Arguments
The 97% consensus on global warming
What the science says...
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97% of climate experts agree humans are causing global warming. |
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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 1956 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.
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 1, 2024: Corrected a typo in the publication year for Plass (1956) in the at-a-glance section.
Last updated on 26 May 2023 by John Mason. View Archives
@921... "please stop throwing in red herrings like "minimise" and tell me why my direct quote is wrong?"
How can it be a red herring when it's written extensively into the paper?
What you're doing is disingenuously trying to misinterpret one sentence in the paper, ingoring the rest of what is clearly explained, in order to justify your personal need to reject the conclusions.
I'm continuing to engage with you on this topic because I find this very phenonenon utterly fascinating. I don't think you're at all a stupid person, but you seem to have a fanatical need for a particular conclusion. This is precisely what climate denial is. And it is precisely this weakness of the human mind that science has developed to compensate for.
Compared to most scientific research this Cook paper is a relatively simple experiment. It's also very simple to understand. The paper went through an extensive review process with lots of tough questions from reviewers. It was published in a respected journal. The conclusions are robust and since have become even more so.
@922... No, Albert. Most "skeptics" do not endorse the idea that humans are the primary cause of global warming. They minimize human contribution to warming.
@923... I'd agree with BL that the last sentence there is a quantification of >50%. But it's a moot point. Whether one were to put it in category 1 or 2 matters not, since both of those categories are endorsements of the idea that humans are the primary cause of modern warming.
So, one more time, the entire exercise this paper engages in is to separate research that endorses the position that humans are primarily responsible for warming and papers that minimize human responsibility. That is the very structure of the rating system. That is the fundamental premise stated in the title of the paper, Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature.
Papers either endorse AGW or they minimize it. If a paper claims that the direct effects of CO2 are too small compared to other natural factors that is a minimization of the anthropogenic element of global warming.
[BL] For what it is worth, here are definitions for "mainly" and "main", from wiktionary.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mainly
1. Chiefly; for the most part.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/main#English
1. Of chief or leading importance; prime, principal.
2. Chief, most important, or principal in extent, size, or strength; consisting of the largest part.
In order to come to the conclusions he is, Albert has to completely ignore this important statement in the introduction of the Cook paper.
This is the fundamental premise of the research. This explains why there are endorse vs minimize categories. Albert is laser focused on a misinterpretation of only one sentence in the paper, to the exclusion of all else, in order to confirm his priors.
As I've pointed out innumerable times over the decade since the publication of Cook, the "skeptics" are more than welcome to do the exact same research and see what results they get. And in that decade none of them have taken up that challenge, more often than not coming up with lame excuses why they can't or won't.
"We examined a large sample of the scientific literature on global CC, published over a 21 year period, in order to determine the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW (anthropogenic global warming, or AGW). [emphasis added]"
And category 1 fits that definition perfectly.
And just 64 out of the 4000 explicitly said that human activity was the main cause of global warning.
[BL] You keep repeating this basic mathematical error. There is no justification for using the number of papers from categories 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7 (and the small part of 4 that means "uncertain") as a single group that disagrees with category 1.
Until you provide a justification for that grouping, future references to this calculation will be deleted.
"No, Albert. Most "skeptics" do not endorse the idea that humans are the primary cause of global warming. They minimize human contribution to warming"
Sorry Rob, that is not what a I said. Most sceptics accept the primary greenhouse theory where ECS is about 1.2C but Not the positive feedback theory where ECS increases to 3-4.5C.
This puts them in category 2 or 3 and not category 5,6 or 7.
So it's not surprising that categories 5,6 and 7 have low numbers.
[BL] And it has been pointed out to you that the categories in the paper relate to recent warming, not ECS. You are fundamentally not understanding what the paper looks at.
"What you're doing is disingenuously trying to misinterpret one sentence in the paper, ingoring the rest of what is clearly explained, in order to justify your personal need to reject the conclusions."
How can you misinterpret a plain English statement saying "explicitly endorses >50% of warming is human induced"?
I reject "your conclusions" not "the conclusions"
The 2016 American Meteorological Society conducted poll of their members in 2016 asking them if they believed humans were contributing to global warming was happening and 96% said yes. I would also have said yes and every sceptic I know as well. It was pretty much the same as Cooks categories 1,2 and 3.
