97% Study Falsely Classifies Scientists' Papers, according to the scientists that published them

The paper, Cook et al. (2013) 'Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature' searched the Web of Science for the phrases "global warming" and "global climate change" then categorizing these results to their alleged level of endorsement of AGW. These results were then used to allege a 97% consensus on human-caused global warming.

To get to the truth, I emailed a sample of scientists whose papers were used in the study and asked them if the categorization by Cook et al. (2013) is an accurate representation of their paper. Their responses are eye opening and evidence that the Cook et al. (2013) team falsely classified scientists' papers as "endorsing AGW", apparently believing to know more about the papers than their authors.

Update 1: Dr. Tol also found problems with the classifications
Update 2: Dr. Morner, Soon and Carlin also falsely classified

Craig D. Idso
Ph.D. Geography
Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change

Dr. Idso, your paper 'Ultra-enhanced spring branch growth in CO2-enriched trees: can it alter the phase of the atmosphere’s seasonal CO2 cycle?' is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; "Implicitly endorsing AGW without minimizing it".

Is this an accurate representation of your paper?

Idso: "That is not an accurate representation of my paper. The papers examined how the rise in atmospheric CO2 could be inducing a phase advance in the spring portion of the atmosphere's seasonal CO2 cycle. Other literature had previously claimed a measured advance was due to rising temperatures, but we showed that it was quite likely the rise in atmospheric CO2 itself was responsible for the lion's share of the change. It would be incorrect to claim that our paper was an endorsement of CO2-induced global warming."

Nicola Scafetta
Ph.D. Physics
Research Scientist, ACRIM Science Team

Dr. Scafetta, your paper 'Phenomenological solar contribution to the 1900–2000 global surface warming' is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; "Explicitly endorses and quantifies AGW as 50+%"

Is this an accurate representation of your paper?

Scafetta: "Cook et al. (2013) is based on a strawman argument because it does not correctly define the IPCC AGW theory, which is NOT that human emissions have contributed 50%+ of the global warming since 1900 but that almost 90-100% of the observed global warming was induced by human emission.

What my papers say is that the IPCC view is erroneous because about 40-70% of the global warming observed from 1900 to 2000 was induced by the sun. This implies that the true climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling is likely around 1.5 C or less, and that the 21st century projections must be reduced by at least a factor of 2 or more. Of that the sun contributed (more or less) as much as the anthropogenic forcings.

The "less" claim is based on alternative solar models (e.g. ACRIM instead of PMOD) and also on the observation that part of the observed global warming might be due to urban heat island effect, and not to CO2.

By using the 50% borderline a lot of so-called "skeptical works" including some of mine are included in their 97%."

Any further comment on the Cook et al. (2013) paper?

Scafetta: "Please note that it is very important to clarify that the AGW advocated by the IPCC has always claimed that 90-100% of the warming observed since 1900 is due to anthropogenic emissions. While critics like me have always claimed that the data would approximately indicate a 50-50 natural-anthropogenic contribution at most.

What it is observed right now is utter dishonesty by the IPCC advocates. Instead of apologizing and honestly acknowledging that the AGW theory as advocated by the IPCC is wrong because based on climate models that poorly reconstruct the solar signature and do not reproduce the natural oscillations of the climate (AMO, PDO, NAO etc.) and honestly acknowledging that the truth, as it is emerging, is closer to what claimed by IPCC critics like me since 2005, these people are trying to get the credit.

They are gradually engaging into a metamorphosis process to save face.

Now they are misleadingly claiming that what they have always claimed was that AGW is quantified as 50+% of the total warming, so that once it will be clearer that AGW can only at most be quantified as 50% (without the "+") of the total warming, they will still claim that they were sufficiently correct.

And in this way they will get the credit that they do not merit, and continue in defaming critics like me that actually demonstrated such a fact since 2005/2006."

Nir J. Shaviv
Ph.D. Astrophysics
Associate Professor, Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Dr. Shaviv, your paper 'On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget' is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; "Explicitly endorses but does not quantify or minimise"

Is this an accurate representation of your paper?

