A poster above (arguing for the consensus position btw) posted a recent survey that indicates only 67% of AMS members believe that a majority of warming since 1950 is anthropogenic. That's not a consensus. https://gmuchss.az1.qualtrics.... [GiordyS]

Answered here.

Hey, point me to a good study that shows that "published papers that seek to test what caused the climate change over the last century and half, almost unanimously find that humans played a dominant role". I'll read it and get back to you. [GiordyS]

You failed to answer yes or no, but your response seems to suggest that you actually are arguing with the results of John Cook's paper. Despite the fact that you insisted you weren't. So let's try again. Do you agree with Richard Tol when he says this?

"The consensus is of course in the high nineties. No one ever said it was not." [Richard Tol]

Note that Richard Tol explicitly states this is "something everyone knows." Do you agree with Richard Tol's statement? Yes or No?

67% is not a consensus. [GiordyS]

Are you referring to the same AMS survey where 57% of the respondents say on page 24 that they don't consider themselves experts in climate science?

A poster above (arguing for the consensus position btw) posted a recent survey that indicates only 67% of AMS members believe that a majority of warming since 1950 is anthropogenic. That's not a consensus. https://gmuchss.az1.qualtrics.... [GiordyS]

That was me. Why do you seem to think that survey is a good way to estimate the scientific consensus on AGW among experts in the subject?

Estimating the scientific consensus on AGW can be performed repeatedly and independently by surveying peer-reviewed scientific abstracts which state a position about whether humans caused most of the global warming since 1950. Cook et al. 2013 (C13) did this.

Another method of estimating the scientific consensus is to email the scientists who write those peer-reviewed papers and ask if their paper(s) endorse AGW. C13 did this, but it can't be repeatedly indefinitely because the authors would eventually stop answering. One might also search for statements by those authors, to avoid self-selection bias caused by some authors not responding to emails. Anderegg et al. 2010 did this.

Why do you keep ignoring those estimates in favor of a survey where 57% of the respondents explicitly don't consider themselves experts in climate science? If you had a question about heart surgery, would you actually ignore a survey of 77 actively practicing heart surgeons in favor of a survey where 57% of the respondents say they're not heart surgery experts?

However, the evidence I've seen regarding consensus is mixed. I've seen some worthless studies - one "97%" survey only surveying~75 scientists and asking a near worthless question... [GiordyS]

Good grief. I've already explained that Doran and Zimmerman 2009 surveyed 3146 scientists, and reported all those results in their figure 1. I also already explained that their question wasn't "worthless". I also already explained that Doran and Zimmerman examined the most expert subset: 79 scientists "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".

Again, if you surveyed doctors about a topic involving heart surgery and only 77 out of 3145 of those doctors were actively practicing heart surgeons, wouldn't you be more interested in what those experts have to say?

But it's interesting that GiordyS doubles down on his objection to Doran and Zimmerman using an expert subset of their sample. Keep that in mind.

... I've recently seen a paper that only shows ~65% agreement among AMS members for example. [GiordyS]

Since only 37% of those AMS survey respondents consider themselves experts in climate science, that's consistent with figure 1 in Cook et al. 2016 which shows the AGW consensus is lower among samples having less expertise in climate science.

So yeah, I question the value of former cartoonist "I am not a scientist" John Cook's dubious paper claiming a vast scientific consensus, when clearly agreement among AMS members is only at ~65%. That's just one example of contradictory evidence. You respond to this contradictory evidence by immediately dismissing the views of AMS members as irrelevant. Don't let inconvenient facts get in your way! [GiordyS]

It might be interesting to see the subset of answers for the 37% of those AMS members who do consider themselves to be experts, but it would also be helpful to cross-check against an independent metric like the total number of climate-related publications and total citations for those papers, like Anderegg et al. 2010 did.

Meanwhile a paper studying "United States television news coverage of anthropogenic climate change" and a survey looking at "Informed and uninformed public opinions on CO2 capture and storage" are considered climate science literature that endorses consensus. You don't need expert domain knowledge to see that a) Cook stated that social science research and surveys were not to be included and b) they included social science research and public surveys anyway. Please show me respected climatologists defending such actions. [GiordyS]

So you disagree with ratings given to some of the 11,944 abstracts. Given the large sample, that's almost inevitable. Here are all 11,944 abstract ratings. Change the ratings on whichever ones you think are wrong, then recalculate the consensus. If the new number is sufficiently different, and your re-ratings are reasonable, you might actually be able to publish your re-analysis. But I suspect that reasonable changes would only have minor effects on the consensus, because any of these supposed problems with the raters wouldn't affect the authors' ratings of their full papers. When you change the ratings, you should also email the authors to see if they agree with your new ratings, like Cook et al. 2013 did.

