A third of the world now faces deadly heatwaves as result of climate change

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Poptech said:
That is a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of scientists worldwide and not evidence of any such consensus.
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A relatively small subset of the millions of scientists world-wide are working and writing papers that cite important work in the field. Consensus in the field is what is important. And 2500 is a large number of citations even in a hot field. That is a simple fact.
The infamous retracted paper linking vaccines to autism (Wakefield et al. 1998) was cited 2569 times.
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Yes, it is possible that a spurious paper generates a lot of work that ultimately proves it wrong. I invite you to look at the ~2500 references of the IPCC report to see if the references are negative. You should do the same for the NIPCC report citations,
 
Poptech said:
There is no question the IPCC reports are more well known than the NIPCC reports but so is Justin Beiber. The NIPCC reports exist and you cannot simply hand wave them away because you wish they did not.
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We are not saying the NIPCC reports don’t exist. Only that there is no reason to trust them more than the IPCC reports, and good reason to trust them less.
Incorrect, citations are a determination of popularity not scientific validity. Whether something has “merit” is purely subjective.
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There is something that needs to get straight right away. There are two general categories of ways for people find out scientific truth. One is by relying on an authority, and the other is by direct experimentation and the scientific method. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages and the proper time to be engaged.

Your statement above recommends the scientific method. But are your arguments really of that sort? Or are they an appeal to authority?

Let me be clear about appeal to authority. It is not always a fallacy. For example, if a layman is trying to decide which cancer treatment to undergo, it is unlikely that he can make an intelligent decision based on his own first-hand observations. He is better off trusting an authority. But a cancer researcher who is in a position to do independent research would not be a very good scientist if he placed all his trust in other authorities.

So when it comes to climate change, if you want us to rely exclusively on first-hand observations, we must all be climate scientists with those capabilities. If not, we can easily be lead astray because of our inadequate knowledge of the field. So for us, the best bet is to rely on trusted authorities for those things that we cannot determine for ourselves. However, if you want to recommend that we all act like scientists and reason these things out without any help from authorities, then you have to present purely scientific arguments.

However the arguments I have heard presented are anything but scientific. I refer to arguments against Cook, for example, which are based on assumptions of corruption and bias. These are not topics in climate science, but rather arguments based on authorities.

So basically you have to be consistent. I don’t care which kind of argument you want to present. I am willing to consider both. But what I will not consider is an argument that purports to be purely scientific but is actually based on authorities.
 
dvdjs said:
If Justin Beiber’s work was being cited in scientific articles your comparison would not be risible. But he isn’t; so it is.

It is true that care must be taken in compari\ing citation numbers. Some fields are hot some are not. But here ware comparing two papers of the same type in the same discipline. One has a boatload of citations - and let me assure you that ~2500 is a boatload. The other, not so much. This comparison is a good indication of a scientific consensus behind the IPCC report.
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I only cited the IPCC only once or twice. But what I really like about the IPCC is that it is based mainly on peer-reviewed studies (esp their WGI science chapters) and it is a great place to go to for finding those studies then citing them – and I’ve found many studies thru the IPCC which I’ve cited.

Just check out their references!
 
dvdjs said:
A relatively small subset of the millions of scientists world-wide are working and writing papers that cite important work in the field. Consensus in the field is what is important. And 2500 is a large number of citations even in a hot field.
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Please provide the objective criteria for determining who is a “climate scientist.”

So is the skeptic paper Svensmark and Christenson (1997) the consensus opinion since it has been cited over 1200 times?
dvdjs said:
Yes, it is possible that a spurious paper generates a lot of work that ultimately proves it wrong. I invite you to look at the ~2500 references of the IPCC report to see if the references are negative. You should do the same for the NIPCC report citations,
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Wakefield’s retracted paper proves that citations are simply a measure of popularity not scientific validity. Using your logic they should demonstrate it has merit.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
We are not saying the NIPCC reports don’t exist. Only that there is no reason to trust them more than the IPCC reports, and good reason to trust them less.
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There is no valid reason to trust them any less since the reports are all fully cited and sourced with over 4000 peer-reviewed references and were written and reviewed by highly credentialed scientists.
LeafByNiggle said:
However the arguments I have heard presented are anything but scientific. I refer to arguments against Cook, for example, which are based on assumptions of corruption and bias.
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Did Cook et al. (2013) falsely classify skeptical scientists as endorsing the alleged 97% consensus on AGW?
LeafByNiggle said:
So basically you have to be consistent. I don’t care which kind of argument you want to present. I am willing to consider both. But what I will not consider is an argument that purports to be purely scientific but is actually based on authorities.
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I have not made any appeal to authority arguments for scientific truth.
 
lynnvinc said:
I only cited the IPCC only once or twice. But what I really like about the IPCC is that it is based mainly on peer-reviewed studies (esp their WGI science chapters) and it is a great place to go to for finding those studies then citing them – and I’ve found many studies thru the IPCC which I’ve cited.

