Investigate the authors? Debunked 97‰ climate ‘consensus’ paper garners over 500K downloads

http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/27963/

Five hundred thousand. That’s the number of downloads which has graced the University of Queensland’s John Cook’s paper which claims 97% of scientists believe humans are “largely responsible” for global war– er, climate change.

The average number of downloadsfor an academic paper is … 700.

The 97% figure has widely been touted by activists and politicians since the report was published. President Obama had said “Ninety-seven percent of scientists, including, by the way, some who originally disputed the data, have now put that [global warming debate] to rest.” (The president has since has upped the figure to 99.5%.)

The problem with Cook’s work,according to The Daily Caller, is that that 97% has been met with a lotof skepticism and outright denunciation:

Cook and his team got to 97 percent by running a keyword search for “global warming” and “global climate change” between 1991 and 2011, which yielded more than 12,000 papers. They then agreed upon definitions of possible categories the papers could fit into — “explicit or implicit endorsement of human-caused global warming, no position, and implicit or explicit rejection” — and used the paper abstracts and attempted to decipher the position of each paper.

Earth System Dynamics noted in a September, 2013, press release that there were errors in the math used to get the 97 percent number. “Only 41 out of the 11,944 published climate papers Cook examined explicitly stated that Man caused most of the warming since 1950. Cook himself had flagged just 64 papers as explicitly supporting that consensus, but 23 of the 64 had not in fact supported it.”

A paper by five climatologists in 2013 pointed out that Cook’s research “misrepresented the views of most consensus scientists.”

Also in 2013, Dr. Craig Idso, whose work was lumped in with the 97%,said that the Cook paper was “not an accurate representation of [his team’s] paper.”

MORE: GOP AGs will prosecute climate alarmists if probes of skeptics continue

“It would be incorrect to claim that our paper was an endorsement of CO2-induced global warming,” he said.

The University of Sussex’s Richard Tol responded to the Cook team by saying “Consensus has no place in science,” and characterized the (Cook) data as “a load of crap.”

Now, if Cook and company had put out a paper trivializing global war– er, um, climate change, they’d be in the sights of alarmist academics

‘When 32.6% becomes 97%— the bald-faced (consensus) lie that changed the western world’

What the president was referring to was a 2013 paper by the University of Queensland’s John Cook. In his research, Cook studied 11,994 papers published between 1991 and 2011 that mentioned the search words “global warming” and “global climate change.”

Guess what Cook found? Only 32.6% of the papers endorsed the view of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. But of that group, 97% said that “recent warming is mostly man-made.”

And so, by a nice sleight-of-hand obfuscation, the great “97% consensus” was born.

Don’t believe me? Check out the actual paper, or the abstract, or the original article. In fact, let’s just say thank goodness that the originals are still posted online. Typically, when someone pulls off a con of such massive, world-wide proportions, they subsequently burn the evidence to cover their tracks.

Still don’t believe me? Here’s the actual, posted statement:

We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.

Bottom line: In the actual study in question, only one-third of the 11,994 academic papers studied could be construed as arguing for man-made warming. Possibly the other two-thirds were more focused on the unprecedented increase in solar activity seen over the past century.

Regardless, the big lie has taken hold, and is now being used to push for “decarbonization” policies, and to silence critics of “global warming.”

Obama’s 97 percent climate change consensus includes ‘deniers’

The 97 percent of scientists frequently cited by President Obama who agree on climate change? Some of them are actually climate “deniers.”

Take David Legates, University of Delaware professor of climatology. He’s known as a leading “denier” for his skeptical take on the catastrophic climate change narrative, but he does agree that the climate is changing — which, by Mr. Obama’s standard, puts him in the 97 percent.

In fact, Mr. Legates says the figure is probably closer to 100 percent, because few reputable scientists would disagree that the climate changes, or even that humans have an impact on climate. Where he and other scientists part company with the “consensus” is on the narrower issues of whether human activity is the primary driver of global warming or whether it signals imminent climate disaster.

