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
The 97% consensus lie is nothing more than a carefully constructed lied fed to the news media and the greens. It is all based on the proposition that a lie told often enough soon becomes the truth.
Think about it, the 97% has been repeated over and over both within the scientific community and news media but preached from “on high” by technocrats and political leaders. Therefore how is a good citizen, Joe and Martha Sixpack suppose to ignore or believe that it is not the truth? Especially since science education in the USA especially has declined dramatically since the beginning of this bizarre fiasco.
The 97% is perfectly plausible given no scientist can operate without grants and no grants have been given to any climate scientist who put forward an idea even suspected of undermining man mad CO2 based climate change.
Peer review is as plausible as testing all juries for belief in the defendant being guilty before allowing them to sit on that jury and then saying the guilty verdict is fair and reasonable.
Any computer modeller will tell you a computer model is only as good as the underlying data and in the case of climate data it is sub junk standard using even low end commercial product engineering standards.
A scientific education is no basis for the practical requirements of data acquisition and peer review references prove no attention worth speaking of is paid to that aspect of the task.
D Cage
It doesn’t take a scientist to understand that any data going back to the 1850’s when the IR began is worthless. SST’s taken by a cabin boy chucking a bucket over the side, to no defined depth before sticking his finger in it to see if it is warmer or colder than yesterday, assuming he had time.
Those SST’s being taken along well worn trade routes and other than a few brave souls rounding the cape, almost no measurement of the southern oceans. Them modern ships with automated intakes, but no international agreements on standards which meant a variance of up to 8°C.
Tea boys being sent out into the snow/wind/rain/blistering heat by the ‘responsible’ scientist to take the days measurements from the Stevenson screen, which was a good excuse for a ciggie, assuming of course the screen was maintained properly, well positioned and painted with compliant materials. And if the tea boy actually read the thermometer it would differ from the next tea boy’s readings because one was 5’3″ and the other 6’2″ tall.
Even satellites were/are plagued with drift, calibration issues and faulty parts. They sent Hubble up with a wonky mirror FFS!
It would help science greatly, if the antagonists would stop the semantic games, the model apologies, and indulgence of inference, where they create ever more absurd, dramatic plot twists.
Trouble is also that people are too busy or a bit lazy and just want to have the answer without the details, hence the statistical sleight of hand BS bite size now easily remembered figure of ‘97%’ gets quoted too quickly; but because no one really knows, it’s just too ‘scary’ for the general public believing scientists have all the answers, which of course we don’t know why things work they way they do to a myriad of descriptions of the Universe that we are. We can describe/parrot things, but in many or even the majority of cases we don’t really know why things are the way they are; for example the Standard Model of currently 17 elemental ‘particle/wave/things’ (why did nature replicate Generation I as II & II, as far as we know).
Laudable, David, that you don’t wish to insult Mr N. Indeed leave that to the those who have nothing pithy to say in support of a crumbling political putsch. Something Steve McIntyre said that rings loudly is:
“In my opinion, most climate scientists on the Team would have been high school teachers in an earlier generation – if they were lucky. Many/most of them have degrees from minor universities. It’s much easier to picture people like Briffa or Jones as high school teachers than as Oxford dons of a generation ago. Or as minor officials in a municipal government.
Allusions to famous past amateurs over-inflates the rather small accomplishments of present critics, including myself. A better perspective is the complete mediocrity of the Team makes their work vulnerable to examination by the merely competent.”
Steve is a gentle, kind, self deprecating person. He arrived at this conclusion after years of clisci team thwarting his efforts to get data used in their studies and the low life tag team bitchy emails that resulted.
It set me thinking regarding the exodus from the profession of dissallusioned climate scientists occasioned by the “Dreaded Pause” who came down with the well publicized Climate Blues (oh they rationalized some different reason, but the rationalization-(D*nile) is precisely why they fell ill). The team getting rid of the Pause was because of the devastation it was causing to the meme.
