The In depth Story Behind a Climate Fraud
Summary
TLDRThis video script critically examines the oft-cited claim that 97% of scientists agree on human-caused climate change being a serious crisis. It meticulously dissects various studies purported to support this consensus, revealing how their findings have been misrepresented or diluted. The script highlights that while there is widespread agreement on basic climate science principles, the alleged 97% consensus on climate change being a dangerous, man-made crisis is a fallacy. It argues that the consensus narrative has been weaponized to stifle scientific debate and marginalize dissenting voices, contrary to the principles of open inquiry.
Takeaways
- 🌡️ The claim that 97% of scientists agree on man-made climate change being a dangerous crisis is misleading and not supported by the actual studies cited.
- 📊 Many studies cited for the 97% consensus only found agreement on basic facts like CO2 being a greenhouse gas and human activities impacting climate, but not on the extent of human causation or the urgency of the issue.
- 🔬 Among surveys of climate scientists and experts specifically, the percentage agreeing humans are the primary cause of global warming is much lower than 97%.
- 🤥 Statements claiming consensus from scientific organizations often did not accurately represent the views of their members through proper surveys.
- ⚖️ The push for consensus discourages legitimate scientific debate and dissent on unsettled aspects of climate change.
- 📈 There is widespread agreement on basic climate science facts, but disagreement and uncertainty remain on the magnitude of human impact, future projections, and appropriate policy responses.
- 🏆 Scientific conclusions should be based on evidence and rigorous arguments, not appeals to constructed consensus narratives.
- 🚫 The 97% consensus claim is often exaggerated and misrepresented by politicians, activists, and media to portray unanimous expert agreement on climate change being a human-caused crisis.
- 💰 There are potential personal and professional costs for climate scientists who challenge the prevailing narrative of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.
- 🤷♂️ Overall, the video script argues that the 97% consensus claim is an overstated statistic not accurately reflecting the diversity of views among scientists on key aspects of the climate change debate.
Q & A
What is the 97% consensus claim about?
-The claim is that 97% of the world's scientists agree that climate change is real, man-made, and dangerous.
How did the 97% consensus claim originate?
-The claim seems to have originated from a 2004 study by Naomi Oreskes, which found that 75% of scientific articles endorsed the idea that human activities were affecting the Earth's climate. However, this finding was later misrepresented by Al Gore in his film 'An Inconvenient Truth' as a consensus that climate change is a serious problem caused by humans.
What did the 2009 University of Illinois survey find?
-The survey found that 90% of respondents agreed that global temperatures had risen since the pre-1800s, while only 82% agreed that human activity was a significant contributing factor. Among meteorologists, only 64% agreed that human activity was a significant factor.
What were the findings of the 2013 John Cook study?
-The study claimed to have examined 12,000 scientific papers and found that 97% endorsed the consensus that greenhouse gases were at least partly responsible for global warming. However, the study set a very low bar, and only 1 in 200 papers actually claimed that humans caused most of the observed global warming.
What did the 2012 American Meteorological Society survey reveal?
-The survey found that only 52% of respondents believed that global warming over the 20th century had happened and was mostly man-made. The remaining 48% either thought it was mostly natural, didn't think it happened, or were unsure.
Why is the 97% consensus claim considered problematic?
-The claim is considered problematic because it oversimplifies and misrepresents the actual survey data, which shows much less agreement on the specifics of climate change being a man-made and urgent crisis. The claim is often used to stifle scientific debate and dissenting views.
What does the script suggest about the statements from scientific societies supporting the consensus?
-The script suggests that the statements from scientific societies supporting the consensus were not based on surveys of their members but were instead issued by a small number of activists using committee positions to make it appear as though their views were shared by all members.
What does the script argue is the real problem regarding the 97% consensus claim?
-The script argues that the real problem is not the lack of consensus, but the dishonest bullying campaign to stifle scientific debate by misrepresenting the level of agreement and attacking dissenting views.
What does the script suggest about the consequences of dissenting from the prevailing narrative on human-caused warming?
-The script suggests that scientists who contest the prevailing narrative on human-caused warming or produce smaller estimates of its impact are likely to end up on a McCarthyite blacklist of 'deniers' and face personal and professional costs, including abuse and harassment.
What is the script's overall message regarding the 97% consensus claim?
-The script's overall message is that the 97% consensus claim is a misrepresentation of the actual survey data and is being used as a tool to suppress scientific debate and dissenting views on climate change, rather than promoting an honest and open discussion based on evidence and quality arguments.
Outlines
🔎 The Origin and Validity of the '97% Scientific Consensus' Claim
This paragraph introduces the widely cited claim that 97% of scientists agree that climate change is real, man-made, and dangerous. It questions the validity of this claim by examining the sources and methodology behind it. The paragraph highlights that the original study by Naomi Oreskes in 2004 found only 75% of papers endorsed the idea of human impact on climate, and Al Gore misrepresented this in his book. It suggests that the 97% figure is a fiction and does not accurately represent the consensus among scientists on the urgency and causes of climate change.
🧐 Dissecting the 97% Consensus Studies
This paragraph delves deeper into the studies and surveys used to support the 97% consensus claim. It critically examines the methodologies and findings of various studies, including the University of Illinois survey, the John Cook et al. study, and others. The paragraph highlights issues such as narrow survey questions, biased sampling, and misrepresentation of results. It argues that these studies do not accurately capture the diversity of opinions among scientists on the extent, causes, and urgency of climate change. The paragraph suggests that the 97% figure is misleading and does not reflect the true level of consensus on the specific claim of man-made, dangerous climate change.
⚖️ Exposing Biases and Suppression of Dissent
This paragraph discusses the broader implications of the 97% consensus claim. It highlights the potential biases and political pressures faced by climate experts who question or dissent from the prevailing narrative. The paragraph cites warnings from experts like Jose Duarte about the negative consequences of claiming consensus and the potential for suppression of dissenting views. It argues that the 97% claim is used as a tool to stifle scientific debate and marginalize skeptical perspectives. The paragraph emphasizes the importance of open discourse, questioning, and considering diverse viewpoints in the scientific process.
🌐 The Need for Evidence-Based Discourse
The final paragraph underscores the importance of focusing on evidence and reasoned arguments rather than relying on questionable consensus claims. It acknowledges the diversity of opinions among experts and suggests that the quality of arguments and evidence should take precedence over claims of majority consensus. The paragraph emphasizes the need for open and rigorous scientific debate, particularly on issues with significant policy implications. It concludes by advocating for careful consideration of dissenting views and a commitment to evidence-based discourse in addressing complex issues like climate change.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Consensus
💡Survey
💡Greenhouse gas
💡Global warming
💡Climate change
💡Peer-reviewed
💡Scientific consensus
💡Climate skeptic
💡Consensus slogan
💡Statistical manipulation
Highlights
The claim that 97% of the world's scientists agree on climate change being real, man-made, and dangerous is widely cited, but the details behind this consensus are unclear.
Most scientists agree that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, that the Earth has warmed in the last 160 years, and that humans affect their surroundings, but there is less agreement on whether we face a crisis.
The 97% claim seems to have originated from a study by Naomi Oreskes in 2004, which found that 75% of 928 scientific articles endorsed the idea that human activities affect the climate.
Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' misrepresented Oreskes' study, claiming it proved 100% of scientists believe global warming is a serious problem, which it did not.
A 2009 survey of over 10,000 earth scientists found that 90% agreed global temperatures have risen since the pre-1800s, but only 82% believed human activity is a significant contributing factor.
The often-cited 97% consensus figure came from the 2009 survey, where 75 out of 77 self-described 'climate experts' agreed that humans are partly responsible for warming, but this was only 2% of the respondents.
Another study in 2013 by John Cook claimed that 97% of scientific papers endorsed the consensus that greenhouse gases were partly responsible for global warming, but the criteria were low and only 1 in 200 papers actually said humans caused most of the observed warming.
A survey by the American Meteorological Society found that only 52% of its members believed global warming over the 20th century was mostly man-made.
Statements from science organizations claiming consensus are not based on surveys of their members, but rather issued by small groups of activists.
The talk of a 97% consensus amounts to a dishonest campaign to stifle scientific debate when it is most needed.
Scientists who question the prevailing narrative on human-caused warming face personal and professional costs, including being labeled as 'deniers'.
What matters is the evidence and quality of arguments from experts, not the perceived percentage agreeing with a particular view.
There is wide agreement on the basic facts (CO2 is a greenhouse gas, Earth has warmed, humans affect climate), but active debate on the extent, impacts, and policy responses.
The 2009 survey found that only 64% of meteorologists believed human activity was a significant contributing factor to global warming.
An analysis by Jose Duarte found that the 2013 study by John Cook diluted the sample by including non-experts, making the results meaningless as a measure of what scientists think.
