Richard Tol has an excellent summary of the state of the 97% claim by John Cook et al, published in The Australian today.
It becomes exhausting to just list the errors.
Don’t ask how bad a paper has to be to get retracted. Ask how bad it has to be to get published.
As Tol explains, the Cook et al paper used an unrepresentative sample, can’t be replicated, and leaves out many useful papers. The study was done by biased observers who disagreed with each other a third of the time, and disagree with the authors of those papers nearly two-thirds of the time. About 75% of the papers in the study were irrelevant in the first place, with nothing to say about the subject matter. Technically, we could call them “padding”. Cook himself has admitted data quality is low. He refused to release all his data, and even threatened legal action to hide it. (The university claimed it would breach a confidentiality agreement. But in reality, there was no agreement to breach.) As it happens, the data ended up being public anyhow. Tol refers to an “alleged hacker” but, my understanding is that no hack took place, and the “secret” data, that shouldn’t have been a secret, was left on an unguarded server. The word is “incompetence”, and the phrase is “on every level”.
The hidden timestamps of raters revealed one person rated 675 abstracts in 72 hours, with much care and lots of rigor, I’m sure. It also showed that the same people collected data, analyzed results, collected more data, changed their classification system, and went on to collect even more data. This is a hopelessly unscientific process prone to subjective bias and breaches the most basic rules of experimental design. Tol found the observations changed with each round, so the changes were affecting the experiment. Normal scientists put forward a hypothesis, design an experiment, run it, and then analyze. When scientists juggle these steps, the results influence the testing. It’s a process someone might use if they wanted to tweak the experiment to get a specific outcome. We can’t know the motivations of researchers, but there is a reason good scientists don’t use this process.
My problem with taking the Cook paper seriously is that it is so wholly, profoundly, unscientific from beginning to end that it’s hard to muster any mental effort to unpack a pointless study that will never tell us anything about the atmosphere on Earth.
As I have said from the start, studies on consensus are a proxy for funding, not a proxy for Truth — and funding is as monopolistic as ever. The government gives grants to researchers to find a crisis, and we get what we paid for. If we pour $30 billion into finding reasons to fear CO2, and $0 into finding holes with that theory, it is entirely predictable that we will get 90+ percent of papers that support the theory. There are plenty of ways to write irrelevant, flawed, unrelated, or repetitive material. (What’s remarkable is that there are so many skeptical papers that manage to get written without much funding and get past the gatekeepers in “peer review”.)
But many harried, busy people, untrained in logic, seem to find these consensus papers compelling, so it is worth pointing out the flaws.
The most important issue here is not the inept study authors (who are beyond help) but the response of the University of Queensland, and the editors of Environ. Res. Lett.. Richard Tol has informed the journal of the problems and suggested his reply should be published and the paper should be retracted. Editor Daniel Kammen chose not to publish Tol’s analysis, though he sent it to reviewers. Peer review has become so farcical, one ERL reviewer suggested Tol should rewrite his submission and should conclude that Cook’s paper was an example of “exemplary scientific conduct”. That says a lot about scientific standards at ERL.
Don’t ask how bad a paper has to be to get retracted. Ask how bad it has to be to get published.
Why will ERL publish such a flawed paper, not publish the scientific response to it, and not retract something unscientific and incompetent from beginning to end? Daniel Kammen needs to explain why Cook’s paper is useful science.
Richard Tol‘s blog: Occasional thoughts on all sorts.
“Global warming consensus claim doesn’t stand up”
An edited version appeared in the Australian on March 24, 2015
Consensus has no place in science. Academics agree on lots of things, but that does not make them true. Even so, agreement that climate change is real and human-caused does not tell us anything about how the risks of climate change weigh against the risks of climate policy. But in our age of pseudo-Enlightenment, having 97% of researchers on your side is a powerful rhetoric for marginalizing political opponents. All politics ends in failure, however. Chances are the opposition will gain power well before the climate problem is solved. Polarization works in the short run, but is counterproductive in the long run.
The Cook paper is remarkable for its quality, though. Cook and colleagues studied some 12,000 papers, but did not check whether their sample is representative for the scientific literature. It isn’t. Their conclusions are about the papers they happened to look at, rather than about the literature. Attempts to replicate their sample failed: A number of papers that should have been analysed were not, for no apparent reason.
The sample was padded with irrelevant papers. An article about TV coverage on global warming was taken as evidence for global warming. In fact, about three-quarters of the papers counted as endorsements had nothing to say about the subject matter.
Cook enlisted a small group of environmental activists to rate the claims made by the selected papers. Cook claims that the ratings were done independently, but the raters freely discussed their work. There are systematic differences between the raters. Reading the same abstracts, the raters reached remarkably different conclusions – and some raters all too often erred in the same direction. Cook’s hand-picked raters disagreed what a paper was about 33% of the time. In 63% of cases, they disagreed about the message of a paper with the authors of that paper.
The paper’s reviewers did not pick up on these things. The editor even praised the authors for the “excellent data quality” even though neither he nor the referees had had the opportunity to check the data. Then again, that same editor thinks that climate change is like the rise of Nazi Germany. Two years after publication, Cook admitted that data quality is indeed low.
Requests for the data were met with evasion and foot-dragging, a clear breach of the publisher’s policy on validation and reproduction, yet defended by an editorial board member of the journal as “exemplary scientific conduct”.
Cook hoped to hold back some data, but his internet security is on par with his statistical skills, and the alleged hacker was not intimidated by the University of Queensland’s legal threats. Cook’s employer argued that releasing rater identities would violate a confidentiality agreement. That agreement does not exist.
Richard Tols full post is here.
The Australian article is here.
Just another reason to read “The Australian”.
Well done and well said Jo and Richard Tol.
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And many thanks to the environment editor at the OZ, Graham Lloyd has been outstanding in his quest to air the truth.
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So now we need to discus the problem for students and graduates of the University of Queensland.
Just what is a degree from that University now worth in the eyes of the world?
How do the “peers” of Mann and Cook get way with passing on the trash papers as being ” “reviewed” and accepted as up to standard expected of Australian Academic work?
A real tragedy when exceptions can be made to exclude ” Climate ” papers from the accepted standards applied to other disciplines.
KK
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Well I think many academics will sink themselves – people will work out they backed something foolish ( i.e. a scam ) and will lose their reputations.
All we have to do is be truthful, and keep speaking the truth. Truth always wins out…..and people will flock tot eh truth speakers once the realise they have been conned……
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As I said on RT’s post at WUWT, Cook is now seemingly immune to criticism of this paper: he’s sold his soul and allowed the powers that be to pimp him for his ‘work’ (maybe they thought they were getting cartoons).
What needs to happen now is that we name and shame the peer-reviewers and the directors and editors of the journals that allowed this awful paper to see the light of day. They will maybe not be so comfortable with their association.
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Sold his soul?
Or bought shares in the scam?
Reading this article and considering the time wasted in producing, studying and rebutting this “paper”, you have to conclude that that was the whole purpose of the exercise, to waste time. Paid time for the producers, and unpaid time, i.e. cost, for the critics. An exercise in obfuscation.
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A big problem with the Warmists is that they are so emotionally immature that anything they want to be true, they are capable of convincing themselves is true.
I went through that stage too; finally I was able, along with some small 5-year-old tears, to accept that Santa Claus was just a fairy tale.
Would that the Warmists could have taken a similar journey.
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I was 10 years old when I discovered the truth about Santa. Glad it only took me 5 to cotton on yo the a Climate Change Swindle. I must be improving.
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Comes of typing in the car – I’m not driving. Cotton on to the Climate Change Swindle. Sorry!
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Santa Claus is not real..? Have you got any references to support this claim?
I can’t believe my parents would have lied to me about this for the last few decades.
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You meant to say’ Santa Claus is not real..? Have you got any peer-reviewed references to support this claim? ‘ Perhaps you should check the veracity of Santa in the Fairyfacts Press. I am no longer sure whether I should refer to Their ABC as a kindergarten for Ultimogreens, or a sheltered workshop.
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Climate “scientists” are not actually scientists by even a broad definition of the term. More like conditioned monkeys.
“This human behavior of not challenging assumptions reminds me of an experiment psychologists performed years ago. They started with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, they hung a banana on a string with a set of stairs placed under it.
Before long, a monkey went to the stairs and started to climb towards the banana. As soon as he started up the stairs, the psychologists sprayed all of the other monkeys with ice cold water. After a while, another monkey made an attempt to obtain the banana. As soon as his foot touched the stairs, all of the other monkeys were sprayed with ice cold water.
It’s wasn’t long before all of the other monkeys would physically prevent any monkey from climbing the stairs. Now, the psychologists shut off the cold water, removed one monkey from the cage and replaced it with a new one. The new monkey saw the banana and started to climb the stairs.
To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attacked him. After another attempt and attack, he discovered that if he tried to climb the stairs, he would be assaulted. Next they removed another of the original five monkeys and replaced it with a new one. The newcomer went to the stairs and was attacked.
The previous newcomer took part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, they replaced a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey tried to climb the stairs, he was attacked. The monkeys had no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they were beating any monkey that tried.
After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys had ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approached the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know that’s the way it’s always been around here.”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/201203/what-monkeys-can-teach-us-about-human-behavior-facts-fiction
Pointman
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That logical, last and most terrible step would have been to remove the banana and leave the steps. Any guesses for what the banana would represent?
Pointman
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Brilliant!
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A great demonstration of how: “punishment for not cooperating” (or conversely: “reward for cooperation”) can be equated with: “others think there’s a ‘conspiracy'”
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Work place training programs seem to me, to be specifically about rewards or punishments for cooperation. Team building “insert theme here”.
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So well said Pointman.
The way in which so called climate science is prosecuted bears little resemblance to classical scientific endeavour.
There is a new study starting that will look at the effects of warm currents on ice packs. I wasn’t surprised to hear about it because at this place we all know the models cant possibly include all variables and probably don’t even include the majority of variables. So its always heart warming to get an admission like this one. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/03/16/the-melting-of-antarctica-was-already-really-bad-it-just-got-worse/
“One of these canyons is three miles wide, in a region that was previously believed to simply hold ice lying atop solid earth. On the contrary, the new study suggests the ice is instead afloat.”
So you didn’t (and probably still don’t) even know which ice floats and which is grounded? Yet we can say with 95% certainty that’s its all going to melt and drown us?
Climate science is basically nonsense masquerading as something meaningful. Its the scientific equivalent of claiming to be able to predict the next 1000 lotto draws from having deduced a pattern in the way people screw up their losing tickets. Its embarrassingly childish garbage, carried on by people who should know better but for want of funding, sell their professionalism to the highest left wing, green Government bidder.
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The big question now is who is looking like the bigger fool, Cook or Mann given Richard Tol’s assessment of Cook’s magnum opus and the almost reflexive backhander dished out by even warmista’s to Mann and Rahmstorf’s AMOC fantasy?
For mine its Mann by the length of the strait such is the apparent stupidity of his and Rahmstorf’s latest (toilet) paper. No secret data to selectively mine or conceal, no ‘innovative’ statistical methodology to fineagle. Just running AMOC with delusions of grandeur in plain sight of reality. Risky business driven by desperation?
Cook by comparison seemed and still seems to me nothing more than a very desperate wannabe player who had to team up with the likes of Lewandowsky to get in the game.
I’m 97% convinced of my call on this but happy to listen to different takes on it.
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Ursus,
I agree with your call but if you surveyed the average man on the street, probably no one would know about Mann’s new paper and after some backlash from fellow warmists, I’d think Mann probably won’t now push it hard.
By contrast, many people have heard about Cook’s 97% but are unlikely to have read it, questioned it or understand how shabby it is.
But Cook’s paper has considerable proper-gander value, and in that sense, is more important IMHO.
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Sadly I must agree with your analysis Raven. There are a lot of people in the street who have indeed been taken for proper ganders by Cook and a gormless leftard media who never took a proper, professional gander at his unscientific, confected drivel.
That said, I doubt if warmista’s like even Mann actually ever believed Cook’s 97% claims but just treated it as convenient bulldust. I think Cook was just trying one on to see if he could get away with it knowing there was large cadre of warmista churnalists out there who would publicise his propaganda to all those proper ganders.
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The average person on the street only cares if they are able to earn a living and pay for their current lifestyle, this has been the status-quo since finance came to be.
This need will steer the plebian cognitive dissonance to accept what’s presented in the MSM as no one ever “has the time” to delve into the inner workings of how their own democracy works, I’m sure if unwanted authorities appeared to take them from their homes and relieve them of possessions, trivial papers written by “eggheads” would suddenly move up the ranks of importance where self preservation is concerned.
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The ‘average person’, a ‘usual person’, perhaps on occasion a ‘normal person’ has been thoroughly groomed to accept the catastrophic meme.
More toxic still appears the relentless grooming in the acceptance of a diminished level of prosperity (at paradoxically greater cost)…in the name of a spurious eco-maxist premise that the Western capitalist experiment of the last 150 years is not only a failure but is ‘unsustainable’ and the sinners must pay for the life-support required by Gaia.
No different from the medieval Church, the Green elite promotion of a hair-shirt and self-flagellation mentality together with the provision of ‘indulgences’ for those that could afford the expense is standard practice. As we all recognise, the ‘97% consensus’ has been mindlessly parroted by the MSM and inhabitants of echo chambers like ‘The Conversation’, an impenetrable shield of unwitting and compliant belief against reason expressed as an article of faith in the new Green catechism.
The cognitive dissonance engendered through accepting a declining quality of life that bizarrely costs more in order to ‘save the planet’ is carefully ‘managed’. Undermining this grinding nonsense with inexorable reason prior to the operatic grand-farce due in Paris in November is key.
It needs to be ‘un-managed’ loudly and clearly. It seems The Australian in thankfully on message. Thank you for highlighting this Jo.
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“The ‘average person’, a ‘usual person’, perhaps on occasion a ‘normal person’ has been thoroughly groomed to accept the catastrophic meme.”
As usual you sum it up so clearly Manfred. From prep school to Uni. Young people are conditioned to left/green memes and its only when they leave those institutions and converse in the wider world that many of them realise what a crock of crap they have been fed.
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While Cook’s paper wouldn’t survive any proper gander, Cook is a shameless propagandist, for which his reward is to have his playground style endorsed by Academe.
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There are plenty of folks who openly admit they have neither the knowledge – nor the energy and ambition to acquire the knowledge – who willingly lean on media sources for “information.” I was talking with a neighbor just two days ago who has a specialty in fire fighting, and is very “feel good” in his approach to life. He literally “chooses” to believe that there is a “consensus” about the causes of climate change, but will not go to the effort to educate himself on the debate. Effectively he has chosen to doubt the existence of uncertainties and assign skeptical views to social biases.
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Cook ran a science blog, but wanted to put his authority on his righteous indignation. To do that, he had to put out a science paper in a journal. The fact that it was crap eludes him.
Mann on the other hand is a professional scientisty thingy with the attitude of medusa. Far more cunning, conniving and hard to pin down.
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Greg, I disagree. Cook doesn’t run a “science” blog. Anyone who uses argument from authority as their foundation argument is not talking science, except by accident.
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“Science” like P.T. Barnum would do it. This 97% cr*p will continue to be “truth” as long as liberals, Progressives and their allies in the “news” media have control of the printing presses, microphones, cameras, schools and government bureaucracies. Sites like this are the few places we see a real search for truth.
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You don’t need to search for truth. It doesn’t hide, and is always there.
All you need to do, is avoid looking at, listening to, or in any way believing, “the bodyguard of lies”, that exists, to prevent you finding out about it.
Truth has its own consistency, by its very nature. Lies never seem to be able to find that degree of consistency.
How do you carve an elephant? You get a large block of granite, and cut away all of the bits that don’t look like an elephant.
How do you find the truth? You reject all of the propositions, that don’t show consistency with the other propositions you are presented with.
Lies require orchestration, and monitoring, and adjusting, and promotion, and consensus.
The truth just is; and doesn’t need to do anything, but be.
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Very well said! I always say that telling the truth keeps you from having to remember what you said or wrote.
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Well said, and thank you. Wise words, indeed, and I shall now nick them for use elsewhere. Love your elephant-carving analogy.
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Well said grasshopper
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Ah, the ‘97% consensus’ paper. Another atrocious paper that will go down in history into how not-to-do science. Future researchers will scratch their heads at how bad this paper really is.
Here are some points:
-The key issue is whether 97% of the papers that were pre-selected by Cook et. al. actually support the idea that >50% of the warming since 1950 is caused by humans, which is the key IPCC contention.
The overwhelming majority of the papers selected by Cook et al. in the study do not say anything at all about ‘>50%’. Unless they do, they cannot be stated to do so, anything else is a false representation.
And of course there are many papers that were not pre-selected by Cook et. al. to begin with, being to inconvenient to mention.
The main question is, how can such a ‘97% conclusion’ get past the peer reviewers?, as the conclusions of Cook et al. are nowhere supported by the actual data. You may as well say that 97% of papers support the idea that the >50% of the moon is made of cheese, and it would be as justified from the data.
And the answer is, is that ‘peer review’, at least at the internal journal level, is simply not working.
Whether or not it is working at a broader inter-journal, and inter-disciplinary level however, remains to be seen.
It can then be consigned to the historical dustbin of hopelessly bad research where it belongs.
