82% of Scientists agree that "human activity is a significant contributing factor"

[ctt8410]

According to a study published in 2009 by Peter Doran (professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at UIC) that surveyed the 10,257 scientists listed as geosciences faculty at reporting academic institutions, along with researchers at state geologic surveys associated with local universities, and researchers at U.S. federal research facilities in the 2007 edition of the American Geological Institute's Directory of Geoscience Departments. Response rate was 30.7%. 90% of respondents had Ph.D.s and 7% had Master's Degrees as their highest level of education.


1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?

90% of respondents answered "risen"


2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?

82% of respondents answered "yes"


Of particular interest is that 97.4% of respondents who consider climate study their area of expertise and have published more than 50% of their papers on the subject of climate answered "yes" to question 2.

The field containing the largest percentage of "No" answers to question 2 was petroleum geology with 53% of respondents answering "No".


Citation information: Doran, P. (2009) EOS, 90, 3, 22-23.

[harold_bush]

and in other news, 82% of psychologists think everyone has a mental disease that needs treatment by a psychologist, 99% of chicken farmers think chicken is healthiest meat for people to eat, and 100% of roofing companies think everyone needs a new roof.

[flarendep1]

With all due respect CT, the survey is asking what the participants "think". Very subjective and opinion is great but when facts are being hidden from the public like in the recent Climate Panel scandal, it is tough for people to take this seriously.

Scientists need to stick to the facts and stop throwing in so much personal opinion and agenda. To often opinions are not based in fact, remember scientists predicted we were heading for an Ice Age back in the 70's.

If I were I scientist, I would be pissed that you have people like Al Gore making money off of this "agenda". How much has he donated back for more research??? Just curious to his real motives.

[vols fan]

and in other news, 82% of psychologists think everyone has a mental disease that needs treatment by a psychologist, 99% of chicken farmers think chicken is healthiest meat for people to eat, and 100% of roofing companies think everyone needs a new roof.

[husker]

and in other news, 82% of psychologists think everyone has a mental disease that needs treatment by a psychologist, 99% of chicken farmers think chicken is healthiest meat for people to eat, and 100% of roofing companies think everyone needs a new roof.

[ctt8410]

With all due respect CT, the survey is asking what the participants "think". Very subjective and opinion is great but when facts are being hidden from the public like in the recent Climate Panel scandal, it is tough for people to take this seriously.

I agree that it's mainly subjective questioning. My point with this thread was to reveal that there is a majority consensus on the issue. It's not a unanimous consensus, but 82% is strong support amongst the scientific community on an issue and I think it's important to consider because these are people who are actually reading the primary research and taking the time to look at all the data that is available. An argument that I've heard recently is that the scientific community is backtracking and there's significant divide on the issue. I don't think this is the case at all.

Scientists need to stick to the facts and stop throwing in so much personal opinion and agenda. To often opinions are not based in fact, remember scientists predicted we were heading for an Ice Age back in the 70's.

No doubt. Opinion shouldn't be a part of the research publications. There is, however, an inevitable human component to interpreting raw data. In the end, it's important that people see the numbers and the methodology and then are allowed to make their own conclusions.

Regarding the 70s predictions of an Ice Age, I realize the concern associated with this issue, but the most-cited article pointing out the hypocrisy isn't in a scientific journal. It's actually the Newsweek article from 1975. I don't have a problem with Newsweek, but they're trying to sell magazines and are hardly the authority on scientific consensus.

In reality, there were only 7 papers published in scientific journals from 1965 to 1979 that predicted global cooling. In comparison, there were 42 papers published in that time frame that predicted global warming.

This is well-outlined in Peterson, et al. paper published in 2008 (Bull. Amer. Meteorological Soc., 89, 9, 1325-1337). It's an interesting read about the nature of climatology in the 70s and how the field was progressing at the time. Perhaps the most interesting result from their findings was this plot including the number of papers that concluded we were headed towards global cooling, global warming, or made no conclusion one way or the other.

If I were I scientist, I would be pissed that you have people like Al Gore making money off of this "agenda". How much has he donated back for more research??? Just curious to his real motives.

It's a mixed bag with Gore. On the one hand, I think most scientists are glad that he brought the issue into a public light. Scientists are notoriously bad with PR and they needed someone to serve as a mediary to share their research in understandable terms. On the other hand, he brought the political aspect into this whole issue which causes people to really take sides and get emotional about an issue. I don't think any of them predicted the flood of misinformation that would follow that movie. In addition, Gore didn't dot all his i's and cross all his t's and he frankly screwed up a number of the facts. As far as the money goes, I think most people are pretty bitter about how much politicians make off our ideas, whether they're a research scientist or not.

[ctt8410]

and in other news, 82% of psychologists think everyone has a mental disease that needs treatment by a psychologist, 99% of chicken farmers think chicken is healthiest meat for people to eat, and 100% of roofing companies think everyone needs a new roof.

For the record, 15.5% of the respondents were in the field of geochemistry, 12% were from geophysics, 10.5% were from oceanography, and 5-7% were from geology, hydrology, and paleontology respectively. No one in those fields is getting grant money for climate research. A better analogy might be:

82% of former major league players think that it's more difficult to manage in the NL than the AL.

[BigWeiner]

99% of morons don't know their ass from a hole in a wall

[harold_bush]

I was going to respond, but this article more less says what I was going to say. Long story short, if the "research" is bad or fabricated, as we are seeing with climategate, the opinions may not be worth anything either. My comment is that hsitory shows significnat and warming cooling periods through our history. I like to look at things from a simple perspective. If there were times (Medieval warming period) where man wasn't doing anything that could impact the climate, and the temperatures were as warm or warmer than the emperatures today, it would seem you man made global warming people have a tough time explaining that away. To me that shows things are cyclical and have nothing to do with man.
__________________________________________________ ____________________
Climate alarmists conjured a world where nothing was certain but death, taxes and catastrophic global warming. They used this presumed scientific certainty as a bludgeon against the skeptics they deemed "deniers" -- a word meant to have the noxious whiff of Holocaust denial.

All in the cause of hustling the world into a grand carbon-rationing scheme. Any questions about the evidence for the cataclysmic projections, any concerns about the costs and benefits were trumped by that fearsome scientific "consensus," which had "settled" the important questions.


Jones: Key climatologist softening claims.
A funny thing happened to this "consensus" on the way to its inevitable triumph, though: Its propagators have been forced to admit fallibility.

For the cause of genuine science, this is a small step forward; for the cause of climate alarmism, it's a giant leap backward. The rush to "save the planet" can't accommodate any doubt, or it loses the panicked momentum necessary for a retooling of modern economic life.

Phil Jones is the director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, a key "consensus" institution that has recently been caught up in an e-mail scandal revealing a mind-set of global-warming advocacy rather than dispassionate inquiry.

Asked by the BBC what it means when scientists say "the debate on climate change is over," the keeper of the flame sounded chastened. "I don't believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this," Jones said. "This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the . . . past as well."

Jones discussed the highly contentious "medieval warming period." If global temperatures were warmer than today back in 800-1300 AD -- about 1,000 years before Henry Ford's assembly lines began spitting out cars -- it suggests that natural factors have a large hand in climate change, a concession that climate alarmists are loath to make.

Jones said we don't know if the warming in this period was global in extent since paleoclimatic records are sketchy. If it was, and if temperatures were higher than now, "then obviously the late 20th century warmth would not be unprecedented."

Jones also noted that there's been no statistically significant warming since 1995, although the cooling since 2002 hasn't been statistically significant, either.

All of this is like a cardinal of the Catholic Church saying the evidence for apostolic succession is still open to debate.

The other main organ of the climate "consensus" is the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It won the Nobel Peace Prize for its 2007 report -- which turns out to have been so riddled with errors it could have been researched on Wikipedia.

It said Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, warned that global warming could reduce crop yields in Africa by 50 percent by 2020, and linked warming to the increased economic cost of natural disasters -- all nonsense.

These aren't random errors. As former head of the IPCC, the British scientist Robert Watson notes, "The mistakes all appear to have gone in the direction of making it seem like climate change is more serious by overstating the impact."

Too many creators and guardians of the "consensus" desperately wanted to believe in it. As self-proclaimed defenders of science, they should have brushed up on their Enlightenment. "Doubt is not a pleasant mental state," said Voltaire, "but certainty is a ridiculous one."

The latest revelations don't disprove the warming of the 20th century or mean that carbon emissions played no role. But by highlighting the uncertainty of the paleoclimatic data and the models on which alarmism has been built, they constitute a shattering blow to the case for radical, immediate action.

In The Boston Globe, MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel marshals a new argument for fighting warming: "We do not have the luxury of waiting for scientific certainty, which will never come." Really? That's not what we were told even a few months ago -- before climate alarmism acknowledged doubt.



Read more: 'Warming' meltdown - NYPOST.com

[harold_bush]

99% of morons don't know their ass from a hole in a wall

Name calling is the weapon of a man with no argument.

[husker]

99% of morons don't know their ass from a hole in a wall

spoken like someone that has wiped that hole in the wall many times.