Does the Peiser study alone confirm the scientific consensus on man-made global warming?

Question

Benny Peiser is a social anthropologist and climate change skeptic. He set out to disprove the study by Naomi Oreskes.

Oreskes analyzed 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change". She found that none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.

Peiser repeated the study and initially claimed to find 34 which rejected the consensus - a whopping 2.8%. Upon review, it was found that only one of these 34 actually rejected the consensus, and it was an editorial - not a peer-reviewed study. Peiser eventually conceded this.

http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptics/BPeiser.html

So in your opinion, does the fact that Peiser specifically tried to find papers rejecting the consensus, misrepresented the conclusions of 33 of them, and in the end couldn't come up with a single example of a peer-reviewed study rejecting the consensus prove that the consensus exists?

Answer 1

Wow, you have such a negative outlook on the future.

Answer 2

"She found that none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position."

Of course not -- Any paper which differs from the "consensus position" gets rejected.

Consensus is a political concept, not a scientific one. Ask Galileo about the value of consensus in science.

Answer 3

That seems interesting. However, I have sites which back up his assertions and include additional studies.

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckt...

Besides the point, anyone who continues to spout the consensus view must be living under a rock. Numerous scientist have come out against AGW. And these scientist say their associates disagree with the AGW arguement but are fearful of coming out publicly because of the blowback.

It is time to put the consensus to bed. It never existed, and, if you know anything about science, it is meaningless.

I believe Einstein said this (I am paraphrasing), "Even though 100 people can form a consensus in science, it takes but one to debunk a theory." Obviously, he gets it.

Answer 4

If a paper is titled "climate change", obviously that is a pretty good indication what it is about; most likely climate change.  Does the fact that most papers dealing with the words climate change with similar conclusions prove that their conclusions are correct.  Of course not.

If you looked up, deforestation, I am willing to bet most would conclude the world is being deforested.  Does it mean there are fewer trees than before, again, of course not.

Answer 5

no, if we can't even pedict the weather for the weekend, how can we predict climate change.

BTW you should change your name, you are not a master of science

Answer 6

Benny Peiser's paper has NOT been refuted. Propaganda sites continue to intentionally distort Dr. Peiser's clear position on this:

"I have stressed repeatedly, Oreskes entire argument is flawed as the whole ISI data set includes just 13 abstracts (less than 2%) that explicitly endorse what she has called the 'consensus view'. In fact, the vast majority of abstracts do not mention anthropogenic climate change." - Benny Peiser

The fact remains that Oreskes deliberately and deceptively called a paper "The scientific consensus on climate change" while using the search term "global climate change" thus leaving out 11,000 papers! Oreskes cleary cherry picked papers. This alone debunks her study. Even still as a direct criticism, every part of Peiser's study stands except that when you criticize only Oreskes' cherry picked papers (928 not 12,000) the 34 papers Peiser found doubting AGW may not have been included in Oreskes' paper. No kidding! So he withdrew only this as a direct criticism of her paper. The rest of his criticism remains such as only 13 (1%) explicitly endorse the 'consensus view'. Removing the 34 papers is irrelevant as Peiser's study cleary shows that no consensus exists and Oreskes was not looking at all the papers (928 out of 12,000). Conclusion: Oreske's paper is debunked and worthless.

Answer 7

Wow!  Everyone agrees, yet there still is no one who can tell us if it will be warmer or colder in the future.

Answer 8

I think both sides make too big a deal of both of these studies. It's clear that the overwhelming majority of scientists believe in AGW without having to do any study.  Using a particular search term I think is too limiting.  It would have been better to look at the tables of contents for relevant journals, and then pulled every paper with a title that looked relevant and read through the paper to see what it said.  That probably would have been more work than either Oreskes or Peiser would have wanted to do, but more valuable.

And Bob B, you have a very low (and incorrect) opinion of scientists to say that 'Any paper which differs from the "consensus position" gets rejected.' That is simply not true if the science in the paper is good.  I have had papers published that were MUCH more controversial than anything in AGW, and while it took some work to get them published, they did appear in refereed journals.

Answer 9

If they didn't include the papers writen by Limbaugh and Beck et al... which demonstrably prove that all conservative talk radio hosts with high school diplomas agree that the scientists are wrong, then why should I think this is anything more than liberal bias?

Answer 10

No.

Yo is right. You should change your name. I did a little research,, You dont even have a degree in science! you co-wrote a couple books on Global Warming, andgot a few business degrees.