Global Cooling
Jul 7, 2014 09:31:14 #
A new batch of 5,000 emails among scientists central to the assertion that humans are causing a global warming crisis were anonymously released to the public yesterday, igniting a new firestorm of controversy nearly two years to the day after similar emails ignited the Climategate scandal.
Three themes are emerging from the newly released emails: (1) prominent scientists central to the global warming debate are taking measures to conceal rather than disseminate underlying data and discussions; (2) these scientists view global warming as a political cause rather than a balanced scientific inquiry and (3) many of these scientists frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data.
Regarding scientific transparency, a defining characteristic of science is the open sharing of scientific data, theories and procedures so that independent parties, and especially skeptics of a particular theory or hypothesis, can replicate and validate asserted experiments or observations. Emails between Climategate scientists, however, show a concerted effort to hide rather than disseminate underlying evidence and procedures.
Ive been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process,writes Phil Jones, a scientist working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a newly released email.
Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get and has to be well hidden, Jones writes in another newly released email. Ive discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.
The original Climategate emails contained similar evidence of destroying information and data that the public would naturally assume would be available according to freedom of information principles. Mike, can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Assessment]? Jones wrote to Penn State University scientist Michael Mann in an email released in Climategate 1.0. Keith will do likewise. We will be getting Caspar [Ammann] to do likewise. I see that CA [the Climate Audit Web site] claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!
The new emails also reveal the scientists attempts to politicize the debate and advance predetermined outcomes.
The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] whats included and what is left out of IPCC reports, writes Jonathan Overpeck, coordinating lead author for the IPCCs most recent climate assessment.
I gave up on [Georgia Institute of Technology climate professor] Judith Curry a while ago. I dont know what she thinks shes doing, but its not helping the cause, wrote Mann in another newly released email.
I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose skeptical scientist Steve McIntyre, Mann writes in another newly released email.
These new emails add weight to Climategate 1.0 emails revealing efforts to politicize the scientific debate. For example, Tom Wigley, a scientist at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, authored a Climategate 1.0 email asserting that his fellow Climategate scientists must get rid of the editor for a peer-reviewed science journal because he published some papers contradicting assertions of a global warming crisis.
More than revealing misconduct and improper motives, the newly released emails additionally reveal frank admissions of the scientific shortcomings of global warming assertions.
Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary, writes Peter Thorne of the UK Met Office.
I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run, Thorne adds.
Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC, Wigley acknowledges.
More damaging emails will likely be uncovered during the next few days as observers pour through the 5,000 emails. What is already clear, however, is the need for more objective research and ethical conduct by the scientists at the heart of the IPCC and the global warming discussion.
James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News.
Three themes are emerging from the newly released emails: (1) prominent scientists central to the global warming debate are taking measures to conceal rather than disseminate underlying data and discussions; (2) these scientists view global warming as a political cause rather than a balanced scientific inquiry and (3) many of these scientists frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data.
Regarding scientific transparency, a defining characteristic of science is the open sharing of scientific data, theories and procedures so that independent parties, and especially skeptics of a particular theory or hypothesis, can replicate and validate asserted experiments or observations. Emails between Climategate scientists, however, show a concerted effort to hide rather than disseminate underlying evidence and procedures.
Ive been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process,writes Phil Jones, a scientist working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a newly released email.
Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get and has to be well hidden, Jones writes in another newly released email. Ive discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.
The original Climategate emails contained similar evidence of destroying information and data that the public would naturally assume would be available according to freedom of information principles. Mike, can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Assessment]? Jones wrote to Penn State University scientist Michael Mann in an email released in Climategate 1.0. Keith will do likewise. We will be getting Caspar [Ammann] to do likewise. I see that CA [the Climate Audit Web site] claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!
The new emails also reveal the scientists attempts to politicize the debate and advance predetermined outcomes.
The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] whats included and what is left out of IPCC reports, writes Jonathan Overpeck, coordinating lead author for the IPCCs most recent climate assessment.
I gave up on [Georgia Institute of Technology climate professor] Judith Curry a while ago. I dont know what she thinks shes doing, but its not helping the cause, wrote Mann in another newly released email.
I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose skeptical scientist Steve McIntyre, Mann writes in another newly released email.
These new emails add weight to Climategate 1.0 emails revealing efforts to politicize the scientific debate. For example, Tom Wigley, a scientist at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, authored a Climategate 1.0 email asserting that his fellow Climategate scientists must get rid of the editor for a peer-reviewed science journal because he published some papers contradicting assertions of a global warming crisis.
More than revealing misconduct and improper motives, the newly released emails additionally reveal frank admissions of the scientific shortcomings of global warming assertions.
Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary, writes Peter Thorne of the UK Met Office.
I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run, Thorne adds.
Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC, Wigley acknowledges.
More damaging emails will likely be uncovered during the next few days as observers pour through the 5,000 emails. What is already clear, however, is the need for more objective research and ethical conduct by the scientists at the heart of the IPCC and the global warming discussion.
James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News.
Jul 7, 2014 09:39:27 #
http://www.petitionproject.org/purpose_of_petition.php
The purpose of the Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of settled science and an overwhelming consensus in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climatological damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis.
Publicists at the United Nations, Mr. Al Gore, and their supporters frequently claim that only a few skeptics remain skeptics who are still unconvinced about the existence of a catastrophic human-caused global warming emergency.
