Scientists agree ?

[Calum Douglas]

I dont want to get into a "debate" but I will just mention so that others reading are aware, that it is not in the slightest but a "scientifically settled matter" than any of those things are happening to any significant degree outwith the perfectly normal ebb and flow of nature - and that plenty of very clued up people (climate scientists) are on the other side of the fence.

A good example of this is the constantly paraded "97% of scientists agree that..."
Hmm, well DO they?

Lets look at how that number was arrived at.

Crook simply created an algorithm to scan through 14,000 papers available online, which looked at their abstract (the only bit of many papers available to scan without buying all the papers!). They found that the could only find 14 papers which IN THE ABSTRACT, specifically stated that the authors of the paper, not only rejected that climate change was happening. but specifically rejected that humanity was having any impact either.

They then ditched 10,000 of those papers from the survey because they didnt seem to extpress a definitive position on the subject, but, Crook explains its ok to ditch these as data because (wait for it)

"We found that about two-thirds of papers didn't express a position on the subject in the abstract, which confirms that we were conservative in our initial abstract ratings. This result isn't surprising for two reasons: 1) most journals have strict word limits for their abstracts, and 2) frankly, every scientist doing climate research knows humans are causing global warming. There's no longer a need to state something so obvious. For example, would you expect every geological paper to note in its abstract that the Earth is a spherical body that orbits the sun?"

So, scientists who didnt write what Cook wanted, probably did so (according to crook) because either they really did of course agree but "ran out of words" or because it was "too obvious to bother stating".

This contains within it a somewhat paradoxical implication, they rejected 10,000 abstracts for not giving a definitive enough position, one reason for which they ascribe to the "fact" that "Theres no longer any need to state something so obvious"... BUT
did decide to use the 4000 papers which DID give a position on the question... having just made the statement that there was also "no longer any need to state something so obvious".

Anyway, so to get 97%, you get 14,000 papers. sift them to get 4000 you like, 97% of which "agreed" in he abscract that "supported at least a weak human contribution to global warming".

Note that there were four categories of question, and, if one takes the most extreme, which was something like "humans are the primary cause of climate change in its present trend and if we dont take immidite action there will be a crisis sufficient to threaten our planet", if you take THAT as your criterion (I cant remember the exact number), but you get a very small minority.

I.e, if you set the bar at "the respondant says humans contribute to climate" and then ditch 66% of the papers, you get to say that 97% of scientists agree (by the way, only a fairly small number of the papers were actually written by climate scientists, there probably are orders of magnitude less than 14,000 publishing climate scientisis who specialise in anthropomorpic influence in the world anyway).

If you were to approach it from the other angle, and keep the 14,000 papers, and set the bar for consensus to the other extreme (only saying those who specifically stated that humans were the primary cause and that we have an emergency requiring urgent immidate action... you find that 97% turns into a really small number indeed.

So, the truth about "consensus" is somewhat of a grey area, and the 97% figure, is, upon inspection, lets charitably say... "open to healthy debate".

As far as those graphs go, again its not clear cut, and in most cases the conclusion reached from the graph, is strictly limited to when you choose to start it date-wise. (generally the further back you start, the less clear it becomes that we are in a catastrophic crisis, for example the last time CO2 was this low was at the end of the Miocene, 5million years ago - although there are of course also arguments about the best measurement methods)

The problem with using papers to collect opinions, is that (as anyone in almost any university will tell you), you will never get a penny of funding for anything that doesnt go 100% all in for green, and you certainly wont get it published in a major journal (good old peer review!)

 

[UpForce]

I read your post a couple of times in order to get a handle on what you were getting at.

Apparently you're discussing one of the literary reviews done on climate research papers. There are quite many of these, though I'm more interested in specific results and their peer reviewed veracity than these somewhat more "intersectional" efforts. This one seems to be from 2013. Rather than getting into a "debate" on the matter I thought it better, then, to post a direct link into the whole study. This way everyone interested can examine the source material directly and compare its statements to its representation here.

At least I found the abstract of the review alone quite clarifying.

Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature
Cook et. al., Environmental Research Letters, Vol 8, No. 2, 15 May 2013

 

[Archibald]

Scientific consensus on climate change - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[edwest4]

Opinion polls among scientists and charts and graphs are all fine and good but either climate change caused by human activity is at least 97% true or it is not. The "we weren't allowed enough space to" what? Ramble on? State the obvious? Ignore the "you must state your opinion in the opening line" rule?

Something is happening and efforts are being made but those that own industries that put tons of gases into the atmosphere every year are shielded from deadlines. Or crazy ideas like "carbon offsets" are being created as if the world is a game of Monopoly. 'I'll sell you some carbon offsets." is not the solution to the problem.

 

[kaiserd]

So this topic is about one individual commenting on their perception of the detail of one specific 2013 paper’s methodology for measuring and arriving at a finding that there is a scientific consensus on man-made climate change.
Which clearly has virtually no relevance to the fact that there is today clearly a massively overwhelming majority of scientists (i.e. a very clear consensus) that man-made climate change is an established scientific fact and that this climate change threatens irrevocable damage to our ecosystem and immense negative impact on the human race.
Plus why of any relevance to this website?

 

[edwest4]

It's about science and the scientific method. Absent a recent lack of face to face meetings among actual scientists, some hope that the internet will be used as the 'next best thing.' Anyway, it is worth noting that scientists can influence other scientists. Sometimes, papers with bad or wrongly interpreted information get past peer review. Doing good, reliable science is critical to national defense. As older scientists pass on, it's critical that only the best, checkable and reproducible information gets published.

 

[starviking]

Even if the high level of consensus is not accurate, the facts are that no convincing theories have emerged to contradict the core of the theories explaining global warming.

Hypotheses have been put out - solar variability, inaccurate temperature measurement, etc. They have all been found wanting.

The basic fact is that greenhouse gases like CO2 absorb infrared radiation leaving the Earth, and re-emit it - leading to a certain percentage being re-absorbed by the Earth.

The absorption and re-emission of EM radiation by atoms and molecules is a fact, without it lasers would not work. So, for man-made climate change to be totally incorrect we would have to posit some strange mechanism interfering with basic physics, or an equally strange feedback mechanism in the global and local climates that totally and exactly counteracts the effects of EM absorption and re-emission.