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The 97% consensus myth – busted by a real survey

52percent_AMS-vs-97percent_SkS
We’ve all been subjected to the incessant “97% of scientists agree …global warming…blah blah” meme, which is nothing more than another statistical fabrication by John Cook and his collection of “anything for the cause” zealots. As has been previously pointed out on WUWT, when you look at the methodology used to reach that number, the veracity of the result falls apart, badly. You see, it turns out that Cook simply employed his band of “Skeptical Science” (SkS) eco-zealots to rate papers, rather than letting all authors of the papers rate their own work (Note: many authors weren’t even contacted and their papers wrongly rated, see here). The result was that the “97% consensus” was a survey of the SkS raters beliefs and interpretations, rather than a survey of the authors opinions of their own science abstracts. Essentially it was pal-review by an activist group with a strong bias towards a particular outcome as demonstrated by the name “the consensus project”.
In short, it was a lie of omission enabled by a “pea and thimble” switch Steve McIntyre so often points out about climate science.
Most people who read the headlines touted by the unquestioning press had no idea that this was a collection of Skeptical Science raters opinions rather than the authors assessment of their own work. Readers of news stories had no idea they’d been lied to by John Cook et al².
So, while we’ll be fighting this lie for years, one very important bit of truth has emerged that will help put it into its proper place of propaganda, rather than science. A recent real survey conducted of American Meteorological Society members has blown Cook’s propaganda paper right out of the water.
The survey is titled:
Meteorologists’ views about global warming: A survey of American Meteorological Society professional members¹
Abstract
Meteorologists and other atmospheric science experts are playing important roles in helping society respond to climate change. However, members of this professional community are not unanimous in their views of climate change, and there has been tension among members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) who hold different views on the topic. In response, AMS created the Committee to Improve Climate Change Communication to explore and, to the extent possible, resolve these tensions. To support this committee, in January 2012 we surveyed all AMS members with known email addresses, achieving a 26.3% response rate (n=1,854). In this paper we tested four hypotheses: (1) perceived conflict about global warming will be negatively associated–and (2) climate expertise, (3) liberal political ideology, and (4) perceived scientific consensus will be positively associated–with (a) higher personal certainty that global warming is happening, (b) viewing the global warming observed over the past 150 years as mostly human-caused, and (c) perception of global warming as harmful. All four hypotheses were confirmed. Expertise, ideology, perceived consensus and perceived conflict were all independently related to respondents’ views on climate, with perceived consensus and political ideology being most strongly related. We suggest that AMS should: attempt to convey the widespread scientific agreement about climate change; acknowledge and explore the uncomfortable fact that political ideology influences the climate change views of meteorology professionals; refute the idea that those who do hold non-majority views just need to be “educated” about climate change; continue to deal with the conflict among members of the meteorology community.
From the abstract, it is clear the authors didn’t expect to find this result, as they were likely expecting something close to the fabled 97%. They give this away when they advise in the abstract steps that can be taken to “correct” the low number reported.
The introduction says:
Research conducted to date with meteorologists and other atmospheric scientists has shown that they are not unanimous in their views of climate change. In a survey of earth scientists, Doran and Zimmerman (2009) found that while a majority of meteorologists surveyed are convinced humans have contributed to global warming (64%), this was a substantially smaller majority than that found among all earth scientists (82%). Another survey, by Farnsworth and Lichter (2009), found that 83% of meteorologists surveyed were convinced human-induced climate change is occurring, again a smaller majority than among experts in related areas such as ocean sciences (91%) and geophysics (88%).
So clearly, none of the work to date matches Cook’s pal reviewed activist effort.
The most important question in the AMS survey was done in two parts:
“Is global warming happening? If so, what is its cause?”
Respondent options were:
  • Yes: Mostly human
  • Yes: Equally human and natural
  • Yes: Mostly natural
  • Yes: Insufficient evidence [to determine cause]
  • Yes: Don’t know cause
  • Don’t know if global warming is happening
  • Global warming is not happening
Here’s the kicker:
Just 52 percent of survey respondents answered Yes: Mostly human.
The other 48 percent either questioned whether global warming is happening or would not ascribe human activity as the primary cause.
Here is table 1 from the paper which shows the entire population of respondents (click to enlarge):
ConsenusTableCapture
Table 1. Meteorologists’ assessment of human-caused global warming by area and level of expertise. Figures are percentages rounded to the nearest whole number. Numbers in the bottom four rows represent percentage of respondents giving each possible response to the follow-up email question, including non-response to the email (labeled “insufficient evidence – unknown”). These responses together add to the same number as displayed in the insufficient evidence (total) row; some differences occur due to rounding. Similarly, columns total to 100% if all numbers except those in the bottom four rows are added, and differences from 100 are due to rounding. Although 1854 people completed some portion of the survey, this table only displays the results for 1821 respondents, since 33 (less than 2% of the sample) did not answer one or more of the questions on expertise and global warming causation.
Note the difference between those who cite some climate publications and those who don’t. People are often most convinced of their own work, while others looking in from the outside, not so much. As we know, the number of “climate scientists” versus others tends to be a smaller clique.
Dr.. Judith Curry writes:
Look at the views in column 1, then look at the % in the rightmost column:  52% state the the warming since 1850 is mostly anthropogenic.  One common categorization would categorize the other 48%  as ‘deniers’.
So, the inconvenient truth here is that about half of the world’s largest organization of meteorological and climate professionals don’t think humans are “mostly” the cause of Anthropogenic Global Warming the rest will probably get smeared as “deniers”
That’s a long way from Cook’s “97% consensus” lie.
References:
[1] Meteorologists’ views about global warming: A survey of American Meteorological Society professional members  doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00091.1 http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00091.1
[2] Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024

143 Responses to The 97% consensus myth – busted by a real survey

  1. Also note that only 4% say it is not happening.
  2. But, but ,but….Weather persons aren’t real climate scientists, they just read from the cue board and make sure they floss before broadcasts! and run flashy blogs!!
    just in case, /sarc
    Bet there are no respondents from the UK Met O.
  3. dbstealey says:
    As I’ve often said, you couldn’t get 97% of Italians to agree the Pope is Catholic.
    Anyone who believes that 97% of scientists think human activity is the cause of global warming appears to be ignorant of the OISM Petition, in which more than 30,000 American scientists co-signed a statement saying that more CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere.
    There is nothing comparable from the climate alarmist crowd, whose numbers are much smaller than generally assumed.
  4. You see, it turns out that Cook simply employed his band of “Skeptical Science” (SkS) eco-zealots to rate papers, rather than letting the authors of the papers rate their own work. The result was that the “97% consensus” was a survey of the SkS raters’ beliefs and interpretations, rather than a survey of the authors opinions of their own science abstracts.
    Those who can’t handle the truth,
    try to silence those who speak it.
    Cook effectively silenced the authors’ beliefs by replacing them with his SkS raters’ beliefs.
    Cook can’t handle the truth.
  5. Ric Werme says:
    One flaw in the study is that it excludes the people who have left the AMS in disgust over the executive committee position paper.
    (BTW, Tim Kelley is still working at NECN, so there is life after the AMS.)
  6. milodonharlani says:
    The early on-line release document doesn’t show opinions among those who think global warming, from whatever cause, is happening as to whether it is harmful or beneficial. Might track with opinions as to cause, whether human or natural in some combo, but might not. Hope the final version includes that break down.
  7. An even more realistic answer would occur if the answers were inverted on the questionaire. A serious study would put the politically incorrect answer first. Even teeing up the study for the proper result it’s weak.
    The totalitarians think that drumming up political pressure/funding equals consensus/validity. In that regard they really do have their 97 per cent!
  8. Graeme W says:
    I can see how some people will interpret/spin these results. They’ll exclude the “non-publishers” because “they’re obviously not experts if they can’t publish papers”. They’ll then merge all the rows where people agree that humans are involved, even if it’s not “mostly”, and they’ll come up with a percentage much higher than 52%. I haven’t done the maths, but I suspect it’ll be over 80% of scientists publishing papers that believe humans are a factor in global warming.
    Personally, I’d disagree strongly with the removal of the “non-publishers”. Just because a person isn’t publishing papers, that doesn’t mean that they can’t analyze data or review published material and make a determination as to whether the arguments in the publication are convincing.
  9. Thomas Ferge says:
    …….We suggest that AMS should: attempt to convey the widespread scientific agreement about climate change;……
    what? to convey the consensus they just found to be non-existent?
    This is called indoctrination in normal life…….
    facepalm!
  10. milodonharlani says:
    Jerry Critter says:
    November 20, 2013 at 11:06 am
    Maybe the 4% think it’s getting colder. I’d be surprised if that many AMS members think that climate, the average of weather over decades, centuries, millennia & longer intervals, doesn’t change.