But unlike Cook, they asked directly if they believed humans were the main cause of global warming and 67% said yes. This question was equivalent to Cooks category 1.
[BL] Last sentence underlined for emphasis.
Have you given any thought at all as to what that 67% figure means for the erroneous 1.6% number you keep going back to? Are you capable of any consistent argument?
"Dismissing feedbacks is an assertion of blind faith in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. You just have to read the body of research."
I haven't dismissed any feedbacks, only the belief that they can be accurately measured. Many scientists believe that the positive feedback theory because of any temperature change in the atmosphere is grossly overstated and some even think the feedback is negative.
The only "evidence" for the positive feedback theory are models which are trying to model something where many variables are only guesstimates.
I programmed process computers for over 20 years and have a reasonable understanding of how models work.
If you you gave me the source code and runtime variable values of any model that purports to ""prove" positive feedback theory, I could show you in a short period of time that by adjusting these variables, any desired output could be achieved.
[BL] The snipped portions represent accusations that the people developing climate models stick in any number they want, to achieve a desired result. That may be the way you code programs, but it is not the way climate modelers work.
Unless you can back up that serious accusation with proper references, future accusations will be deleted.
"Such low ECS figures would mean the earth's climate should be almost perfectly stable over geologic time (no glacial-interglacial cycles) and we know that's not true."
Rob, believe it or not there are other factors that effect global temperature like, the sun, solar winds, magnetic fields, cosmic rays, transportation and retention and expulsion of ocean heat, volcanic activity above and below water, aerosols, clouds, gravitational pull of other planets, milankovitcg cycles, earth rotation wobble, shifting of poles, etc.
Our current warming cycle started around 1700 as The little ice age peaked negatively and we have been warming sporadically ever since.
its all perfectly normal with many historical precedents in the Holocene and previous interglacials.
1000 years ago Vikings colonised and farmed parts of Greenland that are still permafrost today. How can this be unless Greenland was far hotter than today. etc Etc etc.
But Michael Mann showed us in his model that the medieval warm period and little ice age never existed so all those thousands of scientists that proved they did exist must be wrong.
[PS] This is getting offtopic and you are now trying gish-gallop of long debunked myths in violation of comments policy. Use the search function to find the appropriate myth and post your evidence from reputable source if you wish to dispute it. Without supporting evidence, you are simply engaging in sloganeering.
It takes a certain chutzpah to believe that scientists have somehow ignored other factors. Try reading the Attribution chapter of the IPCC report to form an informed opinion. Similarly, the ice age cycle is well-understood which even cursory reading would show.
Since you dont appear to be to learn, we can only assume that you are trying to persuade us to a different opinion. Trying to change the mind of well-informed people means becoming well-informed yourself. Repeating nonsense doesnt do that.
@930... And that is your disingenuous interpretation of the paper. Everyone else understands this statement is what defines the endorsement categories relative to endorsement vs minimizing.
@931... "This puts them in category 2 or 3 and not category 5,6 or 7."
Nope.
Rejecting well established feedbacks in favor of an unsupportable idea that ECS is 1.2°C is clearly minimizing human contribution since it's abundantly obvious that CS is higher just based on warming to date.
@932... "How can you misinterpret a plain English statement saying 'explicitly endorses >50% of warming is human induced'?"
Yes, this is indeed the exact sentence you're attempting to use to reject the conclusions of the paper. Remember, the conclusion of the paper is that 97.3% of the research agrees that human activities are primarily responsible for global warming.
"The 2016 American Meteorological Society conducted poll of their members..."
(sigh) So, you're going to misinterpret this research as well?
Read that paper again, please. The conclusion was that the AMS needed to do a better job of educating their members. It was set up much like Doran/Zimmerman showing how agreement with human causation increased with greater levels of expertise.
@933... "Many scientists believe that the positive feedback theory because of any temperature change in the atmosphere is grossly overstated and some even think the feedback is negative."
Yes, members of the infinitessimal group of dismissives whose research is so bad that it can't get published in decent journals.
@934... "believe it or not there are other factors that effect global temperature like, the sun, solar winds, magnetic fields, cosmic rays...(etc., etc.)."
