This four year old presentation by Dr. John Robson investigates the unsound origins and fundamental inaccuracy, even dishonesty, of the claim that 97% of scientists, or “the world’s scientists”, or something agree that climate change is man-made, urgent and dangerous.
For a transcript of this video including links to some of the sources, please visit https://climatediscussionnexus.com/videos/the-97-consensus-slogan/
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TRANSCRIPT
There are so many empty slogans out there I wish we could tackle all of them at once. But the “97% of scientists agree” is surely the elephant in the room. Lots of people have tried to rebut it by dismissing the notion of consensus itself, or by praising the historical examples of renegade scientists who went against a prevailing consensus and turned out to be right. But that unnecessarily concedes the major claim itself, which the evidence shows is simply not true. I hope you enjoy the video, and that you’ll share it widely.
-JR
Narrator
The claim that 97% of the world’s scientists agree is pretty much the ace of trumps in the whole climate debate. After all, who’s going to argue against a consensus that strong, backed by so many experts. But what exactly are they supposed to agree on? If you look behind the curtain, no one seems sure what the experts actually said. Or who they are. Or… anything.
John
At first glance it seems straightforward enough. In 2013 President Barack Obama famously tweeted that “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.”
In 2014, his Secretary of State John Kerry said 97% of “the world’s scientists tell us this is urgent.” And that same year, CNN said “97% of scientists agree that climate change is happening now, that it’s damaging the planet and that it’s manmade.”
Narrator
That’s pretty much what most people think when they hear the 97% slogan: Every scientist believes man-made climate change is an urgent crisis.
But there are millions of scientists in the world. How many exactly were surveyed? When were they surveyed? Who did it? And what exactly did they agree on?
John
Let’s find out. I’m John Robson and this is a Climate Discussion Nexus Fact Check on the 97 percent consensus slogan.
To begin with, there are some ideas that pretty much all scientists accept. For instance that birds are descended from dinosaurs, though that idea was once dismissed as highly eccentric. And when it comes to climate, you don’t need a poll to tell you that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, meaning it likely has some overall warming effect. That’s been known since the mid-1800s. And if you did do a survey, you would find overwhelming scientific agreement on that point.
Also, there are lots of indications that the world is somewhat warmer now than it was in the mid-1800s, the end of a natural cooling period called the Little Ice Age.
Finally, virtually nobody disputes that humans have changed the environment of our planet, by releasing emissions into the air, changing the land surface, putting things in the water, and so forth.
These aren’t controversial ideas, and they’re accepted even by most climate skeptics. What we don’t accept is that any of them prove that humans are the only cause of global warming, or that climate change is a dangerous threat.
If 97% of scientists believed that, it would be troubling. Though even so, we’d still have to find some plan whose benefits outweighed its costs. In any event, that level of consensus that the problem was manmade and urgent would certainly be noteworthy. But the thing is, they don’t agree on that.
A close look at what survey data we have, and there isn’t much, tells us, yes, there is a great deal of agreement that CO2 is a greenhouse gas to some degree, that the Earth has warmed in the last 160 years, and that humans affect their surroundings. But that survey data also tell us there’s far less agreement on everything else including whether we face a crisis.
So where did this 97% claim come from and why is it so widely repeated?
Narrator
The 97% claim seems to have begun with a historian of science named Naomi Oreskes who, in 2004, claimed she’d looked at 928 articles about climate change in scientific journals, that 75% of them endorsed the “consensus view” that “Earth’s climate is being affected by human activities” and that none directly disputed it.
By 2006, in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, this finding had somehow morphed into “a massive study of every scientific article in a peer-reviewed journal written on global warming for the last 10 years and they took a big sample of 10%, 928 articles, and you know the number of those that disagreed with the scientific consensus that we’re causing global warming and that it’s a serious problem? Out of the 928, zero.”
John
That was a fib. Gore took a study that found 75% endorsed the idea that humans have some effect on climate and turned it into proof that 100% of scientists believe it’s a serious problem. It does no such thing.
Narrator
And nor do the handful of other surveys on the subject. For instance five years later, in 2009, a pair of researchers at the University of Illinois sent an online survey to over 10,000 Earth scientists asking two simple questions: Do you agree that global temperatures have generally risen since the pre-1800s? and Do you think that human activity is a significant contributing factor? [Note: They asked some other questions too, but didn’t report the questions or results in the publication.]
John
They didn’t single out greenhouse gases, they didn’t explain what the term “significant” meant and they didn’t refer to danger or crisis. So what was the result?
Narrator
Of the 3,146 responses they received, 90 percent said yes to the first question, that global temperatures had risen since the Little Ice Age, and only 82 percent said yes to the second, that human activity was a significant contributing factor.
Interestingly, among meteorologists only 64 percent said yes to the second, meaning a third of the experts in the study of weather patterns who replied didn’t think humans play a significant role in global warming, let alone a dominant one.
