Popular Technology.net: 97% Consensus

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Monday, August 22, 2016

Climate Change, Energy and the Environment Lectures

The following lectures from the Prager University Foundation cover climate change, energy and the environment. The Prager University Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization has created an online resource of concise five minute lectures on environmental science topics presented by scientific experts and professionals. These offer fresh perspectives supported by fact based reasoning on contentious issues to anyone with an open mind.

"A world of new perspectives, five minutes at a time." - Prager University Foundation

Climate Change:

Climate Change: What Do Scientists Say? (Dr. Richard S. Lindzen)

Can Climate Models Predict Climate Change? (Dr. William Happer)

The Paris Climate Agreement Won't Change the Climate (Dr. Bjørn Lomborg)

Do 97% of Climate Scientists Really Agree? (Alex Epstein)

What They Haven't Told You about Climate Change (Dr. Patrick Moore)

The Truth about CO2 (Dr. Patrick Moore)

Is Climate Change Our Biggest Problem? (Dr. Bjørn Lomborg)

Climate Change: What's So Alarming? (Dr. Bjørn Lomborg)

Energy:

Are Electric Cars Really Green? (Dr. Bjørn Lomborg)

Can We Rely on Wind and Solar Energy? (Alex Epstein)

Fossil Fuels: The Greenest Energy (Alex Epstein)

Why You Should Love Fossil Fuels (Alex Epstein)

Environment:

Is Organic Food Worth the Cost? (Dr. Bjørn Lomborg)

Are GMOs Good or Bad? (Dr. Patrick Moore)

Trees Are the Answer (Dr. Patrick Mooree)

Why I Left Greenpeace (Dr. Patrick Moore)

Curriculum Vitae:

Richard S. Lindzen, A.B. Physics Magna Cum Laude, Harvard University (1960); S.M. Applied Mathematics, Harvard University (1961); Ph.D. Applied Mathematics, Harvard University (1964); Research Associate in Meteorology, University of Washington (1964-1965); NATO Post-Doctoral Fellow, Institute for Theoretical Meteorology, University of Oslo (1965-1966); Research Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research (1966-1967); Visiting Lecturer in Meteorology, UCLA (1967); NCAR Outstanding Publication Award (1967); AMS Meisinger Award (1968); Associate Professor and Professor of Meteorology, University of Chicago (1968-1972); Summer Lecturer, NCAR Colloquium (1968, 1972, 1978); AGU Macelwane Award (1969); Visiting Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences, Tel Aviv University (1969); Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (1970-1976); Gordon McKay Professor of Dynamic Meteorology, Harvard University (1972-1983); Visiting Professor of Dynamic Meteorology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1975); Lady Davis Visiting Professor, Department of Meteorology, The Hebrew University (1979); Director, Center for Earth and Planetary Physics, Harvard University (1980-1983); Robert P. Burden Professor of Dynamical Meteorology, Harvard University (1982-1983); AMS Charney Award (1985); Vikram Amblal Sarabhai Professor, Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India (1985); Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship (1986-1987); Distinguished Visiting Scientist, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA (1988-Present); Sackler Visiting Professor, Tel Aviv University (1992); Landsdowne Lecturer, University of Victoria (1993); Bernhard Haurwitz Memorial Lecturer, American Meteorological Society (1997); Fellow, American Academy of Arts & Sciences; Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science; Fellow, American Geophysical Union; Fellow, American Meteorological Society; Member, Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters; Member, Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society; Member, National Academy of Sciences; Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1983-2013); Distinguished Senior Fellow, Center for the Study of Science, Cato Institute (2013-Present); Lead Author, IPCC (2001); Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2013-Present); ISI Highly Cited Researcher

William Happer, B.S. Physics, University of North Carolina (1960); Ph.D. Physics, Princeton University (1964); Research Physicist, Columbia University (1964-1965); Professor, Department of Physics, Columbia University (1965-1980); Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (1966); Co-Director, Columbia Radiation Laboratory, Columbia University (1971-1976); Director, Columbia Radiation Laboratory, Columbia University (1976-1979); Member, JASON Advisory Group (1976-Present); Alexander von Humboldt Award (1976); Professor of Physics, Princeton University (1980-1991); Chairman, Steering Committee, JASON Advisory Group (1987-1990); Member, Board of Trustees, MITRE Corporation (1987-2011); Class of 1909 Professor of Physics Award, Princeton University (1988); Director, Office of Energy Research, U.S. Department of Energy (1991-1993); Professor of Physics, Princeton University (1993-1995); Eugene Higgens Professor of Physics, Princeton University (1995-2003); Chairman, University Research Board, Princeton University (1995-2005); Member, National Academy of Sciences (1996); Herbert P. Broida Prize, American Physical Society (1997); Davisson-Germer Prize in Atomic or Surface Physics, American Physical Society (1999); Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award, Research & Development Council of New Jersey (2000); Member, Science and Technology Advisory Committee, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (2002-2005); Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Member, American Philosophical Society; Fellow, American Physical Society (APS); Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, Princeton University (2003-Present)

Patrick Moore, B.Sc. (Hons) Forest Biology, University of British Columbia (1969); Ph.D. Ecology, Institute of Resource Ecology, University of British Columbia (1974); Ford Foundation Fellowship (1969-1972); Vice-President, Pacific Salmon Society (1969-1972); Director, Western Canada Chapter, Sierra Club (1971-1973); Co-Founder, Greenpeace (1971-1986); Member, Board of Directors, British Columbia Salmon Farmers Association (1984-1991); Founder and President, Quatsino Seafarms Ltd. (1984-1991); President, British Columbia Salmon Farmers Association (1986-1989); Member, Board of Directors, British Columbia Aquaculture Research and Development Association (1990-1993); Member, Aquaculture Advisory Council, British Columbia Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries (1990-1993); Founder and Chairman, British Columbia, Carbon Project (1990-1994); Appointment, British Columbia Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (1990-1994); Member, Power Generation Working Group, Greater Vancouver Regional District (1992); Member, Economic Development and Environment Committee, Vancouver Board of Trade (1992-1994); Director, Architectural Institute of British Columbia (1995-1996); Director and Vice-President, Environment and Government Affairs, Waterfurnace International (1995-1998); Honorary Doctorate of Sciences, North Carolina State University (2005); Founding Co-Chair, Clean and Safe Energy Coalition (2006-2013); National Award of Nuclear Science and History, National Atomic Museum Foundation (2009); Speaks Truth To Power Award, EarthFree Institute (2014); Member, Board of Directors, Forest Alliance of British Columbia (1991-Present); Co-Founder and Chief Scientist, Greenspirit (1991-Present); Chair, Ecology, Energy, and Prosperity Program, Frontier Centre for Public Policy (2014-Present)

Bjørn Lomborg, M.A. Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark (1991); Ph.D. Political Science (Thesis: "Simulating Social Science: The Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma and Computer Simulations in Political Science"), University of Copenhagen, Denmark (1994); Georgia Rotary Student Foundation Scholarship, University of Georgia (1983); Undergraduate, Computer Science and Mathematics, University of Georgia (1983-1984); Kossack Prize of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Georgia (1984); Assistant Professor of Statistics, Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark (1994-1996); Associate Professor of Statistics, Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark (1997-2005); Director, Environmental Assessment Institute (EAI), Denmark (2002-2004); Organizer, Copenhagen Consensus (2004); Adjunct Professor of Policy-making, Scientific Knowledge and the Role of Experts, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark (2005-2015); Director, Copenhagen Consensus Center, Denmark (2006-Present)

Alex Epstein, B.A. Philosophy, Duke University (2002); Network Model Development and Application Training, OPNET Technologies (1996-2000); Freelance Writer (2001-2004); Objectivist Academic Center, Ayn Rand Institute (2004); Fellow, Ayn Rand Institute (2004-2011); Director, Center for Industrial Progress (2011-Present); Adjunct Scholar, Cato Institute (2015-Present)

Monday, December 22, 2014

All "97% Consensus" Studies Refuted by Peer-Review

After showing how 97 articles thoroughly refuted the most prominent "consensus" study, Cook et al. (2013), consensus proponents inevitably moved the goal posts and fell back on other "97% consensus" studies: Doran & Zimmerman (2009), Anderegg et al. (2010) and Oreskes (2004) (which is really a 100% consensus study). However, these have all been thoroughly refuted in the scholarly literature and the following are the refutations of them.