  11. Dumb Scientist says:
    Anthony Watts: The 97% consensus myth – busted by a real survey … We’ve all been subjected to the incessant “97% of scientists agree …global warming…blah blah” meme, which is nothing more than another statistical fabrication by John Cook and his collection of “anything for the cause” zealots … Cook simply employed his band of “Skeptical Science” (SkS) eco-zealots to rate papers … a lie of omission … they’d been lied to by John Cook et al². … we’ll be fighting this lie for years … blown Cook’s propaganda paper right out of the water.
    ==================================
    Isn’t a survey of opinions different from a survey of scientific abstracts? If so, how can an opinion survey show that a survey of scientific abstracts is a “lie”?
    Note that 78% of meteorologists who publish mostly on climate agree that the warming is mostly human-caused. Only 5% of all meteorologists claim that the warming is mostly natural, and only 4% claim that the warming isn’t happening.
    If we can agree about these facts, that’s great news!
    REPLY:Bryan, This response suggests you are simply concern trolling. Had Cook actually done an honest survey, we’d have the opinions of the authors about their papers, not the opinions of the SkS pal review squad in place of those opinions.
    For more shenanigans related to SkS, you might look up the sort of pea and thimble switcheroos (they didn’t survey skeptical blogs) and statistical techninques (populations of N=0 are allowed, add your own interpretation) employed by the gang that couldn’t shoot straight when it came to their published opinions on skeptics and their supposed belief in “faking the moon landing”. What you have here with SkS is an organized propaganda team. They aren’t interested in science.
    – Anthony
  12. HGW xx/7 says:
    Such beautiful news… and on the most beautiful day Seattle has had in weeks. :-)
    As for Mr. Critter, it would serve you well to also note that only about 4% (or thereabouts) on this site say that climate change isn’t occurring either. A majority here believe it is, but those who don’t aren’t excluded either. It’s called an open forum for a reason.
    Have a lovely day all!
  13. Lance Wallace says:
    The clear bias of the authors is shown in their favorable reference to Lewandowsky et al. (2013), “who found that providing information on the scientific consensus increased the likelihood of members of the public agreeing that global warming was occurring.” So if we push the 97% meme, we will swing more of the public. Shades of Goebbels!
  14. Political Junkie says:
    A recent Canadian survey of the general population claimed that 60% of respondents “believe that climate change is real and caused by human activity.” Presumably a very tiny fraction of Canadians reads peer-reviewed papers on the topic.
    Therefore the more correct conclusion of the survey would be: “62% of Canadians believe media reports stating that climate change is real and caused by human activity.”
    The survey of meteorologists appears to support previous findings – the better your understanding of science, the lower your belief in catastrophic man-made global warming.
  15. Mac the Knife says:
    As this was a survey of current AMS members (n=1854), it would be interesting to know how many prior members have revoked their AMS membership in the last 5 years, because they objected to the pro AGW stance taken by AMS. We have seen a number of folks declare on these blog pages they had revoked their membership in disgust. Does the total number reach 100 or more? If so, that would amount to a +5% shift in the current poll results.
    Conversely, have more folks with pro-AGW beliefs joined AMS because of AMS advocacy of AGW? That would skew the results even more so.
  16. Steven Mosher says:
    interesting that only 5% think its natural.
  17. milodonharlani says:
    Graeme W says:
    November 20, 2013 at 11:22 am
    Sadly, you are probably right about the spin. The MSM already try to make fun of TV meteorologists.
    Blame the non-publishers’ anti-CACA opinions on those troglodytic TV weather forecasters!
    How dare they disagree with their betters on the government gravy train!
    Article quotes Joe Bastardi on the cooling planet.
  18. Mac the Knife says:
    From one of the 97% consensus today, the latest psientific pronouncements from the Prince of Wails :
    The Prince of Wales has warned that natural disasters like Typhoon Haiyan that devastated the Philippines and flooding in India earlier this year will become more common unless action is taken to tackle climate change.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10462733/Prince-Charles-warns-over-inability-to-tackle-climate-change.html
  19. BW2013 says:
    Only 26% responded-What about the other 74%?????? I want to hear from them!!!!!!
    Half of 26% is really 13%….
  20. Lance Wallace says:
    Graeme W says:
    November 20, 2013 at 11:22 am
    “I can see how some people will interpret/spin these results. They’ll exclude the “non-publishers” because “they’re obviously not experts if they can’t publish papers”. They’ll then merge all the rows where people agree that humans are involved, even if it’s not “mostly”, and they’ll come up with a percentage much higher than 52%. I haven’t done the maths, but I suspect it’ll be over 80% of scientists publishing papers that believe humans are a factor in global warming.”
    Graeme, the authors did in fact spin the results, stating that “93% of actively publishing climate scientists indicated they are convinced that humans have contributed to global warming.” How does this differentiate them from most skeptics? Later on, the authors did do the more defendable thing, by admitting that only 78% of these actively publishing climate scientists believe humans contribute more than half of the global warming, which is the IPCC position. Count on the alarmists quoting the 93% figure.
    Considering that these “actively publishing climate scientists” are supported by a Federal government that is pushing the alarmist position, I am amazed that 22% of them are risking biting the hand that feeds them.
  21. MarkB says:
    You see, it turns out that Cook simply employed his band of “Skeptical Science” (SkS) eco-zealots to rate papers, rather than letting the authors of the papers rate their own work. The result was that the “97% consensus” was a survey of the SkS raters’ beliefs and interpretations, rather than a survey of the authors opinions of their own science abstracts.
    While it wasn’t the main methodology and it wasn’t done in a statistically rigorous manner (as is the case with this AMS paper) Cook’s etal did in fact survey authors.
    REPLY: yes, some, but as Schollenberger points out here, their method was madness: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/on-the-consensus/
    - Anthony
  22. Mac the Knife says:
    BW2013 says:
    November 20, 2013 at 11:39 am
    Only 26% responded-What about the other 74%?????? I want to hear from them!!!!!!
    Half of 26% is really 13%….
    Point well taken!
    MtK
  23. Greg White says:
    The bigger question is how many think the warming [from] a doubling of CO2 will exceed 2 degrees C? Or a range like their original question; Net positive, neutral, slightly damaging, catastrophic?
  24. Margaret Hardman says:
    So what you’re saying is that a certain percentage of an national organisation of meteorologists, not climate scientists, have said something a bit different to a survey of abstracts of published papers on climate change. Really. Who’d have thought it? As for busted, why don’t you “skeptics” repeat the original protocol with the same criteria using a different sample and see what you get? Then I might think it is actually busted. Of course, the reason the “skeptics” don’t like it is because it is pretty conclusive really (hence Tol’s ill fated effort at debunking the result).
  25. Dumb Scientist says:
    [snip - not interested in your characterization of me - Anthony]
  26. Mike Jonas says:
    The post says “They give this away when they advise in the abstract steps that can be taken to “correct” the low number reported.“. I couldn’t find the word “correct” or anything that looked like this idea in the abstract or the paper. The nearest I could find was. “MS and other organizations seeking to enhance the climate change readiness of the meteorology community should find ways to acknowledge and deal with the conflict“. The paper did read like it was written by warmists, though.
    Near the finish it said “:MS and other organizations seeking to enhance the climate change readiness of the meteorology community should find ways to acknowledge and deal with the conflict“. Judith Curry has put forward suggestions for this, I think she called it “mediated discussion”.
    The paper also said “ it is imperative that members of the scientific community – and the professional societies that represent them – take all reasonable measures to ensure that what is
    known about the risks [of harm by climate change], and about options for managing those risks, are shared with decision makers    “. This is where they really show their warmism. The paper is all about uncertainties, yet they have leaped straight to risks.
  27. Steven Kopits says:
    I think most skeptics would agree that some portion of global warming is human-caused. They might even agree that it’s mostly human caused.
    But where I think they would disagree is whether it’s catastrophic or even undesirable. Would I welcome a climate 2-3 deg warmer here in NJ? Absolutely.
  28. Adam says:
    Ahhh, but these are just Meteorologists, they are not Climate Scientists.
    They know nothing about the practice of Climate Science: a highly specialised science which requires years of “training” before one can understand the mechanism of how increasing CO2 can be used to cause an increase in funding.
    It is the same as asking Football players to comment on the Higgs Boson.
    [/sarc]
  29. Bill Illis says:
    Interesting that Robert Way of the recent Arctic temperature re-writing paper is also an author on the “97% consensus paper”.
    “Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature” John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli, Sarah A Green, Mark Richardson, Bärbel Winkler, Rob Painting, Robert Way, Peter Jacobs and Andrew Skuce
  30. JJ says:
    Ric Werme says:
    One flaw in the study is that it excludes the people who have left the AMS in disgust over the executive committee position paper.
    One among many.
    It also doesn’t include the people still in the AMS who understand the potential ramifications of making your ‘non-consensus’ views known via a survey like this.
    At best, 52% of 26% or about 14%, buy the party line.
    86% either don’t believe it, or don’t care enough about the impending destruction of the planet to raise their voice about it.
