Archive for Earth Sciences Forum This site is dedicated to the Earth Sciences. We are here for you to discuss issues regarding any aspect of the Earth sciences, at all levels of knowledge. Questions are welcomed, as are open scientific debates. Enjoy!!!
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Andre
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About that consensus....it's down the drain
| Quote: | Survey: Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory
...Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."
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Latecommer
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It appears that the consensus is that there is no consensus.
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Matt
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I'm unconvinced by this study.
So 45% endorse a theory of anthropogenic global warming explicitly or implicitly (though I'm interested to know how an 'implicit' endorsement is defined) and 6% reject outright. The neutral category is interesting though. Why might a paper not accept or reject anthropogenic climate change? Yes there may be many papers there by climate scientists who are legitimately uncertain, but the category could also include papers which observe or model a phenomenon without hypothesising as to its cause. It may also have papers in which it is irrelevant or by people without the expertise to comment, for example an ecological study on the effects of climate change. An ecologist may acknowledge that they may not be in any position to comment, or may not even see the need as their paper deals with the effects rather than the cause. I realise that papers of that nature may also make it in to the other categories however.
The paper has been submitted to Energy and Environment but not yet published. I'm not 100% sure if it has been accepted. It will make an interesting read if it is.
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billiards
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The fact is, there is no consensus, that much is clear by all the bickering that goes on. Fighting over whether there is, or there is not, is a strawman. Statistics are easy to manipulate, by my calculation of the data presented in this study, (which for some reason gives only 99% of the story,) if you take "neutral" papers out of the equation, "implicit" endorsements account for 88% of all polarized (biased) papers. Furthermore, I don't like the subtle bias in the article:
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These changing viewpoints represent the advances in climate science over the past decade. While today we are even more certain the earth is warming, we are less certain about the root causes. More importantly, research has shown us that -- whatever the cause may be -- the amount of warming is unlikely to cause any great calamity for mankind or the planet itself. |
The above is clearly intended to enforce a skeptical viewpoint.
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