The invented political notion that 99% of climate scientists believe humans have caused all or most recent global warming has been dealt another significant blow. A group of Israeli scientists has examined the widely-publicised claim by the climate activist Mark Lynas that there is a 99% ‘consensus’ that humans cause most warming. Led by Yonatan Dubi, Professor of Chemistry and Physics at Ben Gurion University, the scientists found that massive flaws and biases riddled the Lynas work, implying the conclusions of the study do not follow from the data.
This work matters. The claims of a 99% consensus, along with an earlier 97% figure, are widely used in political and media circles to shut down debate over anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Sceptical scientists – even those as distinguished as last year’s Nobel Physics Prize winner Dr. John Clauser – can be dismissed as cranks and deniers. Of course consensus is not proof, which is notably lacking in the model-driven climate science field. However the Israeli authors observe a consensus claim is “influential in bolstering the reception of a particular thesis within the broader public sphere”. This leads to “less quantifiable statements”, such as humanity is facing an imminent climate crisis, and is followed by global calls for action. Not to put too fine a point on it, the collectivist Net Zero project relies on a fake scientific consensus that crumbles when exposed to the most basic scrutiny.
The Lynas et al. paper, which examined the ‘abstracts’ of 3,000 papers, is riddled with errors. It assumes that all papers taking ‘no position’ on AGW are in support of the hypothesis. The Israeli authors note that sceptical scientists tend not to emphasise scepticism in the opening abstract as work not supporting the political narrative on climate is now almost impossible to get published in the major science journals. Careful analysis of how sceptical papers diplomatically “fit the consensus” suggests the actual number of scientists agreeing with AGW may be on the “low side”, conclude the examining authors.
The dictionary definition of consensus is a “general agreement” or “the judgement arrived at by most of those concerned”. The authors are clear in their judgement: “No claim for consensus can be made from the data presented in Lynas et al.”
This is not the first time such outlandish ‘consensus’ claims have been critically examined. In 2013, John Cook asserted that 97% of 11,944 peer-reviewed science papers explicitly endorsed the opinion that humans had caused the majority of the warming over the last 150 years. But, 7,930 of those papers took no position on anthropogenic change and were excluded from the 97% claim. It was subsequently revealed that only about 0.5% of the papers explicitly stated that recent warming was mostly human caused.
At the time, a former IPCC author Professor Richard Tol said that Cook’s nonsense paper showed the climate community still had a long way to go in weeding out bad research and bad behaviour. For their part, the Israeli scientists note that their criticisms also apply in general to earlier consensus studies based on abstract scanning, and it is to be regretted that they were “not taken into consideration” by Lynas et al. “It is thus crucially important to understand the limitations of, and the good practices required of, these types of consensus studies”. The matter is said to be too important to be left “blurry and subjective”.
These days, Mark Lynas is the Communication Strategist and Climate Lead for the Alliance of Science, a non-profit operation linked to Cornell University. Its primary source of funding is said to be the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In the past, his career has taken a number of colourful turns. He first drew attention to himself in 2001 when he threw a cream pie into the face of the sceptical climate economist Bjorn Lomborg. He was behind the PR stunt in 2009 when the Government of the Maldives met under water to raise fears about rising sea levels. Happily this is not a problem for the Maldives, since overall the islands have grown in recent years. In 2007 he wrote an article in the Guardian reporting on the possibility of global warming producing fuel air bombs caused by oceanic methane eruptions. These would be equivalent to 10,000 times the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons.
Always the activist and politician, Lynas has also entered the recent debate around the deaths caused by onshore wind turbines of millions of bats and large numbers of raptors such as eagles. As the Policy Director of Audubon California, he said we needed renewable energy, and eagle deaths should not be “used to push against clean energy”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Cook’s original 97% consensus is a well known fraud, it is the opposite 3-5%, blame humans for climate – an utter unfounded stupidity. And why the hell would I believe the label ‘science’ or ‘scientist’ – who are they? Priests, Prophets, Doom Mongers for sale? Climate-itutes?
