97% of scientists believe climate change is caused by humans, study finds

[GennGreymane]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...-a6982401.html

97 per cent of scientists agree that climate change is caused by humans, an American study has claimed.

Significantly, the researchers behind the study also found that the more knowledge of climate science these scientists have, the more likely they are to believe in human-caused climate change.

The study, published recently in the Environmental Research Letters journal, was conducted by a team from Michigan Technological University.

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It was compiled through the analysis of seven previous independent studies of scientists' opinions on climate change, essentially making it a meta-study of a number of different meta-studies.

Dr. Sarah A. Green, a chemistry professor at Michigan Tech who led the study, explained: "What's important is that this is not just one study -- it's the consensus of multiple studies."

Co-author Naomi Oreskes, a professor in the history of science at Harvard University, said: "By compiling and analysing all of this research...we've established a consistent picture with high levels of scientific agreement among climate experts."

According to Green, the main problem with some of the countless climate change surveys is that they can be biased towards respondents with certain opinions, or targeted at people who lack expertise in climate science.

She also believes the wider public have a "very skewed" view of the sheer levels of acceptance of man-made climate change theories in the scientific community.

Research shows that only 12 per cent of the public in the US realises there is such strong agreement among scientists, and the one of the main arguments used by climate change deniers is the supposed lack of scientific consensus on the issue. People who believe scientists are still torn over climate change are also less likely to believe in the need for urgent solutions.

As the study says, part of the problem is down to certain groups "conflating the opinion of non-experts with experts and assuming that lack of affirmation equals dissent."

Green points out that although skepticism and an urge to dig deeper into statistics is a key part of the scientific process, "climate change denial is not about scientific skepticism."

The world's leaders appear to agree with the scientific community. At the UN Climate Change Conference at the end of 2015, 195 countries unanimously agreed to reduce their carbon output and work to keep global warming to "well below" 2 degrees over pre-industrial levels

[Septik]

good thing someone was able to round up all the worlds scientists and get an answer to this once and for all!!

[Deleted]

So they "believe" it?

I wonder how many scientists back in the day believed the earth was flat.

[Krille]

So they "believe" it?

I wonder how many scientists back in the day believed the earth was flat.

Wordings. Can be hard sometimes. In the actual article the same sentence is: "97 per cent of scientists agree that climate change is caused by humans, an American study has claimed".

[Aehl]

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/...a-real-survey/

Although 1854 people completed some portion of the survey, this table only displays the results for 1821 respondents, since 33 (less than 2% of the sample) did not answer one or more of the questions on expertise and global warming causation

Thats 1854 out of how many?

There are lies, there are damned lies and there the kind of idiotic statistics that claim that 98% of people believe something when they interview 100 people out of 23 million

“Cook survey included 10 of my 122 eligible papers. 5/10 were rated incorrectly. 4/5 were rated as endorse rather than neutral.” -Dr. Richard Tol
“That is not an accurate representation of my paper...It would be incorrect to claim that our paper was an endorsement of CO2-induced global warming.”” –Dr. Craig Idso
“Cook et al. (2013) is based on a strawman argument…By using the 50% borderline a lot of so-called “skeptical works” including some of mine are included in their 97%.” –Dr. Nicola Scafetta
“Nope… it is not an accurate representation.” –Dr. J. Shaviv

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestay.../#4b9d0dd35909

Scafetta responded. “What my papers say is that the IPCC [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] view is erroneous because about 40-70% of the global warming observed from 1900 to 2000 was induced by the sun.”

AGW is panic mongering alarmist garbage.

[Ghostpanther]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...-a6982401.html

So this means 3% got it right? Climate change has been happening for a very, very long time. And with or without mankind, it would continue to do so.

[Summer]

So they "believe" it?

I wonder how many scientists back in the day believed the earth was flat.

Not many. That the earth is round was known in antiquity and accepted even in medieval church etc. Unless you want to refer to ancient Mesopotamians as scientists and use that for validity of your argument. You can read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth

You're likely confusing things and referring to the widely accepted geocentric model (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_model) that wasn't seriously questioned until Galileo did his measurements. However in this case also I'd ask whether the heavily religious middle ages had scientists in the sense we use the word: incidentally Galileo and his brethren were what you could think of as the first scientists, the astronomers setting the foundations for Newton and classical physics and the dawn of a new age for mankind!

In other words I don't find your comparison very good :P

[Deleted]

Leaves 3% that disagree.

[Cerilis]

To sum up the future of this thread: Scientists believe that 99% of people are more likely to believe something if it starts with "scientists believe" or is made pseudo-official with a percentage/statistic.

