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The 97% consensus on global warming

What the science says...

Select a level... Basic Intermediate Advanced

97% of climate experts agree humans are causing global warming.

Climate Myth...

There is no consensus

"[...] And I'll mention that the stat on the 97% of - of scientists is based on one discredited study." (Ted Cruz)

At a glance

What is consensus? In science, it's when the vast majority of specialists agree about a basic principle. Thus, astronomers agree that the Earth orbits around the Sun. Biologists accept that tadpoles hatch out from frog-spawn and grow into adult frogs. Almost all geologists agree that plate tectonics is real and you'd be hard-placed to find a doctor who thinks smoking is harmless.

In each above case, something has been so thoroughly looked into that those who specialise in its study have stopped arguing about its basic explanation. Nevertheless, the above examples were all once argued about, often passionately. That's how progress works.

The reaching of scientific consensus is the product of an often lengthy time-line. It starts with something being observed and ends with it being fully explained. Let's look at a classic and highly relevant example.

In the late 1700s, the Earth-Sun distance was calculated. The value obtained was 149 million kilometres. That's incredibly close to modern measurements. It got French physicist Joseph Fourier thinking. He innocently asked, in the 1820s, something along these lines:

"Why is Planet Earth such a warm place? It should be an ice-ball at this distance from the Sun."

Such fundamental questions about our home planet are as attractive to inquisitive scientists as ripened fruit is to wasps. Fourier's initial query set in motion a process of research. Within a few decades, that research had experimentally shown that carbon dioxide has heat-trapping properties.

Through the twentieth century the effort intensified, particularly during the Cold War. At that time there was great interest in the behaviour of infra-red (IR) radiation in the atmosphere. Why? Because heat-seeking missiles home in on jet exhausts which are IR hotspots. Their invention involved understanding what makes IR tick.

That research led to the publication of a landmark 1956 paper by Gilbert Plass. The paper's title was, “The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change”. It explained in detail how CO2 traps heat in our atmosphere. Note in passing that Plass used the term "Climatic Change" all the way back then. That's contrary to the deniers' frequent claim that it is used nowadays because of a recent and motivated change in terminology.

From observation to explanation, this is a classic illustration of the scientific method at work. Fourier gets people thinking, experiments are designed and performed. In time, a hypothesis emerges. That is a proposed explanation. It is made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.

Once a hypothesis is proposed, it becomes subject to rigorous testing within the relevant specialist science groups. Testing ensures that incorrect hypotheses fall by the wayside, because they don't stand up to scrutiny. But some survive such interrogation. As their supporting evidence mounts up over time, they eventually graduate to become theories.

Theories are valid explanations for things that are supported by an expert consensus of specialists. Gravity, jet aviation, electronics, you name it, all are based on solid theories. They are known to work because they have stood the test of time and prolonged scientific inquiry.

In climate science today, there is overwhelming (greater than 97%) expert consensus that CO2 traps heat and adding it to the atmosphere warms the planet. Whatever claims are made to the contrary, that principle has been established for almost seventy years, since the publication of that 1955 landmark paper.

Expert consensus is a powerful thing. None of us have the time or ability to learn about everything/ That's why we frequently defer to experts, such as consulting doctors when we’re ill.

The public often underestimate the degree of expert consensus that our vast greenhouse gas emissions trap heat and warm the planet. That is because alongside information, we have misinformation. Certain sections of the mass-media are as happy to trot out the latter as the former. We saw a very similar problem during the COVID-19 pandemic and it cost many lives.

For those who want to learn more, a much longer detailed account of the history of climate science is available on this website.

Please use this form to provide feedback about this new "At a glance" section. Read a more technical version below or dig deeper via the tabs above!


Further details

We know full well that we don’t have the time or capacity to learn about everything, so we frequently defer to the conclusions of experts. Without experienced people using their expertise to perform many vital tasks – and without new people constantly entering such occupations – society would quickly disintegrate.

