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Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

Loachman said:
And who is paying your scientists? Somebody is, or are they simply doing it out of the kindness of their hearts?

The same people through the same channels that developed Penicillin, split the atom, mapped the human genome and got us to the moon. I can say this, I know of no one that started their career as a scientist and has been in that profession every since that focuses on climate change that is raking in the millions. Can you say the same about the forces behind denial? The petroleum industry is valued in the trillions, so forgive if I find your argument of "for profit" conspiracy moot.
 
Kilo_302 said:
They're employed by variety of institutions, universities, government etc.

And those, of course, are completely trustworthy and agenda-free. All perfect little angels.

As are all of those under their employ, including scientists who are completely capable of inventing a scare to generate research money and prestige but, of course, would never, ever even think of doing so.

Kilo_302 said:
It's not relevant, but I work in IT.

It is relevant because you made somebody else's occupation relevant.

The scare du jour in the seventies was a coming ice age. I remember that quite well. They were wrong then (but likely just a matter of timing; that which happened before will likely happen again).

Climates fluctuate, and due to much more significant factors than a slight increase in atmospheric CO2 (or bovine methane, but nobody seems to make a fuss about that anymore). Ours will warm and cool, cyclically, as it always has, regardless of what we do or do not do. There is a lengthy historical record that backs that up.

Beneficiaries of such frauds include developing economies and billionaire hypocrites like David Suzuki and Al Gore who rake in hundreds of thousands while spewing more carbon dioxide than whole towns. There's some money to follow.
 
My whole problem with the climate change industry (which used to be the global warming industry. I wonder why they rebranded?) is several-fold. Only those who question the dogma gets academically ostracized, threatened with loss of funding or even being accused of being a criminal in need of being locked up.

There is also an unhealthy and smug moral certainty about climate of science. Any branch of science that wraps itself in certainty is not science.

Finally, the solutions proposed by climate changers (ban all petroleum usage) would collapse modern agricultural transportation and manufacturing methods. Humans would die of starvation in the 100s of millions, if not billions, as a result. But hey- we "saved" the planet, right? There is literally no other technology that currently exists with the energy density and return on energy investment to keep 7 billion of us alive on this planet. I hope that fusion eventually fills the bill, but that always seems to be 20 years out...

Climates change by definition. My own personally thinking is that humans have had some effect on climate. No question- but the biggest driver in the system still seems to be the sun and it's cycles and possibly even cosmic radiation which seems to interact with the upper atmosphere in ways we still don't fully understand to create clouds. It is a complex system and anyone who claims to understand all of the feedbacks, I take immediately to be a fool.

Oh yes- I am still waiting for my cheque from the petroleum industry. Perhaps they have my last name or address wrong....
 
SeaKingTacco said:
There is also an unhealthy and smug moral certainty about climate of science. Any branch of science that wraps itself in certainty is not science.

Tell this to biologists and evolution, or do you believe that to be unsettled science as well?

Finally, the solutions proposed by climate changers (ban all petroleum usage) would collapse modern agricultural transportation and manufacturing methods.

Individuals may propose this, how it is no the official stance of proponents of climate change because there is no body to make an official stance. Way to lump everyone in the same pool!

Climates change by definition.

Numero uno argument from ignorance, bravo.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice-age-medieval-warm-period-intermediate.htm

No question- but the biggest driver in the system still seems to be the sun and it's cycles and possibly even cosmic radiation which seems to interact with the upper atmosphere in ways we still don't fully understand to create clouds.

Woah, the sun is the driving force...who knew! No one is denying that, however it is the suns effect on CO2 that is causing the change. I'm glad you've concluded that it "seems" that way, ground breaking discoveries happening right here on army.ca!
 
... And there is the smugness.

That took, what 2 mins?

My views on other branches of science, aliens, Sasquatch and movie reviews have no bearing on my views on climate change. What you have employed is a fallacious rhetorical device that seeks to draw a false equivalence between my views in one subject area with my views in another. A very common and unfortunate tactic that is used by all sides of a debate.

No branch of science (if, in fact, it is a branch of science) claims that it knows everything. There is a continued quest for knowledge and what is orthodoxy today may be over-turned tomorrow. Science is not about consensus- it is about evidence.

The IPCC seems to think they speak for climate change. It is right in their name...
 
True scientists welcome challenges to their findings, and assist such challenges by publishing their methods and data.

A significant number of warmistas attempt to shout down their opposition or bully it into silence. They are unique, among scientists, in that regard.

If they truly had a case, people like Mann would open his research rather than opening lawsuits.

That tactic invites derision and suspicion, and affects, rightly or wrongly, the claims of his "colleagues".

Mann's tactic, in the face of Mark Steyn's refusal to cave but rather to counter-sue, is to dodge and delay.
 
SeaKingTacco said:
... And there is the smugness.

That took, what 2 mins?

SeaKingTacco said:
malinformed drivel.

Pot meet kettle. I don't proclaim to be anything short of an *******, but don't try and play the victim while your hands are dirty as well.

What you have employed is a fallacious rhetorical device that seeks to draw a false equivalence between my views in one subject area with my views in another. A very common and unfortunate tactic that is used by all sides of a debate.

It most certainly is not a false equivalence as it is highlights your disagreement with what IS regarded as reality by the professionals in their fields. The equivalence most certainly is present, you're just playing favorites. Deductive reasoning should be applied evenly across the board, but you instead yield to non-scientific sources on a scientific matter.

No branch of science (if, in fact, it is a branch of science) claims that it knows everything. There is a continued quest for knowledge and what is orthodoxy today may be over-turned tomorrow. Science is not about consensus- it is about evidence.

Climate science doesn't either, no one has thrown their hands up and proclaimed they're finished. The evidence points towards AGW being a reality, so they're continuing forward with that.
 
