Friday, May 27, 2016
Solar Cycle #24
In April 2016 the sun was quiet.
April 2016 was month #89 of the unusually calm solar cycle #24.
The sunspot number (SSN) was 38.0 -- half of a typical count for month #89 of a solar cycle.
The sunspot count correlates positively with solar energy output.
Also unusual is this change to the sun's polar field:
--- The south polar field is now almost four times stronger than the weaker northern field.
--- This has never been observed at this stage of the solar cycle since observations began 40 years ago.
The current solar cycle #24 is weaker in total than solar cycle #7, from 1823 to 1833, during the "Dalton Minimum".
In fact, solar cycle #24 so far has been the weakest solar cycle in close to 200 years, since solar cycle #6.
In the past, unusually weak solar cycles have been associated with an unusually cool climate.
April 2016 was month #89 of the unusually calm solar cycle #24.
The sunspot number (SSN) was 38.0 -- half of a typical count for month #89 of a solar cycle.
The sunspot count correlates positively with solar energy output.
Also unusual is this change to the sun's polar field:
--- The south polar field is now almost four times stronger than the weaker northern field.
--- This has never been observed at this stage of the solar cycle since observations began 40 years ago.
The current solar cycle #24 is weaker in total than solar cycle #7, from 1823 to 1833, during the "Dalton Minimum".
In fact, solar cycle #24 so far has been the weakest solar cycle in close to 200 years, since solar cycle #6.
In the past, unusually weak solar cycles have been associated with an unusually cool climate.
Bye, El Nino
A cyclical weather event called El Nino caused a portion of the Pacific Ocean's surface to quickly warm by almost +3 degrees C. compared with the 1990 to 2015 average temperature.
The portion is the "NINO3.4 region" of the equatorial Pacific, bordered by the coordinates of 5S-5N, 170W-120W.
This region is used by meteorological agencies to define when an El Niño weather event is happening.
After peaking in February 2016, the average temperature in that region quickly fell back to the 1990 to 2015 average by May 18, 2016.
This 2015/2016 EL Nino was very similar to the 1997/1998 El Nino.
In fact, the 2016 temperature peak was just a few tenths of a degree C. warmer than the 1998 El Nino temperature peak, 18 years earlier.
A few tenths of a degree difference is smaller than the margin of error in the measurements, in my opinion.
There was a flat temperature trend from about 2003 to 2015, when global warming was not happening -- it was just a figment of over-active leftist imaginations in that period.
The temporary, local El Nino sea surface temperature peak does increase the global average temperature, even though it has nothing to do with the satanic gas that leftists falsely believe controls the climate -- carbon dioxide.
Earth's atmosphere and oceans are never in equilibrium -- temperatures are always changing.
So why do people care about an average temperature … a very complex statistic, hard to measure, with a big margin of error, that has barely changed in the past 150 years?
No one lives in an average temperature.
No one knows what a "normal" average temperature is.
The average temperature is unknown for 99.999% of earth's history.
So no one should care about the average climate.
And no taxpayers should have to pay one penny to hire government employees to calculate that number.
There's more warming in the first few hours after sunrise every day outside your home … than the warming of the average temperature of our planet in the past 150 years!
The portion is the "NINO3.4 region" of the equatorial Pacific, bordered by the coordinates of 5S-5N, 170W-120W.
This region is used by meteorological agencies to define when an El Niño weather event is happening.
After peaking in February 2016, the average temperature in that region quickly fell back to the 1990 to 2015 average by May 18, 2016.
This 2015/2016 EL Nino was very similar to the 1997/1998 El Nino.
In fact, the 2016 temperature peak was just a few tenths of a degree C. warmer than the 1998 El Nino temperature peak, 18 years earlier.
A few tenths of a degree difference is smaller than the margin of error in the measurements, in my opinion.
There was a flat temperature trend from about 2003 to 2015, when global warming was not happening -- it was just a figment of over-active leftist imaginations in that period.
