Is Pope Francis right on climate change?

[ferdgoodfellow]

David Friedman a academic economist…who admits he’s not a scientist.

I don’t think it matters. The question is whether he is right or wrong.

Friedman says:

Bedford and Cook (2013) contains the following sentence: “Cook et al. (2013) found that over 97% endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause.”

So let’s go over to Bedford and Cook and check it out. (skepticalscience.com/docs/Bedford_2013_agnotology.pdf) See page 6 where we find:

Of the 4,014 abstracts that expressed a position on the issue of human-induced climate change, Cook et al. (2013) found that over 97% endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause. Less than 2% of the abstracts rejected this view.

This will take a little longer, but go and read Cook et al.
iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article

In Table 2 we see them starting out with 3 levels of endorsement: explicit endorsement with quantification, explicit endorsement without quantification, and implicit endorsement. Only the first category indicates an explicit statement that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming. The other two indicate a belief that humans contribute to global warming so some degree.

But when we get down to the results, we find that the three categories were collapsed into one (“Endorses AGW”). As Friedman correctly observes:

It is that combined group, (“endorse AGW” on Table 4) that the 97.1% figure refers to. Hence that is the number of papers that, according to Cook et. al., implied that humans at least contribute to global warming. The number that imply that humans are the primary cause (category 1) is some smaller percentage which Cook et. al. do not report.

[ferd’s emphasis]

The long and the short of it is Cook has no justification for saying, as he did in Bedford and Cook, “that over 97% endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause.” His results do not allow him to say that.

So I think it is indisputable that Cook misrepresented his own research, an it don take no rocket surjun to see that.

But Friedman ain’t done yet. He makes this shocking revelation:

P.S. A commenter has located the data file for Cook et. al. (2013). By his count, the number of articles classified into each category was:

Level 1 = 64
Level 2 = 922
Level 3 = 2910
Level 4 = 7970
Level 5 = 54
Level 6 = 15
Level 7 = 9

The 97% figure was the sum of levels 1-3. Assuming the count is correct—readers can check it for themselves—that 97% breaks down as:

Level 1: 1.6%
Level 2: 23%
Level 3: 72%

Only Level 1 corresponds to “the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause.” (emphasis mine) Hence when John Cook attributed that view to 97% on the basis of his Cook et. al. (2013) he was misrepresenting 1.6% as 97%. Adding up his categories 5-7, the levels of rejecting of AGW, we find that more papers explicitly or implicitly rejected the claim that human action was responsible for half or more of warming than accepted it. According to Cook’s own data.

Would anybody now like to claim that lumping levels 1, 2, and 3 together and only reporting the sum was not a deliberate attempt to mislead?

ferd’s emphasis.

Shocking. Does Cook have any credibility left?

 

[ferdgoodfellow]

So what do y’all think about NAOMI KLEIN!!! being invited to speak at the Vatican and what it tells us about their current mindset?

 

[ferdgoodfellow]

More criticism of Cook et al: wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/03/cooks-97-consensus-disproven-by-a-new-paper-showing-major-math-errors/

 

[Zoltan_Cobalt]

1. There is a considerable amount of opinion, conjecture and theoretical language in the document.

Not regarding the science of AGW and other environmental problems. That is presented in a straight-forward manner and as the basis for having a dialogue about what we need to do about it.

That is exactly what we are doing. Having a dialogue.

You are saying that the world will end because man is producing too much CO2.

I am simply asking you to prove it.

(I have been asking lots of people, scientists included the same question…no answer yet.)

So the dialogue continues.

“Thou shalt not kill” is a precept in the Bible and in many other religions. Likewise it is considered wrong to harm and destroy people’s health and property, or destroy ecosystems which provide means of survival.

Note also that the Bible doesn’t specify that some methods of harming and killing people, such as with knives, are wrong, while others, such as by poison, are okay.

The “Thou shalt not kill” precept can also be applied to the harm done by laws affecting our economy and lifestyle. Think of the harm done to the poor in third world countries when energy for their health and comfort becomes unaffordable.

Something more to dialogue about.

Since LS presents in a straight-forward manner as accepted science the links between our actions and these environmental and human harms, then those precepts about killing and harming apply and LS most certainly IS a matter of morals.

Wait…IF LS presents as “accepted science”…it is a flawed premise.

The Science is FAR from settled

RE faith, there is nothing in LS that contradicts our faith in God and Jesus Christ, and in fact the Pope claims that the Church is alive and in dialogue with historical developments:

Does that mean the Church is talking about revising history???

Just because AGW was not mentioned in the Bible, does not mean we can and should get by with harming people through the environmental harms of today.

Don’t forget the economic harms caused by overzealous environmentalism. We must put PEOPLE first.

The Pope uses the term dialogue in several ways, but not regarding whether the basic science of AGW is in question. You really need to read the whole of LS with an open mind.

As should you…

For one thing the phrase “dialogue, discussion and growth in learning on these matters” does not appear in the encyclical, and it seems you may be getting your information from secondary, biased sources.

I mentioned no such phrase: “dialogue, discussion and growth in learning on these matters”

When you re-read LS…objectively you will find the WORDS dialogue, discussion and growth (in learning) used frequently…as you aptly indicate below.

Here are some direct quotes with the term “dialogue”:

“3…In my Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, I wrote to all the members of the Church with the aim of encouraging ongoing missionary renewal. In this Encyclical, I would like to enter into dialogue with all people about our common home.”
Note that it is appropriate and customary to use the term “dialogue” when engaging in the larger community and others outside the Church and outside Christianity.

In the following, the term “dialogue” refers to a discussion about what we need to do regarding the real and actual environmental problems caused by us, some places including the words “action” or “solutions”:

“14. I urgently appeal, then, for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet. We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all…”

“15…In light of this reflection, I will advance some broader proposals for dialogue and action which would involve each of us as individuals, and also affect international policy.”

"60. Finally, we need to acknowledge that different approaches and lines of thought have emerged regarding this situation and its possible solutions. At one extreme, we find those who doggedly uphold the myth of progress …At the other extreme are those who view men and women and all their interventions as no more than a threat, …Viable future scenarios will have to be generated between these extremes, since there is no one path to a solution. This makes a variety of proposals possible, all capable of entering into dialogue with a view to developing comprehensive solutions.

“163. So far I have attempted to take stock of our present situation, pointing to the cracks in the planet that we inhabit as well as to the profoundly human causes of environmental degradation. …now we shall try to outline the major paths of dialogue which can help us escape the spiral of self-destruction which currently engulfs us.”

“201…The gravity of the ecological crisis demands that we all look to the common good,
embarking on a path of dialogue which demands patience, self-discipline and generosity, always keeping in mind that ‘realities are greater than ideas.’”

CHAPTER 5 – LINES OF APPROACH AND ACTION – has a series of sections with headings re dialogue, beginning on page 48:

The Pope is indeed indicating that we must mitigate these problems. However, he is leaving it up to us how to do it, because there are many ways. He does not indicate we should hold our breath or starve to death to mitigate – the whole thrust is how we can live fully and deeply, not just in a material sense but in a sense that truly fulfills.

 

[Zoltan_Cobalt]

You are right on many of your criticisms of the Cook paper, but not this one. When an author does not express an opinion on AGW, it doesn’t mean he is undecided about the question. It just means his paper does not strictly address that question.

Consider that the initial selection of 12,000 papers was based on keyword hits like “global warming” or “climate change”. There and be many reasons for a paper to be indexed with one of these keywords. For example, a paper entitled “Calibration Methods for Remote Satelite Measurements of Atmospheric Temperature” could very well have climate change as an indexing keyword because one of the chief uses of satellite temperature measurements is in climate change research. But such a paper would not be expected to take a position on whether the earth is actually heating up, much less whether man is the main cause. The existence of this paper gives no information about the author’s position on this question. It certainly does not imply he is undecided. Statistically the only appropriate thing to do is to omit the paper from the study. The only effect this omission has is to reduce the final number of papers in the study. It does cast doubt on whatever conclusion may be reached from the remaining papers.

“The paper is a treasure trove of how-not-to lessons for a graduate class on survey design and analysis: the sample was not representative, statistical tests were ignored, and the results were misinterpreted.”