Mann's work has been replicated by hundred's of scientist's over the years to the point that his role is largely irrelevant now. Reduced to acknowledgement like most scientific discoveries. The theory of AGW is sound, the evidence grows ever more every day. No counter theory has withstood scrutiny and most were refuted in the 1980's. Science is a very competitive endeavour and I think you will find that most outcast opinions are not well received in any discipline. Science may be about evidence, but without a theoretical framework to view it from there can be no progress. There has to be some consensus otherwise we would still be arguing about things that many believe were settled hundreds of years ago
 
Kilo_302 said:
Well since I've been warned by staff for being somewhat strident (as if members responding to my posts haven't used similiar language and tone  ::) ) I'm done here.  :bowing:

Report the posts you have issues with and I'll look at them and respond the same way I did to you.

Otherwise, accuse me again of favourtism and I'll just ban you and be done with it. I responded to YOU about YOUR posts. Not those of someone else.

Scott
Staff
 
Loachman said:
And those, of course, are completely trustworthy and agenda-free. All perfect little angels.

As are all of those under their employ, including scientists who are completely capable of inventing a scare to generate research money and prestige but, of course, would never, ever even think of doing so.

It is relevant because you made somebody else's occupation relevant.

The scare du jour in the seventies was a coming ice age. I remember that quite well. They were wrong then (but likely just a matter of timing; that which happened before will likely happen again).

Climates fluctuate, and due to much more significant factors than a slight increase in atmospheric CO2 (or bovine methane, but nobody seems to make a fuss about that anymore). Ours will warm and cool, cyclically, as it always has, regardless of what we do or do not do. There is a lengthy historical record that backs that up.

Beneficiaries of such frauds include developing economies and billionaire hypocrites like David Suzuki and Al Gore who rake in hundreds of thousands while spewing more carbon dioxide than whole towns. There's some money to follow.

So again, ground we have covered before. You're suggesting that hundreds of scientific institutions the world over are all in cahoots and perpetrating a massive hoax for...prestige? It's not possible that a trillion dollar industry would have the motivation and the ability to muddy the waters with a few dozen paid hacks and conservative think tanks? This has happened before with the tobacco debacle. The Heritage Institute used to claim there was no link between cancer and smoking and used many of the same people we're seeing pop up today as climate change deniers.

I'm not talking about the 70s ice age scare, I'm asking you to explain why Exxon of all organizations had accepted climate change as reality back in the 70s. They were doing ground breaking stuff. Was this for prestige? Or do you think it may have been because they were concerned it would affect their business?

My occupation is NOT relevant because we are talking about sources, not my occupation or Loachman's occupation. No one on this thread is a specialist, so the best we can do is interpret the data, but also understand the political realities surrounding the issue.

As cld617 has said, we've been here before. We had a similar consensus on the ozone layer, before that we realized at some point in the 50s that dumping industrial waste in lakes was a bad thing, and on and on. If we had had a trillion dollar industry fight back on those as well we might never have made any progress. And finally, there's always new data coming in. What would it take for you to change your mind? If 97% isn't a convincing number, would 98% be convincing? 99%?
 
What would it take to convince me?

It would take those same scientists to all agree what caused climate change before we showed up.

It changes, it's always changed, but now it's our fault. 
 
Dolphin_Hunter said:
What would it take to convince me?

It would take those same scientists to all agree what caused climate change before we showed up.

It changes, it's always changed, but now it's our fault.

Same old argument in same old thread. Having an opinion is great, but it needs to be an informed opinion.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice-age-medieval-warm-period-intermediate.htm
 
Kilo_302 said:
So again, ground we have covered before. You're suggesting that hundreds of scientific institutions the world over are all in cahoots and perpetrating a massive hoax for...prestige?

People are getting rich from this hoax - the Al Gores, David Suzukis, players in the cap-and-trade scams, governments from carbon taxes, manufacturers of wind turbines and solar arrays that produce unreliable energy at inflated cost, which sucks the life out of economies, and require coal, gas, or nuclear back-ups. The driver for this is personal/corporate profit and transfer of wealth rather than pure altruism.

Kilo_302 said:
My occupation is NOT relevant because we are talking about sources, not my occupation or Loachman's occupation.

Then why did you make Mr Solway's occupation (poet) relevant? Either everyone's occupation is relevant, or nobody's is. You cannot have it both ways, at your convenience.

Kilo_302 said:
No one on this thread is a specialist, so the best we can do is interpret the data, but also understand the political realities surrounding the issue.

Mr Solway would appreciate that concession.

Kilo_302 said:
We had a similar consensus on the ozone layer, before that we realized at some point in the 50s that dumping industrial waste in lakes was a bad thing, and on and on.

Neither of those realizations were based upon faulty/inaccurate/simplistic computer models fed with cherry-picked data. They were based upon direct observations and hard evidence. That does not exist in this case. The warmistas' predictions have not come to pass, and they cannot explain why thay have not.

Kilo_302 said:
And finally, there's always new data coming in.

Yes, and much of it runs counter to the alarmist narrative.

Kilo_302 said:
If 97% isn't a convincing number, would 98% be convincing? 99%?

Ah, yes, the notorious "97%" (more links within the article itself):

http://judithcurry.com/2013/07/26/the-97-consensus/

The 97% ‘consensus’

Posted on July 26, 2013 | 349 Comments

by Judith Curry

Isn’t everyone in the 97%?  I am.  – Andrew Montford

I’m sure most of you have encountered the recent paper by  Cook et al. (2013) Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, which includes John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli of SkepticalScience fame.  And the many critiques of this study that have appeared at WUWT, Blackboard, etc.

IMO, the main point of all this is that he concept of a ‘consensus’ surrounding climate change is becoming increasingly meaningless.

Ben Pile’s recent post What’s behind the battle of received wisdoms? has certainly stirred the pot.  Some excerpts from Pile’s post:

On the pages of the Guardian’s environment blog, Dana Nuccitelli (who is not a climate scientist) compiled a list of what he thought were Neil’s mistakes. ‘These are your climate errors on BBC Sunday Politics‘, he proclaimed. But half of Nuccitelli’s rebuttals related to Neil’s treatment of the study into the extent of the scientific consensus on climate change, co-authored by Nuccitelli, which represents (according to the study) the views of 97% of scientists. Davey had cited the study during the interview, but Neil had said that it had been largely discredited.

(M)any sceptics have pointed out that the 97% figure encompasses the arguments of most climate sceptics. In evidence to the US Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee last week, Roy Spencer, a climate scientist who is routinely vilified for his apparent climate scepticism, claimed that his  arguments fell within the 97% definition. Here in the UK, climate sceptic blogger and author of the Hockey Stick Illusion, Andrew Montford tweeted in the wake of the survey, ‘isn’t everyone in the 97%? I am’. This prompted Met Office climate scientist, Richard Betts to poll the readers of the Bishop Hill blog, ‘Do you all consider yourselves in the 97%?’. It seems that almost all do.

Just as Donald and Painter’s evidence to the STC reflected either naivety or a strategy, 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. The survey manifestly fails to capture arguments in the climate debate sufficient to define a consensus, much less to make a distinction between arguments within and without the consensus position. Nuccitelli’s survey seems to canvas scientific opinion, but it begins from entirely subjective categories: a cartoonish polarisation of positions within the climate debate.

Yet the survey was cited by Davey himself in defence of the government’s climate policies in the face of changing science. Whatever the scientific consensus is, the fact that this consensus can be wielded in arguments about policywithout regard for the substance of the consensus creates a huge problem.

The consensus referred to by Davey and Nuccitelli, then, is what I call a consensus without an object: the consensus can mean whatever the likes of Davey and Nuccitelli want it to mean. Davey can wave away any criticism of government’s policy simply by invoking the magical proportion, 97%, even though those critics’ arguments would be included in that number. Consensus is invoked in the debate at the expense of nuance. A polarised debate suits political ends, not ‘evidence-based policy’.

But what a broader view of these debates reveal is a more troubling phenomenon of an uncritical reproduction of orthodox thinking on climate science by putative experts in science and public policy, across Twitter, the blogosphere, print media, the academy and political institutions. Physicians, heal thyselves!

The consequence of excluding non-expert opinion (other than expert opinion’s cheerleaders) from the climate debate is, paradoxically, the undermining of the value of expertise. Rather than engagements on matters of substance, a hollow debate emerges about whose evidence weighs the most, whose arguments are supported by the most experts, and which experts are the most qualified. The question ‘who should be allowed to speak’ dominates the discussion at the expense of hearing what they actually have to say.

Accordingly, rather than being a dispassionate study into scientific opinion, the 97% survey was a superficially academic exercise, intended to obfuscate the substance of the climate debate. Those who fell for it forget that its authors, aside from having their own — shock horror! — agendas, have no expertise in climate science, much less any interest in taking the sceptics’ arguments on.

But what the squabble over the Sunday Politics interview reveals is that political debates descend to science; they are often not improved by science and evidence as much as they degraded by undue expectations of them. Being an advocate of science seems to mean nothing more than shouting as loudly as possible ‘what science says…’, second hand.

And those who shout most loudly about science turn out to be advancing an idea of science which, rather than emphasising the scientific method, puts much more store — let’s call it ‘faith’ — in scientific institutions. Hence, the emphasis on the weight, number and height of scientific evidence articles, and expertise, rather than on the process of testing competing theories.

The comments on the thread are very interesting, with this comment by Mike Hulme of the University of East Anglia making quite a splash in the climate blogosphere:

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?

There is very interesting discussion on the thread, including comments by Dana Nuccitelli and further points from Ben Pile.

JC comments:  In case you missed it the first time, check out my recent publication No consensus on consensus.  So, what the heck does the ‘climate change consensus’ even mean any more?  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+ years (i.e. see the recent article in the New Republic).

The utility of the ‘consensus’ in delineating the ‘tribes’ in terms of the climate policy debate was further muddied this past week by the identification of Dana Nuccitelli’s place (WUWT)  of employment is Tetra Tech, an environmental consulting firm that apparently includes gas and oil clients.

The ‘consensus’ often characterizes climate change skepticism being more rabid in the U.S. than any place else.  However, it is my perception that we are seeing far more respect for skepticism and skeptics in other countries notably the U.K., which is enabling a more sophisticated dialogue on the topic of climate change.

Ben Pile’s characterization of ‘consensus without an object’ is spot on IMO;  this has degenerated into the use of ‘consensus’ by certain individuals as a power play for influence in the policy and political debate surrounding climate and energy policy.

It’s long past time to get rid of the concept of ‘consensus’ on climate change.  An excerpt from the Conclusions to my paper No Consensus on Consensus:

The climate community has worked for more than 20 years to establish a scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change.  The IPCC consensus building process arguably played a useful role in the early synthesis of the scientific knowledge and in building political will to act. We have presented perspectives from multiple disciplines that support the inference that the scientific consensus seeking process used by the IPCC has had the unintended consequence of introducing biases into the both the science and related decision making processes. The IPCC scientific consensus has become convoluted with consensus decision making through a ‘speaking consensus to power’ approach.  The growing implications of the messy wickedness of the climate change problem are becoming increasingly apparent, highlighting the inadequacies of the ‘consensus to power’ approach for decision making on the complex issues associated with climate change. Further, research from the field of science and technology studies are finding that manufacturing a consensus in the context of the IPCC has acted to hyper-politicize the scientific and policy debates, to the detriment of both.  Arguments are increasingly being made to abandon the scientific consensus seeking approach in favor of open debate of the arguments themselves and discussion of a broad range of policy options that stimulate local and regional solutions to the multifaceted and interrelated issues of climate change, land use, resource management, cost effective clean energy solutions, and developing technologies to expand energy access efficiently.
 
cld617 said:
Same old argument in same old thread. Having an opinion is great, but it needs to be an informed opinion.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice-age-medieval-warm-period-intermediate.htm
Been there, read that..  It's a great website.

