David Burton writes:
I just realized the obvious answer to a question that has been nagging in the back of my mind for nearly a year and a half.
In 2008 Margaret Zimmerman asked two questions of 10,257 Earth Scientists at academic and government institutions. 3146 of them responded. That survey was the original basis for the famous “97% consensus” claim.
For the calculation of the degree of consensus among experts in the Doran/Zimmerman article, all but 79 of the respondents were excluded. They wrote:
“In our survey, the most specialized and knowledgeable respondents (with regard to climate change) are those who listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change (79 individuals in total). Of these specialists, 96.2% (76 of 79) answered “risen” to question 1 and 97.4% (75 of 77) answered yes to question 2.”
The basis for the “97% consensus” claim is this excerpt:
[of] “the most specialized and knowledgeable respondents (with regard to climate change)… 97.4% (75 of 77) answered yes to question 2.”
But that is a false statement.
The two questions were:
Q1: “When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?” 76 of 79 (96.2%) answered “risen.”
Q2: “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?” 75 of 77 (97.4%) answered “yes.”
My nagging question was, why did different numbers of people (79 vs. 77) answer the two questions? What happened to the other two respondents?
The answer to that question is not in the Doran article.
But it is in the Zimmerman report, a copy of which I bought back in March, 2012. The reason I feel stupid is that I read it and even quoted the relevant part way back then, and it still took me until now to realize the obvious answer to my nagging question.
This was the full set of questions that Zimmerman asked in their survey:
Q1. When compared with pre-1800's levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?1. Risen2. Fallen3. Remained relatively constant4. No opinion/Don't knowQ2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures? [This question wasn’t asked if they answered “remained relatively constant” to Q1]1. Yes2. No3. I'm not sureQ3. What do you consider to be the most compelling argument that supports your previous answer (or, for those who were unsure, why were they unsure)? [This question wasn’t asked if they answered “remained relatively constant” to Q1]Q4. Please estimate the percentage of your fellow geoscientists who think human activity is a contributing factor to global climate change.Q5. Which percentage of your papers published in peer-reviewed journals in the last 5 years have been on the subject of climate change?Q6. AgeQ7. GenderQ8. What is the highest level of education you have attained?Q9. Which category best describes your area of expertise?
Do you see it? If a respondent answered “remained relatively constant” to the first question, then he wasn’t asked the second question!
That’s obviously why only 77 answers were reported to the second question. Two of their 79 top climate specialists had answered “remained relatively constant” to the first question, and those two were not asked the second question, and were not included in the calculation of the supposed 97.4% agreement.
That means only 75 of 79 (94.9%) of their “most specialized and knowledgeable respondents” actually gave them the answers they wanted to both of their questions.
So, despite asking “dumb questions” that even most skeptics would answer “correctly,” and despite excluding over 97% of the responses after they were received, they still did not find 97% agreement. They actually found only 94.9% agreement.
I’ve updated my http://tinyurl.com/Clim97pct page to reflect that fact.
I’ve also emailed the editor of Eos, which published their article back in 2009, asking that they run a correction.
“Humans have had a “significant impact” on warming is pretty vague.
Also, why does anyone care what a survey conducted in 2008 show?
A lot of water under the bridge since then.
I personally made the Sun rise this morning. And this had never happened before.
Lies, damn lies and statistics.
Given the results of the Surface Station project, and the frequent and ill-advised manipulation of historical and current temperature data, I’d say that warming definitely has a strong human component, just not in the way they think.
How they arrived at it is merely an exercise in Marketing. That it is a worthless number that has no meaning is what is scientifically valid.
Is the underlying data of ALL responses actually available? So, of the 3000+ responses, how did the data break down?
@Harold Ambler says:
…I personally made the Sun rise this morning. And this had never happened before…
Quite right. Yesterday, it was me…
Also, the answer to the second question would include people that thought temperature was lower and that it was caused by humans. It doesn’t seem likely that any would answer this, but there’s nothing in the question or data *as* *reported* above.
“I’ve also emailed the editor of Eos, which published their article back in 2009, asking that they run a correction.”
Why waste time doing that?
To any audience says 95% of scientists …. blah, blah, is just the same as saying 97%.
You asking them to correct it , implies that you would consider it better if it showed the “correct” number of 95% , when in fact the whole thing is BS, game playing that should be retracted in its entirety.
The unpublished question number 0 was probably the most important one:
Q0 Would you like more money and public funds to be directed to you area of research in the future?
Those who replied “No” or “Don’t care” were obviously not to be considered experts in relevant fields of study. and were not asked the rest of the questions.
“I’ve also emailed the editor of Eos, which published their article back in 2009, asking that they run a correction.”
Why waste time doing that?
To any audience says 95% of scientists …. blah, blah, is just the same as saying 97%.
Quite a scientific study. Science by consensus, I’m impressed.
That really feels like a cherry picked bunch of yes men, with a couple of dissenters just for effect to make it feel like a proper survey.
What happened to the other two , what happened to the other three thousand plus.
I’ve always been appalled that a Masters degree was awarded for this torturing of data.
The 97% is still being quoted in the MSM, it would be good to get it changes, pointing out the mistake, now that the lame questions and methods are out in the open.
A more thorough revisit with publicity could be worthwhile.
EthicallyCivil says:
December 10, 2013 at 8:14 am
“Also, the answer to the second question would include people that thought temperature was lower and that it was caused by humans. It doesn’t seem likely that any would answer this, but there’s nothing in the question or data *as* *reported* above.”
During the cooling 70ies and up to 1988 the scare scientists postulated that an increase of CO2 due to human activity was the cause of the cooling; arguing that CO2, being IR-active, was emitting more energy to space; leading to an “ice age”, as the media reported (the journalists meant to say “glaciation”, but were too stupid for that).