The same is true of climate change: we defer to the expert consensus of climate scientists. Indeed, public perception of the scientific consensus with regard to global warming has been found to be an important gateway into other enlightened climate-related attitudes - including policy support. 

Nine consensus studies

Let's take a look at summaries of the key studies, featured in the graphic above, into the degree of consensus. These have been based on analyses of large samples of peer-reviewed climate science literature or surveys of climate and Earth scientists. These studies are available online through e.g. Google Scholar. That slightly different methodologies reached very similar conclusions is a strong indicator that those conclusions are robust.

Oreskes 2004

In this pioneering paper, a survey was conducted into all peer-reviewed abstracts on the subject 'global climate change', published between 1993 and 2003. The work showed that not a single paper, out of the 928 examined, rejected the consensus position that global warming is man-made. 75% of the papers agreed with the consensus position while 25% made no comment either way.

Doran & Zimmerman 2009

A survey of 3,146 Earth scientists asked the question, "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?" Overall, 82% of the scientists answered yes. However, what was most interesting was the type of response compared to the level of expertise in climate science. Of scientists who were non-climatologists and didn't publish research, 77% answered yes. In contrast, 97.5% of actively-publishing climatologists responded yes. As the level of active research and specialization in climate science increases, so does agreement that humans are significantly changing global temperatures. The paper concludes:

"It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely non-existent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes. The challenge, rather, appears to be how to effectively communicate this fact to policy makers and to a public that continues to mistakenly perceive debate among scientists."

Anderegg et al. 2010

This study of 1,372 climate science researchers found that (i) 97–98% of the researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of anthropogenic climate change (ACC) as outlined by the IPCC and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers. 

Cook et al. 2013

A Skeptical Science-based analysis of over 12,000 peer-reviewed abstracts on the subject 'global climate change' and 'global warming', published between 1991 and 2011, found that over 97% of the papers taking a position on the subject agreed with the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of the project, the scientist authors were emailed and rated over 2,000 of their own papers. Once again, over 97% of the papers taking a position on the cause of global warming agreed that humans are causing it.

Verheggen et al. 2014

Results were presented from a survey held among 1868 scientists studying various aspects of climate change, including physical climate, climate impacts, and mitigation. The survey was at the time unique in its size, broadness and level of detail. Consistent with other research, it was found that as the level of expertise in climate science grew, so too did the level of agreement on anthropogenic causation. 90% of respondents with more than 10 climate-related peer-reviewed publications (about half of all respondents), explicitly agreed with anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs) being the dominant driver of recent global warming. The respondents’ quantitative estimate of the GHG contribution appeared to strongly depend on their judgement or knowledge of the cooling effect of aerosols.

Stenhouse et al. 2014

In a survey of all 1,854 American Meteorological Society members with known e-mail addresses, achieving a 26.3% response rate, perceived scientific consensus was the strongest predictor of views on global warming, followed by political ideology, climate science expertise, and perceived organisational conflict.

Carlton et al 2015

Commenting that the extent to which non-climate scientists are skeptical of climate science had not so far been studied via direct survey, the authors did just that. They undertook a survey of biophysical scientists across disciplines at universities in the Big 10 Conference. Most respondents (93.6%) stated that mean temperatures have risen. Of the subset that agreed temperatures had risen, the following question was then asked of them: "do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?" The affirmative response to that query was 96.66%.

Cook et al. 2016

In 2015, authors of the above studies joined forces to co-author a paper, “Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming”. Two key conclusions from the paper are as follows:

(i) Depending on exactly how you measure the expert consensus, somewhere between 90% and 100% of climate scientists agree humans are responsible for climate change, with most of our studies finding 97% consensus among publishing climate scientists. (ii) The greater the climate expertise among those surveyed, the higher the consensus on human-caused global warming.

