The Truth About Global Warming's Famous Slowdown

Dana Nuccitelli writes:

The rate of heat building up on Earth over the past decade is equivalent to detonating about 4 Hiroshima atomic bombs per second. Take a moment to visualize 4 atomic bomb detonations happening every single second. That's the global warming that we're frequently told isn't happening.

That's Dana's opening paragraph in the inaugural blog post in a new two-person blog called Climate Consensus - The 97% which started up today at The Guardian. The other blogger is my friend John Abraham.

Both of these authors are climate scientists. Dan is famous for his work at Sketpical Science Blog, and John is famous for his wrangling with Lord Viscount Fakir Christopher Mockable-ton of the United Kingdom. This is going to be a good blog.

Click here to see the first post and learn about how global warming is really, honestly, truely continuing despite all this crap you may hear about a hiatus.

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Source of 97%:

http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf

Ask 3146 people two badly worded questions (you almost HAVE to say "yes" to them both) and throw out all but 79 responses (lol, about 97% of them). Of those, 76 out of 79 (96.2%) "correctly" answer Q1, and 75 out of 77 (97.4%) "correctly" answer Q2. Repeat those percentages over and over, to anyone who will listen, and eventually it becomes reality. That's how you manufacture your consensus.

What you are saying makes no sense. First, if these are two questions one "must" answer yes to, then maybe the answer to the two question is .... well, "yes."

The reduction in numbers you mention happened AFTER 90% answered "yes" (to the questions they could have answered "no" but did not). Then, the study goes on to focus on climate scientists.

So, you comment is how you manufacture lies.

There have been a few studies of the "consensus" and I think they are all a waste of time. We've never been forced to study consensus itself in science. That is a reaction to climate change denialism. There is no good reason to react to politically motivated whinging.

And here's the odd part: Climate change denialists do not think that global warming and its effects are not real. They KNOW this is real. They are not denying it because they don't believe it. They are denying it because it is in their short term economic interest to deny it, either because they are in the fossil fuel industry, or bought and paid for by that industry.

Which are you?

Here are the two questions:

1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?

2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?

So "You almost HAVE to say 'yes' to them both"? Hello? Question 1 isn't even a yes/no question. And even if the questions had been worded as you suggest, that would contradict your assertion that the survey throws out most of the responses in order to skew the results. (Hint: It doesn't.)

But by all means, keep throwing those strawmen at us. They burn quite briskly — and without adding CO2.

By Chris Winter (not verified) on 24 Apr 2013 #permalink

I think you are confused with some of that material. Even the initial parts of that article when they are talking about pulling some articles in that make no claim, are not supporting the opposite side either.

And the survey is quite consistent. Taken as a whole the percentage is high (and why do you have to say yes to questions 1 and 2 unless you think that the facts support it?). The 97% number seems fine to me as it reflects expert opinion. Those are the ones most familiar with the literature and the research. And that is a striking consensus in the field.

Nothing needs to be manufactured here. The literature, and what is reflected from them, are quite clear. There is basically nothing to the counter point outside of industry lawyers or research groups. And they have no conflicts of interest at all.

The funny thing is, I could provide some real criticisms of this work from a scientific point of view that even the authors would acknowledge. But the denialists don't understand it enough (or much of anything, really, because understanding things isn't their forte) to do so.

I also am under the impression that the small number of consensus studies that have been done so far are going to be augmented by one or two new ones that address some of the criticisms (maybe all of them) one might legitimately raise. Which is funny ... long before the denialists come up with something worthwhile to say about this, the issues will be addressed.

Science. It is self correcting. Denialism. It is self --- well, self something else. Can't say it on a family blog like this.

Interesting numbers. I think we see with pinroot's response the rapid selection of numbers to take away from context and twist simply in order to belittle results. When the first comment is repeated, as will likely be, away from the source, deniers will eat it up.

Side comment: have never heard of "economic geology" before, will have to look it up to see what type of discipline it is.

Exactly! The truth is written in the famous science journal "The Guardian".
I'm glad that you favor this as an argument over your extensive swearing.

By Matthias Mayse (not verified) on 28 Apr 2013 #permalink