Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

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.

-‘Aliens Cause Global Warming’. Michael Crichton, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. January 17, 2003

Here are two flowcharts to help anyone apply Crichton’s methodology.

1. Crichton’s simplified science/not science methodology

Explanation: “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.”

2. Crichton’s science/not science methodology, with particular regard to reproducibility

Explanation: “Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results.” Given that, as Crichton established, consensus = not science, and whereas the dictionary definition of consensus is a general agreement, then when a result is repeated (and agreed upon) by others, it will become the consensus and therefore cease to be science.

Further reading:

On evaluating claims of scientific consensus [link]

Coming to a consensus based on data, experimentation, and evidence [link]

1. Fred Seitz

Frederick Seitz had a stellar career as a scientist, working in solid state physics and becoming president of the United States National Academy of Sciences from 1962-1969, and the president of Rockefeller University from 1968 to 1978.

In 1979, Seitz went to work for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company as a paid permanent consultant. In the 1970’s and 80’s, Seitz helped the company disburse 45 million dollars to fund medical research, carefully avoiding spending any of it on research on the actual health effects of cigarette smoking.  R.J Reynolds frequently ran ads touting their research investments as part of their commitment to science.

Later, Seitz went on to vocally dispute the science of global warming, and in 1998, began gathering signatures for a petition opposing the Kyoto Protocol. Most egregiously, ‘In addition to the petition, the mailing included what appeared to be a reprint of a scientific paper from Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), and a letter from Seitz identifying himself as past president of the National Academy of Sciences.’

Now, if Seitz wasn’t the inspiration for Erhardt Von Grupten Mundt in the movie Thank You For Smoking, then I don’t know who was.

Meet ‘the man they rely on’:

2. Richard Lindzen, or Senator Inhofe, or…

…anyone else that says there is “no consensus” on global warming. Hint: there can still be a consensus, even if you, personally, disagree with it.

This is what consensus looks like:

The Science of Climate Change
A joint statement issued by the Australian Academy of Sciences, Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts, Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Royal Society of Canada, Caribbean Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, French Academy of Sciences, German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina, Indian National Science Academy, Indonesian Academy of Sciences, Royal Irish Academy, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italy), Academy of Sciences Malaysia, Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Turkish Academy of Sciences, and Royal Society (UK).

The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represents the consensus of the international scientific community on climate change science. We recognize the IPCC as the world’s most reliable source of information on climate change and its causes, and we endorse its method of achieving this consensus.

Given that ringing endorsement, does it really make much sense to give equal weight to viewpoints that dissent from mainstream scientific consensus?

Captain Rum would say yes. Here he is schooling Edmund Blackadder on the equal validity of all opinions:

3. Climate Audit’s climate ‘auditors’

One aspect of the CRU email thefts has been the insight into how climate scientists have had to deal with a barrage of Freedom of Information requests. What to make of them: were they an earnest request for information, or just plain vexatious behaviour?

When the requests look like the following, I’d go with the latter option:

FOI_09-97
I hereby make a EIR/FOI request in respect to any confidentiality agreements)restricting transmission of CRUTEM data to non-academics involing the following countries: [insert 5 or so countries that are different from ones already requested1]
1. the date of any applicable confidentiality agreements;
2. the parties to such confidentiality agreement, including the full name of any organization;
3. a copy of the section of the confidentiality agreement that "prevents further transmission to non-academics".
4. a copy of the entire confidentiality agreement,

This pointlessly trolling climate scientists for data and information and doing sod all useful with it when they get it, and the constant, constant, whining for attention, totally reminds me of Stewie Griffin.

So take it away, Stewie.

The Center for Inquiry (CFI), affiliated with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), took a look at the ‘United States Senate Minority Report on Global Warming’. This Senate report came out in January 2009 with the tagline “More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims”.

CFI’s Office of Public Policy examined the report in what they called the Credibility Project. The results:

• Slightly fewer than 10 percent could be identified as climate scientists.
• Approximately 15 percent published in the recognizable refereed literature on subjects related to climate science.
• Approximately 80 percent clearly had no refereed publication record on climate science at all.
• Approximately 4 percent appeared to favor the current IPCC-2007 consensus and should not have been on the list.

…After painstakingly taking the time to vet many of the scientists now serving as “consensus busters” Jordan says that it is difficult for him and his colleagues not to conclude that “this is one more effort of a contrarian community to block corrective action to address a major—in this case global—problem fraught with harmful consequences for human welfare and the environment.”

It isn’t enough to simply don the mantle of “skeptic”, as so many of the climate science deniers have done. One should also try to adhere to the principles of skepticism, and it wouldn’t hurt to have at least a passing familiarity with the epistemic virtues.

So what happens when the skeptics at CFI apply scientific skepticism to climate science? They find that it is, in fact, good science.

Dr. Paul Kurtz, the founder of the Center for Inquiry, stressed that “It is essential that the government base its policies on the best scientific information we have and it is a preponderance of scientific judgment that global warming poses a dire threat to the future of humanity on the planet.”

And what happens when CFI applies skepticism to the claims of the climate skeptics in the Senate report? They find what I would call pseudoskepticism.

After painstakingly taking the time to vet many of the scientists now serving as “consensus busters” Jordan says that it is difficult for him and his colleagues not to conclude that “this is one more effort of a contrarian community to block corrective action to address a major—in this case global—problem fraught with harmful consequences for human welfare and the environment.”

CFI’s efforts here speak to a particular difficulty that many people have, including in the skeptical community, with identifying credible expertise and sources of information (for some of the best writing on the web on this I recommend readers visit climatesight.org, and peruse the credibility spectrum). What looked like a credible and important list – no less than 700 scientists dissenting on global warming claims – was nothing of the sort. Now if it were 700 peer reviewed papers that together presented evidence of a coherent and credible alternative to global warming theories, that would be something else, but these lists of names serve only to obfuscate. And it works. Even James Randi, a leading light in the skeptical movement, fell for one such list, writing: “…some 32,000 scientists, 9,000 of them PhDs, have signed The Petition Project statement proclaiming that Man is not necessarily the chief cause of warming, that the phenomenon may not exist at all, and that, in any case, warming would not be disastrous,” later adding, “I strongly suspect that The Petition Project may be valid.”

The Petition Project is of course irrelevant to the science. Anyone can sign a petition, and having a PhD does not confer upon one any expertise in climate change; especially if that PhD is in an entirely unrelated discipline to climate change, as was true for the vast majority of the signatories. The scientific research is what matters. Yet the petition appeared more credible to James Randi than the science.

It is gratifying, therefore, to see CFI taking strides in reclaiming the mantle of skepticism from climate science deniers. Scientific skepticism has proven to be a valuable tool for identifying pseudoscience, through its demand that fringe ideas meet exacting standards of proof. Still, the skeptical community needs to do a better job at identifying pseudoskepticism and the tactics of denial, and CFI’s Credibility Project is a very good step in that direction.

“The science is settled” is a slogan attributed by opponents of the Kyoto Protocol and global warming theory to supporters notably in the Clinton administration. There are no known examples of its use outside the skeptic press, though some of the statements that were made have similar implications. The slogan itself has therefore become a detail in the political debate [wp].

The use of this slogan by deniers is pretty much the very definition of a straw man argument: a  misrepresentation of an opponent’s position in order to refute the misrepresentation, rather than the actual position. Despite the ubiquity of this statement in denialist discourse, one would be hard pressed to find a verifiable example of its use by proponents of the science of anthropogenic global warming.

But there does exist an example of its use by a ‘skeptic’. Here is S. Fred Singer, denier for hire, speaking at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in New York:

“For me, the science is settled. The cause is clearly, mostly natural. The human component, while it must be there, is negligible. We don’t see it.”