Shaviv: "Nope... it is not an accurate representation. The paper shows that if cosmic rays are included in empirical climate sensitivity analyses, then one finds that different time scales consistently give a low climate sensitiviity. i.e., it supports the idea that cosmic rays affect the climate and that climate sensitivity is low. This means that part of the 20th century should be attributed to the increased solar activity and that 21st century warming under a business as usual scenario should be low (about 1°C).

I couldn't write these things more explicitly in the paper because of the refereeing, however, you don't have to be a genius to reach these conclusions from the paper."

Any further comment on the Cook et al. (2013) paper?

Shaviv: "Science is not a democracy, even if the majority of scientists think one thing (and it translates to more papers saying so), they aren't necessarily correct. Moreover, as you can see from the above example, the analysis itself is faulty, namely, it doesn't even quantify correctly the number of scientists or the number of papers which endorse or diminish the importance of AGW."

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Update 1:

Dr. Tol also found problems with the classifications,

Richard S.J. Tol
Ph.D. Economics
Professor of the Economics of Climate Change, Vrije Universiteit

Dr. Tol found 7 papers falsely classified and 112 omitted,

Tol: "WoS lists 122 articles on climate change by me in that period. Only 10 made it into the survey.

I would rate 7 of those as neutral, and 3 as strong endorsement with quantification. Of the 3, one was rated as a weak endorsement (even though it argues that the solar hypothesis is a load of bull). Of the 7, 3 were listed as an implicit endorsement and 1 as a weak endorsement.

...from 112 omitted papers, one strongly endorses AGW and 111 are neutral"

On Twitter Dr. Tol had a heated exchange with one of the "Skeptical Science" authors of Cook et al. (2013) - Dana Nuccitelli,

Tol: "@dana1981 I think your data are a load of crap. Why is that a lie? I really think so."

Tol: "@dana1981 I think your sampling strategy is a load of nonsense. How is that a misrepresentation? Did I falsely describe your sample?"

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Update 2:

Dr. Morner, Dr. Soon and Dr. Carlin were also falsely classified,

Nils-Axel Morner
Ph.D. Quaternary Geology
Professor Emeritus of Palegeophysics and Geodynamics, Stockholm University

Dr. Morner, your paper 'Estimating future sea level changes from past records' is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as having; "No Position on AGW".

Is this an accurate representation of your paper?

Morner: "Certainly not correct and certainly misleading. The paper is strongly against AGW, and documents its absence in the sea level observational facts. Also, it invalidates the mode of sea level handling by the IPCC."

Willie Soon
Ph.D. Rocket Science
Astrophysicist and Geoscientist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Dr. Soon, your paper 'Polar Bear Population Forecasts: A Public-Policy Forecasting Audit' is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as having; "No Position on AGW".

Is this an accurate representation of your paper?

Soon: "I am sure that this rating of no position on AGW by CO2 is nowhere accurate nor correct. Rating our serious auditing paper from just a reading of the abstract or words contained in the title of the paper is surely a bad mistake. Specifically, anyone can easily read the statements in our paper as quoted below:

"For example, Soon et al. (2001) found that the current generation of GCMs is unable to meaningfully calculate the effects that additional atmospheric carbon dioxide has on the climate. This is because of the uncertainty about the past and present climate and ignorance about relevant weather and climate processes."

Here is at least one of our positions on AGW by CO2: the main tool climate scientists used to confirm or reject their CO2-AGW hypothesis is largely not validated and hence has a very limited role for any diagnosis or even predicting real-world regional impacts for any changes in atmospheric CO2.

I hope my scientific views and conclusions are clear to anyone that will spend time reading our papers. Cook et al. (2013) is not the study to read if you want to find out about what we say and conclude in our own scientific works."

Any further comment on the Cook et al. (2013) paper?

Soon: "No extra comment on Cook et al. (2013) is necessary as it is not a paper aiming to help anyone understand the science."

Alan Carlin
Ph.D. Economics, MIT
Senior Operations Research Analyst, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Retired)

Dr. Carlin, your paper 'A Multidisciplinary, Science-Based Approach to the Economics of Climate Change' is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; "Explicitly endorses AGW but does not quantify or minimize".

Is this an accurate representation of your paper?

