 Peter Nicholson
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A new survey finds consensus among scientists about the reality of climate change and its likely cause. A group of 3,146 earth scientists surveyed around the world overwhelmingly agree that in the past 200-plus years, mean global temperatures have been rising, and that human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures.
In trying to overcome criticism of earlier attempts to gauge the view of earth scientists on global warming and the human impact factor, Peter Doran and Kendall Zimmerman sought the opinion of the most complete list of earth scientists they could find, contacting more than 10,200 experts around the world listed in the 2007 edition of the American Geological Institute’s Directory of Geoscience Departments.
Questions used were reviewed by a polling expert who checked for bias in phrasing, such as suggesting an answer by the way a question was worded. The nine-question survey was short, taking just a few minutes to complete.
Two questions were key: have mean global temperatures risen compared to pre-1800s levels, and has human activity been a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures.
About 90 percent of the scientists agreed with the first question and 82 percent the second.
In analyzing responses by sub-groups, Doran found that climatologists who are active in research showed the strongest consensus on the causes of global warming, with 97 percent agreeing humans play a role.
Doran and Kendall Zimmerman conclude that “the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.”
Not that skeptics will care. Anti-intellectualism, anti-science convictions reflect hangups ranging from creationism to the good old favorite – “Al Gore said it and I hate his suits”.
Humans aren’t responsible for anything, individually or collectively. The Lord told me so.
And we’re forgiven, anyway.
On Nova last night the show detailed how we are also cooling the earth with jet contrails.As a result this scientist said global warming would be much worse without this affect.He was at first vilified and is now considered correct in his assumptions.What we know for sure is that there is so much we don’t know.
[Comment deleted – Violation of Posting Guidelines. – ed.]
#3
crap “random” adolescent post….why waste the energy
“Two questions were key: have mean global temperatures risen compared to pre-1800s levels”
You mean during the little ice age? I should hope they rose, otherwise we’d be freezing to death!
ROFL!
Climate Voodoo Environmental “science” Witch Doctors pronounce The Sky is Falling!…as usual. Ho hum. NEXT!
Without making a comment on the actual issue, aren’t we talking here about a poll which, no matter how carefully worded, could be paraphrased “Is your work critically important to everyone in the world?” “Do you think you should continue to receive a high level of funding for your work?”
Just for the sake of discussion, let’s say that all this man-made global warming talk is true. Who would you expect to deliver the message? Your astrologer? Your Proctologist? The people who own the industries that are making mounds of money while contributing to the problem?
On the other hand – show me how the leading lights in climate research are making their fortunes by pointing out the problem.
Not to make claims on either side, but as a statistician, the work “significant” can be very misleading. It could be entirely possible that A has a significant effect on B, yet that the measure of that effect is still small. “Significant” just means that it can be distinguished from the random noise. Because of this, polls of this nature, while they could be used for political purposes (and those could be noble and good purposes), are useless polls from a truly scientific perspective.
Well, I’m no scientist, I just play one on this blog, but:
“Two questions were key: have mean global temperatures risen compared to pre-1800s levels, and has human activity been a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures.”
The questions are fatally vague and undefined. Any qualified scientist should have returned the form with “WTF” written in Red Letters across the front page with a note: “Please don’t waste my time.”
Hey Eideard, you are a bit behind the times; “global warming” has been re-branded “climate change” that way humans are responsible regardless of what the temperature does, a genius marketing move!
why won’t anyone take this serialsly?
EXCELCIOR!
Science is simply not a consensual activity. Scientific breakthroughs are exactly the opposite.
New ideas are almost invariably pilloroed by the scientific comunity.
Consensus among scientists? When was science ever about “consensus?” That’s the problem with the politicization of this issue. Science is about hard facts. Computer models do not make for hard facts. Consensus does not make for scientific fact. IT’s not about denying that something is going on. it’s about having indisputable facts that just don’t exist to claim that MAN or CO2 levels are causing global warming.
# 13 Read said, “Science is simply not a consensual activity. Scientific breakthroughs are exactly the opposite.”
In the 3rd century BC, a survey of Ptolemy and his contemporaries found a consensus that the Earth did not move and was the center of the universe. They also thought the Sun, Moon, and stars orbited around the Earth.
