Guest rebuttal by David Middleton
Trump thinks scientists are split on climate change. So do most Americans
There’s a 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming, but most Americans are unaware
Dana Nuccitelli
Mon 22 Oct 2018 06.00 EDT
[…]
Back around 2009, I “crossed swords” with Mr. Nuccitelli a few times in the Yahoo! Answers forum. Dana is a smart guy and strikes me as a very decent person. The last think I want is for him to be able to copy one or two words from my post and run whining to the the New York Times and complain about civility; so I will make a concerted effort to not insult him in this post… But I just can’t resist this…
Scientists are very divided on climate change
Much of my rebuttal was put together from prior WUWT posts on this subject, there’s at least one new addition to the vast evidence of scientific division (Stenhouse et al., 2017).
Stenhouse et al., 2014 told us that atmospheric scientists are very divided on climate change over the past 150 years.
89% × 59% = 52%… A far cry from the oft claimed 97% consensus.
When self-described “climate scientists” and meteorologists/atmospheric scientists are segregated the results become even more interesting…
Only 45% of meteorologists and atmospheric scientists endorse the so-called consensus. Even self-described climate scientists only reach 78%.
Maibach et al., 2016 told us that atmospheric scientists were very divided about climate change since 1950.
“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…
Conflict within the AMS
Stenhouse et al., 2017 tells us that there is conflict within the American Meteorological Society on the subject of climate change.
This article analyzes open-ended survey responses to understand how members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) perceive conflict within the AMS over global warming. Of all survey respondents, 53% agreed that there was conflict within the AMS; of these individuals who perceived conflict, 62% saw it as having at least some productive aspects, and 53% saw at least some unproductive aspects. Among members who saw a productive side to the conflict, most agreed as to why it was productive: debate and diverse perspectives enhance science. However, among members who saw an unproductive side, there was considerable disagreement as to why. Members who are convinced of largely human-caused climate change expressed that debate over global warming sends an unclear message to the public. Conversely, members who are unconvinced of human-caused climate change often felt that their peers were closed-minded and suppressing unpopular views. These two groups converged, however, on one point: politics was seen as an overwhelmingly negative influence on the debate. This suggests that scientific organizations faced with similar conflict should understand that there may be a contradiction between legitimizing all members’ views and sending a clear message to the public about the weight of the evidence. The findings also reinforce the conclusion that attempts by scientific societies to directly address differences in political views may be met with strong resistance by many scientists.
So… Where does this 97% number originate?
Second hand opinions of abstracts of papers. The authors’ tabulate their opinions regarding whether or not the abstracts support the AGW paradigm. One of the earliest examples was Anderegg et al., 2010. The most recent and oft-cited is Cook et al., 2013 (Mr. Nuccitelli was a coauthor).
As Legates et al., 2013 pointed out, Cook defined the consensus as “most warming since 1950 is anthropogenic.” Cook then relied on three different levels of “endorsement” of that consensus and excluded 67% of the abstracts reviewed because they neither endorsed nor rejected the consensus.
The largest endorsement group was categorized as “implicitly endorses AGW without minimizing it.” They provided this example of an implied endorsement:
‘…carbon sequestration in soil is important for mitigating global climate change’
Carbon sequestration in soil, lime muds, trees, seawater, marine calcifiers and a whole lot of other things have always been important for mitigating a wide range of natural processes. I have no doubt that I have implicitly endorsed the so-called consensus based on this example.
The second largest endorsement group was categorized as “implicitly endorses but does not quantify or minimize.” Pardon my obtuseness, but how in the heck can one explicitly endorse the notion that “most warming since 1950 is anthropogenic” without quantification? This is the example Cook provided:
‘Emissions of a broad range of greenhouse gases of varying lifetimes contribute to global climate change’
By this subjective standard, I have probably explicitly endorsed the AGW “consensus” in many of my WUWT posts.
By Cook’s standards, I have implicitly endorsed AGW without minimizing it and implicitly endorsed but did not quantify or minimize. While I am a luke-warmer, I am 100% certain that I have never explicitly or implicitly endorsed the consensus.
No Schist, Sherlock.
