The “97% Consensus” Breaks Down

I’ve already, like many others, beaten up on the recent paper claiming there is a 97% consensus of Hotcoldwetdry doom. Here’s Lord Christopher Monckton on the further destruction of the meme, doing a guest post at William W. Briggs (via Tom Nelson)

A major peer-reviewed paper by four senior researchers has exposed grave errors in an earlier paper in a new and unknown journal that had claimed a 97.1% scientific consensus that Man had caused at least half the 0.7 Co global warming since 1950. (Snip)

The new paper by the leading climatologist Dr David Legates and his colleagues, published in the respected Science and Education journal, now in its 21st year of publication, reveals that Cook had not considered whether scientists and their published papers had said climate change was “dangerous”.

The consensus Cook considered was the standard definition: that Man had caused most post-1950 warming. Even on this weaker definition the true consensus among published scientific papers is now demonstrated to be not 97.1%, as Cook had claimed, but only 0.3%.

Only 41 out of the 11,944 published climate papers Cook examined explicitly stated that Man caused most of the warming since 1950. Cook himself had flagged just 64 papers as explicitly supporting that consensus, but 23 of the 64 had not in fact supported it.

What the original Cook paper was attempting to do was find a way to link consensus, which is not science, to papers that were supposedly scientific, and say “see? Consensus is science!”

Make sure to read the whole thing.

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4 Responses to “The “97% Consensus” Breaks Down”

  1. john says:

    Legates receives heavy funding from ExxonMobil
    Legates has been told by the Governor of the State of Delaware to stop using the title os State Climatologist.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Legates
    As for the Journal of Science and Education being respected, it is not respected. It is little more than a sham. A simple google search would have shown that. Every major national and international scientific organization believes in AGW. The last 4 heads of the EPA under Republican Presidents believes in AGW. The Pentagon believes in AGW.
    Apparently Legates does not.
    The consensus is in fact growing, even the GOP is now realizing thatb tehy were wrong

  2. Gail Combs says:

    there ANY country that does not believe in AGW?
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>
    Yes the Russians, the Chinese and Czechoslovakia.

    Straight from PRAVDA:
    Earth on the Brink of an Ice Age

    How Ice Age Begins

    Russian Scientists: ‘We Could Face Cooling Period For 200-250 Years’ http://thegwpf.us4.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=edfee3ba24&e=d42d210d4d

    According to scientists from the Pulkovo Observatory in St.Petersburg, solar activity is waning, so the average yearly temperature will begin to decline as well. To go along with that is a paper Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says “…Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun….”

    Czech President Klaus: Global Warming Not Science, but a ‘New Religion’

    China is being China and dancing around the issue. The Chinese Academy of Sciences is now going to look at the issue this month (as CAGW is sinking) but I doubt China is going to worry over much when they have REAL POLLUTION ISSUES they need to address ASAP.

  3. Wonderful_Gumballs says:

    John, when you keep saying “belief” you keep affirming that what you follow is a religion, not science.

    Science is based on data, numbers, and testable observable verifiable data.

    Using belief, theory, models, suppositions, hypotheticals, and belief in the impossible… is not science.

    The whole religion of CAGW is not based on sound science or real bio\physio-chemical reactions.
    ~Rising CO2 does not increase temperatures noticeably.
    ~Rising CO2 does not increase sea levels.
    ~Rising CO2 does not lead to 1:1 temperature increases.
    ~Rising greenhouse gases do not necessarily trap more heat.
    ~there is no such thing as runaway heat.
    ~Weather we’ve experienced has happened before.
    ~We know at most 25% of natural processes affecting this globe.
    ~We only know 75% of everything that is on this earth now. We know less about what was on the earth.
    ~We still don’t know how clouds really affect climate.
    ~Local weathermen still are not reliable outside of a weeks forecast.

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