Update: Since this article was first published additional studies have been used to perpetuate the long-debunked "97% consensus" talking point, such as Verheggen et al. (2014). While others like Stenhouse et al. (2014) actually demonstrated a marginal 52% consensus.

[1] Oreskes (2004) - "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change"

The Letter Science Magazine Rejected (PDF) [Archive]
(Energy & Environment, Volume 16, Numbers 3-4, pp. 685-688, July 2005)
- Benny Peiser

Abstract: On 3 December 2004, Science published an article entitled "The scientific consensus on climate change" by Naomi Oreskes (Vol 306, Issue 5702, 1686). Oreskes claims to have analysed 928 abstracts she found listed on the ISI database using the keywords "global climate change". The article suggested that for the first time, empirical evidence was presented that appeared to show a unanimous, scientific consensus on the anthropogenic causes of recent global warming. Between 3 December 2004 and 4 January 2005 I conducted a similar analysis. The results of my findings contradicted Oreskes and essentially falsified her study. On 4 January 2005, I submitted these results in a letter to Science. On 18 February, editors from Science contacted me to suggest that they would consider publishing a shorter version of the letter. This shorter version was submitted on 23 February. On 13 April, Science responded, saying "After realizing that the basic points of your letter have already been widely dispersed over the internet, we have reluctantly decided that we cannot publish your letter." No evidence was provided for this technically contrived excuse. As far as I am aware, neither the details nor the results of my analysis were cited anywhere. Journals such as Science have an obligation to correct errors, especially as activists, journalists and science organisations have endlessly repeated claims made in Oreskes (2004). The sad reality is that by refusing to publish corrections to a fatally flawed paper, they undermine their own credibility, that of their contributors, and the integrity of science.

Scientific Consensus on Climate Change? (PDF) [Archive]
(Energy & Environment, Volume 19, Number 2, pp. 281-286, March 2008)
- Klaus-Martin Schulte

Abstract: Fear of anthropogenic "global warming" can adversely affect patients' well-being. Accordingly, the state of the scientific consensus about climate change was studied by a review of the 539 papers on "global climate change" found on the Web of Science database from January 2004 to mid-February 2007, updating research by Oreskes, who had reported that between 1993 and 2003 none of 928 scientific papers on "global climate change" had rejected the consensus that more than half of the warming of the past 50 years was likely to have been anthropogenic. In the present review, 31 papers (6% of the sample) explicitly or implicitly reject the consensus. Though Oreskes said that 75% of the papers in her former sample endorsed the consensus, fewer than half now endorse it. Only 7% do so explicitly. Only one paper refers to "catastrophic" climate change, but without offering evidence. There appears to be little evidence in the learned journals to justify the climate-change alarm that now harms patients.

[2] Doran & Zimmerman (2009) - "Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change"

Comment on "Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change" (PDF)
(Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union, Volume 90, Number 27, July 2009)
- Roland Granqvist

Abstract: In a summary of their survey on the opinion about global warming among Earth scientists (see Eos, 90(3), 20 January 2009), Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman conclude that the debate on the role of human activity is largely nonexistent, and that the challenge is "how to effectively communicate this fact to policy makers" and to the public. However, I argue that neither of these conclusions can be drawn from the survey. For example, one issue that is much discussed in the public debate is the role of greenhouse gas emissions in global warming. Perhaps there is not much debate about this issue among scientists, but this cannot be concluded from the survey, in which nothing is said about such emissions. In the second question of their survey, Doran and Kendall Zimmerman refer only to "human activity."

Further Comment on "Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change" (PDF)
(Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union, Volume 90, Number 27, July 2009)
- John Helsdon

Abstract: The feature article "Examining the scientific consensus on climate change," by Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman (see Eos, 90(3), 20 January 2009), while interesting, has a primary flaw that calls their interpretation into question. In their opening sentence, the authors state that on the basis of polling data, "47% [of Americans] think climate scientists agree… that human activities are a major cause of that [global] warming…." They then described the two-question survey they had posed to a large group of Earth scientists and scientifically literate (I presume) people in related fields. While the polled group is important, in any poll the questions are critical. My point revolves around their question 2, to wit, "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?" Note that the opening sentence of their article uses the phrase "major cause" in reporting the results of the polling, while the poll itself used the phrase "significant contributing factor." There is a large difference between these two phrases.

[3] Anderegg et al. (2010) - "Expert credibility in climate change"

Climate denier, skeptic, or contrarian? (PDF) [Archive]
(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 107, Number 39, September 2010)
- Saffron J. O'Neilla, Max Boykoff

Abstract: Assigning credibility or expertise is a fraught issue, particularly in a wicked phenomenon like climate change—as Anderegg et al. (1) discussed in a recent issue of PNAS. However, their analysis of expert credibility into two distinct "convinced" and "unconvinced" camps and the lack of nuance in defining the terms "climate deniers," "skeptics," and "contrarians" both oversimplify and increase polarization within the climate debate.

Expert credibility and truth (PDF) [Archive]
(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 107, Number 47, November 2010)
- Jarle Aarstad

Abstract: Anderegg et al. (1) state that 97–98% of climate researchers most actively publishing in the field "support the tenets of [anthropogenic climate change] ACC … the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of convinced researchers" (1). The contribution illustrates the predominating paradigm in climate research today. However, whereas expert credibility and prominence may dominate the opinion of what is true, it can never alter truth itself.

Regarding Anderegg et al. and climate change credibility (PDF) [Archive]
(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 107, Number 52, December 2010)
- Lawrence Bodenstein

Abstract: The study by Anderegg et al. (1) employed suspect methodology that treated publication metrics as a surrogate for expertise. Credentialed scientists, having devoted much of their careers to a certain area, with multiple relevant peer-reviewed publications, should be deemed core experts, notwithstanding that others are more or less prolific in print or that their views stand in the minority. In the climate change (CC) controversy, a priori, one expects that the much larger and more "politically correct" side would excel in certain publication metrics. They continue to cite each other's work in an upward spiral of self-affirmation. The authors' treatment of these deficiencies in Materials and Methods was unconvincing in the skewed and politically charged environment of the CC hubbub and where one group is in the vast majority (1). The data hoarding and publication blockade imbroglio was not addressed at all. The authors' framing of expertise was especially problematic. In a casting pregnant with self-fulfillment, the authors defined number of publications as expertise (italics). The italics were then dropped. Morphing the data of metrics into the conclusion of expertise (not italicized) was best supported by explicit argument in the Discussion section rather than by subtle wordplay. The same applied to prominence, although here the authors’ construct was more aligned with common usage, and of course, prominence does not connote knowledge and correctness in the same way as expertise.

