Climate Change News collection

[LeafByNiggle]

In the early 1970s over 40 of the world’s leading climate scientists gathered in Bonn, West Germany and came to the unanimous conclusion that the earth’s climate was getting colder and that we were potentially heading into another ice age.

Despite your cherry-picking a small group of scientists of the time, anthropogenic global warming dominated the academic literature overall, even in the early 1970s. Of course they were not as sure as we are today because they had only a fraction of the raw data that we have today and very little ability to do high-power modelling. However it is totally inaccurate to use this small and short-lived hypothesis to paint the entire field of climate science as unreliable.

 

[Theo520]

CEI Files Formal Complaint Regarding NASA's Claim of 97% Climate Scientist Agreement on Global Warming - Competitive Enterprise Institute

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) petitioned NASA to remove from its website the claim that 97 percent of climate scientists agree humans are responsible for global warming. The petition, filed under the Information Quality Act (IQA), points out the major flaws in the studies cited by...

cei.org

While NASA asserts the “97 percent” claim is supported by a number of studies, CEI contends that claim has major flaws that have been documented by critics. These include:

• Incorrectly categorizing scientists who take “no-position” as endorsing the view that humans are responsible for climate change.
• Failing to include relevant sources without explanation.
• Failing to match the terms used as the basis for a study to the claim actually made by NASA.

“The claim that 97% of climate scientists believe humans are the primary cause of global warming is simply false,” said CEI attorney Devin Watkins. “That figure was created only by ignoring many climate scientists’ views, including those of undecided scientists. It is time that NASA correct the record and present unbiased figures to the public.”

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Examples of some of these “failures” please?

 

[LeafByNiggle]

That figure was created only by ignoring many climate scientists’ views, including those of undecided scientists.

What does “ignoring” mean here? Does it mean not counting scientists who have not expressed an opinion in their literature about this question? (Because that is a totally reasonable thing to do.) And does it assume such scientists are “undecided”? (Because that is a totally unreasonable thing to do.)

 

[Theo520]

What does “ignoring” mean here?

Please control this knee jerk reaction to immediately deflect on everything you don’t like. I provided a link to the press release which in turn provide a link to the full request.

You can read the full Request for Correction here.

By all means, critique or refute their logical argument.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Here is one of their “logical arguments”:
CEI paper:

The paper [Cook 2013] then added the first three categories together (3,896 papers) and compared that to the
sum of the last three categories (78 papers) plus studies expressing uncertainty (40 papers). In
short, 4,014 papers (3896 + 78 + 40 = 4014), expressed or implied a position on AGW. Of these
3,896 or 97% supposedly affirmed the consensus view. But this was 97% of abstracts of papers
in which a position was taken. But this total did not include the 66.4% of all papers that did not take a position (4a). In other words, at most, Cook et al. found that about one-third of peerreviewed papers containing the search terms “global warming” or “global climate change”
endorse the consensus viewpoint—a far cry from 97%.

I have seen and commented on this argument many times, but for you I will do it once more.

The CEI argument (they were not the first to come up with it) is flawed because it assumes that any paper that contains the automatic search terms of “global warming” or “global climate change” would be expected to take a position on AGW unless the author(s) were truly undecided. This is a faulty assumption. There are many reasons besides indecision on the part of the authors why a paper might not take a position on the AGW question even though it contained the noted search terms.

For example, a paper that deals with measurements of global warming irrespective of the cause would be of that sort. Many papers deal with measurement technique - comparing surface measurements with satellites, for example. Someone who is not familiar with the academic literature in this area might assume that all climate scientists are focused on on the question of causal attribution, but they would be wrong. That is why I find CEI’s argument so disingenuous. It plays upon the unfamiliarity of the reader with the field and leads them to drawing conclusions that are not warranted.

Papers that did not express a position give no information at all about the question of percentage of agreement with AGW. To give an analogous example, what if we were to survey the geology literature to see what the level of agreement is among geologists that the earth is round. We could start like Cook by screening for search terms like “curvature of the earth” and “flat earth”. Among those papers, probably the majority of them would not explicitly state or imply that the earth is round, but would discuss more esoteric aspects of their field. But it would obviously be a big mistake to assume from this statistical fact that any significant proportion of geologists are uncertain as to the general shape of the earth.

Unless you actually examine a sampling of the no-position papers in the Cook initial screening you cannot say that those papers were written by authors undecided about AGW.

 

[Theo520]

While NASA asserts the “97 percent” claim is supported by a number of studies, CEI contends that claim has major flaws that have been documented by critics.

What I like about this approach is it forces a response. NASA has 120 days to respond to CEI’s request for correction and its response must include a “point-by-point response to any data quality arguments” raised in the request.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

The CEI has had a long history of filing suits under this act, and their suits have had a long history of being dismissed in court. That is not surprising, given how easy it was for a hack like me to refute one of their major complaints, as I did in my previous post.