Lynas et al. 2021

In this paper, from a dataset of 88,125 climate-related peer-reviewed papers published since 2012, these authors examined a randomly-selected subset of 3000 such publications. They also used a second sample-weighted approach that was specifically biased with keywords to help identify any sceptical papers in the whole dataset. Twenty-eight sceptical papers were identified within the original dataset using that approach, as evidenced by abstracts that were rated as implicitly or explicitly sceptical of human-caused global warming. It was concluded that the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change, expressed as a proportion of the total publications, exceeds 99% in the peer reviewed scientific literature.

Myers et al. 2021

This study revisited the 2009 consensus among geoscientists, while exploring different ways to define expertise and the level of agreement among them. The authors sent 10,929 invitations to participate in the survey, receiving 2,780 responses. In addition, the number of scientific publications by these self-identified experts in the field of climate change research was quantified and compared to their survey response on questions about climate change. Perhaps not surprisingly, the study found that agreement on anthropogenic global warming was high at 91% to 100% and generally increases with expertise. Out of a group of 153 independently confirmed climate experts, 98.7% of those scientists agreed that the Earth is warming mostly because of human activities such as burning fossil fuels. Among the subset with the highest level of expertise, these being independently-confirmed climate experts who each published 20+ peer-reviewed papers on climate change between 2015 and 2019, there was 100% agreement.

Public Polls and Consensus

Opinion polls are not absolute in the same way as uncontestable scientific evidence but they nevertheless usefully indicate in which way public thinking is heading. So let's look at a couple taken 13 years apart. A 15-nation World Public Opinion Poll in 2009 PDF), with 13,518 respondents, asked, among other questions, “Is it your impression that among scientists, most think the problem is urgent and enough is known to take action?” Out of all responses, just 51% agreed with that. Worse, in six countries only a minority agreed: United States (38%), Russia (23%), Indonesia (33%), Japan (43%), India (48%), and Mexico (48%). Conversely, the two highest “agree” scores were among Vietnamese (69%) and Bangladeshis (70%) - perhaps unsurprisingly.

The two other options people had to choose from were that “views are pretty evenly divided” (24% of total respondents), or “most think the problem is not urgent, and not enough is known to take action“ (15%). American and Japanese respondents scored most highly on “views are pretty evenly divided” (43 and 44% respectively).

How such a pervasive misperception arose, regarding the expert consensus on climate change, is no accident. Regular readers of this website's resources will know that instead, it was another product of deliberate misinformation campaigning by individuals and organizations in the United States and other nations around the world. These are people who campaign against action to reduce carbon emissions because it suits their paymasters if we continue to burn as much as possible. 

Step forward to 2022 and the situation has perhaps improved, but there's still some way to go. A recent poll, Public Perceptions on Climate change (PDF), was conducted by the Policy Institute, based at King's College London, UK. It quizzed samples of just over 2,000 people from each of six countries (UK, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Italy and Germany). The survey asked the question: “To the best of your knowledge, what percentage of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening?” The following averages were returned: the UK sample thought 65%, the average of the whole survey was 68% and the highest was Ireland at 71%. Clearly, although public perception of expert consensus is growing, there's still plenty of room for strategies to communicate the reality and to shield people from the constant drip-feed of misinformation.

Expert and Public Consensus

Finally, let's consider the differences between expert and public consensus. Expert consensus is reached among those who have studied complex problems and know how to collect and work with data, to identify what constitutes evidence and evaluate it. This is demanding work requiring specific skill-sets and areas of expertise, preparation for which requires years of study and training. 

Public consensus, in contrast, tends to occur only when something is blindingly obvious. For example, a serial misinformer would struggle if they tried running a campaign denying the existence of owls. Everyone already knows that of course there are owls. There is public consensus because we see and hear owls, for real or on the TV or radio. But complex issues are more prone to the antics of misinformers. We saw examples of misinformation during the COVID pandemic, in some cases with lethal outcomes when misinformed people failed to take the risks seriously. There's a strong parallel with climate change: it is imperative we accept the expert consensus and not kick the can down the road until the realisation it is real becomes universal – but utterly inescapable.