It is evident that 31,487 Americans with university degrees in science including 9,029 PhDs, are not "a few." Moreover, from the clear and strong petition statement that they have signed, it is evident that these 31,487 American scientists are not skeptics.
These scientists are instead convinced that the human-caused global warming hypothesis is without scientific validity and that government action on the basis of this hypothesis would unnecessarily and counterproductively damage both human prosperity and the natural environment of the Earth.
The purpose of the Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of settled science and an overwhelming consensus in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climatological damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis.
Publicists at the United Nations, Mr. Al Gore, and their supporters frequently claim that only a few skeptics remain skeptics who are still unconvinced about the existence of a catastrophic human-caused global warming emergency.
It is evident that 31,487 Americans with university degrees in science including 9,029 PhDs, are not "a few." Moreover, from the clear and strong petition statement that they have signed, it is evident that these 31,487 American scientists are not skeptics.
These scientists are instead convinced that the human-caused global warming hypothesis is without scientific validity and that government action on the basis of this hypothesis would unnecessarily and counterproductively damage both human prosperity and the natural environment of the Earth.
Jul 7, 2014 09:39:33 #
On Tuesday, a group of 50 international scientists released a comprehensive new report on the science of climate change that concluded that evidence now leans against global warming resulting from human-related greenhouse gas emissions.
The report, which cites thousands of peer-reviewed articles the United Nations-sponsored panel on climate change ignored, also found that "no empirical evidence exists to substantiate the claim that 2°C of warming presents a threat to planetary ecologies or environments" and no convincing case can be made that "a warming will be more economically costly than an equivalent cooling." The U.N.'s panel is scheduled to release its next report next month.
The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, or NIPCC, which produced the report, is described as "an international panel of scientists and scholars who came together to understand the causes and consequences of climate change." Unlike the "United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is government-sponsored, politically motivated, and predisposed to believing that climate change is a problem in need of a U.N. solution," NIPCC "has no formal attachment to or sponsorship from any government or governmental agency" and is "wholly independent of political pressures and influences and therefore is not predisposed to produce politically motivated conclusions or policy recommendations."
In Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science, which The Heartland Institute published and released on Tuesday, lead authors Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, and S. Fred Singer worked with a team of scientists to produce a 1,200-page report that is "comprehensive, objective, and faithful to the scientific method." They found that even "if the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide were to double," whatever "warming may occur would likely be modest and cause no net harm to the global environment or to human well-being."
Breitbart News obtained a detailed summary of the report's key findings. The report rebuts the alarmist reports put out by the United Nations' IPCC, which the authors claim are in "contradiction of the scientific method" because the IPCC assumes that its implicit hypothesis that "dangerous global warming is resulting, or will result, from human-related greenhouse gas emissions" is correct and "that its only duty is to collect evidence and make plausible arguments in the hypothesiss favor.
According to the study's authors, "the hypothesis of human-caused global warming comes up short not merely of 'full scientific certainty' but of reasonable certainty or even plausibility. The weight of evidence now leans heavily against the theory."
The U.N.'s IPCC's first key claim is that "a doubling of atmospheric CO2 would cause warming between 3°C and 6°C." The study's authors, though, conclude that the "IPCC ignores mounting evidence that climate sensitivity to CO2 is much lower than its models assume." The NIPCC study discovered that warming actually "ceased around the end of the twentieth century and was followed (since 1997) by 16 years of stable temperature."
The IPCC also claims in its reports that "CO2 caused an atmospheric warming of at least 0.3°C over the past 15 years." The lead authors of the report, though, found that the IPCC used incomplete climate models in their research. In fact, the NIPCC's authors found that "no excess warming has been demonstrated."
The IPCC also asserts that a "thermal hot spot should exist in the upper troposphere in tropical regions" even though "observations from both weather balloon radiosondes and satellite MSU sensors show the opposite." Furthermore, the IPCC also asserts that "both polar regions should have warmed faster than the rest of Earth during the late twentieth century" when, in fact, "the large polar East Antarctic Ice Sheet has been cooling since at least the 1950s."
The authors write that the United Nations panel has made "climate change into a political issue long before the science was sufficiently advanced to inform policymakers" and that "most government signatories to the UNs Framework Convention on Climate Change have deferred to the monopoly advice of the IPCC in setting their national climate change policies."
"More than 20 years down the track, it is now evident this approach has been mistaken," they write. "One result has been the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars implementing energy policies that now appear to have been unnecessary, or at least ill-timed and ineffective."
NIPCC's findings "point toward several policy recommendations quite different from those that have come from the IPCC and its related agencies, bureaus, and commissions at the United Nations," and they include: taking into account "long-term trends" in climate science; seeking out advice from "independent, nongovernment organizations and scientists who are free of financial and political conflicts of interest"; allowing individual nations to "take charge of setting their own climate policies based upon the hazards that apply to their particular geography, geology, weather, and culture"; and recognizing "the theoretical hazard of dangerous human-caused global warming is but one small part of a much wider climate hazard," which is as much a "geological as it is a meteorological issue."
