BookTalk.org

The 97 per cent figure is derived from two pieces of pseudoscience that would have embarrassed a homeopath. The first was a poll that found that 97 per cent of just seventy-nine scientists thought climate change was man-made—not that it was dangerous. A more recent poll of 1854 members of the American Meteorological Society found the true number is 52 per cent.

The second source of the 97 per cent number was a survey of scientific papers, which has now been comprehensively demolished by Professor Richard Tol of Sussex University, who is probably the world’s leading climate economist. As the Australian blogger Joanne Nova summarised Tol’s findings, John Cook of the University of Queensland and his team used an unrepresentative sample, left out much useful data, used biased observers who disagreed with the authors of the papers they were classifying nearly two-thirds of the time, and collected and analysed the data in such a way as to allow the authors to adjust their preliminary conclusions as they went along, a scientific no-no if ever there was one. The data could not be replicated, and Cook himself threatened legal action to hide them. Yet neither the journal nor the university where Cook works has retracted the paper, and the scientific establishment refuses to stop citing it, let alone blow the whistle on it. Its conclusion is too useful.

Scientists need to back up their opinions with research and data that survive the peer-review process. A Skeptical Science peer-reviewed survey of all (over 12,000) peer-reviewed abstracts on the subject 'global climate change' and 'global warming' published between 1991 and 2011 (Cook et al. 2013) found that over 97% of the papers taking a position on the subject agreed with the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of the project, the scientist authors were emailed and rated over 2,000 of their own papers. Once again, over 97% of the papers taking a position on the cause of global warming agreed that humans are causing it.

Richard Tol wrote: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.

Most of the papers they studied are not about climate change and its causes, but many were taken as evidence nonetheless. Papers on carbon taxes naturally assume that carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming – but assumptions are not conclusions. Cook’s claim of an increasing consensus over time is entirely due to an increase of the number of irrelevant papers that Cook and co mistook for evidence.

The 97% consensus paper rests on yet another claim: the raters are incidental, it is the rated papers that matter. If you measure temperature, you make sure that your thermometers are all properly and consistently calibrated. Unfortunately, although he does have the data, Cook does not test whether the raters judge the same paper in the same way.

Consensus is irrelevant in science. There are plenty of examples in history where everyone agreed and everyone was wrong. Cook’s consensus is also irrelevant in policy. They try to show that climate change is real and human-made. It is does not follow whether and by how much greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced.

The theologist Michael Rosenberger has described climate protection as a new religion, based on a fear for the apocalypse, with dogmas, heretics and inquisitors like Nuccitelli. I prefer my politics secular and my science sound.

ant wrote:We can go on and on with the cut and paste war. Or, you can dazzle us more with your reasoning and scientific acumen of meteorology and climate modeling.

It's intriguing how angry you get about all this.

ant wrote:Did you honestly think I was going to let you off the hook when you said a while back you're a consensus science type of guy?

ant wrote:Add all the money and political gain and you get an entirely different picture.

ant wrote:That is no argument at all when you start peeling away at it.., the evidence to back it up is not hard evidence. It's actually mushy.

Interbane wrote:Anyone who believes that climate change is most likely anthropogenic because of the consensus is committing an ad populum fallacy. I know this and accept it, because to justify a belief either way means becoming a scientist and spending a decade pouring over all the details. This isn't going to happen with me. I can't justify my belief, and neither can you. But as a heuristic, it makes sense to go with the consensus. You haven't given any better alternative heuristic, so my mind isn't changed. I still believe that outright denial of climate change is immoral. This is another belief that can't be justified, and I accept that.

but as a layperson stumbling into the stupendously complex arena of climate change, the most reasonable position is to begrudgingly accept the opinion of scientists

as I said previously, sometimes we have to make a judgment call before the science is settled.

ant wrote:We'll let Interbane esplain the science to us.
Especially me.
I don't understand it.
He does.

ant wrote:While the scientists gather more evidence to settle the issue with evidence that is more convincing, we'll continue to put pressure on emerging industries like China, India and the entire East to cut their economic growth because we're destroying the environment, but we will eventually settle the science.