It Is Time For Us All To Recognize The 97% Con Game

Apr 2, 2019 Posted by Dr. Jay Lehr, Scientist, Author and Speaker

It is not unique in science for incorrect views to hold forth for decades if not centuries before the crowds are turned back by incontrovertible evidence. Medical history is full of the minorities trying to make surgery safer by the simple effort of hand washing. Ulcers were long thought to be a result of type “A” personalities rather than requiring a specific bacteria to allow their development. Einstein himself fought an uphill battle with his theory of relativity when 100 German scientists collaborated on a consensus to defeat him. He said famously “If I were wrong one would have been enough”.

We are confident that none of our readers has failed to read or hear for a number of years that 97% of all scientists believe that mankind has played a role in changing the earth’s climate. While it should have been stored away long ago as an urban myth, you know those stories that hang around endlessly regardless of the lack of supporting facts. We doubt a day ever goes by now that some global warming alarmist does not use it to promote their cause of enlarging government and reducing personal freedom through the promotion of fear about our future.

One prominent web site WhatsUpWithThat.com, provided by meteorologists Anthony Watts actually collected 97 papers written to explain precisely why the conclusion that 97% of scientist believe in man caused warming was completely false. Why do we think the world needs a 98th? It is because nearly all of the other 97 articles delved into the erroneous statistics presented in the two papers that launched this truly insane conclusion, bandied about daily.

We will stay out of the weeds of statistics used to first present the illusion and then to dispel it. The readers can jump in there, if they wish, by reading the original papers by Naomi Oreskes that started it all in Science Magazine in December of 2004. Then the claim really exploded when John Cook and associates of Australia did some follow up statistical tricks in their paper in Environment Research Letters in 2013. Their fraud should become even more obvious as their study did not arrive at the same 97% that Naomi Oreskes did but rather theirs was 97.1%

The biased folks who concluded from a truly bizarre survey of science literature that 97% of all authors believe in man caused global warming would have actually been better served had they concluded that say 70% of all scientists believe in their premise as that would actually have been possible. However a little common sense, which we all know is no longer very common, should tell us that no large group of people on our planet could ever reach 97% agreement on anything. Yes anything, including the Earth being round rather than flat or the sun rising in the East rather than West, or even the Earth’s gravitational pull.

Sure proof of this erroneous talking point is provided by the Global Warming Petition Project at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine in 2015. They obtained signatures on a Declaration from 31,478 American scientists, including 9,021 with Ph.D.s that stated they did not believe mankind had a significant impact on his climate. The declaration included the words:

“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human releases of carbon dioxide methane or other greenhouse gases are 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 evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environment of the Earth.”

They actually published all the names in a thick paper back book, sending copies free to anyone interested. It is rather doubtful that these people all comprise the 3% of non believers.

While we do not, we do not doubt there are many scientists who do believe that man plays a major role in the determination of his climate. However, among the unsuspecting public who do not stop to consider what we are saying, the near universal comment of “the 97%” has done a lot of damage. It leads to poor anti fossil fuel legislation in states all across the nation. It leads to some states embracing the Paris Accord which would redistribute $3 trillion of American dollars to nations who use little fossil fuel. These American states could have none but zero impact on the planets thermometer but they can and will damage their state’s economy and their citizens standard of living.

Of the 97 other articles disputing the 97% consensus on global warming, displayed on Anthony Watt’s web site, our favorite was Australian scientist, Joanne Nova’s. She named the consensus “a marketing ploy” that some journalists will fall for. It turns out the word “some” was a gross understatement and why you are reading it almost daily. She points out that “arguments from authority are not science they are only PR”. The thing that makes science different from religion is that only empirical evidence matters not opinion. While consensus does not matter a whit in science it often develops when that is where the government funding money is. There is none available to find unbiased information on the world’s climate, but rather it is everywhere where you state a desire to prove man the culprit in anything about climate one thinks to be unpleasant.

Governments across the globe have been spending billions to support the man caused global warming idea, now climate change, delusion, along with equal quantities to support forms of renewable energy. It takes a strong backbone to resist the siren call of money.

Even a once resistant Republican Party in Congress is slowly capitulating to the fraudulent scientific consensus. It has always been easier to go along with the crowd.

Give some thought to what we are saying next time you are confronted with this dangerous absurdity, which will likely be later today.

How Many Constitute 97%?