Thanks though. 

http://www.populartechnology.net/2012/03/truth-about-skeptical-science.html      Another good website.
 
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/02/12/study-global-warming-skeptics-know-more-about-climate-science/

Science Education

Study: Global warming skeptics know more about climate science

By  Maxim Lott
·Published February 12, 2015
·FoxNews.com

Are global warming skeptics simply ignorant about climate science?

Not so, says a forthcoming paper in the journal Advances in Political Psychology by Yale Professor Dan Kahan. He finds that skeptics score about the same (in fact slightly better) on climate science questions.

The study asked 2,000 respondents nine questions about where they thought scientists stand on climate science.

On average, skeptics got about 4.5 questions correct, whereas manmade warming believers got about 4 questions right.

One question, for instance, asked if scientists believe that warming would “increase the risk of skin cancer.” Skeptics were more likely than believers to know that is false.

Skeptics were also more likely to correctly say that if the North Pole icecap melted, global sea levels would not rise. One can test this with a glass of water and an ice cube – the water level will not change after the ice melts. Antarctic ice melting, however, would increase sea levels because much of it rests on land.

Liberals were more likely to correctly answer questions like: “What gas do most scientists believe causes temperatures to rise?” The correct answer is carbon dioxide.

The study comes on the heels of a 2012 study that found that global warming skeptics know just as much about science; the new study specifically quizzed people on climate science.

Climatologists who are skeptical about the extent of man-made global warming say the results don’t surprise them.

“It's easy to believe in the religion of global warming.  It takes critical thinking skills to question it,” Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, told FoxNews.com.

Groups that are concerned about global warming say the study results really show that politics is blinding otherwise-reasonable people.

“Climate contrarians know what scientists have found but they’re choosing to reject those findings, usually for political reasons,” Aaron Huertas, a spokesman for the Union of Concerned Scientists, told FoxNews.com.

He added that things would get better if people heard more from conservatives who worry about climate.

“The public just doesn’t hear often enough from conservative politicians and advocacy groups that are engaging in constructive debates on climate policy,” he said.

The study’s author, Kahan, also says that the global warming debate has become so politically polarized that people pick their side based on politics rather than what they know about science.                                                                                                                     

“The position someone adopts on [global warming] conveys who she is – whose side she’s on, in a hate-filled, anxiety-stoked competition for status between opposing cultural groups,” Kahan writes in his paper.

Kahan says that if global warming believers really want to convince people, they should stop demonizing and talking down to their opponents, and instead focus on explaining the science.

“It is really pretty intuitive: who wouldn’t be insulted by someone screaming in her face that she and everyone she identifies with ‘rejects science’?”

*Edited to add URL of article.
 
Again, more links in the article at https://andymaypetrophysicist.wordpress.com/ disproving this notion of "consensus":

Andy May  8:32 am on August 28, 2015

New Book: A Disgrace to the Profession, by Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn has written a wonderful new book on Dr. Michael Mann’s hockey stick and the controversy surrounding it. It is difficult to overstate the significance or impact of Mann’s Hockey Stick (Mann, Bradley, Hughes (23 April 1998), “Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries” (PDF), Nature 392 (6678): 779–787, Figure 5, the paper is often abbreviated as “MBH”). The Hockey Stick appeared in Figure 1 of the Summary for Policymakers of the third IPCC Assessment Report (called “TAR” published in 2001) and it was prominently displayed in Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” As the book clearly shows, both the graph and the movie have been thoroughly discredited by hundreds of scientists who have attempted and failed to reproduce Michael Mann’s hockey stick using his data and other proxy data. Further, MBH attempts to overturn hundreds of papers that describe a world-wide Medieval Warm Period from around 900 AD to 1300 AD. The chapter devoted to Dr. Deming discusses this, for more information see here, here and here.

Professor Jonathon Jones of Oxford University:

“The hockey stick is an extraordinary claim which requires extraordinary evidence…the evidence is extraordinarily weak…its defenders were desperate to hide this fact…I’d always had an interest in pathological science, and it looked like I might have stumbled across a really good modern example…The Hockey Stick is obviously wrong. Everybody knows it is obviously wrong.”

As 1973 Nobel Prize winner Professor Ivar Giaever said “Global Warming has become a new religion – because you can’t discuss it and that is not right.”

Steyn’s book documents the problems with the hockey stick, its use by the IPCC without proper peer review or validation, and the attempt to cover up its problems. It does this artfully using the words of the scientists, both “alarmists” and “deniers” and those in between. The list of quoted scientists is huge and includes Mann’s co-authors and others who supported him even after the paper and his hockey stick were shown to be wrong and perhaps, fraudulent.

The hockey stick told us that the recent warming period (1950 to 1998) was unusual in the last thousand years and that this sort of sudden warming had (supposedly) never happened before and that man’s CO2 emissions were (presumably) the cause. After all, what else was unusual about that time period? Yet, all of these suppositions were wrong and the hockey stick was wrong. Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas and it does cause warming of the atmosphere by trapping heat radiated from the ground and oceans, if everything else in the atmosphere remains equal, which it never does. The graph appeared to show that this Carbon Dioxide based warming was much more dominant in our climate than traditional paleoclimate studies, physics or chemistry would suggest. It was an extraordinary claim, yet it was accepted instantly without any validation. This had the effect of destroying the credibility of the IPCC and the previously respected publication Nature.

At the time that Michael Mann’s hockey stick was chosen to be Figure 1 of the TAR summary for policy makers, Mann had just received his PhD. As many in the book note, the ink was not yet dry on his diploma. Yet, in addition, he was made one of the lead authors of the very section of TAR that presented his hockey stick (see figure 2.20). As a result it was up to him to validate his own work. In the words of Dr. Rob Van Dorland, an IPCC lead author:

“It is strange that the climate reconstruction of Mann passed both peer review rounds of the IPCC without anyone ever really having checked it.”

