So to summarize, Dr Peiser has made 4 errors in his research:
1. Dr Peiser failed to replicate Dr Oreskes search properly.
2. Dr Peiser compounded the previous error by assuming that Dr Oreskes got her figures wrong, rather than contacting Dr Oreskes to obtain her search criteria.
3. Of the 34 abstracts identified by Dr Peiser that reject or question the view that human activities are the main driving force of the observed warming over the last 50 years, 12 are not in Dr Oreskes sample.
Of the remaining 22 articles, 21 do not fit that description (one argues that natural factors have been underestimated still does not reject or doubt that human activities are the main factor). In other words Dr Peiser has misinterpreted the abstracts of 21 articles.
4. Only one fits Dr Peiser's category, but it does not fit Oreskes' criteria of being a piece of published peer-reviewed research, but is instead a statement by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. Dr Oreskes removed this from her sample partly because the statements by the AMS, AOG, & AAAS are not in her sample either.
But it gets better! The thing is, Peiser himself participated in the various discussions that analyzed his claims. He replies in a typical denier fashion - by failing to address any of the actual substantial comments, and by continuing his absurd accusations. Even though his gross errors were pointed out to him, he ignored the refutations. Several days later, he repeats his assertions on a different website, where people are not aware of the refutation. In short, Peiser doesn't try to stand by his argument where the audience is aware that it is wrong, and then repeats the argument to a different audience while being aware that it is wrong. This is typical dishonesty and deception, virulent in the climate change denial crowd.
Onward!
The results of the petition which I discussed below, spread by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, with the fraudulent pseudo-scientific attachment, has often used by climate change deniers as "proof" that over 19 000 scientists think global climate change is a myth. So who were some of these scientists who signed the petition? Well, there were several fictional characters and celebrities, including John Grisham, Michael J. Fox, Drs. Frank Burns, B. J. Honeycutt, and Benjamin Pierce (from the TV show M*A*S*H), an individual by the name of "Dr. Red Wine," and Geraldine Halliwell, formerly known as pop singer Ginger Spice of the Spice Girls.
In fact, the petition was published online, and pretty much anyone could sign it. This of course didn't stop the deniers from using the petition as "evidence" that there is no consensus among scientists.
Oh, and the paper was co-authored by the 22-year-old son of the author, Zachary, home-schooled by his dad.
But there's even more fun stuff!
Everybody's heard the denial side repeat this mantra: that because regular climate measurements have been taken for such a short time (at best for about 150 years, but more often 30-50 years), there is no sufficient data to make long-time predictions, especially in light of the fact that it is well-known that the Earth has once been covered by ice up to the equator, and at other times the poles have been covered with green vegetation.
This is of course sound advice, and all environmentalists should always keep it in mind. But my question here is: do the climate change deniers follow their own advice? And the now-predictable answer is of course "no".
In 2001, the ExxonMobil-fueled climate skeptic Richard Lindzen came up with the idea that the increase in global CO2 emissions is in fact thwarted by something called "adaptive infrared iris", or a sort of feedback loop that has to do with water vapour. The technical details are irrelevant for us here. But when the deniers heard of this, they of course went all gaga about it and again claimed the entire climate science has been overturned, and that IPCC's climate sensitivity range should be decreased by a factor of at least three.
So what was the basis for his claims? A few years' worth of data collected in just a single small area of one ocean. As Stephen Schneider comments: Extrapolating this small sample of data to the entire globe is like extrapolating the strong destabilizing feedback over midcontinental landmasses as snow melts during the spring - such an inappropriate projection would likely increase estimates of climate sensitivity by a factor of several.
But in the hypocritical world of climate change denial, only other scientists cannot use insufficient, local and short time-span data. For climate change denial, this is perfectly fine, and represents sound science.