[4] Cook et al. (2013) - "Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming"

Climate Consensus and 'Misinformation': A Rejoinder to Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change (PDF) [Archive]
(Science & Education, pp. 1-20, August 2013)
- David R. Legates, Willie Soon, William M. Briggs, Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

Abstract: Agnotology is the study of how ignorance arises via circulation of misinformation calculated to mislead. Legates et al. (Sci Educ 22:2007–2017, 2013) had questioned the applicability of agnotology to politically-charged debates. In their reply, Bedford and Cook (Sci Educ 22:2019–2030, 2013), seeking to apply agnotology to climate science, asserted that fossil-fuel interests had promoted doubt about a climate consensus. Their definition of climate 'misinformation' was contingent upon the post-modernist assumptions that scientific truth is discernible by measuring a consensus among experts, and that a near unanimous consensus exists. However, inspection of a claim by Cook et al. (Environ Res Lett 8:024024, 2013) of 97.1 % consensus, heavily relied upon by Bedford and Cook, shows just 0.3 % endorsement of the standard definition of consensus: that most warming since 1950 is anthropogenic. Agnotology, then, is a two-edged sword since either side in a debate may claim that general ignorance arises from misinformation allegedly circulated by the other. Significant questions about anthropogenic influences on climate remain. Therefore, Legates et al. appropriately asserted that partisan presentations of controversies stifle debate and have no place in education.

Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: A re-analysis (PDF) [Archive]
(Energy Policy, Volume 73, pp. 701-705, October 2014)
- Richard S. J. Tol

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.

Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: Rejoinder (PDF) [Archive]
(Energy Policy, Volume 73, pp. 709, October 2014)
- Richard S. J. Tol

Abstract: In my critique of Cook et al. (2013), I raised a number of issues (Tol, 2014). Cook et al. (2014) respond to a few only. They do not dispute

(1) that their sample is not representative,
(2) that data quality is low,
(3) that their validation test is not passed,
(4) that they mistake a trend in composition for a trend in endorsement,
(5) that the majority of the investigated papers that take a position on (anthropogenic) climate change in fact do not examine any evidence, and
(6) that there are inexplicable patterns in the data.

Comment on 'Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature' (PDF) [Archive]
(Environmental Research Letters, Volume 10, Number 3, March 2015)
- Benjamin John Floyd Dean

Abstract: I read the study by Cook et al with great interest [1]. The study used levels of endorsement of global warming as outlined in their table 2; however, I could see no mention as to how these levels were created and how reliable they were in terms of both inter-rater and intra-rater reliability (Cohen's kappa). Best practice on rater reliability indicates that both inter-rater and intra-rater should have been measured and documented in a study such as Dr Cook's [2] and I am surprised that this fact appears to have been neglected. It would be of considerable benefit to readers for some robust rate reliability metrics to be included, if at all possible.

Comment on 'Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature' (PDF) [Archive]
(Environmental Research Letters, Volume 11, Number 4, April 2016)
- Richard S. J. Tol

Abstract: Cook et al's highly influential consensus study (2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 024024) finds different results than previous studies in the consensus literature. It omits tests for systematic differences between raters. Many abstracts are unaccounted for. The paper does not discuss the procedures used to ensure independence between the raters, to ensure that raters did not use additional information, and to ensure that later ratings were not influenced by earlier results. Clarifying these issues would further strengthen the paper, and establish it as our best estimate of the consensus.

[5] Verheggen et al. (2014) - "Scientists' Views about Attribution of Global Warming"

Comment on "Scientists' Views about Attribution of Global Warming" (PDF) [Archive]
(Environmental Science & Technology, Volume 48, Issue 16, pp. 8963–8971, November 2014)
- José L. Duarte

Abstract: Verheggen et al. report a survey of scientists' views on climate change. However, they surveyed a large number of psychologists, pollsters, philosophers, etc. The number of nonclimate scientists who responded is undisclosed, and is likely unknowable given the design. Thus, the valid results of the study are unknown, and it should be withdrawn. Moreover, the core method of including mitigation and impacts researchers creates a structural inflationary bias, ultimately conflating career choice with consensus. Finally, an estimate of the consensus is unlikely to be reliable without accounting for the extraordinary personal cost of dissent, especially when an issue is moralized.

Rebuttals to Criticisms:

Criticism: "Some papers on the list are hidden behind a paywall."

Rebuttal: Whether a full copy of a paper is made freely available is at the discretion of the journal's publisher. Any similar list would have the same limitations since archiving a paper without a publisher's permission would violate copyright law. Where a full copy of a paper was found online, a (PDF) link was added after a paper's name.

Criticism: "Some papers on the list are not scholarly peer-reviewed (refereed)."

Rebuttal: This is a strawman argument, as it is not claimed that these papers were scholarly peer-reviewed (refereed) prior to publication but rather that they are a form of "peer-review" that has been published in a scholarly journal. Peer-review can be defined as an "evaluation of scientific, academic, or professional work by others working in the same field". In a scholarly journal like the PNAS, the document format used to "constructively address a difference of opinion with authors of a recent PNAS article. ...or point out potential flaws in studies published in the journal" are called "Letters".

Criticism: "Tol (2014) was rejected by other journals for being flawed."

Rebuttal: Dr. Tol's 2014 paper was actually censored by Environmental Research Letters (ERL) due to having multiple outspoken alarmist scientists on its editorial board (e.g. Peter Gleick and Stefan Rahmstorf) and politely declined by two other journals for being "out of scope" (off topic) not flawed.

Criticism: "Tol (2014) has 24 errors."

Rebuttal: Dr. Tol refuted all of these claims in a post online and in his published rejoinder.

Criticism: "Dr. Tol confirmed the 97% consensus."

Rebuttal: This misleading claim originated with one of the co-authors of Cook et al. (2013) - Dana Nuccitelli. Dr. Tol refuted this claim in a scathing editorial he wrote for The Guardian:

"Dana Nuccitelli writes that I “accidentally confirm the results of last year’s 97% global warming consensus study”. Nothing could be further from the truth. I show that the 97% consensus claim does not stand up. [...]

In his defence, Nuccitelli argues that I do not dispute their main result. Nuccitelli fundamentally misunderstands research. Science is not a set of results. Science is a method. If the method is wrong, the results are worthless." - Dr. Richard Tol

Criticism: "Dr. Tol claims the consensus is actually 91%."

Rebuttal: This misleading claim originated with one of the co-authors of Cook et al. (2013) - Dana Nuccitelli and falsely spread by websites like Politifact. Dr. Tol refuted this claim in an email to Politifact.

"I never claimed that the consensus rate is 91%. [...]

Do check the grammar: "would […] in that case" does in no way indicate my agreement with the number. In fact, I make it very clear that any number based on Cook’s data is unreliable." - Dr. Richard Tol

Friday, December 19, 2014

97 Articles Refuting The "97% Consensus"

The 97% "consensus" study, Cook et al. (2013) has been thoroughly refuted in scholarly peer-reviewed journals, by major news media, public policy organizations and think tanks, highly credentialed scientists and extensively in the climate blogosphere. The shoddy methodology of Cook's study has been shown to be so fatally flawed that well known climate scientists have publicly spoken out against it,

"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 [UK] that the energy minister should cite it."

- Mike Hulme, Ph.D. Professor of Climate Change, University of East Anglia (UEA)

The following is a list of 97 articles that refute Cook's (poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed) 97% "consensus" study. The fact that anyone continues to bring up such soundly debunked nonsense like Cook's study is an embarrassment to science.

Summary: Cook et al. (2013) attempted to categorize 11,944 abstracts [brief summaries] of papers (not entire papers) to their level of endorsement of AGW and found 7930 (66%) held no position on AGW. While only 64 papers (0.5%) explicitly endorsed and quantified AGW as +50% (humans are the primary cause). A later analysis by Legates et al. (2013) found there to be only 41 papers (0.3%) that supported this definition. Cook et al.'s methodology was so fatally flawed that they falsely classified skeptic papers as endorsing the 97% consensus, apparently believing to know more about the papers than their authors. The second part of Cook et al. (2013), the author self-ratings simply confirmed the worthlessness of their methodology, as they were not representative of the sample since only 4% of the authors (1189 of 29,083) rated their own papers and of these 63% disagreed with the abstract ratings.

