Another fun climate change thread

Though you have only to google any part of it, I will do it for you.

Popular Technology.net: 97% Study Falsely Classifies Scientists' Papers, according to the scientists that published them
_______________________________________________________________________

So now we can get back to this:

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.

For example:

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?

"That is not an accurate representation of my paper . . . It would be incorrect to claim that our paper was an endorsement of CO2-induced global warming."
____________________________________________________

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?

"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."
__________________________________________________

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?

"Nope... it is not an accurate representation . . . "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."
____________________________________________________

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?

"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."
___________________________________________________

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?

"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."
__________________________________________________________________________

And here is a representative from the Sierra Club parroting the 97% consensus bullshit and being grilled by Senator Cruz.



__________________________________________________________________________

And this:

The participating scientists accepted "The Science of Climate Change" in Madrid last November; the --- full IPCC accepted it the following month in Rome. But more than 15 sections in Chapter 8 of the report -- the key chapter setting out the scientific evidence for and against a human influence over climate -were changed or deleted after the scientists charged with examining this question had accepted the supposedly final text.

Few of these changes were merely cosmetic; nearly all worked to remove hints of the skepticism with which many scientists regard claims that human activities are having a major impact on climate in general and on global warming in particular.

The following passages are examples of those included in the approved report but deleted from the supposedly peer-reviewed published version:

-- "None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases."


-- "No study to date has positively attributed all or part [of the climate change observed to date] to anthropogenic [man-made] causes."

-- "Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced."

 

Yeah, I do. Why don't you provide the number of scientists that were involved in this 97% consensus figure. I've already shown you that the authors of some of the papers used have said that their Papers and positions have been misrepresented. But go ahead tell me how many scientists you believe make up that 97% figure. And also go ahead and provide the questions that were asked of these scientists.

 

Storch, you neglected to mention that as part of the Cook study, the scientists involved, including the ones cited in your source I can only assume, were invited to rate their own papers.

From the study-

"We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%). Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For both abstract ratings and authors' self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position on AGW marginally increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.

Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature - IOPscience

So while the 97% is misleading in that it only includes scientists who have expressed a position, of those who have expressed a position, 97% have taken the position that anthropological climate change is real - even after invited to clarify their own papers

 

Also, I looked into your source

Popular Technology - Media Bias/Fact Check

 

I assume that you're trying to make the point that the scientists who answered an email and said that their Papers were misclassified never said such a thing because you don't like the messenger. Is that what you're implying?

 

Yeah, about that:

How many climate scientists make up that 97% of all climate scientists consensus?

 

Lol that's hilariously misleading

 

Not sure, i'll find out. I'm confident the number is higher than the 4 scientists cited in the one biased source you're using to prove your point.

 

Yeah, and about that:

John Cook’s 97% consensus paper was never going to tell us anything about climate science, so it does seem somewhat pointless to analyze the entrails. It was always a marketing ploy. If it had been done well it might have been useful as a proxy for government funding in science. But it wasn’t, so all we’re left with is some insight about the state of academic competence.

Finding a consensus should have been easy. After all, billions of dollars of funding has gone to find some evidence (any evidence) that CO2 causes a crisis, and entire research departments have been set up to produce papers to discuss that. And if they didn’t find evidence (they didn’t), they could still write papers discussing the bias of instruments, the error bars, the adjustments, and so on and so forth. What are the chances that hordes of scientists would not find anything to publish? We also know that while believers were being employed left, far-left, and center, quite a few skeptics were sacked. Sometimes skeptical papers got delayed by up to two years, while there was usually a rapid-print option for believers. Once, a whole journal was even shut down for publishing skeptical papers (the sin!).

In that environment, how hard would it be to find “a consensus” among government funded officially approved climate scientists? A gift project, you would think, for any half-capable data-cruncher who can read and spell. Which is why it’s all the more amazing that the Cook 97% consensus paper managed to get so much so wrong:

1. The study can’t be replicated. (Legates et al)
2. The data is hidden. Either Cook et al didn’t keep it (and are incompetent) or they did but it does not reflect well on them and they won’t release it (they are incompetent and deceptive too?).
3. The definitions changed between the claims in the abstract and those in the paper. (Legates et a
4. The raters were not independent. 7% of the ratings were wrong, and biased.
5. The ratings data shows inexplicable patterns.
6. Cook et al fail to report that their data fail their own validation test.
7. Most of the papers were irrelevant. Those authors were writing about “impacts” or “mitigation” of climate change and not about the cause of climate change. Obviously skeptical scientists will not write about “mitigation” or “impacts” of climate change, so including these papers (and there are thousands) served the purpose of increasing the total number of papers claimed to be surveyed and also increases the percentage of “consensus”. That is an utterly predictable outcome. Good PR, lousy design.
8. It’s not a representative sample, and Cook did not test to see if it was.
9. The paper is used to make profoundly unscientific statements in the media. Cook et al endorse the fallacies.

Cook scores 97% for incompetence on a meaningless consensus « JoNova

 

Just google it . . .

 

Here's something:

That’s a 0.3% consensus, not 97%
We’ve already found enough flaws, but Christopher Monckton analyzes John Cook’s 97% consensus paper and sharpens the scythe. He finds:

1. It should never have been done, it’s an unscientific method — “consensus”
2. The “consensus” was defined in three different ways. (Which hypothesis are they testing?) None of the three definitions is specific enough to be falsifiable.
3. The paper strangely omitted the key results. (Why make 7 classifications, if they were not going to disclose how many papers fell into each category?)
4. Of nearly 12,000 abstracts analyzed, there were only 64 papers in category 1 (which explicitly endorsed man-made global warming). Of those only 41 (0.3%) actually endorsed the quantitative hypothesis as defined by Cook in the introduction. A third of the 64 papers did not belong.
5. None of the categories endorsed “catastrophic” warming — a warming severe enough to warrant action — though this was assumed in the introduction, discussion and publicity material.
6. The consensus (such as there is, and it being irrelevant) appears to be declining.

