Friday
Aug292014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill More on Cook's 97%
Aug 29, 2014 Climate: Parliament Jose Duarte has another post looking at John Cook's 97% 'consensus' paper.
I discovered that the following papers were included as endorsement, as "climate papers", again in just ten minutes of looking. They are classified as either implicit or explicit endorsement, and were evidently included in the 97% figure:
- Chowdhury, M. S. H., Koike, M., Akther, S., & Miah, D. (2011). Biomass fuel use, burning technique and reasons for the denial of improved cooking stoves by Forest User Groups of Rema-Kalenga Wildlife Sanctuary, Bangladesh. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 18(1), 88–97.
- Ding, D., Maibach, E. W., Zhao, X., Roser-Renouf, C., & Leiserowitz, A. (2011). Support for climate policy and societal action are linked to perceptions about scientific agreement. Nature Climate Change, 1(9), 462–466.
- Egmond, C., Jonkers, R., & Kok, G. (2006). A strategy and protocol to increase diffusion of energy related innovations into the mainstream of housing associations. Energy Policy, 34(18), 4042–4049.
- Gruber, E., & Brand, M. (1991). Promoting energy conservation in small and medium-sized companies. Energy Policy, 19(3), 279–287.
- Ha-Duong, M. (2008). Hierarchical fusion of expert opinions in the Transferable Belief Model, application to climate sensitivity. International Journal of Approximate Reasoning, 49(3), 555–574.
- Palmgren, C. R., Morgan, M. G., Bruine de Bruin, W., & Keith, D. W. (2004). Initial public perceptions of deep geological and oceanic disposal of carbon dioxide. Environmental Science & Technology, 38(24), 6441–6450.
- Reynolds, T. W., Bostrom, A., Read, D., & Morgan, M. G. (2010). Now what do people know about global climate change? Survey studies of educated laypeople. Risk Analysis, 30(10), 1520–1538.
- Semenza, J. C., Ploubidis, G. B., & George, L. A. (2011). Climate change and climate variability: personal motivation for adaptation and mitigation. Environmental Health, 10(1), 46.
Duarte is again openly referring to the paper as fraudulent. Yet this paper was cited approvingly by Ed Davey and Barack Obama. And the Institute of Physics is standing by it. Shameless, every one of them.
Reader Comments (30)
Poor Jose. The Cook paper is fascinating in its absurdity. He will be drawn back to it again and again, each time discovering another monumental error. Jose will not be able to do proper work for quite some time.
quotable quotes (many more):
"This study is a teachable moment, a future textbook example of scientific scams."
"This is a false claim, and the authors should be investigated for fraud."
"Nuccitelli thinks that if a psychology paper uses the phrase "climate change denial", it might count as scientific endorsement of anthropogenic climate change. We should linger on that. This is a staggering level of stupidity with respect to what would count as scientific evidence of AGW."
"Those climate scientists who have touted, endorsed, and defended the Cook et al. study – I suggest you reconsider. I also suggest that you run some basic correction for the known bias, and cognitive dissonance, humans have against changing their position, admitting they were wrong, etc. Do you really want to be on the historical record as a defender of this absurd malpractice?"
"This paper is vacated, as a scientific product, given that it included psychology papers, and also given that it twice lied about its method (claiming not to count social science papers, and claiming to use independent raters), and the professed cheating by the raters. It was essentially voided by its invalid method of using partisan and unqualified political activists to subjectively rate climate science abstracts on the issue on which their activism centers -- a stunning and unprecedented method"
Extract from the Fraud Act 2006:
The penalty is:
It would seem to me that there are lots of climate pseudo-scientists who should be behind bars.
Love it.
"International Journal of Approximate Reasoning"
What a wonderful title. Such implications!
But will Cook sue? No, of course he won't. Shame.
... and so much more.
The pitifully low calibre of this Cook et al work does not surprise me. The climate alarmists are awash with people of pitifully low calibre.
I am glad to see further illustrations of the shoddiness of this work by Cook et al. Every little helps. If only the wider public could get a sense of this - both the production of junk by Cook et al, and the dumb acceptance of it by the likes of Davey and Obama and who knows how many other people rattling along in the bandwagon.
The Guardian ran out of reputation free Nazis and liars (Monbiot, Hickman, Porritt etc.) and stooped to pick up idiots (Cook, Nuccittelli).
Interview with Cook in the Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/aug/25/solar-physicist-religion
But Cook's second, self-professed, stimulus took me by surprise.
