Mr. Cook, did you receive my email?

Dave

On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 11:01 AM, David Burton <{redacted}> wrote:

Dear Mr. Cook,

On your web site you wrote that "Doran & Zimmerman (2009) found a 97% consensus among scientists actively publishing climate research." But did you know that Doran & Zimmerman miscalculated their result?

To maximize their "consensus" number, Zimmerman & Doran:

1. Chose to survey only scientists at academic and government institutions (which generally lean Left), and

2. Asked "no-brainer" questions that almost everyone, even climate skeptics, would answer "correctly,"  and

3. Did not ask any questions that would actually separate alarmists from skeptics, such as whether, in President Obama's words, "climate change is real, man-made and dangerous," and

4. Used only 79 out of the 3146 responses that they received, when calculating their degree-of-agreement percentage. They called those 79 "the most specialized and knowledgeable respondents (with regard to climate change)."

They reported that 75 of the "most specialized and knowledgeable respondents" agreed with the "consensus" position that "mean global temperatures have generally risen" since the depths of the Little Ice Age and "human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures."

Note #1: by that measure, even I am part of the consensus.

Note #2: They concluded that, "It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes."

Note #3: Their methodology could easily be used to reach the conclusion that "the debate on the authenticity of acupuncture is largely nonexistent among those who understand its nuances and scientific basis."

Yet all that was insufficient.  75 of 79 is not 97%, it is only 94.9%.

So how did they get to 97%?

The answer is that they simply didn't count the two "most specialized and knowledgeable respondents" who had said they thought global temperatures "remained relatively constant."

79 - 2 = 77, and 75 / 77 = 97.4% = mission accomplished.

That's right, it's hard to believe, but they simply didn't count two of the four dissenters among the 79 who they identified as the "most specialized and knowledgeable respondents."

On that basis they reported in the prestigious journal Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union, that:

[of] "the most specialized and knowledgeable respondents (with regard to climate change)... 97.4% (75 of 77) answered yes to question 2. [Q2: Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?]"

I've written this up in more detail, here.

Will you please correct your web page, to reflect the fact that Doran & Zimmerman miscalculated?

Warmest regards,

Dave Burton

Cary, NC