“When it’s a consensus among the uninformed, it’s not worth much“:
What can we take away from all this? First, lots of people get called “climate experts” and contribute to the appearance of consensus, without necessarily being knowledgeable about core issues. A consensus among the misinformed is not worth much.
Second, it is obvious that the “97 per cent” mantra is untrue. The underlying issues are so complex it is ludicrous to expect unanimity. The near 50/50 split among AMS members on the role of greenhouse gases is a much more accurate picture of the situation. The phony claim of 97 per cent consensus is mere political rhetoric aimed at stifling debate and intimidating people into silence.
Yes. Anyone who cites that number at this point is either a liar or appallingly ignorant.
[Update a while later]
Related, I was going to post about this interview with Jerry Taylor, formerly of Cato, who seems to aspire to be continually out of synch with reality:
I began to change, maybe five or six years ago, for several reasons.
One, the scientific evidence became stronger and stronger over time. A lot of conservatives think of climate change as similar to the population issue. You have to remember, in the ’60s and ’70s people were frantic about population growth. And it just peeled away as an issue, simply because it was wrong — or the projections were. And so I would say the same thing: [climate change] is just one in the endless parade of environmental apocalypse stories.
That’s simply not true. The scientific evidence has not become “stronger and stronger over time.” In fact, particularly with the pause, and the complete failure of the models, the uncertainty is growing.
Judith Curry addresses it:
…it is interesting to see Libertarian arguments about climate change policy they [sic] don’t seem overly caught up in the UNFCCC/IPCC ideology, or its antithesis ideology. The Climate Hawks (e.g. Dave Roberts) love this kind of libertarian ‘conversion’ story. But to my mind, Jerry Taylor’s argument for a carbon tax doesn’t really hold up.
Nope.
Even libertarians are noticing that “the smart [climate] skeptics still remain a tiny, tiny minority” in the scientific community.
Jerry Taylor seems to be uninformed.
Are smart skeptics a majority in climate science? A large minority?
That depends on what you mean by “skeptics.” Skeptical of what? All scientists are skeptics, by definition.
Scientists who don’t think most recent warming is man-made.
I have no idea. I don’t think anyone does. But that’s not the issue. Some think it’s man made, some think (like me) it may be. But there actually hasn’t been any significant warming for over a decade. There is a long-term trend from the Little Ice Age.
What there is no consensus on at all, let alone the insane 97% number, is that if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels, we’re all doomed.
Plant matter as well as fossil fuels are depleted in the C13 isotope relative to the primary C12 isotope. As total atmospheric CO2 is relentlessly increasing, the C13 concentration in the atmosphere is steadily decreasing — proof that the increase in CO2 from the mid 1800’s of 280 ppm to about 400 ppm today is man-made.
Proof? The decrease in the concentration of C13 is “in the right direction” but it isn’t anywhere near the rate needed for the bulk of the increase in CO2 to come from burning forests or from fossil fuel combustion. No . . . where . . . near.
The counter to this is, “Yes, but the 400 ppm CO2 is way higher than anything from the ice cores from the past ump-teen thousand years.”
In other words, the answer to lack of full depletion in the C13 is “because shut up.” In a “real” scientific discipline (cough, physics, cough), this glaring inconsistency in the isotope ratios would be a serious driver of new theories (dark matter for the phonograph record spin profile of spiral galaxies and the frenetic milling of galaxy clusters, dark energy for the acceleration of the cosmological expansion). In climate science, no one bothers to try and explain what is going on.
I have no idea.
There have been a number of attempts to answer that question, with answers in the 80-98% range.
But that’s not the issue.
It’s a good starting point. If humans aren’t responsible for most recent warming, there’s much less reason to believe that reversing our actions will have much effect. If humans are responsible, there’s much more reason to believe we have some degree of leverage over future warming.
But there actually hasn’t been any significant warming for over a decade.
Again, one’s view on the basic question of human responsibility can put that fact in a couple different lights. If humans aren’t primarily responsible, a slowdown in warming is just natural variability in a process we don’t control. If humans are mostly responsible, a slowdown is can be presumed to be temporary, since the human actions in question have not slowed.
What there is no consensus on at all, let alone the insane 97% number, is that if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels, we’re all doomed.
Most scientists in the field are of the view that human actions are the primary cause of recent warming. That doesn’t mean that we know we have to stop burning fossil fuels or else we’re doomed. But in a sane world that fact would shift the policy conversation from “is AGW actually happening?” to “what is the appropriate response to AGW?”
There have been a number of attempts to answer that question, with answers in the 80-98% range.
Nonsense. There was one flawed attempt, by Cook, and it was methodologically BS.
There was one flawed attempt, by Cook, and it was methodologically BS.
The Taylor interview linked to above includes a graph of the results of five other surveys, with results between 82 and 98%. There have been others as well.
All that says is that those surveyed think that humans play a “significant” role in “global warming.” In other words, more than “little or none.” I wouldn’t disagree with that (though I don’t think anyone really knows). That doesn’t mean much, in terms of policy.
@Jim
Define “science”.
What makes a person, a “scientist”?