Consensus

Science is skepticism. If someone isn't a skeptic, then they're not a scientist: they're a politician.

Consensus/popularity is politics, Science is skepticism (and proof). The "97% Scientific Consensus" for AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming), is done by fools or liars. The actual consensus is surprisingly small, the studies that say otherwise are embarrassingly bad, and there's a much stronger consensus that IPCC and the media are misleading the public.

ℹ️ Info

~ Aristotle Sabouni
Created: 2017-04-01

🗒️ Note:
Consensus is one of three fallacies (or all of them combined): bandwagon fallacy appeal to authority fallacy Echo-chamber fallacy Fallacies are not logic or science, they are fallacies that either intentionally or accidentally dupe the rubes.

Here's a breakdown of what the data actualy shows:

Logic contradicts the 97% myth. Folks like PopularTechnology.net just show a few thousand papers supporting the anti-AGW view, and it would require an astronomical burden to get back to the 97% of papers (or scientists) agree standard. The same with polls of scientists. For each one scientist (Skeptic), the other side has to find 40 without scientific integrity, and that burden is just too high. So they don't even try. They try to cherry pick their data, exclude dissenters from their samples and know that the media and polemics will still cite them and fail to note the refutations.
Cook, Doran & Zimmerman, Anderegg, Lewandowsky, Oreskes are political advocates more than Scientists and they created some really bad "studies" (more cherry picked propaganda) to try to prove their conclusion that 97% agree. That's not science. No one who glanced at their methodology would call it quality research. And their studies were all refuted by real Scientists (those following Scientific methods) like Peiser, Pielke, Mockton, Shulte, Khandekar.
Strengers, Verheggen and Vringer, AMS (Meteorologists), APEGA (Geologists and Geophysicists), GMU (Climatologists), Lefsrud & Meyer all did far better (methodologically) direct survey's of published scientists to see if there was consensus and/or they agreed with the IPCC's conclusions. They came back with no real consensus, other that high skepticism or contempt for the IPCC's conclusions, and that the trend is headed towards more skepticism over time (rather than less). But these far broader studies, with better methodology are widely ignored by the media, because they don't fit the agenda. That's not science.

This doesn't mean you can't believe in AGW. A consensus against AGW doesn't disprove manmade warming, any more than consensus would prove it. But there's still the core question: if most studies show that there's no consensus, and those that do are frauds, and you haven't seen this in your favorite papers or TV shows, then why has the media been lying to you? Do you think they're all incompetent and have no researchers or fact checkers able to do what this article did, or do they have a political agenda and are willing to lie (mislead) the public for their cause? And that leads us to the conclusion, those that claim 97% consensus are either liars or fools.

🗒️ Note:
I created variances of this list for a couple decaes (though it's changed over time). While I'd gladly accept corrections, I've yet to have any consensus advocates able to refute it, or any of the studies in it. Their usual tack is to attack me, or go back to citing places that cite these studies, as if their appeal to authority/popularity isn't dependent on the research it's based on. Which tells me what I need to know about them, their sources, and their scientific/intellectual honesty and integrity.

The Studies[edit | edit source]