Consensus means nothing. Anthropocentric Climate Change does not exist. There is no physical proof it exists. It exists only in models and maths, and fake data. It is tautological. I ‘prove’ the maths therefore the theory is right. Or, my data is ‘peer reviewed’ which proves my theory. Both are tautological lies. $cientism. Science was the study of the physical. Now it is just marketing of maths and fake data.
Einstein’s postulates (amongst a thousand examples), suffer from the same (unproven canonical models) but who has the balls to question the nonsense of STR? (or much else for that matter)
To be fair Einstein’s theories of relativity are testable and have been shown to work. On the other hand QM and the wave function are articles of faith. I tend to be attracted to pilot wave theory but physicists get techy about the existence of pilot waves whilst simultaneously accepting the wave function without evidence. The interpretation particles exist only as probabilities till arbitrarily measured has to be the most stupid theory in all of science.
Yes but no one is trying to reorganise the global economy based on what they claim about relativity or black holes or evolution. But they are trying to do that with climate change, and they are mostly succeeding because most people think matters of science are not to be questioned. They think scientists know more than them. This mostly is true, but what they forget is that the issue of climate is highly politicised and is no longer about science. A good analogy is the used car salesman. He knowns probably way more than me about cars, but I don’t always end up buying one. —WHY? Because I use my own experience and initiative in making the decision.
Totally agree the climate nonsense is a scam and interpretation of QM aren’t destroying the economy. Science fundamentally however has been irrational a long while, the replication crisis shows it’s largely descended in to lying and superstition, ppl trying to get high profiles with extreme claims unsupported by evidence, eg Neil Ferguson.
What about the hypothesis (not even a theory yet…) that CO2 controls temperature?
Rising Co2 is an effect of the small amount of warming coming out of mini ice age as described by Henry’s law. Cold liquids hold more co2, warming oceans therefore release it, plus we add a burning to co2 concentrations burning fossil fuels. The idea it’s earth’s thermostat is preposterous cow manure.
Refuted by the lack of correlation between the increase of CO2 emissions and alleged increase of rate of global warming.
Scientific ground rule: if there is a causal relationship between two variables, then there MUST be correlation. It can’t just be sometimes.
In fact as emissions have increased, alleged rate of global warming flatlined (late 90s) then within 8 to 10 years started to decline slightly.
I say alleged because the Climatists collect average temperatures from around some of the Globe, most not accurate to 0.5C, run them through their algorithm-rich computer programme and out the other side comes numbers with greater accuracy than the input numbers, to show alleged warming to two decimal places.
Keep chipping away at this evil lie Chris, great work.
What all this shows, more than anything else, is that public opinion is driven by whatever the media chooses to amplify. And to the extent that policy is driven by public opinion, policy is driven by whatever the media chooses to amplify.
The question that no one seems to be getting at is: how does the media select what it chooses to amplify?
Yes, I think “chooses” should be within inverted commas. Who tells the media what to amplify?
Money. Especially the profit margin.
No Climate Crisis
leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, media, friends online.
Claims that 99% (or even 97%) of climate $cientists believe humans have caused most global warming is the equivalent of Courtiers claiming that the King is wearing the most beautiful suit of clothes ever seen when he is obviously naked…..and they obviously have “a personal interest” in going along with the pretence.
Plenty of eminent physicists disagree but they are silenced.
Thank you for keeping on following the money, Chris.
And as for the rest, per Einstein: “to defeat relativity one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact.”
Indeed.
Another excellent expose of the fraud that is climate science…follow the money. But who is listening in our Government? I can see the monkey’s now with their hands over their ears.
