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Fact brief - Is there an expert consensus on human-caused global warming?

Bob Loblaw at 06:37 AM on 11 November, 2024

Jess Scarlett @ 6:

You're going to have to put together a much stronger argument than that if you want to convince anyone that there isn't a strong expert consensus on human-caused global warming.

For starters, is your lead question ("Have you looked into all the climate scientists gagged...") a rhetorical gambit, or are you actually asking a serious question? Are you trying to imply that the studies that have looked at the scientific literature missed a few "gagged scientists", or many, or all? Are you trying to imply that this "gagging" has been so thorough that none of their opinions have every made it into print? Or that the few that have made it into print would be a much greater number "but gagging"?

The OP here links to the full SkS rebuttal on the topic. Here is the link to the basic tab of that rebuttal, but note that there are also advanced and intermediate tabs to read. The basic rebuttal links to the various papers that have been done on the subject, and those papers give details on just what sort of searches they did to obtain the list of papers that were evaluated. Feel free to look them over and come back with an argument as to why those searches will have missed the opinions of the "gagged scientists" you seem to think exist in large numbers.

...but before you start trying to make an argument that the review system won't let opposing opinions get published, I suggest that you read this SkS article on "pal review" that shows just where bad reviewing practices exist in the climate science literature. (Hint: it's the "gagged scientists" that have historically abused the peer review system.)

But let's entertain your argument that there are a whole bunch of 'gagged scientists" that can't get published, or have chosen to remain silent out of fear. You said "...all the climate scientists gagged..." That seems to imply a large number. I'll begin with a recollection of discussing climate science with someone at a conference about 30 years ago. He made the claim that lots of scientists had reversed their opinion from global cooling in the 1970s to warming in the 1990s. (This is debunked on this post at SkS.)

I challenged him by saying "name one".

He prattled on about there being lots.

Again, I said "name one".

He kept prattling on.

I repeated "name one".

I held my hand up about head high and started dropped it down to chest height, waist height, and below, saying "this is your credibility dropping".

He still didn't give a name. He never did.

So that is my challenge to you: you claim that there are scientists at CSIRO and NASA that have been gagged because they disagree with the scientific consensus. Name One. And provide some sort of link to a reliable source of information supporting that position.

Second: in the advanced tab of the full rebuttal, under "The Self-Ratings", the Original Cook et al study obtained ratings of over 2100 papers from 1200 scientists, and 97.2% of those ratings agreed with the consensus. In the following paragraph, it states that the authors' review of over 4000 abstracts indicated a 97.1% agreement with the consensus.

My second challenge is for you to do some elementary arithmetic (I won't call it math), and tell me how many papers do you think those "gagged scientists" failed to publish, and how would the 97% number have changed if they had succeeded in publishing those papers.

I'll give you a hint. You'd have to find nearly 2100 papers or 4000 abstracts to get it to drop to a 50% consensus.

Good luck finding that many papers.

...and before you try to link to PopTech's list of papers, please read "Meet the Denominator".

Please provide us with backup of your claim.

Fact brief - Is there an expert consensus on human-caused global warming?

Eclectic at 05:15 AM on 11 November, 2024

Jess Scarlett @6 :

Jess, the consensus being talked about is the scientific consensus ~ IOW the evidence based consensus, which is expressed in published scientific papers. There are some (rare) scientists who disagree with the evidence, but they have failed to present any counter-evidence. (Can you still call them scientists when they are being unscientific?)

Reputable scientific journals are actually keen to publish new research ~ if it is controversial and ground-breaking . . . but it must be based on scientific evidence, not on loudmouth political opinions.

The politics of what to do about AGW is another question entirely.

Fact brief - Is there an expert consensus on human-caused global warming?

Evan at 00:20 AM on 10 November, 2024

Although not a consensus statement as such, the booklet titled "Climate Change: Evidence and Causes" published jointly by the US National Academy of Sciences and the UK Royal Society is a very readable, useful resource to recommend to people who want to read something about global warming from a reputable source. This booklet serves as an implicit consensus statement by these two organizations. I highly recommend this.

Climate Change: Evidence and Causes

Fact brief - Is there an expert consensus on human-caused global warming?

Evan at 00:12 AM on 10 November, 2024

I have nothing to add to this useful article, except to provide a shout-out for the valuable list mentioned in this article of statements by scientific societies concerning global warming.

NASA List of Scientific Consensus

Of red flags and warning signs in comments on social media

Bob Loblaw at 01:31 AM on 16 June, 2024

TWFA @ 4:

Oh, my. What red flags does your comment trigger?

Questions the 97% consensus. Suggests waiting a couple of decades to see what happens. Claims action will take "hundreds of trillions". As the OP says, "wording typical for the 'discourses of climate delay'".

Uses phrases "conclusions are correct and infallible" and "your perfection of science and purity of motive" [emphasis added], which attempts to make the consensus look like it is an absolute claim (even though the OP says "the facts are at least more than settled enough to base our decisions on". [again, emphasis added].

Says "...convinced the right people..." and "...your theory of climate control..." [emphasis added], showing conspiratorial thinking (in group, out group).

Says "...that anything said in question or to the contrary is "disinformation"...", in spite of the fact that the OP uses phrases such as "...in most likelihood be wrong or misleading...", "...might also be an indication...", "...It doesn't necessarily mean that everything written is wrong, but it nonetheless serves as a warning flag...", and "...might need to be read with a suitably large grain of salt."

All in one short paragraph. An impressive feat, to pack so many warning signals into such a short comment. Were you intending to provide us with an example of the type of comment that is probably safe to ignore? Or maybe you're just doing a Poe? Or maybe you are just so self-unaware that you don't see this in yourself?

2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #19

One Planet Only Forever at 03:23 AM on 13 May, 2024

Based on the Story of the Week:

The consensus of people who seriously and responsibly investigate global climate appears to be that, due to the undeniable failure of global leadership by the most harmful powerful people, humanity's future requires adaptation to more dramatically end the use of fossil fuels and other harmful developed human activities plus adaptation to the expensive effort to reduce the excessive accumulated harmful impacts.

When people resist learning to be less harmful 'liberty reducing law and order' can become the required corrective recourse (far better than the disaster of attempted rebellion against undeserving powerful harmful leaders) ... but that requires people who are focused on being less harmful and more helpful to others to 'govern law and order actions without compromising the actions to get along with people who resist learning to be less harmful'.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

transposer85 at 20:53 PM on 25 April, 2024

One Planet Only Forever @27

I am with you on this issue. I am currently trying to present such points in the best way to inspire deniers to change on a channel where somebody posted this film which garnered some positive resonance. As an environmentalist, vegan activist who studied ecology and human ecology in which, in 1992 we delved into the idea of man-made climate change at a time where it was generally seen as a laughing stock, I wanted to chime in with some relevant points:

The channel I am referring to is actually more Covid centred. I find myself in the fairly unusual position of being very pro consensus science in the field of environment, whereas I find medical science is riddled with corruption, mistruths and effective lobbyism which came to a head with Covid together with coercion at a level where it is entirely rational to assume plausibility of at least some conspiratorial aspects. Plenty of evidence is there.

I am mentioning this partly because you touched on the topic but more importantly because I believe it is important to understand the psychology of climate deniers in a more nuanced manner, i.e. in more depth. Unfortunately, as far as I understand it, many people with legitimate concerns regarding Covid measures, associated discrimination and other significant costs to society, got drawn in to certain (predictably) politically motivated groups and for whatever reason, emotional triggers, legitimate lack of trust in the system for some aspects, lack of time for the reviewing the details (big one) etc, have just fallen for climate denial propaganda.

This is at least one part of the spectrum of the climate denial "group" which theoretically could be won back to rationality and trust in the areas of science where trust is actually deserved.

It may be that more emotional people are attracted to these traps. The more we can refine our understanding of the psychology of transformation, the better chance we have of inspiring rationality and deserved trust. Unfortunately, simply facts normally doesn't do it very well. So we have to get creative as scientific mindsets who are characteristically not so emotional on average. It's very important for people to sense they have been heard and taken seriously, even if we strongly disagree with their perceptions and belief systems.

In short we need to apply kindness and compassion even when we feel like throwing that out of the window and slamming people for being ignorant et cetera. An invitation to follow the money could be useful, like you pointed to. Funding and wages in science it's a very variable thing depending upon the type of science. Environmental science is probably on average at the lowest end a financial return, compared with "science" that largely comes straight out of industries, wishing to make profits on their products.

I'm not going to hammer out my evidence for the C topic because my comment will most likely be deleted. I am new here so don't know how this works yet but if you really are interested I will (somewhat begrudgingly) spend even more of my free time to lay it out in a private message ;) otherwise we may have to just agree to disagree.

Gigafact and Skeptical Science collaborate to create fact briefs

John Mason at 16:50 PM on 8 April, 2024

Right on the money, Eclectic. 150 words is a tall order and every single one has to be considered. There's one in the pipeline on the topic of consensus where this area can be considered with more detail.

A data scientist’s case for ‘cautious optimism’ about climate change

lchinitz at 23:14 PM on 2 April, 2024

Hello all,

I find this conversation interesting because I am having exactly the same conversation with a friend of mine. My friend has a position that (I think) is similar to WIlliam's, while I have been responding from the point of view of most of the responses here. So let me try to take the other point of view for just a second to see if it helps.

What my friend argues (and maybe this is part of William's point) is that every policy decision will have to have some negative consequences, but those don't seem to be acknowledged by the people arguing for taking significant actions to prevent climate change. The Stanford paper that Michael cites is a great one (I used it myself in my conversations with my friend) but, as Bob Loblaw describes, these analyses focus on the cost of avoidance vs. the cost of dealing with the consequences. They do not, however, ask/answer the question "what are the costs of the unintended consequences of implementing these avoidance strategies?" For example, if we assume that (at least for a time) energy costs rise, how does that affect people who don't have the ability to pay those increased costs?

Let me provide a non-climate change example. During the Covid crisis there were a lot of measures undertaken to deal with the virus — vaccine mandates, mask mandates, stay-at-home mandates. Recently in some conversations moderated by Braver Angels, Francis Collins made the following statement "If you’re a public health person and you’re trying to make a decision, you have this very narrow view of what the right decision is, and that is something that will save a life. Doesn’t matter what else happens. … You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never quite recover from."

If we take that back into the climate change conversation, I think that the question that (at least some) people are asking is, can we show that we have at least considered the unintended effects of these actions before we decide to take them?

To be very clear, I am absolutely convinced that if we were to do that, we would find that the risks are highly asymmetric. It's going to be MUCH worse to do nothing than to aggressively address the problem right now. That is, my personal opinion does not align with William's. However, based on what I'm reading from him, and based on this ongoing conversation with my friend, I get the sense that there are at least some people who need to see that there has been an attempt to understand the possible negative consequences of whatever choices we decide to make.

Does anyone know of such an analysis? I have found a lot of good economic analyses (the Stanford one above, and one from the Institue for Policy Integrity called "Expert Consensus on the Economics of Climate Change", are among my favorites.) But these, again, focus on the costs of doing something vs. the costs of doing nothing. But they don't bring in the unintended costs of the doing something path, similar to what Collins mentioned. I'd love to know if there is something out there that discusses this.

Cranky Uncle with Dr. John Cook

One Planet Only Forever at 07:38 AM on 8 January, 2024

Ben Laycock, Some observations and feedback ...

The evidence appears to clearly indicate that it is incorrect to believe that "... every single government ... is ... blissfully unaware that economic growth is the primary driving force of the climate catastrophe."

There is enough evidence from the COP interactions, and so much more, to establish a consensus understanding (a legitimately justified 'common sense' as opposed to a harmfully misled developed 'common sense among a portion of the total population') that people wanting to benefit from harmful unsustainable developed perceptions of advancement, success and superiority are the fundamental problem, not just regarding climate change impacts.

The 'government representatives' acting for the benefit of harmful unjustified pursuers of benefit are likely 'well aware of how harmfully misleading they are being' when they fight against more rapid ending of fossil fuel use. Even the 1.5 C target limit of harm done was a harmful compromise. But, because of the unjustified success of harmful pursuers of personal benefit since 1990, the more justified compromise of 1.0 C limit of harmful impact was 'no longer an available option' in 2015.

As for the solution being 'crash the economy', in addition to the points made by Eclectic and Rob Honeycutt, I offer the following thoughts. I agree with crashing the economy if:

Crashing the economy is => Leadership actions to increase awareness and improve understanding of what is harmful and how people can be more helpful to others, especially to future generations.

That type of leadership would result in:

a very rapid ending of harmful unsustainable developed aspects of the economy (stuff that should be excluded from measurements of economic success). The rapid ending would be assisted by leadership encouraging a reduction of unnecessary harmful activity, especially by the richest.

a very rapid increase in the development of less harmful more sustainable economic activity (with the harmful impacts properly and fully subtracted so that there is no misunderstanding regarding the value or merit of an economic activity while harmful activities are cleared out of the system)

That 'crashing of those aspects of the economy' would be Good for the future of humanity. And it would most negatively affect the people who want to be more harmful and less helpful (also a Good Thing).

Of course, if the status quo powers continue to get their way, including being able to significantly compromise leadership actions, the harm suffered would most likely be severely experienced by those less powerful who do not deserve to be penalized - you know - the undeniable status quo history of humanity. And those less powerful 'easy to harm' people include the future generations of humanity (They have no vote, marketing, or legal power).