One of the most frequent refrains is the assertion that “climate scientists” endorse the so-called consensus more than other disciplines and that the level of endorsement is proportional to the volume of publications by those climate scientists. Well… No schist, Sherlock! I would bet a good bottle of wine that the most voluminous publishers on UFO’s are disproportionately more likely to endorse Close Encounters of the Third Kind as a documentary. A cursory search for “abiogenic hydrocarbons” in AAPG’s Datapages could lead me to conclude that there is a higher level of endorsement of abiogenic oil among those who publish on the subject than among non-publishing petroleum geologists. This doesn’t elevate their hypothesis to a scientific consensus.
These exercises in expertise cherry-picking are quite common. A classic example was Doran and Kendall Zimmerman, 2009. This survey sample was limited to academic and government Earth Scientists. It excluded all Earth Scientists working in private sector businesses. The two key questions were:
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?
I would answer risen to #1 and my answer to #2 would depend on the meaning of “human activity is a significant contributing factor.” If I realized it was a “push poll,” I would answer “no.”
Interestingly, economic geologists and meteorologists were the most likely to answer “no” to question #2…
The two areas of expertise in the survey with the smallest percentage of participants answering yes to question 2 were economic geology with 47% (48 of 103) and meteorology with 64% (23 of 36).
The survey was limited to government and academic scientists. Had the survey included economic geologists in the mining and oil & gas industries, only about 30% would have answered “yes” to question #2.
The authors then derisively dismissed the opinions of geologists and meteorologists…
It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.
No discipline has a better understanding the “nuances” than meteorologists and no discipline has a better understanding of the “scientific basis of long-term climate processes” than geologists. I could run through numerous surveys of geoscientists that demonstrate strong disagreement with the so-called consensus.
The authors close with a “no schist, Sherlock” bar chart:
The most recent example of expertise cherry-picking was Stenhouse et al., 2014.
The 52% consensus among the membership of the American Meteorological Society explained away as being due to “perceived scientific consensus,” “political ideology,” and a lack of “expertise” among non-publishing meteorologists and atmospheric scientists…
While we found that higher expertise was associated with a greater likelihood of viewing global warming as real and harmful, this relationship was less strong than for political ideology and perceived consensus. At least for the measure of expertise that we used, climate science expertise may be a less important influence on global warming views than political ideology or social consensus norms. More than any other result of the study, this would be strong evidence against the idea that expert scientists’ views on politically controversial topics can be completely objective.
Finally, we found that perceiving conflict at AMS was associated with lower certainty of global warming views, lower likelihood of viewing global warming as human caused, and lower ratings of predicted harm caused by global warming.
So… Clearly, 97% of AMS membership would endorse the so-called consensus if they were more liberal, more accepting of unanimity and published more papers defending failed climate models. No schist, Sherlock!
What, exactly, is a “climate scientist”?
35 years ago climatology was a branch of physical geography. Today’s climate scientists can be anything from atmospheric physicists & chemists, mathematicians, computer scientists, astronomers, astrophysicists, oceanographers, biologists, environmental scientists, ecologists, meteorologists, geologists, geophysicists, geochemists to economists, agronomists, sociologists and/or public policy-ologists.
NASA’s top climate scientist for most of the past 35 years, James Hansen, is an astronomer. The current one, Gavin Schmidt, is a mathematician.
It seems to me that climate science is currently dominated by computer modelers, with little comprehension of the natural climate cycles which have driven climate change throughout the Holocene.
Climate scientist seems to be as nebulous as Cook’s definition of consensus.
Closing Note
I wrote this without actually reading beyond the headline of Mr. Nuccitelli’s article. Did I miss anything?
OK… I glanced at it… Nope, I didn’t miss anything.
References
Anderegg, W. R. L., Prall, J. W., Harold, J., & Schneider, S. H. (2010). Expert credibility in climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 107, 12107–12109.
Cook, J., Nuccitelli, D., Green, S. A., Richardson, M., Winkler, B., Painting, R., et al. (2013). Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature. Environmental Research Letters, 8, 024024.
Doran, P., & Zimmerman, M. (2009). Examining the scientific consensus on climate change. EOS. Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, 99, 22–23.
Legates DR, Soon WW-H, Briggs WM et al. (2013) Climate consensus and “misinformation”: a rejoinder to “agnotology, scientific consensus, and the teaching and learning of climate change”. Sci Educ. doi:10.1007/s11191-013-9647-9.
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.
Stenhouse, N., and Coauthors, 2014: Meteorologists’ views about global warming: A survey of American Meteorological Society professional members. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 95, 1029–1040, doi:https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00091.1.
