Consensus Yet Again in May 2012

 In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
Galileo Galilei

The New York Times is promoting a billboard sponsored by Al Gore's Climate Reality Project. The billboard asks: “Who to believe on climate? Heartland ... or EVERY National Scientific Academy in the world?”

What questions were put to all the members of all the National Scientific Academies? 

What independent third party non-partisan pollster administered the questions?

When were these polls completed? In what countries?

What were the results? Where can they be found online?

What was the percentage of respondents in each country?

Did they ask who believed that the human burning of fossil fuels was the primary cause of the late 20th century global warming?

The answers to the above questions are unavailable because no such polls were ever done. 

The governors of the National Academies issued the concurrence with the man-made global warming view as a political statement.

Why?

Read here

And how are people feeling about the issue of global warming after all the scare stories and hype? Check out Obama.

And now you know the unreported part of the story.

In another consensus study conducted by Naomi Oreskes she counted 10,000 papers supporting AGW. How many did she find that did not and why did she not report that number? This oversight betrays a bias rather than  an attempt to elucidate the truth. A German meteorologist, Klaus-Eckart Puls, recently remarked: "Ten years ago I simply parroted what the IPCC told us. One day I started checking the facts and data – first I started with a sense of doubt but then I became outraged when I discovered that much of what the IPCC and the media were telling us was sheer nonsense and was not even supported by any scientific facts and measurements. To this day I still feel shame that as a scientist I made presentations of their science without first checking it."


How many more scientists who have supported AGW are in the same boat? How many of the often presented figure of 97% are like him? In the debate over the proximate causes of modern climate change there is no doubt that someone is in denial. In this case is it the side that is leveling the accusation that is indulging in the practice? Can we say projection? They claim reason but exhibit Aristotelian fallacies in defense of their position such as ad hominems and painting with a broad brush. And yet they think it is those skeptical of the 'consensus' who are in denial. They believe in the consensus as if that is sufficient. They think they have the weight of the evidence on their side because of it. But consensus is not evidence. Observation, experiments and studies constitute evidence. And there is evidence on both sides.

Interestingly, a year 2000 peer reviewed study has surfaced, published by the American National Academy of Science, authored by none other than James Hansen, that shows NASA knew global warming is caused by non-CO2 factors. Well, gollllleee! 

There is no consensus on man-made global warming. But one thing is sure: both sides can't both be right.  

Let us not forget that reality is the final arbiter. 

The location of this version of an acronym for CAGW eludes me: Conning A Gullible World 

And so it is.