Physicist: ‘Physics World insults me, simultaneously promotes climate alarmism’

By Lubos Motl

Excerpt: Another amazing fact about the article that immediately stuns you is that the following paragraphs of this “assault on the concept of consensus” is actually a celebration of the ludicrous claim that there is a consensus about the dangerous man-made climate change. He uncritically mentions John Cook’s claim that 97.1% of the scientists support these bogus claims.

The number 97% first appeared in a worthless poll among some cherry-picked 77 people, 75 of which agreed with some alarmist assertion. Dropout John Cook’s own version of the number came from counting comments on his crackpot server. 97% of the time, he signed his comments with his own name, 3% of the time, he signed as Luboš Motl. By counting the comments, he decided that 97% of the people support the ideology of the dangerous man-made climate change. There is absolutely nothing serious about any of the claims about the 97% consensus and everyone who takes any comment of this kind seriously is a hopelessly brainwashed moron.

Whether it’s this episode or others, every sane person knows that the claim about the 97% consensus is rubbish. The number of researchers who think that there is a danger of climate change in the next century is comparable to 1/2 and has already been distorted by the political influence in the discipline, currently the most politicized discipline of natural science. So the percentages just don’t say anything about the validity of the claims, anyway. Skuse doesn’t understand these basic things – in spite of his pretending that he understands what’s wrong with using the consensus as a weapon.

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