The scare scientists switched to warming over time, as a glaciation became impossible to market, arguing CO2 emitted more IR to the surface; the switch was complete in 1988, when Hansen performed his infamous A/C stunt. The scare scientists remained the same; each one making his choice between being efficient, and being honest, as Schneider demanded.
Why did they ask Q2 and Q3 if the answer to Q1 was: “4. No opinion/Don’t know”?
The first question was trivial. 1800 was in the midst of the Little Ice Age, so OF COURSE it’s warmer now.
The second question is also trivial if you keep in mind that, as used by the UN and the IPCC, “Climate Change” is BY DEFINITION anthropogenic. It’s hardly surprising that anybody who publishes papers on “Climate Change” believes it is anthropogenic, or they would have used different terminology.
Harold Ambler and Dodgy Geezer go on about how they made the sun rise.
Will you knuckleheads please knock it off? Do you have any idea how hard I work to make the Sun set?!
“Q2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?”
This says nothing of ‘warming’. Land use may have very well kept the temperatures more moderate duing the LIA recovery, keeping it slightly lower than it would have been keeping all else kept constant. This question is ambiguous and fails the survey. Also, few think humans have directly affected ocean temperatures so this would imply global land-only temperature records, again ambiguous.
It’s not just that being warmer than during the Little Ice Age is trivially true, but the use of the term ‘significant’ is ambiguous.
Most lay people use ‘significant’ to mean ‘major, important, big, predominant’ or other such, whereas those accustomed to dealing with measurement and the statistics thereof use ‘significant’ as meaning simply ‘detectable above the noise’.
So I, for example, would have to say yes to both questions, even though I’m not a believer in catastrophic AGW.
I want to know how many of them predicted the coldest temperature ever measured.
Thanks for this post David B. I hadn’t seen the full questions yet, and neither was I aware of the exact phrasing om Q2:
The obvious follow-up question, in my opinion, would be:
What exaclty is meant by “a significant contributing factor”? And how would this be quantified? To me thos looks like a advertently vague ambiguous question, that could easily be misintepreted by a casual reader or a referring churnolist.
Humm, 3,146 responses reduced to 77 in the final segment on human caused global warming. Evidently, this filtering process ended up in the innards of the Health Exchange website insurance application process generating the same 77 completed applications on the first day. You doubt this possibility? Prove it as wrong, go ahead.
Why it is important to bring this up again is that not only MSM still quote it, but Obama has used the 97% argument again recently.
75 scientists say the science is settled!
These survey’s all seem to be phrased to achieve a “desired” outcome. I would like to see a survey that asked how much anthropogenic forcings have contributed to global warming. Break it down in fifths (0-20%, 20-40%….) or even something less definitive, like (some, about half, most or nearly all). The recent Cook et al study was prime example of over-complicating the question and playing fast and lose with what defines “the consensus”.
Why not just ask those in the climate filed what they think?
Darn!
There goes that neat 97% propaganda number,now it is a boring 94.9% number.
Back to the drawing board again.
Good comments! lol
What shocks me is that of the thousands who completed the survey, only 79 were chosen in order to come up with the alleged “97% consensus”, thus 77 our of 79. Does the media know this? This was not a survey determining a consensus, when an oligarchy was formed first from which the 97% was then derived.
94.9% or 97%, either way it was still a ridiculous survey & manipulated to get the desired results. It was any thing but objective.
“Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures? ”
I would bet that if you asked that question of known skeptical scientists, you’d get a high % of ‘yes’. “Human activity” covers a lot of ground and “significant” factor is very difficult to quantify, for some it could mean ‘more than 50%’, for others it could mean 10% if, in the opinion of the scientist, the other factors (solar, Milankovitch cycles, PDO/AMO oscillation, etc) contributed similar or smaller % to the total.
The question is so vague as to be meaningless
I also think this revelation is too little, too late. The more important discovery is that 97% of scientists who’s livelihood (writings) depends on climate study grant money agree, and that their numbers (79) are a small part of the entire population of interested scientists who responded.
For those 77 I’d like to see the answers to
Q9. Which category best describes your area of expertise?
May be there were some more cartoonists or unqualified “scientists” like Cook amongst them.
I shouldn’t wonder.
The real question to ask – these are (partly climate) scientists after all:
If you had to bet on the actual value of the ‘climate sensitivity’ what you bet on? (ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity)
Temperature increase per CO2 doubling:
a) Don’t know
b) It does not matter
c) 6
I wonder how the graph on the wikipedia page (models) would compare to a poll run by Anthony, vs a poll at from AGU members, vs a poll run by some IPCC hired gun.
To me this is THE question, as the entire spend of $20 trillion or whatever, plus all the fear is based not on the Earth’s temperature rise, but on its relation to CO2.
The most interesting question is why is there about 3 % in disagreement?
You wouldn’t get 3% of working scientists who say the earth is flat.
It ruins the comparison.
Even the Flat Earth Society president responded to Obama and furiously endorsed GLOBAL warming.
Who were those masked men/women?
I’d say yes man is responsible, a large part is the UHI…
Fits in there well with ‘Dreams of my Father.’ (Does narcissism/do narcissists really know any bounds?)
http://survivingnarcissism.com/2011/02/04/narcissism-knows-no-bounds/
.
Just a quirky
So exactly how much extra CO2 did Obama ,Cameron, Prince Charles and the rest of the world leaders generate all jetting into South Africa for Mandela,s funeral.
For those who think the 94.9 number should be put out for public consumption , I would personally be worried about a Striesand effect as 94.9 sounds pretty much like 97 to the general public – dont want to reopen that wound !
I agree with an earlier poster whether its 94% or 97 % is irrelevant the question and and the observations to be made are as follows:-
1 Out of the 10,257 people asked to respond only 3146 took the survey ie 30%
2 Out of a sample of 3146 only 79 respondents were considered ie 2.5%
This survey is absolute garbage and the following statement is true almost 100% of alarmist scientists agree with themselves 🙂
Of all the things quite obviously wrong or misleading with this survey, I think this 94.9% instead of 97% is by far the least of them. What do you expect the response to be? “Oh my, you’re right! 94.9% of all scientists agree!”…. and you’ve accomplished what exactly?
