MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen: Believing CO2 controls the climate ‘is pretty close to believing in magic’

Via: http://merionwest.com/2017/04/25/richard-lindzen-thoughts-on-the-public-discourse-over-climate-change/

Richard Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Image via MIT.edu

MIT atmospheric science professor Richard Lindzen suggests that many claims regarding climate change are exaggerated and unnecessarily alarmist.

Introduction:

For over 30 years, I have been giving talks on the science of climate change. When, however, I speak to a non-expert audience, and attempt to explain such matters as climate sensitivity, the relation of global mean temperature anomaly to extreme weather, that warming has decreased profoundly for the past 18 years, etc., it is obvious that the audience’s eyes are glazing over. Although I have presented evidence as to why the issue is not a catastrophe and may likely be beneficial, the response is puzzlement. I am typically asked how this is possible. After all, 97% of scientists agree, several of the hottest years on record have occurred during the past 18 years, all sorts of extremes have become more common, polar bears are disappearing, as is arctic ice, etc. In brief, there is overwhelming evidence of warming, etc. I tended to be surprised that anyone could get away with such sophistry or even downright dishonesty, but it is, unfortunately, the case that this was not evident to many of my listeners. I will try in this brief article to explain why such claims are, in fact, evidence of the dishonesty of the alarmist position.

The 97% meme:

This claim is actually a come-down from the 1988 claim on the cover of Newsweek that all scientists agree. In either case, the claim is meant to satisfy the non-expert that he or she has no need to understand the science. Mere agreement with the 97% will indicate that one is a supporter of science and superior to anyone denying disaster. This actually satisfies a psychological need for many people. The claim is made by a number of individuals and there are a number of ways in which the claim is presented. A thorough debunking has been given in the Wall Street Journal by Bast and Spencer. One of the dodges is to poll scientists as to whether they agree that CO2 levels in the atmosphere have increased, that the Earth has been warming (albeit only a little) and that man has played some part. This is, indeed, something almost all of us can agree on, but which has no …

The CON-sensus: The History of the ‘97% Consensus’ Claims On ‘Global Warming’

By MICHAEL BASTASCH

But how many proponents of “climate action” have actually bothered to read the research that underlays such a popular talking point? How many realize the “consensus” the research claims to find is more of a statistical contortion than actual agreement?

Probably not many, so let’s talk about the 2013 study led by Australian researcher John Cook claiming there’s a 97 percent consensus on global warming.

What Does The ‘Consensus’ Really Mean?

Cook and his colleagues set out to show just how much scientists agreed that humans contribute to global warming.

To do this, Cook analyzed the abstracts of 11,944 peer-reviewed papers on global warming published between 1991 and 2011 to see what position they took on human influence on the climate.

Of those papers, just over 66 percent, or 7,930, took no position on man-made global warming. Only 32.6 percent, or 3,896, of peer-reviewed papers, endorsed the “consensus” that humans contribute to global warming, while just 1 percent of papers either rejected that position or were uncertain about it.

Cook goes on to claim that of those papers taking a position on global warming (either explicitly or implicitly), 97.1 percent agreed that humans to some degree contribute to global warming.

In terms of peer-reviewed papers, the “97 percent consensus” is really the “32.6 percent consensus” if all the studies reviewed are taken into account.

But Cook also invited the authors of these papers to rate their endorsement of the “consensus.” Cook emailed 8,574 authors to self-rate their papers, of which only 1,189 authors self-rated 2,142 papers.

Again, 35.5 percent, or 761, of those self-rated papers took no position on the cause of global warming. Some 62.7 percent, or 1,342, of those papers endorsed the global warming “consensus,” while 1.8 percent, or 39, self-rated papers rejected it.

Twisting the numbers a bit, Cook concludes that 97.2 percent (1,342 of 1,381) of the self-rated papers with a position on global warming endorsed the idea humans were contributing to it.

Other studies written before and after Cook’s attempted to find a consensus, but to varying degrees, finding a range of a 7 to 100 percent (yes, no disagreement) among climate experts, depending on what subgroup was surveyed.

Cook’s paper is probably the most widely cited, having been downloaded more than 600,000 times and cited in popular media outlets.

