Sunday
Feb092014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Friends sceptic
Feb 9, 2014 Friends of Science has issued a report into the claims of a 97% consensus.
As this report shows, there’s no 97% consensus on global warming in these surveys. Not even close. They’re fooling you.
I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but it's good to have a systematic review of these rather absurd claims.
Reader Comments (16)
“What luck for rulers that men do not think.”
― Adolf Hitler
I think the 97% has been well and truly Fisked but you won't know it's made an impact until SkS denounce it as a denialist plot.
I've read it. I think it makes a very useful and timely contribution, with informative comparison tables. The construction and deployment of these various '97%'s is one of the more blatantly corrupt and rotten planks on which the cagw campaign stands. This is clearly not yet widely appreciated, but when it is the plank will turn into part of the cagw campaign coffin. The sooner the better. This report will surely help with that.
I have looked at the Powell 2014 list of papers, available here:
http://www.jamespowell.org/resources/Nov2012thruDec2013.xlsx
It is full of papers with zero relevance to climate issues, such as the influence of X rays on the formation of black holes a billion years after the Big Bang.
I started looking through it, but thought I would do a quick search to find out more about FoS. It quickly becomes clear they're another evil organisation funded by "Big Oil" - or so the links on Google's first page would suggest. But then who were making these claims - Oh....DeSmogBlog & DeepClimate, each of which referred to a SourceWatch article, which in turn admits that some of its content is taken from Wikipedia.
I'm rapidly loosing the will to live.....
To "It doesn't add up". Please explain what your reference to the James Powell papers has to do with the Friends of Science Paper linked by our host.(I mean it - just asking).
Tony.
Anthony Ratliffe:
The Powell claim is discussed but not analysed in any depth on page 37 of the report. It is easy to see merely from the titles of some of the papers that they have nothing to do with climate. Many of the doubtfuls also turn out to be nothing to do with it either. Powell stupidly relied on a keyword search, and then evidently failed to actually check the papers to see what they were really about. His conclusions are therefore not merely suspect, but wrong. I can't say I've checked on all 2,258 articles, but sampling blocks at various points in the alphabetical listing shows a consistent pattern.
Feb 9, 2014 at 11:32 AM | It doesn't add up
james powell - speed reader par excellence ...
"The search produced 13,950 articles." "I read whatever combination of titles, abstracts, and entire articles was necessary to identify articles that "reject" human-caused global warming."
Yeah .... riiiight.
Feb 9, 2014 at 1:17 PM | Anthony Ratliffe
He collaborated with Cook and Nuccitelli to produce a 97% ... whatever. I used to have the time frame within which he 'read' all the papers (with C&Ns help). I think it was about three weeks.
The short section on Powell's trawls is one of the least well written sections of the report. His work is of the right kind of slop to be a focus there, but they could have done a better job of eviscerating it.
The Executive Summary is well done and stands alone, with powerful charts. The effort is weakened, however, by the Introduction, which states without much backing that climate change is caused mostly by the sun's magnetic field. The Society should consider breaking the Executive Summary and associated backup material free from the beliefs of the Society regarding the causes of climate change.
Feb 9, 2014 at 12:46 PM | Unregistered Commenter dave ward
I'm rapidly loosing the will to live.....
http://nl.yoyowall.com/wallpapers/2013/03/I-Dont-Want-To-Anymore-leven-op-deze-planeet-800x1280.jpg
Re Lance Wallace's criticism (Feb 10, 1:05 AM). It could be addressed by removing Figure 11 from the Introduction (page 11). It contains an unattributed, and therefore perhaps original to this report, assertion in a pie-chart that 45% of the 'contributions to global warming since 1950' are due to 'Solar Magnetic Flux'. There is also an artist's impression of spiral arms of this magnetism in a sidebar on the same page. Neither are referred to at all anywhere in the text of the Introduction (nor I think but with less assurance, anywhere else in the report), and so could readily have been removed. As could the orphan illustration of the heliosphere on page 15, and the sidebar there as well. This sidebar notes the variation in the magnetic field strength in the heliosphere, and states that 'there are controversial studies linking cosmic ray fluxes to cloudiness and climate change on Earth' - the heliosphere of course is noted for giving us variable levels of protection from such cosmic rays.
The only other mention of sun that I came across in the main text of the report, is right at the end. The penultimate paragraph is 'Friends of Science hold the position, based on the scientific evidence, that the sun is the main driver of climate change. Not you. Not CO2.' This information is not essential to the main purpose of the report and could also have been omitted.
But these are relatively minor distractions in a report covering more than 40 pages, including references. I think it is well worth getting a copy to have on file, because the deceit of the various claims of '97%' or suchlike 'consensus' being implied for serious, alarming, or even catastrophic, warming due to human influence has still not been, in my opinion, sufficiently exposed.
I have had a chance to get back to the Friends of Science paper, and I have found some weaknesses in their treatment of the Doran and Zimmerman survey results. On page 3 of the Executive Summary, in Figure 1, the assert that that survey shows 3.4% agreeing with an 'IPCC Declaration'. There is no nearby definition of that 'declaration', nor anywhere in the paper a derivation of the '3.4%'. On page 4 they note that there have been 'various IPCC declarations'. A candidate for the one they might be referring to in Figure 1 is on page 10 of the report, quoting the AR4 SPM as claiming 'Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations'.On page 25, they make another unexplained claim that the D & Z results 'mean that only 2.58% of 3,146 scientists agree with an undefined expression of AGW'. They reference an SPPI paper for that,(http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/consensus_opiate.pdf). There a derivation can be found for a slightly different '2.38%', but it is an untenable one.
It is a pity that such carelessness is present, as there remains much that is useful in the Friends report.
Thank you Mr. Shade. I am embarrassed to say that after review I conclude this is a terrible typo and thinko on my part - a typo because I placed the Anderegg dissenting 34% in the table as 3.4% and a thinko that I did not notice this. Likewise the 2.58% is also a typo made by me.
Thank you for finding this error - a revised document is being posted.
I appreciate it very much. Other reader comments here are also very interesting and useful for our next reports.
Sincerely,
Michelle Stirling
Communications Consultant
Friends of Science Society
Today, I released the 7th edition of A Chronological Listing of Early Weather Events. It is available at http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/Weather.htm