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Comments 35851 to 35900:

  1. An externally-valid approach to consensus messaging

    Rob @8, I will certainly concede that in the US, and to a lesser extent in Australia socialism, communism and fascism are politically moribund, and the terms used primarilly as means of denigrating the various shades of center right to right positions actively presented by parties.  That, however, is not the case world wide.  I certainly do not know enough about Peruvian politics to say to what extent they are moribund in Peru (and hence irrelevant to From Peru).

  2. Rob Honeycutt at 09:01 AM on 22 June 2014
    An externally-valid approach to consensus messaging

    Tom...  What I'm saying is the terms are generally used today a way to be dismissive of an opposing moderate political points of view. 

    I don't think John is polling opinions in any extremist nations, so I wasn't considering that relative to my comments.

  3. An externally-valid approach to consensus messaging

    Rob Honeycutt @4, that is an odd comment given that there still exist socialist governments (Venezuela comes to mind) and politically active communist parties (and fascist parties, including 2 active in Australia, and 1 active in New Zealand) around the world.  The stipulation "... in the same form ..." may make your statement correct, but only in the way that nobody steps in the same river twice.  Liberal, liberal/democratic, christian/democratic, libertarian and conservative parties have also changed over the decades, and as we do not consider that to indicate their ceasing to exist, neither do the changes in comunist, socialist and fascist parties indicate the end of communism, socialism or fascism as political movements.

  4. grindupBaker at 06:30 AM on 22 June 2014
    2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #25A

    Prior to this sea-surface temperature reference I'd understood that ocean temperatures such as in GISTEMP were measured below the surface to varying amounts perhaps as much as a few metres and "sea-surface temperature" was not measured. I'd like to be disabused with some authoritative detail if that's not so, but otherwise I'd suggest that persons of SKS comment quality start being precise with the phrasings. Additionally, I think it's a poor aspect of the science that 2 entirely dissimilar measurements (air temperature a few feet above the surface and ocean temperature a few feet below the surface) are cobbled together into a single number. It seems to have led to much silliness of "debate" (most definitely in quotes).

  5. An externally-valid approach to consensus messaging

    Am I missing something? Seems to me that, to measure the gap between scientists’ perceptions & the public’s, we don’t need to ask the public “how many climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming,” but rather “are humans causing global warming?” I think the gap that matters is not that between scientists’ beliefs & the public’s beliefs about scientists’ beliefs, but instead the gap between scientist’s beliefs & the public’s beliefs about the same thing: anthropogenic global warming.

  6. An externally-valid approach to consensus messaging

    Rob, I would say the same thing about 'left' and especially 'far left' particularly in the US context--there is essentially no such thing, not as an effective political force, at least.


    The other depressing thing along these lines (depending on how you think about it, I suppose) is that there is little difference between 'left' and 'right'--essentially between Dems and Repubs--as to life style choices being affected by concern about GW. Essentially no one in the US avoids air travel (or long distance travel in general) because of its GW footprint.

    IIRC, Republicans are actually more likely to have installed solar power on their homes than Democrats are.

  7. Rob Honeycutt at 02:52 AM on 22 June 2014
    An externally-valid approach to consensus messaging

    I would suggest that the terms "socialist" and "communist" (and "fascist" for that matter) are not proper terms applied to today's political environment. They're early 20th century concepts that no one adheres to today in the same forms they existed previously. 

    Today these terms are used to try to ridicule those who people disagree with on political issues. 

  8. An externally-valid approach to consensus messaging

    From Peru, the survey was in the US, so by "far left" they mean left leaning liberals, or at most what I call "welfare capitalists", ie, people who believe social justice and reasonable standards of living can only be achieved by grafting a comprehensive welfare system onto a capitalist economic structure.

  9. An externally-valid approach to consensus messaging

    "At the left of the political spectrum, perceived consensus is below 70%. Even those at the far left are not close to correctly perceiving the 97% consensus"

    What are we calling "far left"?

    Are we talking about liberals, socialists or communists?

  10. An externally-valid approach to consensus messaging

    Over the past couple of days, a lively discussion of this issue has been going on in the comment thread to the article, Defending the consensus, again!, posted on the And Then There's Physics website. 

    I have posted a link to John Cook's OP on that thread. 