 

[Theo520]

The CEI has had a long history of filing suits under this act, and their suits have had a long history of being dismissed in court

Evidence please, I think you are making stuff up.

I searched and found no links for their petitions being dismissed.

 

[Theo520]

The CEI argument (they were not the first to come up with it) is flawed because it assumes that any paper that contains the automatic search terms of “global warming” or “global climate change” would be expected to take a position on AGW unless the author(s) were truly undecided. This is a faulty assumption. There are many reasons besides indecision on the part of the authors why a paper might not take a position on the AGW question even though it contained the noted search terms.

Clearly you didn’t read the link I supplied. You don’t address the arguments they made. Stop playing with strawmen and respond to their argument.

 

[Ender]

What does “ignoring” mean here? Does it mean not counting scientists who have not expressed an opinion in their literature about this question? (Because that is a totally reasonable thing to do.)

The Cook paper (with which I’m familiar) started with approximately 12k papers, and used them to represent the set of all climate scientists. So, of that set, 2/3 expressed no opinion on AGW. How then is it reasonable to ignore 2/3 of all climate scientists and imply that because they didn’t take a position, their non-expressed position can be assumed from the other third? If 67% didn’t say anything on the subject how is it possible to claim that 97% agree? I don’t accept that 97% of the remaining 1/3 supported AGW, but even if they did the assertion that 97% of all scientists believe in it is just nonsense.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

In the early 1970s over 40 of the world’s leading climate scientists gathered in Bonn, West Germany and came to the unanimous conclusion that the earth’s climate was getting colder and that we were potentially heading into another ice age.

Despite your cherry-picking a small group of scientists of the time, anthropogenic global warming dominated the academic literature overall, even in the early 1970s. Of course they were not as sure as we are today because they had only a fraction of the raw data that we have today and very little ability to do high-power modelling. However it is totally inaccurate to use this small and short-lived hypothesis to paint the entire field of climate science as unreliable.

Care to demonstrate your assertion that “global warming dominated the academic literature overall, even in the early 1970s” with actual data?

The Bonn meeting was of forty-three of the leading climatologists of the time, not merely a “small group” of what you would lead us to think were insignificant voices.

Besides that Heller addresses a wide ranging set of claims – frequency of droughts, of hurricanes, of tornadoes, of hot days, of reduction in sea ice, etc., and shows that the historical record supports none of the claims being made today by alarmists. This isn’t “cherry-picking” it shows the historical record disputes pretty much every claim being made by the propagandists.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

The CEI has had a long history of filing suits under this act, and their suits have had a long history of being dismissed in court

Evidence please, I think you are making stuff up.

I searched and found no links for their petitions being dismissed.

You needed to google “Information Quality Act” and you would have seen this. I must apologize, though, for claiming multiple CEI lawsuits being dismissed. I actually found only one CEI lawsuit dismissed in that link. The other DQA lawsuits were filed by other organizations and they were also dismissed, but they were not filed by CEI. Sorry.

But that does show that merely filing a suit under this act is not a slam dunk on getting a favorable response. By the way, you still have not given any examples of the “failures” listed in your earlier post.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

The CEI argument (they were not the first to come up with it) is flawed because it assumes that any paper that contains the automatic search terms of “global warming” or “global climate change” would be expected to take a position on AGW unless the author(s) were truly undecided. This is a faulty assumption. There are many reasons besides indecision on the part of the authors why a paper might not take a position on the AGW question even though it contained the noted search terms.

Clearly you didn’t read the link I supplied. You don’t address the arguments they made. Stop playing with strawmen and respond to their argument.

Just putting the word “clearly” in front of a claim does not make it clear. And the response of mine you quoted did directly refute a claim made in the CEI paper. I didn’t address all their arguments because I do not have that kind of time to devote to such a meaningless exercise. Easily refuting this one argument casts doubt on all the rest without considering them in detail. And there is no strawman here because I started by quoting verbatim from the CEI paper. I did not make up an exaggerated position by CEI. How about you stop deflecting with your chastisements and show why you think my refutation is not a refutation of a CEI claim?

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

What does “ignoring” mean here? Does it mean not counting scientists who have not expressed an opinion in their literature about this question? (Because that is a totally reasonable thing to do.)

The Cook paper (with which I’m familiar) started with approximately 12k papers, and used them to represent the set of all climate scientists. So, of that set, 2/3 expressed no opinion on AGW. How then is it reasonable to ignore 2/3 of all climate scientists and imply that because they didn’t take a position, their non-expressed position can be assumed from the other third?