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Actually, I’d rather it be held up in universities world wide as an example of what NOT to do. It deserves to be ridiculed by all for decades to come.
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… and future liberals and eco-loons will STILL be citing the “peer reviewed” 97% well into the next century.
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Hey, the 97% worked in the last century, for phrenology, and in the century before that for phlogiston. If you have found a good scam, why not keep using it.
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If the ‘climate science’ was settled, as was said many times back then, why did Generaloberstabsveterinär Cook think he needed to concoct such a ridiculous scenario?
Maybe he realized that the skeletal remains of the dead donkey would not move any more.
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Since anything goes in the 97% world..
The 97% actually applies to politicians and actors who are certain about global warming.
97% of politicians are scientifically illiterate and 97% of green industry lobbyists know this.
97% of the worlds media did not report the desecration of a sacred site in Peru last year by greenpeace.
97% of the worlds media did not report the oil spill from the Sea Shepherd into the barrier reef waters.
97% of the worlds media did not report the real reason for the MV Akademik Shokalskiys’ venture into Antarctic waters last year.
Any more 97%ers anyone?
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Ninety-seven, is the largest prime percentage.
As such, it obviously holds a magical and arcane power over journalists, politicians, activists, and other people with an IQ less than or equal to 97 (which is only 3 points below the median, let us not forget).
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97% – that’s the sort of votes Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad used to get as presidents in Iraq and Syria, with the same validity.
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An open comment to all real scientists everywhere-
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When will the rest of the ‘real scientists’ in all disciplines, stop cowering in the corner and start criticizing such nonsense? And loudly!
When will ‘real scientists’ petition ERL and the University for an explanation of this paper, it’s data and methods, and call for the paper’s retraction?
When will ‘real scientists’ realize that by staying on the inside but saying nothing ensures that all science is viewed as tainted, and rotten. The public, your paymasters, will see science as a demeaned and immoral vocation.
When that happens blame yourselves and your inaction. You deserve all you lose.
For it will happen and that’s when the Big Green pseudoscience advocates will have moved in. Taken over. The UN funded NGOs, the anti-science Greens, the dimwitted bureaucrats, and all the rest will have won. Real science where will that be?
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Thank-you Richard Tol for not being a silent partner in this rubbish, realizing what is happening and highlighting issues.
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Tom, I don’t know whether to applaud you for your post or castigate you for not understanding that most scientists, and I don’t know whether I should put the s word into quotation marks, have to pay the bills and they would lose their house if they lost their ongoing cash flow and hence ability to pay their mortgage due to colleagues finding them no longer “sound”. It doesn’t take much for the academic community to grab the fire hoses fast and furiously. I watched as one scientist was chased out of his home country by asking scientific questions that got taken up by the media. What you can ask over a cup of coffee is not the same as what can be asked in the media. The said scientist learned quickly to leave anything controversial alone though he had to change countries to continue his academic career. Ten to twenty years of training, status, cash flow and collegial support are not easy to give up. Perhaps that’s why its largely the retired and very few financially free people plus a few mavericks such as Jo feel free to say something.
Plus, climate “science” is not the only area that is no-go though I won’t mention them by name as they are no-go here too.
But in principle Tom, I absolutely agree with you.
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I agree with you up to a point, but if science as a respectable subject and serious occupation is to survive then those within it must police what is done and said in its name.
If they allow this tosh and its like to be published in the name of science, then as I said, they deserve all they lose.
Now is a different time from the past. Previously restraining over opinionated agenda driven zealots like Cook would be done internally and with little fuss.
These days of easy access communications such methods can not (IMO must not) be used. The main stream press dropped the ball on this one, so it is up to the scientists to help clear out this nonsense.
The amount of publicity given Cook et al and this anti-science study demands that all in science ensure that a loud and definite rejection of it ensues. Unless they don’t mind using the social science’s methodologies and standards throughout all science.
As for “Ten to twenty years of training, status, cash flow and collegial support are not easy to give up.” That ten to twenty years of training and status will be diluted away, then the money and support will go as the Green pseudoscience encroaches, slithering in, and demeans all it touches.
It is truly up to the other scientists — unless of course they are part of the 97%.
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Come on, Jo. Every single study ever undertaken shows similar results. National Academy of Sciences found similarly:
“Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field surveyed here support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.”
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/27/12107.full
But fine, I’m sure there are problems there as well. But you do know that nearly 100% of all major science societies who have issued a statement on the climate have said that climate change is real, is caused primarily by man, and is a problem that needs to be addressed. NAS, American Geophysical Society, American Physical Society, American Meteorological Society, Royal Society…all of them. The best you can find are a few that are non-committal, and that is only a few.
Here is the problem…you just uncomfortable with the fact that you are siding with the minority, so the last resort is always that there must be some kind of conspiracy theory that answers why so many scientists side against you. As per you:
“As I have said from the start, studies on consensus are a proxy for funding, not a proxy for Truth — and funding is as monopolistic as ever. The government gives grants to researchers to find a crisis, and we get what we paid for.”
So all of them are doing it for the money. Do you have even a sliver of proof of that? Or is that just an assumption that it must be so.
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Jim, you miss the point. There is a consensus among certified government funded climate scientists. I have never suggested otherwise. I’ve also never said they are all doing it for the money. In a sense, they are doing largely what they were paid to. They weren’t paid or asked to find holes in the theory, so they didn’t look for holes. Monopolistic funding asks for certain kinds of answers. I posit no conspiracy, though it appears you wish I had. I’m pointing at systematic problems. Cultural problems. And specifically, I’m pointing at pathetically low standards of logic, reason, methodology, integrity, and impartiality in peer review.
Cook used bad methodology, biased observers, an unrepresentative sample and most of the papers he studied were irrelevant or disagreed with what the authors would have categorized own their paper as. He hid the data, argued it was “not collected” when it was and has allowed his results to be misrepresented in the media repeatedly without correcting the errors. His university said the release of the data would breach confidentiality agreements that didn’t exist. His work can’t be replicated.
You can’t defend his dismal methods, failure to release data, nor the ERL failure to publish Tol by citing other papers. You’ve made no attempt to defend his work at all.
If you have any standards of rigor or interest in the scientific method, you would demand this paper get retracted, and Tols published. Do you?
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Thanks for responding, Jo. But I’m not attempting to defend or criticize his work. I am simply saying that his conclusion is like every other study on the subject.
I really haven’t delved into the methodology used by Cook, so no defense nor rebuttal from me. I am simply positing a very clear fact…any study undertaken on the topic has shown similar results, including the one I posted from prestigious National Academy of Sciences. And if the number wasn’t somewhat similar to the one found by Cook, you certainly would have at least one major science society (or more) opine on the climate differently, and there are none. Its nearly unanimous, just like every study done on the opinion of climate scientists. And as far as science organizations, that is one each of us can clearly search ourselves…and I am not wrong.
In your opinion, are there any scientists at all out there with pure interest in science? Or is it just climate scientists who are prone to fraud (which is what you are suggesting), after all, government funds studies on a whole host of other subjects as well. Are we to trust none of them? It certainly sounds like conspiracy theory to me.
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OK, so you have no idea how bad the Cook study is, but that’s not a problem for your “science”. You can overlook flagrant breaches of the scientific method (which is what this post is about).
There are whistleblowers who work directly against their financial interest. If that scores angel-points in science, I’m a saint. It’s still a pointless discussion. Not only can “pure interest” not be measured, even if it could, it doesn’t tell us whether they are right on wrong. I can find you a 6 year old with “pure interest”. The sanctity of their intent does not a successful climate model make.
I suggested nothing of the sort. Read my comment again.
Please stop inferring ad homs from me. I judge whether any scientist is right according to their reasoning and evidence. The money has nothing to do with the climate. I discuss the money in relation to the cultural and systemic failures of peer review and the “consensus” fallacies.
Possibly you want me to offer you up a grand conspiracy. Sorry to disappoint you. I see systemic failures, weak training, one-sided funding. There are a lot of people who don’t know what argument from authority is. Yourself included apparently. That’s a problem.
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This is your quote, Jo.
“The government gives grants to researchers to find a crisis, and we get what we paid for. If we pour $30 billion into finding reasons to fear CO2, and $0 into finding holes with that theory, it is entirely predictable that we will get 90+ percent of papers that support the theory.”
It does nothing of the sort. It doesn’t hand out a grant saying find a crisis, or poke a hole in it. It says here is a grant to study cause and effect of melting ice in the Arctic, or here is a grant to study migration of the bark beetle, or his a grant to study ocean acidification, and on and on. And when the results say that there is an effect, and the cause is warming temperatures, its not because the government asked for that result. That has nothing to do with systemic failures and everything to do with the fact you disagree with the conclusion.
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Jim, No banana for you. The situation and mindset is so hopeless that the UN even defines “climate change” as being specifically man made, thus ruling out a natural cause by decree. Most government reps copy this and use the term specifically to mean “man-made climate change”. The US govt since Al Gore have had policies to monitor, and assess the risks of man-made climate change. They’ve had policies to support renewables and “sustainability”. Scientists frequently write their grant proposals with caveats about how important their work is “for climate change”.
Find me one successful grant application with the opposite caveat. Find me a scientist who got funding because they doubted man-made climate change was significant and wanted to, say, produce a model of natural climate change. Some skeptics (who had tenure from the 1980s) still have jobs, and still get grants (though I bet they don’t write those caveats into the applications), but these are a very small slice of the scientific community.
The cultural blanket is so strong that US governments have bragged about how much money they spent researching “climate change”. Scientists who write the grant applications are merely responding to the toxic, namecalling, one-sided academic environment they find themselves in.
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Jo,
While I do not believe that most “climate scientists” or any other scientists for that matter, are deliberately fraudulent, or do things just for the money or a big pay out, as a retired scientist I’m acutely aware of how the funding process presents a moral hazard to applicants for funding.
Without funding the university would not continue to pay me. Ergo I had to bring in money by way of grants to do studies. Of course I, and umpteen other scientists had/have to find a way to meet the expected criteria of the funders. Basically you go where the money is or you don’t pay the mortgage.
It isn’t deliberate fraud. But it is the reality we are in.
I absolutely agree with you above. Thanks for your continuing work.
Moral Hazard. The perfect description. We need a better system that helps scientists to be as absolutely brutally honest as a real scientist needs to be. – Jo
80
But if it were that strong, and if, “the jury was in”, and “the science was settled” (to quote Al Gore), why would the US governments need to continue spending money researching “climate change”? Surely that money would be better spent on engineers who were able to come up with means for mitigating the effects.
80
Sorry, Jo.
But its you that is charging conspiracy among climate scientists and governments, all colluding to trick citizens, not me. So its you that needs to find the grant applications you say yourself exist, that being some that say we will find ways to fear CO2. You claimed it, “If we pour $30 billion into finding reasons to fear CO2,” now you can show it.
But I did find your chicken/egg response amusing. I take it you believe there wasn’t an interest in climate change in the science community until government asked for it. Sadly, the truth is the opposite. It was in fact the science community who informed governments first of the dangers of AGW. It would be only negligent for governments to ignore those warnings. Its been a topic in science for many decades.
But I’ll let your statement above stand for the truth:
“Some skeptics (who had tenure from the 1980s) still have jobs, and still get grants (though I bet they don’t write those caveats into the applications), but these are a very small slice of the scientific community.”
Exactly. They are in fact a small slice of the scientific community…which was my point from the beginning, and which Richard himself admitted. What is most sad is that skeptics just can’t say, “I just believe differently from the majority.” Instead, its “the majority is telling us falsehoods for the dollar.” Very sad, and nothing but a conspiracy.
You say you don’t subscribe to a conspiracy, but you only prove that you do.
06
Jim, it doesn’t matter what I say, you can “prove” in your own head exactly what you want to hear. Everyone else can read what I wrote.
And then we end up back at argument from authority with you pumping the strawman “consensus” as if it is news. Two fallacies in one. “congrats”
Welcome to the land where gullible pawns tell themselves they have independent minds, as they slavishly follow the herd.
50
Jim: what are the “…dangers of AGW”? Is AGW proven? You certainly phrase it as if you believe it is. As for its dangers, does it not make you wonder that none of the dangers that have been forecast have yet come to be, yet “we” (i.e. our governments) are spending money to “ameliorate” these dangers as if they are already upon us. You might be content to have a billion dollars a day wasted on the charade, but I, and many, many others, are not – certainly not while there are still millions going to bed hungry, and this money seems to be to ensure that that remains so.
The simple fact is that Jo is right; there are a lot of people, many of whom might claim to be scientists, who are feeding the fears that you apparently have, and are receiving a lot of reward for their efforts. It is not a conspiracy, it is just folks leaping onto a bandwagon. (However, should we discount a conspiracy with the ease you seem to; many of the people on the bandwagon are those who got it rolling in the first place, and many of these have shown that they might have other motives in their actions.)
30
Once again Jo Nova demonstrates her utter arrogance and conceit. Jo asserts that those that don’t agree with her but back the climate scientists are not independently minded. In Jo’s mind, you can only be deemed to be an independent thinker if you reject the AGW hypothesis and take her view.
Little wonder that I’m not willing to trust her assertions when she can’t even see how arrogant and irrational this position is.
There are few people that have the science background to arrive at a true scientific position of scepticism on AGW. In other words, the vast majority of people, including those that claim to be professional scientists, are choosing to believe one side or the other. That is why the Cook study is important and why the “sceptics” are trying to discredit it. Even Tol says he agrees that the vast majority of papers agree with the AGW hypothesis and yet he’s still in there trying to muddy the waters.
Jo claims she’s a scientist. If Cook did the work incorrectly, do it yourself Jo and let’s look at your results. We know you won’t because you know it will either be a Watts-BEST outcome (and you’ll have to do an embarrassing double backflip as Watts did) or else, like your notch filter, it won’t stand up to scientific scrutiny.
04
Radagast, careful, your ill-will and malice are showing already.
You are not even close. An independent mind means anyone who has done their own research in order to make an opinion. Those who argue from authority instead are obviously born to follow.
So tell us why you believe man made warming will lead to a catastrophe…?
BTW: I have always said there is a consensus among certified government funded climate scientists (Shame you didn’t read the post). Frankly, I’m amazed Cook had such a dead easy point to make, and still stuffed it up six ways.
But there is no consensus among the broader group of scientists, but it wouldn’t matter if there was. It’s still profoundly unscientific to “vote” for truth.
If the hypothesis is true, and the evidence is overwhelming, go right ahead and overwhelm us. Lay it out independent thinker…
40
For those that actually do care about reading and understanding both sides of a debate, here is the Skeptical Science response to Tol’s claims:
http://skepticalscience.com/climate-contrarians-accidentally-confirm-97-percent-consensus.html
Little wonder that the paper has not been retracted and that Jo didn’t provide it for you. You might want to ask yourself why she would do that.
You might also ask yourself why neither Jo nor Tol appear to have made any responses to the SS article. I suspect they do not have any. Except, of course, the usual ad hom attacks on SS and Cook….
02
Thanks for posting the link. We already know Tol agrees there is a consensus, so do most skeptics (in the narrow “experts” of climate definition). So what? It’s still a meaningless fallacy. Cook still hid his data, screwed up the process, unscientifically changing the process after looking at some results. He still said his observers were unbiased and independent when they weren’t. He did not tell the truth about the time stamps, nor about the confidentiality agreements. I could go on…
PS: look up the strict definition of ad hom. Learn it. Then read the post before you comment next time.
20
So, Jo, explain why you didn’t link to the Skeptical Science rebuttal of Tol.
Explain why you are censoring my posts.
You don’t even accept “brutal” honesty on your own blog.
02
It doesn’t answer the issues raised in this post.
I’m not.
It’s tough when you are wrong about everything isn’t it?
10
Radagast:
Why should she? Or, to put it in another way, why has she not linked to many other sites that might have similar rebuttals? Why just pick SS? You’re not trying to plug that site, are you? To make it even richer, you then accuse Jo of censoring your posts – ha! Try submitting any contrary views on SS (as I and many others have done – hint: you will not see any) to find what censoring is. Most sceptics dislike of SS is not ad hominem, it is acceptance of reality.
You appear to be a relative newcomer to this site, as you do not know that Jo has no fear of honesty, brutal or otherwise. Mind you, she does seem to bridle at unwarranted, destructive critiques, but then, who wouldn’t?
20
As for the notch filter, my understanding is that it is still a work in progress, but has so far stood up quite well to scientific scrutiny (oooh, that must hurt those like Mann and Cook). What evidence do you have that it does not? – and, no, just telling me that it doesn’t will not hold any water: give me the data on which your conclusion is based.
10
Jim,
You have no chance here , run while you can !
00
Finally, Radagast, check out how your recommended web site operates with Truth.
10
Jo, let me ask your opinion on something.
I live here in the States, so I have a bit more understanding over funding here than I would over what occurs in Australia.
Back in the early 2000’s, all of these major American science societies were issuing warnings over AGW. NAS, American Geophysical Union, American Physical Society, etc. In control of all 3 segments of our federal government (Executive, and both Houses) was the GOP. Now, would you not think that if government funding was the prime objective for scientific conclusions, all of these organizations would have offered a different opinion? Wouldn’t you think we would have been seeing climate study after climate study refuting AGW?