  11. One Planet Only Forever at 03:08 AM on 21 June 2014
    How will El Niño impact weather patterns?

    Better understanding the complex interrelationships involved in the climate on this amazing planet helps provide better information to people who would benefit from advance notice of the likely weather. Many human pursuits can be more successful if better weather infromation is available. Crop growers, in particular, would benefit from better forecasts of the expected weather through the upcoming growing season. Ocean transport companies and human activity that rely on it also benefit from knowing in advance what weather can be expected along their most efficient, busiest routes.

    A small aside. The ONI (NOAA's reporting of the 3 month average surface temperature of the tropical Pacific Ocean - link below) for MAM is -0.2, which is in the neutral range (The ONI for FMA was -0.5). Even with the index neutral the global average surface temperatures for April and May in the GISTEMP and NOAA records are nearly as high as the highest monthly value that occured during the 1997/98 El Nino.

    http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml

  12. Chris Winter at 01:45 AM on 21 June 2014
    Ridley, Murdoch, and Lomborg Attempt to Greenwash Global Warming

    A useful reference on this question is a book by Richard Preston: DRIVEN TO EXTINCTION: The Impact of Climate Change on Biodiversity. He discusses animals more than plants, but on pp 175-179 he decribes the work of Blake Suttle, an ecologist who set up experimental plots in the Angelo Coast Range Reserve of California's Mendocino county.

     

    Suttle's aim was to measure the impact of increased rainfall on local biodiversity. He found it increased for the first two years, as expected. But then it declined, and by the fifth year there was only half the original number of species. Grasses had crowded many other species out, and as a result the nutritional value per square foot dropped sharply.

  13. The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator

    How often is the data updated? I am curious as we are expecting a warmish year and would like to use the trend calculator to keep up to date with changes in the "no warming meme"

  14. 2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #25A

    The title of the article about sea-surface temperature being a lousy indicator of global climate is incorrect.  Stephen Briggs referred to surface air temperature, not sea-surface temperature; the correction is in an update at the end of the article.

  15. 2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #25A

    Well assuming "Kiwiiano" is in NZ, then he/she has it a lot easier than much of western world because of the high renewable generation. However reducing your carbon footprint by individual lifestyle change is always going to be a losing proposition. Far more obtainable is moving to alternative energy and more efficient use of energy which is something nations do rather than individuals. On the other hand, if you believe all government is evil and unnecessary except for courts and defense, then a problem that needs collective solution is a challenge to your values.

  16. 2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #25A

    chriskoz@1:They believe the meme because they don't want to face the alternative, profound changes to their current lifestyles. How would you reduce your carbon footprint to 10% of everything you've taken for granted? I certainly find it a struggle.

  17. PhilippeChantreau at 05:15 AM on 20 June 2014
    Transformational Climate Science at Exeter University

    Denisaf, I'm not sure I understand your comment better than others but here my response to what I do understand from it:

    Humans in the past decided to build and operates extensive infrastructure devoted to the use of horses for transportation, agriculture, war, etc. Did they "cancel" that commitment? Not specfically, but they found something better and moved on. In effect, that cancelled it. Humans will have to find better solutions again and move on again, or be set back quite a bit.

    As for anthropogenic, it does not mean intentional, if that's what you were trying to say. Of course, it is unintentional only up to the point that humans become aware of all the consequences of their "commitment" to that infrastructure and then decide to keep up the commitment. We are there, so, as of right now, the disruption is both anthropogenic and intentional. With knowledge comes responsibility.

  18. Transformational Climate Science at Exeter University

    Didn't understand denisaf's comment...

    I like "Dangerous Climate Change," too.  Perhaps "Dangerous Climate Disruption," though the word "disruption" already connotes something unsettling, I think.

  19. 2014 SkS Weekly Digest #24

    Synapsid:

    I can't say whether derp takes a dim view of Skeptical Science sharing editorial cartoons generally or not. It wasn't my intent to say so.

    That being said, what I can say, based on the texts of derp's comments at #1 and #5, is that it certainly seems that way.

    In particular, derp wrote "cartoons like this", which implies multiple cartoons, whether multiple discrete instances of objectionable cartoons, or the genre as a whole.

    Further, derp's follow up in #5 clearly suggests belief that this is a longstanding issue, which has translated into what derp believes to be "not much engagement with this blog anyway".

