I don’t like to use the word “fraud”, and I can’t recall if I’ve ever used it in a title. In this case it is warranted. Brandon Shollenberger writes of a new book, The Climate Wars:
How the Consensus is Enforced, that proves without a doubt that John Cook and his “Skeptical Science” team are nothing but a gang of “say anything” activists, and that the much repeated “97% consensus” is indeed nothing more than a manufactured outcome.
He writes via email:
I recently “hacked” Skeptical Science again to find CONFIDENTIAL material. By which I mean I download some PDF files from publicly accessible locations and found out one of them was a manuscript submitted for publication, which as a submitted manuscript was supposed to be kept CONFIDENTIAL. Instead, it was posted in a location anyone could access.
The paper is rather remarkable in that it admits several of the criticisms of the (in)famous Cook et al consensus paper, such as saying:
During the rating process of C13, raters were presented only with the paper title and abstract to base their rating on. Tol (2015) queries what steps were taken to prevent raters from gathering additional information. While there was no practical way of preventing such an outcome, raters conducted further investigation by perusing the full paper on only a few occasions, usually to clarify ambiguous abstract language.
Which acknowledges the raters on the project cheated and looked at material they weren’t supposed to look at (but insisting it is okay because the raters only cheated a few times, trust us). Similarly, the paper acknowledges the raters were not independent of one another like Cook et al claimed, but rather:
Raters had access to a private discussion forum which was used to design the study, distribute rating guidelines and organise analysis and writing of the paper. As stated in C13: “some subjectivity is inherent in the abstract rating process. While criteria for determining ratings were defined prior to the rating period, some clarifications and amendments were required as specific situations presented themselves”. These “specific situations” were raised in the forum.
But even this admission is a deception as anyone who looks at the forum would know fully well the discussions between raters were not merely to seek clarifications and amendments, but included raters straight up asking one another how they would rate various papers.
There’s plenty more to be said about all this, and I wrote a post about this, but I wrote a more thorough discussion in a new eBook I just published. I’ve been meaning to publish an eBook on this topic for some time, but prior to this latest discovery, I couldn’t find a way to write it properly. Now I think I have.
A couple of excerpts from my reading of it are below.
The difference between how Skeptical Science behaves in private and how it behaves in public is both troubling and insightful. It is important not because being able to label people hypocrites is a big deal but because it reveals the lies and deceptions the group uses to promote its consensus message. For instance, we saw above the original plan was to describe their results on the consensus about global warming in the form of:
‘There’s an x% consensus supporting the AGW theory, and y% explicitly put the human
contribution at >50%’.
But they chose to abandon this plan and describe the results in the form:
Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that
humans are causing global warming.
After seeing their results and realizing how embarrassing it’d be for them to say:
‘There’s an x% consensus supporting the AGW theory, and y% explicitly put the human
contribution at >50%’.
But the reality is the Skeptical Science group intentionally misled people time and time again.
…
This also shows the falsity of the claim in the paper:
Each abstract was categorized by two independent, anonymized raters. The study participants were all members of the same Skeptical Science group, were often friends and they were actively talking to one another about how to categorize papers. There may be some semantic parsing which would make the claim these raters were “independent” true, but Cook and his colleagues must have known there’s no way anyone reading their paper would have guessed the
“independent” raters were talking to one another about how to rate things:
Similarly, while it may be true the raters were only presented certain information as part of the
rating system, Cook and his colleagues intentionally left out the fact the raters cheated and looked up
additional information.
That gave the readers an impression Cook and colleagues knew would be false.
Even if one feels their statements weren’t technically lies, they were clearly attempts to deceive people.
Perhaps the most remarkable example of this sort of deception, however, is the fact the paper claimed these raters were “independent.”
You can find the new eBook here:
At 99 cents, I think it is a bargain.
Definitely a bargain at 99 cents, but surely a steal at 97 cents. 😉
(Sorry, bad joke there.)
..HEY, that’s my job !
LOL……
..97% of liberal green activists agree with 97% of liberal green activists…go figure !
Oops – that brings the consensus down to 94%. We can’t have that!
Its climate science so it adds up to 96.9% (I’m guessing that it really is the reason that its always 97% rather than my little joke)
Hide the decline!
“… is indeed nothing more than a manufactured outcome.”
Was there ever any real question that this was an unbelievable number? It’s a shameless equivalent to the number of people in North Korea who voted for the Dear Leader, with just as much scientific credibility as a consensus, or a mandate to ‘rule’ the Journals. We’ve all been around long enough to know how this works, and the shenanigans played over pot-‘o-cash, and pecking order. A claim like that is shameless dross and should have been laughed out the door from the outset.
Ya know, someone made an argument along the lines of “how can so many scientists be lying.” I remarked to myself that they don’t need to be lying to be wrong. But, I wonder, is that even the case? Maybe they really are all lying, at least, maybe a large enough percentage are lying to shift the narrative in their favor.
I really don’t understand how people can grow up to be so dishonest. I used to think that nearly everyone was basically honest, only hiding things about themselves they found embarrassing (addictions, etc.). Anymore, I just don’t know.
Mark,
When I was young I used to believe that politicians kept their promises, and cops were basically honest, and judges couldn’t be bought, and love is all you need…
“All you need is love” and “if it feels so right, how can it be wrong?” are two common lyrics from rock-star philosophers that led many of my generation astray. Climate-change advocates still embrace the latter one. If lies and deceit make you feel good because you’re saving the planet, then how can it be wrong?
Mark, my direct experience is that climate modelers are scientifically incompetent. They have no idea how to evaluate the accuracy of their own models. It’s not dishonesty there. It’s plain incompetence plus an inner certainty rooted in ignorance. They don’t know that they don’t know.
Scientific incompetence doesn’t explain the otherwise well-trained physicists and chemists who have accepted the modelers’ message though.
I don’t think they are dishonest, either, at least the great majority of them. The lesson I take away is that even among scientists, critical thinking is not often deployed when outside their specific area of professional competence. I’ve run across that, too, among scientists I know personally. Surrender to insistent fashionable nonsense seems a human failing, even among scientists.
@ Pat Frank, March 12 11:04 am, ‘It’s plain incompetence plus an inner certainty rooted in ignorance. They don’t know that they don’t know.”
Oh they do and that is the knowledge that the grant money seemed to be limitless.
Yes Pat Frank except I would says technically incompetent. The word technical has a much wider spread and covers mathematics, statistics, logic, IT, and of course all aspects of engineering (although engineering includes the mentioned subjects especially maths) . You should know that thermodynamics, heat & mass transfer and fluid dynamics are engineering subjects and which so-called climate scientists have no understanding. I have mentioned before that that a certain Dr Gav-in Sch.. dt admitted on another blog he did not know about the Sc number (Sc short for Schmidt) or what it was used for. How can anyone prepare a useful model when they do not understand the parameters which could be used to represent some process or how the parameters can be expressed in a useful mathematical relation to represent real (not imaginary) outcomes. I understand in USA there are a number of States that require registration of professional engineers. Some countries around the world have legislation concerning registration of professional engineers. It is time that the incompetents calling themselves scientists were taken to court for providing (false) engineering information when not registered or adhering of legal engineering codes of practice.
“Surrender to insistent fashionable nonsense seems a human failing, even among scientists”
Being wrong with everyone may be a better survival strategy than right alone, at least in some cases.
Here’s a cynical remark by an old-time Frenchman:
“When everybody’s wrong, everybody’s right.”
Replace ‘lying’ by:
‘Well, could have been true … provided sufficently many what-if:s’, and even lacking those
‘not knowing for certain that it’s false’ combined with
‘conveniently looking the other way’ ‘as long as it
‘serves the cause’ …
All they really need is ‘plausible deniability’ when they are cought out!
And people state that JFK conspiracy is out of question because it would depend on many people in-the-know.
No, it would just depend on many people conveniently looking elsewhere. I don’t buy the JFK-conspiracy-is-ridiculous notion.
Like when homosexuality suddenly stopped being a mental illness, based on no data, after it was one, based on nothing, how many people looked elsewhere instead of dismissing the whole DSM (or other mental illness classifications) crap? DSM being just a glorification of social norms, it isn’t and was never science.
How many people dismissed “Soviet Union is dictatorship”? No, it was no secret. Soviet Union was never closed. People and knowledge could circulate. The facts were known in the thirties. Only recent fake history pretends it was a late discovery in the West.
Yet many French scientists were pro-Soviet Union.
Today, the CNRS (centre national de la recherche scientifique), THE French center of scientific research (for almost all fields), is still a Marxist bastion.
“Soviet Union was never closed. People and knowledge could circulate. The facts were known in the thirties”
True. There were one or two western socialists who traveled into the Soviet Union in the 1930s and knew that 3 million Ukrainians has been starved, and that Stalin was running slave camps in the East. They were in a position to tell the world about it. They chose not to, probably because the reality was too shocking to embrace. Imagine having to admit that your socialist paradise was deliberately starving millions, shooting tens of thousands. You would have to face the wrath of your own colleagues back home. You would be reviled by your friends.
That is what the CAGW scientists face. They simply do the human thing and look away, hoping that it is not true, and that somehow their bad science will right itself. Sad.(Judith Curry is a lone exception and was attacked for doing so)
The 1930 socialists were happy that Hitler came along to emulate Stalin. Thus they for a while had the moral high ground, until “The Gulag Archipelago” came to the west. (A 1973 Russian book by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn about the Soviet forced labor camp system)
There are only two logical choices here, as I see things:
1) The perpetrators of such flawed and idiotic studies are flat out lying, aware that they are lying, and doing it anyway for whatever reason (glory, bring down the system, save the world, whatever). The media sucks it up like a sponge and declares it robust and conclusive and neither the general public OR the rest of the scientific community-that does NOT do climate related research-simply thinks that due diligence was done and that the studies were done WELL and truly ARE robust and conclusive. (So we’ll call this one Liars Believed by the Oblivious)
2) The perpetrators of these flawed and idiotic studies actually THINK they are conducting “real science” by acceptable and embraced methods, and so when their flawed their “models” “studies” come back with the answers they were hoping for, they accept them as “good scientific research”. So they aren’t really LYING…. they simply misunderstand the scientific method (or abuse it) and present their results as if they are plausible/robust/conclusive etc. Again…the REST of the scientific community doesn’t CARE or investigate these studies unless people like those at WUWT make such a stink about them that they finally DO take a look and say “Well that is flawed and idiotic” but its too late to stop the Press’s momentum train.(We’ll call this one Incompetent Fools)
No “conspiracy” is required when the media is so complicit and the agenda is so “pure and holy”….I mean…don’t we ALL want to save the planet and leave a world worth enjoying for our children? I really don’t think that people as STUPID as Cook et al, could pull OFF a conspiracy if they tried because they’d just leave the “conspiracy meeting forum” open to the world online and thus blow the whole thing. And people who ARE smart enough and powerful enough to pull off a conspiracy are also smart enough to know they don’t even NEED one these days. They know EXACTLY how to stroke and manipulate idiotic little fishies like Cook and Lew and Nuttibelly and Gavin etc without ever meeting them. Give them NUMEROUS awards for their “Environmental Work” and their Nobel Cause Mentality! Shower them with grants and monetary awards that encourage them to keep lying or being incompetent! Stroke those egos! Add more kudos! Make the Mickey Mann Team think they are truly special and smart and gifted and that the whole world will honor them someday. (Why else would these mediocre, ex cartoonist, blogger, shrunken heads get so shocked and pissed off when regular people ignore them, refute their work, and refuse to treat them like royalty? I believe it really IS stunning to them….after all….they’ve been so carefully stroked and coddled and praised by “important societies and organizations with fancy logos and world wide credentials…”)
But even if I’m WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY off course in this, in today’s world, what difference does it make if in the end….we all end up with a better world? (Ends justify the means) The vast majority of those with an entrenched agenda stop caring about what is TRUE or FALSE or wrong or right…it’s the end goal they see and nothing but that end goal. How many people have been SLAUGHTERED in the name of a “king” or a “country” or a “people” or a “worthy cause”? It’s not at all hard to convince the naive and those lacking real self confidence to “fight” against “________”. Just make whatever you fill that blank with a monster….an injustice….a plague….a festering malignant social illness….and people will do just about anything to conquer it…without ever even attempting to find out for themselves if that monster was real or not.
The Boogy Man isn’t under our beds anymore….he lives inside us…just waiting for an “enemy” to torment and intimidate.
As people grow up they are socialized to belong to groups. It is not hard to understand wanting membership in the “Society of Global Warmists” (Important to note they get particularly angry when it is suggested they operate like a Religion). SGW membership is highly desirable for joiners: No membership dues, an endless supply of government funding, no advanced scientific education required, expanding occupational opportunities for certified members and high visibility and recognition in the Mainstream Media. What is not to like. Okay, so you have to sacrifice your scruples, you may add. Everything comes at a cost.
You might have a point, however I never read past SGW.
There are already enough acronyms, we don´ t need more.
Re: Aphan at 4:19 On your second alternative, the CAGW advocates are not a conspiracy as such, just a mass movement. However, obviously, that makes it even more dangerous. Fascism was a mass movement. Political Islam is a mass movement. The mechanics of how this sort of thing works is reminiscent of Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer”.
On Sat, Mar 12, 2016 at 4:34 PM, Watts Up With That? wrote:
> Science or Fiction commented: “You might have a point, however I never > read past SGW. There are already enough acronyms, we don´ t need more.” >
Bill Powers wrote: “As people grow up they are socialized to belong to groups.”
Yes, humans have an innate desire to conform to the majority. It’s a survival mechanism. There is some measure of safety and certainty when you conform to the majority view. The thinking is, if the majority see something a certain way, their collective knowledge must be greater than yours, and so you should defer to that way of thinking in order to be on the right track.
And then there are the nonconformists like me. My attitude is the majority should agree with “me”. 🙂
Winston Smith is that you writing under a pseudonym?
Easy Mark, provide you have the taxpayer funded resources.
You create a culture that puts intelligence above honesty.
You then paint lying as actually being very clever.
You then promote people who are drunk on gold stars and elephant stamps.
How many MD could lie about the risks of vaccines?
Nearly all of them, obviously – any 10 years old can see that.
How many academics can lie about Islam?
about the same number as can lie about statins/ssris/etc etc
I see similarities in a group with a huge PR machine and funding
pillorying anyone who dares speak out
big pharma/big Pharmer/big green blob goracles etc
Don’t forget about original sin. Essentially, humans are selfish, doing and saying whatever we see as furthering our own interests, regardless of truth. Why do we lock our houses or cars? Why do we need passwords for computers? Why do we copyright original materials? Because we know (whether or not we admit it) that others are not honest, and that someone will steal what is ours if we don’t take preventive steps.
