Mike Hulme: ‘The populist notion that all climate skeptics are either in the pay of oil barons or are right-wing ideologues…cannot be sustained’
…What Is Cook’s 97% Consensus? ‘Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. This is a very wide definition that even most sceptical scientists would have little difficulty agreeing with. It is also an pretty meaningless statement’
What Is Cook’s Consensus?
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/what-is-cooks-consensus
By Paul Homewood
John Cook’s little paper, “Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature” has attracted much attention in recent weeks.
Yesterday an essay by Brandon Shollenberger at WUWT, which accused the authors of “laundering lies”, made me realise that an important issue seems to have escaped our attention.
[As I say, much has been written on the subject, so bear with me if this particular issue has already been flagged up]
Brandon writes:-
It’s nothing but laundering lies. The authors don’t come out and directly say anything untrue, but they intentionally create and promote misunderstandings to inflate the importance of their work.
It’s rampant dishonesty hiding behind a fig leaf of deniability. This is how I recently described Cook et al’s PR campaign for their recent paper.
I didn’t intend to follow up on this comment, but this morning I saw a quote from Dana Nuccitelli that was impossible to resist:
We were always careful to say that while the survey involved 12,000 abstracts, the 97 percent consensus was among the ~4,000 abstracts that took a position on the cause of global warming (plus the roughly 1,400 of 2,100 self-rated papers taking a position). And we were careful to point out that the consensus was that ‘humans are causing global warming.
Nuccitelli says he and his co-authors always used a particular phrasing when describing their results. I must admit, that is true. They’ve always managed to say “humans cause global warming” with the implicit qualifier of “some” (that they knew nobody would pay attention to). It’s obvious they knew the limitations of their results and didn’t want to be accused of lying.
Brandon is making the point that the 97% figure is calculated from the papers which acknowledge that “humans are causing global warming”, which could mean anything from a little to a lot. Indeed, this is exactly what Cook’s abstract says:-
Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.
This is a very wide definition that even most sceptical scientists would have little difficulty agreeing with. It is also an pretty meaningless statement.
But does Cook really have this in mind when he talks of “endorsing the consensus”? The answer lies in the paper’s introduction, which states.
We examined a large sample of the scientific literature on global Climate …
Analysis of claimed ‘97% consensus’: ‘The vast majority [of studies] fall into the Impacts and Mitigation categories’ — ‘Many of these do not back up Cook’s assertion that human activity is very likely causing most of the current global warming’
…Climatologist dr. Judith Curry on the alleged 97% ‘consensus’: ‘The definition of climate change consensus is now so fuzzy that leading climate change skeptics are categorizing themselves within the 97%. IPCC and other leading climate scientists can’t agree on the cause of the lack of surface temperature increase for the past 15+ year’
The 97% ‘consensus’ | Climate Etc. http://judithcurry.com/2013/07/26/the-97-consensus/…
Warmist Mike Hulme: “The “97% consensus” article is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed…it is a sign of the desperately poor level of public and policy debate in this country that the energy minister should cite it”
Warmist Mike Hulme: “The “97% consensus” article is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed…it is a sign of the desperately poor level of public and policy debate in this country that the energy minister should cite it”
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2013/07/warmist-mike-hulme-97-consensus-article.html
Making Science Public » What’s behind the battle of received wisdoms?Ben Pile is spot on. The “97% consensus” article is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed. It obscures the complexities of the climate issue and it is a sign of the desperately poor level of public and policy debate in this country that the energy minister should cite it. It offers a similar depiction of the world into categories of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to that adopted in Anderegg et al.’s 2010 equally poor study in PNAS: dividing publishing climate scientists into ‘believers’ and ‘non-believers’. It seems to me that these people are still living (or wishing to live) in the pre-2009 world of climate change discourse. Haven’t they noticed that public understanding of the climate issue has moved on?…
The BIG LIE: Sceptics Funded by Big Oil -no, the Alarmists are.
The BIG LIE: Sceptics Funded by Big Oil -no, the Alarmists are.
