Climate change will impact beer. Now, do you care?

[Arkain2K]

""Under higher-warming climate scenarios, we find 100-year drought and heat events occur every three years, decreasing barley yields by an average 17 percent in those years, and increasing the price of a 6-pack in the U.S. by $1-8. Another way climate change will suck."

South America would fare poorly, as would many tropical areas. In China and the U.S., the barley yield is actually predicted to rise, but "not enough to offset the global decrease," the study says.

I wish they would elaborate as to why.

Does that means global warming leads to better crop yields in the American and Chinese agriculture industry?

 

[PhitePhan]

You seem to be coming at this in good faith, but I think your assessment of the Cook study is off. You've appeared to at least read the abstract and methodology so I'll take the time to respond. Earlier you said your issues are 1. it disregards the majority of studies that don't make a claim one way or the other and 2. whether or not AGW is implicitly supported is subjective.

Towards your first point - this is how the papers considered were chosen:

Tons of literature considers implications of the climate and mentions the words 'global climate change' without actually doing novel research on climate processes. That doesn't make them bad science, just not the kind that counts towards whether or not humans are the cause. I just scrolled randomly to the middle of the data file and pulled three titles that were excluded from the percentage because they have 'no position':

These papers just aren't investigating the mechanisms of global warming but the implications, so it makes sense to exclude them.

This is just a normal part of a systematic review, to keep your paper selection unbiased you start with a keyword search, and then have a criteria by which you would exclude papers that aren't applicable.

As for subjectivity in rating papers as implicitly agreeing with AGW, etc, I think they have that covered pretty well in the methods and supplementary info.


From the supplementary info:


You can look at all the papers in this datafile http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/media/erl460291datafile.txt and sort them in excel or something. I've done it and taken at the explicit rejection papers and it is striking - there are so few and there is some absolute garbage that should never have been published. One of my favorites of the few dozen was just a round up of blog posts on the internet in a computer science journal and I have no idea how it got published. And considering the range of titles - there are mideast regional energy journals and stuff - the argument that authors couldn't get skeptical science published just doesn't hold water.

I appreciate your thoughtful response. I must admit that my objections were based on a superficial review of the paper (Cook et al 2013) due to obvious discrepancies, such as citing 1/3 of abstracts. Your response forced me to review the paper in more detail and while reading about this paper I also found that this paper has received extensive criticism from other professionals well beyond anything I can articulate.

For example, Richard Tol wrote: "A claim has been that 97% of the scientific literature endorses anthropogenic climate change (Cook et al., 2013. Environ. Res. Lett. 8, 024024). This claim, frequently repeated in debates about climate policy, does not stand. A trend in composition is mistaken for a trend in endorsement. Reported results are inconsistent and biased. The sample is not representative and contains many irrelevant papers. Overall, data quality is low. Cook's validation test shows that the data are invalid. Data disclosure is incomplete so that key results cannot be reproduced or tested."

He followed up with further criticism after correspondence with Cook et al: "In my critique of Cook et al. (2013), I raised a number of issues (Tol, 2014). Cook et al. (2014) respond to a few only. They do not dispute

(1) that their sample is not representative,
(2) that data quality is low,
(3) that their validation test is not passed,
(4) that they mistake a trend in composition for a trend in endorsement,
(5) that the majority of the investigated papers that take a position on (anthropogenic) climate change in fact do not examine any evidence, and
(6) that there are inexplicable patterns in the data."

I was furthermore very surprised to learn that Cook and colleagues are very much AGW proponents and wrote about end results and promotion of the study before analysis had even been undertaken. In one exchange, Cook stated that the purpose of the paper was to establish the existence of a consensus: "It’s essential that the public understands that there’s a scientific consensus on AGW. So, Jim Powell, Dana [Nuccitelli] and I have been working on something over the last few months that we hope will have a game changing impact on the public perception of consensus."

Obviously this is concerning, particularly when these same researchers were responsible for interpreting abstract results. The fact that these folks were also responsible for determining implicit agreement among abstracts is also very questionable, particularly considering Tol's critiques numbered 1-6 above.

