Reposted from the NoTricksZone
By P Gosselin on 26. October 2021
Cooked up consensus…
Martin Landvoigt writes on truth and consensus, climate models, the “fundamental and methodological difficulties” in climate science and how “hard, robust evidence is largely lacking” and so it’s “a matter of weakly substantiated opinions”.
Climate consensus and the climate
By Martin Landvoigt at Philosophieren für alle), Die kalte Sonne
(Text excerpt translated, subtitles added by P. Gosselin)
On this basis, the argument of the supposed consensus in climate science has been presented several times and repeatedly.
Numerous studies are supposed to prove this. In particular, the study: Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature – John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli, Sarah A Green, Mark Richardson, Bärbel Winkler, Rob Painting, Robert Way, Peter Jacobs and Andrew Skuce – Published 15 May 2013.
Cook et al 2013 refuted
Arguably the most influential study used by U.S. presidents and other top-level decision makers as evidence for climate policy. Nevertheless, it can be considered refuted:
Detailed analysis shows that only 0.5% (65 of the 12,000 abstracts rated) suggest that humans are responsible for more than 50% of the global warming up to 2001, contrary to the alleged 97% consensus amongst scientists in the Cook et al study. Citing fear mongering and faulty methodology Friends of Science reject the study and President Obama’s tweet as careless incitement of a misinformed and frightened public, when in fact the sun is the main driver of climate change; not human activity or carbon dioxide (CO2).
Many articles and studies refute their approach and results. Including:
The claim of a 97% consensus on global warming does not stand up
Consensus is irrelevant in science. There are plenty of examples in history where everyone agreed and everyone was wrong
Of course, the method used is also astonishing: studies published on the subject of climate change were examined. Therein lies the assumption that scientists who publish on the topic are the only authoritative experts. This method, which probably provides a ‘biased’ selection, also only highly dubiously suggests expert opinion. Wouldn’t a representative survey among experts have been the appropriate method? So too among meteorologists and other scientists working in many different capacities around weather and climate. In fact, there are such studies that show the picture in a much more differentiated way, yet still largely ignored.
Now a new study has been published: Greater than 99% consensus on human caused climate change in the peer-reviewed scientific literature by Mark Lynas, Benjamin Z Houlton and Simon Perry – Published 19 October. Will this study provide better and more up-to-date knowledge than the many studies that preceded it? Unfortunately, it does not.
The abstract does not specify what the consensus is supposed to be:
We identify four sceptical papers out of the sub-set of 3000, as evidenced by abstracts that were rated as implicitly or explicitly sceptical of human-caused global warming. In our sample utilizing pre-identified sceptical keywords we found 28 papers that were implicitly or explicitly sceptical. We conclude with high statistical confidence that the scientific consensus on human-caused contemporary climate change—expressed as a proportion of the total publications—exceeds 99% in the peer reviewed scientific literature.
Naturally this leaves room for all kinds of assumptions: Does that 99% consensus really claim a strong, predominant or complete influence of anthropogenic factors? Or is it merely that there is a – quantitatively unnamed – human influence on the climate? The latter can be assumed since there are masses of articles doubting a dominating influence of those factors on the climate.
However, since the mentioned 3000 articles probably do not have exactly that question as a subject of investigation (only generic keywords were searched), it cannot be assumed that valid quantifiable investigation results are available here. The analysis of the text confirms this:
3.1. Results of random sampling
Our random sample of 3000 papers revealed a total of 282 papers that were categorized as ’not climate-related‘. These false-positives occurred because, even though the climate keywords occurred in their title/abstracts, the published articles dealt with social science, education or research about people’s views on climate change rather than original scientific work.
Little surprised then we have the classification:
| Explicit endorsement with quantification Implicit endorsement No position | 19 460 2104 |
Source: Lynas et al. 2021
Less than 1% of the papers quantify the human influence on the climate
In plain language: only 19 out of 3000 papers examined quantify the human influence on the climate. The rest obviously do not make any quantifiable statements. And even from those 19 papers it is not analyzed how the influence was quantified. A quantification of 50% anthropogenic contribution would already be considered as evidence of the so-called consensus here, but in other contexts would already mean also contradiction to the IPCC and the verdict of climate denier. Although the 2104 papers are relevant and describe climate change, they do not even make implicit statements about human causation. Why not actually? To speak here of a far-reaching consensus of over 99% is truly brazen!
