Disturbing review of the Cook et al. (2013) 97% paper

[caraher]

6. Cook's paper doesn't bear on the reality of human-caused climate change

I only skimmed Duarte's critique but if it's accurate - and I haven't run across any convincing rebuttals through casual Googling that rise much above ad hominem attacks - it means we shouldn't point to the Cook paper as proof of the consensus.

Which is fine by me - IPCC is a very conservative (be design) organization and it's clear enough what their consensus view is.

It's worth noting that Duarte is not contesting either the reality of AGW or the existence of a scientific consensus; rather, he is attacking the Cook paper. And for that, he is probably better qualified as a psychology doctoral student than he would be were he a climate scientist. Duarte offers no climate science, so it misses the point to say it's foolish to take climate science from a psychologist.

I took Cook to be doing essentially an updated version of Oreskes' work. The only "fact" imperiled, beyond the reputations of the people involved, is backing for the specific "97% consensus." I don't think that is going to make a decisive difference for anyone whether the "real number" (if such even truly exists) is 95%, 80%, or 99.9%.

But it's just one more thing to cope with when playing "skeptic" whack-a-mole.