Update May 26, 2023: The "At a glance" section was updated to improve readability.

Last updated on 26 May 2023 by John Mason. View Archives

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Further reading

Richard Black at the BBC investigates whether there is a bias against skepticism in the scientific community.

More on what we're talking about when we say "scientific consensus,"  in an essay founded on Denial101x and scientific literature: Scientific Consensus isn’t a “Part” of the Scientific Method: it’s a Consequence of it. (or via archive.org)

Further viewing

The "Climate Denial Crock of the Week" video series examines the list of "32,000 leading skeptical scientists."

Naomi Oreskes gives a thorough presentation of the development of our scientific understanding of anthropogenic global warming:

Lead author John Cook explains the 2016 "Consensus on consensus" paper.

Here is a video summary of the various studies quantifying the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming, as well as the misinformation campaigns casting doubt on the consensus.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Joe Crouch for his efforts in tracking down scientific organizations endorsing the consensus as well as links to their public statements.

Update

On 21 Jan 2012, we revised 'the skeptic argument' with a minor quote formatting correction.

Comments

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Comments 1 to 25 out of 955:

  1. Concensus only has meaning if there is no pressure to conform in either direction. In the climate debate this is extremely far from being true. How far could we reasonably expect a questioner to go in an IPCC panel when that instantly collects a denialist label and probably guarantees a dead end to even the most able career? In the current climate it is reasonable to assume the dissent camp is at least ten times the admitted size. I know that as an admittedly uninformed questioner I get some pretty vitriolic responses from the eco faithful.
  2. Roverdc hits the nail on the head. To say there is bias in the science at this point is a wild understatement. What the public hears is claims that "all scientists except a few kooks agree that catastrophic global warming is immenent and caused by your car.". This is what they think you mean by consensus. Is it safe to say the real consensus is closer to the view of those so called deniers in the National Post series or to the alarmist panic that is being widely circulated through things like "An Inconvenient Truth"?
  3. The fact that there are so many Academies of Science endorsing the global warming position is probably the strongest argument for supporting it. The question to ask is how mature is this field? If the answer is 'very mature' then this type of support has high credibility. If the answer is 'immature' then it's significance is considerably less. Here is a link to US Senate Committee on the Environment that lists in detail 400 scientists who disagree with the anthropomorphic global warming hypothesis: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport That there are so many when we repeatedly hear on the news and radio that the actual number of dissenters is 'miniscule' will have the tendency to turn believers into sceptics. I would also feel more confident if the 'hockey stick' graphics that predict rapid change and global catastrophe would not all be linked back to a small handful of researchers and students who work together and presumably have the same preconceptions and modus operandi. If there are no 'hockey sticks' then the small increase in global temperature over the last century does not statistically look different from what one would expect from natural variation.
  4. that list of 400 is about as big a hoax as the "Petition Project" was. Here's one of many sites exposing it. http://gristmill.grist.org/user/Andrew%20Dessler would you like to try again, Mr. Nitschke?
  5. sorry about the double post, and for the unintended smarmy tone.
  6. I think I'd put the list on the petition project up against the IPCC list, many of whom disagree with IPCC conclusions, any day of the week. The listed expose here paledriver is pure rubbish. Maybe you should investigate the actual list rather than the fake and distorted claims about it.