  31. Latitude says:
    The only science I’ve ever seen…..
    Where they can identify a cause for something that is not happening
  32. Ric Werme says:
    Margaret Hardman says:
    November 20, 2013 at 11:48 am
    So what you’re saying is that a certain percentage of an national organisation of meteorologists, not climate scientists, have said something a bit different to a survey of abstracts of published papers on climate change.
    The real driver behind this study is to understand “members of this professional community are not unanimous in their views of climate change, and there has been tension among members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) who hold different views on the topic.”
    The reason for the tension is the AMS policy statement on climate change which many members think overstates the problem. E.g., from http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2012climatechange.html
    Future warming of the climate is inevitable for many years due to the greenhouse gases already added to the atmosphere and the heat that has been taken up by the oceans. Amelioration might be possible through devising and implementing environmentally responsible geoengineering approaches, such as capture and storage measures to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. However, the potential risks of geoengineering may be quite large, and more study of the topic (including other environmental consequences) is needed. The subject of geoengineering is outside the scope of this statement (for more information see AMS Statement on Geoengineering).
    In general, many of the climate-system trends observed in recent decades are projected to continue. Those projections, and others in this section, are largely based on simulations conducted with climate models, and assume that the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere will continue to increase due to human activity. Global efforts to slow greenhouse gas emissions have been unsuccessful so far. However, were future technologies and policies able to achieve a rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emissions — an approach termed “mitigation” — this would greatly lessen future global warming and its impacts.
  33. Oldseadog says:
    It would have been interesting to find how many of those who think that humans are causing warming think that human produced CO2 is the main cause.
    I know someone who thinks that changing the plant cover, from trees to farm land for example, is much more important than CO2 in influencing climate change. He thinks that CO2 is a negligible cause compared to the change of land use.
    Just his opinion, of course.
    I agree with him, though.
  34. rgbatduke says:
    Also note that only 4% say it is not happening.
    Sure. Because in order to believe that, one has to doubt all of the efforts to reconstruct past temperatures including the thermometric record, from the LIA to the present. It’s interesting that as many as 4% say it isn’t happening. Perhaps they are saying it isn’t happening still, or perhaps they think that the digested thermometric record transformed into a GASTA by interested parties is dubious when the total warming observed in GASTA (presented without error bars) is smaller than the error bars in GAST (the average surface temperature itself, not the “anomaly”).
    The latter isn’t a completely untenable view. Weather records, as opposed to “climate anomalies”, do not provide particularly strong evidence that the 1990s were warmer than the 1930s, when almost exactly half of the state record high temperatures were set in the US. This has to be compared to the three state high temperature records set in the twenty first century so far.
    Perhaps the US is not the world, but it has been a leader in science and measurement for well over a century, and its records are far better and more accurate than those accumulated over much of the world outside of Europe. Even in Europe the record is complicated by a lack of reliable long time trend observations, so that many of the records are quite new simply because the country the record belongs to is quite new.
    rgb
  35. The rule remains, garbage in garbage out.
    Another rule, do not use polls of fools as useful.
  36. Oldseadog says:
    Further to some comments above, I am surprised that some of you do not regard meteorologists as climate scientists.
    If not, what are they?
  37. milodonharlani says:
    Oldseadog says:
    November 20, 2013 at 12:08 pm
    Good point. My cousin, an emeritus statistics prof, thinks that humans must have some measurable effect, just from UHIs & other heat-generating activities, without considering GHGs.
  38. R. de Haan says:
    Still a 53% in support of a political doctrine that is based on lies.
    http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/11/20/obamacare-and-global-warming-are-the-same-program/
  39. The cruelest lies are often told in silence. -Robert Louis Stevenson, novelist, essayist, and poet (1850-1894)
  40. R. de Haan says:
    48% of the sane have to convince 53% morons that they have it wrong.
    Tough job.
  41. Merovign says:
    It was never about the numbers, it was always about power and control.
    Which is why the narrative will not change, no matter what the actual numbers are. There will always be a new excuse or a new “hidden raw data” study.
  42. Kevin Kane says:
    Why couldn’t the “Yes : Mostly Human” be “Yes: Mostly CO2 From Human’s” or something to that effect? Do humans not have a warming affect by other activities? Maybe the 52% would have been lower.
  43. Uncle Gus says:
    A whopping 11% either don’t know if GW is happening or flatly don’t believe it. That’s more than one in ten who are, by definition, deniers! (I.e. they deny that the science is settled.)
    This is a little startling considering that deniers are supposed to be a tiny minority.
  44. Frank K. says:
    Ric Werme says:
    November 20, 2013 at 12:06 pm
    Margaret Hardman says:
    November 20, 2013 at 11:48 am
    So what you’re saying is that a certain percentage of an national organisation of meteorologists, not climate scientists, have said something a bit different to a survey of abstracts of published papers on climate change.
    The real driver behind this study is to understand “members of this professional community are not unanimous in their views of climate change, and there has been tension among members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) who hold different views on the topic.”
    —
    The whole “97%” meme is inane on its face. What researcher, who wishes to continue to get their steady stream of taxpayer-funded grant money, is going to say the following in their paper abstract:
    “While climate change is NOT a problem in the foreseeable future, and efforts to affect climate through geoengineering are likely to fail, our research indicates that…”
    And many abstracts in supposedly reputable journals are now becoming increasingly manic…witness some of Jim Hansen’s recent work like the dreadful “Climate change and trace gases.” (2007). Here’s the abstract…
    Paleoclimate data show that the Earth’s climate is remarkably sensitive to global forcings. Positive feedbacks predominate. This allows the entire planet to be whipsawed between climate states. One feedback, the “albedo flip” property of water substance, provides a powerful trigger mechanism. A climate forcing that “flips” the albedo of a sufficient portion of an ice sheet can spark a cataclysm. Ice sheet and ocean inertia provides only moderate delay to ice sheet disintegration and a burst of added global warming. Recent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions place the Earth perilously close to dramatic climate change that could run out of our control, with great dangers for humans and other creatures. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the largest human-made climate forcing, but other trace constituents are important. Only intense simultaneous efforts to slow CO2 emissions and reduce non-CO2 forcings can keep climate within or near the range of the past million years. The most important of the non-CO2 forcings is methane (CH4), as it causes the 2nd largest human-made GHG climate forcing and is the principal cause of increased tropospheric ozone (O3), which is the 3rd largest GHG forcing. Nitrous oxide (N2O) should also be a focus of climate mitigation efforts. Black carbon (“black soot”) has a high global warming potential (~2000, 500, and 200 for 20, 100 and 500 years, respectively) and deserves greater attention. Some forcings are especially effective at high latitudes, so concerted efforts to reduce their emissions could still “save the Arctic”, while also having major benefits for human health, agricultural productivity, and the global environment.
    —
    Hey kids, let’s all do the “Albedo Flip”! :-P
  45. Latitude says:
    1821….
    110 Weather Channel
    …the rest for NOAA, NWS, etc
    All with a very strong agenda….
    I’m surprised they even got 52%
  46. milodonharlani says:
    rgbatduke says:
    November 20, 2013 at 12:09 pm
    I see that NOAA has disallowed the 1898 high for Oregon of 119 degrees F, replacing it with a 1998 reading of 117 degrees.
    I also notice that NOAA lists 1994 for Texas’ high, although that 120 degree reading is a tie with August 12, 1936 in Seymour. The summer of ’36 was a hot one in the US, as you know.
  47. Rhoda R says:
    Old Sea Dog; where do you get the idea that this site doesn’t consider meterologists to be scientists?
  48. Peter Miller says:
    88% of those in geophysics agree?
    If they are including geologists, then that figure is an outright lie, as geologists are the strongest single sceptic profession. As for geophysicists – why the heck should they know anything about climate, especially climate history?
    Anyhow, if those employed in government, or quasi-government organisations are stripped out (after all, they have an obvious vested interest in seeing climate alarmist theories continued) then the 97% figure could easily be reversed with the vast majority being sceptic.
  49. E Wiebe says:
    It seems worth pointing out that you should all actually read the paper. It’s really not as supportive of this site’s alternative hypotheses as many here seem to believe. It is linked above though, which is one good thing about the story at the top of these comments.
    E.g., “In conclusion, given the potential for human society and the earth’s eco-systems to be harmed by climate change, it is imperative that members of the scientific community – and the professional societies that represent them – take all reasonable measures to ensure that what is known about the risks, and about options for managing those risks, are shared with decision
    makers who should be considering that information.”
  50. Jimbo says:
    Many climate scientists’ careers and lavish funding DEPENDS on continued global warming.
  51. M Seward says:
    The clear trend is that those ‘climate scientists’ who publish mainly in ‘climate science’, i.e. they do it for a living and have to get published as part of that are the most enthusuastic about AGW. That is just a self interest filter at work. Says all you need to know really.
