Guest dredging up the past by David Middleton
As a geologist, I spend my work days dredging up the past, mostly from the Upper Miocene to the Lower Pleistocene. My earlier post today about Dr. Will Happer joining the Trump administration led me to dredging up a 2016 survey of the American Meteorological Society (Maibach et al., 2016)… And that led me to dredging up this 2013 Tweet from thankfully former President Barack Hussein Obama…
Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous. Read more: http://t.co/4lEEBYtVqf
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 16, 2013
In light of CNN’s proclamation that Dr. Happer’s “public stance on climate change is in opposition to near universally accepted science,” as outlined in thankfully former President Barack Hussein Obama’s Tweet, I decided to proverbially put 2 + 2 together and see if I get 97%.
“Climate change is real”
“Man-made”
“And dangerous”
“And today, there’s no greater threat to our planet than climate change.”
So climate change can no longer be denied – or ignored. The world is looking to the United States – to us – to lead.
–Thankfully former President Barack Hussein Obama, April 18, 2015
Climate Change…
Reference
Maibach, E., Perkins, D., Francis, Z., Myers, T., Englbom, A., et al. (2016). A 2016 National
Survey of American Meteorological Society Member Views on Climate Change: Initial Findings. George Mason University, Fairfax, VA: Center for Climate Change Communication.
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The original conclusion of 97% comes from a paper published by Cook, et. al. http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article You will note that they use the 97% figure as those who study issues concerning Climate Science and, who explicitly or implicitly address the thesis that at least some climate change is caused by human emissions. They looked at 11,944 abstracts from 1991 to 2011. 66.4% of Climate related papers were thrown out because those papers did not think it important enough that they should address even by implication or in passing that humans caused Global Warming. Also included were papers by non climate scientist such as psychological or economic studies. I would suggest that it is not too surprising, that a scientist who thought AGW was important enough to discuss, would believe that it exists.
Tellingly, those papers they chose to address mentioned that some human emissions might have caused some global warming. Thus they set a rather low bar, that humans emissions probably had some unspecified effect. The 97% consensus cannot be said to support the idea that human kind is the primary cause of global warming or that its effects are potentially devastating. While it is true that some in the consensus may believe those contentions to be true, they do not make up 97%. They may even be a minority, even a relatively small minority. The authors – who did have that figure – choose not to publish it. By the researchers own methodology, the vast majority of skeptics would also be members of the 97%. Interestingly. Cook et. al.’s own graphs show that over time, the percent of articles published by scientists mentioning Anthropological Global Warming has fallen from its high in 1993 to something approach half of that in 2011 when the paper was published, while scientist have apparently deemed other aspects of the climate more important for their attention as articles focused non Anthropogenic problems have increased by approximately 50%.
Any scientist who agrees with Arrhenius, the first scientist to propose the Green House theory of CO2, would certainly be considered a denier by most ideologues. ” By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind.” (p63) Arrhenius, S., Worlds in the Making: The Evolution of the Universe. New York, Harper & Row, 1908 see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius
This comment went bust in the middle of editing it. Please refer to the finished version. If the blog master would take this down, it would be helpful as I am not able to do so.
[It is not clear which comment should be removed. .mod]
Nope, the original “97% consensus” paper was not Cook 2013, it was actually just an article (apparently not peer-reviewed), by Dr. Peter Doran, in 2009. Here’s what he did.
Synopsis:
#1. Doran EXCLUDED (for being insufficiently specialized) 97% of the geoscientsts who responded to his poll, and
#2. He EXCLUDED scientists who worked in private industry (who tend to be more conservative than those in government & academia), and
#3. He EXCLUDED scientists who thought that “When compared with pre-1800s levels… mean global temperatures have generally… remained relatively constant.”
Note that Doran & his student did not ask any question to distinguish between climate alarmists like Mann & Hansen, and climate realists like of the most folks here. If they had asked such a question (like whether, in the succinct words of President Obama, “Climate change is real, man-made and dangerous?”) there would have been nothing resembling a “consensus.”
Very few scientists would disagree with the fact that it is generally warmer now than it was during the Little Ice Age, and human activity has probably contributed to that modest warming. But so what? That’s a pretty meaningless “consensus,” in the context of the climate debate. It does not help make a case for the sorts of public policy measures which climate activists advocate. After all, anyone sane would have to agree that the current climate is better than the “pre-industrial” Little Ice Age climate.
The best evidence is that anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change is real, but modest and benign, and CO2 emissions are beneficial, rather than harmful.
.
Expanded:
FIRST, Dr. Doran wrote just two “opinion” questions for his survey, both of which were “gimmies,” designed to elicit the answers he wanted. (There were also some demographic & background questions.)