    My intent was to respond to the overall sentiment of derp's comment, which denigrated "cartoons like this" as being beneath adult communication, so in the end it doesn't really matter if derp meant this cartoon alone, a handful of cartoons like it, every single cartoon shared by Skeptical Science, or editorial cartoons as a genre.

  20. 2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #25A

    ubrew12: I second your endorsement of Richard Heinberg's article, So You Want to Change the World? Better Read This First posted on EcoWatch.

    I encourage everyone reading this thread to carefully read Heinberg's article. It is insightful and thought-provoking.

    In addition to including Heinberg's article in the above OP, I also posted a link to it on the SkS Facebook page. I am pleased to report that it has "reached" more than 15,500 people.   

  21. Ice picks: Five pieces of ice news revealing earth’s ice cover is in serious decline

    One can actually see quite well from the topographical map that Greenland is not a bowl.  It's more like a broken dish, filled well over rim level with ice cream.  A few of the cracks in the bowl run nearly to the base of the dish.  A lake would undoubtedly form in the base of the dish, especially with rebound lifting the land, but most of the water in the current ice mass would be lost to the oceans during the melt period.  The mass of the ice cream would squeeze the lake water out the cracks.

  22. Transformational Climate Science at Exeter University

    Whilst we're debating semantics I used the term "dangerous climate change" in the article because that's the phrase used by the UK Met Office, who were one of the organisers of the conference. See for example:

    http://econnexus.org/can-global-warming-be-limited-to-two-degrees/

  23. 2014 SkS Weekly Digest #24

    Further to what DSL just stated, I've recently posted something to that effect on Neven's Arctic Sea Ice blog. In addition to May 2014 being 0.06 C above the previous record (2010 and 2012 jointly), the March-April-May quarter was LOTI's second highest at 0.07 C below 2010. (And 0.04 above the next highest.)

    It could be premature to look toward the devoloping el Nino just yet, but NOAA's 3.4 index might just have started to edge towards positive numbers. (It could be transient, or it could be the start of something.)  

    If the next 7 months LOTI figures match their 2013 equivalents, the Jan-Dec average will be about 3rd on the list. On the other hand, as DSL has pointed out, the average for the first 5 months already matches the 2010 J-D figures. So, will there be a significant el Nino event later this year, and, if so, what will it do to these numbers?

    Get your (crystal) balls out.

  24. Dikran Marsupial at 21:18 PM on 19 June 2014
    Transformational Climate Science at Exeter University

    denisaf, the fact that society has committed itself to a substantial degree to its infrastructure does not change the fact that it is anthropogenic climate disruption.  I don't see how that argument means that Anrthopogenic Climate Disruption is a misleading term.  The infrastructure is anthropogenic, any climate disruption that is caused by the infrastructure is likewise anthropogenic.

  25. Transformational Climate Science at Exeter University

    Anthropogenic Climate Disruption is a misleading term. The greenhouse gas emissions that are the major cause of climate disruption are due to the operation of technological systems (power stations, vehicles, etc.). There is a commitment for this infrastructure to continue to use fossil fuels as long as it exists. Humans have only made the decisions about the construction and operation of this infrastructure. They cannot decide to cancel that commitment!

  26. Transformational Climate Science at Exeter University

    2C warming is mentioned. I understood it was qualified as 2C of warming by the end of the century. This is consistent with the view that warming will continue as long the atmospheric concentration level (currently 400 ppm) is so high that it continues to act (has Hansen termed it) as a blanket. Increased emissions into the oceans will not totally offset the continuing emissions from fossil fuel usage even when they are reduced by sounder energy policies. There is too much infrastructure committed to using fossil fuels for this rate of usage to decrease rapidly.

  27. 97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven

    I would also point out the accusations of " sycophant research" is simply empty rhetoric - a dismissive to hide that fact that there is no counter-theory, and at odds with the mass of hard data collection that is the core of climate research. 

    FF companies have the scientists, the money, computer power and the motiviation to find alternative theories. Instead they invest in PR. Why do you think that is? Perhaps because of what their own scientists tell them? I work in petroleum science - denialists are rare among scientists.

  28. 2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #25A

    chriskoz@1: I think, in a nutshell, that's the purpose of this website, and of others like it.  "Why, indeed, is this happening?"  is what Cook and others (Peter Sinclair at climate crocks) have been asking, and the answers have been illuminating about human behavior and the 'calculus' by which vested commercial interests prey upon societies understanding of 'truth' in service to their profitability.

