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JvD at 23:30 PM on 17 May 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
I'd like to have a show of hands at this point of people who - having followed this discussion - agree with me that SkS is creating a false impression that 100% renewables scenario's are realistic. I call this creating a false impression, because in reality, achieving 100% renewables (global average!) has been stated by numerous credible sources to be extremely difficult which is another way of saying extremely costly.
My proposal here is that SkS overhaul its various articles that conclude that 100% renewables scenario are credible.
For example, the final sentence of this particular article is:
"Numerous regional and global case studies – some incorporating modeling to demonstrate their feasibility – have provided plausible plans to meet 100% of energy demand with renewable sources."
Should be updated to read:
"Numerous regional and global case studies – some incorporating modeling to demonstrate their feasibility – have provided plans to meet 100% of energy demand with renewable sources, although achieving such plans globally is thought to be extremely difficult and costly, according to authoritative expert bodies"
I have re-read most of this entire discussion (which took almost an hour) and I think that we could all agree that SkS should now move to create the above example amendment to this article. It would be sensible to update the other articles on renewables providing 100% power or baseload power to reflect this conclusion. It is necessary that SkS does this, because the current purport of all these articles is that renewable can 'plausibly' provide 100% of energy without any nuclear.
SkS needs to update the articles to make sure that people realise that achieving 100% renewables can only be done with extreme difficulty. It is right and just that readers of Sks should realise this fully, and not be moved to complacency on this issue, which is what the current version of the articles are apparently seeking to do!
Thank you,
Joris
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DSL at 23:16 PM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Warren, I'm sure you'll agree that only those who offer an opinion can be applied to the concept of "consensus." Climate in particular is an interdisciplinary area of study, and not all biologists and oceanographers should be expected to be included in the category of "contributing to the consensus." If we use that definition, then only those who offer a point of view on the "A" in AGW can be counted, even if their opinion is "I'm not sure" (which is different than not offering an opinion at all). It is implicit, then, in the use of the concept of consensus that it refer only to those who offer an opinion.
To say something like "of 12,000 papers, 30% endorse" is much more misleading, unless the full range of responses is given at that point. In such a case, the scientific reader will immediately discard the "no opinion offered" and do the math to arrive at 97%. The mainstream reader will be confused and either take 30% in the wrong way (only 30% believe in AGW!) or figure things out and get the 97%. If the most useful and precise result is 97%, why obscure it?
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Dikran Marsupial at 22:59 PM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Warren, the large eye-catching diagram at the top of the page makes it abundently clear that it is 97% of the papers that state a position on the matter, so it is only potentially misleading to those who can only be bothered to read the title and read no further. Has the climate debate really reached the point where statements need to be worded that defensively?
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Kevin C at 22:44 PM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Warren: Let me try and explain this one more way.
In 2004 GW Bush won the presidential election with 62m votes, or 50.7% of the votes cast. 62m is also 21% of the US population (not all of whom were eligable to vote), and <1% of the global population. Was the popular support for GW Bush 50.7%, or 21%, or <1%?
I submit to you that any answer other than 50.7% would be misleading.
You are suggesting that papers which do not address the question of the human contribution to global warming in the same category as papers which do address the question but are undecided on the answer. That's the sort of meaningless abuse of statistics which, while common in public discourse, has no place in science.
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Warren Hindmarsh at 22:40 PM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Sphaerica,
it is misleading because 97% of the survey did not find "that humans are causing global warming"
by the reports own results around 4,000 of 12-14,000 reports found so ie around 30%
It doesn't matter what is written in the rest of the report. that sentence is misleading.
"in 1969 man walked on the moon" is completely different. there you are considering the definition of "man"
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CBDunkerson at 22:35 PM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
yphilj - When Arrhenius first suggested AGW in 1896 it was almost universally rejected based on bad data and methodology regarding the infrared absorption capability of increased CO2 levels. The idea was essentially resurrected by Callendar in the late 1930s and grew slowly more accepted from there as the evidence began piling up.