since when are social scientists (who are included in Cook's 97% figure) climatologists? Since when are public surveys considered climate science literature? AMS members are a lot closer to 'climatologists' than many of the scientists he includes in Cook's 'consensus' paper. [GiordyS]

Remember that GiordyS just doubled down on his objection to Doran and Zimmerman using an expert subset of their sample? This time, GiordyS is objecting because Cook et al. didn't take an expert subset of the full sample of papers returned by their Web of Science search. It's "tails I win, heads you lose" once again.

Furthermore, given that 57% of those surveyed AMS members don't consider themselves experts in climate science, wouldn't GiordyS only have a point if 57% of the scientists and papers included in Cook's 'consensus' paper were social scientists and public surveys? Since 57% of 11,944 abstracts is 6808, GiordyS only has to find 6,808 public surveys in the abstract ratings.

The little graph you keep posting from their activist blog shows their paper got it wrong 62% of the time?? Is that supposed to be a defense?? [GiordyS]

The authors were rating their full papers, while the Cook et al. raters were only rating the abstracts. Since the two ratings are actually measuring different things, they're not expected to be exactly the same because an abstract contains less information than the full paper. As I've explained, most scientists don't see the need to include obvious information in the abstract, but many try to include background information in their papers' introductory sections.

More importantly, the fact that more authors gave their full papers higher endorsements of AGW than the Cook et al. abstract ratings really should make you reconsider all your bizarre accusations. Again, isn't it strange that all your supposedly "atrocious" and "misleading" rater problems actually caused the Cook et al. raters to underestimate the consensus rate compared to the authors' self-ratings?

Read error 5:

T14 uses as a basis for this argument an excerpt from stolen private forum discussions (Lacatena, 2014) which is quoted out of context. Discussion of the methodology of categorising abstract text formed part of the training period in the initial stages of the rating period. When presented to raters, abstracts were selected at random from a sample size of 12,464. Hence for all practical purposes, each rating session was independent from other rating sessions. While a few example abstracts were discussed for the purposes of rater training and clarification of category parameters, the ratings and raters were otherwise independent. This was discussed in C13;

"While criteria for determining ratings were defined prior to the rating period, some clarifications and amendments were required as specific situations presented themselves."

Independence of the raters was important to identify uncertainties based on interpretation of the rating criteria, but had little bearing on the final conclusion. Indeed, the conclusion is strengthened by the fact that the vast majority of rater disagreements were between no position and endorsement categories; very few affected the rejection bin.

Here's a peer reviewed critique from Richard Tol: http://www.sciencedirect.com/s... [GiordyS]

That's the one where Richard Tol says: "There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans. I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct."

I gave you a peer reviewed critique by an IPCC author and that wasn't good enough to raise any doubts or questions. Peer review is apparently only useful when it produces 'correct' results. [GiordyS]

I raised my doubts and questions about Tol's peer reviewed critique after he claimed the existence of ~300 extra rejection abstracts. Richard Tol simply refused to list the extra ~300 rejection abstracts his paper claimed exist.

And of course Richard Tol is not to be trusted, even though he apparently agrees with the *result* and is criticizing the method... http://www.sciencedirect.com/s... [GiordyS]

Richard Tol is not to be trusted until and unless he either lists the extra ~300 rejection abstracts he claims exists, or he retracts that claim. (To the extent that scientists trust anyone, that is.)

Here is Richard Tol's response to that: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.en... [GiordyS]

Note that Richard Tol's response still doesn't include a single example of his ~300 gremlin-conjured rejection abstracts.

Someone dismissed Judith Curry's views because she wrote about it in her blog. Imagine that: dismissing Judith Curry as a mere 'blogger' when defending a paper written by... a mere blogger. Unbelievable. [GiordyS]

When Judith Curry publishes these views in a peer-reviewed journal (like Cook et al. did) then scientists will be more inclined to read those peer-reviewed views. Curry's blog, however, is a cesspool of ignorance. For example, after years of arguing that scientists don't agree closely about the causes of Earth's warming, Curry just wrote on her blog that:

"I think the Brumbergs are correct to conclude: 'In our view, the fact that so many scientists agree so closely about the [causes of the] earth’s warming is, itself, evidence of a lack of evidence for [human caused] global warming.'"