"I'm a Christian and find myself strongly challenged by passages in the Bible like Amos 5 and Matthew 25 ".
This is the linked passage. No mention of liars.
31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left
Richard Tol @ 1.17pm: "the Cook paper is fascinating in its absurdity" , yet it has been quoted (i.e. used by) the POTUS
in his quest to destroy the US constitution! It was always immediately obvious what this paper was, but what Jose has shown , by sheer literary style, just how corrupt and mendacious the interaction of science and ideology has become.
It is beyond cynicism, I am a cynic myself having observed politics since the 1955 General Election when Dennis Potter , no less, knocked on our door canvassing. He lost, but created the character of Nigel Barton, the prototype of the modern apolitical MP. Reading this essay I am, for the first time, actually frightened for the future of the civilised world by the sheer disregard of the concept of integrity and the principle of " truth" in science being an objective, not a tool of control. But Jose has hit upon a simple but fertile idea. If "97%" can be transformed into an object of derision and indicator of delusion the consequences to all those who have ever used the figure, for whatever purpose, are dire - labelling them as fools or liars.
One of the titles looks like great bedtime reading and would be clearly relevant to life in general: "Hierarchical fusion of expert opinions in the Transferable Belief Model, application to climate sensitivity."
Tell me that wasn't written for a grant...
E.Smiff @ 7.32pm: Reading your posts I have always believed that you are more inspired by Ezekial 25:17 , as delivered by Samuel L Jackson.
Duarte’s article links to Cook’s upcoming event at Bristol University’s Festival of Ideas. Bristol lists him as “of the University of Queensland” without noting that he’s a student there - a student who got into the University circuit via his collaboration with Professor Lewandowsky, and who then lied to his collaborator Lewandowsky and to me about his collaboration on Lewandowsky's paper, and then lied again in a paper he wrote with Lewandowsky which tried to hide the lies in the first paper.
I’ve been calling out Lewandowsky and Cook as liars at Chris Mooney’s, the New Yorker, Huffington Post, the Conversation, and anywhere else I can. Mooney and his colleagues at the Guardian, Telegraph, New York Times, Los Angeles Times etc. are only journalists. If they wants to repeat lies and conduct fawning interviews with known liars that’s their business. Bristol University is a bit different, and so is the Conversation, since it’s financed by a number of state-financed universities and institutions. If they lie and continue to publicise the work of known liars people just might start to ask questions. Or they might like to sue me.
Or they could start telling the truth.
esmiff
By calling Monbiot Hickman and Porritt Nazis you do a disservice to us all. If you’re going to call them liars you should at least be prepared to provide evidence.
It’s immensely interesting that the Guardian can no longer get Monbiot Hickman and Porritt to write about climate science, a subject on which they had so much to say so recently. My interpretation is that they are cowards, and ignorant, but not necessarily stupid.
I only have one piece of evidence that Monbiot is a liar, when he accused a commenter (“Scunner”) of being a sockpuppet. Scunner still comments at the Guardian. Monbiot not so much.
The Obama tweet said that 97 per cent of "scientists" agree that climate change is real, man-made - and dangerous.
If I remember correctly, there is nothing in Cook et al that supports the claim that "[all] scientists" agree that it is "dangerous".
Here’s another quote from Duarte:
At first I thought what made Duarte important as a critic of Cook etc. was his status as a social scientist, and therefore an “insider”.No. It’s his literary talent, and his courage in calling out liars and frauds, (which may or may not be the same thing, if you think of Swift, and Thomas Love Peacock, and Orwell, none of whom would have described themselves as conservatives, as Duarte does.)
What confusing times we live in.
geoffchambers
Monbiot called everyone who disagreed with him on CIF an astoturfer. He claimed oil companies were sending hordes of anti science oinks to destroy him. Lies don't come much bigger than that The truth is that he was the figurehead of a website that orchestrated gangs of hooded geeks to descend on every AGW discussion forum in cyberspace. .
He accused those over the age of 60 of being deniers because they didn't care what happened in the future. Monbiot is a deeply insidious establishment figure who has spun wildly exaggerated nonsense (lies) not only about AGW but also about Fukushima and Srebrenica .
Strictly speaking, he is a (self confessed) anarcho primitivist, not a Nazi. I'll explain the difference if you have 15 minutes of your life you don't need.
http://alturl.com/xxmqe
AGW is a lie and he has promoted it using the most dishonest methodology.
geoffchambers
The reason Monbiot and Hickman don't post is that climate science is now a joke only clowns mould defend in a major newspaper. Clowns like Cook and Nucittelli.
