Archives par mot-clé : Consensus

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Consensus, likelyhood and confidence

by WUWT, Nov 10, 2025

Is the scientific confidence on climate change greater than 99% or less than 1%? And does the IPCC truly have confidence in its own conclusion? At first glance these questions may seem trivial and pointless. Even a bit embarrassing. Yet, upon closer examination, it turns out that only 0.6% of peer-reviewed scientific papers explicitly endorse the IPPC’s central position – namely, that there exists a consensus that human activities, especially by the emission of greenhouse gases,  are the dominant cause  of recent global warming. Yes, there is a general consensus that humans influence the climate, but only in an explicitly unquantified sense and probably rather small. And that is something quite different.

The IPCC deserves credit for indicating in most of its assessments, the degree of “likelyhood” of their statements and the degree “confidence” the author’s have in their own conclusions. However, those reported levels of likelyhood and confidence are notably low, and often fall below what might be considered appropriate for statements presented with scientific authority. It seems that for most of the author’s of the IPCC Assessment reports the science is not settled.

You probably don’t believe this right away. So please read the article below.  It is largely adapted from the paragraph’s 1 and 3 of Chapter 3 of my book “Crisis or Hoax”. Published by Bookbaby (printed) and Amazon (e-book). An earlier version of this article was published on the Dutch website “Climategate”.

Consensus, likelyhood  and confidence

 1. A consensus of 97%  or more?

On May 16, 2013, U.S. President Obama tweeted, “97% of scientists agree. Climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.”

The tweet became extremely important and may have been the most quoted tweet ever. His successor, Twitter fanatic Donald Trump did not even come close. At first glance, it seems an odd time for such a tweet. In May 2013, the average global temperature had barely risen for 14 years. But Obama wasn’t reacting to the weather or the climate either; he was reacting to an article by John Cook (et al.) that had appeared the previous day (!), on May 15, 2013, in the peer-revied journal Environmental Research Letters It was entitled “Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature”. (J.Cook et al, 2013). The lead author was an assistant professor of communication sciences.

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UK Poll Shows Rising Climate Skepticism, Opposition to Net-Zero Policies

by O. Wright et al., Sept 12, 2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch 

New research finds a sharp rise in climate change skepticism as Brits reject net-zero policies

Ed Miliband's wind farm fantasy
The number of Britons who think the dangers of global warming have been exaggerated has jumped by more than 50 percent in the past four years, new research for The Times reveals today. [emphasis, links added]

One in four voters now believes that concerns over climate change are not as real as scientists have said, amid growing public concern about the cost of the government’s net-zero policies.

Less than a third of the public (30 percent) are in favor of banning new petrol and diesel cars — down from 51 percent in 2021.


Only 16 percent of voters said they would be prepared to pay higher gas bills to encourage the switch to electricity.

Experts said the findings showed that growing climate skepticism within mainstream politics in both Britain and the US was cutting through with voters, as the broad consensus on climate action breaks down.

“Climate change is being politicised [in the UK] in the same way that has been done in the United States,” said Professor Wouter Poortinga, an environmental psychologist at the University of Cardiff.

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Trump Unsettles Supposedly Settled Climate Science

by H.S. Burnett, Aug 26, 2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch 

DOE climate report shows rising CO2 has limited impact on temperatures and isn’t catastrophic as alarmists claim.

 

Donald Trump’s presidency has seemingly unsettled the supposedly settled science of climate change, disrupting 40 years of “climate change is killing us” dogma in seven short months. [emphasis, links added]

For nearly four decades, scientists with a reputational and financial stake in the game, and compliant, uninquisitive mainstream media, have told the public one thing consistently concerning climate change: there is a consensus, there is no debate, human greenhouse gas emissions are causing dangerous climate change. The end, roll credits, The Science is settled.

The Consensus Climate Cabal (CCC) of scientists, activists, and politicians attempted to enforce the settled climate science orthodoxy because they profited from it in one way or another, in part by shutting down continued debate and discussion about the causes and consequences of climate change.

For example, the Climategate emails showed scientists suppressing or lying about inconvenient data, undermining climate concerns, having open-minded journal editors removed from their positions or reined in by journal publishers (nefarious activity that continues to this day, unfortunately).

In Climategate’s aftermath, climate skeptics were increasingly shut out of the peer review process, and papers openly skeptical of the anthropogenic climate disaster narrative were nearly impossible to get published in top journals.

The mainstream media then piled on. It began to shut dissenting voices out of climate change stories.

The media concluded that since “the science was settled,” the debate was over, and publishing the views of climate skeptics/climate realists was tantamount to allowing Holocaust deniers a voice in stories about Nazi death camps.