Standard sampling theory, as explained in any elementary text on statistics.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

In the early 1970s over 40 of the world’s leading climate scientists gathered in Bonn, West Germany and came to the unanimous conclusion that the earth’s climate was getting colder and that we were potentially heading into another ice age.

Despite your cherry-picking a small group of scientists of the time, anthropogenic global warming dominated the academic literature overall, even in the early 1970s. Of course they were not as sure as we are today because they had only a fraction of the raw data that we have today and very little ability to do high-power modelling. However it is totally inaccurate to use this small and short-lived hypothesis to paint the entire field of climate science as unreliable.

This was not the view of a small group of scientists, it was the consensus view of the leading experts in the west. This is a report from the CIA in 1974 showing the climate alarm of leading agencies such as NCAR, NOA and others.

The report repeatedly makes the point that the world is moving from an “agriculturally optimal” climate to what is referred to as a “neo–boreal” one, implying that the colder climate would lead to unstable weather and reduced food production.

http://www.climatemonitor.it/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/1974.pdf

Here is MIT professor of meteorology, Richard Lindzen, providing a modern expert view that doesn’t exactly support what the propagandists say on the subject.

The point here is that numerous experts in the field today do not agree with the alarmists. He makes excellent points on funding.

 

[Theo520]

You needed to google “Information Quality Act” and you would have seen this. I must apologize, though, for claiming multiple CEI lawsuits being dismissed. I actually found only one CEI lawsuit dismissed in that link. The other DQA lawsuits were filed by other organizations and they were also dismissed, but they were not filed by CEI. Sorry.

Thanks for the follow up.

I may be looking at the wrong one, but a response was made and the EPA said they were the wrong party and just hosting the document. So they did get a response at least.

https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2019-02/documents/7428response.pdf

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

HarryStotle:

In the early 1970s over 40 of the world’s leading climate scientists gathered in Bonn, West Germany and came to the unanimous conclusion that the earth’s climate was getting colder and that we were potentially heading into another ice age.

Despite your cherry-picking a small group of scientists of the time, anthropogenic global warming dominated the academic literature overall, even in the early 1970s. Of course they were not as sure as we are today because they had only a fraction of the raw data that we have today and very little ability to do high-power modelling. However it is totally inaccurate to use this small and short-lived hypothesis to paint the entire field of climate science as unreliable.

Care to demonstrate your assertion that “global warming dominated the academic literature overall, even in the early 1970s” with actual data?

I am too lazy to look it up again, but I think the burden is on you in making the claim that the literature of the time was anything like a consensus that global cooling was coming.

The Bonn meeting was of forty-three of the leading climatologists of the time, not merely a “small group” of what you would lead us to think were insignificant voices.

Really? How many climate scientists do you think there were? Care to cite the proceedings of that meeting so I can read (not watch) what they concluded officially - not some denialists YouTube video please.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

HarryStotle:

In the early 1970s over 40 of the world’s leading climate scientists gathered in Bonn, West Germany and came to the unanimous conclusion that the earth’s climate was getting colder and that we were potentially heading into another ice age.

Despite your cherry-picking a small group of scientists of the time, anthropogenic global warming dominated the academic literature overall, even in the early 1970s. Of course they were not as sure as we are today because they had only a fraction of the raw data that we have today and very little ability to do high-power modelling. However it is totally inaccurate to use this small and short-lived hypothesis to paint the entire field of climate science as unreliable.

This was not the view of a small group of scientists, it was the consensus view of the leading experts in the west. This is a report from the CIA in 1974 showing the climate alarm of leading agencies such as NCAR, NOA and others.

The report repeatedly makes the point that the world is moving from an “agriculturally optimal” climate to what is referred to as a “neo–boreal” one, implying that the colder climate would lead to unstable weather and reduced food production.

http://www.climatemonitor.it/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/1974.pdf

I didn’t see anything in that report that predicted global cooling. I certainly didn’t see anything that even pretended to be a position of most scientists of the day. In fact there is a specific disclaimer at the beginning of the paper that says the paper is the opinion only of the authors of the paper and not the official position of the CIA.

When my wife was a reference librarian in a public library she taught patrons how to vet their sources, especially for material on the internet. Attribution research it is called. You could have benefited from one of her classes.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

You needed to google “Information Quality Act” and you would have seen this. I must apologize, though, for claiming multiple CEI lawsuits being dismissed. I actually found only one CEI lawsuit dismissed in that link. The other DQA lawsuits were filed by other organizations and they were also dismissed, but they were not filed by CEI. Sorry.

Thanks for the follow up.

I may be looking at the wrong one, but a response was made and the EPA said they were the wrong party and just hosting the document. So they did get a response at least.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2019-02/documents/7428response.pdf

Yes, and I expect the CEI will get a letter something like that too.