The temporary, local El Nino sea surface temperature peak does increase the global average temperature, even though it has nothing to do with the satanic gas that leftists falsely believe controls the climate -- carbon dioxide.
Earth's atmosphere and oceans are never in equilibrium -- temperatures are always changing.
So why do people care about an average temperature … a very complex statistic, hard to measure, with a big margin of error, that has barely changed in the past 150 years?
No one lives in an average temperature.
No one knows what a "normal" average temperature is.
The average temperature is unknown for 99.999% of earth's history.
So no one should care about the average climate.
And no taxpayers should have to pay one penny to hire government employees to calculate that number.
There's more warming in the first few hours after sunrise every day outside your home … than the warming of the average temperature of our planet in the past 150 years!
Friday, May 20, 2016
NASA (GISS) data "adjustments from 2008 to 2016 cause "warming"
January 2000 average temperature
shown below is repeatedly
"adjusted" warmer
January 1910 average temperature
shown below is repeatedly
"adjusted" cooler
Make the past cooler.
Make recent years warmer.
= "Instant global warming"
Climate History 101
CO2 was higher for the first 4 billion years of Earth’s 4.5 billion year history than it has been in the past 500 million years.
We have been in a cooling period since the Eocene Thermal Maximum 50 million years ago.
The Earth was an average 10 to 20 degrees C. warmer then.
The Arctic and Antarctica were ice-free and covered in forest.
Glaciers began to form in Antarctica 30 million years ago, and in the northern hemisphere 3 million years ago.
Today's climate is one of the coldest climates in the Earth’s 4.5 billion year history.
Antarctic ice cores show that for the past 800,000 years, there have been periods of major glaciation followed by interglacial periods in 100,000 year-cycles.
These "Milankovitch" cycles are linked to the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit and its axial tilt.
It's likely these cycles are related to solar intensity and the seasonal distribution of solar heat on the Earth’s surface.
CO2 lags temperature by an average of 800 years during the most recent 400,000-year period, indicating that natural global warming is the cause of more CO2 in the air (out-gassing of CO2 from oceans as they gradually warm from natural causes).
20,000 years ago, during the peak of the last major glaciation, 2 miles of ice was on top of what is now Montreal.
Chicago was covered by a half mile of ice.
With all that frozen water on the land, sea level was 400 feet lower than today.
7,000 years ago all the low-altitude, mid-latitude glaciers had melted.
One third of all manmade CO2 emissions were released from 1997 through 2015 -- a period the UK Met Office says there had been no statistically significant global warming.
We have been in a cooling period since the Eocene Thermal Maximum 50 million years ago.
The Earth was an average 10 to 20 degrees C. warmer then.
The Arctic and Antarctica were ice-free and covered in forest.
Glaciers began to form in Antarctica 30 million years ago, and in the northern hemisphere 3 million years ago.
Today's climate is one of the coldest climates in the Earth’s 4.5 billion year history.
Antarctic ice cores show that for the past 800,000 years, there have been periods of major glaciation followed by interglacial periods in 100,000 year-cycles.
These "Milankovitch" cycles are linked to the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit and its axial tilt.
It's likely these cycles are related to solar intensity and the seasonal distribution of solar heat on the Earth’s surface.
CO2 lags temperature by an average of 800 years during the most recent 400,000-year period, indicating that natural global warming is the cause of more CO2 in the air (out-gassing of CO2 from oceans as they gradually warm from natural causes).
20,000 years ago, during the peak of the last major glaciation, 2 miles of ice was on top of what is now Montreal.
Chicago was covered by a half mile of ice.
With all that frozen water on the land, sea level was 400 feet lower than today.
7,000 years ago all the low-altitude, mid-latitude glaciers had melted.
One third of all manmade CO2 emissions were released from 1997 through 2015 -- a period the UK Met Office says there had been no statistically significant global warming.
A leftist loves a good crisis: Real or imaginary
The global "warmunists" talk about the future climate, as if they have any idea what the future climate will be !
They have fantasy of a coming climate catastrophe, unless you do as they say without question.
