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Consensus On Consensus: Climate Experts Agree On Human-Caused Global Warming (theguardian.com)
mspohr quotes a report from The Guardian written by Dana Nuccitelli, environmental scientist and contributor to SkepticalScience.com: There is an overwhelming expert scientific consensus on human-caused global warming. Authors of seven previous climate consensus studies -- including Naomi Oreskes, Peter Doran, William Anderegg, Bart Verheggen, Ed Maibach, J. Stuart Carlton, John Cook, [Dana Nuccitelli] and six of her colleagues -- have co-authored a new paper that should settle this question once and for all. The two key conclusions from the paper are: 1) Depending on exactly how you measure the expert consensus, it's somewhere between 90% and 100% that agree humans are responsible for climate change, with most of our studies finding 97% consensus among publishing climate scientists. 2) The greater the climate expertise among those surveyed, the higher the consensus on human-caused global warming.
Quoted from IOPscience: Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming. The consensus that humans are causing recent global warming is shared by 90%-100% of publishing climate scientists according to six independent studies by co-authors of this paper. Those results are consistent with the 97% consensus reported by Cook et al based on 11 944 abstracts of research papers, of which 4014 took a position on the cause of recent global warming. A survey of authors of those papers also supported a 97% consensus. Tol comes to a different conclusion using results from surveys of non-experts such as economic geologists and a self-selected group of those who reject the consensus. We demonstrate that this outcome is not unexpected because the level of consensus correlates with expertise in climate science. At one point, Tol also reduces the apparent consensus by assuming that abstracts that do not explicitly state the cause of global warming ('no position') represent non-endorsement, an approach that if applied elsewhere would reject consensus on well-established theories such as plate tectonics. We examine the available studies and conclude that the finding of 97% consensus in published climate research is robust and consistent with other surveys of climate scientists and peer-reviewed studies.
Quoted from IOPscience: Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming. The consensus that humans are causing recent global warming is shared by 90%-100% of publishing climate scientists according to six independent studies by co-authors of this paper. Those results are consistent with the 97% consensus reported by Cook et al based on 11 944 abstracts of research papers, of which 4014 took a position on the cause of recent global warming. A survey of authors of those papers also supported a 97% consensus. Tol comes to a different conclusion using results from surveys of non-experts such as economic geologists and a self-selected group of those who reject the consensus. We demonstrate that this outcome is not unexpected because the level of consensus correlates with expertise in climate science. At one point, Tol also reduces the apparent consensus by assuming that abstracts that do not explicitly state the cause of global warming ('no position') represent non-endorsement, an approach that if applied elsewhere would reject consensus on well-established theories such as plate tectonics. We examine the available studies and conclude that the finding of 97% consensus in published climate research is robust and consistent with other surveys of climate scientists and peer-reviewed studies.
1. A tech breakthrough in energy production.
We already have nuclear technology available to us, ready to implement that produces nearly no waste (by reprocessing), is very safe, and burns much more abundant thorium for fuel (also burns most of what we currently consider waste, via reprocessing.) It would solve energy needs for the foreseeable future. Why is no one building these things?
Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the historyWhen people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” – UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.
“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists.” – Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.
“Temperature measurements show that the [climate model-predicted mid-troposphere] hot zone is non-existent. This is more than sufficient to invalidate global climate models and projections made with them!”- UN IPCC Scientist Dr. Steven M. Japar, a PhD atmospheric chemist who was part of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Second (1995) and Third (2001) Assessment Reports, and has authored 83 peer-reviewed publications and in the areas of climate change, atmospheric chemistry, air pollutions and vehicle emissions.
UN IPCC Scientist Kenneth P. Green Declares ‘A Death Spiral for Climate Alarmism’ – September 30, 2009 – ‘We can expect climate crisis industry to grow increasingly shrill, and increasingly hostile toward anyone who questions their authority’ – Dr. Kenneth Green was a Working Group 1 expert reviewer for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001
‘The whole climate change issue is about to fall apart — Heads will roll!’ -South African UN Scientist Dr. Will Alexander, April 12, 2009 – Professor Alexander, is Emeritus of the Department of Civil and Biosystems Engineering at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, and a former member of the United Nations Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters.
“I was at the table with three Europeans, and we were having lunch. And they were talking about their role as lead authors. And they were talking about how they were trying to make the report so dramatic that the United States would just have to sign that Kyoto Protocol,” Christy told CNN on May 2, 2007. – Alabama State Climatologist Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, served as a UN IPCC lead author in 2001 for the 3rd assessment report and detailed how he personally witnessed UN scientists attempting to distort the science for political purposes.
“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic campClimate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.” – Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.
“The quantity of CO2 we produce is insignificant in terms of the natural circulation between air, water and soil I am doing a detailed assessment of the UN IPCC reports and the Summaries for Policy Makers, identifying the way in which the Summaries have distorted the science.” – South African Nuclear Physicist and Chemical Engineer Dr. Philip Lloyd, a UN IPCC co-coordinating lead author who has authored over 150 refereed publications.
“The claims of the IPCC are dangerous unscientific nonsense” – declared IPCC reviewer and climate researcher Dr Vincent Gray, of New Zealand in 2007. Gray was an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports going back to 1990, author of more than 100 scientific publications.
"Some sort of impact" sounds like weasel words to me. The linked paper shows six independent studies that all agree; the consensus of 90-100% of scientists is that:
human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century
Which is a much stronger statement than you make out. Also, agreement with this position is correlated with expertise.