    Changing the subject, I really enjoyed the Ecowatch article 'So you want to change the World?  Better read this first.'  about how societies really only change when infrastructural requirements (resource depletion, new technologies), force them to (and that this is one of those times).  It's illuminating to see modern trends put in a 'cultural anthropologists' perspective.  A quote: "How can you know if your idea fits the emerging infrastructure? There’s no hard and fast rule, but your idea stands a good chance if it assumes we are moving toward a societal regime with less energy and less transport (and that is therefore more localized); if it can work in a world where climate is changing and weather conditions are extreme and unpredictable; if it provides a way to sequester carbon rather than releasing more into the atmosphere; and if it helps people meet their basic needs during hard times."  From here on out, 'may you live in interesting times' is our fate.  It's useful to have such thinkers working to provide a useful guide to how to respond to these challenges.

  29. 2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #25A

    Within '6 ways the planet is different than the one your dad was born into', I found the 'Unprecedented' Climate Extremes in Last Decade by WMO, where they show decadal temp trends. And indeed, the 2001-10 decade shows the largest trend to date (at the extreme value of last 4 decades since 70s when AGW really kicked off). Given that data from WMO, it's mind bogling why the "global warming stopped in last 17y" meme is still alive. Why people are so irrational, that they still believe is such nonsense?

  30. Dikran Marsupial at 17:52 PM on 19 June 2014
    Ice picks: Five pieces of ice news revealing earth’s ice cover is in serious decline

    jetfuel wrote "If Greenland is topographically like a bowl, wouldn't flow from melt beneath the ice actually send water inland and then in December-Febuary it would all solidify."

    not necessarily.  While Greenland is topographically like a bowl, the rim is not of equal height around the edge, which means that rivers could form, eroded in the gound under the ice, that transport the meltwater to the sea.  These seem quite evident in the figure above, e.g. on the West coast at about 68 North. The fact that any "inland sea" that forms under the ice would be under several kilometers of ice sheet pressing down on it, suggests it will be unlikely to have a very great volume, so it is not a given that large amounts of meltwater can pool there.

    The fact that independent measurements show that there is ice loss in Greenland suggests there is a flaw in your theory that suggests there is little or none.

  31. Ice picks: Five pieces of ice news revealing earth’s ice cover is in serious decline

    jetfuel@14,

    You begin by analysing the Greenland icesheet melt numbers in your first paragraph.

    Then you try to attribute the percentage of GIS melt to US CO2 emissions in second paragraph.

    Finally, you conclude:

    I begin thinking 'news' of a great Greenland meltdown at a recently doubling rate is intended for low information people.

    How does such conclusion follow from your post? IMO, your conclusion is irrelevant to the preceding arguments, i.e. it is illogical hand waving/trolling.

    Firstly, while considering melting of GIS, you should consider total climate forcings, not just forcings from US CO2 emissons.

    Secondly, while considering the melt rate variability (apparent doubling in X years), you should concentrate on just that. Your assertion that an annual melt takes "only 0.103 of one of the 1470 squares" is irrelevant ands patologically illogical. We know that it will take many centuries at the current rate to melt the entire GIS.

    If considering the "doubling of melt rate" you should lokk e.g. at this picture:

    IS contribution

    and figure out how the slope of the green line changes. We can clearly see that it accelerated lately.

  32. 97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven

    likeithot - Your most recent reply contains several logical fallacies, namely Argument from Authority (while Lindzen is a climate scientist, he is in a distinct and tiny minority on his views, with multiple papers debunked), Red Herrings (eugenics), the Argument from Uncertainty regarding the maturity of the field. You also have Gish Galloped false claims about extreme weather, sea level rise rates,  and the temperature record

    From your posts it appears you, in fact, are the person who has been spending too much time in the echo chamber - deep in denial myths. 

    At this point it's clear to me that you are simply trolling, and are not interested in a rational discussion of the data and science. I would suggest that the correct response is DNFTT (Do Not Feed The Troll). 

  33. Ice picks: Five pieces of ice news revealing earth’s ice cover is in serious decline

    If Greenland is topographically like a bowl, wouldn't flow from melt beneath the ice actually send water inland and then in December-Febuary it would all solidify. Seems to work against it all getting into the sea. Any slipping would get welded in place. Only the outer fringes would not fall under this characterization.

