Data Comparisons

Nir Shaviv: One of the 97%

37 Comments

To think. I thought Nir Shaviv was one of the scary denialists. After all, he appears on SkS’s denialist list. Wikipedia writes “Shaviv was one of the global warming skeptics interviewed for The Great Global Warming Swindle documentary”.

In fact, I thought the whole “cosmic rays” area was supposed to be uniformly denaialist. I wondered I would see if I entered Cosmic Ray Flux.

Among other things I find

On Climate Response To Changes In The Cosmic Ray Flux And Radiative Budget

Authors: Shaviv, Nj (2005)
Journal: Journal Of Geophysical Research-space Physics
Category: Methods
Endorsement Level: 2. Explicitly endorses but does not quantify or minimise

So, I guess Shaviv’s work numbers among those that show global warming is caused by GHG’s. That might mean he is in the minority (3%) because he’s in the majority (97%)? Or something.

Oddly, I also find these two papers

The Influence Of Cosmic Terrestrial Clouds And Global Warming

Authors: Bago, Ep; Butler, J (2000)
Journal: Astronomy & Geophysics
Category: Methods
Endorsement Level: 5. Implicitly minimizes/rejects AGW
The Influence Of Solar Activity And Cosmic Rays On Terrestrial Clouds And Global Warming

Authors: Bago, Ep; Butler, Cj (2001)
Journal: Recent Insights Into The Physics Of The Sun And Heliosphere: Highlights From Soho And Other Space Missions
Category: Methods
Endorsement Level: 4. No Position

Same authors. Different ratings. Could happen. What do the abstracts say?

The first one says:

We analyse the new ISCCP (International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project) D2 cloud data to ascertain whether or not a connection between cosmic ray flux and cloud cover exists. Despite a previous finding that total cloud factor and cosmic ray fluxes were correlated, our results indicate that only the low-level cloud follows solar activity over the full period, 1983-1994. Using several proxies for solar activity and the radiative forcing calculated by Ockert-Bell (1992) for the ISCCP cloud types, we estimate the possible impact that such a solar-terrestrial connection may have on climate. We conclude that, possibly excluding the most recent decades, much of the warming of the past century can be quantitatively accounted for by the direct and indirect effects of solar activity.

The second one says

We analyse the new ISCCP (International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project) D2 cloud data to ascertain whether or not a connection between cosmic ray flux and cloud cover exists. Our results indicate that only the low-level cloud follows solar activity over the full period, 1983-1994. Using several proxies for solar activity and the radiative forcing for the ISCCP cloud types, we estimate the possible impact that such a solar-terrestrial connection may have on climate. We conclude that, possibly excluding the most recent decades, much of the warming of the past century can be quantitatively accounted for by the direct and indirect effects of solar activity.

I don’t know why one is classified as “No Position” and the other as “Implicitly minimizes/rejects AGW”. Still, neither of these papers is in the 97%.

37 thoughts on “Nir Shaviv: One of the 97%”

  1. Brandon, like I said. Oh and I also know how to bring up entire categories but since Brandon did not listen I will keep this to myself.

  2. poptech, whoever you really are, explicate your objections.

    Brandon and I are co-authors of another piece, on another subject, on another blog. He was invaluable, thoughtful, fact based, and consistent during that project. You sir appear to be none of the above. Facts rather than allegations, please?

  4. Brandon attacked me because I said I knew that skeptic authored papers were classified as either “Endorse AGW” or “No AGW position”. Again, I was right.

  6. Poptech

    I knew that skeptic authored papers were classified as either “Endorse AGW” or “No AGW position”. Again, I was right.

    Some are. Some aren’t. I found some Lindzen papers under reject AGW. So are some Scaffetta papers and a Ballunius paper. I think you have to search by words in the abstract though. The tool doesn’t work on author names.

    “What do we really know about the Sun-climate connection?”

    No idea. That’s one to ask the authors at SkS. I haven’t run a search on the Web of Science.

  7. Something is really wrong with this study all number of papers which meet the criteria are not showing up in the SS database.

  8. Oh. I think I know why. The paper says
    “climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics ‘global climate
    change’ or ‘global warming’”.

    I think the abstracts have to have those words in them. The paper may contain those words, but the abstract does not. I’m not sure what I think about the criterion of having the word in the abstract and not counting those with the words in the paper– but it may be the one used. If it’s used it does have to be used consistently.