The hockey stick was never validated, yet it became so famous that it was taught to young children all over the world in elementary schools. Many years later, in 2005, it was thoroughly debunked by Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (often abbreviated M&M). They showed that using the statistical technique invented by Michael Mann even random number series (persistent trendless red noise, see M&M Figure 1) will generate a hockey stick. Basically, Mann had mined many series of numbers looking for hockey stick shapes and gave each series that had the shape he wanted a much higher weight, up to a weighting factor of 392! This was truly a case of selecting a desired conclusion and then molding the data to fit it. Prominent statisticians Peter Bloomfield, Dr. Edward Wegman and Professor David Hand said Michael Mann’s method of using principle components analysis was inappropriate and misleading and exaggerated the effect of recent global warming.

Mann’s notorious statistical exercise was not sufficient to build the entire hockey stick. Unfortunately for him, if his model was carried to the present day, it peaked in the 1940’s and then declined in temperature. So, he simply spliced actual estimated global temperatures to his proxy reconstruction and didn’t mention it in the article, this is the notorious and poorly understood “Mike’s Nature Trick“ scandal. More on the fraudulent parts of the hockey stick, including the Briffa “hide the decline” trick can be found here. These two links on “hide the decline” and “Mike’s nature trick” are the most balanced and informative I know of, one is by Professor Curry and the other by Steve McIntyre.

As you can see in the book many prominent scientists in the IPCC knew the hockey stick was “crap” to quote Professor Simon Tett, Chair of Earth System Dynamics, University of Edinburgh, formerly with Met Offices Hadley Climate Research Unit or CRU. And they knew it as early as 2001, but no one said anything. And, as we know from “climategate” emails, even though they knew it was “crap” they colluded to block Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick’s paper challenging the hockey stick. For years Dr. Michael Mann and Dr. Phil Jones (Hadley CRU) kept the supporting data for the hockey stick secret as well as the computer algorithms they used to generate the hockey stick. This very act would normally have invalidated their work and the hockey stick, but it was accepted by Nature and the IPCC anyway. A very sad period of time for science.

Dr. Kevin Vranes in 2005 said “Your [Dr. Mann’s] job is not to prevent your critics from checking your work; your job is to continue to publish…” “Why did the IPCC so quickly and uncritically accept the hockey stick?” asks Dr. Roy Spencer, “Because they wanted to believe it.” They needed it as a PR tool, they didn’t check it in any way they just ran with it.

One of the best critiques in the book is from Oxford Associate Fellow Jerome Ravetz:

“[The climate community] propounded as a proven fact, Anthropogenic Carbon-based Global Warming. There is little room for uncertainty in this thesis; it effectively needs hockey stick behavior in all indicators of global temperature, so that it is all due to industrialization. [This proposed “fact”] relied totally on a small set of deeply uncertain tree-ring data for the medieval period, to refute the historical evidence of a warming then; but it needed to discard that sort of data for recent decades, as they showed a sudden cooling from the 1960’s onwards!”

The problems encountered publishing the valid criticisms of Dr. Mann’s hockey stick are a serious indictment of the current peer review system, especially the systems at Nature and at the IPCC. Professor Hans Van Storch (University of Hamburg) went so far as to say “Scientists like Mike Mann, Phil Jones and others should no longer participate in the peer-review process.” Reform is needed and some suggestions by Professor Ross McKitrick are made here. The current peer review process can and has been used to suppress valid and important papers. This is why I applaud the internet and scientific blogs, they prevent self-serving and arrogant scientists from blocking the truth. One thing we have seen since the time of Copernicus and Galileo, no deception of this magnitude lasts forever.

Contrary to the myth that 97% of climate scientists believe we are headed toward a man-made climate doom, the truth is that a very small group of second rate climate scientists have captured the attention of some prominent political and media figures. They have also isolated themselves from the rest of the scientific community and suffer because of it. To quote Professor the Lord Oxburgh of Liverpool:

“We cannot help remarking that it is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians. Indeed there would be mutual benefit if there were closer collaboration and interaction between CRU and a much wider scientific group outside the relatively small international circle of temperature specialists."

So, the following question is from Professor Mike Kelly (Cambridge) and it was directed to Dr. Keith Briffa, but could easily have been directed to Mike Mann or any of the alarmists:

“Given that the outputs of your work are being used to promote the largest revolution mankind has every contemplated, do you have any sense of the extent to which the quality control and rigour of approach must be of the highest standards in clear expectation of deep scrutiny?”

At this point, it is fair to ask what Dr. Mann and his colleagues have to say about all of this. The book does go there in some detail. Dr. Mann claims that his hockey stick has been replicated by others and this is true. But, they not only used the same data or similar data, but they used the same statistical techniques that have been shown to be critically flawed. One case in point is fairly typical of the others. Karoly and Gergis, in 2012, published their own hockey stick to rave reviews in the public media, especially in Australia. It claimed 95% certainty that the recent decades in Australasia were the warmest in 1000 years. They used similar proxies as Dr. Mann and used the same statistical techniques. Steven McIntyre went to work and blew it up in less than three weeks. He sent his statistical analysis to the authors. Dr. Karoly and Dr. Gergis, to their credit, recognized their error and withdrew their paper, even after the mainstream media praise. As Joanne Nova wrote, “In May it was all over the papers, in June it was shown to be badly flawed. By October, it quietly gets withdrawn.”

Just as Karoly and Gergis’s paleoclimate reconstruction disappeared, Mann’s seems to be disappearing as well. Professor Philippe De Larminat noted in 2014:

“The hockey stick curve, which ignores large climatic events, seems to have come straight from another world… This Chapter 5 [in the Fifth and latest IPCC report] in question does not make the slightest mention of the famous publication from Mann et al … neither in the text nor among the some 1,000 specific bibliographical references in this chapter. Given the extensive use that the IPCC made of it in the past (cited six times in the Third Assessment Report), and the controversy it still causes, this absence is peculiar.”

Let’s hope that hockey stick fiction goes away like the 97% consensus fiction has.

