Talk:List of climate change controversies

The "97%"

Usually, the fallacious figure was arrived at thus: Australian researcher John Cook and colleagues perused over 11,000 peer-reviewed papers and articles published between 1991 and 2011 which included the terms ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’. They then sorted them into four subgroups, headed:

1] No Position on anthropogenic global warming

2] Endorsement,

3] Rejection, and

4] Uncertainty.

"No Position" -- at 66.4% -- was the largest group. *Only among the (33.6%) minority which did proffer an opinion, 97.1 per cent endorsed the anthropogenic-global-warming position.

Repetition is not necessarily Reality -- and, as committed as we should be to the environment, to say that ninety-seven -- or ninety-eight -- percent of scientists hold an anthropogenic global-warming/climate-change view is grossly misleading, and might well be filed under Mark Twain's "Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics." It should be removed from any article claiming scientific accuracy.

75.18.222.154 (talk) 01:32, 12 February 2015 (UTC) MC

Your analysis is "original research" which can't be used in Wikipedia, and is based on a couple of fallacies: you've misrepresented the Cook et al. paper, and have omitted Anderegg et al. and the Doran, Zimmerman paper, both of which are cited in the article. . . dave souza, talk 08:01, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Dave, in what way do you think he misrepresented the paper, and what do the other two papers have to do with his discussion of this paper – are you referring to some edit he made in the article itself that you've reverted?

Speaking just of this paper, I've read it. Cook et al. found that 66.7% of the 11,944 abstracts they checked either took no position on AGW or expressed uncertainty about it. Of the remaining one third of the abstracts, 97% endorsed AGW, and this 97% includes abstracts that, in the words of the authors, give "Implicit endorsement", i.e., "Implies humans are causing global warming, e.g., research assumes greenhouse gas emissions cause warming without explicitly stating humans are the cause." In other words, if an abstract does not explicitly say that human activity causes global warming, let alone that it's the cause of most of it, and does not even conclude from its research that carbon emissions cause global warming but only uses that as an ASSUMPTION on its way to considering some other question that it's researching, that paper is still used as part of the 97% of the abstracts that state a conclusion that adopt AGW as fact. Furthermore, the paper considers only abstracts, and explicitly states that its 97% includes those that do not quantify how much of the global warming is caused by human activity. Accordingly, this paper does not say, and cannot be used to support the conclusion, stated in the article, that "Just over 97% of climate researchers say humans are causing most global warming." (Emphasis added.) It does not poll the researchers, only abstracts, finds that only 97% of 33.3% of the abstracts (i.e., 32.3%) support AGW, and the paper does not come to a conclusion about the "most" part. In fact, while the authors do say that they counted how many of the abstracts explicitly state that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming, they do not give the number of how many say that. I find it strange that the "gatekeeper" editors of this article, who are very quick and thorough in eliminating any change to this article that might indicate that it is not certain that global warming is mostly or entirely caused by human activity, have no problem leaving in mischaracterizations of the papers like citing Cook et al. as one of the papers that support the statement "Just over 97% of climate researchers say humans are causing most global warming," when it says no such thing, it the abstract or elsewhere in the paper.

I've also noticed that while the editors will use conclusionary statements in the abstract of a source, when someone adds to the article by reporting facts that are actually in the full paper of the source, those additions are removed as "independent research" whenever they conflict with the "97% of climate researchers say humans cause most global warming" conclusion favored by the editors. This seems a pretty clear indication of editorial bias in this article. Such a position (allowing quotations from the abstract but disallowing as "original research" accurate representations of statements made in the paper itself) is not followed anywhere else in Wikipedia outside the climate research field, which is apparently heavily policed by the editors for orthodoxy. - (Above three paragraphs by Embram (talk) 15:10, 27 February 2015 (UTC))

I've been notified that even questioning the editing of others, let alone suggesting possible bias, is forbidden here. Accordingly, I apologize for doing so in the above paragraph, and will not henceforth. - Embram (talk) 16:28, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

This is the comment to which Embram refers. If we stick to discussing article improvement based on reliable sources, and using WP:DR when needed, all is well. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 17:22, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

As I also studied the entire paper I partially agree with Embram. For one of Cooks categories concurrence with the mainstream view was implied, and it was not OR for Embram or anyone else to say so. Quite the opposite... the implied nature of the concurrence is explicitly laid out in the paper's methodology section. So what to do? The best is to rely on quality secondary sources to report the results of this papre. Barring that, we should maybe insert "explicit" and "implicit" so the presentation of the stats is accurate, and we should maybe include the error-checking second step they followed, which they say supported their their conclusions. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 17:41, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Prior discussions of pretty much same thing

• Talk:Global_warming_controversy/Archive_10#Cook_et_al:_Scientific_consensus
• Talk:Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change/Archive_21#The_John_Cook_Study_Has_Major_Problems
• Talk:List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming/Archive_36#Peer_review_section_seems_to_be_WP:SYNTH
• Talk:Global_warming/Archive_70#Consensus_View_of_Article_Abstracts_Discussing_Global_Climate_Change

NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 17:58, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

The only change I'd suggest now is to remove the citation to/of the Cook study from (or change the caption in) the chart that's captioned "Just over 97% of climate researchers say humans are causing most global warming" because the Cook study does not support that statement. The Cook study counted abtracts, not researchers (as one of the other cited references points out, some researchers published many more papers on the topic than others), and did not make any statement about the percentage that agreed with the "most" part. The authors apparently counted the number of abstracts that "[e]xplicitly [state] that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming" (type 1 endorsement in Table 2) but didn't say how many they were, instead lumping them in with the implicit endorsements and the explicit endorsements without quantification to get the 97.1% figure. - Embram (talk) 19:30, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

I haven't spent a whole lot of time debating here but I've come back every few months and read through talk pages on this subject for laughs. There is simply no arguing with the handful of people who have adopted wikipedia as their personal e-library, of sorts. They are experts in wiki law (which is not an infallible metric for determining whether or not something belongs here and it is laughable that this even needs to be said) and they seem to virtually never concede a point. A user named TFD actually said (archive 11) that "It is just not possible to write an article arguing against AGW that conforms to the standards required for publication, since any reasonable conclusions drawn from the facts would hold that most global warming is man made." I know that this is sort of like telling fundamentalist Christians that one of their own believes something totally backward. Their reaction is likely to be "...so?". But this statement, to anyone who has not only actually looked at the facts but, more importantly, understands how science works, is indicative of a major problem in this community.

This place is full of non-scientists who, because of their lack of expertise, place an undue degree of importance on consensus and who steadfastly and absolutely refuse to acknowledge anything that runs counter to their fully cemented notions. I hope TFD and others like him decide to go back and read about the history of science. They may find it surprising that the consensus was against many of their heroes.

In the meantime, this place should not be regarded as an unbiased source of information. It is anything but.

Above 3 paragraphs by NerdNinja9. Cue cookie cutter response, from some self-styled wiki god, dismissing everything I've just said.NerdNinja9 (talk) 16:02, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Kahan study

I have just cut new text added by Vgy7ujm that said

On the other hand, a 2015 study by Dan Kahan showed that global warming skeptics are as familiar with the relevant science as their opponents. They simply arrive at different conclusions.

The study is paywalled, and I have not read this primary source yet. However, I have read secondary sources, and I don't think the study quite supports the contention in this text. The problem is that the new text seems to posit an exact parallel between degree of acceptance vs skepticism with the Scientific consensus on climate change no matter how much one knows about the science. That doesn't quite hit the nail, from what I gather. See this for example. It seems the study rather said that despite lots of knowledge about the science, polarity still exists; and yet with less knowledge of the science there is less polarity. At what point on the science-knowledge spectrum do we place "skeptics"? At what point on the strengh-of-opinion spectrum do we place "skeptics"? I've got no problem adding something about this study, but is the text I cut truly a fair presentation of the results? Maybe it is, and if so, someone should restore it. But let's talk.

@Vgy7ujm: can you please indicate the specific paragraphs in this paper that you think say what you said?

• I quickly skimmed through the study. First, the study involves a random sample of 2,000 ordinary US citizens, so it is a study about various questions concerning knowledge of climate change science and the relationships between this knowledge and political ideology. Second, the findings are interesting, but not overly surprising. In general, people on the political right are more likely not to know or believe relevant issues in climate science. So, the study doesn't support the quote above and the study as a whole has nothing to do with climate scientists' views. --I am One of Many (talk) 20:02, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

I can confirm that there is nothing in this article that supports the quote. It is either deliberately misleading, or the wiki editor didn't understand the paper. It is a random minor paper in Political Psychology, of no value to this page.Feyre (talk) 23:29, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

refs for this thread

References

Willie Soon

See: Willie Soon#2015: Allegations of disclosure violations
This better? Vsmith (talk) 03:32, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Last 30 years of solar variability picture

Last 30 years before 2010. Obsolete.Xx236 (talk) 06:25, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

RfC on redirects

I posted an RfC on the target for various redirects, some of which currently (or previously) pointed to this page. Feel free to provide your input. You can find the discussion at Talk:Climate change denial#Redirects to this page. Thanks.   — Jess· Δ♥ 16:12, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Primarily

Edit summary claims:

(best estimate is that the trend is entirely (not "primarily") anthropogenic)

IPCC source says:

Total radiative forcing is positive, and has led to an uptake of energy by the climate system. The largest contribution to total radiative forcing is caused by the increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 since 1750 (see Figure SPM.5). {3.2, Box 3.1, 8.3, 8.5}

This means co2 is only one of many sources, not the only source.

Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise, and in changes in some climate extremes (see Figure SPM.6 and Table SPM.1). This evidence for human influence has grown since AR4. It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. {10.3–10.6, 10.9}

It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together. The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period. {10.3}

Extremely likely is not certainty. More than half is not 100%. So entirely in entirely inaccurate and primarily is accurate. Primarily should be restored. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1009:B066:FAA4:15B8:C210:2893:8B18 (talk) 06:32, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

And dominant does not mean entirely either. This should be clear to anyone whose first language is English. So why are we arguing about this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1009:B066:FAA4:15B8:C210:2893:8B18 (talk) 06:36, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

"Primarily" appears in one of the pullquotes in one of the cites. See also, paragraph 2 of lead to Global warming which uses word from IPCC AR5 SPM "mostly", with abundant debate in the archives. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:31, 6 November 2015 (UTC)