They have been warning about various alleged environmental catastrophes since the 1960s -- global warming or global cooling have been "boogeymen" for about 40 years so far.
All of these 'coming catastrophes' must have gotten lost somewhere on the way ... actually, they were always fantasies to begin with !
Earth's climate today is the best it has been in at least 500 years.
Green plants are growing faster.
Nighttime low temperatures are slightly warmer.
Statistical compilations of the average temperature of our planet are so haphazard, with such large margins of error, that its possible there has been little or no warming at all since the mid-1800s.
Much of the alleged warming could be measurement error.
But then our planet is ALWAYS warming or cooling.
There is strong proxy and anecdotal evidence the centuries from 1300 to 1800 were cooler than today, so it is wonderful news we don't have to live in a cool century.
Leftists, however, do not like wonderful news.
They like to scare people with a false boogeyman, currently carbon dioxide, and then tell them the only way to prevent a catastrophe is to do what they say without question.
And don't you dare ask questions, or you will be character attacked !
Why do leftists do this?
Because who in their right mind would listen to leftists, and do what they say, without being scared?
Based on data and logic, almost no one would want a substandard economic system called "socialism".
It failed in Russia, China, East Germany, North Korea, Cuba, etc., and is failing now in Venezuela.
The only way to 'sell' socialism is to claim more government power is needed to "Save the Earth".
That's nonsense, of course -- Earth does not need saving.
If the leftists really cared about the Earth, rather than boosting their own political power, they would be screaming about the gross pollution in China, India and other parts of Asia.
But the "warmunists" are nearly silent about real pollution that one can see, smell and breathe.
You'll never read about this in the mainstream press, but there are plenty of scientists expecting global cooling for at least the next few decades.
If there is cooling, and people can feel it, they may stop believing in a coming global warming catastrophe.
However, you can be sure the leftists will have another "catastrophe" dusted off, and ready to go -- a golden oldie -- The coming global cooling catastrophe.
For the leftists there will always be a boogeyman, and the "solution" to any alleged coming catastrophe will always be more government power.
That's how leftists operate -- they find a "crisis", or invent a "crisis", and then do not let it go to waste
They have fantasy of a coming climate catastrophe, unless you do as they say without question.
They have been warning about various alleged environmental catastrophes since the 1960s -- global warming or global cooling have been "boogeymen" for about 40 years so far.
All of these 'coming catastrophes' must have gotten lost somewhere on the way ... actually, they were always fantasies to begin with !
Earth's climate today is the best it has been in at least 500 years.
Green plants are growing faster.
Nighttime low temperatures are slightly warmer.
Statistical compilations of the average temperature of our planet are so haphazard, with such large margins of error, that its possible there has been little or no warming at all since the mid-1800s.
Much of the alleged warming could be measurement error.
But then our planet is ALWAYS warming or cooling.
There is strong proxy and anecdotal evidence the centuries from 1300 to 1800 were cooler than today, so it is wonderful news we don't have to live in a cool century.
Leftists, however, do not like wonderful news.
They like to scare people with a false boogeyman, currently carbon dioxide, and then tell them the only way to prevent a catastrophe is to do what they say without question.
And don't you dare ask questions, or you will be character attacked !
Why do leftists do this?
Because who in their right mind would listen to leftists, and do what they say, without being scared?
Based on data and logic, almost no one would want a substandard economic system called "socialism".
It failed in Russia, China, East Germany, North Korea, Cuba, etc., and is failing now in Venezuela.
The only way to 'sell' socialism is to claim more government power is needed to "Save the Earth".
That's nonsense, of course -- Earth does not need saving.
If the leftists really cared about the Earth, rather than boosting their own political power, they would be screaming about the gross pollution in China, India and other parts of Asia.
But the "warmunists" are nearly silent about real pollution that one can see, smell and breathe.
You'll never read about this in the mainstream press, but there are plenty of scientists expecting global cooling for at least the next few decades.
If there is cooling, and people can feel it, they may stop believing in a coming global warming catastrophe.