There are other scathing critiques of this paper, even from AGW proponents who recognize Cook et al for being determinantal to the AGW discussion. For example, Professor Mike Hulme, wrote in part: "The [Cook et al.] article is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed. It obscures the complexities of the climate issue and it is a sign of the desperately poor level of public and policy debate in this country that the energy minister should cite it. It offers a similar depiction of the world into categories of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to that adopted in [an earlier study]: dividing publishing climate scientists into ‘believers’ and ‘non-believers’. It seems to me that these people are still living (or wishing to live) in the pre-2009 world of climate change discourse." For the record, Hulme is NOT a AGW "denier." In 2008, Hulme made a personal statement on what he called the "5 lessons of climate change", as:

1. "climate change is a relative risk, not an absolute one"
2. "climate risks are serious, and we should seek to minimise them"
3. "our world has huge unmet development needs"
4. "our current energy portfolio is not sustainable"
5. "massive and deliberate geo-engineering of the planet is a dubious practice"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Hulme

The above critiques of this paper were found at the following links:

http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2013/09/Montford-Consensus.pdf

http://www.populartechnology.net/2014/12/all-97-consensus-studies-refuted-by.html

 

[ocean size]

I appreciate your thoughtful response. I must admit that my objections were based on a superficial review of the paper (Cook et al 2013) due to obvious discrepancies, such as citing 1/3 of abstracts. Your response forced me to review the paper in more detail and while reading about this paper I also found that this paper has received extensive criticism from other professionals well beyond anything I can articulate.

For example, Richard Tol wrote: "A claim has been that 97% of the scientific literature endorses anthropogenic climate change (Cook et al., 2013. Environ. Res. Lett. 8, 024024). This claim, frequently repeated in debates about climate policy, does not stand. A trend in composition is mistaken for a trend in endorsement. Reported results are inconsistent and biased. The sample is not representative and contains many irrelevant papers. Overall, data quality is low. Cook's validation test shows that the data are invalid. Data disclosure is incomplete so that key results cannot be reproduced or tested."

He followed up with further criticism after correspondence with Cook et al: "In my critique of Cook et al. (2013), I raised a number of issues (Tol, 2014). Cook et al. (2014) respond to a few only. They do not dispute

(1) that their sample is not representative,
(2) that data quality is low,
(3) that their validation test is not passed,
(4) that they mistake a trend in composition for a trend in endorsement,
(5) that the majority of the investigated papers that take a position on (anthropogenic) climate change in fact do not examine any evidence, and
(6) that there are inexplicable patterns in the data."

I was furthermore very surprised to learn that Cook and colleagues are very much AGW proponents and wrote about end results and promotion of the study before analysis had even been undertaken. In one exchange, Cook stated that the purpose of the paper was to establish the existence of a consensus: "It’s essential that the public understands that there’s a scientific consensus on AGW. So, Jim Powell, Dana [Nuccitelli] and I have been working on something over the last few months that we hope will have a game changing impact on the public perception of consensus."

Obviously this is concerning, particularly when these same researchers were responsible for interpreting abstract results. The fact that these folks were also responsible for determining implicit agreement among abstracts is also very questionable, particularly considering Tol's critiques numbered 1-6 above.

There are other scathing critiques of this paper, even from AGW proponents who recognize Cook et al for being determinantal to the AGW discussion. For example, Professor Mike Hulme, wrote in part: "The [Cook et al.] article is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed. It obscures the complexities of the climate issue and it is a sign of the desperately poor level of public and policy debate in this country that the energy minister should cite it. It offers a similar depiction of the world into categories of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to that adopted in [an earlier study]: dividing publishing climate scientists into ‘believers’ and ‘non-believers’. It seems to me that these people are still living (or wishing to live) in the pre-2009 world of climate change discourse." For the record, Hulme is NOT a AGW "denier." In 2008, Hulme made a personal statement on what he called the "5 lessons of climate change", as:

1. "climate change is a relative risk, not an absolute one"
2. "climate risks are serious, and we should seek to minimise them"
3. "our world has huge unmet development needs"
4. "our current energy portfolio is not sustainable"
5. "massive and deliberate geo-engineering of the planet is a dubious practice"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Hulme

The above critiques of this paper were found at the following links:

http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2013/09/Montford-Consensus.pdf

http://www.populartechnology.net/2014/12/all-97-consensus-studies-refuted-by.html

Thanks mate. It is an imperfect study. I don't see the criticisms damning beyond allowing the paper any value though. The study also had a self rated component where authors rated their own full texts and the results were quite similar. It is true most of the papers aren't looking at the data of whether or not humans are the main cause but as they point out if you only look at papers that take a stand either way and quantify human contribution there are 75 of them and 87% of abstracts and 96% of author rated full papers find humans are the main cause. So I guess it depends if one wants to use the study to form a consensus of authors or a consensus of the papers asking the question.
https://skepticalscience.com/97-percent-consensus-robust.htm#Cat17

 

[ocean size]

Again, climate "deniers" Richard Lindzen, Judith Curry, Roger Pielke, Roy Spencer, John Christy, Lord Monckton, William Happer, Freeman Dyson, and Iver Giaever would all answer "yes, most likely" to both of the questions above. Therefore you are counting these "deniers" as part of the "97% consensus". Do you not see the problem?

I don't know the views of all those people in terms of parsing how all these people would respond. But in terms of Cook ( abstracts of theirt published work) here is Spencer:

https://skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=search&s=&a=spencer,+rw&c=&e=&yf=&yt

5 papers, 4 with no opinion, one that implicitly minimizes/rejects AGW so he'd be classified a 'denier' I suppose.

 

[ocean size]

I wish they would elaborate as to why.

Does that means global warming leads to better crop yields in the U.S agriculture industry?

The barley in the us is grown up along the Canadian border, and the decrease in yields elsewhere is due to droughts. So I'd assume the increased yield is due to more steady precipitation. Just across the border to the north decreases are predicted. Probably can't extrapolate from this to other crops unless they are really similar to barley in where they are grown and their water needs

Full study
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41...LfdgGthsfsUT-5agpsL-MY-V6ba6MwAUKxdoJOCi0TBo=

 

[Arkain2K]

The barley in the us is grown up along the Canadian border, and the decrease in yields elsewhere is due to droughts. So I'd assume the increased yield is due to more steady precipitation. Just across the border to the north decreases are predicted. Probably can't extrapolate from this to other crops unless they are really similar to barley in where they are grown and their water needs

Full study
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-018-0263-1.epdf?shared_access_token=i29g1W2gX8ueGpKoZUCA8tRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MFWGRMBT-Y7TXCsg2nTbgiN9Lm2O1C2byJgeAjv1Ko71bDvzKUEyDlzQGXq59fHf0Odw6CHogqpYcesiuHGC5LfdgGthsfsUT-5agpsL-MY-V6ba6MwAUKxdoJOCi0TBo=

Yeah, I wish we don't have to assume things when random factoids are presented like that without any further elaboration.

But that piece in the OP is clearly intended to say "climate change is bad for barley", so I get why they feel the need to completely skim over the big countries where barley yields are increasing despite going through the same climate change, knowing full well not many have the time and effort to do their own follow-up research to find out what the author intentionally left out.

 

[ocean size]

Yeah, I wish we don't have to assume things when random factoids are presented like that without any further elaboration.

But that piece in the OP is clearly intended to say "climate change is bad for barley", so I get why they feel the need to completely skim over the big countries where barley yields are increasing despite going through the same climate change, knowing full well not many have the time and effort to do their own follow-up research to find out what the author intentionally left out.

Eh yeah, can only fit so much in a article on a study that covers the globe and everything from barley yields, exports, beer prices and consumption. The authors are from China UK and US - it was conducted globally and individual countries are only mentioned when things change drastically for them. So the US gets better yields during extreme years, but (looking at the supplementary info) they just export that barley and in the country beer production and consumption are predicted to decrease and prices expected to rise slightly. Not sure what you think is intentional left out but that seems kinda uncharitable - I think there is no silver lining or anything remarkable happening with the US besides yields increasing, just not enough to offset the overall pattern.

 

[12ga.]

Beer is a tempest in a teapot compared to where we are headed. Try no crops and all fish in sea dead visa vi anthropogenic warming of just 3 degrees. Not sure there is a "fix"... People want to live large and corps want the profits to fullfill those desires.. We are fucked or our kids are.

Nobody ever got elected telling people they need to live with less.

 

[Farmer Br0wn]

here is another science based video.

the description has links to every study he uses as well.

@Ripskater and @Farmer Br0wn you guys both never got back to me

Sorry, harvest has been long, dusty, and dangerous. I'm just getting home.

What were you wanting me to address exactly?

 

[Arkain2K]

Beer is a tempest in a teapot compared to where we are headed. Try no crops and all fish in sea dead visa vi anthropogenic warming of just 3 degrees. Not sure there is a "fix"...

 

[no fat chicks]

Sorry, harvest has been long, dusty, and dangerous. I'm just getting home.

What were you wanting me to address exactly?

i think it was your stance regarding evolution. Was I fair in lumping you in with the young earth creationist crowd?

Hope the you had a good harvest.

 

[12ga.]

Werd. You know I have a recurring nightmare that the "rich" e.g. the waltons and other elites that build nuclear shelters, some of them generational habitation capable, will just off us one day by nuclear armageddon. I know it's crazy but maybe not. Solves nearly every problem they and their polticos are grappling with. Debt, terrorism, global warming, over population, etc. 6 billion die 100-200K or so survive and come out to a new "garden of eden" ..so to speak

Or maybe I played too much Fallout lol

 

[waiguoren]

I don't know the views of all those people in terms of parsing how all these people would respond. But in terms of Cook ( abstracts of theirt published work) here is Spencer:

https://skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=search&s=&a=spencer,+rw&c=&e=&yf=&yt

5 papers, 4 with no opinion, one that implicitly minimizes/rejects AGW so he'd be classified a 'denier' I suppose.

Spencer has stated repeatedly that he believes that mankind's CO2 emissions contribute to global warming. If you don't believe me, I can probably produce video evidence rather quickly.

 

[ocean size]

Spencer has stated repeatedly that he believes that mankind's CO2 emissions contribute to global warming. If you don't believe me, I can probably produce video evidence rather quickly.

You were just complaining that the Cook framework would lump him in with endorsers, right? And that that would be flawed, because you were counting him among the 'denialists'. I've just shown that the criteria actually lump him in with the denialists, where you said he should be. The paper addressed the abstracts of published research articles AND gave authors a chance to rate their own studies, it didn't go on their general views or whatever.

I have no reason to doubt he believes in the greenhouse effect of CO2 and that humans have released a lot of carbon but that is besides the point.

 

[waiguoren]

You were just complaining that the Cook framework would lump him in with endorsers, right? And that that would be flawed, because you were counting him among the 'denialists'. I've just shown that the criteria actually lump him in with the denialists, where you said he should be. The paper addressed the abstracts of published research articles AND gave authors a chance to rate their own studies, it didn't go on their general views or whatever.

I have no reason to doubt he believes in the greenhouse effect of CO2 and that humans have released a lot of carbon but that is besides the point.

I'm saying Cook et al (2013) is meaningless and that its result has been misinterpreted by many people even within this very thread.

I'm saying that it's wrong to take from Cook et al (2013) that 98% of scientists believe anything. Cook et al (2013) dealt with abstracts, not scientists.

I'm saying that multiple qualified experts like Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. Richard Lindzen and Dr. Judith Curry and Dr. William Happer---all of whom Cook has labeled "deniers" or "denialists"----have made repeated statements that---if those statements had been written in an abstract---would qualify them by Cook's criteria as "endorsers of AGW".

No one with even a cursory understanding of this field doubts that near-100% of experts believe that mankind's CO2 emissions have caused some warming. Lindzen/Happer/Curry/Spencer/Christy all believe that. It's when one starts making claims like "mankind is primarily responsible for the observed warming" or "earth's radiative balance is highly sensitive to atmospheric CO2 concentration" that one starts to lose the support of experts.

 

[ocean size]

I'm saying Cook et al (2013) is meaningless and that its result has been misinterpreted by many people even within this very thread.

I'm saying that it's wrong to take from Cook et al (2013) that 98% of scientists believe anything. Cook et al (2013) dealt with abstracts, not scientists.

I'm saying that multiple qualified experts like Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. Richard Lindzen and Dr. Judith Curry and Dr. William Happer---all of whom Cook has labeled "deniers" or "denialists"----have made repeated statements that---if those statements had been written in an abstract---would qualify them by Cook's criteria as "endorsers of AGW".

No one with even a cursory understanding of this field doubts that near-100% of experts believe that mankind's CO2 emissions have caused some warming. Lindzen/Happer/Curry/Spencer/Christy all believe that. It's when one starts making claims like "mankind is primarily responsible for the observed warming" or "earth's radiative balance is highly sensitive to atmospheric CO2 concentration" that one starts to lose the support of experts.

You are correct it is a review of abstracts not authors, which I think is more useful and powerful. For me to accept that critique, that the paper called denialists endorsers through their abstracts, id need examples of actual miscategorized abstracts. But I've shown at least Spencer hasn't been characterised incorrectly, despite him testifying to congress that he was.

The study is far from meaningless though:
1. Many people still deny the greenhouse effect or warming at all - I understand your point that there is a difference between accepting the greenhouse effect is a thing and that humans are causing the majority of global warming, but you greatly underestimate the people, especially a few years ago, that would say warming isnt happening, it is a Chinese hoax, it his can't possibly be affecting it.
2. The authors self rating component where they rate their own papers which had very similar results- 2000 papers I think.
3. If you only take papers that have an explicit endorsement either way, a category you didn't take objection to, there are only 75 total. 83% endorse - and mind you there is limited information in an abstract to decide whether they are explictly saying humans cause the majority- the authors self rating for explicit stand papers is 96%. I've looked at the explicit rejection papers before and lol'd at times- I might be interested to take the time to go through some/them and be willing to make a bet about quality of the endorsement papers over there explicitly reject papers. One of the first I saw on the rejection side was a round up of blog posts on the internet the author in a comp sci journal found interesting.

And don't come at me with the fact 2/3 of the original pool of papers was disregarded. That is nonsense- just because a paper has 'global warming' in the text doesn't mean it belongs in a review of the scientific consensus.

I will agree that the {scientists who believe climate change is caused by some amount by humans} > {scientists who believe climate change is mostly caused by humans} because the second is a subset of the first. I think contrarians are good in terms of keeping their colleagues honest.

But I'm not sure about your characterizations- without evidence of anyone's work getting miscategorized by cook et alia, and while I am not that familiar with your entire prominent 'denier' list, I don't see why Curry would belong - in terms of her science. She's flirted with the denial blogging community, acknowledges human caused warming, just modeled it to be 40% less of an increase than the IPCC predicts (results that were panned on their merits) Not that humans aren't largely responsible.

Edit: I just want to preempt any objections- I think it boils down to whether you think the consensus number should be 'endorses that humans are causing warming' vs 'endorses that humans are causing the majority of warming'. For the former I think Cook did a decent job, for the later, I'd only really be interested if it is a discussion of the evidence and comparison of papers that actually set out to test the hypothesis one way or the other. For the most part, people aren't going to mention in their abstract whether they endorse the view that humans are the primary cause unless they are working on something directly related to the topic anyway. As of 2013, the best we have compiled is explicit author rates papers, and that is 96% endorsement.

 

[waiguoren]

Many people still deny the greenhouse effect

"Many people"....like what, < 0.5% of the population? Some crazy guy you met on a street corner?