Cook used his own biased, subjective judgment to misclassify published papers according to criteria that was largely irrelevant to the central issues in the global warming debate.

Then, he carefully parsed the language of the survey questions and their published results. Next he encouraged the media and fellow global warming alarmists to cite these biased, subjective, totally irrelevant surveys as conclusive evidence for the lie that nearly all scientists believe humans are creating a global warming crisis.

\

 

[lynnvinc]

…He and his climate periti also give large hints that their true beliefs are more radical than the text of LS itself. For example, leading up to the roll-out they prevented any dissenting voices to be heard.

They have a right to ban quacks, who would just take up unnecessary time.

Afterwards they have invited folks like Naomi Klein, an unabashed communist, to speak at the Vatican. NAOMI KLEIN!, fer cryin out loud. What is going on here?

I just started Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate.

I’m not sure she is a communist (I’ll have to read the whole book to figure that out).

So far, she is mainly talking about global capitalism since the late 1980s, a deregulated form of aggressive capitalism that is beyond national laws and controls – free to pretty much destroy the earth’s ecosystems and our subsistence base without governments’ ability to rein it in when it causes terrific environmental harms, thru such things as NAFTA, the WTO, and now the TPP.

It’s taken me a very long time to fully understand this. Only very recently I put 2 & 2 together. I had been hearing cases over the years about how NAFTA is really harmful to this or that Mexican town or sector, and cases about how it is really harmful to places in U.S. in various ways, especially regarding serious environmental harms and communities being force to live with toxic conditions or pay millions or billions in lawsuits.

That made me start thinking, well if it’s harmful to the signatory countries then who is it helping and why was it passed (by both Republicans and Dems, but also opposed by others on both sides of the aisle). Oh … yeah … the multinationals, that’s who it is helping. The corps that fund the campaigns of both the Republicans and Dems.

If the end result had been a more equitable distribution of wealth or at least the middle class getting a larger slice of the pie, then it might not have been so bad – we harm our children’s inheritance of life-sustaining ecosystems, but at least we get a bigger piece of the pie for now. But it is only helping the rich, esp the richest of the rich. And the TPP will be like NAFTA on steroids.

Klein talks about the 3 policy pillars of this: privatization of the public sphere, deregulation of the corporate sector (including environmental deregulation), and lower corporate taxes, paid with cuts to public spending.

So at least in this book she is not talking about capitalism per se, but global laissez faire, world domination capitalism – about which I think many people are concerned, especially as it intrudes in their neighborhoods and does real harm, and we don’t have a legal leg to stand on, bec governments around the world have ceded power to it.

If you think we live in a democracy, think again – this virulent form of capitalism has swallowed it up. People just don’t know until push comes to shove, then they are in for a very rude awakening.

---

Now I think the problem of why we are not addressing and mitigating AGW goes much deeper than that. I teach Environmental Crime & Justice and one of the issues is how minorities are at a much high risk of environmental harms than non-minorities. Some of the authors suggest the root of this problem is colonialism and the colonial mentality – going in, taking over other people’s lands, committing genocide against those people, and using slave labor – people as objects or property. That’s actually the foundation of the U.S. and in part forms our mentality.

The reason I bring this up is because government and business can only play a part in mitigating AGW. It will only be mitigated if the people also get involved and do the needful. So why aren’t they doing so…at least at the level of having some positive impact? Of course, our media, educational system, and churches are pretty much corporate funded or influenced, so we do not get the whole truth about environmental harms and what we have to do to mitigate them from those sources – that’s a real problem, yes. However, I think it’s deeper than that. I think it is that lingering colonial mentality that disvalues people and ecosystems that is at the heart of why people refuse to mitigate.

So Klein is only partly right, but I think it goes much more deeply than she suggests.

I think the Pope also has a good grasp of this parasitic global capitalist system we now have and understands this is part of the problem.