It would seem that those vulnerable to finding that they had wasted years of study and over half a lifetime supporting a phlogiston theory would be the brightest and most scrupulous (but constitutionally fragile) practitioners. The mediocre and devious would cynically hang in there clinging to a falsified position for the good life, payola, and praise of political masters and entertainment stars.
Look up “Cognitive Dissonance” –
The Brittanica definition is particularly telling:
https://www.britannica.com/science/cognitive-dissonance
This explains everything. Including Dana.
Rumor has it that the illegal migrants are planning on moving to Al Gores house
because its carbon neutral and that is of course their first priority .
Can we expect the Hollywood elite to open up their acreages too ?
Doesn’t Moonbeam have a ranch they can stay in ?
No. America is open, and we welcome refugees, and expect others to pay the consequences. Then we can cry that the poor were hardest hit, and claim their votez.
There is no man made climate change
but that does not mean that there is no climate change.
In fact it is happening, exactly as I predict it: warmer and drier at the higher latitudes and wetter and dramatically more wet at the lower latitudes.
Click on my name to read my report.
Nice to see a survey with simple questions where it is split in its parts.
Normally you see questions like is AGW harmfull or other combinations.
There is no way to answer that in an honest way if you can not split the double statement.
In fact you can design a survey to get the wanted answer, if you are clever with the formulation of the questions.
The 97% meme was ever a ploy: to keep sceptics arguing the case while the alarmists moved on. It’s like giving a dog a bone: he’s distracted and will keep at it for as long as possible.
Once the fake statistic was set running it should have been left to rot and any further use of it treated with contempt (just tell ’em they’re liars). It’s the same as when people dream up scenarios which we label PC: it’s a distraction to make people challenge the PC – and shrug as they accept it as trivial. PC is a tool of those who want to disrupt society.
It just doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things: Alarmists are liars and need their lies to be believed – or argued over – in order to promote their NWO – which has nothing to do with warming. (BTW: another PC meme is to attack ‘conspiracy theories’ whether they are valid or not).
Agreed. The best way to challenge this is just call them liar, fake scientist, or promoter of fraudulent stats. Precisely what one says should depend of who’s claiming 97%. Arguing it on ‘science’, presupposes there’s been something worthy of the name science or statistics. There hasn’t. Bad statistics are common in social sciences.
Square ice berg:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45953252
OMG we’re living in a GCM climate model Matrix!!
Nope, not Matrix, but Dark City — that rectangular ice berg was “tuned”.
If you don’t get the analogy, then go watch the movie, Dark City. (^_^)
David –
Do you believe it is warmer today than the 30s? the late 80s and early 90s?
Globally? Probably.
In the US, it’s a close call.
Funny, how the only reasonable answers in all these charts steadily belong to 1% of respondents.
Reason is a rare thing in this Universe.
Another point that just struck me:
I remember a time, only a few years ago, when the word “luke-warmer” was used quite regularly, and accurately, to describe people such as myself and others who frequent this site. It is interesting how the term now seems to have largely disappeared, to be replaced with more derogatory phrases. I suspect it simply conveyed something too close to the truth for alarmists to continue using.
Luke-Warmers get grief from both sides.
And it holds in general politics too.
Sometimes persuasion is used to try and influence the floating-voter who might actually determine the outcome of an election. Insults, threats, and intimidation might also work, but in my case they have simply driven me to vote for people I hadn’t voted for before. The people who might do the most to get Trump re-elected seem to be the same voices who haven’t learned what didn’t work last time.
Her Hagness’ “deplorables” comment converted me from a vehement Clinton opponent into an avid Tump-supporter.
President Trump’s first 21 months in office made me think he’s the best thing since Reagan… maybe since Madison.
And still they harp on a “blue wave” coming as if it is preordained reality. Nate Silver has declared there is only a 1 in 5 chance the Republicans will hold their majority in the HR. Meanwhile Republicans early voting is like nothing I can recall occurring in a midterm.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/10/22/key-state-tracking-republicans-leading-democrats-in-early-voting/
I am one of the early voters in Indiana and not a D got a vote from me. I didn’t used to be that way. I never voted party before the 2016 election, always voted for the person before that. The Democrats converted me into a straight ticket R. I have hardened to the point now that if a family member were running for office as a D I would vote against them.