  52. Dumb Scientist says:
    [snip - not interested in your characterization of me - Anthony]
    ==========================================
    Just a few days ago, dbstealey and Ferdinand Engelbeen drew my attention to the WUWT sidebar which criticizes SkS for deleting user comments and noted that this means SkS is “dishonest”.
    So it’s disappointing that my comment was snipped, but even more disappointing that Anthony claims it was because of a “characterization” after he accused John Cook and other SkS authors of dishonesty.
    I still think it’s possible that Anthony has the integrity to not snip this comment, so I’ll repeat my challenge that got snipped earlier: “I’d be very interested to see WUWT read through 10,000 scientific abstracts and rate them. You could show the world how to do a proper survey… right?”
    ================================
    REPLY: Oh please. Bryan for the record, I don’t give a rats ass about what you think about comment policy (see here). You put words in my mouth in the last comment, I snipped it because of that. Get over yourself. Why don’t you get your peers at JPL to do it, if it is so important to you? After all, you’ve got millions of dollars of government money at your disposal there and we have next to nothing.
    The whole consensus chasing is a waste of time in my opinion, Mother Nature will be the final arbiter of the AGW issue- Anthony
  53. Jimbo says:
    Steven Mosher says:
    November 20, 2013 at 11:33 am
    interesting that only 5% think its natural.
    Interesting as I wouldn’t have made it into that 5%, shock and horror. Neither would our host or a great many sceptics.
  54. Latitude says:
    E Wiebe says:
    November 20, 2013 at 12:44 pm
    It seems worth pointing out that you should all actually read the paper. It’s really not as supportive of this site’s alternative hypotheses
    ======
    What alternative hypotheses??
    ….complete FAIL is not a hypothesis
    In case you haven’t noticed….they’ve been flat out lying for almost 2 decades
  55. “Many climate scientists’ careers and lavish funding DEPENDS on continued global warming.”
    Just as the opposite is true, very little skeptical work is funded. The question is, how much does this monetary pressure skew the numbers….8 per cent…12 per cent… 20 per cent? Just a few per cent makes deniers in the majority and that is easily a certainty.
    And the 5 per cent for the last item is a bogus number.
  56. Rosarugosa says:
    Only 1% told the truth, that is “Yes, don’t know cause”
  57. james griffin says:
    Science is not about consensus it is about the testing of a theory….
    Theory tested and fails test many times over…
    Last week on the BBC’s Question Time our Climate Change Minister, another MP and a union boss all reckoned the Polar Ice Caps are melting….err no.
    Refer sea ice data on the site today….overall up on the mean average 1979 – 2008.
    They lie and lie and lie…and are they so thick and stupid it beggars belief!
  58. Mike Maguire says:
    I was a member of the AMS for 20 years, also having the broadcast television seal. I left television in 1993 to trade commodities, using the influence of weather on the price of grains and energies and still do that.
    I left the AMS over a decade ago but not over this particular issue even though I consider myself AGW brainwashed in the 1990′s and the AMS played a role.
    I would have responded that yes, there has been global warming with insufficient evidence, some of it is probably human. This would have put me in the other 48%.
    I just remembered why I quit being a member. The combination of dues and renewal of my broadcast seal was over $200/year and I figured out my television career was over as well as any benefits the membership offered with my new profession. I liked their AMS bulletin/journal with some good articles occasionally but the internet has 1,000 times more stuff now……..just like Anthony provides daily right here. Thanks Anthony!
    One thing that is misleading in these type of surverys. When a scientist responds that they think most of the warming is from humans, it’s almost assumed that they belong in the CAGW category when, in reality, there are those that think humans warming the planet is almost entirely a good thing…………..I was one of them in the 1990′s!
    I’m waiting for the survey to come out that asks greenhouse growers(these people make their living creating the ideal environment for plants to flourish) questions about increasing CO2 and plants.
  59. Dr Burns says:
    Only 5% believe it’s mostly natural ! Staggering ! What evidence do they have that man has had anything to do with it ? What has happened to science ?
  60. KNR says:
    . Given the chances of getting 97% again was virtual nil , it could well have been higher or lower and still be a honest exercise.
    The biggest give away that Cooks work was rubbish is in the fact the very number they were so desperate to support . Because the ‘need’ to hit that exact same number was a reflection of the way this claim had entered the dogma of ‘the cause ‘, which can never be challenged nor changed for the faithful rather than a refection of reality . For its only the dogma style claims of religions that require such tricks , science could have easily handled lower or higher values.
  61. JohnWho says:
    ““Is global warming happening? If so, what is its cause?””
    Uh, where is “Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are the primary cause”?
    Why cut back on CO2 emissions if they aren’t causing anything significant?
  62. Robuk says:
    We drive by a building which houses a company selling solar panels, on the wall is a thermometer display, it is always reads differently to our car, The display as we passed recently (on a dull day) read 9C degrees our car read 8C, On one pass recently (sunny day this autumn) the display read 21C, the car display read 14C.
    Is this man made global warming.
  63. R. de Haan says:
    Obamacare has just annihilated the working class, expect a shift in opinion shortly. everybody depends on government soon.: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-20/obamacare-shock-one-california-employers-terrifying-true-story
  64. Jimbo says:
    Mac the Knife says:
    November 20, 2013 at 11:38 am
    From one of the 97% consensus today, the latest psientific pronouncements from the Prince of Wails :
    The Prince of Wales has warned that natural disasters like Typhoon Haiyan that devastated the Philippines and flooding in India earlier this year will become more common unless action is taken to tackle climate change.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10462733/Prince-Charles-warns-over-inability-to-tackle-climate-change.html
    It’s good to see Prince Charles taking action to tackle climate change.
    By the way the 74% who did NOT respond obviously don’t take ‘climate change’ seriously. We have a consensus of not giving a damn. Like Prince Charles!
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  65. conscious1 says:
    The problem with the 97% figure is that the media translates it into- 97% of scientists agree that “humans are causing catastrophic climate change and if we don’t do something now we are doomed”. If you asked scientists if they agree with that quote only about 3% would.
    Humans are having dramatic effects on local climates through deforestation, the expansion of urban heat islands and black carbon that is reducing Arctic albedo. Human produced CO2 is having some (unknown) effect so you would have to be a denier and in the 3% to not think humans are having some effect on climate. It may be negligible in the long run but we don’t know at this time. It’s the definitive conclusions of impending crisis made by the media and some climate scientists not supported by the underlying uncertainties that are an attack on science. When people throw the 97% figure out, it’s the distortion of what that represents that is a more important issue in my opinion.
  66. KNR says:
    A further thought on the infamous 97% , I am unaware of anybody who as ever done any research that proves what the number of scientists , climate of otherwise , actual is .
    Therefore how can you ever know what percentage any number of people in a sub group form of the whole group , when you do not know the whole groups size ?
    Sounds like a basic maths fail to me.
  67. Bruce Cobb says:
    Of the 52% True Believers, 100% believe because of the “consensus”.
  68. Man Bearpig says:
    Dumb Scientist Says … Isn’t a survey of opinions different from a survey of scientific abstracts? ..
    ———————————-
    All surveys are made to ascertain the opinions of the sample. The Cook survey is based on the opinions of the people that were invited to take the survey. If the sample is of an inherent bias then depending on the level of bias, it will show through in the results. Any statistician will tell you that to get a 97 percent result over a true unbiased sample is practically impossible.
    If you asked 100 vegitarians if meat is good for you you will get a different answer than asking 100 butchers.
    Do you understand this?
  69. Oldseadog says:
    Rhoda R,
    Not “this site”, just “some of you” meaning the WUWT readership.
    Margaret Hardman at 11.38?
    Maybe I misunderstood Margaret,
  70. Two Labs says:
    What’s funny is when these folks say something like “political ideology is related to belief about climate change,” they always mean “conservatives tend to be skeptics” and ignore the equally-true converse “liberals tend to be believers.”
  71. Col Mosby says:
    Quite frankly, technology will make concerns about excessive carbon moot anyway. Electric cars and nuclear power plants will prevail, with or without encouragement by the environmental pressure groups, although I do see a radical change growing amongst the greenies in favor of
    nuclear power (which logically should have been there all the time, but for environmentalism’s
    typical lack of logical thinking). Right now nuclear reactors are the cheapest way to make
    electricity, and have been for several years. Only the high initial cost and public opposition has
    prevented this technology from taking over. But there are now 70 reactors under construction worldwide and plans for another 500, probably more. And electric cars, assuming a good, cheap, fast recharging battery, have it all over gas powered jobs. Even Henry Ford knew that, way back when. Worrying about carbon is shortsighted and pointless.
  72. Stephen Richards says:
    The whole thing always did remind me of the hair and make-up adverts. You know the ones 80% of 125 women. Totally irrelevent stats.
  73. It’s too bad they didn’t ask how many AMS members agree with the AMS statement on climate change. Sounds like they’d have been lucky to clear 52%.