Those not in the consensus group were labeled as climate deniers and disenfranchised in polite company.

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A recent article in Nature acknowledged that the DOE’s report has at least a modicum of validity.

“Predictions of global warming are uncertain,” writes Tim Plamer, D.Phil., in a recent article in Nature. “That’s why we need to keep finding out how the climate system works.”

Palmer admits, for example, that climate change is not catastrophic, and “its authors are correct in one respect: the most important uncertainty in our ability to predict how much global temperatures will increase as carbon emissions continue is related to how cloud coverage will change over time.”

The response of global temperatures to rising CO2 is the most critical question in the climate debate. If that question is unsettled, then we can’t really know how the climate will respond to rising temperatures and whether it endangers humans or the environment. Score one for the DOE report.

The science is not “settled,” after all. It never was!

climate-debate

DOE Climate Report Authors Challenge Climate Consensus, Trigger Fierce Media Backlash

by K. Killough, Aug 4, 2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch 

he Department of Energy has released a climate assessment report that incorporates the conclusions of climate scientists who have long been labeled by Democrats, the media, and climate activists as “climate deniers.” [emphasis, links added]

In a statement announcing the release Tuesday of the report, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said it was part of the EPA’s proposed rule repealing the 2009 endangerment finding, which cites the report.

Wright notes in the report’s foreword that the modern world is one of unprecedented prosperity in human history, but the public is being told that “the very energy systems that enabled this progress now pose an existential threat.”

He said he commissioned the report to “encourage a more thoughtful and science-based conversation” that scrutinizes the view that fossil fuels are threatening humanity’s well-being.

The report’s coauthor, Dr. Judith Curry, president of the Climate Forecast Applications Networkand author of “Climate Uncertainty and Risk,” says on her blog that there wasn’t complete agreement among the authors, and she welcomes a robust discussion on the report’s conclusion.

However, she wrote, she didn’t expect the same kind of openness from the alarmists who have long been the primary source of science informing climate policy for the past couple of decades.

“The Michael Mann wing of the climate debate will hate this report because: the CWG [Climate Working Group] authors are reputable scientists outside of their ‘tribe.’ The Report demonstrates that Mann et al. are losing control of the climate narrative in the U.S., and because of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Curry wrote, adding that their usual ad hominem attacks won’t be effective against the report.

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How the “scientific consensus” on climate change was invented

by C. Rotter, Feb 27, 2025 in WUWT

How a “scientific consensus” that “climate change is mostly human-caused” was forced by:
1) Shutting down funding for scientific research into natural causes.
2) Punishing scientists who continued this research anyway.

This is an excerpt from “Climate The Movie” (2024). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOAUsvVhgsU

better to know...?, climate-debate

Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #621

by K. Haapala,  WUWT, Nov 25, 2024

Scope: This Week begins with Richard Lindzen’s discussion on recent political movements that falsely claim to be based on science. Vijay Jayaraj discusses a conference of important nations that the legacy media missed, or misrepresented. Delancyplace.com discusses a few issues in Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Roy Spencer and John Christy discuss corrections needed to the measurements by satellites when the satellites drift too far from the planned orbit. Owen Klinsky alerts the US to the Winter Reliability Assessment by North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC). Roger Caiazza continues to express concern over New York’s future reliance on Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resources (DEFR), that appears imaginary. A brief discussion on a Bomb Cyclone concludes this Week.

Rumors State: Some of the most misleading arguments for drastic action to “combat climate change” include phrases such as “The Science says.” Science says nothing; in physical science it is the physical evidence that reveals the validity of a claim. Writing in the American Mind, MIT Professor emeritus of Atmospheric Science Richard Lindzen reveals “How a political movement invented its own scientific basis.” He begins with:

“Modern political movements have frequently laid claim to being based in science, from immigration restriction and eugenics (in the U.S. after WWI), to antisemitism and race ideology (in Hitler’s Germany), to Communism and Lysenkoism (under Stalin). Each of these falsely invoked a scientific consensus that convinced highly educated citizens, who were nonetheless ignorant of science, to set aside the anxieties associated with their ignorance. Since all scientists supposedly agreed, there was no need for them to understand the science.

Of course, this version of “the science” is the opposite of science itself. Science is a mode of inquiry rather than a source of authority. However, the success that science achieves has earned it a measure of authority in the public’s mind. This is what politicians frequently envy and exploit.

The climate panic fits into this same pattern and, as in all the preceding cases, science is in fact irrelevant. At best, it is a distraction which has led many of us to focus on the numerous misrepresentations of science entailed in what was purely a political movement.”

