Page 88 - DLIS402_INFORMATION_ANALYSIS_AND_REPACKAGING

Unit 3: Information Products

Statements by individual scientists opposing the mainstream assessment of global warming do Notes
include opinions that the earth has not warmed, or that warming is attributable to causes other than
increasing greenhouse gases.
Surveys of scientists and scientific literature
Various surveys have been conducted to evaluate scientific opinion on global warming.
Anderegg, Prall, Harold, and Schneider, 2010
A 2010 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS)
reviewed publication and citation data for 1,372 climate researchers and drew the following two
conclusions:
(i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets
of ACC (Anthropogenic Climate Change) outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, and
(ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced
of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.
The methodology of the Anderegg et al. study was challenged in PNAS by Lawrence Bodenstein
for “treating publication metrics as a surrogate for expertise”. He would expect the much larger
side of the climate change controversy to excel in certain publication metrics as they “continue to
cite each other’s work in an upward spiral of self-affirmation”. Anderegg et al. replied that Bodenstein
“raises many speculative points without offering data” and that his comment “misunderstands our
study’s framing and stands in direct contrast to two prominent conclusions in the paper. The
Anderegg et al. study was also criticized by Roger A. Pielke, Pat Michaels, Roger Pielke, Jr., and
John Christy. Pielke Jr. commented that “this paper simply reinforces the pathological politicization
of climate science in policy debate.”
Doran and Kendall Zimmerman, 2009
A poll performed by Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman at Earth and Environmental
Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago received replies from 3,146 of the 10,257 polled Earth
scientists. Results were analyzed globally and by specialization. 76 out of 79 climatologists who
“listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of
their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change” believe that mean global
temperatures have risen compared to pre-1800s levels, and 75 out of 77 believe that human activity
is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures. Among all respondents, 90% agreed
that temperatures have risen compared to pre-1800 levels, and 82% agreed that humans significantly
influence the global temperature. Economic geologists and meteorologists were among the biggest
doubters, with only 47 percent and 64 percent, respectively, believing in significant human
involvement. A summary from the survey states that:
It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity
is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term
climate processes.
Bray and von Storch, 2008
Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch conducted a survey in August 2008 of 2058 climate scientists
from 34 different countries. A web link with a unique identifier was given to each respondent to
eliminate multiple responses. A total of 373 responses were received giving an overall response rate
of 18.2%. No paper on climate change consensus based on this survey has been published yet
(February 2010), but one on another subject has been published based on the survey.
The survey was composed of 76 questions split into a number of sections. There were sections on
the demographics of the respondents, their assessment of the state of climate science, how good the
science is, climate change impacts, adaptation and mitigation, their opinion of the IPCC, and how

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