Methodology: The data (11,944 abstracts) used in Cook et al. (2013) came from searching the Web of Science database for results containing the key phrases "global warming" or "global climate change" regardless of what type of publication they appeared in or the context those phrases were used. Only a small minority of these were actually published in climate science journals, instead the publications included ones like the International Journal Of Vehicle Design, Livestock Science and Waste Management. The results were not even analyzed by scientists but rather amateur environmental activists with credentials such as "zoo volunteer" (co-author Bärbel Winkler) and "scuba diving" (co-author Rob Painting) who were chosen by the lead author John Cook (a cartoonist) because they all comment on his deceptively named, partisan alarmist blog 'Skeptical Science' and could be counted on to push his manufactured talking point.

Peer-review: Cook et al. (2013) was published in the journal Environmental Research Letters (ERL) which conveniently has multiple outspoken alarmist scientists on its editorial board (e.g. Peter Gleick and Stefan Rahmstorf) where the paper likely received substandard "pal-review" instead of the more rigorous peer-review.

Update: The paper has since been refuted five times in the scholarly literature by Legates et al. (2013), Tol (2014a), Tol (2014b), Dean (2015) and Tol (2016).

* All the other "97% consensus" studies: e.g. Doran & Zimmerman (2009), Anderegg et al. (2010) and Oreskes (2004) have been refuted by peer-review.

[ Journal Coverage ]

Energy Policy - Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: A re-analysis (PDF) (October 2014)
Energy Policy - Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: Rejoinder (PDF) (October 2014)
Science & Education - Climate Consensus and 'Misinformation': A Rejoinder to Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change (PDF) (August 2013)

[ Media Coverage ]

American Thinker - Climate Consensus Con Game (February 17, 2014)
Breitbart - Obama's '97 Percent' Climate Consensus: Debunked, Demolished, Staked through the heart (September 8, 2014)
Canada Free Press - Sorry, global warmists: The '97 percent consensus' is complete fiction (May 27, 2014)
Financial Post - Meaningless consensus on climate change (September 19, 2013)
Financial Post - The 97%: No you don't have a climate consensus (September 25, 2013)
Forbes - Global Warming Alarmists Caught Doctoring '97-Percent Consensus' Claims (May 30, 2013)
Fox News - Balance is not bias -- Fox News critics mislead public on climate change (October 16, 2013)
Herald Sun - That 97 per cent claim: four problems with Cook and Obama (May 22, 2013)
Power Line - Breaking: The "97 Percent Climate Consensus" Canard (May 18, 2014)
Spiked - Global warming: the 97% fallacy (May 28, 2014)
The Daily Caller - Where Did '97 Percent' Global Warming Consensus Figure Come From? (May 16, 2014)
The Daily Telegraph - 97 per cent of climate activists in the pay of Big Oil shock! (July 23, 2013)
The Guardian - The claim of a 97% consensus on global warming does not stand up (June 6, 2014)
The New American - Global Warming "Consensus": Cooking the Books (May 21, 2013)
The New American - Cooking Climate Consensus Data: "97% of Scientists Affirm AGW" Debunked (June 5, 2013)
The New American - Climategate 3.0: Blogger Threatened for Exposing 97% "Consensus" Fraud (May 20, 2014)
The Patriot Post - The 97% Consensus -- A Lie of Epic Proportions (May 17, 2013)
The Patriot Post - Debunking the '97% Consensus' & Why Global Cooling May Loom (August 7, 2014)
The Press-Enterprise - Don't be swayed by climate change ‘consensus' (September 10, 2013)
The Tampa Tribune - About that '97 percent': It ain’t necessarily so (May 19, 2014)
The Wall Street Journal - The Myth of the Climate Change '97%' (May 26, 2014)
Troy Media - Bandwagon psychology root of 97 per cent climate change "consensus" (February 18, 2014)
WND - Black Jesus' Climate Consensus Fantasy (June 25, 2013)

[ Organization Coverage ]

Competitive Enterprise Institute - Consensus Shmensus (September 5, 2013)
Cornwall Alliance - Climate Consensus? Nonsense! (June 16, 2014)
Friends of Science - Friends of Science Challenge the Cook Study for Bandwagon Fear Mongering on Climate Change and Global Warming (May 21, 2013)
Friends of Science - Only 65 Scientists of 12,000 Make up Alleged 97% on Climate Change and Global Warming Consensus (May 28, 2013)
Friends of Science - 97% Consensus? No! Global Warming Math Myths & Social Proofs (PDF) (February 3, 2014)
Friends of Science - Climate Change Is a Fact of Life, the Science Is Not Settled and 97% Consensus on Global Warming Is a Math Myth (February 4, 2014)
George C. Marshall Institute - The Corruption of Science (October 5, 2014)
John Locke Foundation - The 97% consensus on global warming exposed (July 3, 2014)
Liberty Fund - David Friedman on the 97% Consensus on Global Warming (February 27, 2014)
Global Warming Policy Foundation - Consensus? What Consensus? (PDF) (September 2, 2013)
Global Warming Policy Foundation - Fraud, Bias And Public Relations: The 97% 'Consensus' And Its Critics (PDF) (September 8, 2014)
National Center for Policy Analysis - The Big Lie of the "Consensus View" on Global Warming (July 30, 2014)
National Center for Public Policy Research - Do 97% of All Climate Scientists Really Believe Mankind is Causing Catastrophic Global Warming? (February 10, 2014)
Principia Scientific International - Exposed: Academic Fraud in New Climate Science Consensus Claim (May 23, 2013)
The Heartland Institute - What 97 Percent of Climate Scientists Do (May 12, 2014)

Rebuttals to Criticisms:

Criticism: "Tol (2014) was rejected by other journals for being flawed."

Rebuttal: Dr. Tol's 2014 paper was actually censored by Environmental Research Letters (ERL) due to having multiple outspoken alarmist scientists on its editorial board (e.g. Peter Gleick and Stefan Rahmstorf) and politely declined by two other journals for being "out of scope" (off topic) not flawed.

Criticism: "Tol (2014) has 24 errors."

Rebuttal: Dr. Tol refuted all of these claims in a post online and in his published rejoinder.

"Dana Nuccitelli writes that I “accidentally confirm the results of last year’s 97% global warming consensus study”. Nothing could be further from the truth. I show that the 97% consensus claim does not stand up. [...]

In his defence, Nuccitelli argues that I do not dispute their main result. Nuccitelli fundamentally misunderstands research. Science is not a set of results. Science is a method. If the method is wrong, the results are worthless." - Dr. Richard Tol

"I never claimed that the consensus rate is 91%. [...]

Do check the grammar: "would […] in that case" does in no way indicate my agreement with the number. In fact, I make it very clear that any number based on Cook’s data is unreliable." - Dr. Richard Tol

Thursday, June 06, 2013

Obama Tweets Support for 97% Consensus Study, whose sick team members celebrated the death of Conservative Andrew Breitbart

On May 16, 2013 President Obama tweeted support for a "study" that falsely manufactured a statistically worthless claim of a 97% consensus among scientist for human-caused global warming.

However, it was revealed in 2012 that team members from this study had celebrated the death of conservative Andrew Breitbart in the lead author, John Cook's Skeptical Science forums. In a forum thread titled, "Conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart is dead at 43" Cook's acknowledged team members Rob Honeycutt and John Hartz posted,

"[H]e was a particularly destructive individual, almost entirely without morals. He was an "ends justifies the means" type and his sole purpose was to try to destroy everything liberal regardless of what he had to do to achieve this. He was the one who made the cavallier comment that "We have all the guns and we outnumber liberals." He's the kind of guy that would laugh if someone acted upon such a suggestion." - Rob Honeycutt [Skeptical Science Forums], March 2, 2012

"Ding dong, the witch is dead..." - John Hartz [Skeptical Science Forums], March 2, 2012

This type of behavior apparently earns you an acknowledgement in the scientific literature and a tweet from the President.

Why would President Obama endorse the work of such individuals?

Tuesday, June 04, 2013

Cook's 97% Consensus Study Game Plan Revealed

In March of 2012, the climate alarmist website Skeptical Science had their forums "hacked" and the contents posted online. In a forum thread titled, "Introduction to TCP" (2012-01-19) John Cook layed out the game plan for the 97% consensus study, Cook et al. (2013) 'Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature',

Introduction

It's essential that the public understands that there's a scientific consensus on AGW. So Jim Powell, Dana and I have been working on something over the last few months that we hope will have a game changing impact on the public perception of consensus. Basically, we hope to establish that not only is there a consensus, there is a strengthening consensus. Deniers like to portray the myth that the consensus is crumbling, that the tide is turning. However, our survey of the peer-reviewed literature shows that the opposite is true - the consensus is getting stronger and the gap between those that accept and reject the consensus is increasing. What we have in mind is an extended campaign over 2012 (and beyond).

Phase 1: Publishing a paper on the negligible impact of climate denial in the peer-reviewed literature

TCP is basically an update and expansion of Naomi Oreskes' survey of the peer-reviewed literature with deeper analysis. In 2004, Naomi surveyed 928 articles in the Web of Science matching the search "global climate change" from 1993 to 2003. We've expanded the time period (1991 to 2011) and added papers matching the search "global warming". We ended up with 12,272 papers. I imported the details of each paper (including abstracts) into the SkS database and set up a simple crowd sourcing system allowing us to rate the category of each paper using Naomi's initial categories (impacts, mitigation, paleoclimate, methods, rejection, opinion). We did find some rejection papers in the larger sample but the amount was negligible. The amount of citations the rejection papers received were even smaller proportionally, indicating the negligible impact of AGW denial in the peer-reviewed literature. Jim and I wrote these initial results up into a short Brevia article that we just submitted to Science (so please don't mention these results outside of this forum yet, lest it spook Science who freak out if there's any mention of a submitted paper before publication). Of course, Science have a 92% rejection rate so the chances are very slim - we'll try other journals if rejected there.

When the paper is published, we would announce it on SkS as the beginning of the public launch of TCP. It will also be promoted through the communications dept at the Global Change Institute although their press releases only go to Australian media so will have to explore other promotion ideas.

Phase 2: SkS team rates endorsements

For Phase 1, we didn't rate the actual # of endorsements of AGW - the focus was on the proportion and impact of rejection articles. So Phase 2 will be about tallying the # of endorsements and comparing it to the # of rejections in a variety of ways. This is where it gets exciting. A simple comparison of the # of endorsement papers vs rejection papers tells a vivid story of a strengthening consensus. Even more so, the # of citations of endorsement papers vs rejection citations. And this is something I haven't crunched any data for yet but just adding up the # of authors who have written endorsement papers vs rejection authors will, I imagine, tell another interesting tale.

What I'm thinking of doing is crowd sourcing among the SkS team the role of rating the 12,000 papers. By rating, we are actually going beyond what Naomi did. Her rating was one dimensional - just the 6 categories. We decided we wanted to collect more information about each paper and have defined two dimensions or two aspects of each paper that we want to capture - the category (impacts, mitigation, paleoclimate, methods, opinion) and the endorsement level (from explicit endorsement down to explicit rejection). So I'll program up a crowd sourcing system allowing SkSers to rate papers - the goal being every paper gets at least 2 ratings from different people for consistency.

The end goal of Phase 2 is publishing the results in a peer-reviewed paper. As far as co-authorship of the paper goes, I was thinking perhaps a practical approach would be that to be a co-author on the paper, you rate at least 2000 papers - seems a fair requirement to get your name on a peer-reviewed paper. And of course input into the writing of the paper - we'll need to anticipate all the various attacks our results will get as this result will be highly threatening to the denialosphere.

The result is we'll have 12,000 papers with category ratings and endorsement level. We can analyse this data in a variety of ways to tell many interesting stories - but what I'm guessing from what I've rated so far is we'll find is around 50% of the papers are explicit or implicit endorsements and the rest are neutral (with the tiniest fraction being rejection). Note and this is an important note - this result is based just on the abstract text, not the full paper, and hence is an underestimate of the actual number of endorsements.

Phase 3: Publicly crowd source the categorisation of neutral papers

When we publish the Phase 2 paper, it will strongly emphasise that the endorsement percentage is based just on the abstract text and hence an underestimate of the true number of papers endorsing the consensus. I anticipate there will be around 6000 "neutral" papers. So what I was thinking of doing next was a public crowd sourcing project where the public are given the list of neutral papers and links to the full paper - if they find evidence of an endorsement, they submit it to SkS (I'll have an easy-to-use online form) with the excerpted text. The SkS team would check incoming submissions, and if they check out, make the endorsement official. Thus over time, we would gradually process the 6000 neutral papers, converting many of them to endorsement papers - and make regular announcements like "hey the consensus just went from 99.75% to 99.8%, here are the latest papers with quotes". The final result will be a definitive, comprehensive survey of the number of endorsements of AGW in the literature over the last 21 years.

Phase 4: Repeat each year

Fingers crossed, Phase 3 will be complete by the end of 2012. Then in early 2013, we can repeat the process for all papers published in 2012 to show that the consensus is still strengthening. We beat the consensus drum often and regularly and make SkS the home of the perceived strengthening consensus.

In a forum thread titled, "Marketing Ideas" (2012-01-19) John Cook immediately moved onto marketing a "scientific" study before it was even started,

This thread is for general discussions of how to market TCP (began in this earlier thread) and make as great an impact as possible. Various surveys find that a disturbing proportion of the public don't think scientists agree about global warming so I suggest our goal be to establish "strengthening consensus" as a term in the general public consciousness (that goal can be a topic for discussion if required).

To achieve this goal, we mustn't fall into the trap of spending too much time on analysis and too little time on promotion. As we do the analysis, would be good to have the marketing plan percolating along as well. So a few ideas floating around:

Press releases: Talked to Ove about this yesterday, the Global Change Institute have a communications dept (well, two people) and will issue press releases to Australian media when this comes out. No plan yet for US media.
Mainstream Media: This is the key if we want to achieve public consciousness. MSM is an opaque wall to me so ideas welcome. I suspect this will involve developing time lines, building momentum for the idea and consulting with PR professionals like Jim Hoggan.
Climate Communicators: There needs to be a concerted effort (spearheaded by me) to get climate communicators using these results in their messaging. I've been hooking up with a lot of climate communicators over the last month and will be hooking up with more over the next few months so will be discussing these results with every climate communicator I can get hold of, including heavyweights like Susan Hassol and Richard Somerville, to discuss ways of amplifying this message.
Also Ed Maibach is doing research on the most effective way to debunk the "no consensus" myth so I hope to contact him and hopefully include our results in his research. The more we can get climate communicators incorporating our results into their messages, the better.
Blogosphere: The usual blogosphere networking. Note - Tim Lambert tried to do a similar crowd sourcing effort a few years ago but didn't succeed in generating enough support for the crowd sourcing - I'm confident we can get it done.
Climate Orgs: Also have been making connections with various climate organisations and occasionally talked about the possibility of collaboration so will use this project as a focal point as ways to work together. Have to think about this some more
Google: Coincidentally, started talking to someone who works at Google, specifically the data visualisation department. So I've been working with them on visualising the consensus data in sexy, interactive ways. This will be one of the X-factor elements of TCP - maybe they can even provide an embeddable version of the visualisation which blogs and websites can use.
Video: Peter Sinclair is keen to produce a YouTube video about the TCP results to publish on the Yale Forum on Climate Change.
Booklet: similar to Guide and Debunking Handbook, explaining the results of the peer-reviewed paper in plain English with big shiny graphics (with translations, I suppose - they're a pain for me to convert but worthwhile doing).
Kindle/iBook version of Booklet (can you publish free books on Amazon?).
Embeddable widget: graphic showing the graph of strengthening consensus, updated each year, easily copy and pasteable into other blogs. I like this idea, can make TCP go viral and become ubiquitious on the climate blogosphere!
Other ideas very welcome.

Update - will continue to add to this list as more ideas come along.

Ari Jokimaki responded to Cook,

"I have to say that I find this planning of huge marketing strategies somewhat strange when we don't even have our results in and the research subject is not that revolutionary either (just summarizing existing research)." - Ari Jokimäki

Saturday, June 01, 2013

The Statistical Destruction of the 97% Consensus

Dr. Richard Tol has been tweeting a statistical destruction of the "97% consensus" study, Cook et al. (2013) by educating co-author Dana Nuccitelli as to why his "sample" is not representative.

"In his defense, [Dana] has had limited exposure to stats at uni" - Richard Tol

Including "global" before "climate change", Cook et al. dropped 75% of papers and changed disciplinary distribution.

Including "global" before "climate change", Cook et al. dropped many papers by eminent climate researchers.

Including "global" before "climate change", Cook et al. dropped 33 of the 50 most cited papers.

Choosing exclusive WoS over inclusive Scopus, Cook et al. dropped 35% of papers and changed disciplinary distribution.

As Dr. Tol so eloquently put it,

"[Dana] I think your sampling strategy is a load of nonsense." - Richard Tol

CV of Dr. Richard Tol: M.Sc. Econometrics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (1992); Ph.D. Economics (Thesis: "A decision-analytic treatise of the enhanced greenhouse effect"), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (1997); Researcher, Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (1992-2008); Visiting Researcher, Canadian Centre for Climate Research, University of Victoria, Canada (1994); Visiting researcher, Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment, University College London, United Kingdom (1995); Acting Programme Manager Quantitative Environmental Economics, Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands (1998-1999); Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University (1998-2000); Board Member, Centre for Marine and Climate Research, Hamburg University (2000-2006); Lead Author, IPCC (2001); Contributing Author and Expert Reviewer, IPCC (2001, 2007); Associate Editor, Environmental and Resource Economics Journal (2001-2006); Adjunct Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University (2000-2008); Michael Otto Professor of Sustainability and Global Change, Department of Geosciences and Department of Economics, Hamburg University, Germany (2000-2006); Editor, Energy Economics Journal (2003-Present); Visiting Research Scholar, Princeton Environmental Institute and Visiting Professor, Department of Economics, Princeton University (2005-2006); Research Professor, Economic and Social Research Institute, Ireland (2006-2011); Research Fellow, Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP), Center for Global Trade Analysis, Department of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University (2007-2010); Associate Editor, Economics E-Journal (2007-Present); Adjunct Professor, Department of Economics, Trinity College, Ireland (2010-2011); Professor of the Economics of Climate Change, Institute for Environmental Studies and Department of Spatial Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (2008-Present); Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Sussex, Falmer, United Kingdom (2012-Present)

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

97% Study Falsely Classifies Scientists' Papers, according to the scientists that published them

The paper, Cook et al. (2013) 'Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature' searched the Web of Science for the phrases "global warming" and "global climate change" then categorizing these results to their alleged level of endorsement of AGW. These results were then used to allege a 97% consensus on human-caused global warming.

To get to the truth, I emailed a sample of scientists whose papers were used in the study and asked them if the categorization by Cook et al. (2013) is an accurate representation of their paper. Their responses are eye opening and evidence that the Cook et al. (2013) team falsely classified scientists' papers as "endorsing AGW", apparently believing to know more about the papers than their authors.

Update 1: Dr. Tol also found problems with the classifications
Update 2: Dr. Morner, Soon and Carlin also falsely classified

Craig D. Idso
Ph.D. Geography
Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change

Dr. Idso, your paper 'Ultra-enhanced spring branch growth in CO2-enriched trees: can it alter the phase of the atmosphere’s seasonal CO2 cycle?' is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; "Implicitly endorsing AGW without minimizing it".

Is this an accurate representation of your paper?

Idso: "That is not an accurate representation of my paper. The papers examined how the rise in atmospheric CO2 could be inducing a phase advance in the spring portion of the atmosphere's seasonal CO2 cycle. Other literature had previously claimed a measured advance was due to rising temperatures, but we showed that it was quite likely the rise in atmospheric CO2 itself was responsible for the lion's share of the change. It would be incorrect to claim that our paper was an endorsement of CO2-induced global warming."

Nicola Scafetta
Ph.D. Physics
Research Scientist, ACRIM Science Team

Dr. Scafetta, your paper 'Phenomenological solar contribution to the 1900–2000 global surface warming' is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; "Explicitly endorses and quantifies AGW as 50+%"

Is this an accurate representation of your paper?

Scafetta: "Cook et al. (2013) is based on a strawman argument because it does not correctly define the IPCC AGW theory, which is NOT that human emissions have contributed 50%+ of the global warming since 1900 but that almost 90-100% of the observed global warming was induced by human emission.

What my papers say is that the IPCC view is erroneous because about 40-70% of the global warming observed from 1900 to 2000 was induced by the sun. This implies that the true climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling is likely around 1.5 C or less, and that the 21st century projections must be reduced by at least a factor of 2 or more. Of that the sun contributed (more or less) as much as the anthropogenic forcings.

The "less" claim is based on alternative solar models (e.g. ACRIM instead of PMOD) and also on the observation that part of the observed global warming might be due to urban heat island effect, and not to CO2.

By using the 50% borderline a lot of so-called "skeptical works" including some of mine are included in their 97%."

Any further comment on the Cook et al. (2013) paper?

Scafetta: "Please note that it is very important to clarify that the AGW advocated by the IPCC has always claimed that 90-100% of the warming observed since 1900 is due to anthropogenic emissions. While critics like me have always claimed that the data would approximately indicate a 50-50 natural-anthropogenic contribution at most.

What it is observed right now is utter dishonesty by the IPCC advocates. Instead of apologizing and honestly acknowledging that the AGW theory as advocated by the IPCC is wrong because based on climate models that poorly reconstruct the solar signature and do not reproduce the natural oscillations of the climate (AMO, PDO, NAO etc.) and honestly acknowledging that the truth, as it is emerging, is closer to what claimed by IPCC critics like me since 2005, these people are trying to get the credit.

They are gradually engaging into a metamorphosis process to save face.

Now they are misleadingly claiming that what they have always claimed was that AGW is quantified as 50+% of the total warming, so that once it will be clearer that AGW can only at most be quantified as 50% (without the "+") of the total warming, they will still claim that they were sufficiently correct.

And in this way they will get the credit that they do not merit, and continue in defaming critics like me that actually demonstrated such a fact since 2005/2006."

Nir J. Shaviv
Ph.D. Astrophysics
Associate Professor, Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Dr. Shaviv, your paper 'On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget' is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; "Explicitly endorses but does not quantify or minimise"

Is this an accurate representation of your paper?

Shaviv: "Nope... it is not an accurate representation. The paper shows that if cosmic rays are included in empirical climate sensitivity analyses, then one finds that different time scales consistently give a low climate sensitiviity. i.e., it supports the idea that cosmic rays affect the climate and that climate sensitivity is low. This means that part of the 20th century should be attributed to the increased solar activity and that 21st century warming under a business as usual scenario should be low (about 1°C).

I couldn't write these things more explicitly in the paper because of the refereeing, however, you don't have to be a genius to reach these conclusions from the paper."

Any further comment on the Cook et al. (2013) paper?

Shaviv: "Science is not a democracy, even if the majority of scientists think one thing (and it translates to more papers saying so), they aren't necessarily correct. Moreover, as you can see from the above example, the analysis itself is faulty, namely, it doesn't even quantify correctly the number of scientists or the number of papers which endorse or diminish the importance of AGW."