In evaluating the AGW issue in terms of selfishness–follow the money. IPCC would not exist if truth were their goal, because actually finding and acknowledging the truth would acknowledge that their whole organization is needless, superfluous, a waste of money, time, and talent. Obviously, they like their cushy jobs and will do whatever they can to preserve and augment them, including scaring the insides out of the readers of their reports (or the news stories about them). The fake consensus is merely another ploy to keep the funds coming in and sustain the employment of the “scientists.”
So Cook et al violated the purported research design. “Blind” evaluation of the abstracts involved peeking, and the evaluators, supposedly independent, discussed their non-blind evaluations with each other. As bad as psychology is as a science, Cook could not have introduced more fairly well proven biases if he tried.
Why not just do “kitchen table field research” and flatly make data up?
“Cook could not have introduced more fairly well proven biases if he tried.”
He did try. That is the point of this whole thing. He deceived people intentionally.
Why the ‘past tense’?
Cook, Lewserandumsky, sks, etc. are building fabrication upon fabrication in a bizarre Ponzi scheme.
When the Ponzi scheme is finally tumbled and all of there perpetrators received their jus desserts; then we can discuss the dismal CAGW scam in the past tense.
Tom
re: …As bad as psychology is as a science…”
Psychology is not a science; it is an observation activity. Sort of like cage fighting and the WWE.
@ Chips, March 12 5:05 pm, Bread and games.
The point of discussion should not be this one cook et al. paper. I’ve been at a lot of scientific conferences all around the world and I’ve never met any scientists not in full support of taking action to curb co2 emissions. If there are methodological problems with this paper, that doesn’t change anything, because the paper still describes a real phenomenon, in my experience. What would be much more relevant is to discuss why these scientists think like that and it can be changed (believing that they are somehow lying or scared to say what they really think might be a pleasant thought but that’s not true and not very useful if you want to change anything)
..When you go to a Green Liberal Activist rally, you tend to get Green Liberal Activist opinions ! Weird eh ?
Pat,
“In my view, the desire to conform and be accepted in the group (an evolutionarily beneficial trait) paralyzes one’s critical faculty.”
Why the injection of “an evolutionary beneficial trait” I respectfully ask? Could that itself be a “symptom” of the very “disease” you are proposing afflicts many? Would not an intelligent being be able to sense/perceive the value of belonging to a group, regardless of how they came to exist? It seems pretty self evident to me . .
“… it seems only a small fraction of the population has some natural immunity to that failing.”
If it is evolutionarily beneficial, why are you calling it a failure? And from whence came this “natural immunity”, if it is not evolutionarily beneficial?
In short, I feel the Evolution hypothesis is essentially useless for understanding human (self) tendencies.
(Oops, out of place comment, sorry ’bout that . . I would not mind at all it being deleted by the Mod)
Silly Cook. He could simply have said, “Benben says so.” All that work… boy, must Cook feel dumb, now.
..ROTFLMAO
I’m glad you laughed, Marcus. You deserve some joy for all the fun and joie de vivre you bring to WUWT.
🙂
(and good cites to “THIS IS HAPPENING — RIGHT NOW!!!!” stuff and also razor-sharp insights (when you are in the mood))
…I’m too old to be in the ” Mood ” !! LOL
..The only ” Moods ” I get are grumpy and grumpier !! LOL
@ Marcus. (eye roll) 🙂
Re: “in the mood” — unless you are about 110, you are NOT “too old.” She is out there, Marcus… I’m tellin’ ya. And I am praying you two find each other. I’ll bet she loves to laugh 🙂
Now, stop commenting on WUWT for awhile (not for too long, though) and think a little bit about where to look up her phone ## (or e mail)… remember?….. yeah…. THAT lady :)…. you’ll never know unless you try.
And FYI for anyone who did not see my comment about it a few months ago, Marcus knows I am not insinuating that I am that lady!!
Ok, ok, I’m not 110…or even 50, but I FEEL old ! Does that count ? Ummm, what’s an Email ?? LOL
Janice, benben was not making an argument in favor of the CO2 scare. He was pointing out that somehow all these scientists he’s met believe in the scare (despite the zero evidence). He’s further saying that it’ll be difficult to change things until we figure out why these scientists believe as they do.
In my view, the desire to conform and be accepted in the group (an evolutionarily beneficial trait) paralyzes one’s critical faculty. Scientists appear as susceptible as everyone else. From the evidence, it seems only a small fraction of the population has some natural immunity to that failing.
Pat,
“In my view, the desire to conform and be accepted in the group (an evolutionarily beneficial trait) paralyzes one’s critical faculty.”
Why the injection of “an evolutionary beneficial trait” I respectfully ask? Could that itself be a “symptom” of the very “disease” you are proposing afflicts many? Would not an intelligent being be able to sense/perceive the value of belonging to a group, regardless of how they came to exist? It seems pretty self evident to me . .
“… it seems only a small fraction of the population has some natural immunity to that failing.”
If it is evolutionarily beneficial, why are you calling it a failure? And from whence came this “natural immunity”, if it is not evolutionarily beneficial?
In short, I feel the Evolution hypothesis is essentially useless for understanding human (self) tendencies.
@ JohnKnight March 12, 2016 at 4:39 pm “In short, I feel the Evolution hypothesis is essentially useless for understanding human (self) tendencies.”
I suggest you examine dog breeds if you think that, because it is not so. Dog breeders have no doubt of this, they specifically breed for tendencies in disposition, loyalty, aggression, docility, attention, inattention. On and on it goes. Testable and repeatable on demand. Those experiments have been done, its genetic and thus a key feature of evolutionary selection processes.
Human responses are of course genetic also, this can be seen clearly in behavior of siblings, and especially in twins and triplets. It’s why we don’t change much from what our tendencies are no matter how we are induced to be different.
It’s also why political correctness will both never stop being pushed, and why it also will never be accepted. It’s why some want consensus, and they will never have it or get it, and why skeptics want others to also be skeptical, to see the ‘truth’, and it never happens. 🙂
[and ain’t diversity fun! … /s ]
An inconvenient gene?
unmentionable,
I wrote;
“In short, I feel the Evolution hypothesis is essentially useless for understanding human (self) tendencies.”
You responded;
“I suggest you examine dog breeds if you think that…”
. . . What breed are you? ; )
“Human responses are of course genetic also …”
I suppose you meant influenced by genetics . . but who can tell, with such a dogmatic thinker ; )
@ Pat Frank, thanks that is exactly what I mean.
JohnKnight March 12, 2016 at 4:39 pm
“In short, I feel the Evolution hypothesis is essentially useless for understanding human (self) tendencies.”
JohnKnight March 12, 2016 at 7:59 pm
“… I suppose you meant influenced by genetics . . but who can tell, with such a dogmatic thinker ; ) …”
—
Is that sort of thing what you were referring to?
Maybe you’re a bull dog? 😉
Unmentionable,
“Is that sort of thing what you were referring to?”
I’m not sure what you’re asking about . . but your basic argument seems easily refuted by the obvious fact that people change from the “consensus” position to the “skeptical” position . .
. . If that too is “genetic” response, then we would have both the tendency to go along with the group and the tendency not to go along with the group, as well as the tendency to switch from one to the other, all being evolutionary beneficial . . so I don’t see how this Evolution talk-talk adds anything to an understanding of human responses. It looks more like a conditioned reaction than anything else, to me.
PS~ And it seems to me that the talk-talk virtually always leads to some form of an “I am evolutionarily superior to those people” conclusion. Stuff like paralyzed critical faculty tend to plague those who see things differently than devout Evolution adherents ; )
John, that parenthetical was added because it helps explain the near universality of the phenomenon of normative belief.
Primates have a 40 million year evolutionary history, nearly all of it in social groups. Social cohesion becomes very important to survival. In a culturally obligate group — uniquely we humans — social cohesion includes coherence of viewpoints — widespread loyalty to group norms. There would be an evolutionary gradient toward that trait.
The fact that automatic agreement is not universal among us can be laid at the feet of nature’s imposition that survival requires genetic diversity, coupled with the fact that so very much of how we think is influenced by our personal experience of the world as we grow up. The human brain is hugely plastic, and we continually rewire ourselves as we learn; right up through our entire lives.
Belonging to a group is not self-evident in a world that includes so many solitary organisms, notably so many predators.
Evolutionarily beneficial to a tribal past is not necessarily beneficial now, in a technical-scientific advanced nation-state present.
The evolution of traits has always been subject to a changing environment, impacting any and every species. What was beneficial in the past may not be beneficial in a new environment. Steven Stanley’s 1987 book, “Extinction,” discusses the evidence of this sort of turn-around in the fossil record. It’s an excellent Scientific American press book, published back when SciAm paid attention to science. Adaptation of predators is one of the environmental changes that causes once beneficial traits to become a liability.
Pat,
“John, that parenthetical was added because it helps explain the near universality of the phenomenon of normative belief.”
Yours? Or just other’s “normative belief”?
“The fact that automatic agreement is not universal among us can be laid at the feet of nature’s imposition that survival requires genetic diversity,”
Of course it “can be”, but my inquiry is about what the hell good it does anyone to dogmatically do so, when dealing with real world situations/problems?
” What was beneficial in the past may not be beneficial in a new environment.”
Or, it might be . . right? One has to actually figure such things out, I say, and I see no help with that at all coming from reciting Evolutionary just so stories . . I can generate one that makes it seem beneficial to maintain cohesion, or I can generate one that makes it seem detrimental to maintain cohesion, but then I am not actually observing/reasoning about what is going on in reality-land . . I’m just telling stories about things I can imagine, right?
Janice you are a naughty girl, Marcus seems like a nice bloke, he will find his way n the fullness of time.
As for the topic at hand many scientific frauds have been committed over the last few hundred years AGW and the 97% is now old news we have had a couple more since, like finding a non existent particle one day before the hadron colder was to be shut down so umpteen million would be spent on an upgrade, or even finding gravity waves as soon as the device costing about a billion was switched on phlogiston has nothing on these buggers.
The problem is that you can go through any number of “97%” papers and it is easy to spot how they mislead. Doran and Zimmerman’s 97% comes from only 77 people out of over 3,000. Anderegg et al use “interesting” comparison techniques to arrive at 97%. Cook et al found only 0.5% but claimed 97% anyway.
This seems so unnecessary if all scientists are really of one mind. It makes you ask how many of the more esoteric climate papers are similarly misleading.
Of course, it may just be that the American Meteorological Society’s survey was the most accurate. They actually asked the scientists which was quite a novelty in itself. They found that 52% thought that global warming was mostly man-made.
..Well, 97% of course !
graphic c is mistaken:
52% was the response rate.
(Source: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/29/ams-sponsored-survey-of-tv-weathercasters-63-of-tv-weathercasters-believe-global-warming-is-mostly-natural/ )
(Source: Ibid.)
So Janice, that means 0.54 x 0.31 = 17% of respondents thought global warming was a man-made phenomenon. Only 0.52 x 0.54 x 0.31 = 9% of those contacted by the survey (apparently all scientists of some sort) bothered to respond that global warming was a man-made phenomenon. Can’t quite figure how to get 97% consensus out of that. I wouldn’t buy a stock, or bet on an athletic team, that polled so low among “expert” reviewers, and I don’t buy the 97% figure.
Dear Ed,
Just to clarify, I only cited that AMS article to correct graphic c who was using it to promote AGW. I certainly do NOT think that the AMS survey validates the 97% fr@ud — at all.
And I’m glad you, too, do not buy it.
Your Ally for Science Truth,
Janice
I was at a conference in an unrelated field years ago, and was seated at a dinner table with one of the bigwigs. During the conversation at the table, he brought up climate change, and there was some serious skepticism in his remarks. Others at the table had very noncommittal remarks about looking through the evidence themselves but not being sure/convinced. At the end, the original scientist said something like, “They do know what they’re doing, right? ”
It sure wasnt some sort of cheerleading session.
benbenben says:
… I’ve never met any scientists not in full support of taking action to curb co2 emissions.
You certainly exist within your own special bubble, don’t you?
And:
…What would be much more relevant is to discuss why these scientists think like that
Lewandowsky already does that. It’s pseudo-science. What matters are things like facts, measurements, evidence, and the Scientific Method; not “why these scientists think like that”.
benben, you’re not cut out for this. Go into psychology, or sociology. You will never be an adequate scientist, and neither will the self-serving ‘scientists’ you listen to.
Even I’m in favour of taking action to curb CO2 emissions – and I’m a full blown skeptic.
For example, at work, I often find that the windows have been left open whilst the central heating is turned up to full in the middle of winter.
I am in favour of closing the windows and turning down the central heating to a comfortable level.
Put simply, I am extremely keen on seeing efficient (i.e. non-wasteful) use of energy.
I believe that energy should be both generated and utilized in the most efficient manner available.
Implementing such an approach would curb CO2 emissions.
However, I am skeptical of concerns regarding extreme weather and climate apocalypse, induced by rising emissions of CO2.
We need to be clear here, what it is that the consensus is presumed to be a consensus on.
Benbenben’s comment is very typical of the tendency of some to move the goalposts.
The so-called “consensus” relates to CAGW, not reducing energy wastage or curbing the exhausting of products of combustion (including CO2).
Let’s not mix up one topic with the other.
dbstealey
“What matters are things like facts, measurements, evidence, and the Scientific Method;”
Oh you mean these facts..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming#/media/File:Global_Temperature_Anomaly.svg
And that sea ice in the arctic just had it’s lowest maximum ever recorded.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/arctic.sea.ice.interactive.html
And if you want consensus let’s see what NASA has to say?
http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
Simon,
You link to Wikipedia as your ‘authority’ on global warming??
I’ve repeatedly debunked (yes: debunked) that GISS chart, as have others. But it seems you prefer to look at charts that lead you by an invisible ring through your nose, in the direction you prefer to be led.
Next, from the self-serving NASA/Muslim Outreach link you posted:
“Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver.”
And yet, that ‘rigorous research’ cannot produce a single measurement to support that assertion, which is based on the belief that human CO2 emissions are the primary cause of our changing climate.
Finally, your increasingly wild-eyed exclamations over the natural fluctuations in Arctic ice ignore the Antarctic, for one reason: the Antarctic is pretty near normal. Sorry about your greenie religion, but the fact is that there’s nothing unusual or unprecedented happening — much as you fervently wish there was.