Scientific Consensus with Dr John Cook

Ben Laycock at 07:12 AM on 7 January, 2024

Whilst it is reasurring that the information in the IPCC reports is reached ia consensus, it can gie us a false sense of security because only the most conservative estimates are included. The most alarming possibilities are left out because they are deemed unlikely. So the possibility of global temperatures reaching an insufferable 4 degrees higher is not something we should be concerned about because it is not very likely to happen.... until it does!

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #49 2023

nigelj at 04:35 AM on 10 December, 2023

MS Sweet. Good information to know.

"I note that Dr. Hansen has long held an Earth System Sensitivity of 6 C. The IPCC consensus has been 3C"

The IPCC number is "equilibrium climate sensitivity", a different thing from earth system sensativity as below. Making it hard to compare the two numbers.

"By definition, equilibrium climate sensitivity does not include feedbacks that take millennia to emerge, such as long-term changes in Earth's albedo because of changes in ice sheets and vegetation. It includes the slow response of the deep oceans' warming, which also takes millennia, and so ECS fails to reflect the actual future warming that would occur if CO2 is stabilized at double pre-industrial values.[38] Earth system sensitivity (ESS) incorporates the effects of these slower feedback loops, such as the change in Earth's albedo from the melting of large continental ice sheets, which covered much of the Northern Hemisphere during the Last Glacial Maximum and still cover Greenland and Antarctica)...."

(Climate sensitivity, wikipedia)

We will probably never know any of these numbers for sure because you can't put the planet in the laboratory. (Although I think paleo studies like the one you posted have a lot of credibility - because they are based on real world conditions). But IMHO that uncertainty is not necessarily a crucial problem. Current rates of warming are bad and are having very visible effects, and huge implicatrion in the short to medium term, and so whatever the level of climate sensitivity using whatever definition, we clearly have a huge problem.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #49 2023

michael sweet at 01:16 AM on 10 December, 2023

This MSN article, Which is apparently a press release from the Columbia Climate school describes a paper in Science. The paper is a collaboration of many scientists summarizing knowledge of CO2 concentrations for the past 65 million years. The MSN article is easy to read. Since it is a press release it would be a good OP here at SkS. I have not yet read the paper.

Unfortunately, they conclude that Earth system sensitivity, the climate response when all slow feedbacks respond, is 5-8 C. The processes involved can take a long time to equilibrate (as much as thousands of years). Still, it is a very grim conclusion. I note that Dr. Hansen has long held an Earth System Sensitivity of 6 C. The IPCC consensus has been 3C. This is unlikely to affect anyone living but bodes very bad for 1000 years from now. The question of how long the slow processes take to equilibrate is left unanswered.

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #44

michael sweet at 02:39 AM on 8 November, 2023

I don't think Hansen is worried about thousands of years in the future. He has been saying for decades that aerosols are reflecting a lot of energy back into space, cooling the planet. Reducing fossil fuel use reduces aerosols. The loss of aerosols causes rapid warming. Hansen projects that 1.5C will be exceeded by 2030 and 2.0 C will be exceeded by 2050. He is concerned about changes that will occur while people alive now are still around, about 100 years. He is concerned about multimeter sea level rise by 2100. If Hansen is correct about aerosols the next 30 years will have substantial extra heating.

I respect Zeke and Mann but their explainations for the extreme heat the past 6 months are pretty weak. While the current temperatures are inside the error bars for the models, the temperature this year is extraordianrily hot comnpared to all previous years. I note that the IPCC generally emphasizes what a consensus of scientists think is the minimum amount of change in the climate and temperature. That means that a majority of scientists think it will be worse than the IPCC projections.

The scientists who project damages substantially exceeding the IPCC reports are in the minority. It is very concerning to me that they exist at all. Especially since the last 6 months have been so hot and next year is projected to be even hotter. El Nino does not usually strongly affect temperature until the end of the year.

I agree that "it's important to communicate the incredible challenges we face but without instilling in people's minds the idea it's already a lost cause." But politicians still are not taking action seriously.

What is the IPCC defination of "consensus". It has to be a lot higher than 50%. Is it 80%, 90%? They must have it written down somewhere.

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #44

Just Dean at 23:31 PM on 6 November, 2023

Evan, It is not just Mann that disagrees with Hansen. I believe that Hansen holds the minority position here. Both Zeke and Mann reference the IPCC special report on 1.5C that warming will cease when we get to net zero emissions. To me, the IPCC represents the consensus thinking. There is a recent paper by Dvorak and Armour that reaches bascially the same conclusion, Ref. , and adresses the aerosol effect.

If you follow Zeke at theclimatebrink.com and/or X, he has addressed directly Hansen's pipeline paper and his high estimate of climate sensitivity. Also, Zeke's latest analysis of record breaking temperatures relative to the multimodel averages can be found at theclimatebrink.com.

At a glance - Climate scientists would make more money in other careers

Philippe Chantreau at 09:31 AM on 31 October, 2023

Interesting theory.

From the chronological point of view, would it not be possible to observe the emergence of a consensus of research results before the accumulation of investments that resulted from that consensus? If that is the case (it assuredly is), does that not make it impossible for these investments to be the cause of the results, since effects can not precede cause?

What is the source for that 5 trillion figure? This would correspond to a vast array of very diverse and numerous separate "industries" and interests, how do they coordinate their influence on those scientists anxious for their jobs? How can said scientists know where the money is coming from and ensure they say what is expected of them? Once a large number of studies from.many different sources all converge in one direction, is it still reasonable to assume that it is just the result of efforts to satisfy funding sources? How about studies coming from sources that have an interest against belief in AGW that also confirm these results?

What are the criteria to declare that a business existence and success are dependent on "belief" in AGW?

Is there a figure for the level of investment dependent on delaying energy transition policies?

Not that I would engage in deflection but, to pursue the same logic, what level of public opinion manipulation can be expected from a single industry that generates hundreds of billions of profits (not talking about investments here, simply profits)? Would it not be easier to coordinate an effort to manipulate when only a few very large interest groups are involved?

Just asking questions.

At a glance - Climate scientists would make more money in other careers

Moonwatcher at 08:39 AM on 31 October, 2023

The statement that

There are many much easier ways for an intelligent and literate person to make money. If money was the motive, they'd be in another career.

is highly misleading. Those who were educated as scientists simply would not qualify for other careers, except possibly in one-in-a-million exceptions where a rich uncle, for example, was willing to take him/her in and get them up-to-speed. Normally, they are simply told that they don't have the right background for the job.

It is true that while employed, scientists can make a respectable but certainly not extravavent living. With the gross over-supply of scientists and enginners, however, their careers are always tenuous at best. I know because I have been there and have been in contact with others in the same boat.

Now consider the fact that there is already well over $5 trillion (USD) invested in the climate change industry (ie. businesses whose success depends on the general belief in AGW). Put yourself in the shoes of one of the financiers investing that money. Would you tend to grant funds to scientists who speak unfavorably about the AGW theory, thereby jepardizing their clients investments? And, with the gross over-supply of qualified scientists, there will always be some willing to sing to the same sheet of music as the financiers. These are the scientists that we call successful, but are certainly not rich. They do, however, keep their jobs (hopefully!), and are the ones that are polled in establishing consensus figures.

From this relatively small pool of successful scientists, a few climb the ladder to prestigious positions such as scientific advisors to various political, entrepreneurial, and military celebrities. These are the only scientists that come close to being "rich" by most peoples standards.

John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist

Rob Honeycutt at 11:20 AM on 28 October, 2023

Honestly, TWFA, I cannot decipher what any of this post @51 has to do with anything I just explained to you.

The broad consensus on anthropogenic climate change isn't like a medical study. Think of it this way, it's probably more like the connection between smoking and lung cancer. It's impossible to isolate the precise mechanism that links cigarette smoke to lung cancer, but study after study shows there is a very clear link. But, the tobacco industry wanted everyone to believe the connection was "too complex" or "too imprecise" or "the product of groupthink" or any of many similar arguments.

Ironically, it is literally the exact same people who devised the tobacco industry's response campaigns to the overwhelming science on smoking that created the fossil fuels industry's campaign of doubt about climate science.

John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist

TWFA at 07:49 AM on 28 October, 2023

I get the variability, it's no different from clinical studies, the challenges of getting good data, running controls and placebos, they, too are all over the map and it takes time for a trend to be identified. At least in those we have millions of patients to experiment with, collect data from and alter course of treatment in a short time frame, but we only have one planetary patient, and the treatments proposed are extremely costly and disruptive, and also unfair to many different minorities, an extreme example being Inuits with ATVs and snow machines expected to either erect a solar farm and electrify them or go back to dog teams. Shouldn't they do their part too?

I was in the field of medical imaging and informatics, PACS and EHR systems and such, awarded eight patents and founded several startups. I hired brilliant ADHD software developers who were often wrong but never in doubt, when they would have a major system upgrade they wished to perform they would ask if they could do it during their work day. Why? Not because their favorite show was on that night, that show was in front of them 18 hours a day. No, it's because that's when our customers were also busiest, and that way if there was a problem they would discover it much more quickly as every button on my phone lit up with screaming radiologists.

I would explain to them that our clients are customers, not lab rats, you exist to serve them, they do not exist for you to write perfect code, you will do it at midnight and be prepared roll-back at 5. In the climate debate the client is the people, not the planet, as George Carlin put so well decades ago, the planet will be fine long after we are gone, so as in medicine the first rule is to do no harm.

What I see going on here is similar, folks who want to move ahead full blast, others like me who wish to see more data and test the models, others who could care less either way, either because they feel they have no say in it anyway or have the wealth to both buy a pair of Teslas AND a second home up north.

Taking the current models and applying them to some other data set than the one they were developed upon is the right way to test them. Perhaps it is classified, but thermocline levels and or temperatures obtained by submarine or sonobouy, some type of terrestrial sub-surface measurements, well water temperatures, whatever, anything that gets us as far away from the noise of weather and cloud reflectivity, there has to be something else out there we have been measuring for the past and will be for the next fifty years that can show the same trend, no matter how small, no matter the lag. There must be some other canary out there.

Temperatures above and below the weather would put to rest silly arguments about hurricanes in the East Pacific, which if never making landfall two centuries ago may never have been recorded, let alone measured, and other sensationalism thanks to mass media and competing information leading to mass hysteria.

Kind of reminds me of the windshield pit fiasco in the Pacific NW back in the fifties when some thought fallout from bomb tests in the Marshall Islands was doing something to their cars, the consensus among the social psychiatrists being that for the first time folks were looking AT their windshields instead of THROUGH them.

John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist

Rob Honeycutt at 03:57 AM on 28 October, 2023

TWFA... What I'm trying to convey to you is, climate science is a complex topic and you need to spend far more time than you currently have to get a good grasp of what is happening. Instead, you're starting from assumptions and are merely grasping for arguments to support that position, without endeavoring to skeptically research the topics.

"I am looking for information, not confirmation..."

This is clearly not the case, though, being that everything you've stated or "asked" has been fundamentally based in rejection of the established science.

Look, TWFA, there is a lot to understand about this topic. I am not an expert. But what I have done is taken the time to read a large body of the available research. There are many here on this site who are willing and capable of offering answers, but you're going to have to approach the subject with a little bit more humility and awareness of your current state of understanding.

If you have real questions, ask them. But don't be offended if people here give you answers you don't want to hear.

For instance, when you say, "I am just looking for a few that have run the models against some mid tropospheric level data set, or deep ocean temperatures, or anything other than surface temperatures." This is exactly what I'm talking about.

Why would you dismiss surface temperature? What about mid-troposphere temps do you think is more interesting? There are plenty of articles on this site discussing those topics already. All of those articles reference the available peer reviewed science.

Every time I hear someone call themselves an "independent thinker" it raises a huge red flag for me. Why would you believe every climate scientist out there is not an independent thinker? Why would you assume the broad consensus on climate change isn't a product of independent thinking across a broad spectrum of experts in their relative fields?

In order to truly be an independent thinker you first need to inform yourself about the subject you're thinking about. Without doing that, you're merely a rejectionist. If you're offended at being told this, perhaps you're just looking for an easy exit.

John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist

TWFA at 11:44 AM on 27 October, 2023

Without a time machine the answer as to whether Clauser or "everybody else" is right or wrong is not and cannot as yet be known, theory is not an outcome, consensus is not data, only measurement is, as Spock would say, "Insufficient data, captain".

No, I am not claiming to be as intelligent or logical as Spock and you are not going to be able to insult or castigate me into agreement or silence. I and doubtless others do not find such an approach the least bit persuasive, and the biggest problem the experts have is being persuasive instead of dismissive.

Whether you like it or not there will be other old geezers like me and Clauser who have only earned their advanced degress in ignorance through a lifetime of experience and observations of nature, people, their predictions and outcomes, most recently all the peer reviewed scientists and experts claiming that a vaccine, a mask and two weeks to flatten the curve was all that was necessary to bring things to a halt, but in my case a serial entrepreneur and inventor investing in my own ideas and predictions as well as those of others.

We have learned that it is not the answers that make the case, it is the questions that precede them, and we know how to ask them. Do not dismiss the value of lay participation in an esoteric field, especially when it affects them directly, you never know where wisdom and breakthrough may come from.

