an X thread by Chris Martz

One of the most pervasive myths is that 97% (or sometimes stated as >99%) of “climate scientists” agree that virtually all global warming since the mid-19th century is human-caused and that this warming is an existential threat to the welfare of the planet and all life on it.

Except, this statistic is largely made up, and no matter how many times it is quashed, it persists as a talking point in online forums. Just yesterday, I received a comment, saying,

🗨️ “𝐶𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑢𝑠 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑟 𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑙𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑜𝑢𝑡𝑤𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑠 97% 𝑜𝑓 𝑐𝑙𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑠𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑠 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑙𝑢𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑁𝐴𝑆𝐴?”

So, is this the same @NASA that lost 14 astronauts between two manned space shuttle launch failures in 1986 and 2003? Or the same NASA that recently enlisted @SpaceX’s help to get astronauts stuck in space back to Earth? That NASA?

Oof, that one is going to burn.

Sizzle sizzle. 🌶️

Anyways, let’s continue. . . 🚶‍♂️‍➡️

The “consensus of scientists” with respect to climate change is not organic. It was manufactured through questionable data processing methods.

When someone states the axiom “All scientists agree,” it is usually a reference to two particular studies, both of which were published in Environmental Research Letters (ERL): Cook et al. (2013) and Lynas et al. (2021).

Let’s look closer at these studies. 🔎

𝐓𝐇𝐄 “𝟗𝟕% 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐍𝐒𝐔𝐒”

The paper that got this all started was published in ERL in 2013.

🔗 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024

Led by cognitive psychologist John Cook, a Senior Research Fellow at the Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change and founder of the climate blog, Skeptical Science, he and eight co-authors skimmed the abstracts of 11,944 climate-related papers published between 1991 and 2011.

Of the 11,944 abstracts, 7,930 (66.4%) of them expressed 𝒏𝒐 𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 on the cause(s) of global warming since the pre-industrial era.

Of the remaining 4,014 abstracts which endorsed either anthropogenic global warming (referred to as AGW hereafter) or natural global warming, 3,896 (97.1%) endorsed AGW. Only 78 (1.9%) rejected AGW, while 40 (1%) of them expressed uncertainty on the physical drivers.

So, the “97% consensus” was contrived by omitting 7,930 (66.4%) of the 11,944 abstracts because those papers did not explicitly state a position on the cause(s) of global warming since the 1850s or so.

That’s sausage-making. 🌭

But, what about the >99% consensus?

Let’s find out. 🔎

𝐓𝐇𝐄 “>𝟗𝟗% 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐍𝐒𝐔𝐒”

Like Cook et al. (2013), Lynas et al. (2021) attempted to quantify the consensus on AGW.

🔗 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2966

In this synthesis, 3,000 climate papers were selected at random. In that batch, 282 were marked as false positives since they weren’t actually climate-related. That’s fair. So, the analysis continued with the remaining 2,718 peer-reviewed articles.

Of those, 1,869 (68.8%) of them took 𝒏𝒐 𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 on AGW. And, like Cook et al. (2013), all 1,869 papers neither endorsing nor rejecting AGW were discarded. Of the remaining 849 papers that did endorse a position, 845 (99.5%) of them sided with AGW while four did not.

So, like Cook et al. (2013), Lynas et al. (2021) ignored over 65% of the papers selected that didn’t take one position or the other on the physical driver(s) of global warming. By doing this, they could artificially manufacture a consensus on an issue where none actually exists if all of the relevant papers were considered.

The advantage that Lynas et al. (2021) has over the former is that each paper was examined thoroughly rather than just reading the abstract. This made for a more thorough analysis despite the same flawed methodology both used in ignoring the majority of papers that took a neutral stance.

🧵 1/3 (Keep reading) ⬇️

But, wait, there’s more. . .

Climate activists often argue that Cook et al. (2013) and Lynas et al. (2021) were justified in excluding the 66.4% and 68.8% of papers, respectively, that did not express a position on the causes of global warming, on the grounds that those studies were not focused on identifying or discussing causal links.

But, that’s hand-waving. 👋

Not all studies that endorsed anthropogenic global warming (AGW) specifically investigated the physical driver(s) of surface air temperature (SAT) changes since the mid-to-late-19th century. In fact, in order to qualify as endorsing (or rejecting) AGW, a paper merely needed to articulate a clear stance—whether in the abstract, main body or discussion / conclusion—regardless of whether or not the study’s focus was on physical drivers of temperature change.

You will find when reading through the literature that papers challenging the narrative—such as those on topics like climate model performance, temporal trends in extreme weather events and efficacy of “net zero” energy policies—will include a disclaimer stating that mankind’s carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions are the proximate cause of all global warming in order to pass through peer-review, as to not sow doubt in readers that climate change is an existential crisis.

As an example, a study on U.S. mainland hurricane landfalls might conclude that no increase in either the frequency or intensity has been observed since, say, 1900. However, the authors will include a statement, usually in the conclusion, something along the lines of,

🗨️ “𝐴𝑙𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝑈.𝑆. 𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑑 ℎ𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑘𝑒𝑠 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑠𝑙𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒𝑑 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑒 1900, 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑛𝑜 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑜𝑏𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑒𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑎𝑗𝑜𝑟 ℎ𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑓𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑠 𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑓𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑦, 𝑐𝑙𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑠 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑗𝑒𝑐𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑓𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒 𝑏𝑦 𝑥% 𝑎𝑠 𝑜𝑐𝑒𝑎𝑛 𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑡𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑠 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑢𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑒 𝑑𝑢𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑛ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑔𝑎𝑠 (𝐺𝐻𝐺) 𝑒𝑚𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠.”

Another point I should add about Cook et al. (2013) and Lynas et al. (2021) is that neither paper frame their findings as being a reflection of the “consensus of scientists.” Thus, when people claim that 97-99% of experts agree, that’s not actually what these studies purport. Rather, the papers actually [attempted to] quantify the “scientific consensus” on AGW, which is a consensus of what the published literature says. That is very different from a “consensus of scientists,” which is essentially an expert opinion poll.

What’s more, none of these reviews address the big question, which is whether or not global warming is [or will be] dangerous. Just because our greenhouse gas emissions 𝑚𝑎𝑦 have caused most of the warming observed since the onset of the Industrial Revolution says nothing about the level of danger or risk posed by it both short- and long-term.

So, what do we actually know about what scientists think about (a) the cause(s) of global warming and (b) whether or not they think it is dangerous?

Thankfully, we have some insight into that.

🧵 2/3 (Keep reading) ⬇️

This is where things get juicy. 🧃

While a “consensus of scientists” (i.e., expert opinion poll) is less robust than a “scientific consensus” (i.e., synthesis of what the published literature concludes), one advantage that polling scientists for their opinion has over the latter is that it gives them anonymity to freely express their views on highly contentious topics such as climate change without having to fear losing a job or having their paper(s) rejected by biased journal editors (the gatekeepers).

Professional organizations including the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and Royal Society often manufacture a “consensus of scientists” by taking a very strong stance on an issue without first consulting the opinions of their members.

One egregious instance of where this has occurred is within the AMS (which I am a member of).

On July 8, 2022, in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia v. EPA—which essentially limited the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from power plants—the former Executive Director of AMS issued a strongly worded “Special Statement” criticizing the Court’s ruling,

🗨️ “𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑨𝑴𝑺 𝒊𝒔 𝒅𝒆𝒆𝒑𝒍𝒚 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒄𝒆𝒓𝒏𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑼𝒏𝒊𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒔’ 𝒊𝒏𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒒𝒖𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒑𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒄𝒍𝒊𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒅𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒊𝒕 𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒆𝒔 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒. 𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑎𝑐𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑢𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑙𝑦—𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑏𝑦 𝑛𝑜 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦—𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑆𝑢𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑒 𝐶𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑡 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑊𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑉𝑖𝑟𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑎 𝑣. 𝐸𝑃𝐴.”

The letter continues, asserting without presenting a single shred of evidence, that,

🗨️ “𝑪𝒍𝒊𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆 𝒊𝒔 𝒆𝒙𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒐𝒓𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒍𝒚 𝒅𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒔 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑢𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒… 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒂𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒏𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒄𝒍𝒊𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆 𝒐𝒄𝒄𝒖𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒏𝒐𝒘 𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒄𝒉 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒔 𝑤𝑒 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒈𝒓𝒆𝒆𝒏𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒆 [sic] 𝒈𝒂𝒔𝒔𝒆𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒑𝒐𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒂𝒍 𝒅𝒓𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆: 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑢𝑛, 𝑣𝑜𝑙𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑒𝑠, 𝑎𝑒𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑙𝑠, 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑑-𝑢𝑠𝑒, 𝑜𝑟 𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑙 𝑣𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦.”

🔗https://ametsoc.org/ams/assets/File/aboutams/statements_pdf/AMS_Statement-EPA-2(1).pdf

And, of course, this politically motivated jab at the Supreme Court was issued without the consultation of every professional member of the AMS.