Anybody care to explain to me how CO2 can allow IR to REACH the surface but somehow “traps” it there and won’t allow it to reflect back into space??? Is it one-way reflective?
That stupid survey was identical to asking Holistic practitioners if Holistic medicine is better than “western” medicine. Once you weed out all of the non-believers, you will be left with a consensus.
4 out of 5 dentists who expressed an opinion recommend patients chew sugarless gum. The rest still need to pay for something expensive.
The only thing amazing about the “97%” thing is that enough people are stupid enough to fall for it. Really, the bottom line is, 97% of self-proclaimed “climate scientists” who have an interest in promoting their reason for existing agree that they should exist. The rest are still trying to determine what the meaning of “is” is.
That warmists are sloppy and/or “stretchers.”
I haven’t read all the comments, but has anyone asked if the 79 “experts” were identified before or after the questionnaires were returned? I assume that Zimmerman had pre-qualified the 10,257 “scientists” etc. who were asked the questions, so why were the 7,111 who didn’t think climate change or global warming was worth a response excluded from the advertised data? Te sad part of all this is the duplicity of the “scientists” propagating this malarkey and the gullibility of the public to allow the grant money researchers and the liberal press to pull this scam off.
Also, Q2 is misrepresented as “significant, in a way likely to have strong net negative effects on humanity” as opposed to “significant, meaning measurable and non-trivial”. Certainly when one includes elements like UHI in fraction of global temperature signal that includes urbanized and suburbanized land, and including all factors (per Pielke Sr. rainforest destruction, soot, et. al. it can reasonably be argued as measurable and non-trivial.as a whole.
Even 94.9% didn’t agree that burning fossil fuels will cause any number of catastrophes or tipping points.
DirkH says: at 8:28 am
The scare scientists remained the same; each one making his choice between being efficient, and being honest, as Schneider demanded.
Good points. Not to quibble, but Schneider, though, at least in the quote that I have, made the choice between being honest and being effective:
“We have to offer up scary scenarios… each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective [lying] and being honest [ineffective].” -Stephen Schneider, lead ipcc author, 1989
Other similar quotes:
“Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.” -Sir John Houghton, ex ipcc chair
“The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.” -Daniel Botkin, ex Chair of Environmental Studies, UCSB
“Only sensational exaggeration makes the kind of story that will get politicians’ attention.” -Monika Kopacz, Atmospheric Scientist
Well, the logic behind the Doran/Zimmerman study is mind boggling. To see this, first of all let’s substitute climate science with another field of investigation, for logic is not supposed to be sensitive to semantic details, just truth values assigned to propositions. Therefore the subsample considered is defined this way:
Let the questions asked be as follows:
1. Does homeopathic remedies have any beneficial effect?
2. Does a solvent retain “memory” of the active substance even if the solution is diluted until not a single molecule of it is left there?
Q2 is only asked from those in the subsample described above who answered “yes” to Q1.
Now, I would bet a fortune the consensus calculated this way is pretty close to 100%. Does it imply anything about the memory of water?
What have we learnt here? If the merit of the basic paradigm of an entire field is in question, genuine experts of said field are the first to be excluded from the survey, that’s what.
I agree, David, that it is important. What I would like to know, of course, is WHO were the 77, and how many of those “experts” were, in fact experts.
Why does it matter? I think that since it is only those in the :skeptical” community that recognize that the mythic 97% is just that, mythic, we still need to keep hammering the “truth” so it gets out to the growing community of “I’m not sure any longer” people. Keep up the good work.
I’ve conducted a survey by mail before from a university setting. This whole Zimmerman survey is trash. First off, the total realm of N is 10,257. The number of respondents is 3146. The number who responded yes to question 2 is 77 our of 3146. Then, you have to compare that value to the Non-Respondents. You have to survey those who did not reply. Are they a different population? How do they differ to those who responded.
Sure, you can drill down in to the survey to cherry pick out a limited view of the data, like:
“..those who listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change “
Why send out surveys to 10,257 scientists if you are only going to take 79 of them? Don’t we have more than 79 declared “climate scientists”?
More importantly, how can “climate science” be a specialty when it is a general science? Geomorphology is a specialty. Space Weather is a specialty. Climate Science is a vast generalized field of hundreds of other sciences.
The bigger question I have always had (but know the answer) is why did they send the poll to 11,000 scientists when by their own methodology they only planned to use 2.5% of them?
Answer: They didn’t like the outcome of the full poll and whittled it down until they got the number they wanted.
They asked if they think that temperatures have risen since the mid 1800s. It is almost inconceivable to think that someone would say no. On the other hand, if they asked have temperatures risen since the 1930s you certainly would get a larger number of respondents saying that the answer to that question is not 100% clear. Especially if you look at the United States, where it seems likely that temperatures have actually dropped since the 1930s. Worldwide? That’s another question.
I would like to see the answers from the “specialized and knowledgeable respondents”, to Q3:
“What do you consider to be the most compelling argument that supports your previous answer (or, for those who were unsure, why were they unsure)?”
How many “compelling arguments” where presented, and how many just left it blank, or regurgitated the “we can’t afford to wait” talking points. I wonder how “compelling” those arguments are today?
What the respondents to the survey really says is that of the scientific community, only 77 made it very clear that they are not scientists. However, 33,000 made it very clear they are scientists.
Back when I was still doing research, we considered any signal that was measureable as significant, even if we had to use a boxcar integrator to find it. The term ‘significant’ has different meanings, and is dependent on the person using the term.