Only consensus: man has some impact
Therefore, the claimed consensus could only be that man has some influence on the climate. But the investigation does not even come up with that, although it would be a trivial statement. A similar consensus will be that the color of the cloudless daytime sky is blue. But this is completely irrelevant and does not justify political decisions, especially if they drastically change the living conditions of people. Correspondingly wrong is then also the conclusion:
The tiny number of papers that have been published during our time period which disagree with this overwhelming scientific consensus have had no discernible impact, presumably because they do not provide any convincing evidence to refute the hypothesis that—in the words of IPCC AR5—’it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century‘ [12], and, most recently in IPCC AR6—’it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land‘ [13].
How did it survive peer-review?
The entire paper had not even examined whether there was a consensus on “human influence being the dominant cause of the observed warming”. How could such wrong conclusions survive a peer review? This raises doubts about the value of peer review.
Nevertheless, it can be assumed that this study will continue to be used – without giving details – as proof of the scientific nature of climate protection policy. However, it is precisely this considerable effect that is probably intended and should rather be classified as propaganda and bad science.
The major untenable assumption was that the keyword search was valid, or being applied to the correct set of papers.
How does 1869 climate papers taking “no position” out of 2718 randomly selected, turn into 99% consensus. Sounds like something well beyond buIIsh1t.
It is the magic of computer programming. It is rather like people defending Michael Mann’s factor analysis that makes hockey sticks out of red noise.
So if you were a journalist with any scintilla of self respect who reported this study without questioning its probity, wouldn’t you now be dealing with an extreme case of self-loathing?
(Or are you a gormless twat that just copy/pastes anything that’s fed to you?)
clarification – this was not a comment directed at the author of this post.
So, for journalists, as a class, I’m going to go with “B”.
Just look at the pathetic lies that our various trolls repeat over and over again. And most of them aren’t even paid to make themselves look stupid.
MarkW, I had a few lines of exchange with griff back in August. Griff maintained, and I’m much inclined to take griff’s word on it, that griff is unpaid.
Now that’s really sad.
I’d feel a lot better if griff was banking some bucks for those baseless assertions griff makes and griff’s willful blindness to facts pointed out to griff noting the difference between weather and climate.
Ya know what I’m sayin’ Mark? Sad. Annoying, but sad. That’s our unpaid griff.
–
–
P.S. I do take your point. They should at least get paid to look stupid. Maybe the trolls should unionize, eh? 😜
“If we’re gonna be stupid, pay us what we’re worth! …….wait a minute………”
😲 … 🤣 🤣 🤣
Griff is really useful. He tests our patience and ideas. He asks the dumb questions that intelligent people might ask (those that haven’t been interested in climate) and he acts as a quality control. Nick Stokes was more thoughtful and directed but equally useful. I love to see the answers to these points, I think it improves the site and my understanding. So if Griff isn’t being paid, it wouldn’t be bad if he were.
I tend to agree.
It’s the comments responses to Griff’s inanities that provide facts and insights to laymen like me.
I used to think that it would not be possible for anyone to make a bigger hash of assessing scientific papers than Cook did with his “97% consensus” hit job, but here we go with Lynas trying to outdo him using similar methodology. Another case of “the ends justifies the means”. To call this “junk science” demeans all other practitioners of that black art. This is further evidence also that “peer review” no longer has any credibility.
Peer review is only relevant for papers written by one or two authors, without much history of scientific publication. It is foolish to expect that all these authors actually wrote this paper – they merely peer reviewed it and added their names. They have therefore shown their competence – it is low and their opinions – alarmist. It never was science, how could it be? What was the hypothesis and how was it falsified?
I had a paper rejected by a windbag from the Royal Society Journal which prompted me to invent my own quotation: There are an almost unlimited number of ways that my hypothesis can be falsified; your opinion isn’t one of them.
Regarding peer review, note that Cook is named in the acknowledgements, but it is not clearly stated he actually was a formal reviewer. Obviously he would endorse the paper. Mark Lynas has a history degree and was a virulent anti-GMO activist, then did an abrupt 180 and now strongly supports GMO and gets invited to conferences to speak on this. I wonder if he could be persuaded to reverse his AGW stance.
