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EOS, TRANSACTIONS AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION, VOL. 90, NO. 3, doi:10.1029/2009EO030002, 2009

Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

Peter T. Doran

Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA


Maggie Kendall Zimmerman

Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA


Abstract

Fifty-two percent of Americans think most climate scientists agree that the Earth has been warming in recent years, and 47% think climate scientists agree (i.e., that there is a scientific consensus) that human activities are a major cause of that warming, according to recent polling (see http://www.pollingreport.com/enviro.htm). However, attempts to quantify the scientific consensus on anthropogenic warming have met with criticism. For instance, Oreskes [2004] reviewed 928 abstracts from peer-reviewed research papers and found that more than 75% either explicitly or implicitly accepted the consensus view that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities. Yet Oreskes's approach has been criticized for overstating the level of consensus acceptance within the examined abstracts [Peiser, 2005] and for not capturing the full diversity of scientific opinion [Pielke, 2005]. A review of previous attempts at quantifying the consensus and criticisms is provided by Kendall Zimmerman [2008]. The objective of our study presented here is to assess the scientific consensus on climate change through an unbiased survey of a large and broad group of Earth scientists.

Published 20 January 2009.

Index Terms: 3305 Atmospheric Processes: Climate change and variability (1616, 1635, 3309, 4215, 4513); 1616 Global Change: Climate variability (1635, 3305, 3309, 4215, 4513); 1699 Global Change: General or miscellaneous.

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Citation: Doran, P. T., and M. Kendall Zimmerman (2009), Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, Eos Trans. AGU, 90(3), doi:10.1029/2009EO030002.