, 2017: Conflict about Climate Change at the American Meteorological Society: Meteorologists’ Views on a Scientific and Organizational Controversy. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 98, 219–223, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00265.1
If the climatariat genuinely believed we were on the verge of “wrecking the planet,” wouldn’t the rational response…. if not the overwhelmingly desperate felt need…. be to hold debates and thereby show the world how right they are? In my opinion their refusal to debate is prima facie evidence they have to confidence the
facts are on their side. I think we should make a bigger issue of this.
Of course they won’t debate because none of them can show actual evidence that man’s CO2 is causing serious global warming.
thanks
JK
If the UN/IPCC ,and the climate scientists that advise them on policy…genuinely believed that global warming was a problem..
..they would never have put policies in place that allow the vast majority of countries to increase their emissions
…so they don’t believe it either…game over
And they would also be howling for a widespread and rapid nuclear power program to be instituted.
Spot on. Giving China a free pass and putting them on the receiving end of the Green [ slush ] Fund , makes a mockery of the idea that this is a real physical problem.
BTW, who is going to take someone with a gender ambiguous forename, who rides around on a PINK Vespa, seriously as an objective scientist. He is buried up to his ass in identity politics and certainly regards climate activism as part of the same social virtue signalling process.
To be fair the pink might be cancer motivated,but Mr Nutticelli (oops, Grauniad typo) should decide if he is scientist, or activist. It’s hard to maintain untainted scientific credibility when you are both.
The above are very good points.
We know that climate has always changed. My city’s location was once covered by a mile of ice – a continental glacier, and that was just ~ten thousand years ago – the blink of an eye in geologic time.
In addition, all we (probably) know is that:
1) Atmospheric CO2 is increasing, possibly or probably due to human activities.
2) A hypothetical doubling of CO2 from the so-called “pre-industrial” level of VERY approx. 280ppm to 560ppm would cause AT MOST 1C of global warming (Christy and McNider 2017, Lewis and Curry 2018) , which is NOT dangerous, but is net-beneficial for humanity and the environment.
3) Increasing atmospheric CO2 is hugely beneficial for the environment and humanity, due to greatly increasing plant and crop yields.
4) In conclusion, there is no credible evidence of dangerous manmade global warming, and ample evidence to the contrary.
What we do not know for certain is more interesting, but is generally ignored in the fractious climate debate:
a) What are the primary causes of increasing atmospheric CO2? Why are we so sure it is fossil fuel combustion? What are the other contributors, such as deforestation, agriculture, and other human and natural causes, and how big are they?
b) If we are so sure that CO2 is a significant driver of global temperature, how is it that atmospheric CO2 trends lag atmospheric temperature trends in the modern data record by ~9 months, and by hundreds of years in the ice core record? Are we confident that the future is a significant driver of the past, and if so, why?
The dumbing-down of the general public, including our idiot/corrupt politicians and civil serpents, is regrettable.
The dumbing-down of the science community is even more unfortunate.
Regards, Allan
Allen, thank you for elaborating.
I would like to add that IMHO, when you dumb down science, you dumb down everything else, except religion.
They have a strict policy to not enter a debate. I was scheduled to debate at MacMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario about 15 years ago. David Suzuki’s daughter was on the pro side. At the last minute, she withdrew (alleged death in the family). They supplied a true believer science fiction writer. You could never make this up.
You can count the debates on one hand.
And if they had any chance in those debates they would be debating all day every day.
Actually one should not think it is easy to debate once one is on the right side. You need to know much more than your opponent thinks to know in order to fight wrong data.
One idiot can produce a lot of outrageous claims that are painfully difficult to outcompete. Think of Dana Nuccitelli and his 97 per cent talking point. David wrote a long rebuttal. That means the work put in rebuttal is much larger than the original claim. That goes both ways.
Nuccitelli is wrong about the overwhelming consensus, because he (she, it?, I’m not gonna check) talks to people who have consensus or apparent consensus on the existence of overwhelming co2 related climate change consensus.
I’ve observed this, myself, here in North Carolina, at all three of the largest local universities: the climate activists default strategy for “winning” the climate debate is to suppress dissent.