The survey PRETENDED to be an attempt to learn about scientists’ opinions, but it wasn’t. Neither question was designed to actually learn anything about scientists’ opinions. Both of the questions were so uncontroversial that even I, and most other skeptics of climate alarmism (a/k/a “climate realists” or “lukewarmers”) would have given the answers he wanted.
SECOND, Doran had his graduate student send the survey to over 10,000 geophysical scientists, but ONLY to people working in academia or government — known bastions of left-of-center politics. Scientists working in private industry, who tend to be more conservative, were not surveyed. That biased the sample, because the climate debate is highly politicized: most conservatives “lean skeptical” and most liberals “lean alarmist” in the climate debate.
They got 3,146 responses.
THIRD, to calculate his supposed “consensus” Prof. Doran excluded all but the most biased respondents: the most specialized specialists in climate science.
That’s a massive, fundamental blunder. That’s like asking ONLY homeopaths about the efficacy of homeopathy, rather than the broader medical community. It’s like asking ONLY people working on cold fusion about whether cold fusion works, rather than asking all physicists. As Rick C PE & David Middleton noted, above, the most specialized specialists in every field will report a “consensus” agreeing with the presuppositions and the efficacy of the methods of that field — even for fields that are complete hokum. (In this case, the question at issue is whether the unverifiable CMIP “GCMs” [climate models] are trustworthy or GIGO.)
That process excluded over 97% of the geophysical scientists who answered the survey! Only 79 were left.
That’s right: he pruned 3,146 responses down to just 79.
But even that didn’t get his desired “consensus” figure up to 97%. So,
FOURTH, to calculate his final “97.4%” result, Doran EXCLUDED respondents who gave one of the “skeptical” answers to the first of his two questions.
I’m not kidding, he really did.
The first “gimme” question was:
(I would have said “risen.”)
Those who answered “remained relatively constant” were not asked the 2nd question, and THEY WERE NOT COUNTED when calculating his percentage of consensus.
That left him with just 77 out of 3,146 responses. He used only those 77 for the “97.4%” calculation.
The second question was:
Well, of course it is! That encompasses both GHG-driven warming and particulate/aerosol-driven cooling. It could also be understood to include Urban Heat Island (UHI) effects.
Since just about everyone acknowledges at least one of those effects, I would have expected nearly everyone to answer “yes” to this question. Yet 2 of 77 apparently did not.
It is unfortunate that Doran and his graduate student didn’t ask an actual, legitimate question about Anthropogenic Global Warming. They should have asked something like, “Do you believe that emissions of CO2 from human activities, such as burning fossil fuels, are causing dangerous increases in global average temperatures?” or (paraphrasing President Obama) “Do you believe that climate change is real, man-made and dangerous?”
Of course, the reason he didn’t ask “real” questions like those is that his survey was a scam: Its purpose was NOT to discover anything, it was to support a propaganda talking point.
BTW, I bought his graduate student’s thesis project report, so if anyone here has any questions about it let me know. My contact info can be found on my SeaLevel.info web site.
You can find much more information about the various surveys of scientific opinion on climate change, including source references for everything I’ve written here, on my web page, here:
http://tinyurl.com/Clim97pct
Another “human factor” often added to man’s release of CO2 is forest/jungle clearing, rain forest burning, and agriculture/tree harvesting.
And, as you point out, the Urban Heat Island effect on local/micro-climate changes.
Thanks for that. I was not aware of that study. I looked at it and your critique seems to be a valid one, and it does predate Cook et.al. And, there is a 97% figure in there. But if you look at the literature this is not one which received much public awareness. In fact this paper refers to a previous one and seems to be the first commonly cited, that would be Oreskes 2004 paper. That consensus being that GHGs have resulted in rising temperatures. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686
Forbes has an interesting and in depth article on the subject which discusses both Cook and Oreskes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2016/12/14/fact-checking-the-97-consensus-on-anthropogenic-climate-change/#53a6adaa1157
You have to dig down deep for the 97%…
https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/testfolder/aa-migration-to-be-deleted/assets-delete-me/documents-delete-me/ssi-delete-me/ssi/DoranEOS09.pdf
The “funny” thing is that only 96% of “the most specialized and knowledgeable respondents” thought temperatures had risen… While 97% blamed people.
Anderegg et al., 2010 also pushed the 97% meme…
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/27/12107
Dana Nuccitelli, one of Cook’s coauthors, was pushing the 97% based on Doran and Anderegg, years before they published their paper.
“#3. He EXCLUDED scientists who thought that “When compared with pre-1800s levels… mean global temperatures have generally… remained relatively constant.””
So basically, he found that of those scientists who believe the earth is warming, 97% believe that it is warming?
CMS,
The first survey of scientific opinion on the topic, AFAIK, was Doran and Zimmerman, 2009, “Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change”:
https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/testfolder/aa-migration-to-be-deleted/assets-delete-me/documents-delete-me/ssi-delete-me/ssi/DoranEOS09.pdf
Doran and Zimmerman invited 10,257 academic and government Earth scientists to participate in their poll. No private sector scientists allowed. They received 3146 responses to these two questions:
“1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
“2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?”
Note that a third question, asking whether whatever man-made warming might have occurred be good, bad or indifferent, wasn’t included.
The authors managed to derive the canonical 97%, concocted by Oreskes’ bogus abstract review in 2004, by cherry-picking from the 3146 respondents, the 79 “most specialized and knowledgeable…who listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change”.
“Of these specialists, 96.2% (76 of 79) answered “risen” to question 1 and 97.4% (75 of 77) answered yes to question 2.” So the actual share of even this selective group was 94.9%, ie 74/79, affirmatively answering both questions.
The category with the lowest faith in the alleged consensus was those respondents whose area of expertise was economic geology. Of them, 47% (48 of 103) answered yes to question 2.
But of course the media reported the phony 97% figure, which in the popular imagination, as intended, became the share of opinion of “all scientists”, not of 75 individuals with a career stake in the supposed consensus.
{Huh. Looks like this comment didn’t post, when I first tried it.}
AMS has done a lot of surveys. I keep a collection of them, here:
http://sealevel.info/AMS/
If someone knows of one that I missed, please tell me.
The original conclusion of 97% comes from a paper published by Cook, et. al. http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article You will note that they use the 97% figure as those who study issues concerning Climate Science and, who explicitly or implicitly address the thesis that at least some climate change is caused by human emissions. They looked at 11,944 abstracts from 1991 to 2011. 66.4% of Climate related papers were thrown out because those papers did not think it important enough that they should address even by implication or in passing that humans caused Global Warming. Also included were papers by non climate scientist such as psychological or economic studies. I would suggest that it is not too surprising, that a scientist who thought AGW was important enough to discuss, would believe that it exists.
The original categorization of papers had three different grouping of pro AGW papers. One was those who believed that humans were the primary source of global warming, and two those who simply believed that humans contributed at least some small part to global warming and thirdly, those who implicitly assumed human effects of some kind. Thus they set a rather low bar, that humans emissions probably had some unspecified effect. The authors choose to collapse those three categories and report them as one. Thus by design, the 97% consensus cannot be said to support the idea that human kind is the primary cause of global warming or that its effects are potentially devastating. While it is true that some in the consensus may believe those contentions to be true, they do not make up 97%. They may even be a minority, even a relatively small minority. Cook, et. al. decided we did not need to have that figure. By the researchers own very broad methodology, the vast majority of skeptics would also be members of the 97%. Interestingly. Cook et. al.’s own graphs show that over time, the percent of articles published by scientists mentioning Anthropological Global Warming has fallen from its high in 1993 to something approach half of that in 2011 when the paper was published, while scientist have apparently deemed other aspects of the climate more important for their attention as articles focused non Anthropogenic problems have increased by approximately 50%.
Any scientist who agrees with Arrhenius, the first scientist to propose the Green House theory of CO2, would certainly be considered a denier by most ideologues. ” By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind.” (p63) Arrhenius, S., Worlds in the Making: The Evolution of the Universe. New York, Harper & Row, 1908 see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius
CMS, that’s not the original 97%. You haven’t been paying attention.
But I have Jeff. And you are right other studies predate Cook. However, I suggest that when people refer to the 97% Cook is the one they refer to. Oreskes is second. For support for that conclusion, I would suggest that you might look at the Forbes article “Fact Checking The Claim Of 97% Consensus On Anthropogenic Climate Change” https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2016/12/14/fact-checking-the-97-consensus-on-anthropogenic-climate-change/#53a6adaa1157
The 97% meme predates both of those. I’d say Oreskes and Cook were attempts to support the original assertion.
When there is a mile [of] ice covering lower Manhattan then I will know the climate has changed.
🤙
Right on!
Meanwhile…our grids grow ever more unreliable:
https://dailycaller.com/2018/09/06/new-england-electricity-market-in-crisis/
I would like to bring to your knowledge a couple of comments of a reader (Gianluca) of the Italian skeptical blog http://www.climatemonitor.it -translation under my only responsibility- about the 97% consensus on AGW.
http://www.zafzaf.it/clima/97en.html
These comments give an ~30% consensus on AGW and less than 10% consensus among self-defined climate scientists.
All those graphs mean absolutely nothing.
How can you ”agree” that the climate is changing when our current definition of climate is a silly joke. All that can be agreed on is that the weather may have changed (shifted) a little lately. That’s it!