  74. Jquip says:
    What percentage of scientists believed in the Phlogiston theory prior its failure? How about the miasma theory or disease transmission? How about the Geocentric model of the Solar System? Or, worse, the bilateral compromise of Geoheliocentrism?
    Asking what people believe is like asking how many Americans are Jewish. It neither proves nor disproves Yahweh or the validity of Judaism. But it sure tells you what religion they hold to.
  75. Hal44 says:
    What does ‘mostly’ mean? 51%, 66.67%, 90%, 97.1%,……..?
    Anybody who answers ‘mostly’ should be required to supply us with the statistical techniques (and data) they utilized to arrive at their decision.
  76. Dumb Scientist says:
    [SNIP again - not interested in playing this game with you Bryan, take a 24 hour time-out - Anthony]
  77. HLx says:
    Why do the percentages sum to 99% in the last column? Erroneously rounding down?
  78. philjourdan says:
    So 4% of the people that study the subject are flat earthers? And if it turns out not to be the case, then the real flat earthers will be 52%.
    Interesting.
  79. Margaret Hardman says:
    Not sure how this from the paper sits with the claim in the headline:
    “As we mentioned above, asking about a 150-year time frame rather than a 50-year time
    frame may also have changed the strength of the relationships between global warming views
    and other variables. For example, expertise may have been a stronger predictor of views on human causation if we had asked about a shorter timeframe. Because the evidence for human
    causation is much stronger for the last 50 years (Core writing team et al., 2007), we would expect experts, who are presumably familiar with this evidence, to be substantially more likely to view
    global warming in this period as human-caused than non-experts who were not familiar with the evidence. Conversely, the evidence is weaker for human causation over the past 150 years.”
    Seems the two studies were asking different questions and the authors of this one acknowledge that.
  80. Alvin says:
    Yes, mostly natural is so low. Why?
  81. Scott Basinger says:
    From what I’ve seen of his posts, Dumb Scientist’s tag seems to have been come by honestly.
  82. Mike Smith says:
    But science isn’t about majority votes or consensus.
    All this survey tells us is… the results of Cook’s bogus research was… well, bogus.
  83. Txomin says:
    The results are interesting but the fact that the survey was allowed to happen at all is the big news. Times are changing. Something is getting hotter and it’s not the weather.
  84. albertalad says:
    Lol – would this be the same Meteorologists who can’t get their own weather forecasts correct three days down the road?
    REPLY: …and some climatologists who can’t get their models correct three years down the road?
    - Anthony
  85. joeldshore says:
    It is interesting that people here are busy spinning things by coming up with hypotheses of why there might be a bias in favor of global warming in this survey. However, there are two important sources that are probably biasing the results the other way:
    (1) The question was phrased, “Do you think that the global warming that has occurred over the past 150 years has been caused…”. The 150 year time frame means that the people who answered “mostly by human activity” were actually agreeing to a stronger statement than has been made by the IPCC which instead focusses on the warming that has occurred over the last 50 years. (The authors themselves even note this potential issue with the way the question was worded.)
    (2) Of all the professional scientific societies that they could have surveyed, APS is probably the most “skeptical” because it contains a lot of forecast and broadcast meteorologists, who are generally known to be more skeptical of AGW on the whole than scientific researchers. I imagine that if you did this survey among members of the American Geophysical Union, you would get a higher percentage agreeing with the attribution statements, just as one gets a higher percentage once one filters it by area of expertise and by whether one is actively publishing in any field…and especially actively publishing in the field.
    (3) The nature of the questions, based on the past rather than the future may also have affected the results. For example, if you look at the original STATS survey results (http://stats.org/stories/2008/global_warming_survey_apr23_08.html), you see a stronger response to the question of the danger for the future than for the attribution in the past. For example, 85% of the respondents saw climate change as posing a great or moderate danger over the next 50 to 100 years (with about equal numbers saying great 41% or moderate 44%).
  86. Mac the Knife says:
    E Wiebe says:
    November 20, 2013 at 12:44 pm
    E.g., “In conclusion, given the potential for human society and the earth’s eco-systems to be harmed by climate change, it is imperative that members of the scientific community – and the professional societies that represent them – take all reasonable measures to ensure that what is known about the risks, and about options for managing those risks, are shared with decision
    makers who should be considering that information.”
    E Wiebe,
    What is the potential for human society and earth’s eco-systems to be harmed by climate change? Conversely, what is the potential that they will benefit from climate change? “We don’t know!” is the only honest answer. How should we weigh these nebulous potentials for harm or benefit? “We don’t know!” is again the only honest answer. Given that, what ‘reasonable measures’ would/could/should we take to ‘manage those risks’…. or promote those potential benefits? We     really don’t have a clue! It’s a ‘house of cards’, with no solid foundation and the flimsiest of construction, teetering one layer on top of the next.
    Climate changes on this planet. It always has. It always will. What is the ‘optimal climate’? Optimal for whom? “We don’t know!” is yet again the only honest answer. What we do know is we are intelligent and adaptable. We know how to adapt to climate change. It’s already encoded in our very DNA, from hundreds of thousands of years of successful adaptation. Let’s go with our strong suit, adapting to our normally varying climates. Let’s not waste precious resources on creating climate models that produce predictive results little better than consulting fresh goat entrails, pretending to soothsay our future from them, and then casting destructively expensive CO2 spells in hopes of limiting a variable planetary climate system that defies our current and near future ability to know or model.
    MtK
  87. V8 says:
    i bet those 97 percenters were all on fed grants to research “climate change”…
  88. Berényi Péter says:
    In case of Homeopathy I would attribute more weight to opinions of those not publishing in that particular field, but are educated in a neighboring discipline, in spite of the fact they have their own peer reviewed journals, schools, organizations &. conferences.
    It all comes down to the question how far climate science has advanced along the road leading to a full-fledged pseudoscience. To that question one would never expect an honest answer from those inside.
  89. Truthseeker says:
    Sure humans are the cause of global warming – by manipulating data, not maintaining the data collection mechanisms correctly and playing fast and loose with statistical methods.
    Simples …
  90. Mac the Knife says:
    Jimbo says:
    November 20, 2013 at 1:10 pm
    Thanks for the followup, Jimbo! Those really HUGE buildings in the Prince of Wails compound must be the CO2 containment structures!
  91. Psalmon says:
    Most “scientists” agreed at one point that the Sun revolved around the Earth. Even if it is 97%, so what? It’s all part of the AGW debate tactics:
    1. Call Names
    2. Answer data without data
    3. Invoke moral authority (97%) thing
    4. Declare debate over
    Know their game, call them on it, force them to data. They lose every time.
  92. albertalad says:
    Lol – would this be the same Meteorologists who can’t get their own weather forecasts correct three days down the road?
    REPLY: …and some climatologists who can’t get their models correct three years down the road?
    - Anthony
    ================
    LOL – perfect laugh on a day with my high for the day @ -18C and a low for the night @ -28C.
  93. Jquip says:
    Alvin: “Yes, mostly natural is so low. Why?”
    There’s a few possibilities. The first of which is that it has been a steady drumbeat of propaganda for over 2 decades now. Specifically, it’s been taught to children and so is the only metaphysical model they know. But also, people have a rather strange connection to reality. In that they consider that things are ‘fixed’ or, at least fixed in the same sense as completely regular — such as orbits. The idea that chaotic systems are… well, chaotic, is largely lost on them. Nevermind that weather is just a system and that they’re well familiar with it. They simply don’t draw any connections from the one to the other.
  94. Jon says:
    The results show that 73% (52% + 10% + 11%) feel that humans have at least some role to play in global warming … do they not?
  95. Jon says:
    Sorry … that should be 62%
  96. Gene Schmick says:
    I suspect that the majority of the AMS members that believe in AGW responded and that those with no strong belief did not. IOW this survey, like many others done online, is mostly self-selected and really not worth much.
  97. albertalad says:
    Jon says:
    November 20, 2013 at 2:55 pm
    The results show that 73% (52% + 10% + 11%) feel that humans have at least some role to play in global warming … do they not?
    ————————
    If you’re following the walk out at this year’s shindig at the UN Climate Change meeting the “humans” most to blame have walked out blaming the rich countries for refusing to pay the blackmail they demanded. China being the leader walking out – honest to God!
  98. ROM says:
    As this poll seems to have been very important to the policy outcomes of the AMS executive surely good governance and freedom from bias and therefore far fewer reasons to cast severe doubt on the pool outcomes would have been ensured by the AMS if they would have had a professional pollster either do this poll or at least analysis these claimed results rather than the apparent very amateur committee doing it with what appears to be an already built in global warming affirmative bias.
    26.3% response merely tells us that the committed on both sides of the debate have responded. But it leaves 73% of those contacted as the loose end in this poll.