I suspect the turning point was the 'Keeling curve' starting in 1958. By then the radiative absorption errors had been corrected, but there was still a prevailing belief that ocean uptake of carbon would prevent atmospheric CO2 levels from increasing for centuries... until Keeling's data definitively proved that they were already rising.
As Kevin C indicated, AGW was clearly the majority opinion by the 1970s, but did not reach the current near universal acceptance until the early 1990s... just under a hundred years after Arrhenius. Really, at this point the only ways to reject AGW are to not understand the science or believe in a massive unknown and undetected negative feedback effect.
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Bob Lacatena at 22:24 PM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Warren,
There's nothing remotely misleading about the statement. Every element of it is true. To call it misleading is like saying that "In 1969 man walked on the moon" is misleading, because the effort took a decade, and only one man actually walked on the moon, and his feet never touched the moon itself becase he had to wear a spacesuit, and they were only there for a few days.
In this case, the paper is open access and anyone can read it. There's also an entire blog post above that explains it more clearly, as well as press releases, press articles, and more.
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Alexandre at 22:21 PM on 17 May 2013Measure the climate consensus yourself with our Interactive Rating System
Very good. If someone thinks the ratings were not adequate, they can see for themselves.
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Warren Hindmarsh at 22:09 PM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
In today's world of "climate science" it is very important to only publish clear and incisive reports, the opening sentences to this report are anything but that by any reading.
A more accurate opening could be something like:
A survey by a team from a global warming blog site of 12,000-14,000 papers on global warming or climate change found that around 4,000 expressed a direct opinion on the causes, of these around 97% endorsed AGW around 30% of the total papers. Coincidentally of 8,500 authors asked to rate their own papers of these 4,000 responded, of the 1,400 respondents expressing an opinion on global warming or climate change 97% endorsed AGW, around 30% of the self rated respondents.
I agree quite convoluted:
Or you could write something like:
Of 14,000 papers on global warming or climate change surveyed by a team from a global warming blog site, around 30% endorsed the opinion that the causes were Human induced.
But definately not this:
"of over 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers by our citizen science team at Skeptical Science has found a 97% consensus in the peer-reviewed literature that humans are causing global warming"
It is misleading
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Glenn Tamblyn at 17:37 PM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
bill
Yep, a tweet from POTUS is Twitter GOLD. Also a tweet from Rep Waxman (of Waxman-Markey) as well
This is now generating a second round of media attention, particularly from the US. John Cook has already done one interview on CNN.
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scaddenp at 13:58 PM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Bob, Ray only talked about plate tectonics. Plate tectonics did arise in the 1960s, and it did gain very quick acceptance. The old theory of continental drift lent it a lot of observational support while the new mechanism dealt to the ridiculous idea of contenents moving across oceanic crust. The Wegener theory was wrong and rightly rejected. The key papers appeared in very short interval between 1962 and 1965 and I would say the observations from the WWSSN and ocean-floor striping discovery were the fundimental keys. It was the standard paradigm by the time I got to uni in 1976.
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climateadj at 13:24 PM on 17 May 2013Another Piece of the Global Warming Puzzle - More Efficient Ocean Heat Uptake
"So why has ocean heat uptake become more efficient over the past decade instead?"
My pet theory is that there is the oceanic equivalent of the Hadley Cell at work. This upwells cold water in the tropics and downwells warm water from the tropical surface out to the mid-latitude depths. A couple of years ago I produced a plot from the ARGO data showing this:
If the ocean is becoming more energetic, then it's not unreasonable to expect this overturning to increase with the warm water forced deeper.
Here's a couple of temperature and salinity trend plots that I produced at the same time that might be relevant:
https://sites.google.com/site/climateadj/argo-analysis
Only six years of data (2005-2010), but it seemed consistent with the "Hadley" circulation becoming more vigorous with the "warm front" moving more poleward and deep.
Then again, this is only the pet theory of an amateur.