Criticisms

Left-wing politicians and environmental activists pushing for laws and regulations to …

Watch: ‘You just made the claim!’: Warmist Prof. hilariously fails to name source of 98% ‘consensus’ claim

A college professor claimed that “98 percent of the world’s scientists” agree that manmade climate change is real — but things soon became awkward when Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked the academic to name the source of his information on-air.

“I am interested in the claims you’ve made about climate science, that it’s settled, and that 98 percent of worldwide scientists believe that. How do you know that? Are you a scientist or have you polled other scientists? Where did you get that figure?” Carlson asked California State University-Sacramento professor Joseph Palermo on Wednesday.

Palermo clearly wasn’t prepared to defend his previous assertion.

“Well, see, that’s another one of those interesting kind of questions is that, that wasn’t what the blog was about,” Palermo replied, referencing “right-wing websites” misconstruing science for “catchy headlines” and “clickbait.”

But Carlson was determined to get an answer. So he asked the question a second time.

Palermo dodged the question again, saying, “I didn’t want to get into — are you a climate change denier, or a skeptic?”

That’s when Carlson laid into the academic, reminding him that not taking everything at face value is how science works.

“The essence of science, and of journalism,” Carlson said, “is skepticism, because it seeks to get to the truth.”

“And I’m asking as you as someone who just said, as a statement of fact, that 98 percent of the world’s scientists agree with you, with whatever you believe, I’m wondering how you know that,” Carlson added.

Palermo avoided providing evidence to his claim twice more. At one point, he even urged Carlson to send out his “giant research team” to “find out about it,” a suggestion that prompted a good laugh from the Fox News host.

“You just made the claim!” Carlson pointed out.

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Related: 
MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen Mocks 97% Consensus: ‘It is propaganda’ 97 Consensus? Dr. Lindzen: ‘They never really tell you what they agree on. It is propaganda. So all scientists agree it’s probably warmer now than it was at the end of the Little Ice Age. Almost all Scientists agree that if you add CO2 you will have some warming. Maybe very little warming. But it is propaganda to translate that into it is dangerous and we must reduce co2 etc. If you can make an ambiguous remark and you have people who will amplify it ‘they said

Biggest Fake News Story: Global Warming and Phony 97% Consensus

Written by William F. Jasper

We have all heard the smug Al Gore line, repeated innumerable times by condescending media scribblers and talking heads, that “the science is settled,” that 97 percent to 99 percent of climate scientists agree there is a global warming crisis and man’s carbon footprint is responsible for it. (Never mind that a few years ago, when it became evident the global temperature data weren’t showing significant warming, the mantra had to be changed from “global warming” to “climate change.”)

Professor Oreskes, together with Australian global warming activist John Cook, will play an important role in the upcoming battle with Trump over the UN’s climate pact, which is a radical, job-destroying, economy-destroying, multi-trillion dollar tax-regulate-transfer scheme that would do nothing to improve the environment or stop climate change.

President Barack Obama was citing John Cook when he tweeted on May 16, 2013: “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.”

The New American has repeatedly reported on the fraudulent methodology used by Oreskes and Cook to arrive at their ludicrous near-unanimous consensus claims. Prof. Richard S. J. Tol and Dr. Benny Peiser are but two of the experts who have called out Oreskes and Cook, showing that only one percent of climate research papers — not 97 percent — support the “consensus” view claimed by the AGW alarmists. (See herehere, and here.)

Cook’s most damning exposé, though, was self-inflicted. In a series of e-mails, he let the cat out of the bag that, far from being a dispassionate scientific undertaking, his tabulation effort, called The Consensus Project (TCP), was actually a marketing and propaganda scheme calculated to convince the public that a non-existent consensus among scientists did in fact exist.

However, no amount of debunking, and no amount of evidence, will change the “crisis” mindset that grips many of the media commentators. CNN’s Chris Cuomo is a prime example of the arrogance of ignorance among the committed AGW mediameisters. In a combative “interview” on December 12, CNN’s Chris Cuomo went after Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci, repeatedly citing the false claim that the science is settled and that “science” has declared we must accept vast new global governance and controls to avert planetary catastrophe.