Total Earth Scientists (ie people that might notice change in the earth due to climate) = 10257
Percentage that felt it important enough (or qualified enough) to answer poll = 3146 = 30.7% (less than a 1/3rd of scientists)
Percentage that were subjectively allowed (screened) to answer = 79 = 0.77 % of total earth scientists, or 2.5 % of those that felt qualified to answer. (basing this on a science professional would answer only if they felt qualified)
Those that felt AGW is real = 2.38% of those who both felt it necessary to answer and allowed to answer. Or 0.73% of total earth scientists.
Raving Concensus
Straining out a gnat (a few % points) and swallowing a camel (the fundamentally wrongheaded study).
Nice article. Nice to know someone has got the numbers right.
Q1 can be rephrased:
Has it been warming or cooling since the 1800s?
Most would say definitely. Maybe more or less than 0.1F, but definitely, yeah temp has changed.
Q2: rephrased:
If something has happened since the 1800s, do You think mankind had something to do with it?
Most would answer, Yes, definitely. Mankind has become a major ecological force since the 1800s. So it is only fair to believe some of our activities has had an impact.
But those who answered were not asked the questions the media claims were asked:
Q1 rephrased:
Has there been a temp increase since 1800?
Q2 rephrased:
Is mankind the most important factor in this temperature rise, through our emission of CO2 from burning fossil fuel?
The public, however, do believe that these were the questions, not those in my 1st rephrasing.
The surveyed were not asked if it has become warmer. Q1.
The surveyed were not asked weather they believe we contributed to 50% or more of the warming, as has been claimed. Is 1% significant? Maybe. Is 3% significant. Maybe. Is more than 50% significant, definitely.
So why not ask that question flat out: If You do think that there has been a rise in temperature, what potion of this increase has, in Your opinion, been caused by humans?
a) 75%, b) 50% c) 25%, d) 10%, e) 5%, f) less than 5%, g) I am not sure.
They did not ask this or any similar question, and as 1% can bee seen as significant, those who answered could have implied, mankind was responsible for 1% of the warming.
This survey then, is not statistics, and it is not science. It is not precise, it does not ask or answer any of the things the media has puffed it up to do. Anything significant arising out of this survey, can be dismissed totally as propaganda, not science, not precise, and not worthy of any statistical analysis.
I am going to respectfully disagree:
From the pdf file in the survey link above:
Also
Finally,
Now, I understand that these two government-paid “researchers” eliminated all replies (of those who were NOT employed at government institutions, accepting the prejudiced argument paraphrased as: “Any private money paid to researchers from private enterprise or from non-government institutions corrupts the results of that research, and therefore (the replies from non-government scientists) cannot be reported nor analyzed seriously by us in our paper. Government-paid “scientists” are NOT prejudiced nor can they be corrupted by the source of their (government-paid) grants and salaries and funding.”
Notice also that the “participants” ARE specifically mentioned as including skeptics, the 79 chosen “ANSWERS” to these two simplified questions do NOT include any skeptical replies. Those have been eliminated by requiring that 50% of the person’s “recent papers” be on “climate science”. ANY person who writes articles on well-rounded subjects has been eliminated. Notably also, since government-paid grants ARE the sole funding for “climate science” limited research topics, by requiring that 50% of a person’s recent papers (note the unclear criteria of “recent papers” as well!) these two propagandists further their methodology and prejudices.
For reference, 5% of 3146 replies is only 157 answers.
8.5 % of 3146 replies is only 267 people.
Assuming nobody deliberately circumvented the rules and answered two or more times. So, we could immediately and accurately claim that only 77 out of 267 (29% of “scientists”) VERY ACTIVE IN ACTUAL CLIMATE SCIENCE PEER_REVIEWED RESEARCH believe in their theory of man-caused temperature increases due to man’s release of CO2 into the atmosphere!
As others have noted, this poll was rigged from the start:
“…Margaret Zimmerman asked… 10,257 Earth Scientists… 3146 of them responded. …all but 79 of the respondents were excluded.” (because they weren’t climatologists).
Enough said. It’s crystal clear the only reason Earth Scientists (other than climatologists) were on the mailing list was to give the survey the appearance of legitimacy. They screened out everyone who wasn’t a climatologist because they didn’t want to know what real Earth Scientists believe. Remember, this BS was published in EOS, (the Journal of the American Geophysical Union) while Peter Gleick was head of the AGU task force on Scientific Ethics. No journal worth the paper it is printed on would publish such a blatantly skewed survey.
Any guesses as to who the two ‘denier’ climatologists were? My guess is Judy Curry and one of the Roger Pielkes
pappad says:
December 10, 2013 at 10:11 am
Anybody care to explain to me how CO2 can allow IR to REACH the surface but somehow “traps” it there and won’t allow it to reflect back into space??? Is it one-way reflective?
I would go a step further and ask the question –
Isn’t the altitude of the CO2 molecule important also since the earth’s surface is round and curves away from the emitted radiation?
There are 38 “notable” scientists alone on this list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming
who go against the grain of “the science is settled” crowd. How many of these were part of the 79 who did the survey from where the 97% consensus was established?
Post 1990 climatologists are corruptly biased toward warmism
Here’s a counter-intuitive point. Doran tried to narrow it down to those most actively involved with climate change, as climatologists with the most published papers. From what I can sense and gather, the problem is that climatologists of the post ~ 1990 vintage were not admitted into their doctorate programs unless they agreed with science and preferably politics of the (leftist) Chicken Littles like James Hansen. So, any survey of post 1990 climatologists (of which most of them are) will find almost unanimous agreement with warmist “science” and goals.
The Hockey Schtick reports: Meteorologist’s poll finds no consensus on climate change & those with liberal political views far more likely to believe in man-made global warming. Only 52% overall believed global warming is happening and is mostly human-caused, while 48 percent did not. But they looked at those who “earned their living” via global warming, and found that to be a conflict of interest (instead of a positive and appropriate “specialization” or whatever), and reported how these respondents were biased toward the warmist position.
In my opinion, this whole exercise starts off with the logical fallacy of “begging the question”; i.e. “In our survey, the most specialized and knowledgeable respondents (with regard to climate change) are those who listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change (79 individuals in total).”