Indefatigablefrog –
Well put. I agree. We have created a rapid imbalance. Nature always reacts to these. There is always a positive and a negative, depending on where and who your are (and when)
Should the question be: “Have humans influenced climate change?” I would have to say yes. The real question relates to what degree and how? We have this wonderful process called the scientific method through which – bit by bit – we can expose truth. It is the abuse of this method and the ignorance relating to it that angers me e.g. the miss-use of statistics, as we see in this topic. The general public cannot see through this
Take care. Those on the middle road get pummelled from both sides 🙂
Michael Carter,
The real question is this:
Have humans influenced climate change to any measurable degree?
This gets into climate Null Hypothesis territory: if any change is too small to measure, and too minuscule to quantify its effects, then the Null Hypothesis remains unfalsified. There is no discernable difference between a climate with human CO2 emissions, and a climate without them.
That word play is how the alarmist crowd gets around having to answer questions. Who disagrees with “climate change”? Anyone?
So the question isn’t climate change, but rather the question is this: “Where are the effects of human CO2 emissions?”
No one has ever produced any measurements of AGW. If AGW cannot be quantified, then it is a non-problem. QED
Simon, Why does your Arctic “lowest maximum ever recorded” not go back to at least 1975, which the FAR records?
‘Data are believed to be usable from 1972 with caution, but are better from 1975 onwards.
https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf
Simon dear-
“What matters are things like facts, measurements, evidence, and the Scientific Method;”
Oh you mean these facts..https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming…”
Yes Simon, the globe warms in between glacial ice ages. Always has, most likely will continue to. That is a measurable, evidence based-fact.
“And that sea ice in the arctic just had it’s lowest maximum ever recorded.http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu…”
And? Do you know how long we’ve been “recording” Arctic sea ice? Since 1979 Simon. 37 years. THIRTY SEVEN. According to “climate experts”, that’s barely enough time to record a trend! How old is Earth Simon? 4.5 billion years. Wanna calculate how much of that time there has even BEEN sea ice in the Arctic and compare that to how much of that time there has NOT been ice there at all?
“And if you want consensus let’s see what NASA has to say?http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/”
Now, what is ODD is that to calculate a consensus…you know…with facts and measurements and evidence, you actually have to ASK all the members of the group in question to TELL YOU exactly what they think. And, if the vast majority of them, upon questioning, answer that they believe “X” to be true, then you can call it a consensus. Since NASA has not done that, NASA is lying.
Another oddity, when specific groups of scientists that study climate or climate related topics are ASKED about what they believe concerning global warming/climate change, the numbers are VASTLY different than the ones spewed out by people who have NOT asked the scientific community to actually GIVE their opinions on the subjects. People who read palms are called “crazy” and the same thing should be said about scientists who pretend they can read MINDS.
Hope this clears things up for you.
dbstealey
You say some really funny things. It’s one of the reasons I love to read your work, but this takes the cake. Can you explain this one?
“Next, from the self-serving NASA/Muslim Outreach link you posted:”
I can’t on any level imagine what you meant by this and what role Islam plays in NASA’s work?
And on Antarctic sea ice at normal…. Well maybe your paranoia about muslims has addled your brain.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries.png
Simon,
Do a search for ‘NASA, Muslim Outreach’. Cure your ignorance.
dbstealey
Politifact called the statement re Muslims a “half truth.” That’s always plenty enough for you though hasn’t it DB. You get to discredit NASA (who keep printing those ever increasingly uncomfortable graphs) and at the same time have a crack at the Muslims. Perfect storm.
And talking about increasingly uncomfortable graphs, didn’t Roy Spencer just record the hottest month ever in February? And wait, hold on, isn’t his work is the most accurate around? What are you going to do for facts now?
Simon,
May I quote you? Thanks:
…this takes the cake. Can you explain this one?
You were expressing your ignorance concerning NASA’s Muslim Outreach. I had written:
“Next, from the self-serving NASA/Muslim Outreach link you posted:”
You replied:
I can’t on any level imagine what you meant by this and what role Islam plays in NASA’s work?
So I assisted you. Told you how you could get enlightened.
But instead of saying, “Thanks”, you frantically searched until you found your confirmation bias.
And it wasn’t a “half truth” as you falsely claimed. But at least you’re halfway to enlightenment.
To assist you once more in conquering your ignorance, here is NASA’s chief, Charles Bolden, admitting that NASA’s new goal is “Muslim outreach”. Go argue with Bolden if you want. But it’s clear that Politifact is emitting false propaganda.
You’re in over your head here, Simon. You could learn, but instead you try to find support in misinformnation blogs like Politifact. We’ll just add this to the growing list of things you’ve been wrong about. And that includes the NASA graph that got you so excited.
dbs – why the nasty tone?
Michael Spurrier,
Was it nasty? Or was it frustration for someone who either misrepresents, or comments making fun of me? Simon wrote:
You say some really funny things … Well maybe your paranoia about muslims has addled your brain.
You might be one of those people who turns the other cheek. Not everyone is like that.
@ Michael Spurr1er (re: 4:46am)
That you considered D.B.’s tone “nasty” reveals one of two things:
1. You condemned D.B. without reading what Simon wrote (and, possibly, all of what D.B. wrote), thus,
you are a cad.
2. You read all that Simon (and D.B.) wrote and cannot recognize a truth-twister when you see one, thus, you are naïve (and prideful, for you consider that you knew best).
So. Which is it?
Note: I did not include #3, “stupid,” but, that is also a possibility… and for which you would also deserve a sharp-toned reply, here, for the excessive pride which led you to arrogantly assume you knew better.
Why MY “nasty” tone? Because your attack on D.B. for (utlimately) his very accurate representation of the state of affairs at NASA vis a vis “Mus1im self-esteem” was out of line and deserved a firm rebuke.
Your “tone” problem (for, indeed, the problem lies within you, not the speaker) is that you have so little ability to discern a genuine presenter of truth from a poseur who is twisting truth to mislead. A healthy person is angered by disingenuousness and speaks accordingly.
In short: you do not have a tone (of the speaker) problem, you have a comprehension-and-pride OR an ignorance-and-pride OR a sloth problem.
Or…. you are a troll, trying to use mock-dismay to attack the messenger, instead of the message.
‘I’ve never met any scientists not in full support of taking action to curb co2 emissions.’
Its my melancholy duty to inform you that CO2 doesn’t actually cause global warming, the plateau in temperatures for 19 years and massive model failure is proof of that.
All those scientists have been brainwashed by their own propaganda.
“I’ve been at a lot of scientific conferences all around the world and I’ve never met any scientists not in full support of taking action to curb co2 emissions.”
Would you mind providing a list and link to the conferences?
It would be nice to get an impression about what is going on.
Science or Fiction,
Excellent question. I’m looking forward to benben’s response — if any.
benben
You never met a single scientist not in full support of taking action to curb co2 emissions?
Wow. It’s worse that we thought.
My point exactly 🙂
benben,
Why aren’t you answering Science or Fiction’s questions?
Look a few posts up, at 3:18 pm. Those questions.
BenBen
Scientists at conferences know better than to say anything other than ‘I believe we have to take any and all actions to reduce CO2 emissions.’ The terrorising of scientists who don’t leap on the AGW bandwagon is well documented. Even their blogs are harassed.
It takes scientists of Galilean stature to resist the Green Borg. Many will accept a position of not asking embarrassing questions of the others if those others do not look too closely at the work of the many.
Yeah maybe…. But my experience is that in general they’ll have spirited debates about a while host of very controversial topics and nobody shies away from saying what they think. Is not that they’re afraid to say they don’t believe in CAGW, it’s that they just believe it’s true.
I’m not a climate scientist by the way so I’m not talking about scientist with a stake in AGW.
But time and again I am told by congregants of the Church of the Global Warmingists that if you are not a climate scientist then your thoughts on the matter don’t count. So why are you so prolifically posting benben? Here all this time I thought you were a certified minister of the church. So by extrapolation you do not have to be a climate scientist so long as you are reading from the gospel according to Al.
benben says…
All over the world?
Been to many climate change shindigs? Feasted on the taxpayers dime? Racked up those air miles, took a few vacations using free air mileage?
You lead a very insulated life there benben. I run into very few actual scientists who agree with taking action to curb CO2 emissions.
Those that do, admit their total ignorance about global warming and immediately retreat to the great guilt complex. None of which changes their lifestyle at all.
Just asking said scientists just how is global warming going to be stopped by stopping emissions yanks their shorts up tight. Every one I’ve met who bought an eco car did it because of tax benefits and commuter advantages.
What isn’t wrong with the paper? Start with a decided result and then concoct BS to fit the story?
Post the quiz at sites that hate skeptics and loved to pretend stupidity in their stead?
Hide the unknown researcher behind another even more unknown person to further confuse who is ‘conducting’ the survey?
It’s darn hard to find anything right with the paper!
Spoken like a true adherent to the church of the global warming. CAGWism? CAGWians?
The paper describes nothing. It is all fluff and nonsense. Nor did the paper ever truly desire to accomplish anything beyond fabricate followers and disciples where there are very few.
The paper, it’s designers and conductors rank amongst the foulest beings on Earth. Their sheer complicity in the horrors they’ve foisted on mankind is reprehensible.
Science is buggered with both scientific findings and the scientific method set back decades all for money and political gain.
Money that should have solved some of the world’s great problems, wasted upon CAGW falsehoods. Irrational reason after reason piled up to pretend to explain why the Earth was not warming, was not responding as alarmists claim.
Ever more deranged responses and evasions from the religious faithful claiming to offer ‘proof’ when they’re called on nature’s lack of cooperating with the CAGW beasts.
You’re pathetic!
@ benben, March 12, 8:40 om: You said this:
Yeah maybe…. But my experience is that in general they’ll have spirited debates about a while host of very controversial topics and nobody shies away from saying what they think. Is not that they’re afraid to say they don’t believe in CAGW, it’s that they just believe it’s true.
OUCH I didn’t finish me rebuttal, Mods please remove, thanks
Hey, I’m just saying what I have personally observed, nothing more nothing less. Also, it would be nice if you could remain civil. I am always very polite and I would expect you to be capable of the same.
Cheers
Ben
Benben, says, “I’ve been at a lot of scientific conferences all around the world and I’ve never met any scientists not in full support of taking action to curb co2 emissions.”
============================================================
You need to expand your horizons. Tens of thousands of scientists backed by thousands of peer previewed publications see additional CO2 as net beneficial.
BTW exactly zero of the 97 percent consensus studies even begin to address the if additional CO2 is net beneficial, as thousands of observations show, or net harmful as dozens of WRONG IPCC models, all running way to warm, intimate may or might possibly happen sometime in the future.
“The point of discussion should not be this one cook et al. paper.”
No, it really should.
Many people cite a study when it is well known that study protocol was not followed.
These people have no respect for the scientific methodology, period. So it does NOT matter if the study came to correct conclusion. Arriving at the right conclusion by luck doesn’t count.
Mr. Shollenberger’s book no doubt goes into the details Richard Tol discussed (see link below), but the above post gives an impression that Shollenberger focused mainly (or almost exclusively?) on process not content. The main problem with Cook’s fr@ud is that it was a l1e. The papers actually did NOT advocate AGW in the overwhelming percentage of cases. That the reviewers talked to each other, etc… is, indeed, not good, but such behavior would not necessarily have resulted in the grossly inaccurate results. Just an FYI, here, to keep your eye on the ball, folks,. Their intent to deceive by making a knowingly false statement about what those papers said when they knew the public could not reasonably be expected to know the truth is why it was “fr@ud.”
So, don’t let any trolls here get you to bite their red herrings along the lines of, “So, they talked to each other, what’s wrong with that, not that big of a deal.”
(Source: Bob Tisdale on Richard Tol’s expose of Cook, et. al., http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/26/richard-tols-excellent-summary-of-the-flaws-in-cook-et-al-2013-the-infamous-97-consensus-paper/ )
Janice
You usually cut to the nut of stuff pretty quickly, so I’m confused by your statement:…That the reviewers talked to each other, etc… is, indeed, not good, but such behavior would not necessarily have resulted in the grossly inaccurate results….”.
Given the grossly inaccurate results of the study, given the reviewers’ part in the study, what purpose do you think their conversations had? From my perspective, unless Cook simply arbitrarily changed the classifications, exactly this type of communication was required to generate the (highly desired) grossly inaccurate 97% result.
Hi, Mr, Javert,
Thank you for such kind words! Well, I was lazy and wrote sort of “short hand,” I guess. Sorry about that. I meant that while I AGREE that talking amongst themselves was bad and introduced bias, the key was the protocol Cook set up (the papers did not actually advocate AGW, he used a completely baseless selection criteria) which contrived a result that was a blatant l1e. The talking amongst themselves was not a controlling variable, it was subsidiary to the controlling selection protocol. It enabled it, but, was not the main problem (imo).
I noticed that the post’s excerpts from S’s book emphasized the methods and I was, thus, concerned that the book did not, in the end, condemn the horrendously false result per se. And that trolls would say, “Ah, well, they talked with each other, so, maybe that biased the results a LITTLE, but it’s mostly okay.” The 97% claim was not even a little okay — it was VERY wrong.
And, now, I’m probably just making myself more opaque. I’ll try better next time! THANK YOU, SO MUCH, FOR TELLING ME I WASN’T CLEAR! What a fine fellow you are to do that. Sure hope I didn’t blow this opportunity to clarify…
And, btw, I will NEVER read another WORD of that vile Shollenberger after he said (March 12, 12:23pm), “The accusations I made in my post more than justify my remarks,”
about
the quote cited by MikeN, here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/03/12/the-cook-97-consensus-paper-exposed-by-new-book-for-the-fraud-that-it-really-is/comment-page-1/#comment-2164837 .
I don’t care if some of what S writes is truth, that he said something like that about Anthony and, when confronted, doubled down on it, makes him wicked. I won’t listen to a wicked person. Period.
Take care!
Janice
Janice, personally I find you often write is a smart-arsed arrogant tone – whatever the truth of your comment maybe it puts me off reading…..
Yo, Michael Spurrier (4:54am). Listen up. When you’re right, you’re right. What can I say.
Bwah, ha, ha, ha, haaaaaaa!
😉
“but such behavior would not necessarily have resulted in the grossly inaccurate results”*
…but such behavior would necessarily mean they cannot be trusted.
The science process is about the methodology and the TRUST.
Yes, you have used the word several times and in various variants. However most of the references are to accepted conclusions or quotes from other people.
Apologies for the long lines and maybe a few alignment issues below.
Nice job, what program is that from ?
