"99% consensus on human caused climate change in the peer-reviewed scientific literature" ... "The conclusion does not follow from the data”

"Case closed," trumpeted the Guardian back in 2021. "The scientific consensus that humans are altering the climate has passed 99.9%, according to research that strengthens the case for global action at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow."

And now, just before all the private planes and well-fed bureaucrats fly into Dubai for COP28, in a Battle of the Peer-Reviews, Climate magazine has published a study concluding, in their own words, that "the researchers much-ballyhooed conclusion conclusion "does not follow follow from the data."

In other words, that the science is not settled.

Turns out the claim for a 99% Consensus as as inane as the oft-repeated claim of a 97% consensus.  (What exactly do they agree about—do they agree there’s a 'climate crisis'? -- that is entirely anthropogenic, i.e., human-caused? -- that we should also factor in the benefits of fossil fuels?") 

And not just inane, but inaccurate. As inaccurate as much of the climate science, and possibly representative of it.

The author of that much-feted 2021 paper that made the 99% claim told the Guardian “It is really case closed. There is nobody of significance in the scientific community who doubts human-caused climate change.”  Case closed? Not really, say the authors of the new paper in Climate, more like "case not even made." In their paper, they say, 

we point out some major flaws in the methodology, analysis, and conclusions of the [2021] study. Using the data provided in the study, we show that the 99% consensus, as defined by the authors, is actually an upper limit evaluation because of the large number of “neutral” papers which were counted as pro-consensus in the paper and probably does not reflect the true situation. We further analyse these results by evaluating how so-called “skeptic” papers fit the consensus and find that biases in the literature, which were not accounted for in the aforementioned study, may place the consensus on the low side. Finally, we show that the rating method used in the study suffers from a subjective bias which is reflected in large variations between ratings of the same paper by different raters. All these lead to the conclusion that the conclusions of the study does not follow from the data.

In short, the evidence doesn't fit the claim, and the authors drew more into their net than they should have, misclassifying "neutral" papers and discarding sceptical one. To paraphrase, Noam Chomsky, it's a manufactured consensus.

One that delegates might ponder as they take their private jets and ample delegations to Dubai, to offer therewith their advice on how the rest of us should cut back.