In 2012, at the tail end of the great NC sea-level legislative kerfuffle, a freshman volunteer with the Duke University Environmental Alliance, the school’s largest student environmental club, invited representatives of NC-20 (including me), which backed the legislation, to participate in a planned “panel discussion” about the new law, scheduled for Oct. 30, 2012 at 6:30pm, along with Nicholas School faculty members, who had led the opposition to it (and who had a representative testify against the bill in Committee at the NC State Legislature, testimony that was remarkably blatant in its misrepresentation of the science). The young volunteer apparently didn’t realize that the purpose of the event was to propagandize for the Correct Viewpoint, and differing opinions were not permitted, so she wasn’t supposed to have invited us. When the faculty activists learned that we would be there, they all remembered conflicting commitments, and backed out. The environmental club then cancelled the panel discussion, because, according to the email from a club officer, “as an environmental group, we cannot let one side go unrepresented.” (A few weeks later the Nicholas School had Michael Mann come down to speak on campus, for a fat fee, and everyone there forgot their aversion to one-sided events.)
In 2014, when very distinguished Princeton atmospheric physicist Will Happer was scheduled to teach a Physics Colloquium at his alma mater, UNC, left-wing activists in the Physics Department appealed to the Department Chairman, in an unsuccessful effort to get the event cancelled, because Prof. Happer is outspokenly skeptical of climate alarmism.
In 2016, in front of a room full of people, at an event promoting climate alarmism, NCSU professor Ruben Carbonell promised me that I could present the other side in an upcoming presentation. I don’t know whether he ever intended to keep that promise. After ignoring my emails for a month, he finally replied, saying that he had “checked out… the organization that funds you” (note: no organization actually funds me, unfortunately), and “we have decided to focus our resources on other topics and programs.”
Cowards.
Cowards, reactionary jerks, and shallow ideologues….
Their refusal to debate is political. Apart from (1) having nothing solid to debate, there’s (2) a need to do something, with having evidence to justify the doing.
(1) Their consensus, is one of opinion, not one of facts believed. A consensus that IPCC experts opine this or that. Not that IPCC experts all agree upon some evidence. They do not all agree on the same GCM, atmospheric surface temperature dataset, or whether Hockey Sticks are science or statistical fraud. A debate would be a cacophony; like skeptics but even noisier, will more disagreement, and no harmony.
(2) By claiming consensus, they can justify illusory certainty. From that, they justify action. Their ‘climate action’ always promotes a neo-Malthusian worldview to put the brakes on human ambition, to trash the human spirit.
The whole purpose of the false claims of broad “consensus” is because they want people to stop thinking, and blindly accept the propaganda they’re feeding them at every turn.
Because when you begin to dig into their claims and the house-of-cards pseudo-science that supposedly supports said claims, you quickly find it to be nonsense.
They want politicians and media to stop thinking, and blindly accept the propaganda. Common people are not so stupid. “They” are not democrats. No climate policy is ever put to a vote. I don’t think they care much what “people” think.
Oh initially, before the “Dreaded Pause” came to be accepted as real by the committed, they did debate, but with disastrous results. They lost every one.
Agreeing with anthropogenic warming and believing that something ought to be done about it is not the same as actually doing something about it or even IF much can be done about it.
Easy to say to others “this is a problem; do something about it”.
Harder to get personally active, as that requires individual sacrifice.
I think this video, which is a conversation between Mark Levin and Patrick J Michaels puts the whole AGW into a nut shell.
https://rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com/2018/10/22/mainstream-news-on-global-warming-theory-and-its-validity-not-by-mark-levin-and-patrick-j-michaels-american-association-of-state-climatologists-former-president/
Particularly I like the way he points out that AGW models do not meet the criteria espoused by Karl Popper and how the models are but tools of government and inaccurate because they are based on warming in the 20th century which in not commensurate with the CO2 increases of the time.
A must view for any discerning person who wishes to understand how we are today with Climate Change and the attempt to drop carbon fuels from the economies. Economies which will likely starve and impoverish the world.
Cheers
Roger
Great video. Well worth watching. Would be good to have a written summary of key points.
Why is it that, in those surveys, there is never, ever a ‘don’t really care’ spot on the survey?
But you do, that’s why you are here.
Care about climate change, or political correctness?
How many folks who accept taking surveys are really educated on any of the issues they are willing to opine about?
Pretty much, anyone using the 97% theme either does not understand the origin of the claim, or is deliberately being deceptive.
Or are simply parroting a position to be liked by others.
My first question to these parrots is always “What percent of the atmosphere is made up of CO2?”
