Arguments
Fact brief - Is there an expert consensus on human-caused global warming?
Posted on 9 November 2024 by Guest Author
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline.
Is there an expert consensus on human-caused global warming?
A number of peer-reviewed studies found nearly all climate scientists agree carbon dioxide from human activities is warming the planet by making it more difficult for heat to escape the atmosphere.
A 2016 summary of consensus studies confirmed 90%-100% of publishing climate experts agree on global warming. Recent 2021 studies suggested 98% and 99% consensus.
Scientific consensus is agreement among the vast majority of specialists on a basic principle. It results from a large, rigorous body of observations and experiments which proposed, debated, and refined an explanation of a specific phenomenon.
Public perception often relies on non-expert perspectives. Scientific consensus however, requires rigorous testing by experts to confirm that hypotheses stand up to scrutiny.
The diversity in perspective and approach of climate scientists shows expertise, not groupthink, produces consensus. From careful, continuous research, excess CO2 from burning fossil fuels is agreed to be the main driver of global warming.
Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
Environmental Research Letters Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming
Environmental Research Letters Greater than 99% consensus on human caused climate change in the peer-reviewed scientific literature
Environmental Research Letters Consensus revisited: quantifying scientific agreement on climate change and climate expertise among Earth scientists 10 years later
NASA Scientific Consensus
About fact briefs published on Gigafact
Fact briefs are short, credibly sourced summaries that offer “yes/no” answers in response to claims found online. They rely on publicly available, often primary source data and documents. Fact briefs are created by contributors to Gigafact — a nonprofit project looking to expand participation in fact-checking and protect the democratic process. See all of our published fact briefs here.
I have nothing to add to this useful article, except to provide a shout-out for the valuable list mentioned in this article of statements by scientific societies concerning global warming.
NASA List of Scientific Consensus
Although not a consensus statement as such, the booklet titled "Climate Change: Evidence and Causes" published jointly by the US National Academy of Sciences and the UK Royal Society is a very readable, useful resource to recommend to people who want to read something about global warming from a reputable source. This booklet serves as an implicit consensus statement by these two organizations. I highly recommend this.
Climate Change: Evidence and Causes
Thanks Evan for providing that link to understand in a simple way some climate truths.
The ability and resolve to learn the why of it all is a losing battle. The internet can give us Skeptical Science but not teach us equity.
Seems to me, critical thinking has caved in to populist media messaging. The swing to the right in many western countries has reached a new peak in the consumer driven on steroids the USA.
"The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the axe; for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood, he was one of them."
Perhaps I will think this again- It seems to be a law of human nature that some people only notice things when they suffer personally.
Dale H
Why don't we call it what it really is?
Global warming!
I think it would help in the consumer understanding and uptake.
And as always, people believe those who offer the best entertainment, the best phrasemongers, the simplifiers. As a result, the majority of people always choose the quick bite, instead of the paths that would lead to sustainable solutions.
The unpleasant truths fall by the wayside.
The people deserve their leaders, whom they themselves elected.
Have you looked into all the climate scientists gagged after being bullied and fired for not having those scientific results in the industry the longest. Look up CSIRO bullied out of jobs or defunded. What about same as NASA scientists. So yeah nearly all scientists left to speak agree. After 2015.
Jess Scarlett @6 :
Jess, the consensus being talked about is the scientific consensus ~ IOW the evidence based consensus, which is expressed in published scientific papers. There are some (rare) scientists who disagree with the evidence, but they have failed to present any counter-evidence. (Can you still call them scientists when they are being unscientific?)
Reputable scientific journals are actually keen to publish new research ~ if it is controversial and ground-breaking . . . but it must be based on scientific evidence, not on loudmouth political opinions.
The politics of what to do about AGW is another question entirely.
Jess Scarlett @6, you appear to be implying scientists at CSIRO ,an Australian government funded climate change advice agency, were gagged and bullied and fired for being sceptical of anthropogenic climate change and so those left were the ones believing in anthropogenic climate change. This does not appear to be correct. It appears that the issues at CSIRO was essentially scientists were gagged, bullied and fired if they published studies or spoke out publicly in a way not consistent with the governments direction on climate science and mitigation policy, which of course varied form government to government. It appears CSIROS mangement were afraid of offending the governmnet of the day.
The scientists actually gagged, bullied or fired seemed to be scientists who spoke out publicly about climate dangers and weak emissions reduction targets and who published studies critical of weak climate mitigation schemes. For example a study by Dr Splash, a scientist, critical of emissions trading schemes and recommending a carbon tax. This is essentially the complete opposite of your claim. The following link gives a good account of the issues:
www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-05-02/csiro-missing-in-action-on-climate-advice/8479568
Jess Scarlett @ 6:
You're going to have to put together a much stronger argument than that if you want to convince anyone that there isn't a strong expert consensus on human-caused global warming.
For starters, is your lead question ("Have you looked into all the climate scientists gagged...") a rhetorical gambit, or are you actually asking a serious question? Are you trying to imply that the studies that have looked at the scientific literature missed a few "gagged scientists", or many, or all? Are you trying to imply that this "gagging" has been so thorough that none of their opinions have every made it into print? Or that the few that have made it into print would be a much greater number "but gagging"?
The OP here links to the full SkS rebuttal on the topic. Here is the link to the basic tab of that rebuttal, but note that there are also advanced and intermediate tabs to read. The basic rebuttal links to the various papers that have been done on the subject, and those papers give details on just what sort of searches they did to obtain the list of papers that were evaluated. Feel free to look them over and come back with an argument as to why those searches will have missed the opinions of the "gagged scientists" you seem to think exist in large numbers.
...but before you start trying to make an argument that the review system won't let opposing opinions get published, I suggest that you read this SkS article on "pal review" that shows just where bad reviewing practices exist in the climate science literature. (Hint: it's the "gagged scientists" that have historically abused the peer review system.)
But let's entertain your argument that there are a whole bunch of 'gagged scientists" that can't get published, or have chosen to remain silent out of fear. You said "...all the climate scientists gagged..." That seems to imply a large number. I'll begin with a recollection of discussing climate science with someone at a conference about 30 years ago. He made the claim that lots of scientists had reversed their opinion from global cooling in the 1970s to warming in the 1990s. (This is debunked on this post at SkS.)
So that is my challenge to you: you claim that there are scientists at CSIRO and NASA that have been gagged because they disagree with the scientific consensus. Name One. And provide some sort of link to a reliable source of information supporting that position.
Second: in the advanced tab of the full rebuttal, under "The Self-Ratings", the Original Cook et al study obtained ratings of over 2100 papers from 1200 scientists, and 97.2% of those ratings agreed with the consensus. In the following paragraph, it states that the authors' review of over 4000 abstracts indicated a 97.1% agreement with the consensus.
Please provide us with backup of your claim.