Facebook’s “Climate science center” Hypes “97% Experts Agree” Climate Alarmist Propaganda – Watts Up With That?

Guest essay by Larry Hamlin

Facebook’s “Climate science center” webpage (shown below) attempts to make its case by providing “Facts about climate change” vignettes that supposedly provide its best climate alarmist arguments on about 12 climate science topics with the first of these topics highlighting the central theme of the “cause of climate change” noted at the bottom portion of the photo.

The complete vignette for this lead “Facts about climate change” topic addresses the statement that “The cause of climate change is widely agreed upon in the scientific community” with that cause being the climate alarmist propaganda claim that “At least 97% of the published climate experts agree that global warming is real and caused by humans” as displayed below.

The Facebook description providing additional explanation allegedly in support of the “97% of published climate experts agree” claim can only be described as monumentally inept, completely incompetent and lacking any relevant supportive scientific specificity reads as follows:

“The myth that scientists disagree on climate change sometimes comes from misleading petitions that don’t accurately represent the climate science community. These open petitions typically include non-scientists and scientists working in unrelated fields. Among scientists who study and publish research on the earth’s climate, there is overwhelming agreement that human-caused global warming is happening.”

Professor Ross McKitrick (an expert in applied statistics that has led him to collaborative works across a wide range of topics in the physical sciences including paleoclimate reconstruction, surface temperature measurement and climate model evaluation in addition testifying on these topics before the U.S. Congress, making invited academic presentations and publishing articles in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Nature, Science and The Economist) provided a revealing article that exposes the extraordinary shenanigans behind the phony 97% claim that Facebook chooses to give such underserved prominence in its alleged “Facts about climate change” statements.

Dr. McKitrick notes the following key points regarding the phony fabricated derivation and use of the contrived 97% climate alarmist propaganda claim: 

“One of the most powerful rhetorical weapons being deployed is the claim that 97 per cent of the world’s scientists agree what the problem is and what we have to do about it.”

“But it would be a tragedy because the 97 per cent claim is a fabrication.”

“In 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama sent out a tweet claiming 97 per cent of climate experts believe global warming is “real, man-made and dangerous.” As it turns out, the survey he was referring to didn’t ask that question, so he was basically making it up.” 

“The most highly cited paper supposedly found 97 per cent of published scientific studies support man-made global warming. But in addition to poor survey methodology, that tabulation is often misrepresented. Most papers (66 per cent) actually took no position. Of the remaining 34 per cent, 33 per cent supported at least a weak human contribution to global warming. So divide 33 by 34 and you get 97 per cent, but this is unremarkable since the 33 per cent includes many papers that critique key elements of the IPCC position.”

“In 2012 the American Meteorological Society (AMS) surveyed its 7,000 members, receiving 1,862 responses. Of those, only 52% said they think global warming over the 20th century has happened and is mostly man-made (the IPCC position). The remaining 48% either think it happened but natural causes explain at least half of it, or it didn’t happen, or they don’t know. Furthermore, 53% agree that there is conflict among AMS members on the question.”

“So no sign of a 97% consensus. Not only do about half reject the IPCC conclusion, more than half acknowledge that their profession is split on the issue.”

“What can we take away from all this? First, lots of people get called “climate experts” and contribute to the appearance of consensus, without necessarily being knowledgeable about core issues. A consensus among the misinformed is not worth much.”

“It is obvious that the “97%” mantra is untrue. The underlying issues are so complex it is ludicrous to expect unanimity. The near 50/50 split among AMS members on the role of greenhouse gases is a much more accurate picture of the situation. The phony claim of 97% consensus is mere political rhetoric aimed at stifling debate and intimidating people into silence.”

The Facebook claims that “At least 97% of climate experts agree that global warming is real and caused by humans” and that “The myth that scientists disagree on climate change sometimes comes from misleading petitions that don’t accurately represent the climate science community” completely mischaracterize the politically driven shenanigans used by climate alarmists regarding the origin and fabrication of this falsely manipulated and specious propaganda claim.

Obamas flawed politically contrived utterances in 2013 about the phony “97% of climate experts agree” was not the first time he engaged in politically contrived and flawed climate science propaganda statements.

A 2016 article addressed Obama’s flawed misrepresentations of global sea level rise made during his 2008 Presidential campaign as follows:     

“In a May 15, 2016 Rutgers University graduation address President Obama told the assembled gathering (https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/05/15/remarks-president-commencement-address-rutgers-state-university-new) that “in politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue. It’s not cool to not know what you’re talking about.”

Yet Obama had told the country in his Democratic nomination acceptance speech on June 3, 2008 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/03/obamas-nomination-victory_n_105028.html) that we would be able to look back upon his nomination and tell our children that “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”.

Besides the monumental hubris of this statement, it is apparent that President Obama was ignorant of the fact that the oceans have been rising for thousands of years since the end of the last ice age.

