A new survey

A new survey of climate scientists has been published. The author team is headed by Bart Verheggen and includes John Cook. Here's the abstract:

Results are presented from a survey held among 1868 scientists studying various aspects of climate change, including physical climate, climate impacts, and mitigation. The survey was unique in its size, broadness and level of detail. Consistent with other research, we found that, as the level of expertise in climate science grew, so too did the level of agreement on anthropogenic causation. 90% of respondents with more than 10 climate-related peer-reviewed publications (about half of all respondents), explicitly agreed with anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs) being the dominant driver of recent global warming. The respondents’ quantitative estimate of the GHG contribution appeared to strongly depend on their judgment or knowledge of the cooling effect of aerosols. The phrasing of the IPCC attribution statement in its fourth assessment report (AR4) providing a lower limit for the isolated GHG contribution may have led to an underestimation of the GHG influence on recent warming. The phrasing was improved in AR5. We also report on the respondents’ views on other factors contributing to global warming; of these Land Use and Land Cover Change (LULCC) was considered the most important. Respondents who characterized human influence on climate as insignificant, reported having had the most frequent media coverage regarding their views on climate change.

Having Cook on the author team is obviously going to lead many people to write the paper off without even taking a look at it. When you are proven to have set out to write a paper to meet a predetermined conclusion, that is the way people will treat your work. 

But I'm sure we will all look at the paper carefully. Thoughts in the comments please.

Comments

[NikFromNYC]

It's brazen:

http://s6.postimg.org/jb6qe15rl/Marcott_2013_Eye_Candy.jpg

[Will Nitschke]

"we found that, as the level of expertise in climate science grew, so too did the level of agreement on anthropogenic causation."

With the definition of expertise being how skilled you were at writing lots of papers and then getting them published.

[Will Nitschke]

Also interesting that the IPCC consensus position - 95% certainty - extremely likely - is supported by only 25% of actual correspondents in this survey.

Skeptics - i.e., less than likely that the more than 50% claim is true, is now supported by around 60% of experts. That's fairly close to the findings of an earlier Hans von Storch survey. It seems skepticism is growing.

This paper does a remarkable job of attempting to obfuscate these basic results.

[Will Nitschke]

Final thought: why not carry the 'reasoning' of this paper to its logical conclusion. Identify the climate scientist who has published the most papers in this field, and just ask him (or her) what we should believe.

[Tuppence]

we found that, as the level of expertise in climate science grew, so too did the level of agreement on anthropogenic causation.

"as the level of expertise in climate science grew"
being code for
"as the amount of tax gravy train consumed and anticipated grew"

[Katisha]

Government-funded climate scientists conclude more government needed.
Tobacco-funded scientists conclude smoking is healthy.

Good to see people doing whatever is in their paymaster's interests. And holding tightly onto their jobs and prejudices.

[bill]

97% of German generals thought invading Poland was a very good idea. The idea was then tested experimentally, and shown not to work as the modelling had predicted. The Generals blamed this strange outcome on a lack of funding, their inability to communicate their strategy, and interference from politicians who had no real understanding of the concepts involved.

[Cheshirered]

The whole purpose of confirmation bias papers is one of circular reasoning and self-fulfilling prophecy, delivering rinse-repeat funding and influence. Meanwhile, their data is corrupted, their predictions failing and their science is clearly anything but settled. Damn those observations!

And still everyone ignores Huffman. Perhaps his logic is just too much to bear.

[JamesG]

Another survey that tells us turkeys don't vote for xmas.