There was a lone scientific voice whose own research lead to the conclusion that the Earth and the other planets circled the Sun and the Earth spun on its axis, causing night and day. He was ridiculed. His name was Aristrachus.
I’d advise understanding the history of Climatology and the academic discipline itself — a good run down is here. This is a once moribund under-funded field that is suddenly the center of attention because someone in the group latched on to this gravy train. The bias is obvious self-interest of the highest order. For them not to agree that climate change is man-made is like an ethnic studies professor voting for John McCain. It’s not going to happen.
And it’s all quite amusing to see all these rationales emerge. The meteorologists, meanwhile, have been thrown under the bus. They are apparently idiots.
The earth’s temperature peaked in 1998. It’s been falling ever since; it dropped dramatically in 2007 and got worse in 2008, when temperatures touched 1980 levels.
Meanwhile, the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center released conclusive satellite photos showing that Arctic ice is back to 1979 levels. What’s more, measurements of Antarctic ice now show that its accumulation is up 5 percent since 1980.
In other words, during what was supposed to be massive global warming, the biggest chunks of ice on earth grew larger.
Get the BS Meter out for this article
“Climate Scientists Agree…”
Uh, does anyone remember when the scientific consensus was that the hole in the ozone layer was going to melt Antarctica? So much for consensus.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in 2008 it’s that information can’t be gained from listening to others. We must each independently arrive at the truth and we are to construct our understanding from anecdotal evidence alone.
If it’s cold outside today, or you hear that there’s a lot of snow somewhere, it is all the proof you need that global warming isn’t real.
And I’m with Rick. You can question the motives on both sides of this, but which is more compelling?
Manufacturers want global warming to be false, because doing something about it will cost them money.
Scientists want global warming to be true, because: their funding is tied to it, their self-worth is tied to it, etc.
But at their core manufacturers are all about making money and scientists are at their core dedicated to advancing knowledge. Would they support false science to keep their grants coming at the cost of their legacy? Wouldn’t you have more rogue scientists getting grants from manufacturers debunking the ‘false’ science? Then they’d get money and get to advance truth/understanding.
Motives, think about them.
Global warming is man-made? Well, I’m not sure and I don’t think using computer models is all that accurate. Also, we are told all the problems are man-made with little regard to natural solar and climate cycles .
Want to limit emissions and clean up the mess that’s already there? OK, I’m all for that.
Want to institute Cap and Trade/ Carbon Credits? Only when you come up with a reliable system that doesn’t:
1. Allow a select group of people to become very rich while the poor and middle class carry the burden.
2. Let rich people, companies and countries “buy” their greenness without actually changing.
The idea that the well off can toss a few bucks at an offset and continue polluting as much (or more) as they always have is obscene. If we are going to solve this problem then it must be done honestly with ‘real’ physical changes.
If you want a system that helps and is fair to everyone then I’m with you.
As a side note, I have never owned a minivan or a suv. My wife and I both drive cars that get +35 miles to the gallon and we try very hard to manage our trips to use just one car. At night ALL of our electronics (except phone and clocks) are really turned off (even power blobs).
# 19 Steven Long said, “Motives, think about them.”
Exactly. How much future pork is tied to “global warming”?
So out of 10,200 scientists, only 3,146 bothered to reply. The ones that were actively involved in climate research strongly agreed with the consensus on man-made global warming.
I wonder why the 7,000 other scientists didn’t bother replying.
1. Increasing energy efficiency is good.
2. Reducing dependence on a single energy source is good.
3. Reducing pollution is good.
If there is a consensus on these 3 points, does it matter whether we agree or not on global warming/cooling/climate change?
The Earth climate is a pendulum.
Humans have simply increased the momentum of the swing.
Of course it will self-correct itself over time.
I’m much more concerned over man-made pollution, and what I can do about it.
Perhaps when Google Earth + NASA’s 3D full earth topography and a decent weather analysis program can all be loaded into a single computer and produce an “estimate” on weather to within 1KM square anywhere on the planet in near-realtime, current simulations are nearly worthless.
128 Core 1THZ 10NM CPU with 10 Pentabytes of RAM should do the trick.
None of this surprises me. Every week it’s a new story about both sides of the “global warming debate” – if you can even call it that.