That’s a 0.3% consensus, not 97% « JoNova

Also:

None of the seven “levels of endorsement” by which Cook et al. categorize their selected abstracts provides evidence that any of the 11,944 abstracts encompasses the catastrophist definition (3):

1. “Explicitly states that humans are the primary cause of global warming”
2. “Explicit endorsement without quantification”
3. “Implicit endorsement”
4. “No opinion, or uncertain”
5. “Implicit rejection”
6. “Explicit rejection without quantification”
7. “Explicit rejection with quantification”

 

Got it. From the Cook study - 11,994 abstracts studied

Of that, before the authors were invited to rate their own studies, the study found roughly 33% agreed with manmade climate change (remember, thats compared to 66% with no position).

So thats roughly just shy of 4000 abstract articles expressing a positive concensus on anthropological climate change

And please note the number of authors expressing no position went down to 33% when the authors were invited to rate their own abstracts, yet the percentage of scientists expressing a positive position stated the same (97%)

Give or take because i'm not factoring in the 3% of nays and i'm doing a lot of rounding here because i'm lazy

 

Even if some were miscategorized, Reality isn't a consensus. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. The increase in temperature has been in line with the increase in CO2. We know at an atomic scale that the CO2 increase is caused by human consumption of hydrocarbons.

Also, what an awful website. Stock photos, no TLS certs, only a third of the page used. Since the editors and the authors of populartechnology.net are developers, no wonder they have to shill out to big conspiracy. They suck at their day job.

 

You should probably read my last post. And while you're at it, why don't you provide the number of those climate scientists who've endorsed the catastrophe scenario?

 

Cook's data

Re: Open letter on access to data for replication

Dear Professor Høj,

I was struck by a recent paper published in Environmental Research Letters with John Cook, a University of Queensland employee, as the lead author. The paper purports to estimate the degree of agreement in the literature on climate change. Consensus is not an argument, of course, but my attention was drawn to the fact that the headline conclusion had no confidence interval, that the main validity test was informal, and that the sample contained a very large number of irrelevant papers while simultaneously omitting many relevant papers.

My interest piqued, I wrote to Mr Cook asking for the underlying data and received 13% of the data by return email. I immediately requested the remainder, but to no avail.

I found that the consensus rate in the data differs from that reported in the paper. Further research showed that, contrary to what is said in the paper, the main validity test in fact invalidates the data. And the sample of papers does not represent the literature. That is, the main finding of the paper is incorrect, invalid and unrepresentative.

Furthermore, the data showed patterns that cannot be explained by either the data gathering process as described in the paper or by chance. This is documented. I asked Mr Cook again for the data so as to find a coherent explanation of what is wrong with the paper. As that was unsuccessful, also after a plea to Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the director of Mr Cook’s work place, I contacted Professor Max Lu, deputy vice-chancellor for research, and Professor Daniel Kammen, journal editor. Professors Lu and Kammen succeeded in convincing Mr Cook to release first another 2% and later another 28% of the data.

I also asked for the survey protocol but, violating all codes of practice, none seems to exist. The paper and data do hint at what was really done. There is no trace of a pre-test. Rating training was done during the first part of the survey, rather than prior to the survey. The survey instrument was altered during the survey, and abstracts were added. Scales were modified after the survey was completed. All this introduced inhomogeneities into the data that cannot be controlled for as they are undocumented.

The later data release reveals that what the paper describes as measurement error (in either direction) is in fact measurement bias (in one particular direction). Furthermore, there is drift in measurement over time. This makes a greater nonsense of the paper.

Richard Tol: half Cook’s data still hidden. Rest shows result is incorrect, invalid, unrepresentative. « JoNova
________________________________________________________________________

Biases in consensus data

According to Cook et al., each abstract was assessed by at least 2 and at most 3 raters. In fact, 33 abstracts were seen by only one rater, 167 by four raters, and 5 by five. If the initial ratings disagreed, as they did in 33% of cases, abstracts were revisited by the original raters. In 15.9% of cases, this led to agreement. In 17.1% of cases, a third rater broke the tie.

A reported error rate of 33%, with 2 ratings and 7 categories, implies that 18.5% of ratings were incorrect. 0.6% of abstracts received two identical but wrong ratings. 2.9% of ratings are still wrong after reconciliation. 3.2% of ratings are wrong after re-rating. In total, 6.7% of reported data are in error.

The figure shows that the corrections to the ratings through reconciliation and re-rating were, on balance, towards rejection of the hypothesis of human-made climate change. In other words, these were not errors in either direction, but rather biases in one direction.

Richard Tol: Biases in consensus data

 

I wouldn't waste my time.... Not a dig, your posts make it nearly impossible to differentiate your own views from information copied from your source.

 

You are getting bogged down in nothingness

Even some guy thats a "climate scientist" studying the co2 content of each ringbark in some dumb tree, what the hell is he going to know about anything else? The same shit everyone else reads.

Those guys dont get in those positions from being top of their class in the first place.

Just keep it simple. Temperature increases in the last 100 years, what percentage of that is because of humans, 20,40, 80%

Why is it no one on the planet can even answer that simple question?

 

Sounds like you want me to read what I post from a site, and then paraphrase it for you. That's not necessary. I stand by what I post, and if you have a rebuttal to what I've posted, whether copied or not, let's hear it, and we'll go from there. Not a dig, but you can complain about the information I've found and posted concerning the credibility of Cook's 97% consensus, or you can provide something to refute it. Otherwise you're just making noise.