Joseph Bast and Roy Spencer
Secretary
of State John Kerry, President Obama and others frequently claim that climate change
will have “crippling consequences,” and that “Ninety-seven percent of
scientists agree that climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.” In
reality, the assertion is science fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a
handful of surveys and exercises in counting abstracts from scientific papers –
all of which have been contradicted by more reliable research.
One
frequently cited source is Naomi Oreskes. She claimed to have examined
abstracts of 928 articles and to have found that 75% supported the view that
human activities are responsible for most of the observed warming over the
previous 50 years, while none directly dissented. Ms. Oreskes's definition of
consensus covered “man-made” influences but left out “dangerous” – and excluded
scores of articles by prominent scientists who question the consensus. She also
failed to acknowledge that a study published in the journal Nature noted that abstracts of academic
papers often contain claims that aren't substantiated in the papers.
Another
widely cited source for the consensus view is an article in Eos: Transactions of the American
Geophysical Union. It reported the results of a two-question online survey
of selected scientists, and claimed “97 percent of climate scientists agree.”
Most scientists who are skeptical of man-made catastrophic global warming would
nevertheless answer “yes” to both questions. However, the survey was silent on
whether the human impact – or the rise in temperature – is large enough to
constitute a problem. It also failed to include scientists most likely to be
aware of natural causes of climate change.
There
is no basis for the claim that 97% of scientists believe that man-made climate
change is a dangerous problem.
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