By Rich Kozlovich

(Editor's Note:  Originally posted here on Tuesday, December 23, 2014, again on May 11, 2017 - but with this constantly being thrown up I felt it worth posting again.  It will be interesting to see what the left does when the Canadian courts finally rule against him and the counter suits begin against Mann and most likely David Suzuki.  Those won't be SLAPP suits.  RK)

In order to have clarity on any subject we first need it defined. From the beginning The High Priest of the Church of the Warming Globe, Al Gore, proclaimed in Pontifical confidence - "The science is settled"! We have been told from the beginning that "97% of scientists agree" that mankind's introduction of CO2 into the atmosphere is warming the globe so dramatically we only had months before we reached the tipping point of no return, therefore "we can't wait", we must act now.

The first thing that struck me about the phrase "97% of scientists agree" was they didn't claim 97% of "all" scientists agree. That should have triggered this question in everyone's mind.

How many constitute 97%?

The number of scientists should have been of more concern than the percentage of scientists. Why? There's a reason statistics is called the arcane science. If there was anything that generates more logical fallacies I don’t know what it is, because you can make statistics say anything you like if you leave important things out.

In July of 2012 Barry Woods wrote an article entitled, "What else did the ‘97% of scientists ’say?" he asks, "I wonder just how many politicians, environmentalists or scientists who use the phrase ‘97% of scientists’ (or those who more carefully use ‘active climate scientists’) to give weight to their arguments regarding climate change to the public, have any idea of the actual source of this soundbite?”

He goes on to say: 

“Perhaps a few may say the ‘Doran Survey’, which is the one of the most common references for this ‘97% of active climate scientists’ phrase. In fact, the Doran EoS paper merely cites a MSc thesis for the actual source of this 97% figure and the actual survey.”…. “

The Doran paper has been criticised by many sceptics in the past, where a survey of 10,256 with 3146 respondents was whittled down to 75 out of 77 “expert” ‘active climate researchers’ (ACR) to give the 97% figure, based on just two very simplistic (shallow) questions that even the majority of sceptics might agree with. Lawrence Soloman made one of many critiques of the Doran Paper here and offers a very good summary, some other reviews here, here and here”

Let’s take a look at this. The 97% figure they tout is in reality the views of just 75 out of 77 scientists of unknown scientific discipline. Originally a survey was sent to 10,265 scientists - a credible number - but this is where the story starts to get interesting - only 3,146 responded. It would appear that right from the very beginning they lost approximately 60% of “all” scientists by not responding.  I think it isn't unreasonable to presume they didn't respond because they didn't agree with the basic premise of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) that mankind was responsible. That leaves 3,146 to make up that 97% figure. Right? Well, actually no, and the story of the fabled 97% gets even better.

Now we need to ask: What did all those 3,146 scientists have to say? We don’t know! Why? Because they apparently didn’t like what almost all of them had to say since the number of “acceptable” responders was whittled down from 3,146 to 77.

Remember they lost approximately 60% of “scientists” right from the get go, and now they’ve dumped another 3,069 leaving 77, and only 75 agreed. Think about this. The percentage of scientists who actually agree (using their own base of 10,265) is only approximately .075%. One might ask why they allowed two “deniers”, or at the very least two not entirely on board with AGW? If they published a claim of 100% even the Warmists would have laughed at them.

There are a number of things we take away from this. This mythical figure of 97% of scientists isn’t even 97 scientists and consensus isn’t science, it’s politics and if you “check out the history of science…you will find that scientific discovery is generally made by ignoring the ‘consensus..’  We know the world officially stopped warming 18 years ago in spite of the fact CO2 levels have risen - a rise and fall has been going on all through the Earth's history - and currently only constitutes .037% of our atmosphere, of which humanities contribution to that number is infinitesimally small - we've passed virtually every tipping point they touted and the world’s still here - the oceans haven't risen, the poles haven't melted and all the models predicting a warming disaster have failed or are failing.

 

The Hockey Stick Graph has been shown to be so seriously flawed it has been called fraudulent, and since he lost his SLAPP suit against scientist Tim Ball in Canada he faces “Massive counterclaims, in excess of $10 million, have just been filed against climate scientist Michael Mann after lawyers affirmed that the former golden boy of global warming alarmism had sensationally failed in his exasperating three-year bid to sue skeptic Canadian climatologist, Tim Ball. Door now wide open for criminal investigation into Climategate conspiracy.”  