Am I just one of many that have changed like that? I think so. Our dreams of what or nations is and should be grow ever further apart as the middle ground is shrinking and becoming a no mans land between sides that are ever more entrenched.
Thomas Jefferson once wrote: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” I believe we are currently heading towards one of those times and doubt that anyone can change that course.
The Republicans might lose the House. Although, Nate’s bias is showing. The over/under is currently a GOP loss of 25 seats… making it close to a toss up. In the Senate, the GOP should have a net gain of 1-6 seats.
Here in Texas, we were bombarded with headlines about record Democrat turnout in the primaries. 60% of the total turnout was Republicans… and we had no competitive statewide races.
This year, we have been bombarded by Beto-mania… the fake Hispanic running against Ted Cruz. Four years ago, the lamestream media coronated Abortion Barbie as the next Governor of Texas months before Greg Abbott crushed her by a 20% margin. Cruz might not crush Beto by 20%, but he will crush him.
All that’s needed to falsify the 97% consensus is to put up the following graph from the IPCC AR5 and ask the following questions:
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/graphics/images/Assessment%20Reports/AR5%20-%20WG1/Technical%20Summary/FigTS-14.jpg
1/ What does the consensus agree on, the failed models or the 4 empirical datasets that falsify the models?
2/ If the consensus agrees with the theoretical models, which model does the consensus agree is the correct one?
Graph source: IPCC AR5 report, Working Group I, Technical Summary, pg. 87, fig. TS.14.
The questions always ask is the global warming / climate change man made or natural, with the term man made interpreted as , because of CO2. But that’s not specifically asked and if one looks at the vast use of concrete that has been used in the modern society at least part of the change has been due to man but not necessarily CO2.
I believe that the amount attributable to fossil fuels is as close to zero as to be irrelevant. Most of it is man made in the sense that it is MANipulated ( by MANN)
Nuccitelli is not only wrong, his memory of where the number came from is wrong. And the claims made in the paper it came from, which he authored, is also wrong. Three wrongs definitely don’t make a right.
The “97% consensus” is a consensus of scientific LITERATURE, not the number of scientists supposedly claiming humans are causing global warming. It came from a “study” by Nuccitelli, Cook and others reviewing the abstracts of 11,944 “peer-reviewed scientific” papers.
In the abstract of their study they claimed: “Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming”
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024;jsessionid=8EDD19163A68F5120D7C97B307B875A6.c1.iopscience.cld.iop.org
Interestingly, no matter how you parse their data, you never arrive at the 97.1% number they claim. In fact the actual numbers are:
0.54% claim humans cause 50% or more of global warming.
7.72% explicitly claim humans cause it but don’t quantify how much.
24.36% imply that humans cause global warming (highly subjective of course).
That works out to 32.62% of papers endorsing global warming explicitly or implicitly.
Which means that 67.38% do NOT endorse global warming. Of that group, 0.75% explicitly reject the notion that humans cause global warming.
by David Middleton:
No “seeming” about it with me. It should be an obvious fact to most everyone.
And the following is off-topic, ….. but a “timely” fact that needs told, to wit:
“WOW”, ….. it did it again, ….. just like “clockwork”, …. for the 60th consecutive year.
The maximum atmospheric CO2 ppm for 2018 occurred mid May.
The minimum atmospheric CO2 ppm for 2018 occurred at end of September.
year – mth ———- CO2 ppm
2018 1 2018.042 407.96
2018 2 2018.125 408.32
2018 3 2018.208 409.41
2018 4 2018.292 410.24
2018 5 2018.375 411.24 mid May
2018 6 2018.458 410.79
2018 7 2018.542 408.71
2018 8 2018.625 406.99
2018 9 2018.708 405.51 end of September
2018 10 ———— 406.87 October 22, 2018
Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii (NOAA-ESRL)
And here it is October 23rd and the tree foliage is still “dark green” around here, and thus still “sucking up” atmospheric CO2 to produce sugars for the Spring growth next April/May.