It didn’t happen, but if what you say is correct, it should have, shouldn’t it?
330
I didn’t know the GOP was offering grants for people to show that natural forces controlled the climate. Perhaps you might point me to one?
Got any evidence that skeptics got more funding than believers during the Bush era? When I studied the ratio. It was 1:3500.
352
I don’t think the GOP, nor the Democrats, nor anyone else for that matter hands out a grant asking for an already agreed upon conclusion, but it seems to me that is your suggestion, at least when it comes to a government that believes in AGW.
In fact, I don’t think the majority of scientists enter into a study with a preconceived notion to support their belief or non-belief in AGW. I have much more confidence and faith in science that apparently you do.
215
When the question politicians ask is “how bad will climate change be”, it’s a loaded question. See my previous answer.
“I have much more confidence and faith in science that apparently you do.”
Not remotely. You don’t seem to know what science is. I’m the one with faith in the Scientific Method, you however seem to think that the bureaucratic-academic-government-owned-and-publishing-house-controlled incarnation of modern scientific practice is “science”.
I have faith, confidence, gratitude and passion for science. It’s why I write this blog.
183
Ah, I see…you have more faith and confidence in science than National Academy of Sciences, American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society, Royal Society, all of them. They don’t employ the scientific method, and they endorse findings that skirted it.
Right.
07
You “think” the NAS and AGU follow the scientific method. Why don’t you ask them what empirical evidence led them to that conclusion. We have. We know their answer…
90
Jim, your unswerving faith that climate scientists are incorruptible is amusing but sad. Given ample evidence of disingenuous behaviour of the activists (they don’t deserve the title ‘scientists’ when they behave that way) it is clear they willingly and knowingly stray far off the science reservation.
I suggest reading and digesting Freakonomics or similar material to understand how easily any profession is corrupted by incentives, particularly money. Once one grasps that basic concept, and combines that with the fact of the billions vested every year in the AGW related fields, it is easy to see how we got to where we are today.
How else does one explain the persistence of wildly inaccurate IPCC climate models, for example, which any honest scientist would have discarded many moons ago? They serve a political purpose of alarming warming projections which cannot be concocted by scientific means. All that time, supercomputer resources, and money wasted. Think on the useful purposes such resources may have been utilized. What a tragic a waste.
123
Read what I wrote, my faith is in science, not individual scientists, or just selective branches of science.
In the long run, purity of science will shine through. It always does, and always will. That is not to say there aren’t mistakes, or yes, even deceit. Of course there is.
But climate science, and the theory of AGW, is many decades old. It is constantly going through challenges and questions. And each year it gets more robust, with the errors thrown out.
And what is happening? Each year the warnings are becoming more urgent, not less. Climate science is getting better, not worse, just like atmospheric science, and earth science, and everything other branch of science.
05
Your faith is in what you erroneously think is “science” but is really nothing more than “faith” in authorities, institutions and governments. But it’s not like any of them have ever failed is it?
The warnings are getting more urgent.
The warming though, is not.
70
Tagged by three warmistas. Their tears, they feed me.
40
As long as the billions in funding flow unilaterally the ‘purity of science’ will not shine through. It is now abundantly clear that you do not understand the science but rather read the political press statements as evidence. The science massively disagrees with said statements. The fact that the IPCC climate models are diverging from observed data seems lost on you. This is basic stuff.
30
Tell you what, lets look at private funding. Its still dollars, and a dollar, I guess, corrupts…supposedly.
Richard Mueller was funded by the Koch’s at Berkeley Earth Institute for a study on temperatures and measurements, and his conclusion was not quite what the Koch’s would have hoped, I don’t think. But he is a scientist. Same with Willie Soon. I could not care less where he got his funding from, his results will stand or fall on their own merit.
Its science, and the clear majority of scientists value the truth, wherever it takes them.
215
See my previous reply. Your “science” is by ad hom and argument from authority. Your science is a fallacy.
152
As I said from the beginning, “my” science is only the science embraced by the most prestigious science organizations in the world, nothing more and nothing less.
By the way, I love the castigation for appealing to authority. Of course I do. I’m not a climate scientist. But then I also appeal to authority when I go to the doctor, or when I take my car to the mechanic, or when an architect plans out my house…I could go on. Of course, I also get second opinions. In the case of climate science, its many more than just second opinions that have told me the same. Its thousands of opinions.
13
Yes Jim. You live in the glow of “prestige”. If your prestigious doc was hiding evidence, adjusting graphs, couldn’t explain why he recommended one path, and his patients were dying at an above average rate, you would be defending him to the end. The word you are looking for is “patsy”.
51
Jim,
Throughout history, the most prestigious organizations, generally populated by dogmatic despots, had full control of society. After the enlightenment and through the age of reason, this changed. Wouldn’t you agree that the world has been better off this way?
You should explore the science and the logic behind what these prestigious organizations expound. You’ll be surprised at what you’ll find.
Abe
30
I would suggest that “Jim” is a politician, and one with a legal background, to judge (ho, ho) by his skilful manipulation of words and of this entire debate. He has left himself wide open a few times, and no-one seems to have seen the opportunity. Please do not berate him, as he is refreshing in his pedantry and unemotional argument; accept him as a way to hone your own skills.
51
Radical Rodent,
I’m approx. 97% sure of this, although it did take a bit to see through the veneer.
I was leaning more towards someone ‘on their way’ to a legal background and so was attempting to hone their own skills. (medium confidence level)
Could “Jim” possibly be working with someone else? (medium to high confidence level)
Abe
20
Radical Rodent,
The overt references to the warmist memes, (97%, confidence levels), were just for laughs. The rest of what I wrote was my real impression. Sometimes we write something and because of a lack of context coming from facial expressions and body language meanings can be totally misconstrued. The internet is weird that way.
Abe
00
How many people have had to put up with pain and further complications by a bad doctor? Stomach ulcers for example? How careful do you need to be with mechanics? I know one didn’t fix my filler cap but sprayed petrol around it to say that had been hard work to fix it.
We all have faith in the scientific method and most didn’t doubt CAGW until it became ridiculously obvious how bad the science was. Now you’re a denier if you merely have doubts about the catastrophe part being settled science (and are ridiculed for using the term Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming). You are forbidden to disagree with anything.
You cite a paper that cites the infamous Doran paper for examples of consensus. Here are some of the comments from scientists (from the 97%) that were surveyed in the MSc. used for the paper.
“..scientific issues cannot be decided by a vote of scientists. A consensus is not, at any given time, a good predictor of where the truth actually resides..”
“..The “hockey stick” graph that the IPCC so touted has, it is my understanding, been debunked as junk science..”
“..I’m not sure what you are trying to prove, but you will undoubtably be able to prove your pre-existing opinion with this survey! I’m sorry I even started it!..”
00
As for corruption in Climate Science, its rife in all fields.
I was complaining about a dishonest editor once, and the other scientist started with the old pythonesque “Arrh, you ‘ere lucky”. He told me the story of a Japanese professor who came up with novel polymerisation method. This editor held it up for more than 6 months while her friend essentially copied the work with a few variations.
The consensus is that they both share the credit for the new method.
00
Jim: I have the distinct impression that your background isn’t in science or technology.
If you’re working on a scientific project, it doesn’t matter a proverbial monkey’s cuss what anyone else thinks – if you’re in research then they’re your results, you should be able to stand by them, justify your methods, have the data available for anyone to look at, let someone repeat your experiment with your materials, question your own findings and be able to take the flak if someone disagrees – and accept that your work could be improved if needed.
A touch of humility makes for good science.
These qualities appear to be missing in certain ‘global warming’ investigators!
I spent some years working on a vaccine project. I needed a certain commercially available bacterial extract. I had two choices of manufacturer. One preparation was considerably cheaper to buy in, but on checking I found that this one didn’t work in my assay system.
The extracts had each been obtained from a different type of bacterium, and there was clearly some undefined difference. The bottom line here is that even from a reputable manufacturer, materials may behave differently on a laboratory bench, even batch to batch, and this always has to be borne in mind.
Science demands cynicism.
00
Carbon-
I said it in another comment, I’m not a climate scientist…nor a scientist of any kind. Just a guy who started his own business (HR) here in the States about 25 years ago. Hopefully that doesn’t disqualify me from making comments, or having opinions, on scientific issues.
Science does in fact demand cynicism, and judging by the comments here, there is plenty of it to go around in the field of climate science.
I believe that plenty of proof has been offered as to the validity of AGW, as well as the concerns voiced by so many science organizations the world over. If you don’t, fair enough…we agree to disagree.
But I have asked this a few times here and have not received an answer…maybe you can provide one. What proof do you have that climate scientists are fraudulently arriving at decisions regarding their findings? Don’t tell me it just must be so…is there any proof anywhere that a government demanded false results toward approval of AGW? Is there proof anywhere that a number of climate scientists purposely lied to get funding? We can argue about mistakes in studies, or studies that say something different. Happens all the time. What proof is there that governments and scientists the world over are conspiring to fool people?
I’m willing to learn.
00
Commenters, Jim has a pattern of putting inflammatory hyperbolic words in people’s mouths, claiming they have said something that clearly they didn’t or else asking loaded questions which imply something that was not said. He appears convinced we all think there is a giant conspiracy, and grand collusion, and no matter how many times I explain we are talking about systematic, cultural problems, he ignored my answers and just asks it again.
Now he claims he didn’t get an answer, when clearly he got a lot. (See Eddy Aruda answered him too.)
Jim, you need to start quoting and reading people exactly. You need to write honest comments in English to comment here. I hope you can improve. The transparent fishing attempts with inflammatory language are a very boring and overused tactic.
10
Tell you what, Carbon, since you call for cynicism (or skepticism) in science, and I agree, I might refer you to the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, which was founded back in the 70s (well before all this brouhaha on the climate) by a number in the field of science including Carl Sagan.
When people tell me that climate scientists the world over are on the take, that is saying that there is hoax being perpetrated on the public…just as Senator Jim Inhofe ways constantly here in the States. This is what CSI had to say about such a charge:
“As scientific skeptics, we are well aware of political efforts to undermine climate science by those who deny reality but do not engage in scientific research or consider evidence that their deeply held opinions are wrong. The most appropriate word to describe the behavior of those individuals is “denial.” Not all individuals who call themselves climate change skeptics are deniers. But virtually all deniers have falsely branded themselves as skeptics. By perpetrating this misnomer, journalists have granted undeserved credibility to those who reject science and scientific inquiry.”
http://www.csicop.org/news/show/deniers_are_not_skeptics
Like I said, we can disagree about the science…but I would like someone to show me any proof that climate scientists are on the take. Such a charge isn’t skepticism.
10
Massive climate funding exposed | Climate money: Auditing is left to unpaid volunteers | Climate money: Monopoly science | Climate money: Big government outspends big oil
You are five years behind in your reading. It’s called moral hazard, and confirmation bias. The funding is monopolistic.
Commenters, since Jim thinks “denial” is a scientific term, rather than just plan thuggish namecalling, I don’t expect he will be commenting here long. Though Jim could be the first (you never know) to be able to define the term in English (in the context of a science debate) and supply the scientific observations that we “deny”, in which case he will be able to keep using it. Go right ahead Jim, where’s that evidence…
10
Jo, thuggish name calling? Since you seem to think Eddy gave a professional response, let me review for you just a few of the names he called me…delusional, 5 year old, BSer, disciple of Yogi Berra, Kool-Aid drinker, inane, little girl…and more. There is plenty there that you might want to take umbrage over.
But you know something, this is a blog…one comments at ones own risk, so its all OK. He can call me names.
There is name calling alright, and its not from me.
Listen, you won’t frighten me off even with your attempt at circling the wagons. You cited a number of articles of yours, and I will read them, and I look forward to the proof you offered that climate scientists are on the take, that governments fund a monopoly of studies only with a pre-determined answer supporting AGW, and that this is done everywhere in the world. Give me a bit of time…its Friday!
02
Calm down Jim.
1. I take it you admit “denier” is just namecalling, not science?
2. I didn’t offer “proof” for a claim you made, and I haven’t.
3. I’m not trying to frighten you by replying to your questions. But since you use the same dishonest tactic of not quoting directly, and twisting their words to fit your fantasy, I want to warn other commenters not to waste their time.
30
You know, let me take back Eddy’s attempt at an insult the Yogi Berra thing…more of an accomplishment it is.
“There are some people who, if they don’t already know, you can’t tell ’em.”
-Yogi Berra
He was right about a lot of things!
12
Oh, I’m calm Jo. If denier is name calling to you, I won’t use it again…its not my intention.
But since you have no problem with the names Eddy called me (and by the way he just added a few more), you should no I don’t either. Its all OK.
01
“If denier is name calling to you, ”
You think weasel words will impress us?
Explain to me how “denier” is either a scientific descriptor, or a term that could be in even the slightest way complimentary, or part of a science debate? You have not answered my question.
Some names apply to one person for one moment, these are colorful language. Some names are repeated labels applied to an entire group and for everything they say. These are the terms that define a debate. Explain to me for one minute, if we are deniers, why would you bother to come discuss anything with us? It’s not like you can teach or learn anything from a denier? It’s like talking to a dog, right?
You have not said you will stop using the term, only that you will drop it in order to get past the filter. You have not even admitted your whole understanding of “climate science” includes the use of petty names.
30
Know, not “no”
Me spell good one day!
01
Hey, tell you what, Jo, denier is as much of thuggish name calling as “alarmist.” Neither is. If one believes that an organization such as NAS is alarmed by the warming occurring, fair enough, alarmists it is. If you say “I deny that what NAS claims about AGW is true,” which you do, than denier it is.
But it bothers you, so OK, it won’t come from me again. Don’t want to bother you. Do you use the term “alarmist?” All the time. Would you ever stop using it? Nope. You will always use it, just like you use the term “weasel.”
So now that we know that your outrage about name calling is entirely selective (I do note that you support Eddy’s use of name calling, we can move on.
02
An climate alarmist (definition) wants to cause alarm about the climate. Even so, I use it rarely, but occasionally when there is no better description. Check my posts. I use many different descriptors, as appropriate. Most of the time I say “fan of man-made global warming”, “believer in CAGW” or equivalent.
I allow both sides to use colorful language on this blog, but repetitive labels need to be defined in English and substantiated.
If I deny that the NAS is 100% right, that makes me a denier that the NAS is perfect (ie “skeptic”). It doesn’t make me a “climate denier”. Your repeated use of sloppy, careless terms that you can’t substantiate, is an abuse of English — though you probably do it unwittingly — a mere cheap trick to win a debate without even debating. Transparent ploy.
I take it you have absolutely no empirical evidence to back up your “faith” then?
20
Fair enough, Carbon.
02
Actually, Jo, I could not have been more precise with my use of English.
From Websters on “denial”:
“: a statement saying that something is not true or real : a statement in which someone denies something.”
So, when AAAS says this, “Based on well-established evidence, about 97% of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening. This agreement is documented not just by a single study, but by a converging stream of evidence over the past two decades from surveys of scientists, content analyses of peer-reviewed studies, and public statements issued by virtually every membership organization of experts in this field… Earth’s climate is on a path to warm beyond the range of what has been experienced over the past millions of years.,” you don’t believe anything in that statement is true…for you, evidence isn’t clear, and you don’t believe we are on a path to warm the climate beyond anything we have seen in millions of years. You simply deny that is true, you are a denier of what AAAS believes.
I never said you were a climate denier…go back and check. I used it as a descriptor, and it clearly is appropriate.
By the way, I never said denier is a scientific term…is alarmist?
Lets see if you are similarly selective in your use of labels as opposed to scientific terms.
02
Jim, “precise”? As usual you write with an audacious bluff and a basic misunderstanding of what science is.
In a science debate, an alarmist is someone who generates “alarm” but can’t back it up with empirical evidence. I haven’t called you an alarmist, but you keep avoiding my request to provide any empirical evidence to support your faith. Touche? I’m being careful, logical and restrained. I supplied empirical evidence to back up my position and my word use. You didn’t.
The Websters definition depends on knowing “truth” and “reality”. You supply no evidence of either, merely opinion polls and pronouncements of self selected committees of six.
The AAAS says there is ” a converging stream of evidence …”. If that’s true where is it? You avoid this question, and we all know why.
A true scientist is by default a skeptic — always wants to see the chain of evidence and that means observations of events with a causal role.
Your use of denier was in a comment where you transparently implied another commenter had said something they didn’t remotely say and then you asked for “proof” of that fantasy. You used loaded inflammatory terms and were demanding profoundly unscientific evidence. Your sloppy random choice of carbon500 to toss “denier” at demonstrates you think in the denier-paradigm — applying it loosely and broadly. We’ve had several comments rounds since where you repeatedly avoid substantiating the term in any way other than the fallacy of authority.
Because you appear to think of anyone who questions the truth of a committee report is a “denier” you mentally cripple yourself with a smug and wholly unfounded arrogance that you are automatically right, and we must be mentally deficient. This leaves you at a major disadvantage in any debate where you meet real scientists and true skeptics.
30
So, alarmist is a term used in scientific debate. OK, it that is your criteria…same for the term “denial” or denier. In fact, its equally spread among the left and the right. Here is just ONE example of the term used in a science debate by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, where he reveals science denial on the left:
“However, we are wrong to say that science denial is a problem only coming from the right, or so says astrophysicist and host of the popular Cosmos series, Neil deGrasse Tyson…“It’s wrong to simply attack the right for science denial. Liberals cannot claim to fully embrace science, there is plenty of science denial from the left.”