 

Dr. Tim Ball used, what's called in Canada the Truth Defense, also known as the Scorched Earth Defense. All Mann had to do was to "hand over those “hockey stick” r-squared correlation coefficient numbers" to demonstrate the validity of his work.  Why didn't he in Canada? And why is he apparently failing to do so in his SLAPP suit against Styne here in America?

 

As for the statement that "97% of scientists agree", we can now confidently say that figure along with everything else the warmists have presented is so seriously flawed they can be ignored with impunity.  It's clear from their own figures there are only .075% of "some" scientists polled who think mankind is destroying the Earth with carbon dioxide emissions and the only thing that will prevent it is to destroy our modern industrial society, return to nature and live short miserable lives.  And many of the world’s leaders think this is a good idea!  

Did I ever mention in the past you can’t fix stupid? Which in this case couples corruption and insanity

Editor's Note:  Here's an update on the Mann/Ball Canadian lawsuit.  No matter how Mann's attorney attempts to twist the facts there's one incontrovertible truth - Mann has refused to turn over the documents as he agreed, and under Canadian law "Not releasing his secret science for open courtroom examination means, legally, this is an omission proving a guilty mind. B.C. case law is specific on this, it tells us intentional withholding of key evidence is an “admission of guilt” (id.)."

Do 97% of Climate Scientists Really Agree

The Leftist Lie of 97% Consensus on Climate Change Alarmism

By Adrian Vance June 6, 2017

...........believe in man-caused global warming,” is a common refrain by the panic pushing “We’re all gonna die!” people, but this is nonsense.

The story began at Scripps Institute where “CO2 causes global warming” was created by Dr. Roger Revel, who later denied the concept shortly before he died, but it was their Science Librarian, Naomi Oreskes, who created “97%” from a study where she had undergrad students tabulate 928 articles from their collection of science journals.  She instructed them to score those with no conclusion whether or not man’s CO2 was the cause of the claimed atmospheric temperature increase to be in favor of the hypothesis on the assumption that not expressing a negative opinion meant they were believers...........The 100 department Chairs she mailed to would be very aware of from where the money comes and teach “Earth is flat” if their jobs depended on it. None would be questioning the anthropogenic warming hypothesis as it is a full employment program for thousands of Ph.D.s............To Read More....

My Take - I did an article on this some time back entitled, How Many Constitute 97%?, wherein I say:

"Let’s take a look at this. The 97% figure they tout is in reality the views of just 75 out of 77 scientists of unknown scientific discipline. Originally a survey was sent to 10,265 scientists - a credible number - but this is where the story starts to get interesting - only 3,146 responded. It would appear that right from the very beginning they lost approximately 60% of “all” scientists by not responding.  I think it isn't unreasonable to presume they didn't respond because they didn't agree with the basic premise of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) that mankind was responsible. That leaves 3,146 to make up that 97% figure. Right? Well, actually no, and the story of the fabled 97% gets even better.

Now we need to ask: What did all those 3,146 scientists have to say? We don’t know! Why? Because they apparently didn’t like what almost all of them had to say since the number of “acceptable” responders was whittled down from 3,146 to 77.

Remember they lost approximately 60% of “scientists” right from the get go, and now they’ve dumped another 3,069 leaving 77, and only 75 agreed. Think about this. The percentage of scientists who actually agree (using their own base of 10,265) is only approximately .075%. One might ask why they allowed two “deniers”, or at the very least two not entirely on board with AGW? If they published a claim of 100% even the Warmists would have laughed at them."

The truth is there is no 97% consensus among scientists, in fact there's not even consensus among 97 scientists but a mere 77 and who knows their motives. 

Are Microbiologists Climate-Denying Science Haters?

By Alex Berezow — May 4, 2017

Recently, I gave a seminar on "fake news" to professors and grad students at a large public university. Early in my talk, I polled the audience: "How many of you believe climate change is the world's #1 threat?"

Silence. Not a single person raised his or her hand.

Was I speaking in front of a group of science deniers? The College Republicans? Some fringe libertarian club? No, it was a room full of microbiologists.

How could so many incredibly intelligent people overwhelmingly reject what THE SCIENCE says about climate change? Well, they don't. They just don't see it as big of a threat to the world as other things. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of them felt that antibiotic resistance and pandemic disease were the biggest global threats. One person thought geopolitical instability was the biggest concern......To Read More.....