Unfortunately, the Trump spokesman did not challenge Cuomo’s bogus consensus assertions, but merely argued that scientific consensus has often been wrong in the past. This …

CNN’s Chris Cuomo Uses Fake Facts and Fake History to Support Fake Science

CNN’s New Day co-anchor Chris Cuomo compared ‘climate change deniers’ to people who believed the earth was flat and opposed bi-racial marriages.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about “fake news,” most of which comes from the left side of the political spectrum. Consider this exchange between Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota:

Cuomo: Either you accept the science or you don’t.
Camerota: No. That’s not what he’s saying. [Trump] sees nuance where you see black and white, that it’s either settled or not settled.
Cuomo: Ninety nine percent of the scientific community says that global warming is impacted by man.

Let’s begin with the fake fact regarding the claim that “ninety-nine percent of the scientific community says that global warming is impacted by man.” The number is actually 97%, and as any search on Google will show, even that number is faked, but people like Cuomo keep repeating it hoping that in time enough people will believe it and cry out for more government control and wealth confiscation:

“The 97% ‘consensus’ study, Cook et al. (2013) has been thoroughly refuted in scholarly peer-reviewed journals, by major news media, public policy organizations and think tanks, highly credentialed scientists and extensively in the climate blogosphere. The shoddy methodology of Cook’s study has been shown to be so fatally flawed that well known climate scientists have publicly spoken out against it.”

Just a year ago, ClimateChangeDispatch published “97 Articles Refuting The ‘97% Consensus’” which shows there is no consensus among scientists concerning global warming that humans (anthropogenic/man-made) are the major source of a “roughly 0.8 degrees Celsius [increase] over the past century or so.” (Source)…

Pew: Most Americans Don’t Believe in ‘Scientific Consensus’ on Climate Change

By Lauretta Brown | October 4, 2016 | 1:34 PM EDT
FILE – In this Tuesday Aug, 16, 2005 file photo an iceberg melts in Kulusuk, Greenland near the arctic circle. (AP Photo/John McConnico, File)

(CNSNews.com) – Nearly three-quarters of Americans don’t trust that there is a large “scientific consensus” amongst climate scientists on human behavior being the cause of climate change, according to an in-depth survey on “the politics of climate” released Tuesday by Pew Research Center.

According to the survey, only 27 percent of Americans agree that “almost all” climate scientists say that human behavior is mostly responsible for climate change, while 35 percent say that “more than half” of climate scientists agree on this. An additional 35 percent of those surveyed say that fewer than half (20%) or almost no (15%) climate scientists believe that human behavior is the main contributing factor in climate change.

Pew contrasted this to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which “stated in the forward to its 2013 report, ‘the science now shows with 95 percent certainty that human activity is the dominant cause of observed warming since the mid-20th century.’”

Pew Poll: Nearly 3/4 Of Americans Don’t Believe There’s A ’97 Percent Consensus’ On Global Warming

American aren’t convinced of the so-called “97 percent” consensus among climate scientists on global warming, and most U.S. adults don’t have “a lot” of trust in climate scientists to give accurate information about the issue.

The Obama administration has repeatedly touted the “97 percent” statistic as proof most climate scientists agree that global warming is man-made, but a new Pew Research poll shows the public still doesn’t agree the consensus is that strong.

“Just 27% of Americans say that ‘almost all’ climate scientists hold human behavior responsible for climate change,” according to Pew’s new poll, published Tuesday.

“Another 35% say more than half of climate scientists agree about this, while an equal share says that about fewer than half (20%) or almost no (15%) scientific experts believe that human behavior is the main contributing factor in climate change,” Pew reported.

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One reason belief in the so-called “consensus” is so low among the public is because of media coverage. American adults trust climate scientists even less than the media, according to Pew, so continuous reports about the “97 percent” figure may have some second-guessing its validity.

And skeptical they should be, since the “97 percent” figure has been debunked several times over the past few years. MIT climate scientist Richard Lindzen bashed the study behind the claim, calling it “propaganda.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/04/poll-nearly-34-of-americans-dont-believe-theres-a-97-percent-consensus-on-global-warming/#ixzz4M8fKfTHv