Update 1:

Dr. Tol also found problems with the classifications,

Richard S.J. Tol
Ph.D. Economics
Professor of the Economics of Climate Change, Vrije Universiteit

Dr. Tol found 7 papers falsely classified and 112 omitted,

Tol: "WoS lists 122 articles on climate change by me in that period. Only 10 made it into the survey.

I would rate 7 of those as neutral, and 3 as strong endorsement with quantification. Of the 3, one was rated as a weak endorsement (even though it argues that the solar hypothesis is a load of bull). Of the 7, 3 were listed as an implicit endorsement and 1 as a weak endorsement.

...from 112 omitted papers, one strongly endorses AGW and 111 are neutral"

On Twitter Dr. Tol had a heated exchange with one of the "Skeptical Science" authors of Cook et al. (2013) - Dana Nuccitelli,

Tol: "@dana1981 I think your data are a load of crap. Why is that a lie? I really think so."

Tol: "@dana1981 I think your sampling strategy is a load of nonsense. How is that a misrepresentation? Did I falsely describe your sample?"

Update 2:

Dr. Morner, Dr. Soon and Dr. Carlin were also falsely classified,

Nils-Axel Morner
Ph.D. Quaternary Geology
Professor Emeritus of Palegeophysics and Geodynamics, Stockholm University

Dr. Morner, your paper 'Estimating future sea level changes from past records' is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as having; "No Position on AGW".

Is this an accurate representation of your paper?

Morner: "Certainly not correct and certainly misleading. The paper is strongly against AGW, and documents its absence in the sea level observational facts. Also, it invalidates the mode of sea level handling by the IPCC."

Willie Soon
Ph.D. Rocket Science
Astrophysicist and Geoscientist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Dr. Soon, your paper 'Polar Bear Population Forecasts: A Public-Policy Forecasting Audit' is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as having; "No Position on AGW".

Is this an accurate representation of your paper?

Soon: "I am sure that this rating of no position on AGW by CO2 is nowhere accurate nor correct. Rating our serious auditing paper from just a reading of the abstract or words contained in the title of the paper is surely a bad mistake. Specifically, anyone can easily read the statements in our paper as quoted below:

"For example, Soon et al. (2001) found that the current generation of GCMs is unable to meaningfully calculate the effects that additional atmospheric carbon dioxide has on the climate. This is because of the uncertainty about the past and present climate and ignorance about relevant weather and climate processes."

Here is at least one of our positions on AGW by CO2: the main tool climate scientists used to confirm or reject their CO2-AGW hypothesis is largely not validated and hence has a very limited role for any diagnosis or even predicting real-world regional impacts for any changes in atmospheric CO2.

I hope my scientific views and conclusions are clear to anyone that will spend time reading our papers. Cook et al. (2013) is not the study to read if you want to find out about what we say and conclude in our own scientific works."

Any further comment on the Cook et al. (2013) paper?

Soon: "No extra comment on Cook et al. (2013) is necessary as it is not a paper aiming to help anyone understand the science."

Alan Carlin
Ph.D. Economics, MIT
Senior Operations Research Analyst, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Retired)

Dr. Carlin, your paper 'A Multidisciplinary, Science-Based Approach to the Economics of Climate Change' is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; "Explicitly endorses AGW but does not quantify or minimize".

Is this an accurate representation of your paper?

Carlin: "No, if Cook et al's paper classifies my paper, 'A Multidisciplinary, Science-Based Approach to the Economics of Climate Change' as "explicitly endorses AGW but does not quantify or minimize," nothing could be further from either my intent or the contents of my paper. I did not explicitly or even implicitly endorse AGW and did quantify my skepticism concerning AGW. Both the paper and the abstract make this clear. The abstract includes the following statement:

"The economic benefits of reducing CO2 emissions may be about two orders of magnitude less than those estimated by most economists because the climate sensitivity factor (CSF) is much lower than assumed by the United Nations because feedback is negative rather than positive and the effects of CO2 emissions reductions on atmospheric CO2 appear to be short rather than long lasting."

In brief, I argue that human activity may increase temperatures over what they would otherwise have been without human activity, but the effect is so minor that it is not worth serious consideration.

I would classify my paper in Cook et al's category (7): Explicit rejection with quantification. My paper shows that two critical components of the AGW hypothesis are not supported by the available observational evidence and that a related hypothesis is highly doubtful. I hence conclude that the AGW hypothesis as a whole is not supported and state that hypotheses not supported by evidence should be rejected.

With regard to quantification, I state that the economic benefits of reducing CO2 are about two orders of magnitude less than assumed by pro-AGW economists using the IPCC AR4 report because of problems with the IPCC science. Surely 1/100th of the IPCC AGW estimate is less than half of the very minor global warming that has occurred since humans became a significant source of CO2."

Any further comment on the Cook et al. (2013) paper?

Carlin: "If Cook et al's paper is so far off in its classification of my paper, the next question is whether their treatment of my paper is an outlier in the quality of their analysis or is representative. Since I understand that five other skeptic paper authors whose papers were classified by Cook et al. (Idso, Morner, Scaffeta, Soon, and Shaviv) have similar concerns to date, the classification problems in Cook's paper may be more general. Further, in all six cases the effect of the misclassifications is to exaggerate Cook et al's conclusions rather than being apparently random errors due to sloppy analysis. Since their conclusions are at best no better than their data, it appears likely that Cook et al's conclusions are exaggerated as well as being unsupported by the evidence that they offer. I have not done an analysis of each of the papers Cook et al. classified, but I believe that there is sufficient evidence concerning misclassification that Cook et al's paper should be withdrawn by the authors and the data reanalyzed, preferably by less-biased reviewers.

One possible explanation for this apparent pattern of misclassification into "more favorable" classifications in terms of supporting the AGW hypothesis is that Cook et al. may have reverse engineered their paper. That is, perhaps the authors started by deciding the "answer" they wanted (97 percent) based on previous alarmist studies on the subject. They certainly had strong motivation to come up with this "answer" given the huge propaganda investment by alarmists in this particular number. So in the end they may have concluded that they needed to reclassify enough skeptic papers into "more favorable" classifications in order to reach this possibly predetermined "answer" and hoped that these misclassifications would go unnoticed by the world's press and governmental officials trumpeting their scientifically irrelevant conclusions. Obviously, whether this was actually done is known only to the authors, but I offer it as a hypothesis that might explain the apparently widespread and one-directional misclassifications of skeptic papers. Mere sloppy analysis should have resulted in a random pattern of misclassifications."

Update 3:

Further analysis reveals that Cook et al. (2013) was created as a propaganda campaign not a scientific study and is shown to be statistically worthless by Dr. Tol,

Cook's 97% Consensus Study Game Plan Revealed (PopularTechnology.net, June 4, 2013)

The Statistical Destruction of the 97% Consensus (PopularTechnology.net, June 1, 2013)

Update 4:

Dr. Tol has published a scathing editorial in the Guardian and a peer-reviewed paper in the journal Energy Policy completely discrediting the shoddy methodology employed by Cook et al. (2013) and showed their findings to be worthless,

The claim of a 97% consensus on global warming does not stand up (The Guardian, June 6, 2014)

Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: A re-analysis
(Energy Policy, Volume 73, pp. 701–705, October 2014)
- Richard S. J. Tol

Rebuttal:

Alarmists continue to try and quote mine Dr. Scafetta's comments when he is clearly saying things that AGW "consensus" proponents do not support:

1. The sun can account for 40-70% of the observed warming.
2. The part of the warming not caused by the sun can be due to the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect and not CO2.
3. Climate sensitivity to CO2 is low at 1.5 C or less.
4. Climate models poorly reconstruct the solar signature and do not reproduce natural oscillations of the climate (AMO, PDO, NAO etc.)
5. IPCC 21st century projections must be reduced by at least a factor of 2 or more.