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Bob Loblaw at 12:55 PM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Ray @56 "Plate techtonics was first elaborated in the 1960s and rapidly gained acceptance."
Continental drift was promulgated in the early 1900s, by Alfred Wegener, and had origins as far back as the 1500s. It met great resistance amongst many geologists, and some resisted until they died. Plate tectonics finally gave it a mechanism. You give your credibiliity no help by trying to pass it off as a 1960s idea that was quickly accepted.
There is an interesting distinction between global warming (human-caused by burning fossil fuels) and continental drift, though:
- continental drift was an observation that languished for years in search of a mechanism, before it became accepted
- the effect of greenhouse gases and CO2-induced climate change through burning of fossil fuels had a well-accepted mechanism long before observations appeared showing it happening...
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bill4344 at 10:57 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Whoopes, forgot it's not HTML anymore! Should have previewed; Sorry. Tweeted by the POTUS.
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Old Mole at 10:27 AM on 17 May 2013Who is Paying for Global Warming?
Gentlemen:
Sorry to have been so late to the discussion, but hasn't it occurred to anyone that the figures in the "% of Total Production Exported" start to get completely cockeyed around Russia? Call me math challenged, but it seems to me that if say, Venezuela exports more than twice as much as it uses domestically, it would amount to more than 1.5%, and that the 20 Mtonnes that China exports out of over 3000 wouldn't amount to nearly 5%.
Could this be corrected?
Best wishes,
Mole
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dhogaza at 10:11 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Ray:
"However there have been several who have disagreed with all the proposals of plate tectonics leading to comments such as this "Criticism of plate tectonics has increased in line with the growing number of observational anomalies.""
Google search on that phrase returned four hits, all related to one person, who has published in one place, the "Journal of Scientific Exploration", which specializes in crank science articles that can't get published in the scientific literature.
" Is this a forerunner of what might happen with the "settled science" of anthropogenic climate change?"
Crank science rejection of climate science is already with us, of course. Our cranks will continue to be with us forever, I'm sure.
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scaddenp at 08:54 AM on 17 May 2013The anthropogenic global warming rate: Is it steady for the last 100 years? Part 2.
MS1 "I think their paper failed " really? The paper investigated how much of the variability of the temperature record could be accounted from assuming simple relationship with 3 known causes of internal variability. Rypdal 2012 showed it could be improved but F&R is remarkable successful. Tests with only using part of the data for training show it also a robust predictor of future variability.
If the ENSO index was substantially flawed or there was significant non-linearity, this isnt born out by the success of their prediction. If you believe that the prediction can be improved significantly by other indexes or method, then show us.
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Matt Fitzpatrick at 08:34 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Re: mattn
"Why did you use global climate change as a search term rather than anthropogenic...?"
Probably a precautionary measure. Since survey responders were looking for endorsement of anthropogenicity, using that as a search term could have biased the result. It probably would have reduced the proportion of "neutrals", and may have affected the "endorses" versus "rejects" as well.
Not to change the subject, but I find the ad hominem and conspiracy ideation I'm seeing in responses elsewhere on the Internet rather depressing. True, that kind of response is nothing new, but since I participated in this (albeit minimally), it's personal now.
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dana1981 at 08:31 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
mattn @53 - had we searched for 'anthropogenic', we might have missed some of the 'rejection' studies attributing global warming to other factors.
It's also possible that a group might investigate certain impacts from 2°C warming (for example) without necessarily accepting that 2°C warming will happen, or if it does, that it would necessarily be human-caused.
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Ray at 08:19 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Composer99 @26. Not sure that using platre techtonics as an example of settled science in this context is a good idea especially when you couple it with "Third, that humans are causing global warming is not an opinion. Based on the available evidence it is a settled fact". Plate techtonics was first elaborated in the 1960s and rapidly gained acceptance. However this was said about this acceptance "A hypothesis that is appealing for its unity or simplicity acts as a filter, accepting reinforcement with ease but tending to reject evidence that does not seem to fit" Othersd agreed stating "this is admirable description of what has happened in the field of earth dynamics, where one hypothesis -- the new global tectonics -- has been permitted to override and overrule all other hypotheses."
