“Let's debunk the “scientific consensus.” 🧪

“If there is anything that over 97% of climate experts are guaranteed to agree on, it's that they don't want to lose their steady stream of funding. 💵”

Let's debunk the “scientific consensus.” 🧪

We are constantly told that “There is an overwhelming consensus among the world's scientists that global warming is human-caused and is dangerous.” We hear that “97 to >99% of experts agree.” 👨‍🔬

“The science is settled,” they say. Case closed. 👏

Of course, anyone who has had any training in a physical science knows that there are disputes among scientists all the time.

If there is anything that over 97% of climate experts are guaranteed to agree on, it's that they don't want to lose their steady stream of funding. 💵

Where did this “97% consensus” originate from, you might ask? 🤔

Well, it was contrived 11 years ago in a study published in the journal, Environmental Research Letters (ERL), Cook et al. (2013). 📓

🔗iopscience.iop.org/article/10.108…

The authors reviewed a total of 11,944 abstracts from climate-related peer-reviewed papers published in a 20-year interval between 1991 and 2011.

Of those examined, 7,930 (66.4%) of them expressed 𝒏𝒐 𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 on the cause(s) of global warming. It even explicitly states this in the abstract.

I even took the liberty to highlight it (left). 🖊️

Of the remaining 4,014 studies that took one position or the other, 3,896 (~97.1%) endorsed anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory (i.e., the idea that most, if not all of the warming since ~1850 has been caused by mankind's greenhouse gas emissions). For the mathematically challenged, 3,896 ÷ 4,014 ≈ 0.9706 or ~97.1% (right).

So, what can we deduce from this? 🤔

The “97% consensus” was manufactured by sausage-making. The authors omitted 7,930 (66.4%) of the 11,944 climate abstracts examined because they did not take a position on the cause(s) of global warming over the last century and some change. 🌭

These methods were carried out again in a follow-up study, Lynas et al. (2021), also published in ERL, which claims there's a “99.5% consensus.”

🔗iopscience.iop.org/article/10.108…

In this study, 3,000 climate papers were selected at random. Of those, 282 were false positives, as it turns out they were not actually climate-related. So, they were tossed out and left out of consideration, which is fine. So, the authors continued with examining 2,718 remaining papers. 🗒️

Of those, 1,869 (68.8%) of them took 𝒏𝒐 𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 on the causes of global climate change. 849 of them did and 845 (99.5%) endorsed AGW theory. 845 ÷ 849 ≈ 0.995 or ~99.5%.

Between both studies, if the calculations were done correctly, we're looking at more like a 31.1-32.6% “scientific consensus” that >50% of global warming has been anthropogenic in origin.

Regardless, even I think there has been at least some anthropogenic-induced warming. How much? I cannot say with certainty.

But, even if there were a “97-99.5% consensus” on the root cause(s), there is no consensus that the warming is dangerous. That is the weakest part of the alarmists' entire argument.