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unclassified

Europe’s Consensus On Climate Is Crumbling

by W. Münchau, Feb 29, 202 in ClimateChangeDispatch

At stake in the European elections in June this year will be everything that defines the modern EU: a large volume of net zero legislation, a values-based foreign policy, and ever-more intrusive business regulation.

Polls suggest the centrist majority that has supported these policies is growing slimmer. [emphasis, links added]

Ursula von der Leyen [pictured above] has been the quintessential representative of that majority. Born in Brussels, German by nationality, proposed by France, she was the perfect candidate for European Commission president in late 2019.

Now she is seeking a second term. Whether she will succeed will depend to a large extent on whether the centrist four-party coalition that supported her in 2019 will hold.

All over Europe, we are now seeing a backlash against the kind of policies the Von der Leyen Commission represents.

The far right is part of that response, but the main political shift has been inside Von der Leyen’s own political group, the European People’s Party (EPP), of which the German CDU/CSU is the largest member.

This backlash follows one of the most hectic political phases in recent EU history. When Covid struck in early 2020, Von der Leyen was instrumental in setting up the EU’s recovery fund to help countries deal with the economic consequences of the pandemic.

Then came the Green Deal, a hefty tranche of legislation on renewable energy, land use, forestry, energy efficiency, emission standards for cars and trucks, and a directive on energy taxes.

There was also a tightening of standards on pesticides, air quality, water pollution, and wastewater.

Farmers are resisting this program because it affects their livelihoods. Industrialists, too, are unhappy. A big part of the Green Deal was its industrial policy; the flagship legislation was the Net Zero Industry Act.

The industry used to be the EU’s strongest supporter.

But with the new laws came new bureaucracy: now, all EU-funded investment must include a green component of at least 30 percent, while a carbon border adjustment mechanism, to take effect in 2026, will penalize imports that do not meet EU carbon-emission standards. Together, EU legislation in the last few years amounts to a near-total corporate regime change.

Compliance with some regulations is virtually impossible for companies without dedicated legal teams. It is going to get worse.

Under discussion right now is a supply-chain law that would make European companies responsible for human rights abuses in their supply chain – including the suppliers of their suppliers.

I expect that the hyperactive phase of this green agenda will end with the elections in June. Some of it might even go into reverse. I am even starting to doubt whether the EU will ever enforce the 2035 target for phasing out fossil-fuel-driven cars.

This is an industrial-policy disaster in the making because Europe’s carmakers are having trouble selling their electric cars.

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climate-debate

Ninety-Nine Percent? Re-Examining the Consensus on the Anthropogenic Contribution to Climate Change

by Denteslski et al. , Nov 2023 in MDPI/Springer

Abstract

Anthropogenic activity is considered a central driver of current climate change. A recent paper, studying the consensus regarding the hypothesis that the recent increase in global temperature is predominantly human-made via the emission of greenhouse gasses (see text for reference), argued that the scientific consensus in the peer-reviewed scientific literature pertaining to this hypothesis exceeds 99%. This conclusion was reached after the authors scanned the abstracts and titles of some 3000 papers and mapped them according to their (abstract) statements regarding the above hypothesis. Here, we point out some major flaws in the methodology, analysis, and conclusions of the study. Using the data provided in the study, we show that the 99% consensus, as defined by the authors, is actually an upper limit evaluation because of the large number of “neutral” papers which were counted as pro-consensus in the paper and probably does not reflect the true situation. We further analyze these results by evaluating how so-called “skeptic” papers fit the consensus and find that biases in the literature, which were not accounted for in the aforementioned study, may place the consensus on the low side. Finally, we show that the rating method used in the study suffers from a subjective bias which is reflected in large variations between ratings of the same paper by different raters. All these lead to the conclusion that the conclusions of the study does not follow from the data.
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Mark Lynas ‘99% Consensus’ on Climate Change – Busted in Peer Review.

by  A. Watts, Nov 1, 2023 in WUWT

My name is Yonatan Dubi, I am a professor of chemistry and physics at Ben Gurion University, Israel. I am also one of Israel’s leading advocates for rational environmentalism and climate realism. Together with a few colleagues we have conducted a very nice research, detailing and quantifying the flaws in the famous consensus study by Lynas et al, which (falsely) claimed the ridiculous 99% consensus. After a year long journey, our paper was finally published in the peer reviewed journal Climate, the link is https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/11/11/215.

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climate-debate

How A Scientific ‘Consensus’ Is Fabricated And Enforced

by L. Balzer, Oct 25, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

We are repeatedly told that 97% of scientists agree that Earth’s climate is experiencing dangerous warming caused by human activities.

