Of course I read it. Regardless of your position on climate change, the literature study done by John Cook was not a survey, as many people, I think including RVAmeche, assume with the 97% statement. "97% of climate scientists agree" is the deliberately misleading statement.
So you don't think that counting the number of abstracts that "Explicitly endorses and quantifies AGW as 50+% ", and then equating that to the proportion of climate scientists who hold that opinion is deliberately deceptive?
There is indeed some deception in the numbers, whether created deliberately, ignorantly, or both. Browsing abstracts as a survey, as done by Mr Cook, is a funny way to show anything. But if you really want to confuse yourself, read this thread:
I would rather be on the safe side and do everything we can to prevent a potentially bleak future for our kids and grand kids. If we are all pulling in the same direction we can actually do something useful for humanity. Even if climate change fears turn out to be overblown, who cares? Worst case is we develop some breakthrough technologies and become more energy efficient, reduce pollution and increase global stability. But if the fears turn out to be valid, and the decision makers with power choose to be contrarians, well then we're screwed. I guess I just don't see much downside to operating on the assumption that the worst-case predictions are valid and likely to happen. It's just simple risk management.
I once did an analysis of a 2 ft by 2 ft louver being hit by a tornado-borne missile (telephone pole). The louver was on the exterior wall of the spent-fuel pool area in a nuclear plant. The hypothetical design scenario was that the pole would fly across the entire site, perforate the louver, then crash through the room and directly hit some safety-related equipment. The chances of that actually happening are minuscule, but everyone in the chain of command was on board with the due diligence being performed as a matter of routine risk management and regulatory compliance. I ask myself why we blithely spent thousands of ratepayer dollars doing that analysis but we squabble over the need to address a problem like climate change, with consequences a thousand-fold worse and that is an almost certain scenario in comparison. Is it that the scenario is just so overwhelming and depressing that people don't want to face it?
I respect people who don't blindly accept climate change as gospel, but what if you look at it not as a skeptic, but as a pragmatic manager of risk? does that change the calculus for you?
"we blithely spent thousands of ratepayer dollars doing that analysis "
That's an easy one; there aren't any tornado deniers saying that tornadoes don't exist or that tornado-induced projectiles are myths perpetrated by money-seeking analysts.
Now, some people like to cherry pick their data to prove their point, so here's my cherry-pick, a 20-year running average of accumulated cyclonic energy (ACE) from the NOAA website cited earlier. Now, anything before 1960 is obviously limited by the lack of satellite imagery, but, nevertheless, we can see that there is a cyclical behavior, so studious cherry pickers can claim whatever they want. But, raw technical analysis says there's an upward trend, landfalls not withstanding.
TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
"Even if climate change fears turn out to be overblown, who cares?" ... well
(1) everyone who cares about how our government spends our money. This ACC is a huge, no HUGE, trough of money.
and (2) everyone concerned about the impact of our economy of work (etc) going elsewhere because of CC taxes (when other governments don't impose the same taxes).
and (3) everyone who doesn't like being "lied" to.
"I ask myself why we blithely spent thousands of ratepayer dollars doing that analysis but we squabble over the need to address a problem like climate change," ... well, the nuke business is extremely (and rightly) concerned with safety and is mandated to analyze the heck out of everything.
another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?
Even if we shift entires economic engines towards fighting climate change, isn’t it plausible that it will result in a net positive economic situation for the world in the long run? We currently pour trillions into defense which is an utter waste of energy as a species. If you pour half of that energy into something that actually leads to a better environment and sustainability as a species, that’s a worthy pursuit. My point is, I don’t see economies being worse off after investing in anti climate change technologies. We are already flushing our money down that military-industrial toilet as it is, so we have nothing to lose by spending it on environmental sustainability instead.
that is, unfortunately, a whole different issue. Imagine the social change we could accomplish with 1% of the defense budget. Imagine where we'd be in the development of Fusion reactors with 1% of the defense budget. Imagine what we'd gain if x% wasn't siphoned off (directly or indirectly, legally or illegally) from the budget (eg "pork" projects), and instead the budget was spent on useful things (but who to define "useful" ?).
Personally I laugh when people say we have to terraform Mars to protect ourselves from extinction events ... by the time we can terraform Mars (if we should terraform Mars) social unrest will have killed us off a long time ago.
another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?
I take it by those comments that you discount the military industrial complex as an important part of the economy. Or that defense readiness is a deterrent to war.
I respect people who don't blindly accept climate change as gospel, but what if you look at it not as a skeptic, but as a pragmatic manager of risk? does that change the calculus for you?
I completely agree with the intent of your post, including the intent of the statement above, but we should not treat a skeptical approach and a risk management approach as two opposites. Skepticism is an integral part of risk management. We should be especially skeptical about:
1) Evidence that supports our preconceptions.
2) Evidence that leads us to discount the risk of adverse consequences.