I was going to explain how Curry's self-contradictory "tails I win, heads you lose" nonsense was wrong, but then I realized that anyone who seriously cites Curry's blog probably wouldn't be able to understand why Curry is wrong here anyway. If Curry ever tried to publish this nonsense, it wouldn't get through peer review. That's why I ignore Curry's blog, but I would read her response if it were actually peer-reviewed.

Cooks paper is atrocious but people want to push this idea of consensus so I guess it gets a free pass. It seems warmists are blinded by bias: they can't pick out a horribly rotten apple sitting right on top. So how can we trust them to get anything right? They can't see clearly. [GiordyS]

But I'm more interested in the quality of the paper making this 97% claim. Unfortunately it seems global warming activists, scientists, and even NASA (!) will endorse really, really bad papers as long as they produce the 'correct' results. It's a travesty. [GiordyS]

It's tragicomedy to see people line up to support horrendously bad studies simply because they reach the 'correct' conclusions. This sort of uncritical acceptance of anything which supports your 'side' while rejecting anything critical, no matter how well thought out, is actually helping climate deniers gain support and momentum. [GiordyS]

You on the other hand are giving a free pass to an atrociously bad paper because you agree with the results. And so are many scientists. [GiordyS]

So the question is: how can you keep defending such a paper? [GiordyS]

Apparently alarmists will defend crap science as long as it produces 'correct' results. [GiordyS]

How ironic. GiordyS repeatedly accuses NASA and other scientists of endorsing "really, really bad papers as long as they produce the 'correct' results" while GiordyS simultaneously cites Tol 2014, a paper which fails to list even a single example of the extra ~300 rejection abstracts Tol claims exists.

In other words: I picked the numbers that most strongly weaken my argument, and still came out with a strong argument.

No, I already told you that your "strong argument" simply doesn't make sense. For instance:

No mention of how many rejected, how many expressed uncertainty, and how many expressed that their paper was not about AGW. There's also the fact that 34.9% of RESPONDENTS claimed no position themselves on AGW, which is really hard to do if you're a climate scientist unless you're uncertain.

Your argument isn't "strong". It's based on a fundamental misconception. The "RESPONDENTS" didn't claim "no position themselves on AGW". They rated the position stated by their paper, not their own position. Your supposedly "strong arguments" are filled with simplistic "mistakes" like this.

You're trying to use a fallacy of equivocation: I said "bias" to indicate that one method of analysis favors a position more than another, and you're repeating "bias" to say "lies and damned lies to support a pre-conceived outcome." Maybe learn not to be a deceptive, dishonest asshole?

Charming. It's fascinating that you baselessly accuse me of saying "lies and damned lies to support a pre-conceived outcome" when I never said that, then baselessly call me a deceptive, dishonest asshole. You're almost as charming as Jane/Lonny Eachus.

You completely ignored my rebuttal, and simply flung a new set of accusations.

Your rebuttle was to claim those papers weren't relevant. I responded by pointing out that Cooke excluded them because they didn't take a direct position, even though they were relevant. In other words: you said, "They weren't about that!", and I said, "Yes they were; they just didn't have a yes/no conclusion." Again: you're lying to try to dodge the argument, and you're trying to poison the well by making false claims about the context of the debate.

Once again, you're baselessly accusing me of lying. How charming. You've also failed once again to quote anything I actually said, while putting quotation marks around words I never said. Here's what I actually said:

Really? Are you absolutely sure that those peer-reviewed papers didn't just have "global climate change" or "global warming" as keywords? Because that's how C13 actually selected their sample.

You seem to be incorrectly saying that every single paper which includes those keywords is an attribution study. If you were correct, you'd be able to provide 7,930 abstract quotes saying "we don't know whether global warming is caused primarily by human activities". Is it even remotely possible that those 7,930 papers just weren't attribution studies?

Try to use your approach to estimate the consensus on plate tectonics or evolution. Are abstracts which don't explicitly state that they agree with those theories actually saying "we don't know"? If that's really your position, you must also not think there's a scientific consensus about plate tectonics or evolution.

Note that I actually asked if it was even remotely possible that those 7,930 papers just weren't attribution studies. Perhaps you can't quote my actual words because you'd have to explain why you can't provide 7,930 abstract quotes saying "we don't know whether global warming is caused primarily by human activities".

Maybe if you spent a little less time complaining about women, you'd have more time to provide those 7,930 abstract quotes.