John Kerry, Biden’s climate czar, stated, “97 percent of peer-reviewed climate studies confirm that climate change is happening and that human activity is largely responsible.”

Although the 97% figure, based on discredited studies, is exaggerated, the majority of climate scientists are perhaps on the human-caused climate change bandwagon. [emphasis, links added]

This is no accident.

In 2009, 1,079 emails between climate scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in the United Kingdom and others working with them were released by a whistleblower in an incident that came to be known as Climategate.

This small group of scientists has been the most influential in driving worldwide alarm over global warming.

The emails they exchanged revealed that they were doing everything they could to keep scientists whose findings disagreed with theirs out of the peer review system.

The ruthless methods these men used to silence any scientist who dared to question their conclusions were shocking.

They had pressured editors of scientific journals to block the publication of peer-reviewed studies contradicting their results.

A professional scientist’s career rests on his/her success in getting their studies published in peer-reviewed journals.

Phil Jones of CRU, writing to Michael Mann, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, about two papers that disagreed with their hypothesis, stated, “Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

Mann responded, “Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal?”

Jones assured him, “I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”

They demonstrated their hatred of skeptical scientists, rejoicing at the news that one of them had died.

One scientist, Ben Santer, told CRU, “The next time I see Pat Michaels [a dissenting scientist] at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat the crap out of him.”

Two years later in 2011, 5,000 more emails were leaked. These were even more startling and incriminatingthan the 1,079 released in 2009.

Myron Ebell commented, “If there were any doubts remaining after reading the first Climategate emails, the new batch of emails that appeared on the web today make it clear that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] is an organized conspiracy dedicated to tricking the world into believing that global warming is a crisis that requires a drastic response.”

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climate-debate

The Latest On Global Warming Is … There Is No Global Warming

by Editorial Board, Oct 25, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

A new study out of Norway is exactly what was needed to shut down the climate alarmists. Its findings show that man has not set fire to his home planet.

Right from the top, in the abstract not 10 lines into the study, the authors get to the point. [emphasis, links added]

“Using theoretical arguments and statistical tests we find,” the researchers say, “that the effect of man-made CO2 emissions does not appear to be strong enough to cause systematic changes in the temperature fluctuations during the last 200 years.”

In other words, our words, the greenhouse effect is so weak that it should be sidelined as an argument.

From there, the bad news only gets worse for priests of the climate religion.

“​​Even if [recently] recorded temperature variations should turn out to deviate from previous variation patterns in a systematic way, it is still a difficult challenge to establishhow much of this change is due to increasing man-made emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases.”

The researchers, from Statistics Norway, the government’s official data agency, also address the apparent “high degree of consensus among many climate researchers that the temperature increase of the last decades is systematic (and partly man-made),” while noting that it “is certainly the impression conveyed by the mass media.”

Of course, the climate zealots won’t like the study.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

“97% Consensus” — What Consensus?

by G. Wrightstone,  Aug 31, 2023 in WUWT

You have likely heard that 97% of scientists agree on human-driven climate change. You may also have heard that those who don’t buy into the climate-apocalypse mantra are science-deniers. The truth is that a whole lot more than 3% of scientists are skeptical of the party line on climate. A whole lot more.

The many scientists, engineers and energy experts that comprise the CO2 Coalition are often asked something along the lines of: “So you believe in climate change, then?” Our answer? “Yes, of course we do: it has been happening for hundreds of millions of years.” It is important to ask the right questions. The question is not, “Is climate change happening?” The real question of serious importance is, “Is climate change now driven primarily by human actions? That question should be followed up by “is our changing climate beneficial or harmful to ecosystems and humanity?”

There are some scientific truths that are quantifiable and easily proven, and with which, I am confident, at least 97% of scientists agree. Here are two:

  1. Carbon dioxide concentration has been increasing in recent years.
  2. Temperatures, as measured by thermometers and satellites, have been generally increasing in fits and starts for more than 150 years.

What is impossible to quantify is the actual percentage of warming that is attributable to increased anthropogenic (human-caused) CO2. There is no scientific evidence or method that can determine how much of the warming we’ve had since 1900 that was directly caused by us.

We know that temperature has varied greatly over the millennia. We also know that for virtually all of that time, global warming and cooling were driven entirely by natural forces, which did not cease to operate at the beginning of the 20th century.

The claim that most modern warming is attributable to human activities is scientifically insupportable. The truth is that we do not know. We need to be able to separate what we do know from that which is only conjecture.

What is the basis for the “97% consensus” notion? Is it true? 

