What the Cook et al. paper did was examine 11,944 abstracts from papers that were published from 1991 to 2011 that included the words “global climate change” or “global warming” in their abstract. What they found after analysing these abstracts is that among those that expressed a position on global warming, 97% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.
They also contacted 8,547 authors to ask if they could rate their own papers and got 1,200 responses, which meant that 2,142 papers were also rated by their authors on their endorsement level. The results for this again found that 97% of the selected papers stated that humans are causing global warming. This was done to determine that there wasn’t any sort of inherent problem in the rating system used and this seems to indicate that.
Continue reading 97% Climate consensus ‘denial’: the debunkers again not debunked
Several months ago Cook et al released a paper in which they analysed the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
What they did in that study is examine 11,944 abstracts from 1991 to 2011 that included the words “global climate change” or “global warming” in their abstract. What they found after analysing these abstracts is that among those that expressed a position on global warming, 97% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.
When they asked the authors of those papers to rate their own papers they again found that 97% stated that humans are causing global warming. They also contacted 8,547 authors to ask if they could rate their own papers and got 1,200 responses. The results for this again found that 97% of the selected papers stated that humans are causing global warming. They did this to determine that there wasn’t any sort of inherent problem in their rating system and this seems to indicate that.
For anyone who is aware of other studies that did something similar these results weren’t a surprise. As studies like Oreskes 2004, Doran 2009 and Anderegg 2010 showed similar results. It’s the very reason I just shrugged at these results and mostly watched everything play out from a distance. To me they just didn’t seem that interesting, or that they would generate a lot of controversy.
Continue reading Cook’s 97% Climate Consensus Paper Doesn’t Crumble Upon Examination
Andrew Dessler, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University, uploaded a good short video where he talks about how likely it would be that climate sensitivity is less than 2 degrees. It puts some of the more recent papers into context as to why they might be underestimating climate sensitivity:
My only nitpick about this video is that he didn’t mention that if you look at how our planet has reacted in the distant past a low climate sensitivity isn’t supported. If you do a review of these studies it shows that the climate sensitivity of our planet is somewhere between 2 and 4.5 degrees (with a few big jumps upwards, but those are the exception).
Continue reading Is The Climate Sensitivity Less Than 2°C?
After I published the response I received from the KNMI I did a few pokes on Twitter towards Anthony Watts and Marcel Crok to see if they were willing to respond to it.
So far I haven’t received a response from Watts, but Marcel Crok was kind enough to engage me in his comment section. I’ll be going through his responses to me in this post and my take on them.
Before I do that though I have to compliment Crok for being respectful and civil towards me, despite me being quite critical towards him. It’s something that’s often severely lacking from any public exchanges that take place. Being able to engage someone while being quite critical and at the same time having a civil exchange was a breath of fresh air. It’s just sad that this is the exception.
Now lets start with his first response towards me, which I found a bit strange:
Continue reading Marcel Crok Responds To The KNMI Statement
To be short: yes, the KNMI had some criticism towards the IPCC and how they operate. However, it wasn’t the type of criticism the so-called sceptics thought.
What the KNMI did was provide recommendations to the IPCC to improve its procedures. This included recommendations for improving their reports and how results are communicated. Something that the IPCC asked for and the resulting recommendations from the KNMI aren’t shocking.
However, the so-called sceptics seemed to think differently. Marcel Crok, one of the more known Dutch so-called sceptics, wrote an article about it and Anthony Watts published the following snippet from it on WUWT (emphasis added by Crok):
Continue reading Dutch Meteorological Institute KNMI Critical Of IPCC?
On my “Climate Changes, But Facts Don’t: Debunking Monckton” videos this claim was popping up a lot. The reasoning is that because global surface temperatures haven’t risen for over 15 years this means that global warming has stopped and that the projections are wrong.
Unfortunately this ignores a lot of evidence that the planet is still accumulating heat. As I had to explain this constantly in my comment sections on YouTube it prompted me to push the script I was writing about this to the top of the queue:
Just a little heads-up for my readers that I’ve written a guest post for Climate Crocks. The following is a snippet from the beginning of the guest post: One of the things I do is to keep an ear out to what the so-called sceptics are saying in their corner on the internet. I do this on for example Twitter…
For one of the SkepticTV shows we had the opportunity to have Dr. Michael Mann as a guest. As I’m the person who is most familiar with environmental subjects among the SkepticTV crew I had the honour of interviewing Dr. Mann during the show (no pressure there…). During this broadcast Dr. Mann and I talked about the legal attacks against…
Today is the 6th time Earth Hour will be held to raise awareness about the need for action on global warming. Considering this event started in just one city the current number of participants is a testament to how effective this awareness campaign is:
Earth Hour is the single, largest, symbolic mass participation event in the world. Born out of a hope that we could mobilize people to take action on climate change, Earth Hour now inspires a global community of millions of people in 7,001 cities and towns across 152 countries and territories to switch lights off for an hour as a massive show of concern for the environment.
A campaign so effective that it has become the focus of a lot of the so-called sceptics, who are currently attempting to reframe the message of Earth Hour.
On Watts Up With That (WUWT) another attempt at discrediting the scientific consensus paper by Cook et al. was made, this time by Christopher Monckton (archived here). An attempt I’m not exactly impressed by. But before I go into that I’ll provide some context about the Cook et al. paper.
Several months ago 
Yesterday I published a 
After I published 
Today is the 6th time Earth Hour will be held to raise awareness about the need for action on global warming. Considering this event started in just one city the current number of participants is a testament to how