http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-big-lie-sceptics-funded-by-big-oil.html
The BIG LIE: Sceptics Funded by Big Oil -no, the Alarmists are.Image: Cartoons by JoshHow often do you see articles (eg LINK) saying that “sceptics are funded by BigOil?” OK, please BigOil, we NEED funds, we have not received our share. Where are they?(see Hey Big Oil! Where’s our $$$$s?) “Sceptics are lavishly funded by BigOil.”Well, no! The Wall Street Journal last year exposed this to be a lie. (link)When did it become received media wisdom that global warming skepticism was all the work of shadowy right-wing groups lavishly funded by oil companies? As best we can tell, it started with a 1995 Harper’s magazine article claiming to expose this “high-powered engine of disinformation.” Today anyone who raises a doubt about the causes of global warming is accused of fronting for, say, Exxon, whatever the facts. We know that BigOil sponsors the influential “progressive” think tank of Pew Charitable Trusts thanks to Joanne Nova (link) and also, from the same link, we know that the Heartland institute does NOT depend on BigOil funding even though that has constantly been an assertion. The favorite target of global warming alarmists is the group of big international oil companies. Big Oil is accused of generously funding the global warming skeptics, like The Heartland Institute. (link)WE ALSO HAVE RECENTLY HAD A PAPER BY COOK ET AL (2013) CLAIMING A “CONSENSUS ON ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING IN THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.”Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. This paper has been rebutted everywhere, including by Lord Christopher Monckton0.3% CONSENSUS, NOT 97.1% Also by Anthony Watts: (link)You’d think such simple elementary errors in data would have been caught in peer review, after all, that is what peer review is for. I think that there was a goal by Cook and his crowd, and that goal was to match the 97% number that has become a popular meme in the literature and the media. This intent seems confirmed by a recent statement by one of the co-authors, Dana Nuccitilli in a media argument that 97% global warming consensus meets resistance from scientific denialismThe above-mentioned Dana Nuccitelli describes himself as “a blogger on environmentalguardian.co.uk. He is an environmental scientist and risk assessor and also contributes to (UN)SkepticalScience.com.” (LINK) (UN)SkepticalScience is a blog run by the aforementioned …
Revealed: Guardian climate blogger Dana Nuccitelli works for EPA, wind, solar contractor without disclosure
Revealed: Guardian climate blogger works for EPA, wind, solar contractor without disclosure
Dana Nuccitelli is a rabid (albeit part-time) warmist blogger for The Guardian. He also has an interesting full-time employer. The BBC reported today: This was neatly summed up in a Guardian blog by Dana Nuccitelli, who works for a multi-billion dollar US environmental business (Tetra Tech) and writes prodigiously about global warming and related matters […]
Sent by gReader Pro…
Delingpole: 97 per cent of climate activists in the pay of Big Oil shock!
Delingpole: 97 per cent of climate activists in the pay of Big Oil shock!
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/07/delingpole-97-per-cent-of-climate.html
97 per cent of climate activists in the pay of Big Oil shock!By James Delingpole Last updated: July 23rd, 2013Unless you’re a reader of the Guardian Environment’s recently added section “Sacrifice your children to Mother Gaia. It’s the only way!”, you’ll probably never have heard of the man who co-edits it, Dana Nuccitelli. But you’ll certainly be familiar with his most famous bogus statistical artefact: the one he created with fellow climate alarmist John Cook to prove that 97 per cent of climate scientists really DO believe in global warming.The claim has been roundly debunked. Apart from the problems with its statistical methodology, its findings are essentially meaningless. As Ben Pile points out in this characteristically measured, thoughtful piece,
“Nuccitelli’s survey results are either the result of a comprehensive failure to understand the climate debate, or an attempt to divide it in such a way as to frame the result for political ends.”
Indeed, adds Pile, they represent:
“a cartoonish polarisation of positions within the climate debate.”
How so? Well, as (climate sceptical) Bishop Hill once asked on Twitter: “Isn’t everyone in the 97 per cent? I am.” When the question was repeated at the Bishop’s website by Met Office’s Richard Betts, almost all those present agreed that they were. I would have done too, depending, of course, on precisely how you interpret the “consensus position” that “humans are causing global warming.”Well of course they are. Even if it’s only down to the Urban Heat Island effect or the methane from beef cattle, humans almost certainly have an influence on climate. But so what? It always astonishes me when I see climate alarmists – even nice, well-meaning ones like Richard Betts – get all excited about this, as if somehow it represents a sudden concession by sceptics to the cause of warmism. If the alarmists spent any time paying attention to Watts Up With That, Bishop Hill or any of the myriad other sceptical websites out there, they would realise that this is what we’ve always thought. Our beef with the alarmists is not over the issue “Do humans contribute to climate change?” It’s over “Do humanssignificantly contribute to climate chnage?” “Is there any evidence that this climate change is catastrophic or unprecedented?” “Do we need to do anything about it?” “Can we do anything …
Warmist admits recent 97% ‘consensus’ survey paper is bogus
Warmist admits recent 97% ‘consensus’ survey paper is bogus
http://junkscience.com/2013/07/20/warmist-admits-recent-97-consensus-survey-paper-is-bogus
The Nonsensus (based on the recent survey of 65 papers) is actually more like less than 50%. The Reno Gazette Journal reports warmist Dana Nuccite Nuccitelli said, “We were always careful to say that while the survey involved 12,000 abstracts, the 97 percent consensus was among the ~4,000 abstracts that took a position on the […]…