Agnotology is the study of
how ignorance grows through repetition of misleading misinformation. You might
never have heard of it, but it’s the perfect term for the climate science
“debate”. Predictably its use began when those convinced of man-man global
warming claimed fossil fuel groups were funding misinformation. But as per
usual, unskeptical scientists opened a promising new front only to got burned
by the evidence.
In the latest volley, from
Legates et al 2013, John Cook’s “97% consensus” survey has become the case study in
agnotology. Based on incorrect results, a flawed method, and a logical fallacy,
it kept key facts hidden while sloppily blending vague language into a form
that is easily and actively misinterpreted. That it passed peer-review is
another damning indictment of peer review.
Cook still refuses to provide
about half
the data, but the data that has been made public shows (after some digging)
that a mere 41 papers out of 12,000 was called a 97% consensus. The trick is
that Cook et al interchangeably use different definitions of consensus………The
consensus Cook considered was the standard definition: that Man had caused most
post-1950 warming. Even on this weaker definition the true consensus among
published scientific papers is now demonstrated to be not 97.1%, as Cook had
claimed, but only 0.3%.....To Read More….
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