On Scientific Consensus
You must have seen the quote “97% of experts support the anthropogenic global warming theory” quote in a thousand places – and that’s just on the BBC – but it’s interesting to finally discover how that figure was cooked.
The number comes from a 2008 master’s thesis by student Maggie Kendall Zimmerman at the University of Illinois. Her results are headlined as having come from a survey of 10,257 Earth scientists – chosen, it turns out, not by qualification (many didn’t have a PhD) but instead by their employer. However once you get past the exclusions and get to the sub-sample who actually make up the conclusion you’re down to only 77 scientists, 75 of whom thought that humans contributed to climate change. The ratio 75/77 produces the 97% figure that pundits now tout.
In short – it’s nonsense. For a longer fisking of the methodology behind the 97% there’s a comprehensive demolition job here. It’s worth reading so that you can understand how glibly repeated statistics in the media, held up as true and unassailable, are usually just extracted from somebody’s arse.
I just work on the basis that the vast majority of intelligent people I know, who take the time to study the data and the science and actually understand climate models and feedback processes, agree that climate change is overwhelmingly likely to be anthropogenic in cause. I am always surprised to find otherwise intelligent people who believe it’s all a hoax – this is the first time I’ve visited this blog so I can’t judge if you fit into this subset – but there’s always a political dimension. Their chosen political ideology does not allow them to admit to the truth!
“Anthropogenic in cause” i.e. man made CO2 which we’ve only been producing in quantity for a couple of hundred years. So how come the climate has been changing for millions of years, and has been significantly warmer than now without life being destroyed?
Climate “Models” are just that – models, and as the Hockey Stick fiasco shows, you can make them give any result you like.
Studying Data would presumably include temperature readings from sites that are now in heavily built up areas, airport hardstandings, or “Extrapolated” from sites up to 1200Km away?
Our chosen political ideology includes spotting a crock of shit when we see one, and not wanting £billions being wasted on ludicrous schemes with no chance of success.
The “vast majority of intelligent people I know” presumably spend all their time at Real Climate, which doesn’t allow any version of the truth but their own.
And you’re really surprised that some people actually have a different view to your own??? Take the blinkers from your eyes…..
“So how come the climate has been changing for millions of years, and has been significantly warmer than now without life being destroyed?”
It’s beyond the scope of a blog comment to explain the basics ……. check out the site called skepticalscience. That might help you.
To explain it in the simplest terms …… yes “life” can survive at a vast range of temperatures – even within volcanic vents under the sea (!) – but we are not just talking about survivability. We are looking at 7 billion (and rising) people living civilised lives, having enough food to eat and water to drink. It’s already hard enough ….. but with rapid unpredictable climate change? People who live in the poorer areas of the world, whose livelihoods and ability to survive are closely tied to the land and the weather – they are already seeing massive change. Can you, with a clear conscience, go and inform them that it’s all a hoax?
Millions of years worth of organic matter, stored carbon from a time when temperatures WERE a lot higher, has been released over just a couple of hundred years. You really think that will make no difference? You are blinkered.
“It’s beyond the scope of a blog comment to explain the basics ……. check out the site called skepticalscience. That might help you.”
Not it’s not – go to a real climate blog (not Skeptical Science) such as Watts Up With That, where you will find very detailed posts and comments from a wide range of contributors – including some who believe in AGW.
“We are looking at 7 billion (and rising) people living civilised lives, having enough food to eat and water to drink.”
I happen to agree that we cannot carry on as we are, but any chance of a sensible discussion has been completely overshadowed by the new “religion” of Global Warming that you clearly subscribe to. There are numerous alternative ways of powering and feeding the worlds population – why not read the following post and download the accompanying Power Point presentation:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/06/co2-is-plant-food-clean-coal-say-watt/
If you do actually visit the “other side” and see what this man has to say, you might also take on board that higher CO2 levels are actually good for plant life – the same plants which feed the 7 billion people you are concerned about.
“There’s always a political dimension” you said earlier – Indeed there is, and it runs deeper than scare stories of sea levels rising, which one of the worlds leading researchers, Dr Nils Axel Morner, has proven to be false. If that was true why did Al Gore recently spend several million dollars on a beach front property? This political agenda is actually a damn sight more serious than you seem aware of. Many of the worlds most wealthy and influential people (Ted Turner for instance) have stated that they would like to see the world “depopulated” as being the only way to save the planet. Only their idea of a suitable number is but a tiny fraction of what we have now.
http://green-agenda.com/
Continued…
You could also look at this post:
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/atmospheric-co2-made-easy/
And study the “Million Dots” picture. Even if you are still convinced that we must drastically reduce our CO2 output please explain how you think the industrialised world will be able to have their wealth transfered to poorer countries when our own way of life has been pushed back to the dark ages? Anyone who seriously thinks a few thousand wind turbines can provide sufficient “Clean, Renewable” energy to replace what we have now is not “intelligent”, they are deluded. Only yesterday it was announced that another UK turbine manufacturer has closed – it is likely that the vast majority of these useless machines will end up being made in China. You might like to consider the “Carbon Footprint” of that scenario…
When your lot stop threatening to blow school kids up for having a different view point, when you stop believing the lies peddled by the IPCC, when you stop telling us the Polar Bears are all dying (they’re not), and when you realise that Science is NEVER settled, then I might be prepared to listen to your point of view. Until then I suggest you go back to the saftey of Gavin Schmidt’s blog – the one he runs whilst being paid by NASA.
Oh, and buy some candles – you’ll need them in a few years time when all the “dirty” power stations have been closed, and your wonderful wind turbines are standing idle in the middle of a sub zero winter…..
@Microdave *applause*
@Sunflower: Climate varies. Always has done, always will do. Of what was once called AGW until the planet inconveniently cooled over the last decade, it’s really the A which is up for debate. And in that discussion you’ve got to overcome the credibility threshold of explaining the Medieval Warm Period, the Viking Era and the Roman Optimum before you’re even allowed on stage to argue lightbulbs and 4x4s.
The massively debunked hockey stick equations would produce that shape if you fed a flat line into it – and the only data we can’t test that against is the original temp data because Mann et al destroyed it – so AGW zealots are only left with temperature stations located in artificially affected heat islands, discarding unhelpful data and carefully selected tree rings.
Look at Carbon14 data – a proxy for solar activity – and you’ll see a correlation between that and temperatures. The Maunder and Sporer Minimums straddle the Little Ice Age. Solar changes also explain what alien 4x4s can’t – similar heating and cooling to ours being measured on Mars.
Historical records showing fluctuations over thousands of years, not the few decades/one century so often shown in We’re All Doomed graphs, have convinced me that nature, not us, causes these fluctuations.
Mirroring the decline of the old religions and the birth of new ones, all that has happened is a transference of blame for tornadoes from Thor to Tim from down the pub. The truth is that neither is responsible.
Although you’ve become a disciple of the latest religion you just don’t realise yet that ironically it’s the return of the Aztec sun god Huitzilopochtli. Who required human sacrifices. Maybe that’s the solution to your “7 billion (and rising)” problem, eh?
“To add to their embarrassment, many of those reviewers from within the IPCC establishment actually disagreed with the IPCC’s conclusions, sometimes vehemently”.
As outlined in The Great Gloal Warming Swindel movie which has been around for some years
😀
http://www.veoh.com/collection/Navitor/watch/v6367840WfkW3SDa