Hardnekkige desinformatie over de niet-bestaande klimaatconsensus

Niet waar! Het is een sprookje. Het behoort tot de sjibbolets van de klimaatpropaganda. Het wordt nog steeds gerecycled, recentelijk nog door senator Boxer (zie en luister vanaf 4 minuten).

In het verleden hebben Al Gore en Naomi Oreskes (coauteur van de 'Merchants of Doubt') deze stelling vaak verkondigd. In ons land was het onze voormalige milieuminister Jacqueline Cramer, die het aan de kamer vertelde. Niemand vroeg haar toen naar de bron. En dat was maar goed ook, want dat zou waarschijnlijk een pijnlijk moment hebben opgeleverd. Ik vermoed dat zij het antwoord schuldig had moeten blijven.

Maar wat is die bron dan? En is die betrouwbaar?

Op de website van Forbes legt Larry Bell uit hoe de vork in de steel zit.

Since 1998, more than 31,000 American scientists from diverse climate-related disciplines, including more than 9,000 with Ph.D.s, have signed a public petition announcing their belief that “ there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” Included are atmospheric physicists, botanists, geologists, oceanographers, and meteorologists.

Maar waar komt die consensus-claim dan vandaan?

So where did that famous “consensus” claim that “98% of all scientists believe in global warming” come from? It originated from an endlessly reported 2009 American Geophysical Union (AGU) survey consisting of an intentionally brief two-minute, two question online survey sent to 10,257 earth scientists by two researchers at the University of Illinois. Of the about 3.000 who responded, 82% answered “yes” to the second question, which like the first, most people I know would also have agreed with.

Then of those, only a small subset, just 77 who had been successful in getting more than half of their papers recently accepted by peer-reviewed climate science journals, were considered in their survey statistic. That “98% all scientists” referred to a laughably puny number of 75 of those 77 who answered “yes”.

That anything-but-scientific survey asked two questions. The first: “When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?”  Few would be expected to dispute this the planet began thawing out of the “Little Ice Age” in the middle 19th century, predating the Industrial Revolution. (That was the coldest period since the last real Ice Age ended roughly 10,000 years ago.)

The second question asked: “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?” So what constitutes “significant”? Does “changing” include both cooling and warming and for both “better” and “worse”? And which contributions does this include land use changes, such as agriculture and deforestation?

Kortom, het was een flutenquête.

Zie ook hier.

Maar er zijn toch nog andere gerenommeerde instituten die zich achter de zogenaamde consensus hebben geschaard? Ook daar is het verrassend te ontdekken hoe zij tot hun stellingname zijn gekomen.

Larry Bell:

The National Research Council (NRC), a branch of the NAS, produced a recent report titled America’s Climate Choices, claiming that humans are responsible for causing recent climate change, posing significant risk to human welfare and the environment. Of the 23 people who served on the panel that wrote it, only five have a Ph.D. in a field closely related to climate science, and another five are staffers of environmental activist organizations. It was chaired by a nuclear engineer with no formal climate science training, and the vice chairman served for years as a top staffer for the Environmental Defense Fund. Two other members are, or were, politicians, and one had been appointed by the Clinton-Gore administration as general counsel for EPA. Prior to publishing the report, 19 of the 23 had made public statements claiming that global warming is a human-induced problem and/or that action is required to reduce CO2 emissions.

As Dr. Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, observed, NAS President Ralph Cicerone is really saying that “ regardless of evidence the answer is predetermined. If government wants carbon control, that is the answer that the Academies will provide.”

Some scientific society administrations are getting serious heat from their constituents for taking positions attributing climate change threats to human influences. In 2009, eighty prominent scientists, researchers and environmental business leaders, including many physicists, asked the century-old American Physical Society (APS), the nation’s leading physics organization, to change its policy statement which contains such language as “Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate”, and “The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.”

Instead, the group of scientists and academic leaders urged APS to revise its statement to read: “While substantial concern has been expressed that [greenhouse gas] emissions may cause significant climate change, measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th[and] 21st century changes are neither exceptional or persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today. In addition, there is an extensive literature that examines beneficial effects of increased levels of carbon dioxide for both animals and plants.”

Then, in the aftermath of the ClimateGate e-mail scandal, 265 APS members circulated an open letter saying: “By now everyone has heard of what has come to be known as ClimateGate which was and is an international science fraud, and the worst any of us have seen We have asked APS management to put the 2007 statement on ice until the extent to which it is tainted can be determined, but that has not been done. We have also asked that the membership be consulted on this point, but that too has not been done.” Of the 265 letter signatories, many or most are fellows of major scientific societies, more than 20 are members of national academies, two are Nobel laureates, and a large number are authors of major scientific books and recipients of prizes and awards for scientific research.

A June 22, 2009 editorial published in the American Chemical Society journal, Chemical and Engineering News, stated that “deniers” are attempting to “derail meaningful efforts to respond to global climate change”. That article prompted dozens of letters from angry members who rebuked it as “disgusting”, a “disgrace”, “filled with misinformation”, and “unworthy of a scientific periodical”. Many called for the replacement of its Editor-in-Chief Rudy Baum, who admitted to being “startled” and “surprised” by the negative reaction. As Dr. Howard Hayden, a Physics Professor Emeritus from the University of Connecticut wrote: “Baum’s remarks are particularly disquieting because of his hostility toward skepticism, which is part of every scientist’s soul.”

While real polling of climate scientists and organization memberships is rare, there are a few examples. A 2008 international survey of climate scientists conducted by German scientists Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch revealed deep disagreement regarding two-thirds of the 54 questions asked about their professional views. Responses to about half of those areas were skewed on the “skeptic” side, with no consensus to support any alarm. The majority did not believe that atmospheric models can deal with important influences of clouds, precipitation, atmospheric convection, ocean convection, or turbulence. Most also did not believe that climate models can predict precipitation, sea level rise, extreme weather events, or temperature values for the next 50 years.

A 2010 survey of media broadcast meteorologists conducted by the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication found that 63% of 571 who responded believe global warming is mostly caused by natural, not human, causes. Those polled included members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the National Weather Association.

A more recent 2012 survey published by the AMS found that only one in four respondents agreed with UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claims that humans are primarily responsible for recent warming. And while 89% believe that global warming is occurring, only 30% said they were very worried.

A March 2008 canvas of 51,000 Canadian scientists with the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysics of Alberta (APEGGA) found that although 99% of 1,077 replies believe climate is changing, 68% disagreed with the statement that “ the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled.” Only 26% of them attributed global warming to “human activity like burning fossil fuels.” Regarding these results, APEGGA’s executive director, Neil Windsor, commented, “We’re not surprised at all. There is no clear consensus of scientists that we know of.”

Lees verder hier.

Er is dus geen consensus en degenen die dat beweren maken zich schuldig aan het verspreiden desinformatie. Maar belangrijker is wat (wijlen) Michael Crichton daarover placht zeggen:

'There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period ...'

Voor mijn eerdere DDS-bijdragen, zie: