Climate Alarmists Caught Doctoring ‘97 Percent Consensus’ Claims

Global warming alarmists have been caught doctoring the results of a widely cited paper asserting there is a 97 percent scientific consensus regarding human-caused global warming. After taking a closer look at the paper, investigative journalists report the authors’ claims of a 97 percent consensus relied on them misclassifying the papers of some of the world’s most prominent global warming skeptics. At the same time, the authors deliberately presented a meaningless survey question that allowed them to twist the responses to fit their own preconceived global warming alarmism.

Global warming alarmist John Cook, founder of the misleadingly named blog site Skeptical Science, published a paper with several other global warming alarmists claiming they reviewed nearly 12,000 abstracts of studies published in the peer-reviewed climate literature. Cook reported he and his colleagues found 97 percent of the papers that expressed a position on human-caused global warming “endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.”

As is the case with other ‘surveys’ alleging an overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming, the question surveyed did not address the issues of contention between global warming alarmists and skeptics. The question Cook and his colleagues surveyed was simply whether humans have caused some global warming. Most skeptics, like most alarmists, believe humans have caused some global warming. The issue dividing the two is whether humans are causing a global warming crisis demanding concerted action.

Kind of like those car repair insurance ads that claim “All future covered repairs will be paid directly to the shop.”

Silly me, I thought a “covered repair” was DEFINED as one they paid for. D’oh!

Scafetta responded. "What my papers say is that the IPCC [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] view is erroneous because about 40-70% of the global warming observed from 1900 to 2000 was induced by the sun."

Scafetta is correct that his paper was misclassified. The sun gained about 1 W/m2 from 1900 to 2000 which is 1/4 watt distributed over the sphere of the earth. That's not going to cause much temperature change. OTOH Scafetta may include other effects of high solar activity like modulatin of the clouds. But those are somewhat speculative. So while the consensus does not include Scafetta it is still pretty strong.

The correct argument against the consensus nonsense is that the effects of mild warming are fewer storms (more northerly storm track and decreased temperature gradient from north to south). So claims of more storms are counter to the models and speculative at best. Claims of cooling from global warming are just ridiculous. It's obviously more subtle and may not be easy to explain. But it is the correct counterargument.

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