No new reports are required. —-Matters of science are NOT decided by a show of hands from government funded data adjusters. But political matters are, and that is what climate change is —-POLITICS. The IPCC is a political body, not a scientific one, and its conclusions are all entirely political. Climate is the excuse for the politics. The politics of “Sustainable Development” which is all about a world run by unelected technocrats controlling all of the world’s wealth and resources. The quicker ordinary people realise that the more likely they are to rise up against being fobbed off with heat pumps and expensive energy and the whole GREEN eco socialist scam. ———–But this is highly unlikely as most people too busy with work and family life blindly accept what they see and hear on 90% of the media and the endless pronouncements from bureaucrats at UN podiums about a climate crisis which no real science actually supports. As someone once pointed out “Practical Politics is all about scaring the populace with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary, se we clamour to be led to safety”
Most people I know buy in to the “western liberal democracy” myth. They assume democracy works to ensure that governments do what the people want. They believe the media holds power to account on their behalf. “But why would they lie to us?”, they ask.
My brother said the very same thing—-“Why would people say there is global warming if it isn’t true”? ———-mmmmmmm Oh dear where to begin. So I said to him “Most people don’t believe a word coming from government these days. They don’t trust them on many issues, like immigration, the economy, foreign policy, welfare etc etc etc. So why do you want to believe everything that say about climate change? ——-So he said “because the scientists are telling us this”. ——————-I said “Can you even name a climate scientist? —–Nope he can’t and what he doesn’t realise is that all of these “scientists” he thinks he is referring to are all funded by the government, and as someone wisely pointed out “never buy medicine from the same doctor that diagnosed your malady”. —-A wise man indeed.
I recommend reading the Lynas paper and the Israeli paper. The Israeli paper makes two main criticisms of Lynas:
“No opinion” papers are counted as conforming to the consensus
Sceptical papers may not appear as sceptical in the abstract
The second objection has some validity but is really hard to quantify. The first objection dismisses the fact that in the Lynas paper he gives two estimates of the proportion of sceptical papers – one counting “no opinion” papers as conforming to the consensus and one omitting these papers – both give an estimate of over 99%. The Israeli paper does mention this but dismisses it with these words:
However, this was not the main result presented by Lynas et al., although they briefly mention this point.
In fact Lynas et al give both approaches almost equal weight and anyhow both approaches support the headline of over 99%.
Our estimate of the proportion of consensus papers was 1 − (4/2718) = 99.85%. The 95% confidence limits for this proportion are 99.62%–99.96% (see R code in supplementary info), therefore it is likely that the proportion of climate papers that favour the consensus is at least 99.62%.
Recalculating at the 99.999% confidence level gives us the interval 99.212%–99.996%, therefore it is virtually certain that the proportion of climate papers that do not dispute that the consensus is above 99.212%.
If we repeat the methods of C13 and further exclude papers that take no position on AGW (i.e. those rated 4a), we estimate the proportion of consensus papers to be 99.53% with the 95% confidence interval being 98.80%–99.87%.
Surely the much deeper problem with this approach is that it measures papers not scientists. Some scientists publish many more papers than others.
I make the further observation that both studies only refer to peer-reviewed published papers. This might seem an inconsequential detail but given 1) the almost total capture of scientific publication by regulatory and other vested interests and 2) the ongoing discrediting of the peer-review process (in large part predicated on 1 above), it would be interesting to examine the thousands of papers languishing on pre-print servers. I suspect the percentages will appear very differently!
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328721001695
https://www.wsj.com/articles/hank-campbell-the-corruption-of-peer-review-is-harming-scientific-credibility-1405290747
Certainly opinion polls of scientists give much lower numbers, for example this survey of American meteorologists found just 52% who thought global warming was happening and was mostly due to human causes https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/95/7/bams-d-13-00091.1.xml (first row of table 1) which is why the campaigners look at abstracts instead.
Yes but let’s remember that “opinion” is just that.—— “Opinion” isn’t evidence of anything. Computer models full of assumptions that many wrongly like to class as “science” are not evidence of anything either and that is where the idea of a climate crisis emanate from. Models full of speculation, assumption and guesses where many of the parameters are either not fully understood, or unknown altogether. If what is claimed by all of those with an “opinion” cannot be falsified then it isn’t science and it does not matter what anyone’s “opinion” is.