“What Tyson is talking about is the anti-vaccine movement, which is made up of a lot of liberals, or as the daily show called them, the climate denying nutjobs of the left, who at the same time deny things like modern medicine and seek alternative medicines that have either never been confirmed by science or fully debunked and let’s not forget that the debate over genetically modified foods is almost completely run by the left.”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danthropology/2014/08/neil-degrasse-tyson-on-liberal-science-denial-and-gmos/
I actually never accused anyone here of being a denier, I simply highlighted the difference between denial and skepticism, as defined by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, another group of scientists and science journalists who clearly feel denial is part of the debate in science.
So fine, lets leave it that both alarmist and denier are part of scientific debate, and neither is name calling. I said exactly that in the beginning.
01
Jim, not even close. What we have established is your blind faith in authority. Your avoidance of my repeat request for evidence is obvious.
I defined “alarmist” accurately, and you’ve shown you live up to that definition (though I haven’t used it to describe you) – you supplied no observations to justify “alarm”. That is panic mongering. You can’t substantiate either your terms or your unscientific “faith” that a catastrophe is coming. I use accurate English and the scientific method.
You however used sloppy, vague definitions of “denier” that involve half the population denying something which is profoundly unscientific. Scientists don’t vote for truth, and if I (and most readers here) “deny” that argument from authority is scientific evidence we are being scientific. Hence you calling us deniers in a science debate is a pure Orwellian-Alice-in-Wonderland inversion of the truth. “Alarmist” is a descriptive term. “Denier” (as you use it) is namecalling.
In a science debate, those who argue from authority and deny the empirical evidence are the deniers. (The pause, the missing hot spot, the antarctic sea ice, the medieval warm period, the holocene, the biased adjustments to temperature and satellite measures of sea levels… etc)
In other words, (since you raised the topic) the alarmists themselves are also the deniers. They use namecalling as their main form of “scientific” argument (which is also a projection of their own failings) . They hope the crowd is too stupid to notice their cheap diversion to avoid a real scientific discussion where they actually name the evidence.
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Hard to keep up with your selective outrage, Jo, really hard. Name calling hurled at me is just “colorful language,” when I cite a science organization using the term denier it is “thuggish name calling,” and now, lo and behold, here you are using the term denier. Acceptable from you because its scientific?
At least one of us has said from the beginning, its all OK. Alarmist isn’t name calling, denier isn’t name calling, and actual real true to life name calling (did you say I was a weasel?) is fine as well.
One of us said that, and it wasn’t you.
00
I’m sorry you are finding it hard to keep up.
The situation is pretty simple. I use English accurately, avoid “labels” that are 100% wrong, and back up my arguments with empirical evidence.
You twist, paraphrase and imply things which were never said, bait people with inflammatory language, and have nothing more than opinions and polls to support your “faith”. So entranced are you by “official” authority, that if a subcommittee of six uses namecalling instead of reasoned argument, you argue that makes it a reasoned argument. The activists on these subcommittees hide behind decades of goodwill and good work misusing the brand name built by real scientists. These unscientific, unskeptical poseurs cast derogatory aspersions on the mental capacity of opponents, but won’t supply the empirical evidence the skeptical scientists ask for. If that is not thuggish, what is?
Accuracy matters. I didn’t say you were a weasel, I pointed out you used “weasel words” to avoid the point. Check the evidence.
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Jim: You ask, and I quote “What proof do you have that climate scientists are fraudulently arriving at decisions regarding their findings?”
Nowhere have I said or implied this.
10
Fair enough, Carbon. Others here have certainly implied it.
11
You can’t even give money away to study “natural forces”. It could wreck your career.
“Nebraska lawmakers called for a wide-ranging study of “cyclical” climate change. Funded by the state, the $44,000 effort was to be limited to natural causes – not additional speculation about manmade effects. Amazingly, University of Nebraska scientists are not just refusing to participate in the study, unless it includes human influences. One climatologist at the university’s National Drought Mitigation Center actually said he would not be comfortable circulating a study proposal or asking other scientists to participate in it; in fact, he “would not send it out” to anyone.”
http://judithcurry.com/2013/11/29/impact-of-natural-variability-on-nebraska-drought/
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Jim, Jo’s partner was at Stanford University where my Dad spent 3 decades as Patent Administrator at SEL. You really believe research funding is policy neutral, scientific merit based, dispensed by priests in white lab coats???
Instead of the “GOP early 2000s”, go to the 1970’s and look at NASA geoengineering plans to spread coal dust on the Arctic ice to stop the coming Ice Age (with eminent Climatologist Stephen Schneider in Pt.3) https://youtu.be/5ndHwW8psR8
Then go back even further to Pres. Eisenhower’s farewell address, not the often cited “military industrial complex” part, go to the part where he anticipates the dangers of government policy driven research:
“Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.”
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.” http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp
How sad that Ike was too early for Obamavision.
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Ike’s the man!
40
Great General, and a pretty good President.
40
“we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.”
Check out “Technocracy Rising:The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation”, Patrick M Wood.
Much more info here
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You are referring me to a TV show that conducts searches into UFOs, the abominable snowman, and yes I guess a coming ice age. Please. I cite places like National Academy of Sciences.
Yes, Climatologist Stephen Schneider is on it, and he is not suggesting anything of the sort to combat the myth of a coming ice age…in fact you should listen to it, he suggests that doing things like melting Arctic ice could be much worse.
20
Yes, but it is still done in an alarmist way. The man appears frightened at the prospects he is describing, and admits he doesn’t know what can be done. He gives the impression of a novice rider hanging on to a galloping horse. But when that catastrophe failed to materialise, he was one of the first to jump on the horse, and gallop the other way.
And all done without any empirical evidence whatsoever. Simply conjecture and hypotheses, and anthropogenically constructed climate models.
00
Jim,
While it may be true that the executive and both houses were controlled by the GOP, (don’t recall about the two houses, so I’ll take your word for it), the Legislature only determines the level of funding that’s distributed to the many non-elected departments under the Executive, such as EPA, FDA, NASA, etc.. And while there may be oversight by the House and by the Senate as regards the proper/improper functioning of these agencies, the decisions about who receives research allocations such as grants, is mostly or entirely up each of the individual entities I mentioned, (and those that I didn’t specifically mention).
And because of this, although scientific organizations may apply for research grants, it’s these admistrative agencies that decide what gets funded and what doesn’t. The IPCC, through a plethorah of NGO’s lobby these agencies to provide the grants that will be dedicated to researching what is in the interest of the IPCC. Read the founding documents of the IPCC and you will see that their stated goal is to research man-made climate change and it’s extent and it’s implications. They have never had as a goal, as stated by them, the identification and/or quantification of the extent to which natural variability plays a part in the climate.
All of what I’ve stated here can be verified on the internet if one does their due diligence.
Abe
141
The UN defined ‘climate change‘ pre-emptively. The political body that is the IPCC was task orientated to support a predetermined policy based definition. It is utterly inconceivable they would have come out with scientific findings that relegated the anthropogenic influence toward irrelevancy. They betray their political agenda as they cling to their failed models of climate.
There are swathes of both UN and national policies based on the predetermined UN definition of ‘climate change’. The clincher lies in the following recent quote, direct from the horse’s mouth:
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.
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Abe, thanks for a reasoned reply.
Yes, the GOP controlled both Houses at the beginning of the Bush administration, including the House of Representatives, which controls the purse strings.
So lets hold onto your thought that its the administrators handing out the grants. Those administrators are not always from the left of the political spectrum, if that is what you believe is the side fostering the belief in AGW. They are appointed and hired by the right as well.
From where do you understand that proponents of AGW have infiltrated completely administration posts, and that the right wing when in power are completely unable to change such majority? That of course is never true.
Right now in Congress there is an effort underway by Ted Cruz to limit any study and effort by NASA to all planets and space, other than Earth. To not let NASA spend any money on things like global temperatures. And they can do it. That is the power of funding and majority in action.
01
Right Jim, but since governments and money don’t influence scientists, as you say right, then you won’t care what the GOP does will you?
PS: I’m sure lots of free marketeer entrepreneurial types end up being administrators in the Dept of Ecowhatsit.
31
Hey, I enjoyed it!
01
Jim,
I would be very interested to comprehend the reasoning you applied to get from this . . .
. . . to this . . .
😮
NGO’s have a great deal of influence. And the IPCC has stated that they don’t employ their own research scientists but rather lobby government agencies all over the world for research funding. These NGO’s are not exclusively funded by the IPCC either. There are other green groups and even private individuals who either directly or through trust funds also supply funding to these NGO’s.
These same groups also have enormous influence, through funding, in major Universities around the world.
This means that the money (in the billions world-wide every year) is being injected into the system and so, it must be exerting influence as to what gets researched and what doesn’t.
What I don’t understand is why all of this is so important to you? There’s no way that you or I or anyone here can influence these groups directly. The only thing you or I can do is to examine the claims rationally and see if they ‘hold water’. If they don’t, then all we can do then is to teach others to reason things out rather than being ‘spoon fed’ unsubstantiated theories.
And even if the politics of climate change are so intrigueing to you, why come to a science blog to discuss politics. Jo and all the others here are happy to accomodate peoples desire to learn, but our time and our efforts would be much more usefull to you if we used them to elaborate on the technical and scientific aspects of the debate. That’s where our passions are and that’s where our experience is more extensive.
For me, when it comes to the politics of it all, I mostly just laugh at the absurdity of it all. 🙂
As I pointed out in another comment further down the page:
The IPCC is nothing more than an administrative branch of the UN which is a political organization. I question their reports because the science in them is sometimes flawed, often skewed, and always politicised.
Once the post-modern science of ‘climate change’ is exposed by the power of the scientific method, natural climate variability will be all that’s left. The rest will take care of itself.
Abe
11
Abe, I know you are saying it, but then why not show me explicitly the lobbying effort employed by the IPCC. Please show me the dollars given by the IPCC to lobby who, administrators of grant money? I know Congressmen are lobbied, and any lobbying efforts to convince the GOP on the dangers of climate change have certainly failed.
You know that IPCC is now lobbying bureaucrats? Tell you what, I will believe it when you prove it to me. By the way, how much do you suppose fossil fuel companies are lobbying Congress? You think its as much as the green industry? No, its more.
02
Jim,
I was under the impression that I’d covered all these points with you.
Oh, and by the way, about this . . .
Tell you what, let’s not, and say we did. 😉
Sometimes discussions can be like merry-go-rounds. It’s fun for kids to go round and round and round. But even they eventually want get off.
Sorries.
Abe
20
Abe,
I never do another commenter’s work for them…you will notice that I made citations numerous times here (even if some think that just appeals to authority). If you have any links showing lobbying dollars paid by the IPCC I am willing to read.
As far as who spends more on lobbying, alternative energy or oil/gas, a good source is Opensecrets.org, which tracks lobbying efforts in the US. Back in 2013 and 2014, you can read both:
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=E1500
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?Ind=E
Note number one on oil was Koch, at $9.5M, and number one on alt energy was Poet, at about $450K. Total oil in 2014 was about $118M, and total alt energy was about $2.4M.
Not even close.
00
Jim,
This:
And this:
And this:
Disregards this:
Completly.
Typical.
Abe
00
I put this in the wrong place above, so I will retype it, Abe:
Abe-
It was you who said that IPCC lobbies governments all over the world for research funding, so it was you who brought up the non-scientific point of lobbying. I just asked you to provide a link that says such, and since you didn’t provide one, I take it there is none…but if you have it, let me know.
Just wanted to show you that if it is lobbying that concerns you, alternative energy doesn’t even hold a candle to oil. And I provided a link to prove it.
00
Back in the 1970’s, Climatologists were predicting that we were moving into a new Ice Age. They even appeared on television, in mutual support of each other, in a three or four part series, to warn the population of the dangers.
That series did not cause the expected concern, in the collective minds of the general public.
So the Climatologists rebranded the profession of Climatology, to become Climate Science, and rebranded themselves as Climate Scientists, in order to make their message more accessible to the general public. In the process they also changed their product from “fear of freezing” to “fear of baking”.
Pure Madison Avenue …
41
Jo says:
Maybe, but what evidential basis is there for believing that consensus exists?
According to PopTech, … All “97% Consensus” Studies Refuted by Peer-Review .
21
Jim: Science is a method, rather than a result.
It is true that the overwhelming majority of papers in the scientific literature supports the hypothesis that greenhouse gas emissions had some effect on climate (Cook’s object of study).
But stumbling on the “correct answer” is not what science is about. If the method is wrong, the result is invalid. It may be still be true, but it is invalid nonetheless.
502
Fair enough, Richard. Peace.
20
Spot on Richard. No one is looking for a sound method, they are too busy trying to “cherry pick” studies that might produce the results they are looking for. Everything about AGW is geared toward making a statement of unassailable fact, then manipulating the evidence to support it. The exact opposite of science.
How is it we have such “certainty” over ice melts and sea level rises when the most recent studies of the Totten glacier revealed we did not even know which parts of it floated and which are land based?
This notion that our understanding of the climate is so complete we can use production of CO2 like a global thermostat is bordering on the insane. If you believe it you should really be seeking help.
181
Richard Tol,
You’ve made both of these statements. But, there is a considerable difference between them, as you can see from the parts I highlighted. Can you elaborate what you mean?
If you have the time, it would also be interest to review the data on how you (or someone else) determined that there is an overwhelming majority of papers in the literature that support the hypothesis that human beings cause climate change.
Abe
00
Hi Jim,
You asked for proof that they are doing it for money.
Here it is.
If climate change is caused by man-made global warming and is the greates threat to life on this planet then climate change scientists and their supporters would not wait for generous grants and tax payer subsidies before devotong all their resources to saving the planet.
Feel free to argue the case for altruism, while they are on tax payer funded jaunts, driving taxpayer funded vehicles, investing in beach-side properties and jetting all over the world to attend lavishly catered conferences at tax=payer expense.
You prove that they are not in it for the money.
Yours,
James Bradley
173
Hi, James!
Let me ask you a question…are only climate scientists in it for the money? Or are earth scientists as well? How about biologists? Chemists?
46
They all have to pay their mortgage, for their food and children. Of course they are.
What is different between climate scientists and other scientists is the political and social drivers and those drivers drive the funding.
82
A number of years ago my brother in law had a colleague at UTS, a chemist, tell him of his experiences in the private sector. He was asked to devise experiments where the companies product was shown to be “scientifically proven” to be superior to competing companies products. Naturally he obliged as he wanted to keep his job.
00
Not only that James, have a think about the lunacy of green suggestions that so called “evil corporations” will destroy the planet for money.
Worst business model ever: Kill your market.
122
Worst business model ever: Kill your market.
lol. 🙂
70
Strangely; it works for ticks, parasites, viruses and many more. They are all still in the game and doing their stuff the same old way.
You would have to believe that such a marketing strategy kills everybody quickly. I see that Europeans still smoke a lot, and that sugar is put into absolutely everything in the supermarket.
Perhaps the fear is somewhat exaggerated.
20
Jim,
I salute you and your innate and incredible ability to combine the fallacy of an argument from the beard with an appeal to authority. Has the Church of Green issued their version of a papal bull or are you just winging it?
Regarding your contention about all of the scientific organizations refuting climate change, that is only because that is where the money is! You reason from the false premise that because the Republicans were in charge there wasn’t enough room at the taxpayer funded trough. How delusional you are!
Can you cite one example where the rent seeking organizations you cited put it to a vote of the rank and file before a decision was made to support the global warming cause? The only instance I am aware of involved the Australian Geological Society. They could not support the “consensus” position because there was no consensus to do so!
Remember, unless you are the lead dog the view never changes! Do yourself a favor and think critically. By doing so, you will be able to break free of the pack and enjoy the view!
244
Good to see you back, Eddy.
I do hope this visit is a foretaste of things to come. You have been missed, my friend.
60
I second that. Great to see you Eddy :- )
71
Thanks for the salutations, and I guess my fallacies of argument that brought a wayward son back!
See above my response to Jo on appeals to authority. The use of an essay by Richard Tol, or a piece by Judith Curry, are not appeals to authority I guess. Or ones that I am similarly not allowed to use.
But sure, you can check for yourself the survey conducted by American Meteorological Society with its members in regard to climate change:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00091.1
“Our findings regarding the degree of consensus about human-caused climate change among the most expert meteorologists are similar to those of Doran and Zimmerman (2009): 93% of actively publishing climate scientists indicated they are convinced that humans have contributed to global warming. Our findings also revealed that majorities of experts view human activity as the primary cause of recent climate change: 78% of climate experts actively publishing on climate change, 73% of all people actively publishing on climate change, and 62% of active publishers who mostly do not publish on climate change. These results, together with those of other similar studies, suggest high levels of expert consensus about human-caused climate change (Farnsworth and Lichter 2012; Bray 2010).”
Here is Judith Curry publishing the result of the survey and its table:
https://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/table.jpg
You may find it interesting reading in that the authors clearly state any where any cause for questions may arise regarding the findings, but they are confident that the results show the opinion of their members.