    Human nature being what it is a fairly large proportion of that 76% of non respondents are just as likely to have taken a look at the poll and said to themselves “I just can’t be bothered” or increasingly like so many of us out here, “I’m sick to death of this whole bloody global warming scam and they can take a running jump for all I care”
    Then there is that last group who probably looked at the poll and said to themselves “If I fill that poll out the way I feel about this whole damn climate warming scam and somebody finds that out, which in a pro CAGW outfit like the AMS is quite likely, then somebody from the more fanatical side of the AMS will likely try and make sure my job future and promotion prospects are probably gone for good ”
    At a guess, no models involved here, the true figure if all meteorologists had responded without fear or favor is likely to be closer to two thirds of it’s members being on the more skeptical side of the global warming debate and maybe three quarters of them just refusing to believe in the Catastrophic Anthopogenic Global Warming meme, itself another differentiation in the climate argument which is now steadily creeping into this whole argument.
  99. John K. says:
    A man-made climate change is a next charlatanry in a line with decades-lasted a gender-change-story of a twin mutilated.
    To date, a collection of related works by Michael Kerjman, an author of significant “The X-challenge: the realm of senses”, paved a path to understand this merely natural process.
  100. Latitude says:
    Jon says:
    November 20, 2013 at 2:55 pm
    The results show that 73% (52% + 10% + 11%) feel that humans have at least some role to play in global warming … do they not?
    ====
    Jon, that 11% is 11% of the 20% (labeled “insufficient evidence – unknown”) (~2%) which was an even smaller number of respondents to the follow up (second) email…
    ..the bigger question is who are the 74% that didn’t respond at all
    Noting that most meteorologists either work for a business (ie Weather Channel) or the government (NOAA, NASA, etc) that have a global warming promotion agenda….
  101. rogerknights says:
    Dumb Scientist says:
    November 20, 2013 at 12:55 pm
    [snip - not interested in your characterization of me - Anthony]
    ==========================================
    Just a few days ago, dbstealey and Ferdinand Engelbeen drew my attention to the WUWT sidebar which criticizes SkS for deleting user comments and noted that this means SkS is “dishonest”.
    So it’s disappointing that my comment was snipped, but even more disappointing that Anthony claims it was because of a “characterization” after he accused John Cook and other SkS authors of dishonesty.
    The word used in the sidebar is “unreliable.”
  102. Mike Smith says:
    Jon says:
    The results show that 73% (52% + 10% + 11%) feel that humans have at least some role to play in global warming … do they not?
    Unfortunately, this study does not address the issue of significance. 0.0001% is “some role” but not one that anyone should fret over.
    I think almost every objective scientist would conclude that humans have made “some” contribution to warming if only by the Urban Heat Island effect. But nobody is their right mind would suggest that is something we should be spending a billion dollars a day to mitigate.
  103. NotAGolfer says:
    Again, there’s a huge difference between asking about “human induced” climate chsiange and “human-produced CO2″ climate change. I’d answer “yes” that humans affect climate significantly (rainforest deforestation, land use changes, etc), but I’d answer “no” that human-produced CO2 is causing any measurable effects on climate.
  104. dp says:
    Because only 1% claim they don’t know the cause the entire poll is rubbish. Nobody knows the cause and so nobody knows if it is going to continue to warm, cool, or remain stagnant. To put it another way, if anyone were certain of the cause there would be no reason for the poll, and there really would be a consensus. This is not a poll of what is known, but what is believed. I’m sure popularity is not a characteristic of science.
  105. u.k.(us) says:
    Dumb Scientist says:
    November 20, 2013 at 11:28 am
    ===========
    Just looked at your website, you don’t shy away from controversial subjects do you.
    How does your traffic compare to WUWT ??
    I think it is “alexa” that knows, who’s reading the material.
  106. Well rather than doing polls of themselves and publishing the results it just might be this group start looking for better front men to sell the product.
    Al Gore not so much on the trusted side now.
    The current head of sales Pres. Obama just showed a decided lack of how to finish the sale of the current lie he is task to sell, some chance this even larger lie will be even harder to do a roll out of a web site on.
    If not they can show their own faces to the public and sell these lies up front on TV live themselves.
    Put up or shut up. All hat and no warming.
  107. Latitude says:
    dp says:
    November 20, 2013 at 4:34 pm
    Because only 1% claim they don’t know
    ============
    “To support this committee, in January 2012 we surveyed all AMS members with known email addresses, achieving a 26.3% response rate….”
    I would bet my money that 75% know and didn’t want to admit it….
  108. thingadonta says:
    In future years people will look back at Cook et al’s paper and just shake their head at how muddled it was. It should never have got past peer review. History isn’t usually kind to statistical fabrication.
  109. Dumb Scientist says:
    [Snip. 24-hour timeout, per Anthony. Timeout began @1:38 pm, 11/20/2013. — mod.]
  110. JohnWho says:
    Scott Basinger says:
    November 20, 2013 at 2:01 pm
    From what I’ve seen of his posts, Dumb Scientist’s tag seems to have been come by honestly.
    Well, yeah, except for the “scientist” part.
    LOL
  111. OldEngland says:
    just 13% of US meteorologists think climate change is caused by humans .
  112. JJ says:
    Alvin says:
    Yes, mostly natural is so low. Why?
    Because they didn’t respond to the questionnaire.
    A self selected survey of a group of people that have a strong incentive to keep their head down if their opinion doesn’t conform to the party line is meaningless except as an indicator of dissent by non-participation. More crap that never should have been published.
  113. Bart says:
    Dumb Scientist says:
    November 20, 2013 at 12:55 pm
    “…after he accused John Cook and other SkS authors of dishonesty.”
    Not just accused, but tried and convicted. You should look up the original WUWT posts which documented specific transgressions in detail. They are indeed an ethically challenged lot at SkS.
    Their posts which I have read are also not generally high quality. You should be very careful about accepting anything from them as factual without double and triple checking the original sources yourself.
  114. Txomin says:
    @albertalad
    Please explain why and how the last countries to industrialize (if at all), that is to say, the poorest, are the ones to “blame”.
  115. Red Nek Engineer says:
    I am an AMS Fellow, a CCM and member for 40 years. it is well known I am a skeptic and have given talks at the AMS broadcast conferences and Annual meeting. I was not surveyed. None of my colleagues who I spoke to today are AMS seal holders and known skeptics were surveyed. It is not that they don’t have my address. I get their bills and magazines.
  116. Gary Pearse says:
    Margaret Hardman says:
    November 20, 2013 at 11:48 am
    “So what you’re saying is that a certain percentage of an national organisation of meteorologists, not climate scientists, have said something a bit different to a survey of abstracts of published papers on climate change. Really.”
    Margaret, so you’d exclude the professional who spends everyday studying and forecasting weather, storm tracks, clouds, precipitation, hurricane strengths, blizzards, tornadoes but include astronomers, psychologists, oceanographers, biologists, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers as long as they support the hype. I know you yourself are simply a follower, which is okay, even laudable that you have the interest, but a wise follower would at least realize they may have something to learn from either side of the debate rather than, with no knowledge of climate, to filter ideas out that criticize the establishment.
    Would it surprise you to know that Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit, armed with a formidable expertise in statistics has debunked the work of many of the main proponents of CAGW theory. Indeed, a number of prominent papers were withdrawn after publication when his critiques were presented. Interestingly, he is not even a d_eni_er. He just can’t stand badly done statistics, omissions of non-supportive samples and drawing conclusions not supported by the data. He was of course escoriated severely in the Climategate emails by the climate aristocracy for doing it but none could find any effective way to criticize his methods. Climate Audit is a must read for even the faithful. When they publish a paper, they immediately go to CA to see (with some intrepidation, I imagine) to see what their nemesis has to say about it. We know this because if he has criticized their work, there is a worldwide storm in all the blogs and op eds of the compliant MSM.
    Would it surprise you to know that all thinking skeptics know and accept that there has been a period of warming, actually since the Little Ice Age and prior to than, there have been many periods of warming – several historically and prehistorically that surpass today’s warm period, and cooling and deep freezing before humankind ever lit a match. Climate is a fascinating subject but the CAGW unprecented types had a free-for-all love-in that didn’t demand rigorous work before skeptics began to investigate their work. If we were all just a bunch of shills for big CO2 emitters as the way we are usually dismissed, why would they be so aggrieved by skeptic’s science and math? No Margaret, serious, apolitical skeptics who are causing these tremors are physicists, mathematicians, engineers, economists (who look at the costs of adaptation to emissions or emission controls) who can understand and audit the work. I, like many (for example Anthony Watts) was a believer in the idea that humans were causing warming and other damage and that something had to be done. When their work didn’t stand up to scrutiny and dire predictions weren’t even seeming to come to pass (agricultural output was increasing, forests were growing faster, the planet was noticeably greening, etc.) and the shenanigans of Climategate, torturing of data, cherry picking data to match expectations, the schmoozing with political and ideological factions, etc., hey, I and many others became skeptics.
  117. Lance Wallace says:
    The preliminary report by Maibach can be found at the link below.
