Heartland Institute attacks Pope's position on Climate Change

[xBiffx]

The sheer lack of reading skills here is mind blowing. The study specifically states 97% of papers that expressed a position on climate change. You didn't even need to read the paper, you just had to look at the abstract.

The reasons for only rating papers that expressed a position on AGW one way or the other should be self evident.

Which is exactly why DSF is calling the guy out for this quote.

He called on anyone with “open ears” to fulfill their moral duty to seek the truth on climate change – which 97 percent of scientists agree is likely the result of human activities.

Wow..just wow.

 

[fskimospy]

Which is exactly why DSF is calling the guy out for this quote.

So he's calling out his lack of ability to read an abstract. Even more self-ownage.

 

[xBiffx]

So he's calling out his lack of ability to read an abstract. Even more self-ownage.

I'm not sure how calling out another person for misrepresenting the findings of a study is synonymous with self ownage. You are also saying that person is wrong as well. I mean, WTF?

 

[fskimospy]

I'm not sure how calling out another person for misrepresenting the findings of a study is synonymous with self ownage. You are also saying that person is wrong as well. I mean, WTF?

No, I'm saying the pope is right as his position is the one most consistent with the evidence. For obvious reasons, that study only analyzed papers that took a position one way or the other on AGW. After all, you can't discern someone's position on a topic they don't address. If you were including climate papers that don't address the causes AGW in your sample, then you should include all papers that don't address the causes of AGW in your sample, like ones on electromagnetism, or the history of the Roman Empire.

So once you break your sample down to people actually making a statement about AGW, we find that 97% of the papers agree. That can reasonably be extrapolated to somewhere around 97% of scientists agreeing on the issue. One possible confound would be if a small number of pro-AGW people were responsible for a highly disproportionate amount of the papers present, and that's something that I would have to check on. Considering the large number of papers present however, it's unlikely to alter the findings significantly.

 

[Poptech]

Looks like DSF got duped again. To combat the claim that they were misidentifying people's papers they also invited researchers to self-rate, and it was 97% yet again.

You have to be careful about badly biased sources, DSF. They will keep lying to you as happens to you so often.
Link to the actual paper:
http://m.iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article

This is incorrect, Cook et al.'s author self-ratings simply confirmed the worthlessness of their methodology, as they were not representative of the sample since only 4% of the authors (1189 of 29,083) rated their own papers and of these 63% disagreed with their abstract ratings.

Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: A re-analysis

Maybe next time you should not only read the paper but comprehend it before you comment on it.

 

[Poptech]

Yes, you have bought into lies...again. What you just linked right there confirms the paper's finding. You realize that, right?

I'm quite familiar with the study, and the 97% number is pretty solid. (It comes from both the researchers themselves and the authors of the studies self-rating) As per your previous link, you got duped again.

Remember, sources, sources, sources. Well that, or at some point it's hard to think of you as just some overly credulous fool and figure that you're knowingly parroting climate denier bullshit.

He has not stated a single lie as you clearly have never read Cook's propaganda nor do you understand it.

Cook et al. (2013) attempted to categorize 11,944 abstracts (not entire papers) to their level of endorsement of AGW and found 7930 papers (66%) held no position. While only 65 papers (0.5%) explicitly endorsed and quantified AGW as +50% (Humans are the primary cause). Their methodology was so fatally flawed that they falsely classified skeptic papers as endorsing AGW, apparently believing to know more about the papers than their authors. Cook et al.'s author self-ratings simply confirmed the worthlessness of their methodology, as they were not representative of the sample since only 4% of the authors (1189 of 29,083) rated their own papers and of these 63% disagreed with their abstract ratings.

 

[thraashman]

This is incorrect, Cook et al.'s author self-ratings simply confirmed the worthlessness of their methodology, as they were not representative of the sample since only 4% of the authors (1189 of 29,083) rated their own papers and of these 63% disagreed with their abstract ratings.

Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: A re-analysis

Maybe next time you should not only read the paper but comprehend it before you comment on it.

So your view is "let's not listen to your guy, let's listen to my guy who is an economist (not climatologist) Fox News contributor climate change denier who has tried to claim that climate change will lead to economic growth!"

 

[fskimospy]

This is incorrect, Cook et al.'s author self-ratings simply confirmed the worthlessness of their methodology, as they were not representative of the sample since only 4% of the authors (1189 of 29,083) rated their own papers and of these 63% disagreed with their abstract ratings.

Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: A re-analysis

Maybe next time you should not only read the paper but comprehend it before you comment on it.