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“The thinking error that makes people susceptible to climate change denial”

by E. Worrall, May 4, 2023 in WUWT

“… Climate change deniers simplify the spectrum of possible scientific consensus into two categories: 100% agreement or no consensus at all. If it’s not one, it’s the other. …”

The thinking error that makes people susceptible to climate change denial

Published: May 2, 2023 10.13pm AEST
Jeremy P. Shapiro
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences, Case Western Reserve University

Cold spells often bring climate change deniers out in force on social media, with hashtags like #ClimateHoax and #ClimateScam. Former President Donald Trump often chimes in, repeatedly claiming that each cold snap disproves the existence of global warming.

From a scientific standpoint, these claims of disproof are absurd. Fluctuations in the weather don’t refute clear long-term trends in the climate.

Yet many people believe these claims, and the political result has been reduced willingness to take action to mitigate climate change.

Why are so many people susceptible to this type of disinformation? My field, psychology, can help explain – and help people avoid being misled.

The allure of black-and-white thinking

Close examination of the arguments made by climate change deniers reveals the same mistake made over and over again. That mistake is the cognitive error known as black-and-white thinking, also called dichotomous and all-or-none thinking. As I explain in my book “Finding Goldilocks,” black-and-white thinking is a source of dysfunction in mental health, relationships – and politics.

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Climate change deniers simplify the spectrum of possible scientific consensus into two categories: 100% agreement or no consensus at all. If it’s not one, it’s the other.

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Read more: https://theconversation.com/the-thinking-error-that-makes-people-susceptible-to-climate-change-denial-204607

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better to know...?, climate-debate

UGLY: Climate Skeptic Group Gets EVICTED from National Science Teaching Association Convention

by A. Watt, Mar 27, 2023 in WUWT

From the You can’t handle the truth! department comes this sad but predictable tale of closed minded pettiness. NSTA, is your position so strong and unassailable that you have to trample free speech rights to protect teachers from hearing alternate views? Does cancel culture now extend to the minds of educators?

From Greg Wrightstone, president of the CO2 Coalition who reports they were evicted from their paid and agreed to exhibit just minutes after the show opened. This picture shows them on their way out the door while the show is in progress.

He writes:

We had an exhibit booth and were attending the NSTA convention, but they were having none of it. We were thrown out of the NSTA annual convention yesterday for exposing their position on the teaching of climate change. Our science was not on the “Approved List” by them.

climate-debate

A Primer On The IPCC’s Implausible Climate Scenarios

by R. Pielke, Mar 17, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Next Monday the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will release its so-called “Synthesis Report” which will integrate the findings of six different reports that it has released since 2014.

I have not participated in the IPCC nor have I seen the new report.

However, I have little doubt that one of the main issues that we will be discussing next week when the report is released will be the implausible climate scenarios that underpin much of the work of the IPCC over the past 9 years.[emphasis, links added]

Research I’ve been involved in — along with colleagues Matthew Burgess and Justin Ritchie — shows that theemissions scenarios that have guided the work of the IPCC and the broader climate research community are widely off the mark.

In short, they are far too extreme, both in what they project for today and especially into the future.

Our work is part of a growing consensus in the literature about the implausibility of extreme climate scenarios — a consensus so strong that it was acknowledged in the most recent IPCC assessmentreports, even though it complicated their messages.

The ubiquity of out-of-date scenarios throughout recent IPCC reports and the underlying literature that is has assessed means that the IPCC Synthesis Report, summarizing its work since 2014, runs the risk of promoting out-of-date science.

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Barry Brill: The Climate Emperor Is Now Naked

by B. Brill, Mar 18, 2023 in ClimateRealism

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The survey of 950 U.S. Likely Voters was conducted on March 6-8, 2023. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

The result (reported here) was breathtaking!An outright majority of those polled agreed that climate change has become a religion which has nothing to do with the climate. Almost half (47%) said they “Strongly Agree” while a further 13% said they “Agree”.

It’s hard to digest the fact that no less than 60% of US voters have now formed the clear view that the endless propaganda we hear daily from our politicians and corporate media actually has nothing to do with science or genuine alarm – it isn’t even about the climate. Instead, it’s all about political power and control.

Nearly half of those polled have strong feelings about this. That seems to suggest that they are a million miles from swallowing the orthodox narrative and are no longer persuadable. Although they weren’t asked, one can assume that they are fed up with the propaganda and want to be treated as adults.

Surprisingly, nearly half of the Democrats polled agreed that climate change has become a religion. But there was still a significant difference between the parties, the breakdown being:

Democrats:             45%

Independents:         60%

Republicans:          79%

There is no reason to believe that adult New Zealanders would feel any different from their American counterparts. And the breakdown between political parties would probably be much the same here as well.

 

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See also: The Global Warming Doomsday Religion Is A Suicide Pact To Wreck Our Economy

unclassified

IPSOS Global Poll: 4 In 10 People Believe Climate Change Is Natural

by P.J. Watson, Dec 13, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch

The results of a global poll are sure to shock those who claim that the “science is settled” on climate change – nearly four out of ten people believe it is natural, not man-made.

The worldwide IPSOS survey asked people in 30 countries across five continents to give their views on what they thought was causing climate change. [emphasis, links added]

Thirty-seven percent of respondents said they believed it was “mainly due to the kinds of natural phenomena that the Earth has experienced throughout its history.”

In the seven countries where political leanings were recorded, 28 percent of leftists said they were climate skeptics, while 50 percent of right-leaning respondents said they were doubtful.

According to energy company EDF, which commissioned IPSOS to conduct the poll, the results were “unexpected.”

“The degree of skepticism over human-caused global warming will shock the ‘settled’ science green catastrophists, who use constant scare tactics to promote the command-and-control Net Zero agenda,” writesChris Morrison.

Despite EDF asserting that populations are starting to notice the supposed increase of “extreme climate events,” regardless of doubts as to whether this is even happening, the energy company noted that it is not making them “more concerned, nor is it convincing them of the human origins of the phenomenon.”

In other words, despite decades of being constantly bombarded with “the message” that humans are solely responsible for climate change, a huge chunk of the global population still isn’t buying it.

EDF notes that climate skepticism has grown by six points over the last three years, while skepticism in France grew by eight points in a single year.

The reality of what ‘net zero’ actually means for people’s standard of living and their finances appear to be hitting home amidst a cost of living crisis that has led many in the West to be unable to afford their heating bills.

No doubt calls for wealthier Western countries to pay “climate reparations” is also causing more people to question precisely where their money is going and for what purpose.

Meanwhile, despite Just Stop Oil climate change protesters staging unruly demonstrations for months in London, the sudden cold snap appears to have made them all disappear.

better to know...?, climate-debate

97% Consensus on Climate Change? Survey Shows Only 59% of Scientists Expect Significant Harm

by WUWT, Nov 9, 2022

Humans are likely causing some warming, but substantial scientific disagreement exists on whether there will be significant impacts

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (November 8, 2022) – A new poll of scientists conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University found that only 59 percent of respondents think global climate change will cause “significant harm” to the “living conditions for people alive today.” That is far short of the “97 percent consensus” narrative pushed by climate alarmists and their media allies across the globe.

The survey, conducted in September and October 2022 by Fairleigh Dickinson University and commissioned by The Heartland Institute, polled only professionals and academics who held at least a bachelor’s degree in the fields of meteorology, climatology, physics, geology, and hydrology.

The key question of the survey asked: “In your judgement, what will be the overall impact of global climate change on living conditions for people alive today, across the globe?” Fifty-nine percent said “significant harm.” Thirty-nine percent said either “significant improvement,” “slight improvement,” “no change,” or “slight harm.” Two percent were not sure.

Among respondents with the most experience – those at least 50-years-old – less than half expect significant harm for people alive today. Scientists 30-years-old and younger were the only age group for which more than 60 percent expect significant harm.

Like prior surveys of scientists, the new poll shows the vast majority of scientists agree the planet is warming. On average, respondents attributed 75 percent of recent warming to human activity. More importantly, scientists disagree among themselves on whether future warming will be much of a problem.

The poll also found only 41 percent of respondents believe there has been a significant increase in the frequency of severe weather events. The majority say there has been no change or only a slight increase.

In reality, objective data show hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, drought, and other extreme weather events have become less frequent in recent decades.

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Exposing The ‘97% Of Scientists Agree With Man-made Global Warming’ Lie

by D. Craig, Sep 15, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch

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The main author of the paper who came up with the figure was John Cook, an Australian former web programmer and blogger who later gained a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Western Australia and founded what could be seen as a climate alarmist website.

He assembled a group of volunteers recruited via the website as part of a ‘citizen science’ project and tasked them with examining the abstracts of 11,944 climate papers from 1991-2011 matching the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’.

Note that the volunteers didn’t speak to any scientists and didn’t read the scientific papers. They just looked at the abstracts – a summary paragraph or two.

The volunteers classified the abstracts into one of seven categories according to their opinions of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW):

  1. Explicit endorsement of AGW with quantification
  2. Explicit endorsement of AGW without quantification
  3. Implicit endorsement of AGW
  4. No position or Uncertain
  5. Implicit rejection of AGW
  6. Explicit rejection of AGW without quantification
  7. Explicit rejection of AGW with quantification

The reviewers then ‘simplified’ results into four main categories as follows:

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Reasons to avoid false balance and fake debates

by W. Baerbel and J. Cook, Sep 9, 2022 in SkepticalScience

False balance media reporting

One of the most insidious, albeit often inadvertent forms of climate misinformation is false-balance media  coverage, where contrarian voices are given equal coverage with climatescientists. This stems from the journalistic norm assuming there are always two sides to an issue, thus giving mainstream and contrarian voices equal representation. As a result, a few dissenting scientists are given similar attention to the 97% of scientists who are convinced that humans are causing global warming.

debate

Analysis of media coverage from 1988 to 2002 showed that newspapers often presented false balance media coverage of climate change [18]. While the situation has improved in prestige-press coverage [19], the tabloid press has shown no signs of improvement [20]. Similarly, 70% of U.S. TV coverage of climate change presents a false balance [21]. In short, much of what people learn about climate change from the media involves well-established scientific truth presented alongside groundless assertions.

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To debate or not to debate

Debate is crucially important to climate science and in the case of human-caused climate change has already occurred over decades. The process of scientific debate is open to anyone—although it does require that participants subject their ideas to the scrutiny of the peer-review process, which is fundamental for the advancement of scientific knowledge [31]. However, contrarians refuse to participate in scientific debates: they do not present their views at scientific conferences, and have a negligible presence in the peer-reviewed literature. Instead, they demand special treatment by bypassing the usual scientific process and presenting unvetted ideas to the public.

How should one respond if invited to publicly debate mainstream climate science? Requests to “debate” climate science or the timing of climate impacts are for propaganda purposes and should be avoided.  Agreeing to participate in such debates run the risk of misinforming the public by conveying the false impression that the scientific community is undecided on basic facts like human-caused global warming.

In contrast, debates over solutions to climate change are worthwhile. One response to an invitation to debate is to inform the organisers of the danger of misinforming the public by debating established science, and that a more appropriate and constructive debate topic is climate solutions. If the organisers persist in hosting a problematic debate, a further option is to issue a public statement explaining that you had advised the organisers not to go ahead due to the problematic nature of the event, but they went ahead regardless.

climate-debate

“97% Consensus” — What Consensus?

by G. Wrightstone, Oct 28, 2021 in CO2Coalition

You have likely heard that 97% of scientists agree on human-driven climate change. You may also have heard that those who don’t buy into the climate-apocalypse mantra are science-deniers. The truth is that a whole lot more than 3% of scientists are skeptical of the party line on climate. A whole lot more.

The many scientists, engineers and energy experts that comprise the CO2 Coalition are often asked something along the lines of: “So you believe in climate change, then?” Our answer? “Yes, of course we do: it has been happening for hundreds of millions of years.” It is important to ask the right questions. The question is not, “Is climate change happening?” The real question of serious importance is, “Is climate change now driven primarily by human actions? That question should be followed up by “is our changing climate beneficial or harmful to ecosystems and humanity?”

There are some scientific truths that are quantifiable and easily proven, and with which, I am confident, at least 97% of scientists agree. Here are two:

  1. Carbon dioxide concentration has been increasing in recent years.

  2. Temperatures, as measured by thermometers and satellites, have been generally increasing in fits and starts for more than 150 years.

What is impossible to quantify is the actual percentage of warming that is attributable to increased anthropogenic (human-caused) CO2. There is no scientific evidence or method that can determine how much of the warming we’ve had since 1900 that was directly caused by us.

We know that temperature has varied greatly over the millennia. We also know that for virtually all of that time, global warming and cooling were driven entirely by natural forces, which did not cease to operate at the beginning of the 20th century.

The claim that most modern warming is attributable to human activities is scientifically insupportable. The truth is that we do not know. We need to be able to separate what we do know from that which is only conjecture.

What is the basis for the “97% consensus” notion? Is it true? 

Hint: You can’t spell consensus without “con.”

If, indeed, 97% of all scientists truly believed that human activities were causing the moderate warming that we have seen in the last 150 years, it would be reasonable for one to consider this when determining what to believe. One would be wrong, however.

Science, unlike religion, is not a belief system. Scientists, just like anyone else, will say that they believe things (whether they believe them or not) for social convenience, political expediency or financial profit. For this and other good reasons, science is not founded upon the beliefs of scientists. It is a disciplined method of inquiry, by which scientists apply pre-existing theory to observation and measurement, so as to develop or to reject a theory, so that they can unravel as clearly and as certainly as possible the distinction between what the Greek philosopher Anaximander called “that which is and that which is not.”