It’s a combination of Python programs and a MySQL database. It’s the infrastructure behind the Tables of Content at my Guide to WUWT on the right-side Nav bar. See http://wermenh.com/wuwt/index.html .
The Python code reads the last two weeks of posts every night, extracting new posts from the previous day and updating comment counts from all the pages. Other code produces the ToCs.
If the comments go away, I’ll only need to read the previous day’s posts!
And Mr. Werme’s expose only supports your assertion, Anthony, of your reluctance to use “fr@ud.” About 23 times out of about 18,000 titles = ~.0013 %.
Way to go, Anthony. Your promoting another’s book on your website is gracious of you. Good choice of subject matter, too!
(further evidence: that I had to spell it “fr@ud.” 🙂 )
About 14,000 posts!
mysql> select count(*) from post;
+———-+
| count(*) |
+———-+
| 14194 |
+———-+
Thanks, Ric Werme. Veeeery eenterestink — and not shtupeet! 🙂
Boy, was my guesstimate way off!
I thought your estimate was pretty good.
Ric Werme! That was very kind of you. Lol, I was off by almost a THIRD. Thanks for that encouragement. Now, I feel a little better about it. I guessed: 10 years x 12 months x 150/month.
Too bad you left out the 20 years or so ending in 2008. But that list probably would have exceeded your bandwidth to send it.
Hi, (again) Ed,
I think Ric Werme was only searching for WUWT article titles, but, YOU ARE RIGHT, no doubt! In fact, just about EVERY article about AGW could use the “f” word:
“Fr@ud in Mann’s Data”
“More Fr@ud out of CRU”
“Fr@ud Again! Polar Bears Are Just Fine”
“Fr@ud, Fr@ud, and More Fr@ud by NOAA Data Twisters”
“(Yawn) Fr@ud. Business as Usual at the Parmesan Data Factory”
“Zzzzzzzz Fr@ud. GISS Where?”
See you on the next thread about the AGW FR@UD. 🙂
Janice
Anthony stated “I can’t recall if I’ve ever used it in a title.” Presumably “at WUWT” was implied. The blog started in 2006, I believe my records are complete.
You need to filter on author too, as it is Anthony who says he’s not used fraud in a title. There are other authors of some of the 14k posts on WUWT.
No need to elaborate on that farce.
It would be like Anthony, deciding to do a similar study, picking the raters from a pool of regular contributors here or his own “sources”.
Use the same papers, only change the wording. Instead of:
“Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that
humans are causing global warming.”
Let’s use this wording:
“Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW XX.X% endorsed the position that humans are causing all of the global warming and natural cycles are not having much, if any effect”
Or:
“Humans are causing all of the warming and climate model projections are reliable and should be used exclusively to determine actions”
Or:
“Carbon dioxide is a pollutant, that is directly contributing to premature deaths and human health issues”
Or:
“Carbon dioxide is only a minor factor in the law of photosynthesis and the increase of CO2 has not been a significant factor in the greening of the planet and exponential growth in crop yields and world food production”
Anyway, instead of complaining about the paper, why not just re-do the analysis? Is just a meta-analysis, shouldn’t take too much time if you have a couple of volunteers, which I’m sure you can find on this blog. Then you’ll have something nobody can ignore 🙂
You mean like this?
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/97_Consensus_Myth.pdf
And it was ignored by all MSM.
Ron
(Great job on killer link)
And I’ll bet it’s ignored by benben
Ron,
That was an excellent link. Thanks.
Of course, it will have no impact whatever on folks like benben, because his mind is closed tighter than a submarine hatch. Confirmation bias rules his thinking, so he rejects anything that could possibly cause him to question his belief system.
Also, we’re still waiting for benben to post info on the ‘consensus’ scientists and meetings he was writing about. I sure hope he wan’t just making it all up.
Benben,
The Cook paper is pointless and seriously flawed. The rating categories are ill defined. Furthermore, “consensus” is a political term, not a scientific one. Consensus is not a tenet of the scientific method. It would be a monumental waste of time to try to “redo” the analysis.
You have obviously not read the paper nor have you read the multitude of valid criticisms of the paper that have been posted here on WUWT.
“why not just re-do the analysis?”
roflmao..
That has to come under the “why bother” category.
It was irrelevant then, its irrelevant now.
(even though its about the only thing that politicians have to hang their AGW on)
You still don’t know that consensus has absolutely nothing to do with proper science, don’t you?
Or are you a sociologist ?
@ Benben
From a scientific point of view the analysis is not interesting at all, not the least.
“Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What are relevant are reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”
– Michael Crichton
“The old scientific ideal of absolutely certain, demonstrable knowledge—has proved to be an idol. The demand for scientific objectivity makes it inevitable that every scientific statement must remain tentative for ever. It may indeed be corroborated, but every corroboration is relative to other statements which, again, are tentative. Only in our subjective experiences of conviction, in our subjective faith, can we be ‘absolutely certain’.”
– Karl Popper
“Walter Sobchak October 7, 2015 at 6:18 pm
The 97% is the most stunningly irrelevant statistic in the world.
In 1931 a book was published in Germany, Hundert Autoren Gegen Einstein (A Hundred Authors Against Einstein), a collection of criticisms of Einstein’s theory of relativity.
When asked about the book, Einstein retorted by saying “Why 100 authors? If I were wrong, then one would have been enough!”
Percentages of scientists are utterly irrelevant to the evaluation of scientific matters.”
Why do I have an image in my mind of “benben” sucking on a baby pacifier? That’s a dummy …
I’m shocked, shocked I tell you, to learn that there is gambling in this establishment.
“such much”
Sure thing, Captain Renault.
What watch?
That Cook’s paper did not show what it purported to show was published previously. That it was methodologically flawed was shown by Tol long ago. To now prove definitively that the authors were duplicitous supports the previous suspicion about same. But it does not change anything in the political battle where 97% is still warmunist ammunition about flat earth society and such.
What is needed are simple irrefutable counter soundbites. 97% should agree climate changes; 5000 years ago the Sahara was savannah, 1000 years ago Vikings grew barley on Greenland, and 300 years ago there were Thames Ice Fairs. 97% should agree renewables are intermittant, so high penetration risks grid reliability without adequate costly backup. 97% agree that Arctic ice has not disappeared as predicted. 97% agree that sea level rise has not accelerated as predicted. …
Unfortunately, Richard Tol published so much nonsense while pointing out some genuine problems with Cook et al that he muddied the waters so much nobody would know what was actually wrong with the paper. As a result, Cook et al have been able to respond to Tol as though doing so rebutted all critics of their paper.
Had Tol focused on issues that actually mattered, such as the misrepresentation of their results, we might already have an easy talking point, the one I pointed out in my book. Namely, that by their own measure, the consensus is:
Slightly rephrased, that is a good talking point. TY
Thank you both!
Keep the eye on the ball. Whether 97% or 7%, using consensus is not valid scientific method, and is, therefore, irrelevant.
And the people who need persuading aren’t listening., anyway.
So I coughed up the C$1.37 and bought the book. I like it.
Brandon please clarify the following summary of Cook’s results:
There’s a 97% consensus supporting the AGW theory, and 1.6% put the human contribution at >50%.
Do you really mean “AGW” in that summary? Because it seems to me that “AGW” means “significant human contribution” but your research shows most of those papers made no statement on human contribution.
Michael D, the AGW theory in and of itself doesn’t place a level of contribution by humans. Humans could theoretically contribute to global warming at a far smaller level than other, natural factors might. Endorsing AGW merely means endorsing the idea humans have had some role, not that humans have had a large role.
Though really, the % contribution approach used by Cook et al is a bit silly as what actually matters is the absolute contribution. If scientists largely agreed humans had caused, say, .5C of warming, that would be good to know. It would be good to know whether there had been .8C of total warming or 1.2C of total warming. Yet if there had only been .8C of warming, the human contribution would be more than 50% while if there had been 1.2C of warming the human contribution would be less than 50%.
Then you have other problems. For instance, suppose someone believes humans have caused more than 50% of the actual warming but believes that amount of warming has been exaggerated? A person might believe there has only been .5C of warming, with the rest being due to data errors. That would be worth knowing. The approach used by Cook el al could never capture information like that. And don’t get me started on how the % contribution will inherently vary depending on time period chosen.
There are a lot of details and nuances one could examine when trying to understand what people believe. Cook et al initially planned to try to look at at least some of those nuances. If they had followed through with their initial plan, they would have got results like those I describe. Instead, they pretended there is only one question there can be a “consensus” on in order to hide how embarrassing their results are.
Hmm. We can’t avoid the fact that the “A” in “AGW” means “Anthropogenic” which of course means “human caused.” I think most people, perhaps even Cook, would agree that there was widespread GW and sea-level rise 9000 years ago at the end of the last ice age and that it was not AGW, even if the campfires at Gobleki Tepi put some CO2 into the air at that time. So I guess I always understood that promoting AGW meant promoting the idea that humans are the primary cause.
I guess you’re saying that believing in AGW means believing that AGW can or could cause some global worming, even a small amount??
Thanks for the book, by the way…
That’s pretty much right Michael D. Whether one thinks the position is defensible, or even sensible, there are people who believe humans have some role but only a small one. Cook et al explicitly sought to incorporate that possibility in their analysis when designing their rating system. When one uses the standards they initially listed, one gets the results I described.
Personally, I think most people will conflate AGW with the idea humans are the primary culprit in their minds, but for whatever reason, Cook et al sought out to distinguish the two. In the beginning. By the end, when they knew distinguishing between the two would produce embarrassing results, they decided to not distinguish between the two positions and instead start conflating them.
The part I find most remarkable, however, is how Dana Nuccitelli was incredibly viscous about me applying this standard when I did so after the paper was published. If you haven’t seen it already, you’ll see me discuss it in the book. Nuccitelli viscously criticized me for applying a standard he himself had suggested be used when coming up with the rating criteria he personally designed. That level of hypocrisy to achieve their 97% message is staggering.
And I was glad to write it. I just hope people enjoy it!
Brandon S, thanks for your work. I would like to highlight one often overlooked message that your recent comment above illustrate by their lack of addressing a central failure of the deeply flawed 97 percent studies. Even ignoring the major flaws and biases, they do not address the benefits vs. the purported harms, period. There is no opposite to the Oregon petition statement from skeptics, where the observed benefits vs. the missing harms are clearly illustrated.
David A, interestingly, that topic comes up a little in the book as I highlight how the tweet from not-Obama claimed the Skeptical Science consensus paper found there was a consensus global warming is dangerous. Which is complete bunk, of course. How dangerous global warming might be is probably the central issue when it comes to policy debates, but it’s not one even remotely examined by this paper (or many others discussing the “consensus”).
Let’s not forget that the Introduction in Cook’s paper actually says:
We examined a large sample of the scientific literature on global CC, published over a 21 year period, in order to determine the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW (anthropogenic global warming, or AGW).
Clearly under his own stated objective, he only found 1.6%.
But Co-author of the study Mark Richardson, from the University of Reading, goes one step further saying:
“We want our scientists to answer questions for us, and there are lots of exciting questions in climate science. One of them is: are we causing global warming? We found over 4000 studies written by 10 000 scientists that stated a position on this, and 97 per cent said that recent warming is mostly man made.”
http://www.iop.org/news/13/may/page_60200.html
Clearly he lied.
It would be interesting to see how many public statements one could find which were clearly lies like that. I used to have a list of ones from I think six different authors of the paper, but my old laptop died, and I never bothered to look again.
At some point you have to wonder if they’ve repeated these lies so much they’ve actually come to believe them.
Brandon Shollenberger,
I bought and read your new ebook.
It is an excellent reference work on John Cook’s lack of integrity on both the professional level and personal level.
John
I’m glad to hear it. I had planned to write this some time back, but I kept putting it off because I knew I’d have to write it in the first person, and I was really worried about how that’d turn out. I was really worried that’d put too much focus on me instead of the behavior of those who are behind the “consensus” message.
Ok, so we all know Cook’s paper was contrived BS but rather than a group of sceptics sounding off in their own echo chamber it needs taking to an official (and neutral) court where there can be a definitive judgement. UK MP’s, activists and journalists routinely use or refer to ‘97%’. Accept that this claim has stuck and needs to be debunked properly.
..Judith Curry made it onto Fox News, the most watched news channel/website in the world ! Hey, it’s a start !
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/09/28/new-low-in-science-criminalizing-climate-change-skeptics.html
…Or this…
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2016/03/02/leonardo-dicaprio-preaches-environmental-responsibility-but-does-practice-it/
..Or this….
https://science.house.gov/news/in-the-news/washington-times-editorial-doctored-science-global-warming
…Slowly but surely ! ( please don’t call me Shirley, that was my mother ! )
If Fox is ‘the most watched … channel in the world’ does that make them the Mainstream Media? If they are the most watched that does connote mainstream.
Lou, haven’t checked in a couple of years but let’s say, for shites and giggles, that Fox News Special Report draws 3 to 5 million viewers on a typical weeknight between 6 – 7 PM EST. The collective of ABNBCBS half hour segments draws 6 – 8 million viewers each or between 18 and 24 million viewers get their evening news from one of those three. That is why they are considered the Mainstream plus they carry the water everyday for what the NYTimes has deemed news worthy so for example you are not likely to hear countermanding versions of the CAGW narrative. I don’t believe that ABNBCBs or the NYTimes have given any press coverage to the pause in Global Warming of the past 20 years. They still think the debate is over as if science was an ideological struggle.
ok, so then Fox is not the ‘most watched …channel/website in the world!’ as Marcus stated. Thanks. And every known way of global measurement, inc satellite UAH and RSS, all show the planet is now at its warmest recorded temp. All even higher than 1998. How then is there ‘no warming for 20 years’ if temp is at its highest?
FOX is the most watched CABLE news network which is not part of the MSM. I am sure that information is lost on those, such as yourself, who wish to play games with words.
According to actual data the climate cycles. The fact that you make out that the past year was the warmest in the record book of 140 years of data gathering for a planet that has been orbiting the Sun (primary source of global warming) for 4.5 Billion years, makes you an Alarmist Maximus.
According to alarmist lore we are all facing an end of days scenario because the GSTs have been on the rise in direct correlation to an increase in trace amounts of CO2, an essential element for life on earth that alarmist label a pollutant. Since actual temperatures have not risen steadily for the past 19 years agents of alarm decided to alter historical data records. Games with numbers.
“the ABNBCBs or the NYTimes … They still think the debate is over as if science was an ideological struggle.”
