JoNova

A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).

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What does it take for a worldwide consensus? Just 75 opinions.

It’s true, 97%-of-experts agree the world is going to hell in a handcart. It’s part of the frontline toolkit used by the Big Scare Campaign.

Do a google search on “97% of climate scientists agree” and 3,920,000 links turn up.

Like everything in the Big Scare Campaign, a tiny semi-dried kernel of truth becomes inflated, distorted and repeated into a  planetary group chant. Here’s how one small online survey was distilled to the point where the opinions of 75 climate scientists doing a 2 minute online survey could be headlined up as: “97 percent of scientists say man-made climate change is real”. (Worse — for those of us with a scientific bent — this mantra to the imaginary Gods of Science is even referred to as “Scientific” evidence.)

In August 2010, the HockeySchtick site pointed out the 97% figure was just 75 self selected scientists.  As as example of the way the chant is spun, the author, “MS” linked to the unSkepticalScience site and the screen image that John Cook posted in an article titled: “Visually depicting the disconnect between climate scientists, media and the public”.

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Don’t miss the fact that the graphic is subtitled “SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE”. [...]

January 2nd, 2011 | Tags: , , | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Comments (133)

PNAS: Witchdoctors of science

Proceedings of the National Academy of Science: a step back to the Stone Age

A shameful day in the history of science. The once esteemed National Academy of Science is reduced to pagan witchcraft: point the bone at the blacklist, count the tea-leaf-citations, put on your funny hat and make a prophesy about the weather.

Some critics are saying the survey is flawed because it uses artificial groupings. Artificial be damned — the survey is flawed because it’s a waste-of-time work of anti-science for even existing. Science is not a democracy. Natural laws don’t form because anyone says so, and the only way to find out the answer is to … look at the evidence. Doh.

This adulation of individuals and tests of character, “success”, or popularity is the anti-thesis of what the great brains-trust of science ought to do. In science all minds test their theories against the universe, and only the real world matters. The petty world of human reputations is steeped in bias and conflicts of interest with personality defects and political power grabs, not to mention the corrupting influence of money. Science achieved vast success for civilization by freeing [...]

June 23rd, 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , | Category: Global Warming, Logic & Reason | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Comments (284)

Global bully Rudd fights for foreign committee, against citizens

The world is considering a new financial market larger than any commodity, it’s “based on science”, but if you ask for evidence, you’re called names—“Denier”, and by our Prime Minister, no less. This is supposed to pass for reasoned debate? [...]

November 11th, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming, Logic & Reason | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Comments (273)

Funded arrogance

Professor Matthew England

The debate that Senator Steve Fielding started continues, this time between heavyweights in Australian climate science. Yet again, the side with the funding, the power, and the large claims is unable to answer basic polite science questions. The pompous arrogance is evident. Why not just answer the question?

Professor Matthew England’s research teams have received nearly $2.5 million in funding from the Australian government, much of it for studying oceans and climate change. So when we need good answers on the topic, he would be the man. If a school student asked for help, we might expect only a two line reply passing on a link. But when the question comes from one of the most informed climate scientists in the country, with 12 years as head of Australia’s National Climate Centre, and it’s about a graph at the centre of legislative negotiations, it’s inexcusable that the reply was vague, poorly reasoned and didn’t answer the question. All this, in a conversation that England himself started.

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June 30th, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming, Logic & Reason | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Comments (311)

Emails with an unskeptical skeptic

the email exchange between Sceptico and myself, that started off as a friendly enquiry by me, as to why a self-proclaimed ’skeptic’ thought that anyone raising scientific questions about global warming should be lumped in with creationists, and called a denier. I wondered if he was just innocently unaware that the science has changed. [...]

February 17th, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , | Category: Global Warming, Logic & Reason | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post | Comments (91)