally verified positions form scientific consensus. There should be clarification.
John