The study's authors conclude that "atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is a mild greenhouse gas that exerts a diminishing warming effect as its concentration increases" and even "doubling the concentration of atmospheric CO2 from its pre-industrial level, in the absence of other forcings and feedbacks, would likely cause a warming of ~0.3 to 1.1°C, almost 50% of which must already have occurred." Further, the study found that "a few tenths of a degree of additional warming, should it occur, would not represent a climate crisis" because, over recent geological time, the earth's "temperature has fluctuated naturally between about +4°C and -6°C with respect to twentieth century temperature. A warming of 2°C above today, should it occur, falls within the bounds of natural variability."
Even if a future warming of 2°C occurs, the authors observe that though it "would cause geographically varied ecological responses, no evidence exists that those changes would be net harmful to the global environment or to human well-being" because the "current level of ~400 ppm" proves that "we still live in a CO2-starved world. Atmospheric levels 15 times greater existed during the Cambrian Period (about 550 million years ago) without known adverse effects."
In addition, the earth "has not warmed significantly for the past 16 years despite an 8% increase in atmospheric CO2, which represents 34% of all extra CO2 added to the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution."
The U.N.'s IPCC continues, though, to postulate that "increases in atmospheric CO2 precede, and then force, parallel increases in temperature"; "solar forcings are too small to explain twentieth century warming"; and "a future warming of 2°C or more would be net harmful to the biosphere and human well-being." And the IPCC cites circumstantial evidence to support its global warming alarmism. Such evidence include an "unusual melting" that is occurring in mountain glaciers, Arctic sea ice, and polar icecaps," rising global sea levels, an increase in "droughts, floods, and monsoon variability and intensity," more intense "wildfires, rainfall, storms, hurricanes, and other extreme weather events," and an "unusual melting of Boreal permafrost or sub-seabed gas hydrates is causing warming due to methane release."
The report dismisses these claims with peer-reviewed evidence and concludes that "neither the rate nor the magnitude of the reported late twentieth century surface warming (19792000) lay outside normal natural variability," "solar forcings of temperature change are likely more important than is currently recognized, and evidence is lacking that a 2° C increase in temperature (of whatever cause) would be globally harmful."
"We conclude no unambiguous evidence exists for adverse changes to the global environment caused by human-related CO2 emissions," the authors write. "In particular, the cryosphere is not melting at an enhanced rate; sea-level rise is not accelerating; no systematic changes have been documented in evaporation or rainfall or in the magnitude or intensity of extreme meteorological events; and an increased release of methane into the atmosphere from permafrost or sub-seabed gas hydrates is unlikely."
The authors also note that "forward projections of solar cyclicity imply the next few decades may be marked by global cooling rather than warming, despite continuing CO2 emissions" and warn against using imperfect deterministic climate models to advocate for a "one size fits all" climate policy.
In light of these findings, which are "stated plainly and repeated in thousands of articles in the peer-reviewed literature" that are not "fringe," the authors emphasize that policymakers "should resist pressure from lobby groups to silence scientists who question the authority of the IPCC to claim to speak for 'climate science.'"
The report, which cites thousands of peer-reviewed articles the United Nations-sponsored panel on climate change ignored, also found that "no empirical evidence exists to substantiate the claim that 2°C of warming presents a threat to planetary ecologies or environments" and no convincing case can be made that "a warming will be more economically costly than an equivalent cooling." The U.N.'s panel is scheduled to release its next report next month.
The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, or NIPCC, which produced the report, is described as "an international panel of scientists and scholars who came together to understand the causes and consequences of climate change." Unlike the "United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is government-sponsored, politically motivated, and predisposed to believing that climate change is a problem in need of a U.N. solution," NIPCC "has no formal attachment to or sponsorship from any government or governmental agency" and is "wholly independent of political pressures and influences and therefore is not predisposed to produce politically motivated conclusions or policy recommendations."
In Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science, which The Heartland Institute published and released on Tuesday, lead authors Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, and S. Fred Singer worked with a team of scientists to produce a 1,200-page report that is "comprehensive, objective, and faithful to the scientific method." They found that even "if the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide were to double," whatever "warming may occur would likely be modest and cause no net harm to the global environment or to human well-being."
Breitbart News obtained a detailed summary of the report's key findings. The report rebuts the alarmist reports put out by the United Nations' IPCC, which the authors claim are in "contradiction of the scientific method" because the IPCC assumes that its implicit hypothesis that "dangerous global warming is resulting, or will result, from human-related greenhouse gas emissions" is correct and "that its only duty is to collect evidence and make plausible arguments in the hypothesiss favor.
According to the study's authors, "the hypothesis of human-caused global warming comes up short not merely of 'full scientific certainty' but of reasonable certainty or even plausibility. The weight of evidence now leans heavily against the theory."
The U.N.'s IPCC's first key claim is that "a doubling of atmospheric CO2 would cause warming between 3°C and 6°C." The study's authors, though, conclude that the "IPCC ignores mounting evidence that climate sensitivity to CO2 is much lower than its models assume." The NIPCC study discovered that warming actually "ceased around the end of the twentieth century and was followed (since 1997) by 16 years of stable temperature."
The IPCC also claims in its reports that "CO2 caused an atmospheric warming of at least 0.3°C over the past 15 years." The lead authors of the report, though, found that the IPCC used incomplete climate models in their research. In fact, the NIPCC's authors found that "no excess warming has been demonstrated."