I mean, who would ever expect that a dumb playwright without an advanced degree in probability theory like Bernard Shaw could ever be able to explain it to the masses in a public debate of his day not unlike the one we are engaged in right here.

However I am pleased to learn from you that we have some kind of recorded data of planetary cloud cover history, presumably from cave drawings forward, or perhaps Martian observations contained in journals carelessly left behind after landing and departing Nazca International Spaceport, instead of inferred or imputed data through a chain of supporting inferred or imputed data, and because the effects of cloud cover and weather is my primary area of interest I would appreciate links to that data.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #42 2023

Just Dean at 21:42 PM on 19 October, 2023

I didn't see a shout out to the National Academies Consensus Study Report released on Tuesday - Acclerating Decarbonization in the United States .

Patrick Brown's recycled hallucination of climate science

Doug Bostrom at 05:41 AM on 18 September, 2023

Heh. Is a variation of "Godwin's Law" that all discussions about climate mitigation converge on nuclear power?

I like Philippe's circumspect synopsis. Maybe that's because my own perspective is shaped by being a Washington, USA resident. Washington's experience is a case study of the factors Philippe mentions, which I think hinge on our enduring optimism as a species. The more challenging a problem, the more our instinct to optimism is called into play.

Here in Washington, long ago, the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPS) pursued an ambitious multi-plant nuclear generator construction program. It failed spectacularly, for all the reason Phillippe mentions. It came to be known as "WHOOPS," a mocking reference to the agency in charge.

Now, decades later, WPPS is renamed Energy Northwest and is once again pursuing nuclear power, full of optimism. Once again, our rose-tinted vision is being blasted by the harsh glare of implementation problems. See this item for "history doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes:" Small reactors at Hanford: Déjà vu all over again.

For my part I feel as though fission power is uniquely unforgiving of human nature, starting with "here's the construction budget," continuing through "we grow bored and lazy with routine operation, and we're not good with long term institutional memory" while passing by greed and conflicted objectives in connection with "I want more for myself." Add to that a tendency to political instability at various levels over the span of time needing continuous perfection for safely handling nuclear generation assets. The results of ineluctable human nature in the case of this technology are in turn also uniquely unforgiving; we're not permitted or able to forget or ignore or ameliorate our mistakes in the same way as with our other artifacts.

France's experience is the very best we can do, the result of a very particular relationship between the generation system and its harboring state, and rare stability. Chernobyl, Fukushima Daiichi and Zaporizhzhia have to be included in the spectrum of known outcomes and undeniable facts on the ground, as well as Washington's first failure and what appears to be evolving into its second.

We consistently confuse good luck with skill. If we're OK in consensus with certain statistical rates of fiscal or physical or political disasters— good luck exhausted— then by all means let's use nuclear fission for power generation. But let's stop lying to ourselves about its characteristics when collided with human nature.

"This time will be different!" No. Our renewable energy of optimism fails to encompass that our species and our behaviors are constants even as we fiddle with the edges of nuclear physics to make it more friendly to our defects. The main engineering problem lies between our ears, and it's not likely we'll reach a state of perfection inside that confused space.

Exploring the feasibility of a new feature: Bunk of the Week

One Planet Only Forever at 06:21 AM on 13 September, 2023

I will submit a response using the form. But I want to share my initial 'thoughts open to discussion'.

A good title is important. But a good description of the objective, the reason, for the actions is probably more important.

My first thoughts for a Title and an 'Intro, objective, reason' for the Blog Post series is:

This Week's (or Month's) Climate Science Non-sense: In pursuit of common-sense understanding of climate science matters.

Developing a common sense (a common understanding or consensus understanding) requires an agreed common objective. Without an agreed 'common interest' objective a diversity of conflicting interests will interfere with the development of 'common sense'.

The common sense objective regarding climate science should be pursuing increased awareness and improved understanding to reduce harmful human activities, especially by trying to reduce the harm of misleading marketing efforts.

My suggested focus on 'common sense' is due to harmfully misleading populist political players claiming their group is 'The Common Sense Party' while they make non-sense claims that they hope will be popular. It seems to be driven by the non-sense belief that a belief that is more popular 'must be more reasonable and more justified'. More popular means more correct and therefore, by default, less harmful and well justified doesn't it?

There is no consensus

RicardoB at 23:13 PM on 10 September, 2023

Eclectic @951:

Thank you for you comments.

You stated: "Dr Jordan Peterson shows how little he knows about climate matters ~ fair enough ~ but why is he choosing to boost Dr Curry?"

He chooses to boost Curry as he chooses to boost many other prominent "climate narrative contrarians" that he "interviews" in that same channel, like Robert Bryce, Steven Koonin, Richard Lindzen and Alex Epstein.

Dr. Peterson main point of view on the "climate debate" seems to come from his strong belief (?!) that the political measures that are being enforced by governments (to tackle global warming) will lead to mass impoverishment and starvation via the rise of the energy bill. In his words: "People can't care about environmental concerns when they are so desperate they are worried about tonight's shelter and the next meal." He frequently rages about "the consensus" and the "hysteria" that are leading to these political choices.

Hence, he deliberately chooses to debate the topic only with "specialists" from the "contrarian side" - champions for the carbon industry agenda. It suffices to say that these interviews function not as debates or means to get to the truth (by now, Dr. Peterson seems mostly uninterested in the cientific truth), but as opportunities both to let these "specialists" voice their cherry-picked concerns and attack established comprehensive scientific bases, and to not get himself confronted/debunked on his opinions. There's no debating; there's only agreeing.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

michael sweet at 00:36 AM on 19 August, 2023

Don Williams:

The "hiatus" papers do not show what you are claiming. Yes, Mann et al claimed that the "pause" was statistically significant. You can quote that paper. But in science it is not individual papers that count, it is the conclusions that count.

Foster and Ramsdorf replied to the Mann et al paper and claimed that the Mann et al paper had made calculation errors that invalidated their result. Foster et al claimed that there was no statistical significance. The scientific method is to exchange peer reviewed papers to debate facts. After several papers were exchanged, Mann et al conceded that they had made a mistake in their calculations and the "pause" was not statistically significant. It was magnificent to watch top scientists debate a fact and reach a consensus on what the true result was.

The scientific consensus is that the "pause" was simply random variation and not a change in the warmng pattern. Data collected since then have conclusively confirmed that the climate did not stop warming as demonstrated by the escalator. The Mann et al scientists agree with the consensus.

Mann and his collaborators are great scientists. Sometimes everyone makes mistakes. The difference between scientists and deniers is that when data shows that a scientist made a mistake they learn from the experience and move on. Deniers just regurgitate the same old debunked "pause" claims after everyone informed has moved on.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

MA Rodger at 00:33 AM on 19 August, 2023

Don Williamson @133 & others,
Discussion of the early 21st century SAT/SST record is hardily on-topic for this comment thread. The handful of years showing a reduced rate of warming surface tempertures did not lead to a reversal of warming but to an increased rate of warming, so any linkage to 1970's ideas of a coming ice age is entirely absent, despite an attempted linkage @108 up-thread. (And for the record, the take-away from the SciAm article referenced @133 is the ascribed response fro 'researchers' to all the 'hiatus' nonsense:-

"Picking a period of a decade or so where one part of the Earth's climate system fails to warm and using it to discredit all of climate science is a fallacious argument, and one driven by those with an agenda to discredit climate scientists."

Don Williamson, you have up-thread referenced Oreskes in the discussion of the 1970's idea of a coming ice age and insist there is some missing argument that gives continuing credibility to this 1970's idea (which are also ideas of earlier times according to Oreskes. "Throughout most of the history of science, geologists and geophysicists believed that Earth history was characterized by progressive, steady, cooling.") Do note the referenced pre-print conference paper does not constitute proof of a 'missing argument'. And were one sought, perhaps Oreskes (2007) 'The scientific consensus on climate change: How do we know we're not wrong?' can provide it.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Bob Loblaw at 23:53 PM on 18 August, 2023

Don:

Just as I thought. You have not actually read any of the papers - you only have a link to something with selected quotes. And the "multiple papers" you claim are available just lead to Michael Mann mentioning a "temporary slowdown"?

I repeat my challenge:

Pick one - just one - of those papers, and provide us with a thorough review of that paper and how it supports your argument that the hiatus represents a serious challenge to the consensus position on anthropogenic increases in global temperature.

You're just blowing smoke.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Bob Loblaw at 23:08 PM on 17 August, 2023

One more challenge for Don, which I predict will be ignored or deflected:

In comment #125 you mention that there are 100s of papers on the hiatus and claim:

...but I've done a lot of research into the hiatus - peer-reviewed papers 'research'

To demonstrate the level of "research" that you have done, here is the challenge:

Pick one - just one - of those papers, and provide us with a thorough review of that paper and how it supports your argument that the hiatus represents a serious challenge to the consensus position on anthropogenic increases in global temperature.

Don't forget to include a link to the paper.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Rob Honeycutt at 12:12 PM on 17 August, 2023

"I think I understand why people are interested in finding out why the abrupt about-face more than 'just accept the consensus because it's a consensus and we really mean it this time'"

Don... Just to put a fine point on this one:

There was and is a concensus on orbitally forced cooling over the past 5-6000 years.

There was and is a concensus on mid-20th century cooling due to industrial aerosols.

There was and is a concensus that doubling CO2 concentrations would produce about 3°C of warming.

None of these are inconsistent.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Rob Honeycutt at 11:56 AM on 17 August, 2023

Don @123...

"One of the main thrusts of Ms Oresekes' article was the reversal of the dominant view - whether contrarians picked up on it or not."

And as I've attempted to explain repeatedly, there was a "reversal" because there was a "reversal" in the temperature trend. When it was cooling, the dominant position was that it was cooling. When the trend changed to warming, the dominant position "reversed" to warming.

I'm not sure why this fact escapes you.

"Why wouldn't 'this abrupt about-face—from cooling to warming' create doubt?"

Because it has nothing to do with any changes in the scientific understanding of forcings on the climate system that produce warming or cooling.

"A few years after the new consensus was formed - the hiatus made it's unfortunate debut."

Which was much ado about nothing. There's a "hiatus" after every major el nino event.

"I think I understand why people are interested in finding out why the abrupt about-face more than 'just accept the consensus because it's a consensus and we really mean it this time'"

Think about this:

We've known since the mid-1800's that CO2 is the primary radiatively active gas in the atmosphere. We've known since the early 1900's pretty much the amount of warming we'd see from a doubling of CO2 concentratations. Nothing has changed about that concensus, in fact it's only become vastly better understood since then.

The consensus that doubling CO2 would significantly warm the planet hasn't altered a bit. What Dr. Oreskes is speaking about is what was known about the temperature trend at the time, not the underlying physics of what was and is occurring.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Eclectic at 10:39 AM on 17 August, 2023

Don Williamson @123 and prior :

To put things in a more realistic perspective : the Ocean Heat Content continued to rise during the so-called Hiatus of atmospheric temperatures. So there was actually no real Hiatus ~ it was just an interesting talking-point. The globe was continuing to warm.

Yes, we can discuss "the hiatus" as an abstract concept or as a propaganda topic ~ but we are wasting our time if we tie ourselves into a pretzel trying to argue about consensus or scientific opinion regarding a physical non-event in overall global warming.

Propaganda point: Yes . . . a real scientific point: No

However, the 1945-1975 "cooling pause" was definitely real.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Don Williamson at 08:21 AM on 17 August, 2023

To Rob Honeycutt

One of the main thrusts of Ms Oresekes' article was the reversal of the dominant view - whether contrarians picked up on it or not.

Why wouldn't "this abrupt about-face—from cooling to warming" create doubt?

It seems logical to question the reversal especially when the climate scientists themselves reversed their opinion.

A few years after the new consensus was formed - the hiatus made it's unfortunate debut.

I think I understand why people are interested in finding out why the abrupt about-face more than 'just accept the consensus because it's a consensus and we really mean it this time''

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Don Williamson at 00:34 AM on 17 August, 2023

To Bob Loblaw

"unless we can give a convincing account of the empirical reasons behind that reversal"

I think we can agree the reversal was real. It needs to be explained by convincing arguments (rather that dismissing it out-of-hand) ~ but was that directed to the contrarians or to the "new consensus"?

The contrarians won't be convinced - they pounced on the flip flop as Ms Oreskes feared.

I think her article is a valuable insight into the innate complexities of climate science. The warming can taper off or cool. Maybe natural variability plates a bigger role that we might think?

Natural variability was a common refrain used in the hiatus discussions.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Rob Honeycutt at 23:58 PM on 16 August, 2023

Also, Don... It was around the 1970's when there was some disagreement in the climate science community regarding whether the cooling effects of industrial aerosols or the underlying CO2 driven warming would dominate. At that point in time, there wasn't a strong consensus. It took additional study to convince the leading experts that CO2 was the larger, longer term problem.

The good news was that we, as a species, were able to substantively address the issue of industrial aerosols through the clean air acts in the US and similar regulations in other countries.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Rob Honeycutt at 23:43 PM on 16 August, 2023

"What Oreskes stated about undermining the consensus with the reversal from cooling to warming..."

Once again, the earth was cooling mid-century. The earth had been cooling for the past 5-6000 years. When CO2 forcing came to dominate the trend shifted to rapid warming.