Surprised nobody has yet quoted this bit:
"the researchers are a bunch of militant anti-science political activists".
As with climategate, the problem is not that a small number of activists behaved dishonestly.
The problem is that academics and journals and the media let them get away with it and actively promote and encourage them- like Bristol university's Cabot Institute. I suggest that attention should focus more on those who are responsible for this.
diogenese2
You looking at me [snip] ?
All my exaggerations have a humorous tinge. It's to balance out the massive corporate, denier meme and the comedy around Monckton etc. For example 'gangs of hooded geeks'.
geoffchambers
This is the Monbiot anarcho primitivist link, sorry.
http://alturl.com/py3pf
The lie of AGW comes in two strengths.
1. There is scientific evidence that human beings are responsible for observed temperature increases (to 1998).
Petr Chylek ( Remote Sensing Team Leader, Los Alamos National Laboratory)
To blame the current warming on humans, there was a perceived need to “prove” that the current global average temperature is higher than it was at any other time in recent history (the last few thousand years). This task is one of the main topics of the released CRU emails.
Some people were son eager to prove this point that it became more important than scientific integrity.The next step was to show that this “unprecedented high current temperature” has to be a result of the increasing atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.
The fact that the Atmosphere Ocean General Circulation Models are not able to explain the post-1970 temperature increase by natural forcing was interpreted as proof that it was caused by humans. It is more logical to admit that the models are not yet good enough to capture natural climate variability (how much or how little do we understand aerosol and clouds,and ocean circulation?), even though we can all agree that part of the observed post-1970 warming is due to the increase of atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Thus, two of the three pillars of the global warming and carbon dioxide paradigm are open to reinvestigation.The damage has been done. The public trust in climate science has been eroded. At least a part of the IPCC 2007 report has been put in question. We cannot blame it on a few irresponsible individuals. The entire esteemed climate research community has to take responsibility.
http://www.thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/218-petr-chylek-open-letter-to-the-climate-research-community.html
2. The problem of CO2 emissions is so potentially catastrophic to human life , we have to reduce them by 80% by 2050.
https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/reducing-the-uk-s-greenhouse-gas-emissions-by-80-by-2050
This is largely the work of one man, James Hansen backed by major political figures like Al Gore and George Soros (one of world's biggest hedge fund owners).
Quotes
Imagine a giant asteroid on a direct collision course with Earth. That is the equivalent of what we face now [with climate change], yet we dither.
It would be immoral to leave young people with a climate system spiralling out of control.
So, we are facing an imminent event equivalent to the dinosaur extinction. Total devastation. So who is this unhinged Nostradamus ? The man who endorsed a book by Dark Mountain eco fascist Keith Farnish.
Farnish writes
"The only way to prevent global ecological collapse and thus ensure the survival of humanity is to rid the world of Industrial Civilization"
and
Unloading essentially means the removal of an existing burden: for instance, removing grazing domesticated animals, razing cities to the ground, blowing up dams and switching off the greenhouse gas emissions machine. The process of ecological unloading is an accumulation of many of the things I have already explained in this chapter, along with an (almost certainly necessary) element of sabotage.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100023339/james-hansen-would-you-buy-a-used-temperature-data-set-from-this-man/
Hansen wrote
Keith Farnish has it right: time has practically run out, and the 'system' is the problem. Governments are under the thumb of fossil fuel special interests - they will not look after our and the planet's well-being until we force them to do so, and that is going to require enormous effort. --Professor James Hansen, GISS, NASA
I'm more worried about the President of the United States wasting his time on this stuff Richard.
E Smiff
I don’t think Monbiot is an anarcho-primitivist. He has serious differences with the Black Mountain chaps (if you can call anything serious in the bonkers world of climate catastrophists). He once accused Kingsnorth of living in a fantasy world peopled with men in torn jeans and women in fur bikinis, a world which could never exist - to which Guardian commenter theSnufkin replied “George has obviously never been to Streatham on a Saturday night”.
There’s a real discussion to be had about which wing of the Green movement is the most likely to lead to totalitarian outcomes. On the whole I think I prefer the Black Mountain route to Monbiot’s vision of a world in which men in suits dictate how many air miles you can travel.
geoff:
I'll be a libertarian fly on the wall for that one.
geoffchambers
Educated people don't make statements about things they don't know anything about. That includes Dark Mountain.