  9. Lucia, when I said that “skeptic authored papers were…” I meant “some”. By default it searches the title and abstract only and requires that they have been assigned an endorsement level. Here is the SQL search string;

    SELECT COUNT(*) AS Total_Rows FROM wos_article WHERE (Title LIKE ‘% [Search Words] %’ OR Abstract LIKE ‘% [Search Words] %’) AND WoS_EndorsementId > 0 AND WoS_CatId > 0

    Do you have access to Web of Science? If so search for these two papers:

    “What do we really know about the Sun-climate connection?”,

    “Variable solar irradiance as a plausible agent for multidecadal variations in the Arctic-wide surface air temperature record of the past 130 years”

    I have many more but I do not have access to the Web of Science to check.

  10. Lucia as has probably already been stated any ‘skeptic’ that you might find has a reasonable argument that needs answering seems to believe that

    1) CO2 is a GHG and we are adding CO2 to the atmosphere.
    2) Humans are affecting the climate in many ways.

    So all believe in AGW. You, Curry, Pielke, Spencer, Lindzen are all believers. Your attempt to understand Cook’s reasoning by exemplar is going to fail because Cook has set up a false dichotomy. The real problem is that Cook is intelligent enough to knows this.

  11. “Poptech (Comment #113320)
    May 17th, 2013 at 9:20 pm

    Something is really wrong with this study all number of papers which meet the criteria are not showing up in the SS database.”

    So Poptech is criticizing someone elses database? haha that’s rich – this guy has papers on his list of papers rejecting AGW which clearly support the consensus. With parts of those papers acknowledging their results support AGW and whose authors have said he (Poptech) has mislead people by placing their papers on his list. What a joke to have this guy criticize anyone!

  12. R, Why are you making a strawman argument? please name the paper on my list that an author made such a comment and does not support a skeptic argument against ACC/AGW Alarm.

    Looks like I found a BIG problem with this study. More computer illiteracy from the cartoonist.

  13. This “study” is completely worthless since it is trying to determine a consensus of abstracts not papers that include key words in the WoS. Therefore it cannot be considered representative of the climate science literature but representative of authors who used those key words in their abstracts.

  14. lucia writes “Oh. I think I know why. The paper says “climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’”. I think the abstracts have to have those words in them.”

    Neither of the examples you have in the post have those phrases in them and were included?

  15. Tim, both of my examples have the phrases in the full paper not in the abstract and are not included in Cooks study. See here,

    “What do we really know about the Sun-climate connection?”
    http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/IASTP/43/

    My second example had the phrase in it but it was for one of the references so this is a better example:

    “Estimation and representation of long-term (>>40 year) trends of Northern-Hemisphere-gridded surface temperature: A note of caution”
    http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/40YearTrends.pdf

    Both of these were not counted because they did not include the phrase “global warming” in the abstract even though they discuss it in the body of the paper.

  16. Tim, Lucia’s first example: ‘On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget’ includes a searched phrase in the abstract: “We examine the results linking cosmic ray flux (CRF) variations to global climate change.”

    The second one has it in the title: ‘The Influence Of Cosmic Terrestrial Clouds And Global Warming‘

  17. Do you have access to Web of Science?

    No.

    But you linked a paper. I didn’t see the search terms in the abstract. Maybe I misread, but I didn’t see them.

    TimTheToolMan (Comment #113327)
    May 17th, 2013 at 10:09 pm Edit This Edit Delete

    …
    Neither of the examples you have in the post have those phrases in them and were included?
    If I recall correctly, they are in the search terms are in the abstract.

  18. poptech writes “Tim, Lucia’s first example”… Well I can see the one in the title now. But I still cant see it in the abstract. No matter though, I’m sure its there somewhere but perhaps not quoted by lucia. Its an awful way of selecting papers to do with AGW.

    Actually that’s exactly not what I meant. What I meant was that its an excellent way to select papers to do with AGW. Its not necessarily a great way to select papers that explore natural phenomenon resulting in warming though.

  19. Poptech is… silly:

    Brandon, like I said. Oh and I also know how to bring up entire categories but since Brandon did not listen I will keep this to myself.

    I didn’t make this post, yet somehow he thinks he’s responding to me because he’s responding to it. Beyond that, I never claimed or suggested papers were not misclassified so his “Gotcha!” moment is completely misplaced. And he apparently thinks he has the knowledge to keep to himself despite me having explicitly explained that very same knowledge. And then he goes onto say:

    Something is really wrong with this study all number of papers which meet the criteria are not showing up in the SS database.