This is starting to gish into a big gallop.
If you're going to accept low CS figures then you also need to accept high CS as well, otherwise you're just cherry picking your preferred conclusions without considering the full body of research.
There are good reasons to believe the high CS figures have low probability, as there are even stronger reasons to believe low CS figures are improbable.
"But Michael Mann showed us in his model that the medieval warm period and little ice age never existed so all those thousands of scientists that proved they did exist must be wrong."
a) Please look up the definition of the word "heterogeneous."
b) Assuming you're talking about MBH98/99, that was nearly 25 years ago and their research only went back too the MWP. Perhaps you should catch up on more recent research.
(Yes, this is quickly veering off-topic... as one would expect.)
[PS] Any further discussion on this thread that is not about the consensus will be deleted.
[BL] Discussion of the Medieval Warm Period should go on one of these threads:
https://skepticalscience.com/medieval-warm-period.htm
https://skepticalscience.com/IPCC-Medieval-Warm-Period.htm
@933... Missed this one: "The only 'evidence' for the positive feedback theory are models which are trying to model something where many variables are only guesstimates."
Incorrect.
Knutti and Hegerl (2008)
Albert... I think you should take a moment to read the comments policy for this site. Accusations as you've just leveled are against policy.
As for your question, no one was trying to hide anything. The data is there available for anyone who wishes to dig into it. But it's not really relevant to the results of the paper. It just creates fodder for people like you whose intent is to misinterpret the data.
Regarding the AMS paper, different from the Cook paper, that research was about the opinions of their members. As already stated, the paper was structured similar to Doran/Zimmerman where the subjects had varying degrees of expertise in the subject matter. Once you got to publishing PhD level scientists, yes there was a consensus in the 97% range.
If one thinks about how Albert is trying to frame this, it makes no sense. I've heard the same tripe from other deniers over the years; he's not the first to come up with this.
He's trying to re-frame the question from "in order to determine the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW" into "in order to determine the percentage of research papers that endorse and quantify human contribution to GW as >50%."
It's quite a nonsensical and pointless framing of his (their) own creation that bears no relevance to anything that would have the least bit of interest to anyone.
Once again, it is fascinating to watch such entrenched, intractable displays like this.
"a) If you had bothered to read the actual paper it's explained why the figures are organized as they are."
I have read the paper multiple times and the so called explanation groups 1,2 and 3 together and compares them to groups 5 6 and 7 and as I have said, most sceptics would be in group 3.
The "minimise" option Is a red herring as most sceptics believe in an ECS of 1.2C which is both group 3 and groups 56 and 7.
"b) Your 1.6% figure only relates to papers that explicitly quantify human contribution. With that you'd have to compare that to other papers that explicitly minimize human contribution."
Nonsense. It is a clear indication that only 1.6% of the papers thought that humans were causing most of warming.
You can't count, for example, a paper that explicitly quantifies against a paper that implicitly endorses human contribution.
Nomsense. Most sceptics who write papers would be in several categories and that is the lie in Cooks paper.
The only time that a scientific organisation has polled its members was by the AMS in 2016 and it explicitly asked members if they vpbelieved humans were responsible for the majority of warming and 67% said yes.
They didn't play the pretend game of setting up false categories and compare warmists against sceptics like Cook did.
The AMS were extremely embarrassed by this and tried to spin the result saying it was misinterpreted blah blab blah but since this no scientific body has ever dared poll their members again.
Roh you still havenot explained why Cook went to considerable lengths to hide the category numbers. It took me a couple of days to eventually figure out how to chuck the file into a spreadsheet and extract the totals.
I am passionate about truth in science, you're not, so let's just agree to disagree.
PS engaged with you on this subject because I have an open mind on all matters and wanted to read whether there were aspects of the "97%" I wasn't aware of, but your comments show me that there aren't.
Last comment
A few years ago the Australian sceptic society had a comment on their home page saying nothing was exempted from scepticism but also had a manifesto on global warming saying the science was settled and gave theit reasons.
I went through the manifesto line by line discrediting it by referring to data and submitted it. However next day it had disappeared and I contacted the editor and he said he had passed it on to "experts" to see if it was valid. He said he would get back to me but never did.