When they fail, as they always do, you know immediately you are dealing with ignorance.
“But I just can’t resist this…”
Whew…
🙂
And now, ah, climate history, reading all the loud codswallop, for sure climate has no history !
And “Greenland” was a mistaken translation from some “before God” tribal language !
Greenland was named, as far as I remember, by Erik The Red. The language at the time, 800 to 1100, was “olddansk”. Yes, in 1500 the language was changed to “gammeldansk” and in 1700 to “yngrenydansk”, which is what is spoken today. However, I doubt that green-land has changed it’s underlying meaning throughout the years. Back in early 1960’es during my young school years, I was explained that the term green-land was a promotional effort, most likely based on facts, that the Danes/Norwegians could have good time in Greenland and live of the land.
In fact many moved to Greenland, but by 1400 there were hardly any left, as the climate grew too cold to survive, if you had not adapted the same way as the Eskimos. There is a biological reason why this was not possible for the Danes and Norwegians, but this is another story and has to do with the blood circulation difference between Eskimos and Danes/Norwegians.
Language reference: https://prezi.com/l90anhldis34/det-danske-sprog/
fascinating post Carl – obviously you’re Scandinavian judging by the name? do you ahve anymore info on the biological differences between Norse and Eskimo that contributed to the above?
There were no Danes in Greenland at the time of settlement or during the Norse period. They were all from Norway or Iceland.
To the extent I got to know Dana… I thought he was a decent person with good intentions. But I can’t resist Data laughing almost as much as I can’t resist Dean Wormer’s “Zero-point-zero”.
He certainly is not stupid, well educated but probably didn’t find his intended vocation as a scientist, attractive or financially rewarding, so he does what he enjoys more and possibly is better paid for, writing simple and plain science fiction.
Dana worked in the fossil fuel industry before the Guardian. I can see why a climate alarmist would find that unattractive. The jibes from other alarmists must’ve been hard to bear.
No… Dana works/worked for a large civil/environmental engineering consulting firm… Largely related to compliance. As such, they did a lot of work for fossil fuel companies.
I’m surprised Scooter is still around. However nice of a person he is, it is clear from his comments and articles he is a zealot.
There are actually two issues making Climate Science toxic and failing of which you got one
1.) What, exactly, is a “climate scientist”?
The issue is the field has got so wide it involves so many fields even if I saw someone qualified to discuss one area they aren’t qualified to discuss another. They are definitely not qualified enough to provide answers on how to tackle any problem found. The whole activism activities of the scientists compounds the issue, would you trust your GP if he was an activist for a pharmaceutical company.
The other issue you left out
2.) The field has taken on things like social and political equality and justice
I was actually stunned a few years ago when the IPCC started introducing that into the field because it was a death sentence. That is a political ideology that a very small minority accept. If a field of study ever want to self euthanize itself that was the thing to bring into the field. Majorities in almost every country will have problems with parts of that concept.
The first might be fixable but it is all sort of moot now the second sealed the fate and I don’t know where you go from there. I suspect in years to come there will be lots of stories about this period.
Maybe the Climate Science profession should require a certification like a CPA or Professional Engineer. Aren’t the stakes for harm to humans and the environment much higher if a Climate Scientist makes a miscalculation?
Hmm.. Another clue that this whole phenomenon has an alternate motive.
An ulterior motive, to be more succinct.
It’s fascinating that a “consensus” that allows as little as 50.0001% anthropogenic warming *since 1950* is used as political support for arbitrary targets pegged to warming since late-19th-century levels. I’ve always felt that warming *since 1950* should be the relevant guidepost, instead of not-really-pre-industrial levels. The “warming since pre-industrial times” meme implies that there was a constant temperature in pre-industrial times and we know exactly what it was — neither is true.
Before it “warmed from 1950”, it first had to cool off from 1950 to 1980. Then it warmed from 1980 to the present at the same magnitude as the warming that took place from 1910 to 1940.
The Hansen 1999 US Chart below shows the ups and downs. The Hansen 1999 Chart temperature profile is consistent with unmodified temperature profiles from around the globe, i.e., the 1930’s is as warm or warmer than subsequent years.