Climate to me is very long period of stable weather. Very long…like a thousands of years. It was still dry and hot in the summer in the Mediterranean 5,000 years ago. And it’s still dry and hot in the summer now, and it will still be dry and hot for the foreseeable future. No climate change that can be at all determined.
Polls are not science, no matter what the results
I’m so far behind, I’m still calling it “global warming”.
I want to see a list of these scientists’ names.
The basic “climate change is real”, is itself faulty. If global warming is referred to climate change, then the results may be different from climate change it entirity. For example I support climate change is real but I opposite global warming is real. Here 96% split in to two parts.
Secondly, Is climate change is man-made. Again here are also two options: global warming associated with anthropogenic greenhouse gases and ecological changes. — urban-heat-island effect & rural-cold-island effect I support ecological changes but I oppose global warming . Here 67% split in to two parts.
Same is the case with the other two on danger —
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
If that sample is suggested as a random sample of ‘scientists’, then it is clear that the “alarmists’
people are worried about dont exist
It’s not “random” or even genuinely representative. It’s a survey of 7,682 members of the American Meteorological Society (half of whom didn’t respond), conducted by an asshat who wants RICO prosecutions for anyone who disagrees with him.
To be noted that the question asking if the climate change has been caused by humans, does not specify that that change is caused by our emissions of CO₂ . I think most reasonable people on both sides of the argument would agree that deforestation, irrigation and concreting over large areas of the globe will have an effect on climate.
That and a Gathering of too many Eco-Activists in one place will also have a negative effect on Climate
I would present this as “Six Times as Many Scientists Now Doubt the Consensus.”
“As new data and analysis come in, consensus is quickly disappearing with a huge increase moving to the skeptics camp. It was previously reported that only 3% of scientists doubted the consensus view on global warming, that warming is primarily caused by human activity. Today, 12% actively disagree and twice as many report that they don’t know.”
Let the alarmist side claim that there has not really been a shift because the original metric was spiked.
This is just one more proof that for woke Progressives truth and facts are malleable and plastic. Reality is inverted: the arc of facts is bent to justify the Progressive socialist agenda. Any contrary fact is ignored or discredited as H8.
Here in Australia a similar “study “was conducted
by a phsycologist academic -John Cook who
managed get his 97 percent by rejecting over 1000
Responses in the 1100 he surveyed so in reality
less than 10 percent when along with the so called
framed question on the Climate change meme.
Mike Reed
If he did it on public money that counts as fraud and mail-fraud.
If you’re referring to the John Cook of Skeptical Science, he’s not a psychologist, just a psycho who fancies himself an SS officer.
The 97% canard – Keeps getting repated ad nausuem by the activists and grossly misrepresented by the activists.
Gotta wonder how someone so mathematically deficient to be unable to understand what those surveys actually show, somehow possesses the superior intellectual capacity to understand the validity of climate science.
The whole 97% was BS from the start in reality even taken it at its extreme it was 97% of selected paper from a selected time period broadly agree with an slight defined idea.
That is as good as it got .
I looked at that 97% number as it is often used in marketing, reporting etc:
https://watchingthewatchersofdeniers.wordpress.com/2016/09/16/the-ubiquitous-97/
Who were the three percent that said the climate wasn’t changing or didn’t know? Early days when I saw the survey I looked at how the questions were asked. Almost everyone with any sense of history, especially with science, knows that Earth’s climate nature is to change. Yet seldom did any news media outlet point that out. Nope, they all claimed that 97% were saying that climate change was all about anthropogenic forcing and, more bizarrely, seemed to infer that climate had been in some wonderful equilibrium for some long period of time.
Of course, the climate changes, it has always done it and will always do it and there is nothing we can do about it. The stable climate is a myth …
It changes yes, but at the same time it is and has been very stable. Stable enough for life to happily continue to thrive over eons with perhaps the odd interruption. The often repeated ”climate always changes” is just as meaningless as ”the climate is changing”
Mike,
Obviously Earth’s climate has been stable enough for life to survive and thrive, but it really hasn’t been all that stable.
During the worst Snowball Earth episodes, average global temperature has probably been around -50 degrees C. During the hottest hothouse intervals, it has gotten over 25 degrees C. Not to mention the oceans of molten lava on the surface before live developed here.
How do you explain living fossils like Gingko biloba. 270 million years and still going.
Elon Musk smokes marijuana while talking about how climate change poses a risk to humanity. Marijuana and climate delusion go together
https://www.forbes.com/sites/samshead/2018/09/07/elon-musk-smoked-marijuana-and-chatted-cybernetic-collectives-with-joe-rogan/#3747b8e82777
MJ could be a hyuuuge carbon sink.
Until smoked.