“Mark Lynas has a history degree and was a virulent anti-GMO activist…”
Not all historians are that stupid, for example, Dr. John Robson, a Canadian: https://www.youtube.com/c/CDN_ClimateDN/videos
Another “if you repeat it enough times it becomes truth” consensus supported by the media.
They’ve only moved the needle 2 points in 8 years from 97% to 99%. At this rate it will take another 44 years to turn it up to 11.
They need to get to 110% now or they’re headed for a disaster of biblical proportions: fire and brimstone coming down from the sky, rivers and seas boiling, forty years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together – MASS HYSTERIA!
Or something.
The peer review system is already in the dock, this type of publication will do science no good whatsoever.
I despair for the scientific community, this must be desperately frustrating.
The “long march through the institutions” of the Marxists is now complete. Our only hope is Darwin.
Woodworms eating away at the foundations of civilization in the hope that once destroyed something better will emerge, may well be correct.
But be careful what you wish for.
Law, order, government, science, and commerce exist because of trust. Breach that trust and civilization will shrink back to tribalism.
I would love to see an honest survey where these questions were asked:
What percentage of global warming since 1850 is proven to be caused by humans?
To what degree do the current and projected warming rates represent an existential danger to civilisation?
To what degree do the costly measures taken and proposed represent an existential danger to civilisation?
Science cannot prove anything to be true. At best it can disprove an assertion.
Once again, that is an unanswerable question. Prediction is hard, especially about the future.
That is far easier to answer. The short answer is that net zero, without the technology to do it, at a sane price will destroy civilization.
No detailed costed engineering plan exists, that shows a successful decarbonisation. What exists are a random collection of useless technologies that wont work and will cost every penny we have and more.
Forget global warming: We are and will continue to face pressure on supply and cost of fossil fuels: controlling them will enable bit players to exert global power.
The short answer in my book is that the first nation to fully embrace nuclear power will be the last civilization left standing.
It’s simply a propaganda exercise of transference (the special appeal to authority).
I think that’s the whole point of this kind of “research.” 😄
“Humans are to be blamed for all the wrongs in this world” is the popular and current mantra. That is why a large segment of the human race is calling the current era “Anthropocene era” but in reality that large segment of the human race is suffering from ennui. The challenge of being human with a particular mission in life is now very low. After all humans and his technology have addressed the challenges in a span of one or two generations the challenges that his ancestors have face for a millions years or so. The core of the present civilization is the harnessing of energy and once energy is sniffled out the current civilization could collapse and it is back to dark ages with all the new challenges humanity will have to face again.
Future historians will be calling this era ” Misanthropic era ” rather than “Anthropocene era”.
This happened before – see Gilgamesh. Enlil could not sleep with the noise of humans so commanded a plague, drought, and Flood. We call that Babylon, and Venice/Rome the wh*ore of Babylon (Ishtar) . Today this is called eugenics in polite company – see Huxley’s UNESCO manifesto…
History like climate goes in cycles. Energy from the harnessing of fire, domestication of farm animals, and unpaid or lowly paid humans were the main catalyst for significant changes in human history. The recent past history is made possible by the dominance of “King Coal” and his lesser relatives natural gas and oil or generally called the fossil fuel dynasty. It is only natural the recent iconoclastic agenda would focus on the destruction of “king coal” and his dynasty. The main difference with the past is the globalization that took place in the last century. The iconoclasm is no longer limited to a particular region but it affects the whole mankind and hence the rise of the “Misanthropic Era or age”.
The misanthropic era or age to be acceptable and more politically correct starts with the condemnation or blaming humans for all the ills of this world and calling the current state as Anthropocene Age.
The tiny number of papers that have been published during our time period which disagree with this overwhelming scientific consensus have had no discernible impact, presumably because they do not provide any convincing evidence to refute the hypothesis that—in the words of IPCC AR5—’it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century‘ [12], and, most recently in IPCC AR6—’it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land‘ [13].
Lynas et al.
Translation into WUWT-speak:
Argumentum ad populum…argumentum ad populum…argument from ignorance and incredulity…appeal to authority, appeal to authority, proof by assertion, and false authority (within which are hubris and hasty generalizations).
In summary: Kettle Logic
rather ….In summary… Bandar Log-ic
“We all say it, so it must be true”
In other news, 100% of scientists agree that water is wet.