    I have many more but I do not have access to the Web of Science to check.

    Wait… He doesn’t have access to the database of abstracts Cook et al extracted theirs from. Despite this, he knows there are papers that met Cook et al’s criteria that didn’t get included in the SkS database. Given being in the Web of Science was one of those criteria…

    I wouldn’t bother asking him anything Rud Istvan. He has no particular concern with facts. Or what people says. Or maybe even reality.

  21. I’ll repeat it here: Stop having an argument about your argument. It’s distracting. I often don’t monitor that sort of thing as we get to comment 50 in a thread. But this is the top of comments. If you want to have an argument about your argument, go to Poptech’s blog and sort out that argument over there.

  22. Shub, you made me think about an issue I find important. Does criticizing a person on your “side” contribute to or detract from your “side”? Scientists researching global warming who have kept silent because they believe criticizing certain people would harm their “cause” have been criticized for that. I’m one of the ones who has criticized them.

    I know all the arguments about tactics and focusing efforts,* but in the end, what it comes down to is wrong is wrong. Bad behavior is bad behavior. If I don’t call someone out because of whatever characteristic they have, I’m being biased. Some people might accept that; I can’t.

    Of course, there are legitimate reasons not to go after someone on your “side.” DFTT is the biggest one!

    *On the topic of tactics, I actually think keeping silent works only in the short term. In the long-term, it only makes things worse for you.

  23. It can be charming reading so-called skeptics arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of pin. But then someone comes along and spoils it all by redefining the definitions of pin, dance and angel, and making the navel-gazing even more extreme.
    Never mind – Birds of a feather, and all that…

  24. … and then a bunch of IPCC authors (and Nic Lewis) can come along with something that is well within the 97% but is probably pleasing a lot of lukewarmers as well, go figure.

  26. It’s ABSTRACTS folks. For example in the Prequel Survey one of the ones rated rejection of AGW was by Anthony Leiserowitz and one of the ones going the other way was by Balling. Rasmus had one that was rated neutral, as in discusses.

  28. Eli writes “Keyword searches not abstract text.”

    Whereas the paper says

    “. In March 2012, we searched the ISI Web of Science for papers published from 1991–2011 using topic searches for ‘global warming’ or ‘global climate change’. Article type was restricted to ‘article’, excluding books, discussions, proceedings papers and other document types. The search was updated in May 2012 with papers added to the Web of Science up to that date.”

    So “topic search”. And then when you look at the Web of Knowledge website’s search capability that says

    “In Web of Knowledge under the All Databases tab you can search by: Topic, Title, Author, Publication Name, Year Published and/or Address.”

    No mention of keywords there Eli. But Meh, tit for tat…

  30. Eli

    It’s ABSTRACTS folks.

    Yes. It’s ABSTRACTS. As my post says:

    What do the abstracts say?

    If there is some point you are trying to make by saying ABSTRACTS in all caps, please state your point you are trying to make.

  31. I always thought the official section was “Methodology” but henceforth I shall look for the section titled “FR”.

  33. Eli–
    On topics: Sure. Thanks. I’m sure Poptech will thank you too.

    While you hop in, can you tell us what were you trying to communicate by typing ABSTRACTS in all caps?

  34. Now some, not Eli to be sure, might think that Lucia won’t go neneer neneer, but here is what Web of Science says about Topic searches and keywords

    QUICK REFERENCE CARD -WEB OF SCIENCE SEARCH
    1.Search by Topic, Author, Group Author, Source Title, Publication Year, and Address. Use the drop down menu for each search box to choose the area of your search. You can limit your search by original language of publication or document type.

    4. ABSTRACT
    All author abstracts are indexed and searched in a Topic search.
    5. AUTHOR KEYWORDS
    All author keywords are indexed and searched in a Topic search.
    6. KEYWORDS PLUS KeyWords Plus® are unique to Web of Science
    and consist of words and phrases harvested from the titles of the cited articles. KeyWords Plus are searched in a Topic search

  35. Eli quotes “4. ABSTRACT
    All author abstracts are indexed and searched in a Topic search.”

    Oh noes. Lucia was right!

    (I know she has far too much class for a neneer neneer comment but I on the other hand have no class whatsoever 😉

  37. lucia writes “I didn’t know if I was right or wrong.”

    ssshh…no need to spoil a good neneer neneer opportunity 😉

    Anyway, the upshot is that the search returned the results we were all expecting. ie. Titles and Abstracts. As well as any keywords the authors added.

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