    He gives a completely different picture of the survey aims from the later Stenhouse et al report:
    “The aim of the survey was to answer the following five research questions:
    RQ1: Do AMS members feel there is unproductive conflict about climate change within AMS? If so, what do they see as the nature of that conflict? Do they feel able to talk about the issues?
    RQ2: If members feel there is unproductive conflict within the membership, to what degree would they support efforts by AMS to better understand the nature of the conflict and take steps to mediate it?
    RQ3: What is the range of views among AMS members regarding the existence of climate change, its causes (human v natural), and its implications (i.e., the degree to which it is seen as a serious problem, or not; the degree to which climate change can be limited)? Are members’ views of the conflict (see RQ1 and 2) related to their views about climate change?
    RQ4: To what degree do members feel AMS should play an active role in educating the public and other external audiences (e.g., policy makers) about climate change? How large a priority should this be?
    RQ5: To what extent are AMS members themselves willing to play a role in educating the public and other external audiences? What, if anything, are they currently doing in this capacity? What, if anything, additional would they like to do?”
    This has utterly nothing to do with the supposed four “hypotheses” claimed by Stenhouse et al. If the survey was not designed with those hypotheses clearly laid out in the survey design and ethics board approval, it is not acceptable to apply new hypotheses ex post facto. Can Stenhouse et al show us documents where these hypotheses were laid out as part of the justification of the survey?
  118. Gary Pearse says:
    Lance Wallace says:
    November 20, 2013 at 7:12 pm
    Lance, the biggest question I have is: Why on earth is it important to resolve professional conflict on a technical subject. Are they seeking a consensus? Are they considering a cultural revolution type correction of wrong thinking? The wording is very mealy-mouthed and I agree with the premise that they hadn’t expected such results and don’t know how to express themselves on it. How would you define what they mean by “conflict”? Can anyone here tell me what the conflict is? I think they mean that they are disturbed that the profession isn’t toeing the official line.
  119. rogerknights says:
    Gary Pearse says:
    November 20, 2013 at 7:27 pm
    Lance Wallace says:
    November 20, 2013 at 7:12 pm
    Lance, the biggest question I have is: Why on earth is it important to resolve professional conflict on a technical subject. Are they seeking a consensus?
    Possibly the leadership is annoyed at the pushback it’s gotten regarding its position statement.
  120. norah4you says:
    Answer to Dumb Scientist November 20, 2013 at 11:28 am
    I always thought that all scientists had to pass at least basic courses in Theories of Science…. I might be wrong in that assumption. Anyhow you seem not to have read Darell Huff, How to lie with statistics, New York : Norton, 1954
    ISBN 0-393-09426-X
    Might be an old book, read it myself first time in 70th when studying Mathematical Statistic, but it’s content still one of the best there is to show what magical trics some use to prove non-science theories….
  121. Sceptical lefty says:
    “The whole consensus chasing is a waste of time in my opinion, Mother Nature will be the final arbiter of the AGW issue- Anthony”
    To anyone interested in ideal science the above remark rings absolutely true. Unfortunately, real science — how it’s actually done — is heavily dependent on consensus and the godlike pronouncements of acknowledged ‘authorities’. (Most people really don’t want to think: they want their opinions formed by those whom they choose to believe.)
    Be that as it may, I still think that you more effectually retain the high moral ground by arguing the science; and you concede ground by getting into the gutter and arguing “consensus” with those you so rightly despise. It doesn’t matter that you are correct on this point — you still pick up some of the smell.
  122. phil wright says:
    i’ve noticed in the last year or so that the “climate change” department of uk Guardian newspaper site has been taken over by …”the 97% consensus”. it is almost like an sks mouthpiece.not good at all!
  123. Chris Wright says:
    “Is global warming happening?”
    This is a meaningless question. Warming did occur in parts of the two previous centuries, but there has been none in this century.
    If I had to answer the question I would have to say no, because the question is in the present tense. But I am quite sure some amount of warming did occur in the last century.
    The question should have been: “Did global warming occur during the 20th century?”. A secondary question could be: “Has global warming occurred during the 21st century?”
    It does seem rather basic.
    Chris
  124. Ed Zuiderwijk says:
    Could it be that the category “non-publishers” under the “climate science” are those who could not get their work published (as opposed to did not produce any publications) and are consequently elbowed out of their jobs and are now doing something else instead?
  125. Ed Zuiderwijk says:
    I’m one of those who ‘need to be “educated” about climate change’. Exciting!
    Bring it on and see who’s thoughest. (aka: put your finger between my teeth and learn how well I still function).
  126. Tim Clark says:
    Scott Basinger says:
    November 20, 2013 at 2:01 pm
    “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.” – Winston Churchill
  127. RaiderDingo says:
    This came in the form of a new paper published by the American Met. Society (AMS) that surveyed its members on the subject.The paper studied the views of 1,821 survey respondents (only about 1/4 of its total members) with meteorological and atmospheric “expertise” (not ‘climate scientists’ per say). Only 124 of these respondents had published papers focused mostly on climate.
    Of this sub-group, 98% agreed that global warming was happening and 78% also agreed that it was mostly man-made. A further 10% thought it was jointly man-made/natural and 5% more agreed that there was probably some human influence. So in total, 93% of respondents with expertise in climate science agreed that global warming was both i) happening and ii) at least partly man-made, with a big majority believing it was ‘mostly’ man-made.
    Alas, Anthony didn’t see that this result actually supports previous results showing a high degree of agreement among scientists *with expertise in climate science* that global warming is both i) happening and 2) at least partly man made. Even among the non-climate experts surveyed there was 73% agreement that global warming is both i) happening and 2) at least partly man made.
  128. Peter Mott says:
    In the paper (which is linked in the post) they say: “In terms of strength of the relationship between the independent and dependent variables,perceived consensus was the strongest predictor of all three types of global warming views certainty, causation, and harm/benefit.”
    That is, those scientists who believed there was a consensus were likely to subscribe to it. So we have a sort of syllogism: A scientist who believes there is a consensus that P will believe that P. Most scientists believe there is a consensus that P therefore Mosts scientist believe that P
    It follows that there is a consensus that P … and loop. This obviously means that one should not pay much attention to whether there is a consensus or not. Because the consensus arises not from the science but from sociological/psychological facts about scientists.
  129. Owen says:
    52% agree. WHAT? I’m shocked the number is this high.
    These people have the best education, knowledge and information that is available and it clearly shows the whole thing is a scam. For them to believe that global warming/ climate change is manmade is appalling. This 52% number is nothing to cheer about.
  130. Chris R. says:
    Not too surprising. I would hazard a guess a guess that a large majority
    of readers of this site believe that human actions did cause some substantial
    fraction of the global warming which seems to have peaked circa
    A.D. 2000. Again, I would guess that most readers/posters here
    believe some combination of the following:
    (a) A doubling of CO2 will result in some warming, but less (perhaps
    MUCH less) than the approximately 3 degrees Centigrade that the
    IPCC trumpets.
    (b) CO2 (and other GH gases) are a factor, but are not the dominant
    effect.
    (c) Natural feedback will turn negative and halt any influence of GH
    gases far below any catastrophic level.
    (d) Claimed negative effects of warming are exaggerated and, even if
    they do exist, are much farther in the future than Al Gore and minions
    would claim.
    (e) Solar activity in some fashion was a rather larger contributor to the
    warming that peaked circa A.D. 2000 than is believed by the IPCC.
    The recent “pause” in global warming coinciding with a period of decreased
    sunspot activity helps lend some credence to this thought.
    As I say, this is purely my guess, based on reading comments on this
    site for years. I think that some linear combination of the thoughts
    above is the majority opinion of readers of this site,
  131. Mumbles McGuirk says:
    I participated in this survey and remember thinking at the time how poorly worded it was. I feel a much better survey could’ve been designed and its results would’ve been far more illuminating.
    I think it’s interesting that the highest degree of agreement with the CAGW hypothesis is among highly published climate scientist. These tend to be modelers and not traditional climatologist (i.e those who deal with real world data to reconstruct past climates.) Modelers tend to view the real world as a poor approximation of their models, the Pause is a failure of reality to keep pace with their simulations. They ‘buy into’ CAGW because they work by induction, where the evidence is suppose to support the theory not ‘tother way around.
  132. dbstealey says:
    Mumbles,
    For a neutral fair and survey they need to include an equal number of catastrophic AGW skeptics, selected by the skeptics themselves.
    But that will not happen with any of these organizations, because global warming propaganda is their motive, not science.
  133. daveburton says:
    On February 17, 2013 Berényi Péter made a particularly insightful observation. He wrote:
    To test consensus position on a particular topic of science, correct methodology requires genuine experts of that very field to be excluded from the poll.
    If you wanted to know, for example, [whether] homeopathy was science or pseudoscience, [to decide if] it deserved financial support from government on taxpayer’s money, you’d never ask a group of homeopaths if they believed substances diluted until not a single molecule of the supposed agent remained in them had still beneficial effect, would you? Even if you would and found 98% consensus on this issue among them, it would be utterly meaningless.