Just check out their references!
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The NIPCC reports have over 4000 peer-reviewed references with over 3500 not cited by the IPCC.

NIPCC Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science (PDF) (993 pgs)
NIPCC Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts (PDF) (1062 pgs)
 
Poptech said:
There is no valid reason to trust them any less since the reports are all fully cited and sourced with over 4000 peer-reviewed references and were written and reviewed by highly credentialed scientists.
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OK, you are telling me I should trust the NIPCC reports because of “highly credentialed scientists”, and then you say:
I have not made any appeal to authority arguments for scientific truth.
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Really? Then what was all that stuff about “highly credentialed scientists” if not an appeal to authority? If you were presenting a purely scientific argument, the fact that these scientists are “highly credentialed” would be totally irrelevant.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
OK, you are telling me I should trust the NIPCC reports because of “highly credentialed scientists”, and then you say:

Really? Then what was all that stuff about “highly credentialed scientists” if not an appeal to authority? If you were presenting a purely scientific argument, the fact that these scientists are “highly credentialed” would be totally irrelevant.
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That is not an argument that they are correct only comparable.
 
Poptech said:
Please provide the objective criteria for determining who is a “climate scientist.”
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Scientists with a signifcant publication record in climate sicence.
So is the skeptic paper Svensmark and Christenson (1997) the consensus opinion since it has been cited over 1200 times?
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If you want to make a detailed analysis, beyond the prima facia case, first remove self citations, then, as I already noted, take care to look at the nature of the citation - affirmative/negative. It would also be important to look at the number of distinct citing authors.

Note that the situation you brought has a bit of a control. Two “co,parable” papers on the same subject. One is highly cited the other is not. It is clear that the community thinks one is worth mentioning and the other not so much.

Wakefield’s retracted paper proves that citations are simply a measure of popularity not scientific validity. Using your logic they should demonstrate it has merit.
I have already expressed caveats. High citation numbers are not ipso facto a measure of scientific validity. But your cherry picking of an exceptional case is worthless beyong the trivial.

It is like trying to undermine a consensus by mentioning that any scientific consensus will give way to new results that disprove the old view. Possibility does not mean likelihood. What is required is the heavy-lifting of forging a better understanding. In the same way, if you would like to prove that this situation with the IPCC report is akin to Wakefield, then lets see the deeper analysis of the citations that shows that the situations are “caomparable”.
 
dvdjs said:
Scientists with a signifcant publication record in climate sicence.
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What is considered “significant” is subjective.

Please provide the objective criteria for determining who is a "climate scientist."
dvdjs said:
If you want to make a detailed analysis, beyond the prima facia case, first remove self citations, then, as I already noted, take care to look at the nature of the citation - affirmative/negative. It would also be important to look at the number of distinct citing authors.
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See now you want to do a detailed analysis but when it is the IPCC report everyone should just take their citation count at face value because it supports your ideology. I want people reading this to pay attention to the blatant hypocrisy here.
dvdjs said:
I have already expressed caveats. High citation numbers are not ipso facto a measure of scientific validity. But your cherry picking of an exceptional case is worthless beyong the trivial.
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Does Wakefield’s paper have merit because of its high citation count?
 
Poptech said:
Did the NIPCC cite references unrelated to the climate change debate?
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I don’t know. Are you asking me to personally check through 3500 references thoroughly enough to see if they are relevant? Even if I could get access to the full text of all 3500 references, I estimate it would take me at least 45 minutes per reference to read and understand enough of the reference to tell if it is relevant. That is at least 2625 hours of work on my part, just to argue one point with someone on CAF. I don’t have that kind of time, and I doubt that anyone else here does either.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
I don’t know. Are you asking me to personally check through 3500 references thoroughly enough to see if they are relevant? Even if I could get access to the full text of all 3500 references, I estimate it would take me at least 45 minutes per reference to read and understand enough of the reference to tell if it is relevant. That is at least 2625 hours of work on my part, just to argue one point with someone on CAF. I don’t have that kind of time, and I doubt that anyone else here does either.
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So your claim that they may be irrelevant to the subject matter of the IPCC is baseless.
 
Poptech said:
So your claim that they may be irrelevant to the subject matter of the IPCC is baseless.
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No, I didn’t claim they were irrelevant to the subject matter. I claim that it has not been established that they are relevant. So the question of their relevance is simply undecided at this point, in my mind.
 
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