By Margarita Grabert, Philipp Lengsfeld, Adedamola Adedokun, Andreas Glassl and Fritz Vahrenholt.
Abstract
Based on the premises that there is a high rate of agreement among the scientific community concerning the key factors driving climate change, there have been growing calls from the public to “Unite behind science”. However, a careful assessment of the so-called climate research “consensus”, raises serious questions about the validity of this claim.
This work analyses key peer reviewed publications supposedly documenting a climate “consensus”, focusing on “consensus” publications that are no based on the analysis of data, but rather of the subjective positioning and beliefs of scientists, obtained mainly from surveys.
We have used a 90 % agreement rate as a reasonable threshold for indicating consensus, and found that, in fact, an above 90 % consensus agreement rate is only achieved by filtering and selection bias. The same pattern was observed in the different studies analyzed, and we show that no “consensus” has actually been documented.
The work further substantiates that the central anthropogenic global warming hypothesis of scientific consensus has not only not been documented, but in fact does not exist in the analyzed material.
Despite the obvious weaknesses observed in these climate consensus publications, the climate science community is yet to refute these claims which might lead to misinformation on the public scene. Hence, the objective of this study is to change this, as well as to shed light on potential data analysis issues in economic style surveys on climate change.
Continue reading: Climate Change Consensus Only Achieved with Filtering and Selection Bias. A Review of Secondary Consensus Claim Papers. By Margarita Grabert, Philipp Lengsfeld, Adedamola Adedokun, Andreas Glassl and Fritz Vahrenholt.