Global Warming Consensus (Again)

I mentioned yesterday that Martin-Klaus Schulte has redone Naomi Oreskes 2004 review of papers about climate change, and found that the "consensus" in support of anthropogenic global warming that she found isn't there anymore. A reader pointed me to evidence that maybe it wasn't even there in 2004.

Benny Peiser of Liverpool John Moores University wrote a letter to Science disputing Oreskes' claim, which you can read here. Unfortunately, they wouldn't publish it, first because it was too long--then, when he cut it the requested length:

After realizing that the basic points of your letter have already been widely dispersed over the internet, we have reluctantly decided that we cannot publish your letter. We appreciate your taking the time to revise it.

So first it's too long--then everyone knows it, so we can't publish it.

Now, there are some criticisms of Peiser's claims, such as this one that claims that some of the abstracts that Peiser put in the "rejects or doubts" category don't belong there. Even the examples picked don't seem to be clearly wrongly categorized. Without Schulte's recent attempt to replicate Oreskes' results, I am not sure that I could have an opinion about whether Peiser was right or not. Schulte's results--and the absurd reasons why Science rejected Peiser's letter--suggest to me that Oreskes' 2004 results should not be accepted as valid.