Thanks, David. As an Economic Geologist I am thrilled to be cited as most in denial. As T. Boone Pickens said in his recommendation for assessing the health of a potential acquisition target, find the highest ranking geologist you can and ask them, because 1. they know the answer, and 2. they tend to tell it straight out. Any geologist that thinks in the lessons of Sequence Stratigraphy has no concern whatsoever about a few meters of sea level movement, it doesn’t register as a useable signal against the noisy background. It actually is amusing to watch climate scientists quibble over two degrees C change.
Bingo! We are also accustomed to multiple working hypotheses. In my world, climate science is a subset of stratigraphy and a subset of geology.
Chamberlin’s Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses… Ranks right up there with the Law of Superposition.
David, you said, “Had the survey included economic geologists in the mining and oil & gas industries, only about 30% would have answered “yes” to question #2.”
It is my impression from reading the commenters here that geologists are over-represented, compared to their proportion in the general population. That being the case, I think it has a lot to do with the way that we look at the Big Picture. It also helps that few in other vocations have been introduced to Chamberlain during their education.
The Climatariat is clearly unaware of Chamberlin.
Unaware, David, or confirmation biased enough to ignore it?
It strike me that confirmation bias has also bred conformational bias in the climate studies realm.
Multiple working hypotheses don’t mix well with 97% consensuses.
👍
Just to be sure i’m not being a space cowboy, you do mean Alan Chamberlain, right?
http://cedarstrat.com/
T. C. Chamberlin’s “Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses”
To laugh like Mr. Data, all I have to do is think about people swimming down Canal St. to get to work. AGW is science fiction at work. You just have to believe that the Westside highway is under water. You just have to believe any number of scary things…. on the brink of Halloween. A House of Climate Horrors with AGW as a zombie science, the walking dead.
This year for halloween they’re trying to crash the stock market, I guess.
What people or scientists think is irrelevant. What can be demonstrated with reproducible results may be relevant. The biggest issue to me, though, is the assertion by the orthodoxy that the world’s climate is a univariate system where the only relevant variable is carbon dioxide. The theory that the state of the system is determined by a trace gas implies a dangerous instability that is contradicted by a mountain of evidence. Why this assumption of a univariate system continues to be given credibility is unfortunate. The debate should not be framed in this way.
If you only include carbon dioxide you are missing the major GHG – H20. Now we all know the shape of the curve relating CO2 concentration to assumed global temperature, and how it flattens so that doubling the concentration from 400 to 800 ppm will warm the assumed global temperature about 1K, or less. The question is: does water vapour have a similar concentration/temperature curve, and if so, give that the concentration over most of the earth, except the driest deserts such as Antarctica, would be 1000 ppm or more (possibly up to 4000 ppm above tropical seas), are we already on the near flat section of the curve? If so, increasing the concentration of water vapour in the atmosphere should do little to increase global temperatures.
The Univariate hypothesis requires treating water vapor as a variable that is completely dependent on CO2. The IPCC treats the dependency of water vapor on CO2 as an axiom that is not subject to question. If the axiom that water vapor is a completely dependent variable on CO2 is subject to proof, then the entire Univariate hypothesis collapses. I think it is the weakest point of the Climate Change orthodoxy, but they will not entertain any debate on something they consider sacred.
Phil
try to convince a man who frequents here with the name Phil.
….
Not guilty Your Honor. No dot after my phil
Dudley – it’s 40,000 ppm in the tropics – 4%.
I’m amazed that OSHA hasn’t set a PEL!
⚠😉
scientists are split on a lot of things.
reasons for the abrupt glacial melt in the Alps at the end of the Little Ice Age, for example.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/10/23/a-natural-recovery-from-the-lia/
I have a database for monsoon rainfall vs the solar cycle that delivers +0.94 r2 correlation. The response is antipathetic with rain rising as the solar cycles fall and obviously vice versa. There is no trend whatsoever since 1813 when the monsoon was first recorded. That tells me that the Sun trumps the industrial revolution. Coincidently, according to the biggest glaciers of the Alps, the Little Ice Age came to an abrupt end about 1810 – 1820. I conclude that the tiny rise is not climate change or is completely an artifact of weather stations moved from the barbershop in our towns to the major airports on our planet.
I have two thermometers, one on the porch rail and one on the wall. The porch rail is usually 3-5 degrees C colder than the outside brick wall of my home.
And yet when they receive criticism the first thing they do is to point out that whoever is doing the criticism is not a ‘climate scientist’.
