Page 89 - DLIS402_INFORMATION_ANALYSIS_AND_REPACKAGING

Information Analysis and Repackaging

Notes well climate science was being communicated to the public. Most of the answers were on a scale
from 1 to 7 from ‘not at all’ to ‘very much’.
In the section on climate change impacts questions 20, 21 were relevant to scientific opinion on
climate change. Question 20 “How convinced are you that climate change, whether natural or
anthropogenic, is occurring now?” got 67.1% very much agree, 26.7% to some large extent (5–6),
6.2% said to some small extent (2–4), none said not at all. Question 21 “How convinced are you that
most of recent or near future climate change is, or will be, a result of anthropogenic causes?” received
34.6% very much agree, 48.9% agreeing to a large extent (5–6), 15.1% to a small extent (2–4), and
1.35% not agreeing at all.
STATS, 2007
In 2007, Harris Interactive surveyed 489 randomly selected members of either the American
Meteorological Society or the American Geophysical Union for the Statistical Assessment Service
(STATS) at George Mason University. The survey found 97% agreed that global temperatures have
increased during the past 100 years; 84% say they personally believe human-induced warming is
occurring, and 74% agree that “currently available scientific evidence” substantiates its occurrence.
Only 5% believe that that human activity does not contribute to greenhouse warming; and 84%
believe global climate change poses a moderate to very great danger.
Oreskes, 2004
A 2004 article by geologist and historian of science Naomi Oreskes summarized a study of the
scientific literature on climate change. The essay concluded that there is a scientific consensus on
the reality of anthropogenic climate change.

The author analyzed 928 abstracts of papers from refereed scientific journals between
1993 and 2003, listed with the keywords “global climate change”.

Oreskes divided the abstracts into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position,
evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the
consensus position. 75% of the abstracts were placed in the first three categories, thus either explicitly
or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, thus taking no
position on current anthropogenic climate change; none of the abstracts disagreed with the consensus
position, which the author found to be “remarkable”. According to the report, “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.”
Bray and von Storch, 2003
Bray and von Storch conducted a survey in 2003 of the perspectives of climate scientists on global
climate change. The survey received 530 responses from 27 different countries. The 2003 survey has
been strongly criticized on the grounds that it was performed on the web with no means to verify
that the respondents were climate scientists or to prevent multiple submissions. The survey required
entry of a username and password, but the username and password were circulated to a climate
skeptics mailing list and elsewhere on the internet. Bray and von Storch defended their results and
accused climate change skeptics of interpreting the results with bias. Bray’s submission to Science
on December 22, 2004 was rejected.
One of the questions asked in the survey was “To what extent do you agree or disagree that climate
change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes?” with a value of 1 indicating strongly agree
and a value of 7 indicating strongly disagree. The results showed a mean of 3.62, with 50 responses
(9.4%) indicating “strongly agree” and 54 responses (9.7%) indicating “strongly disagree”. The same
survey indicates a 72% to 20% endorsement of the IPCC reports as accurate, and a 15% to 80%

84 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY