Claim 97% of Climate Scientists Believe In Global Warming is TOTALLY BOGUS!

We keep hearing the Global Warming is totally settled science because 97% percent of climate scientists believe that global warming is real and man-made.  There are a few things wrong with that claim.

Firstly, there is no such thing as settled science. Science is about forming a hypothesis and proving it based on the evidence. For science to be settled means that every time one tests the hypothesis you get the same result, for example, without any other influences every time you heat water up to 212 degrees it boils. Climate scientists cannot say this about global warming, for example none of their experiments to test their hypothesis predicted the almost 18 year pause in warming that continues to this day.

Even more important is that the study claiming 97% of climate scientists agree with the global warming theory is bogus. The results are totally misrepresented by the study's author and the media.

The study reporting the 97% consensus "Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature"  by John Cook, and friends, was published a year ago last week and according to Watts Up With That, the University of Queensland threatens lawsuit over use of Cook’s ’97% consensus’ data for a scientific rebuttal. 
 
Investigative journalists at Popular Technology reported the 97% Study falsely classifies scientists' papers, according to the scientists that published them

Popular Tech. looked into precisely which papers were classified within Cook’s asserted 97 percent. The investigative journalists found Cook and his colleagues strikingly classified papers by such prominent, vigorous skeptics as Willie Soon, Craig Idso, Nicola Scafetta, Nir Shaviv, Nils-Axel Morner and Alan Carlin as supporting the 97-percent consensus.

Cook and his colleagues, for example, classified a peer-reviewed paper by scientist Craig Idso as explicitly supporting the ‘consensus’ position on global warming “without minimizing” the asserted severity of global warming. When Popular Technology asked Idso whether this was an accurate characterization of his paper, Idso responded, “That is not an accurate representation of my paper. The papers examined how the rise in atmospheric CO2 could be inducing a phase advance in the spring portion of the atmosphere’s seasonal CO2 cycle. Other literature had previously claimed a measured advance was due to rising temperatures, but we showed that it was quite likely the rise in atmospheric CO2 itself was responsible for the lion’s share of the change. It would be incorrect to claim that our paper was an endorsement of CO2-induced global warming.”

A more extensive examination of the Cook study reported that out of the nearly 12,000 scientific papers Cook’s team evaluated, only 65 endorsed Cook’s alarmist position. That is less than 0.97%. How did they come up with 97%? Well out of all the scientists who had an opinion 97% agreed there was global warming and it was the fault of mankind.

The crucial point here is the qualifying clause, “of those who have an opinion.” In other words, even the highly questionable Cook study doesn’t actually claim, as President Obama does, that “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree.” In fact, when examined closely, one finds that the study says only one-third of the authors of the published research papers they examined expressed an opinion that the Cook team interpreted as either an implicit or explicit endorsement of AGW. So now its 97 percent of one-third of selected scientists in a sampling of research papers. That’s a far cry from the 97 percent of all scientists claimed by President Obama and many of the media stories. And, as we will show below, even this admitted dramatically lower consensus claimed by the study is fraught with problems and falls apart further under examination.

Another criticism of the Cook and buddies paper is they didn’t define the “consensus” they were looking for. Is the 97% for people who believe the global warming is real, or people who believe its real and caused by mankind. 

So far John Cook has refused to provide complete data on his 97% Consensus Project (flatly refusing date-stamp and anonymized rater identification.) By not providing the data, Cook is preventing other scientists from being be able to replicate the results.

Cook however left the data on the Internet. Blogger Brandon Shollenberger alertly located the data, which he has provided a teaser at his blog.

The University of Queensland sent Brandon Shollenberger a threatening cease-and-desist letter. So he as not published his analysis. They even released a public statement trashing  Shollenberger.

From the data and methodology Cook has allowed the public to see, the 97% consensus figure is totally bogus, and the fact he preventing full disclosure of his data by threatening legal action suggests there may be more nefarious things being withheld.