Dr. Michael Mann, of hockey stick fame, is a physicist. He has no formal training in anything to do with trees. No climate scientists complained that Mann was unqualified to use tree rings to guess the historical temperature.
I read Mann’s paper years ago. He’s no biologist – nowhere was there a discussion of factors affecting tree ring size. In my view, a huge flaw in his paper. How did it come to be published without such a discussion?
Because it told the narrative that the government paymasters wanted to hear.
None of the people who did the “peer review” on that paper knew enough to even ask why there was no such discussion.
Credentials don’t matter. Al Gore has credentials. What matters is that the narrative supports values that undercut western civilization, an eternal goal of those who envy success.
It would be interesting to assess the data with regards to funding — what do government-funded scientists say vs. those who are not. Sounds like PhD project for somebody…
I like simple numbers. From 3,146 respondents in that survey, whopping 75 answered “yes”. After pruning out most of respondents as insufficiently qualified for any reason, 77 were left. 75/77=97%, try it yourself.
In other words, the claim that 97 percent of scientists believe humans are causing the climate to change is just another fraud perpetrated by the Alarmists.
This is a perfect example of how a lie, repeated often enough, becomes the “truth”.
OffGuardian has a review of a pro-AGW book up. It’s a positive review, but their comment policy is very open and anyone who feels like going over there to discuss almost certainly won’t be silenced. Some dreadful Calvinistic nonsense being spouted below the line
Review: Unprecedented Crime
https://off-guardian.org/2018/10/22/50139/
A (subtitle?) in the article states “Only 18% of “scientists” thought that there was any point in destroying our economy in order to prevent the weather from changing. Fully 41% of “scientists” indicated that climate change might as well be “ignored.””
It’s easy to see where the “41%” came from. The 18% is obviously 17% + 1% who believe all or much of the change can be averted. But I can’t for the life of me see where “… any point in destroying our economy …” came from. Oh, that’d probably HAPPEN, but they can’t all be okay with it. Let’s not put words in their mouths. I don’t like it when they do it to me, and fair’s fair.
I didn’t say I wouldn’t inject any hyperbole, I just said I’d try not to insult Dana.
Although, the IPCC’s latest and greatest SR 1.5 tells us that they need a $240/gal gasoline tax and about $133 trillion to avert all or much of future climate change… Kinda hard to see that as anything other than destroying our economy.
I suppose that thinking that “all or much of the change can be averted” isn’t an endorsement of destroying our economy… unless I use a Cook-style rating system.
…and China gets a get out of jail free card
David
$133 Tn……….Bwahahahaha…….
Let me check down the back of the sofa!
Do these people undergo a reality lobotomy as an IPCC prerequisite?
Yes, they do.
That number is the signal for them to fold their tents and go home. Or better yet go stand on the South pole and await the apocalype. Quasi religious nutjobs!
This is very interesting. I look forward to seeing a similar analysis as to who should be proposing solutions for this “problem”. Who has the right to say wind and sun are the best energy sources to prevent this unimaginable warming of 1.5 deg?
$trillions have been spent on this stuff without any appreciable effect. How on Earth did that happen? Our politicians must be dumber than we even imagined.
So dumb that they and all their cronies are filthy rich.
Yup, that’s dumb alrighty.
Nailed it.
+100
I do not want to be seen as harsh or some thing like that but got to say
that academia of science is in principle no any much different than the
other academia, the religious one.
Sorry, no meaning to offend but got to put this list expressing my
understanding, or my view point:
A 97% consensus in the Budist academia desagree with the very
lord or deity they worship.
A 97% consensus in the Hinduism academia desagree with the very Vedic scriptures and their God.
A 97% consensus in the Islamic academia desagree with Quran and their
God.
Same goes for Christian and Judaism.
and then
A 97% of scientific academia desagree with the reality and the very method
the academia worships as “path” of unbiased research and learning.
As as I can tell, nothing new under the Sun, especially when considering
the zealots too.
Sorry if I happen to upset or offend or hurt any one feelings.
cheers
97% of Democratic Senators believe unsupported accusations.
98%… 48/49 = 97.96%
Even if I discount the two Marxist independents who caucus with the Democrats…
46/47 = 97.87%
Unless, of course, they’ve been accused themselves.
97% of Democratic Senators believe unsupported accusations
but only when the accusations are not against one of their own.
It is said 50 % OF Americans believe in ghosts and 50% do not believe in evolution. Do the Ven diagrams.