  7. The Marshall Institute co-sponsored with the OISM a deceptive campaign -- known as the Petition Project -- to undermine and discredit the scientific authority of the IPCC and to oppose the Kyoto Protocol. Early in the spring of 1998, thousands of scientists around the country received a mass mailing urging them to sign a petition calling on the government to reject the Kyoto Protocol. The petition was accompanied by other pieces including an article formatted to mimic the journal of the National Academy of Sciences. Subsequent research revealed that the article had not been peer-reviewed, nor published, nor even accepted for publication in that journal and the Academy released a strong statement disclaiming any connection to this effort and reaffirming the reality of climate change. The Petition resurfaced in 2001. They openly lied about endorsement from National Academy of Sciences, were caught, the Academy issues a statement disclaiming any connection, they re-release it again anyways, and you're foolish and gullible enough to buy it and defend it. Would you like me to post a sample of the signers? That would be embarrassing for you.
  8. i will anyways......................... The term "scientists" is often used in describing signatories. The petition requests signatories list their degree (B.S., M.S., or Ph.D.) and to list their scientific field.[3] The distribution of petitions was relatively uncontrolled: those receiving the petition could check a line that said "send more petition cards for me to distribute". The Petition Project itself used to state: “ Of the 19,700 signatures that the project has received in total so far, 17,800 have been independently verified and the other 1,900 have not yet been independently verified. Of those signers holding the degree of PhD, 95% have now been independently verified. One name that was sent in by enviro pranksters, Geri Halliwell, PhD, has been eliminated. Several names, such as Perry Mason and Robert Byrd are still on the list even though enviro press reports have ridiculed their identity with the names of famous personalities. They are actual signers. Perry Mason, for example, is a PhD Chemist.[2] ” In May 1998 the Seattle Times wrote: “ Several environmental groups questioned dozens of the names: "Perry S. Mason" (the fictitious lawyer?), "Michael J. Fox" (the actor?), "Robert C. Byrd" (the senator?), "John C. Grisham" (the lawyer-author?). And then there's the Spice Girl, a k a. Geraldine Halliwell: The petition listed "Dr. Geri Halliwell" and "Dr. Halliwell." Asked about the pop singer, Robinson said he was duped. The returned petition, one of thousands of mailings he sent out, identified her as having a degree in microbiology and living in Boston. "It's fake," he said.[15] ” In 2005, Scientific American reported: “ Scientific American took a sample of 30 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science. Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, 11 said they still agreed with the petition —- one was an active climate researcher, two others had relevant expertise, and eight signed based on an informal evaluation. Six said they would not sign the petition today, three did not remember any such petition, one had died, and five did not answer repeated messages. Crudely extrapolating, the petition supporters include a core of about 200 climate researchers – a respectable number, though rather a small fraction of the climatological community.[16] ” In a 2005 op-ed in the Hawaii Reporter, Todd Shelly wrote: “ In less than 10 minutes of casual scanning, I found duplicate names (Did two Joe R. Eaglemans and two David Tompkins sign the petition, or were some individuals counted twice?), single names without even an initial (Biolchini), corporate names (Graybeal & Sayre, Inc. How does a business sign a petition?), and an apparently phony single name (Redwine, Ph.D.). These examples underscore a major weakness of the list: there is no way to check the authenticity of the names. Names are given, but no identifying information (e.g., institutional affiliation) is provided. Why the lack of transparency?[17]
  9. I have the article you claim was "formatted to mimic..." sitting right here. It doesn't look like it is anything of the sort. In fact it clearly lists Author and who puplished it. It looks like a review of literature type paper which...it is. As for mass mailing as it was done with a tiny budget it was nothing of the sort. In fact I never even got one despite being on one of the main mailing lists they supposedly used. How many copies of this supposed mass mailing did you get? Aren't you bothered by a clear attempt by the "enviros" to commit fraud with fake names? Shouldn't you question why they think this is needed or something to be proud of. Is it ok to be dishonest as long as they are on your side? A sample of 30 in which some back down (people get fired for being skeptics in this field you know)is instantly credible to you while you arm wave away 17,000 You are pointing out 1 fake signature out of 19,000! Really? It was caught, we had thousands of Fake names on our voting list in one nearby city alone. You are avoiding the main