...and again, a math teacher should have been used.
The main blog article (submitted by Angela Fritz) has the comment:
"...The study published Thursday is the first to take so many papers and authors into account. Doing a search on the popular science article website Web of Science for "climate change" or "global warming" produces over 12,000 results. Of these, 4,014 papers were identified to state a position on climate change. Among those, 3,896, or 97.1% endorsed the consensus that climate change was happening and that it was caused by human activity..."
So, is that what the abstract actually states? Let's see (http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024):
"...We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'..."
Starting there, they didn't specifically search for ANTHROPOGENIC global warming (AGW), just standard, generic GW.
But, to continue.
"...We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW..."
So out of the 11,944 papers that matched the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming', 7,930.82 of them expressed NO position on AGW.
Read that again: 66.4% of the papers that they looked at expressed NO position. That means they can't be part of the 97% that agreed with the "consensus".
"...32.6% endorsed AGW..."
And that's a total of 4,323.73 papers that endorsed AGW (out of 11,944). We'll come back to that.
"...0.7% rejected AGW..."
Which is still 83.61 papers. But that's another group that can't be part of the 97% that agreed with the "consensus".
Finally,
"...0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming..."
Last group. Another 35.83 papers that are uncertain - therefore, they cannot be listed as part of the 97% "consensus".
Quick count, then: 7,930.82 + 83.61 + 35.83 = 8,050.26. Out of the 11,944 papers they looked at, 67.4% of them either had no position on AGW, rejected AGW, or said it was uncertain. That only leaves them with 32.6% of the papers.
Far from the 97.1% they claim.
So exactly where did they get a 97.1% consensus?
Back to the abstract.
"...Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming..."
Ok, there's the metrics they used. From the 4,323.73 papers that endorsed AGW (out of 11,944), 97.1% said humans are causing GW. Not "contributing to", but CAUSING global warming. That's a whole different story for later.
Still, that means that 4,198.34 of those papers endorsed the "consensus" - leaving 125.39 papers that expressed an opinion on AGW, but didn't endorse the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.
Numbers again: Upon examining 11, 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming', only 4,198.34 of those papers endorsed the "consensus" position that humans are causing global warming.
And from that, they got a 97.1 percent number.
Wow.
Even more interesting that that, they continued the abstract:
"...Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research..."
Out of the 11,944 papers they looked at, 67.4% of them either had no position on AGW, rejected AGW, or said it's cause was uncertain. If you add the 2.9% of those papers that expressed an opinion on AGW, but didn't endorse the consensus position that humans are causing global warming (the remainder from their 97.1%), that's about 70.3% of the papers.
"...the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research..."?
Really? Sounds to me like only 29.7 percent of those 11,944 papers AGREED with the "consensus". There's your vanishingly small proportion.