What got the most media attention was that among the 77 respondents who described themselves as climate experts, 75 said yes to the second question. 75 out of 77 is 97%.
John
OK, it didn’t get any media attention that they took 77 out of 3,146 responses. But that’s the key statistical trick. They found a 97 percent consensus among 2 percent of the survey respondents. And even so it was only that there’d been some warming since the 1800s, which virtually nobody denies, and that humans are partly responsible. These experts didn’t say it was dangerous or urgent, because they weren’t asked. [Note: or as noted above, if they were the results weren’t reported.]
So far the claim that 97% of “world scientists” are saying there’s a climate crisis is pure fiction. But wait, you say. There must be more. Yes, there is. But not much.
Narrator
Another survey appeared in 2013, by Australian researcher John Cook and his coauthors, in which they claimed to have examined about 12,000 scientific papers related to climate change, and found that 97% endorsed the consensus view that greenhouse gases were at least partly responsible for global warming. This study generated headlines around the world, and it was the one to which Obama’s tweet was referring.
John
But here again, appearances were deceiving.
Two-thirds of the papers that Cook and his colleagues examined expressed no view at all on the consensus. Of the remaining 34%, the authors claimed that 33% endorsed the consensus. Divide 33 by 34 and you get 97%. But this result is essentially meaningless, because they set the bar so low.
The survey authors didn’t ask if climate change was dangerous or “manmade”. They only asked if a given paper accepted that humans have some effect on the climate, which as already noted is uncontroversial. It could mean as little as accepting the “urban heat island” effect.
So a far better question would be: How many of the studies claimed that humans have caused most of the observed global warming? And oddly, we do know. Because buried in the authors’ data was the answer: A mere 64 out of nearly 12,000 papers! That’s not 97%, it’s one half of one percent. It’s one in 200.
And it gets worse. In a follow-up study, climatologist David Legates read those 64 papers and found that a third of them didn’t even say what Cook and his team claimed. Only 41 actually endorsed the view that global warming is mostly manmade. And we still haven’t got to it being “dangerous”. That part of the survey results was simply invented, by politicians and activists.
Other researchers have condemned the Cook study on other grounds too. For instance economist Richard Tol showed that over three-quarters of the papers counted as endorsing even the weak consensus actually said nothing at all on the subject. And evidence later emerged that the authors of the paper were drafting press releases about their findings before they even started doing the research, which indicates an alarming level not of warming or of consensus but of bias.
The reality is that neither this study, nor a handful of others like it, prove that 97% of scientists believe climate change is mostly manmade, let alone that it’s a crisis. The fact that people who claim to put such stock in “settled science” accept such obvious statistical hocus pocus is both astounding and disappointing.
Narrator
So what do climate experts really think? The year before Obama sent out his tweet, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) surveyed its 7,000 members. They got about 1,800 responses. Of those, only 52% said they think global warming over the 20th century has happened and is mostly manmade. The remaining 48% either think it happened but is mostly natural, or it didn’t happen, or they don’t know. And while it’s possible that the three-quarters who didn’t answer split the same way as those who did, it’s also possible that committed alarmists are more likely to answer such surveys. In any case, it’s a small sample, even of AMS members, let alone of the world’s scientists.
John
There was one more survey a few years later by the Netherlands Environment Agency that claimed 66% of climate experts believed humans were mostly responsible for warming since 1950. Which falls far short of 97% even if it outperforms the other studies.
A social psychologist named Jose Duarte, who specializes in survey design, published an analysis of that one, pointing out that they diluted the sample by including large numbers of psychologists, philosophers, political scientists, and other non-experts, making their results meaningless as a measure of what scientists think. Just as you’ll find that the people who cite that 97% number are overwhelmingly not trained scientists, certainly not trained statisticians.
Narrator
So we’re no farther ahead than when we began. Most experts agree on the basics, namely that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and probably causes some warming and that humans have some impact on climate probably including some warming. But they actively debate the rest: How much warming will there be? Is it a problem? Should we try to stop it, or adapt, or wait and see? These are all important questions and we need good answers.
John
And there’s the claim that many of the world’s national science academies, representing hundreds of thousands of scientists across the globe, have issued statements supporting the consensus about global warming and demanding government efforts to cut emissions. The problem is, not a single one of those societies took a survey of their members before issuing their statements in the name of their members. The statements were put out by a small number of activists using their committee positions to make it look as though their views are shared by all the world’s experts. But if they are, why didn’t these authors survey their members before publishing the statements?
There are a couple of other studies that claimed to prove a consensus. But they run into the same problems. All they show is wide agreement on the uncontroversial bits. They offer no information about whether a majority of scientists think global warming is a crisis. And then they’re spun wildly by non-scientists to tell us things they don’t begin to say, often about questions they didn’t even attempt to investigate .