You'd have to agree there are some similarities between the current situation on global warming. But I can hear you say, "plate tectonics is now agreed to by every one and anthropogenic climate change will be also" However there have been several who have disagreed with all the proposals of plate tectonics leading to comments such as this "Criticism of plate tectonics has increased in line with the growing number of observational anomalies." Is this a forerunner of what might happen with the "settled science" of anthropogenic climate change?
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Utahn at 08:16 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
One interesting approach to addressing that concern about adjutication (apologies if in the article), would be to take all the disagreements and judge them in one direction or the other. This would give you a range of possible outcomes if one person (or one way of leaning) was right or the other. I bet it woudln't change the final answer much at all, but woudl be kind of interesting. I suspect most of the shifts woudl be from no opinion to endorsement or vice versa, i.e. changing the proportion with an endorsement or not, but not much the percentages...
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Tom Curtis at 08:16 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
yphilj @49, looking at the scientitsts self assessments, in 1991 endorsements constituted approximately 80% of papers that took a position on AGW. Although a strong majority, that does does not constitute a consensus IMO. It is, however, based on a small number of repsonses and may not be representative. Against that, the small number of self assessements still represents about 20-25% of papers assessed in the abstracts, and the IPCC 1990 report certainly did not endorse a consensus that AGW was occurring and significant. So while Kevin C is correct that a consensus was forming in the 1970s, it did not solidify until the early 1990s. Certainly it has existed since 2001.
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mattn at 08:13 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Couple questions:
1) Why did you use global climate change as a search term rather than anthropogenic, which is often used in the literature? I looked at a paper of mine, out of curiousity, and I never used climate change as a phrase even though the paper was on tropical trends in an A1B scenario.
2) Why are so many of the papers "impacts papers"? These aren't papers about climate science per se, they usually are more along the lines of: given a 2C global increase increase what happens at location x? Also, is there anyone who would write an impacts paper about the impact of no global warming?
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Tom Curtis at 07:47 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Barry @38, the blog by Brandon Shollenberger at Lucia's essentially points out that:
1) "While criteria for determining ratings were defined prior to the rating period, some clarifications and amendments were required as specific situations presented themselves."
and that
2) "Initially, 27% of category ratings and 33% of endorsement ratings disagreed. Raters were then allowed to compare and justify or update their rating through the web system, while maintaining anonymity. Following this, 11% of category ratings and 16% of endorsement ratings disagreed; these were then resolved by a third party."
Instead of merely quoting to the paper to that effect (as I have done), however, he has taken some examples out of context from the hacked forum contents and deliberately not quoted the discussion of these points in the paper even though he knew that they existed so as to create the impression that SKS had acted in an underhanded way.
Victor Venema makes a fair comment on Shollenberger's approach:
"From Anthony Watts I expect any kind of deception. If something is written on WUWT, by now I initially assume that the opposite is true. From The Blackboard I had a better impression. Had there not been a discussion about the broken link to the article, I might not become suspicious and have checked the article. From now on I will put you in the Watts category until you have shown you deserve better."
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Bob7905 at 07:32 AM on 17 May 2013The evidence for climate change WITHOUT computer models or the IPCC
Kevin C @20
Thanks for the clarification. I was being dense and had misread what you had suggested @15 for the modified date range.
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scaddenp at 06:28 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Michel, while concensus doesnt mean the science is correct, the scientific consensus is the best basis for policy decisions on just about anything. This paper shows that while there might be debate at politcal level, there isnt at the science level.
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Kevin C at 05:36 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
yphilj: That's a very good question. The current paper shows a robust consensus back to 1991. The only similar earlier work I'm aware of is this paper covering the period 1965-1979 (including the 70's of the mythical 'global cooling' predictions). They found 7 papers predicting cooling, 19 neutral and 42 warming.