Carlin: "No, if Cook et al's paper classifies my paper, 'A Multidisciplinary, Science-Based Approach to the Economics of Climate Change' as "explicitly endorses AGW but does not quantify or minimize," nothing could be further from either my intent or the contents of my paper. I did not explicitly or even implicitly endorse AGW and did quantify my skepticism concerning AGW. Both the paper and the abstract make this clear. The abstract includes the following statement:

"The economic benefits of reducing CO2 emissions may be about two orders of magnitude less than those estimated by most economists because the climate sensitivity factor (CSF) is much lower than assumed by the United Nations because feedback is negative rather than positive and the effects of CO2 emissions reductions on atmospheric CO2 appear to be short rather than long lasting."

In brief, I argue that human activity may increase temperatures over what they would otherwise have been without human activity, but the effect is so minor that it is not worth serious consideration.

I would classify my paper in Cook et al's category (7): Explicit rejection with quantification. My paper shows that two critical components of the AGW hypothesis are not supported by the available observational evidence and that a related hypothesis is highly doubtful. I hence conclude that the AGW hypothesis as a whole is not supported and state that hypotheses not supported by evidence should be rejected.

With regard to quantification, I state that the economic benefits of reducing CO2 are about two orders of magnitude less than assumed by pro-AGW economists using the IPCC AR4 report because of problems with the IPCC science. Surely 1/100th of the IPCC AGW estimate is less than half of the very minor global warming that has occurred since humans became a significant source of CO2."

Any further comment on the Cook et al. (2013) paper?

Carlin: "If Cook et al's paper is so far off in its classification of my paper, the next question is whether their treatment of my paper is an outlier in the quality of their analysis or is representative. Since I understand that five other skeptic paper authors whose papers were classified by Cook et al. (Idso, Morner, Scaffeta, Soon, and Shaviv) have similar concerns to date, the classification problems in Cook's paper may be more general. Further, in all six cases the effect of the misclassifications is to exaggerate Cook et al's conclusions rather than being apparently random errors due to sloppy analysis. Since their conclusions are at best no better than their data, it appears likely that Cook et al's conclusions are exaggerated as well as being unsupported by the evidence that they offer. I have not done an analysis of each of the papers Cook et al. classified, but I believe that there is sufficient evidence concerning misclassification that Cook et al's paper should be withdrawn by the authors and the data reanalyzed, preferably by less-biased reviewers.

One possible explanation for this apparent pattern of misclassification into "more favorable" classifications in terms of supporting the AGW hypothesis is that Cook et al. may have reverse engineered their paper. That is, perhaps the authors started by deciding the "answer" they wanted (97 percent) based on previous alarmist studies on the subject. They certainly had strong motivation to come up with this "answer" given the huge propaganda investment by alarmists in this particular number. So in the end they may have concluded that they needed to reclassify enough skeptic papers into "more favorable" classifications in order to reach this possibly predetermined "answer" and hoped that these misclassifications would go unnoticed by the world's press and governmental officials trumpeting their scientifically irrelevant conclusions. Obviously, whether this was actually done is known only to the authors, but I offer it as a hypothesis that might explain the apparently widespread and one-directional misclassifications of skeptic papers. Mere sloppy analysis should have resulted in a random pattern of misclassifications."

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Update 3:

Further analysis reveals that Cook et al. (2013) was created as a propaganda campaign not a scientific study and is shown to be statistically worthless by Dr. Tol,

Cook's 97% Consensus Study Game Plan Revealed (PopularTechnology.net, June 4, 2013)

The Statistical Destruction of the 97% Consensus (PopularTechnology.net, June 1, 2013)

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Update 4:

Dr. Tol has published a scathing editorial in the Guardian and a peer-reviewed paper in the journal Energy Policy completely discrediting the shoddy methodology employed by Cook et al. (2013) and showed their findings to be worthless,

The claim of a 97% consensus on global warming does not stand up (The Guardian, June 6, 2014)

Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: A re-analysis
(Energy Policy, Volume 73, pp. 701–705, October 2014)
- Richard S. J. Tol

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Rebuttal:

Alarmists continue to try and quote mine Dr. Scafetta's comments when he is clearly saying things that AGW "consensus" proponents do not support:

1. The sun can account for 40-70% of the observed warming.
2. The part of the warming not caused by the sun can be due to the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect and not CO2.
3. Climate sensitivity to CO2 is low at 1.5 C or less.
4. Climate models poorly reconstruct the solar signature and do not reproduce natural oscillations of the climate (AMO, PDO, NAO etc.)
5. IPCC 21st century projections must be reduced by at least a factor of 2 or more.

