Want more evidence that global warming alarmists are far from the disinterested scientific observers they pretend to be? Check out this Human Events article from James Taylor.
Global warming alarmists have been caught doctoring the results of a widely cited paper asserting there is a 97 percent scientific consensus regarding human-caused global warming. After taking a closer look at the paper, investigative journalists report the authors’ claims of a 97 percent consensus relied on them misclassifying the papers of some of the world’s most prominent global warming skeptics. At the same time, the authors deliberately presented a meaningless survey question that allowed them to twist the responses to fit their own preconceived global warming alarmism.
Global warming alarmist John Cook, founder of the misleadingly named blog site Skeptical Science, published a paper with several other global warming alarmists claiming they reviewed nearly 12,000 abstracts of studies published in the peer-reviewed climate literature. Cook reported he and his colleagues found 97 percent of the papers that expressed a position on human-caused global warming “endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.”
As is the case with other ‘surveys’ alleging an overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming, the question surveyed did not address the issues of contention between global warming alarmists and skeptics. The question Cook and his colleagues surveyed was simply whether humans have caused some global warming. Most skeptics, like most alarmists, believe humans have caused some global warming. The issue dividing the two is whether humans are causing a global warming crisis demanding concerted action.
Nevertheless, global warming alarmists have been reporting the Cook study shows a 97 percent consensus that humans are causing a global warming crisis.
Your correspondent can attest personally that conversations with such well-known climate “skeptics” as Patrick Michaels, Roy Spencer, and John Christy never have suggested either that the world has not warmed during the past century (though global surface temperatures seem to have leveled off at some point in the 1990s) or that people have played no role in contributing to warming. As the article suggests, the skeptics’ skepticism relates to alarmists’ use or misuse of the scientific record to push policies of questionable value.