The IPCC also asserts that a "thermal hot spot should exist in the upper troposphere in tropical regions" even though "observations from both weather balloon radiosondes and satellite MSU sensors show the opposite." Furthermore, the IPCC also asserts that "both polar regions should have warmed faster than the rest of Earth during the late twentieth century" when, in fact, "the large polar East Antarctic Ice Sheet has been cooling since at least the 1950s."
The authors write that the United Nations panel has made "climate change into a political issue long before the science was sufficiently advanced to inform policymakers" and that "most government signatories to the UNs Framework Convention on Climate Change have deferred to the monopoly advice of the IPCC in setting their national climate change policies."
"More than 20 years down the track, it is now evident this approach has been mistaken," they write. "One result has been the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars implementing energy policies that now appear to have been unnecessary, or at least ill-timed and ineffective."
NIPCC's findings "point toward several policy recommendations quite different from those that have come from the IPCC and its related agencies, bureaus, and commissions at the United Nations," and they include: taking into account "long-term trends" in climate science; seeking out advice from "independent, nongovernment organizations and scientists who are free of financial and political conflicts of interest"; allowing individual nations to "take charge of setting their own climate policies based upon the hazards that apply to their particular geography, geology, weather, and culture"; and recognizing "the theoretical hazard of dangerous human-caused global warming is but one small part of a much wider climate hazard," which is as much a "geological as it is a meteorological issue."
The study's authors conclude that "atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is a mild greenhouse gas that exerts a diminishing warming effect as its concentration increases" and even "doubling the concentration of atmospheric CO2 from its pre-industrial level, in the absence of other forcings and feedbacks, would likely cause a warming of ~0.3 to 1.1°C, almost 50% of which must already have occurred." Further, the study found that "a few tenths of a degree of additional warming, should it occur, would not represent a climate crisis" because, over recent geological time, the earth's "temperature has fluctuated naturally between about +4°C and -6°C with respect to twentieth century temperature. A warming of 2°C above today, should it occur, falls within the bounds of natural variability."
Even if a future warming of 2°C occurs, the authors observe that though it "would cause geographically varied ecological responses, no evidence exists that those changes would be net harmful to the global environment or to human well-being" because the "current level of ~400 ppm" proves that "we still live in a CO2-starved world. Atmospheric levels 15 times greater existed during the Cambrian Period (about 550 million years ago) without known adverse effects."
In addition, the earth "has not warmed significantly for the past 16 years despite an 8% increase in atmospheric CO2, which represents 34% of all extra CO2 added to the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution."
The U.N.'s IPCC continues, though, to postulate that "increases in atmospheric CO2 precede, and then force, parallel increases in temperature"; "solar forcings are too small to explain twentieth century warming"; and "a future warming of 2°C or more would be net harmful to the biosphere and human well-being." And the IPCC cites circumstantial evidence to support its global warming alarmism. Such evidence include an "unusual melting" that is occurring in mountain glaciers, Arctic sea ice, and polar icecaps," rising global sea levels, an increase in "droughts, floods, and monsoon variability and intensity," more intense "wildfires, rainfall, storms, hurricanes, and other extreme weather events," and an "unusual melting of Boreal permafrost or sub-seabed gas hydrates is causing warming due to methane release."
The report dismisses these claims with peer-reviewed evidence and concludes that "neither the rate nor the magnitude of the reported late twentieth century surface warming (19792000) lay outside normal natural variability," "solar forcings of temperature change are likely more important than is currently recognized, and evidence is lacking that a 2° C increase in temperature (of whatever cause) would be globally harmful."
"We conclude no unambiguous evidence exists for adverse changes to the global environment caused by human-related CO2 emissions," the authors write. "In particular, the cryosphere is not melting at an enhanced rate; sea-level rise is not accelerating; no systematic changes have been documented in evaporation or rainfall or in the magnitude or intensity of extreme meteorological events; and an increased release of methane into the atmosphere from permafrost or sub-seabed gas hydrates is unlikely."
The authors also note that "forward projections of solar cyclicity imply the next few decades may be marked by global cooling rather than warming, despite continuing CO2 emissions" and warn against using imperfect deterministic climate models to advocate for a "one size fits all" climate policy.
In light of these findings, which are "stated plainly and repeated in thousands of articles in the peer-reviewed literature" that are not "fringe," the authors emphasize that policymakers "should resist pressure from lobby groups to silence scientists who question the authority of the IPCC to claim to speak for 'climate science.'"
Jul 7, 2014 09:42:47 #
The Myth of the Climate Change '97%'
What is the origin of the false beliefconstantly repeatedthat almost all scientists agree about global warming?
By
Joseph Bast And
Roy Spencer
May 26, 2014 7:13 p.m. ET
Last week Secretary of State John Kerry warned graduating students at Boston College of the "crippling consequences" of climate change. "Ninety-seven percent of the world's scientists," he added, "tell us this is urgent."
Where did Mr. Kerry get the 97% figure? Perhaps from his boss, President Obama, who tweeted on May 16 that "Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous." Or maybe from NASA, which posted (in more measured language) on its website, "Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities."
Yet the assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made, urgent problem is a fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been contradicted by more reliable research.
