'Position statements hide debate'

How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic

Posted by Coby Beck (Guest Contributor) at 9:26 AM on 15 Nov 2006

(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: All those institutional position statements are fine, but by their very nature they paper over debate and obscure the variety of individual positions. The real debate is in the scientific journals.

Answer: This is a fair point. Group position statements are designed to present a united front. The best indicator of what individual scientists think is in the current scientific literature, where new and different is the paramount value and scientists are free to express their own ideas, as long as they're supported by data and logic. What does the literature look like in terms of the climate debate? Sounds like a good topic for research.

Naomi Oreskes took on just this topic. She did an ISI database search with the keyword phrase "global climate change," and then surveyed those resulting abstracts published between 1993 and 2003 in refereed scientific journals. There were 928.

She then divided the papers into six categories:

explicit endorsement of the consensus position,
evaluation of impacts,
mitigation proposals,
methods,
paleoclimate analysis, and
rejection of the consensus position.

The details can be read here. Oreskes' key finding is that none of the papers fell into the last category, while 75% fell into the first three. This is a surprisingly robust consensus of opinion, especially considering that the start date was a full two years before the 1995 IPCC report, eight years before the more recent 2001 report.

A lot has happened since then, and none of it casts any doubt on the finding that the world is warming and it is primarily due to human actions.

(See this guide entry if ever Benny Peiser's name comes into the discussion of Oreskes' study.)

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Position statements hide debate

You state "A lot has happened since then, and none of it casts any doubt on the finding that the world is warming and it is primarily due to human actions."
Indeed a lot has happened, not all of which is acknowledged by the IPCC, and some of which casts doubt on the idea that mankind is causing global warming. On 2 Feb 2007, the IPCC agreed the SPM to AR4, based on "secret" scientific papers, which will be published in May 2007. An unofficial copy of these papers shows that the IPCC neglects the work of Henrik Svensmark and others, on the role of cosmic rays. Strictly speaking, the IPCC is correct. The data on the effects of ions in the lower atmosphere was not published until 8 Feb 2007, in Proceedings of the Royal Society A. The book The Chilling Stars was not published until a week later. The paper Cosmoclimatology: a new theory emerges. Astronomy & Geophysics 48: was not published until after 2 Feb 2007.
It will be interesting to see what the IPCC publishes in May 2007 on extraterrestial forcings. They can ignore Svensmark's landmark work; in which case their "scientific" documents will be out of date, incomplete, and arguably inaccurate. Or they can include Svensmark's work; in which case they will undermine the theory that anthropogenis global warming is real.
We await May 2007 to see what the IPCC actually does.

by Rctner at 6:59 AM on 04 Mar 2007

Papers or abstracts of papers?

I am a layman. I have finally decided to begin looking into the global-warming issue, which I now see is many issues, not one.

One of the many sub-issues is the issue of "consensus."

Did the study cited in the article above examine only abstracts or did it also examine whole papers?

If only the former -- as some GW denialists claim -- wouldn't that tend to leave out comments of dissent?

One of the reasons I am asking this is because I am beginning to get a glimmer that one repetitive controversy is over methods used.

P. S. -- Can someone point me toward a list of notes documenting Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth? I thought I would start with that because so many people have recommended it to me.

Burgess Laughlin http://www.aristotleadventure.com

by Burgess Laughlin at 10:47 AM on 04 Mar 2007

Re: Papers or abstracts of papers?

Herewith some comments on the Al Gore film, An Inconvenient Truth.

THE GORONS (courtesy of Lord Monckton)
1. Some of the errors in Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth ·
Gore, aiming to undermine the significance of previous warm periods such as that of the Middle Ages, promoted the 1,000-year "hockey stick" temperature chart (debunked by McIntyre & McKitrick, 2005).
· Gore showed heart-rending pictures of the New Orleans floods and insisted on a link between increased hurricane frequency and global warming that is not supported by the facts (IPCC, 2001, 2007).
· Gore asserted that today's Arctic is experiencing unprecedented warmth while ignoring that Arctic temperatures in the 1930s and 1940s were as warm or warmer (Briffa et al., 2004).
· Gore did not explain that Arctic temperature changes are more closely correlated
with changes in solar activity than with changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations (Soon, 2005).
· Gore did not explain that the Sun has been hotter, for longer, in the past 50 years than in any similar period in at least the past 11,400 years (Solanki et al., 2005).
· Gore said the Antarctic was warming and losing ice but failed to note, that this is only true of a small region; the vast bulk of the continent has been cooling and gaining ice (Doran et al., 2004).
· Gore mentioned the breakup of the Larsen B ice shelf, but did not mention peer-reviewed research, which suggests the ice shelf, did not exist 1,000 years ago (Pudsey & Evans, 2001).
· Gore hyped unfounded fears that Greenland's ice is in danger of disappearing. In fact its thickness has been growing by 2 inches per year for a decade (Johanessen et al., 2005).
· Gore falsely claimed that global warming is melting Mt. Kilimanjaro's icecap, actually caused by atmospheric dessication from local deforestation, and pre-20th-century climate shifts (Cullen et al., 2006).
· Gore said global sea levels would swamp Manhattan, Bangladesh, Shanghai and other coastal cities, and would rise 20ft by 2100, but the UN estimate is just 7in to 1ft 5in. (IPCC, 2007; Morner, 1995, 2004, Singer, 1997).
· Gore implied that a Peruvian glacier's retreat is due to global warming, failing to state that the region has been cooling since the 1930s and other South American glaciers are advancing (Polissar et al., 2006).
· Gore blamed global warming for water loss in Africa's Lake Chad, though NASA scientists had concluded that local water-use and grazing patterns are probably to blame (Foley & Coe, 2001).
· Gore inaccurately said polar bears are drowning due to melting ice when in fact 11 of the 13 main groups in Canada are thriving, and polar bear populations have more than doubled since 1940 (Taylor, 2006).
· Gore said a review of 928 scientific papers had shown none against the "consensus". In fact only 1% of the papers were explicitly pro-"consensus"; almost 3 times as many were explicitly against (Peiser, 2006).
· Gore showed a link between changes in temperature and in CO2 concentration in the past 500,000 years, but did not admit that changes in temperature preceded changes in CO2 concentration (Fischer et al., 1999).
If you are interested in discussions of the pros and cons of global warming, there are very few places where you can get both sides of the argument discussed dispassionately. Two I know of. One is Prof. Benny Peiser's CCNet (b.j.peiser@ljmu.ac.uk). You can subscribe, at no cost, to an almost daily newsletter.
Last Christmas, Prof. Sir Alan Thorpe, of NERC decided to "crush" the skeptics once and for all time with scientific arguments. He opened the NERC debates, which lasted for some weeks. They are a bit tedious to get through, and the so-called Summary NERC has produced, is merely a re-statement of the NERC position on the subjects raised. You will find quite a bit of discussion on consensus, to which I contributed http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/consult/debate/debate.aspx?di ... (This site is down at the moment, but should return shortly)
You might find this exchange between myself and Prof. Prentice interesting. Specifically Prof Prentice states "I don't think that the existence of a consensus could be proved scientifically. In the end, judgment is involved. "
Reference my message # 347.
I am not explaining myself very well. What I object to is the phrase "scientific consensus". As I have said, to me this is an oxymoron. The IPCC and others can count how many papers have been written, but in science what counts is the scientific accuracy of the content. Who is the judge of the value of the scientific content? It surely cannot be the IPCC to judge how the scientific content of it's own theories compares with that of it's rivals. Both sides of the debate have stated their reasons why they feel they are right. Personally, I believe the skeptic point of view is more likely to be correct. In this I am joined by many other scientists, many of whom are far more qualified than I am. We are not just a bunch of "crackpots".
The problem is what happens as a result of the difference between the two sides, the warmers and the skeptics. You are convinced that you are right; we are equally convinced. So far as I can tell, there is no way we can resolve the issue of who is right and who is wrong, except by the hard data, 15 to 20 years ago. Unfortunately your claim that a scientific consensus exists has resulted in our politicians taking action which, if we are correct, is likely to waste billions if not trillions of dollars. For example here in Ontario, we are being denied the advantage of cheap electricity generated by burning clean coal.
Do you really believe that there is such a thing as a "scientific consensus"? And if so, how do we determine. scientifically, whether a scientific consensus exists on this issue of AGW?

Wednesday, 24 Jan 2007 - 13:47:59 GMT
Defending the IPCC process again, I must point out that the IPCC doesn't have "its own theories", nor does it have "rivals"! The IPCC is not a small group of scientists with an agenda (as some commentators seem to imply). It is a process engaging a very broad spectrum of the scientific community, as authors and reviewers. The authors are experts, drawn from the global pool of expertise. The final "headline" wordings in the SPM are agreed upon in line-by-line detail by representatives of the world's governments.

The fact that the IPCC has reached certain conclusions is simply a reflection of the fact that there is a consensus, in the usual meaning of the word. I don't think that the existence of a consensus could be proved scientifically. In the end, judgment is involved.

I don't know much about Canada's energy policy but I should point out that carbon capture and storage is very much on the radar of people who think about decarbonizing energy supplies, e.g. for China.
Colin Prentice, Prof. Earth System Science, University of Bristol

by Rctner at 7:48 AM on 05 Mar 2007
[ Parent ]

First category

I'm interested in what percentage of the abstracts examined by Oreskes fell into the first category alone. I can't find this info in the article itself; does anybody know the percentage?
(my interest is because the second and third categories could just take the consensus as given without necessarily providing direct evidence in its favor, so I'd prefer a breakdown by each category rather than having the first three grouped together)

by rmckeon at 5:21 AM on 19 Mar 2007

Yes its happening, is it a significant problem?

Is there a consensus on the severity of AGW? How much effect on mean temps will AGW have? That is the real question to me. If most scientists feel strongly that its going to hike the temps by ten degrees and push the ocean up another two feet, thats one thing...if most fall around the few inch range, thats a different thing.

Are there any surveys of non climatoligist scientists who have reviewed IPCC report?

by Bengt Washburn at 2:51 PM on 06 Nov 2007

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