Transcripts
[Music]
the claim that 97% of the world's
scientists agree is pretty much the Ace
of Trumps in the whole climate debate
after all who's going to argue against a
consensus that strong backed by so many
experts but what exactly are they
supposed to agree on if you look behind
the curtain no one seems sure what the
experts actually said or who they are or
[Music]
[Music]
anything at first glance it seems
straightforward enough in 2013 President
Barack Obama famously tweeted that quote
97% of scientists agree climate change
is real man-made and dangerous end quote
in 2014 his secretary of state John kery
said 97% of quote the world scientists
tell us this is urgent end quote and
that same year CNN said quote 97% of
scientists agree that climate change is
happening now that it's damaging the
planet and that it's man-made end
quote that's pretty much what most
people think when they hear the 97%
slogan every scientist believe man-made
climate change is an urgent
crisis but there are millions of
scientists in the world how many exactly
were surveyed when were they surveyed
who did it and what exactly did they
agree on let's find out I'm John Robson
and this is a climate discussion Nexus
fact check on the 97% consensus
slogan to be to begin with there are
some ideas that pretty much all
scientists accept for instance that
birds are descended from dinosaurs
though that idea was once dismissed as
highly eccentric and when it comes to
climate you don't need a poll to tell
you that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse
gas meaning it likely has some overall
warming effect that's been known since
the mid 1800s and if you did do a survey
you would find overwhelming scientific
agreement on that point also there are
lots of ation that the world is somewhat
warmer now than it was in the mid 1800s
the end of a natural cooling period
called the little Ice
Age finally virtually nobody disputes
that humans have changed the environment
of our planet by releasing emissions
into the air changing the land surface
putting things in the water and so forth
these aren't controversial ideas and
they're accepted even by most climate
Skeptics what we don't accept is that
any of them prove Pro that humans are
the only cause of global warming or that
climate change is a dangerous
threat if 97% of scientists believe that
it would be troubling though even so
we'd still have to find some plan whose
benefits outweighed its costs at any
event that level of consensus that the
problem was man-made and Urgent would
certainly be noteworthy but the thing is
they don't agree on that a close look at
what survey data we have and there isn't
much tells us yes there's a great deal
of agreement that CO2 is a greenhouse
gas to some degree that the Earth has
warmed in the last 160 years and that
humans affect their
surroundings but that same survey data
also tell us there's far less agreement
on everything else including whether we
Face a crisis so where did this 97%
claim come from and why is it so widely
repeated
[Music]
the 97% claim seems to have begun with a
historian of science named Naomi oresky
who in 2004 claimed she'd looked at 928
articles about climate change in
scientific journals that 75% of them
endorsed the consensus view that earth's
climate is being affected by human
activities and that none directly
disputed it by 2006 in Al gor and in
convenient truth this finding had
somehow morphed into a massive study of
every scientific article in a
peer-reviewed journal written on global
warming for the last 10 years and they
took a big sample of 10% 928 articles
and you know the number of those that
disagreed with the scientific consensus
that we're causing global warming and
that it's a serious problem out of the
928
zero that was a fib Gore took a study
that found 75% endorsed the idea that
humans have some effect on climate and
turned it into proof that 100% of
scientists believe it's a serious
problem it does no such
[Music]
thing and nor did a handful of other
surveys on the subject for instance 5
years later in 2009 a pair of
researchers at the University of
Illinois sent an online survey to over
10,000 earth scientists asking two
simple questions do you agree that
global temperatures have generally risen
since the pre
1800s and do you think that human
activity is a significant contributing
factor they didn't single out greenhouse
gases they didn't explain what the term
significant meant and they didn't refer
to danger or crisis so what was the
result of the
3,146 responses they received 90% % said
yes to the first question that global
temperatures had risen since the little
ice age and only 82% said yes to the
second that human activity was a
significant contributing
factor interestingly among
meteorologists only 64% said yes to the
second meaning a third of the experts in
the study of weather patterns who
replied didn't think humans play a
significant role in global warming let
alone a dominant
one what got the most media attention
was that among 77 respondents who
described themselves as climate experts
75 said yes to the second question 75
out of 77 is
97% okay it didn't get any media
attention that they took 77 out of 3,146
responses but that's the key statistical
trick they found a 97% consensus among
2% of the survey respondents and even so
it was only only that there had been
some warming since the 1800s which
virtually nobody denies and that humans
are partly responsible these experts
didn't say it was dangerous or urgent
because they weren't asked so far the
claim that 97% of world scientists are
saying there's a climate crisis is pure
fiction but wait you say there must be
more yes there is but not
[Music]
much another survey appeared in 2003 1
by Australian researcher John Cook and
his co-authors in which they claim to
have examined about 12,000 scientific
papers related to climate change and
found that 97% endorsed the consensus
view that greenhouse gases were at least
partly responsible for global warming
this study generated headlines around
the world and it was the one to which
Obama's Tweet was referring but here
again appearances were deceiving 2third
of the papers that cook and his
colleagues examined expressed no View at
all in the
consensus of the remaining
34% the authors claimed that 33%
endorsed the
consensus divide 33 by 34 and you get
97% but this result is essentially
meaningless because they set the bar so
[Music]
low the survey authors didn't ask if
climate change was dangerous or quote