However, you can be sure the leftists will have another "catastrophe" dusted off, and ready to go -- a golden oldie -- The coming global cooling catastrophe.
For the leftists there will always be a boogeyman, and the "solution" to any alleged coming catastrophe will always be more government power.
That's how leftists operate -- they find a "crisis", or invent a "crisis", and then do not let it go to waste
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Climate Centerfolds
Ten 10 links for April and May.
So many choices -- so little time for research.
How to dress to beat the heat.
Not for office viewing, unless you work for Bill Clinton.
http://onionbloggle2012.blogspot.com/
So many choices -- so little time for research.
How to dress to beat the heat.
Not for office viewing, unless you work for Bill Clinton.
http://onionbloggle2012.blogspot.com/
Manipulate temperature data to show more warming ?
The sad fact is the people who make the scary, wrong for 40 years so far, climate change predictions ... also own the average temperature 'actuals' ... and they "adjust" raw data 'actuals' to better match their predictions.
Making predictions and controlling historical data is a HUGE conflict of interest for the leftists who invented the coming climate change catastrophe fantasy 40 years ago.
In ClimateGate E-mails,
the team made clear their desire
to manipulate the temperature record
and remove the post-1940 cooling:
From: Tom Wigley
To: Phil Jones
Subject: 1940s
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:25:38 -0600
Cc: Ben Santer
So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 deg C,
then this would be significant for the global mean — but
we’d still have to explain the land blip.
It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”.
di2.nu/foia/1254108338.txt
In another ClimateGate E-mail,
Phil Jones said that much of the
southern hemisphere data was
“mostly made up.”:
Date: Wed Apr 15 14:29:03 2009
From: Phil Jones
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: contribution to RealClimate.org
To: Thomas Crowley
Tom,
The issue Ray alludes to is that in addition to the issue
of many more drifters providing measurements over the last 5-10 years, the measurements are coming in from places where we didn’t have much ship data in the past.
For much of the SH between 40 and 60S the normals
are mostly made up as there is very little ship data there.
Cheers
Phil
di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/2729.txt
Making predictions and controlling historical data is a HUGE conflict of interest for the leftists who invented the coming climate change catastrophe fantasy 40 years ago.
In ClimateGate E-mails,
the team made clear their desire
to manipulate the temperature record
and remove the post-1940 cooling:
From: Tom Wigley
To: Phil Jones
Subject: 1940s
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:25:38 -0600
Cc: Ben Santer
So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 deg C,
then this would be significant for the global mean — but
we’d still have to explain the land blip.
It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”.
di2.nu/foia/1254108338.txt
In another ClimateGate E-mail,
Phil Jones said that much of the
southern hemisphere data was
“mostly made up.”:
Date: Wed Apr 15 14:29:03 2009
From: Phil Jones
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: contribution to RealClimate.org
To: Thomas Crowley
Tom,
The issue Ray alludes to is that in addition to the issue
of many more drifters providing measurements over the last 5-10 years, the measurements are coming in from places where we didn’t have much ship data in the past.
For much of the SH between 40 and 60S the normals
are mostly made up as there is very little ship data there.
Cheers
Phil
di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/2729.txt
Monday, May 9, 2016
Does this sound like "settled science"?
Dr. Phil Jones
– CRU emails –
5th July, 2005 –
“The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has, but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant ...”
__________________
Dr. Phil Jones
– CRU emails –
7th May, 2009 –
‘Bottom line: the ‘no upward trend’ has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried.’
__________________
Dr. Judith L. Lean
– Geophysical Research Letters –
15 Aug 2009 –
“…This lack of overall warming is analogous to the period from 2002 to 2008 when decreasing solar irradiance also countered much of the anthropogenic warming…”
__________________
Dr. Kevin Trenberth
– CRU emails –
12 Oct. 2009 –
“Well, I have my own article on where the heck is global warming…..The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
__________________
Dr. Mojib Latif
– Spiegel –
19th November 2009 –
“At present, however, the warming is taking a break,” ... "There can be no argument about that,”
__________________
Dr. Jochem Marotzke
– Spiegel –
19th November 2009 –
“It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community,” ... ”We don’t really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point.”
