You probably heard the lie that 97% of scientists agree about the “fact” of man-made global warming and its dire consequences for all of civilization. Michael Stroup at the National Center for Policy Analysis takes dead aim at it in a post at the NCPA’s environmental blog — here’s an excerpt:
How often do you read or hear the claim that a “scientific consensus” exists that global warming is directly affected by mankind’s actions? This influence is called “anthropogenic global warming,” or AGW.
Further, how often do you hear how people who fail to agree with this AGW consensus are “deniers,” akin to someone who believes the Earth is flat.
The informed critics of AGW deniers will cite a scholarly review of the climatology literature that reveals how 97% of the climate science community supports the AGW theory. But, if you read the paper for yourself (it is only six pages long, with some simple graphs), you will see that these critics are lying.
Here is the gist of this influential study:
- The authors led an exhaustive survey of the abstracts to over 10,000 peer-reviewed articles dealing with global climate issues that were published in scientific journals from 1991-2011.
- Each and every article was assigned to one of four distinct groups: three groups that clearly indicated a specific position (supporting AGW, rejecting AGW, or stating that AGW was uncertain), and a fourth group that did not state any opinion on the validity of AGW at all.
- Then they tracked the percentage of all articles that fell into each group during each year.
The study concludes:
Among the papers expressing a position on AGW, an overwhelming percentage (… 97.1% based on abstract ratings) endorses the scientific consensus on AGW.
Focus on that conditional phrase, “among the papers expressing a position on AGW.” On page 3 of this study, a simple time series chart shows that OVER HALF of these articles did NOT express an opinion on AGW at all.
You can read the entire article here: EnvironmentBlog.NCPA.org.