You are mixing up your metaphors Bill. Ideology is a system of ideas or ideals, Science is a gathering of facts or knowledge. No one disputes the planet is warming, not even UAH or RSS. All of the facts gathered show that. Which is what Science is, the gathering of facts. What ABC or NBC or the NYTimes show are the scientific facts, not an ‘ideological struggle’ of ideas or ideals. Science is based on facts, ideology on ideas or ideals.
I believe in science Lou. I just don’t see it practiced in the advancement of the ideologically driven reporting of CAGW by the Mainstream Media. If it were science, then they would invite discovery not declare that climate change is all mans fault and it is a debate that has been won. Debating is an ideological device. But you keep telling yourself whatever you need to in order to get you through you day.
Is this what is known as “Cook-ing the Books”?
Or, “Cook(ing) the Bo(ll)o(c)ks”, perhaps.
Huh. I just realized something like three of my comments haven’t shown up and aren’t makred as in moderation. I wonder what’s causing that. And more importantly, how I might be able to avoid it in the future.
Okay, that’s weird. My comments didn’t appear when Ilogged in via one of the options below, but when I simply typed an e-mail address and my name, they did. Apparently this site’s configurations think logging in makes me more likely to be a spammer!
… ” ONE of the options ” ??? I only get ONE !
No, it doesn’t AFAIK, no idea what’s going on there, but I occasionally have same problem. I look for a comment. but can’t find it. Try a browser cache refresh that usually does it for me.
I’m not worried about it. I just thought it funny the comments submitted while logged in didn’t show up yet ones I submitted while not logged in did. It seemed the exact opposite of how things should work.
Filters are funky things, and I’m sure it could happen for any number of reasons. I just had to share the humor of it.
“Huh. I just realized something like three of my comments haven’t shown up and aren’t makred as in moderation. I wonder what’s causing that. ”
—————
How are you holding your mouth?
Do you really want to know ??
Could you clarify that Brandon e-mailed this, and not that you copied it from somewhere? I was under the impression that Brandon wanted you and other readers of this blog to ‘go die in a fire’.
From his blog:
“At this point I can only say Watts is either a deranged sociopath with no sense of morality who derives sexual pleasure by spreading lies to the greatest number of people possible or is an idiot savant whose one field of mastery is deluding himself into believing whatever idiotic things he finds most convenient at any given moment.”
..Ah ha !! The Cocka-roach shows his true form !!
..Edited version ….
Ah ha, the little Kocka-Ro@ch shows his true form !!! Nothin’ a little Raid won’t fix !
My true form? I’ve always been up-front with my opinions. While those opinions have grown increasingly negative in regard to this site, that doesn’t change anything about this post as far as I am concerned. It certainly doesn’t change anything about the eBook I wrote.
I e-mailed people I thought might be interested in this eBook to let them know I had published it. And as long as people want to discuss it, I’m happy to wherever that may be. That’s all there is to it as far as I’m concerned. I don’t see any benefit in going beyond that.
Brandon S…..I assumed he ( MikeN ) was talking about a different Brandon the posts here, but, if you admit to stating the following … ““At this point I can only say Watts is either a deranged sociopath with no sense of morality who derives sexual pleasure by spreading lies to the greatest number of people possible or is an idiot savant whose one field of mastery is deluding himself into believing whatever idiotic things he finds most convenient at any given moment.”, then you are definitely a Kocka-Ro@ch hiding behind the dark……
Well……
Shollenberger read MikeN’s comment to respond to him at 10:57am. S sidestepped the vile quote. If YOU had not said such a revolting thing about Anthony wouldn’t YOU correct the record as soon as possible?
I’ll check back to see what S says. If he says nothing about it, I’ll take that for an endorsement of the words quoted and conclude that S should be ignored from now on.
..These old frozen bones agree with you 100% Janice !
You guys can believe whatever you want, but if you read the post I wrote rather than just that single paragraph, you will at least see why I said what I said. The accusations I made in my post more than justify my remarks, and as far as I know, nobody has disputed any of them.
But that’s also not important for this particular blog post. Like it or not, people who disagree with one another can talk to one another. People who don’t have respect for one another can talk to one another. Refusing to talk to people simply because they said something you dislike is not how society works. Or at least, it’s not how society should work.
..Brondon S…..Scientist attack the SCIENCE …..Trolls attack the scientist !
Brandon Shollenberger
You seem to be in a trap of your own making. Your analysis may indeed be accurate, but your lunatic, ISIS-like “die in fire” statement cast a dark cloud over your maturity and judgement.
Like most other people, I have way too little bandwidth to perform due diligence on every piece of material I read (especially on the web). Yea, you’re not on my reading list.
Chip Javert, I said many of the same things with less, or even no, rhetoric in the past. The same people who won’t listen given the rhetoric I used now didn’t listen then. The idea my choice of rhetoric is going to have any real effect is… unlikely. I’ll probably be described and treated the exact same way I was before I wrote that.
But hey, when a blogger promotes and then hides illegal activity, feel free to ignore it because the person who points it out is oh so mean. Of course, while you do that, please remember this site routinely runs posts by Tim Ball, whose rhetoric is every bit as vile as anything I wrote in that single post. Only, he uses it constantly whereas I used it once.
MikeN, I did e-mail this to him. I’ve also e-mailed things to John Cook before. If I were given the opportunity, I’d even write a guest post at Skeptical Science. I firmly believe whatever one’s feelings toward other people, you should never refuse to engage with them outright. And if I find information I think a person would be interested in that I feel ought to be brought to more people’s attention, I’ll certainly let them know.
That’s why I’ve been willing to inform people like Bob Ward and John Abraham of things when I discovered them. As much as we may not see eye to eye on most things, there are some topics we have common ground on. On those topics, why not talk to them?
(For what it’s worth, I e-mailed the same thing to about a dozen different people. All I did was look at my e-mail address book for people who seemed like they might be interested and wouldn’t view it as spam. That was all I went off.)
..Ummm, how does that excuse justify calling Anthony Watts ” A deranged sociopath with no sense of morality who derives sexual pleasure by spreading lies to the greatest number of people possible ” ?? And here I thought my mind was twisted !
excuse / justify
…All you are doing Brandon, is begging people, somebody, anybody, to come read your blog !
@ Brandon Shollenberger ,
you sure know to make enemies.
That I do. Incredibly, all it takes is to state the truth. If you refuse to toe the line and remain silent for the “right” people, you can make everyone hate you.
Marcus, you’re right. Kudos to Anthony Watts for giving BS a forum after those nasty words. It would have been very easy to just ignore him. But Anthony is all about getting to the truth of the matter, not settling scores (like many others would do, given an opportunity like this).
A stand-up guy would reciprocate. Maybe even apologize. Wouldn’t you agree, Brandon?
Brandom Shollenberger
You’re still claiming the statement calling Anthony Watts ” A deranged sociopath with no sense of morality who derives sexual pleasure by spreading lies to the greatest number of people possible ” is telling the truth or is an example of not seeing eye-to-eye?
You have some weird personal value system.
Marcus, Chip, Brandon wrote a longer post that he thinks Anthony is promoting scientific rubbish as long as it is critical of warmers, even if it is dishonest. He was particularly critical of Doug Keenan’s changing of the terms of his 100k bet.
I found it surprising that he would then submit something here. Especially since it would mean he is associating his own work as something intellectually weak that Anthony Watts publishes because it critiques the alarmists.
As alluded to by others, the essential point is that the “study” only purports to show consensus that there is *some* (any) impact of anthropogenic CO2. Yet that has never been in question. You can include essentially all skeptics in that 97% figure. And most skeptics I think would agree that a modestly warmed and C02-enriched environment could well be beneficial on balance.
The issue instead is whether the catastrophic run-away AGW scenarios programmed into computer models are realistic and whether trillions of dollars should be spent combating it (and whether hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest in Africa and Asia should be thrown under the bus in its name); and the “study” has nothing to see about that.
Anyone who cites the 97% figure in defence of the CAGW theory is either wholly ignorant or is engaging in fraudulent bait-and-switch.
…97% of people that believe in Catastrophic anthropegenic Glo.Bull Warming all live in hot, arid parts of America ..Send them to Northern Canada, as a holiday, during winter for a few days and they will be singing a different tune( if they still can )..I was a non union Iron worker for twenty years..They have no idea what ” Freezing Your Nuts Off ” really means ! As a Northern Canadian, I can tell you clearly, I am tired of freezing my nuts off !! Bring on that Glo.Bull Warming !! Quick !
no harsh word anthony, i suspected it from the beginning as only 9 or 11 papers in total are talking about an AMO or PDO two oscillations known to have an impact on climate.
it’s like pronging 11000 sceptical papers of which just 1.6% says that there is no global warming and say “97% of the sceptics believe that there is no global warming”
it is a fraud point blank
and i think someone is getting “Cooked” /sarc
Fraud is committed by cooking the books/data/facts…. Cook et al and fellow crooker,s know the recipe very well.
I suspect it is taught in at all the best Climate courses and institutions, along with the art of writing successful grant seeking proposals. Warmist exist in the world of shady dealings, data manipulation, criminal intent and lots and lots of nods and winks are all the norm of the givers and takers!
TG
Legal definition of fraud (http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/fraud):
A false representation of a matter of fact—whether by words or by conduct, by false or misleading allegations, or by concealment of what should have been disclosed—that deceives and is intended to deceive another so that the individual will act upon it to her or his legal injury.
Fraud is commonly understood as dishonesty calculated for advantage. A person who is dishonest may be called a fraud. In the U.S. legal system, fraud is a specific offense with certain features.
Fraud must be proved by showing that the defendant’s actions involved five separate elements: (1) a false statement of a material fact,(2) knowledge on the part of the defendant that the statement is untrue, (3) intent on the part of the defendant to deceive the alleged victim, (4) justifiable reliance by the alleged victim on the statement, and (5) injury to the alleged victim as a result.
97% looks like a duck & quacks like a duck…
Frederik Michiels
March 12, 2016 at 11:50 am
” 9 or 11 papers ‘
OMG..It’s a 9/11 conspiracy !!
( sorry, couldn’t help myself )
ROTFL 🙂
For the public and politicians’ perception a big part of the problem I think is the terms are ill-defined and the proponents have brilliantly used equivocation and a trail of non sequiturs to maintain credibility for energy policy prescriptions that, say, forty years ago would have been immediately recognised as insane.
It is clear that the 97% of scientists figure is an exaggeration. The issue is how much of one. It is also clear to me you can buy a lot of scientist for 4.7 billion dollars year (the amount of Federal budget dollars allocated to pro AGW research). I believe the percentage of scientists doing pro AGW research and therefore appearing to BELIEVE AGW is a purchased percentage. Remember next to sex, money is the most power force in our modern society.
Everything these alarmists say is fully substantiated by their own opinion! (That’s from a placard on one of my shelves.) Their “science” is comprised of obfuscation, distraction, denial, and outright lies.
Yea good ol Steven Goddard was right after all beware if Sanders or clintoris wins this site will be closed down, we are entering dark times I hope to XXXX that CRuz wins its the only thing that will save America
Purchased Brandon Shollenberger’s series of three books at Amazon.
Thanks! I hope you enjoy them. The style of this latest book is quite a bit different than that of the other two, and they may be a bit more dry, but I think they convey a greater amount of information.
translation: Brandon does’n think he went off half-cocked and doesn’t remember wishing that readers of his material die in a fire (Anthony’s readers, yes; Brandon’s readers & cash cows, no).
I remember what I wrote in that post just fine. I stand by every word of it. If anybody actually had a response to the accusations and arguments I made in it, I’m sure they’d post it. Instead, we just get people whining that I wasn’t nice.
You can do that if you’d like, but personally, I’d rather try to be productive.
I’m not at all happy with Brandon’s choice of words, but in this case, getting the word out on this superseded my disgust with his labeling.
I’ve been called worse. Once some fool claimed I have sex with farm animals.
I note that the co-author Mark Richardson has left University of Reading and joined NASA’s JPL working on the ‘Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2’.
We may now have a satellite to be suspicious of.
No doubt about that. OCO-2 were supposed to publish map results. Haven’t, since apparently not what they wanted. Guest post here previously from somone who wrote a good enough mapping algorithm and thereby displayed some of the problems. CO2 not well mixed, and anomalous high over Africa. So much for AGW.
ristvan said:
OCO-2 were supposed to publish map results. Haven’t, since apparently not what they wanted.
That’s what I suspected would happen when it was first announced. That was after the Japanese satellite failure.
We can be sure that if the data supported their narrative, it would be plastered all over the climate journals. But we don’t hear about it; the crickets are too loud.
Yes they did. It’s just that they were focusing on a whole year’s data. the New Horizons folks have a much better commitment toward getting Pluto photos out to the public ASAP. (They’re still coming in.)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/11/04/oco-2-orbiting-carbon-observatory-2-the-mission-has-released-an-animation/
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/oco2/index.html
The scientific criticism of Cook’s study may be valid, but it won’t be effective. Cook’s ambition is not to sway or impress a scientific audience. Instead, his study was designed for the very purpose of being abridged, misrepresented, and abused for political gain. Right from the start, it was propaganda dressed up as science. It’s an extension of what he has long been doing on his SKS web site, where in each of his posts he always prefixes his side of the argument with the phrase: “What the science says.”
Cook is a gifted and effective propagandist, and this is how he became popular with the CAGW crowd. Judging by his sartorial preferences, he takes pride in his chosen profession.
Which is why upthread I suggested the 97% consensus antidote was irrefutable political sound bites, not more technical study deconstructions. Perhaps you could helpfully suggest some?
So far, more than 97% of all doomsday predictions have failed.
.”Scientists attack the SCIENCE …..Trolls attack the scientist !” (slightly edited for grammar)
Oh how I wish I could agree with that! But the evidence of decades of observing science in action puts lie to the assertion. One famous physicist said something like to be ahead of your time by too many years was to be labeled a crackpot rather than win a Nobel. (no time to look that quote up just now)
Human nature does not change just because a guy puts on his lab coat and enters the lab. In fact, I think the special language of academic attack may be even worse than the way Bubba down at the pub verbally attacks his mother-in-law. Bubba is very plain, open, and honest you see.
Science should be one thing, but is most often something entirely different.
Yes, and the whole “Science” (or is it sciences?) is an honor system.
And it’s BROKEN.
And it will be slightly more broken if people here insist that not following very stupid study protocol is not that bad, cause very stupid.
The eternal conflict of Ego and Id . . .
Dawn, 26C and raining, thank God for Climate Change! I just put the air on.
It is Cook’s methodology that is the primary fraud here by pretending to be objective. Imagine that I wanted to prove that “ancient aliens” existed. Under Cook’s methodology I would only consider papers with the words “ancient aliens” in the title, and I would only want the opinions of self described “ancient alien theorists”. You would have to expect that the percentage of believers would be extremely high.