“Somewhere in the world, a woman is having a baby every 30 seconds, What are we going to do about it?”
“I think we should find her and stop her”.
She should be encouraged to no longer attend those kinds of parties!!!
How random was the random selection of 3000 papers? If Cook is anything to go by (and it may not be in Lynas’ case), even simple claims like that should be examined very closely.
Peer review has devolved from valuable, skeptical analysis by experts in the field to rubberstamping agreement with those of like mind (politics, not science).
Bad it is, but science?
‘Quantifying the scientific consensus on climate change’ is not a genuine scientific question anymore than whether there is a consensus that Babe Ruth was the best baseball player of all time.
“…rather be classified as propaganda and bad science/”
I object, there is NO SCIENCE used anywhere in this paper. Improper pattern matching, bad assumptions, over-simplified statistics, hand waving, and inept agenda-driven conclusions are not science (at least…they didn’t use to be).
Even given their methodology and numbers, seems to me an honest headline and abstract would say ~69.9% of climate studies make no attribution of man’s influence on climate change while ~30% attribute it to man’s influence and the rest dispute that attribution.
But a consensus of 30% doesn’t confirm biases too well so…
… and 99% of Aunty employees surveyed believe in the climate crisis and they know how taxpayers can fix it. The other 1% away at the time and out of mobile range were excluded for methodological accuracy.
Hmmm, I didn’t realize science was a democracy. Down with Galileo!
How such absolute tripe can garner any serious attention is utterly beyond me…
It is such absolute tripe that this is the third blog-post in recent days attacking it. As Shakespear would put it “the lady does protest too much”.
Such trash deserves daily opprobrium for being so obvious, just to provide practice belittling true believers like you.
Something that dawned here recently was concerning ‘Peer Review’ in that it has become ‘Peer Pressure’
Effectively the ‘peers’ are in collusion with each other all to conform to The Narrative
(that CO2 controls the weather and that rising temps are = bad)
It is very effectively is a conspiracy
but but but, not a conspiracy in the classic sense of a group of (usually) malevolent characters having secret meetings and drawing up plans without anyone else’s knowledge.
Something like what Huxley talked about and especially Eisenhower with his “To be gravely regarded” words
This is an unspoken conspiracy but still a one where all the members (co-conspirators) conform to and with the plan and as time progresses, so does it.
How its all held together is of course via the Media, via the tsunami of ‘papers’ they produce and also via jamborees such as the COP conferences.
Thus all the conspirators can share what they’re individually thinking and gradually expand the thing and it’s all done ‘In Plain Sight of The Whole World’
Thus, when anyone comes along and says ‘Ah look, there’s a conspiracy!” they’ll be told in no uncertain terms that they are mentally deficient
It is exactly as Cronies operate when biding for Government contracts/work/money. Government makes the (if you like) mistake of having it all transparent and open but when there’s only one buyer in the market, that becomes the downfall of the system/method.
i.e. Costs skyrocket, timescales expand endlessly and buck passing becomes an Olympic sport
And as Climate Science goes, that’s exactly it, only Government is buying/paying for Climate Science
Now you see why ClimateGate simply *HAD* to be hushed up. The conspirators were caught red-handed doing a conventional conspiracy.
Being in Government employ, it was The Biggest Disaster that could befall any Government – Climategate took a very large chainsaw, dynamite and a backhoe loader right to the very root of what ‘democracy’ is supposed to be all about.
Even before it made, by their own definition, it made everyone inside government to be = mentally deficient, blind, deaf and terminally stupid.
At which point we might/could/should be grateful to Lynas because what he’s doing here is quantifying and qualifying who the conspirators are.
Theye are so dumb they have given themselves away.
We really do have to ask “How long can it continue from here/now?”
But nothing can ever come because, as per Huxley, Eisenhower and me just now, who would ever believe such a thing could be going on in plain sight under the noses of everyone.
Perfect Monty Python.
Now any closer to ‘getting it’?