One frequently cited source for the consensus is a 2004 opinion essay published in Science magazine by Naomi Oreskes, a science historian now at Harvard. She claimed to have examined abstracts of 928 articles published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and found that 75% supported the view that human activities are responsible for most of the observed warming over the previous 50 years while none directly dissented.
Ms. Oreskes's definition of consensus covered "man-made" but left out "dangerous"and scores of articles by prominent scientists such as Richard Lindzen, John Christy, Sherwood Idso and Patrick Michaels, who question the consensus, were excluded. The methodology is also flawed. A study published earlier this year in Nature noted that abstracts of academic papers often contain claims that aren't substantiated in the papers.
Enlarge Image
Getty Images/Imagezoo
Another widely cited source for the consensus view is a 2009 article in "Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union" by Maggie Kendall Zimmerman, a student at the University of Illinois, and her master's thesis adviser Peter Doran. It reported the results of a two-question online survey of selected scientists. Mr. Doran and Ms. Zimmerman claimed "97 percent of climate scientists agree" that global temperatures have risen and that humans are a significant contributing factor.
The survey's questions don't reveal much of interest. Most scientists who are skeptical of catastrophic global warming nevertheless would answer "yes" to both questions. The survey was silent on whether the human impact is large enough to constitute a problem. Nor did it include solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, meteorologists or astronomers, who are the scientists most likely to be aware of natural causes of climate change.
The "97 percent" figure in the Zimmerman/Doran survey represents the views of only 79 respondents who listed climate science as an area of expertise and said they published more than half of their recent peer-reviewed papers on climate change. Seventy-nine scientistsof the 3,146 who responded to the surveydoes not a consensus make.
In 2010, William R. Love Anderegg, then a student at Stanford University, used Google Scholar to identify the views of the most prolific writers on climate change. His findings were published in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. Mr. Love Anderegg found that 97% to 98% of the 200 most prolific writers on climate change believe "anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible for 'most' of the 'unequivocal' warming." There was no mention of how dangerous this climate change might be; and, of course, 200 researchers out of the thousands who have contributed to the climate science debate is not evidence of consensus.
In 2013, John Cook, an Australia-based blogger, and some of his friends reviewed abstracts of peer-reviewed papers published from 1991 to 2011. Mr. Cook reported that 97% of those who stated a position explicitly or implicitly suggest that human activity is responsible for some warming. His findings were published in Environmental Research Letters.
Mr. Cook's work was quickly debunked. In Science and Education in August 2013, for example, David R. Legates (a professor of geography at the University of Delaware and former director of its Center for Climatic Research) and three coauthors reviewed the same papers as did Mr. Cook and found "only 41 papers0.3 percent of all 11,944 abstracts or 1.0 percent of the 4,014 expressing an opinion, and not 97.1 percenthad been found to endorse" the claim that human activity is causing most of the current warming. Elsewhere, climate scientists including Craig Idso, Nicola Scafetta, Nir J. Shaviv and Nils- Axel Morner, whose research questions the alleged consensus, protested that Mr. Cook ignored or misrepresented their work.
Rigorous international surveys conducted by German scientists Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch most recently published in Environmental Science & Policy in 2010have found that most climate scientists disagree with the consensus on key issues such as the reliability of climate data and computer models. They do not believe that climate processes such as cloud formation and precipitation are sufficiently understood to predict future climate change.
Surveys of meteorologists repeatedly find a majority oppose the alleged consensus. Only 39.5% of 1,854 American Meteorological Society members who responded to a survey in 2012 said man-made global warming is dangerous.
Finally, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changewhich claims to speak for more than 2,500 scientistsis probably the most frequently cited source for the consensus. Its latest report claims that "human interference with the climate system is occurring, and climate change poses risks for human and natural systems." Yet relatively few have either written on or reviewed research having to do with the key question: How much of the temperature increase and other climate changes observed in the 20th century was caused by man-made greenhouse-gas emissions? The IPCC lists only 41 authors and editors of the relevant chapter of the Fifth Assessment Report addressing "anthropogenic and natural radiative forcing."
Of the various petitions on global warming circulated for signatures by scientists, the one by the Petition Project, a group of physicists and physical chemists based in La Jolla, Calif., has by far the most signaturesmore than 31,000 (more than 9,000 with a Ph.D.). It was most recently published in 2009, and most signers were added or reaffirmed since 2007. The petition states that "there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of . . . carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."
We could go on, but the larger point is plain. There is no basis for the claim that 97% of scientists believe that man-made climate change is a dangerous problem.
Mr. Bast is president of the Heartland Institute. Dr. Spencer is a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA's Aqua satellite.
What is the origin of the false beliefconstantly repeatedthat almost all scientists agree about global warming?
By
Joseph Bast And
Roy Spencer
May 26, 2014 7:13 p.m. ET
Last week Secretary of State John Kerry warned graduating students at Boston College of the "crippling consequences" of climate change. "Ninety-seven percent of the world's scientists," he added, "tell us this is urgent."
Where did Mr. Kerry get the 97% figure? Perhaps from his boss, President Obama, who tweeted on May 16 that "Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous." Or maybe from NASA, which posted (in more measured language) on its website, "Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities."
Yet the assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made, urgent problem is a fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been contradicted by more reliable research.