You may want to take your own advice. I am not at all surprised you listed a paper by a well known climate change denier, however.

Just from a quick perusal of his paper it seems that Tol has made a number of elementary errors.

1. He complains about the search source because he has another one that returns more papers. Unless he can show a systematic bias in the smaller sample, its impact on the findings is mostly irrelevant.

2. Tol misunderstands the basis for his contention that abstract reviewers get 'tired' over time by misapplying other research about repeated interview subjects. The journal is also responsible for this error as they should have caught this mistake in the peer review process.

3. The author states a disagreement with classification (that impact assessments shouldn't be classified as implicit acceptance) and then declares the original study wrong on the subject. This is a highly dubious claim, as apparently he is saying that an author is likely to be writing a paper about what humans can do to mitigate climate change while not believing that humans are causing climate change. Simply stating "I disagree with this based on my personal opinion" is not a compelling argument.

Finally, his paper argues that the consensus rate should be anywhere from 90% to 94% instead of 97%. Furthermore, if you read the rest of your paragraph you will notice that exactly 0.7% of the ratings differed between rejection and endorsement. Even taking Tol's numbers as being correct yields the result where the overwhelming majority of scientists agree. It's funny that not even the author of your paper himself disagrees with the fact that the scientific consensus for AGW is overwhelming, haha.

If you would like to see a better and more thorough destruction of Tol's paper by one of the original Cook, et al authors I'll link you here:

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...accidentally-confirm-global-warming-consensus

In an additional linked paper analyzing Tol's methods this was the conclusion:

http://*****/wXd0FjekBE

Tol’s analysis appears to be flawed. The work fails both simple common-sense sanity checks, and basic testing to ensure that the method can reproduce the known results of the reconciliation step. The reduction in consensus percentage is primarily an artifact of the method, rather than arising from the shifts in the reconciliation step. The behavior of the method does not reflect Tol’s description of that behavior. The correction algorithm gives an initial impression of being correct, but on further analysis appears to be statistically meaningless.

Basically his methodology was biased against consensus regardless of what data was put into it. It was bullshit. I would suggest that you better comprehend papers you provide in the future before commenting on it.

 

[fskimospy]

He has not stated a single lie as you clearly have never read Cook's propaganda nor do you understand it.

Cook et al. (2013) attempted to categorize 11,944 abstracts (not entire papers) to their level of endorsement of AGW and found 7930 papers (66%) held no position. While only 65 papers (0.5%) explicitly endorsed and quantified AGW as +50% (Humans are the primary cause). Their methodology was so fatally flawed that they falsely classified skeptic papers as endorsing AGW, apparently believing to know more about the papers than their authors. Cook et al.'s author self-ratings simply confirmed the worthlessness of their methodology, as they were not representative of the sample since only 4% of the authors (1189 of 29,083) rated their own papers and of these 63% disagreed with their abstract ratings.

I've read his paper, and I understand it just fine. The fact that you're already trying to call it 'propaganda' tells me that you're not exactly an impartial source on this matter, as does the fact that you linked such a sloppy and irresponsible paper uncritically.

If I were you I would reevaluate the sources from which you get your information.

 

[Poptech]

So your view is "let's not listen to your guy, let's listen to my guy who is an economist (not climatologist) Fox News contributor climate change denier who has tried to claim that climate change will lead to economic growth!"

You guy (Cook) is a cartoonist. My guy was a lead author of the IPCC reports and did his Ph.D. thesis on the greenhouse effect - Dr. Tol has impeccable scientific credentials,

Richard S. J. Tol, M.Sc. Econometrics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (1992); Ph.D. Economics (Thesis: "A decision-analytic treatise of the enhanced greenhouse effect"), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (1997); Researcher, Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (1992-2008); Visiting Researcher, Canadian Centre for Climate Research, University of Victoria, Canada (1994); Visiting researcher, Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment, University College London, United Kingdom (1995); Acting Programme Manager Quantitative Environmental Economics, Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands (1998-1999); Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University (1998-2000); Board Member, Centre for Marine and Climate Research, Hamburg University (2000-2006); Lead Author, IPCC (2001, 2013); Contributing Author and Expert Reviewer, IPCC (2001, 2007, 2013); Associate Editor, Environmental and Resource Economics Journal (2001-2006); Adjunct Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University (2000-2008); Michael Otto Professor of Sustainability and Global Change, Department of Geosciences and Department of Economics, Hamburg University, Germany (2000-2006); Editor, Energy Economics Journal (2003-Present); Visiting Research Scholar, Princeton Environmental Institute and Visiting Professor, Department of Economics, Princeton University (2005-2006); Research Professor, Economic and Social Research Institute, Ireland (2006-2011); Research Fellow, Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP), Center for Global Trade Analysis, Department of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University (2007-2010); Associate Editor, Economics E-Journal (2007-Present); Adjunct Professor, Department of Economics, Trinity College, Ireland (2010-2011); Professor of the Economics of Climate Change, Institute for Environmental Studies and Department of Spatial Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (2008-Present); Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Sussex, Falmer, United Kingdom (2012-Present)

