Climate Lies: The myth of the "97% of Scientists Agree"
On May 16th, 2013, Barack Obama famously tweeted that “97% of Scientists agree: climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.” Every word of this tweet was a lie. The 97% Consensus figure came from a May 15th, 2013 study by John Cook - which Obama linked to in his tweet. If 97% of scientists really thought “climate change is real, man-made and dangerous” that would be quite troubling. But nowhere in the study was anything said about global warming being dangerous.
Additionally, while the 97% figure was widely quoted, the criteria by which Cook achieved his figure was totally lacking in scientific clarity – or honesty. To be counted as affirming the global warming consensus question, scientists only needed to agree that “carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that human activities have warmed the planet to some unspecified extent”. That’s it. If, as a scientist, you agreed that human activity had some portion – any portion – of responsibility for global warming you were included in the 97% consensus. We’re shocked the figure wasn’t 100% based on the actual questions.
Cooke’s underlying methodology is also highly problematic and less well known. Here is a quote from Cook himself: “66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW [Anthropogenic (man-made) Global Warming], 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.” This is where the “97% of scientists agree” narrative came from - even if they aren’t agreeing to what Cooke later claimed they were.
So, in reality, two-thirds of scientists expressed no opinion on human contribution to global warming. But rather than highlight that two-thirds of the scientists were not endorsing the Climate change narrative, Cooke simply excluded them from his study - as if they didn’t even exist. The remaining one-third of the scientists in the study’s group was then used to arrive at the 97% figure. Needless to say, the much-touted figure of 97% is not only wildly over-stated – it is meaningless.
But there’s a deeper, much more problematic element to the whole Climate Change Narrative. In 2009, there was a hacking and subsequent leaking of emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (or CRU) in the UK. East Anglia has been responsible for the determination and compiling of most of the historical underlying global temperature data used by the IPCC climate models.
Most people assume that temperature data is widely compiled and cross-checked. In fact, a tiny subset of researchers across a very small number of institutions are behind the production of this historical temperature data. As noted by The Telegraph, “the CRU’s director is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC’s key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely.”
Some very interesting - some might say damning - comments by the people compiling this temperature data were released in the hack – dubbed Climategate: “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temperatures to each series for the last 20 years…to hide the decline.”
“I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the temperature proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite so simple. We don’t have a lot of temperature proxies that come right up to today and those that do have some unexpected changes in response that do not match the recent warming… I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago.”
“What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multi-decadal natural fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably…” In yet another email, a researcher wrote that “The two [data fact checkers] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone. . . . We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind.” “I have deleted loads of emails.”
A number of formal investigations were undertaken – three in the UK, one in North America at Penn State and one internationally for the IPCC. The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review, commissioned and paid for by the University of East Anglia, exonerated the University of East Anglia of any wrongdoing as regards the emails. A Penn State University investigation reached the same conclusion. Both institutions receive tens of millions in federal global warming research funding. No actions were taken other than to recommend procedural changes.
The House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee reached a different conclusion. “The leaked e-mails appear to show a culture of non-disclosure at CRU and instances where information may have been deleted to avoid disclosure.” But once again, no action was taken. The IPCC investigation was led by the Inter Academy Council (IAC) – a UN group designed to act as a public relations panel for national academies of science. It was commissioned by the IPCC to investigate their procedures.
The IAC concluded that “many of the conclusions in the “Current Knowledge about Future Impacts” section of the Working Group II Summary for Policy Makers are based on unpublished or non-peer-reviewed literature.” They also found that “authors reported high confidence in some statements for which there is little evidence. Furthermore, by making vague statements that were difficult to refute, authors were able to attach “high confidence” to the statements.” An independent analysis of the IAC Report noted that “once the tall weeds of diplomatic niceties are pulled back, the IAC report contains a profound critique of the IPCC.”
A damning independent, lengthy and detailed report was issued by the Global Warming Policy Foundation – authored by Andrew Montford with a foreword by Lord Turnbull titled The Climategate Inquiries. In it they provided a highly critical commentary on the IPCC, writing that “While the IPCC presents itself as a synthesis of the work of over 2,000 scientists it appears that in practice it is a process in which a much smaller number of scientists, whose work and careers are intertwined, dominate the assessment and seek to repel those who are situated elsewhere in the spectrum of scientific opinion. There is no transparent process for selection of participants in the assessments. Its handling of uncertainty is flawed and outcomes that are highly speculative are presented with unwarranted certainty.”