__________________
Dr. Phil Jones
– BBC –
13th February 2010 –
“I’m a scientist trying to measure temperature. If I registered that the climate has been cooling I’d say so. But it hasn’t until recently – and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend.”
__________________
Dr. Phil Jones
– BBC –
13th February 2010
[Question]
“Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming”
[Answer]
“Yes, but only just”.
__________________
Prof. Shaowu Wang et al.
– Advances in Climate Change Research –
2010 –
“…The decade of 1999-2008 is still the warmest of the last 30 years, though the global temperature increment is near zero; …”
__________________
Dr. B. G. Hunt
– Climate Dynamics –
February 2011 –
“Controversy continues to prevail concerning the reality of anthropogenically-induced climatic warming. One of the principal issues is the cause of the hiatus in the current global warming trend.”
__________________
Dr. Robert K. Kaufmann
– PNAS –
2nd June 2011 –
“ ... it has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008 ...”
__________________
Dr. Gerald A. Meehl
– Nature Climate Change –
18th September 2011 –
“There have been decades, such as 2000–2009, when the observed globally averaged surface-temperature time series shows little increase or even a slightly negative trend1 (a hiatus period) ... ”
__________________
Met Office Blog – Dave Britton (10:48:21)
– 14 October 2012 –
“We agree with Mr Rose that there has been only a very small amount of warming in the 21st Century. As stated in our response, this is 0.05 degrees Celsius since 1997 equivalent to 0.03 degrees Celsius per decade.”
Source: metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/met-office-in-the-media-14-october-2012
__________________
Dr. James Hansen
– NASA GISS –
15 January 2013 –
“The 5-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slowdown in the growth rate of the net climate forcing.”
__________________
Dr Doug Smith
– Met Office –
18 January 2013 –
“The exact causes of the temperature standstill are not yet understood,” says climate researcher Doug Smith from the Met Office.
[Translated by Philipp Mueller from Spiegel Online]
__________________
Dr. Virginie Guemas
– Nature Climate Change –
7 April 2013 –
“ … Despite a sustained production of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, the Earth’s mean near-surface temperature paused its rise during the 2000–2010 period … ”
__________________
Dr. Judith Curry
– House of Representatives Subcommittee on Environment –
25 April 2013 –
"If the climate shifts hypothesis is correct, then the current flat trend in global surface temperatures may continue for another decade or two, … ”
__________________
Dr. Hans von Storch
– Spiegel –
20 June 2013 –
“ … the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) — a value very close to zero ... If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models ... ”
__________________
Professor Masahiro Watanabe
– Geophysical Research Letters –
28 June 2013 –
“The weakening of k commonly found in GCMs seems to be an inevitable response of the climate system to global warming, suggesting the recovery from hiatus in coming decades.”
Friday, May 6, 2016
The 97% Consensus Myth Revealed
I have three problems with the methodology of global warming activists evaluating abstracts to determine a climate change "consensus":
First:
It doesn't matter if 97%, 77% or 33% of scientists agree on something -- science is not based on votes, or a consensus.
In fact, scientific progress often requires consensus beliefs to be proven wrong.
Second:
It's wrong for global warming activists to evaluate scientific papers rather than real scientists who actually understand the subject matter.
Third:
It's really wrong to evaluate a scientific paper ONLY by reading the abstract.
A short abstract provides an incomplete, and often misleading, summary of the whole paper.
--- Here's how the now thoroughly discredited
John Cook "97%" survey was done in 2013:
Global warming activists evaluated 11,944 abstracts found by searching a database for the topics: "global climate change" and "global warming", for papers published over a 21-year period.
Based ONLY on reading the short abstracts, the global warming activists assumed two-thirds (66.4%) of the papers took no position on man made global warming.