I believe what Dr. Oreskes is saying is, that change in the dominant view could be used by "contrariants" to cast doubt on the science. It's a rather precient statement since they subsequently did exactly that.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Don Williamson at 22:27 PM on 16 August, 2023

To Bob Loblaw

I apologize for misspelling your name, it was unintentional.

What Oreskes stated about undermining the consensus with the reversal from cooling to warming is her pov as a professor of science history and I can't dispute it. She has much more background to draw on for her conclusions and opinions than I would. I would defer to her as the expert.

I specifically use her terms throughout the discussion to try limit any inference that it's my opinion or my interpretation. I hope this clarifies the situation.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Bob Loblaw at 13:31 PM on 16 August, 2023

Don:

Please first do me the courtesy of getting my name right. It's Bob, not Rob. You have repeated this several times, and it makes me think you are not reading carefully.

Not all geologists are the same. I am a physical geographer, and my specialty was climate (and more specifically, microclimate). You can read more about my background in the "Team" menu option under "About" (beneath the main masthead).

Other physical geographers specialized in topics such as geomorphology, hydrology, etc., and within those sub-disciplines they may have specialized in coastal geomorphology, glacial geomorphology, etc. And after they finish PhDs, they spend years continuing to learn (I would hope) that would allow them to become specialists in areas peripheral from their early studies. Although I am very familiar with many of these other sides of physical geography (which overlaps with geology in many cases), it does not mean that I am an expert in coastal geomorphology.

Unfortunately, your position in #105 that Michael Mann has a background in geology means that all geologists can be considered to be "climatologists" only demonstrates your lack of understanding of the discipline. Only a very small subset of geologists learn the processes that drive climate and can be considered to be climatologists.

As the saying goes, cats have four legs, and dogs have four legs, but cats are not dogs.

Your comment in #106 about Oreskes using awkward wording is only evidence of your desire to read something into it that isn't there. And your devolution into "undermine the consensus argument" only demonstrates where your true bias rests. You are seeing this as a battle between two camps, rather than a scientific discussion.

Most of the rest of your posts are exposing your bias: you have your talking points that represent "our side" (that is, your side). You think that your misrepresentations expose some nefarious intent on the part of a group you think of as your opponents. This is most unfortunate, as it makes it very difficult to have a constructive discussion with you.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Rob Honeycutt at 12:51 PM on 16 August, 2023

"Why not acknowledge the 'dominant view' was wrong and science coalesced into a new consensus?"

Don... This comment is exactly what I'm talking about. There was (and still currently is) a dominant view that the earth has been cooling for the past several thousand years. There was (and still currently is) a dominant view that the earth had been cooling from the 1940's up to about the early 1970's.

What she's saying is that "contrarians" might exploit these facts of science in order to seed doubt in the minds of the general public about the clear reality of CO2 driven global warming.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Don Williamson at 12:30 PM on 16 August, 2023

Here's a great argument from Oreskes in her 2007 paper on the consensus.

"might the scientific consensus be wrong? If the history of science teaches anything, it’s humility. There are numerous historical examples where expert opinion turned out to be wrong"

The "cooling" was obviously in the data (some say cooling from the 1920s, some say cooling from the 1940s) but the warming eventually came to the forefront as Oreske stated in her 2004 article.

Will the warming continue? That can get into a very complex discussion about the hiatus - where many diverse opinions were offered. Some of the same scientists disputed and supported the reality of hiatus. Can cooling start again despite CO₂? We really don't know so locking in only one direction for temperatures leaves an opening for contrarians to pounce when it's not warming and they took advantage of that with the so-called hiatus. Some well known climate scientists were on both sides and that wasn't very helpful.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Don Williamson at 10:41 AM on 16 August, 2023

To Rob Loblaw

I never stated that Oreskes wanted to promote the cooling but it was an awkwardly worded challenge to contrarians to exploit if they think about it.

The most important aspect IMHO is the following:

"unless we can give a convincing account of the empirical reasons behind that reversal"

"that reversal" "cooling to warming" "abrupt about-face" needed a convincing argument, I'm not sure simply dismissing it is a very convincing argument.

Perhaps she is trying to suggest a way to maintain solidarity in needed in order to not "undermine" the consensus argument - when and if the reversal is exploited?

I think she realizes that without a convincing argument, it's not easy to dismiss it. The reversal has legs, how strong the legs are depends on how strong the arguments are from our side.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Don Williamson at 07:06 AM on 16 August, 2023

To Rob Honeycutt

To say that the Oreskes article as a draft is an incorrect interpretation.

It was a pre-print and never published in scientific literature but she did present these views in a European meteorology conference in Germany

link: LINK

I can't fathom why an American professor of her status would travel overseas to a conference and present her article is she wasn't aligning herself to the opinions as stated in the article.

She offered no rebuttal in her article so one must assume that it stood on its own merits. And to encourage contrarians to exploit the reversal, that's a very powerful argument that the contrarians cooling era argument has merit ~ whether we want to admit it or not.

Why not acknowledge the 'dominant view' was wrong and science coalesced into a new consensus?

To assert that a scientific consensus can't be wrong is a foolhardy position to take, I'm sure you'll agree.

Science moves forward but is dismissing the pov from a science historian as esteemed as Prof Oresekes is - the best way to move forward?

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Don Williamson at 23:40 PM on 15 August, 2023

There was an article by Naomi Oreskes regarding the cooling climate dominant view of the 1950s to 1970s.

I was finally able to locate her work after months of research, I heard rumors about it but it turns out to be real.

It might advance the discussion if this is included in the consensus debate. It needs to be tackled head-on, what does Naomi Oresekes say about her previous paper?

LINK

There is no consensus

rkrolph at 17:00 PM on 15 August, 2023

I have been wondering lately if some of the more famous climate change skeptics, climate scientists like Judith Curry, have modified or adjusted their outlier positions as the global warming crisis grows worse year by year.

But apparently not, based on the article I read in the Torrance Daily Breeze by John Stossel, titled "The fake climate change consensus", that quoted her extensively, Most of the article I recognized as long ago debunked garbage, but it seems surprising to me that experienced climate scientists like Curry would still be promoting this kind of nonsense.

At a glance - The tricks employed by the flawed OISM Petition Project to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change

nigelj at 08:05 AM on 9 August, 2023

"How the OISM Petition Project casts doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change......Do you think that a lot of scientists reject the idea that human-caused carbon emissions are responsible for climate change - and is that because you once read about a petition signed by them to that effect? If the answer is yes, then this is for you."

It is well known that plenty of people only read the headline or first paragraph, or half of articles, and here you are stating in the headline that a petition casts doubt on the consensus on climate change, and the very first paragraph states that lots of scientists reject that human emissions cause climate change. With not even a mention of how flawed the oregon petiton was in the first paragraph.

Is this the impression you wanted to leave those readers with? It looks self defeating to me.

It's not urgent

PollutionMonster at 18:07 PM on 29 July, 2023

I used the tactic of asking for a source rather then trying to debate an incoherent argument.

Denier link heritage

This seems very similar to the other arguments they make usually focusing on how expensive and infeasible renewable energy is. Certainly more subtle than other deniers who deny the 97% scientific consensus.

Hansen predicted the West Side Highway would be underwater

One Planet Only Forever at 08:00 AM on 6 July, 2023

daveburton,

I will try to limit how much I repeat any of the assistance others have provided to increase your awareness and improve your understanding of the issues. I will try to focus on aspects of your response @10 that have not yet been addressed.

I think it may be best to respond in reverse as follows.

Regarding: "Assumption #2: You seem to think that the CO2 level controls sea-level."

That is a misunderstanding of my comment. I am aware of and understand the following Common Sense Consensus knowledge:

Increased CO2 levels will result in a warmer global average surface temperature resulting in the reduction of the amount of water that is stored as ice supported by land (melting of ice supported by water does not change the level - unless the melting of that ice accelerates the flow of land supported ice to the ocean). Most of the water that is no longer "ice supported on land" will drain into the oceans resulting in a higher sea level (and this process will take a long time to reach a balanced state after CO2 levels stop increasing).

In addition to the sea level change due to melted ice, an increased level of CO2 in the atmosphere will result in an increased average temperature of the oceans. And water expands as it warms resulting in a higher average sea level in addition to the melted ice impact.

Regarding: "Assumption #1: You assume that there's such a thing as "a locked-in doubling of CO2.""

I was not assuming anything. I was presenting a hypothetical situation for consideration. That situation is a case where CO2 levels reach 560 ppm and stay at that level due to continued human impacts.

Simply asking what the sea level will be when CO2 levels reach 560 ppm will result in a vast range of answers. There are a diversity of cases where CO2 levels reach 560 ppm that would have significantly different expected maximum sea level rise. They include the following:

CO2 rapidly reaching 560 ppm and continuing to rapidly increase. That will produce a low amount of sea level increase at the moment that 560 ppm is reached. But it would cause a much higher level in the distant 'balanced condition' of the future that will be established at some significant time after CO2 levels are no longer being increased.

CO2 levels slowly reaching 560 ppm and continuing to slowly increase. That would result in a higher sea level when 560 ppm is reached that in case 1. But if the same 'maximum ppm level' as in case 1 is reached then the long term sea level rise would likely be comparable to case 1.

CO2 level increases to 560 ppm then is held steady by continued human impacts (a locked in level of CO2). This is the case I was referring to. Indeed you misunderstood my comment.

CO2 levels rise to 560 ppm and then are rapidly reduced by human industrial CO2 removal or other human impact changes that result in reduction of CO2 levels rather than a steady level of 560 ppm. This is closer to what an ethical consideration would conclude. The more ethical conclusion is that CO2 levels should not be allowed to reach 560 ppm. And human actions to remove CO2 from the atmosphere are required even though the CO2 levels do not reach 560 ppm.

Finally regarding your opening statement: "...why are you asking me "about the human origins of global warming"? My comment had nothing to do with that."

I was not asking a question. I was pointing out that the information you provided did not affect the conclusion of the OP. Your comment could be considered to be an attempt to use a 'new twist' of the "Hansen got it wrong" claim.

That raises a new question. Why did you make the claim you made @8?

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

BaerbelW at 15:32 PM on 5 July, 2023

Duran3d @75

You may want to read the explanation about a scientific consensus - which is after all what this rebuttal is all about:

https://sks.to/consensus-explainer

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

michael sweet at 11:47 AM on 5 July, 2023

Duran3d:

As has been pointed out, a consensus is a supermajority of those consulted. For IPCC reports they usually state what the consensus is for the least amount of harm from the discussed issue. For example, the IPCC sea level rise projections are set at what a consensus thinks are the minimum rise expected. That means that a large majority of scientists who study sea level rise think sea level rise will be greater than the IPCC consensus. Trying to minimize something that has already been minimized is not a consistant argument.

Claiming that it must be a unanimous consensus will not get you any traction here at Skeptical Science.

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

Eclectic at 11:07 AM on 5 July, 2023

Duran3d @75 ~ the short version is that Rob Honeycutt is correct. The long version is that Rob Honeycutt is still correct. [See also: Bob Loblaw @77 ]

In derivation, the word consensus has a (narrow) range of meanings . . . but the meaning which you wish to use is nowadays an extreme outlier (used by hardly anyone). Over decades, the meaning of a word can gradually drift in one direction ~ and the drift does occur by consensus ;-)

Consensus does not mean merely a majority, or even a supermajority [indeed some sources claim "over 75%" agreement is a consensus ~ but that is far too weak for expressing consensus among scientists]. And some people try to gild the lily by going all mathematical: e.g. in year 2010 the consensus among scientists was >97% about the human cause of modern Global Warming . . . a figure which has now risen to >99% agreement (at time of writing). # But that sort of thing is unnecessary, because the overall evidence (of AGW) is so overwhelming, that it is a justifiable short-hand to use the simple word consensus.

Duran3d , you may be pleased to hear that one of the range of meanings of consensus used by the Ancient Romans . . . included a situation involving "plotting together". That fact could be joyous news to current climate-science-denying contrarians & Conspiracy Theorists ! Though I think most of that group are not really interested in meanings or facts.

As an aside ~ the word consensus is attacked by one of the (current) U.S. Presidential candidates [RFK.Jr] who uses his lawyerly skills to advocate the Anti-vaxxer cause. But coming from him, it is all just a torrent of words intended to convince the already-convinced intransigent Anti-vaxxers. He continually demands "scientific evidence in controlled studies" while also continually ignoring the bleeding-obvious evidence which already exists as a huge mountain. He is a true Denialist.

At a glance - Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin

Bob Loblaw at 10:12 AM on 5 July, 2023

By the way, Gordon. We're still waiting for you to provide a definition of "catastrophic" on this thread here. Don't think we've forgotten about your previous evasive behaviour on other threads.

Have you read the Comments Policy yet?

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

Bob Loblaw at 09:55 AM on 5 July, 2023

Well, duran3d (comment 75) and Rob Honeycutt (comment 76) disagree on the definition of "consensus". Perhaps a dictionary would help?

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/consensus

consensus (countable and uncountable, plural consensuses or consensus)

A process of decision-making that seeks widespread agreement among group members.

General agreement among the members of a given group or community, each of which exercises some discretion in decision-making and follow-up action.

Hmmm. Well, that's just one site. How about

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/consensus

noun,plural con·sen·sus·es.

majority of opinion: The consensus of the group was that they should meet twice a month.

general agreement or concord; harmony.