This is the link that I gave before that describes Monbiot's relationship with Dark Mountain and his admission of being an anarcho primitivist. Yes, he has said there are differences between them, but being paid to be to be a progressive Guardian journalist would suggest he would lie about it. He lies about everything else.
http://alturl.com/py3pf
Monbiot and the Dark Mountain
Dougald Hine interviewed George Monbiot at the Dark Mountain Uncivilisation conference, 2010
He introduces the interview by expressing his gratitude that Monbiot has done as much as anyone else to spread the word about the Dark Mountain . The manifesto is partly as follows
We live in a time of social, economic and ecological unravelling. All around us are signs that our whole way of living is already passing into history. We will face this reality honestly and learn how to live with it. We reject the faith which holds that the converging crises of our times can be reduced to a set of ‘problems’ in need of technological or political ‘solutions’.
Monbiot himself rejects the idea that the collapse of industrial civilisation is inevitable and nothing can be done, on the contrary, he believes in engaging the destruction of industrial civilsation. That is the difference between them.
However he also says "I am very sympathetic to a lot of the things Paul said today"
http://archive.org/details/MonbiotHineUncivilisation2010
Monbiot is positively exaltant about Kingsnorth's essay.
Paul Kingsnorth co-founded the Dark Mountain project as a means of exploring this problem. His latest essay The Quants and the Poets is a compelling and beautifully-written account of the way in which “the green movement has torpedoed itself with numbers” and is now trying to save the world “one emission at a time.” Trying to accommodate a narrative of other people’s making, greens “feel obliged to act like speak-your-weight machines just to be heard.” This approach, he argues, “has left environmentalism in a position where its advocates now find themselves unable to do anything but argue about which machines they would prefer to use to power an ever-growing industrial economy.”
He explains his prescription as follows:
“What is missing here is stories, and an understanding of the importance of stories in getting to the bottom of what is really going on. Because at root, this whole squabble between worldviews is not about numbers at all – it is about narratives. … How to reassert the importance of stories, then, is perhaps a key question now. Green poets might perhaps start by observing that worlds are not ’saved’ by the same stories that are killing them. They might want to observe that saving worlds is an impossible business in the first place, and that attempting to do so is likely to lead to some very dark places. Or they might try and explore what it is about how we see ourselves which reduces us to this, time and time again – arguing about machines rather than wondering what those machines give us and what they take away.”
http://www.monbiot.com/2011/05/05/our-crushing-dilemmas/
Keith Farnish is a prominent member of the Dark Mountain network.
http://uncivilisation.ning.com/profile/KeithFarnish
Farnish wrote a book called 'Time's Up!: An Uncivilized Solution to a Global Crisis '. In it he writes ' The only way to prevent global ecological collapse and thus ensure the survival of humanity is to rid the world of Industrial Civilization
and
Unloading essentially means the removal of an existing burden: for instance, removing grazing domesticated animals, razing cities to the ground, blowing up dams and switching off the greenhouse gas emissions machine. The process of ecological unloading is an accumulation of many of the things I have already explained in this chapter, along with an (almost certainly necessary) element of sabotage'
The book was endorsed by the world's leading scientist James Hansen who gave evidence at the trial of the activists who damaged Kingsnorth power station.
In an almost identical vein, showing that unlike Paul Kingsnorth, he believes in taking terrorist style action, like Keith Farnish.
George Monbiot endorsed the actions of protesters who sabotaged Scottish mine equipment and encouraged future similar action.
But while the government undermines its own targets, some people in Scotland are putting its climate change policy into effect. The Scottish camp for climate action has declared war on opencast coal mining. Yesterday people associated with it did what the government should have done years ago, and cut the conveyor belt used to carry coal from the Glentaggart pit in Lanarkshire to the local rail terminal. Now they propose to take on other pits, as well as Scotland's biggest coal-burning power stations. They have chosen the right targets. Coal is the dirty word that threatens to destroy attempts at Copenhagen in December to prevent climate breakdown. If governments won't take it on, we must.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/aug/07/monbiot-scotland-climate-policy
geoffchambers
I perfectly understand why you think my Nazi angle discredits you and others attempt to argue against AGW. The difference between us is that I think the opposition is lying at every turn and there is no 'decent chap' debate going on for me to discredit.
If you believe that Phil Jones emails can disappear causing a major global incident and no one in British intelligence knows where they went, I can sell you full access to GCHQ's computer systems for a very reasonable price. Weekend only. If you believe East Anglian plods would be given the job, I can arrange a skiing holiday in Norwich in January for you and your family. Tour guide will be Allan Partridge himself.