One frequently cited source for the consensus is a 2004 opinion essay published in Science magazine by Naomi Oreskes, a science historian now at Harvard. She claimed to have examined abstracts of 928 articles published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and found that 75% supported the view that human activities are responsible for most of the observed warming over the previous 50 years while none directly dissented.
Ms. Oreskes's definition of consensus covered "man-made" but left out "dangerous"and scores of articles by prominent scientists such as Richard Lindzen, John Christy, Sherwood Idso and Patrick Michaels, who question the consensus, were excluded. The methodology is also flawed. A study published earlier this year in Nature noted that abstracts of academic papers often contain claims that aren't substantiated in the papers.
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Another widely cited source for the consensus view is a 2009 article in "Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union" by Maggie Kendall Zimmerman, a student at the University of Illinois, and her master's thesis adviser Peter Doran. It reported the results of a two-question online survey of selected scientists. Mr. Doran and Ms. Zimmerman claimed "97 percent of climate scientists agree" that global temperatures have risen and that humans are a significant contributing factor.
The survey's questions don't reveal much of interest. Most scientists who are skeptical of catastrophic global warming nevertheless would answer "yes" to both questions. The survey was silent on whether the human impact is large enough to constitute a problem. Nor did it include solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, meteorologists or astronomers, who are the scientists most likely to be aware of natural causes of climate change.
The "97 percent" figure in the Zimmerman/Doran survey represents the views of only 79 respondents who listed climate science as an area of expertise and said they published more than half of their recent peer-reviewed papers on climate change. Seventy-nine scientistsof the 3,146 who responded to the surveydoes not a consensus make.
In 2010, William R. Love Anderegg, then a student at Stanford University, used Google Scholar to identify the views of the most prolific writers on climate change. His findings were published in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. Mr. Love Anderegg found that 97% to 98% of the 200 most prolific writers on climate change believe "anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible for 'most' of the 'unequivocal' warming." There was no mention of how dangerous this climate change might be; and, of course, 200 researchers out of the thousands who have contributed to the climate science debate is not evidence of consensus.
In 2013, John Cook, an Australia-based blogger, and some of his friends reviewed abstracts of peer-reviewed papers published from 1991 to 2011. Mr. Cook reported that 97% of those who stated a position explicitly or implicitly suggest that human activity is responsible for some warming. His findings were published in Environmental Research Letters.
Mr. Cook's work was quickly debunked. In Science and Education in August 2013, for example, David R. Legates (a professor of geography at the University of Delaware and former director of its Center for Climatic Research) and three coauthors reviewed the same papers as did Mr. Cook and found "only 41 papers0.3 percent of all 11,944 abstracts or 1.0 percent of the 4,014 expressing an opinion, and not 97.1 percenthad been found to endorse" the claim that human activity is causing most of the current warming. Elsewhere, climate scientists including Craig Idso, Nicola Scafetta, Nir J. Shaviv and Nils- Axel Morner, whose research questions the alleged consensus, protested that Mr. Cook ignored or misrepresented their work.
Rigorous international surveys conducted by German scientists Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch most recently published in Environmental Science & Policy in 2010have found that most climate scientists disagree with the consensus on key issues such as the reliability of climate data and computer models. They do not believe that climate processes such as cloud formation and precipitation are sufficiently understood to predict future climate change.
Surveys of meteorologists repeatedly find a majority oppose the alleged consensus. Only 39.5% of 1,854 American Meteorological Society members who responded to a survey in 2012 said man-made global warming is dangerous.
Finally, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changewhich claims to speak for more than 2,500 scientistsis probably the most frequently cited source for the consensus. Its latest report claims that "human interference with the climate system is occurring, and climate change poses risks for human and natural systems." Yet relatively few have either written on or reviewed research having to do with the key question: How much of the temperature increase and other climate changes observed in the 20th century was caused by man-made greenhouse-gas emissions? The IPCC lists only 41 authors and editors of the relevant chapter of the Fifth Assessment Report addressing "anthropogenic and natural radiative forcing."
Of the various petitions on global warming circulated for signatures by scientists, the one by the Petition Project, a group of physicists and physical chemists based in La Jolla, Calif., has by far the most signaturesmore than 31,000 (more than 9,000 with a Ph.D.). It was most recently published in 2009, and most signers were added or reaffirmed since 2007. The petition states that "there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of . . . carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."
We could go on, but the larger point is plain. There is no basis for the claim that 97% of scientists believe that man-made climate change is a dangerous problem.
Mr. Bast is president of the Heartland Institute. Dr. Spencer is a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA's Aqua satellite.
Jul 7, 2014 09:55:09 #
Summary:
1) 97% of 79 scientists does not make for a majority consensus. Consider that over 31,000 scientists in the USA refute the global warming contention.
2) scientists across the USA are distancing themselves (resigning from the APA) due to the APA's contention that evidence is "irrefutable".
3) in 150 years the average temperature has gone up 0.8C. This is well within the norms of the earth over time (+4C/-6C)
4) no hotspot in the upper troposphere has been detected though that is what the proponents of global warming model says is an indicator of global warming.
5) despite increased levels of CO2 the earth has NOT warmed as expected per the proponents of global warming models.
FACT: Global warming due to Man's activity is a Trillion dollar business.
Conclusion: There is NO PROOF that the Global Warming is underway or will ever happen due to our presence on the planet.
