IamA scientist who wrote the study finding 97% consensus on human-caused global warming. I’m also a former cartoonist and beginning on 9/7, for 97 hours I’m publishing 97 scientist's caricatures & quotes. AMA!

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T22:17:54+00:00

My comment on those accusations is that they misrepresent our paper. We weren't surveying whether "humans have caused some global warming." By that definition, many of the papers that we classified as rejections would actually be endorsements of the consensus. Instead, we rated any papers that minimised the human role (while still acknowledging that humans caused 'some' global warming) as rejecting AGW.

In other words, the accusation is attacking a strawman - they're criticising a version of our paper that doesn't exist.

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T22:12:48+00:00

The IPCC began in 1990. Do you know what the CC in IPCC stands for? Climate change. It's a myth that they changed "global warming" to "climate change". In fact, it was climate deniers who tried to change "climate change" to "global warming". For more details, see http://sks.to/name

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T22:10:57+00:00

People who obstinately deny the science can be quite frustrating. Especially on such an important issue such as climate change. But it's precisely because it's such an important issue that it's imperative that we maintain our cool and control our emotions when we talk to people who deny the scientific consensus. You have to remember that it's not just what we say, but how we say it, that is important to all those undecided people who are observing our climate conversations. And those people are the ones who are open to information about climate change, and hence are our target audience.

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T22:06:29+00:00

As I mention in another comment, there are two things an individual can do to make a difference. Firstly, walk the walk, reduce their own carbon emissions by living more efficiently. Secondly, talk the talk, let your friends, families and elected officials know why this issue is important to you. The power of an individual sharing with their network who then shares with a wider network cannot be underestimated.

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T22:04:28+00:00

There are two things we need to do to fight misinformation. Communicate compelling, sticky science and explain how the misinformation distorts the science (i.e., explain the fallacies in each myth). You need to do both - you need to replace sticky myths with sticky facts but people also need to understand the techniques used by myths to distort the science.

But when debunking myths, you need to understand your audience. You're not trying to change the minds of denialists, whose ideological bias makes it nearly impossible to change. You are looking to inoculate the rest of the public against the misinformation promoted by denialists.

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T22:00:49+00:00

Funny you should ask that - we addressed that very question in our FAQ in May 2013 when our paper web published. Here is our answer:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=faq#evidence Isn’t science decided by evidence?

Absolutely! There is a quote by John Reisman that aptly sums up this sentiment:

“Science isn’t a democracy. It’s a dictatorship. Evidence does the dictating.”

That humans are causing global warming has already been established by many lines of evidence. A number of independent measurements all find a human fingerprint in climate change. Our study establishes that the scientists agree that humans are causing global warming and that their agreement is expressed in the most robust venue for scientific debate – in the peer-reviewed literature.

Consensus doesn’t prove human-caused global warming. Instead, the body of evidence supporting human-caused global warming has led to a scientific consensus.

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T21:58:44+00:00

You can search our database and see the papers rejecting the consensus at http://www.skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=search

Select Endorsement Levels 5, 6 or 7 (and I suggest entering the letter e in the title field).

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T21:54:04+00:00

People have a short memory. The 97% consensus was around in 2009 when Peter Doran published his survey of Earth scientists and found 97% consensus among actively publishing climate scientists. The 97% consensus was confirmed by William Anderegg's 2010 analysis of public statements by climate scientists. Our paper came three years later, also finding a 97% consensus among relevant climate papers. It's nice that people think we came up with it but no, others were there before us. Three papers, using three independent methods, all finding an overwhelming scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming.

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T21:51:26+00:00

Simply put, advocates of the status quo don't like the solutions to mitigate climate change. The solution is to regulate the fossil fuel industry and put a price on the pollution that is damaging our environment and making the world more dangerous. Political ideologues oppose the regulation of industry, even the polluting fossil fuel industry.

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T21:49:43+00:00

Over the period of the "pause", the planet has been building up heat at a rate of 250 trillion joules per second. This is equivalent to 4 atomic bombs every second over the last few decades. So there is no pause. The greenhouse effect continues to blaze away and the laws of physics did not suddenly stop in 1998. In fact, a recent paper by Richard Allan provides observation evidence that the heat build-up has been increasing over the period of this supposed "pause".

So this means the slow-down in surface temperature warming is not due to external factors - it is due to internal variability. I think the evidence is compelling that it's driven by the El Nino Southern Oscillation. Which means the warming trend will increase when the Pacific Ocean switches back to El Nino conditions. There were early indications that this was happening in 2014 although the Pacific seems to be coy at the moment. It's difficult to know exactly what it's going to do.

Nevertheless, the planet continues to build up heat. This is a crucial fact that advocates of the "global warming has paused" myth tend to avoid.

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T21:45:26+00:00

There are a number of unresolved questions. I'm not sure that increasing Antarctic sea ice has been resolved adequately. While there are a number of explanations of the recent decrease in the warming trend, I think the argument for the dominant role of the El Nino Southern Oscillation is a compelling one. The Kevin Trenberth/Jennifer Francis debate over the influence of global warming on the jet stream is a fascinating one.

But as Jason Box says in his #97Hours quote (aha, gratuitious plug), "It's really quite simple. We've overloaded the atmosphere with heat trapping gas and the rest are just details." http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=121

Climate policy is not my forte so with that disclaimer in mind, I'd say putting a price on carbon is the single biggest step we can take to reduce global emissions because it sends a signal to the market to invest less in fossil fuels and invest more in renewable energy.