Hmmm. Looks like Rob is on the right track....

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

Rob Honeycutt at 06:32 AM on 5 July, 2023

duran3d @75...

Incorrect. The definition of "consensus" is "a general agreement." Thus, there can obviously be levels of agreement or consensus.

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

duran3d at 06:03 AM on 5 July, 2023

Wrong use of the word "consensus" all around. Consensus means agreement among all individuals. If 99 say yes and 1 says no, that is no consensus. That is called majority.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #25 2023

One Planet Only Forever at 03:03 AM on 24 June, 2023

As an engineer with an MBA I am interested in new information and feedback that helps me understand how to limit harm done.

The weekly Skeptical Science New Research listing continues to be a helpful resource for increased awareness and improved understanding, especially the category of ‘Articles/Reports from Agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations Addressing Aspects of Climate Change’.

Politics can be understood to be the system for influencing/governing/controlling/delaying the development of social and economic systems and understanding. There is a parallel to engineering which develops new things and changes (improves and corrects) existing things.

Imagine if the engineering of things was significantly influenced, was allowed to be compromised, by disinformation developed by pursuers of status/success in competition for popularity or profit. Now imagine the more massively damaging results if political leadership was influenced/compromised that way (no need to imagine it – just become more aware of today’s developed reality).

Anyone concerned about the harm done by pursuers of personal benefit from disinformation, and the related harmful spin-offs of unjustified sharing of misinformation and the potential related unjustified fear, anger and hatred (which includes the development of hatred for people who try to increase awareness and improve understanding of climate science and the required corrections of popular and profitable developments), would benefit from reading "Our Common Agenda Policy Brief 8 Information Integrity on Digital Platforms, United Nations" (same link as the second item listed in the ‘Articles/Reports from Agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations Addressing Aspects of Climate Change’).

The document is fairly easy to read. And there are only about 16 pages of text in the 29 page document.

The following excerpt, from the section titled “What harm is being caused by online mis- and disinformation and hate speech?”, captures the nature of the challenge/threat and the importance of effective collective limits on the success of people who pursue benefit from disinformation and the related lack of increased awareness and lack of improved understanding of the harm being done:

Similarly, mis- and disinformation about the climate emergency are delaying urgently needed action to ensure a liveable future for the planet. Climate mis- and disinformation can be understood as false or misleading content that undercuts the scientifically agreed basis for the existence of human-induced climate change, its causes and impacts. Coordinated campaigns are seeking to deny, minimize or distract from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientific consensus and derail urgent action to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement. A small but vocal minority of climate science denialists³⁰ continue to reject the consensus position and command an outsized presence on some digital platforms. For example, in 2022, random simulations by civil society organizations revealed that Facebook’s algorithm was recommending climate denialist content at the expense of climate science.³¹ On Twitter, uses of the hashtag #climatescam shot up from fewer than 2,700 a month in the first half of 2022 to 80,000 in July and 199,000 in January 2023. The phrase was also featured by the platform among the top results in the search for “climate”.³² In February 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called out climate disinformation for the first time, stating that a “deliberate undermining of science” was contributing to “misperceptions of the scientific consensus, uncertainty, disregarded risk and urgency, and dissent”.³³

Some fossil fuel companies commonly deploy a strategy of “greenwashing”, misleading the public into believing that a company or entity is doing more to protect the environment, and less to harm it, than it is. The companies are not acting alone. Efforts to confuse the public and divert attention away from the responsibility of the fossil fuel industry are enabled and supported by advertising and public relations providers, advertising tech companies, news outlets and digital platforms.³⁴ Advertising and public relations firms that create greenwashing content and third parties that distribute it are collectively earning billions from these efforts to shield the fossil fuel industry from scrutiny and accountability. Public relations firms have run hundreds of campaigns for coal, oil and gas companies.³⁵

Mis- and disinformation are having a profound impact on democracy, weakening trust in democratic institutions and independent media, and dampening participation in political and public affairs. Throughout the electoral cycle, exposure to false and misleading information can rob voters of the chance to make informed choices. The spread of mis- and disinformation can undermine public trust in electoral institutions and the electoral process itself – such as voter registration, polling and results – and potentially result in voter apathy or rejection of credible election results. States and political leaders have proved to be potent sources of disinformation, deliberately and strategically spreading falsehoods to maintain or secure power, or undermine democratic processes in other countries.³⁶

Hopefully this UN effort will help reduce the damaging success of disinformation. And hopefully it will be more effective more rapidly than the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)”.

The powerful ability to benefit from disinformation and its spin-offs of popularity of misinformation and hate requires a significant correction of the developed political systems and the resulting social and economic developments and corrections.

Climate scientists, likely unwittingly, were a significant factor in exposing the problem and forcing the increased awareness and understanding of the need to correct a lot of what has developed, especially the abuse of disinformation by political game players.

Cranky Uncle: a game building resilience against climate misinformation

Eclectic at 10:10 AM on 17 June, 2023

@13 , thank you, Peppers, you raise some very general points ~ which might be allowably on-topic in this Cranky Uncle thread. (And please forgive my overly formal usage of a capital P in your moniker ~ since even our impersonal friend ChatGPT gets awarded an initial capital C . )

Rob H. is being too tactful to hint at the conjunction of Veritas with an excess of vinum.

Peppers, you are using false logic when you suggest that all newer scientific understandings (e.g. Einstein's relativity) are entirely replacing (and invalidating) the previous consensus position (e.g. Newton's views). Quite false, to assert that such "progress" does imply that Einstein is also wrong & will in turn be thrust into the dustbin.

Peppers, I also take issue with you on the infant mortality argument that you use. There are still parts of the world where infant & maternal mortality/morbidity are appallingly high. And even in parts of the USA, too. The solution to these problems is essentially non-scientific ~ it is political [includes attitudinal ]. The problem is: too many Cranky Uncles in this world, with their bad attitude/ their illogic/ their uncompassion & uncharitableness. [ is "uncompassion" a ChatGPT neologism? ]

# John Hartz's comment (today, in the News Roundup #23) quotes George Monbiot on climate science denial and the current rising level of antisocial fascist behaviour. That is a thread, Peppers, where you might well continue your Chatty musings !

The little-known, massive advantage that renewables hold over coal

michael sweet at 02:01 AM on 11 June, 2023

David-acct,

So no analysis to respond to the scientific consensus that renewable energy can powe r the entire economy for about half ote cost of fossil fuels, including any storage needed. There are a great many scientific papers, written by specialists with actual experience and data to support their conclusions, that analyze this issue in great depth and you respond with "look at this website with no analysis".

Fwiw, NERC is a legacy organization run by utilities who have a vested interest in not changing the profitable status quo.

10 year anniversary of 97% consensus study

michael sweet at 02:54 AM on 26 May, 2023

John Kerry was quoted addressing the British Parliment as saying:

"“If you have five tipping points, and two of them involve the potential of metres, literally multiple metres, double digits of sea level rise, that’s as good a definition of catastrophe as you can achieve.

“And the reality is that that is where we are headed unless we do more about it. Now, why do I have this measure of optimism and of our capacity? Because it is within our capacity."

I thnk in addition to multiple meters of sea level rise there are other potential consequences of climate chnge that would qualify as "catastrophic". Perhaps we could make a list.

I saw a projection of a billion climate refugees or more under some conditions. For me that is way past catastrophic.

How many human deaths in one year , or cumulative, before it counts as catastrophic? Only one if it is a close friend or relative.

What conditions do others here think would count as catastrophic. Perhaps we could find a consensus, Undoubtedly we all have different conditions that have to be met for the problem to be catastrophic.

I remember when the IPCC AR5 came out in 2014 with a list of severe consequences. I wondered at the time if I would live to see sea level rise causing damage, widespread fire storms, heat conditions killing millions etc. I was 56 at the time and thought I would live another 30 years. Now, only 8 years later, we see these problems already happening around the world. I can only imagine what it would be like in 2100 if we do not take as strong action as possible immediately.

In my experience, persons who ask for definations of catastrophic want to minimize the actions we take to try to avoid the already begun catastrophic climate change.

10 year anniversary of 97% consensus study

Bob Loblaw at 00:20 AM on 18 May, 2023

To borrow a contrarian meme, "one more nail in the coffin" of Gordon's quest "to find out what percentage of climate scientists believe that global warming will be catastrophic."

The study referenced in the OP is not a survey of "what scientists believe". Skeptical Science has a longer post on the 97% consensus theme. The Cook et al (2013) study is just one of the papers discussed there, and this is how it is described (including a link to the paper itself):

A Skeptical Science-based analysis of over 12,000 peer-reviewed abstracts on the subject 'global climate change' and 'global warming', published between 1991 and 2011, found that over 97% of the papers taking a position on the subject agreed with the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of the project, the scientist authors were emailed and rated over 2,000 of their own papers. Once again, over 97% of the papers taking a position on the cause of global warming agreed that humans are causing it

Note that the study looked at the abstracts of published papers. And in a second phase, the study did not ask scientists "what they believed" - they asked authors of papers to rate the papers they had written.

That Gordon confuses reading the literature with "asking what someone believes" tells us more about Gordon than we probably need to know.

If Gordon seriously wants an answer to his "catastrophic" question, along the lines of the study done by Cook et al (2013), there is an obvious solution:

Read the scientific literature

10 year anniversary of 97% consensus study

Gordon21829 at 10:12 AM on 16 May, 2023

On the 10th Anniversary of the 97% consensus study maybe it is time to find out what percentage of climate scientists believe that global warming will be catastrophic ?

10 year anniversary of 97% consensus study

Bob Loblaw at 05:14 AM on 16 May, 2023

Plus ca change....

I notice that if you look at the total number of downloads of the later "Consensus on consensus" paper and the Tol paper that triggered it, 95% of the downloads are for "Consensus on consensus". That's gotta hurt.

Skeptical Science News: The Rebuttal Update Project

BaerbelW at 05:21 AM on 12 May, 2023

The blog post was updated on May 11 with the links ot the latest rebuttals getting the "at a glance treatment":

The 97% consensus on global warming

Global cooling - Is global warming still happening?

At a glance - The greenhouse effect and the 2nd law of thermodynamics

Charlie_Brown at 08:04 AM on 3 May, 2023

Clearly countering a highly technical argument using non-technical explanations poses a difficult problem. I don’t think that I am capable of meeting the objective of simplifying this to the level necessary for the non-technical reader. As stated above, the Gerlich & Tscheuschner paper contains many technical errors and distractions. Primarily, they misrepresent the technical basis of the greenhouse effect and then criticize the erroneous description. In particular, they criticize the use of thermal conductivity when thermal conduction has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect. They also spend a lot of time criticizing the radiative explanation. This becomes a problem for non-technical people because they have trouble figuring out which scientist to believe. Interestingly, G&T argue that there are many examples of consensus scientists being wrong, but make no mention that individual contrarians, such are themselves, might be the ones who are wrong.

The first law of thermodynamics, conservation of energy, is relatively easy to understand. The second law is much more difficult. In its shortest oversimplified form, it says that entropy increases, which doesn’t mean much to most people. It has the Kelvin-Planck and Clausius statements and several corollaries, which are helpful concepts. The Clausius statement is: “No process is possible whose sole result is the removal of heat from a reservoir at one temperature and the absorption of an equal quantity of heat by a reservoir at a higher temperature.” This statement does not say that it is impossible to transfer heat from a cold body to a hot body (Look and Sauer, Thermodynamics, 1982). As stated above in the “At A Glance” description, it is “the net sum of the energy flows will be from hot to cold”.

G&T oversimplifies the Clausius statement to:
“– Heat cannot move itself from a cooler body into a warmer one.
– A heat transfer from a cooler body into a warmer one cannot happen without compensation.”

G&T continue their argument by addressing and discounting potential criticisms of their paper. They quote climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf, who has it right, then proceed to reject Rahmstorf with some undefined nonsense about the distinction between heat and energy.

G&T quotes Rahmstorf: “Some ‘sceptics’ state that the greenhouse effect cannot work since (according tothe second law of thermodynamics) no radiative energy can be transferred from a colder body (the atmosphere) to a warmer one (the surface). However, the second law is not violated by the greenhouse effect, of course, since, during the radiative exchange, in both directions the net energy flows from the warmth to the cold.”

Then G&T counters: “Rahmstorf’s reference to the second law of thermodynamics is plainly wrong. The second law is a statement about heat, not about energy. Furthermore, the author introduces an obscure notion of “net energy flow”. The relevant quantity is the “net heat flow”, which, of course, is the sum of the upward and the downward heat flow within a fixed system, here the atmospheric system. It is inadmissible to apply the second law for the upward and downward heat separately redefining the thermodynamic system on the fly.”

Unfortunately it is G&T who are plainly wrong, even after very clear and accurate explanations are provided for them. How can it be resolved when two scientists are called "plainly wrong" when both should be knowledgeable on the technical issues?

Maybe an example would help. Consider two walls of different temperature facing each other, perhaps as a large radiant heating panel in a room. The net flow of radiant heat will be from the hot wall to the cold wall. All objects above absolute zero radiate energy (heat), so the cold wall must be radiating heat in the direction of the hot wall. Raise the temperature of the cold wall to warm, so now the flow of energy from the warm wall is increased and the net flow of heat is reduced. One can go to the extreme of making the temperatures equal and the net heat flow will be zero, but both walls will be radiating.