1) 97% of 79 scientists does not make for a majority consensus. Consider that over 31,000 scientists in the USA refute the global warming contention.
2) scientists across the USA are distancing themselves (resigning from the APA) due to the APA's contention that evidence is "irrefutable".
3) in 150 years the average temperature has gone up 0.8C. This is well within the norms of the earth over time (+4C/-6C)
4) no hotspot in the upper troposphere has been detected though that is what the proponents of global warming model says is an indicator of global warming.
5) despite increased levels of CO2 the earth has NOT warmed as expected per the proponents of global warming models.
FACT: Global warming due to Man's activity is a Trillion dollar business.
Conclusion: There is NO PROOF that the Global Warming is underway or will ever happen due to our presence on the planet.
Jul 7, 2014 09:55:31 #
Uh-oh. The Sky is Falling Environmental Nut Jobs have pissed off Hondo and now have to deal with the consequences of their incessant, squawking follies.
Get 'em, Hondo! They HATE facts, Hondo. HATE 'EM !
Get 'em, Hondo! They HATE facts, Hondo. HATE 'EM !
Jul 7, 2014 10:40:22 #
Hondo812: 97% of 79 scientists does not make for a majority consensus. Consider that over 31,000 scientists in the USA refute the global warming contention.
Nagy: This is untrue. The percentage applies to all climate scientists.
Hondo812: scientists across the USA are distancing themselves (resigning from the APA) due to the APA's contention that evidence is "irrefutable".
Nagy: The American Psychological Association?
Hondo 812: in 150 years the average temperature has gone up 0.8C. This is well within the norms of the earth over time (+4C/-6C)
Nagy: Really? Who said this? In the last 100 years alone it rose 1.3º F. (http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2013/03/ecoalert-since-industrial-revolution-earth-is-warmer-than-over-past-2000-years.html)
Hondo812: no hotspot in the upper troposphere has been detected though that is what the proponents of global warming model says is an indicator of global warming.
Nagy: The major claim for global warming is that it is. Temperatures are rising. Period.
Hondo812: despite increased levels of CO2 the earth has NOT warmed as expected per the proponents of global warming models.
Nagy: This is a nonsensical statement typical of those whose only interests in science are denying global warming and evolution. It states that global warming has not progressed the way some models predicted, therefore it is not happening at all. This is about as stupid as denying the Soviet missile sites in Cuban in 1962 because the degree of their operationality was not perfectly estimated.
Hondo812: FACT: Global warming due to Man's activity is a Trillion dollar business.
Nagy: More gems from a grandmaster of nonsense. He states that global warming must be a fraud in order to promote some people's bottom line. In fact, the serious scientific warnings began in the the 1950s and were utterly unconnected to any overt profit motive. Moreover, the finite nature of fossil fuels is argument enough against their continued use against easily renewable and in the long run cheaper alternatives. Finally, the greatest amount of monetary interest in the global warming issue is the fossil fuel industry itself, whose coffers no green interest can match.
Hond812: Conclusion: There is NO PROOF that the Global Warming is underway or will ever happen due to our presence on the planet.
Nagy: Conclusion: Hondo 812 has the reasoning ability of an amoeba.
Nagy: This is untrue. The percentage applies to all climate scientists.
Hondo812: scientists across the USA are distancing themselves (resigning from the APA) due to the APA's contention that evidence is "irrefutable".
Nagy: The American Psychological Association?
Hondo 812: in 150 years the average temperature has gone up 0.8C. This is well within the norms of the earth over time (+4C/-6C)
Nagy: Really? Who said this? In the last 100 years alone it rose 1.3º F. (http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2013/03/ecoalert-since-industrial-revolution-earth-is-warmer-than-over-past-2000-years.html)
Hondo812: no hotspot in the upper troposphere has been detected though that is what the proponents of global warming model says is an indicator of global warming.
Nagy: The major claim for global warming is that it is. Temperatures are rising. Period.
Hondo812: despite increased levels of CO2 the earth has NOT warmed as expected per the proponents of global warming models.
Nagy: This is a nonsensical statement typical of those whose only interests in science are denying global warming and evolution. It states that global warming has not progressed the way some models predicted, therefore it is not happening at all. This is about as stupid as denying the Soviet missile sites in Cuban in 1962 because the degree of their operationality was not perfectly estimated.
Hondo812: FACT: Global warming due to Man's activity is a Trillion dollar business.
Nagy: More gems from a grandmaster of nonsense. He states that global warming must be a fraud in order to promote some people's bottom line. In fact, the serious scientific warnings began in the the 1950s and were utterly unconnected to any overt profit motive. Moreover, the finite nature of fossil fuels is argument enough against their continued use against easily renewable and in the long run cheaper alternatives. Finally, the greatest amount of monetary interest in the global warming issue is the fossil fuel industry itself, whose coffers no green interest can match.
Hond812: Conclusion: There is NO PROOF that the Global Warming is underway or will ever happen due to our presence on the planet.
Nagy: Conclusion: Hondo 812 has the reasoning ability of an amoeba.
Jul 7, 2014 10:41:54 #
EngineerAl: Uh-oh. The Sky is Falling Environmental Nut Jobs have pissed off Hondo and now have to deal with the consequences of their incessant, squawking follies.
Get 'em, Hondo! They HATE facts, Hondo. HATE 'EM !