So who thinks – and has said – that “the science is settled”? S. Fred Singer, for one.

Resources: Real Climate

Here’s the banner image for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Nigel Lawson’s ‘think’ tank.

On the left of the image, that’s a cute data plot of 21st Century global mean temperature (2001-2008), and, plainly, it shows that the temperature is in decline over the seven year period.

But why only seven years of data, and not 130 years of data? For the forward looking chaps at the GWPF, one supposes that would be just too last millennium.  It’s 2010, after all. Why look backward?

Here’s why not:

The Global Warming Policy Foundation got it right with their banner image; that is how to cherry pick data. Don’t show, don’t even hint at, the existence of something that contradicts your message, like 130 years of temperature data with a really clear positive trend. Just ignore it or deny it.

How not to cherry pick data

With that in mind, take a look at this really quite baffling graph from the website of the Orwellian-named Canadian ‘Friends of Science’:

This series runs from 1979 to 2009. It shows data from two averaged satellite temperature records, with the CO2 concentration in green. Both birds have only been flying since the end of the 1970s, hence the data series starts in 1979. “Surface temperature data is contaminated by the effects of urban development”, the ‘Friends’ tell us, which one supposes must suffice as explanation for their only using satellite data. As an aside, one wonders if science really needs such friends as these, able to dismiss 130 years of surface temperature measurements and scientific endeavour with an imperious wave of the hand. But let us persist, and see what the satellite data shows; perhaps a best fit over the 30 years of satellite measurements will reveal some interesting information.

Well, the ‘Friends of Science’ were good enough to plot a best fit (that odd little purple line on the right), but one that started on January 2002, not 1979:

“The best fit line from January 2002 indicates a declining trend.”

Indeed it does, dear ‘Friends’, but why a best fit for that interval? 1998 to 2009 would have really made your point. Plotting a best fit from 2002, while plainly ignoring the rest of the data, just looks silly.

Where the ‘Friends of Science’ went wrong, clearly, was in revealing the existence of a  full 30 years of satellite temperature measurements. If their x-axis had started in 2002, it would have made for a much more subtle cherry pick than displaying 30 years of data and adding an orphaned best fit line that doesn’t cover even a third of the whole plot.

I don’t know, it’s as if the ‘Friends of Science’ aren’t really committed to denialism.

Take a tip from the GWPF’s playbook: if you are going to cherry pick data, don’t blatantly show the audience that is what you have done, and don’t even hint at the disconcerting existence of such findings as this:

Shhh…

Just copy and paste the following texts, remembering to delete the words you don’t want. Otherwise people might think you are a bot and your post won’t get past the spam filter! Don’t let that happen: the world needs to hear your opinion!! The internet has given ordinary people a way to fight back against the received wisdom of the so-called “wise elites”. You can force the Climategate scientist’s media enablers to start covering this story that they would rather ignore!!!

First, choose your personality type. You are:

…all rogue n’ mavericky:

Global warming is nothing but a [plot/conspiracy/giant lie] by [Big Government, Big Green and Big Business / the trillion dollar wind power industry / Big Energy / Al Gore] to [give all power to the UN Climatocrats / create a one world government / tax the US into bankruptcy / force you to bow down to its agenda of enforced austerity / enrich Al Gore].

These emails just go to show what a [scam / con / fraud / giant Ponzi scheme] global warming really is.

We need to stop [the “cap and kill” law / mortgaging our children’s futures on pseudoscience / the Socialist Agenda] before the [eco-fascists / warlarmists / greentards] [tax us into the stone age / exploit us like the third world peasants they want us to become / destroy our liberty / force us into solar powered death camps].

[AGW is a myth / There is no Mann-made global warming / the Greenhouse Effect is just a theory, not a fact]. Get over it.

…some twit that went to a posh school and now writes a blog {*}:

This is the end of the [IPCC-endorsed AGW scam / Al Gore’s great big AGW conspiracy].

Climategate is [the game changer that will make people listen / the end of the Al Gore-approved AGW narrative].

AGW is [about raising taxes / increasing state control / about a few canny hucksters who’ve leapt on the bandwagon fleecing us rotten with their taxpayer subsidised windfarms and their cabon-trading / about the sour, anti-capitalist impulses of sandal-wearing vegans and lapsed Communists who loathe the idea of freedom and a functioning market economy / little more than a scheme by bullying ecofascists to deprive us of our liberty].

We know it’s all a crock and we’re not going to take it.

But the vested interests behind AGW are going to make darned sure that [the AGW bandwagon keeps roll roll rollin’ along / we push this utterly disastrous, economy-destroying measure through / spend vast amounts of public money on a problem that doesn’t exist].

This is our Berlin Wall moment! They can’t stop us now!

…just terribly concerned about what it all means for science:

I’m a [scientist / engineer / fully qualified blogger] and I have never seen [naughtiness / misconduct / outright lying and fraud] like this in all my years of [science / professional experience / blogging].

These so-called scientists’ exclusion of alternative views and opinions is nothing less than [Marxist state censorship / suppression of dissent / Lysenkoism] and is not what science is all about.

These [frauds / white-coated Eichmanns / con-men who hijacked science to predict a looming Armageddon unless we do exactly what they say] should [be censored / resign / be fired and stripped of their titles so they never get employment again /be Rochambeau’d].

We should throw out [the hockey stick / all of their research / all ground based temperature data / all the Paleoclimate reconstructions  / the IPCC reports] and just start over on climate science from a clean slate.

Science should be open and transparent. They need to release all of their [code / emails / raw data / home address and teenage daughters' cellphone number] so we can see for ourselves before we [destroy our economy / give trillions of dollars directly to Al Gore] based on a lie.

…absolutely convinced of media bias everywhere:

ClimateGate proves that global warming is: [dead / a fraud / the greatest lie ever perpetuated on the American people], but the [liberal / left wing / eco-shill / Libtard-MSM] media are [covering it up / hiding the truth / in full panic stricken media blackout mode].

Only [Fox News / The Daily Mail / The {insert your own courageous national media outlet here}] are covering this story. Hmm.

Global warming [alarmism / hysteria] is all about [money / power / a massive UN sponsored tax grab]. Just Google [Michael Crichton / {insert name of some blogger you like here}].

…suffering from liberal guilt, probably wearing sandals right now, and have about as much backbone as roadkill weasel after a visit to a chiropractor:

It’s no use pretending this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them.

…President of The Maldives:

I know you are all really busy right now with some emails or whatever, but we are a tad concerned that we might be losing some height. As in, above sea level.

Internet Talking Points Recycling Program Seal of Approval:

This post constructed from 97% Recycled Internet.

{*}: 100% Recycled Internet!

Resources:

Poe’s Law

A more productive approach to discussing the CRU email thefts

Here’s hoping. And let’s hope that CRU can get back to work soon. We’ll all benefit. Except maybe the denialists, who will have to find something else to misrepresent.

Oh look, Kiwis! Okay, that was quick.

In the meantime, this happened:

“Vast ice sheets across the globe gained up to four inches just hours after it emerged experts at the University of East Anglia had been manipulating data in a bid to knock-off early.

Meanwhile in the Antarctic the 200 square mile Donnelly ice shelf changed direction and headed back towards the continent where it then reattached itself to the slightly larger McPartlin ice shelf.

Climate change sceptic and fully-qualified blogger Martin Bishop said: “As soon as these emails were released the world’s glaciers resumed their normal, icey behaviour, as long-predicted by some of London’s most important journalists.

“This is the smoking iceberg that fires a polar bear of truth between the eyes of hysteria and communism.””

Or maybe not. But The Daily Mash do quote an expert, albeit superfluously, considering they already quoted a fully-qualified blogger.

Professor Henry Brubaker, of the Institute for Studies, said: “While there will always be debate over climate data, it’s important to remember that the state of the world’s icebergs and glaciers remains wholly dependant on which group of tedious, hectoring arseholes is currently winning the argument.”

-The Daily Mash

When you read some of these letters, you realise just why Newton and his collaborators might have preferred to keep them confidential. This scandal could well be the biggest in Renaissance science. These alleged letters – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists behind really hard math lessons – suggest:

Conspiracy, collusion in covering up the truth, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

But perhaps the most damaging revelations are those concerning the way these math nerd scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence to support their cause.

Here are a few tasters. They suggest dubious practices such as:

Conspiring to avoid public scrutiny:

There is nothing which I desire to avoid in matters of philosophy more then contentions, nor any kind of contention more then one in print: & therefore I gladly embrace your proposal of a private correspondence. What’s done before many witnesses is seldom without some further concern then that for truth: but what passes between friends in private usually deserve ye name of consultation rather then contest, & so I hope it will prove between you & me.

Newton to Hooke, 5 February 1676

Insulting dissenting scientists and equating them with holocaust deniers:

[Hooks Considerations] consist in ascribing an hypothesis to me which is not mine; in asserting an hypothesis which as to ye principal parts of it is not against me; in granting the greatest part of my discourse if explicated by that hypothesis; & in denying some things the truth of which would have appeared by an experimental examination.

Newton to Oldenburg, 11 June 1672

Manipulation of evidence:

I wrote to you on Tuesday that the last leafe of the papers you sent me should be altered because it refers to a manuscript in my private custody & not yet upon record.

Newton to Keill, May 15 1674

Knowingly publishing scientific fraud:

You need not give yourself the trouble of examining all the calculations of the Scholium. Such errors as do not depend upon wrong reasoning can be of no great consequence & may be corrected by the reader.

Newton to Cotes June 15 1710

Suppression of evidence:

Mr. Raphson has printed off four or five sheets of his History of Fluxions, but being shew’d Sr. Is. Newton (who, it seems, would rather have them write against him, than have a piece done in that manner in his favour), he got a Stop put to it, for some time at least.

Jones to Cotes, 17 September 1711

Abusing the peer review system:

…only the Germans and French have in a violent manner attack’d the Philosophy of Sr. Is. Newton, and seem resolved to stand by Cartes; Mr. Keil, as a person concerned, has undertaken to answer and defend some things, as Dr. Friend, and Dr. Mead, does (in their way) the rest: I would have sent you ye whole controversy, was not I sure that you know, those only are most capable of objecting against his writings, that least understand them; however, in a little time, you’ll see some of these in ye Philos. Transact.

Jones to Cotes, October 25 1711

Insulting their critics:

The controversy concerning Sr. Isaac’s Philosophy is a piece of news that I had not heard of unless Muys’s late book be meant. I think that Philosophy needs no defence, especially when tis attack’t by Cartesians. One Mr Green a Fellow of Clare Hall in our University seems to have nearly the same design with those German & French objectors whom you mention. His book is now in our press & is almost finished. I am told he will add an appendix in which he undertakes also to square the circle. I need not recommend his performance any further to you.

Cotes to Jones, November 11 1711

Gravity does not extend so far from Earth that it can be the force holding the moon to its orbit; school students are increasingly reluctant to practice differential equations, that will only lead to the practice of more oppressive forms of higher math; the tide is turning against over-regulation, like Newton’s “laws” of motion and Universal Gravitation. The so called ‘Cartesian’, ‘skeptical’ view is now also the majority view.

Unfortunately we’ve a long way to go before the public mood (and scientific truth) is reflected by our policy makers. There are too many vested interests in classical mechanics, with far too much to lose either in terms of reputation or money, for this to end without a bitter fight.