The questions I would ask are:
1. Why do you prefer to believe that manmade warming warming is masked by (possibly manmade) cooling rather than the much more obvious conclusion that there is negligible manmade warming in the first place?
2. If you believe that natural cooling masked the warming then how do you differentiate between the powerful natural cooling that negates manmade warming and the declining natural variation inherent in the models that produced the alarm in the first place?
3. Conversely if you believe that manmade aerosols masked the manmade CO2 then aren't you just a charlatan who would likely postulate a manmade ice-age if the temperature was dropping?
4. What actually leads you to believe that CO2 is a driver of climate in the first place? If it is only the Vostok ice core data (and what else could it be?) then explain where the sudden, massive carbon sink comes from that restarts cooling and what triggers the restart when the postulated warming feedbacks from CO2 are at their maximum?
5. Do you think that all warming is bad for life on Earth despite all of recorded history telling us the opposite? If not then what is your preferred cutoff point from good to bad and how did you derive it?
6. What is the level of death by starvation/cold that you are happy with to combat this putative problem that seems to exist only in unverified models? If the cure was proven worse than the disease would you then reconsider question 1?

Of course the only opinion that counts is that of mother nature. and she is clearly a huge skeptic of the notion of CO2 as a climate driver. At some point all these scientists will have to face up to that fact. It really doesn't matter how many self-styled experts are proven wrong. We've been in that situation enough times before to know that it is common.

[Barry Woods]

Dana has a guardian article.. Pure propaganda.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/aug/11/fringe-global-warming-contrarians-disproportionate-media

The line seems to be if you are a climate scientist that doesn't believe in more than 50% AGW, that you are 'fringe' (denier?)

Is believing in some AGW is not enough..

This is incredibly dangerous for science. I hope there is some push back
This is trying to support Cook's earlier earlier paper with it's 50% or more assertion.

[John Shade]

John Ray, of Greenie Watch fame, has a substantial background in the design and analysis of surveys in the social sciences. Here are his first reactions to this latest Cook et al. survey:

Further comments by JR:

Note the following statement from the full paper:

"Participation in our survey was sought from scientists having authored or coauthored peer-reviewed articles or assessment reports related to climate change"

Also note:

"1868 questionaires were returned, although not all of these were fully completed. This amounts to a response rate of 29%"

So these were NOT atmospheric scientists. They were anybody who had mentioned global warming in some paper or other. It is hence NOT an expert sample.

Furthermore, the response rate was so low that it is not a representative sample either. It is entirely possible that people who wanted to keep their heads down in a very controversial area were the core of the non-respondents -- and a major reason for wanting to keep heads down would be the risks of acknowledging skepticism. The way Warmists have attacked and penalized skepticism has made it impossible to get open responses in the matter and hence vitiates any survey of the field. The conclusions of the study are therefore worthless.

He notes that the conclusions of the study are therefore worthless, but of course that will not deter scare campaigners from making use of them to further their cause amongst the ill-informed, the vulnerable, the politically ruthless, and of course the financially rapacious.

[Martin A]

And still everyone ignores Huffman. Perhaps his logic is just too much to bear.
Aug 12, 2014 at 9:28 AM | Unregistered CommenterCheshirered

Or perhaps he comes across too often as borderline deranged, ranting about the incompetence of those he disagrees with and keeping on about his belief in how the physical world is influenced by the supernatural.

There is no solid foundation to any of the earth and life sciences today. The central theories in both--plate tectonics and undirected evolution--are simply, inescapably disproved by the design I have found and verified, many times over.

[Nial]

> being the dominant driver of recent global warming.

What recent global warming are they talking about?

[E. Smiff]

This is my problem. More cars, more planes, more coal, more everything. Nothing is actually being done apart from raising the price of energy through renewables. Temperatures still not rising,

GLASGOW AIRPORT RECORDS BUSIEST JULY IN SIX YEARS.

Glasgow Airport recorded its busiest July in six years after more than 840,000 passengers travelled through its doors.

[Andrew Duffin]

"90% of respondents with more than 10 climate-related peer-reviewed publications... "

In other words, a self-selected group of people with a vested interest in agreeing.

nwtpipo

[Robin Guenier]

I said (Aug 11) that I'd try to do a careful review of this paper when I got back from a short break. Well, I'm back - but interest has moved on so I'll leave it.