So the way I am reading that first link...
Cook said that 97% of the abstracts that took a position on the theory of AGW said that it was "mainly" caused by humans, but that only 33% of the abstracts overall even TOOK a position in the first place, meaning that, in reality, only about 32% of the abstracts specifically said that AGW is "mainly" man-caused.
But the general population took that 97% number to mean that 97% of THE TOTAL NUMBER of abstracts took the stance that AGW is man-caused?
That second part is interesting, though.
When they then had the actual AUTHORS of the paper analyze their OWN abstracts, 65% of them felt their papers took a stance on AGW, and 97% of those people agreed that mankind is "mainly" causing AGW, which would leave you with roughly 64% of scientists in the entire study believing that AGW is "mainly" man-caused.
As for the second link yeah, I think I said that earlier? The issue is "MAIN" cause of AGW. But that does NOT discount that 97% of the papers cited DO say that mankind is A cause of AGW. And hey, if 97% of scientists think that mankind at least playing SOME part in AGW, and roughly 64% think we are the MAIN cause of AGW... that seems relatively important.
If you take out the 7,930 articles which expressed no opinion, you're left with 4,014. The number of level 3 articles, implicit endorsement, was identified as 2,910. This means that 72.5% of the responses were labeled under implicit endorsement. I can't take the 97% figure seriously if 72.5% of them "implicitly endorse" AGW. Now, for the record, I'm not so much a climate-change denier as I am climate-change material impact denier. I mean, when I see the temperature going up .001 degrees a year, I'm not overly concerned. When I hear the sea levels have risen 7.5 inches since 1870 (EPA) and I read that if all the glaciers were to melt, the sea levels would rise by 230 feet, I'm not exactly troubled. All else being equal, I can extrapolate that about 99.73% percent of the glaciers are still intact. When I read stuff like that, I'm not overly concerned. Especially since climate is inherently cyclical. But spending $1-2 trillion a year to lower the global climate by 0.2 degrees Celsius is a bit troubling. It's fine that we don't see eye to eye on this. That happens. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it - and I'm not trying to win an argument, simply explaining that you can have rationale beliefs that differ. Not siding with Global Warming alarmists doesn't automatically mean you're misinformed... I think I've spent 200-300 hours studying this stuff. I prefer to form my own judgments from gathering as much information as possible. I'm not an expert, but I can form rational conclusions based on the data presented.
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