Skepticism doesn't mean the automatic rejection of evidence that suggests our current activities may have significant adverse consequences. That is the very opposite of skepticism.
Skepticism means always considering the possibility that evidence may be wrong or misleading, and considering the consequences if it is.
Engineering is employing a skeptical approach to maximise the difference between long term benefits and long term costs, including our best estimate of hidden costs.
Congressional testimony from IPCC coordinating lead author Richard Tol discussing Cook's 2013 paper (The 97% consensus one):
Quote: "I had a close look at what this study really did and as far as I know, as far as I can see, this estimate just crumbles when you touch it. None of the statements in the paper are supported by any data that's actually in the paper, so unfortunately...ehh, I mean, it's pretty clear that most of the science agrees that climate change is real and mostly likely human-made, but this 97% is essentially pulled from thin air. It's not based on any credible research whatsoever."
Cheers
Greg Locock
New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
Nir J. Shaviv
Ph.D. Astrophysics
Associate Professor, Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Dr. Shaviv, your paper 'On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget' is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; "Explicitly endorses but does not quantify or minimise"
Is this an accurate representation of your paper?
Shaviv: "Nope... it is not an accurate representation. The paper shows that if cosmic rays are included in empirical climate sensitivity analyses, then one finds that different time scales consistently give a low climate sensitiviity. i.e., it supports the idea that cosmic rays affect the climate and that climate sensitivity is low. This means that part of the 20th century should be attributed to the increased solar activity and that 21st century warming under a business as usual scenario should be low (about 1°C).
I couldn't write these things more explicitly in the paper because of the refereeing, however, you don't have to be a genius to reach these conclusions from the paper."
Any further comment on the Cook et al. (2013) paper?
Shaviv: "Science is not a democracy, even if the majority of scientists think one thing (and it translates to more papers saying so), they aren't necessarily correct. Moreover, as you can see from the above example, the analysis itself is faulty, namely, it doesn't even quantify correctly the number of scientists or the number of papers which endorse or diminish the importance of AGW."
How many of these do you want? I've got lots!
Cheers
Greg Locock
New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
Why do people spend so much time debating this 97% number?
A more interesting question is this:
What proportion of climate scientists would need to explicitly state that human GHG emissions will not have an adverse effect on the climate, for us to be confident that there was no need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
We can't put a precise figure on that because it would depend on who said it, and what they said, but surely there is no argument that the number is very much greater than 3%
Because it seems to be a holy icon for the true believers, as you can see in previous posts in this thread. If the only argument you can muster is that 97% of whatever support your position, and in fact that number is bogus, then you are just waving your hands in the air.
Cheers
Greg Locock
New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
In the context of a corrupt society looking to exploit a niche for its own agenda - TRUST NOBODY.
Manipulation of scientific data and outright fraudulence is rife across all fields of science; the pharmaceutical and nutrition industries are arguably the most disgusting.
When the nutritional "experts", backed by dozens of peer-reviewed scientific studies, told us that eating animal fat would kill us and we should all switch to margarine, 97% of America obliged and those who questioned it were ridiculed. It was then uncovered that the "scientific" research had been manipulated beyond belief; coincidently, the research had been funded by the chaps marketing margarine.
I have to wonder if 97% of these damning Climate Change testimonies aren't a product of research funded by the organisations profiting from the mass hysteria?
Having said that, I appreciate the efforts of people who believe our world is frying and are stepping up to intervene- these are true heroes at heart, fighting for something they believe in. If we can fork out trillions for margarine, we can certainly do it again for climate change.
@hokie66, "you discount the military industrial complex as an important part of the economy" ...
um, no in fact I think I'm almost saying the opposite. The amount we spend on the military is enormous and so is that "industry"s participation in the economy ... it has to be, that's where we're spending the money.
but could we reduce the military budget by a few %age points ? Would this detract significantly from our nation's security ? This would generate jobs etc in an industry more closely aligned to humanity'e end goals (as opposed to any one nation's goals). Would this be a "better" use of the money ??
another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?
Do we all agree that increasing energy efficiency would benefit us all?
Do we all agree that less pollution would benefit us all?
Do we all agree that having a sustainable/renewable energy source rather than a diminishing finite energy source would benefit us all?
I think we would all say yes, in general to the above. So why not drive towards those goals? What's really the downside? I don't see how we could possibly end up worse off in the long run if that is what we decide to put our human energy and resources into. If climate change is a real threat, then maybe we do enough to make our descendants' lives a little easier. If it's not really such a big threat, then our descendants will still thank us for investing in things that improved their quality of life and maybe even improve geopolitical stability, who knows?
I believe this is a cause that engineers around the world would love to put their hearts and minds into. It's an extremely worthy cause independent of whether this government report is accurate or not. But if we remain fractured and spinning our wheels in endless debate, I think we are just wasting time when we could be adding real value. I don't think military spending is furthering our species at all, but that's just my personal opinion so maybe I should have kept that part out of the discussion.
