Re: No Surprise Er...
>> Would it be more accurate to say that less then 2% of papers studied had an opinion that humans were not responsible for climate change?
Would it be more accurate to say that only 0.5% of abstracts assessed agreed with the IPCC's position that human activity is responsible for over 50% of warming over the past century? Because that's the real figure when the wide range of opinions aren't conflated like John Cook et al did to arrive at his 97% consensus. That's right, only 64 abstracts out of 12000 made that assertion. Not quite a consensus that mankind is the primary driver of climate change is it?
That's what many people fail to see in the alarmist argument. They hear about anthropogenic global warming, and assume all warming is due to man's activity (Co2). That fails to take into account natural variability. The reality is that even the IPCC has had to reduce its climate sensitivity figures (forcing effect of a doubling of Co2). It's still too high though.
Will a doubling of Co2 cause some warming? Probably. Is it responsible for all the warming observed over the past 150 years? Certainly not. And anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. We know this because if Co2 was the primary driver, then the last 15 years should have seen large temperature increases (we're pumping out more Co2 now than at any other time). As we all know, that hasn't happened. The models failed to predict it because they assumed climate sensitivity (to Co2) was much higher than it is.
So whenever someone tries to conflate the arguments that a doubling of Co2 causes some warming with mankind being the primary driver, take pause and and ask does correlation imply causation. That's the argument being presented here.
Similarly, if someone suggests that the majority of (often quoted as 97%) scientists agree that we are the main cause of warming, don't take that at face value. It's a statistical lie. They conflate a broad range of opinions, most of which don't believe that mankind is responsible for more than 50+% of observed warming, into a single "Endorse" result. So you'll see something along the lines of:
'97% of scientists endorse manmade (or anthropogenic) climate change'. This implies that they all support the idea that we are responsible for most of the warming. That's completely fallacious. That statement would include scientists who think we probably contribute 1-2% of the warming. A trivial amount. It gives a completely false picture of a consensus.