Not to mention his paper was roundly attacked in Alarmist blogs, such as RealClimate and listed as an "Anti-AGW paper" by one of the most prolific abstract raters of Cook et al. (2013), Ari Jokimäki.

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Conclusion: The Cook et al. (2013) study is obviously littered with falsely classified papers making its conclusions baseless and its promotion by those in the media misleading.

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CVs of Scientists:

Alan Carlin, B.S. Physics, California Institute of Technology (1959); Ph.D. Economics (Thesis: "An evaluation of U.S. government aid to India"), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1964); Foreign Area Fellow, Ford Foundation (1960-1963); Economist, The RAND Corporation (1963-1971); Director, Implementation Research Division, Office of Research and Development, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC (1971-1974); Editorial Board, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (2 years); Founding Member, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (1979); Senior Operations Research Analyst, Office of Research and Development and Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC (1974-2010)

Craig D. Idso, B.S. Geography, Arizona State University (1994); M.S. Agronomy, University of Nebraska - Lincoln (1996); Ph.D. Geography (Thesis: "Amplitude and phase changes in the seasonal atmospheric CO₂ cycle in the Northern Hemisphere"), Arizona State University (1998); President, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (1998-2001); Climatology Researcher, Office of Climatology, Arizona State University (1999-2001); Director of Environmental Science, Peabody Energy (2001-2002); Lectured in Meteorology, Arizona State University; Lectured in Physical Geography, Mesa and Chandler-Gilbert Community Colleges; Member, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); Member, American Geophysical Union (AGU); Member, American Meteorological Society (AMS); Member, Arizona-Nevada Academy of Sciences (ANAS); Member, Association of American Geographers (AAG); Member, Ecological Society of America (ECA); Member, The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi; Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (2002-Present); Lead Author, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (2009-Present)

Nicola Scafetta, Laurea in Physics, Università di Pisa, Italy (1997); Ph.D. Physics (Thesis: "An entropic approach to the analysis of time series"), University of North Texas (2001); Research Associate, Physics Department, Duke University (2002-2004); Research Scientist, Physics Department, Duke University (2005-2009); Visiting Lecturer, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (2008, 2010); Visiting Lecturer, University of North Carolina Greensboro (2008-2009); Adjunct Professor, Elon University (2010); Assistant Adjunct Professor, Duke University (2010-2012); Member, Editorial Board, Dataset Papers in Geosciences Journal; Member, American Physical Society (APS); Member, American Geophysical Union (AGU); Research Scientist, ACRIM Science Team (2010-Present)

Nils-Axel Morner, Fil. Kand. [B.A.], Stockholm University, Sweden (1962); Fil. Lic. [M.A.] Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden (1965); Fil. Dr. [Ph.D.] Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden (1969); Associate Professor of Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden (1969-1971); Associate Professor of General and Historical Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden (1971-1980); Secretary, Neotectonics Commission, INQUA (1977-1981); Editor, Bulletin of the INQUA Neotectonics Commission (1978-1996); Professor of General and Historical Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden (1981-1991); President, Neotectonics Commission, INQUA (1981-1991); Chairman, Nordic Historical Climatology Group (1989); Professor and Head, Department of Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics, Stockholm University, Sweden (1991-2005); Co-ordinator, INTAS project on Geomagnetism and Climate (1999-2003); President, Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, INQUA (1999–2003); Expert Reviewer, IPCC (2001, 2007); Professor Emeritus of Palegeophysics and Geodynamics, Stockholm University, Sweden (2005-Present); Golden Chondrite of Merit Award, University of the Algarve, Portugal (2008)