Think of it this way – we are sort of like those people living in the Matrix (the movie) mostly unaware of the real reality. Sometimes it takes some hitting up against the wall to become aware…

I can understand why most people are not into mitigating AGW. I’ve been banging my head against this brick wall of AGW resistance, denialism, and indifference for over 25 years…and I’ll continue until I die. I’d be remiss not to do that. I just wish I had more “people skills” to get thru to others.

 

[ferdgoodfellow]

Hi Lynn,

Hope things aren’t too hot in Texas this fine August day. Been around 100 here in SW ND, and the wheat is being whacked with great vigor. Harvest is upon us.

They have a right to ban quacks, who would just take up unnecessary time.

Quacks? Please name names. Are you talking about Richard Lindzen, Judith Curry, Robert Carter, Tom Segalstad, Nir Shaviv, Henrick Svensmark, Paul Reiter…

I just started Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate.

I’m not sure she is a communist (I’ll have to read the whole book to figure that out).

I am sorry. That was my knee-jerk reaction to her general message. I need to sincerely apologize and retract that accusation. The only think I know for sure is that she was a “red diaper baby” and raised in a very “progressive” family. I have not read any of her books.

So far, she is mainly talking about global capitalism since the late 1980s, a deregulated form of aggressive capitalism that is beyond national laws and controls – free to pretty much destroy the earth’s ecosystems and our subsistence base without governments’ ability to rein it in when it causes terrific environmental harms, thru such things as NAFTA, the WTO, and now the TPP.

It’s taken me a very long time to fully understand this. Only very recently I put 2 & 2 together. I had been hearing cases over the years about how NAFTA is really harmful to this or that Mexican town or sector, and cases about how it is really harmful to places in U.S. in various ways, especially regarding serious environmental harms and communities being force to live with toxic conditions or pay millions or billions in lawsuits.

That made me start thinking, well if it’s harmful to the signatory countries then who is it helping and why was it passed (by both Republicans and Dems, but also opposed by others on both sides of the aisle). Oh … yeah … the multinationals, that’s who it is helping. The corps that fund the campaigns of both the Republicans and Dems.

If the end result had been a more equitable distribution of wealth or at least the middle class getting a larger slice of the pie, then it might not have been so bad – we harm our children’s inheritance of life-sustaining ecosystems, but at least we get a bigger piece of the pie for now. But it is only helping the rich, esp the richest of the rich. And the TPP will be like NAFTA on steroids.

All I can offer in response is an anecdote from a client of mine who was a consultant to Canadian copper mining company in Mexico. He said the company was required to hire everyone within a certain radius of the mine. They also were required to build them housing and schools. They were fined punitively for any environmental infraction. They basically developed that area from scratch, building roads and other infrastructure. An interesting study would be for us to study the quality of life impact on that particular developement. Are the folks better off before or after?

I can understand why most people are not into mitigating AGW. I’ve been banging my head against this brick wall of AGW resistance, denialism, and indifference for over 25 years…and I’ll continue until I die. I’d be remiss not to do that. I just wish I had more “people skills” to get thru to others.

Hey, I can relate!, from the opposite end of the debate.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

“The paper is a treasure trove of how-not-to lessons for a graduate class on survey design and analysis: the sample was not representative, statistical tests were ignored, and the results were misinterpreted.”

Cook used his own biased, subjective judgment to misclassify published papers according to criteria that was largely irrelevant to the central issues in the global warming debate.

Then, he carefully parsed the language of the survey questions and their published results. Next he encouraged the media and fellow global warming alarmists to cite these biased, subjective, totally irrelevant surveys as conclusive evidence for the lie that nearly all scientists believe humans are creating a global warming crisis…

That’s a lot of accusations for very little support. For instance, how was the sample not representative? I know they sampled only scientists who publish. But do you really think that the publishing scientists do not hold approximately the same views as the non-publishing ones.

 

[Karen107]

I don’t think it matters. The question is whether he is right or wrong.

Friedman says:

So let’s go over to Bedford and Cook and check it out. (skepticalscience.com/docs/Bedford_2013_agnotology.pdf) See page 6 where we find:

This will take a little longer, but go and read Cook et al.
iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article

In Table 2 we see them starting out with 3 levels of endorsement: explicit endorsement with quantification, explicit endorsement without quantification, and implicit endorsement. Only the first category indicates an explicit statement that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming. The other two indicate a belief that humans contribute to global warming so some degree.