None of the scientists I listed---all of whom Cook's website has accused of "denial" or even outright referred to as "denialists"---deny the greenhouse effect.

If you only take papers that have an explicit endorsement either way, a category you didn't take objection to, there are only 75 total.

....which is a big part of my point. Cook and his activist allies are claiming to have demonstrated "endorsement of AGW", yet only 75/12,000 or 0.63% of global warming/climate change papers took an explicit position on the question.

And don't come at me with the fact 2/3 of the original pool of papers was disregarded. That is nonsense- just because a paper has 'global warming' in the text doesn't mean it belongs in a review of the scientific consensus.

See the above.

Imagine, for a moment, that Cook et al (2013) had polled a representative sample of experts rather than merely examining abstracts. Suppose that of a sample of 12,000 experts, 67% took no position on statement X. Of the 0.63% of experts who did take an explicit position on statement X, 98% believed statement X to be true. Would it be ethical for one to claim on this basis that 98% of experts believed statement X?

The answer is: of course not.



This conversation began with my debunking of a post of @esant707, who claimed that 98% of scientists believe that "climate change is man-made". Assuming that @esant707's statement was that 98% of scientists believe that humans are responsible for most of the earth's observed warming since the industrial revolution, my claim was that the 98% figure is bogus. @esant707's claim is also unsupported under almost any reasonable interpretation of his claim that I can imagine.

while I am not that familiar with your entire prominent 'denier' list, I don't see why Curry would belong.

I'm not sure if I'm being unclear in my writing or if you're not reading carefully. The "denier list" I posted was a list of credentialed experts who Cook's website has accused of "denial" or who Cook's website has outright labelled as "denialists" and yet who hold a view that Cook's methodology would grant as "endorsement" if it appeared in an abstract. As you can see here, Curry is one of those people.

 

[Tiny]

China is on the hook for roughly 30 percent of global co2 emissions.

Wanna get tough? Talk to china. Be tough in china. Dont trade with or even more drastic, threaten war with china if they dont fix their shit now because you know...end of the world type shit apparently.

But that doesnt happen, does it?

Instead cuckold countries like canada whos on the hook for fucking 2 percent is gonna fuck their economy by imposing a carbon tax that wont actually reduce carbon emissions at all. Just another way to tax people.

Tesla a company that actually seems to be trying to give people options other than gas burning cars and homes...do you see governments pushing his tech globally? I sure dont. I dont see any government trying to give the individual real options to get off of burning fossil fuels.

No instead ya got virtue signally assholes flying their private jets all over the globe preaching “global warming, pay this tax now!” Instead of offfering the invidual real options ti lessen their footprint.

Why is the automotive companies even allow to continue making gas guzzling cars if its end of the world type shit? Co2 emissions from transportation is one of the major factors in global emissions.

Id wager ever single asshole libtard in this thread preaching global warming hasnt done jack shit to change thier habbits to actually solve the problem individually.

The still drive gas guzzling cars or take gas guzzling transport daily. Heat their homes with natural gas.

No instead they virtue signal about how important man made global warming is and virtue signal and call it a day.

That makes you an asshole. A virtue signalling libtard cuckold asshole.

 

[ocean size]

"Many people"....like what, < 0.5% of the population? Some crazy guy you met on a street corner?

None of the scientists I listed---all of whom Cook's website has accused of "denial" or even outright referred to as "denialists"---deny the greenhouse effect.



....which is a big part of my point. Cook and his activist allies are claiming to have demonstrated "endorsement of AGW", yet only 75/12,000 or 0.63% of global warming/climate change papers took an explicit position on the question.



See the above.

Imagine, for a moment, that Cook et al (2013) had polled a representative sample of experts rather than merely examining abstracts. Suppose that of a sample of 12,000 experts, 67% took no position on statement X. Of the 0.63% of experts who did take an explicit position on statement X, 98% believed statement X to be true. Would it be ethical for one to claim on this basis that 98% of experts believed statement X?