The remaining one-third of the abstracts were sorted into seven categories, ranging from “explicit, quantified endorsement”, to “explicit, quantified rejection” (of the IPCC "consensus" that global warming after World War II was caused mainly by human activity).
Cook falsely concluded: “97.1% endorsed the consensus (IPCC) position.”
Quite a few scientists/authors later publicly said Cook and his global warming activists misinterpreted their papers.
Cook never cared whether or not scientists who wrote the papers thought climate change was dangerous (catastrophic, in leftist terms) or harmless.
Cook also never cared that a majority of papers that took a position on man made climate change merely made that assumption -- they did not examine any evidence in support of their position.
Cook and his activists used three of the seven rating categories to imply “endorsement” of the IPCC "consensus", when only one rating category (1) really supports the IPCC "consensus":
(1) man is mainly responsible, with quantification,
(2) man is responsible, without quantification, and
(3) the abstract “implies” man is involved.
Only category (1) actually says man is MAINLY responsible for global warming … which I disagree with, because there is no scientific proof that is true, and no explanation of why 4.5 billion years of natural climate change suddenly stopped, and man made CO2 suddenly became the "climate controller" after World War II.
Category (1) included only 0.5% of all 11,994 abstracts -- which is certainly not 97%.
Other people who decided to read the actual articles and papers, rather than just the short abstracts, claim the 0.5% should have been 0.3% -- and that's certainly not 97%.
Their real analysis found only 41 abstracts of the 11,944 Cook and his global warming activists reviewed – just 0.3% – actually said man is MAINLY responsible for global warming.
Cook's global warming activists never read the actual articles, or the full studies with backup data, that the abstracts briefly summarized.
They did try to contact some of the authors:
“To complement the abstract analysis, email addresses for 8,547 authors were collected … authors were emailed an invitation to participate in a survey in which they rated their own published papers (the entire content of the article, not just the abstract) with the same criteria as used by the independent rating team."
There were 11,944 papers with 29,083 authors.
Only 8,547 of 29,083 authors were sent e-Mails
Only 2,136 papers were eventually self-rated by one or more of the authors.
Only 224 out of 2,136 self-rated papers were said to support the consensus IPCC position (Category 1).
That’s a 10.5% Category 1 "consensus" of those authors whose e-Mail address could be found, who then voluntarily decided to rate their own papers.
10.5% is certainly not 97%.
Many of the author ratings of their own papers disagreed with the abstract ratings by Cook's global warming activists.
Cook didn't care.
For Cook, a global warming activist reading just the abstract, can decide if a scientific paper he never read supports a climate hypothesis … and the global warming activist's opinion was used for the 97% myth, even when an actual author of the paper disagreed with his rating!
You can count on leftists to lie and mislead in support of their causes.
John Cook "cooked the books" -- that crooked Cook !
And people who mindlessly parrot his false 97% consensus claim, such as President Obama, are misguided fools -- for Obama creating a memorable sound byte, using a bogus statistic, is more important than telling the truth.
The truth is that no one knows exactly what causes climate change, or if humans have much of an influence.
The truth is that "consensus" has no meaning, and no value, in science.
The truth is that no one knows the future climate, beyond assuming a continuation of the past climate - in the past Earth's climate has always been changing -- sometimes warming, sometimes cooling -- since long before humans existed.
The truth is the climate in 2016 is excellent, and has been improving for humans, animals and plants, for every decade of our lives.
Leftists, however, don't want you to enjoy the wonderful climate today -- they want to scare you about the future climate, and then claim you must do everything they say to avoid a future climate catastrophe.
Leftists are lying, as usual.
First:
It doesn't matter if 97%, 77% or 33% of scientists agree on something -- science is not based on votes, or a consensus.
In fact, scientific progress often requires consensus beliefs to be proven wrong.
Second:
It's wrong for global warming activists to evaluate scientific papers rather than real scientists who actually understand the subject matter.
Third:
It's really wrong to evaluate a scientific paper ONLY by reading the abstract.
A short abstract provides an incomplete, and often misleading, summary of the whole paper.