I know this because we actually have good insight into what AMS members think about (a) the cause(s) of global warming since the 1960s and (b) whether or not they think said warming is dangerous.

In January 2016, Dr. Ed Maibach and colleagues from George Mason University (GMU) polled all 7,682 (at that time) professional members of the AMS on their views on climate change. A handful of questions were asked with several follow-ups.

🔗https://gmuchss.az1.qualtrics.com/CP/File.php?F=F_cRR9lW0HjZaiVV3

The survey had a 53.3% participation rate and there were 4,092 respondents (p. 1). 📋

Here are a sample of the questions asked:

1⃣ 𝗥𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲, 𝗱𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴? (4,091 responses)

✅ Yes: 96%

❌ No: 1%

🤷 Don’t know: 3%

✦ [Follow-up, only asked to those who answered “Yes” to 1⃣] 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴? (3,854 responses)

🟢 Extremely sure: 58%

🔵 Very sure: 31%

🟡 Somewhat sure: 10%

🔴 Not sure: 0%

✦ [Follow-up, only asked to those who answered “No” to 1⃣] 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴? (53 responses)

🟢 Extremely sure: 13%

🔵 Very sure: 43%

🟡 Somewhat sure: 38%

🔴 Not sure: 6%

2⃣ 𝗗𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗼𝗰𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝟱𝟬 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗱… (4,004 responses)

🔴 Largely / entirely by humans (>81%): 29%

🟤 Mostly by humans (60-80%): 38%

🟡 Roughly equally natural + man-made: 14%

🟢 Mostly by natural events (60-80%): 7%

🔵 Largely / entirely by natural events (>81%): 5%

🤷 Don’t know: 6%

❌ Climate has not changed: 1%

6⃣ 𝗧𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗹𝗲𝗱𝗴𝗲, 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗮 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗱 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝟱𝟬 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀? (4,002 responses)

✅ Yes: 74%

❌ No: 11%

🤷 Don’t know: 15%

✦ [Follow-up, only asked to those who answered “Yes” to 6⃣] 𝗪𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗵 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗯𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁(𝘀) 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗮 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝟱𝟬 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀? (3,546 responses)

🟢 Exclusively beneficial: 0%

🔵 Primarily beneficial: 4%

🟡 Equally mixed, beneficial + harmful: 36%

🟤 Primarily harmful: 36%

🔴 Exclusively harmful: 2%

🤷 Don’t know: 21%

7⃣ 𝗧𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗹𝗲𝗱𝗴𝗲, 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗮 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝟱𝟬 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀? (3,963 responses)

✅ Yes: 78%

❌ No: 5%

🤷 Don’t know: 17%

✦ [Follow-up, only asked to those who answered “Yes” to 7⃣] 𝗪𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗵 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗯𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁(𝘀) 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗮 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝟱𝟬 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀? (3,761 responses)

🟢 Exclusively beneficial: 0%

🔵 Primarily beneficial: 2%

🟡 Equally mixed, beneficial + harmful: 29%

🟤 Primarily harmful: 47%

🔴 Exclusively harmful: 3%

🤷 Don’t know: 19%

So, based on this 2016 survey of professional AMS members, of those who responded,

• 96% of AMS members agree that climate change is occurring, regardless of the proximate cause.
• 67% of AMS members agree that change has primarily been human-caused, but the contribution estimates vary considerably. 67% is far from a consensus.
• 38% of AMS members agree that the impacts of climate change in their localities have been negative over the last 50 years. However, 40% said that the impacts have been mixed or primarily beneficial, and 21% said that they weren’t sure.
• What can we conclude about the “consensus of scientists” on climate change?
• Is climate change occurring? ✅
• Human activities contribute to global warming in at least 𝑺𝑶𝑴𝑬 capacity? ✅
• All global warming over the last half century has been man-made? ❌
• Climate change is [or will be] dangerous? ❌

Thus, just because global warming is real and we do play some role in causing it is still not a good enough justification to rapidly eliminate fossil fuels from our energy mix. There must be sufficient proof that this warming poses a great threat to the welfare of the planet and life on it, and that has yet to be provided.

So, when climate alarmists [most of whom have no qualifications of their own] claim that I am standing at odds with organizations like the AMS or NASA, quite frankly, I don’t care.

It is clear from the survey results presented above that there is a greater disagreement among scientists than you are led to believe by what both the gatekeepers allow to be published in journals and what higher-ups within scientific organizations claim is the universal position among their members without first consulting them.