But when we get down to the results, we find that the three categories were collapsed into one (“Endorses AGW”). As Friedman correctly observes:

[ferd’s emphasis]

The long and the short of it is Cook has no justification for saying, as he did in Bedford and Cook, **“that over 97% endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause.” ** His results do not allow him to say that.

So I think it is indisputable that Cook misrepresented his own research, an it don take no rocket surjun to see that.

But Friedman ain’t done yet. He makes this shocking revelation:

ferd’s emphasis.

Shocking. Does Cook have any credibility left?

Dear Ferd…Actually I am not convinced by your argument. Up there you took Cooks quote from Friedmans article and not the article that Cook wrote which gives it a whole different scenario… This is what Friedman wrote as you included in your post…**“that over 97% endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause.” **

But that was not what Cook said. Cook was honest and spelled out how he got his results and what the results were based on.

A new survey of over 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers by our citizen science team at Skeptical Science has found a 97%** consensus among papers taking a position on the cause of global warming in the peer-reviewed literature** that humans are responsible.

Go to the link and watch the video Cook is there saying what they did … They did not say 97% of scientists agree, he quantified it.

skepticalscience.com/97-percent-consensus-cook-et-al-2013.html

I hope you see the irony of someone who is not a scientist but an economist, evaluating scientists and their studies and convincing people that somehow he is more credible than the scientists involved in the study. If Friedman really wanted to make a valid point he would be presenting scientific evidence showing the world is cooling and not warming. But really the best he can do is attack someone elses study finding ways to discredit it. Things are just not lining up on that side if you ask me… Ask yourself why is it that we’re not hearing a resounding voice from the scientists who believe the world is cooling or not warming??? It appears that there’s a typical case of attacking the messenger because someone doesn’t like the message that they’re hearing. I am not convinced that all these climate scientists are without integrity as the deniers of AGW are. …

 

[lynnvinc]

“The paper is a treasure trove of how-not-to lessons for a graduate class on survey design and analysis: the sample was not representative, statistical tests were ignored, and the results were misinterpreted.”

Cook used his own biased, subjective judgment to misclassify published papers according to criteria that was largely irrelevant to the central issues in the global warming debate.

Then, he carefully parsed the language of the survey questions and their published results. Next he encouraged the media and fellow global warming alarmists to cite these biased, subjective, totally irrelevant surveys as conclusive evidence for the lie that nearly all scientists believe humans are creating a global warming crisis.

But the real damage came to President Obama’s credibility when he said:

“Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.”

Cook and his alarmist pals should be jailed for making our president look stupid.

Naomi Oreskes did a similar study and found zero articles in disagreement with AGW:
sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.full

Even the articles that Theo520 keeps trotting out by well-known CC contrarians agree AGW is happening, but claim that it is slower than most others would claim and the temp sensitivity to CO2 is at the lower end of the well-established range – and those studies are fatally flawed not to find a higher sensitivity.

AGW is a very much done deal in the climate science community. Nobody really doubts it anymore. And it is best not to waste time on these types of red herring discussions that only distract from the AGW issue and our need to mitigate this problem.

And so what if some other study were to find that, say, 35% disagreed – that would not make the problem go away. And it is always better to err on the side of life and life-support systems than to risk harming life on into the future.

 

[Zoltan_Cobalt]

Naomi Oreskes did a similar study and found zero articles in disagreement with AGW:
sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.full

Even the articles that Theo520 keeps trotting out by well-known CC contrarians agree AGW is happening, but claim that it is slower than most others would claim and the temp sensitivity to CO2 is at the lower end of the well-established range – and those studies are fatally flawed not to find a higher sensitivity.

AGW is a very much done deal in the climate science community. Nobody really doubts it anymore. And it is best not to waste time on these types of red herring discussions that only distract from the AGW issue and our need to mitigate this problem.

And so what if some other study were to find that, say, 35% disagreed – that would not make the problem go away. And it is always better to err on the side of life and life-support systems than to risk harming life on into the future.