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

The lie is in how this highly criticized study is dishonestly framed by the "believers"...first of all, 97% of papers expressing an "opinion" in no way represents 97% of all climate scientists which is how this is frequently mischaracterized. In addition, the study in no way states that this 97% states that humans cause a majority of warming and this is frequently mischaracterized as well. Only 65 of the 12280 studies explicitly endorse AGW as the majority driver of climate change...that's .53% ffs. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time to get into this right now. Maybe later.

 

[fskimospy]

You guy (Cook) is a cartoonist. My guy was a lead author of the IPCC reports and did his Ph.D. thesis on the greenhouse effect - Dr. Tol has impeccable credentials,

Richard S. J. Tol, M.Sc. Econometrics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (1992); Ph.D. Economics (Thesis: "A decision-analytic treatise of the enhanced greenhouse effect"), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (1997); Researcher, Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (1992-2008); Visiting Researcher, Canadian Centre for Climate Research, University of Victoria, Canada (1994); Visiting researcher, Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment, University College London, United Kingdom (1995); Acting Programme Manager Quantitative Environmental Economics, Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands (1998-1999); Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University (1998-2000); Board Member, Centre for Marine and Climate Research, Hamburg University (2000-2006); Lead Author, IPCC (2001, 2013); Contributing Author and Expert Reviewer, IPCC (2001, 2007, 2013); Associate Editor, Environmental and Resource Economics Journal (2001-2006); Adjunct Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University (2000-2008); Michael Otto Professor of Sustainability and Global Change, Department of Geosciences and Department of Economics, Hamburg University, Germany (2000-2006); Editor, Energy Economics Journal (2003-Present); Visiting Research Scholar, Princeton Environmental Institute and Visiting Professor, Department of Economics, Princeton University (2005-2006); Research Professor, Economic and Social Research Institute, Ireland (2006-2011); Research Fellow, Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP), Center for Global Trade Analysis, Department of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University (2007-2010); Associate Editor, Economics E-Journal (2007-Present); Adjunct Professor, Department of Economics, Trinity College, Ireland (2010-2011); Professor of the Economics of Climate Change, Institute for Environmental Studies and Department of Spatial Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (2008-Present); Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Sussex, Falmer, United Kingdom (2012-Present)

You might want to mention that he was a coordinating lead author on a section of the IPCC not dealing with the causes of AGW and that he quit without finishing.

Seems like relevant information to me.

 

[Poptech]

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...accidentally-confirm-global-warming-consensus

Dr. Tol responded to Dana's nonsense in the Guardian,

The claim of a 97% consensus on global warming does not stand up (The Guardian, June 6, 2014)

Dana Nuccitelli writes that I “accidentally confirm the results of last year’s 97% global warming consensus study”. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I show that the 97% consensus claim does not stand up.

At best, Nuccitelli, John Cook and colleagues may have accidentally stumbled on the right number.

Cook and co selected some 12,000 papers from the scientific literature to test whether these papers support the hypothesis that humans played a substantial role in the observed warming of the Earth. 12,000 is a strange number. The climate literature is much larger. The number of papers on the detection and attribution of climate change is much, much smaller.

Cook’s sample is not representative. Any conclusion they draw is not about “the literature” but rather about the papers they happened to find.

Most of the papers they studied are not about climate change and its causes, but many were taken as evidence nonetheless. Papers on carbon taxes naturally assume that carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming – but assumptions are not conclusions. Cook’s claim of an increasing consensus over time is entirely due to an increase of the number of irrelevant papers that Cook and co mistook for evidence.

The abstracts of the 12,000 papers were rated, twice, by 24 volunteers. Twelve rapidly dropped out, leaving an enormous task for the rest. This shows. There are patterns in the data that suggest that raters may have fallen asleep with their nose on the keyboard. In July 2013, Mr Cook claimed to have data that showed this is not the case. In May 2014, he claimed that data never existed.