So a sceptic society now determines what you can be sceptical about. You can challenge the theories of Newton and Einstein but not the high church of climate change. That makes it a faith, not science.
Very last comment
In the sixteenth century, 99.9% of scientists believed the Sun orbited the Earth.
i Won't be commenting on this thread again.
[BL] Points previously made, previously refuted, all marked with warning snips. If there had not already been a response, the entire post would have been deleted as sloganeering.
As this user is incapable of reading, understanding, and/or following a comments policy, the only thing we can agree on is that this will be his last post - on this thread, or any other.
Okay, let's go over this again, Albert.
The premise of the paper is as stated in the introduction.
Do you honestly not see the words: human activity is very likely causing most of the current AGW?
That statement creates the fundamental basis of papers that either endorse or minimize that position.
If you're telling me that most "skeptics" agree that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW... hey! We're good!
"It is a clear indication that only 1.6% of the papers thought that humans were causing most of warming."
Nope, precisely because categories 1, 2 and 3 all endorse the idea that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW.
"...AMS in 2016 and it explicitly asked members if they vpbelieved humans were responsible for the majority of warming and 67% said yes."
And they also explain that most of their members were NOT experts in climate science and do not publish climate research. The greater their expertise, the greater their level of agreement, with the highest level of expertise also demonstrating ~97% agreement with the idea that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW.
"...why Cook went to considerable lengths to hide the category numbers."
He didn't.
"I am passionate about truth in science..."
Clearly, quite the opposite.
"...I have an open mind on all matters..."
As Carl Sagan used to say, "It's good to keep an open mind, but not so much that your brain falls out." I think that perfectly describes your position in this matter.
"In the sixteenth century, 99.9% of scientists believed the Sun orbited the Earth."
No, it was 16th century scientists who were explaining to people the earth orbited the sun. Once presented within a scientific/mathematical structure, scientists of the day readily accepted this fact.
"i Won't be commenting on this thread again."
We are relieved.
Please note: the basic version of this rebuttal has been updated on May 11, 2023 and now includes an "at a glance“ section at the top. To learn more about these updates and how you can help with evaluating their effectiveness, please check out the accompanying blog post @
https://sks.to/at-a-glance
Thanks - the Skeptical Science Team.
I have been wondering lately if some of the more famous climate change skeptics, climate scientists like Judith Curry, have modified or adjusted their outlier positions as the global warming crisis grows worse year by year.
But apparently not, based on the article I read in the Torrance Daily Breeze by John Stossel, titled "The fake climate change consensus", that quoted her extensively, Most of the article I recognized as long ago debunked garbage, but it seems surprising to me that experienced climate scientists like Curry would still be promoting this kind of nonsense.
Rkrolph @948 , as far as I have seen, Dr Curry has not changed her expressed views in recent years (she has retired academically, but AFAIK still maintains a commercial interest in weather/hurricane season predictions). # I follow her blog most days ~ the blog is slightly redeemed by one or two of the commenters there. The blog is a somewhat more genteel version of WUWT blog.
Unlike Drs Spencer & Christie, and the definitely-emeritus Prof Lindzen, the good Dr Curry maintains a certain amount of vagueness in her speech and presentations . . . implying that she is not quite opposed to the mainstream climate science. Vagueness & a degree of "uncertainty" are her game ~ enough fuzziness for some Plausible Deniability, when someone tries to pin her down now or at a future date. But it is as obvious as an elephant in your kitchen, about which side of the scientific fence she occupies. And this goes down well with the usual group of denialist U.S. senators.
** Up to as much as two-thirds of modern rapid global warming might possibly be owing to "natural variations" or ocean/atmosphere cycles . . . that's the sort of Plausible Deniability she goes for. So no need to take any climate action.
Mr John Stossel is a reporter that has gone over to the Dark Side, years ago. Basically a propagandist. I haven't followed him closely enough to allow me to make a psychiatric assessment.
Rkrolph @948, Dr. Curry has recently "debated" the climate issue with Dr. Jordan Peterson in his YouTube channel. You can get a pretty good idea about Dr Curry's position on Global Warming from it:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q2YHGIlUDk