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Cooked Up Consensus: Lynas et al “Should Rather Be Classified As Propaganda, Bad Science”…”Truly Brazen”

by P. Gosselin, Oct 26, 2021 in NoTricksZone

Martin Landvoigt writes on truth and consensus, climate models, the “fundamental and methodological difficulties” in climate science and how “hard, robust evidence is largely lacking” and so it’s “a matter of weakly substantiated opinions”.

Climate consensus and the climate

By Martin Landvoigt at Philosophieren für alle), Die kalte Sonne
(Text excerpt translated, subtitles added by P. Gosselin)

On this basis, the argument of the supposed consensus in climate science has been presented several times and repeatedly.

Numerous studies are supposed to prove this. In particular, the study: Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature – John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli, Sarah A Green, Mark Richardson, Bärbel Winkler, Rob Painting, Robert Way, Peter Jacobs and Andrew Skuce – Published 15 May 2013.

Cook et al 2013 refuted

Arguably the most influential study used by U.S. presidents and other top-level decision makers as evidence for climate policy. Nevertheless, it can be considered refuted:

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climate-debate

100% consensus on the Anthropogenic Global Warming? A skeptical examination

by S. Point, Aug 27, 2021 in EuropeanScientist

The theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming is regularly presented as benefiting from a solid scientific consensus. What proves the solidity of this consensus? A scientific article, published in 2016  by Cook and colleagues, proposed a synthesis of the work: from the examination of  studies available at that time, the authors showed that the consensus on the reality of climate change was shared by 90%-100% of scientific climate experts. An estimate that we find widely relayed in the media today. In 2019, Powell said he found consensus to be 100%. In this article, we propose to analyze the potential biases in the work of Cook and colleagues, in order to understand how these biases could affect the claimed level of consensus. We also deal with Powell’s recent assert of 100% consensus and enlighten potential cognitive & methodological biases in his approach.

AN UNDENIABLE CONSENSUS?

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climate-debate

Michael Mann Appeals to, Then Ignores Scientific Consensus on 60 Minutes

by James Taylor, Oct 5, 2020 in WUWT

Prominent scientist and climate activist Michael Mann appealed to an asserted scientific consensus to chastise President Donald Trump on CBS’s 60 Minutes program last night. Ironically, Mann himself ignored clear scientific consensus in order to promote his own, out-of-the-mainstream climate change theories.

While interviewing Mann, CBS’s Scott Pelley said, “There have always been fires in the West. There have always been hurricanes in the East. How do we know that climate change is involved in this?” Pelley followed up with, “The president says about climate change, ‘Science doesn’t know.’”

Replied Mann, “The president doesn’t know, and he should know better. He should know that the world’s leading scientific organizations, our own U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and national academies of every major industrial nation, every scientific society in the United States that’s weighed in on the matter. This is a scientific consensus. There’s about as much scientific consensus about human-caused climate change as there is about gravity.”

Mann’s description of the conclusions of the “scientific consensus” however, is exactly the opposite of what scientific bodies report.

As documented in Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) expresses “low confidence” in any connection between climate change and changes in hurricane activity.

Similarly, as documented in Climate at a Glance: U.S. Wildfires, U.S. wildfires are much less frequent and severe than they were in the first half of the 20th century – 100 years of global warming ago. Moreover, the IPCC reports a decrease in drought conditions – which is the primary climate factor regarding wildfires – in the global region including the U.S. West. Moreover, the IPCC finds no evidence of an increase in drought globally, either.

Ultimately, data, evidence, and scientific facts are far more indicative of scientific truth than a real or imagined consensus of scientists. Yet, to the extent Michael Mann wishes to invoke consensus as a scientific argument, the clear consensus of scientists is that Mann is promoting extreme climate theories that have no basis in reality.

better to know...?, climate-debate

The Ninety-Seven Percent Consensus Myth

by J. O’Sullivan, une 29, 2020 in ClimateChangeDispatch

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A Pew Research survey for this year’s Earth Day showed that while Democrats with a high degree of scientific knowledge were likely to have a strong belief in the human contribution to climate change, Republicans with the same level of information were much more skeptical.

These are intriguing, even embarrassing, results. The researchers plainly thought so, because they added this somewhat nervous comment on them:

A similar pattern was found regarding people’s beliefs about energy issues. These findings illustrate that the relationship between people’s level of science knowledge and their attitudes can be complex.

And maybe they illustrate something else, too.

These results seem to conflict with perhaps the single best-known statistic about science and global warming, namely that 97 percent of scientists believe in global warming.

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