Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming

Craig Idso, Robert Carter and S. Fred Singer tackled climate change alarmism in the book, “Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming: The NIPCC Report on Scientific Consensus,” published by the Heartland Institute.

As much as the liberal media, liberal academics and pundits tell Americans that the earth is too warm and human beings are the cause for a spike in weather and temperature changes, there is little-to-no scientific consensus to support these assertions. For example, Naomi Oreskes, who wrote one of the most-cited articles on climate change alarmism, is a science historian and is not a scientist. But, the authors pointed out that her essay was not peer-reviewed, which is a common practice for published journal articles.

What was the basis of her article? “Examining abstracts from 928 papers” and “using the key words ‘global climate change’ to make her conclusion that 75% of scientists believed in climate change. Yet, she ignored abstracts from global warming skeptics, the authors noted, and there are at least 1,350 global climate alarmism articles since her article was published in 2004, which would affect her results if she repeated the process today. Oreskes also did not specify how many of the 928 articles endorsed her conclusion of a “consensus” of scientists.

Oreskes has made a career out of her work, with her essay leading to a book entitled “Merchants of Doubt” and a movie released in 2015. Also, Oreskes’ claims are often repeated by former U.S. vice president Al Gore in both his movie and book, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Oreskes teaches at Harvard.

Remember the oft-repeated ‘97% of climate change scientists agree humans have contributed to the rising global temperatures’ line? The 2009 Doran and Zimmerman paper made that claim, but the authors disagree with the methodology behind the paper. For example, it was a two-minute online survey sent to 10,257 scientists, of which 3,146 people responded. However, these scientists were geologists, paleontologists, oceanographers and not physicists, meteorologists and those who would know the field intimately. “Neither was academic qualification a factor – about 1,000 of those surveyed,” the authors noted, “did not have a Ph.D., some didn’t even have a master’s diploma.” They also estimated only 5% of the respondents “self-identified as climate scientists.” There were also issues in how the questions were worded and where the 97% consensus claim came from, which apparently was from 79 respondents within that sample.

These are but two examples from the NIPCC book, but it is clear that the climate change agenda turns a blind eye to neutral and impartial studies of the subject.

Photo by Light Brigading

Photo by Light Brigading

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