The exact climate sensitivity is still being debated, but your links are nearly five years out of date.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
A more accurate statement:
Not really.
1. Over 90% of scientists think the Earth is more likely to be warming up than cooling down.
Yes, that's what TFA says.
Even skeptics usually agree with this.
Actually, the reason for studies like this is because there are plenty of "skeptics" (read, "deniers") who do NOT agree with this. Every time there's a story on Slashdot about climate change, there's a whole group of people who come out of the woodwork and try to cite how the data from the past X number of years is bad and the warming trend isn't real, etc. Or global cooling was a thing not so long ago. Or whatever.
Yes, legitimate "skeptics" about the role of humans in climate change do generally believe that the planet is still warming. But there are plenty of others who dispute that.
2. Most of these scientists said humans had some sort of impact on the climate, but exactly how much was under debate.
Actually, most of the studies cited in TFA required that the respondents committed to belief that humans were a "significant" contributor to climate change, and some asked respondents whether humans were the "dominant" cause. The wording varied from study to study, and you can read the details in the full metastudy.
Regardless, most of the studies in TFA imply something much stronger than your statement.
In fact, the consensus view at present is that the impact of CO2 is overestimated.
Nope. That's not the current consensus view. There have been some studies which have rejected the more dire models for CO2. But your links are a few years old. Basically, your links are referring to issues where models didn't predict the "slowdown" in climate change that happened in the early 2000s. It has now picked up again.
And this is likely just due to random elements in a chaotic system. Subsequent studies have suggested that randomness in the earth's climate from year-to-year probably has multiple times the amount of impact that alterations to the CO2 model (or other factors, like sunlight absorption models, ocean absorption models, etc.) have.
Bottom line: the validity of these models has to be judged over longer timespans, to avoid the year-to-year blips in a chaotic system. With that taken into account, the general CO2 models likely aren't that far off.
become the leaders in the new energy economy
We had a chance with Solar...but the GOP stopped any grants to an industry until it could stand on it's own. Now it's all in China.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
According to this article, regulations and red tape quadrupled the cost of a nuclear plant in the US from 1970 to 1980
I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
Ah, the usual bait and switch: taking a plausible but inconsequential result ("humans probably have contributed to warming") and then pretending as if any climate activist policy were justified because of it.
The climate crisis people just retire to their corner and whine. If the climate is a real problem, then we can't afford to ignore ideas that don't fit some secondary agenda. On the other hand, if we do rule them out, then maybe climate wasn't as bad a problem as some claimed.
You mean like nuclear power? I see this a lot, the claim is that global warming is the greatest threat to humanity, national security, whatever, and therefore we must have some radical plan to solve this. I then propose nuclear power and people go nuts, "we can't do that, people will die!" or some shit. Well people will die, we've established that. What we should to is make it so as few people as possible die and the people that survive can live a healthy and happy life. This is assuming of course that future nuclear power plants will blow up like Chernobyl did, which they won't.
Nuclear power has the best safety record of any power source we have. Big failures that happen once every thirty years or so make the news but little failures don't. By little failures I mean people falling from windmills and solar panels, people crushed to death in a coal mine, people suffocating from a natural gas leak, or people run over by trains and trucks carrying coal, oil, and ethanol. I'm not saying people won't die from nuclear power, it has its industrial accidents like any other industry, but fewer people would die if we used nuclear power.
Instead of real solutions like nuclear power we have distractions like wind, solar, and ethanol. Instead of actually solving the problem we have dictators with their hands out at the UN demanding money from the free nations of the world because the poor people of their nation are harmed by the carbon released by the wealthy free nations. Never mind that this money would never actually reach the people harmed, it would just buy them a bigger palace to live in. Never mind that these people would be much better off with coal power to light and air condition their homes, and things like clean water to drink and sewage treatment plants.
The problem isn't that these people are seeing sea level rise, or more extreme weather events. The problem is that they don't have the freedom to build a better life without some war lord coming along to burn it all down.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The problem for me is that a lot of denialist articles include "facts" that were later proven wrong and some years ago they were TOLD it is fine to lie in their studies to get people to deny climate change. So much of the denialist FUD looks like a power grab by fossil energy companies to give to pet politicians and astroturfing organisations to funnel the money back to their coffers.
FTFY
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Consensus is PART of the scientific method. It's the only way we actually get to DO "science".
No it's not, the scientific method is based on proof and a chain of reproducibility. If you ask, "How do we know X is true?" You can find a paper, and reproduce its results. The paper is probably based on other papers, and if you want to, you can reproduce those results. If you want to, you can follow the chain all the way back to Galileo dropping balls off the leaning tower of Pisa.
As soon as you get to a point where someone says, "We know X because we voted and have consensus," the chain of reproducibility has been broken. Suddenly you are relying on the authority of the group, not on evidence. There always needs to be the option to reproduce, otherwise it's not science. Surveys are not climate science, they are political science.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
As much as I hate rewarding lazinness. Plenty of papers out there that argue TCR is well south of 2deg per doubling of CO2: a position that surely will get you labelled as a filthy denier. What value TCR/ECR actually is is the ultimate 64 trillion dollar question that heavily influences what is a sensible policy response to CO2 caused global warming (mitigate, adapt or do SFA)?. Be careful handling subversive materials not sanctioned by your tribal elders...
http://link.springer.com/artic...