But if the Newton / Royal Society mail scandal is true, it is a blow to the Renaissance lobby’s credibility which is never likely to recover.

Resources:

Real Climate on the CRU hack

Greenfyre’s overview of Climategate

When peer review doesn’t mean peer review

Take a glance at that list, and it just leaps out at you: so many of the papers are all from the same source, from a journal called Energy & Environment. I counted 79 out of the 450, all from just one journal. Now, it isn’t the case that global warming is a small, narrowly focused field of research; if it was, one might expect it to be served by relatively few journals, and this large number of papers from a single journal wouldn’t be so strange. But global warming is a very broad field of research. It draws on a large number of disciplines, from atmospheric physics, paleoclimatology, marine science and more. It should, therefore, strike you as odd that fully 17% of the skeptical papers on this list all come from the journal Energy & Environment. And what a journal it is. From wikipedia:

“The journal is not listed in the ISI’s Journal Citation Reports indexing service for academic journals, although it is included in Scopus, which lists it as a trade journal, with coverage from 1995. “

So E&E doesn’t merit a listing in JCR, and hence has no impact factor, which, for publishing scientists, can be a big deal. The quality of the journal in which one publishes can count toward ones career. E&E simply would not count, and Scopus just lists it as a trade journal, which isn’t worth much at all. To pile on still further:

“The journal’s peer-review process has at times been criticised for publishing substandard papers. Roger A. Pielke (Jr), who published a paper on hurricane mitigation in the journal, said in a post answering a question on Nature’s blog in May about peer-reviewed references and why he published in E&E: “…had we known then how that outlet would evolve beyond 1999 we certainly wouldn’t have published there.”"

What good peer review provides is confidence that what you are reading has been scrutinised by relevant experts in the field. I can’t begin to comprehend, then, who scrutinised and approved this E&E paper. Perhaps it was the timecube guy. This author wants you to know that everything we know about the sun, our “currently fashionable model” for it, is in fact wrong:

“Analyses of planets, the Moon, the solar wind, solar flares, the solar photosphere, and ordinary meteorites show that our Sun is actually the violent, ill mannered remains of a supernova that once ejected all of the heavier elements on Earth and in the solar system and now selectively moves lightweight elements into a veneer of H and He that covers the Sun’s energetic neutron core [18]. This brings the IPCC conclusions into question and, more importantly, the draconian solutions that some policymakers advocate.”

Fair enough, I suppose. If we can’t even figure out what that big glowing thing in the sky is, then we certainly shouldn’t do anything about global warming. After all, if the sun was secretly all along a neutron star, and nobody noticed, then, heck, everything we think we know about everything can be called into question. Especially the IPCC conclusions. Right?

There are standards in science, and one of them is peer review. Scientists know what it is and what it isn’t, and the review process in a sub standard vanity press journal like E&E, well, isn’t. Let’s just take the E&E papers out of this list. It’s better for it, as a lot of what remains in the list really isn’t junk.

Skepticism, or just scientists doing science?

Here’s how you know man made global warming science is not a religion: it keeps on trying to debunk itself. Here’s one way you can see it keeps on trying to debunk itself: this list of 450 papers (well, excepting the dross from E&E).

It is an accepted scientific norm that research, once conducted and reported, can be challenged. Nothing is sacred and nothing is untouchable. Accordingly, here’s a great example of just that from the list.

• Can increasing carbon dioxide cause climate change? (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 94, pp. 8335-8342, August 1997) – Richard S. Lindzen.

That’s the Richard Lindzen, climate contrarian, Professor of Meteorology at MIT, lead author of Chapter 3 of the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report. He went to a symposium organised by the Charles D. Keeling, the man who first recorded the progressive atmospheric accumulation of CO2, and pretty much a rock star in climatological terms; and he presented a paper challenging the most fundamental aspect of man made global warming, that increasing carbon dioxide causes climate change. And what did the prestigious National Academy of Sciences do with that highly skeptical paper?