issue. Consensus is not science but if it was the supposed 2500 scientists of the IPCC report have every failing you mention of the petition project and more important the people who signed the petition agreed with what it said. The same can not be said for the IPCC and its supposed 2500. Counted in that IPCC number are hundreds of non scientists, NGO reps (these are people with an agenda)and most importantly reviewers, many of whom don't even agree with the conclusions of the IPCC report. In fact most of the famous "deniers" are included in the 2500 IPCC counts. Someone made the mistake of asking them after the second IPCC report (surveyed participants) and found that over 60% did not agree with the summary for policy makers. Maybe we should stop pretending numbers and NGOs are scientists and that consensus is science. It's that claim that raises huge red flags for me.
  10. Wow, that was terrible punctuation. Darn Packers
  11. I'm sorry. Are you a Packer fan? Picked another losing cause? I'm sorry again,but I couldn't help myself on that one. Great game though.
  12. Let's take a look at the "Inhofe 400" Meteorologist George Waldenberg was named. In response to his inclusion ,Mr. Waldenberg sent an email to Senator Inhofes' staff that began "Marc, Matthew: Take me off your list of 400 (Prominent) Scientists that dispute Man-Made Global warming claims. I've never made any claims that debunk the "Consensus". You quoted a newspaper article that's main focus was scoring the accuracy of local weathermen. Hardly Scientific ... yet I'm guessing some of your other sources pale in comparison in terms of credibility. You also didn't ask for my permission to use these statements. That's not a very respectable way of doing "research". One shining example. I have many more.
  13. Again? now its one out of 400 and who the heck was talking about the Inhofe 400? The point remains it is not a popularity contest despite all the attempted score keeping by the IPCC fans. Also many of the prominent scientists counted in that score are in fact the so called deniers.
  14. the point remains that the deniers flesh out their "petitions" and "lists" with fakes, fraudulent claims, and people who in no way have made any claims against the consensus and pointedly say so. I've pointed out one of many, (which I've linked to above) And the "400" was brought up on post#3, which is why I even referred to fraudulent "Petition Project" in the first place.
  15. p.s. I'm not claiming that there's no dissent. Just that there IS a consensus. An overwhelming one.
  16. Well that awful Inhofe 400 is now over 420 as in the time it took for you to complain about the one that didn't sign 20 more "scientists" did. But, it isn't important. My problem with this is, it isn't an election, you claim the skeptics inflate their numbers, maybe so, beyond question the AGW catastrophy folks inflate theirs. At least two of the best known "deniers" are IPCC lead authors. Dozens of others are listed as contributers or reviewers, several have been so disgusted with the process they withdrew and asked their names be removed. This means they are counted on both sides. What is that overwelming consensus? Here is what is presented as that consensus: Human CO2 emissions will cause massive catastrophic warming, It will cause disaster in the near future ruining the world for our children. This warming will lead to massive flooding, drought, wide scale starvation, wars, plagues, melting of the polar ice, flooding of huge areas of the world... Refer to my post number 2 above. Which is closer to the consensus? Al Gore with 23 feet of sea level rise this century or the "deniers" with 15-20 cm ? Al Gore with his talk of "unprecidented warming". Or the "deniers" claims that the world seems to have wamed about .6-.7 C over the last century and that may be somewhat due to human activity. Most of the "deniers" probably don't even have that much trouble with the consensus as stated in the first paragraph of the original post. They are vilified largely because they refuse to accept the supposed consensus I just described. In general I agreed with the stated consensus in the original post, though based on the recent data and the trouble with the historical record I think now I would not use the word "most".
  17. 420? In the original 400 I found many who were completely unqualified, some of whom are skeptical, some of whom are not. Many who are qualified who are either not actually skeptical, are skeptical only of some proposed solutions or who have actually stated their agreement WITH the consensus. The list was not made to hold up to close scrutiny. I imagine it's the same with the additional 20.
