John Cook et Alii Willfully Lie

The lucripetous and deceitful John Cook (an unscrupulous and shameless propagandist for the silly, pseudo-scientific conjecture of anthropogenic global warming) continues to lie in order to convince the gullible that, if a plurality of supposed experts suggest that anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide cause global warming, then everyone else must believe that any resultant warming will be catastrophic for the entire planet.  He and his overpaid collabarators falsely and fallaciously claim that “among papers expressing a position on human-caused global warming, over 97% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.”
See “97% Study Falsely Classifies Scientists’ Papers, according to the scientists that published them” at Popular Technology:

The paper, Cook et al. (2013) “Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature” searched the Web of Science for the phrases “global warming” and “global climate change” then categorizing these results to their alleged level of endorsement of AGW.  These results were then used to allege a 97% consensus on human-caused global warming.
To get to the truth, I emailed a sample of scientists whose papers were used in the study and asked them if the categorization by Cook et al. (2013) were an accurate representation of their paper.  Their responses are eye opening and evidence that the Cook et al. (2013) team falsely classified scientists’ papers as “endorsing AGW”, apparently believing to know more about the papers than their authors.

See also Jo Nova’s “Cook’s fallacy ‘97% consensus’ study is a marketing ploy some journalists will fall for”:

What does a study of 20 years of abstracts tell us about the global climate?  Nothing.  But it says quite a lot about the way government funding influences the scientific process. John Cook, a blogger who runs the site with the ambush title “SkepticalScience” (which unskeptically defends the mainstream position), has tried to revive the put-down and smear strategy against the thousands of scientists who disagree.  The new paper confounds climate research with financial forces, is based on the wrong assumptions, uses fallacious reasoning, wasn’t independent, and confuses a consensus of climate scientists for a scientific consensus, not that a consensus proves anything anyway, if it existed.

From WUWT:

UPDATE I:  the demented Prof. Stephan Lewandowsky, one of John Cook’s accomplices, also lies in order to enrich himself.  See “The Lewandowsky Papers”, by Ben Pile:

A culture of intransigence has developed in the shadow of the compact between politics and science, which can be seen in the Lewandowsky affair in microcosm.  Lewandowsky’s work unwittingly demonstrates that what is passed off as peer-reviewed and published ‘science’, even in today’s world, is no more scientific than the worst ramblings of the least qualified and nuttiest climate change denier on the internet.  It looks like science, certainly, but the product survives only a superficial inspection.  The only difference being the institutional muscle that Lewandowsky has access to, but which unhinged climate change deniers do not.  The object of the Professor’s study is really his own refusal to debate with his lessers.

By “climate change denier”, a pejorative term employed by dishonest awarmists, Ben Pile evidently means “sceptics of AGW”.

UPDATE II:  see, also at WUWT, “The Collapsing ‘Consensus’”, by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley: 

Environmental Research Letters ought to have known better than to publish the latest anti-scientific propaganda paper by John Cook of the dubiously-named Skeptical Science website.  Here are just a few of the solecisms that should have led any competent editor or reviewer to reject the paper:

• It did not discuss, still less refute, the principle that the scientific method is not in any way informed by argument from consensus, which thinkers from Aristotle via Alhazen to Huxley and Popper have rejected as logically fallacious. 
• Its definition of the “consensus” it claimed to have found was imprecise: that “human activity is very likely causing most of the current anthropogenic global warming”. 
• It did not put a quantitative value on the term “very likely”, and it did not define what it meant by “current” warming.  There has been none for at least 18 years. 
• It cited as authoritative the unscientifically-sampled surveys of “consensus” by Doran & Zimmerman (2009) and Anderegg et al. (2010). 
• It inaccurately represented the views of scientists whose abstracts it analysed. 
• It disregarded two-thirds of the 12,000 abstracts it examined, on the unscientific ground that those abstracts had expressed no opinion on Man’s climatic influence. 
• It declared that the one-third of all papers alleged to have endorsed the “consensus” really amounted to 97% of the sample, not 33%. 
• It suggested that the “consensus” that most recent warming is man-made is equivalent to the distinct and far less widely-supported notion that urgent action to prevent future warming is essential to avert catastrophe.  [President] Obama fell for this, twittering that 97% found global warming not only real and manmade but also dangerous. 

Yet the most remarkable conclusion to be drawn from Cook’s strange paper is that the “consensus”—far from growing—is actually collapsing. 

UPDATE III (28 May):  it seems that Cook et al. are unable to search academic literature databases competently; see  “‘Landmark consensus study’ is incomplete”, by Shub Niggurath:

The Cook et al. numbers are somewhat replicable, only if search [were] limited to the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index databases in Web of Science.  Presumably, this made the job of classification easier.  Contrary to claims, however, this makes their literature search incomplete.  It is neither ‘comprehensive’ nor produces the ‘largest’ possible data set.  The finding of incomplete search has further implications as it affects all conclusions drawn in the paper.

UPDATE IV (11 June):  see Shub Niggurath’s “Why the Cook paper is bunk: Part I”:

Cook and co-authors rationalize the decrease in the proportion of papers supporting the consensus, via a convoluted theory, as evidence for a high degree of consensus.  They contend the decrease implies more papers have accepted the consensus and therefore don’t need to talk about it.  At the same time, they take the increase in absolute numbers of orthodox position papers as evidence for ‘increasing consensus’.

UPDATE V (17 June):  Shub Niggurath’s “Why the Cook paper is bunk: Part II” is now available:

Now, Cook and colleagues have spread the message wide that 97% of a ‘large number of scientific abstracts’ support anthropogenic global warming […]. From the University of Queensland’s press release:

About 97 per cent of 4000 international scientific papers analysed in a University of Queensland-led study were rated as endorsing human-caused global warming.

How this happened is known:  a large number of papers not stating a position on AGW were classified as ‘implicitly’ accepting the orthodox climate position.  […]
The ‘implicit endorse’ category Cook’s group invented, illustrates devilish intricacies that can arise in classification studies.  Papers were added to the category merely because a predetermined rating system suggested it to volunteers, who then went looking for it.  It serves as a paradigm that illustrates how researchers can imprint methodological and observer biases on material they set out to study.

Climategate II

1. Conjecture:
Tall Bloke quotes selected admissions, in recently released e-mails by “scientists” who continue pushing the pseudo-scientific AGW conjecture, that they have no proof of AGW:

Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest.

 I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.

See also, inter alia, The Air Vent, Climate Audit, James Delingpole, Jo Nova, The Pointman, The Reference Frame and Watts Up With That.

2. Result:

From Age UK:  “Last year in Britain, according to figures from the Office of National Statistics, there were an average of 200 excess deaths every day, many of which could have been avoided by people adopting simple measures to stay warm.”  Michelle Mitchell, charity director of Age UK,  claims that avoidable winter deaths are a disgrace:  “We like to think of ourselves as a civilised society which protects the most vulnerable”, she says, according to the BBC, “but the numbers of older people who do not survive the winter here is far higher than most European countries where the weather is far colder.”
Why are so many elderly people dying in cold weather?  They cannot afford to keep their dwellings warm because stupid government policies, based on a silly, unproven conjecture, have ensured that electricity for heating is too expensive.

Even if the conjecture that industrial emissions of CO₂ caused dangerous globe warming were true, governments’ expensive actions, for the most part, have been worse than useless.  See “Europe’s $287bn carbon ‘waste’: UBS report”, by Sid Maher of The Australian:

Swiss banking giant UBS says the European Union’s emissions trading scheme has cost the continent’s consumers $287 billion for “almost zero impact” on cutting carbon emissions, and has warned that the EU’s carbon pricing market is on the verge of a crash next year.

In a damning report to clients, UBS Investment Research said that had the €210bn the European ETS had cost consumers been used in a targeted approach to replace the EU's dirtiest power plants, emissions could have been reduced by 43% “instead of almost zero impact on the back of emissions trading”.
Describing the EU’s ETS as having “limited benefits and embarrassing consequences”, the report said there was fading political support for the scheme, the price was too low to have any significant environmental impact and it had provided windfall profits to market participants, paid for by electricity customers.

As the person (or persons) who released these latest e-mails noted, nearly 16,000 children die every day from avoidable hunger and similar, related causes, yet incompetent and corrupt governments, instead of spending resources on schemes which would assuredly alleviate or prevent suffering, conspire to enrich scammers, con-artists and grasping, simoniacal or usurious cronies. 

UPDATE I:  see Pointman’s “Happy Birthday, Climategate”:

Climategate was at last the great confirmation of a deep suspicion many of us had entertained for a long time; we were not contending with an honest scientific debate but dealing with a bunch of cheats, liars and spin merchants.  Following it, anything they said was going to be examined critically by a fresh army of sceptics and the pickings since climategate have been rich.
The floodgates opened and there were a lot of gates, glaciergate, pachuraigate and amazongate to name but a few.  On hard examination, so many of the outrageous claims being made by the IPCC turned out not to be based on their much trumpeted peer-reviewed papers but press releases, undergraduate scribblings and the furtive handouts of quasi-political activist organisations like Greenpeace and the WWF.  A recent survey by a corps of volunteers found 30% of the references in the last IPCC report tracked back to sources like those.  So much for their exclusive use of gold standard science.

UPDATE II:  even The Guardian has noticed; but, naturally, The Guardian had to ask the truly pathetic Prof. Michael Mann to provide some rationalisation for his and his fellow conspirators’ scamming; Mann responds by calling the latest release of e-mails “truly pathetic”—perhaps unconsciously quoting e-mail 3373: “the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published.”*

UPDATE III:  the BBC’s environmentalist hack and leading apologist for scamming pseudo-scientists, the mendacious Richard Black, also leaps into his customary, deceptive, rationalisation mode.

UPDATE IV:  Nature News Blog. 

