Iain Aitken
[Note: This essay is abstracted from my eBook Myths: Widely Held But False Beliefs In The Climate Change Crisis, available on Amazon]
In its Fifth Assessment Report, the IPCC, the ‘internationally accepted scientific body on climate change’, gave their opinion on the extent to which global warming is caused. recent due to human activity: ‘Most likely [95-100 percent confidence] more than half of the increase in average global surface temperature observed between 1951 and 2010 was due to humans [i.e. man-made] increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and anthropogenic fuels together’. Reflecting that opinion Wikipedia says that the ‘Scientific consensus on climate change’ is that ‘The Earth is warming and … this warming is mainly caused by human activities. ‘. It states that 97-100% of published climate scientists positively endorse this opinion. Similarly, NASA states that, ‘The consensus on climate change and its causes is human existence … human activities are the primary cause of the observed warming climate trend. observed over the past century.’ And in an October 2020 interview on CBS’s 60 minutes Climatologist Dr Michael Mann said, ‘There is as much scientific consensus about human-caused climate change as there is about gravity.’ So, is it really true that 97-100% of climate scientists explicitly or implicitly endorse this crucial IPCC opinion?
While science is not remotely democratic (it just needs a scientist to prove that the ‘consensus’ view is wrong and it is false) the fact remains if this 97-100% consensus claim is true it’s really powerful. If the ‘internationally accepted scientific body on climate change’ says something that is almost certainly true, and virtually all climate scientists around the world agree, it is almost certainly true. right – right? While there is certainly an almost complete scientific consensus among scientists government (literally, dozens of scientific academies around the world explicitly or implicitly endorse the IPCC’s opinion) without necessarily reflecting the consensus view among climate scientists. So what exactly is it that climate scientists agree on?
The consensus argument is expressed by Barack Obama’s 2013 tweet that, ‘Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: climate change is real, man-made, and dangerous’. He tweeted this shortly after the release of the most famous climate change consensus survey, Quantifying the anthropogenic global warming consensus in the scientific literature (John Cook et al, 2013) conducted by Skeptical Science, a small group of climate change activists who, despite their name, are the exact opposite of climate change skeptics (the strap of they are ‘Began to be skeptical of global warming skepticism’). This study examined Abstracts from 11,944 climate science articles published over a twenty-year period from 1991 to 2011. It concluded that 97.1% of Abstracts (actually express opinions about causes of global warming) endorses the view that man-made emissions of greenhouse gases (or at least greenhouse gases) cause global warming. Although this is 97% of climate scientists, not 97% of climate scientists, it is not unreasonable to assume that based on this survey, about 97% of climate scientists climate advocates the view that man-made greenhouse gas emissions (or, at least, greenhouse gases) cause global warming. It says nothing about how many, how much warming those emissions has caused and whether that warming is ‘dangerous’. It is probably the case that at least 99.9% of those who might consider themselves climate scientists (including the most cynical of the idea of the climate change crisis) endorse the view that emissions man-made greenhouse gases (or at least greenhouse gases) cause global warming, i.e. some global warming. That is not in any serious dispute. Dispute is about how many, how much global warming caused by human activity and whether it is ‘dangerous’. So the study doesn’t reveal something that isn’t well known and isn’t controversial.