It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to know that human activity has a measurable impact on the environment. However, one week there’s a report that human activity is preventing what was called a relapse to the ice age:
http://world-science.net/othernews/081217_warming.htm
the next week there’s these sorts of reports (I swear to Christ there’s one every month – “XXX Number of Scientists agree! Global Warming is happening!!”).
Fortunately for us, science has already given us the answer to all these questions:
Doesn’t matter.
Why? Because global climate change significant enough to cause catastrophic damage or create issues regarding the basic-level habitability of this planet would/will take thousands, even possibly hundreds of thousands of years. And that’s assuming we’re causing it directly! Science has shown that there are NORMAL and NATURAL fluctuations in climate and global temperature and that these changes occur over thousands and millions of years.
So, if the average global temperature is up 1.00000000000000000897643 degrees (obviously a fabricated and exaggerated number) or whatever the number is since the first time someone was able to measure the temperature of the air 200+ years ago, why is everyone freaking out? What’s the global temperature difference from when the last ice age occurred and now? And what was our part in exiting that geologic era?
If pollution gets too bad, say to the point that there’s smog clouds over a city like there are today, I think the safest bet there could be is this: Humans will die of their own doing and end their species by choking on their own pollution or through active and aggressive warfare well before we could even hope to attempt to destroy the entire planet. That is, of course, assuming we don’t have a nuclear throw-down. But then that isn’t “global warming”, is it?
[Please drop the WWW from URLs as WordPress doesn’t display it properly… and you said, “rocket surgeon.” Har!- ed.]
Rick, your comment is true but not on point. I am not asserting that the scientists are wrong. I am questioning the value of polling climate scientists as a group and referring to their apparent consensus as if it matters to the facts of the matter. Others made the same point in this thread very well.
Not a single one of us knows WTF we are talking about.
I’ll start with this amusing found wisdom: Science is not built on consensus. Of course it is. Consensus forms and is accepted, then it is challenged and refined, and sometimes overthrown forming a new consensus.
Silly Hoomans.
Well the usual naysayers are out in force today.
You want motives? Every single “scientist” who has denied AGW has turned out to be a shill for the oil companies. There is more money in denying than in accepting the evidence.
And lets talk computer models. There is an easy way to test: put in decades old data to see if you get close to today’s results. Guess what? THEY HAVE, and IT WORKS!
8 ArianeB said, “And lets talk computer models. There is an easy way to test: put in decades old data to see if you get close to today’s results.”
Actually, the computer models didn’t accurately predict the temps over the last 10 years, nor, the sea ice levels nor the Antarctic ice…
I do not understand what the point of denying the science of “climate change.” Sure when the issue is moved into the realm of politicians it gets mucked up. But why deny the science of what is happening?
I have seen Ptolemy pointed to in these replies as an instance of “scientific consensus” tomfoolery. Why do you need to go so far back in time to find human error? Modern science is built upon theories. Theories explain a lot of disparate facts. Within a theory the facts will not always agree (like global dimming cooling the earth in the face of rising temperatures or increased snowfall in Antarctica) but the theory gets revised. I am sorry to say to all of the climate “Skeptics” out there, the science points to man made warming. If there was data to the contrary; not conjecture, not accusations of needing funding, but data, then a viable alternate theory would exist.
So far the opposing side has come up short.
@#28: By very virtue of being Astrophysicist I have no interest in Big Oil… By the same token I have seen undeniable evidence that all planets in our Solar system were heating up during the same period, many showing effects ordinary people understand on Earth. Poles melting on Earth? Poles melting on Mars in last two decades. Increased violent storms and hurricanes migrating to higher latitudes on Earth? In 1990’s Giant Red Spot storm on Jupiter moved in latitude for the first time since observed, more recently new “baby Red Spot” storm (still storm larger than the Earth) joined it. Winters getting warmer on Earth? Pluto warming up as it increases distance from the Sun…
Oh yes, the instruments on satellites designed to measure Sun activity and designed to survive best it can throw at us? Burned in early 2000’s…
Poster #2 mentions “Global Dimming”. It is not only by aircraft. Most of our “greenhouse” gasses production activity is followed closely by heavy shading particle production/emission. Our various pollutions balance well vs. climate change. We should clean up the act but not religiously following the “Church of Global Warming Caused by Man”. That I think distracts us from the real pollution problems we can correct and mitigate.