They published it.

And that, people, is how scientists do science.

A question of context

So here we are, 2009, 12 years later, and the idea that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause climate change is still the accepted consensus. What Lindzen wrote in 1997 didn’t overturn that consensus. It challenged it, but that wasn’t enough. The reason is that there exists a preponderance of evidence for man made global warming. This list of 450 disparate papers, many of which are from just one junk journal, does not make for a coherent scientific argument against man made global warming. In fact, the creators of the list don’t bother to explain why each paper is “skeptical of man made global warming”; and I find myself skeptical that many of these papers even come close to doing any such thing. If there is a coherent case to be made against “man made global warming”, it isn’t being made by this list.

Picking only the papers that appear to be skeptical of a topic, without considering the totality of the research published on that topic, is called cherry picking. Compare and contrast with the IPCC. It isn’t as though the IPCC doesn’t consider contrary research findings in its reviews: it does. The following example (from the TAR) shows this review process in action:

“5.1 Observed changes in terrestrial (including freshwater) species distributions, population sizes, and community composition.

The IPCC evaluated the effect of climate change on biological systems by assessing 2,500 published studies. Of these, 44 studies, which included about 500 taxa, met the following criteria: 20 or more years of data; measuring temperature as one of the variables; the authors of the study finding a statistically significant change in both a biological/physical parameter and the measured temperature; and a statistical correlation between the temperature and the change in the biological/physical parameter. Some of these studies investigated different taxa (e.g. bird and insect) in the same paper. Of a total of 59 plants, 47 invertebrates, 29 amphibians and reptiles, 388 birds, and 10 mammal species, approximately 80% showed change in the biological parameter measured (e.g. start and end of breeding season, shifts in migration patterns, shifts in animal and plant distributions, and changes in body size) in the manner expected with global warming, while 20% showed change in the opposite direction. Most of these studies have been carried out in the temperate and high-latitude areas and in some high altitude areas. These studies show that some ecosystems that are particularly sensitive to changes in regional climate (e.g. high-altitude and high-latitude ecosystems) have already been affected by changes in climate.”

Now think what would happen if the IPCC worked the same way as the creator of this “450 papers” list. We would have a list of papers showing changes in the biological parameter that were only consistent with global warming. By not considering the totality of the evidence, for and against, and putting it in context, we would get a quite false impression of the state of research. If the creator of the “450 papers” list had been given the same job, we would have a list of papers that only showed changes in biological parameters that were not consistent with global warming. Either way, it would be cherry picking, and therefore misleading. What we get from the IPCC review instead is the honestly reported finding that 20% of their datasets did not support global warming. They weren’t ignored or suppressed, but put into context, we can see that the preponderance of the datasets rather did support global warming.

It is possible for hundreds of research papers to exist that are “skeptical of man made global warming”, and at the same time, for the existence of such papers to be insufficient to overturn the consensus on man made global warming. It’s a question of putting research into context, and considering the totality of the evidence.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
-F. Scott Fitzgerald

What should have been done

What this topic needs is a fair review. Some group to take a look at all the evidence relating to man made global warming, for and against, weigh it up, pull out the main themes and the most well supported research findings, and report all this in a transparent and open manner. Put these “skeptical” papers in context, and provide an overview of the level of scientific certainty on the topic of “man made global warming.”

Come to think of it, the IPCC reports do just that.

This list of 450 papers doesn’t really prove anything. It scores a cheap rhetorical point, perhaps, by showing – albeit incompetently – that skepticism exists in the peer reviewed climate science literature, but really that just demonstrates that climate science is, well, science, rather than being a religion that silences all its heretics.

So please don’t be fooled by silly junk like this list. Consider the totality of the evidence, and don’t fall for the temptation of cherry picking only the research that supports your point of view.

• More analysis at greenfyre