Climate alarmist will always have something to talk about because the climate is always changing. It is unlikely they will ever be able to model it accurately, so they will never know, more than generally, why the changes occur. The changes which are judged to be inimical are largely so because Man has settled somewhere and doesn’t want the weather to change unless, of course, things get better at that particular spot. Climate change has become “The Never-Ending Story”. Eventually, alarmist will lose their research money, and suddenly, the climate will cease to be newsworthy. We will then return to complaining about the weather.
Does anyone really believe we can control the climate and make things better for everyone?
You are too kind…. Dana probable thinks you were were spreading ‘misinformation’
Dana writing at Skeptical Science (leaked forum)
“Yes, the global warming section of Yahoo Answers was my first introduction to online climate science discussions over 4 years ago. It has some major plusses and minuses – there are some extremely well-informed people who answer questions there, some who are working in or studying the field of climate science. But there are also quite a few ‘skeptics’ who spread a lot of misinformation in their answers. In theory it’s a very useful site, as long as the person asking the question can differentiate between the good and bad answers, since invariably both are provided. So I visit the site on a daily basis to both spread what I’ve learned about climate science and also debunk the many, many factually incorrect skeptic answers. It would be a shame to allow such a potentially useful site to become a tool for ‘skeptics’ to misinform people who are sincerely seeking to learn about the subject.
So yeah, I think I’ve averaged about 8 answers per day, pretty much every day for 4.5 years. It adds up. But each answer only takes a few minutes tops, unless I need to do additional research before answering. There aren’t too many complex questions there, it’s mostly along the lines of “is global warming a myth?” and “are we causing global warming?”, etc. Though some of the more frequent site users ask some really good questions too, and I’ve learned a lot from those.
I think that’s where I was first introduced to Skeptical Science too, through links in other users’ answers. Skeptical Science is almost certainly the #1 referenced site in the Yahoo Answers global warming section. We’re all well-aware of the site and reference it frequently.”
(Brandon hosts the leaked forum)
http://www.hi-izuru.org/forum/Authors/2010-09-26-Dana's%20work%20in%20Yahoo%20Answers.html
The moderators of Yahoo! Answers routinely deleted skeptical answers when the Climatariat reported them as inappropriate. I stopped participating largely because I got tired of filing appeals, which usually succeeded.
Skeptical Science [97%] Consensus Project – leaked forum.
http://www.hi-izuru.org/forum/The%20Consensus%20Project/
Has this gem from Ari… Subject – marketing ideas [97%consensus]
“I have to say that I find this planning of huge marketing strategies somewhat strange when we don’t even have our results in and the research subject is not that revolutionary either (just summarizing existing research). I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t do this, but just that it seems a bit strange to me.” – Ari
This topic was laughably started before they even defined the “consensus”, the SkS team really struggled with this, less sceptics be included in agreeing with it, they ended up going with the ‘porno’ approach – ‘no quantification’
http://www.hi-izuru.org/forum/The%20Consensus%20Project/2012-01-24-Defining%20the%20scientific%20consensus.html
John Cook:
“Okay, so we’ve ruled out a definition of AGW being “any amount of human influence” or “more than 50% human influence”. We’re basically going with Ari’s porno approach (I probably should stop calling it that 🙂 which is AGW = “humans are causing global warming”. Eg – no specific quantification which is the only way we can do it considering the breadth of papers we’re surveying.”
And John Cook sounding a bit paranoid about Anthony Watts…
John Cook:
“The wording will have to be very carefully constructed because as you say, this will be going out to deniers too. Considering every denier scientist seem to have a direct line to a red phone on Anthony Watts’ desk, the existence of TCP will probably known to Watts before we’ve even looked at the results from the scientists. A scary thought really. For that reason, I think we should wait till as late as possible before emailing the scientists. Eg – wait till after quality control, once our results are done and analysed and the scientists’ ratings are the final piece in the puzzle.
Keeping in mind our email will likely get broadcast on the denialosphere, we have to be very careful to have neutral wording that isn’t leading in any way. The word consensus will likely not even be mentioned. But this isn’t the thread to discuss that. I’ve started a thread just tonight on pinning down the quality control process and once that’s dealt with, then I’ll start working on the scientists self-rating stage. But if people want to post thoughts about that process, start a new thread and we can collect ideas in there.”
hardcore political activists, the lot of them..
Read this project forum and weep for science….
http://www.hi-izuru.org/forum/The%20Consensus%20Project/
I’m guessing 4% don’t think that global warming is happening on a millennial scale.
The NYT is where global warming science believers go to tattle when someone is mean to them? Who knew? I guess since it’s all devolved to the level of two year olds, a tattle room makes sense. Science is soooooo dead.
People’s perception based percentage points has no meaning in the evaluation of science. In elections people go for this type of perception based percentages. At the end it may be yes or no. The credibility of science goes with scientific discussions.
sjreddy
I agree with Mr Michaels and have written similar conclusions for many years. For example:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/08/warming-up-the-poor-and-vulnerable/#comment-2483774
“The IPCC’s special report clearly states that the world has already warmed by 1ºC due to human activity. As a result, climate change is already affecting people, ecosystems and livelihoods across the globe, with impacts such as floods or droughts disproportionately affecting the poorest and most vulnerable. Some of the most affected areas are small islands, megacities, coastal regions and high mountain ranges.”
The above statement is simply .FALSE. – anyone who wrote it is a liar and anyone who believes it is a fool.
Increasing atmospheric CO2 is NOT causing wilder weather and is NOT causing dangerous global warming.
The net impact of increasing atmospheric CO2 will at most be slight warming, which will be net beneficial to humankind and the environment, and large increases in plant and crop yields, which will be hugely beneficial.
…
The Greens have deliberately held back the poorest people in the world with their false opposition to energy. Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of society – it IS that simple.
The position of the greens against energy is the same as their effective banning of DDT from 1972 to 2002 – both resulted in tens of millions of needless deaths, especially among children under 5, and enormous human suffering.
Greens are the great killers of our age – that fact is incontrovertible. I suggest that they belong in jail.
The banning of DDT from 1972 to 2002 – did not result in tens of millions of needless deaths. DDT was banned from agricultural use, and was still permitted for malaria control. Repeating a false meme Macrae makes you look ignorant.
FALSE Dave Burton. I have researched this subject and your statement is a bold lie, repeated from the usual deceitful green sources. The green slime routinely employs blatant lies such as yours, because any lie is OK for them, as long as it serves The Cause.
DDT was effectively banned for the control of malaria from 1972 to 2002 and malaria deaths almost doubled during that time, from about one million per year to almost 2 million in 2004. More than half these deaths were children under the age of five, just babies for Christ’s sake – see Figure 6 in The Lancet article.
Malaria deaths declined sharply after 2005, following the re-introduction of DDT. The people responsible for the effective ban in DDT killed tens of millions, mostly children under five in sub-Saharan Africa. The effective ban of DDT was a crime against humanity.
Here is just a few of many references:
GLOBAL MALARIA MORTALITY BETWEEN 1980 AND 2010: A SYSTEMATIC ANALYSIS,
The Lancet, Murray et al, Vol 379, No. 9814, p413–431, 4 February 2012
https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(12)60034-8.pdf
The above article is not paywalled, but you have to create a free account. Read it and weep.