Nir J. Shaviv, B.A Physics Summa Cum Laude, Israel Institute of Technology (1990); M.S Physics, Israel Institute of Technology (1994); Ph.D. Astrophysics (Thesis: "The Origin of Gamma Ray Bursts"), Israel Institute of Technology (1996); The Wolf Award for excellence in PhD studies (1996); Lee DuBridge Prize Fellow, Theoretical Astrophysics Group, California Institute of Technology (1996-1999); Post Doctoral Fellow, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Toronto (1999-2001); The Beatrice Tremaine Award, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (2000); Senior Lecturer, Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (2001-2006); The Siegfried Samuel Wolf Lectureship in nuclear physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (2004); Associate Professor, Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (2006-2012); Professor, Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (2012-Present)

Richard S.J. Tol, M.Sc. Econometrics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (1992); Ph.D. Economics (Thesis: "A decision-analytic treatise of the enhanced greenhouse effect"), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (1997); Researcher, Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (1992-2008); Visiting Researcher, Canadian Centre for Climate Research, University of Victoria, Canada (1994); Visiting researcher, Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment, University College London, United Kingdom (1995); Acting Programme Manager Quantitative Environmental Economics, Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands (1998-1999); Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University (1998-2000); Board Member, Centre for Marine and Climate Research, Hamburg University (2000-2006); Lead Author, IPCC (2001); Contributing Author and Expert Reviewer, IPCC (2001, 2007); Associate Editor, Environmental and Resource Economics Journal (2001-2006); Adjunct Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University (2000-2008); Michael Otto Professor of Sustainability and Global Change, Department of Geosciences and Department of Economics, Hamburg University, Germany (2000-2006); Editor, Energy Economics Journal (2003-Present); Visiting Research Scholar, Princeton Environmental Institute and Visiting Professor, Department of Economics, Princeton University (2005-2006); Research Professor, Economic and Social Research Institute, Ireland (2006-2011); Research Fellow, Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP), Center for Global Trade Analysis, Department of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University (2007-2010); Associate Editor, Economics E-Journal (2007-Present); Adjunct Professor, Department of Economics, Trinity College, Ireland (2010-2011); Professor of the Economics of Climate Change, Institute for Environmental Studies and Department of Spatial Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands (2008-Present); Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Sussex, Falmer, United Kingdom (2012-Present)

Wei-Hock "Willie" Soon, B.Sc. Aerospace Engineering Cum Laude, University of Southern California (1985); M.Sc. Aerospace Engineering, University of Southern California (1987); Ph.D. Rocket Science with distinction (Thesis: "Non-equilibrium kinetics in high-temperature gases"); Graduate Scholastic Award, IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society (1989); Rockwell Dennis Hunt Scholastic Award, University of Southern California (1991); Member, Tau Beta Phi (National Engineering Honor Society); Member, Sigma Gamma Tau (National Aerospace Engineering Honor Society); Post-Doctoral Fellow, Solar, Stellar, and Planetary Sciences Division, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (1991-1996); Astronomer, Mount Wilson Observatory (1992-2009); Astrophysicist and Geoscientist, Solar, Stellar, and Planetary Sciences Division, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (1997-Present); Visiting Professor, Department of Science and Environmental Studies, University of Putra, Malaysia (1999-2000); Annual Reviewer, Progress in Physical Geography Journal (2001-2002); Senior Scientist, George C. Marshall Institute (2001-2003); Former Member, American Astrophysical Society (AAS); Former Member, American Geophysical Union (AGU); Former Member, International Astronomical Union (IAU); Receiving Editor, New Astronomy Journal (2002-Present); Member, CANSTAT Advisory Board, Fraser Institute (2002-Present); Member, Advisory Board, National Center for Public Policy Research (2002); Smithsonian Institution Award for "Official Recognition of Work Performance Reflecting a High Standard of Accomplishment" (2003); Science Director, Center for Science and Public Policy (2003-2006); Petr Beckmann Award for "Courage and Achievement in Defense of Scientific Truth and Freedom" (2004); Chief Scientist, Science and Public Policy Institute (2007-2010); Senior Visiting Fellow, State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Xiamen University, China (2013-2014); Courage in Defense of Science Award (2014)