The one thing that really frustrates me is the patent response I always get from global warming alarmists when I present the abstracts of peer reviewed climate studies that refute their nonsense claims. It is almost guaranteed they will summarily reject the information with “scientific consensus proves global warming to be a fact!”
What scientific consensus are you talking about, I will ask? Like a memorized script they will reply “thousands of the world’s leading scientists, working on the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) report, agreed global warming was unequivocal with almost 100% certainty.” But is this truly scientific consensus?
Let’s have a factual look at the scientific consensus scientists offered on global warming in the IPCC’s report and summary. The IPCC’s report is comprised of the works of three IPCC working groups. The findings of these three groups were condensed into a report titled “Summary for Policy Makers.”
The IPCC working groups consisted of 850+ contributing authors, 400+ leading authors, and around 2,500 scientific reviewers. Dr. William Schlesinger, IPCC Lead Author and former dean at Duke University, quantified the reviewers as “something in the order of 20 percent had some dealing with climate.” The numbers cited above are somewhat inflated. Many reviewers served on two or more working groups. The IPCC added all members of all three working groups without subtracting duplicate names.
The working groups were broken down as follows:
Working Group I - Causes and future forecasts of climate change. This group consisted of approximately 600 scientific reviewers.
Working Group II - Impacts of climate change
Working Group III - Response strategies
Collectively WG II and III consisted of around 1,900 scientific reviewers.
When we say reviewers, what exactly does that mean and what were the methodologies of the review process? Only 308 of the official IPCC experts commented on the final draft at all before release to government organizations. Of the 308, only five commented on all 11 chapters.
Only 62 reviewers commented on the pivotal Chapter 9 - the chapter that spelled doom and gloom. Eight of these were representatives of governments, 55 had vested interests in the report because they were the authors and were working under government funding focused on establishing human activities as the basis of global warming. Only one (1) scientist actually endorsed the worst case projections of Chapter 9 and 11!
The IPCC editors summarily rejected any reviews from scientists who offered an alternate hypothesis or disagreement with the conclusions accepted by the IPCC editors. Commenting scientists were required to justify their comments but the IPCC editors were not required to justify their reasons for rejecting a scientist’s comments. Thus, there are zero non-affirming comments on record despite there being a number offered and rejected. This is a complete violation of the normal practices of scientific peer review. A few scientists who worked on the IPCC reports and attempted to offer non-conforming and subsequently rejected reviews have gone on to be public critics of the IPCC report and summary.
The “Summary for Policy Makers” (SPM) was a shorter condensed version of the IPCC report intended to present the findings and recommendations of the IPCC to government policy makers. A total of 51 subject matter experts worked on the SPM - 33 of them drafting authors and 18 contributing authors. The SPM was drafted at a governmental plenary session attended mostly by government representatives and representatives of environmental organizations.
The SPM was signed by 51 individuals. According to IPCC lead author, Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, the SPM “represents a consensus of government representatives (many of whom are also their nation’s Kyoto representatives), rather than scientists.” Significant changes to the main science content of the reports were made to the SPM after the reviewed work was submitted. As one IPCC official put it “it was necessary to ensure consistency.” In any other area of research such action would get a research paper thrown into the trash and its authors exposed professionally.
The SPM is presented as the body of scientific consensus of thousands of the world’s foremost climate scientists. The facts are approximately 10 climate scientists around the world actually reviewed the IPCC report and endorsed it to varying degrees. Only one agreed with the dire predictions of Chapter 9 and 11. Most others were government officials, sociologists, and other non-climate related scientists. The greatest majority were getting paid by government grant money.
At best resources on both sides of the debate can account for around 2800 scientists who publically profess varying degrees of agreement with the IPCC’s report on global warming. Contrast that with a present 31,072 scientists who dispute the findings. Of these disputers, 103 are world recognized climate scientists, 3,697 environmental scientists, 903 computer, mathematical, and information theory scientists, 5,691 scientists trained in physics and aerospace, and 4,796 scientists trained in chemistry. The number of Scientists holding PhD’s in climate relevant sciences who disagree with the conclusions of the IPCC is 9,029 - almost 15 times the number who supposedly agree.
Scientific consensus implies that the majority of scientists favor a given hypothesis. The fact is approximately 2800 scientists agree on anthropogenic (man made) global warming and over 31,072 disagree. Scientific consensus is against anthropogenic caused global warming. The truth is there is no scientific consensus favoring anthropogenic global warming. The claim is an urban myth. The claim that the science is settled and the debate is over is equally a myth. The science is far from settled and it would appear, if one is looking at the numbers, the debate is dominated (by a margin of 15:1) by the scientists who disagree with the IPCC reports and conclusions.
Finally, there was no peer review of the IPCC report unless you consider the authors reviewing their own submission a review. At best, it was a review for spelling, syntactical and grammatical errors. The IPCC sidestepped true scientific debate (the peer review process) in their methodologies. Indeed, the IPCC’s report on global warming amounts to nothing more than a railroaded UN policy backed by a small handful of hand selected contract scientists. Having experience in medical research, science, and the peer review process, I find the IPCC’s methodologies to be anything but scientific and their conclusions far too biased by political agenda to be accepted as a valid scientific conclusion.
For more in-depth reading on the scientific consensus on global warming, there is an excellent analysis of the IPCC 4AR WG 1 Report written by Jon McLean and published by the Science & Public Policy Institute, dated October 24, 2007. A PDF of the paper can be downloaded at http://mclean.ch/climate/docs/IPCC_review_updated_analysis.pdf
[Edit 1] - As of May 1st, the number of scientists now in signatory opposition to the IPCC’s conclusions is 13,478 (up 406 from the time I first posted this blog).
[Edit 2] - A detailed list of the 31,478 scientists who are signatory to a petition in opposition to the IPCC’s conclusions can be found at http://www.petitionproject.org