How did they determine that the chosen subgroup was the most “specialized and knowledgeable”?
(As to the former, I see climate scientists as generalists, not specialists.) If they tested “knowledgeable” by how they conformed to the current consensus, then the argument is indeed circular.
If the purpose of the poll was to study the opinions of published self described “climate scientists”, a group which turned out to be only 79 (or 77) members, why was it necessary to mail out the survey to over 10,000 scientists? Sure, not everyone responded, but Zimmerman still had a pool of over 3,000 respondents to pick from. Does this even make sense? If you were really interested in the religious opinions of, say, Jesuits, would you send out survey forms to 10,000 different ministers, priests and practitioners from all major religions — and then just pick out the answers from responding Jesuits? No, of course not.
Oh well, if it were an actual scientific survey they would not have used such ambiguous questions anyway. As many others have commented, the questions are so poorly phrased that most sceptics would have answered the same as the so-called experts.
97% or 94%, who cares? Sure, the study is crap anyway but the difference in percentages is insignificant.
…and yet a 0,07 degree increase in global temperatures over a 100-year period IS “significant?”
sorry for the decimal error. I’m having cataract surgery and things aren’t too clear on-screen these days.
Humorous thought of the day: In a few years, when CAGW is generally accepted as scientific fraud, some bright MSM reporter will “discover” how the 97% number was actually generated, providing yet another obscene example of how devious scientists defrauded the general public.
By that time, scientific credibility might be pretty well shot…the world will once again fill with astrologers, alchemists, palm readers and homeopathic witch doctors.
ps: I agree with previous Streisand effect comments – we don’t need MSM headlines saying “Even Deniers Think 95% of Scientists Agree…”.
Margaret Zimmerman sent survey to “Earth Scientists at academic and government institutions”, thus she had already picked “most specialized and knowledgeable respondents” for survey. In essence the survey started with bias. Margaret Zimmerman’s survey further tossing out 3,067 respondents amounts to cherry picking. Which makes whole 97% to 95% claim unscientific (aka bogus).
An honest survey/summary would acknowledge non-cherry picked result would amount to consensus of only 2.4%. To solely claim 97% is another example of constant misleading, unethical, dishonest, and/or unscientific, claims and results by proponents of Global Warming.
Almost 100% of scientists agreed at one point (in fact for almost 1000 years) that the Sun revolved around the Earth. That’s the best argument that consensus means nothing.
It would be difficult to list all the ways this study is meaningless. Over 10,000 scientists were asked. How were they chosen? Just over 3,000 responded. So already we have a self-selection problem.
After applying a subjective and (perhaps defensible but nevertheless) arbitrary set of filters, we examine the responses of 79. So a completely unscientific process is used to select a group representing 0.8% of the original group (itself chosen in an unscientific manner) and that 0.8% is allowed to speak for everyone in order to create an argument by authority.
Humm!
Q2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures? [This question wasn’t asked if they answered “remained relatively constant” to Q1]
1. Yes
2. No
3. I’m not sure
Since it is not the penguins that are manipulating the global temperature data, then you HAVE to answer YES.
It’s shocking but true, 75 doctors (out of 3,146) agree that brushing your teeth with brand x is better than brand y. And if you don’t agree to buy into our product, we will label you and blacklist you for life. Happiness and world peace be with you.
Heck, it’s just a minor technical ‘glitch’ (fashionable word these days) in their statistics. I have little doubt, that when it comes to the much more challenging, daunting, borderline impossible, statistical problem of determining a current global average temperature coupled with the even more daunting, virtually impossible, statistical problem of computing past global average temperatures and then detecting a change that these people are more than up to the challenge.
Ok, I better type this: (sarc).
Hell, that must be unprecedented all right.
TomL says:
December 10, 2013 at 8:44 am
The first question was trivial. 1800 was in the midst of the Little Ice Age, so OF COURSE it’s warmer now.
Even so, of these supposed knowledgeable “climate scientists”, there was not 100% agreement that we’ve warmed since the end of the LIA.
Amazing.
Re: An oopsie in the Doran/Zimmerman 97% consensus claim
Drilling down:
1. 1/1 Recent (respondent-provided) peer-reviewed papers on climate change = 100%, a sufficient publication record (> 50%) to be counted among “specialized and knowledgeable respondents”.
2. 3,067/3,146 Earth Scientists = 97.4% not admitting to being published Climate Scientists.
3. 7,111/10,257 Earth Scientists = 69.3% thought the survey was not worth answering at all.
4. 3/79 Climate Scientists = 3.8% unaware of the Little Ice Age
5. 75/10,257 Earth Scientists = 0.7% thought that human activity had enough of an effect on Earth’s mean global temperature to make the survey worth answering. (Accord Rob @ 11:06 am, above.)
“Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?“. What does “significant” mean? I suspect that most people would have “significant” begin at around 10%. Even with “significant” beginning somewhat higher than that, virtually all those who are sceptical of mainstream climate science, because they think that the AGW effect has been exaggerated, would answer “yes” to that question.
That’s very interesting to see the full story & well spotted there David. The same thing had occurred to me in May when looking closer at the paper , about the actually being 95% http://joannenova.com.au/2013/05/cooks-fallacy-97-consensus-study-is-a-marketing-ploy-some-journalists-will-fall-for/?replytocom=1274625#respond
It’s great to understand why now too, from all your enquiries.
Harold Ambler says:
December 10, 2013 at 8:03 am
I personally made the Sun rise this morning. And this had never happened before.
Thank you Harold. Very kind of you to do this for us all…and our children…../ sarc lol
We all know the 97% figure is bogus, the problem is that there are far too many second rate politicians and scientists who think it is gospel.
This 97% figure is all too often is used as an excuse for implementing economically damaging ‘climate change’ policies. The problem is – as shown several times here – is that its obviously fatal flaws take a little too long to explain for the comfort of the average individual’s attention span.
