The Global Warming Consensus Claim

Two years later, it continues to not stand up to even the mildest scrutiny:

Consensus has no place in science. Academics agree on lots of things, but that does not make them true. Even so, agreement that climate change is real and human-caused does not tell us anything about how the risks of climate change weigh against the risks of climate policy. But in our age of pseudo-Enlightenment, having 97% of researchers on your side is a powerful rhetoric for marginalizing political opponents. All politics ends in failure, however. Chances are the opposition will gain power well before the climate problem is solved. Polarization works in the short run, but is counterproductive in the long run.

In their paper, Cook and colleagues argue that 97% of the relevant academic literature endorses that humans have contributed to observed climate change. This is unremarkable. It follows immediately from the 19th century research by Fourier, Tyndall and Arrhenius. In popular discourse, however, Cook’s finding is often misrepresented. The 97% refers to the number of papers, rather than the number of scientists. The alleged consensus is about any human role in climate change, rather than a dominant role, and it is about climate change rather than the dangers it might pose.

But other than that, it’s a compelling argument.

Yet the warm mongers continue to repeat it, because it fits the narrative.

[Update a while later]

Thoughts from Judith Curry on climate change, Ted Cruz, and “the Stupid Party.”

I agree with her that Cruz’s statements were actually quite reasonable.

[Update a while later]

Don’t ask how bad a paper has to be to get it retracted, ask how bad it can be and still be published.

Use of the “97%” number, at this point, is a sign of someone who is either a liar, or profoundly ignorant about the issues. In either case, such people should not be taken seriously.

20 thoughts on “The Global Warming Consensus Claim”

  1. I am changing the subject, only slightly.

    Rafael “Ted” Cruz announced he and his family are “going on Obamacare” and CNN had a giggly laugh fest about it.

    Senator and Presidential Candidate Ted Cruz said it was a “good thing” that he was going on Obamacare because in his view, it is a good thing that Members of Congress experience the effects of the laws that they pass, in Menken’s words, “good and hard.” Ted Cruz is making a public political point about Obamacare that he is going to “eat the same dog food” that is placed in front of millions of other Americans. Ted Cruz also made the point that he is submitting to the law, unlike You-Know-Who.

    Is this funny? No! Is this ironic or hypocritical? Gosh no! Are the people at CNN intellectually disabled? Most certainly yes.

    My on topic point is that if the Climate Change Consensus Contingent went to the same schools as the folks at CNN, they are equally brain-damaged by association.

    1. I’m seem to recall many in Rand’s comment section who opposed the law than and now, yet were forced by the law either to signup for an Obamacare plan or pay the penalty.

      I pay taxes too, but I don’t know how my paying taxes means I support paying more of them. Does the fact that 3% of the IRS not paying taxes mean they want to abolish income taxes?

      Yeah, some people have issues under standing correlation and causation. Cruz will now be using Obamacare, but the cause isn’t because he wants to use it and supports it.

      I may agree with Climate Change, but I don’t believe it is caused by man alone; and I haven’t seen much evidence to support either sustained Climate Change in general or specifically Global Warming as an overall trend.

      1. “I’m seem to recall many in Rand’s comment section who opposed the law than and now, yet were forced by the law either to signup for an Obamacare plan or pay the penalty.”

        Yup, we are all already on Obamacare whether we want to be or not. Obamacare is more than just a subsidized plan, it is the dictates that flow down from politicians on how companies have to operate, what insurance companies have to cover, and how doctors run their offices.

        Cruz won’t qualify for a subsidy but he could buy a plan off an exchange rather than directly from an insurance company and it doesn’t really matter because it is all Obamacare.

        1. “Cruz won’t qualify for a subsidy”

          He doesn’t qualify to run for President, either, since he was born to a Cuban father in Canada.

          1. He qualifies to run for President because he was born to an American mother who’d resided in the U.S. for at least 10 years, at least 5 of them after she turned 14, and according to U.S. law at the time that makes him an American citizen from birth (i.e. a “natural-born citizen”), regardless of where the birth took place.

            As for Obamacare, Cruz doesn’t qualify for an income-based subsidy, but some or all of his premium is paid by the government as an employment benefit.

          2. Under Canadian law, he’s Canadian, and was Canadian right up until he renounced his dual citizenship 3 years ago. I like the guy, and he qualifies to run for MP or Prime Minister in Canada, but not for President of the USA.

            Don’t think the Dems are going to say “no big deal” 18 months from now. If Cruz is the candidate, next October will be the first time low-information voters will hear that he was born in Canada to a Cuban father.

  2. I’d never seen the full quote before

    “There two parties in Washington — the stupid party and the evil party. Every once in a while the stupid party and the evil party get together and do something that is both stupid and evil. In Washington, that is called bipartisanship.”

    Truer words have rarely been spoken.

  3. It’s all part of the herd mentality – gotta’ keep tabs on what the rest of the herd is doing, and follow it. Right over the cliff.

  4. I would expect that this kind of analysis would be devastating to the current legal battle between Mann and NR/Steyn/Rand, even if only to erode the number of folks that remain willing to support Mann academically and financially. Are there any links to updates on the current status of that case?

  5. I agree with her that Cruz’s statements were actually quite reasonable.

    A dissenting view from a climate scientist cited by Cruz’s spokesman:

    Mr. Cruz (and others who seek to minimize the threat posed by climate change) likes to cite statistics about the last 17 years because 17 years ago, the Earth was experiencing a large ENSO [El Nino-Southern Oscillation] event and the observed temperatures were substantially above normal, and above any long-term trend line a reasonable person would draw. When one starts their analysis on an extraordinarily warm year, the resulting trend is below the true long term trend. It’s like a pro baseball player deciding he’s having a batting slump three weeks after a game when he hit three homers because he’s only considering those three weeks instead of the whole season.

    1. Yet that’s not what we were told when that peak occurred. We were told it would just keep going up from there, and told that over and over again. Meanwhile the warmists kept using the 1970’s as their baseline.

      1. Yup. And, when the standstill began, they said we’d have to wait 5 years before the AGW hypothesis would need a rethink. Then it was 10 years. Then 15. Now, it’s 20.

        The goalposts keep shifting, just like a Doomsday Cult that keeps having to move the Day of Reckoning forward every time the scheduled apocalypse fails to arrive.

    2. It doesn’t wash. You can make the same claim mutatis mutandis with regard to the previous warming which was the basis of the alarm.

    3. We need to keep in mind that a lot of people were willing to draw steep lines through the short term warming trend until there was a 17 year pause in that trend.

    4. So why didn’t the climate modellers consider ENSO 17 years ago? Could it be that if they had, they would have predicted a flattening of temperatures?

      Heh.

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