It can’t be repeated often enough…
“There’s a 97% consensus supporting the AGW theory, and 1.6% put the human contribution at >50%.”
I agree wholeheartedly. I think it’s a perfect, simple explanation of why the Skeptical Science consensus message is bunk.
“There’s a 97% consensus supporting the AGW theory, and 1.6% put the human contribution at >50%.”
As written, this sentence doesn’t make sense. By definition, the human contribution to AGW is 100%. I presume the 1.6% saying the contribution is more than 50% is in reference to change in some metric (termperature?) over some period of time (since industrial revolution?) versus natural variability?
DH, I just tried to post a slight mod that got lost in (I suppose) old iPad OS space, which, had it survived, would have addressed your excellent comment. The thought was deep enough, the subject (IMO) important enough, to merit a possible much longer guest post to offer to AW. I will start that tomorrow and see where it leads. There are several threads to weave together that might sharpen the point of the skeptical spear against the warmunist mastadon.
davidmhoffer,
Indeed. However, as written in AR5, the attribution statement is:
More than half of the observed increase in global mean surface temperature (GMST) from 1951 to 2010 is very likely due to the observed anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations.
Cook et al (2015) define the “consensus position” on AGW thus …
We examined a large sample of the scientific literature on global CC, published over a 21 year period, in order to determine the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW (anthropogenic global warming, or AGW).
… which is compatible with the AR5 statement. Anyone who actually reads Cook (2015) and cares to honestly evaluate what it says will find this statement:
Among papers expressing a position on AGW, an overwhelming percentage (97.2% based on self-ratings, 97.1% based on abstract ratings) endorses the scientific consensus on AGW.
The close agreement between the two figures suggests that Shollenberger’s accusations of “cheating” on the part of those who rated the abstracts, and “deception” on the part of Cook et al. are unfounded and therefore lacking merit. It’s at least as dubious as pretending the IPCC attribution statement makes the logical error of assigning < 100% of anthropogenic forcings to AGW when it clearly does not.
Brandon Gates, rather than rely on vague innuendo, would you perhaps care to explain how anything I’ve said is wrong? People pointing out:
Should perhaps be written as:
Does nothing to suggest any of the points I’ve made are wrong. Neither does the fact you can find two values in the Cook et al paper which are approximately equal when both values are generated via the same dishonest conflation I highlighted. That Cook et al repeated a dishonest approach when analyzing a second set of data does not make their first use of it any less dishonest.
If you want to focus on the fact I literally quoted one of the authors of the paper, and that original quotation was somewhat imprecise, you can, but… I don’t know what you think that would accomplish. I think you might accomplish a lot more if you tried actually addressing the things I’ve said.
Brandon Schollenberger,
I already provided the relevant quote:
Among papers expressing a position on AGW, an overwhelming percentage (97.2% based on self-ratings, 97.1% based on abstract ratings) endorses the scientific consensus on AGW.
Emphasis added as you apparently missed it the first time.
On the planet I inhabit, when researchers explain their methods and categorizations in detail, I don’t consider it dishonest. Why should your own subjective categorization be any more valid than theirs? Since when is a difference of opinion an a priori example of malfeasance?
Already done, twice now. When were you planning to extend the IPCC and Cook et al the same courtesy?
Brandon Gates, I’m at a loss as to what point you think you’re making. I honestly have no idea what your response to the first quote in your comment is supposed to mean because it doesn’t seem to have any connection to reality. You bolded something and said I apparently missed it, yet… I didn’t. You do nothing to make it appear I did. You don’t do anything to explain how what you bolded has anything to do with anything I said. Then based on this, you say:
The reality is Cook et al didn’t do this. One of the central points I’ve made is the descriptions they gave of their methodology were false, as well as how they described the results generated by that methodology. I went so far as to demonstrate this by quoting the second author of the paper on how to describe their results, a quote you criticized me for posting… even though it was an author of the paper who I was quoting.
I honestly have no idea what you think you’re saying. If you think I have said something wrong, I suggest you quote what I said and explain how it is wrong with sufficient detail or reference for people to verify what you say. Until you do so, it will just continue to look like you haven’t even read what you’re criticizing.
[SNIP – come up with a better argument than “you are being obtuse”. Stop wasting everybody’s time – Anthony
Anthony,
You have a category for tagging posts “fraud”. Two articles of the five tagged “fraud” contain the word in the title:
—————
UK Conference of Science Journalists: ‘institutions unlikely to fairly investigate allegations of fraud made against their own’
Anthony Watts / July 1, 2012
Guest post by Douglas J. Keenan
The 2012 UK Conference of Science Journalists was held on June 25th. The programme is available on the UKCSJ web site. The conference is intended for science journalists, as its name says; I attended at the kind invitation of the President of the Association of British Science Writers, Connie St Louis.
I went to two of the sessions. The first was a session was entitled “What can journalists do to uncover scientific misconduct?”. The second was the plenary at the end. What follows is my perspective on those sessions.
—————
Euro Carbon Market Fraud – trade suspended
Anthony Watts / January 20, 2011
From the Telegraph: European carbon market suspended over fraud fears
The European carbon market has been thrown into turmoil after the scandal-hit scheme was suspended for a week over suspicions of fraud.
—————
I would say you’re not exactly shy about using the word, or allowing guest authors to use it. You’re certainly not shy about alleging that climate scientists are politically motivated to reach laughably wrong conclusions. And you are of course quite vocal when they respond to your vacuous accusations of “mendacity” with “denigration”.
In short, self-awareness does not appear to be one of your strong points. Your sudden aversion to using the word “fraud” is but another example of it.
BG says:
You’re certainly not shy about alleging that climate scientists are politically motivated to reach laughably wrong conclusions.
It waddles like a duck. It has feathers. It quacks like a duck.
It’s a duck.
And after posting hundreds of thousands of words expressing your true belief in dangerous manmade global warming, you could easily put together an article of your own, instead of criticizing what other writers say.
I know why you don’t: your true belief would get cut to ribbons in short order. Because when it comes right down to the nitty gritty, you have no solid measurements, facts, or evidence to support your belief. You just believe. That’s enough for you, but it’s not enough for skeptics of that particular scare. We need the facts and measurements that your side hasn’t been able to produce.
PS, whoops, ignore: “Quoting the Hydro International news blurb:” Text editor user error.
dbstealey,
Quoting the Hydro International news blurb:
Yeah, that’ll hold up in court.
In other news: if it flaps its arms furiously trying to fly, it might be an ostrich. OTOH, one actually begins to wonder if dodos are really extinct.
Brandon Gates
I’m unclear on how comprehensive WUWT’s category for tagging posts “fraud” is, and I don’t know how many posts WUWT has over the review period (>10,000?).
In some of the material you reference, WUWT appeared to use “fraud” in the title because the attached third party material used the term (i.e.:the term was not initiated by WUWT). Even so 2/10,000 = 0.02%.
However, finding 2 articles with fraud in the title definitely does not support your judgement & charge of “self-awareness does not appear to be one of [Anthony’s] strong points. Your sudden aversion to using the word “fraud” is but another example of it.”
Geez. We got some serious nit-picking going on.
[snip – you’re done with this, the point’s been made. there is no need to clutter up the thread with a multi-page comment -mod]
mod,
[snip. –mod]
[it was a huge amount of text for a comment – all decisions are final -mod]
Please take the time to read my comments. Especially http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/03/12/the-cook-97-consensus-paper-exposed-by-new-book-for-the-fraud-that-it-really-is/#comment-2164766
Sigh.
Anthony has often discouraged people from claiming fraud without good supporting evidence. Pretty decent for a “deranged sociopath,” wouldn’t you say?
[snip -mod]
Brandon,
We are all aware that this site shines a light in some very dark corners, so why do you try to make something of the practice? Are you defending “deliberate scientific malfeasance”, or arguing against its exposure? What?
Your denigration of our host is not surprising, in light of the company you keep over at that stalker/hate blog, neither is the fact that you come here feigning distaste for use of terms like “fraud”, for the same reason. We have a good picture of you already, but do keep filling in any blanks for new readers.
Your off- topic thread bombing diversion didn’t work this time, but your self- exposure (again) was almost worth your appearance.
Alan Robertson,
Splash one irony meter. I don’t have any distaste for the word “fraud” itself, and never feigned such. As even my subsequent (shorter) comments have been binned, it’s pretty clear that the length of the original comment in this subthread wasn’t so unwelcome as the content. I find this more than a little amusing.
I wouldn’t wish to diminish your ability to think for me better than I can for myself. By all means, carry on with your self-soothing fantasies.
The only way to win the debate is to be honest, and to be honest, you have to explain pseudoscientists are perverting climate science for political and economic gain. That’s fraud, so you have to use the word.
Brandon: In your Amazon summary you say, “….it shows the tactics dangers of consensus messaging, …” I think this should probably be “… it shows the tactics AND dangers of …”
Right you are. Thanks for catching that! I submitted an update to fix that error, It may take a few hours to go live though.
Seeing as though master-bates likes giving it ,From my readings of WUWT you seem to be one of few that want to scorn personal slanders/insults on someone trying to put a fair balanced point of view on this subject .
Sorry I can’t read your bog still trying to get through ” green eggs and ham” and can’t really afford laying out 99 cents on a personal opinion .
As is her wont, Ms HotWhopper [Miriam O’Brien -mod] has a raging critique that avoids engaging with the contents of Mr Shollenberger’s book, while deleting comments that might steer the discussion into more intellectual waters.
Astute readers are aware that denizens of that site are in attendance, this thread.
I thought her post was rather funny myself. I like how she claims I hacked into forums at one point. Where does she get this stuff from?
(Also, really, if I’m just a script kiddie repeatedly breaking into Skeptical Science, why don’t they stop me? I mean, getting beat repeatedly by a script kiddie would seem rather embarrassing.)
Surely since belief in AGW is part of the examination to be a climate scientist the percentage belief is irrelevant. It is like saying that the jury we selected from those tested on their belief of the defendant’s guilt and passed with the highest marks found him guilty so he had a fair trial.
Actually, people who have no opinion on whether or not something is true at all may still examine the potential effects it might have. For instance, a person might be interested in the potential effects global warming could have on the local ecological systems they are involved in. Such a person might study what effects a rise in temperature for their area would have on the various life in that area.
The remarkable thing is that would likely be rated as endorsing the “consensus” by the Skeptical Science crowd.
While its that given that all he as they all he can sell is BS , you have to admit Cook has sold his BS well.
And now its part of ‘the causes ‘ dogma you could prove it worthless 97 times and it would still make no difference, I bet some who defend it endlessly have never even read it for consider the issue around it .
While the personal front given its made a ‘little man ‘ big then the author can never back down , for like Mann his only choice is to go ‘all-in ‘ . So although much satisfaction may be gained in taking it apart , again, in reality the story has moved on , and has ever its not about the ‘science’ of facts . The fact this claim did not match the sniff test from day one , the chances of honestly getting 97% again are virtual zero , means nothing .
Like others you best you can hope for is for Cook to live long enough to see that work held up has the joke and example of poor science in actions, in effect their legacy will be a ‘how not too ‘
Cook’s co-authors discussed abstracts with each other and looked up full papers but these affect only a small fraction of their data. Their claim that they found a ‘97% consensus’ is word-play, and the fact that they keep propagating the figure puts their actions in the realm of fraud. The paper itself, however, I am not sure, represents fraud. Cook and his friends say 97% of those that took a position’ support a consensus but in their study abstracts were assigned positions by the volunteers. Even if the claim is made that people secretly supported a purported consensus which the authors divined by reading their abstracts, it stands to reason that all papers from the mitigation and impacts literature would do the same, and therefore James Powell’s classification method is more correct than Cook’s.
The real false claim is the one supporting the derivation of the 97% figure from the paper’s data. While there are some serious anomalies in the abstract classification data, the authors did not conspire to create fraudulent or false data.
Whether or not the authors conspired to create fraudulent or false data has nothing to do with anything I said in my e-mail or eBook. I believe I made it quite clear the fraud was in the Skeptical Science group intentionally misrepresenting both what they did and what their results were. I don’t know of anyone who has been discussing anything but that so I’m not sure what you might be responding to.
Title of post:
Cook 97 Consensus paper exposed by new book for the fraud that it really is.
“I believe I made it quite clear the fraud was in the Skeptical Science group intentionally misrepresenting…”
Title of post:
Cook 97 consensus *paper* exposed by new book for the fraud that it really is.
When “scientists ” must support the scary global warming industry as a condition of receiving grants and other funding they cease to be scientists . The scientific community openly acknowledges this pressure to perform like trained seals or their funding is cut . As a result there is no “scientific consensus ” and never was . Who’s payroll was Cook on ?
“John Cook is the Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at The University of Queensland. He created the website Skeptical Science.com, which won the 2011 Australian Museum Eureka Prize for the Advancement of Climate Change Knowledge. In 2015, John was elected as a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, who are selected for their ‘distinguished contributions to science and scepticism’. John co-authored the college textbook Climate Change Science: A Modern Synthesis and the book Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand. He won an award for Best Australian Science Writing for 2014, published by UNSW.”
In these trials it states that Q.U was involved in taking measurements of the precipitation enhanced by ATLANT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWXjbQV3alY I asked John Crook If he had any info on whether ATLANT was running in the trial area’s at the time of the 2010/11 QLD floods. The noise from the crickets was deafening ,not a word. I guess he to has been CONd Censless as well. Jay Anderson had no joy getting this paper included in the inquiry. http://www.floodcommission.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/file/0011/4223/Anderson_Jay.pdf When the system starts F***ing it’s own people over , it’s time for a new system . Where’s Robin Hood when we need him?
A lie is, by definition, an attempt to deceive people. Saying something like 97% of some category ignored the truth that is was 97% of 77 papers, not 97% of 3000+papers. So the 97% figure is a flat out lie.
Everybody involved in science, and any of the soft sciences in particular, should be required to read “How to Lie with Statistics” by David Huff(1954). It’s been reprinted many times because it is a clear, humourous, and concise description of how statistics are manipulated to misrepresent the facts. It’s readily available for as little as $4.
This book is currently Amazon’s number 1 best seller in Weather!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/14484/ref=sr_bs_1_14484_1
Congratulations Brandon.