The rates of ocean sea level change have varied significantly over this time period with more recent studies showing greater detail of ocean sea level change information over about the last two hundred years. These changes in ocean sea level have occurred as a result of natural climate caused events as clearly shown in information (slide #36) from a presentation (https://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/spe-curry-final.pdf) by Dr. Judith Curry regarding global climate science issues.”

NOAA tide gauge data shows the 115 year long Honolulu, Hawaii (Obama’s birth place) coastal location sea level rise trend measurement period with a stable rate of about 6.1 inches per century increase. President Obama’s claims that man made climate change was causing the oceans to rise and that during his administration “the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal” was based on his ignorance of well-established basic climate science. As the President has said “It’s not cool to not know what you’re talking about.”

In addition to ocean sea level rise data Dr. Curry also included self-explanatory labeled information in her presentation supporting the occurrence of natural climate driven behavior as a significantly contributing to the recent decades long global temperature increasing trend as shown in the graphs below from her presentation. 

The Democratic Party has been wrong for over 33 years now regarding its climate alarmism claims since it first started its politically contrived schemes to push its flawed climate alarmist agenda at the June 23,1988 Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearings in Washington DC. A June 30,2021 article addressed these huge failures on the 33rd anniversary of those hearings as follows:  

“A detailed review of the testimony from that hearing after 33 years of recorded climate history reveals a litany of the hearings flawed and failed speculation, conjecture and predictions of climate outcomes establishing the fact that the hearing got everything wrong from start to finish and in fact represents a celebration of an extraordinary number of failed predictions.

At the time of the hearing some regions of the Midwest and Southeast were undergoing a severe drought which led many Democratic Senators and other “experts” to exploit this circumstance (as they always do with normal weather events including droughts in the U.S. West this year) and offer extensive speculative claims that the U.S. could expect additional droughts and heat waves in the future because of growing global CO2 emissions.

The 33 years that have passed since then have proven these Democratic Senators and “experts” to be wrong with EPA and NOAA data clearly establishing that the U.S. and global droughts have not increased over this period and neither have U.S. heat waves as shown by the data below as is the case for virtually every other climate area addressed at this hearing with the specific information following for each of these areas discussed in the material below.

Numerous Democratic Senators and “experts” claimed that the global temperature anomaly would climb by about 1.4 Degrees C by year 2021 from 1986 levels based on a NASA GISS climate model unless emissions were immediately reduced. UAH satellite measurements of global temperature which commenced in 1979 show that the global temperature anomaly has only increased since these hearings by 0.49 Degrees C by year 2021 nearly 3 times less than the flawed speculation at these hearings. The flawed NASA GISS climate model projections and UAH actual measured satellite data are shown below.”

“Democratic Senators and “experts” also claimed that the rate of coastal sea level rise would increase to 2.5 inches per decade with additional further increases occurring because of rising CO2. However, NOAA tide gauge data through year 2020 (33 years after the Senate hearings) establishes that the global average absolute rate of sea level rise is stable at about 0.7 inches per decade strikingly below the hearings exaggerated and proven to be flawed sea level rise claims. Additionally, NOAA tide gauge data at hundreds of coastal locations around the U.S. shows no change in the rate of coastal sea level at these locations as demonstrated by the longest U.S. tide gauge 164-year record at the Battery location in New York shown below at a stable rate of about 1.1 inches per decade. Again, the hearings exaggerated coastal sea level rise claims have been proven to be wrong.”

“Democratic Senators and “experts” claimed that increasing CO2 emissions would result in devastating reductions in global food production. After 33 years of history the data shows world record high food production levels of grains, wheat, corn, rice, soybeans, etc. as noted below. The exaggerated doomsday claims by Democratic Senators and “experts” at the hearing were again proven to be wrong.

The June 23,1988 Senate hearing on global warming based on 33 years of history has proven the hearings exaggerated claims to be flawed, false and failed. The 33-year birthday celebration by climate alarmist of this sorry event is in fact a celebration of global warming failures.” 

The Facebook climate alarmist “97% agree” claim is phony political rhetoric specifically intended to distract attention from the overwhelming number of significant well established climate data discrepancies and failures that do not support climate alarmism’s decades long campaign including the failure of climate models to predict accurate climate outcomes for more than 33 years, the decades long consistently exaggerated projections of global temperature increases by climate models, the decades long failed claims of increasing rates of coastal sea level rise with instead rates of sea level rise remaining stable, the alarmist decades long doom and gloom claims of failing global food production yet global food production instead has reached record high food  production levels, the failure to see extreme weather conditions including lack of increasing numbers and intensity of  heat waves, droughts, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, etc, etc. 

Additionally, the latest data released by the Center for Emergency Management updated database on U.S. disaster loses since 1990 shows disaster losses as a percent of GDP declining as shown below.

The contrived political climate alarmist “97% agree” scheme was fabricated at a time when the world’s developed nations (led by China and India) still played a significant role in global energy use and emissions contributions, but that time has long past. 