Professor Ian Plimer notes:

“In the next IPCC report, the Medieval Warming and Little Ice Age mysteriously reappeared. This suggests that the IPCC knew that the “hockey stick” was invalid. This is a withering condemnation of the IPCC. The “hockey stick” was used as the backdrop for announcements about human-induced climate change, it is still used by Al Gore, and it is still used in talks, on websites and in publications by those claiming that the world is getting warmer due to human activities. Were any of those people who view this graphic told that the data before 1421 AD was based on just one lonely alpine pine tree?”

So, the book shows that the hockey stick is dead to all scientists on all sides of the climate debate. What is the impact of this appalling chapter in the history of science? I think that Professor Judith Curry says it best:

“With regards to climate science, IMO the key issue regarding academic freedom is this:  no scientist should have to fall on their sword to follow the science where they see it leading or to challenge the consensus.  I’ve fallen on my dagger (not the full sword), in that my challenge to the consensus has precluded any further professional recognition and a career as a university administrator.  That said, I have tenure, and am senior enough to be able retire if things genuinely were to get awful for me. I am very very worried about younger scientists, and I hear from a number of them that have these concerns.”

This is an outstanding and important book and I highly recommend it.
 
And an article about a paper written by a believer in AGW: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/04/tol-takes-on-cooks-97-consensus-claim-with-a-re-analysis-showing-the-claim-is-unfounded/#more-110831:

BUSTED: Tol takes on Cook’s ‘97% consensus’ claim with a re-analysis, showing the claim is ‘unfounded’

Anthony Watts / June 4, 2014
 
A new paper by Dr. Richard Tol published today in ScienceDirect, journal of Energy Policy, shows that the Cook et al. paper claiming that there is a 97% consensus among scientists is not just impossible to reproduce (since Cook is withholding data) but a veritable statistical train wreck rife with bias, classification errors, poor data quality, and inconsistency in the ratings process. The full paper is available below.

Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: A re-analysis

Richard S.J. Tol dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2014.04.045

Abstract

A claim has been that 97% of the scientific literature endorses anthropogenic climate change (Cook et al., 2013. Environ. Res. Lett. 8, 024024). This claim, frequently repeated in debates about climate policy, does not stand. A trend in composition is mistaken for a trend in endorsement. Reported results are inconsistent and biased. The sample is not representative and contains many irrelevant papers. Overall, data quality is low. Cook׳s validation test shows that the data are invalid. Data disclosure is incomplete so that key results cannot be reproduced or tested.

Conclusion and policy implications

The conclusions of Cook et al. are thus unfounded. 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. Cook et al., however, failed to demonstrate this. Instead, they gave further cause to those who believe that climate researchers are secretive (as data were held back) and incompetent (as the analysis is flawed).

It will take decades or longer to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to zero—the only way to stabilize its atmospheric concentration. During that time, electoral fortunes will turn. Climate policy will not succeed unless it has broad societal support, at levels comparable to other public policies such as universal education or old-age support. Well-publicized but faulty analyses like the one by Cook et al. only help to further polarize the climate debate.

Full paper available in plain text here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421514002821

And a PDF here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421514002821/pdfft?md5=3ec2c68758ccd267c4c6c63bd5e7bb5a&pid=1-s2.0-S0301421514002821-main.pdf
 
Huh. What do you know. The consensus Does not exist and even some of the AGW people are willing to admit it. Good on Richard Tol for demonstrating integrity. And good on Anthony Watt for hosting an opinion obviously contrary to his own on his website.
 
This article https://hiizuru.wordpress.com/2014/05/11/introduction-for-the-upcoming-tcp-release/ also criticizes the "97%" claim, and methods used by Skeptical Science. I have not pasted the whole article, as the associated diagrams and commentary thereon are crucial:

Introduction for the Upcoming TCP Release

As you may have heard, I recently came into possession of previously undisclosed material for a 2013 paper by John Cook and others of Skeptical Science. The paper claimed to find the consensus on global warming is 97%.

That number was reached by having a group of people read abstracts (summaries) of ~12,000 scientific papers then say which endorse or reject the consensus. Each abstract was rated twice, and some had a third rater come in as a tie-break. The total number of ratings was 26,848. These ratings were done by 24 people. Twelve of them, combined, contributed only 873 ratings. That means 12 people did approximately 26,000 ratings.

Cook et al. have only discussed results related to the ~27,000 ratings. They have never discussed results broken down by individual raters. They have, in fact, refused to share the data which would allow such a discussion to take place. This is troubling. Biases in individual raters are always a problem when having people analyze text.

Biases can arise because of differences in worldviews, differences in how people understand of the rating system or any number of other things. These biases don’t mean the raters are bad people or even bad raters. It just means their ratings represent different things. If you take no steps to address that, your ratings can wind up looking like:
 
Judith Curry (not a poet, by the way) on the 97% myth again http://judithcurry.com/2015/08/27/the-conceits-of-consensus/#more-19735:

The conceits of consensus

Posted on August 27, 2015 | 500 Comments

by Judith Curry

Critiques, the 3%, and is 47 the new 97?

For background, see my previous post The 97% feud.

Cook et al. critiques

At the heart of the consensus controversy is the paper by Cook et al. (2013), which inferred a 97% consensus by classifying abstracts from published papers.The study was based on a search of broad academic literature using casual English terms like “global warming”, which missed many climate science papers but included lots of non-climate-science papers that mentioned climate change – social science papers, surveys of the general public, surveys of cooking stove use, the economics of a carbon tax, and scientific papers from non-climate science fields that studied impacts and mitigation.

The Cook et al. paper has been refuted in the published literature in an article by Richard Tol:  Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: A re-analysis (behind paywall).  Summary points from the abstract:

A trend in composition is mistaken for a trend in endorsement. Reported results are inconsistent and biased. The sample is not representative and contains many irrelevant papers. Overall, data quality is low. Cook׳s validation test shows that the data are invalid. Data disclosure is incomplete so that key results cannot be reproduced or tested.