Monty Python was not ‘funny haha’
Monty Python often satirised itself in order to satirise exactly people like Lynas – and it is they who ‘don’t get it’
If it all weren’t so goddammit expensive, stress inducing and time-wasting, it really would be funny
It is beautiful though, watching them strutting around just like the Duracell Bunnies did in their heyday – with a generous measure of ‘Muppet’ thrown in
edit to haha
didya see where I put ‘Brandoning’ instead of ‘bidding’
Your point about the runaway problem of monopsony was illuminated by Pepys, arguably the first literate defence procurer who tried all of the ways to tackle the problems of corruption including contract incentives and even the natialisation of shipyards He said that, after a lifetime he finally understood that ‘it is not possible for the King to buy as cheap as other men’.
As Climate Science is bought by governments through grants, the only answer is to cancel this kind of funding.
A precedent was the reduction of Arts Council grants to the theatre sector. Amid cries of ‘disaster’ …. the number of events and box office receipts grew.
How one reduces the grants to Universities for ‘mind-poisoning crap’ is the issue. Any ideas?
Peta of Newark,
The scare about anthropogenic (i.e. human caused) global warming (AGW) is not a conspiracy. I wish it were because such a conspiracy would probably have collapsed – and almost certainly could be broken – by now.
The AGW scare is a bandwagon that can be – and is – of use to people of every political ideology. Nobody needs to conspire to get people on board or to stay on board a bandwagon they all want go in.
A coincidence of interests is usually more powerful than any conspiracy.
Richard
Surely, it can easily be refuted by examining a small sample of the 99%, to see what they actually say.
Lynas the phantom flan flinger
A lame attempt at shutting down any public discussion
The consensus is er settled
99% of scientists agree that a butterfly flapping its wings in a Braziilian forest could have an impact on global climate.
.
A drive to kill all butterflies has been funded by the UN
Even if their analysis was true: it’s publicly known that the ratio of research money pro vs. contra to CAGW is around 3500 to 1. On top, it’s known that it’s extremely difficult to publish sceptic papers at all. So it’s even possible that their analysis could show something similar, at least for recent papers. That doesn’t mean anything wrt the “real” consensus on CAGW by the scientific community. And most important of all, science is not about consensus. Personally, Happer and Wijngarden’s paper was enough to close the whole issue about GHG’s in our atmosphere. Consensus is irrelevant. One scientifically sound paper is enough to show that the others are wrong.
Consensus is irrelevant to science. In that respect, the Lynas paper is irrelevant.
However, I find it quite interesting that they claim to have used some algorithms to search papers in a quest to find clues as to what the papers have to say about human influence on the climate.
Now, I am no expert but my impression is that computers excel in two things: they are extremely good at searching and categorizing information based on our preference, and they never tire.
So, why did they have to make a “random sample” in the first place? Why not just let the computer run its search on the full set of papers?
Or maybe they did. That would be the Cook-method, and it seems they are buddies of sorts.
The author is just much too polite towards Cook and Lynas. Both studies are incompetent from the sociological viewpoint and fraudulent from the science point of view. Incompetent charlatans is to me the correct characterisation.
All this says is that “The Ministry of Truth” has been remarkably successful.
Getting a sceptical paper published is well nigh impossible these days and carries great danger to career prospects. Without these being included in the survey, which is not possible, the Ministry of Truth prevails, with the very survey itself reinforcing its claims of rectitude.
Where has all the ethics gone? Gobbled up by the Communists, I suspect, with their Mantra that: “The end justifies the means”.
Any paper claiming “99 %” of anything should be deemed and dismissed as non-science.
So, if you do your maths like “Lynas et al.” the headline of the study could also be:
“More than two thirds of climate studies (app 69%) find no evidence for anthropogenic driven climate change!”
Sorry, that’s more like the Cook et al (2013) methodology than Lynas et al (2021).
– – – – –
Cook et al
From the Abstract :
The detailed numbers are available in their Table 3 :
– – – – –
Lynas at al
The ratings of the 2718 “climate-related papers” they ended up with on their first pass are summarised in Figure 1 of their paper :
They then performed the following “calculation” :
For Lynas et al “No position” is now equal to “Enthusiastic endorsement of whatever ‘the consensus’ is today”.
For Cook et al it was more like “Ignore 2/3rds [7930 of 11,944] of the papers we looked at”.
If Lynas et al had used exactly the same methodology as Cook et al their “calculation” would have been more like : “Our estimate was (19 + 409 + 417) / (2718 – 1869) = 99.53%.”
They just felt that they “had to” squeeze out an extra 0.3% for some obscure reason(s).