“Neither of these arguments have been proven, and they represent the extremes to which the ‘believers’ will go to push their agenda,” said Mr. Legates in an email to The Washington Times. “These questions are seldom addressed by the ‘believers’ when they are trying to manufacture their supposed ‘consensus’ since they will not find widespread agreement.”

Those touting the 97 percent figure “ask simplistic, obvious questions for which nearly 100 percent consensus can be attained and then pretend that saying ‘I believe in climate change’ actually means ‘I believe anthropogenic global warming will be disastrous,’” he said.…

Palin Warns Against Global Warming Political Agenda, Scientific Dishonesty During ‘Climate Hustle’ Movie Premiere

“Climate Hustle” takes direct aim at the notion that 97 percent of scientists agree that human activity causes catastrophic climate change. The figure collapses under careful scrutiny, according to the key figures appearing in the film. Morano, the film narrator who also edits and publishes the Climate Depot site, addressed the sleight-of-hand.

“Climatologists will say that the way the question is worded depends on whether they are included,” Morano said. “We have many skeptical scientists included as the 97 percent because of the way the questions [in surveys] are asked are so vague and broadly worded…”…

‘Stalinist Conformity’: Swiss Professor Says ‘Young Researchers Forced To Submit To Mainstream Theories’

http://notrickszone.com/2016/04/10/stalinist-conformity-prof-mathias-binswanger-says-young-researchers-forced-to-submit-to-mainstream-theories/

Criticizing the mainstream is highly risky: Young scientists forced to conform to established models to avoid putting careers at risk

By Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt

In Weltwoche of 6 April 2016 Prof. Mathias Binswanger was very clear on why young university researchers are quasi forced to submit themselves to the trends of the day, i.e. the overriding mainstream in any particular scientific field:

Mathias Binswanger: ‘The principle is ultimately always the same: Foremost one has to be an often published and often cited figure in his/her scientific field in order to be able to contribute to the ranking of a university. But how does one often publish or become often cited in respected journals of his own field? The most important principles are: Adaptation to the mainstream and do not question any established theories or models. All submitted articles first must go through a peer-review process where champions of the scientific discipline evaluate it. Under these circumstances a young researcher has no option but to go along with the mainstream theories represented in the top journals and to use the empirical processes that are currently in trend. Only in this way does he/she have any chance of having enough publications to make him/herself eligible to be a professor. Through this very kind of pressure to conform applied by top journals is science obstructed rather than promoted.’”

It is hardly necessary to mention that this principle promotes a “Stalinist conformity” with the highly politicized climate sciences for young researchers. typically today mostly only retired professors dare to speak up when it comes to doubt over the supposed imminent climate catastrophe. These professors finally beco0me free to openly express themselves without threats to their  careers threatened.

– See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2016/04/10/stalinist-conformity-prof-mathias-binswanger-says-young-researchers-forced-to-submit-to-mainstream-theories/#sthash.twIbn36a.dpuf

The Cook ‘97% consensus’ paper, exposed by new book for the fraud that it really is

The Cook ‘97% consensus’ paper, exposed by new book for the fraud that it really is

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/03/12/the-cook-97-consensus-paper-exposed-by-new-book-for-the-fraud-that-it-really-is

I don’t like to use the word “fraud”, and I can’t recall if I’ve ever used it in a title. In this case it is warranted. Brandon Shollenberger writes of a new book, The Climate Wars: How the Consensus is Enforced, that proves without a doubt that John Cook and his “Skeptical Science” team are […]

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Rep. Lamar Smith: ‘The Inconvenient Facts the Media Ignore About Climate Change’

The repeated claims that “the debate is over” and that “97 percent of scientists agree that human-caused global warming is real” are false and mislead the public. In testimony before the Science Committee, a lead author of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that the 97 percent estimate “just crumbles when you touch it.”

The source of this “97 percent” myth is a discredited study that attempted to categorize scholarly articles on climate change by the position the papers took on the issue. But most of the papers never took a position on climate change at all. This has not stopped the liberal national media from touting this illegitimate statistic.…