As an analogy, should I disagree with a US government agency (and most of the scientific community) just because some guy somewhere with a PhD claims that "evolutionary theory is mostly religion"?

So former cartoonist, activist blogger John Cook's paper is akin to "evolutionary theory" in your analogy...??

No, I was quoting the same climate contrarian GiordyS has cited, Dr. Roy Spencer, addressing the U.S. Congress at 3:23:10. Should I disagree with most of the scientific community just because Dr. Spencer told the U.S. Congress that "evolutionary theory is mostly religion"?

Since when are ordinary people supposed to ignore mountains of evidence right in front of our noses simply because NASA pretends it doesn't exist?

It's hilarious that you're implying that's what I was suggesting. Instead, I'm actually saying that the "mountains of evidence" right in front of your nose are a mirage. It's libelous nonsense that's being repeated by blog commenters without subject expertise, probably because they're just "having fun" baselessly accusing scientists of dishonesty.

You sure give the government a lot of power if you are not willing to think for yourself. Do you EVER disagree with a US government agency?

I've repeatedly thought for myself and shared the open source code behind my analyses. It's just that the results of my research broadly agree with statements from NASA, the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, etc.

As an analogy, should I disagree with a US government agency (and most of the scientific community) just because some guy somewhere with a PhD claims that "evolutionary theory is mostly religion"?

Many blog commenters go on Gish Gallops for dozens if not hundreds of pages, instantly dropping each apparently earnest point and just flinging another instead of answering or even just acknowledging the rebuttal.

Sadly, that's what you seem to be doing. You completely ignored my rebuttal, and simply flung a new set of accusations. Most of which didn't make sense. Here's the only part that made enough sense to rebut. Please note that I'm quoting your words and responding directly to you, but only as an example so you can do that with my last comment. Otherwise I'll let you have the last word; I'm tired of these endless and libelous Gish Gallops.

Of the papers which received self-rating, 36.9% had abstracts expressing a position of consensus for AGW. When they phoned up the authors and asked them, 62.7% of those authors self-rated their position and the position of their paper as in consensus. In other words: the self-rating system is biased *toward* AGW.

When they emailed the authors, more of the authors said their paper as a whole endorsed the consensus than the abstract ratings alone did. That doesn't show that the self-rating system is somehow biased *toward* AGW. It probably shows that an abstract contains less information than the paper as a whole. Surprise!

Even more bizarrely, bluefoxlucid even seems to grasp this point:

The whole thing also takes implicit endorsements of AGW as endorsements--which is fair, and notable. If you write a paper that strongly supports AGW and you try to conclude AGW is not a thing, you're just delusional. There's a large difference between being wrong and being delusional: wrong just means your facts are incorrect; delusional means the facts are right in front of you and you refuse to believe them. Evidence for the fairness of this methodology includes that more papers self-rate in support for AGW than do papers whose abstracts declare support: scientists who produce evidence for AGW and don't come out to declare it as such likely expect you to recognize the obvious.

Yeah. Most scientists don't see the need to include obvious information in the abstract, but many try to include background information in their papers' introductory sections. Don't you see how this supports the idea that an abstract contains less information than the paper as a whole, rather than supporting the accusation that "the self-rating system is biased *toward* AGW"?

Catching somebody lie about the methodology of their "science" paper is indeed ripping it to shreds.

Lots of blogs claim lots of things. Like your claims, for instance. But that doesn't make them true. Isn't it bothersome to you that NASA doesn't agree with your accusations?

So you agree that published papers that seek to test what caused the climate change over the last century and half, almost unanimously find that humans played a dominant role? Yes or no?

Or maybe GiordyS is just as confused as Jane Q. Public, and all of your hysterical and libelous accusations are baseless? Remember the stages of grief. You should find it bothersome that NASA contradicts you first, then second you should eventually start moving past that first stage of grief and start considering the possibility that NASA understands science better than web developers do.

Problem #1: 11,944 research papers which were all specifically about climate change and human influence; they removed the 7,930 "We don't know" from the numbers... (Often, deluded opponents will claim the rejected papers had "climate" as a keyword but were not about climatology; that is false: all 11,944 papers were selected from a larger such set, and were selected because they explored human-caused climate change.)

Really? Are you absolutely sure that those peer-reviewed papers didn't just have "global climate change" or "global warming" as keywords? Because that's how C13 actually selected their sample.

You seem to be incorrectly saying that every single paper which includes those keywords is an attribution study. If you were correct, you'd be able to provide 7,930 abstract quotes saying "we don't know whether global warming is caused primarily by human activities". Is it even remotely possible that those 7,930 papers just weren't attribution studies?