🧵 3/3 (End)

Here’s the original thread below.

Editor’s Note:

Chris’s thread is excellent, but he is relatively new to the Climate Wars and doesn’t know about the precursor to Cook et al 2013, Naomi Oreskes’ 2004 paper, “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” published in Science magazine. It analyzed 928 scientific abstracts from 1993 to 2003. It found that none rejected the consensus on human-caused climate change, often cited as showing 100% agreement, though only 25% explicitly endorsed it, with 50% implicitly doing so. This study was pivotal in quantifying the consensus and bringing it into public discourse, influencing later efforts like Cook et al. (2013) to measure consensus percentages.

Stand on a seaside shore, watch the tide roll in and out, and I can see, and feel, the Moon’s force, cyclical, ever present and yet not easy to unravel.

There are now tide times, that accurately forecast the height of sea level for any location on Earth. Not the same, ever changing, yet able to be predicted.

A century ago, Arthur Thomas Doodson, a mathematician at the Liverpool Tidal Institute, worked out which cycles were most important and their order, decoding the ocean’s rhythms with astonishing precision. His work, pivotal to the D-Day landings of 1944, holds a key to understanding a hypothesis central to my new Theory of Climate Resilience: the ‘Moon’s Tidal Push’.

By connecting Doodson’s legacy to modern science, we see how the Moon’s influence, as obvious as the tides, could reshape climate science and revolutionise our capacity to forecast droughts and floods on land.

Doodson’s genius lay in decoding. He identified 388 tidal constituents—distinct gravitational rhythms from the Moon, Sun, and Earth’s motions, including the 18.6-year lunar declination cycle where the Moon’s angle to Earth’s equator shifts.

Each constituent, like a note in a symphony, contributes to the tide’s rise and fall. Using mechanical tide-predicting machines, Doodson integrated these factors to forecast tides for Normandy’s beaches, ensuring Allied troops landed safely at low tide on June 6, 1944. His calculations, correctly incorporated lunar cycles as short as hours and as long as decades, without a single computer.

If Doodson could work this out in the 1920s, imagine what we can do today. Modern computers can crunch numbers far beyond his analog machines, yet the Moon’s role in climate remains under-explored, overshadowed by CO2-focused models that don’t work. They have limited predictive capacity, but much political utility that is not serving us well.

The future is in rejecting the current paradigm and beginning to work from a new theory of climate resilience.

I have begun to detail the technical aspects of this at https://jennifermarohasy.substack.com/p/the-moons-tidal-push

By Andy May

My last post on the AMO and HadCRUT5 generated some interest and some criticism. As I explained, there are two common methods of computing the AMO index. One is to fit a least squares line to the AMO SSTs (sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic) and use the line to detrend the AMO, creating an index. This was the original methodology as described by Enfield, et al. and Gray, et al. It is the method I prefer because it makes no assumptions about the origin of the increasing SSTs in the North Atlantic.

The other method, recommended by Trenberth & Shea, is to subtract the GMST (global mean surface temperature anomaly) from the AMO temperature anomaly. They believe this is better because the GMST warming is due to “anthropogenic changes” which mask the natural AMO oscillation. Thus, they assume global warming is entirely man-made and can “fix” the AMO by subtracting it. After subtracting the GMST, there is still an oscillation, but it is reduced in amplitude (Trenberth & Shea, 2006).

Trenberth and Shea further criticize the original AMO index as having no physical meaning. While this is true, it is also unbiased and not tainted with unwarranted assumptions about the cause of global warming. In this post we will show that the long-term trend evident in the raw North Atlantic sea surface temperature record can also be removed using the well-documented Bray Solar Cycle. The long-term signal observed since the Little Ice Age ended in 1850 may be due to increasing solar activity, at least in part. I am not saying that the Bray Solar Cycle is the cause of the long-term warming within the raw AMO region SST data, I’m just saying it could be. This invalidates Trenberth and Shea’s assumption that human activities are the cause. It is their assumption that is in question.

In May & Crok (download the final submitted version here), we used the common NOAA/Kaplan AMO region unsmoothed actual AMO temperature record before detrending. Figure 1 shows the raw and unsmoothed ERSST v5 data for the AMO North Atlantic region (equator to 70N), the ERSST record for the AMO region is similar to the NOAA/Kaplan record. The HadSST 4.1 is different because it is not infilled and has gaps that jump around with time (see figure 3 here).