[Kretan]

Whether you believe 97% is the perfectly correct number or not, the study won't be off enough for you to say "naw, only 50% agree". It's painfully obvious that the number of scientists who agree on climate change being caused by humans is pretty huge.

[Deleted]

Are there even scientists that dare to say otherwise? That's my main concern here.
If you dare to say Humans are not the (main) cause, the "scientific community" will drop you and your career ends instantly.

[ArguesWithStrangers]

Banwagon fallacy is a fallacy.

[Kretan]

To sum up the future of this thread: Scientists believe that 99% of people are more likely to believe something if it starts with "scientists believe" or is made pseudo-official with a percentage/statistic.

More like it will be a few people who don't really understand science championing tiny perceived flaws as reasons to dismiss the whole idea of man made climate change and then asking for a mountain of proof and data to disprove them without providing a scrap of their own and then refusing to read or research anything provided. The life of endus.

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Are there even scientists that dare to say otherwise? That's my main concern here.
If you dare to say Humans are not the (main) cause, the "scientific community" will drop you and your career ends instantly.

Not really how this works. You don't start out by saying "Man made climate change is false! I'm going to prove it watch!" You go "I'm going to study the impacts of XX on the climate to see what the likely cause is". Everyone who embarks on that research (or a huuuuge majority) come back with the same result....man caused it.

[Krille]

Are there even scientists that dare to say otherwise? That's my main concern here.
If you dare to say Humans are not the (main) cause, the "scientific community" will drop you and your career ends instantly.

Have you ever studied yourself? Written a "scientific" paper? You might have that claim as hypothesis, it won't hurt you as a scientist. But if you go out in public and simply state "man didn't cause the global warming" without any evidence, you'll probably not be having a wonderful career as that is incredibly stupid.

Being a scientist isn't about having opinions you "dare" to have. You research and you report findings, you might have a set agenda behind it but if we're talking hard sciences that shouldn't matter. That's more of an issue with social studies etc when the interviewer or observer might impose his own agenda to the questions asked etc.

[saltytoes718]

Do these scientist also understand that we are at the tail end of an ice age? Yes people technically we are still in an ice age and logic would tell me that if the ice age is ending that it would naturally get warmer. NO?

[Deleted]

Are there even scientists that dare to say otherwise? That's my main concern here.
If you dare to say Humans are not the (main) cause, the "scientific community" will drop you and your career ends instantly.

If you're a crackpot about it, yes. If you level actually relevant criticism about a model, no. This is how those models get refined over time in actual fact, and come to incorporate new and more data and factors. In the end, all of this ends up corroborating the AGW hypothesis.

In the end of course, the fact that 97, or 98, or 95, or whatever % of scientists agree is irrelevant, because the only relevant thing is the evidence. And judging by the evidence, things are looking grim indeed.

Ofc not that it helps in any actual public discussion with climate change deniers, as most of the time you just get the same regurgitated 'gotcha!" arguments, like "hurr durr volcanoes produce more CO2 than humans" [false by orders of magnitude], "hurr durr Greenland used to be GREEN 5000 years ago" [bullshit], " hurrrr climate keeps changing since forever" [obviously true, but not a fucking argument at all, unless you really think having a warm shallow sea in the middle of Europe will be beneficial for anyone else than the fish], or my favorite "hurp da durp, climate scientists are corrupt and suffer from conflict of interest" [totally not smokescreen to obfuscate the massive lobbying and smear campaigns by big oil].

It's just tedious.

[Krille]

Do these scientist also understand that we are at the tail end of an ice age? Yes people technically we are still in an ice age and logic would tell me that if the ice age is ending that it would naturally get warmer. NO?

This is news to me. Care to share where you got this idea from?

[Ghostpanther]

More like it will be a few people who don't really understand science championing tiny perceived flaws as reasons to dismiss the whole idea of man made climate change.

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Not really how this works. You don't start out by saying "Man made climate change is false! I'm going to prove it watch!" You go "I'm going to study the impacts of XX on the climate to see what the likely cause is". Everyone who embarks on that research (or a huuuuge majority) come back with the same result....man caused it.

We should not dismiss that humans are polluting the world. Reducing air, water and soil pollution is a important goal. Anyone with eyes can see the amount of pollution humans do every day. Do not need scientist to tell us this is a fact. And if the pro-global warming scientists are correct, reducing overall pollution should help with that too?

[TwistedSkull]

Now we just need to get the deniers to understand it.

[Ghostpanther]

This is news to me. Care to share where you got this idea from?

The part of Ohio I live in now at one time thousands of years ago was covered with a glacier miles thick. The Great Lakes were literally carved out of the earth from this retreating glacier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_glacial_period