Survey: Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory

DailyTech: Survey: Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory Michael Asher (HT: Marc Vandeer Maas) (Actually, I think the title is misleading. Less than half of journal articles endorse anthropogenic globlal warming.)

Comprehensive survey of published climate research reveals changing viewpoints.

In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the "consensus view," defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes' work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated.

Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy. The figures are surprising.

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."

The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of  consensus here.  Not only does it not require supporting that man is the "primary" cause of warming, but it doesn't require any belief or support for "catastrophic" global warming.  In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.

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.

Schulte's survey contradicts the United Nation IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (2007), which gave a figure of "90% likely" man was having an impact on world temperatures. But does the IPCC represent a consensus view of world scientists? Despite media claims of "thousands of scientists" involved in the report, the actual text is written by a much smaller number of "lead authors." The introductory "Summary for Policymakers" — the only portion usually quoted in the media — is written not by scientists at all, but by politicians, and approved, word-by-word, by political representatives from member nations. By IPCC policy, the individual report chapters — the only text actually written by scientists — are edited to "ensure compliance" with the summary, which is typically published months before the actual report itself.

By contrast, the ISI Web of Science database covers 8,700 journals and publications, including every leading scientific journal in the world.

Naomi Oreskes' article, upon which Al Gore and the media have based their claims about consensus on anthropogenic global warming, appeared in Science Magazine in December 2004. She is a professor of science history. As you can see from the link, this was an essay, not a peer-reviewed article.

Last February, I published a post in which I wrote:

Within a month after the publication of the article [by Oreskes], Dr. Barry Peiser of John Moores University sought to replicate Oreskes' study. Doing a search on the phrase “climate change” in abstracts for the same time period using the same database, Peiser found more than 12,000 hits. Peiser contacted Oreskes and she explained that she had searched on the phrase “global climate change.” So Peiser again tried to replicate the search. He got 1,247 hits, or one third more than Oreskes. Only 1,117 of these had full abstracts. Questioning Oreskes findings, Peiser conducted his own study. Using eight categories, here is what he found:

• 13 (1%) Explicitly endorse the 'consensus view'
• 322 (29%) Implicitly accept the 'consensus view' but mainly focus on impact assessments of envisaged global climate change.
• 89 (8%) Focus on "mitigation.”
• 67 (6%) Mainly focus on methodological questions.
• 87 (8%) Deal exclusively with paleo-climatological research unrelated to recent climate change.
• 34 (3%) Reject or doubt the view that human activities are the main drivers of the "the observed warming over the last 50 years.
• 44 (4%) Focus on natural factors of global climate change.
• 470 (42%) Abstracts include the keywords "global climate change" but do not include any direct or indirect link or reference to human activities, CO2 or greenhouse gas emissions, let alone anthropogenic forcing of recent climate change.

Using Oreskes criteria, Pesier found only 424 articles (38%) that contained explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, or offered mitigation proposals. This is not insignificant but neither is it unanimous consensus.

What I find interesting is that if you add the first three of Pesier's categories (explicitly endorse, implicitly accept, and focus on mitigation), you get 38%, which is just a little shy of the 45% in the newer analysis.

But as I've said before, this topic is a bit pointless. Science is not a democratic process where straw polls and article content analysis determine matters. Science is accomplished by developing relatively comprehensive models of reality and then systematically testing those models from every conceivable angle. No model has fully emerged that can persuade based on its explanatory and predictive merits. Climate science is still in its infancy.