My Take - The article creates a firestorm of comments about the claime  97% of scientists agree on Anthropogenic Global Warming, but that figure is a logical fallacy.....and a lie of omission. The information exposing that fruad has been available for some time so there's no excuse for touting a number we know factually to be inaccurate.   Here's my article, How Many Constitute 97%?

How Many Constitute 97%?

By Rich Kozlovich

(Editor's Note:  Originally posted here on Tuesday, December 23, 2014, but with this constantly being thrown up I felt it worth posting again.  RK)

In order to have clarity on any subject we first need it defined. From the beginning The High Priest of the Church of the Warming Globe, Al Gore, proclaimed in Pontifical confidence - "The science is settled"! We have been told from the beginning that "97% of scientists agree" that mankind's introduction of CO2 into the atmosphere is warming the globe so dramatically we only had months before we reached the tipping point of no return, therefore "we can't wait", we must act now.

The first thing that struck me about the phrase "97% of scientists agree" was they didn't claim 97% of "all" scientists agree. That should have triggered this question in everyone's mind.

How many constitute 97%?

The number of scientists should have been of more concern than the percentage of scientists. Why? There's a reason statistics is call the arcane science. If there was anything that generates more logical fallacies I don’t know what it is, because you can make statistics say anything you like if you leave important things out.

In July of 2012 Barry Woods wrote an article entitled, "What else did the ‘97% of scientists ’say?" he asks, "I wonder just how many politicians, environmentalists or scientists who use the phrase ‘97% of scientists’ (or those who more carefully use ‘active climate scientists’) to give weight to their arguments regarding climate change to the public, have any idea of the actual source of this soundbite?”

He goes on to say: “Perhaps a few may say the ‘Doran Survey’, which is the one of the most common references for this ‘97% of active climate scientists’ phrase. In fact, the Doran EoS paper merely cites a MSc thesis for the actual source of this 97% figure and the actual survey.”…. “The Doran paper has been criticised by many sceptics in the past, where a survey of 10,256 with 3146 respondents was whittled down to 75 out of 77 “expert” ‘active climate researchers’ (ACR) to give the 97% figure, based on just two very simplistic (shallow) questions that even the majority of sceptics might agree with. Lawrence Soloman made one of many critiques of the Doran Paper here and offers a very good summary, some other reviews here, here and here”

Let’s take a look at this. The 97% figure they tout is in reality the views of just 75 out of 77 scientists of unknown scientific discipline. Originally a survey was sent to 10,265 scientists - a credible number - but this is where the story starts to get interesting - only 3,146 responded. It would appear that right from the very beginning they lost approximately 60% of “all” scientists by not responding.  I think it isn't unreasonable to presume they didn't respond because they didn't agree with the basic premise of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) that mankind was responsible. That leaves 3,146 to make up that 97% figure. Right? Well, actually no, and the story of the fabled 97% gets even better.

Now we need to ask: What did all those 3,146 scientists have to say? We don’t know! Why? Because they apparently didn’t like what almost all of them had to say since the number of “acceptable” responders was whittled down from 3,146 to 77.

Remember they lost approximately 60% of “scientists” right from the get go, and now they’ve dumped another 3,069 leaving 77, and only 75 agreed. Think about this. The percentage of scientists who actually agree (using their own base of 10,265) is only approximately .075%. One might ask why they allowed two “deniers”, or at the very least two not entirely on board with AGW? If they published a claim of 100% even the Warmists would have laughed at them.

There are a number of things we take away from this. This mythical figure of 97% of scientists isn’t even 97 scientists and consensus isn’t science, it’s politics and if you “check out the history of science…you will find that scientific discovery is generally made by ignoring the ‘consensus..’  We know the world officially stopped warming 18 years ago in spite of the fact CO2 levels have risen - a rise and fall has been going on all through the Earth's history - and currently only constitutes .037% of our atmosphere, of which humanities contribution to that number is infinitesimally small - we've passed virtually every tipping point they touted and the world’s still here - the oceans haven't risen, the poles haven't melted and all the models predicting a warming disaster have failed or are failing.

 

The Hockey Stick Graph has been shown to be so seriously flawed it has been called fraudulent, and since he lost his SLAPP suit against scientist Tim Ball in Canada he faces “Massive counterclaims, in excess of $10 million, have just been filed against climate scientist Michael Mann after lawyers affirmed that the former golden boy of global warming alarmism had sensationally failed in his exasperating three-year bid to sue skeptic Canadian climatologist, Tim Ball. Door now wide open for criminal investigation into Climategate conspiracy.”  

