John Cook - the man, the fraud, the scepticTM

John Cook - the story about the man who provided the wide-spread narrative of 97% climate scientists agree[16] on man-made global warming.

Eine deusche Version mit zusätzlichen deutschen Hinweisen erscheint ein andern Mal.

Prologue

After I watched two more or less recent videos, I began to investigate John Cook myself.
[1], [2]
Climate propaganda wasn’t my interest last year, apart from the compilations about weather warfare and weather modification made by Jim Lee of climateviewer, of which I investigated several critically. Accordingly, something that Mr. Levermann[3] said about Jet Streams in the full video[4] of [1] let my skin crawl.

That you could conclude from the same data Cook et al.[15] used to conclude (again) 97% of climate scientist agree about man-made global warming, that only 0,3% or 1,0% agree, was an old hat to me.[5]

But is John Cook really just a cartoonist as the rumors said?
After all, drawing cartoons could be a hobby. It wouldn’t necessarily mean that you couldn’t excel in other works.

What my investigation found.

John Cook was born around 1972[10] and made a degree in physics in 1989.[6], [7] About what concretely or what his final paper was or if such a paper was necessary at all, I couldn’t find out.
Directly afterwards he quit academia, and indeed soon became a cartoonist as well as a web programmer and web-page designer.[7], [9]
Several climate change cartoons you can still look up here on pinterest.

If I get it correctly, he got into the global warming agenda after watching something related to Al Gores An Inconvenient Truth, then watching the movie and drawing a comic related to it.[7], [8]
Anyway, his interest about the climate agenda he got in the 2000s. Soon afterwards (2007) he founded the blog skepticalscience.com.

From a 2010 interview with yale climate connections[10] we can learn two things (among others)

Australian and native Queenslander John Cook has a day job. And it’s not in the climate science field.
You’d never know it based on what the 38-year-old Cook has accomplished while moonlighting.

It was 2007, and Cook was working from his home in web programming and database programming, something he still does to earn a living, generally working with small local Australian businesses — local doctors, beauty salons, cartoonists, and promotional product companies.

With an undergraduate education in physics from the University of Queensland and a post-graduate honors year studying solar physics, Cook says his interest in climate science was sparked when he was given a copy of a speech by Oklahoma Republican Senator James Inhofe, most known to climate professionals for having attached the “greatest hoax known to man” tag to anthropogenic climate change.
[Order of the last two quotes changed.]

Conveniently John Cook/the interview omitted what one could still read on his blog in 2008 about how his interest began[7]

My interest in global warming began when I drew a cartoon spoof of the TV show 24 that wondered what Jack Bauer would do if Al Gore was President and global warming was the "threat du jour"[9]. I watched An Inconvenient Truth for research which I found thought provoking although I didn't know what to make of all the science.
I then got into some discussions with a family member and diehard skeptic who handed me a speech by Senator Inhofe. It was fairly light on actual science but some research revealed the arguments were misleading and flawed which surprised me - I thought such a prominent spokesman for global warming skeptism would've done his homework more thoroughly.

Via his blog-writing he got into university again. Officially in 2011. One of his two oldest entries (2010) of „scientific“ papers[11], is basically an advertising brochure[12] for skepticalscience. On other pages his publishing starts 2012.[13] In 2013 John Cook published his 97% junk science paper. Apparently he started his postgraduate research in 2012 and submitted the paper in 2014.[14] Anyway, he got his degree (in cognitive psychology) in 2016 and

In 2015, he developed a Massive Open Online Course at the University of Queensland on climate science denial, that has received over 25,000 enrollments.[6]

Please, get it to make it a psychological disorder.

He is the stereo-type of self-pro-claimed skepticsTM (like Michael Shermer). Something, what one can observe time and time again: A starting point where one has zero skepticism towards and from that onwards attacking everything else „skeptically“, nearly akin to the methodology of Critical Theory.
Skepticism not just one method amongst several to gain knowledge and investigate claims but more of a cult-like mantra, being literally the inversion of this tool.

You don't need to have a degree in sociology or something similar, every scientist can just make a questionnaire-type qualitative study where some raters rate the material

conceived as a 'citizen science' project by volunteers

Remember, this is what 97% endorsement already looked like in the original study[15]

And this investigation of the same data showed that you can equally say 0,3% or 1,0% as well as 97% of climate scientist endorse the man-made global warming consensus.[5]

Epilogue

Also remember, these guys made of themselves Nazi and Sparta photoshops.[17] ([17] is a blog where one can find more nefarious or funny things about John Cook and skepticalscience.)

One of them was featured a guardian column with the title Climate Consenus - The 97%. Which luckily ended last year.[18], [19]

What have we learned? Bloggers and cartoonist are the people who can successfully fill up the press with garbage which is eagerly waiting to trumpet it to everywhere. You don't need to be a "climatologist" at all to become a widely mentioned spokesperson for climate scare, just the right mind-set (something that one might be familiar with from some religions).

Good news: Tony Heller went to Australia (2016) as well.[20]

[1] (2min)

[2] (total 50min, climate propaganda award starts 13:04 and ends 21:35; Relotius at 35:12)

[3] https://www.pik-potsdam.de/members/anders/
[4] https://www.bundestag.de/ausschuesse/a16_umwelt/oeffentliche_anhoerungen#url=L2F1c3NjaHVlc3NlL2ExNl91bXdlbHQvb2VmZmVudGxpY2hlX2FuaG9lcnVuZ2VuL29lZmZlbnRsaWNoZXMtZmFjaGdlc3ByYWVjaC0yMy1zaXR6dW5nLWNvcDI0LzU3NzUzNA==&mod=mod544426
[5] https://climaterealists.org.nz/sites/climaterealists.org.nz/files/Legatesetal13-Aug30-Agnotology[1].pdf
[6] https://theconversation.com/profiles/john-cook-3280
[7] http://web.archive.org/web/20080213042858/http://www.skepticalscience.com/page.php?p=3
[8] http://web.archive.org/web/20080513222140/http://cartoons.sev.com.au/archivepage.php?cartoonid=ss151
[9] http://web.archive.org/web/20080411215605/http://wiki.sev.com.au/About-Us
[10]https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2010/12/skeptical-science-founder-john-cook/
[11] https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ZEN_Z2UAAAAJ&hl=en
[12] https://www.skepticalscience.com/docs/Guide_to_Skepticism.pdf
[13] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John_Cook7
[14] https://www.uwa.edu.au/science/Postgraduate-Profile?link_id=EAAAAIMVHQPhK0CBjLFM7MkakBQA+kpSANZQswXk7FGQk25f
[15] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024
[16] https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
[17] http://www.populartechnology.net/2012/03/truth-about-skeptical-science.html
[18]https://www.theguardian.com/profile/dana-nuccitelli?page=5
[19]https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/27/breaking-guardian-climate-change-retreat-will-discontinue-its-science-and-environment-blogging-networks/
[20] (4min, full 33min)