Try to use your approach to estimate the consensus on plate tectonics or evolution. Are abstracts which don't explicitly state that they agree with those theories actually saying "we don't know"? If that's really your position, you must also not think there's a scientific consensus about plate tectonics or evolution.

... took count of the papers which were *definitely* certain, determined that 97% of *those* support human-caused global warming, and labeled that as 97% of *all*.

No, they labeled that as 97% of papers stating a position on the primary cause of global warming. Which is true.

Problem #2: False equivocation. They took count of the number of published papers, and claimed the ratio of published papers agreeing with a position as the ratio of *scientists*. ...

Wrong. They cited Doran and Zimmerman 2009 and Anderegg et al. 2010 and Verheggen 2014 which really are surveys of scientists.

And just FYI: I'm not going to argue about that fact. If anybody doubts that "C13" was garbage, all they have to do is spend a few minutes on Google and view the evidence.

I spent a few minutes on Google and viewed the evidence from NASA. They don't agree with Jane Q. Public's "utter garbage" accusation.

Could it be that Jane's claim isn't the case at all because, as I've repeatedly noted, that graph isn't showing wildfires at all, but instead includes the staggering amount of intentional burns started by humans for land clearing?

Actually, Dr. Deanna Conners tracked down that graph's source and said: "... So it appears that much of the pre-1960 data were related to incendiary forest fires (per http://www.interfire.org/featu... , an incendiary fire is one that is set intentionally) and not to true wildfires. The post-1960 dataset that I analyzed only contained data for wildfires; the National Interagency Fire Center explicitly separates the wildfire data from the prescribed fire data. Hence, comparisons to earlier data may indeed be akin to comparing apples to oranges..."

Are you absolutely sure that graph only shows wildfires? It doesn't use that word. Maybe it actually shows the total acreage burned, which would include the staggering amount of intentional burns started by humans for land clearing.

NOAA ignores its own satellite records (which it previously claimed were more accurate than surface temperature measurements) to make that claim. And it's just like them to do so. They choose whichever dataset that supports their pre-formed conclusions. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-10-21]

... The recent declaration of 2014 as "the hottest year" -- when it wasn't anything of the kind -- is a wonderful illustration of the idiocy behind CO2 warming alarmism. Self-described Climate Scientists claimed the satellite temperature record would be the most accurate ever. And it is. But now that the satellite data is disproving their pet theory, they just leave that data out. It's really quite hilarious. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-01-25]

When the satellites launched, climate scientists lauded them as "the most accurate climate data sources" in existence. Now that the satellite data does not support their "climate change" scam, they just leave it out... [Lonny Eachus, 2015-02-02]

Funny, but when satellites launched, they were proclaimed to begin a new era in accurate climate measurements... but now that they disagree with your agenda, they are downplayed or ignored. [Lonny Eachus, 2015-04-04]

Funny. It was claimed satellites marked a new era in accurate climate data, ignored now they don't agree. [Lonny Eachus, 2015-04-07]

Satellite data was all the rage in the 90's when it was warming. climatism.wordpress.com/2014/02/09/est... [JWSpry, retweeted by Lonny Eachus, 2015-06-04]

RSS/UAH sat data was all the rage in the 90's, when it was warming. Now scoffed at. [JWSpry, retweeted by Lonny Eachus, 2015-08-22]

Alarmists used 2 love satellite data when it read > GISS/NOAA #ClimateFraud [Chuck L]

Yep. When sats agreed with them they called it "the best data there is." [Lonny Eachus, 2016-01-26]

Nonsense. In the 1990s UAH actually showed cooling because of all the flaws in Dr. Spencer's analysis which other scientists had yet to correct for him. It wasn't until after Dr. Spencer finally corrected for all these spurious cooling trends in his analysis that UAH showed warming!

So Lonny's claim is patently absurd. UAH data couldn't possibly have been "all the rage in the 90's" with "alarmists" because UAH data showed cooling in the '90s! Perhaps Lonny doesn't care about facts and is simply playing a game?

What a sadly typical example of fractally wrong nonsense being repeated by gullible crackpots they heard at a conspiracy theory echo chamber.

Of course, Lonny's just projecting again. Jane/Lonny previously cited ocean heat content (OHC) measurements based on satellite data until I showed him that those OHC data doesn't support his denial of global warming. Guess which of those satellite datasets reveals ~90% of heat added to Earth, and which only reveals a cherry-picked ~1%.