 

Dr. Tim Ball used, what's called in Canada the Truth Defence, also known as the Scorched Earth Defence. All Mann had to do was to "hand over those “hockey stick” r-squared correlation coefficient numbers" to demonstrate the validity of his work.  Why didn't he in Canada and is apparently failing to do so in his SLAPP suit against Styne here in America?

 

As for the statement that "97% of scientists agree", we can now confidently say that figure along with everything else the warmists have presented is so seriously flawed they can be ignored with impunity.  It's clear from their own figures there are only .075% of "some" scientists polled who think mankind is destroying the Earth with carbon dioxide emissions and the only thing that will prevent it is to destroy our modern industrial society, return to nature and live short miserable lives.  And many of the world’s leaders think this is a good idea!  

Did I ever mention in the past you can’t fix stupid? Which in this case couples corruption and insanity

 

Climatologist Dr. Tim Ball On 97% Consensus: “Completely False And Was Deliberately Manufactured”!

By P Gosselin on 24. August 2015

Canadian climate scientist Dr. Tim Ball recently published a new book on climate science: The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science. What follows later (below) is a short interview with Dr. Ball.

“Government propaganda” …”corrupt science”

 

In the book Ball writes that the failed predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), coupled with failed alarmist stories such as the complete loss of Arctic sea ice by 2013, are making the public increasingly skeptical of government propaganda about global warming. People were already skeptical because they knew weather forecasts, especially beyond forty-eight hours, were invariably wrong, and so today more people understand there is no substance to global warming claims and that it is based on corrupt science. Now they are asking: Who perpetrated the deception and could a small group of people deceive the world?

In his book The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science” Dr. Ball explains who did it and why.......As Ball carries on his legal battle he maintains that climate deception continues and that the public is paying a high price for completely unnecessary energy and economic policies based on the pseudoscience of the IPCC. Not to mention the social devastation of communities devastated by job losses……To Read More…

How Many Constitute 97%?

By Rich Kozlovich

In order to have clarity on any subject we first need it defined. From the beginning The High Priest of the Church of the Warming Globe, Al Gore, proclaimed in Pontifical confidence - "The science is settled"! We have been told from the beginning that "97% of scientists agree" that mankind's introduction of CO2 into the atmosphere is warming the globe so dramatically we only had months before we reached the tipping point of no return, therefore "we can't wait", we must act now.

The first thing that struck me about the phrase "97% of scientists agree" was they didn't claim 97% of "all" scientists agree. That should have triggered this question in everyone's mind.

How many constitute 97%?

The number of scientists should have been of more concern than the percentage of scientists. Why? There's a reason statistics is call the arcane science. If there was anything that generates more logical fallacies I don’t know what it is, because you can make statistics say anything you like if you leave important things out.

In July of 2012 Barry Woods wrote an article entitled, "What else did the ‘97% of scientists ’say?" he asks:

"I wonder just how many politicians, environmentalists or scientists who use the phrase ‘97% of scientists’ (or those who more carefully use ‘active climate scientists’) to give weight to their arguments regarding climate change to the public, have any idea of the actual source of this soundbite?”

He goes on to say: 

“Perhaps a few may say the ‘Doran Survey’, which is the one of the most common references for this ‘97% of active climate scientists’ phrase. In fact, the Doran EoS paper merely cites a MSc thesis for the actual source of this 97% figure and the actual survey.”…. “The Doran paper has been criticised by many sceptics in the past, where a survey of 10,256 with 3146 respondents was whittled down to 75 out of 77 “expert” ‘active climate researchers’ (ACR) to give the 97% figure, based on just two very simplistic (shallow) questions that even the majority of sceptics might agree with. Lawrence Soloman made one of many critiques of the Doran Paper here and offers a very good summary, some other reviews here, here and here”

Let’s take a look at this. The 97% figure they tout is in reality the views of just 75 out of 77 scientists of unknown scientific discipline. Originally a survey was sent to 10,265 scientists - a credible number - but this is where the story starts to get interesting - only 3,146 responded. It would appear that right from the very beginning they lost approximately 60% of “all” scientists by not responding.  I think it isn't unreasonable to presume they didn't respond because they didn't agree with the basic premise of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) that mankind was responsible. That leaves 3,146 to make up that 97% figure. Right? Well, actually no, and the story of the fabled 97% gets even better.