There is no consensus

Rob Honeycutt at 09:25 AM on 22 April, 2023

Okay, let's go over this again, Albert.

The premise of the paper is as stated in the introduction.

We examined a large sample of the scientific literature on global CC, published over a 21 year period, in order to determine the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW (anthropogenic global warming, or AGW).

Do you honestly not see the words: human activity is very likely causing most of the current AGW?

That statement creates the fundamental basis of papers that either endorse or minimize that position.

If you're telling me that most "skeptics" agree that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW... hey! We're good!

"It is a clear indication that only 1.6% of the papers thought that humans were causing most of warming."

Nope, precisely because categories 1, 2 and 3 all endorse the idea that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW.

"...AMS in 2016 and it explicitly asked members if they vpbelieved humans were responsible for the majority of warming and 67% said yes."

And they also explain that most of their members were NOT experts in climate science and do not publish climate research. The greater their expertise, the greater their level of agreement, with the highest level of expertise also demonstrating ~97% agreement with the idea that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW.

"...why Cook went to considerable lengths to hide the category numbers."

He didn't.

"I am passionate about truth in science..."

Clearly, quite the opposite.

"...I have an open mind on all matters..."

As Carl Sagan used to say, "It's good to keep an open mind, but not so much that your brain falls out." I think that perfectly describes your position in this matter.

"In the sixteenth century, 99.9% of scientists believed the Sun orbited the Earth."

No, it was 16th century scientists who were explaining to people the earth orbited the sun. Once presented within a scientific/mathematical structure, scientists of the day readily accepted this fact.

"i Won't be commenting on this thread again."

We are relieved.

There is no consensus

Rob Honeycutt at 15:18 PM on 20 April, 2023

If one thinks about how Albert is trying to frame this, it makes no sense. I've heard the same tripe from other deniers over the years; he's not the first to come up with this.

He's trying to re-frame the question from "in order to determine the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW" into "in order to determine the percentage of research papers that endorse and quantify human contribution to GW as >50%."

It's quite a nonsensical and pointless framing of his (their) own creation that bears no relevance to anything that would have the least bit of interest to anyone.

Once again, it is fascinating to watch such entrenched, intractable displays like this.

There is no consensus

Rob Honeycutt at 15:03 PM on 20 April, 2023

Albert... I think you should take a moment to read the comments policy for this site. Accusations as you've just leveled are against policy.

As for your question, no one was trying to hide anything. The data is there available for anyone who wishes to dig into it. But it's not really relevant to the results of the paper. It just creates fodder for people like you whose intent is to misinterpret the data.

Regarding the AMS paper, different from the Cook paper, that research was about the opinions of their members. As already stated, the paper was structured similar to Doran/Zimmerman where the subjects had varying degrees of expertise in the subject matter. Once you got to publishing PhD level scientists, yes there was a consensus in the 97% range.

There is no consensus

Albert22804 at 08:54 AM on 20 April, 2023

"We examined a large sample of the scientific literature on global CC, published over a 21 year period, in order to determine the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW (anthropogenic global warming, or AGW). [emphasis added]"

And category 1 fits that definition perfectly.

And just 64 out of the 4000 explicitly said that human activity was the main cause of global warning.

There is no consensus

Rob Honeycutt at 05:23 AM on 20 April, 2023

In order to come to the conclusions he is, Albert has to completely ignore this important statement in the introduction of the Cook paper.

We examined a large sample of the scientific literature on global CC, published over a 21 year period, in order to determine the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW (anthropogenic global warming, or AGW). [emphasis added]

This is the fundamental premise of the research. This explains why there are endorse vs minimize categories. Albert is laser focused on a misinterpretation of only one sentence in the paper, to the exclusion of all else, in order to confirm his priors.

As I've pointed out innumerable times over the decade since the publication of Cook, the "skeptics" are more than welcome to do the exact same research and see what results they get. And in that decade none of them have taken up that challenge, more often than not coming up with lame excuses why they can't or won't.

There is no consensus

Rob Honeycutt at 01:28 AM on 20 April, 2023

@923... I'd agree with BL that the last sentence there is a quantification of >50%. But it's a moot point. Whether one were to put it in category 1 or 2 matters not, since both of those categories are endorsements of the idea that humans are the primary cause of modern warming.

So, one more time, the entire exercise this paper engages in is to separate research that endorses the position that humans are primarily responsible for warming and papers that minimize human responsibility. That is the very structure of the rating system. That is the fundamental premise stated in the title of the paper, Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature.

Papers either endorse AGW or they minimize it. If a paper claims that the direct effects of CO2 are too small compared to other natural factors that is a minimization of the anthropogenic element of global warming.

There is no consensus

Eclectic at 23:28 PM on 19 April, 2023

Albert @921 & other posts ,

Evidently, you have not read the second part of the Cook 2013 paper, where it clearly shows your "1.6%" figure is so grossly wrong about the consensus. So grossly wrong, that it is difficult to believe you are being serious.

Likewise, you seem suspiciously uneducated about feedbacks/ runaways.

Just to throw you a bone : note that the global surface temperature has increased ~1.2 degreesC over about 170 years & an atmospheric CO2 rise of 50%. Try your math on that.

There is no consensus

Rob Honeycutt at 14:44 PM on 19 April, 2023

And... "Quite commonly I see statements saying that Cooks paper said the "97% of scientists believe that humans are largely (>50%) responsible for global warming" but Cooks paper category 1 clearly and unambiguously states that the figure is 1.6%."

Here you muck up pretty much everything. The Cook paper is an analysis of research papers, not scientists' opinions.

Category 1 explicitly endorses the idea that human's are the primary cause of global warming, and makes quantifications.

Category 2 explicitly endorses the idea that human's are the primary cause of global warming without making quantifications.

Category 3 implicitly endorses the idea that human's are the primary cause of global warming.

Category 5 implicitly minimizes the idea that human's are the primary cause of global warming.

Category 6 explicitly minimizes the idea that human's are the primary cause of global warming without making quantifications.

Category 7 explicitly minimizes the idea that human's are the primary cause of global warming, and makes quantifications.

The level of consensus is the measure of the papers that endorse vs those that minimize.

It's that simple. A child can understand this.

There is no consensus

Bob Loblaw at 05:04 AM on 19 April, 2023

Albert @909 starts off by questioning the groupings in the Cook et al 2013 study, saying that he searched and could not find totals for the individual categories.

I have linked to the journal article above, and you can scroll down and find the "Supplementary data" link. In that data, one of the files provides every single paper/abstract included in the study, and it's ranking. It's pretty trivial to read that into a spreadsheet and get totals for each group. Those totals are:

1	Explicitly endorses and quantifies AGW as 50+%	64
2	Explicitly endorses but does not quantify or minimise	922
3	Implicitly endorses AGW without minimising it	2910
4	No Position	7970
5	Implicitly minimizes/rejects AGW	54
6	Explicitly minimizes/rejects AGW but does not quantify	15
7	Explicitly minimizes/rejects AGW as less than 50%	9

The paper points out that category 4 includes two groups, which need to be treated differently:

No position (7930 papers)

Uncertain (40 papers)

"No position" must be excluded entirely, as it is impossible to conclude a position that is not expressed in the paper's abstract. That makes a total of 4014 papers that express an opinion (explicitly or implicitly).

Given the groupings of 1-3 and 5-7, it is obvious that 1-3 share the trait of "not minimized". It is perfectly reasonable to treat "not minimized" as ">50%", when the paper does not quantify a value.

Likewise, grouping 5-7 together is the opposite: they all share the trait of "minimizes", whether they have quantified the minimization or not.

The point of the three categories is to distinguish between explicit quantification, explicit without quantification, and implicit without quantification - on both sides of the equation.

Now, what about that 1.6% number that Albert throws out? To get 1.6%, you have to pick category 1 (64 papers) and divide by 4014 (the total number that expressed an opinion, explicitly or implicitly).

So, while Albert is questioning the grouping of papers into 1-3 and 5-7, he sees no problem in grouping 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 together into one category and calling it "papers that disagree that humans caused most of the recent warming". That grouping is far less supportable than the grouping used in the paper. Categories 2 and 3 (totalling 3832 papers) clearly are not defined in such a way that you can interpret "not minimized" as "<50%".

In fact, if you only consider the papers that explicitly quantify the effect as >50% or <50%, there are only 73 papers in categories 1 and 7 - and 64 of them say >50% of recent warming is due to humans. That is 88% of the total. A far cry from Albert's 1.6%.

We can also compare categories 2 vs. 6. 98% are on the "endorses" side.

And we can compare categories 3 and 5. Again, 98% on the "endorses" side.

Either Albert has not really considered where the 1.6% value came from, or he is deliberately trying to bias the result in one direction.

As for his final claim about "skeptics" being included in the 97%, Skeptical Science has another blog post on that matter. Scroll down to the section titled "Confused Contrarians Think they are Included in the 97%".

Albert is just repeating frequently-debunked crap.

There is no consensus

Albert22804 at 20:41 PM on 18 April, 2023

why does the original paper list the seven categories but not the seven individual totals. I searched but couldn't find any totals.

instead it lumps categories 1,2 and 3 into a single number. So what was the point in having 3 categories?

but we frequently hear that the paper showed that "97% of scientists believe that humans caused most of the recent warming" which is not true because only 1.6% of papers said that.

I don't know of any sceptic who doesn't think humans are causing some warming so they would all be in the 97% consensus.

Science tackles the West’s megadrought

One Planet Only Forever at 02:40 AM on 17 April, 2023

Regarding criticisms that comments to help understand and correct misunderstandings regarding climate science are ‘politically biased’:

Undeniably, an evaluation of the history of this issue leads to a consensus understanding that Conservative Movement populists divisively politicized the issue. They promoted pseudoscience and science denial to ‘successfully and harmfully’ appeal for support in their efforts to delay the limitation and correction of harm done by fossil fuel use.

SkS can be understood to be one of the many developments created in response to that 'successful' harmful populist divisive misleading political marketing.

See the SkS re-posting of the Thinking is Power item “Science and its Pretenders: Pseudoscience and Science Denial”, particularly the Standford University Encyclopedia of Philosophy “Science and Pseudo-Science” webpage that EddieEvans linked in their comment @5 and my response @6.

Science and its Pretenders: Pseudoscience and Science Denial

One Planet Only Forever at 14:20 PM on 13 April, 2023

EddieEvans,

Thanks for pointing to the Stanford University page. It is a great supplement to the Thinking is Power item reposted here on SkS.

I note that the list of criteria in 'Section 4. Alternative demarcation criteria; Sub-section 4.6 Multi-criterial approaches' starts with the following criteria identifying the practice of Pseudoscience:

"Belief in authority: It is contended that some person or persons have a special ability to determine what is true or false. Others have to accept their judgments."

Note that many believers of Pseudoscience that is professed by their "Identified Authority (Authoritarian ruler on the matter that they have passionate beliefs about)" often claim that a 'presenter of the developed consensus understanding regarding climate science and the resulting need to rapidly end the harm of fossil fuel use' is claiming to be 'the authority that others must accept the judgments of'.

The fact that the original Stanford document was published in 2008 appears to indicate that something is causing a powerful resistance to leadership learning the Truth about Pseudoscience, and not just regarding the climate impact case.

It appears that the powerful problem is harmful Populist political players as described in the detail in the National Endowment for Democracy's Democracy Digest item "Has populism won the war on liberal democracy".

The book "Has Populism Won? The war on liberal democracy", by Daniel Drache and Marc D. Froese, presents the diversity of Populists. Example of that diversity is Lula and Bolsonaro of Brazil both being Populists, as are Trump and Sanders in the USA. A common point about all Populists is their selling of different versions of a Big Lie that emotionally triggers support by making misleading, overly simple, claims about things. However, populists can be 'harmful or helpful'. Being misleading is not good. But it can temporarily reduce harm ... unless the 'helpful' Big Lie is 'seen through'.

Also note that the harmful Populists love to benefit from the promotion of Pseudoscience through the 'scientifically developed' power of misleading targeted marketing. Helpful Populists would be less likely to do that. The climate science case identifies the more harmful, less helpful, Populists.

A final point. Being scientific, and scientific developments, are no guarantee that harm is being reduced. What is chosen to be researched and how that learning is employed can be helpful or harmful. The science of marketing is an example. Nuclear weapons also prove that point. But misleading marketing is potentially a far more harmful scientifically developed thing.

CO2 effect is saturated

Rob Honeycutt at 01:04 AM on 25 March, 2023

Gootmud... Reading through that Happer paper is interesting in that they're essentially confirming the consensus position on man-made climate change is correct. Their climate sensitivity figure of 1.4K is the direct effect without water vapor feedback. The 2.9K is with WV feedback per M&W1967, and the 2.2K figure is with updated calculations for WV.

So, why is that 2.2K figure so much lower than the central estimates of ~2.9K/2xCO2? Well, there are other feedbacks that are not included in Happer's calculations, like ice sheet feedbacks.

This paper is a good demonstration that Happer knows the climte science is correct but he continues to speak out against it, ostensibly in order to instill doubt in the research.

Why? If you up for a little light reading, try Oreskes/Conway's The Merchants of Doubt. (Hint: it's not really about the science.)