97% is the magic consensus number. The 3% doubt-there is always one or two who do not agree. As people would know some of the dissenters, 100% would be an obvious fraud. If it were 98%, it would look too contrived-it would not be believable. If it were 96%, it would not be regarded as conclusive. I will bet that the next climate assessment will claim 97% certainty that man-made CO2 causes global warming or climate change, regardless of the actual growing disparity between measured results and model predictions. Maybe we can take a poll of what the poppycock excuse will be to explain away where the excess heat went when the discrepancy rises. The distribution to the ocean depths to an immeasurable degree has already been (ab)used.
How about a paper to dispel this poppycock.Perhaps a physicist demonstrating the heat would persist in the upper oceans for too long to explain the miraculous heat loss and measuring constraints make the theory invalid.
95% of those who call themselves climate scientists are actually marxist propagandists.
Which of these experts said no? Even I would say yes despite UHI etc. Little Ice Age.
[My emphasis] Now this is a tricky one. Does human activity include UHI, land use changes, soot? Why didn’t they substitute “human activity” for man-made greenhouse gases?
7,111 Earth scientists could not be bothered to respond. They obviously don’t think man-made greenhouse gases are a problem enough to bother responding about.
Of the 79 it would be interesting to know where they get their funding from. Seventy-nine turkeys were asked to vote for or against Christmas. There was a 100% consensus to ban Christmas.
I’d originally thought the D&Z paper to appear at least ‘plausible’ in the minds of the authors, notwithstanding the fatal flaws and inherent bias that they might fail to see in their selection methodology.
But now we can see from David’s revealing the full report that it was actually nothing but fraudulent.
The climate looks like it is 97% consensus changing, and this was always the joker in the pack. 😉
PS The consensus survey papers are just a pack of horse poop. What if you have a consensus that is shown years down the line to be wrong? I feel an stomach ulcer coming along.
I note that the questions asked in these surveys seem rather innocuous and leave all sorts of wiggle room. When the results are published is when the wild exaggerations and claims of calamity appear. No one ever asks THE question to wit : ” Is all of the alleged warming of the earth the fault of the burning of fossil fuels and CO2??” The reason for that is they don’t want to go on record as being obvious crackpots (or as our friends in the UK would say “barking mad”). The wild claims and accusations are left to those who do not have a scientific bone in their bodies — The journalists, the dyed in the wool leftists, the politicians, and the other liars like algore. I may not be talking about separate groups here.
This is the part I have trouble with.
Where’s the catastrophe questions?
People won’t fear AGW if there is no “C” in front of it.
Has there ever been a survey establishing the “catastrophe consensus?”
Where’s the questions asking:
Do you believe CO2 will boil the oceans and burn the earth?
Do you believe we can control the climate by regulating CO2?
Do you believe we need a category 6 for hurricanes because of CO2?
Do you believe malaria is on the rise due to CAGW caused by CO2?
At current rates, how much will the sea level change by 2050?
Let’s call ourselves “the three-percenters–the happy few.”
Actually, since the physically meaningless metric, “mean global temperatures” (There’s that ridiculous plural again. there is no global temperature, and definitely not multiple global temperatures) is a completely man-made thing, the answer should have been 100%.
To maximize their “consensus” number, Zimmerman & Doran:
1. Chose to survey only scientists at academic and government institutions (which generally lean Left), and
2. Asked “no-brainer” questions that almost everyone, even climate skeptics, would answer “correctly,” and
3. Did not ask any questions that would actually separate alarmists from skeptics, such as whether, in President Obama’s words, “climate change is real, man-made and dangerous,” and
4. Used only 79 out of the 3146 responses that they received, when calculating their degree-of-agreement percentage. They called those 79 “the most specialized and knowledgeable respondents (with regard to climate change).”
They reported that 75 of the “most specialized and knowledgeable respondents” agreed with the “consensus” position that “mean global temperatures have generally risen” (since the depths of the Little Ice Age!) and “human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures.”
Note #1: by that measure, even I am part of the consensus.
Note #2: They concluded that, “It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.”
Note #3: Their methodology could easily be used to reach the conclusion that “the debate on the authenticity of acupuncture is largely nonexistent among those who understand its nuances and scientific basis.”
But all that was insufficient. 75 of 79 is not 97%, it is only 94.9%.
So how did they get 97%?
The answer is that they simply didn’t count the two “most specialized and knowledgeable respondents” who had said they thought global temperatures “remained relatively constant.”
79 – 2 = 77, and 75 / 77 = 97.4% = mission accomplished.
On that basis they reported in the prestigious journal Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union, that:
I marvel that such an obvious blunder could get past peer review, or even pal review.
” I marvel that such an obvious blunder could get past peer review, or even pal review. ”
Peer review vested in interests ( Or is that interests vested in peer review ? )
” I marvel that such an obvious blunder could get past peer review, or even pal review. ”
Peer review vested in interests ( or is it interests vested in peer review ? ).
I don’t see much point in quibbling whether the number is 95 or 97, the whole exercise is so flawed as to be meaningless.
Q2: “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?” 75 of 77 (97.4%) answered “yes.”
What does ‘significant’ mean? It could mean anything you like. Suppose I believed human activity caused a 0.1 degree rise. If I happened to believe 0.1 degree to be significant, then I would answer yes. You simply can’t let the person answering the survey decide what ‘significant’ means, it has to be clearly defined.
The obvious solution would be to ask what amount of warming was caused by humans, in one tenth of a degree values ranging from zero to 1.0.
I would answer either zero or 0.1 – and I certainly wouldn’t regard it as ‘significant’.
Chris
Indeed, is pee’er review merely a matter of territorial defence.
” Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is ! “
What’s the consensus purity of the 79 scientists? It says part of the criteria for selecting the ‘top’ scientists were those that were peer reviewed. Didn’t the climategate emails shows a definite bias or exclusion of those that disagreed with global warming? Doesn’t that make the 79 chosen scientists pro global warming anyway? That sounds like asking the most fanatic Steelers fans who the greatest team is and then concluding 97% of football fans say the Steelers is the greatest team!
“Q8. What is the highest level of education you have attained?”
And when did you attain it? In the Golden Age of Climate Science (GACS)? Or before Before Academic Corruption of Climate Science (BACS). Asterisk required for former on scientific papers.
I sent the survey to my oldest brother a semiretired Ph.D. professor emeritus who taught, among other things, Research Methods. His comment:
“The survey is lousy. Whoever wrote this article is biased. “
The “article” referred to is the linked PDF article.
The standard of ‘evidenced ‘ for the 97% claim is equal to the standard of evidence to the claim nine out of ten cat prefer Whiskers cat food . For in both cases the actual total number of cats and scientists is a total unknown. therefore its impossible say what percentage this sub group are of the whole group . However in both cases you could take a guess that their dam site more cats or scientists that give no answer at all and that there is no honest way can use the views of this tiny sub group as a honest representation of the whole group.
But a t least if a cat craps in your garden you their not going to lie about it , climate ‘scientists’ on the other hand are another question.
I think it’s coined by this:
“Paul Homewood says:
December 10, 2013 at 9:03 am
75 scientists say the science is settled!”
The 97% consensus is based on only 75 people out of 10.257?
Why haven’t the journalists been all over this by now?
We have a none working climate science and a no working critical journalism.
Or it has all been politicized?
By in large, the American media is far, far left and HAS been for AT LEAST 50 years or so. Remember how they piled onto Joe McCarthy and drove him to drink himself to death? Well, turns out that McCarthy was RIGHT all along. Remember how Cronkite pronounced the 1968 Tet debacle as a “victory” for the VC and proof that they couldn’t be defeated? It was a “victory” in which they took 60% casualties to their fighting forces, didn’t win a single battle or take control of a single acre of South Vietnam for more than 2 days before being driven out. “Uncle” Ho was ready to quit until his Soviet advisors told him to hold on and the American media would fight his battles FOR him. They were right. EVERY anti-war group in the country was ultimately financed by the KGB and the press KNEW it…but kept silent. Look what they’re doing even today.
Is this article Poe?
The complaint is that a paper published nearly 5 years ago says 75 out of 77, when it should say 75 out of 79?
Really?
It’s no big deal Really. Just fascinating to watch the lengths one will go to, this last being but a previously undiscovered pinnacle, on top of all the other selective measures, to overwhelm in a scientific presentation.
Seriously, orion? This is a science blog. The math matters. It should bother you that in a prominent peer-reviewed journal the authors of a very, very widely cited paper about how many dissenters there are from the global warming “consensus” simply didn’t count half of the dissenters that they found.
There are only two possibilities:
1. it was an unintentional blunder, and they really didn’t know better than to do what they did. In that case, how could you possibly trust the competency of anything they (or their peer reviewers!) do? Or else,
2. it was intentional deception. In that case, recall Luke 16:10.
Which do you think it was, orion?
More fundamentally, the truth matters. Scripture calls lies the devil’s language. If you don’t think so, then that probably explains why you toss off insults directed at scientists who work intensely to discern the truth, and why you apparently aren’t bothered by things like Climategate, Gleick’s forgery-based Heartland smear, Mike’s Nature trick, etc.
No, it “should” say “75 out of 157” … or “Only 47% of climate scientists believe CO2 is the cause of CAGW ..”
(157 is that 5% of the replies who claim to be climate scientists.)
Or, it “should” say “75 out of 267” or “Only 28% of climate scientists believe CO2 is the cause of CAGW ..”
(267 is that 8.5% who have written 50% or more of their papers in the past 5 years covering climate science research.)
Or, it “should” say “75 out of 3,146” or “Only 2.4% of climate scientists believe CO2 is the cause of CAGW ..”
(All of those who bothered to reply to the on-line survey.)
Or, it “should” say “75 out of 10,257” or “Only 0.7 % of climate scientists believe CO2 is the cause of CAGW ..”
(which includes all of the people who were asked to complete the survey.)
Daveburton
You claim this is a science blog, then quote the bible to me.
Well done – that was better Poe than the article itself!
Orion, Christian-bashing is not an answer to the question. When Doran & Zimmerman counted only half of the dissenters, do you think it was an unintentional blunder or intentional deception?
pappad says: “Anybody care to explain to me how CO2 can allow IR to REACH the surface but somehow “traps” it there and won’t allow it to reflect back into space??? Is it one-way reflective?”
It’s because when CO2 molecules are floating in the air, the C is lighter than the O and the C side points toward the sky. So they are like little tiny arrows that only allow the IR go one direction.
Well that’s about as “sane” as anything coming out of the Greenie movement.
RACookPE1978 says:
….
Or, it “should” say “75 out of 3,146″ or “Only 2.4% of climate scientists believe CO2 is the cause
…
Hi All,
A very quick google search found the Wikipedia page which says of the 2009 survey:
“Among all respondents, 90% agreed that temperatures have risen compared to pre-1800 levels, and 82% agreed that humans significantly influence the global temperature.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveys_of_scientists'_views_on_climate_change
You can also read this in the reference which is linked in Wikipedia.
The wikipedia site also has info about other surveys from 1990s to 2013.
Cheers
R.
Pippen Kool says:
December 12, 2013 at 10:36 am
It’s because when CO2 molecules are floating in the air, the C is lighter than the O and the C side points toward the sky.
Without adding “sarc”, we do not know if you mean it. But for the record, CO2 is linear, but H2O has an angle of 104.5 degrees between H and O.
pappad asked, “Anybody care to explain to me how CO2 can allow IR to REACH the surface but somehow “traps” it there and won’t allow it to reflect back into space??? Is it one-way reflective?”
There are approximately equal amounts of radiant energy arriving at the Earth from the Sun, and departing from the earth into outer space. However, the spectra of the incoming and outgoing radiation are different. Because the Sun is much hotter than the Earth, the incoming radiation has more short wavelength light (UV and visible), and the outgoing radiation is predominantly longer wavelengths (IR).
It happens that CO2 absorbs in a couple of IR bands, but it is transparent to UV and visible light. Since there’s more outgoing radiation in those bands than incoming radiation, the CO2 blocks more outgoing radiation than incoming radiation.
However, it is important to note that additional CO2 has only a small effect on temperatures, because there’s already so much CO2 in the atmosphere that almost all of the UV in its absorption bands is already blocked. MODTRAN Tropical Atmosphere calculates that just 20 ppm of CO2 would have fully half the warming effect of the current 400 ppm. The NCAR Radiation Code says 40 ppm, but, either way, we’re way past the point of diminishing effects from additional CO2.
Adding CO2 to the atmosphere is like adding blue food coloring to a bowl of water. The first few drops have a dramatic effect on the water’s color, but after that adding additional food coloring has diminishing effects.
Still doesn’t answer the question. Are you trying to claim that the solar radiation coming IN has no IR…only the radiation going out? That “bouncing” off of the Earth’s surface “changes” it somehow? Greenhouses work the way they do because the glass (or plastic) traps the warmed AIR in an enclosure–but there ISN’T any “trap” in the atmosphere.
False.
I’m reading the data and quoting the words from the original research paper, NOT what has been re-written into Wikipedia by pro-CAGW propagandists.
What , do you mean like raw data ? But surely it needs to be corrected before it can be used to support the cause.
romena wrote, “…which says of the 2009 survey: ‘Among all respondents, 90% agreed that temperatures have risen compared to pre-1800 levels, and 82% agreed that humans significantly influence the global temperature.’”
However, they didn’t ask the 2nd question of everyone. Those who said “remained relatively constant” in reply to Q1 weren’t asked Q2. So “82%” is inflated, because they excluded some of the skeptics.
Quoting from the Zimmerman report (which I purchased):
The 5.7% who answered “remained relatively constant” were not asked the 2nd question:
So, actually, at most only 82% of 94.3% = 77.3% agreed with their watered-down “consensus.”
If some of those who answered “yes” to Q2 were among the (0.5% + 4.2%) who said “fallen” or “no opinion” to Q1, then the “consensus” was even less than 77.3%. They probably were, we can’t know for sure, because Zimmerman did not report that.
So they found a “consensus” among academic & government “earth scientists” of at most 77.3%… and that’s in spite of the fact that the questions were so weak that even a skeptic like me would have given the “right” answers, and so been counted as supporting their “consensus,”
BTW, if anyone has any questions about the Zimmerman report, THE CONSENSUS ON THE CONSENSUS: AN OPINION SURVEY OF EARTH SCIENTISTS ON GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE, just email me. My address is on my web site:
http://www.sealevel.info/
The Doran survey was the single most fraudulent piece of scientific trash that changed me into a global warming skeptic. That the AGU would publish this and the scientific community accepted all
the fraudulent claims associated with it ,convinced me it was a huge con job, no different than accepting the claims of used car salesman ( no offence to used car salesman, you are still more respectable than the science that promotes this garbage).
I don’t know if any one has noticed or mentioned this before . I absolutely believe the increase in global temperatures and CO2 caused by human activity is true. I spend a lot of research ( and money given to me to a well known brewery) oh forget it, you get the point.
It is caused by the heated rise in body temperature on the faces of the 97% and the added efforts they are spending to HA “deny” this and then using fossil fueled backhoes to dig holes to hide in eventually having to use the same machinery to dig themselves out of said holes when the next set of “undeniable” statistics become available.
pappad asked, “Are you trying to claim that the solar radiation coming IN has no IR…only the radiation going out? That “bouncing” off of the Earth’s surface “changes” it somehow?”
The incoming solar radiation doesn’t contain “no IR,” but it contains less IR than the radiation going out. When the Earth absorbs short-wavelength radiation, it is re-emitted as long-wavelength radiation.
The radiation absorbed by an object does not necessarily have the same spectrum as the radiation emitted by it.
Example #1: The food in your microwave oven absorbs 2.45 GHz microwave radiation (wavelength 12.4 cm), and then glows in the infrared (with a peak wavelength at less than 10 microns) as a result.
Example #2: A dark object warmed by the sun absorbs a broad spectrum of sunlight, including visible and UV, and gets warmer as a result. But it emits only IR. Thus it effectively converts incoming short-wavelength radiation into long-wavelength radiation going out.
However, you are correct that the term “greenhouse gas” is a misnomer, because greenhouses don’t work that way. Greenhouses work mainly by blocking convective heat loss, not radiative heat loss.
There is no consensus?
“We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’.
We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.
In a second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%). Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/docs/Cook_2013_consensus.pdf
http://theconsensusproject.com/
,..except that claiming a “consensus” is as UNscientific as anything I’ve ever heard of. There IS no such thing as “scientific consensus.” That’s a complete oxymoron. There once was a “consensus” that Pi was 3, that the world rode on the back of a gigantic turtle, that a lunar eclipse was caused by a giant wolf taking a bite out of it, that malaria was caused by an evil “miasma” emanating from swamps, that “bleeding” someone with a fever would cause the fever to go down, that people would die at any speed over 45 mph, that it was not possible to exceed the speed of sound in and airplane, that man would NEVER learn to fly, and that “government” could solve all our social problems with the stroke of a pen.
Ahh. Spectator is referring to the yet more ridiculous attempt at breathing life back into the ‘concensus’ by Cook et al. in his more recent yet seriously contrived attempt at reloading the 97% Myth.
The Doran & Zimmerman paper is a beacon of scientific integrity when compared to this latest attempt that demonstrates just how far and how fast academic standards have fallen in the meantime.