James Bray first described the Bray climate cycle in a classic paper in Nature in 1968. For more complete discussions of the Bray climate and solar cycle see here and here. He used fossil evidence of glacial advances and retreats around the world to show there was a distinct pattern of changes that was around 2500 years in length. He speculated, based on sunspot and auroral records that a matching solar cycle existed. Much later Ilya Usoskin established the Hallstatt or Bray solar cycle using ¹⁴C and ¹⁰Be cosmogenic isotope records that reflect solar activity. Usoskin found that the most likely recent Bray cycle low periods were centered about 1510AD and 810BC. We used these dates and a cosine function to create the Bray trend shown in figure 1. A plot showing both “Bray low” cold periods and more of the Bray solar cycle is shown in figure 2. Figure 2 is very oversimplified, figure 2 here provides more detail.

The computed trend hits its low points near Usoskin’s dates (±20 years) and is arbitrarily scaled from -1 to 1. We are not saying that all multi-century climate trends are due to the Bray Cycle or that it acts alone, long-term climate changes involve many complex factors (see here). This post is simply contesting Trenberth and Shea’s anthropogenic assumption and offers a simple, but plausible alternative. Trenberth and Shea did not consider that changes in the Sun may have contributed to recent warming.

In figure 3 we show the ERSST v5 AMO region SSTs detrended using the light blue dotted least squares line shown in figure 1.

In figure 4 we detrended the ERSST v5 AMO region SSTs with the Bray solar cycle line shown in orange in figure 1. The result is very similar to that shown in figure 3. They are not exactly the same and some of the difference between the two may be due to human activities or emissions, but the main point is that there is no reason to assume global warming is 100% human caused. Changes in solar activity that have been documented by James Bray and Ilya Usoskin and their colleagues could have caused some of the longer-term warming evident in the raw North Atlantic SSTs shown in figure 1.

Conclusions

The Bray Solar cycle trend shown is dimensionless and not a proper trend to use in detrending the AMO region, but thermometers did not exist in 1520AD in the depths of the Little Ice Age or in 810BC at the end of the Greek Dark Age so there is little we can do about that. The main point is that the Bray climate and solar cycles are well established and because of them a natural long-term warming trend is expected today. There are other long solar cycles, such as the 1,000-year Eddy cycle (see the yellow bars in figures 1, 2 & 5 here), but the Bray cycle is the strongest. The Eddy cycle is increasing currently as well and may be a factor in the current longer-term warming.

The Trenberth & Shea assumption that all global warming today is human-caused and should be removed from AMO index is unsubstantiated. It is just as likely that part of the longer-term warming trend is natural and due to increasing solar activity. Solar radiation can penetrate the ocean surface and warm the Atlantic to a depth of 100 meters or more. Greenhouse gas radiation cannot penetrate the ocean surface and causes much less warming of the ocean surface as a result. Thus, Watt per Watt, solar radiation is more effective, by a factor of 4 to 7 times according to Judith Lean, at warming the North Atlantic, a point often missed by the climate “consensus.”

Works Cited

Bray, J. R. (1968). Glaciation and Solar Activity since the Fifth Century BC and the solar cycle. Nature, 220. Retrieved from https://ift.tt/4vw6BHZ

Enfield, D., Mestas-Nunez, A. M., & Trimble, P. (2001). The Atlantic multidecadal oscillation and its relation to rainfall and river flows in the continental U.S. Geophysical Research Letters, 28(10). Retrieved from https://ift.tt/0B2xK3S

Gray, S. T., Graumlich, L. J., Betancourt, J. L., & Pederson, G. T. (2004). A tree-ring based reconstruction of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation since 1567 A.D. Geophys. Res. Lett., 31. doi:10.1029/2004GL019932

May, A., & Crok, M. (2024, May 29). Carbon dioxide and a warming climate are not problems. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 1-15. doi:10.1111/ajes.12579

Trenberth, K., & Shea, D. (2006). Atlantic hurricanes and natural variability in 2005. Geophysical Research Letters, 33. Retrieved from https://ift.tt/SU9MrsJ

Usoskin, I. G., Gallet, Y., Lopes, F., Kovaltsov, G. A., & Hulot, G. (2016). Solar activity during the Holocene: the Hallstatt cycle and its consequence for grand minima and maxima. Astronomy and Astrophysics, 587. doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201527295