--- Here's how the now thoroughly discredited
John Cook "97%" survey was done in 2013:
Global warming activists evaluated 11,944 abstracts found by searching a database for the topics: "global climate change" and "global warming", for papers published over a 21-year period.
Based ONLY on reading the short abstracts, the global warming activists assumed two-thirds (66.4%) of the papers took no position on man made global warming.
The remaining one-third of the abstracts were sorted into seven categories, ranging from “explicit, quantified endorsement”, to “explicit, quantified rejection” (of the IPCC "consensus" that global warming after World War II was caused mainly by human activity).
Cook falsely concluded: “97.1% endorsed the consensus (IPCC) position.”
Quite a few scientists/authors later publicly said Cook and his global warming activists misinterpreted their papers.
Cook never cared whether or not scientists who wrote the papers thought climate change was dangerous (catastrophic, in leftist terms) or harmless.
Cook also never cared that a majority of papers that took a position on man made climate change merely made that assumption -- they did not examine any evidence in support of their position.
Cook and his activists used three of the seven rating categories to imply “endorsement” of the IPCC "consensus", when only one rating category (1) really supports the IPCC "consensus":
(1) man is mainly responsible, with quantification,
(2) man is responsible, without quantification, and
(3) the abstract “implies” man is involved.
Only category (1) actually says man is MAINLY responsible for global warming … which I disagree with, because there is no scientific proof that is true, and no explanation of why 4.5 billion years of natural climate change suddenly stopped, and man made CO2 suddenly became the "climate controller" after World War II.
Category (1) included only 0.5% of all 11,994 abstracts -- which is certainly not 97%.
Other people who decided to read the actual articles and papers, rather than just the short abstracts, claim the 0.5% should have been 0.3% -- and that's certainly not 97%.
Their real analysis found only 41 abstracts of the 11,944 Cook and his global warming activists reviewed – just 0.3% – actually said man is MAINLY responsible for global warming.
Cook's global warming activists never read the actual articles, or the full studies with backup data, that the abstracts briefly summarized.
They did try to contact some of the authors:
“To complement the abstract analysis, email addresses for 8,547 authors were collected … authors were emailed an invitation to participate in a survey in which they rated their own published papers (the entire content of the article, not just the abstract) with the same criteria as used by the independent rating team."
There were 11,944 papers with 29,083 authors.
Only 8,547 of 29,083 authors were sent e-Mails
Only 2,136 papers were eventually self-rated by one or more of the authors.
Only 224 out of 2,136 self-rated papers were said to support the consensus IPCC position (Category 1).
That’s a 10.5% Category 1 "consensus" of those authors whose e-Mail address could be found, who then voluntarily decided to rate their own papers.
10.5% is certainly not 97%.
Many of the author ratings of their own papers disagreed with the abstract ratings by Cook's global warming activists.
Cook didn't care.
For Cook, a global warming activist reading just the abstract, can decide if a scientific paper he never read supports a climate hypothesis … and the global warming activist's opinion was used for the 97% myth, even when an actual author of the paper disagreed with his rating!
You can count on leftists to lie and mislead in support of their causes.
John Cook "cooked the books" -- that crooked Cook !
And people who mindlessly parrot his false 97% consensus claim, such as President Obama, are misguided fools -- for Obama creating a memorable sound byte, using a bogus statistic, is more important than telling the truth.
The truth is that no one knows exactly what causes climate change, or if humans have much of an influence.
The truth is that "consensus" has no meaning, and no value, in science.
The truth is that no one knows the future climate, beyond assuming a continuation of the past climate - in the past Earth's climate has always been changing -- sometimes warming, sometimes cooling -- since long before humans existed.
The truth is the climate in 2016 is excellent, and has been improving for humans, animals and plants, for every decade of our lives.
Leftists, however, don't want you to enjoy the wonderful climate today -- they want to scare you about the future climate, and then claim you must do everything they say to avoid a future climate catastrophe.
Leftists are lying, as usual.