Consensus ————–The last refuge of scoundrels. It allows the many to say what no individual is able to say. Plus since almost all climate science (especially pertaining to climate change) is funded by government you can see why many are reluctant to question the political dogma that exists around this issue eg it is hard to get a person to disagree with something when his ability to pay his mortgage and feed his family depends entirely upon agreeing. ——-But you will find that most people will think that humans have some effect on the planet and they too will all be counted as part of the consensus. But climate change is not a simple black and white issue. It is not the case that there is either (a) climate change. or (b) there is no climate change. But that is how the discussion of this issue is framed by proponents of global warming and anyone who dares question any aspect of it is immediately named called as a “denier”.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/co2-is-not-a-bogeyman-and-heres-the-proof/
Further evidence that Co2 is not the bad guy. Not that I ever believed a trace gas constituting 0.04% of our atmosphere and without which all life would die could be harmful.
Dr Jerome Corsi’s presentation to MD4CE on Tuesday evening blows the climate apocalypse due to man made CO2 propaganda up completely.
An erudite, knowledgeable man with some interesting & challenging perspectives on a number of challenges which we’re currently facing.
Well worth a watch.
https://rumble.com/user/cbkovess
Have read this sentence several times and I don’t think I understand it:
“The Israeli authors note that sceptical scientists tend not to emphasise scepticism in the opening abstract as work not supporting the political narrative on climate is now almost impossible to get published in the major science journals.”
Anybody care to enlighten me?
It’s really just business as usual. Just more of the same myopic focus on just one side of the scientific narrative. The expression of any kind of climate scepticism in a paper’s abstract opening (which will presumably be read by the editors of journals when considering for publication) will mostly lead to immediate rejection. So, the speculation here is that the authors of many papers will cleverly word their abstract by dressing up their rejection of AGW as “taking no position”. This is the only way they can get published. Speculative though it may be, it ties in with the fact that on the follow-up to the Cook study in 2003 that led to the spurious “97%” result, emails sent by Cook himself to the authors of a random sample of the 12,000 or so papers confirmed that the “abstract scanner” volunteers had come to the wrong conclusion of any given paper rejecting AGW, since the abstract (the only part of the papers they read) misled them about the content!
“Sh*t guys, our conclusions don’t support the current Narrative™ which means it could affect our funding. Better make sure the abstract is as woolly and vague as possible and bury the conclusions somewhere in the text where the money schmucks won’t see it”.
Something like that, anyway.
A bit late. The fake percentages were discredited (and take-downs published) over a decade ago.
Only if Greta Thumberg claims it, will I believe it 😁
97% of climate crisis scientists would be unemployed if there was no climate crisis.
A very Good morning to those who Bought into this Fraud & now are smelling the coffee….they’ve Milked the industries out of finances! But don’t worry…. there will be something else you can believe in instead of the Climate Crisis soon…. just for you… Banking crisis… CBDC…. Viruses… or even as WEF promised , Cyber Attached or even aliens….. Just made for Fraud Lovers.
The greatest conspiracy in the history of mankind is barely a few clicks away, there for all to see and understand, if only people stopped for a moment to research and question the incessant drumbeat generated by oligarchic and institutional manipulators in chorus with the self-righteous and the ignorant. Because of the ubiquitous commitment behind the “Great Reset” being applied by those behind what is now known as agenda 2030, people have surrendered themselves, as have many through the ages, that once again ‘the sky is falling’.
Doomsday is upon us unless we get on our knees, diminish our entire civilisation, and self-flagellate until penanced into a computer-modelled, and thus achievable, utopian salvation.
The younger generation has, and is being indoctrinated within our seats of learning by an inexorable gospel that feeds on assumption and distorted theory.
Our children’s futures are in the hands of false prophets who will by no means be sharing in the deprivations and trials which are soon to be wrought upon we, the herded masses. The most evil of which is the imposition of Net Zero.