American Physical Society is now in the process of revising its statement on climate change, and on its panel are Judith Curry, Richard Lindzen, and John Christy…doesn’t sound like they are conspiring to silence skeptics.
And by the way, all of those surveys listed including NAS and Doran were surveys of climate scientists.
So is your point that everyone of these science organizations, and it is virtually all of them, have been fooled? Or are suggesting things the majority of their membership does not agree with? Surely you are not.
11
No, they are not an appeal to authority. Citing an author to bolster you argument is one thing, saying that simply because an author says it is a fact makes it a fact is an appeal to authority. Are you having an epiphany or do I need to explain it to you as I would to a five-year-old?
Did you bother to read the quote you posted? The linked quote is about the “consensus” amongst climate scientists. It was not a survey of meteorologists! Actually, the number of meteorologists that support the CAGW hypothesis is 64%. See http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00091.1 That is a far cry from the 97% consensus that Cook invented out of thin air!
Your citation of Dr. Curry is disingenuous at best! First, the table does not list meteorologist, it lists two categories, climate science, science and total. Of “all respondents,” only 52% answered “Yes, mostly human.” That’s nowhere close to 97% is it?
Perhaps you should read the whole post, the 52% Consensus? http://judithcurry.com/2013/11/10/the-52-consensus/
The only thing I find interesting about your statement is it is absolute non sequitur BS! Are you a disciple of Yogi Berra? What the authors clearly state is 52%! I am glad that it gives you “confidence”!
You are a glutton for green kool aid, aren’t you? They are not on a committee, they are on a subcommittee! http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/updates/statementreview.cfm It is called window dressing!
So what? Did anyone say they weren’t?
A straw man and a false dilemma combined into one! Wow! Take a course in deductive reasoning!
Actually, my point is that science is never done by consensus or isit ever settled. If it were, we would be living in the dark ages
I am still waiting for you to cite one organization that supported the CAGW hypothesis after taking a vote of the rank and file members. Come on, just one?! The Geological Society of Australia is the only one I know of that did take a vote and they could not muster support for the CAGW hypothesis. See http://joannenova.com.au/2014/06/climate-science-hopelessly-politicized-geological-society-of-australia-gives-up-on-making-any-statement/
Again, think before you post!
71
Eddy, is your response always one of insults? It only cheapens your argument, so I won’t even respond to your diversion from whether or not Tol and Curry are appeals to authority…of course they are. And that is OK. Sadly, you think its only allowable for your side.
It wasn’t a survey?
“To support this committee, in January 2012 we SURVEYED all AMS members with known e-mail addresses, achieving a 26.3% response rate (n = 1,854).”
From the article I cited, maybe you should read again, Eddy.
I have read Curry’s post, and since you obviously have not, I will quote it for you:
“A COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY (there it is again, Eddy) has been conducted of the American Meteorological Society membership to elicit their views on global warming…To their credit, the AMS is taking on the issue of disagreement on this topic, hopefully in a meaningful way.”
And as far as APS, sorry for your difficulty in the semantics between committee and sub-committee. Regardless, they still have input into the entire statement:
“If a new statement is drafted, it will be submitted to the full POPA committee in June. Once approved by POPA, it will go to the APS executive board for a vote. If approved there, the proposed statement will be posted on the society’s website for members to read and comment on, likely sometime later in 2014…Once all of the comments have been collected, POPA will again review the statement and may revise it further based on members’ input. It will then go to the executive board and the full council for a vote on whether the statement should be officially adopted in its final form.”
So what is it now, Eddy? The conspiracy really is at root in the committee and not the sub-committee? All on POPA will be conspiratorial toward fooling the American public? Laughable. It will never end, and no matter what any of these organizations do it will never be enough.
I cited for you AMS which conducted a survey of its members, and if you had an inkling of how statistics work, its still valid as to the opinion of the majority without casting votes. Strawman? Its your requirement of a vote.
Science is indeed never conducted by consensus, and it has not been with climate change. That of course doesn’t mean that there isn’t a consensus. And there is.
00
What is really insulting is your inane and illogical comments!
I never said it wasn’t a survey. I said it wasn’t a survey of meteorologist but a survey of scientists!
From the paper:
“First, even though the response rate to our survey was well within the normative range, nearly three-quarters of the AMS members invited to participate did not do so. This raises the possibility that our respondents may not accurately represent the views of the broader AMS membership. It is plausible, for example, that AMS members skeptical of global warming may have been less likely than the average member to respond, potentially by virtue of feeling marginalized within their professional society as a result of the views on the issue.”
The paper stated that, “Confirmation of our four hypotheses shows that meteorologists’ views about global warming observed in the last 150 years are associated with, and may be causally influenced by, a range of personal and social factors. In other words, the notion that expertise is the single dominant factor shaping meteorologists’ views of global warming appears to be simplistic to the point of being incorrect.”
Do not use a word unless you know what it mean. There is no ” semantics between committee and sub-committee.” They are two different words.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/semantics
: the study of the meanings of words and phrases in language
: the meanings of words and phrases in a particular context
Yours is a false assumption and you are a hypocrite who insults others and then whines like a little girl when someone calls him out on his brain dead BS!
You never quoted Curry, you cited a table that falsified your consensus claim and listed an overall agreement of 52%!
Here is what Dr. Curry wrote.
“The article attempts to explain ‘disbelief’ in context of lower expertise, political ideology, and perceptions on the existence of a consensus. I don’t think the methodology used is particularly useful in distinguishing these influences…”
Here are her comments on the table you linked to. Bear in mind that the title of her post was derisive “the 52% Consensus.
“Look at the views in column 1, then look at the % in the rightmost column: 52% state the warming since 1850 is mostly anthropogenic. One common categorization would categorize the other 48% as ‘deniers’.
The table seeks to discriminate between those whose expertise is in climate science vs meteorology/atmospheric science. In the context of the AMS membership, I think this distinction is ambiguous.”
Again, read before you post. a sub-committee reports to the committee. Then, the committee votes on whether or not to accept the sub-committees findings. As your statement demonstrates, the executive board and the council make the decision. The decision is not made by an up or down vote by the rank and file. Thank you for making my point!
You are pathetic. You cite Dr. Curry’s Article about a 52% consensus and lack the wit to comprehend the sarcasm in the title?! 52% is barely a majority and that is nowhere near a consensus!
Again, if the science is “settled” it shouldn’t be too much for you to provide one organization that put it to a vote of the members before endorsing the CAGW hypothesis, right?
I am going to continue to intellectually pummel you until you defecate in your disingenuous drawers!
10
Enjoy your day, Eddy!
02
By the way, AMS could not have been clearer as to what the results were, and their opinion that it reflected close to the number of 93%.
“Our findings also revealed that majorities of experts view human activity as the primary cause of recent climate change: 78% of climate experts actively publishing on climate change, 73% of all people actively publishing on climate change,”
And the table says exactly that…its those that are not active in the field of climate science that bring the number down, and which was the point AMS made…the more your experience in climate science, the more you were willing to say man was the primary cause of climate change.
01
Now that I think about it, Eddy, OK, lets jettison the number 93% of climate experts agree that man is the primary cause of climate change. Lets go with 78% like AMS said. OK?
00
Try 52% overall!
00
Here is another, a Pew poll of American Association for the Advancement of Science, largest science society in the world, with over 100,000 members:
http://www.pewinternet.org/files/2015/01/PI_ScienceandSociety_Report_012915.pdf
87% of all members who are scientists say that the earth is warming due to human activity, and 77% say it is a problem.
And do you want to know why that is valid for concluding that is what the majority of their membership thinks? Take a look at the last article Jo posted, citing the Gallup SURVEY of Americans, and thus concluding that survey is accurate finding of what ALL Americans think. Note she didn’t suggest a vote had to be taken of the entire electorate.
Its just statistics, Eddy.
93%, 87%, 78%…tell you what, lets round down…70%. Seven out of ten…you should take that deal.
00
Jim,
I am not here to “take a deal” on opinions.
Science is based on facts, not opinions.
To quote a real mental midget:
Seem familiar? It should because they are your own words! You are embarrassed because you were wrong about Judith Curry! Your response is to give me another club to hit you over the head with! If you had a brain you would be dangerous!
Here is a perfect example of your feeble mind’s inability to reason logically:
What an idiotic statement that is absolutely non sequitur!
An opinion poll is just that, an opinion. Asking for a vote of the rank and file shows that a majority of the members agree with the statement. My point, which you cannot comprehend, is that if the science is so “settled” then why wasn’t a vote taken before the policy to support the CAGW hypothesis was approved? I asked you to cite just one example and you cannot, can you? Instead, you decide to show everyone how ignorant you really are!
I cited the one example I am aware of where a vote was taken and the Geology Society of Australia was unable to support the hypothesis!
Get a clue!
00
Great…let’s just stay at 93% then.
00
By the way, if you are going to quote me, quote the entire paragraph.
“Science is indeed never conducted by consensus, and it has not been with climate change. That of course doesn’t mean that there isn’t a consensus. And there is.”
Exactly. And each of the polls I cited, along with Richard’s own opinion, says exactly that…a consensus exists.
You just don’t like what the consensus says.
00
If science, as you write, isn’t conducted by consensus then why do you continue to prattle on about it? If the consensus by which science isn’t done has value then why is there a range of anywhere from 52%, your Curry citation, and the 97% Cook crock?
You are the sorriest excuse for a debater Ihave everseen comment on this site.
Are you paid to debate yourself or is your self humiliation based on deep seated mental and emotional problems?
00
Best to make an effort to stay on topic, Eddy…the whole article from Jo is about “consensus.”
00
Like the Dormann-Zimmerman hoax, Jim?
Who are you trying to kid?
51
Not kidding, its all there to see, including the one from National Academy of Sciences, which I cited.
12
Jim,
You say,
You assume, quite naturally, that these bodies all independently arrive at the same conclusion and that they have conducted independent research. However the interchange of personnel between them, the use of the same data and reports, means that there is a consensus amongst themselves, but it is not the result of independent objective research.These bodies also have on-board a coterie of non-scientists from NGO’s and lobby groups.
The following extracts are from a paper which in 2010, examined the membership of the NAS Cimate Panels:
To misquote Jean-Luc Picard, calling these bodies “prestigious”, does not “make them so”.
61
Sure it is prestigious and remains so. Founded in the 1860’s by the Lincoln administration, its purpose was to collect the best among us in science and to advise future administrations on all things science, because old honest Abe knew science was the foundation for any success American might have in the future. And advising they have been, but for some reason, suddenly their advice in climate is fraught with fraud, I guess.
For those interested, here is the full panel on this one topic of climate change:
http://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices/sample-page/panel-reports/87-2/
Are any of their credentials being questioned, Dennis? Or just their inclusion to lend their expertise to the topic, which does in fact have an impact in their fields of expertise. Is anyone associated with the IPCC considered to not have a truthful and valid opinion?
12
You are a perfect example of why anyone that posts should take a course in logic!
Another argument from the beard. At least Abe had a beard! So they have been advising? Are they infallible? Your comment that their climate science advice is now fraudulent is another straw man argument!
The IPCC is not a scientific organization, it is a governmental one. In fact, it is the intergovermental panel, not the scientific panel, on climate change. Politicians have the final say on content for both the summary for policymakers and the synthesis report. Not exactly scientific, is it? The often vaunted list of 2,500 scientific luminaries is riddled with lawyers, politicians and eco activist NGO loons! A third of their last report was comprised of grey literature and riddled with errors. I bet you’re happy to know that the Himilayas will not be ice free in thirty five years, aren’t you?
If you really want to get a laugh just do an internet search for predictions by the giants of climate science from years gone by. All were utterly wrong! Or, search Earth Day predictions from the past! While your at it, research the Club of Rome and one of my favorites, Paul Ehrlich. You will see they were wrong about everything. Then, take a deep breath. Although the human race still faces challenges, the sky is not falling!
Credentials do not a valid argument make. Every scientific consensus that was upended and invalidated was originally born of a consensus amongst distinguished and “credentialed” scientists! Neither their inclusion nor their impact is relevant to the question at hand. The only thing that counts are facts. The CAGW hypothesis has been falsified. Instead of going back to the drawing board the scientists keep inventing new explanation for the pause that the warmist claim doesn’t exist! Besides being a blatant contradiction, it is a falsification of the “settled science” mantra from the green religious accolytes.
Gosh, I don’t know? The former Chairman, who resigned amid allegations of sexual harrassment, can always go back to work as a railroad engineer if his career move into writing soft porn novels doesn’t work out!
20
Jim, I despair. I do not question their credentials in their chosen discipline, how could I. I question why they are on a panel of supposed climate scientists, producing reports which are presented as scientific documents, designed to influence and direct public policy. If you think that it is OK for people like Fred Krupps, Carter Roberts and Richard Moss to be on a panel such as this and to be regarded by implication, as climate scientists, then there is no more to say to you. Good luck.
00
So, Dennis, lets just assume that those 3 are bringing some kind of agenda with them…I don’t…one of the topics of the report was consequences of climate change and they would have something to say about that. But lets just assume it is so…
Also on that panel are 17 other distinguished fellows. Lets just look at a few…
Dr. Raymond W. Schmitt, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution- Oceanography, Dr. Waleed Abdalati, University of Colorado at Boulder- was a chief scientist at Nasa, Dr. Antonio J. Busalacchi, Jr., University of Maryland, College Park-Director of Earth Science, Dr. Ken Caldeira, Carnegie Institution of Washington-Atmospheric Scientist, Dr. Ruth S. DeFries, Columbia University- Geography and Environmental Engineering…
Just to take 5 of the remaining 17. Are you suggesting that the 3 you mentioned are going to be able to silence other scientists, or to somehow determine by themselves the report’s conclusions? Do you think the other 17 will be cowed by them?
No you don’t.
00
Jim, aren’t you the same goofball that wrote the following:
00
Maybe a more interesting question to get answered is how do such bad papers get believed by so many? Or better yet, how do so many unqualified individuals get such powerful credentials that their every word is treated as gospel?
They’re 97% ego and 3% useful intellect… 🙁
151
Hi Jo
I hope you will take a look at this message. It has taken a good twenty minutes for me just to get to this stage being on a satellite connection and having used all of our regular usage for this month. 20 gig on Satellite does not go too far.
So I was watching a fascinating show on SBS that involved a Satellite expert examining ancient roman and other assorted evidence of their influence on the world.
I watched with interest the evidence of Portus from circia 2000 years ago that shows an ancient Roman port way above current seal level, in fact a good few km from current levels from the sea as it exists now.
My question. If such a great port is now well above sea level why all the worry about miniscule current rises ? Do people not look at history?
Thanks. Your point is noted. I would like to know more. _ Jo
210
All of the old Roman ports around the Mediterranian are literally Km. from the sea, S. France, Italy, Morocco. Has the land risen or the sea level dropped? So predicted rises in sea level shouldn’t be a problem as we have had them before.
130
I’d guess Yes to both.
The world is generally a bit cooler now than 8000 years ago, so thermal contraction would have lowered the sea slightly.
Most land masses that used to be covered by ice 30000 years ago have had isostatic rebound, but the Mediterranean specifically may not have been one of those areas.
00
Marakai: a lot of the observed sea-level change in the Mediterranean has been because of plate tectonics, as can be seen on some Greek islands, where the ancient port on one side of the island is metres above present-day sea-level, yet that on the other side is submerged. Quite how the port you cite is km above present-day sea-level, I have no idea; perhaps you meant that it was now km away from the sea, because of sea-level change.
Whichever is meant, it does show that “sea-levels” are not solely dependent upon the “extra” water melting into the oceans, or the thermal expansion of the oceans as the temperatures rise a terrifyingly 2/100ths of a degree C above a possibly totally made-up (but almost certainly previously unknown) number.
110
There are many many reasons for seal level variation, only one of them is what the poles are doing.
Where I live we have an old dock for a local ferry that is well over 100 years old. The dock sits some 10m back up the shore from the current high tide mark. I also saw a show on SBS recently that showed US Civil War forts used for iron clads and the like. The dock was perfectly where it would have been at the time of the war. There seemed to have been no noticeable change in the levels of the water of the tidal system they were in.
Modern coverage of sea level rises focus attention on one factor in order to create fear.
120
If you want to create fear, do not say that sea levels are rising. It is better to say that land levels are sinking. Bigger audience that way.
10
Got a link or a reference to the programme there Marakai ?
There can be many explanations for stranded ports.
Would be great to be able to share your experience of it.
30
Eddie
Chiefio (aka EM Smith) has a piece on the variability of the Mediterranean here – https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/what-ice-caps/
Hope this helps.
10
Thanks Tom. A rather interesting account. The land changes, seas come and go. No wonder the climates change.
Call me a denier but there is no such thing as a global climate or a single climate for the Globe. Climates are regional and climates change.
10
Despite any peer review,
The consensus result is askew,
If their highest priority,
Is to claim a majority,
Can make man-made warming be true.
241
Ruairi,
You never cease to amaze me! 😮 😉
Abe
61
Credit to the wits at JustGrounds for spotting this one:-
“Politicians use statistics in the same way a drunkard uses a lamp-post – more for support than illumination!”
http://www.economist.com/node/16050916
140
There is something that Richard Tol misses out. Anthropogenic global warming is meant to be a great big problem. I heard John Cook speak on the paper last year at Bristol University. He had been invited by Stephan Lewandowsky. This is one of my observations.