In the first place “consensus” has no bearing on science. Consensus is the business of politics.

AGW is a very much done deal in the climate science community.

No it is not…and you know it.

You are the one proclaiming that man made CO2 is responsible for global warming. …prove it!

And it is always better to err on the side of life and life-support systems than to risk harming life on into the future.

Exactly!

Why change our lifestyle, economy and the quality of life of ALL humans on this planet because Al Gore thinks polar bears will drown and there is no evidence supporting such nonsense.

Come one, Lynn…grow up.

 

[Zoltan_Cobalt]

That’s a lot of accusations for very little support. For instance, how was the sample not representative? I know they sampled only scientists who publish. But do you really think that the publishing scientists do not hold approximately the same views as the non-publishing ones.

Leaf…I hate to get into arguments with you. Simply because based on track records…you win more than I do.

But…

This is another one of these incidents that are so totally wrong that even you cannot defend it.

Do a google search on the James Cook’s paper and you will find more negative posts by scientists than anything else. Even pro-AGW scientists complained about his miss interpreting their papers…that agreed with his agenda.

The whole point is nothing more than bad information fed to the media to influence politicians to pass laws that will reduce the industrial capacity of the United States…for no reason at all.

 

[Zoltan_Cobalt]

Go to the link and watch the video Cook is there saying what they did … They did not say 97% of scientists agree, he quantified it.

Then where did the President of the United States get such a stupid idea?

 

[Karen107]

Then where did the President of the United States get such a stupid idea?

It’s not a stupid idea it’s fact. Now Zoltan pay attention!

From this link…skepticalscience.com/97-percent-consensus-cook-et-al-2013.html

A new survey of over 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers by our citizen science team at Skeptical Science has found a 97% consensus among papers taking a position on the cause of global warming in the peer-reviewed literature that humans are responsible.

 

[Karen107]

Why change our lifestyle, economy and the quality of life of ALL humans on this planet because Al Gore thinks polar bears will drown and there is no evidence supporting such nonsense.

Come one, Lynn…grow up.

Wha. I’ve not been blogging with you all much but I can clearly see that Lynns about as classy and as intelligent as a woman can get…the ‘grow up’ comment can only be coming from someone who needs to do a bit of growing up himself…lol. Heaven forbid we change our lifestyle so to live in a more environmentally conscience way … Maybe you don’t love the earth ?? Have you ever had a pet? I dunno…I have no idea what makes you tick, but surely you are learning something here from all these Christians about being a good stewards of Gods creation…

 

[ferdgoodfellow]

Hi Karen,

Here is the direct quote from page 6 of Bedford and Cook:

Of the 4,014 abstracts that expressed a position on the issue of human-induced climate change, Cook et al. (2013) found that over 97% endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause. Less than 2% of the abstracts rejected this view.

Note the words “main cause.”

However, Cook et al didn’t conclude that human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause. In the abstract they summed it up this way:

Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.

That was the strongest possible conclusion from their results. Of the abstracts expressing an opinion, only very few showed a category 1 level of endorsement (Explicit endorsement with quantification–Explicitly states that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming).

It’s one thing to say, as they did in Cook et al, that humans cause some global warming, and quite another to say, as Cook says in Bedford and Cook, that humans are the main cause.

Why can’t you see that?

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Do a google search on the James Cook’s paper and you will find more negative posts by scientists than anything else. Even pro-AGW scientists complained about his miss interpreting their papers…that agreed with his agenda…

This is choice. At the same time as you are criticizing the Cook paper for unscientific survey methods in establishing a consensus on AGW, you propose a “google search” to establish the consensus that other scientists dislike Cook’s paper. Well, a “google search” certainly is more scientific than what Cook did!

 

[LeafByNiggle]

In the first place “consensus” has no bearing on science. Consensus is the business of politics.

This statement has been misapplied. We must distinguish between “doing” science (as in what actual scientists do in their work) and “analyzing” science (as in what non-scientists do when asking what the science says). When doing science, a scientist must not limit himself by assuming that the consensus is correct. That is the proper application of your statement.

But for non-scientists who are not doing original research, searching for the consensus on a scientific question is the absolute best way of establishing what is most likely to be true.

