Arguments
Skeptical Science consensus paper voted ERL's best article of 2013
Posted on 21 April 2014 by John Cook
Environmental Research Letters (ERL)have just announced that our paper, Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, has been voted by the ERL editorial board as the best ERL article of 2013. This award came with a prize of $500 (which we'll use to pay the journal fees of future peer-reviewed papers by the Skeptical Science team).
Our consensus paper was published in Environmental Research Letters in May last year. We'd like to express our appreciation especially to the readers of Skeptical Science who generously contributed towards the payment of the page charges ($1600 in 9 hours!), making it possible for ERL to distribute the paper free of charge.
Within 24 hours of publication, our paper was tweeted by President Obama's Twitter account and received mainstream media coverage in countries all over the world. The paper has been downloaded 161,443 times, making it the most downloaded paper in over 80 Institute of Physics journals (the second most downloaded paper has 105,275 downloads). The paper continues to be cited in a wide range of scholarly journals.
And while we're on the topic and I have your attention, now is a good time to reiterate that we have a wide range of infographics related to our consensus paper and the scientific consensus in general, that are free to be republished. Here are some samples:
So again, thanks to Skeptical Science readers for making publication of our consensus paper possible, and helping make it freely available to the general public. Last but certainly not least: thanks also to Environmental Research Letters for their award.
Ouch. Members of the Deniosphere aren't going to like this.
Why must the world gang up on them so?
Congratulations.
Nice one!
Nice! Apparently they also have a '25 highlights of 2013' with this study at the top of the list. Some interesting reading in those other articles and the papers citing the consensus study.
Great stuff. I'm wondering whether there is some way to illustrate the fact that it's a coterie of fossil-fuel-funded propaganda outlets who are driving the "debate," rather than a stubbornly ignorant public. I guess the graphic that has appeared elsewhere comparing the 97% with the percentage of Republican members of the U.S. Congress who concur with AGW does some of the job, but perhaps something that looks formally at pronouncements or reports of Heartland, CEI, Cato and others?
Congratulations John and the SkS team.
Better than a bloggie, I guess. :-)
Well done all.
Congratulations! I believe this is well-deserved.
Given the role of free market ideologies in all this, I believe it is worthwhile to keep in mind the following points:
Personally? I was a libertarian of sorts (Objectivist, actually, for about a decade and a half), and I am still quite sympathetic towards that sort of world view. I also recognize industrial climate disruption as the single greatest issue facing humanity of our time. Failing to address it will make people impoverished and desperate, and the freedom of the individual tends to be greatly discounted under such conditions.
Well done, an excellent pay back for the hard work.
I noticed Maurice Newman (chairman of the Australian Business Advisory Council) disputed the "concensus" figures on ABC Lateline last night - it's good to be noticed.