It is totally misleading to declare that the paper supports any scientific consensus for a big problem that can justify policy.
232
Kevin:
Sorry for being unclear.
Both your points are correct. Cook’s 97% consensus is about some human contribution to warming. It is not about a dominant contribution. It is not about dangerous warming.
220
Richard,
Thanks for the clarification. As Eddie says below, the Barak Obama twitter account chirruped about the strong interpretation.
Thank you for your work in wading through this paper. It might be dross, but the following statement makes it clear why getting the paper withdrawn is necessary.
The Debunking Handbook – John Cook & Stephan Lewandowsky
But these characters do not realize something else that is important. There are many potential interpretations of complex data and potentially an infinite variety of policies for a global problem. We can only truly understand which are the best at a given point in time by freely evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of those ideas from multiple perspectives, then using this to refine and develop. Cook et al. try to do the exact opposite. It is not just a bad paper academically, it is against those who want to improve knowledge of the real world, and the consequences of people interacting with it. It is anti-science and against understanding in general.
110
Cooks study is frequently misrepresented as a “scientific consensus” as if all scientists were somehow surveyed rather than a tiny and rather vested subgroup of people who write a certain kind of paper.
As far as I know Cook has never made any attempt to correct the public misinterpretation.
90
Is it ‘science’ to study what scientist believe?
Would you not in times past find that the majority of scientists believed in phlogiston and also luminiferous aether, this does not tell us what is true or real, but it just shows us faulty opinions of a majority of groupthink scientists have existed before. Indeed Arrhenius the father of the greenhouse gas theory believed it.
Surely it is the real scientific work done, with the correct interpretation of all the observations and measurements that truly progresses science.
Who does care what most scientist believe?
Why should we want to know? As long as they can correctly do the science surely that is all that matters.
10
The scientific method could be applied to find out what the majority of people with science training believe. Perhaps one day it will be. The conclusions though are only scientific evidence about sociological and cultural matters. As soft as soft science gets.
40
So true, but knowing what many scientist believe does not, IMO, indicate very much about the qualities of science, even less about good science. Just the personal preferences of a group of people.
E.g. Knowing the personality traits of say, Wernher von Braun could not tell very much about how good a rocket scientist he was.
No, my beef with Cook’s study, as Richard shows, is it’s not science, it’s not even passable sociology. Just so much dross.
20
Ooops!
Please ignore that I misread your comment Jo.
10
It’s gotta be true Kevin because Barack Obarma Tweets about it
https://mobile.twitter.com/BarackObama/status/509371785322590208
and UK Climate Minister Ed Davey a Tweets about it
https://mobile.twitter.com/deccgovuk/status/341561549120471041
40
When Gore tweets about we’ll have the trifecta. *Jumps up and yells BINGO*.
50
Cook et al will not be retracted. As usual, this is nothing to do with science. Have a look at the editorial board of
Environmental Research Letters, http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/page/Editorial%20Board
Myles Allen, Oxford Environmental Change Institute, (Disasters ‘R Us)
Peter Gleick
Stefan Rahmstorff
Scott Goetz, deputy director Woods Hole, where Holdren was director
Cameron Hepburn, Oxford Environmental Change Institute and Grantham Institute, (Nick Stern, Bob Ward)
Johan Rockstrom, Stockholm U, formerly Beijer Institute, long time activist since the beginning
There will be more network associations if I went through them.
60
Who will guard the guards? – Juvenal
20
I am still gob-smacked that anyone associates with Peter Gleick. Do these other people have any self respect?
00
The conclusions to be found and the purpose of this “paper” were made clear before the “study” even began.
“It’s essential that the public understands that there’s a scientific consensus on AGW. So Jim Powell, Dana and I have been working on something over the last few months that we hope will have a game changing impact on the public perception of consensus. Basically, we hope to establish that not only is there a consensus, there is a strengthening consensus.”
“When we publish the Phase 2 paper, it will strongly emphasise that the endorsement percentage is based just on the abstract text and hence an underestimate of the true number of papers endorsing the consensus.”
“Thus over time, we would gradually process the 6000 neutral papers, converting many of them to endorsement papers – and make regular announcements like “hey the consensus just went from 99.75% to 99.8%, here are the latest papers with quotes”.”
http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/06/cooks-97-consensus-study-game-plan.html
110
Oops, meant to say “were made clear before the “study” was Cooked up”.
70
O/T: Earth Hour – a late contender, a possible winner!
ABC: Farmers from around Australia travel to Canberra to put the spotlight on climate change ahead of Earth Hour
The group, from New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia, have travelled to Canberra ahead of Earth Hour this Saturday.
Mr Pauley is a part of the advocacy group and he said he first noticed changes in the climate 17 years ago.
Mr Pauley now travels around the state talking with farmers about how to manage their operations in drying conditions.
He said farmers are having increasing issues with reduction in rainfall, shorter seasons and variable temperatures.
“The big issue is, if we don’t become aware, if we don’t do something soon, it will be too late,” he said.
Twitter photo-op: Here we are with Senator Arthur Sinodinos
. . .
Note: Lots of fossil fuel was burnt compiling this information.
101
Yeah I love the TV Ad. Turn off your lights and this farmers crops will grow again.
Nothing like keeping it simple.
70
‘Mr Pauley is a part of the advocacy group and he said he first noticed changes in the climate 17 years ago.’
He is spot on, that’s about when it stopped warming.
100
how did Cook becomes so INFLUENTIAL? that is the question.
J.Bob at WUWT’s Tips & Notes page says –
“This week I happened to end up at the NASA Climate Science Investigation site”…
In the module the following quote showed up “See Skeptical Science and Washington and Cook, 2011 for more information and examples of these types of climate arguments.”
Having worked on many NASA projects in the past, it was a bit much to think that I am paying my taxes, to have John Cook, a cartoonist, as a climate science reference….
NASA: Climate Science Investigations (CSI)
NASA’s Skeptics’ Claims Module
Types of Skeptics’ Arguments
Science Misrepresentations…
See Skeptical Science and Washington and Cook, 2011 for more information and examples of these types of climate arguments…
(second page)
Your argument will include the following components:
Skeptics’ Argument – Skeptics’ claim, the evidence, and justification…
Scientists’ Counter-Argument – Scientists’ claim, evidence, and justification
Use the Climate Argument Prompts Template and Scoring Rubric in the Addressing Climate Skeptics’ Claims module to help you develop your written and oral argument…
http://www.ces.fau.edu/nasa/module-7/types-of-arguments.php
30
The inevitable responses to the lunacy of Climate Change Promotions, Inc.
So many great one-liners, so little time to laugh.
Abe
60
It’s like Jim, but not as we know him.
10
Can’t blame him really.
His carrier has been about personality and likability (and loving lots of alien women). It’s what actors have to do, and he’s doing it still.
He has quite a fan club there. I’m sure he’s as proud of them as they are of him.
30
23 March: Vox: Julia Belluz: This is why you shouldn’t believe that exciting new medical study
In 2003, researchers writing in the American Journal of Medicine discovered something that should change how you think about medical news. They looked at 101 studies published in top scientific journals between 1979 and 1983 that claimed a new therapy or medical technology was very promising. Only five, they found out, made it to market within a decade. Only one (ACE inhibitors, a pharmaceutical drug) was still extensively used at the time of their publication…
But you’d never know that from reading the press…
***”There’s a big, big, difference between how the media think about news and how scientists think about news,” Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard professor of the history of science, recently told me in an interview. “For you, what makes it news is that it’s new — and that creates a bias in the media to look for brand new results. My view would be that brand new results would be the most likely to be wrong.”…
We’re often prodded along by overhyping scientists like Zamboni, who are under their own pressure to attract research funding and publications.
We don’t wait for scientific consensus; we report a little too early, and we lead patients and policymakers down wasteful, harmful, or redundant paths that end in dashed hope and failed medicine…
We now live in an age of unprecedented scientific exploration. Through the internet, we have this world of knowledge at our fingertips. But more information means more bad information, and the need for skepticism has never been greater…
http://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8264355/research-study-hype
2 days ago:
21 March: Vox: Julia Belluz: How Big Oil and Big Tobacco get respected scientists to lie for them
The documentary was inspired by the research of Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University. She coauthored the 2010 book Merchants of Doubt after stumbling on an amazing discovery: in all the journal articles on global climate change published between 1992 and 2002, there was complete consensus among researchers that the warming of the planet was caused by man. Yet somehow this monolithic agreement wasn’t making it out of the annals of research. Oreskes wanted to figure out why…
Naomi Oreskes: If someone casts doubt on science, there are two questions we should ask. Number one: Who are they? Do they have a vested interest in challenging the scientific knowledge for some reason that has nothing to do with science?…
http://www.vox.com/2015/3/21/8267049/merchants-of-doubt
32
Earth Hour!
Does Captain Kirk support Earth Hour?
I prefer the “Hour of Power”!
10
Previous reply belongs with #24 .
Right on Pat!
20
http://www.skepticalscience.com/docs/24_errors.pdf
01
Julia, earlier in March:
14 March: Vox: Julia Belluz: Why you can’t always believe what you read in scientific journals
When people talk about the flaws in the scientific process, they often raise the problem of peer review…
But there are problems with this traditional “pre-publication” peer-review model: it relies on the goodwill of scientists, who are increasingly pressed and may not spend the time required to properly critique a work; it’s subject to the biases of a select few; it’s slow; and it sometimes fails. This means that even in the highest-quality journals, mistakes, flaws, and even fraudulent work make it on the record…
Now, the (anonymous) founders of a new website, PubPeer, are trying to change that. Since establishing the site in 2012, they’ve grown into a global platform for “post-publication” peer review — a new method some say could replace the current model…
JB: Have you noticed any trends in who comments or in which disciplines? What types/fields of scientists are the most active users?
PP: The bulk of our commenting is in the life sciences, but PubPeer is open for discussion of all publications. Nanotechnology, chemistry, climate science, management studies, and quantum mechanics all have active communities on PubPeer…
PP: The biggest problem is the pressure to chase after “metrics” — indirect measures of scientific success. The most important metric is publication in top journals, which determines jobs, grants, everything. This distorts the scientific process toward mostly illusory “breakthroughs” and “high-impact research” at the expense of careful work…
JB: Finally: why do you refuse to reveal your identities? You’re critiquing science in an open democracy, not offering political dissent in a repressive regime or something.
PP: You need look no further than the Sarkar suit for an answer. [Fazul Sarkar is a cancer researcher who sued PubPeer, demanding the identities of anonymous commenters who criticized his work; the court sided with PubPeer.] …
http://www.vox.com/2015/3/14/8203595/pubpeer
on PubPeer, there’s this page with 2 responses, which u can find if u want:
PubPeer: “Dynamics of the intertropical convergence zone over the western Pacific during the Little Ice Age”
Hong Yan, Wei Wei, Willie Soon, Zhisheng An, Weijian Zhou, Zhonghui Liu, Yuhong Wang, Robert M. Carter, Nature Geosci (2015)
but there’s also a link in a righthand column headed “invite others to the conversation”, to:
12 March: HotWhopper.com: sou: Back to normal at WUWT: Dog whistles and big announcements
After a short interlude of tedious boring, WUWT is back to normal. I last wrote about Anthony Watts and his blog: “Is this a lull before his next “big announcement” or dogwhistle to his lynch mob?” Turns out it was both…
The “big announcement” (archived here) if you can call it that, was that Willie Soon and his mate Bob Carter managed to get their names on a paper published in Nature Geoscience (pdf here). …
comments:
Millicent: wish you were right, but I think the number of deniers is largely determined by how much money the fossil fuel industry doles out to keep them going…
Bernard J: I’m with Millicent. Deniers will ‘rationalise’ away any accumulation of data that disturbs their world view.
Deniers and denialism by and large do not respond to any combination at all of education, facts, or reason…
I posit the existence of a denialism ratchet, where the baseline quantum of denialism is highly resistant to decrease in level, and which slides much more easily toward increase. The response of the Australian electorate to Tony Abbott’s machinations after knifing Malcolm Turnbull in 2009 is an example: Australians were overwhelmingly in favour of pricing carbon pollution in 2007 when Kevin Rudd won in a convincing election, but they were easily convinced to the contrary after Abbott became the opposition leader and they largely remain so through to today, where any mention of a carbon price sends the average person in the street into a frenzy of right-wing, wrist-flapping conservatism…
Bernard J: One way to test the ratchet would be to watch the progress of a very laudible project by Editor-in-Chief of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger. He’s made global awareness of the seriousness of climate change the mission of his six-month swan song…
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2015/03/back-to-normal-at-wuwt-dog-whistles-and.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+hotwhopper%2FSJtd+%28HotWhopper%29
***note below: Nature lists HotWhopper as a scientific blog!
About HotWhopper
I’m a sixties-something woman with an interest in climate science. I have a Bachelor of Agricultural Science (Honours) and an MBA and work as a freelance consultant.
I started this blog to shine a spotlight on misogyny and the rejection of climate science. (Yes, they do seem to go hand-in-hand to some extent.) ..
Climate bloggers know me as Sou (occasionally SouT and on Twitter as @SouBundanga)…
Instead all thanks go to HotWhopper being featured on some prominent websites, including Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy on Slate.com and here (thanks, Phil); Joe Romm at ClimateProgress (thanks, Joe); Capital Weather Gang at Washington Post (thanks, Jason); SkepticalScience (thanks, Dana); Pharyngula (thanks, PZ Myers); The Week (thanks, Ryan); D La Repubblica Blog (thanks Silvie); the Oxford University Press blog (thanks Fuhai Hong and Xiaojian Zhao); ourchangingclimate (thanks, Jos), Rabett Run (thanks, Eli), Stoat (thanks, William), The Guardian’s Climate Consensus the 97% blog (thanks again Dana and John Abraham); The Guardian’s the Eco Audit (thanks Karl); Judith Curry’s Climate Etc blog (thanks, Judith), John Quiggin’s blog (thanks, John) and in the comments (from other people) on popular sites like Andy Revkin’s DotEarth, Dr Ricky Rood’s blog on Wunderground.com; SomethingAwful.com, nrc.nl/klimaat, euroekonom.cz, The Conversation, Fairfax Media’s Weatherzone forum (to a mixed reception), WattsUpWithThat (to an unmixed reception) and even slipping past the mods on Andrew Bolt’s blog; plus retweets from “Famous People”…
***I’ve also just discovered (Feb 2014) that HotWhopper is rated as a “scientific blog” by Nature.com. Wow 🙂 (More here.)…
And to Anthony Watts and other climate science deniers, fake skeptics and sexist oafs everywhere, shrinking though your numbers be: HotWhopper just wouldn’t be the same without you.
sou, who elsewhere says she is from Melbourne, gets advice from Gavin Schmidt – multiple tweets:
Gavin Schmidt@ClimateOfGavin3 Mar 2014
@soubundanga There was something similar in AR4, but didn’t have the scope. I think it could be better (cleaner log timescale/ overlapping)
https://twitter.com/climateofgavin/status/440530081509670912
71
The ‘97%’ has been an invaluable global marketing tool aimed at the headline – scanners. IMO, it will never be rescinded – there’s too much at stake.
50
O/T
Aunty tells a big fib.
http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/antarctic-sea-ice-abc-get-it-wrong-again.html
40
It is my view that the figure of 97% was chosen first and then the method of “research” cobbled together to justify it. The figure of 97% has a long history of being used by social engineers, totalitarian governments, marketers and con men. Stalin used it and Putin used it recently to justify his hegemony saying 97% of the population of the Crimea agreed with joining Russia. There have been psychological studies measuring people’s retention of numbers, their brain recall function and likelihood of accepting figures in an unquestioning way.97% is regarded as ideal on most ratings.(Please note I will track down my psych paper references for this comment and forward these in to JO)
If this is the case, then Cook’s survey was designed primarily as a propaganda exercise to fool and impress the public and to stifle opposition from the sceptical scientific community. What I find astounding is the University of Queensland has supported Cook even though this work contravenes accepted social research standards and ethics.
100
97 is the greatest prime number less than 100.
And 99.999% certainty is the greatest comic number less than 100.
80
I never thought of that.
Thanks Gary
30
Dale would seem to get quite a bit of taxpayer funding!
25 March: The Conversation: Explainer: are natural disasters on the rise?
by Dale Dominey-Howes, Associate Professor in Natural Disaster Geography at University of Sydney
Disclosure Statement
Dale Dominey-Howes receives funding from AusAID, the Australian Research Council, the Global Resilience Partnership and the Australian National Disaster Resilience Program.
Cyclone Lam, Pam and now Nathan – natural disasters have filled our news in recent weeks. They wreak havoc in poor and vulnerable communities and cost billions in recovery and aid funding.
These disasters happen when a natural hazard – such as a cyclone, bushfire or earthquake – damages human systems. They seem to be becoming more frequent and worse – but are they really?…
Despite these normal processes, experts now say there is no such thing as “natural disasters”, for three reasons.
First, humanity is interfering with the Earth system. For example, as we drive anthropogenic climate change we are adding more energy to the system. This increases the probability of more frequent and intense “hydro-meteorological” hazards such as floods, bushfires, heatwaves and tropical cyclones.