It’s also Amazon’s current number 1 best seller in:
Environmental Science
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/digital-text/158678011/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_kstore_1_6_last
Climatology
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/16053231/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_b_2_4_last
One-Hour Science & Math Short Reads
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/digital-text/8624196011/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_kstore_3_4_last
Science is not a democracy. Theories are not validated by scientists voting on them. The laws of science are not some form of legislation. The existence of such a very non scientific study is evidence that SKS in not really a scientific site but rather a political site. Having to use the consensus argument is evidence that there is something very wrong with the AGW conjecture.
Therein lies the salient point of all the back and forth on this comment board. Once upon a time there was a “Consensus” that the world was flat and that the Sun revolved around the earth. 1000 years from now society will laugh at the census takers of the early 21st century who insisted that carbon is poison and CO2 is a pollutant caused by man and responsible for catastrophic global warming.
Thats the point, Copernicus was a scientist. The people who claimed the earth was not flat, and the sun did not revolve around the earth were the Scientists, just like the people today who say the planet is not cooling are the Scientists. The Scientists were right then so why would people in the future laugh at what the Scientists say now? The Scientists were not wrong.
Lou, lou, lou, you have your history twisted which is often the case when people put ideology over science i.e.facts.
Copernicus was a maverick, ostracized by the mainstream science community because he bucked conventional, read consensus, knowledge of the day. The 97% of scientists in the 1500’s believed the earth to be the center of the universe. Of course in the 1500’s we had far fewer universities churning out far fewer scientists, with far fewer specialties but that is a story for another day. My point is scientific facts rule, consensus is meaningless ideology. In the case of CAGW the mythological derived 3% are chasing the truth while the 97% are chasing political favor, read grant money.
From Space.com
.”The truth emerges It was not until the year 1543 when the great Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) had his lifelong work “De revolutionibus” published, that the secret of the odd retrograde loops were finally revealed. By demoting the Earth from its hallowed position at the center of the solar system and replacing it with the Sun, he was able to triumphantly explain the riddle of the apparent “backwards motion effect” of the planets – See more at: http://www.space.com/4613-cosmic-illusion-mars-move.html#sthash.tGxk4fn6.dpuf
Bill, you’ve written an engaging alternative view of history but you seem to have a basic misunderstanding of Copernicus and of his times. He was not a maverick who bucked the ‘consensus’, nor was he ostracized by any ‘mainstream science community’. He was a great mathematician who was invited by the clergy to figure out the problems w the Ptolemaic model and calendar. The Catholic Church had great influence in the overall acceptance of Ptolemy’s model woven in w the philosophies of the great philosophers of ancient times. The problems w Ptolemy’s model were well known at the time, and for many centuries before, by learned individuals of many different cultures. Even the Church knew which is why they invited him. Copernicus built upon the knowledge of those previous individuals and of his peers and used his own great knowledge of mathematics to demonstrate a new theory.
There was no ‘mainstream science community’ back then, the word scientist did not even evolve until the 19th century. The accepted European view was fostered greatly by the Churches geocentric system based on Ptolemy and the natural philosophers of the past. The Modern Science we now know was born with/around the time of Copernicus. The telescope was not invented until 60 years after Copernicus passed. The Modern Science we have today is much different than when it was considered Natural Philosophy.
Lou Maytrees said: “Thats the point, Copernicus was a scientist. The people who claimed the earth was not flat, and the sun did not revolve around the earth were the Scientists, just like the people today who say the planet is not cooling are the Scientists. The Scientists were right then so why would people in the future laugh at what the Scientists say now? The Scientists were not wrong.”
“Copernicus… was a polyglot and polymath who obtained a doctorate in canon law [religious ecclesiastical laws] and also practiced as a physician, classics scholar, translator, governor, diplomat, and economist.”
Point-Copernicus wasn’t just a “scientist”. And Copernicus is known for his belief that solar system was heliocentric, not geocentric. MOST scientists of his day believed in Aristotle’s “science” which was the opposite of Copernicus’s. Copernicus was a scientist who BUCKED the consensus among scientists of his time. SOME scientists today are doing the same thing-bucking the consensus regarding climate change. There are THOUSANDS of peer-reviewed papers published every year that buck the declarations of the AGW theory…written by scientists. Both sides cannot be right. At some point in the future, what is really true will be known, and people will chuckle at what “some scientists” used to think.
About the notion that Christianity is the source of the idea that the earth was flat….
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/history/1997Russell.html
“In my research, I looked to see how old the idea was that medieval Christians believed the earth was flat. I obviously did not find it among medieval Christians. Nor among anti-Catholic Protestant reformers. Nor in Copernicus or Galileo or their followers, who had to demonstrate the superiority of a heliocentric system, but not of a spherical earth. I was sure I would find it among the eighteenth-century philosophers, among all their vitriolic sneers at Christianity, but not a word.
I am still amazed at where it first appears. No one before the 1830s believed that medieval people thought that the earth was flat. The idea was established, almost contemporaneously, by a Frenchman and an American, between whom I have not been able to establish a connection, though they were both in Paris at the same time. One was Antoine-Jean Letronne (1787-1848), an academic of strong antireligious prejudices who had studied both geography and patristics and who cleverly drew upon both to misrepresent the church fathers and their medieval successors as believing in a flat earth, in his On the Cosmographical Ideas of the Church Fathers (1834).
The American was no other than our beloved storyteller Washington Irving (1783-1859), who loved to write historical fiction under the guise of history. “
Alphan, it was the power and influence of the Catholic Church of the times which upheld the geocentric model by incorporating Ptolemy and the Natural Philosophers. The Church carried much influence back then. But there were many learned scientific persons of Copernicus’ time and before who knew the problems associated with his (Ptolemy’s) model. So Copernicus was not really bucking anything, he was building on and using known sources who understood that something was not correct with Ptolemy.
And i’ll agree, i’m sure he was much more than ‘just a scientist’. The term was used in reply to
Bill.
“In 1543, the geocentric system met its first serious challenge with the publication of Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), which posited that the Earth and the other planets instead revolved around the Sun. The geocentric system was still held for many years afterwards, as at the time the Copernican system did not offer better predictions than the geocentric system, and it posed problems for both natural philosophy and scripture. The Copernican system was no more accurate than Ptolemy’s system, because it still used circular orbits. This was not altered until Johannes Kepler postulated that they were elliptical (Kepler’s first law of planetary motion).”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_model
So we see that the “consensus” about the movement of planets in our solar system took, literally, thousands of years to come anywhere close to being accurate, at least as we understand it today. NONE of these past thinkers/studiers/observers were completely correct in their individual theories, and once a general theory took hold then….just like today…. it took a long time for that theory to become abandoned worldwide.
20+ years ago, someone declared AGW theory a settled science, and human induced “climate change” as an observable and dangerous thing. But for the past 20+ years tens of thousands of observations and studies have proven otherwise. Some aspects of the theory ARE settled, but the Earth’s system is chaotic, coupled, and constantly in movement and we haven’t even figured out how to predict it’s outcome past a few days to any reliable degree. Like history has shown over and over again, what we know a century from now will be leaps and bounds from what we know today. And I have no doubt that many things we currently believe will be hilariously funny to the people of the future. Do you think we’ve reached the pinnacle of human understanding already?
http://www.languagemonitor.com/science/what-exactly-is-settled-science/
Aphan, thats an interesting wikipedia article. They note an Arab astronomer Ibn al-Shatir had, a century and a half before, written a book with models which were mathematically identical to Copernicus, he simply didn’t make the leap/connections Copernicus did. They also note that as early as the 10th Century, Muslim scholars had been writing many manuscripts seriously questioning Ptolemy.
Lou said-
“They note an Arab astronomer Ibn al-Shatir had, a century and a half before, written a book with models which were mathematically identical to Copernicus, he simply didn’t make the leap/connections Copernicus did. They also note that as early as the 10th Century, Muslim scholars had been writing many manuscripts seriously questioning Ptolemy.”
Yes, it says that. What is your point? Mine is that no one seriously questioned Ptolemy for almost 900 years! Do you think the Catholic Church or scholars in Europe simply didn’t know about Shatir’s work and would have taken the Muslim scholars seriously if they had just seen their theories?
Let’s say that the same scenario/human nature applies today that applied back then. Let’s assume that perhaps non AGW scientists are publishing work that directly opposes the supposed “consensus” but they will be ignored for another 300 years until “the powers that be” must face the truth and embrace something that flies in the face of what was accepted prior. Can we laugh at them then?
Aphan, the point is, as it says right in the Wikipedia Geocentric article you posted, learned individuals and philosophers were questioning Ptolemy at least 600 years before Copernicus figured it out. So how can you say ‘no one seriously questioned Ptolemy for 900 years’? Your article you posted says just the opposite, it was questioned right from the start.
And Copernicus’ theory was well received right from the start. It took other scientists to figure out the inconsistencies in it, Kepler was born less than 30 yrs after Copernicus died.
“Aphan, the point is, as it says right in the Wikipedia Geocentric article you posted, learned individuals and philosophers were questioning Ptolemy at least 600 years before Copernicus figured it out. So how can you say ‘no one seriously questioned Ptolemy for 900 years’? Your article you posted says just the opposite, it was questioned right from the start.”
Sorry, let me clarify. There weren’t any “serious contenders” for an alternative theory until Copernicus came along. Questioning a theory is different from proposing an alternative theory to replace it with. A lot of people today demand that skeptics come up with an alternative theory to replace AGW theory with. And many learned individuals are working on it and many skeptical scientists seriously question the AGW theory. (almost NONE support the CAGW predictions at all). Many, MANY scientists have published papers and studies that provide reasonable answers that can explain all of the warming we’ve have since 1950.
The whole point here is that it took 1000 years to take down Ptolemy’s theories, and they were WRONG all of that time. It won’t take that long to take down AGW theory, because the planet is NOT cooperating with their predictions, and the longer they are wrong, the less support that theory is getting.
YOUR whole argument in the beginning was that the “Scientists back then were right” and yet in reality, only a few WERE actually right. The “leading Scientific theory” for centuries was geocentric…and it was WRONG. Science is always growing, learning, discovering and advancing. It’s never “finished” or “settled”.
Are you sure Aphan? From what i’ve read most “skeptic” scientists only disagree on the actual percentage of the problem caused by human made CO2. They all agree that human made CO2 is part of the reason for the warming though.
Lou said:”Are you sure Aphan? From what i’ve read most “skeptic” scientists only disagree on the actual percentage of the problem caused by human made CO2. They all agree that human made CO2 is part of the reason for the warming though.”
“They all agree…”
Do they Lou? Have to talked to ALL of them? Have you read statements directly from ALL of them? Its obvious you haven’t READ all of them.
Have you spoken to the Scientists who published the studies on the following page-
http://www.c3headlines.com/climate-change-non-co2-causes/
Or these-
http://www.c3headlines.com/peer-reviewed-research-studies-climate-change-related-other.html
There are literally thousands of studies out there, all peer reviewed, that demonstrate other things that could be causing ALL of the current warming. I can give you plenty of links when you’re done with just those two.
Lou: “C’mon Aphan, Bill’s reply was to an earlier comment and he was equating ‘census takers’ w the scientists of today and the ‘consensus’. He was trying to use a belittling pun to equate the beliefs of the Dark & Middle Ages w the Modern Science we have today. It’s a false equivalency b/c it was scientists who figured out that the geocentric theory and beliefs (consensus) of earlier times were incorrect. So it was scientists who proved the earth is not the center of the galaxy, just as its scientists over the past couple of centuries who have figured out AGW.”
Did you know that up until 1950, the idea that climate could change rapidly…on its own (without any human influence) was a controversial idea?? By the 1970s the idea was that climate COULD change rapidly, on it’s own, but over the course of a century…by 1980…in 50 years or less! Then….1990’s…in a decade or less!
“Swings of temperature that in the 1950s scientists had believed would take tens of thousands of years, in the 1970s thousands of years, and in the 1980s hundreds of years, were now found to take only decades.
Ice core analysis by Dansgaard’s group, confirmed by the Americans’ parallel hole, showed rapid oscillations of temperature repeatedly at irregular intervals throughout the last glacial period. Greenland
had sometimes warmed a shocking 7 C within a span of less than 50 years. For one group of American scientists on the ice in Greenland, the “moment of truth” struck on a single day in midsummer 1992 as they
analyzed a cylinder of ice, recently emerged from the drill hole, that came from the last years of the Younger Dryas. They saw an obvious change in the ice, visible within three snow layers, that is, scarcely three
years! The team analyzing the ice was first excited, then sobered—their view of how climate could change had shifted irrevocably.”
https://www.aip.org/history/climate/pdf/Rapid.pdf
And this report- Abrupt Climate Change-Inevitable Surprises-National Academies Press-2002
“The climate record for the past 100,000 years clearly indicates that the climate system has undergone periodic–and often extreme–shifts, sometimes in as little as a decade or less.”
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10136/abrupt-climate-change-inevitable-surprises
Climate scientists STILL don’t understand the natural fluctuations of Earth’s climate fully….so how is it even possible for them to claim that they KNOW that humans are affecting it? There is ZERO empirical evidence that human CO2 has any impact on our climate. Correlation is not causation, even if it’s a perfect correlation between increasing CO2 and temperature increases. Anyone with statistical background and integrity can tell you that much.
You’re wasting your time here if you think statements about what “scientists” believe (without ANY proof that you could possibly know what scientists believe…like certification that you can read minds…) will have any impact on the regular posters here. ZIP. Appeals to authority are logical fallacies, and we eat those for breakfast around here.
Aphan, i clicked on your first two links, the first one – c3 seems to be a blog, not a scientist, and then the 2nd link i clicked on the first 4 articles. Didn’t go any further b/c they (the articles) were by A Watts, J Nova, c3, and M Morano. My bad but I was not aware that any of these people were scientists. So i saw no reason to go further.
I meant climate scientists like Roy Spencer or Judith Curry, who have accredited degrees in their fields.
Lou said-“Aphan, i clicked on your first two links, the first one – c3 seems to be a blog, not a scientist, and then the 2nd link i clicked on the first 4 articles. Didn’t go any further b/c they (the articles) were by A Watts, J Nova, c3, and M Morano. My bad but I was not aware that any of these people were scientists. So i saw no reason to go further.”
Ah, well I didn’t want to assume anything about your intelligence, computer literacy or the amount of energy you are willing to dedicate towards your research in prior comments. At least now I know. Live and learn, right?
On the first linked page, in the articles there are sections of words that are blue and highlighted. If you click on them, they lead to other sites in which peer reviewed papers have been posted or linked to that back up the articles that the author has posted about the topic at hand.