The world’s developing nations overtook and began leading global emissions contributions in 2004, overtook and began leading global energy use in 2007. By 2013 when Obama uttered his phony political “97% agree” slogan the developing nations accounted for 57% of all global energy use and 61% of all global CO2 emissions. By year 2020 the developing nations had increased their dominance in global energy use and emissions to 61% and 66.5% respectively with these majorities climbing yet higher in the future. The developing nations control future global energy use and emissions not the arrogant out of touch with energy and emissions reality climate alarmist U.S. Democratic Party politicians.

The “97%” phony climate political slogan fabricated by climate science incompetent politicians in the U.S. trying to bully the country into committing economic and energy suicide (which has now happened in the UK and EU energy cost and reliability debacle caused by excessive use of unreliable renewable energy) means nothing to the world’s developing nations who are in complete control of all growth of global energy use and resulting emissions with fossil fuel energy use dominating their drive to achieve huge future economic growth. These nations have no interest or intention of buying into the phony U.S. politically contrived climate alarmist campaign slogans. 

The real world energy and emissions political power of the developing nations was achieved with the failure of the UN IPCC COP26 cabal where the developing nations refused to agree to the developed nations fossil fuel reduction schemes that would hindered the developing nations future economic growth with this confab being a huge victory for the developing nations and a complete debacle for the developed nations unrealistic and scientifically flawed climate alarmist political propaganda campaign agenda.

The phony climate alarmist claims of a “climate emergency” made in 2021 in support of the COP26 failed propaganda cabal were further undermined by the most recent UAH global temperature anomaly data including the data for January 2022 which was the lowest January global temperature anomaly measurement for the last 10 years.

The UAH January 2022  temperature anomaly represents a period of 7 years and 3 months since the world has experienced any global warming as shown below.

This outcome is yet more embarrassing global climate data showing the absurdity of the climate alarmists phony hyped “climate emergency” claim.      

In April of last year just prior to the COP26 cabal in Scotland MIT Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences Dr. Richard Lindzen was invited to make a presentation at an Irish Climate Science Forum to address the need for changing the imaginary climate crisis and how that difficult task might be accomplished.

A summary of the key concluding points are noted as follows:     

“The Irish Climate Science Forum (ICSF) in cooperation with CLINTEL hosted a lecture by the world-renowned climate scientist Richard Lindzen.

Some key points from Dr. Lindzen’s regarding climate hysteria:

Richard S. Lindzen, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences, MIT”

“For about 33 years, many of us have been battling against climate hysteria. 

We have correctly noted:

The exaggerated sensitivity,
The role of other processes and natural internal variability,
The inconsistency with the paleoclimate record,
The absence of evidence for increased extremes, hurricanes, etc. and so on.”

“We have also pointed out the very real benefits of CO2 and even of modest warming.”

“And, as concerns government policies, we have been pretty ineffective. Indeed, our efforts have done little other than to show (incorrectly) that we take the threat scenario seriously. In this talk, I want to make a tentative analysis of our failure.”

“In punching away at the clear shortcomings of the narrative of climate alarm, we have, perhaps, missed the most serious shortcoming: namely, that the whole narrative is pretty absurd.”

“Of course, many people (though by no means all) have great difficulty entertaining this possibility. They can’t believe that something so absurd could gain such universal acceptance.”

“The same situation for climate (a comparably complex system with a much more poorly defined index, globally averaged temperature anomaly) is considered ‘settled science.’

“In case you are wondering why this index is remarkably poor. I suspect that many people believe that there is an instrument that measures the Earth’s temperature. As most of you know, that is not how the record was obtained.”

“Obviously, the concept of an average surface temperature is meaningless. One can’t very well average the Dead Sea with Mt. Everest. Instead, one takes 30 years annual or seasonal means at each station and averages the deviations from these averages.”

“If this weren’t silly enough, we are bombarded with claims that the impacts of this climate change include such things as obesity and the Syrian civil war. The claims of impacts are then circularly claimed to be overwhelming evidence of dangerous climate change. It doesn’t matter that most of these claims are wrong and/or irrelevant. It doesn’t matter that none of these claims can be related to CO2 except via model projections. In almost all cases, even the model projections are non-existent. Somehow, the sheer volume of misinformation seems to overwhelm us. In case, you retain any skepticism, there is John Kerry’s claim that climate (unlike physics and chemistry) is simple enough for any child to understand. Presumably, if you can’t see the existential danger of CO2, you’re a stupid denier.”

“That is precisely what the Paris Accord amounts to. However, the ‘something’ also gives governments the power to control the energy sector, and this is something many governments cannot resist.“

“Our task is to show the relevant people the overall stupidity of this issue rather than punching away at details.”

“Whether we are capable of effectively doing this is an open question.” 

It seems clear from Dr. Lindzen’s presentation that he and those many other accomplished climate scientists working with him hold the entire concept of scientifically flawed climate alarmism to be nothing but politically contrived “stupidity.”