Second, we are (mis)managing natural systems…
For me, disasters are a social construct and are about people. I make no apologies for taking such an anthropocentric view…
Although the definition of disaster changes between countries and the accuracy of collected data varies across the globe and through time, one trend is clear. Events we label “natural disasters” are occurring more frequently than in the past…
Ok, I’m going to put my neck on the line here and say that there is no strong evidence that more earthquakes or volcanic eruptions are happening today compared to a century ago.
However, given anthropogenic climate change, it is “more than likely” that the frequency and intensity of hydro-meteorological extreme events have increased…
Without question, anthropogenic climate change will result in changes in the frequency and severity of hydro-meteorological disasters. However, the changes will not be uniform globally, with some areas experiencing more frequent events, other places less frequent events…
(Dale Dominey-Howes will be on hand for an Author Q&A session between 9.30am and 10.30am AEDT on Wednesday March 25. Post your questions about natural (and non-natural) disasters in the comments section below.)
http://theconversation.com/explainer-are-natural-disasters-on-the-rise-39232
31
24 March: UK Telegraph: Andrew Critchlow: HSBC: Green bonds to hit $100bn as investors back renewables
China to drive growth of so called green bond market as world’s second largest economy gets serious about remewables says HSBC
Stephen Williams, head of capital financing in Asia at HSBC: “Globally, green bonds are going mainstream. Early issuers were development institutions such as the World Bank, but last year a third of all green bonds were issued by corporates. Also, issuers have moved into new currencies including offshore renminbi and Australian and Canadian dollars.”
Campaigners in the UK led by energy secretary Ed Davey are pressing for large institutional investors and public institutions to divest their assets in fossil fuels to help address climate change and avoid the so called “carbon bubble” …
“For China specifically, the country’s huge pool of savings and limited investment opportunities are perfect for the development of a corporate green bond market,” wrote Mr Williams on the HSBC website…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/11492451/HSBC-Green-bonds-to-hit-100bn-as-investors-back-renewables.html
24 March: RTCC: Ed King: UK government Green Bank to invest in Africa and India
State-backed bank given £200 million to back overseas clean development projects and boost private sector funding flows
The UK’s Green Investment Bank is set to expand its reach overseas after the government gave it £200 million to back clean energy projects in Africa and India.Energy and climate change secretary Ed Davey revealed the bank will set up a dedicated team to work on projects using public and private sector funding.The bank would initially target renewable and energy efficiency initiatives in South Africa, India and East Africa over the coming three years, Davey told RTCC…
“It’s a pilot – a joint venture with the GIB. They’ll bring in private players – the £200 million isn’t just public but more private money.”The GIB was set up in 2012 with £3.8 billion of public funds to leverage clean energy investment within the UK.In 2014 the government announced plans for the bank help drive private sector renewables investment overseas, using part of its £3.87 billion international climate fund…
The GIB team is set to work closely with the UN’s new Green Climate Fund, which received US$10 billion of pledges from donor countries at the end of 2014.Board level talks on how the GCF will work are taking place at its headquarters in South Korea this week, with some observers expressing frustration at how long it is taking to become operational…
Davey dismissed a news report from the meeting suggesting some donor countries were reneging on their pledges, and insisted the UK would meet its target of disbursing £720 million by 2016.
“I see no reason why our money won’t flow through. The money is there – it’s not like we have to find it out the back of the sofa,” he said.
“We make these commitments – we honour them. The issue is – we have always said – that we give the money gradually.
“We won’t give it as one big cheque because we want to make sure the money is properly used and that’s absolutely as you would expect.”…
An independent observer at the meeting said they expected 50% of pledges would be delivered by an official cut-off point of April 30.
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/03/24/uk-government-green-bank-to-invest-in-africa-and-india/
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Guardian/Green NGOs still think they run the world:
24 March: Guardian: Fiona Harvey: MPs pension fund should not be divested from fossil fuels, says Liz Truss
Conservative environment secretary said she favoured carbon reduction targets over divestment at a public debate on green policies in the run-up to the general election
She told the Guardian: “I believe the right way [to affect investment] is through carbon reduction targets.”
Caroline Flint, Labour’s shadow energy secretary, said she would “look into it”. She declined to support divestment and said the debate over divestment should be about setting the right conditions for long-term investment in environmental sustainability.
***The MPs were speaking to the Guardian on the fringes of a public debate on green policies in the run-up to the general election, held by the Green Alliance and a consortium of environmental NGOs…
***Ed Davey, the Lib Dem energy secretary, told the debate that he supported divestment away from coal, but not gas as it would continue to be needed, and which currently makes up 80% of the UK’s energy use. He said this move was already happening.
***He said: “The way pension funds are going, they are interested in placing their money in what they see as sustainable forms of investment. To give incentives we need decarbonisation targets. I would make a distinction between coal and oil and gas.”
He also called for more transparency for investors. “If you look at the work of the Bank of England, the Bank of Brazil, the Bank of South Africa, you need to ensure investors have real disclosure about the assets of the companies they are investing in, [to see whether they are] building assets or long-term liabilities. Investor disclosure is one thing we can push through.”…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/24/mps-pension-fund-should-not-be-divested-from-fossil-fuels-says-liz-truss
25 March: Guardian: Adam Vaughan: Wellcome Trust rejects Guardian’s calls to divest from fossil fuels
Director of the charitable trust, Jeremy Farrar, says retaining fossil fuel shares gives more influence over such companies – but they would not rule out divesting in the future, should engagement prove ineffective
But Farrar, writing in the Guardian on Wednesday, said that while divestment was a “grand gesture” it was not as effective as engaging with fossil fuel companies.
“By maintaining our positions, we meet boards again and again, supporting their best environmental initiatives and challenging their worst. We would not be able to have the frank discussions we require if we published details, but we are confident that our engagement has impact,” he said.
Selling its shares in such companies could undermine efforts to persuade companies to make their operations more low carbon to fight climate change, he said. “Were we to sell our holdings, it is unlikely that the buyers would exert the same influence.”…
In 2014, Wellcome’s £18bn endowment had more than £450m invested in Shell, BP, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton. The foundation sold a £94m stake in Exxon Mobil in January though it has not explained why.
However, Farrar noted in his article that: “when we are not satisfied that a company is engaging with our concerns, we are perfectly prepared to sell.” He added that the extent to which companies meet their environmental responsibilities was a factor in deciding whether to sell or not, and said “all companies engaged in fossil fuel extraction are not equal”…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/25/wellcome-trust-rejects-guardians-calls-to-divest-from-fossil-fuels
11
The link that the confidentiality agreement does not exist, right at the end of the post is broken.
Would really like to have it!
30
Timo, the link contained a “.” after pdf. I’ve fixed it now. Thanks. – Jo
20
Error was mine.
Doc is here: http://www.climateaudit.info/correspondence/foi/queensland/cook%20consensus%20Documents%20released%20under%20RTI.pdf
Discussed in detail here
http://climateaudit.org/2014/07/26/cooks-fake-ethics-approval/
Credit goes to Simon Turnill.
40
I dislike maths and I am lazy so maybe someone can work out the figures for 97%scientists who put forward a paper that was supposed to be in agreement with Cook -75% of papers that didn’t mention the subject =?(my rough answer would be 97% is 100 % of those who agree with Cook – 75% of 97% = 72.75,so 100 – 72.75 = 27.25% of scientists agree with Cook(I think).
If someone wants to check my figures then if you are in agreement then my figs would be peer reviewed.
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Mac551,
Cook’s paper quotes the number of ‘no AGW position’ as 66.4% which represents 7,930 papers out of 11,944 total papers retrieved for the poll.
This means there’s no need to actually do any math at all. Cook states this number for all to see.
The absurdity of the claim that 97% of scientists agree that there is man-made global warming/climate change is documented by Cook himself. In his own paper. For all the world to see.
If you ask the question, “Do you agree that AGW exists?”, and 66.4% of scientists have no opinion one way or the other, then 66.4% of scientists do not agree that AGW exists as evidenced by the fact that they have no opinion.
To put this yet another way, if 66.4% of scientists have no position this means both that they do not agree with AGW, and that they do not disagree with AGW.
This is by definition.
This is by pure rational thought.
There’s no puzzle to be solved and no riddle to be deciphered.
My question is, “By what twisted rationale did Cook decide that he could just ignore the bulk of the papers in the poll? Especially when it’s those very papers that disprove the stated hypothesis!
Abe
P.S. I used to be relatively lazy myself. I’ve recently decided that life is short and that, because life is short, there’s very little time to continue being lazy. 😉
70
Just-A-Guy ,thanks, but you made my head hurt.
00
Mac551,
You’re welcome. Happy to oblige.
I appologize for making your head hurt, that wasn’t my intent. What was it that made that happen?
It would also be interesting to know what you think about the idea of focusing on one major error in Cook’s paper being preferable to listing all of the errors.
Abe
00
24 March: InsideClimateNews: Zahra Hirji: Harvard Beats Back Divestment Lawsuit, but Students Promise to Appeal
Seven filed suit to force prestigious college to divorce its fortune and its future from fossil fuels.
Last week, a Massachusetts court dismissed a novel lawsuit brought by seven Harvard students seeking to make the university in Cambridge, Mass., divest its $36.4 billion endowment of holdings in major coal, oil and natural gas companies.
The students made two claims in the lawsuit. The first claim, filed on behalf of themselves, argued that divestment is justified under their interpretation of the school’s charter. The second claim, filed on behalf of future generations—people whose “future health, safety and welfare depends on current efforts to slow the pace” of man-made climate change—argued that the school was intentionally investing in a known dangerous activity and should be stopped.
Justice Paul Wilson disagreed. In his opinion, he wrote that the students “have brought their advocacy, fervent and articulate and admirable as it is, to a forum that cannot grant the relief they seek…
Alice Cherry, a plaintiff in the case and a second-year law student at Harvard, told InsideClimate News that she and the other students plan to appeal…
In an October 2013 letter rejecting divestment, Harvard president Drew Faust wrote: “the endowment is a resource, not an instrument to implement social or political change.”
Karthik Ganapathy, a spokesman for the green group 350.org, which helped launch the fossil fuel divestment movement, told InsideClimate News that this argument doesn’t make sense. Historically, the university divested from tobacco companies and companies tied to apartheid in South Africa, he said…
According to 350.org, the primary argument for divestment is: “If it is wrong to wreck the climate, then it is wrong to profit from that wreckage.”
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/24032015/harvard-beats-back-divestment-lawsuit-students-promise-appeal
25 March: InsideClimateNews: Elizabeth Douglass: Exxon Shareholder Climate Vote Blocked, Chevron’s Approved by SEC
Government officials last week blocked a groundbreaking shareholder proposal on climate change from going to a vote at ExxonMobil. The move has confounded proponents, because the decision came just five days after the same agency cleared a similar resolution for Chevron’s shareholder ballot.
“I’m completely baffled, frankly,” said Natasha Lamb, director of equity research and shareholder engagement at wealth manager Arjuna Capital, lead sponsor of the ExxonMobil resolution. “The proposals are virtually identical.”
The Chevron and Exxon rulings came from two different attorney-advisers at the Securities and Exchange Commission…
Both of the resolutions at issue cite the threat from climate change as a reason to rein in spending on risky exploration projects in ultra-deep water, the Arctic and Canada’s oil sands. They argue that those projects at Exxon and Chevron are chasing reserves that might become unsellable—or stranded—in a carbon-constrained world and in low-oil-price scenarios…
“It’s a shift from asking for transparency to asking for action,” said Lamb of Arjuna Capital, a Massachusetts-based affiliate of Baldwin Brothers Inc…
The Chevron proposal, backed by As You Sow, Arjuna Capital and Zevin Asset Management, asks the company to adopt a policy that reduces climate risk by increasing the amount of money that can be distributed to shareholders through dividends.
The issue will be voted on by shareholders at Chevron’s annual general meeting in late May, but the company isn’t happy about it.
“The proposed policy is unnecessary and based on the flawed premise that stockholders would be best served if Chevron stopped investing in its business,” company spokesman Justin Higgs told Bloomberg BNA. “Chevron’s production and resources will be needed to meet projected global energy demand, even in a carbon-constrained future.”…
“This will be well-supported by shareholders,” said (As You Sow President Danielle ) Fugere. “I expect that we’ll get a good vote—anything from 20 percent to 50 percent.”…
The SEC took a different stance on the ExxonMobil resolution. In a letter to Exxon dated five days after its Chevron decision, the commission agreed that the company could exclude the resolution…
In this case, Fugere of As You Sow said the commission must have based its Exxon ruling on some kind of wording technicality.
The SEC’s decision was “less about the substance and more about how we framed the resolution, so we’ll do a different draft of the resolution next year,” said Fugere.
***”There’s a lot of discussion of carbon asset risk in the media, and financial analysts are now addressing it, so this is not an issue that’s going away.”
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/25032015/exxon-shareholder-climate-vote-blocked-chevrons-approved-sec
00
something to watch:
26 March: Reuters: UPDATE 6-Oil prices surge after Saudi air strikes in Yemen
Brent crude oil shot up nearly 6 percent on Thursday after Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab allies began a military operation in Yemen, although importers saw little immediate threat to supplies…
Brent futures rose as high as $59.71 a barrel, up almost 6 percent since their last settlement, before dipping back to $59.10 a barrel at 0739 GMT, though still up over $2.60.
U.S. crude was up $2.55 at $51.76 a barrel…
Beyond oil, the Middle East is also the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), from Qatar and also Yemen, but importers said they were not immediately worried.
“Gas supply from Yemen has no disruption so far. We are not concerned given the supply surplus and weak demand currently,” said Lee Sang-wook at Korea Gas Corp…
With the global crude glut built up from U.S. shale oil and strong output from producers such as Russia, there is little immediate worry about any shortages developing…
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/03/26/markets-oil-idUKL3N0WS0R520150326
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John Cook:Understanding Climate Change Denial 101
Strange thing! I signed up for this cours, which offered by the University of Queensland, before Christmas 2014.
I did not receive any notification of the start of the course or any course materials. It was supposed to start on 10 Mar 2015!
Today I tried his email ( as given on the Uni of Qld website). Apparently he is no longer known there (at least on that address)
30
30
simples: that is not Cook’s email address
I guess the MOOC didn’t start on time because Cook is working hard on the major revisions to his PhD thesis
http://www.psychology.uwa.edu.au/research/postgrads?john.cook
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Have you already paid Uni fees ?
Is this course subject to HECS ?
10
Sorry, I also meant to ask if you had been officially notified that you had been accepted for the course ?
20
It was supposed to be a free course unless you wanted a certificate.
I think I did get a notification but I have to check/
30
Starting April now. The 1st , I shouldn’t wonder ?
https://www.edx.org/course/making-sense-climate-science-denial-uqx-denial101x#
00
[…] UPDATE: Jo Nova has included parts of Richard’s article in her post The 97% Cook Consensus – when will Environ Res Letters retract it? […]
10
Hasn’t he moved to Bristol ?
30
Near His mate Lewendowsky!
20
“There is no doubt in my mind that
the literature on climate change
overwhelmingly supports the
hypothesis that climate change is
caused by humans. I have very little
reason to doubt that the consensus is
indeed correct.”
Richard Tol
Richard Toll,
Did you actually say that?
If You did, have you changed your mind?
20
Yes, that’s what I wrote. No, I did not change my mind.
Science is, in a way, like democracy: The rules are more important than the outcome. I may like the current government, but I still think there should be an election. Or in this case, I may agree with the conclusion, but I still think they should have gotten the method straight.
30
Richard Toll,
What are we to make of this statement from the Cook paper:
In your estimation, is this statement to be included in the category of ‘not getting the rules right’?
From my perspective, this statement is the only part of the entire paper that has any validity because of it’s accurate description of the reality. Fully two thirds of the papers found using the search terms, ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’ expressed no position.
The rest of the world can continue to exmine, debate, and rehash all of the other obvious and not so obvious flaws in Cook’s ‘recipe’. (With cincere apologies to all my fellow skeptics, but . . .) It’s all a waste of time.
Cook already ‘conceded the game’. There is in fact no concensus.
Abe
40
Richard,
In an environment where scientists are not free to express their true opinion without fear or favour due to threats of being ostracised, marginalised, bullied or hounded out of the clique, or the profession for that matter, how can you possibly legitimately state that you “believe” the majority of scientists think any such thing? I’m quite sure a secret ballot with more specific and pointed questions would yield far more widely variant beliefs, even amongst a group of self-selected enviro loons who have been preconditioned to believe in sinful mankind destroying a pristine planet that had attained perfect harmony and stasis until our first footsteps tainted the hallowed ground.
Science is most definitely not a democracy, because even if 100% of scientists completely believe in a fallacy, it remains just that: a fallacy. It is not “true” because a certain group firmly believes in it. 100% of iridologists believe in iridology as a valid diagnostic tool, yet it remains, for all their consensus and belief, pseudoscientific drivel.
It is also not democratic to have “votes” for the consensus done by proxy, in the case of various academies of science, geophysical unions and the like, where the members are not even consulted or polled, and those who have an activist bent in positions of authority take it upon themselves to speak for a silent majority of their members. That is Stalin and Hitler’s idea of democracy, not mine.u
40
Thanks,
I may have read a meaning into the words which was not the intended one.