“Stenhouse et al., 2014 told us that atmospheric scientists are very divided on climate change over the past 150 years.”
How long are we going to use ‘150 years’ as the benchmark for how long it has been since the pre-industrial age began? It has been 168 years now since 1850, and on Jan 1/19, it will be 169 years. We were using ‘150 years ago’ 8-9 years ago. If we use 150 years forever, then at some point it doesn’t mean anything since it will be ancient history. I think the date we should use for any time since human warming began is the year the space age began in 1957. I could easily remember that, as I was born just a few months before the space age began, and the Spaceocene should be the new moniker we should measure the man made warming from. Then it would be 61 years since man made global warming began.
The standard is usually since 1950.
“I think the date we should use for any time since human warming began is the year the space age began in 1957.”
Icarus flying toward the Sun makes just as much sense.
Or the date Henry Ford launched the Model T — October 1, 1908.
Sounds good to me…as long as it isn’t perpetually 150 years ago that the man made warming began.
97% of his peers wouldn’t look through his telescope. Some things never change
So, I ask a train layout builder who has been making model building all their life for advice when I build my home in Florida. They say their wood of choice is balsam wood and that his MODELS are very strong. Who wants to live in that house when a Cat 1 hits my house.
As an degree holding Ecologist, I know my limitations when I talk about issues that I am not completely educated in. I have a wildlife issue I go to a Wildlife Biologist who is knowledgeable of the species I am interested in. While I can converse in the field I rely on their expertise for the facts.
It seems to me that the whole climate issue is this propensity to rely on models and people talking about things they are not experts on.
We need to get to the FACTS and the FACTS will set us free.
Sciwiz
I know two facts.
1. No one has ever reliably, by empirical means, established that atmospheric CO2 heats up the planet.
2. The single meaningful, observable manifestation of increased atmospheric CO2 is that the planet has greened by 14% in 35 years of satellite observations. Nothing in the lexicon of climate alarmist predictions even comes close to that fact they didn’t anticipate.
Any predictions of climate change predicated on 1. are speculative and therefore worthless. That pretty well puts paid to every prediction made by any climate alarmist, ever.
Exactly, my point is we have to base our knowledge on facts not models and that our facts must be constantly verified. I was an Air Force Navigator for 22 years and our weather forecasts rarely were right on, we sent weather reports each hour to provide real data that was used to improve their forecasts. But over 22 years the forecasts had about the same reliability.
I use paper card for many models on my train layout.
And I can vouch that they are very susceptible to Cat #1 🙂
Oh, that’s right. There’s another annual Party-on-the-Plaza COP?? coming up in Poland when? I don’t keep track anymore. They’ll run around chasing cameras and attempting to score soundbites for a few days, then meet for 4-5 hours to produce The Statement™ that proclaims we’re all doomed, but the U. S. must pay-up, and at the end an announcement to schedule the next one. I was starting to wonder at the frequency of these press-releases, all saying we’re doomed and it’s all Trump’s fault. Case solved.
This same group of climate people, can’t make predictions well. I still haven’t heard of a tropical hot-spot forming. I’m preparing for another brutally cold winter in Nebraska.
As far back as 1954 the award winning author Saul Bellow had his short story protagonist in “The Gonzaga Manuscripts” say: “I don’t keep up much with science …. I remember I read somewhere that industry gives off six billion tons of carbon dioxide every year and so the earth is growing warmer because the carbon dioxide in the air is opaque to heat radiation.”
So the CO2 causes warming contention was being promoted as popular science well over 60 years ago. Although the interpretation back then was quite calmly accepted; as Bellow’s protagonist went on to say: “All that means {is} that the glaciers won’t be coming back.”
Dana Nuccitelli’s idea of consensus is the one he brought to The Guardian from the website that cannot be named-if you delete all the objections then of course you can achieve a huuuge “consensus”.
I discovered that truth about a decade ago when I actually tried debating the topic on the afore-unmentioned website. After a few exchanges with one individual, a quite lengthy post of mine, politely replying to each point the individual made, was entirely edited down to zero. Not deleted, but, by their own account, just edited for wrongspeak.
SkS is not a place for discussion. It is a place for dissemination of tribal information.
In my opinion, editing another person’s post is much, much worse than deleting it.
It isn’t all that different from using sock puppets in order to find someone to agree with you.