Of the cooling papers, one was Rasool and Schneider 1991. By the end of the 70's Schneider had changed his mind. Three more of the cooling papers were equivocal on the question - see Ari's page here.
On this basis you could probably argue that the consensus was emerging during the 70's.
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citizenschallenge at 04:25 AM on 17 May 2013Schmitt and Happer manufacture doubt
Scott, I hear you when it comes to the early space program. Man those astronauts were the coolest, heck they were demi-gods to us kids. In fact, it took a while for me to accept that Schmitt's fallen off his rocker... but accept it I have.
But, the main reason I've dropped in - is to say thanks to Dumb Scientist for writing this article and to SkepticalScience for their sharing/reposting policy - which I have again taken advantage of: http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2013/05/dr-harrison-schmitt-and-dr-william.html
As for the Wall Street Journal, might I offer some further reading:
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2010 | citizenschallenge.blogspot
{#11a} SPPI, Monckton, Seitz, WSJ - anatomy of a character assassination
Containing:
Seitz’s Wall Street Journal, June 12, 1996, Op-EdBen Santer’s censored reply ~ Wall Street Journal letter to Ed, June 25, 1996
IPCC’s censored reply ~ Wall Street Journal letter to Ed, June 25, 1996
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Saturday, January 28, 2012
WSJ claims there’s “No Need to Panic About Global Warming” (part two)
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Dumb Scientist at 04:07 AM on 17 May 2013Schmitt and Happer manufacture doubt
Dikran's response to jdixon1980 is correct. High CO2 levels hundreds of millions of years ago partially compensate for the fainter young Sun, but that's slow enough to ignore over "only" millions of years.
Sadly, I didn't notice your other question until just now. I completely agree with KR's comments on that thread, and amusingly also just linked the same page showing that CO2 is rising faster than exponentially.
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yphilj at 03:45 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
When did the scientific consensus on climate change decisively emerge? Early '90s, '80s, earlier? Is this too subjective a question? I suppose another way of asking this is when was the last time anthropogentic climate change was seriously argued about in a scientific journal?
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Dikran Marsupial at 03:24 AM on 17 May 2013Schmitt and Happer manufacture doubt
Assuming that 3,000,000,000 years ago TSI was 20% lower than today and that the Sun had been brightening linearly: 3.2 million years is approximately 1/1000th of that time period so one would expect the drop in lumionosity to be 1/1000th of that 20%, which is essentially negligible (vastly less than the difference in the 11 year solar cycle, which IIRC is about 0.1%).
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jdixon1980 at 03:16 AM on 17 May 2013Schmitt and Happer manufacture doubt
DS, re: solar activity, your response to Schmitt and Happer points to the obviously directly relevant fact that solar activity hasn't increased significantly since 1950, while global temperature has.
I have also read that the sun has an extremely slow trend of increasing intensity, e.g., from the Wikipedia entry on the geologic temperature record:
"Some evidence does exist however that the period of 2,000 to 3,000 million years ago was very generally colder and more glaciated than the last 500 million years. This is thought to be the result of solar radiation approximately 20% lower than today.[citation needed]"
and
"According to standard solar theories, the sun will gradually have increased in brightness as a natural part of its evolution after having started with an intensity approximately 70% of its modern value."
My question is this - what do we know about the solar irradiance at the last time the atmosphere was at 400 ppm, which a brief web search tells me was during the Pliocene epoch, about 3.2-5 million years ago? If TSI was significantly lower then, wouldn't that tend to suggest that the climate forcing from 400 ppm now will be even stronger than it was the last time, also tending to undermine the denier argument that we shouldn't worry about 400 ppm (and counting) because it has happened before?
I must admit that when I started to type this comment, I was confident that the answer to this question was that TSI was much lower a few million years ago, and I was going to suggest that you add that point as another argument against Schmitt and Happer. But after searching for a bit, it might be that I was just misremembering having read that there is a clear long-term solar warming trend on the time scale of millions of years, when it is actually billions. Can you or someone here clear me up on this point?