10
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
— George Orwell
81
Bob Tisdale covers the story at Watts and points the bone at Cook et al.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/26/richard-tols-excellent-summary-of-the-flaws-in-cook-et-al-2013-the-infamous-97-consensus-paper/
10
This thread seems to be more or less finishing.
‘Jim’ has spent a lot of time telling us that we really must be convinced by some widely agreed evidence that mankind, by the emission of CO2, has the power to change the world’s climate for the worse.
It’s time for Jim to start producing some figures to persuade us that the world’s climate is in fact changing, and that humans are the cause.
Anything, Jim – ocean acidification, hurricanes, you name it. Please open up a discussion based on figures and observations and let’s hear your views.
It would be interesting, indeed essential, to learn about the sources of any data you’d like to put forward.
I’ll start the ball rolling. I was born and live in the UK, and I’m 66 years old. The climate here hasn’t changed, and it isn’t doing so. I’ve read an excellent book by a meteorologist, Robin Stirling, entitled ‘The Weather of Britain’ just to be sure that the weather we see now isn’t different from the past. We still get floods, hot summers, cool summers, and so on.
Do I see any untoward changes? No.
Over to you Jim!
10
Hey, Carbon, thanks for another reasoned response to me. As I have mentioned to you, I’m not a scientist, so I rely on what science tells me. I do believe that there are plenty of supporting documents and analysis that support my belief in AGW and the dangers. Could point you to all of the supporting documents offered by IPCC, but I’m sure that is a dirty word around here.
There is no way any commenter here could display on one page facts and figures that would change a skeptics mind. But back a number of years ago, the first publication I read that convinced me was from National Academy of Sciences. And some months back, NAS along with UK’s Royal Society made a similar and even better effort. I might refer you there…all of the facts, figures, and data supporting AGW and why they are concerned about it.
http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/exec-office-other/climate-change-full.pdf
If NAS and Royal Society can’t convince you, certainly Jim from the States never will.
I might also refer you to a data center that should be well received here…Remote Sensing Systems (RSS). RSS uses satellite data, which I know is the skeptics method of choice, since the troposphere has not warmed to climate models expectations. But it has warmed, just as surface temperatures show the surface has warmed. And what does RSS conclude:
“•Over the past 35 years, the troposphere has warmed significantly. The global average temperature has risen at an average rate of about 0.13 degrees Kelvin per decade (0.23 degrees F per decade).
•Climate models cannot explain this warming if human-caused increases in greenhouse gases are not included as input to the model simulation.
•The spatial pattern of warming is consistent with human-induced warming. See Santer et al 2008, 2009, 2011, and 2012 for more about the detection and attribution of human induced changes in atmospheric temperature using MSU/AMSU data.”
http://www.remss.com/research/climate
Please take particular note of the second item listed.
Again, if RSS cannot convince you, Jim has no chance, and I am sure I don’t. In fact, I’m fairly sure RSS, NAS, and RS won’t convince you.
Enjoy your weekend, Carbon! Snowing here in New York!
00
Jim,
I’ve asked you before to do your own thinking but it seems you’rs not prepared to do so.
Here’s a graph of the RSS satellite data as provided by them: RSS – 1979-2014.
I’ve plotted three trend lines. The first is for the entire period of 35 years in the quoted statement. The second is for the first 20 years and the third is for the last 15 years.
Use the small effort involved in evaluating this data. While it is true that overall the data shows warming for the last 35 years, all of that warming occured in the first 20 years of that period. From then on, and until today, there has been cooling not warming.
Temperature variations have been shown to follow cyclical patterns. The statement you quote describes a period in time that begins at the low point in one of these cycles and ends shortly after the peak of that same cycle. Now, using your own reasoning skills, why would it not be preferable to show us trends in the data that begin at the top of the cycle and end at the bottom of that same cycle?
Abe
00
Abe-
Glad to see you recognize that the trend is up for the past 35 years, as stated by RSS. We are indeed making progress.
So, lets add some reasoning, as you suggest, to the more recent years. You do recognize, I hope, that in the years 1998 and 2010 we experienced El Nino’s, which as any scientist will tell you causes a spike in temperatures…forever has it been thus. In fact, 1998 was the year of the El Nino of the Century, or Super El Nino. And of course, that is the year that skeptics like to measure from, because that gives them an answer they desire. So you start a plot from that point on. It is of course fallacy, and thankfully RSS agrees.
I know you probably don’t like to consider surface temperatures, but they are valid. And according to surface temperatures, 2014- without an El Nino- even surpassed 1998, the year of the Super El Nino.
Pause? None at all. And any amount of reasoning will tell you such…at least RSS understands that.
00
Jim,
Woefully ignorant. No one in their right mind would suggest that there was no warming up to and including the el nino of 98. The point is the actual warming pattern measured by RSS does not match the IPCC projections. If it did, the warming pattern would show a continued rise in temperatures. This has not happenned for 15 years as shown by the cooling that has occured from 98 and until now.
And you ignored this:
Why?
Are you unable to reason for yourself?
Do you accept as valid cherry picking the data to show only the rise while at the same time ignoring the data that shows a drop?
Every time I ask you to use your head to examine the data, you reply with another quote from another source and completely ignore the factual errors in yout previous statements.
Abe
00
Jim,
As you can see from the following graph:
Hadcrut3 Unadjusted Global Temperature Anomaly
Surface temperature measurements have flatlined over the last 15-17 years. In order to show an increase in avg temps of 0.04°C, hadcrut has now ‘adjusted’ their data upward:
Hadcrut3 Unadjusted compared with Hadcrut4 Fully Homogenized.
Hmmmm. . .
Abe
00
By the way, Abe, we start in the year 1979 because that is the year that satellite measurements became available. Why would you suggest jettisoning those early years? Was the data less reliable? Of course not. And as I explained above (with some reasoning), picking 1998 as the starting point is only being selectively biased. Now we can go back further in time, 100 years ago, with surface measurements, but of course that still gives you the same answer that RSS is telling you,as far as what temperatures are doing… they are rising.
01
Jim,
I provided you with the graph of the satellite data so I obviously already knew that.
I never suggested jettisoning those early years, I included them in the graph.
How cute, you know how to construct a strawman.
Makes you feel real powerfull being able to knock the strawman down, huh?
This is just a repeat of your previous misrepresentation of the RSS date over a longer period of time using the ground based data.
So I’ll repeat what I actually said earlier:
Temperatures rise, and then they fall. They always have, and they always will. The pattern they trace out on a graph is a sine curve. By picking the trend from one low point to the next available high point, you misrepresent the data.
Temperatures rose from the 70’s to the 90’s. From that point on, they’ve been declining as shown by the RSS data. All of your attempts to reinterpret the facts are not going to change reality.
Abe
00
Jim,
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out to you a very important consequence of presenting your case in the way that you have been up to this point.
Ppl read this stuff. When they see the flaws in your arguments, (as well as the arguments of all those others that have come and gone) they begin to understand how this whole AGW scare has no scientific, rational basis. Once a person comes to that realisation, they will no longer be fooled. Thanks for that.
Abe
00
I am going to stick my oar in here (excuse me Abe).
Jim,
Do you know what a sinusoidal curve looks like? It smoothly and gently goes up and down, just like a wave in the sea. In fact, it is exactly like a wave in the sea, because waves are natural. The sinusoidal curve is the waveform of nature. Everything in nature, that is not cogitative, or a singular event, conforms to that pattern. Everything!
Variations in weather, also follow sinusoidal curves. But there are lots of different frequencies, in play. Obviously we have variations caused by the effect of the moon’s rotation, and variations caused by the tilt of the earth’s rotation relative to the sun, and indeed, we have lots of frequencies associated with variations in the electromagnetic field around the sun, and also variations in the electromagnetic field that surrounds the earth, itself.
We are still not sure that we have identified all of these natural frequencies. There is still a lot we do not understand about nature.
These frequencies all interact with each other, to a greater or lesser degree, to create harmonic frequencies which add “mathematical noise” to the study of the natural cycles.
All of this is natural, and none of it is anthropogenic – i.e. it is not man-made.
To demonstrate that mankind can, and is, having any influence on the weather, let alone being able to impact the overall climate, requires the computer simulations to recognise and account for, every one of the natural frequencies (that all interact with each other, harmonically), including the ones we don’t yet know about! Simulations have yet to do that, which is why the various meteorological organisations are spending millions on purchasing supercomputers. (You ought to see the carbon footprint for one of those babies).
To point to a section on a graph, that is shorter than the wavelength of the lowest frequency, and say, “look the temperature has gone up from the point where the author has chosen to start, to this other point where the author has chosen to stop, and compare that to an increase in something that is not a natural frequency, does not prove that one causes the other. That is the logical fallacy of false causation – i.e. “Correlation does not demonstrate Causation”.
All natural influences must be accounted for, and any unnatural influences must consistently have the same effect, and to the same degree, before we can even start a conversation about proof, that would require significant and costly reengineering of civilisation and society.
The fact that non-scientist politicians are going ahead with reengineering civilisation and society anyway, under the fallacy of the Precautionary Principle, is another debate that would be interesting to have on this site.
20
Rereke Whakaaro,
No apology necessary. It’s a free
countryinternet. (for now).Abe
00
Just-a-guy: I agree entirely with your purple trend line through the RSS data. This is where the character of the record changes, and to plot the green line just doesn’t make any sense – yet Skeptical Science on their website do just this!
How many factors could be at work in determining these temperatures at different times, apart from the El Nino? Latitude, for example – and also land/water influences, geographic position and prevailing winds, mountains and highlands, ocean currents, and pressure and wind systems.
But heigh-ho, CO2’s womderful stuff, isn’t it? (!)
10
Carbon500,
There are still many ppl out there who accept non-rational explanations and can fall for cleverly presented logical fallacies. I’m inclined to believe that websites like SkS specifically cater to these types of ppl. They probably believe that if they can attract enough of these ppl, they can have an impact on the outcome of the debate.
It’s up to the more rational ppl to present the facts in as clear a format as possible.
Yes, it sure is! Like a real superhero!
Abe
10
Jim,
Given the amount of time, energy, and money, invested in the world wide adoption of and conversion to the celcius system of temperature measurement and given that all of the IPCC temperature is presented in degrees celcius, why do you suppose that an organization that purports to be at the leading edge of technology, applies standards considered to be worlds best practice, and receives multi-million dollar funding, would continue to use the fahrenheit scale?
This may seem to be pedantic and nit-picky but not when you consider this:
It could be argued that they only used that for the benefit of those that have not been able to adapt themselves to the ‘new’ system. Sounds fair, right?
But then why leave out celcius and put in Kelvin? I realise that the 0.13 Kelvin is the same as 0.13 celcius, but how many average people actually know that?
It could be argued that Kelvin was included to accomodate the scientists and engineers that are accustomed to using this scale. Sounds fair, right?
Now, use your own reasoning ability and try to figure this out. They present two figures, one for the relatively small group of ppl that have not been able to adapt to using celcius and another for the relatively few ppl that are scientifically literate. That effectively excludes the vast majority of ppl in the world, i.e. those that understand celcius and use it that scale on a regular basis, don’t have a working knowledge of fahrenheit, and aren’t aware that celcius and Kelvin have a similar scale.
This can only be ascribed to negligence through oversight(an accident/error) or incompetence or intentional obfuscation. Whatever the case may be, these types of occurences appear all over the climate change debate at all levels of severity. Whether it be a small little detail like this one or something as important and central as the temperature trends I showed you in my previous comment, the confusion and obfuscation permeates the entire debate.
Maybe you can explain to me why this should occur. One would expect that if the threat is so dangerous, these ppl would at least endeavor to present their case clearly.
Abe
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It is indeed nit picky as you say, but if it is of great concern, I might suggest you ask those organizations the question. To me, Abe, its just one more excuse because you don’t like the results. But if you find out that something nefarious is going on, I would be glad to read it.
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Jim,
You really need to keep your allegations to yourself. I never said, nor did I imply something nefarious. What I said was that regardless of the reason,
the end result is still there.
Where did you see me hazzard a guess as to the reason behind the example I gave?
And once again you ignore the main point. If this were a one-off occurence, then that would be nit-picking. The fact that these types of errors occur repeatedly, everywhere, is the real problem. The pervasiveness is the problem not the isolated incident.
You also skipped right over this:
The mis-representation of the facts occurs at all levels of the debate, not just the trivial.
Thank you for ‘exposing you hand’ to all of us here. It shows where your at.
Abe
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Well, we tried to have a civil discussion, right Abe. Best of luck to you!
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Hello Jim – thanks for your response, enjoyable and much more so than speculating as to which scientists agree/disagree, etc.
I’ve looked at and read your links. I’m aware of the RSS satellite measurements. The RSS link shows the real data/computer projection discrepancies very clearly, but also, for my part I find it hard to reconcile these tiny (fraction of a degree) temperature oscillations with a threat to the global climate.
I notice that you don’t refer to the UAH data – is there a reason for this?
Going to your other link, the NAS/Royal Society material is very slickly presented, but lacks detail.
It mentions for example the migration Northwards of certain insects as a result of ‘global warming’.
Which ones, exactly?
In Al Gore’s scary book, malaria-bearing mosquitoes are put forward as an example. Yet if you look up on the internet Professor Paul Reiter’s presentation to the British Parliament you’ll find something very interesting indeed!
Then there’s the supposed ocean acidification. No doubt you’ve seen the picture of a tiny marine snail with a gnarly-looking shell, allegedly produced in response to increased CO2 in the water. However, these images raise questions in the mind of someone with relevant experience, which I have. Apparently the pictures were obtained using scanning electron microscopy. But why did the authors bother using this technique, given that the snails are half a millimetre in diameter, and conventional microscopy would be quite adequate? Electron microscopy can result in misleading artefacts. Apparently the snail in the image I saw was ‘alive at the point of capture’ – so are these actually post-mortem artefacts that we’re being shown? For scanning electron microscopy, a biological sample is normally required to be completely dry, since the specimen chamber is at high vacuum – yet dessication of a biological sample can completely destroy the cellular architecture of the specimen.
The findings of ‘climate science’ need to be viewed with great caution!
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Carbon500,
One of the many pleasures of reading Jo’s blog. There’s always something new and fascinating to learn from the participants.
Abe
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Hi, Carbon…hope your weekend was fine.
I’m not sure what to say about any lack of detail in regard to NAS and Royal Society…I found it to be nicely detailed. But c’est la vie, just have to agree to disagree, I guess.
In regard to migration due to climate change, there are many articles and studies that support the idea that a warming climate is currently forcing a change in migration and growing seasons. Here in the US, one that has gained notoriety is the devastation of the whitebark pine tree, mainly due to pine beetles that have migrated north.
As far as UAH, no reason to ignore them…I have gone to their website many times. I like RSS for I believe they provided a very sober assessment. I also have made note that RSS was the research center that corrected UAH for errors in the past, which UAH accepted.
“We view this as the stage-setting event that has allowed more beetle events,” said David Thoma, a National Park Service ecologist studying factors behind the beetle outbreak. “Temperature is the primary driver…Warmer temperatures allow the beetles to overwinter. Until the late 1990s, winter temperatures in the high country were inhospitable. Thirty years’ of warming has left whitebark pines exposed to a threat they rarely saw.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/yellowstone-s-iconic-high-mountain-pines-dying-by-beetle-s-mouth/
But there are better summaries on line about numerous changes in growing seasons, and migration patterns. Here is just one that might be interesting here as it mentions Australia, from the phys.org website:
http://phys.org/news/2015-01-climate-shifting-animals.html
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Hello Jim, thanks for your reply, and I’ve read your references.
I have to say I despair whenever I see articles about changes in the natural world. Almost always it’s doomsday, and due to (of course) the increasing warmth due to human CO2. Scientific American is a prime example of this type of journalism – I’ve given up reading it, in fact.
Rarely do I see a proper discussion of other factors which could be involved and affect a species – genetics, predators, infections of various kinds,food sources, human disruption of habitats and so on.
In the 1970s, here in the UK we had a year or two in which there seemed to be an explosion of ‘ladybird’ beetles, and also ‘grasshoppers’. They were seemingly everywhere. Nowadays it would of course be due to man-made global warming! Why this happened I’ve never tried to find out, but perhaps I will now that my memories have been triggered.
In the UK, Dutch Elm disease has devastated these trees. Have a look at the link – this is the kind of proper discussion I like to see. Again, were this to happen now, no doubt it would be man-made global warming!
As we’ve both mentioned the UAH temperature data, have you read Dr. Roy Spencer’s material on his website or read his book? I like his moderate and balanced ‘take’ on it all.
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Here’s the link Jim, my apologies for omitting it the first time round!
http://www.forestry.gov.uk/fr/HCOU-4U4JCL
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Some have asked why I keep going back to Cook. Truth be told, the piece in the Australian is a much-delayed, much-revised version of a comment I offered first to Environmental Research Letters (and later, Jo’s my witness, to other news outlets). That said, prodding Cook and co often leads to additional information, like here http://richardtol.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/ppps-cooks-missing-papers.html
#itworsethanwethought
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[…] http://joannenova.com.au/2015/03/the-97-consensus-misrepresented-miscalculated-misleading/#more-4168… […]
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More people believe in UFO’s than are worried about the scam .. scary global warming .
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