The second linked page is titled Peer Reviewed Research Studies, and has a brief explanation under it. At the bottom of that explanation it reads: (notes: updated on 6/25/2015; click on ‘#**’ for link to given study’s abstract) This means that if you click on the little symbols at the end of each linked title, rather than being taken to a site like WUWT, where THAT particular research paper is being discussed (and is ALWAYS linked to in the Opening Post)-you can SKIP that and go to directly to the papers authored by “real Scientists” that have accredited degrees in their fields.
You see, when I asked “Have you spoken to the Scientists who published the studies on the following”, I actually expected you to be able to FIND the studies being discussed on all those linked pages….and not assume (falsely) that I was too stupid to discern between an article by someone like Marc or Anthony, and the peer reviewed, published studies done by “accredited scientists” that are always directly linked to in those kinds of blog posts.
Lou said: “I meant climate scientists like Roy Spencer or Judith Curry, who have accredited degrees in their fields.”
Climate scientists like Roy Spencer and Judith Curry often have personal blogs. They often highlight and discuss “real scientific studies” done by other people on their blogs. Oddly enough, at times they discuss the same studies that Anthony or Marc have posted on their blog/aggregate sites. C3:Headlines is a climate related site which archives charts, reports, studies etc, and has interactive tools for users as well. Every chart or article links directly to the data referred to in the article or chart (remember those blue highlighted words are “clickable”) or is footnoted with a link directly to the source data-usually NASA, NOAA, GISS etc and what computer program was used to chart the data. If you need help discerning between expert opinions, informed opinions, mere discussions, and actual peer reviewed studies, I can ask my 14 year old son if he has the time to tutor you through it.
Many of the readers/commenters here at WUWT also have accredited degrees in scientific fields and discussions are often detailed and interesting.
NONE of the people who have come up with “consensus” studies are actual “climate scientists”…so why do you believe them over actual, real, climate scientists? NONE of the people who conducted “consensus” studies actually asked climate scientists to tell them exactly what they believe about global warming or climate change-both natural and possibly human caused. Pretending that you have “proven” that a consensus exists, without any evidence to prove that one does, is immoral, unscientific, and should be grounds for dismissal at the very least. But as long as there are people like you…who believe what they want to and can’t even find a study if it takes more than two clicks…the future looks bright.
Aphan, LOL, i feel your pain and the need to lash out. Its not easy is it? I’m not going to go into all you’ve written but you have misunderstood my meaning about links to blogs. c3 linking to HockeySchtick who links to an IOPScience and science paper about the ‘lag response in NAO and the 11 yr sunspot cycle’ does not in anyway disprove AGW, no matter what strange conclusions c3 makes based on it. Or clicking on one of his ‘source’ links for one of his graphs and it links to WUWT and an article by blathering Lord Monckton. Sorry you don’t get it son, but i’ve better things to do than following links to non scientists and their word salads and misinterpretations of others scientific papers.
I do like tho, that the first paper i linked to in c3 was by two Met Office Hadley Centre scientists who used ‘models’ to come to their conclusions. Oh the irony, it hurts.
But back to Dr Spencer and Judith Curry. Spencer in an interview at Science2.0 … “i will also say that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions must cause some warming, …”. And Curry wrote a commentary in the WSJ ‘The Global Warming Statistical Meltdown’ in which she speaks about her and Nic Lewis’ lower climate sensitivity models and GHG emissions paper. Scientists understand the science behind green house gases, bloggers w/agendas and non scientists don’t get it it seems.
Aphan, i think you’re falsely conflating the Natural Philosophers and Ptolemy with Modern Science and scientists of today. We have Modern Science now. Copernicus was the start of it, the Scientific Revolution. It was Modern Science which disproved mathematically the previously held beliefs of the Church and it is Modern Science which has given us the theory of AGW. Science today is much different than the faith based beliefs of the Dark and Middle Ages.
Lou-
Ptolemy was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet who lived 1300+ years before Copernicus was born. Thirteen hundred years of discovery and knowledge occurred between the two men.
Copernicus developed his theories around 1514, long before the Catholic Church even heard about them in 1533 and became interested in them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commentariolus
It took pressure from his friends and pupils and associates to get him to publish them officially in 1543 because he was concerned about how they would be received by the public and others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_revolutionibus_orbium_coelestium
Since you are the one that pointed out the fact that “science” and the concept of a “scientific community” is a modern construct, why do all of your posts reflect the notion that the “people who claimed (back then)…..were Scientists” and that “The Scientists were right back then so…”? You even capitalize the word like it’s an official title. You undermine your own arguments that there was a specific body of men in past times that were known as “the Scientists” that were “right” about all things in the natural sciences. That simply isn’t reality..it is your own “engaging alternative view of history”.
Copernicus was a mathematician and an astronomer. So was Ptolemy, but he was also an astrologer. And Aristotle was a philosopher who dabbled in what he called “physics” that had a much broader range of study than it has today.
Alphan, i’d not seen the wikipedia Commentariolus but had read from another source that iirc Copernicus attended a 1514 Reform Council meeting on the calendar problems and had done his work from there. Also that another mathematician read his manuscript in the late 1530s and published a small synopsis which was greeted well. Copernicus who’d been reluctant to publish it then agreed to in 1542, which basically follows the wikipedia Revolutionibus article, but which i also don’t read as him being pressured into it as he had received good feedback about it.
And I think you are falsely conflating a few different replies of mine into one. My reply to Bill about the ‘laughing at the census takers’ was about it is ‘S’cientists who are doing the work, not census takers. i capitalized in that response to emphasize that particular point, of who exactly was doing the work, which is not census takers.
You then conflated that reply with a different post/or posts and then you’ve also taken words out of context, so i have no response to that kind of mixed up mashup.
Not sure what your last paragraph is about but yes, obviously, Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Copernicus lived in different eras.
Here’s Bill’s original comment-
“Therein lies the salient point of all the back and forth on this comment board. Once upon a time there was a “Consensus” that the world was flat and that the Sun revolved around the earth. 1000 years from now society will laugh at the census takers of the early 21st century who insisted that carbon is poison and CO2 is a pollutant caused by man and responsible for catastrophic global warming.”
Bill is clearly stating several very specific things- that “1000 years from now society will laugh at the census takers of the early 21st century who insisted that carbon is poison and CO2 is a pollutant caused by man and responsible for catastrophic global warming”.
Just like we NOW laugh at the “(con)sensus takers” (not scientists) 1000 years ago that believed that the world was flat and that the Sun revolved around the earth, people 1000 years from now will laugh at the idea that in our day there was some kind of “consensus” that carbon is poison and that CO2 is a pollutant caused by man and responsible for catastrophic global warming.
YOU introduced the Scientists into this…not Bill.
“And I think you are falsely conflating a few different replies of mine into one. My reply to Bill about the ‘laughing at the census takers’ was about it is ‘S’cientists who are doing the work, not census takers. i capitalized in that response to emphasize that particular point, of who exactly was doing the work, which is not census takers.”
Actually, I think you tried to “conflate” what Bill actually said (quoted above) into something he didn’t even mention. Doing that does indeed cause “mixed up mashups” doesn’t it?
When we examine Cook et al 2013, we find that Cook could only demonstrate (with evidence) that 1.6 percent of the Scientist’s papers that he and his team analyzed “explicitly stated that man-made greenhouse gases caused at least 50 percent of global warming.” (that means that 98.4% of the papers did NOT actually state anything of the sort-an even greater “consensus” than what Cook shoveled out as one!)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexepstein/2015/01/06/97-of-climate-scientists-agree-is-100-wrong/2/#fd7e1c626d60
So 98.4% of the Scientists publishing peer reviewed papers on global warming, climate change-you know…the people “who are actually DOING the work”, aren’t saying what people like Cook and Oreskes CLAIM they are saying.
Now, since NONE of the consensus studies have stated that “carbon (or CO2) are poison and that CO2 is a pollutant caused by man and responsible for catastrophic global warming”…if you would be so kind as to provide a list of the actual earth scientists who insist that carbon is poison , and that CO2 is a pollutant caused by man and responsible for catastrophic global warming I would LOVE to see it. (makes it easier to mock them in 1000 years)
Lou said-
“Copernicus who’d been reluctant to publish it then agreed to in 1542, which basically follows the wikipedia Revolutionibus article, but which i also don’t read as him being pressured into it as he had received good feedback about it.”
“Under strong pressure from Rheticus, and having seen that the first general reception of his work had not been unfavorable, Copernicus finally agreed” (how can you NOT read that as being pressured…?)
He’d received good feedback about it from his friends and associates all along…but he only published his entire work after a smaller portion of Chapter 2 of the Revolutionibus was published and received well first. You admitted that he’d been reluctant to publish it. But if he’d done the work under the employ, or at the behest of the Catholic Church (of whom he was not even a member) THEY would have been the determiners of whether or not it was published, not Copernicus.
C’mon Aphan, Bill’s reply was to an earlier comment and he was equating ‘census takers’ w the scientists of today and the ‘consensus’. He was trying to use a belittling pun to equate the beliefs of the Dark & Middle Ages w the Modern Science we have today. It’s a false equivalency b/c it was scientists who figured out that the geocentric theory and beliefs (consensus) of earlier times were incorrect. So it was scientists who proved the earth is not the center of the galaxy, just as its scientists over the past couple of centuries who have figured out AGW.
Aphan, Your generalization of CO2 as only a poison or pollutant? Simply look up the deaths at Lake Monoun or Lake Nyos in Cameroon. Of course it can be a poison or pollutant too.
We can agree or disagree about how pressured Copernicus was to publish, he still was not a maverick or ostracized by the scientific community of his time. He figured out a known problem w Ptolemy that many other intelligent people over the previous centuries had also worked on and tried to figure out.
Weren’t there other studies that show similar findings? if so, and they aren’t addressed in the book, then there isn’t any point to this book.
97% of the Inquisition agreed that the Copernican model of the universe was blasphemy. The other 3% was busy with interrogations and could not be reached.
Shouldnt the question be rephrased to “What percentage of scientists not dependent on global warming funding believe that AGW is real ?”
Problem being…no one has ever asked 100% of scientists what they believe about global warming/climate change. EVER. The supposed “consensus” is made up. Created. Declared….never actually reached by scientists. Every single “consensus paper” relies upon someone else examining the published papers they have culled using specific parameters and determining what THEY THINK….the scientists who wrote those papers THINK. It’s mind reading made acceptable. It’s NOTHING except biased assumptions made about other people by total strangers to them. It is the most illogical, irrational, UNscientific thing I have ever seen in my life, and it’s allowed as if it is perfectly reasonable!
If the Cook et al group had used the word “anthropogenic” or the term “man-made” or “human-induced” along with “global climate change/global warming” in their search parameters for papers….it would have resulted in LESS than 20 papers. Because the overwhelming majority of papers (99.9 of the 11,994) they wanted to use in their study did not even MENTION the “A” with the “GW” they discussed, they had to exclude it as a search term, and then attempt to rationalize the LACK of that term in their paper and get away with it. And they did.
Consensus by declaration. People declaring that they can reasonably determine exactly what someone else thinks about a topic, without even having to ask them. Propaganda. Stupidity. Lapped up by the press and other useful idiots without hesitation.
Feb 3, 2016 What global warming? Large parts of Earth expected to ‘COOL’ over next five years
LARGE areas of the globe are set to cool over the next five years, according to weather forecasters. In its latest five-year forecast, up to 2020, the Met Office has said the Antarctic ocean is expected to cool over the period.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/640519/What-global-warming-Large-parts-of-Earth-expected-to-COOL-over-next-five-years
Cant be true Agent76. Lou Maytrees says that “the people today who say the planet is NOT cooling are the Scientists.” 🙂
Bought and looking forward to reading soon.
I’d suggest that, for the casual reader, it is explained why Brandon uses the term “hacked” in his comment. I’m not sure that all will know the history and would readily understand that accusations of hacking are the default defence of Skeptical Science whenever their own ineptitude leads to documents they would prefer hidden becoming public.
Also it left me a little empty inside to spell Skeptical that way 😉
Most rational adults don’t decide whether to use words on a basis of whether they like to or not, they use them when the words seems appropriate based on reason.
There’s been so much fraud related to so called climate science, that it’s an apparent miracle you’ve been able to keep your estimation of the people conducting – whatever it is that’s alleged being conducted – in such a high level of esteem.
Do you believe the basic science of AGW is real Mr Watts or are you just a very nice person who doesn’t want to talk bad about anybody.
Do you have any connections yourself to alternative energy or politics, that make you feel the story of AGW is good for the world even if it isn’t true? For instance if you make money somehow in a field which is connected with climate alarm or alternative energy then your opinion, obviously, is actually being created by how your money comes.
Thanks
Trent
Let’s talk about reason and logic then. Fraud is a word defined:
“Wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain, a person or thing intended to deceive others”
INTENT is critical in determining fraud, and INTENT is something very difficult to prove. You must be able to prove the person you accuse of fraud KNEW they were perpetrating an outright LIE.
Rational adults try not to use words like fraud, criminal, con artist etc unless they have evidence to support those allegations. Anthony gets crap for spelling mistakes and opinions posted here that aren’t even his! Accusing someone of fraud could actually result in a lawsuit against him. So how about you stop with the illogical false dichotomy and think about other, rational reasons he might have for NOT using that word?
For some odd reason first comment stuck in moderation. Mods-please delete that one?
Let’s talk about reason and logic then. Fraud is a word defined:
“Wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain, a person or thing intended to deceive others”
“Intent” is critical in determining fraud, and “intent” is something very difficult to prove. You must be able to prove the person you accuse of fraud knew they were perpetrating an outright lie.
Rational adults try not to use words like fraud, criminal, con artist etc unless they have evidence to support those allegations. Anthony gets crap for spelling mistakes and opinions posted here that aren’t even his! Accusing someone of fraud could actually result in a lawsuit against him. So how about you stop with the illogical false dichotomy and think about other, rational reasons he might have for NOT using that word?
A now-deceased lady friend of mine who worked for Ma Bell once said humorously about her sales job, “it may be bullshit to you, but it’s bread and butter to me.”
No matter how nonsensical the various “research” carried out by climate cranks with PhDs may be, cranking it out steadily pays very, very well.
Mike Hunt,
Ironic perfection Mike!
Meme: “an idea, image, or behavior spread from one person to another in a culture.”
Even you, in your sloppy, juvenile, irrational taunting could not bring yourself to call it a scientific fact, or empirically established conclusion. It’s already been debunked as a “study”, repeatedly. As a meme, it can live forever, just like movie quotes, song lyrics, and the duck face! Which is right where it belongs!
P.s.
Tell your frat boy friends that the check they wrote to your mom bounced. Again.