Wednesday, May 15, 2013

New paper finds only 32.6% of climate papers endorse anthropogenic global warming

The 32% non-consensus

The new paper from climate clowns Cook & Nuccitelli et al has just been published open-access online in Environmental Research Letters. According to the authors, of 11,944 climate abstracts from 1991-2011, "66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW [anthropogenic global warming], 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming." Of the only 32.6% of papers that endorsed AGW, one would expect 100% endorsement of AGW by the authors of those 32.6% of papers, yet Cook finds somewhat less agreement of 97.1% even amongst scientists who already endorsed AGW in their papers. Even if one trusts the methods of  Cook & Nuccitelli et al, who have repeatedly been shown to distort & torture data and apply inappropriate statistical methods, their paper only indicates a 32.6*0.971 = 31.6% non-consensus endorsement of AGW in the climate literature.

Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature

John Cook et al 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 024024 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024

John Cook 1,2,3, Dana Nuccitelli 2,4, Sarah A Green 5, Mark Richardson 6, Bärbel Winkler 2, Rob Painting 2, Robert Way 7, Peter Jacobs 8 and Andrew Skuce 2,9

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We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%). Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For both abstract ratings and authors' self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position on AGW marginally increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.

Related:
Fuzzy math: In a new soon to be published paper, John Cook claims ‘consensus’ on 32.6% of scientific papers that endorse AGW


I Do Not Think it Means What You Think it Means



The 97% "Consensus" is only 75 Self-Selected Climatologists

5 comments:

  1. Try this math from a commenter on WUWT:
    ------------------------------------

    davidmhoffer says:
    May 14, 2013 at 11:07 pm

    Peter Ward;
    Or did he include the 66.4% with no position in a “those who are not against me are for me” approach?
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

    Not quite. What he did is to ignore them entirely.

    32.6% pro + 0.7% against + 0.3% uncertain = 33.6%
    32.6/33.6 = 0.970
    ------------------------------------

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jo Nova does a fantastic job ripping this 'study' to shreds:

    http://joannenova.com.au/2013/05/cooks-fallacy-97-consensus-study-is-a-marketing-ploy-some-journalists-will-fall-for/

    ReplyDelete
  3. Climate Depot roundup on this 'study'

    http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/05/17/latest-97-consensus-study-goes-belly-up-study-found-more-scientific-publications-whose-abstracts-reject-global-warming-than-say-humans-are-primarily-to-blame-for-it/

    ReplyDelete
  4. see especially

    http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/on-the-consensus/

    ReplyDelete