Now we need to ask: What did all those 3,146 scientists have to say? We don’t know! Why? Because they apparently didn’t like what almost all of them had to say since the number of “acceptable” responders was whittled down from 3,146 to 77.

Remember they lost approximately 60% of “scientists” right from the get go, and now they’ve dumped another 3,069 leaving 77, and only 75 agreed. Think about this. The percentage of scientists who actually agree (using their own base of 10,265) is only approximately .075%. One might ask why they allowed two “deniers”, or at the very least two not entirely on board with AGW? If they published a claim of 100% even the Warmists would have laughed at them.

There are a number of things we take away from this. This mythical figure of 97% of scientists isn’t even 97 scientists and consensus isn’t science, it’s politics and if you “check out the history of science…you will find that scientific discovery is generally made by ignoring the ‘consensus..’  We know the world officially stopped warming 18 years ago in spite of the fact CO2 levels have risen - a rise and fall has been going on all through the Earth's history - and currently only constitutes .037% of our atmosphere, of which humanities contribution to that number is infinitesimally small - we've passed virtually every tipping point they touted and the world’s still here - the oceans haven't risen, the poles haven't melted and all the models predicting a warming disaster have failed or are failing.

 

The Hockey Stick Graph has been shown to be so seriously flawed it has been called fraudulent, and since he lost his SLAPP suit against scientist Tim Ball in Canada he faces “Massive counterclaims, in excess of $10 million, have just been filed against climate scientist Michael Mann after lawyers affirmed that the former golden boy of global warming alarmism had sensationally failed in his exasperating three-year bid to sue skeptic Canadian climatologist, Tim Ball. Door now wide open for criminal investigation into Climategate conspiracy.”  

 

Dr. Tim Ball used, what's called in Canada the Truth Defense, also known as the Scorched Earth Defense. All Mann had to do was to "hand over those “hockey stick” r-squared correlation coefficient numbers" to demonstrate the validity of his work.  Why didn't he in Canada and is apparently failing to do so in his SLAPP suit against Steyn here in America?

 

As for the statement that "97% of scientists agree", we can now confidently say that figure along with everything else the warmists have presented is so seriously flawed they can be ignored with impunity.  It's clear from their own figures there are only .075% of "some" scientists polled who think mankind is destroying the Earth with carbon dioxide emissions and the only thing that will prevent it is to destroy our modern industrial society, return to nature and live short miserable lives.  And many of the world’s leaders think this is a good idea!  

Did I ever mention in the past you can’t fix stupid? Which in this case couples corruption and insanity!

From Benny Peiser's Global Warming Policy Foundation

UK Carbon Tax Threatens Blackouts

Calls To Axe UK Carbon Tax To Keep Lights On And Cut Energy Bills

The American Meteorological Society seems to be upset by a survey that shows that only 52% of their members believe that global warming is mostly man-made. I am sure that is jolly inconvenient for them, but it is exactly what the results of their survey show. --Paul Homewood, Not A Lot Of People Know That, 6 December 2013

Despite the fact that the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) apparently provided a significant portion of the funding for the recently concluded International Forum on Conservation of Polar Bears (December 3-6, Moscow), it appears in the end they and their NGO cohorts were prevented from having an undue amount of influence at the meeting. For that we can thank the delegates of the five Arctic nations: three cheers for common sense! --Susan Crockford, Polar Bear Science, 8 December 2013

Britain’s unilateral carbon tax should be scrapped before it causes blackouts, pushes up household bills and makes the UK uncompetitive, ScottishPower argues. Keith Anderson, chief corporate officer, warns that the “carbon price floor” (CPF), which taxes companies for burning fossil fuels, will make Britain’s remaining coal plants “largely uneconomic by around the middle of the decade”. With Britain’s spare power margin already forecast to fall as low as 2pc by 2015, the carbon tax will force more closures and “threatens to make us even more vulnerable to the risk of blackouts”, he warns. --Emily Gosden, The Daily Telegraph, 9 December 2013

Most draining for [deputy Prime Minister] Nick Clegg has been keeping the Coalition on — as he sees it — the straight and narrow on green issues. George Osborne, eager to remove barriers to recovery and much influenced by Nigel Lawson’s sceptical writings, has grown increasingly impatient with the green agenda. Yet even this, Clegg presents as an example of how the Coalition works successfully. --Matthew D'Ancona, The Sunday Telegraph, 8 December 2013