It's also important to note, the warming we've seen over the past 60 years is largely in line with central estimates for climate sensitivity. We've increased CO2 by about 50% and we seem committed to around 1.5°C of warming. The numbers kind of work, unfortunately.

The Big Picture

One Planet Only Forever at 03:17 AM on 18 March, 2023

Peppers @36,

In spite of all that you have claimed the evidence-based understanding continues to be:

1. The climate impact problem of developed human activity is real.

2. The climate impact to date has already seriously compromised the future of humanity, especially due to the locking in of significant sea level rise). And because of the inertia of harmful developed over-consumption by the most harmful portion of the population things will be worse before humans stop making it worse. The continued harmful activity requires more repair (adaptation). And ‘adaptation effort’ delays human development of sustainable improvements. And the required adaptations will not be done for every body (I see not plans for the current portion of the population responsible for the rising sea levels to build flood mitigation systems that will be required for Bangladesh). And in some cases the harm is not repairable (The rising sea level impacts on Bangladesh may not be possible to adaptively mitigate).

3. The problem is the portion of the total population that is most harmful per-person. The total population increasing is a concern. But the problem of the total harm done is the real concern. And that can be understood to be due to the portion of the population that has developed a liking for over-consumption, not just unnecessary energy over-consumption. And the problem within that problematic ‘highest harm’ portion of the population is the portion that has less interest in learning about the harm caused (or the risk of harm) by their pursuits of ‘more personal enjoyment or benefit’

4. The problem can be solved. It just requires all people, even with an increasing population, to understand and accept the need to limit how harmful they are and to want to be more helpful to Others. There is a planetary limit on how many humans can live sustainably, concurrently live basic decent lives into the distant future. Many studies have established a consensus understanding that the maximum sustainable global population is a function of how much harmful over-consumption develops within the population. The planet can sustainably support more than 10 billion humans living basic decent lives (doing what is needed to live a decent basic live, and limiting the harm done by that essential activity). The planet cannot sustainably support the current 8 billion (or the most harmful 800 million) because of the developed harmful over-consumption within the population (and not just the harmful climate change impacts). Also, the developed systems fail to ensure that every body has the necessities of a basic decent life, including failing to provide basic minimum energy needs to every body and failing to have the ‘needed energy’ be as harmless as possible.

What is tragically missing from most discussion of the climate change problem, and other human harmful impact problems, is that the solutions require everybody to be governed by the desire to learn to be less harmful and more helpful to others. Some people 'doing their best to be less harmful and more helpful, and trying to help others be less harmful and more helpful' face the uphill challenge of overcoming the harm done by 'people who have developed other interests and related harmful misunderstandings'.

The Big Picture

One Planet Only Forever at 13:32 PM on 17 March, 2023

I believe that it is important (and may be helpful) to reasonably (rationally) evaluate (question) the following questionable (interesting) claims that have been made:

1. The increase of CO2 has been caused by the growth of global population (from 1 billion to 8 billion).

JasonChen and Peppers have both made versions of this claim in this comment string.

There does appear to be a correlation. But correlation does not mean causation. The details within the full picture of human population impacts are important to understand.

Not every human has caused, or benefited from, an equal amount of harmful impact. And the personal difference of magnitude of impact among the global population is massive. A multitude of evaluations, enough to establish a consensus understanding, conclude that the majority of the ‘CO2/global warming/climate change’ impact is due to the highest impacting portion of the population (and any population sub-group).

Said another way: If the highest impacting 800 million of the global population were the only humans to live, global population peaked at 800 million rather than having the global population grow to 8 billion, the climate change problem today would be almost as serious as it currently is with 8 billion now on the planet. And the solution would still be 'rapidly ending fossil fuel use', especially by the highest impacting portion of the 800 million.

The problem is the highest impacting portion of the population and their bad examples of how to live being perceived as ‘advanced, superior, and desired’.

2. Helpful developments for the benefit of (the future of) humanity require(d) fossil fuel use.

JasonChen and Peppers have both made versions of this claim in this comment string.

Fossil fuel use burns up non-renewable resources. This planet could be habitable for hundreds of millions of years. At current levels of use, fossil fuels will not last 1000 years. Perceptions that helpful development is achieved through fossil fuel use makes no sense. Any benefits ‘relying on continued fossil fuel use’ will end as the resource runs out. And there is the added matter of the many harms caused by fossil fuel use, not just the rapid production of excess CO2 causing rapid global warming/climate changes and changes of ocean chemistry.

3. Perceptions that helpfulness justify harmfulness.

When people focus on claiming perceptions of the positive benefits of fossil fuel use they are essentially claiming that perceptions of benefit justify or excuse harm done. They may also try to deny that harm is being done by what they perceive to be a positive action. Or they may try to argue that more evidence that harm is being done needs to be obtained before action is taken to limit the harm done (Waiting until the actual damage done is undeniable ‘based on their perceptions’: Waiting until the car crashes before trying to reduce the chances of a car crash). Or they may try to argue that the harm done is acceptable or enjoyable (that car race was thrilling ...).

4. Perceptions of potential personal benefit can cause a person to resist learning to be less harmful and be more helpful to Others (and even themselves).

This is the tricky bit. When a person is confronted with evidence that something they have developed a desire and preference for is harmful or risks causing avoidable harm some people will learn to be less harmful and more helpful. But some people will try to argue against the real and potential harm. They will seek out and develop a liking for a misunderstanding that they believe excuses or diminishes the harmfulness of a ‘perceived to be personally beneficial’ activity like fossil fuel use.

The Big Picture

BaerbelW at 04:35 AM on 17 March, 2023

A question for those who seem to at least somewhat doubt the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change: did you notice the glossary entry for that and follow the link to the explainer? If not, here is the direct link https://sks.to/consensus-explainer. Perhaps read that before commenting again.

The Big Picture

Philippe Chantreau at 03:26 AM on 17 March, 2023

I see all of the familiar red flags of BS with Jason's posts. Attempting to present "the science" as something vague and abstract is a major one.

The science is as far from a metaphysical concept as can be. It is composed of a very large numbers of scientific studies and articles, peer-reviewed and published in science publications, with methods, data and results. All of these, when considered as a big picture, point in a definite direction. The scientific consensus, as I have remarked many times before is not just agreement between experts' opinions. It is mostly a convergence of scientific research results, that experts are familiar with because they are experts. From there, major principles can be established, that are no longer a matter of debate, or not to the extent that would have major consequences.

The attempt at establishing "factions" has for objective to give the appearance that reality is dependent on what camp we think we belong to. That is the ultimate fraud. This is the reason why there has been a push for a "blue team-read team" approach by some, using what is essentially lawyers' skills to make a case where there is not one at all. They know they can manipulate an audience effectively and make them not just believe that down is up but even fight for it. Heck these days, the AI bots mentioned higher could possibly do this even more effectively than sleazy lawyers, they only would have to have access to all the mind manipulating techniques used by advertisers, marketers and said lawyers to fool people.

The Big Picture

Rob Honeycutt at 01:46 AM on 17 March, 2023

Jason @14... "That means pulling up above the canopy to a point of view where we can see the consensus faction and their beliefs alongside the other major factions and their beliefs."

The consensus is precisely an act of "pulling up above the canopy..."

The entire point of a scientific consensus is to measure the broad assessments of a wide range of experts. You know, people who have PhD's and study the subject matter every day of their working lives? Those people overwhelmingly accept that, it's real, it's us, it's bad, we need to act rapidly to fix it, and it's not "game over."

If you want to be inclusive of the minority position that this could all be wrong, that's fine. You know, the standard treatments for cancer could also be wrong and herbal medicine just might save Uncle Bob from an early grave. You can never fully eliminate that possibility.

There are definitely people out there who are going to vigorously try to convince your uncle to use herbs and not listen to his oncologist. They are non-experts in oncology. They have strong opinions on oncology. Bob is more that welcome to risk taking their advice. At the end of the day, the likelihood of the oncologist being wrong are substantially lower than the herbalist.

I peg you as the angry herbalist in this analogy.

The Big Picture

John Mason at 17:59 PM on 16 March, 2023

Jason, that last post contradicts itself. If there's a scientific consensus about something, that means people doing the science have long stopped arguing about the core principles. There may be other "factions" outside of science, for example creationists who dispute evolution. But once you look at the evidence, their views are simply opinion, not evidence-based. That is an important distinction. Evidence is not about belief: it's a hard factual record of the physical world that can be deciphered, with varying degrees of difficulty.

The Big Picture

JasonChen at 17:42 PM on 16 March, 2023

I may perceive the goal of the article differently than you gentlemen. A big picture review should remind us of the context surrounding our day to day conversations. That means pulling up above the canopy to a point of view where we can see the consensus faction and their beliefs alongside the other major factions and their beliefs.

The Big Picture

JasonChen at 11:54 AM on 16 March, 2023

Rob @6... Institutional consensus seems pretty overt, no? The UN. Every university. Every government. Every corporation, including big oil. Every mainstream news outlet. The Federal Reserve. The NFL. Leonardo DiCaprio.

The Big Picture

Rob Honeycutt at 11:16 AM on 16 March, 2023

JasonChen @5... Where do you come to the conclusion that any of this is based on "[an] institutional consensus has formed that higher CO2 will cause higher temperatures"?

That higher levels of CO2 will cause the planet to warm is just basic physics. The scientific consensus is merely the result of a high level of confidence in that physics.

The Big Picture

JasonChen at 11:01 AM on 16 March, 2023

Is the rebuttal project the best home for this article? It lacks the tight focus of other topics, and its length and graphyness limit its persuasive power.

Even so it gives us just the view from the IPCC's window, which doesn't quite fulfill the title's promise. The big picture is 8 billion people are emitting more CO2 for all sorts of good reasons and are set to emit a great deal more. An institutional consensus has formed that higher CO2 will cause higher temperatures, and those claiming to be following the science cite a variety of evidence consistent with that view. They advocate sweeping changes to global power generation and every other aspect of society but face resistance from developing countries, dissident scientists, distrustful conservatives, consumers, and other factions.

CO2 limits will hurt the poor

PollutionMonster at 14:09 PM on 27 February, 2023

Eclectic @73

Thanks that helps a lot. I sometimes have doubts when a lot of deniers yell at me at the same time. I think its best for me to pick my battles and choose a different community to talk to.

I am finding very very little common ground. They refuse to use sources, which makes it difficult to understand where they are coming from. Of course there is endless accusations of me being a idelogue.

Other uninvited deniers join in and call me a troll for using sources and accuse me of gish gallop when I link to skepticalscience. Of the group their two favorite sources tend to be Daily Telegraph and dailymail. Though the group consensus is generally sources are bad.

The connection between Hurricane Sandy and global warming

stranger1548 at 10:05 AM on 29 January, 2023

Sorry, this is the only reference I could find to hurricanes. My question is that it seems I've for read for years that there is no scientific consensus on increasing numbers of hurricanes but that there is consensus on growing intensity. Exchanging posts with a skeptic I failed to back the statement on hurricane intensity. The studies I've looked use modeling the future but as we know the word modeling only receives derision from climate skeptics. I couldn't find any actual proof that hurricanes have intensified. I couldn’t find any climate signals that support the premise.

Publishing a long overdue explainer about a scientific consensus

BaerbelW at 04:37 AM on 15 January, 2023

To add another option to share this explainer, I created an audio version and put it up on Youtube: https://youtu.be/CQIowIu0yoc

This might come in handy whenever trying to explain a scientific consensus in YouTube comments where links to other videos work, but - at least for me - comments with links to other websites make them disappear immediately.

P.S.: Thanks to EddieEvans for giving me the idea to do this recording!

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #52 2022

michael sweet at 09:48 AM on 3 January, 2023

Hairy BUtler,

I read the Hansen et al preprint and Manns response. THe Hansen paper is long and technical. To evaluate the claims is beyond my pay grade, but I can summarize Hansen's claims.

1) Hansen et al claim that studies of Paleoclimate (the climate in ages past) are the best way to estimate climate sensitivity. The current estimate of the Charney equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) is 3C per doubling of carbon dioxide. The ECS is the equilibtium temperature from rapidly changing thngs like atmospheric temperature and the ocean surface. It has been 3C for a long time. Recent papers have made new estimates of the last glacial maximum (LGM) global temperature that are about 3C lower than older estimates were. This results in the ECS increasing to about 4 or 5C. Mann cites the old papers to contradict Hansen. If the ECS is really 4C instead of 3C than the expected warming is significantly greater. Scientists often argue about whether or not new estimates are correct. This can take years to resolve.

2) Hansen has felt for decades that aerosol effects on climate have been underestimated. Hansen claims that current Global Climate Models (GCM's) overestimate ocean mixing and underestimate aerosol cooling effects. He provides new data to support this claim. The net effect is to lower the calculated ECS. As more and more energy comes from renewable sources the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere will decrease. Since aerosols cool the Earth the net effect is greater warming than we have already experienced.

3) Hansen defines the Earth System Sensitivity (ESS) as the final temperature reached when slow responding functions like the melting of global ice caps reach final equilibrium. This is significantly higher than the ECS, perhaps as high as 10C per doubling of carbon dioxide. The generally accepted wisdon is that ESS will take thousands of years to reach equilibrium. Hansen argues that It will be much faster. Perhaps as much as 80% of final heating in a centuary.

4) The net effect of higher ECS and ESS combined with higher aerosol effects means that there is a lot more heating in the pipeline (heating caused by carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere) than is currently believed to be the case.