Social psychologist Jose Duarte has a series of blog posts that document the ludicrousness of the selection and categorization of papers by Cook et al., including citation of specific articles that they categorized as supporting the climate change consensus:
◾Ignore climate consensus studies based on random people rating journal abstracts
◾Cooking stove use, housing associations, white males and the 97%

From this analysis, Duarte concludes: ignore climate consensus studies based on random people rating journal article abstracts.  I find it difficult to disagree with him on this.

The 3%

So, does all this leave you wondering what the 3% of papers not included in the consensus had to say?  Well, wonder no more. There is a new paper out, published by Cook and colleagues:

Learning from mistakes

Rasmus Benestad, Dana Nuccitelli, Stephan Lewandowski, Katherine Hayhoe, Hans Olav Hygen, Rob van Dorland, John Cook

Abstract.  Among papers stating a position on anthropogenic global warming (AGW), 97 % endorse AGW. What is happening with the 2 % of papers that reject AGW? We examine a selection of papers rejecting AGW. An analytical tool has been developed to replicate and test the results and methods used in these studies; our replication reveals a number of methodological flaws, and a pattern of common mistakes emerges that is not visible when looking at single isolated cases. Thus, real-life scientific disputes in some cases can be resolved, and we can learn from mistakes. A common denominator seems to be missing contextual information or ignoring information that does not fit the conclusions, be it other relevant work or related geophysical data. In many cases, shortcomings are due to insufficient model evaluation, leading to results that are not universally valid but rather are an artifact of a particular experimental setup. Other typical weaknesses include false dichotomies, inappropriate statistical methods, or basing conclusions on misconceived or incomplete physics. We also argue that science is never settled and that both mainstream and contrarian papers must be subject to sustained scrutiny. The merit of replication is highlighted and we discuss how the quality of the scientific literature may benefit from replication.

Published in Theoretical and Applied Climatology [link to full paper].

A look at the Supplementary Material shows that they considered credible skeptical papers (38 in total) – by Humlum, Scafetta, Solheim and others.

The gist of their analysis is that the authors were ‘outsiders’, not fully steeped in consensus lore and not referencing their preferred papers.

RealClimate has an entertaining post on the paper, Let’s learn from mistakes, where we learn that this paper was rejected by five journals before being published by Theoretical and Applied Climatology.  I guess the real lesson from this paper is that you can get any kind of twaddle published, if you keep trying and submit it to different journals.

A consensus on what, exactly?

The consensus inferred from the Cook et al. analysis is a vague one indeed; exactly what are these scientists agreeing on? The ‘97% of the world’s climate scientists agree that humans are causing climate change’ is a fairly meaningless statement unless the relative amount (%) of human caused climate change is specified. Roy Spencer’s 2013 Senate testimony included the following statement:

“It should also be noted that the fact that I believe at least some of recent warming is human-caused places me in the 97% of researchers recently claimed to support the global warming consensus (actually, it’s 97% of the published papers, Cook et al., 2013). The 97% statement is therefore rather innocuous, since it probably includes all of the global warming “skeptics” I know of who are actively working in the field. Skeptics generally are skeptical of the view that recent warming is all human-caused, and/or that it is of a sufficient magnitude to warrant immediate action given the cost of energy policies to the poor. They do not claim humans have no impact on climate whatsoever.

The only credible way to ascertain whether scientists support the consensus on climate change is through surveys of climate scientists.  This point is eloquently made in another post by Joe Duarte:  The climate science consensus is 78-84%.    Now I don’t agree with Duarte’s conclusion on that, but he makes some very salient points:

Tips for being a good science consumer and science writer. When you see an estimate of the climate science consensus:
◾Make sure it’s a direct survey of climate scientists. Climate scientists have full speech faculties and reading comprehension. Anyone wishing to know their views can fruitfully ask them. Also, be alert to the inclusion of people outside of climate science.
◾Make sure that the researchers are actual, qualified professionals. You would think you could take this for granted in a study published in a peer-reviewed journal, but sadly this is simply not the case when it comes to climate consensus research. They’ll publish anything with high estimates.
◾Be wary of researchers who are political activists. Their conflicts of interest will be at least as strong as that of an oil company that had produced a consensus study – moral and ideological identity is incredibly powerful, and is often a larger concern than money.
◾In general, do not trust methods that rest on intermediaries or interpreters, like people reviewing the climate science literature. Thus far, such work has been dominated by untrained amateurs motivated by political agendas.
◾Be mindful of the exact questions asked. The wording of a survey is everything.
◾Be cautious about papers published in climate science journals, or really in any journal that is not a survey research journal. Our experience with the ERL fraud illustrated that climate science journals may not be able to properly review consensus studies, since the methods (surveys or subjective coding of text) are outside their domains of expertise. The risk of junk science is even greater if the journal is run by political interests and is motivated to publish inflated estimates. For example, I would advise strong skepticism of anything published by Environmental Research Letters on the consensus – they’re run by political people like Kammen.

Is 47 the new 97?

The key question is to what extent climate scientists agree with key consensus statement of the IPCC:

“It is extremely likely {95%+ certainty} that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together. ”

Several surveys of climate scientists have addressed using survey questions that more or less address the issue of whether humans are the dominant cause of recent warming (discussed in the previous post by Duarte and summarized in my post The 97% feud).

The survey that I like the best is:

Verheggan et al. (2014) Scientists view about attribution of climate change. Environmental Science & Technology    [link]

Recently, a more detailed report on the survey was made available [link] .  Fabius Maximus has a fascinating post New study undercuts key IPCC finding (the text below draws liberally from this post). This survey examines agreement with the keynote statement of the IPCC AR5:

“It is extremely likely {95%+ certainty} that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together. ”

The survey examines both facets of the attribution statement – how much warming is caused by humans, and what is the confidence in that assessment.

In response to the question: What fraction of global warming since the mid 20th century can be attributed to human induced increases in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations? A total of 1,222 of 1,868 (64% of respondents) agreed with AR5 that the answer was over 50%. Excluding the 164 (8.8%) “I don’t know” respondents, yields 72% agree with the IPCC.