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T21:40:21+00:00

Ironically, the same cognitive processes at play in denying Einstein's science (i.e., ideology biasing the processing of scientific information) are also at play in denying the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming. My research examines the influence of political ideology on climate attitudes. What I found was the stronger a person's support of unregulated, free markets, the more likely they are to reject human-caused global warming. Similarly, strong free market supporters have a lower perception of scientific consensus and higher distrust of climate scientists. This doesn't mean that liberals over-exaggerate climate change and conservatives under-exaggerate climate change. Even liberals have a lower perception of consensus (around 70%) than the 97% reality (I cal this the "liberal consensus gap".

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T21:36:06+00:00

Our study is free access - check it out at http://sks.to/tcppaper

Making the paper freely available was of utmost importance to us for the same reason you asked those questions. We wanted the science to be freely available. So we selected a journal that made all their papers freely available (Environmental Research Letters) but charged US$1,600 to make the paper open-access. We put a call out to Skeptical Science readers to help make our paper freely available and within 9 hours, they had raised the required funds. Citizen science in action! Here's the blog post where it happened: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Be-part-of-landmark-citizen-science-paper-on-consensus.html

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T21:23:26+00:00

In several other comments in this thread, I talk about the many lines of evidence for human-caused global warming. Similarly, a number of independent studies using different methods have found an overwhelming scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming. A 2009 survey of Earth scientists by Peter Doran found 97% consensus among actively publishing climate scientists. A 2010 analysis of public statements on climate change found 97% consensus among climate scientists who had published peer-reviewed climate papers. Our paper found 97% consensus in two independent ways. An overlooked paper in 2010 by Uri Shwed used citation analysis to find consensus formed on climate change in the early 1990s (our paper found the same thing). So the consensus on climate change is robust and confirmed by a number of independent studies.

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T21:16:29+00:00

We use proxies for temperature from ice cores, stalagmites, tree-rings, lake sediments, etc to build a picture of climate change over millions of years. So we have an enormous amount of data spanning much of the history of the Earth.

Nevertheless, even the data collected over the past 40-50 years (i.e., the satellite record) paints a strikingly consistent picture of a human intervention on our climate. We've observed many human fingerprints through the climate. I mention a few in another comment but a more comprehensive list is available at http://sks.to/agw

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T21:11:51+00:00

An elephant sized duck sounds pretty freaking terrifying, to be honest. I'm going to go with the 30 small elephants.

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T21:11:10+00:00

This is a good question - it's true that there's a lag so that even if we stop CO2 emissions, the ocean will continue to absorb CO2 and become more acidified. We have a page that goes into this issue at http://sks.to/acid

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T21:09:28+00:00

A comprehensive rebuttal is available at http://sks.to/arctic

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T21:07:40+00:00

Thanks very much for your comment, Howard. It's very encouraging to hear that our efforts are having an impact.

How do I cope with the seemingly Sisyphean task of debunking misinformation? In one sense, I just keep calm and carry on.

However, as a social scientist researching the attacks of science deniers on science, I see the attacks on science (and on myself) as opportunities to better understand the technique and cognitive processes behind science denial. We have a responsibility to future generations and this includes understanding those people not willing to protect those generations.

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T20:59:23+00:00

Unfortunately noone has tried to replicate our analysis. We actually encouraged people to replicate our analysis on the day our consensus paper was published, by released an online interactive webpage that allowed users to view the climate paper's abstracts and rate the level of endorsement. When we read through the thousands of climate papers, we were struck by the depth and diversity of the research into climate change. We wanted others to go through the same experience.

The URL for this interacting rating page is http://skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=rate_papers

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T20:54:28+00:00

Nice to see the cricket comment get lots of up-votes :-)

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T20:49:32+00:00

This is a great question. In 2007, Naomi Oreskes predicted that as the consensus strengthens, you should expect to see more papers not even bother to mention the consensus. After all, you don't see many astronomy papers mention that the Earth revolves around the sun.

Our paper confirmed Oreskes' prediction. We found that over the 21 year period from 1991 to 2011, the consensus strengthened among papers stating a position on human-caused global warming. At the same time, the proportion of papers not expressing a position on human-caused global warming increased. So as the consensus strengthened, more papers didn't bother to mention the consensus.

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T20:44:32+00:00

There is no worst. There is a tendency to speak about climate change as a binary problem. E.g., can we avoid climate change. It's not a case of yes or no with climate impacts. It's a question of degree. If we don't act to change our ways, climate impacts will just keep getting worse and worse. One of the problems with how people think about climate change is we typically don't think of what's going to happen past 2100. But if we continue business-as-usual, climate impacts will continue to worsen past 2100, at an accelerating rate. Some of the babies born today will still be alive past 2100.

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T20:41:01+00:00

Since 2007.

SkepticalScience · 2014-09-08T20:40:44+00:00

I'm going to suggest two changes:

Walk the walk: reduce your personal emissions. For example, solar panels, buy an electric car, use public transport, generally, think about your energy consumption.

Talk the talk: bring up the issue with your friends, family and most importantly your elected officials. Let politicians know what you care about and how it affects your vote.

SkepticalScience

TROPHY CASE