Skeptical Science summarized their findings with the statement, ‘97% of climate papers expressing views on anthropogenic global warming agree: global warming is happening and we we are the cause ‘- where’ we are the cause ‘obviously implied’ we are Only cause’ instead of what it actually found, viz. that we are the cause of some of global warming. If research can conclusively show that 97 percent of climate scientists endorse the IPCC’s opinion that human activity is the main cause of global warming between 1951 and 2005. 2010 then that would certainly strongly support the view that there is almost complete scientific consensus. The IPCC was right. But out of all the Abstracts considered in this study, only 0.3% unequivocally confirm that the central opinion of the IPCCfirst. Even (former IPCC) Mike Hulme noted that, ‘The Cook et al research is hopelessly confused… in a place where the paper claims to be exploring “the extent of scientific consensus that human activity is most likely responsible for most of the current GW [Global Warming]”And the headline conclusion is based on ranking summaries based on whether ‘humans are causing global warming’. These are two completely different opinions. ‘ Recently published article Over 99% consensus on human-caused climate change in peer-reviewed scientific literature (Lynas et al2021) claims that consensus is actually 2% higher – but again only really finds 99% consensus that human activity contributes to climate change to some extent2; in fact, about 99% of the articles reviewed in this study did not specify a degree of clarity. A survey3 out of more than 1,800 climate scientists conducted in 2015 concluded that only 43% of them would agree with the IPCC’s opinion on our recent major role in global warming. demand (and how many of them agree based primarily on their beliefs in the IPCC and/or in themselves – interested in staying ‘above’ the narrative of the climate change crisis? )
Mike Hulme has stated that, ‘Statements like “The world’s top 2,500 scientists have reached consensus that human activities are having a significant effect on climate” are unnecessary. That particular consensus statement, like many others in IPCC reports, is made by only a few dozen experts. ‘ Supporting that view, an independent study4 found that the views expressed by the IPCC were the consensus of a single leadership cadre, only 53 (about 2%) of them, 44 of whom were very closely related professionally, had Articles are co-authored and therefore very likely to share the same opinion. The study’s author, John McLean (climate data analyst at the Australian Alliance for Climate Science and Assessor for IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report), concluded that ‘Governments have accepted naively and recklessly accepting claims about human influence on global temperatures by a close-knit group of several dozen scientists, many of whom are climate modelers, as if they represent the opinion of the broader scientific community. ‘
One of the most comprehensive reviews5 who have conducted surveys of the scientific consensus on climate change have concluded:
- The articles and surveys most often cited as demonstrating support for the ‘scientific consensus’ supporting the no-exceptional man-made global warming catastrophe hypothesis are methodological flaws. and often deliberately misleading.
- No survey or study shows a ‘consensus’ on the most important scientific issues in the climate change debate.
- Extensive survey data reveals deep disagreement among scientists on scientific issues that must be resolved before the hypothesis of man-made global warming can be validated. Many prominent experts and perhaps most working scientists disagree with the statements of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
So what is real Scientific consensus on climate change? There is almost a complete scientific consensus that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing, that increase is mainly due to human activity, the climate system is warming, the climate change. climate is taking place and human activity has contributed to some degree of warming. climate change. Note again that skeptical scientists, such as Dr Roy Spencer and Dr Judith Curry and Dr Richard Lindzen, are part of this ‘scientific consensus on climate change’; The idea that they make up 3% of scientists do not support the scientific consensus on climate change is a misconception, misrepresenting the ‘scientific consensus on climate change’. climate change’.6. This misrepresentation is designed to reinforces the story of the ‘climate change crisis’ and marginalize and neutralize skeptic scientists by making their views seem far removed from the overwhelming consensus, even though they do share that consensus view. Essentially, the ‘consensus’ is broken on the question of whether human activity is possible primarily responsible for recent warming – and whether that warming is ‘dangerous’. The strength of the scientific consensus ‘97% wrong that human activity primarily causes climate change’, maintained by Wikipedia, NASA, Facebook (and many others) is that it can be used used very effectively to stifle any debate about science. As Dr Richard Lindzen said, ‘This statement is intended to satisfy non-experts that they do not need to understand science. Agreeing only with 97 percent would show that one favors science and outweighs anyone who denies disaster. This really meets a psychological need of many people. ‘
So if we go back to Dr Michael Mann’s claim that, ‘There is as much scientific consensus on human-induced climate change as there is about gravity’ this is very confusing. While there is almost complete scientific consensus that climate change is ‘real’ and happening and that there is some anthropogenic effects, there is no such scientific consensus on the extent of anthropogenic effects and whether it could reasonably be described as ‘dangerous’, let alone to the ‘crisis’.
Presenter
first Legates et al. (2015), Science & Education and ‘Consensus? Which consensus? ‘, GWPF Note 5, thegwpf.org, September 2013 and ‘ Richard Tol’s excellent Compendium of Flaws in Cook et al. (2013) and the ‘Infamous 97% Consensus Paper’, wattsupwiththat.com, March 26, 2015 and the article ”97% of The Cook Consensus”, exposed by new book as cheating really so’, wattsupwiththat.com, March 12, 2016
2 ‘Consensus drawn: Lynas et al. ‘Should be classified as propaganda, bad science”, wattsupwiththat.com, October 26, 2021
3 Bart Strengers, Bart Verheggen and Kees Vringer (2015), Climate Science Survey, Question and Answer, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency PBL, pp. 1 – 39
4 ‘Stigmatized authors, biased findings’, John McLean, (Institute for Science and Public Policy), July 2008
5 Why Scientists Don’t Agree on Global Warming (2015) – Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, S. Fred Singer
6 ‘Research: 3% oppose breaking the 97% climate consensus’, wattsupwiththat.com, December 18, 2021
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