 

[lynnvinc]

I suggest that all people here stop responding to the totally wrong idea that there is no consensus on AGW. They just don’t know what they are talking about and bring out weird and wrong ideas.

No one (who knows anything and has an open, non-biased mind) disputes there is consensus in the working, publishing climate scientist community that AGW is real.

Just a couple of comments, then I’m never going to waste my time arguing about this non-issue.

In the early 90s before I got internet access, I saw on TV a scientist who was in disagreement with AGW (later it turned out he wasn’t even a climate scientist, but was funded by the fossil fuel industry – and the sponsor for that program was Texaco), and I started thinking that the fossil fuel industry is going to buy out all the scientists and we’ll just be facing this problem of AGW with no one there to speak the truth.

Later when I found out that most climate scientists were indeed sticking to their guns on this issue, I started thinking of them as heroes.

I still think of them as heroes, because I know evil people are harassing and threatening some of them and their children, which sends a chilling effect throughout the whole community.

Also, since 2004 I’ve been getting alerts about articles using the search terms “climate change” and “global warming” from sciencemag.org/cgi/alerts/main, which covers a large number of journals in many fields. I’ve never seen any article in science journals that disputes AGW. In all those 11 years I saw one in an education journal, written but not written by a climate scientist but by someone in education.

I have no idea why people are so adamantly opposed to accepting AGW that it is impossible for them to accept there is consensus about AGW in the climate science community. Boggles the mind. What is the fear? What is the real scary fear that y’all have that makes it worth risking the well-being and lives of a huge portion of humanity, including one’s own children and descendants, on into the future?

As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord…and stand up for life no matter what. And I won’t be addressing any of these nonsense claims about how there isn’t any consensus among practicing, publishing (in respected science journals) climate scientists that AGW is real. It’s a real waste of time when we should all be into reducing our GHG emissions and other pollution…as Pope Francis so beautifully and eloquently has told us to do.

 

[Ender]

I don’t think that’s what was said on the website rather this was said:

A follow-up study by the Skeptical Science team of over 12,000 peer-reviewed abstracts on the subjects of ‘global warming’ and ‘global climate change’ published between 1991 and 2011** found that of the papers taking a position on the cause of global warming,** over 97% agreed that humans are causing it (Cook 2013). The scientific authors of the papers were also contacted and asked to rate their own papers, and again over 97% whose papers took a position on the cause said humans are causing global warming.

The paper itself was clear in claiming that of those who expressed an opinion, 97% believed in AGW. That is not, however, the way the statistic is commonly (mis)used.

• Study: 97% Agreement on Manmade Global Warming (The Weather Channel)
  • File: 97% of Climate Scientists Confirm Anthroprogenic Global Warming.svg (Wikipedia)
• Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature (ClimateProgress)
• 97% of scientists agree that man-made climate change is happening… (Salon)

I believe the problem with that approach is that if a person showed no opinion one way or the other on the matter of global warming than why would they be included in the study?

Try this example: Of 100 people asked “Do you believe extraterrestrial life exists?”, one said no, ten said yes, the rest were unwilling to take a position. What is the justification for ignoring the 90% of respondents who were ambivalent? Isn’t it clearer to report that 10% believe ET exists than to claim that 91% of those who took a position believe in extraterrestrials? It is surely clearer. It is not reported that way because that message is not politically useful.

I also believe it is relevant that if 2/3rds of scientists papers on climate change and global warming were discarded from the study because it shows that there are a very small amount of scientists arguing the case FOR global cooling or no AGW.

That’s not the point. The real question is how many scientists are convinced that AGW is true. It is commonly asserted that it is an “overwhelming consensus”, a “vast majority”, …97%. That these claims are not supported by the facts of the paper itself, which admitted that two-thirds of the papers (and by extension the two-thirds of all scientists who wrote them) took no position at all. How can anyone claim that 97% of scientists support AGW when the position of 66% of those scientists is not even known? Randomly locating of those who took a position somewhere in an article doesn’t justify selling as fact the 97% figure. It is an example of the deceit that has become such a large part of the AGW political machine.

Ender