The problem isn’t just that we don’t know what percentage of scientists agrees with this or that statement about global warming. It’s something much worse. All this talk of a 97% consensus amounts to a dishonest bullying campaign to stifle scientific debate just when we need it most because the question looms so large in public policy.
As physicist Richard Feynmann once said, “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.” And that’s especially true when we’re asked to take drastic action based on those answers.
Not long ago that survey expert I mentioned earlier, Jose Duarte, warned his fellow scientists about the negative consequences of claiming consensus. He said:
“It is ill advised to report a consensus as though it is an aggregation of independent judgments. Humans are an ultrasocial species, and dissent is far costlier than assent to a perceived majority… A scientist who contests the prevailing narrative on human-caused warming, or merely produces smaller estimates, will likely end up on a McCarthyite blacklist of ‘deniers’. Self-described mainstream climate scientists refer the public to such lists, implicitly endorsing the smearing of their colleagues. This is disturbing, and unheard of in other sciences.”
The unfortunate truth is that there is strong political pressure for climate experts not to question claims of impending doom. Those who do so face steep personal and professional costs, including a barrage of abuse that can be highly unpleasant for people who mostly wanted to devote their lives to the quiet pursuit of knowledge not to noisy polemics. And that means we should listen carefully to them when they feel compelled to speak out anyway.
Whether they represent 50%, or 10%, or 3% of experts, what matters is the evidence they bring and the quality of their arguments.
And on that, I would hope we have 100 percent agreement.
For the Climate Discussion Nexus, I’m John Robson.
HT/Pierre Gosselin
100% Gore is an ass.
No! 101%
I’m still waiting for an Abel Prize to be awarded to a football coach for proving the existence of 110%
Algore is an idiot.
His net worth of $300 mln does not support this statement.
https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-politicians/democrats/al-gore-net-worth/
Thief, or idiot.
So, you are making the case for lying thief rather than idiot.
Just shows that he was smart enough to get elected.
Once elected it’s pretty easy for a national politician to become a multi-millionaire.
All you have to do is sell access to yourself and make promises you have no intention of keeping.
Then there is trading in stocks based on what you learn in closed sessions. Something that is illegal for anyone other than a congressmen or senator.
It shocked me when I learned the part about legal insider trading circa 2007. Literally a US Senator can buy Crapco stock, award a $Trillion contract to Crapco, contribute a positive quote to the WSJ article about Crapco, sell inflated Crapco stock, retract the $Trillion contract from Crapco, say terrible things about why Crapco lost funding to the WSJ, then repurchase deflated Crapco stock and revive the $Trillion contract.
If personal wealth is an indication of intelligence (or ethics and honesty?), then you must hold Trump in high regard.
One thing Al did was buy stock in some company touting making algae into bio fuel. Then he used his bully pulpit to to tout that company, raising it’s stock prices.
Then he dumped his stock and touted something else instead.
If there is one common thread running through the so-called climate crisis, it is the abuse and the torture of data, and the wildly twisted statistical methodologies (and computer models) employed.
“I’ve just completed Mike’s [Mann] Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s [Briffa] to hide the decline.” —Dr. Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit, disclosed Climategate e-mail, Nov. 16, 1999
Plus ça change.
It’s a religious cult- and they’re all corrupt and nuts.
Al Gore is a lawyer. What in hell does he know about climate and calculations?
Global warming usually is equated with retained energy in the atmosphere, as explained below.
Excerpt from:
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/hunga-tonga-volcanic-eruption
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/natural-forces-cause-periodic-global-warming
Retained Energy in Atmosphere
The retained energy in the atmosphere is ONE net effect of the interplay of the sun, atmosphere, earth surface land and water, and what grows on the surface and in water. CO2 plays a 0.69% retained energy role.
Dry Air and Water Vapor
ha = Cpa x T = 1006 kJ/kg.C x T, where Cpa is specific heat of dry air
hg = (2501 kJ/kg, specific enthalpy of WV at 0 C) + (Cpwv x T = 1.84 kJ/kg x T), where Cpwv is specific heat of WV at constant pressure
1) Worldwide, determine enthalpy of moist air: T = 16 C and H = 0.0025 kg WV/kg dry air (4028 ppm)
h = ha + H.hg = 1.006T + H(2501 + 1.84T) = 1.006 (16) + 0.0025 {2501 + 1.84 (16)} = 22.4 kJ/kg dry air
About 16.1 kJ/kg of dry air is retained by air and 6.3 kJ/kg by WV
2) Tropics, determine enthalpy of moist air: T = 27 C and H = 0.017 kg WV/kg dry air (27389 ppm)
h = 1.006 (27) + 0.017 {2501 + 1.84 (16)} = 70.5 kJ/kg dry air
About 27.2 kJ/kg of dry air is retained by air and 43.3 kJ/kg by WV
https://www.wikihow.com/Calculate-the-Enthalpy-of-Moist-Air#:~:text=The%20equation%20for%20enthalpy%20is,specific%20enthalpy%20of%20water%20vapor.
CO2
h CO2 = Cp CO2 x K = 0.834 x (16 + 273) = 241 kJ/kg CO2, where Cp CO2 is specific heat
Worldwide, determine enthalpy of CO2 = {(423 x 44)/(1000000 x 29) = 0.000642 kg CO2/kg dry air} x 241 kJ/kg CO2 @ 289 K = 0.155 kJ/kg dry air.
Retained Energy
In 2023, 16 C
World: (16.1 + 6.3 + 0.155) kJ/kg dry air) x 1000J/kJ x 5.148 x 10^18 kg x 1/10^18 = 1.161 x 10^5 EJ
Dry air, WV and CO2 played 71.38%, 27.93% and 0.69% retained energy roles.
Tropics: (27.2 + 43.3 + 0.155) kJ/kg dry air x 1000J/kJ x 2.049 x 10^18 kg, atmosphere x 1/10^18 = 1,448 x 10^5 EJ.
Dry air, WV and CO2 played 38.5%, 61.28% and 0.219% retained energy roles.
The Tropics is a giant energy storage area, almost all of it by evaporating water. At least 35% of the Tropics energy is transferred, 24/7/365, to areas north and south of the 37 parallels with energy deficits
Humans consumed 604/365 = 1.65 EJ/d, in 2022
In 1900, 14.8 C
World: (14.8 +5.8 +0.106) kJ/kg dry air) x 1000 J/kJ x 5.148 x 10^18 kg x 1/10^18 = 1.066 x 10^5 EJ
Dry air, WV and CO2 played 71.48%, 28.01% and 0.51% retained energy roles.
The 2023/1900 retained energy ratio was 1.089
NOTE: This video shows, CO2 plays no retained energy role in the world’s driest places, with 423 ppm CO2 and minimal WV ppm, i.e., blaming CO2 for global warming is an unscientific hoax.
https://youtu.be/QCO7x6W61wc
Gore IS NOT a lawyer.
You are right.
A checkered background
Gore was an avid reader who fell in love with scientific and mathematical theories, but he did not do well in science classes and avoided taking math.
During his first two years, his grades placed him in the lower one-fifth of his class.
During his second year, he reportedly spent much of his time watching television, shooting pool and occasionally smoking marijuana.
In his junior and senior years, he became more involved with his studies, earning As and Bs.
In his senior year, he took a class with oceanographer and global warming theorist Roger Revelle, who sparked Gore’s interest in global warming and other environmental issues.
Gore earned an A on his thesis, “The Impact of Television on the Conduct of the Presidency, 1947–1969”, and graduated with an A with honors, in June 1969
He was in Vanderbilt Law School, but when he found his father’s seat was available, he ran and won.
Like McKibben- a BA from Hah-vid. Wow, lib arts degree from an ivy league school. They’re not so great. A friend went to Northeastern Law School. He said his class did much better on the BAR test than those from Hah-vid Law.
The Ivy Leagues have a good reputation, so the “best and the brightest” want to go there. Once there, they make connections with other well connected students, which ensures that after graduation they have easy access to the best jobs.
The problem is, this all based on the reputation of the Ivy Leagues as offering the best education money can buy.
This reputation may have been earned, 100 years ago. However in recent years, it’s been obvious that the quality of Ivy League graduates is falling. I’ve read several reports in recent months, that more and more hiring managers aren’t even considering Ivy League graduates anymore.
With comments such as Ivy League graduates only know how to be activists and they expect a corner office on day one.
from 2008, but still relevant
UN Infects Science with Cancer of Global Warming (icecap.us)
Al G. is mentioned several times.
This essay is sometimes referred to as the “edblickrant”.
He’s a swindler…
One of my all time favorite films. A masterpiece. I especially liked the scene where Hoffman is sleeping in a teepee with 3 Native American sisters. 🙂 The poor man was required to er… uh… entertain all 3.
Correct. He is a politician aka snake oil salesman.
Al Gore is a defrocked journalist, son of a powerful Senator who paved the way for Al to be what he became, an empty suit.
“the oceans are boiling”
“The interior of the earth is millions of degrees”
But that’s only as you approach the center of the earth — several million miles below the surface.
“Al Gore is a lawyer.”
No
Al Gore is a liar.
And the difference?
There are skid marks in front of a liar.
I remember when he was VP and running for President, he blatantly violated US election laws by using taxpayer dollars to campaign out his VP office.
When caught and confronted, he did didn’t deny it.
He simply said, “There is no controlling legal authority.”
Who was going to arrest him?
The thermal conductivity of air is 0.024 W/m C. Water vapor is 0.0206 and CO2 is 0.0146. Nitrogen is .024.
CO2 has very little effect in the resistance of heat flow through the atmosphere.
The units of specific conductivity are different from specific heat retention capacity
True. Both are needed.
We are talking about radiation, not conductivity.
The two main ways that energy moves through the atmosphere is by radiation and turbulence. Conductivity is not a factor.
“Al Gore is a lawyer. What in hell does he know about climate and calculations?”
He knows how to use climate scaremongering to make money.
He is not a lawyer. He is a failed politician and successful alternative energy investor. He took two basic science classes in college but did not get an A or B for either one.
************************
”In 1900, 14.8 C”
No one knows the global average temperature in 1900
“blaming CO2 for global warming is an unscientific hoax.”
Your post is unscientific claptrap.
“The problem is, not a single one of those societies took a survey of their members before issuing their statements in the name of their members.”
This is a question of lack of ‘due process’ that should occur in science as well as law. Scientific societies became larger even in their administration and of course cases of political activism. There is also fake due process in setting items up in a way too difficult to study or too biased. Is there a survey of societies’ membership surveys about important matters? Do those in charge know that they are failing in due process?
And yet, our various alarmists are always screaming that all of the Scientific “societies” have agreed with them.
Stephen Schneider said all the way back in 1989 that it was okay for climate scientists to lie to get their political agenda accomplished. The climate industrial complex has never disavowed this anti-science position and continues to embrace “noble cause corruption” in their continuous propaganda campaign.
“If there is one common thread running through the so-called climate crisis, it is the abuse and the torture of data”
Corrupt data reveal the basic dishonesty of Climate Howlers.
The most corruption is from data free wild guesses of a coming CAGW crisis, that has been predicted since 1979, and has not shown up.
The big corruption is claiming long term climate (average temperature) predictions are possible (not true) and that the only possible prediction is CAGW (GAT could be higher or lower in 100 t years — no one knows which)
The CAGW prediction is usually called climate change
The CAGW prediction does need a warming trend since 1975 to be believable but is NOT based on any historical GAT trends. The UAH trend would work as a replacement for NASA-GISS or HadCRUT.
The prediction of CAGW is not historical
It is hysterical.
CAGW is imaginary, much faster warming than actually experienced since 1975.
There was an erratum by Orekes declaring to haven’t used google correctly searching for scientific paper.
An historian of science… Not a scientist
Much like Richard Parncutt – musicologist… not a musician.
Oreskes is actually a human-caused climate change propagandist.
I think the term Gauleiter is more appropriate…. I’m sure even she would describe herself as [solidly NSDAP and as] a senior leader of the movement.
all for “the cause”
When it was written, 97% was certainly not the case. Unfortunately now, a high proportion of scientists are financially dependent on the narrative, so agreeing or not isn’t that relevant any more.
There is a move by the looney left to legitimize consensus as a part of the scientific process. They suggest that consensus plays a role in the acceptance of scientific theories like, for example, evolution. Yet in my entire life, which is now pretty long, I do not recall a single defense of evolution, or any other scientific theory, which stooped to consulting the consensus. It seems to me that consensus was only legitimized as something that a scientist could cite, solely for the purpose of defending AGW. I think that if anybody purporting to be scientific plays the consensus card, they should be humiliated with cries of ‘shame, shame’.
Consensus is replacing scientific method in many of our public schools.
“Why 100? If I were wrong one would be have been enough.” -Albert Einstein
A 2022 survey with no apparent bias (some libertarians just wanted to know the right percentage) found a 59% consensus of scientists on CAGW, at some unspecified time in the future.
AGW
The estimated (my estimate) 99.9% consensus is a meaningful consensus because it is based on evidence and there have been 127 years to disprove the AGW theory
CAGW
The 59% consensus is meaningless because there are no CAGW data — CAGW is a fantasy climate that has been predicted for 44 years and we are still waiting to experience CAGW.
How many climate scientists predict CAGW?
It’s not 97% and never was
Climate Howlers had a strong desire for a huge consensus percentage to support the Appeal to Authority logical fallacy behind CAGW. 59% is not strong enough.
CAGW has been predicted since the 1979 Charney Report, but has yet to show up, so a CAGW consensus would be very useful for public relations propaganda.
To create a 97% consensus, the questions were worded so anyone who believed humans had some effect on the climate would be part of the 97%. I am part of the 97% even though I have no idea what percentage of the post-1975 warming was caused by humans.
The 97% was then spun as fully agreeing with the IPCC about CAGW — a political organization doing CAGW climate scaremongering
The question wording in most of the surveys forced almost everyone to be in the 97%. Cherry picking responses forced the results to 97%
The fact that more than one survey just happened to say 97% suggests said 97% suggest the 97% result existed BEFORE the survey was implemented.
I’ll attach a link to the 59% survey if I can find it. It was in a computer that died in 2022
The surveys are used to support consistently dishonest modern climate science, which consists of government bureaucrats predicting a coming climate catastrophe, as an excuse for leftist fascism in Washington DC..
(1)
Predict a coming climate crisis every year.
(2)
Reason given: ” Because we have
science degrees, and we say so ! ”
(3)
Claim you must be right, because almost everyone you know agrees with you !
(4)
Claim that 97% of scientists agree, so the science must be “settled” (as if science is ever settled!).
“The surveys are used to support consistently dishonest modern climate science, which consists of government bureaucrats predicting a coming climate catastrophe, as an excuse for leftist fascism in Washington DC.”
That’s what is really going on.
There is no such thing as climate science. Climatology, of course. Find me one person on the planet with a PhD in chemistry, geology, physics, fluid dynamics, EM fields and waves, thermodynamics, statistics, paleontology, volcanism, meteorology,, etc., etc., etc., and statistics, and I will point to that person and agree we have found a climate scientist. None of the computer programmers even come close.
Ant scientists who does research on climate science, and publishes at least one paper on the subject, is a climate scientist for at least part of his or her career.
That’s a classic anti climate emergency video. I have informed many climate whack jobs here in Wokeachusetts about it. I doubt any looked at it. They prefer having the scales over their eyes. Several more of Robson’s videos are on my list of classics that should be seen by every politician.
“Experts” putting the con in consensus.
This article explains what Benjamin Disraeli alluded to when he said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
This paragraph FTA distills the tactic:
“OK it didn’t get any media attention that they took 77 out of 3,146 responses. But that’s the key statistical trick. They found a 97 percent consensus among 2 percent of the survey respondents. And even so it was only that there’d been some warming since the 1800s, which virtually nobody denies, and that humans are partly responsible. These experts didn’t say it was dangerous or urgent, because they weren’t asked.”
““OK it didn’t get any media attention that they took 77 out of 3,146 responses. But that’s the key statistical trick. They found a 97 percent consensus among 2 percent of the survey respondents.”
That’s right. The real consensus was about two percent, not 97 percent. The “pollsters” just eliminated all those who did not support the consensus and did not count them. The “97 percent consensus” is a blatant lie created to promote the human-caused climate change agenda.
From research of long ago, so not sure the links still work.
As Legates et al., 2013 pointed out, Cook et al. defined the consensus as “most warming since 1950 is anthropogenic.” Cook then relied on three different levels of “endorsement” of that consensus and excluded 67% of the abstracts reviewed because they neither endorsed nor rejected the consensus.
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024;jsessionid=50408643435B65D1D23F1507F2D3898E.c4.iopscience.cld.iop.org
Doran and Kendall Zimmerman, 2009 – http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
An invitation to participate in the survey was sent to 10,257 Earth scientists. The database was built from Keane and Martinez [2007], which lists all geosciences faculty at reporting academic institutions, along with researchers at state geologic surveys associated with local Universities, and researchers at U.S. federal research facilities (e.g., U.S. Geological Survey, NASA, and NOAA (U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) facilities; U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories; (and so forth). [Note only government scientists, private sector need not apply]
This brief report addresses the two primary questions of the survey
1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global
With 3146 individuals completing.
In our survey, the most specialized and knowledgeable respondents (with regard to climate change) are those who listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change (79 individuals in total). Of these specialists, 96.2% (76 of 79) answered “risen” to question 1 and <b>97.4% (75 of 77) answered yes to question 2.
the AMS survey Stenhouse et al., 2014.
In this survey, global warming was defined as “the premise that the world’s average temperature has been increasing over the past 150 years, may be increasing more in the future, and that the world’s climate may change as a result.”
Questions –
Regardless of the cause, do you think that global warming is happening?
2a./2b How sure are you that global warming (a. is /b. is not) happening?
How sure are you? –Extremely –Very sure –Somewhat sure –Not at all sure -Don’t know –Not at all sure –Somewhat not sure – Very not sure – Extremely not sure
So answering the questions –
1) most warming since 1950 is anthropogenic?
2) When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
3) Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
4) Regardless of the cause, do you think that global warming is happening?
5) How sure are you that global warming (a. is /b. is not) happening?
Answers and questions use generalized words of most, think, significant, contributing and no values or significance is asked for. No where is proof or dates or amounts or data or +/- estimates required and did you see CO2 anywhere?
Do these questions really provide the answer that; stopping man-made, catastrophizing, CO2 control knob, ever increasing (global warming / climate change / disruption / weirding ) [pick 1 or more], which can only be prevented by higher taxes, more regulations and a loss of personal freedom will actually keep us all from floating down the River Styx in a handbasket?
These studies of studies of studies are no better than the old game of “telephone”. By the time the message of the original speaker gets around even a small circle of players, it has morphed into something entirely different from what was actually said by the original speaker.
Or in other terms. these studies of studies of studies are .. well, just plain gossip. Calling it scientific doesn’t make it scientific.
I suppose this is okay for an interview, but it’s rather disjointed and tells us nothing new.. Perhaps we can get a historian (other than Naomi Oreskes) to write an essay about the “Chain of 97%” surveys, claims, and other what-have-you.
Currently, Googling |zimmerman doran site:wattsupwiththat.com| returns “About 113 results (0.23 seconds),”
The subset |zimmerman doran thesis site:wattsupwiththat.com| returns “About 60 results (0.24 seconds)”
My interest in the above is the interview’s:
I know I’ve seen them, probably here, but here they are from Dave Burton’s very good http://www.burtonsys.com/climate/97pct/ . Thank you, Dave.
Q1. When compared with pre-1800’s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
1. Risen
2. Fallen
3. Remained relatively constant
4. No opinion/Don’t know
Q2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures? [This question wasn’t asked if they answered “remained relatively constant” to Q1]
1. Yes
2. No
3. I’m not sure
Q3. What do you consider to be the most compelling argument that supports your previous answer (or, for those who were unsure, why were they unsure)? [This question wasn’t asked if they answered “remained relatively constant” to Q1]
Q4. Please estimate the percentage of your fellow geoscientists who think human activity is a contributing factor to global climate change.
Q5. Which percentage of your papers published in peer-reviewed journals in the last 5 years have been on the subject of climate change?
Q6. Age
Q7. Gender
Q8. What is the highest level of education you have attained?
Q9. Which category best describes your area of expertise?
And, just for the heck of it. Googling |zimmerman doran “dave burton” site:wattsupwiththat.com| returns “About 9 results (0.21 seconds)”
People are looking for you Dave….
Jon Robson is an historian.
From the article: “The 97% Myth”
It is better described as “the 97% LIE”, because it is a blatant, deliberate lie, meant to deceive gullible people into believing that CO2 is dangerous and needs to be controlled.
It is an “Appeal to Authority” LIE to be used as argument ammunition by climate alarmists.
Climate Alarmism is made up of many blatant lies. Lies are the only thing climate alarmists have. It’s one lie after another from these conniving people.
Nobody mentions John Cook’s previous career as the author and artist of the Sev Trek webcomic, before he started his Skeptical Science website to jump on the AGW bandwagon.
Count me as a member of the 3%. I guess I’ll be handing out tunneling instructions and shovels as one of the first inmates at the Nancy Pelosi Climate Change Reeducation Center,
This is quite misleading. Only 64 papers of those surveyed explicitly quantified the exact human contribution to warming (e.g. “the human contribution to global warming is 90% or something in that vein), 922 papers explicitly stated that humans had caused most of the warming without quantifying it (e.g. “human activity has been the primary driver of 20th century warming), and 2,910 papers implicitly endorsed human causation without an explicit endorsement (e.g. “anthropogenic warming is expected to produced x,y,z outcomes by 2050”).
The paper is a literature survey, if a paper doesn’t contain an answer to the question being asked, it is treated as a non-response. If I ask 100 dentists which brand of toothpaste they recommend, and only 10 answer me, I have a sample size of 10, not 100.
That’s how it is supposed to be done. Unfortunately climate science has their own ways of doing things.
That’s exactly how Cook et al. treated the paper’s with no position on climate change. Glad we are in agreement that they did things correctly.
Mr. J: No, that’s not what Cook did. No surprise that you grasp what Cook did, then try to obfuscate it.
and it shows.
But not in a very favourable way 🙁
The methodology used to come up with the “97%” number is summarised in Table 3 of the Cook et al (2013) paper, a screenshot of which is attached to the end of this post.
The media reporting of the Cook et al paper, and all other similar “survey” papers, is 96-point (or larger) headlines starting “97% of scientists say …”.
The right-hand half of Table 3 (below) shows that it wasn’t 97% (or even 98.4%) of the “authors” … which equals “actively publishing PhD-wielding professional scientists” in this context … identified by the Cook et al team back in 2012/2013 as “Endorsing AGW”, it was 34.8%.
Hmmmmmm … the image file doesn’t “natively” render properly in my browser.
A “pro-tip” I learned a while back : Click with the right-hand mouse button on the image, then select whatever your browser’s closest equivalent to “Open Link in New Tab” is to get a “sharp” image.
Using “Ctrl plus mouse scroll-wheel“, or the “Ctrl plus ‘+’ and ‘-‘ keys”, will allow you to zoom in and out.
That isn’t how survey sampling works. Non-respondents can’t be held as taking a negative position, they are simply not part of the sample. You can’t assume to know their disposition. Any members of the population that are not part of the sample are meant to be represented by the sample.