There was also an investigation conducted by the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Unlike many of the other reports, The Minority Staff Report didn’t pull any punches, noting that “The scientists involved in the CRU controversy violated fundamental ethical principles governing taxpayer-funded research and, in some cases, may have violated federal laws. In addition to these findings, we believe the emails and accompanying documents seriously compromise the IPCC-backed ’consensus’ and its central conclusion that anthropogenic emissions are inexorably leading to environmental catastrophes.”
The Report stated that “the CRU documents and emails reveal, among other things, unethical and potentially illegal behavior by some of the world‘s preeminent climate scientists.” The Senate Committee accused the scientists of “obstructing release of damaging data and information, manipulating data to reach preconceived conclusions, colluding to pressure journal editors who published work questioning the climate science ‘consensus’, and assuming activist roles to influence the political process.” A damning report.
Several years later this same Senate Committee released a 92-page Report titled The Chain of Environmental Command: How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EPA. Although older, it remains one of the few deep dives into the funding behind the Climate Change Agenda of the Left. The Report notes that “an exclusive group of wealthy individuals, directs the far-left environmental movement. The members of this elite liberal club funnel their fortunes through private foundations to execute their personal political agenda, which is centered around restricting the use of fossil fuels in the United States.”
The Senate Committee found that “the Billionaire’s Club has established a dozen prominent private foundations with huge sums of money at their disposal to spend on environmental causes.” It also shined a light on the Environmental Grantmakers Association (or EGA) which was described as “a place where wealthy donors meet and coordinate the distribution of grants to advance the environmental movement. EGA encourages the use of prescriptive grantmaking. It is a secretive organization, refusing to disclose their membership list to Congress.”
The summary listing of findings is absolutely alarming - and runs four pages in length. And similar to Obama’s installation of hard-core leftists at the DOJ, the Senate Report details how “The Obama Administration has installed an audacious green-revolving door among senior officials at EPA, which has become a valuable asset for the environmental movement and its wealthy donors.”
The Report also notes that “Some of the most valued services activists provide the Billionaire’s Club includes promulgation of propaganda, which creates an artificial echo chamber; appearance of a faux grassroots movement; access to nimble and transient groups under fiscal sponsorship arrangements; distance/anonymity between donations made by well-known donors and activities of risky activist groups; and above all – the ability to leverage tens of millions of dollars in questionable foreign funding.
As the Senate Report observes, this creates “the manufacturing of an artificial grassroots movement where it is not the citizen’s interest that drives the movement; rather, it is part of a well-funded national strategy.”
The Senate’s claim of a Climate Echo Chamber is well-founded. We’ve experienced it first-hand. At one point we engaged in an exercise of going through X accounts from various climate activists. What we found was a well-orchestrated – and intertwined – Echo Chamber. We also discovered a number of interconnected institutions – Climate Accountability Institute, Union of Concerned Scientists, 350.org and InsideClimate News – all appear to get a significant portion of their funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund - a funding echoed by the previously discussed Senate Report.
InsideClimate News produces ongoing articles, providing continual news fodder for the other climate narrative participants. They are not a traditional news organization. As their site notes, they are “supported primarily by grants for general support from charitable foundations and tax deductible donations from our readers.
These accounts on X send out articles, some actually written by the participants – including InsideClimate News – some by third-parties. One tweets it, then the other and the other – and so on. No individual gives any evidence of connection to the other person. The intent is to act as independent and unaffiliated scientific parties – who have all formulated agreement on the same issue. In short, they act to create a well-organized Echo Chamber. Endlessly tweeting about the latest heat wave, flood or storm and presenting these natural global occurrences as definitive proof of Climate Change and Global Warming.
These coordinated activities, designed to create an echo chamber of climate hysteria, come from the same groups – with the same funding. And the same agenda. None of this is about facts. It’s about creating an actionable public perception. These people are not honest scientists. Their studies contain a contortion of facts, blending questionable data with flawed methodologies – the Scientific Method ignored. These people are actually well-funded lobbyists.