UPDATE V:  Ben Pile contributes “Climategate II—Derailing the Re-Railing” at Climate Resistance. 

UPDATE VI:  at Climate Depot, Marc Morano provides an accurate analysis:

The new emails further expose the upper echelon of the UN IPCC as being more interested in crafting a careful narrative than following the evidence.  The release of thousands of more emails is quite simply another victory for science.

UPDATE VII:  see John O’Sullivan, as well.

UPDATE VIII:  see Alan Caruba’s “Climategate, Part Duh!” at Climate Change Dispatch; of course, Climategate would not miss eponymous details; see Bishop Hill here and here and (UPDATE XII) the bishop’s summary of media accounts here, and (UPDATE XVII) another good one here; and see “A Man with a Cause” at Autonomous Mind as well as a comment thereto from Stuck-Record:

To my mind the most interesting aspect of this second release (since we already know that Jones, Mann, Schmidt, et al. are second rate hucksters) is the proof of perjury.
At the whitewash Parliamentary inquiries, the usual suspects, and the UEA authorities, defence was ‘context’ and ‘interpretation’. i.e., that the emails didn’t actually say what normal people could clearly see they said.  A great many hoops were jumped through in order to create that impression and get it on the record so that a tame media could then reference it, as in: “Everyone was cleared by the inquiries.”
Now it is clear, from even a cursory reading of the second batch, that they were all lying through their teeth.  Even the UEA FOI man looks caught with his pants down.

UPDATE IX:  see The Hockey Shtick here and here (UPDATE XI) and here.

UPDATE X:  see, in “Another Treaty Negotiation, Another Batch of Climate Science E-Mail”, NYT’s Andrew Revkin bending over backwards to spin the latest e-mails as old, irrelevant, intended only to be distracting, and already parsed by his awarmist, pseudo-scientific buddies as safely disregarded.

UPDATE XIII:  recommended reading at Watts Up With That is “Mr. David Palmer Explains the Problem”, by Willis Eschenbach (with emphasis added):

My conclusion after all this time is that Phil [Jones] truly didn’t get it.  He actually didn’t understand.  He was not the owner of private data.  He was the curator of public data.  He didn’t understand that FOI requests are legal documents.  Throughout the whole episode he treated them as some kind of optional request to grant or not as he saw fit.  In this he was aided and abetted by David Palmer.

Upon reading this email, I was very curious to find out what had gotten Phil’s knickers in a twist regarding “what has been said on the Climate Audit website from Friday”. Upon looking up the ClimateAudit post from Friday, April 20, 2007, I laughed when I found out that what Phil was referring to as “bullying and virtual harassment” was the post I cited above and requested that you read.  I’m sure you picked up on how I was “bullying and virtually harassing” Professor Jones.

So that was what Phil was complaining about—my pointing out the foolishness of their various excuses.  And on that basis he said that would not make the raw data available, as though my laughing at his transparent dodges were a valid exemption to an FOI request.

I note that over at RealClimate they are desperately trying to spin this as two-year-old turkey.  However, it’s not just my case that has new information. Regarding a host of other issues, the recent emails contain much previously unrevealed evidence of the perfidy, subversion, misdirection, and malfeasance practiced by the Climategate un-indicted co-conspirators.

UPDATE XIV (24 November):  a searchable database of the Climategate II e-mails is at http://foia2011.org/.  (UPDATE XVIII)  More tools are at Climate Audit.  (UPDATE XIX)  Search both Climategate I and II at http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php.

UPDATE XV (24 November):  at The View from Here, hro001—Hilary Ostrov—provides recommended reading, “IPCC: Fix it or fold it, McKitrick says”, on Prof. Ross McKitrick’s What Is Wrong with the IPCC? Proposals for a Radical Reform.

UPDATE XVI (24 November):  Roger Pielke demonstrates, with one quotation (from John Neilson-Gammon—who, apparently, has never heard of the motto, nullius in verba), how supposedly intelligent scientists come to accept a fraudulent psuedo-scientific conjecture:

When I’m reading science outside my field, where I can’t judge for myself whether it’s right, I’m quite happy to assume that anything that comes out of the National Academy of Sciences is correct.

UPDATE XX (02 December):  see “Shock ‘Climate Change’ News: Media Bias!”.

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*  Raymond S. Bradley wrote to Keith Briffa (09:56, 12/10/03, -0500): 

I don’t think Mike is thinking of coupled AOGCMs here, which would be ideal, but mostly energy balance models and MICs, and it’s hard to use these to look at anything but the very largest scales.  Furthermore, the model output is very much determined by the time series of forcing that is selected, and the model sensitivity which essentially scales the range.  Mike only likes these because they seem to match his idea of what went on in the last millennium, whereas he would savage them if they did not.
Also—& I’m sure you agree—the Mann/Jones GRL paper [Mann, M. E., and P. D. Jones, “Global surface temperatures over the past two millennia”, Geophys. Res. Lett., 30 (15), 1820] was truly pathetic and should never have been published.  I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year “reconstruction”.