The sails on some boats have short
lengths of wool attached to them to show the manner in which the air
is flowing past. They are called tell-tales, and let the sailor know
if the sail needs trimming.
The '97%' statistic can act as a
tell-tale to let you know the manner of person you are dealing with
when it is deployed to promote alarm over our impact on climate. I
make the crude division of those who deploy it that way into climate chumps or climate
cheats. The former have merely been deceived themselves, the latter
want to deceive others.
The basic deceit being that something like 97% of climate scientists or 97% of climate science papers support an alarmist view of climate change and our contribution to it. Who could argue with such numbers? Well, many people can and have. When the sources of such claims have been checked out, they are found to be so unimpressive that it is grossly irresponsible for anyone to rely on them. At best, they indicate support for banalities such as 'climate changes', 'there was global warming in the 20th Century', 'CO2 is a greenhouse gas', 'humans contribute a warming effect by releasing CO2 into the atmosphere'. None of these is intrinsically alarming. For example, they are all perfectly consistent with the assertion that there is no problem.
The climate chumps relay the '97%' in
conversation, in blog comments, and so on, but they do so in complete
ignorance of the shoddy nature of the various derivations of this
stinky statistic. Lots of ordinary members of the public might fall
into this category. They may know next to nothing about the climate
system, but they have heard the relentless propaganda in school, on
tv, or in their newspapers for years and maybe the 97% number just
struck them as impressive. They need your gentle help to get a
clearer view.
The climate cheats know, or ought to
know, that the '97%' is a stinker of a statistic, but nevertheless,
they make a big deal out of it, even seeing it as a clincher in
PR-work and other carefully produced materials. They include
specialist journalists, bloggers, politicians, and civil servants.
They ought to check the origins of prominent statistics used in their
arguments. They deserve your sharp criticism for deploying something
so shoddy and deceptive.
So, when you see the 97% being deployed
in ways that are meant to impress and convince you that you should
believe in climate catastrophe, or 'dangerous global warming' as
President Obama put it, regard it as a tell-tale that you are
reading/listening/watching either a chump or a cheat. A couple of
questions, or maybe just a little more of your attention, should help
you decide which label is the right one. If it is being used in this
way in school materials which you or your children are exposed to,
then make a formal complaint about them.
Andrew Montford has recently written a
GWPF report (link is to the pdf file) on one of the most prominent and recent sources of '97%' - the
notorious Cook et al. paper of 2013 - and he summarises some of the criticisms
made about it by academics:
e.g. Mike Hulme:
The [Cook et al.] article is poorly
conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed.
It obscures the complexities of the
climate issue and it is a sign of the desperately
poor level of public and policy debate
in this country that the energy minister
should cite it. It offers a similar
depiction of the world into categories of ‘right’ and
‘wrong’ to that adopted in [an
earlier study]: dividing publishing climate scientists
into ‘believers’ and
‘non-believers’. It seems to me that these people are still
living
(or wishing to live) in the pre-2009
world of climate change discourse. Haven’t
they noticed that public understanding
of the climate issue has moved on?
e.g. Richard Tol
Reported results are inconsistent and
biased. The sample is not representative and
contains many irrelevant papers.
Overall, data quality is low. Cook’s validation test
shows that the data are invalid. Data
disclosure is incomplete so that key results
cannot be reproduced or tested.
e.g. Jose Duarte
. . .completely invalid and
untrustworthy (and by customary scientific standards,
completely unpublishable.) I had no
idea this was happening. This is garbage,
and a crisis. It needs to stop, and
[such] papers need to be retracted immediately,
especially Cook, et al (2013).
Montford quietly concludes 'The figure
of 97% is entirely discredited, whatever the nature of the
consensus.'
For an introduction to criticisms of
Cook et al. and other sources of '97%', see my earlier post:
Update 27 March 2015: A useful summary of the Cook et al. nonsense is given by Richard Tol here: http://richardtol.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/now-almost-two-years-old-john-cooks-97.html
Update 18 May 2015. Ross McKitrick undermines the '97%' nonsense even further by pointing to ignorance on the part of many of those classed in surveys as 'climate scientists': http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/climate-change-consensus-among-the-misinformed-is-not-worth-much
Update 19 February 2019
The tell-tale is still needed, still working, but this post has a neat rejoinder : http://www.cfact.org/2019/02/17/32717/
Update 18 May 2015. Ross McKitrick undermines the '97%' nonsense even further by pointing to ignorance on the part of many of those classed in surveys as 'climate scientists': http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/climate-change-consensus-among-the-misinformed-is-not-worth-much
Update 19 February 2019
The tell-tale is still needed, still working, but this post has a neat rejoinder : http://www.cfact.org/2019/02/17/32717/