If there are 200,000 dentists in the US, and I got 10 to respond to my survey, it is not correct to say that just 0.005% of dentists prefer Colgate, when 100% of the dentists in my sample did endorse it. And in fact it would be flagrantly misleading to say that 99.995% of dentists do not endorse Colgate.
The equivalent media headline for your hypothetical would have been :
“100% of dentists prefer Colgate ! ! !”
That is as “flagrantly misleading” as concluding that “0.005% of dentists prefer Colgate”.
The correct conclusion in your hypothetical would be :
“We have no idea whatsoever what percentage of ‘all dentists’ prefer Colgate”.
Why is it so difficult for you to see the difference between “X% of scientists“, which is the template that all the media headlines used when “reporting” on the Cook et al paper, and “X% of scientists who expressed a preference” ?
Critics of Cook et al, and all similar “survey” papers, are not saying that the 7930 “No AGW position” papers do not endorse AGW, they are saying that simply discarding two-thirds of the papers analysed isn’t a good idea.
Because those aren’t really different things. If a paper says anything about the causes of 20th century climate change, there is a 97% chance it will indicate humans as a primary driver. That is to say that of scientific research dealing with the causes of modern climate change, almost all of it agrees with the IPCC. And, even more, that percentage has been increasing over time.
They aren’t discarded, those papers are discussed in Cook et al. They just aren’t treated as negative responses, which is the thing that has the contrarian set riled up.
I’m afraid we are “talking past each other” here.
It is your opinion that they “aren’t really different things”.
To me, at least, they are very “different things”.
You are laser-focussed on how professional scientists (and/or mathematicians / statisticians ?) internally “interpret / translate” the wording used in studies similar to Cook et al.
Please read my posts again.
I am more concerned about how “the person on the Clapham omnibus”, AKA “the general public”, will “interpret” the various (traditional and social) media articles about those same studies.
From the IPCC AR6 WG-I report, section 1.2.3.4, “Media Coverage of Climate Change”, on page 173 :
Both the “contrarian set” and the “alarmist set” are guilty of “misleading presentations of scientific findings” when it comes to “climate change topics”.
It’s possible for the media to misrepresent the findings of a study like this one, I agree with that, I don’t agree that the media largely has misrepresented the findings of this study. It is true that vastly more papers accept humans as the driver of modern warming than those that reject it. That is an accurate assessment of the findings of Cook’s study.
It’s possible that a credulous public might read the above and think, “every scientific paper written mentions the cause of climate change and Cook’s study looked at every paper,” but I have rather more faith in people than that.
So 64.6% (n=7930) of all the ‘scientists’ targeted / selected for Cook’s survey had NO INTEREST in answering his questions.
In my marketing days running focus groups, I’d have to report to my client that their product / service was a dud if it couldn’t pass the first hurdles of a productive engagement with the hoped-for market –
Attention > Interest > Desire > Conviction > Action
The survey was Doran & Zimmerman.
The Cook/SkS paper involved a literature review.
It was a literature survey, the papers either said something about the cause of climate change or they didn’t. If they did not say anything about the cause of climate change, the paper’s position on the cause of climate change couldn’t be evaluated – the same as a non-respondent to a phone or mail survey.
Either way, you still think these exercises represent any real-world knowledge about how our world works?
The AGW boosters “cocoon” is a wholly-predictable position on how they regard human CO2 emissions as the “control knob” of all the world’s hundreds of unique climates’ behaviors.
Theirs is a world of fantasy and nonsense.
It represents a general picture of the scientific sentiment toward anthropogenic climate change. It’s relevant only because there is a vocal group of people insisting that scientists disagree over the causes, in the same way creationists insist there is debate over evolution.
Climate “scientists” have never forecasted a 30-year “climate” forecast of the future and checked after 30 years to see if their forecast was accurate.
They use hindcasting but as anyone knows it is much easier to forecast the winner of a race after the race than before the race.
Hindcasting has another name.
It is called curve fitting.
Even with that advantage, the hindcasts still can’t manage to duplicate what actually happened.
I think we need a definition of “climate expert”, How does one fqualify for the credential? What American Universities offer a degree in “Climate Science”?
I also think using the term “skeptic” is not helpful as it sort of concedes the high ground to the alarmists. How about we start identifying as “Climate Realists??
Mr. q: “check your work” is not in the dna of CliSci’s, it’s just one of those meaningless catch-phrases we denialists toss out there to annoy them.
Related education for young readers:
When Cigarette Companies Used Doctors to Push Smoking | HISTORY
“The 97% claim seems to have begun … in 2004”
Still alive in 2024. Must have been well said.
It’s a depressing confirmation of the power of propaganda.
This is really good. Has anyone tried to dispute this video? I have a lot of respect for John Robson.
“Australian researcher John Cook”
Calling Cook a “researcher” is quite a stretch. Cartoonist, wannabe Nazi, propagandist, all of those would be more accurate.