A slight majority (54%) believe the warming measured over the last 100 years is not ‘within the range of natural temperature fluctuation.’
A slight majority (56%) see at least a 50-50 chance that global temperatures will rise two degrees Celsius or more during the next 50 to 100 years. (The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cites this increase as the point beyond which additional warming would produce major environmental disruptions.)
Based on current trends, 41% of scientists believe global climate change will pose a very great danger to the earth in the next 50 to 100 years, compared to 13% who see relatively little danger. Another 44% rate climate change as moderately dangerous.
Seventy percent see climate change as very difficult to manage over the next 50 to 100 years, compared to only 5% who see it as not very difficult to manage. Another 23% see moderate difficulty in managing these changes.
Like Ronald Bailey says “Science is not done by voting, but these results are pretty interesting. ” This helps put to rest the idea that anthropogenic theory of global warming is believed by only a minority of activist scientists who bully others into signing off on papers saying they support it. Looking at the statistics, it’s slightly more common for scientists to be pressured to deny or downplay warming than to overplay it (though neither is very common).
See also: Global Warming May Take a Holiday and That’s a Problem
May 15, 2008 at 3:23 am
http://www.lomborg.com/cool_it/
“Yes, Bjorn Lomborg, the controversial Danish economist, believes that ‘global warming is real and man-made.’ But he is convinced that we are not thinking the problem through correctly and are, in fact, lost in a kind of green fog about how best to deal with global warming and other major environmental threats.”
I am mostly convinced global warming is real and not convinced it is man-made. Fortunately, because I may be wrong, I am not in any way in a decision-making position on this issue. What I think doesn’t matter, one little bit, in this area.
May 18, 2008 at 7:45 pm
There were only eighteen.
May 19, 2008 at 3:40 pm
What fields? What was the sample size? What proportion of each field responded? What were their credentials and what was their relative level of prominence in the field?
This would be true of the skeptic petitions as well. Who of these scientists are fully qualified to make any claim of expertise in macro-level earth sciences? For starters, not botanists or evolutionary biologists – they can comment on the effects but not the odds of what kind of effects will happen. It’s like Al Gore trotting out a picture of Kilimanjaro, even in the sciences it can be amateur hour.
May 19, 2008 at 3:49 pm
leebert – good questions, most of them are answered in the article.
A random sample doesn’t account for competence/prominence in the field, hence the caveat ?Science is not done by voting, but these results are pretty interesting. ?