The heightened political risk faced by the UK utility sector following the announcement of the Labour Party’s price freeze has materially impacted on the valuation of the sector and reversed the five year utility sector trade of Long UK / Short Europe. Total shareholder value lost so far amounts to between £7bn to £11bn. In our view, if the UK government is successful in politically neutralising Labour’s price freeze policy then some of this loss, but probably not all, could be regained. Some of the loss is likely to be permanent in our view because it is now apparent that UK politicians (like those in Europe) are unwilling to stand by the logic of their own energy policy and enforce the higher costs onto consumers that naturally follow from their de-carbonisation strategy. --Peter Atherton & Mulu Sun, Liberum Capital, 5 December 2013

It has long been obvious that by far the most delusional element in the Government’s shambles of an energy policy is how it subordinates all else to an obsession with building thousands of hopelessly inefficient and absurdly oversubsidised windmills. This is now only made worse by George Osborne’s bid to appease his backbenchers by transferring a fraction of the 100 per cent subsidy paid to those increasingly unpopular onshore wind farms to the giant offshore wind farms, which already receive a 200 per cent subsidy, making such electricity as they produce six times more expensive than that we get from coal. --Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 8 December 2013

The government will break the law if it waters down its plans to reduce greenhouse gases, its advisers say. The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) says there is no legal, environmental or economic case for lowering the fourth UK "carbon budget", set in 2011... Benny Peiser from the climate sceptic group GWPF told BBC News: "Given the EU's manifest reluctance to follow Britain's lead, there is no chance that the government will adopt new unilateral targets until and unless there is a legally binding agreement at the 2015 UN climate summit in Paris." --Roger Harrabin, BBC News, 11 December 2013

The Committee on Climate Change mistakenly believe that the UK’s post-2022 CO2 targets are legally binding under the Climate Change Act. This is not the case. When the fourth carbon budget was agreed in 2011, the government confirmed that these targets were conditional on the EU adopting similar targets. George Osborne has stated categorically that Britain will not “cut carbon emissions faster than our fellow countries in Europe.” Given the EU’s manifest reluctance to follow Britain’s lead, there is no chance that the government will adopt new unilateral targets. The decision on post-2020 CO2 targets is likely to be postponed until and unless there is a legally binding agreement at the 2015 UN climate summit in Paris. –Benny Peiser, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 11 December 2013

Will temperatures on Earth be dropping until the year 2100 to Little Ice Age levels, as Horst-Joachim Lüdecke, a scientist at Germany's Saarland University, predicted last week? Or will the temperatures only plunge until 2060, as Habibullo Abdussamatov, the head of Russia's Pulkovo Observatory, recently predicted? Or has the cooling already begun, and might it end as soon as 2030, as claimed by Anastasios Tsonis, head of the Atmospheric Sciences Group at the University of Wisconsin? --Lawrence Solomon, Huffington Post, 10 December 2013

Spain changed environmental rules to speed approvals on industrial projects from pig farms to oil rigs and for the first time will regulate shale drilling. “This is a step in the right direction,” Lars Hubert, exploration manager for shale at San Leon Energy Plc (SLE), said by telephone from Poland. “It should make permitting easier.” The Dublin-based company has four Spanish licenses to prospect for shale rock and six more awaiting approval. --Todd White, Bloomberg, 10 December 2013

China’s Renewables Industry Is Headed For Collapse

China’s aggressive push to “green” its economy and become the world leader in renewable energy is admired by many commentators in the West. Those admirers need to look again. The country’s solar panel industry, which went from zero to become the world’s largest in five years, has crashed, with most producers now suffering from negative profit margins, soaring debt levels and idle factories. China’s experience with wind power is little different. China’s green crash is a textbook example of what happens when central planners substitute their economic decrees for the complex supply and demand decisions of a market. --Patricia Adams and Brady Yauch, Financial Post 9 December 2013

China issued its first nation-wide blueprint for adapting to climate change, as governments around the world shift their efforts from focusing solely on curbing global warming to minimizing its impact on people and the environment. “The government needs to decide what are the most cost-effective measures and which measures will produce the most significant impact. China doesn’t have that much money or resources to address everything on this list.” --Wayne Ma, The Wall Street Journal 10 December 2013

97 per cent of climate activists in the pay of Big Oil shock!