    I read the comments about the 200 GT of annual melt from Greenland (10 km3 just one piece at Twaites), when 2012 is compared to 2011. When I searched for the 2013 net melt over 2012, I found clues that there was no net melt. It seems that typically there isn't any significant net loss per year with the one exception of 2012. More research from decades ago revealed that 125 cubic miles calves from Greenland annually, which equals the replensih rate from snow, which falls every month there. 10,000 to 15,000 calves of ice break off the coastal glaciers of Greenland annually. The alarm of one being (10 GT) 1.9% of the 125 cubic miles of annual flow seems pretty minor. Greenland, An area from Denver to NYC that reaches 750 miles in width and for which the normal ice pack temp hits 10 F in July as an annual max would get plenty of snow and upon which any soot would be soon covered in snow.

    To find some perspective on the great ice loss of 2012, I took a piece of graph paper that was a grid of 35 by 42 squares representing the 2,850,000 km3 of ice on Greenland, the 47 cubic mile loss of 2012 was only 0.103 of one of the 1470 squares of the page. Then, If I were to attribute that loss to too much CO2, and then consider that the US is responsible for 14.14% of Global human produced CO2, then the US could possibly be responsible for (.103) *(.1414)=.0145 of a square on the page (the melt). And if we could grow our US population by 4% over the next year and still cut CO2 creation by 10%

     

    then we could shrink our contribution to that loss of ice by (.0936)*(.0145)=.00136 of one square the next time it might happen. That's where I begin thinking 'news' of a great Greenland meltdown at a recently doubling rate is intended for low information people.

    Moderator Response:

    [PS] Please cite your sources - especially for no net melt or I'll delete for sloganeering. You do realise that the published losses come from mass measurement (GRACE) or altimetry change not fiddling with graph paper? You might get better insight to greenland topography and its implications if you read the Morhighem paper cited in the article.

    You might also want to look at Co2 limits will harm the economy

  34. Rob Honeycutt at 10:27 AM on 19 June 2014
    97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven

    likeithot said... "...Lindzen is a highly recognized scientist with a lot more published science than all of those who work on this site combined."

    So, let me get this straight. One scientist presents a position you like, so that trumps 97 other equally qualified scientists who disagree with him?

    Look, no one says that the 97% are absolutely right and the 3% are absolutely wrong. That's not how science works either. But, when it comes to making critical policy decisions you have to have a reference for how to make those decisions. What are the chances the 3% are right and the 97% are wrong? 

    I would suggest that, even if the figures were 50/50, that would be more than enough reason to take aggressive action on climate change. 

    If there were a 50/50 chance my house was going to burn down if I didn't get the wiring replaced, you'd be darned sure I'd be making that investment asap.

  35. 97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven

    Scaddenp,

    There are some soi-disant skeptics who don't respect the IPCC but do respect the US National Academy of Sciences.  Those people might learn something from the 36-page booklet Climate Change: Evidence and Causes, jointly published by the NAS and the Royal Society of the UK.  It should be considered to represent, for what it covers, the scientific consensus on AGW.

  36. In charts: how a revenue neutral carbon tax cuts emissions, creates jobs, grows the economy

    Terranova@31

    The BC carbon tax is applied to any combustion of coal within the province, but not to any coal mined in the province (or the US) that passes through the ports. Similarly, any oil or gas that is exported from BC is not taxed. 

    A significant exception to the taxing of fossil-fuel combustion is that on any flights from BC to outside the province, the jetfuel is not subject to the carbon tax. On flights within BC, the aviation fuel is subject to the tax.

    I'm far from an expert on the direct health risks of fossil fuels, but I believe there is increasing evidence that particulates pose a bigger health risk than people used to think. WHO reports that there are about 3.3 million deaths per year from indoor air pollution (partly biofuels) and 2.6 million deaths estimated from outdoor air pollution (mostly fossil fuels) in SE Asia and the Western Pacific region (includes China).

    But pollution deaths are not confined to developing countries. According to the OECD there are 40,000 deaths per year in France from vehicle diesel emissions alone. That's about ten times the number of deaths there from road accidents and the equivalent of the 9/11 deathtoll every month.

