Couple of clingers in my de-converting

[Aractus]

The thing about Lindzen is that he is 1 scientist that differs in his opinion from 97% of climate change scientists. Could a creationist use 1 scientist that doesn't believe in evolution to make his point valid? And the worlds climate does change but over thousands and millions of years. Its the sudden quick warming that is alarming. I live in Utah and for the past 15 years I have watched the ski season get shorter and shorter every year. Even aside from climate change. Look at the dwindling honey bee population and how that would affect our food

That just isn't true.

Watch this debate between a so-called alarmist and a so-called sceptic:

http://youtu.be/potLQR7-_Tg

Both of who are serious climate scientists, and notice how much they agree upon and how even the so-called alarmist doesn't take the alarmist position that you just claimed is representative of the "97%".

When I was in primary school we were taught that the gap in the ozone layer was so bad that it would take centuries to recover once we eliminated CFC's and that it may never recover. That's what we were taught in the 1990's, in public school. We weren't taught that there was any debate, we weren't taught that there was any scientific doubt about that projection.

Virtually all climate scientists accept 3 things: 1. that the earth is currently experiencing a warming period; 2. that anthropogenic GHG's have accumulated in the atmosphere; 3. that anthropogenic GHG's have likely contributed to the warming trend.

Now I'll give you an actual link to the so-called "97%" consensus and you can read the various statements for yourself on NASA. I want you to pay particular attention relative to point 3. Some are at one extreme saying that GHG's are responsible for the global warming trend and are a threat into the future. Others are more moderate and say that it is likely attributed to human activity with no mention about the future threat, and there are statements in-between. And that's just from the climate organisations that are featured on that NASA page.

Lindzen takes the position that 1. true, 2. true, 3. true but the effect in the future of adding more CO2 will not be as great in the past. And that's his area of specialist research. He researchers the hypothesis/theories that suggest there is a positive-feedback mechanism; and he takes the position that if there is a feedback mechanism that it's a negative one. Notice that even on the NASA page there not a single mention as to whether there's a positive feedback mechanism. Nor is there any mention of whether climate projections are agreed upon or not.

Here's another link to the definition of the consensus. Doran & Zimmerman, 2009. Examining the Scientific Consensus  on Climate Change. "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?" 97.4% of active climate scientists agreed. That's what the consensus means, that's what your 97% figure comes from. Notice that the authors had to data-mine their data in order to arrive at that figure, and that in fact only 82% of scientists overall agreed. You could really question their methods. To arrive at that number they took in 10,257 surveys, and then only used 77 (less than 1%) of those surveys to get the 97% figure. They should have used a larger sample size of climate scientists than just 77. Here's another paper by Cook et al., 2013, that arrives at the same 97% figure using a similar criteria. Again they're just asking the question of whether human activity is a significant contributor to global warming, and again they had to data-mine to get the figure.

So don't come here and tell me that Lindzen disagrees with the 97% consensus - he doesn't. He's a part of that 97% figure, if he was asked that question he would answer "Yes." What you're doing is a typical bait-and-switch, and a typical stretch of the position of the "consensus". Just because there's 97% agreement on the points I mentioned above, and the question from Doran & Zimmerman 2009 doesn't mean you can stretch that to mean that 97% endorse the position that urgent action to reduce GHG's needs to be taken; on that statement there's far less agreement from active climate scientists. What you've done is labelled someone erroneously.

Note that the 97% figure is comprised of climate scientists who think that human activity is the primary cause, and those who think it is a significant contributor. It is not comprised only of the former. According to Cook et al.'s data, from the 12,000 abstracts that they considered, only around 0.5% took the position that human activity is the primary cause of climate change. The overwhelming majority of the papers took no position on either of those statements.

Let's have a look at how this would look in a graph shall we? First a graph you would normally see floating around the web:



This is a graph I made showing Cook et al.'s data:



Here's an article by two climate scientists Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger & Patrick J. Michaels written in 2014 that titled "If 97% of Scientists Say Global Warming is Real, 100% Say It Has Nearly Stopped. Basically they showed that by using Cook's method you could prove the claim that 100% of climate scientists agree that climate change has stopped. Note that these two climate scientists say "the fact humans play a role in the enhancing the greenhouse effect leading to global warming is hardly actionable". Here's how they did it:

We identified papers published between 2009 and 2014 and currently cataloged in the Web of Science database that included either the term “pause” or “hiatus” or “slowdown” and subsequently, the terms “global” and “temperature.” We then read the abstracts of those papers (or the papers themselves if further investigation was required) and assigned them to one of the following three categories: “not applicable,” “acknowledging the existence of a slowdown or stoppage in global warming (as reflected in the earth average surface temperature) in recent years,” and “arguing that a slowdown or stoppage of global warming (as reflected in the earth average surface temperature) has not occurred in recent years.”

Of the 100 papers we identified, 65 didn’t have anything to do with recent global temperature trends (these typified papers published prior to about 2010). Of the remaining 35 papers, every single one of them acknowledged in some way that a hiatus, pause, or slowdown in global warming was occurring.

Now to go back to the consensus claim. The IPCC 2007 report claimed that: "Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations." and "Continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21st century that would very likely be larger than those observed during the 20th century." There is not, and has never been a consensus on those two statements.

Now take this one from IPCC 2013: "Human influence on the climate system is clear. This is evident from the increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, positive radiative forcing, observed warming, and understanding of the climate system."

Would you notice again please that the claim of positive radiative forcing is NOT a consensus position. This is Lindzen's area of expertise and this is what he actively researches.

My original point pertained to the fact that Global Warming is NOT a crisis. This is a sentiment shared by many more than just 3% of climate scientists. There are plenty of scientists within the 97% who do not think that global warming is a crisis, and plenty who do not think that projections are accurate.