Not to mention his paper was roundly attacked in Alarmist blogs, such as RealClimate and listed as an "Anti-AGW paper" by one of the most prolific abstract raters of Cook et al. (2013), Ari Jokimäki.

Conclusion: The Cook et al. (2013) study is obviously littered with falsely classified papers making its conclusions baseless and its promotion by those in the media misleading.

CVs of Scientists:

Alan Carlin, B.S. Physics, California Institute of Technology (1959); Ph.D. Economics (Thesis: "An evaluation of U.S. government aid to India"), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1964); Foreign Area Fellow, Ford Foundation (1960-1963); Economist, The RAND Corporation (1963-1971); Director, Implementation Research Division, Office of Research and Development, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC (1971-1974); Editorial Board, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (2 years); Founding Member, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (1979); Senior Operations Research Analyst, Office of Research and Development and Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC (1974-2010)

Craig D. Idso, B.S. Geography, Arizona State University (1994); M.S. Agronomy, University of Nebraska - Lincoln (1996); Ph.D. Geography (Thesis: "Amplitude and phase changes in the seasonal atmospheric CO₂ cycle in the Northern Hemisphere"), Arizona State University (1998); President, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (1998-2001); Climatology Researcher, Office of Climatology, Arizona State University (1999-2001); Director of Environmental Science, Peabody Energy (2001-2002); Lectured in Meteorology, Arizona State University; Lectured in Physical Geography, Mesa and Chandler-Gilbert Community Colleges; Member, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); Member, American Geophysical Union (AGU); Member, American Meteorological Society (AMS); Member, Arizona-Nevada Academy of Sciences (ANAS); Member, Association of American Geographers (AAG); Member, Ecological Society of America (ECA); Member, The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi; Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (2002-Present); Lead Author, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (2009-Present)

Nicola Scafetta, Laurea in Physics, Università di Pisa, Italy (1997); Ph.D. Physics (Thesis: "An entropic approach to the analysis of time series"), University of North Texas (2001); Research Associate, Physics Department, Duke University (2002-2004); Research Scientist, Physics Department, Duke University (2005-2009); Visiting Lecturer, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (2008, 2010); Visiting Lecturer, University of North Carolina Greensboro (2008-2009); Adjunct Professor, Elon University (2010); Assistant Adjunct Professor, Duke University (2010-2012); Member, Editorial Board, Dataset Papers in Geosciences Journal; Member, American Physical Society (APS); Member, American Geophysical Union (AGU); Research Scientist, ACRIM Science Team (2010-Present)

Nils-Axel Morner, Fil. Kand. [B.A.], Stockholm University, Sweden (1962); Fil. Lic. [M.A.] Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden (1965); Fil. Dr. [Ph.D.] Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden (1969); Associate Professor of Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden (1969-1971); Associate Professor of General and Historical Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden (1971-1980); Secretary, Neotectonics Commission, INQUA (1977-1981); Editor, Bulletin of the INQUA Neotectonics Commission (1978-1996); Professor of General and Historical Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden (1981-1991); President, Neotectonics Commission, INQUA (1981-1991); Chairman, Nordic Historical Climatology Group (1989); Professor and Head, Department of Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics, Stockholm University, Sweden (1991-2005); Co-ordinator, INTAS project on Geomagnetism and Climate (1999-2003); President, Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, INQUA (1999–2003); Expert Reviewer, IPCC (2001, 2007); Professor Emeritus of Palegeophysics and Geodynamics, Stockholm University, Sweden (2005-Present); Golden Chondrite of Merit Award, University of the Algarve, Portugal (2008)

Nir J. Shaviv, B.A Physics Summa Cum Laude, Israel Institute of Technology (1990); M.S Physics, Israel Institute of Technology (1994); Ph.D. Astrophysics (Thesis: "The Origin of Gamma Ray Bursts"), Israel Institute of Technology (1996); The Wolf Award for excellence in PhD studies (1996); Lee DuBridge Prize Fellow, Theoretical Astrophysics Group, California Institute of Technology (1996-1999); Post Doctoral Fellow, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Toronto (1999-2001); The Beatrice Tremaine Award, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (2000); Senior Lecturer, Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (2001-2006); The Siegfried Samuel Wolf Lectureship in nuclear physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (2004); Associate Professor, Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (2006-2012); Professor, Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (2012-Present)

Richard S.J. Tol, M.Sc. Econometrics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (1992); Ph.D. Economics (Thesis: "A decision-analytic treatise of the enhanced greenhouse effect"), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (1997); Researcher, Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (1992-2008); Visiting Researcher, Canadian Centre for Climate Research, University of Victoria, Canada (1994); Visiting researcher, Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment, University College London, United Kingdom (1995); Acting Programme Manager Quantitative Environmental Economics, Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands (1998-1999); Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University (1998-2000); Board Member, Centre for Marine and Climate Research, Hamburg University (2000-2006); Lead Author, IPCC (2001); Contributing Author and Expert Reviewer, IPCC (2001, 2007); Associate Editor, Environmental and Resource Economics Journal (2001-2006); Adjunct Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University (2000-2008); Michael Otto Professor of Sustainability and Global Change, Department of Geosciences and Department of Economics, Hamburg University, Germany (2000-2006); Editor, Energy Economics Journal (2003-Present); Visiting Research Scholar, Princeton Environmental Institute and Visiting Professor, Department of Economics, Princeton University (2005-2006); Research Professor, Economic and Social Research Institute, Ireland (2006-2011); Research Fellow, Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP), Center for Global Trade Analysis, Department of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University (2007-2010); Associate Editor, Economics E-Journal (2007-Present); Adjunct Professor, Department of Economics, Trinity College, Ireland (2010-2011); Professor of the Economics of Climate Change, Institute for Environmental Studies and Department of Spatial Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (2008-Present); Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Sussex, Falmer, United Kingdom (2012-Present)

Wei-Hock "Willie" Soon, B.Sc. Aerospace Engineering Cum Laude, University of Southern California (1985); M.Sc. Aerospace Engineering, University of Southern California (1987); Ph.D. Rocket Science with distinction (Thesis: "Non-equilibrium kinetics in high-temperature gases"); Graduate Scholastic Award, IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society (1989); Rockwell Dennis Hunt Scholastic Award, University of Southern California (1991); Member, Tau Beta Phi (National Engineering Honor Society); Member, Sigma Gamma Tau (National Aerospace Engineering Honor Society); Post-Doctoral Fellow, Solar, Stellar, and Planetary Sciences Division, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (1991-1996); Astronomer, Mount Wilson Observatory (1992-2009); Astrophysicist and Geoscientist, Solar, Stellar, and Planetary Sciences Division, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (1997-Present); Visiting Professor, Department of Science and Environmental Studies, University of Putra, Malaysia (1999-2000); Annual Reviewer, Progress in Physical Geography Journal (2001-2002); Senior Scientist, George C. Marshall Institute (2001-2003); Former Member, American Astrophysical Society (AAS); Former Member, American Geophysical Union (AGU); Former Member, International Astronomical Union (IAU); Receiving Editor, New Astronomy Journal (2002-Present); Member, CANSTAT Advisory Board, Fraser Institute (2002-Present); Member, Advisory Board, National Center for Public Policy Research (2002); Smithsonian Institution Award for "Official Recognition of Work Performance Reflecting a High Standard of Accomplishment" (2003); Science Director, Center for Science and Public Policy (2003-2006); Petr Beckmann Award for "Courage and Achievement in Defense of Scientific Truth and Freedom" (2004); Chief Scientist, Science and Public Policy Institute (2007-2010); Senior Visiting Fellow, State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Xiamen University, China (2013-2014); Courage in Defense of Science Award (2014)