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By rbdwiggins Posted in Policy — Comments (13) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

This began as a response to pliny, one of our more knowledgeable, resident AGW defenders after he invoked Oreskes, (2004) while commenting in a recent post by bs.

One of my favorite AGW skeptics addresses that subject in these words:
• “The claim of “consensus” rests almost entirely on an inaccurate and now-outdated single-page comment in the journal Science entitled The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change (Oreskes, 2004).”

What follows are a few excerpts from a rather lengthy paper published by the Science and Public Policy Institute entitled:

“Consensus”? What “Consensus”?
Among Climate Scientists, The Debate Is Not Over

(Note: pdf)

Although I suspect it's purely unintentional, it's actually a well written defense of Schulte (2007: submitted).

Abstract

It is often said that there is a scientific “consensus” to the effect that climate change will be “catastrophic” and that, on this question, “the debate is over”. The present paper will demonstrate that the claim of unanimous scientific “consensus” was false, and known to be false, when it was first made; that the trend of opinion in the peer-reviewed journals and even in the UN’s reports on climate is moving rapidly away from alarmism; that, among climate scientists, the debate on the causes and extent of climate change is by no means over; and that the evidence in the peer-reviewed literature conclusively demonstrates that, to the extent that there is a “consensus”, that “consensus” does not endorse the notion of “catastrophic” climate change.

The origin of the claim of “consensus”

.....The claim of “consensus” rests almost entirely on an inaccurate and now-outdated single-page comment in the journal Science entitled The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change (Oreskes, 2004). In this less than impressive “head-count” essay, Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science with no qualifications in climatology, defined the “consensus” in a very limited sense, quoting as follows from IPCC (2001) –
• “Human activities … are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents … that absorb or scatter radiant energy. … most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.”

The limited definition of “consensus”

Oreskes’ definition of “consensus” falls into two parts. First, she states that humankind is altering the composition of the atmosphere. This statement is uncontroversial: for measurement has established that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen over the past 250 years to such an extent that CO2 now constitutes almost 0.01 per cent more of the atmosphere than in the pre-industrial era. However, on the question whether that alteration has any detrimental climatic significance, there is no consensus, and Oreskes does not state that there is.

The second part of Oreskes’ definition of the “consensus” is likewise limited in its scope. Since global temperatures have risen by about 0.4C in the past 50 years, humankind – according to Oreskes’ definition of “consensus” – may have accounted for more than 0.2C.

Applying that rate of increase over the present century, and raising it by half to allow for the impact of fast-polluting developing countries such as China, temperature may rise by 0.6C in the present century, much as it did in the past century, always provided that the unprecedented (and now-declining) solar activity of the past 70 years ceases to decline and instead continues at its recent record level.

There is indeed a consensus that humankind is putting large quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere; that some warming has resulted; and that some further warming can be expected. However, there is less of a consensus about whether most of the past half-century’s warming is anthropogenic, which is why, rightly, Oreskes is cautious enough to circumscribe her definition of the “consensus” about the anthropogenic contribution to warming over the past half-century with the qualifying adjective “likely”.

There is no scientific consensus on how much the world has warmed or will warm; how much of the warming is natural; how much impact greenhouse gases have had or will have on temperature; how sea level, storms, droughts, floods, flora, and fauna will respond to warmer temperature; what mitigative steps – if any – we should take; whether (if at all) such steps would have sufficient (or any) climatic effect; or even whether we should take any steps at all.....

What Oreskes said

Oreskes (2004) said she had analyzed –
• “928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords ‘climate change’.”

She concluded that 75% of the papers either explicitly or implicitly accepted the “consensus” view; 25% took no position, being concerned with paleoclimate rather than today’s climate; and –
• “Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position. … This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect. … Our grandchildren will surely blame us if they find that we understood the reality of anthropogenic climate change and failed to do anything about it. … There is a consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change.”