APEGGA - APEGGA 2008 did a survey of their members and discovered that only 25.7% felt that Climate Change is primarily caused by human factors. So they did a follow up in 2012 and found that only 36% agreed with the IPCC claims on climate change, and 51% think there's little or no danger from anthropogenic causes. More of a consensus against the IPCC than for it.
American Meteorological Society - (AMS) looked at Climate Change 4 times and deep skepticism on the consensus view. For there to be a 97% consensus, there would have to have been 20,000 peer reviewed papers published in 2016 (there weren't), and all of them would have had to been on Climate Change (they weren't), and the entirety would have had to agree with the consensus view (they don't).
Bray and Von Starch - These two studies in 2003 and 1996 mapped how many (and how strongly) scientists agreed/disagreed with the Global Warming consensus, and it was a nice even bell curve, completely showing there was a spectrum of views, and refuting the idea that there was a blanket consensus.
Doran & Zimmerman, Anderegg, Lewandowsky - 2009 Doran & Zimmermann polled 3,146 Government Earth Scientists, then filtered out all but 77 that weren't published in a few pro-Global Warming journals, then asked them two vague questions, and concluded that 75 of the 77 were pro-AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming). There's the 97% they wanted to get to. But that's not science, that's propaganda.
George Mason University - GMU did study of Climatologists in 2007 and found that 73% thought there was proof of global warming. The 2010 follow-up found: "56% find IPCC untrustworthy”, "63% believe global warming is caused mostly by natural causes, and only 31% believe humans are primarily responsible”, "61% say there is a lot of disagreement among scientists”. e.g. No 97% IPCC consensus.
Harris American Meteorological and Geophysical scientists Poll - 2007 Harris American Meteorological and Geophysical Scientists Poll found that only 52% felt that the warming that was happening was "human-induced”. E.g. Climate Change is natural versus manmade was almost a 50/50 split.
Lefsrud & Meyer - 2012 Lefsrud & Meyer did a study of studies to conclude 36% have a "strong belief that climate change is happening, that it is not a normal cycle of nature, and humans are the main or central cause." (agree with IPCC), 64% fall into one of the 4 categories that are skeptical of alarmist global warming claims. And explicit endorsements in AGW has declined from 1993-2008.
Oreskes, Peiser & Pielke, Mockton, Shulte, Khandekar - History Professor Naomi Oreskes wrote a global warming activism essay that claimed her search on “global warming” found 928 papers, and 75% agreed with her view (and 25% held no opinion), starting the fable that there was 100% consensus on Global Warming. Peiser & Pielke, Mockton, Shulte and Khandekar all showed it absurdly bad science. Orsakes never defended.
PopularTechnology.net - PopularTechnology.net did a collection 1,350+ Peer-reviewed papers supporting skeptic arguments against AGW alarmism. This means the Consensus side needs to show a list of 45,000 papers that support AGW, to achieve their 97% claims, or we can agree that the claims of 97% are greatly overstated.
Sietz, Robinson, and Soon : Global Warming Petition Project - Physicist Frederick Seitz was President of the US National Academy of Sciences. He got 31,487 American scientists disagreed with Kyoto/UN on CO2 and Global Warming Alarmism. You'd need 1,049,566 Scientists to disagree to get 97% conensus, or 300,966 Ph.D.'s to sign the counter-effort, which never got anywhere.
Skeptical Science Studies - Psychology Student and Climate Activist behind the fraudulently named and often discredited Skeptical Science, John Cook, did a couple of "Studies" to try to prove the 97% consensus. Science is not proving your hypothesis by cooking the numbers, that's what he did, and we call that politics (FakeScience).
Strengers, Verheggen and Vringer - Strenger, Verheggen and Vringer did a direct survey of 1,800 international scientists who had published peer reviewed articles on Climate Change. Only 43% (797) of climate scientists agree with the IPCC claims that more than half of the observed increase in surface temperature was caused by manmade causes. (This isn't even the newer/bolder 90% caused by man).

Climate skeptics denied free speech[edit source]

Main article: Climate skeptics denied free speech

When the facts are in the way of a leftist agenda, they want to suppress the facts, and people that speak them. If they cared about the whole truth, they wouldn't fear the other side; they know the facts would come out, and their side would win. They either don't trust people, or they don't trust the facts... or both. That's why the silence skeptics.

🔗 More

Fake Studies
This is a list of things that people believe, based on "Studies" that have been debunked or discredited.

Climate
The Climate is always change, the debate is over the cause and consequences. Where there's no debate, there's no science.

Consensus
Science is skepticism. If someone isn't a skeptic, then they're not a scientist: they're a politician.

Climate
The Climate is always change, the debate is over the cause and consequences. Where there's no debate, there's no science.

🔗 Links

Tags: Fake Studies Climate Slides Consensus Climate/tab