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dana1981 at 03:05 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
bert @25 - our full ratings database should be available in the supplementary material (though I don't have time to look at the moment).
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dana1981 at 03:04 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
barry @37 - define what you (or Lucia) mean by "independent".
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miffedmax at 02:52 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
This is a great study.
One thing it shows (and that was really driven home to me when I participated in John's follow-up survey) is how conservative most scientists are with their projections and statements. Where most of us in other fields would be screaming "is" and "will" climatalogists whisper "might be" and "could."
I contrast that with the tone of the so-called skeptics who usually speak in sweeping absolutes.
Anyway, just a few thoughts from a member of the generally unwashed public who has found this site invaluable in getting off the fence when it comes to climate change.
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CBDunkerson at 02:48 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Wow. I saw a short article on this study earlier today, but somehow didn't make the connection to the SkS project. Now that I search Google News it seems like there is a lot of great press around this. Congrats all!
Amazing that so many people in this thread apparently would, "...expect every geological paper to note in its abstract that the Earth is a spherical body that orbits the sun?" Just when you think the 'skeptics' cannot get any more ridiculous...
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Rob Honeycutt at 02:36 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Another thing that I thought was interesting about the results was that, given the challenges of varying interpretation, how consistent the results actually were. I think that speaks volumes about the robustness of the process that John set up.
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Rob Honeycutt at 02:33 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
As I remember it, it would have been utterly impossible to discuss any specific paper between two raters. You're going through so many of them at a time and they're coming at you in a random manner. There were some discussions involving the definitions of the categories, but I think that's about it. Such as, one issue that came up for me was, mitigation. If a paper is a migitation paper, is it not, by default, then implicitly accepting AGW?
I think everyone had to interpret the categories in their own way. And the self-raters had to do the same. That's the whole point to having lots of different people doing the work and using a very large sample size.
And besides, what I think keeps getting ignored over at Lucia's place is that, heck, the SkS raters were far more conservative in their ratings than the scientists who actually wrote the papers. The whole point of getting the scientists to rate the papers was to build in a check on potential bias from the SkS ratings.
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Dikran Marsupial at 02:19 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
The system described in MarkR's comment is rather like the peer review process used in some of the top conferences in my field (machine learning). First the reviewers are selected by the programme committee from a pool of volunteer revewers. Like the pool of reviewers used by this project, the pool of reviewers will not be independent in the sense of not working with eachother, or not being friends, or having common interests. Each paper is assigned three or more reviewers, neither of which know the identity of their fellow reviewers. Once the reviews are completed in isolation the reviewers get to see the comments made by the other reviewers and have an opportunity to revise their review, but this is again done anonymously. The review process for such conferences provides "independent" reviews in the same sense as used in this survey, and provides a reasonable prescedent for the approach that was taken.
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MarkR at 02:07 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
37. barry, I can specifically comment on the latter parts regarding disagreement.
We were aware of the user handles of who had done some ratings, but we didn't know who had done which ratings. In the paper we described this as 'two independent, anonymized raters'. So on Lucia's last point about hashing out disagreements, we knew we had disagreed with one of the other 23 raters, but we did not know with whom.
At the very beginning of the process there were a number of questions about difficult cases or missing aspects of the system we used. For example, a number of papers had no abstract (or a truncated abstract), and the best way to highlight these for removal from the analysis was discussed.
There were very few such special cases and we can be confident are results are solid because we found we were more conservative than the authors!
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John Mason at 01:59 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
I would say that this indicates that the SKS reviewers were actually rather conservative and self-skeptical.
That sounds rather like us lot, Dikran!
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Dikran Marsupial at 01:43 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
barry, it seems to me that they are clutching at straws. Independent means merely that the two raters did not discuss the particular paper that they were reviewing in arriving at their judgements on that paper. That doesn't mean that uncertainty in how the criteria should be applied cannot be discussed in a more general context.
The authors of the papers themselves generally rated their work as more strongly supporting AGW than did the SKS reviewers, which is the opposite of what you would expect if "independence" os the SKS reviewers was an issue. I would say that this indicates that the SKS reviewers were actually rather conservative and self-skeptical.