It is not clear whether Oreskes’ analysis was peer-reviewed, since it was presented as an essay and not as a scientific paper. However, there were numerous serious errors, effectively negating her conclusion, which suggest that the essay was either not reviewed at all or reviewed with undue indulgence by scientists who agreed with Oreskes’ declared prejudice – shared by the editors of Science - in favour of the alarmist position.

What Oreskes got wrong

Dr. Benny Peiser, of Liverpool John Moores University in the UK, conducted a search of the peer-reviewed literature on the ISI Web of Science database between 1993 and 2003. He found not 928 but more than 12,000 papers mentioning the phrase “climate change”. When he pointed this out, the editors of Science were compelled to publish an erratum to the effect that the search term which Oreskes had used was not, as stated in her essay, “climate change” but rather “global climate change”. Accordingly, Oreskes’ essay had covered not the entire corpus of scientific papers on climate change over the stated decade but fewer than one-thirteenth of them.

(Snip…)

Dr. Peiser’s research demonstrated that several of the abstracts confounded Oreskes’ assertion of unanimity by explicitly rejecting or casting doubt upon the notion that human activities are the main drivers of the observed warming over the last 50 years. Thus, in Oreskes’ sample, more than twice as many appeared to have explicitly rejected or doubted the “consensus” as had explicitly endorsed it.

According to Dr. Peiser, fewer than one-third of the papers analyzed by Oreskes either explicitly or implicitly endorsed the “consensus”, contrary to Oreskes’ assertion that the figure was 75%. In addition, 44 abstracts focused on the natural as opposed to anthropogenic causes of climate change, and did not include any direct or indirect link or reference to human activities, carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions, let alone anthropogenic forcing of recent climate change. More than half of the abstracts did not mention anthropogenic climate change at all and could not, therefore, reasonably be held to have commented either way upon the “consensus” as defined by Oreskes.

Dr. Peiser wrote to Science to point out these and other anomalies in Oreskes’ essay. The editors of Science at first asked him to shorten his letter: then, after he had sent in his shortened version, they changed their minds and refused to publish it –
• “After realizing that the basic points of your letter have already been widely dispersed over the internet, we have reluctantly decided that we cannot publish your letter. We appreciate your taking the time to revise it.”

In fact, Dr. Peiser had been careful to ensure that none of his material had appeared in any public forum, whether on the Internet or otherwise. In any event, it is reprehensible that a learned journal should publish defective material and should then, in effect, expect its readers to surf the Internet to find the truth.

(Snip…)

After examining the erroneous essay by Oreskes, the unsatisfactory circumstances in which it was published, and the failure of Science to correct more than one of its numerous deficiencies, we may conclude as follows:

• that Oreskes’ essay provides no sound basis for the assertion that a unanimous scientific “consensus” exists on climate change, for, though most climate scientists probably believe that humankind has caused 0.2C of the past half-century’s 0.4C warming, there is no unanimity;

• that even in the limited sense defined by Oreskes, there were more scientific papers explicitly doubting or even rejecting the “consensus” than explicitly supporting it;

• that less than half of the papers which Oreskes said had implicitly endorsed the “consensus” had in fact done so;

• that more than half of the papers which Oreskes considered had not mentioned anthropogenic climate change at all;

• that the definition of “consensus” in Oreskes’ essay is so limited, and her findings as published so greatly at variance with the content of the papers she reviewed, that the essay provides no justification for her frankly-political contention that – “our grandchildren will surely blame us they find that we understood the reality of anthropogenic climate change and failed to do anything about it”; and

• that Science, having been given evidence of Oreskes’ errors before publication, in the form of a direct survey of more than 500 climate scientists, and after it, in the form of several letters pointing out the material errors some of which we have reported here, refused to allow the survey, the letters, or any other correction to appear in print, save only the correction of the database search term which Oreskes had used.

Bringing the analysis of “consensus” up to date

Oreskes’ essay is now outdated. Since it was published, more than 8,000 further papers on climate change have been published in the learned journals. In these papers, there is a discernible and accelerating trend away from unanimity even on her limited definition of “consensus”.

Schulte (2007: submitted) has brought Oreskes’ essay up to date by examining the 539 abstracts found using her search phrase “global climate change” between 2004 (her search had ended in 2003) and mid-February 2007. Even if Oreskes’ commentary in Science were true, the “consensus” has moved very considerably away from the unanimity she says she found.

Dr. Schulte’s results show that about 1.5% of the papers (just 9 out of 539) explicitly endorse the “consensus”, even in the limited sense defined by Oreskes. Though Oreskes found that 75% of the papers she reviewed explicitly or implicitly endorsed the “consensus”, Dr. Schulte’s review of subsequent papers shows that fewer than half now give some degree of endorsement to the “consensus”. The abstract of his paper is worth quoting in full:
• “Fear of anthropogenic ‘global warming’ can adversely affect patients’ well-being. Accordingly, the state of the scientific consensus about climate change was studied by a review of the 539 papers on “global climate change” found on the Web of Science database from January 2004 to mid-February 2007, updating research by Oreskes (2004), who had reported that between 1993 and 2003 none of 928 scientific papers on “global climate change” had rejected the consensus that more than half of the warming of the past 50 years was likely to have been anthropogenic. In the present review, 32 papers (6% of the sample) explicitly or implicitly reject the consensus. Though Oreskes said that 75% of the papers in her sample endorsed the consensus, fewer than half now endorse it. Only 7% do so explicitly. Only one paper refers to “catastrophic” climate change, but without offering evidence. There appears to be little evidence in the learned journals to justify the climate-change alarm that now harms patients.”

________________

Schulte’s table of results

Abstracts on ISI Web of Science	Oreskes (2004)	Schulte’s review
Period under review:	1993 to 2003	2004 to 2007
Quantity of documents reviewed:	928 documents	539 papers
Mean annual publication rate:	84.3 documents/yr	254.6 (+201%)
Explicit endorsement of the consensus:	Not stated	7% (38 papers)
Explicit or implicit endorsement:	75%	45% (244 papers)
Explicit rejection of the consensus:	0%	1.3% (7 papers)
Explicit or implicit rejection:	0%	6% (32 papers)
New data / observations on climate change:	Not stated	24% (127 papers)
New research on the consensus question:	Not stated	2% (13 papers)
Quantitative evidence for the consensus:	Not stated	0% (no papers)
Mention of “catastrophic” climate change:	Not stated	0% (one paper)

________________

Unlike Oreskes, who does not quote even one of the 928 papers upon which her analysis was based, Schulte cites some of the counter-consensual papers from his sample –

Cao et al. (2005) point out that, without the ability to quantify variations in the terrestrial carbon sink both regionally and over time, climate projections are unreliable –
• “To predict global climate change and to implement the Kyoto Protocol for stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases concentrations require quantifying spatio-temporal variations in the terrestrial carbon sink accurately. During the past decade multi-scale ecological experiment and observation networks have been established using various new technologies (e.g. controlled environmental facilities, eddy covariance techniques and quantitative remote sensing), and have obtained a large amount of data about terrestrial ecosystem carbon cycle. However, uncertainties in the magnitude and spatio-temporal variations of the terrestrial carbon sink and in understanding the underlying mechanisms have not been reduced significantly.”

Gerhard (2004), discussing the conflict between observation, theory, and politics, says –
• “Debate over whether human activity causes Earth climate change obscures the immensity of the dynamic systems that create and maintain climate on the planet. Anthropocentric debate leads people to believe that they can alter these planetary dynamic systems to prevent what they perceive as negative climate impacts on human civilization. Although politicians offer simplistic remedies, such as the Kyoto Protocol, global climate continues to change naturally.”

Leiserowitz (2005) reports –
• “results from a national study (2003) that examined the risk perceptions and connotative meanings of global warming in the American mind and found that Americans perceived climate change as a moderate risk that will predominantly impact geographically and temporally distant people and places. This research also identified several distinct interpretive communities, including naysayers and alarmists, with widely divergent perceptions of climate change risks. Thus, ‘dangerous’ climate change is a concept contested not only among scientists and policymakers, but among the American public as well.”

Lai et al. (2005) offer an entirely new hypothesis to explain recent warming of the climate –
• “The impacts of global warming on the environment, economy and society are presently receiving much attention by the international community. However, the extent to which anthropogenic factors are the main cause of global warming, is still being debated. … This research invokes some new concepts: (i) certain biochemical processes which strongly interact with geophysical processes in climate system: (ii) a hypothesis that internal processes in the oceans rather than in the atmosphere are at the center of global warming; (iii) chemical energy stored in biochemical processes call significantly affect ocean dynamics and therefore the climate system. Based on those concepts, we propose a new hypothesis for global warming.”

Moser (2005) explores the assessment of rising sea levels and in state-level managerial and policy responses to climate change impacts such as sea-level rise in three US states –
• “Uncertainties in the human dimensions of global change deeply affect the assessment and responses to climate change impacts such as sea-level rise.”

Shaviv (2006) considers the cosmic-ray forcing posited by Svensmark et al. (2006), and concludes that, if the effect is real, natural climate variability rather than anthropogenic enhancement of the greenhouse effect has contributed more than half of the warming over the past century –
• “The cosmic-ray forcing / climate link … implies that the increased solar luminosity and reduced cosmic-ray forcing over the previous century should have contributed a warming of ~0.47K, while the rest should be mainly attributed to anthropogenic causes.”

Zhen-Shan and Xian (2007) say that CO2 forcing contributes less to temperature change than natural climate variability, that the anthropogenic enhancement of the greenhouse effect –
• “could have been excessively exaggerated” … Therefore, if CO2 concentration remains constant at present, the CO2 greenhouse effect will be deficient in counterchecking the natural cooling of global climate in the following 20 years. Even though the CO2 greenhouse effect on global climate change is unsuspicious, it could have been excessively exaggerated. It is high time to re-consider the trend of global climate changes.”

Whatever “unanimity” may have been thought or claimed to exist before 2004 in the peer-reviewed literature, there is certainly none in the peer-reviewed journals that have been published since.

(Snip…)

Conclusion

.....The UN’s own attempts to reach “consensus” on the climate sensitivity question demonstrate all too clearly not only that it cannot perform simple additions credibly but also that it does not even agree with itself. The internal inconsistencies in the UN’s documents are numerous and growing. We have already seen how it has changed its mind on sea level, as well as performing incorrect addition sums for what appears to have been a political purpose. On the climate sensitivity question, too, the IPCC does not agree with itself. In 2001, it said that the sum of the major climate “forcings” that contribute to temperature change was approximately 2.4 watts per square meter. Now it has decided that the “forcing” from carbon dioxide is largely canceled out by the negative “forcing” from the pollution that accompanies fossil-fuel burning, particularly in China and India, preventing sunlight from reaching the Earth.

Likewise, if one aggregates up the UN’s central estimates of the contributions of all climate “forcings” and temperature “feedbacks” to the projected warming from increased greenhouse gases, the total comes to just half the UN’s published central estimate of a 3.2C temperature increase in response to a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration. Once again, a large exaggeration is evident, right at the heart of the alarmist case. If the UN’s documents do not even agree with themselves, how can any kind of “consensus” be claimed?

The Russian Academy of Sciences and the US Association of State Climatologists are just two of the scientific organizations that have trenchantly expressed serious doubts about the imagined “consensus” on climate change. They have recently been joined by the Administrator of NASA, who has said that it is arrogant to make the Panglossian assumption that today’s climate is the best of all possible climates, and still more arrogant to assume that any of the more or less futile remedial measures which have been advocated will make any significant climatic difference. The Administrator ought to know: for it is his organization that gathers much of the weather data via satellite upon which the rickety edifice of the climate-change “consensus” is constructed.....

There you have it. I think it's abundantly clear:

There is very little scientific consensus regarding Anthropogenic Global Warming, and there is even less agreement within the scientific community regarding the effects warming may have on the planet, or whether we have the capability, considering man's limited contribution to warming, to mitigate, much less reverse, those effects.

*****