The answer is: of course not.



This conversation began with my debunking of a post of @esant707, who claimed that 98% of scientists believe that "climate change is man-made". Assuming that @esant707's statement was that 98% of scientists believe that humans are responsible for most of the earth's observed warming since the industrial revolution, my claim was that the 98% figure is bogus. @esant707's claim is also unsupported under almost any reasonable interpretation of his claim that I can imagine.




I'm not sure if I'm being unclear in my writing or if you're not reading carefully. The "denier list" I posted was a list of credentialed experts who Cook's website has accused of "denial" or who Cook's website has outright labelled as "denialists" and yet who hold a view that Cook's methodology would grant as "endorsement" if it appeared in an abstract. As you can see here, Curry is one of those people.

See my edit.

Yout analogy isnt great- It would be unfair to say 97% of those 12000 agree with x, but not that of the 12000 that answered the question 97% agree with x. Because category 4 'no opinion' is not the same as directly getting asked a question and stating no opinion. If I publish a paper regarding the growth of caterpillars at different temperatures and the paper mentions climate change once somewhere, that's like never having been asked the question. Cook et alia 2016 point out that if you held 'no opinion' to mean no endorsement to other fields, you wouldn't have consensus on things everyone knows are true, like plate tectonics. It's a nonsensical standard.

Regarding Curry, depends on what she's published, if she didn't deny in a publication, then her publications don't deny. Not Cook's fault if her scientific record on the database they used didn't deny and I think his protocol was pretty clear- abstracts themselves. These are her publications in the study: skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=search&s=&a=curry%2C+j&c=&e=&yf=&yt=
5, three no opinion, two implicitly endorse, both from the 90s. I think they are both fair assessments, in that the abstracts of both are starting from the angle that greenhouse gas driven warming occurs.

The Cook study as written can only be used to establish a 97% consensus of abstracts that humans cause warming, not that they explicitly cause most of it. But they don't state otherwise.

Here's some further reading on consensus- section 2 ''assessing expert consensus" is a nice overview of efforts- there is no perfect methodology but I think you'd be hard pressed to find there isn't a strong consensus with methods that ameliorate your objections.

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002

 

[waiguoren]

Yout analogy isnt great- It would be unfair to say 97% of those 12000 agree with x, but not that of the 12000 that answered the question 97% agree with x. Because category 4 'no opinion' is not the same as directly getting asked a question and stating no opinion. If I publish a paper regarding the growth of caterpillars at different temperatures and the paper mentions climate change once somewhere, that's like never having been asked the question.

Analogies are never perfect and I generally agree with this, but it seems like you're still missing the broader point: the entire idea of finding "consensus" by Cook et al (2013)'s method is absurd.

The "right way" to do this would be to perform a poll of a representative sample of experts on a specific question. A few attempts are contained in the list here. None of them indicate that 97% of experts believe that man is primarily responsible for the observed warming, and none of them indicate that 97% of experts believe that the effects of global warming will be catastrophic.

Regarding Curry, depends on what she's published, if she didn't deny in a publication, then her publications don't deny. Not Cook's fault if her scientific record on the database they used didn't deny and I think his protocol was pretty clear- abstracts themselves. These are her publications in the study: skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=search&s=&a=curry%2C+j&c=&e=&yf=&yt=
5, three no opinion, two implicitly endorse, both from the 90s. I think they are both fair assessments, in that the abstracts of both are starting from the angle that greenhouse gas driven warming occurs.

Right, so Curry's papers are part of the "97% consensus". Yet Michael Mann---probably the most prominent scientist calling for massive economic mobilization to fight global warming---referred to Curry in written testimony to the House Science, Space and Technology Committee as a "climate science denier".

So is Curry a "denier" or "part of the consensus"?

But yes I will concede- the Cook study as written can only be used to establish a 97% consensus of abstracts that humans cause warming, not that they explicitly cause most of it. But they don't state otherwise.

* a 97% consensus of the 32.6% of abstracts that took any position on the question of whether humans cause warming