Last year Cook et al. released a paper in which they analysed the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming based via the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
What they did in that study was examine 11,944 abstracts from 1991 to 2011 that included the words “global climate change” or “global warming” in their abstract. What they found after analysing these abstracts is that among those that expressed a position on global warming, 97% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. They also contacted 8,547 authors to ask if they could rate their own papers and received 1,200 responses. The results for this again found that 97% of the selected papers stated that humans are causing global warming.
Continue reading Richard Tol Versus Richard Tol On The 97% Scientific Consensus
I’ve already written several blog posts about Alexa and how notoriously bad its statistics are. Not really surprising that they are bad if you know how the data for those statistics is gathered. For the bulk of their data Alexa relies on people installing the Alexa Toolbar (or a toolbar that passes information to Alexa). It’s this toolbar that monitors to which websites you go and how you end up on them.
This has as a result that demographic, used browsers, and even the country visitors are from influence the data that Alexa gathers about a website. This can introduce serious artefacts and biases into the collected data and basically makes the statistics generated from it worthless. At best it can give you an idea about how well a website is doing, but that doesn’t mean that what you’re seeing matches reality. I’ve already written a far more detailed blog post about how Alexa works and why you never should rely on the data it provides; it’s just too unreliable.
Continue reading Another Reason To Not Use Alexa Statistics: They’re Too Easy To Manipulate
Anyone who frequents my website regularly, and has either participated in the comment sections or read them, knows I have a very strict moderation policy. I have some very clearly stated rules for conduct, violate those and I will intervene. To me it doesn’t matter if you’re a friend, colleague, opponent, a regular, or just someone passing by. The rules I have for participating on this website get applied equally. There are even clearly stated appeal rules just in case I made a mistake with my moderation.
I already mentioned before that most commenters like the environment that I create with my strict moderation policy. It’s because of those rules that you can freely discuss the merits of what I wrote without the vitriol and derailing of discussions that’s so common. I’ve seen commenters defend my rules as they see what I do and how different my comment sections are because of that.
Continue reading Freedom Of Speech, Censorship, And Moderation
When you discuss the risks and consequences of global warming in the public sphere it will often turn to how certain it is. Which is quite strange as there’s a scientific consensus of 97%, this is the percentage of climate scientists who agree that humans are causing global warming.
This is confirmed by several peer-reviewed studies that have found the same overwhelming agreement on this. A 2009 survey of Earth scientists found that among climate scientists actively publishing climate research, 97% agreed that humans were significantly raising global temperature. A 2011 analysis of scientists’ public statements about climate change found that among those who had published peer-reviewed climate research, 97% accepted human-induced warming. The most recent one was a 2013 analysis that examined 11,944 abstracts and again found this 97% consensus.
Anyone who wants to debate a science denier often needs a thick skin, especially concerning topics like global warming. They often hurl words like leftist, socialist, communist, fascist, sheeple, useful idiot, and worse at you. Though why a political ideology is used as an insult still is something that I don’t understand. At most you’ll get a slightly annoyed roll of the eyes from me when you label me as something that I’m not.
But the one that truly puzzles me is when I’m accused of having a religious like faith in science. Science isn’t a religion, certainly not when you accept the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW). To me it’s climate science denial that looks more like a faith position.
Continue reading Climate Science Is Based On Evidence, But Science Denial Is Based On Faith
Don’t lynch me yet, there’s a point to the title I picked. It has to do with an image I saw on my Facebook feed that uses a drawing from a Dr Seuss story:
I don’t know who originally made this image, but I noticed it via a share from the Facebook page for the organization SumOfUs. Their campaigns and messaging make it very clear that they do not like Monsanto and are anti-GMO.
Climate science deniers tend to be quite touchy when you call them a climate science denier, or denier for short. In my case this has even led to someone threatening to sue me for libel because I used the term climate science denier in a private email. Which wasn’t even aimed at them, I just used the term to describe the type of arguments that were being used.
The term also is quite simple in its origin, it means that you deny something. I use the term to state that climate science deniers dismiss or even flat-out deny the evidence climate scientists have found. You have similar versions of the term denier for those that reject the science behind vaccinations, AIDS, Evolution, etc.
I expect climate science deniers to not respond well when you use the term, that’s why I only use it when it’s truly earned. What I didn’t expect was that the usage of this term would lead to Dr. Roy Spencer writing the blog post ‘Time to push back against the global warming Nazis‘ (archived here):
Continue reading Roy Spencer, In Denial About What Science Denial Means
The floods in the UK has triggered a storm of utter nonsense about what does and doesn’t help to prevent or reduce flooding. One of these claims is that dredging rivers will help with preventing flooding or at least will make them less severe. This is wrong.
I live in The Netherlands and we’re a country with a very long history fighting against the ocean and our rivers. It’s because of our constant battle with water that we have a vast network of defences, a lot of resources to help during a crisis, and contingency plans when things do go wrong. But despite all that nature still sometimes surprises us, it has learned us to never underestimate her. We got two such lessons in 1993 and 1995 courtesy of the river the Meuse.
I don’t often write about religion as I don’t mind it as long as you’re not either pushing it on others or attacking science in the name of it. As an atheist I might consider it an unsupported position, but it’s called faith for a reason. The most you’ll get from me is a shrug or me rolling my eyes if it’s a particular strange belief. But sometimes the religious say or do something that just doesn’t go down well with me; this time it actually got me quite angry.
Before I go into what this was there’s something you need to know about me. I have a disease called X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy, as it’s a bit of a mouthful this is often abbreviated to X-ALD. It’s a metabolic disease caused by a mutation on the X chromosome, people who have it can’t produce a certain protein. Without it very-long chain fatty acids — a type of saturated fats — cannot be transported to the mitochondria in cells and metabolised. This is problematic as fats do not dissolve in water so your body cannot get rid of them, these fats then will start to accumulate in cells and organs.
Continue reading Suffering, Euthanasia, And The Passion Of Jesus Christ
I get the occasional email asking me to help out with something. This time it was an email from Mike Haseler who is the chairman of the Scottish Climate and Energy Forum. The name of this organisation sounded interesting to me considering the subjects I tackle. I got even more interested when it was mentioned that this was to gather some information about the public debate about climate change.
But I always do a background check on the party that’s asking me to help out with something, no matter how small the request is or the amount of effort required on my side. Who you affiliate yourself with does matter if you want to be taken seriously. When I did a cursory check of the contents on their website any good feelings I might have had about this organisation evaporated.
Last year Cook et al. released a paper in which they analysed the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming based via the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
I’ve already written 
Climate science deniers tend to be quite touchy when you call them a climate science denier, or denier for short. In my case this has even led to someone threatening to sue me for libel because I used the term climate science denier in a private email. Which wasn’t even aimed at them, I just used the term to describe the type of arguments that were being used.