The data is also ridden with error. By Cook’s own calculations, 7% of the ratings are wrong. Spot checks suggest a much larger number of errors, up to one-third.

Cook tried to validate the results by having authors rate their own papers. In almost two out of three cases, the author disagreed with Cook’s team about the message of the paper in question.

Attempts to obtain Cook’s data for independent verification have been in vain. Cook sometimes claims that the raters are interviewees who are entitled to privacy – but the raters were never asked any personal detail. At other times, Cook claims that the raters are not interviewees but interviewers.

The 97% consensus paper rests on yet another claim: the raters are incidental, it is the rated papers that matter. If you measure temperature, you make sure that your thermometers are all properly and consistently calibrated. Unfortunately, although he does have the data, Cook does not test whether the raters judge the same paper in the same way.

Consensus is irrelevant in science. There are plenty of examples in history where everyone agreed and everyone was wrong. Cook’s consensus is also irrelevant in policy. They try to show that climate change is real and human-made. It is does not follow whether and by how much greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced.

The debate on climate policy is polarised, often using discussions about climate science as a proxy. People who want to argue that climate researchers are secretive and incompetent only have to point to the 97% consensus paper.

On 29 May, the Committee on Science, Space and Technology of the US House of Representatives examined the procedures of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Having been active in the IPCC since 1994, serving in various roles in all its three working groups, most recently as a convening lead author for the fifth assessment report of working group II, my testimony to the committee briefly reiterated some of the mistakes made in the fifth assessment report but focused on the structural faults in the IPCC, notably the selection of authors and staff, the weaknesses in the review process, and the competition for attention between chapters. I highlighted that the IPCC is a natural monopoly that is largely unregulated. I recommended that its assessment reports be replaced by an assessment journal.

In an article on 2 June, Nuccitelli ignores the subject matter of the hearing, focusing instead on a brief interaction about the 97% consensus paper co-authored by… Nuccitelli. He unfortunately missed the gist of my criticism of his work.

Successive literature reviews, including the ones by the IPCC, have time and again established that there has been substantial climate change over the last one and a half centuries and that humans caused a large share of that climate change.

There is disagreement, of course, particularly on the extent to which humans contributed to the observed warming. This is part and parcel of a healthy scientific debate. There is widespread agreement, though, that climate change is real and human-made.

I believe Nuccitelli and colleagues are wrong about a number of issues. Mistakenly thinking that agreement on the basic facts of climate change would induce agreement on climate policy, Nuccitelli and colleagues tried to quantify the consensus, and failed.

In his defence, Nuccitelli argues that I do not dispute their main result. Nuccitelli fundamentally misunderstands research. Science is not a set of results. Science is a method. If the method is wrong, the results are worthless.

Nuccitelli’s pieces are two of a series of articles published in the Guardian impugning my character and my work. Nuccitelli falsely accuses me of journal shopping, a despicable practice.

The theologist Michael Rosenberger has described climate protection as a new religion, based on a fear for the apocalypse, with dogmas, heretics and inquisitors like Nuccitelli. I prefer my politics secular and my science sound.

I will respond to the rest of your nonsense later but keep in mind Dr. Tol has refuted every published comment on his work.

 

[fskimospy]

Dr. Tol responded to Dana's nonsense in the Guardian,

The claim of a 97% consensus on global warming does not stand up (he Guardian, June 6, 2014)


I will respond to the rest of your nonsense later but keep in mind Dr. Tol has refuted every published comment on his work.

Nowhere in that 'rebuttal' does he address a single substantive criticism of his method, the most important one being that his analysis produced lower results regardless of the inputs. If it does that, it's bullshit, end of story. He also repeats himself about reviewer fatigue despite that clearly being based on his incorrect understanding of research he cited for his previous paper.

If you wish to cite a rebuttal of his that addresses the numerous listed failures in his methods I'm all ears. Failing that I would suggest that you are the victim of confirmation bias.

 

[thraashman]

Dr. Tol responded to Dana's nonsense in the Guardian,

The claim of a 97% consensus on global warming does not stand up (he Guardian, June 6, 2014)


I will respond to the rest of your nonsense later but keep in mind Dr. Tol has refuted every published comment on his work.

From your own link

There is widespread agreement, though, that climate change is real and human-made.

So even your guy is admitting that climate change is occurring and due to man. He's just unwilling to do anything to fix it.

 

[glenn1]

From your own link

So even your guy is admitting that climate change is occurring and due to man. He's just unwilling to do anything to fix it.

