Originally Posted by Tzug
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I read the Forbes article very closely and it's completely insubstantial. As I mention elsewhere below, Epstein does not debunk the "97%" claim; he attempts to debunk one of the studies (Cook). He does not address any of the other studies. With that said, I'll dig into his attempted debunking of the Cook study.
From the start, he misrepresents Cook's article. Epstein writes, 'Here is Cook’s summary of his paper: “Cook et al. (2013) found that over 97 percent [of papers he surveyed] endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause.'
This is not accurate. Cook surveyed almost 12,000 papers. He did not find that 97% of them endorsed AGW. He found that "among abstracts expressing a position on AGW" 97% of them endorsed AGW. This is, ultimately, not that big of a deal, but it already reveals Epstein as a lackluster scholar and continues to undermine his credibility, which is already fairly low considering his vested financial interests and lack of scientific training.
As for, as you say, the scientists "who say they were listed amongst the 97%who think humans aren't causing significant global warming when in fact they do not believe it: Epstein says in his article that "numerous" scientists "protested." The number of scientists who "protest" was 7. 7 out of almost 12,000. I wonder why Epstein chose to write "numerous" rather than "7"? While technically correct, "numerous" has a bit of dramatic flair that "7" doesn't quite capture.
Now let's dig more deeply into some of these scientists. It is not entirely true, as you suggest, that "they do not believe [AGW]." The first scientist, Scafetta, writes: "Please note that it is very important to clarify that the AGW advocated by the IPCC has always claimed that 90-100% of the warming observed since 1900 is due to anthropogenic emissions. While critics like me have always claimed that the data would approximately indicate a 50-50 natural-anthropogenic contribution at most." This is not exactly a slam-dunk debunking of AGW.
Richard Tol, one of the seven, and also one of the people quoted by Epstein, is a firm believer in AGW. He protested about some of his article's classification, and took some umbrage at the project in general, but he is certainly not a climate change denier. In his own words, "WoS lists 122 articles on climate change by me in that period. Only 10 made it into the survey.
I would rate 7 of those as neutral, and 3 as strong endorsement with quantification. Of the 3, one was rated as a weak endorsement (even though it argues that the solar hypothesis is a load of bull). Of the 7, 3 were listed as an implicit endorsement and 1 as a weak endorsement.
...from 112 omitted papers, one strongly endorses AGW and 111 are neutral."
So Tol is actually complaining that some of his papers were excluded AND that one of them was categorized too weakly! ("I would rate 3 as strong endorsement with quantification...of the 3, one was rated as a weak endorsement.") Of the papers that weren't included, "one strongly endorses AGW." He also argues that the "solar hypothesis" advocated by the aforementioned Scafetta among others "is a load of bull." Not exactly someone I would describe as not believing in AGW, despite your earlier claim.
Another among the 7 is Willie Soon who, two years later (this article was published in 2013) would be exposed for taking over a million dollars in funding from various interest groups. Oops!
So you've got 7 protesting scientists (remember: "numerous") out of literally thousands, and among those seven, one believes in AGW, just a smaller percentage of culpability, maybe closer to 40-50%, one who very strongly believes in AGW and in fact thinks the solar theory is "bullshit" and one who at the time of this "protest" is getting paid by the powers at be.
This is pretty weak stuff.
The fact that you keep saying the "97% claims" shows you're either being disingenuous, or you misunderstand the research. There isn't a single claim about 97%. The studies I linked to all used different methodologies to determine the scientific consensus. One study came up with a 91% consensus, one came up with a 100% consensus, one came up with 93% consensus and four came up with either 97% or 97-98%. These are all different studies. Even if I found your Forbes article compelling, which I don't (and yes, I read it all, along with your other link), it does not engage with the full breadth of the research on this.
It is related to global warming, but the link opens to a page to Letters to the Editor. To have full access to the magazine (Science), you either need to be a subscriber or (as is my case) get access through an academic library.
Not only is the Anderegg not "directly" refuted in your links, it isn't mentioned in either article at all. The Forbes article only mentions the Cooks study. It doesn't engage with any of the other studies, including this one.
This is wrong on many levels. Scientists are not paid to write lots of studies, or at least not by journals. In fact, many scientific journals require you to pay them to submit your articles, because, not surprisingly, these are fairly niche journals read primarily by scientists--they are not, despite what you seem to think, money makers. Scientists are paid, usually, by universities, though their research is often aided by grants. Then there are of course scientists employed by private companies, such as the scientists of Exxon who did extensive research in the 70s on global warming and wrote about it in internal memos, as has been mentioned before in this thread.
Of course in a very literal sense you are right that what is popular is not necessarily true. But it's kind of a funny post-hoc way to try and dismiss a preponderance of scientific evidence. This is like a murder defense saying "well, simply because there are 100 eye-witnesses doesn't mean my client is guilty." Of course it's literally true, but as a counter-argument it's pretty thin.
The method you're trying to use to dismiss this preponderance of evidence--that scientists are paid to write these articles (again, a bit of a nebulous claim)--also begins to break down when you consider the many different sources of funding for scientists in different fields, in both private firms and public agencies, from different governments, etc.
It's also odd to me that you dismiss the opinion of scientists because (so you say) they're paid to write these articles but you do not dismiss the opinion of Epstein, who was definitely paid for the Forbes article and, more importantly, is paid by his for-profit think tank. Why is it that the scientists' opinions are invalidated by the presence of money, but Epstein's is not?
Indeed, they might all disagree with the consensus, though that is pretty unlikely. If you look at the methodology of the study, they emailed over 7000 people and about 1850 responded. That's a pretty solid sample size. Even if you if think that's not true, and you think that 24% is too small to be meaningful (though most polling actually relies in a smaller percentage of responses), one way we could corroborate those numbers is with other studies using different methodologies. Which, fortunately, we have! I linked many of them to you. Surprise, surprise, their results line up.
As for the "they never even say what % of what 1/4 agrees," I'm a little baffled by this comment. Of course they do. That's the entire point of the study. It's right there in "Results":
"Climate science experts who publish mostly on climate change and climate scientists who publish mostly on other topics were the two groups most likely to be convinced that humans have contributed to global warming, with 93% of each group indicating their concurrence. The two groups least likely to be convinced of this were the nonpublishing climate scientists and nonpublishing meteorologists/ atmospheric scientists, at 65% and 59%, respectively. In the middle were the two groups of publishing meteorologists/atmospheric scientists at 79% and 78%, respectively."
You must have only read the Abstract.
Interesting (and telling) here that you don't quote the very next lines: "Another survey, by Farnsworth and Lichter (2009), found that 83% of meteorologists surveyed were convinced human-induced climate change is occurring, again a smaller majority than among experts in related areas, such as ocean sciences (91%) and geophysics (88%)." To use your own words, "very suspicious." You obviously opened the study and began to read it, and yet you chose to exclude this information. Why? I'd like to be generous, but it's difficult to interpret this as anything but intellectual dishonesty.
How much modifying do you suggest due to this perceived political and social pressure? 5%? 10%? 64%? This methodology seems very scientific and rigorous and not self-interestingly convenient at all.
Debunked where? So far you've posted one article from Forbes written by the owner of a for-profit fossil fuels think tank who attempts to debunk one article, the Cook, and does not mention any of the others. Even if I granted you the Cook, which I don't, but even if I did, you still have not debunked any of the others.
The Carlton study was published in September 2015. The Forbes article by Epstein was published January 2015. Maybe I should be listening to this Epstein fellow about scientific matters, considering he's evidently discovered time travel!
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01-24-2020, 02:04 PM
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