By James Delingpole

This appeared here, and I would like to thank James for allowing me to publish his work.  RK

Unless you're a reader of the Guardian Environment's recently added section "Sacrifice your children to Mother Gaia. It's the only way!", you'll probably never have heard of the man who co-edits it, Dana Nuccitelli. But you'll certainly be familiar with his most famous bogus statistical artefact: the one he created with fellow climate alarmist John Cook to prove that 97 per cent of climate scientists really DO believe in global warming.

The claim has been roundly debunked. Apart from the problems with its statistical methodology, its findings are essentially meaningless. As Ben Pile points out in this characteristically measured, thoughtful piece,

"Nuccitelli’s survey results are either the result of a comprehensive failure to understand the climate debate, or an attempt to divide it in such a way as to frame the result for political ends."

Indeed, adds Pile, they represent:

"a cartoonish polarisation of positions within the climate debate."

How so? Well, as (climate sceptical) Bishop Hill once asked on Twitter: "Isn't everyone in the 97 per cent? I am." When the question was repeated at the Bishop's website by Met Office's Richard Betts, almost all those present agreed that they were. I would have done too, depending, of course, on precisely how you interpret the "consensus position" that "humans are causing global warming."

Well of course they are. Even if it's only down to the Urban Heat Island effect or the methane from beef cattle, humans almost certainly have an influence on climate. But so what? It always astonishes me when I see climate alarmists – even nice, well-meaning ones like Richard Betts – get all excited about this, as if somehow it represents a sudden concession by sceptics to the cause of warmism. If the alarmists spent any time paying attention to Watts Up With That, Bishop Hill or any of the myriad other sceptical websites out there, they would realise that this is what we've always thought. Our beef with the alarmists is not over the issue "Do humans contribute to climate change?" It's over "Do humans significantly contribute to climate chnage?" "Is there any evidence that this climate change is catastrophic or unprecedented?" "Do we need to do anything about it?" "Can we do anything about it?" "And are we sure that the cures currently being proposed aren't worse than the problem they're supposed to solve?"

But see, here we go again: here I am getting bogged down in a tedious and irrelevant non-argument of the kind the Warmists are always setting up in order to distract lay readers from more pertinent issues: like the fact that wind farms are just crap; that the evidence for catastrophic man-made global warming just hasn't materialised; that the polar bears aren't endangered; and so on.

Props to Dana Nuccitelli – he is, like his fellow climate activist Bob Ward – an absolute master of this straw man distraction technique. The term for it is "Clown Dancing" and Nuccitelli is the veritable Coco-and-Ronald-McDonald-in-a-sticky-embrace-with-Nureyev of the coulroterpsichorean art.

Anyway, all this is by the by. Another of the techniques used by Nuccitelli and his ilk is the "funded by Big Oil" meme. This is the silly notion, popularised by the likes of Al Gore and Michael Mann, that the main reason we climate sceptics say the pesky sceptical things we do is because we're paid to say so by various oil interests. Here is Nuccitelli in his Guardian column only last week on sceptical stalwart Pat Michaels:

"Michaels has admitted that his funding comes heavily from the fossil fuel industry"

(Something which, incidentally, Michaels denies. Since August 1 all of his salary has been paid by the Cato Institute. So, add "great fact-checking" to Dana's list of non-skills).

In truth, the exact opposite more commonly the case. Few corporate interests are quite so heavily in bed with Big Green as Big Oil – as you'll shortly be seeing when I do a number on Shell and its highly dubious behaviour re the UK shale gas industry – and it seems the hypocritical and disingenuous clown-dancer extraordinaire Nuccitelli is no exception.

He has tried to keep it quiet. But there's no – what's the word? Oh yeah…. – denying it: green activist Dana Nuccitelli is in the pay of Big Oil.

What else did the ’97% of scientists’ say?

By Barry Woods

I wonder just how many politicians, environmentalists or scientists who use the phrase ’97% of scientists’ (or those who more carefully use ‘active climate scientists’) to give weight to their arguments regarding climate change to the public, have any idea of the actual source of this sound bite.    Perhaps a few may say the ’Doran Survey’, which is the one of the most common references for this ’97% of active climate scientists’ phrase. In fact, the Doran EoS paper merely cites a MSc thesis for the actual source of this 97% figure and the actual survey.  To Read More….