MALARIA AND THE DDT STORY
The Institute of Economic Affairs, London, 2000
https://iea.org.uk/themencode-pdf-viewer-sc/?file=/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/upldbook26pdf.pdf&settings=111111011&lang=en-GB#page=&zoom=75&pagemode=
MALARIA VICTIMS: HOW ENVIRONMENTALIST BAN ON DDT CAUSED 50 MILLION DEATHS
Original source unavailable – Reprinted at
https://www.rightsidenews.com/life-and-science/energy-and-environment/environmentalist-genocide-how-the-ban-on-ddt-caused-50-million-malaria-deaths-worldwide/
I have seen two debates and participated in one in 15 years. The format of the two I saw was to poll the audience before and after. Both showed a strong increase for the scientific approach which, while not an outright victory, showed the alarmists lost ground among the true believers.
I co-authored a written debate on the Kyoto Protocol in 2002, together with Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson (Carleton U) and Astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas (Harvard-Smithsonian), hosted by the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta.
In our rebuttal, we made eight statements, all of which have since proven correct. The following two are particularly important:
1) “CLIMATE SCIENCE DOES NOT SUPPORT THE THEORY OF CATASTROPHIC HUMAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING – THE ALLEGED WARMING CRISIS DOES NOT EXIST.”
2) “THE ULTIMATE AGENDA OF PRO-KYOTO ADVOCATES IS TO ELIMINATE FOSSIL FUELS, BUT THIS WOULD RESULT IN A CATASTROPHIC SHORTFALL IN GLOBAL ENERGY SUPPLY – THE WASTEFUL, INEFFICIENT ENERGY SOLUTIONS PROPOSED BY KYOTO ADVOCATES SIMPLY CANNOT REPLACE FOSSIL FUELS.”
We were correct on both these points 16 years ago – anyone who disputes this is denying reality:
1) The climate models that predicted catastrophic global warming are all running much too hot.
2) Grid-connected green energy schemes are a costly, intermittent, unreliable debacle.
Our opponents in the debate, the leftist Pembina Institute, cited the IPCC reports and their predictions of dangerous runaway global warming, which have failed to materialize.
The global warming alarmists at the IPCC have been consistently wrong to date – nobody should even listen to these false-alarm climate fraudsters.
Are we going to have Climate Nuremberg trials?
Re: “Are we going to have Climate Nuremberg trials?”
We should have Climate Nuremberg trials. Global warming alarmism was a major crime against humanity, with tens of millions of victims.
The global warming scare was not just false science, it was deliberate fraud – that was proved by the Climategate emails.
Green energy is typically not green and produces little useful (dispatchable) energy. The core problem is intermittency, which is the fatal flaw of grid-connected wind and solar power. Green energy enthusiasts then ASSUMED they can solve this fatal flaw with battery storage, which is more uneconomic nonsense.
The fatal flaw of intermittency in green energy IS just that simple, but this obvious fact continues to elude many politicians and their minions.
My co-authors and I correctly predicted the failure of most green energy schemes in 2002, as follows:
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
In the same debate, we also wrote::
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
Since then, tens of trillions of dollars of scarce global resources have been squandered on destructive green energy schemes that have driven up energy costs and destabilized electrical grids.
An audit in 2018 of the EU’s leading climate alarmist energy policy program by Germany’s Federal Audit Office concluded that Germany’s Energiewende was a colossal and hugely expensive debacle. Almost a trillion dollars was squandered in Germany alone, just on wind power – the German audit estimated the loss at about $800 billion, as reported here on wattsup.
Then there is all the wind power in other countries, and all the solar, and corn ethanol in North America and sugar cane ethanol in Brazil etc. and all the canola and palm oil biodiesel and … and … and ….
Side-effects of these green energy scams included rapid draining of the vital Ogalalla Aquifer for corn ethanol production in the USA and clear-cutting of the rainforests in South America and Southeast Asia to grow biofuels. These actions caused huge environmental damage.
A fraction of these wasted trillions could have put safe water and sanitation systems into every village on Earth, and run them forever. About two million kids below the age of five die from contaminated water every year – over sixty million dead kids from bad water alone since the advent of global warming alarmism.
The remaining squandered funds, properly deployed, could have gone a long way to ending malaria and world hunger.
Regards, Allan MacRae