Shh, don't burst the bubble of the true believers. Even though their behavior is 99.9999% identical to those who are climate change "deniers" they think somehow it makes them better people. The entire damn thing is just an excuse to treat as a moral argument what's really just about differing lifestyle preferences - SUVs, suburb dwellers, etc. They'd be the first to reject anything which would actually make a difference because it would force them to accept a hit to their own lifestyles which was anything beyond merely cosmetic.

 

[Jeff7]

Ancient BS still guiding modern policy. Bleh.


Earth is finite in size. It's essentially a box that we have to live in.

Does it make sense to intentionally poison the place where you live?

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

John Cook likes to pretend he's a Nazi...lol.

 

[trenchfoot]

Ancient BS still guiding modern policy. Bleh.


Earth is finite in size. It's essentially a box that we have to live in.

Does it make sense to intentionally poison the place where you live?

When it comes down to the choice between making a fast buck now and ignoring its consequences or planning ahead and mitigating the foreseeable problems by throwing $$$ at it, well, it's pretty obvious what takes precedence at the moment.

It's that old "well if it ain't totally broke and beyond repair, then what's the problem?" attitude at work here. Better to try and fix it AFTER it can't be fixed all while making huge profits from making the futile attempt eh?

I can see where there are quite a few very rich Catholics being agitated and conflicted over this "new" Pope. This guy ain't towing the traditional line of leaving the rich and powerful sleeping wolves lie.

Good for him.......and us.

 

[thraashman]

When it comes down to the choice between making a fast buck now and ignoring its consequences or planning ahead and mitigating the foreseeable problems by throwing $$$ at it, well, it's pretty obvious what takes precedence at the moment.

It's that old "well if it ain't totally broke and beyond repair, then what's the problem?" attitude at work here. Better to try and fix it AFTER it can't be fixed all while making huge profits from making the futile attempt eh?

I can see where there are quite a few very rich Catholics being agitated and conflicted over this "new" Pope. This guy ain't towing the traditional line of leaving the rich and powerful sleeping wolves lie.

Good for him.......and us.

It's a problem I've noticed with conservatives. With them it tends to be about the "me" and the "now". How will this affect me and my money right now? With liberals it tends to be more about the future and the "collective". How will this make my and my children's lives better or worse in the future?

Now neither are completely selfish or selfless, but clearly conservatives care very little about the future.

 

[IGBT]

the pope wants to be loved by the eco-KOOKS so he's supporting the alarmist mass hysteria eco-KOOK position. The pope needs to go to confession and explain why he's supporting a bunch of alarmist liars.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

It's a problem I've noticed with conservatives. With them it tends to be about the "me" and the "now". How will this affect me and my money right now? With liberals it tends to be more about the future and the "collective". How will this make my and my children's lives better or worse in the future?

Now neither are completely selfish or selfless, but clearly conservatives care very little about the future.

It's a problem I've noticed with liberals is that they don't understand conservatives. Conservatives tend to be much more pragmatic and most support the obvious solution to substantially lower CO2 emissions.

 

[xBiffx]

It's a problem I've noticed with conservatives. With them it tends to be about the "me" and the "now". How will this affect me and my money right now? With liberals it tends to be more about the future and the "collective". How will this make my and my children's lives better or worse in the future?

Now neither are completely selfish or selfless, but clearly conservatives care very little about the future.

You are absolutely right, liberals tend to be more about the future.....their future.

 

[Bowfinger]

It's a problem I've noticed with liberals is that they don't understand conservatives. Conservatives tend to be much more pragmatic and most support the obvious solution to substantially lower CO2 emissions.

Perhaps, yet that doesn't seem to be what "conservatives" want to talk about. I rarely see conservatives join a discussion about the best ways to address climate change. Instead, I mostly see arguments like this where the self-professed conservatives are far more focused on denying man's role in climate change, and often denying climate change is even a problem to be addressed. Getting conservatives to debate solutions instead of climate change itself would be a major step forward.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Perhaps, yet that doesn't seem to be what "conservatives" want to talk about. I rarely see conservatives join a discussion about the best ways to address climate change. Instead, I mostly see arguments like this where the self-professed conservatives are far more focused on denying man's role in climate change, and often denying climate change is even a problem to be addressed. Getting conservatives to debate solutions instead of climate change itself would be a major step forward.

Not much to discuss beyond demonizing and ridiculing each other. Nuclear is a non-starter for liberals....end of discussion. Cap and trade is a non-starter for conservatives...end of discussion. Philosophically, liberals and conservatives are on different planets.