5) Since Hansen expects warming to be greater than the current consensus, much more heating is already in the pipeline and that it will happen much faster than currently expected, he argues that governments need to act much faster to contain this emergency as soon as possible.

Hansen has made the argument for many years that aerosols are underestimated, ESS is higher than the current consensus and more warming is in the pipeline. He has new data in this paper to support his claims. This paper claims that the much more rapid increase in temperature he predicts will be obvious by 2050 and strong indications of his predictions will be measured in about 10 years.

Mann basically says that he doesn't buy Hansens' argument. Hopefully Gavin Schmidt at Real Climate will write a summary that will tell us the consensus view of what Hansen thinks is new data. I expect Dr. Schmidt to agree with Dr. Mann. I cannot evaluate Hansens claims, it is too technical.

In my view, Hansen is a great scientist who has been correct several times before when he stuck his neck out. He has also missed the mark on occasion. It is worrysome to have someone so talented make such a grim argument. This argument is not that different from his previous position but it has some new data to support his case. I imagine that this paper will be discussed a fair amount online but that the IPCC consensus will not change until it is 2050 and his forecasts have proven correct. Pray to whatever Gods you have that Hansen is incorrect.

If anyone else reads Hansen et al I am interested in your thoughts and/or additions on what I have posted here.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #52 2022

HairyButler at 10:51 AM on 30 December, 2022

I came across a new Hansen et al study on ECS which I haven't seen referenced here. I haven't seen any news reports on it either. That's odd, because their estimate for ECS is "at least ~4°C for doubled CO2 (2xCO2), with likely range 3.5-5.5°C". That's a fair bit higher than the long-standing consensus of 3ishC, so it seems newsworthy but maybe I'm missing something. https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.04474

We’ll keep tweeting (for now) but have also started tooting.

nigelj at 08:20 AM on 25 December, 2022

Peppers @40

"The definition of what is a harmful misunderstanding from one people, one culture, one gender, class standing, etc., to another cannot be defined to concluded that all should be and think and do only as you do. "
I disagree. Harmful misunderstandings are defined where there is good scientific evidence and consensus. Science is also a universal language that cuts across cultures.

However I do think people should still be allowed to challenge all consensus scientific positions, and other views, in the public realm like websites and in the scientific literature.

Censorship of opinion and information worries me, (with very limited exceptions like inciting violence, defamation law, etc, etc) because a well intended process can so easily be abused and go terribly wrong, and you would need a huge army of people trying to enforce it. People should read George Orwells 1984.

We’ll keep tweeting (for now) but have also started tooting.

nigelj at 15:52 PM on 23 December, 2022

Peppers @25

At no point have I promoted censorship of information. In fact @15 I indicated I oppose censorship of information and opinion other than 1)the usual time and place restrictions, and 2) website moderation rules forbidding personal abuse, off topic and spamming 3) racism and inciting violence. Defamation law also has its place. Do you oppose any of those sorts of limits?

To briefly answer your other questions. Disinformation is deliberately spreading false information. Misinformation is spreading false information. These are standard dictionary definitions. False information is determined by a consensus view of experts and sometimes by the courts. They are always open to challenge but until the consensus changes false information is false information.

I will label peoples views harmful If I deem them to be harmful. I assume you agree that theives, murderes and environmental polluters to be harmful? I also consider covid deniers to be harmful. Its normal for humans to make judgements about harm, and sometimes require penalties to discourage harmful activities (like theft) or to compensate people, because its part of how we survive and prosper. Sometimes we make the wrong judgements, but making no judgements will get us all killed.

Of course its needs to be genuine and significant harm based on evidence and responses need to be proportionate to the type of harm. Taking some level of risk in life is also healthy. So its a nuanced issue. IMHO.

2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46

One Planet Only Forever at 12:17 PM on 12 December, 2022

EddieEvans,

I agree that a major part of the problem is the lack of legitimate ethical considerations governing thoughts and actions. Misleading marketing is a serious ethical problem.

I read Stephen M. Gardner's "A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change" several years ago. It is an easy read compared to other presentations on ethics. It is encouraging that more books are being produced by a diversity of people on a diversity of issues related to ethical understanding. And those books are aligned with the consensus understanding presented in the Sustainable Development Goals. Those diverse converging lines of thought develop increasing awareness and improved understanding that competition for status needs to be governed to limit the development of harmful unsustainable results (and some current perceived winners need to lose status).

Effectively solving the climate change problem, and many other developed problems, will require systemic changes that increase governing by ‘ethical consideration’ rather than ‘popularity or profitability’. Competition based on popularity and profitability has a tragic history of developing harmful results when it is not rigorously governed by the ethical objective of constantly improved learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others. And when it is poorly governed the competition for status develops harmful undeserving winners who can powerfully resist their deserved loss of status, especially through misleading marketing of harmful misunderstanding.

Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy

Long Knoll at 11:56 AM on 12 December, 2022

Thanks for the quick response.

The article 'Were skeptic scientists kept out of the IPCC' shows evidence that the working group did not suppress contrarian papers but honestly critiqued them, hence it can be argued that they also honestly critiqued Briffa's tree ring data (and from what I know, they did indeed and there was a detailed discussion of Briffa's tree ring data in the report). But someone making the argument I laid out in the above post might still say the quotes, including apparently quite explicit ones from Briffa himself, are evidence of improper pressure to create consensus rather than uncertainty for the policy makers, even if in this case there was ultimately no impact on the results. As you say, I think there's a good chance the quotes are taken out of context like so much of the selective quoting done by 'Climategate' proponents, but if they have been I can't find any material showing how they have been taken out of context.

Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy

Long Knoll at 13:30 PM on 11 December, 2022

There are some quotes from emails sent on September 9th 1999 which are frequently brought up by conspiracy theorists that don't seem to be discussed here. Forgive me if I have simply missed discussion of them. They regard the divergence of Keith Briffa's tree ring reconstruction from Mann and Jones.

IPCC author Chris Folland writes "A proxy diagram of temperature change is a clear favourite for the Policy Makers summary. But the current diagram with the tree ring only data somewhat contradicts the multiproxy curve and dilutes the message rather significantly."

Briffa writes there is "pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data…,’”

Mann writes "Everyone in the room at IPCC was in agreement that this was a problem and a potential distraction/detraction from the reasonably consensus viewpoint we’d like to show w/ the Jones et al and Mann et al series"

This has been used to suggest that the IPCC is after particular data to support a message which it will pressure scientists for, and the IPCC will ideally exlude data which 'dilutes' the message. I don't believe that but it's become a common talking point.

2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46

One Planet Only Forever at 08:40 AM on 8 December, 2022

EddieEvans @7,

I agree that the current situation, and the future for humanity, is more damaged than it needed to be.

The problem is indeed better identified by understanding that the main reason things are so bad is the popularity of ‘resistance to learning to be less harmful and more helpful’ (that applies to far more than climate change).

People who choose to develop and defend an interest that is contradicted by reasoning and evidence-based pursuit of being less harmful develop ‘Conflicts of Interest’. Their developed perceptions of prosperity or opportunity for more prosperity are able to be understood to be harmfully obtained. But their desires conflict with that learning.

Among the diversity of ‘categories’ or ‘groupings’ of people the one that matters most is the clear categorization of:

constant reasoned and evidence-based learning to be less harmful and more helpful

resisting that learning because of other interests.

Based on that categorization/division the USA and its Baby Boomers or religious groups are not categorically a problem. USA Baby Boomers, including many religious Boomers, were a significant part of the development of learning how socioeconomic interests conflicted with the development of a sustainable improving future for humanity. That ‘still improving understanding’ had developed global awareness at the highest levels of leadership in the 1972 Stockholm Conference. Many developments since then, not just the UNFCCC/IPCC, have improved the consensus understanding of the harmfulness of Economic interests being prioritized over concerns about Social or Environmental harm being done. But admittedly, many members of the USA and other harmfully over-developed(ing) nations have been aggressively opposed to that learning becoming the global common sense (consensus understanding).

The important learning from that evidence is that:

with few exceptions like medical actions that risk harm to a person for the benefit of that person and things like vaccinations which protect the person but also benefit the general population, Harm Done or risk of harm done cannot be excused by Good Done.

An important clarification of that understanding is that Harm Done to some people is not excused by Benefits Obtained by other people.

A related further understanding is that “It is not harmful to reduce perceptions of prosperity or opportunity by: restricting harmful actions, making harmful actions more expensive, and correcting unreasonable beliefs (especially beliefs that are contradicted by the evidence)”.

And a final related understanding is that people who need assistance to live basic decent lives can be excused for doing something harmful in pursuit of improvement of their circumstances, attempting to develop up to basic decent living. And more fortunate people should help those people live better less harmfully.

The bottom line is that the serious problem needing to be admitted as unacceptable is: Groups that choose to be gatherings of harmful special interests, creating larger groups that excuse each other’s harmful interests, and claim that they are ‘harmed’ by having their freedoms or beliefs and actions contradicted and restricted because their beliefs are unreasonable and are contradicted by the evidence and understanding of harm done.

The Baby Boomers and religious groups can and should help the younger generations break out of the cycle of excusing harmful pursuits of perceptions of prosperity and superiority.

2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #46

One Planet Only Forever at 09:52 AM on 5 December, 2022

wilddouglascounty @4,

I agree that a diversity of actions are required to increase the number of people who change their mind to abandon harmful Beliefs by improving their Knowledge regarding how to be less harmful and more helpful. And that includes recognizing that not all people in a 'category of people' are harmfully selfish even if the majority in that category are.

I think that the best thing would be for people to use their connections and methods of connecting with others to be more helpful including:

raise awareness and improve understanding about the harm of fossil fuels and the harmful actions of people trying to maximize their benefit from fossil fuels as harmfully as they can get away with.

correct harmful misunderstandings or misleading claims when they encounter them (don't be a by-stander)

Unlike 'more on-line interactive' people like Eddie Evans who have the potential to reach a broader audience, I am not a Social Media participant. My interactions are more direct encounters with people in my many diverse groups of acquaintances. I do not bring up topics like climate change. But whenever a misunderstanding is raised I try to improve the understanding ... with mixed results. I live in Alberta. So I interact with many people who are powerfully motivated to misunderstand a topic like the harmful climate change impacts of fossil fuel use.

I have made a more expansive comment about this regarding the added challenge of the 'recent changes by Twitter' on the 2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #48. The recent SkS post "Publishing a long overdue explainer about a scientific consensus" is also related to the problem.

2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #48

One Planet Only Forever at 08:03 AM on 5 December, 2022

Developing improvements for humanity is almost certain to be harmed by Twitter allowing and excusing, and as a result promoting with relative impunity, harmful misunderstandings and harmfully misleading comments (note: Some misunderstanding and misleading can be neutral or even be helpful. It is less important to correct or limit the influence of neutral or helpful misunderstanding).

It is important to differentiate between Knowledge and Beliefs. Belief can be anything. Knowledge is limited to reasoned or evidence-based understanding. Beliefs can be entrenched dogma. Knowledge is constantly improving. Belief and Knowledge have a history of conflict.

There is now ample evidence, and robust reasoning related to the evidence, that ‘people being freer to believe, comment, and act however they wish without effective governing of harm done’ will lead to a failure of humanity developing sustainable improvements. The climate science case is one of the most significant examples. Thirty years after the development of a robust evidence-based and well-reasoned understanding that fossil fuel use is unsustainable and very harmful there continue to be people trying to resist that learning becoming the ‘significantly more’ common sense. (Note that climate science is not the only case of harmful results due to people being freer to believe and do as they please in competition for personal benefits and status).

Constantly improving consensus understanding of what is harmful and how to effectively limit harm done is essential to the development of sustainable improvements for humanity (refer to the SkS Explainer regarding Scientific Consensus but extend it to other reasoned or evidence-based understanding). Constantly improving the ‘common sense about harm and the need to limit harm done’ is especially important for correcting harmful unsustainable human development and developing sustainable improvements.

Free speech is important. But, like most things, Free Speech can be helpful or harmful. To limit its harmfulness, Free Speech needs to be governed by the pursuit of increased awareness and improved understanding of what is harmful. Helpful learning and education about harm to effectively limit harm done is critical. The most important application of critical thinking is learning to limit harm done (that involves learning that may reduce developed perceptions of status or opportunities for benefit).

It would be great if everyone diligently learned and self-governed their Free Speech to be as harmless as possible and strive to be helpful. But that is unlikely to ever be the reality for humanity. Some people will probably always try to benefit from harmful Free Speech (or other Freedoms). There will probably always be a need for prompt effective correction of harmful misunderstanding or misleading claims. And, in the worst cases, it will be necessary to ‘cancel’ the ‘sharing of very harmful misunderstanding’ and effectively block the influence of the most harmful repeat offenders (the ones who resist learning to be less harmful and more helpful).

Repeatedly harmful people, people resisting helpful harm reducing correction, are traditionally penalized or kept from harmfully influencing things. That tradition needs to govern the ‘sharing of beliefs’.

Publishing a long overdue explainer about a scientific consensus

EddieEvans at 22:26 PM on 3 December, 2022

This a really helpful reader for a non-specialist like myself. I suggest a tone-down, common language version and placing it on Wikipedia. At least on Wikipedia, its subject becomes documented for posterity. Besides, it's ready to go as is.

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