  37. 97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven

    As a post-script, I have a pretty clear of set of criteria for data that would falsify climate theory based on what climate theory actually predicts.

    eg.

    - OHC flat or declining while known net forcing same or increasing.

    - 30 year surface temperature trends flat or declining

    - Ratio of insurance costs for weather events/geophysical events on a 10 year average flat or declining

    - sealevel rise declining over a 10 year interval.

    Do have a set of criteria for changing your mind?

  38. 97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven

    What Lindzen publishes in journals gets noted. What Lindzen presents to the naive is rather different and depressing.

    Eugenics was not the scientific consensus opinion by a very large margin. Democracy would work okay if the population was actually accurately informed but as you are aptly demonstrating, people prefer to get their "information" from sources which confirm preconceived beliefs.

    Spare us the strawman arguements please. You obviously read a pack of pseudoskeptic sites, why not read what the science is actually saying and predicting instead of the nonsense that would appear to fit your prejudices? Have you ever look at the IPCC WG1 report? It would appear not from those statements.

  39. 97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven

    How do you think policy should be guided? Personally I think that in highly technical areas, policy should be guided by the consensus of experts. It might be wrong, but that is still the best way for policy makers to proceed.

    Of course you need to know what the consensus is and interestingly, several ways of examining this have arrived at the same conclusion. If you dont think that this is the consensus opinion, then where is your evidence to the contrary?

    I think the idea of group-think in science is total joke. "Science is a contact sport" is more realistic - and utter applies to Lindzen's example which was clearly not group-think. Actually it is example of politically-motivated abuse of science much like the anti-AGW stance which is rather ironic.

    Otherwise, the piece consists of misinformation that Lindzen would certainly not say to his peers and the usual political argumentation method of selective historical presentation to support an argument. How about showing a little skepticism for this sort of stuff and checking it against the actual science yourself?

  40. 97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven

    likeithot - If you are in agreement with Lindzen, are you arguing that the consensus is unimportant, that attribution is impossible, or that scientists are wholly motivated by money and status rather than facts? Because all of those contentions are quite false. [And as a side note, the comparisons to eugenics, Nazis and Lysenko in Lindzens article indicate to me that he isn't resenting a fact-based argument, rather just rhetoric...]

    In the interests of remaining on topic, I'll just note (as many others have) that public policy decisions are driven by the information available, that on complex subjects we depend upon expert opinion, and that due to some rather serious efforts by 'skeptics' there is a gap between the expert opinion and the public perception of the same. Consensus is very important in informing policy. 

    I will also note that your "look, squirrel" changes of subject mean that you have not supported any of your claims against Cook et al's methods or results. 

  41. 2014 SkS Weekly Digest #24

    composer99,

     

    You are saying that derp's taking a dim view of Skeptical Science sharing editorial cartoons is a usual thing with him.  Is that your intention?

  42. 97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven

    R. Honeyutt:


    Lindzen’s JP&S article "Science in the Public Square: Global Climate Alarmism and Historical Precedents" sums up pretty well the problem with group think, “look how many people are on our side” type arguments:
    http://www.jpands.org/vol18no3/lindzen.pdf

  43. 2014 SkS Weekly Digest #24

    GISTemp L-OTI for May is out: 0.76C — the warmest May on record.  If the rest of 2014 averages what the first five months averaged, 2014 will be the warmest year on record.  Of course, with a moderate El Nino forming, the chances of maintaining that average are fairly small.

  44. Rob Honeycutt at 01:00 AM on 19 June 2014
    97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven

    likeithot...  Every single paper or piece of research ever done, and every one that ever will be done, can be done better. That's just a fact of life. 

    I will take from your combativeness and unwillingness to test the results of Cook13 as an admission that the results are likely to be correct.

  45. 97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven

    A clarification on my previous comment:

    For those unhappy with Cook et al., there are some issues that need to be addressed. 

    • If you agree with the overall level of consensus, you cannot claim the Cook et al. raters were biased. 
    • If you feel the raters were biased while ignoring independent results, the Cook et al. data (the abstracts) are publicly available - do the work and support your claim, or drop it as opinion and not fact. 
    • If you disagree with the overall level of consensus, provide some evidence. Or again, hand-waving opinion unsupported by facts. 

