Dana Nuccitelli, than whom it would be difficult to find a more strident or persistent advocate of global warming alarmism, is upset (as usual).

Why?

He is shocked—shocked!—to find that “Millions of times later, 97 percent climate consensus still faces denial.” Some people, despite having been castigated for it for over a decade, continue to “deny” that there is a “97% consensus” about manmade global warming.

The spur for his latest tantrum, published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, is that

the Exxon- and Koch- funded Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) issued a formal complaint, asking NASA to “correct” a statement on the space agency’s website that said that “Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities.”

We could, of course, gripe about all the funding from renewable energy companies to climate alarmists, or the even greater funding from governments eager to spread the perception of an emergency, the better to get the public to give up prosperity and liberties. Like Nuccitelli’s reference to Exxon and Koch funding, that would be the logical fallacy of argumentum ad hominem circumstantial. So we’ll leave that avenue, which is more akin to kick-boxing than to reasonable argument, undeveloped.

What’s more interesting is that Nuccitelli, to justify his tantrum, fails to grapple even a single time with any of the devastating critiques of the 97% consensus claim. Instead, he merely cites some of the previous studies that make it, and he insists that all who contest it “deny” it.

Dana, dear Dana, denial isn’t the only way to contest a claim. One can also clarify it, to distinguish what really does gather such overwhelming consensus from what doesn’t.

That, for example, is what Dr. Roy W. Spencer, a real climate scientist widely published in the refereed literature, does when he insists that when the consensus is defined as nothing more than that global average temperature has risen (by perhaps about 1 to 1.2 deg. C) over the last roughly 150 years and that human activity has contributed significantly to that rise, perhaps even more than half of it, the result is that he, one of the world’s leading skeptics of dangerous to catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, would be counted as part of the consensus.

Well, if that’s all the consensus is, it’s not particularly interesting.

And, frankly, that’s about all that can actually be supported by the studies Nuccitelli cites.

Never mind the fact that the studies, including some to which Nuccitelli contributed, committed all kinds of research mistakes and logic fallacies.

The Cornwall Alliance published one of the many critiques of the 97% consensus claim, by famed hurricane meteorologist and Cornwall Alliance Fellow Dr. Neil Frank. a little over two years ago. Cornwall Alliance Senior Fellow and board member Dr. Spencer teamed up with Joseph Bast on an article in the Wall Street Journal five years ago that explained in simple terms what was wrong with each of the major “studies” that claimed to establish the “97% consensus.”

Nuccitelli might educate himself by reading those. And if he denies their conclusions, he might try actually refuting their arguments rather than attacking their authors.

We bet he won’t.

Featured image by Solal Ohayon on Unsplash.