    On the other hand, asking experts of neighboring disciplines like doctors, pharmacologists, biologists, nurses and the like makes sense.
    It is the same with climatology. As soon as the scientific value of the basic paradigm of a field, in this case fitting multiple computational models of high complexity to a single run of a unique physical instance, is questioned, it is up to experts of neighboring fields to decide its validity. They may not be able to do their own research in that field, but they do have ample background to understand and evaluate the methods applied in the field in question.
    A “neighboring discipline” of climatology is meteorology (and meteorologists are particularly well-equipped to recognize the difference between climate and mere weather).
    From the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society we learned that most American broadcast meteorologists say that they disagree with the IPPC claim that humans are primarily responsible for recent global warming. A newer survey of all American broadcast meteorologists by researchers at George Mason University confirmed that result.
    Even back in 2007, before Climategate, when Harris polled 500 leading American Meteorological and Geophysical scientists (a broader category; details here), there was no consensus. Harris found that: “97% agree that ‘global average temperatures have increased’ during the past century. But not everyone attributes that rise to human activity. A slight majority (52%) believe this warming was human-induced, 30% see it as the result of natural temperature fluctuations and the rest are unsure.”
  134. Bill from Nevada says:
    The bizarre thing about Climate Science is how far it is from it’s roots.
    In the early days when I was a boy the atmosphere was a cold dry bath of nitrogen and oxygen.
    It was cold because only a little of it absorbed any energy from the sun or the earth,
    and what there was of it, dimmed the sun relative to earth by 20%.
    The atmosphere made the world cooler overall, by quite a bit by blocking that 20%.
    After it reflected that much from ever getting to earth, the atmosphere itself was still cold,
    and it was still heat conductive, therefore the atmosphere contributed at night, to cooling through conduction, and through convection, as well as radiatively.
    In the day time the same conduction convection and radiation worked,
    and the water cycle’s phase change refrigeration cycle,
    added to the conduction created by, it’s own convection.
    The atmosphere was referred to as a greenhouse, STRICTLY to CHILDREN.
    In the day when I was learning physics,
    nobody had the nerve to stand up and say they reflected 20% energy from a sphere and made temperatures on target sensors attached to it, rise, using magic insulation.
    It’s preposterous outright.
    Similarly after that initial amount is reflected away, the atmosphere is still very cold.
    And no matter who they were when there were still honest men in the scientific world,
    nobody claimed immersion into refrigerated fluid,
    removed less heat than illumination in vacuum.
    Conduction nor convection are there to aid removal.
    Even trying to persuade people that they should think of the atmosphere as ever heating the earth is evidence of some need to invert the science.
    And of the 20% light blocked by the atmosphere?
    The 20% blocking that light, cooling the globe through reflection of 20% away
    is CO2.
    And Water.
    The ones cooling us by blocking half the infrared, which is about a fifth of the sun’s total
    are the ones claimed in the scam to do the ‘warming.’
    As you can see: removal of 20% energy in, forbids warming by the atmosphere, by definition.
    As you can see subsequent spinning of the globe in a freezing cold heat conductive bath,
    that’s not ‘warming. Heat sensors don’t go UP when you heat in vacuum then immerse in refrigerated, low temperature fluid baths, even gas ones.
    And as you can see further the very gases blocking that 20% are the ones fingered for ‘heating’.
    These three foundational errors spell: scam. Fraud. Falsehood, willfully contrived and maintained,
    through systematically lying, and assassinating the character of anyone objecting.
    It’s a scam.
    It always was,
    from the time when they had to invert that the atmosphere is actually a cooling, fluid bath.
    You can’t raise a heat sensor output by denying it 20%, energy.
    You can’t raise a heat sensor output by spinning immersed in frigid fluid gas baths, at one atmosphere pressure.
    You can’t raise a heat sensor output using the energy screen, you blocked 20% E in, with.
    You young people have been had.
    It took a lot of money and nerve to turn a cooling conductive bath
    into a giant heater.
    It’s going to take a lot of nerve for you to take science back over with honest men.
  135. 97% of scientists a hundred years ago believed eugenics was proven. 97% of scientists fifteen years ago assumed the human genome project would answer seminal questions about health and disease and promptly lead to valuable therapies. Instead they found out that humans have fewer genes than do tomato plants… and the field of epigenetics was born… and the arrogance of those who called 97% of our genome (the non-expressed part) “junk DNA” was exposed for what it was. We don’t know what we don’t know, but ought to have enough sense when standing outside very complex systems like weather/climate or trying to appreciate how molecular biology works that the likelihood that we know much is low. But politics, money and fame get in the way — and there are always a whole bunch of progressives lined up to be true believers and tell the rest of us what to do — for the “greater good,” mind you! Yuk!
  136. Stephen says:
    I found this very interesting in light of a recent talk I attended at McGill University’s “Is That a Fact” conference on education and epistemology. Apparently, so few publications in peer-reviewed journals stand up to independent verification (~ 10%) that industries independently check science-results before trying to develop technology based upon them. That the “non-publishers”, the ones whose work is directly applied to the real world rather than in academia and who run into trouble for errors rather than silence, disagree with the publishers would alone tll me something is very wrong in the science.
  137. Aaron C says:
    Stephen that is an excellent point. I saw another person say so, too. If there was a fair test of whether it is real, it would be what those scientists outside the research climate field think of them.
    That’s the real measure of their standing in science. “We awl Say Were Smart”
    delivering the kind of trash this whole field has delivered up… just very good point.
    Kudos to whomever saw and said it first above before we did here.
    That’s like…. the ONLY point really.
    I have come here a long time I am glad people are catching up to this pseudoscience. It has given all science work a bad name. Keep up the good work every one don’t let this kind of government employee run, database alteration crime, ruin all our countries, harass these peoples’ work out of existence.
  138. Chris says:
    62% believe global warming is happening and is 50% or more caused by man. 9% believe that global warming is not happening or that the warming that is occurring is entirely natural. The other respondents are either unsure whether warming is occurring or unsure as to the causes. So out of the respondents that have made up their minds, by a ratio of 5:1 they believe that global warming is occurring and that 50% or more of that warming is caused by man.
    Also, in the summary, Anthony made this statement: “The other 48 percent either questioned whether global warming is happening or would not ascribe human activity as the primary cause.” 20% of the 48% responded “global warming is happening but there is insufficient evidence to know the cause”, 1% said “global warming is happening but they don’t know the cause.” I don’t see how that 21% can be categorized as “would not ascribe human activity as the primary cause.” Or, to look at the converse, I could say” 21% believe global warming is occurring and would not ascribe natural variation as the primary cause” – I doubt you would agree with that wording.
  139. Mumbles McGuirk says:
    dbstealey says:
    November 21, 2013 at 9:39 am
    Mumbles,
    For a neutral fair and survey they need to include an *equal number of catastrophic AGW skeptics*, selected by the skeptics themselves.
    But that will not happen with any of these organizations, because global warming propaganda is their motive, not science.
    ———————————————————————————————————————–
    dbstealy,
    No, that’s not true. You are trying to sample the entire population of AMS membership to find out how many are skeptics, warmists, luke-warmists, etc. What you want to check for is that your sample is random by checking to see if the sample population matches the general population in such non-related measures such as age, gender, etc. They did that in this survey and found the answering population slightly skewed from the general AMS population (fewer women, more older members, etc.) The problem with these type of polls is that they are self-selecting, meaning those with an axe to grind or otherwise motivated are far more likely to answer. I am a skeptic and I was highly motivated to answer this poll because I felt my perspective was not represented in the AMS leadership.
    My complaint about the poll was the vague terminology of the survey, they used a definition of GW that was so board no one would disagree with it. They didn’t try to narrow down how much climate change members thought is due to anthropogenic vs. natural forcing. And they didn’t address the consequences of climate change except in wide terms. If I were designing the poll I would’ve tried to narrow down the specifics of what members really thought about different climate change theories. But there was a definite bias in the pollsters and it never even occurred to them that there would be different views among the membership.
  140. tallbloke says:
    I wonder what the result would have been if they’d asked for attribution from 1950 rather than 1850.
  141. claimsguy says:
    The methodology DB suggests isn’t really an opinion survey, it’s an election.
    And Dingo makes a good point: this paper actually supports the central tenet of the “consensus” argument: that the greater your expertise in climate science, the more likely it is that you have concluded that AGW is real.
  142. Aaron C says:
    You know when a field of science gets politicized one side or the other is scamming.
    When men tell you the world is going to end based on their data but they might need the data later for commercial purposes so he doesn’t want to share it with you, (Michael Mann)
    you know it’s just pure crime.
  143. Aaron C says:
    My point is that everyone who has followed this knows people who believe in it are constantly being caught being outright incompetent; whereas the people who don’t,
    they keep on refusing to budge and the hysteria is slowly peeled back,
    revealing bad science that is undoubtedly beyond honest and upright government employement.

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