Skeptical Science and the Lewandowsky Survey

Note:  This post was intended as a footnote for a later, longer post dealing with the Lewandowsky survey of 2010.  That has been much delayed, so I am publishing this now to clear it out of the way.

Some controversy has erupted over the claim that notice of Lewandowsky's survey on attitudes to climate change, the free market and a variety of conspiracy theories was posted on Skeptical Science.  As it stands, no internet accessible evidence dating from that time exists of such a post, although a tweet by John Cook notifying people of the survey on the 27th of August still exists.

Despite the lack of internet evidence, John Cook has claimed that a post was made on Skeptical Science in 2010.  His memory of the event is vague.  He initially was confused as to the year of posting, initially remembering it as 2011 rather than the correct 2010.  Further, he infers rather than remembers that the post was removed after the data was collected.  His memory that the survey was posted has been verified by Lewandowsky who has said,

"Hi Barry, the survey was done about 2 years ago, and I don’t have the link to SkS: I worked with John Cook directly at the time and; he posted it (and I made a note of it), but I don’t have the actual URL to the survey dating back to the time when he posted it.;I suspect he removed it when the survey was closed because then the link would have been dead."

Unfortunately the recollection of both Cook and Lewandowsky is faulty.  Following the method used by McIntyre I have examined the Way Back Machine record.  Rather than examining the home page as he does, however, I examined the much longer list of recent articles to be found in the "Latest Posts" in the sidebar.  Doing so for three dates (Aug 30th, 2010; Sept 8th, 2010; and Sept 23rd, 2010) provides a continuous overlapping record of Skeptical Science posts from Aug 17th to Sept 23rd that can be compared with the Skeptical Science Archive.  During that period, all articles listed on the Way Back Machine are still listed in the Skeptical Science Archives.

More Tol Gaffes

In a prior post, I examined how Tol claimed to find evidence that was "...indicative of the [poor] quality of manuscript preparation and review" in Cook et al, (2013) - evidence that upon examination consisted entirely in Tol's superficial reading of that paper.  Embarrassing enough, I guess, in a blog post, but that gaffe by Tol was in a "Comment" Tol was preparing for academic publication.  Tol is now in draft three of his comment, and has largely removed eliminated that blunder from the text. (He is still insisting that information from a co-author of the paper is irrelevant to his analysis.)  Draft three still contains several outright blunders, indicative of Tol's antagonistic intent and superficial analysis in his comment.  I examine two of those blunders below.

Tol on "Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature"

Richard Tol has been turning a series of intemperate and poorly supported criticisms of Cook et al (2013) into an intemperate and poorly supported comment, currently in its second draft.  Taken to task about the negativity of the criticisms, Tol responded that he did not have the option of constructive criticism because he does not have the resources.  Willard points out how absurd this excuse is.  In fact, I think he is over generous.  A constructive criticism need not formulate a better approach.  It need only show the likely impact of the relevant factors on the results of the paper being criticized.

In fact, it takes minimal resources and time to be constructive in this way.  Tol, however, at avoids every opportunity to lift above pure negativity in this way.  The consistent bias in his approach shows his claim that he does not have the resources for a constructive criticism is sheer bunk.

Tol's gaffe

Richard Tol has claimed that five out of the ten abstracts rated by Cook et al, 2013 were incorrectly rated.  Let's run through the list of those abstracts for him.

Salby's Ratio

Reposted from Skeptical Science.

On the 24th of July, 2012, Murry Salby gave a talk at the Sydney Institute.  He makes a large number of claims in the talk, some of which are even true, while some merely misrepresent the science.  Of these, one the worst  is his discussion of the relative contribution of CO2 (and other long lived greenhouse gases) to the greenhouse effect.  Another is his continued misunderstanding of what has caused the modern increase in CO2 concentrations.  I will be ignoring these, and other, errors.  In this post I focus only on a misrepresentation that cannot be explained by inadequate knowledge, or simple misunderstanding.

Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2 - Notes

Original article.

1) Timing
2) Correlation
3) Mass Balance
4) C14
5) C13

Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2

Reposted from Skeptical Science.

Anthropogenic CO2?

The human-caused origin (anthropogenic) of the measured increase in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 is a cornerstone of predictions of future temperature rises.  As such, it has come under frequent attack by people who challenge the science of global warming.  One thing noteworthy about those attacks is that the full range of evidence supporting the anthropogenic nature of the CO2 increase seems to slip from sight.  So what is the full range of supporting evidence?  There are ten main lines of evidence to be considered:

1. The start of the growth in CO2 concentration coincides with the start of the industrial revolution, hence anthropogenic;
2. Increase in CO2 concentration over the long term almost exactly correlates with cumulative anthropogenic emissions, hence anthropogenic;
3. Annual CO2 concentration growth is less than Annual CO2 emissions, hence anthropogenic;
4. Declining C14 ratio indicates the source is very old, hence fossil fuel or volcanic (ie, not oceanic outgassing or a recent biological source);
5. Declining C13 ratio indicates a biological source, hence not volcanic;
6. Declining O2 concentration indicate combustion, hence not volcanic;
7. Partial pressure of CO2 in the ocean is increasing, hence not oceanic outgassing;
8. Measured CO2 emissions from all (surface and beneath the sea) volcanoes are one-hundredth of anthropogenic CO2 emissions; hence not volcanic;
9. Known changes in biomass too small by a factor of 10, hence not deforestation; and
10. Known changes of CO2 concentration with temperature are too small by a factor of 10, hence not ocean outgassing.