man-made unquote they only asked if a
given paper accepted that humans have
some effect on the climate which as
already noted is
uncontroversial it could mean as little
as accepting the urban heat island
effect so a far better question would be
how many of the studies claimed that
humans have caused most of the observed
global warming and oddly we do know
because buried in the author's data was
the answer a mere 64 out of nearly
12,000 papers
that's not 97% it's 1 half of 1% it's 1
in
[Music]
200 and it gets worse in a follow-up
study climatologist David leg Gates read
those 64 papers and found that a third
of them didn't even say what cook and
his team claimed only 41 actually
endorsed The View that global warming is
mostly man-made and we still haven't got
to it being dangerous
that part of the survey results was
simply invented by politicians and
activists other researchers have
condemned the cook study on other
grounds too for instance Economist
Richard tol showed that over 34 of the
papers counted as endorsing the even the
weak consensus actually said nothing at
all on the subject and evidence later
emerged that the authors of the paper
were drafting press releases about their
findings before before they even started
doing the research which indicates an
alarming level not of warming or of
consensus but of
bias the reality is that neither this
study nor a handful of others like it
prove that 97% of scientists believe
climate change is mostly man-made let
alone that it's a
crisis the fact that people who claim to
put such stock in settled science except
such obvious statistical Hocus Pocus is
both astounding and
disappointing so what do climate experts
really
think the year before Obama sent out his
tweet the American Meteorological
Society AMS surveyed its 7,000 members
they got about 1,800
responses of those only 52% said they
think global warming over the 20th
century has happened and is mostly
man-made the remaining 48% either think
it happened but is mostly natural or it
didn't happen or they don't know and
while it's possible that the three qus
who didn't answer split the same way as
those who did it's also possible that
committed alarmists are more likely to
answer such surveys in any case it's a
small sample even of AMS members let
alone World
scientists there was one more survey a
few years later by the Netherlands
environment agency that claimed 66% of
climate experts believed humans were
most ly responsible for warming since
1950 which Falls far short of 97% even
if it outperforms the other
studies a social psychologist named Jose
darte who specializes in survey design
published an analysis of that one
pointing out that they diluted the
sample by including large numbers of
psychologists philosophers political
scientists and other non-experts making
their results meaningless as a measure
of what scientists think
[Music]
just as we find that the people who site
that 97% number are overwhelmingly not
trained scientists certainly not trained
statisticians so we're no further ahead
than when we
began most experts agree on the basics
namely that carbon dioxide is a
greenhouse gas and probably causes some
warming and that humans have some impact
on climate probably including some
warming
but they actively debate the rest how
much warming will there be is it a
problem should we try to stop it or
adapt or wait and
see these are all important questions
and we need good
answers and there's the claim that many
of the world's National sciencey
representing hundreds of thousands of
scientists across the globe have issued
statements supporting the consensus
about global warming and demanding
government efforts to cut admissions the
problem is not a single one of those
societies took a survey of their members
before issuing their statements in the
name of their members the statements
were put out by a small number of
activists using their committee
positions to make it look as though
their views were shared by all the
world's experts but if they
are why didn't these authors survey
their members before publishing the
statements there are a couple of other
studies that claim to prove a consensus
but they run into the same problems
all they show is wide agreement on the
uncontroversial bits they offer no
information but whether a majority of
scientists think global warming is a
crisis and then they're spun wildly by
non-scientists to tell us things they
don't begin to say often about questions
they didn't even attempt to investigate
the problem isn't just that we don't
know what percentage of scientists
agrees with this or that statement about
global warming it's something much
worse all this talk of a 97% ensus
amounts to a dishonest bullying campaign
to stifle scientific debate just when we
need it most because the question looms
so large in public policy as physicist
Richard fainman once said quote I would
rather have questions that can't be
answered that answers that can't be
questioned and that's especially true
when we're asked to take drastic action
based on those
answers not long ago that survey expert
I mentioned earlier Jose dwarte warned
fellow scientists about the negative
consequences of claiming consensus he
said quote it is ill advised to report a
consensus as though it is an aggregation
of independent
judgments humans are an ultrasocial
species and descent is far costlier than
a scent to a perceived
majority a scientist who contests the
prevailing narrative on human caused
warming or merely produces smaller
estimates will likely end up on a
mccarthyite blacklist of quote deniers
andot
quote self-described mainstream climate
scientists refer the public to such
lists implicitly endorsing the smearing
of their
colleagues this is disturbing and
unheard of in other Sciences end
quote the unfortunate truth is that
there is strong political pressure for
climate experts not to question claims
of impending doom those who do so face
deep personal and professional costs
including a barrage of abuse that can be
highly unpleasant for people who mostly
wanted to devote their lives to the
quiet pursuit of knowledge not to noisy
pmics and that means we should listen
carefully to them when they feel
compelled to speak out
anyway whether they represent 50% or 10%
or 3% of experts what matters is the
evidence they bring and the quality of
their
arguments and on that I would hope we
have 100% agreement
for the climate discussion Nexus I'm
John
[Music]
Robson that's
right
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