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The term consensus seems... polluted. The scientific consensus refers to the number of scientists that believe in anthro-climate change, but not the number of

The term consensus seems... polluted. The scientific consensus refers to the number of scientists that believe in anthro-climate change, but not the number of scientists who actually study climate change detection and its relation to greenhouse gases. In other words, the opinion of a natural scientist, who relies on models developed by scientists who study climate change detection and attribution, does not matter at all. In the same way my opinion on relativity, as an engineer, means nothing about the consensus of people who can say relativity is an accurate theory. I believe there is definitely a majority. But the oft-mentioned studies mentioning 97% consensus are highly misleading.

splawn 11y ago
Here is the oft-mentioned study's abstract and a link to the full study. Abstract 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. http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024/pdf http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/0240...
- midwest1 11y ago
  I read this study earlier. Searching the Consensus Project from Skeptical Science shows papers such as: "Gruber, E., & Brand, M. (1991). Promoting energy conservation in small and medium-sized companies. Energy Policy, 19(3), 279–287." "Boykoff, M. T. (2008). Lost in translation? United States television news coverage of anthropogenic climate change, 1995–2004. Climatic Change, 86(1-2), 1–11." I am concerned that this paper qualifies social scientists, psychologists, and other soft scientists as hard science climate researchers capable of deducing the possibility and cause of global climate change. What the fuck do they know? I'm all for believing that there are a majority of hard-science climate researchers who agree that there is human-caused global warming. This study; however, gives nothing close to a true number.
  - splawn 11y ago
    The ISI search generated 12 465 papers. Eliminating papers that were not peer-reviewed (186), not climate-related (288) or without an abstract (47) reduced the analysis to 11 944 papers written by 29 083 authors and published in 1980 journals That seems like a pretty large sample size to me. I guess you could claim that they cherry picked 11, 944 papers out of some much larger number, but that seems like a stretch. Of course meta-studies like this are always problematic, but considering the overwhelming result I think its at least safe to say that scientists producing papers that run contrary to human caused global warming are in the minority.... and to me that is the best answer we can get as far as what the consensus is. Like you, Im willing to change my view on this (or anything really), but im always going to go with wherever the scientific consensus seems to be.
    - midwest1 11y ago
      Forgive me, I'm doing my best to stay above board. This is not an attack... You misunderstand me. I think that 11944 was too many papers, and should be narrowed down to papers by hard scientists. I'm saying out of those 11944, a potentially huge number were social studies, news studies, and other fields that have nothing to do with climate modeling. When you remove those from the 11944, what do you have? 10000? 5000? 1000? It's completely negligent, at the least. So, how big is that majority, really? And how many of them agree with the IPCCs more conservative estimates vs the scary, less likely ones? It's really hard to say with noise like this. And no, this doesn't mean I get my science opinions from Rush Limbaugh. That's noise, too.
      - splawn 11y ago
        No offense taken, and I can tell you are not just parroting political blogs which is refreshing. I do see your point, but as I will explain later, for a meta-study I think they did the best that they possibly could have. It says that only .07% of the abstracts reject AGW. That is a huge signal. This study shows that climate change isn't controversial within science journals as it is made out to be in the news media, which is the only reason people think it is controversial. If its not controversial among scientists then it must fit within the scientific consensus. Also, There is a problem with fixing the study in the way you mention. If they categorize scientists as "hard" or "soft" then the study becomes prone to be rejected during peer-review because at that point its results would hinge on their ability to make that distinction without bias.

splawn 11y ago

Here is the oft-mentioned study's abstract and a link to the full study. Abstract 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. http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024/pdf http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/0240...

midwest1 11y ago
I read this study earlier. Searching the Consensus Project from Skeptical Science shows papers such as: "Gruber, E., & Brand, M. (1991). Promoting energy conservation in small and medium-sized companies. Energy Policy, 19(3), 279–287." "Boykoff, M. T. (2008). Lost in translation? United States television news coverage of anthropogenic climate change, 1995–2004. Climatic Change, 86(1-2), 1–11." I am concerned that this paper qualifies social scientists, psychologists, and other soft scientists as hard science climate researchers capable of deducing the possibility and cause of global climate change. What the fuck do they know? I'm all for believing that there are a majority of hard-science climate researchers who agree that there is human-caused global warming. This study; however, gives nothing close to a true number.
- splawn 11y ago
  The ISI search generated 12 465 papers. Eliminating papers that were not peer-reviewed (186), not climate-related (288) or without an abstract (47) reduced the analysis to 11 944 papers written by 29 083 authors and published in 1980 journals That seems like a pretty large sample size to me. I guess you could claim that they cherry picked 11, 944 papers out of some much larger number, but that seems like a stretch. Of course meta-studies like this are always problematic, but considering the overwhelming result I think its at least safe to say that scientists producing papers that run contrary to human caused global warming are in the minority.... and to me that is the best answer we can get as far as what the consensus is. Like you, Im willing to change my view on this (or anything really), but im always going to go with wherever the scientific consensus seems to be.
  - midwest1 11y ago
    Forgive me, I'm doing my best to stay above board. This is not an attack... You misunderstand me. I think that 11944 was too many papers, and should be narrowed down to papers by hard scientists. I'm saying out of those 11944, a potentially huge number were social studies, news studies, and other fields that have nothing to do with climate modeling. When you remove those from the 11944, what do you have? 10000? 5000? 1000? It's completely negligent, at the least. So, how big is that majority, really? And how many of them agree with the IPCCs more conservative estimates vs the scary, less likely ones? It's really hard to say with noise like this. And no, this doesn't mean I get my science opinions from Rush Limbaugh. That's noise, too.
    - splawn 11y ago
      No offense taken, and I can tell you are not just parroting political blogs which is refreshing. I do see your point, but as I will explain later, for a meta-study I think they did the best that they possibly could have. It says that only .07% of the abstracts reject AGW. That is a huge signal. This study shows that climate change isn't controversial within science journals as it is made out to be in the news media, which is the only reason people think it is controversial. If its not controversial among scientists then it must fit within the scientific consensus. Also, There is a problem with fixing the study in the way you mention. If they categorize scientists as "hard" or "soft" then the study becomes prone to be rejected during peer-review because at that point its results would hinge on their ability to make that distinction without bias.