Climate Truth Blog

It continues to amaze me how many people are still confused about climate change. It is understandable that since the media is a source of considerable climate change disinformation, (http://mediamatters.org/items/200703230007) media consumers would also be confused. However, the science on climate change has never been more clear. Imagine a coin on which the words “Human Caused Climate Change” are inscribed on one side and on the other side are inscribed the words “Natural Caused Climate Change.” Now imagine that that you flipped that coin every time a climate scientist published a study on climate change between 1993 and 2003. You would have to flip that coin nearly 10,000 times. Now imagine that the coin came up on the “Human” side every time the study concluded humans were primarily responsible for climate change and it came up “Natural” every time the study concluded that climate change was happening primarily due to natural causes. Now imagine that you did a random sample of the coin flips, say about 10% and selected a total of 928. Imagine now that you discovered that the coin NEVER came up on the “Natural” side and 75% of the time (about 700 times in all) came up on the “Human” side. Would that not be amazing? Can you imagine flipping a coin nearly 700 times and it never coming up tails even one time? But that is what we find when we look at the scientific literature on climate change. Like a weighted coin, the weight of the scientific evidence consistently comes up concluding that human activity is causing climate change while it NEVER suggests otherwise.

This is what Naomi Oreskes found (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686) in her study published in Science on December 3, 2004 entitled Beyond The Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.

Oreskes writes, “The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.

Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point.

This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect.”

The question comes down to a very basic one: Do we believe in science? If the answer is yes, then we must accept the current consensus view that human activity is causing the atmosphere to warm and the climate to change. To argue otherwise is to place faith in opinion, ignorance or prejudice, not science. The contrarians are telling us to ignore the score of 700 to zero and instead believe that the scientists are still divided on this issue. Just because they want to gamble the future of life on planet Earth on a lie does not mean we have to. As Oreskes states, “There is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists have repeatedly tried to make this clear. It is time for the rest of us to listen.”