Slide1

The second question is: “What confidence level would you ascribe to your estimate that the anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming is more than 50%?” Of the 1,222 respondents who said that the anthropogenic contribution was over 50%, 797 (65%) said it was 95%+ certain (which the IPCC defines as “virtually certain” or “extremely likely”).

Slide2The 797 respondents who are highly confident that more than 50% of the warming is human caused) are 43% of all 1,868 respondents (47% excluding the “don’t know” group). Hence this survey finds that slightly less than half of climate scientists surveyed agree with the AR5 keynote statement in terms of confidence in the attribution statement.

Whose opinion ‘counts’?

Surveys of actual climate scientists is a much better way to elicit the actual opinions of scientist on this issue. But surveys raise the issue as to exactly who are the experts on the issue of attribution of climate change?  The Verheggan et al. study was criticized in a published comment by Duarte, in terms of the basis for selecting participants to respond to the survey:

“There is a deeper problem. Inclusion of mitigation and impacts papers – even from physical sciences or engineering – creates a structural bias that will inflate estimates of consensus, because these categories have no symmetric disconfirming counterparts. These researchers have simply imported a consensus in global warming. They then proceed to their area of expertise. [These papers] do not carry any data or epistemic information about climate change or its causes, and the authors are unlikely to be experts on the subject, since it is not their field.

Increased public interest in any topic will reliably draw scholars from various fields. However, their endorsement (or rejection) of human-caused warming does not represent knowledge or independent assessments. Their votes are not quanta of consnsensus, but simply artifacts of career choices, and the changing political climate. Their inclusion will artificially inflate sample sizes, and will likely bias the results.”

Roy Spencer also addresses this issue in his Senate testimony (cited above):

“(R)elatively few researchers in the world – probably not much more than a dozen – have researched how sensitive today’s climate system is based upon actual measurements. This is why popular surveys of climate scientists and their beliefs regarding global warming have little meaning: very few of them have actually worked on the details involved in determining exactly how much warming might result from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.”

The number of real experts on the detection and attribution of climate change is small, only a fraction of the respondents to these surveys.  I raised this same issue in the pre-Climate Etc. days in response to the Anderegg et al. paper, in a comment at Collide-a-Scape (referenced by Columbia Journalism Review):

The scientific litmus test for the paper is the AR4 statement: “anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible for “most” of the “unequivocal” warming of the Earth’s average global temperature over the second half of the 20th century”.

The climate experts with credibility in evaluating this statement are those scientists that are active in the area of detection and attribution. “Climate” scientists whose research areas is ecosystems, carbon cycle, economics, etc speak with no more authority on this subject than say Freeman Dyson.

I define the 20th century detection and attribution field to include those that create datasets, climate dynamicists that interpret the variability, radiative forcing, climate modeling, sensitivity analysis, feedback analysis. With this definition, 75% of the names on the list disappear. If you further eliminate people that create datasets but don’t interpret the datasets, you have less than 20% of the original list.

Apart from Anderegg’s classification of the likes of Freeman Dyson as not a ‘climate expert’ (since he didn’t have 20 peer reviewed publications that they classed as ‘climate papers’), they also did not include solar – climate experts such as Syun Akasofu (since apparently Akasofu’s solar papers do not count as ‘climate’).

But perhaps the most important point is that of the scientists who are skeptical of the IPCC consensus, a disproportionately large number of these skeptical scientists are experts on climate change detection/attribution.  Think Spencer, Christy, Lindzen, etc. etc.

Bottom line:  inflating the numbers of ‘climate scientists’ in such surveys attempts to hide that there is a serious scientific debate about the detection and attribution of recent warming, and that scientists who are skeptical of the IPCC consensus conclusion are disproportionately expert in the area of climate change detection and attribution.

Conceits of consensus

And finally, a fascinating article The conceits of ‘consensus’ in Halakhic rhetoric.  Read the whole thing, it is superb.  A few choice excerpts:

The distinguishing characteristic of these appeals to consensus is that the legitimacy or rejection of an opinion is not determined by intrinsic, objective, qualifiable criteria or its merits, but by its adoption by certain people. The primary premise of such arguments is that unanimity or a plurality of agreement among a given collective is halakhically binding on the Jewish population  and cannot be further contested or subject to review.

Just as the appeal to consensus stresses people over logic, subsequent debate will also focus on the merits of individuals and their worthiness to be included or excluded from the conversation. This situation runs the risk of the No True Scotsman fallacy whereby one excludes a contradictory opinion on the grounds that no one who could possibly hold such an opinion is worth consideration.

Debates over inclusion and exclusion for consensus are susceptible to social manipulations as well. Since these determinations imply a hierarchy or rank of some sort, attempts which disturb an existing order may be met with various forms of bullying or intimidation – either in terms of giving too much credit to one opinion or individual or not enough deference to another. Thus any consensus reached on this basis would not be not based out of genuine agreement, but fear of reprisals. The consensus of the collective may be similarly manipulated through implicit or overt marketing as a way to artificially besmirch or enhance someone’s reputation.

The next premise to consider is the correlation between consensus and correctness such that if most (or all) people believe something to be true, then by the value of its widespread acceptance and popularity, it must be correct. This is a well known logical fallacy known as argumentum ad populum, sometimes called the bandwagon fallacy. This should be familiar to anyone who has ever been admonished, “if all your friends would jump off a bridge would you follow?” It should also be obvious that at face value that Jews, especially Orthodox Jews, ought to reject this idea as a matter of principle.

Appeals to consensus are common and relatively simply to assert, but those who rely on consensus rarely if ever acknowledge, address, or defend, the assumptions inherent with the invoking of consensus as a source – if not the determinant – of practical Jewish law. As I will demonstrate, appeals to consensus are laden with problematic logical and halakhic assumptions such that while “consensus” may constitute one factor in determining a specific psak, it is not nearly the definitive halakhic criterion its proponents would like to believe.
 
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