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NewYorkJ at 01:20 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Congrats on this work. It sounds like quite an effort, and getting 1200 scientists to participate in categorizing their own work (important considering how studies are routinely spun by a certain crowd) is impressive.
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barry1487 at 01:13 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
At Lucia's they quote one of the authors as saying that the rating was not strictly independent.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means/
And provide graphics backing up that point. How independent was the rating? -
barry1487 at 01:10 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
I would like to know if there was a marked difference between the ratings for abstracts/papers under the two different search terms.
It is possible (likely?) that searching under 'global warming' might yield more positive results re the consensus than 'global climate change.' Would it be worthwhile comparing to see if the results have been begged by the search terms? -
Tom Curtis at 00:54 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
HJones @34, that is incorrect. The way the opening sentence now reads, it states that:
1) Over 12,000 papers were surveyed; and
2) A 97% concensus was found in the survey.
As it happens, a 97% concensus of papers stating a position on AGW was found. As a matter of logic, if a 97% concensus of papers stating a position on AGW is found, then a 97% concensus is found; and hence (2) is true.
You resist this conclusion because it is a rule of conversational implicature that relevant information will be provided. Given that rule and only the lead sentence, it follows by conversational implicature (but not by logical implicature) that the concensus is of the 12,000 papers. However, the lead sentence did not appear alone. It appeared as part of an article which made it clear that the concensus was restricted to those papers actually stating a position. As it is a cardinal rule of interpretation that sentences be interpreted in context, it follows that the sentence is not misleading.
The worst that can be said of it is that poor phrasing creates an unnecessary distraction. Regardless of whether it is a reasonable distraction, I am sure no harm would be done in ammending the sentence by adding the bolded words from my 32. However, that is not your criticism and your criticism is wrong. Correctly stated your criticism is that the lead sentence creates a false impression by ignoring the rules of conversational implicature; whereas what has actually happened is that you have gained a false impression by ignoring the rule that all sentences must be interpreted in context.
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HJones at 00:27 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Tom Curtis,
Your bold highlights is very clear. However, that is not what is the lead in statement to this article. That was the purpose of my comment, and the only purpose btw. The openning statement is misleading, if your bold highlight is added, I would have no problem with the statement, or converseladd the reference to the number of papers that take a position. The way the statement now reads, 97% of 12000 papers support the position, which is not accurate!
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Dikran Marsupial at 00:24 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
@Tom, well quite! ;o) I like to ask questions that help people to make their point clearly. In this case the ability to specify a scientific topic where Michel could at least argue a concensus exists using his own definition would at least show that he himself thought that the word had a meaningful use in a scientific context and that this wasn't merely an excercise in rhetoric. The ball is in Michel's court.
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Tom Curtis at 00:23 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
H Jones @29, the sentence "A new survey of over 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers by our citizen science team at Skeptical Science has found a 97% consensus in the peer-reviewed literature stating a position on the issue that humans are causing global warming" is not a contradiction. As it is formed from the lead sentence of the article simply by adding the bolded words, and that addition amounts to a conjunction it follows that the lead sentence is true if the ammended sentence is true.
This may not be apparent because in normal communication we expect relevent facts and qualifications to be stated, which the lead sentence did not to. It could be argued, therefore, that while formally true, the lead sentence had a misleading (conversational) implication. That seems, however, a ridiculous claim given that the lead sentence is immediately followed by a massive figure clearly stating the qualification you suppose to be misleadingly left out. The best, therefore, that can be said of your comment is that it is quibbling. The lead sentence is neither false, nor misleading in context, a fact that is readilly apparent.
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ianw01 at 00:20 AM on 17 May 2013Schmitt and Happer manufacture doubt
Their second sentence makes it obvious that it was motivated by political/idealological considerations, rather than being driven by the science. They refer to a "... the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production ...".
How people with "credentials" like that can write such nonsense is incredible.
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