The 97% Lie

By Rich Kozlovich

Recently I attended my 50^th high school reunion where I had a discussion with an old friend about ....Global Warming.  It got started by a discussion about this blog and an explanation as to what I wrote about, including leftism and environmentalism. He then stated he was as far left as a person could go – which kind of surprised me since I always viewed him as a little smarter than most – and I said I was about as far right as one could be.  That led to global warming and my position on the subject.  He said - with complete assurance of being on the right side of this issue – so you’re anti-science?  I said I was just the opposite, wherein he cited the big Anthropogenic Global Warming lie – 97% of scientists agree.  I then told him that number was a lie and that was based on a handful of "scientists".

I then proceeded to explain that all the models used by these "scientists" in predicting climate have failed.  The Hockey Stick Graph has been proven fraudulent, Hanson’s figures have been shown to be inaccurate, and those inaccuracies were so obvious there is a legitimate question of fraud, that CO2 can be heated by the surrounding environment but won’t hold heat, and the three things that do impact climate – the sun’s cycles, the oceans decadal cycles and the number one factor that makes up our atmosphere - water vapor, which does hold heat - are not factored in any of those models.

The real question we should be asking ourselves is this.  How many scientists make up the 97%?   If I ask 10,000 a question and they all respond and 97% agree that means 9,700 answered in agreement.  That of course doesn’t mean they’re right, but it at least gives credibility to that statement – if they’re all scientists working in the same scientific discipline.

However, what if only a small fraction respond? What if 10,256 are asked a question and only 3146 respond?  But as it turns out they didn’t like the answers they were getting so they kept whittling down that number of respondents that would be included in the count to 77.  So it turns out that 97% of “scientists” are only 75.  That makes the statement “97% of scientists agree” a lie of omission.  The implication of that statement, although not directly stated, is that of the tens of thousands of scientists working in any scientific discipline all agree that mankind is causing global warming via humanities output of CO2, and it’s going to destroy civilization, when in reality there are only 75 who think that.  And among that number are those who do work in unknown scientific disciplines.

It get’s better.  What if they were only asked two questions?

 

1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?

 

2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?

 

So you ask....Is that’s it?  Yes that’s it!  Whenever you hear some claim about percentages it should perk up your junkscience radar.  It doesn’t mean percentages are being used to mislead, but it’s done so often we “always” need to take a deeper look into those kind of statements.  There’s a reason why “statistics” is called the arcane science.

So then let’s abandon statistical percentages in favor of real numbers.  Dr. Art Robinson’s GlobalWarming Petition Project garnered 31,487 American scientists, including 9,029 with PhDs, sign a petition saying:

 

We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

There was a concerted effort to claim the number was debunked because those in the AGW camp deliberately perverted the process with fraudulent signatures, but that was discovered and fixed, and I got that from Art Robinson directly via e-mail.  An article in Forbes, “Peer Reviewed SurveyFinds Majority of Scientists Skeptical of Global Warming Crisis”,   states;

 

Don’t look now, but maybe a scientific consensus exists concerning global warming after all. Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.
 

There are a couple of things that should stand out. One – Why – if these claims of a Global Warming crisis is legitimate do the supporters of this idea have to make attempts to distort and destroy the efforts of others who disagree through corrupt practices unless they already know their position is untenable? Two - If their position was valid, does reality demonstrate the correctness of their position and their conclusions?

It doesn’t!  In the real world any small amount of warming that was taking place officially stopped 18 years ago, in direct contrast to everything their models predicted, all the while CO2 levels have risen and temperatures have dropped.

When science gets rich it becomes politics, and government grant money has made the term scientific integrity an oxymoron.  Here are a paraphrased series of quotes I’ve lumped together that bear honest reflection about science and my personal motto - and what’s supposed to be every scientist’s motto - De Omnibus Dubitandum.

“Scientific issues cannot be decided by a vote of scientists. A consensus is not, at any given time, a good predictor of where the truth actually resides, and I do not think that a consensus has anything to do with whether a hypothesis is correct. Check out the history of science you will find that scientific discovery is generally made by ignoring the ‘consensus.  Science is based on skepticism and experimental proof.  The warming since 1650 AD (not 1900) is part of a real ‘millennial cycle’ whose amplitude cannot yet be explained by any quantitative theory.  Also, the computer climate models are both too complex to be readily understood and too simple to describe reality. Believing their results is an act of faith."

You will find much more here in an article that appeared on the blog Watt's Up With That entitled, "What Else Did the 97% of Scientists Say".