Nagy: One member of the Crackpot Choir cheers on the other. If only "Professor" Murry Salby (or is it Murray Salby?) could be induced to drop a few of his own gems on this thread.
Get 'em, Hondo! They HATE facts, Hondo. HATE 'EM !
Nagy: One member of the Crackpot Choir cheers on the other. If only "Professor" Murry Salby (or is it Murray Salby?) could be induced to drop a few of his own gems on this thread.
Jul 7, 2014 11:09:56 #
APA should be the APS.
Thank you Nagy for proofreading. It seems as if that is about all you are good for though. Be sure to keep that dictionary handy to alert me to any spelling errors I might make too!
You seem like an intelligent person. Unfortunately you are not very smart.
Thank you Nagy for proofreading. It seems as if that is about all you are good for though. Be sure to keep that dictionary handy to alert me to any spelling errors I might make too!
You seem like an intelligent person. Unfortunately you are not very smart.
Jul 7, 2014 12:44:35 #
hondo812 wrote:
APA should be the APS.
Thank you Nagy for proofreading. It seems as if that is about all you are good for though. Be sure to keep that dictionary handy to alert me to any spelling errors I might make too!
You seem like an intelligent person. Unfortunately you are not very smart.
Thank you Nagy for proofreading. It seems as if that is about all you are good for though. Be sure to keep that dictionary handy to alert me to any spelling errors I might make too!
You seem like an intelligent person. Unfortunately you are not very smart.
:thumbup:
Jul 7, 2014 13:07:52 #
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ROw_cDKwc0
Facts, showing how absurd and dishonest global warming fanatics truly are.
The equivalent is pretending that umbrellas cause rain.
Here is a video refuting another Big Lie by the left, that Bush "caused the financial debacle."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM
Yet another Leftist Talking Point is refuted here, in their own words:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSwSDvgw5Uc
Liberals get everything wrong. Everything. What can you expect when the Democrats' primary plank is murdering unborn innocent infants.
Facts, showing how absurd and dishonest global warming fanatics truly are.
The equivalent is pretending that umbrellas cause rain.
Here is a video refuting another Big Lie by the left, that Bush "caused the financial debacle."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM
Yet another Leftist Talking Point is refuted here, in their own words:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSwSDvgw5Uc
Liberals get everything wrong. Everything. What can you expect when the Democrats' primary plank is murdering unborn innocent infants.
Jul 8, 2014 01:13:00 #
http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/06/not-the-gingers-global-warming-zealots-now-claim-redheads-will-soon-disappear/#ixzz36o2qim6s
OH NOOOoooooooo!
Not the redheads!
:lol:
OH NOOOoooooooo!
Not the redheads!
:lol:
Jul 8, 2014 10:53:53 #
Hondo812: APA should be the APS.
Nagy: I had no idea what you meant, so I asked?
Hondo812: Thank you Nagy for proofreading. It seems as if that is about all you are good for though. Be sure to keep that dictionary handy to alert me to any spelling errors I might make too!
Nagy: Ah, your narrow little world is expanding, at least by a few angstroms. Previously you had indicated that my use of a dictionary was as a thesaurus from which I draw words to impress you.
Hond812: You seem like an intelligent person. Unfortunately you are not very smart.
Nagy: This is an exquisite illustration of your self-contradictory confusion.
Nagy: I had no idea what you meant, so I asked?
Hondo812: Thank you Nagy for proofreading. It seems as if that is about all you are good for though. Be sure to keep that dictionary handy to alert me to any spelling errors I might make too!
Nagy: Ah, your narrow little world is expanding, at least by a few angstroms. Previously you had indicated that my use of a dictionary was as a thesaurus from which I draw words to impress you.
Hond812: You seem like an intelligent person. Unfortunately you are not very smart.
Nagy: This is an exquisite illustration of your self-contradictory confusion.
Jul 8, 2014 11:01:49 #
EngineerAl: Liberals get everything wrong. Everything. What can you expect when the Democrats' primary plank is murdering unborn innocent infants.
Nagy: This man cannot disabuse himself of the idea that the Democrats are liberals. They are liberals bankrolled by much the same corporate interests as Republicans; the liberals who degraded Social Security benefits; the liberals who are presiding over record corporate profits during a period of economic contraction for ordinary people; the liberals who never made a serious effort to promulgate the liberal agenda that prevails in other countries, such as socialized medicine, a free college education for those who are capable of doing the work, longer vacations, earlier retirement, lengthy maternity leave, etc. The idea is as irrational as most of what Al posts, but of course his opinions are immune to both fact and reason, because they are articles of faith that need no proof.
Nagy: This man cannot disabuse himself of the idea that the Democrats are liberals. They are liberals bankrolled by much the same corporate interests as Republicans; the liberals who degraded Social Security benefits; the liberals who are presiding over record corporate profits during a period of economic contraction for ordinary people; the liberals who never made a serious effort to promulgate the liberal agenda that prevails in other countries, such as socialized medicine, a free college education for those who are capable of doing the work, longer vacations, earlier retirement, lengthy maternity leave, etc. The idea is as irrational as most of what Al posts, but of course his opinions are immune to both fact and reason, because they are articles of faith that need no proof.
Jul 8, 2014 21:09:33 #
CatMarley wrote:
Way to go cat!!
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