  18. addressing claims about the IPCC............... "John McLean and the NRSP Category: Global Warming Posted on: December 20, 2007 1:02 PM, by Tim Lambert Hey, remember John McLean? The guy who kept steering Andrew Bolt into brick walls? Well he's teamed up with Tom Harris of the NRSP to accuse the IPCC of lying about the scientific support for its reports: In total, only 62 scientists reviewed the chapter in which this statement appears, the critical chapter 9, "Understanding and Attributing Climate Change". Of the comments received from the 62 reviewers of this critical chapter, almost 60% of them were rejected by IPCC editors. And of the 62 expert reviewers of this chapter, 55 had serious vested interest, leaving only seven expert reviewers who appear impartial. First, there were much more than 62 reviewers for chapter 9. McLean and Harris have only counted the reviewers of the second order draft and ignored the more numerous comments on the first order draft. Second, they mislead by giving the impression that 60% of the reviewers disagreed with the IPCC, but half of the comments (572 of them!) were made by Vincent Gray, with 97% of them rejected. Only 16% of the comments by other reviewers were rejected. Gray was also responsible for most the rejected comments on the first order draft. Examples of Gray's rejected comments include: Insert after "to" "the utterly ridiculous assumption of" Insert after "Bayesian" "(or super-guesswork)" Insret before "Calibrated" "Bogus" Dave Semeniuk has a more detailed analysis of Gray's comments -- 50 of them were Gray repeatedly asking for "anthropogenic" to be replaced with "human-induced". Third, as Richard Littlemore points out, it is pretty dodgy for the NRSP to complain about "vested interest" when their own vested interest is so blatant. But how did McLean and Harris come up with their claim that 55 of the reviewers had "serious vested interest"? McLean gives details in a piece published by the SPPI (an oil industry funded think tank that apparently does not count as a vested interested to McLean). Scientists were declared to have a vested interest if they were an IPCC author, or an IPCC author of a previous assessment, or if any of their work was cited by the report, or if they worked for a government, or if they work for an organization that gets government funding, or if they have a "possible commercial vested interest in the claim of man-made warming". Basically that leaves amateurs like Gray and McKitrick. In one of his comments Gray asked them to cite one of his Energy and Environment papers. Fortunately it was rejected, or he would have been ruled out as well. John Mashey examined McLean's background and it seems that while the National Post awarded him a PhD he actually has no scientific qualifications at all, just a Bachelor of Architecture. Which makes McLean's rant against a critic, which was captured by Nexus 6 particularly funny." http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/12/john_mclean_and_the_nrsp.php
  19. It appears you have proved my point.
  20. it took you 23 days to come up with that?
  21. You mean I should have quickly pointed out that you had proven my point? Not allow you time to elaborate or correct?
  22. please, for my age addled mind, explain how I've proved your point.
  23. My point is the consensus, such as it is, is closer to the denialist view than the popular view of Al Gore etc. The claim that there is some vast number of scientists that constitute a consensus and that agree with catastrophic warming is not only not science it isn't even correct. We constantly see people pointing out IPCC to supposedly prove this supposed consensus. IPCC isnt all qualified scientists any more than any of these lists are. But more important than that, despite the fact that a pro warming bias is built into the entire IPCC process, the actual body of the IPCC report in fact supports my position rather than that of Al Gore. When I pointed out that the petition project and other similar things like the Heidelberg appeal all had one thing the IPCC didn't have; the consent and agreement of the people involved. (This is something lacking in the lists of academies etc. in the original post as well.) You ignored it completely as if tiny politically active committees somehow spoke for all. Personal attacks on a handful of people, each of which is questionable in itself does nothing to refute my stated point. It appears rather to be a deliberate attempt to obfuscate the issue.
  24. The deniers series in the National post has grown much larger. It is still a good series can you update the link so it doesn't just lead to the first 10.
  25. Yeah, Vincent Gray made a lot of noise, ergo there's no consensus. Genius logic!

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