    And if you are arguing that expert consensus is unimportant, why is consensus one of the most frequent primary 'skeptic' claims presented to argue against policy changes? Perhaps, just perhaps, because expert consensus is actually critical to policy decisions...

    Again I (IMO) view arguments against the consensus, made without evidence, to just be efforts to influence public policy - trying to persuade the public to ignore evidence, to ignore reality. 

  46. 97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven

    likeithot - While the paper could have been more explicit with each individual endorsement level description (at the risk of some repetition), reading the set of exclusive choices as a whole and the guidelines used for evaluations clarifies that endorsement levels of 1-3 are for a majority anthropogenic influence, while endorsement levels 4-7 are for minority or negligible anthropogenic influence. The levels are in fact quite clear on that. 

    You can only claim a lack of attribution levels in the Cook et al paper by ignoring the context of the multiple exclusive choices presented - in essence by taking things out of context. That's an error on your part, and on the part of many who have criticized the paper. 

    As to trying some ratings yourself, that's a suggestion made because you (and any critic) have some options available regarding this paper and the consensus.

    1. If you think the Cook et al raters were biased in their work, do some ratings yourself - a few hundred from the evaluation set should be managable in a weekend day, enough to see if the 97% estimate is supported by the abstracts evaluated. Otherwise you're criticizing w/o evidence, hand-waving. That's one of Tols errors. 
    2. If you agree with the general consensus level, but are just criticizing the methods used in Cook et al, then you are by your very agreement with results not able to argue rating bias. This is another core error in Tols comment.
    3. If you disagree with the level of consensus entirely, with Doran, Anderegg, Oreskes, and Cook et al, you need to provide some independent evidence, i.e. do the work. Or you're again engaging in unsupported hand-waving.

    There really aren't any other choices wrt this paper. 

    In regards to consensus vs. science - the consensus is not the science, but rather is driven by the science, by the available evidence and data. As in any public policy issue, no one person is expert on everything (although some people act like they are, oddly enough) and we therefore rely on expert opinions. And as noted in the Cook et al paper, the gap between the existing scientific consensus and the public view of that consensus (due in large part to signficant ongoing efforts at obfuscation and misinformation) means that our public policies will be misinformed as well - unless and until that misperception is corrected. 

    Claims that a scientific consensus on climate doesn't exist despite multiple studies or even cursory looks at the literature, or that expert opinions are meaningless, are really just efforts in denial, and attempts to halt reality-driven public policies. I consider such claims to be wholly ideological rather than evidential. And (IMO, mind you) I regard your claims in this thread in like manner. 

    If you wish to argue public policy, great, do so, although I suspect SkS is perhaps the wrong place for purely political discussions. But policy discussions need to be based on accurate information, including the reality that the vast majority of people studying climate agree on the basics of AGW. 

  47. Transformational Climate Science at Exeter University

    @All - By all means discuss such matters here, but it seems appropriate to point out that this discussion is currently ongoing over on the Arctic Sea Ice Forum:

    "Climate Change Perceptions and Communications"

  48. In charts: how a revenue neutral carbon tax cuts emissions, creates jobs, grows the economy

    Thanks, Andy. I want to do some more research on the premature death subject.

    Also, is the BC coal mining industry taxed? Apparently, it is a multi-billion dollar industry. Details can be found here.

  49. Transformational Climate Science at Exeter University

    I really should add the following clarification from Professor Catherine Mitchell, to clear up any possible confusion. Regarding UK low carbon energy generation she points out that:

    Since 1990 we have added 3-4% – i.e. we were at 8% largely nuclear and hydro and now we are at about 12% which is nuclear, hydro, new renewables and interconnectors. But the main point that we are still well behind what we need is right, although if we had loads of energy efficiency we would need to have less supply.

  50. Over 31,000 scientists signed the OISM Petition Project

    likeithot @23.

    Do you not feel that the OISM Petition Project has "a clearly pre-meditaded (+unscientific) political adgenda"?

    I note elsewhere on this website you protest that your questioning went unanswered. With that sensitivity in mind, I would answer your question @21 by pointing out that the "someone" is surely the GWPF who certainly require a reality check. To publish that propagandist and scurrilous nonsense from Andrew Montford is, for an organisation registered as a UK educational charity, bringing the UK Charity Commission and the numerous legitimate charities it supports into disrepute.

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