Marathon Pundit: Global warming news: The 97 percent myth

John Kerry, President Obama, and NASA all agree: 97 percent of scientists believe that man-caused climate change is real.

But just who are these scientists? And how many are there?

Not a lot, as the Wall Street Journal [paid subscription required] tells us:

The "97 percent" figure in the Zimmerman/Doran survey represents the views of only 79 respondents who listed climate science as an area of expertise and said they published more than half of their recent peer-reviewed papers on climate change. Seventy-nine scientists—of the 3,146 who responded to the survey—does not a consensus make.

In 2010, William R. Love Anderegg, then a student at Stanford University, used Google Scholar to identify the views of the most prolific writers on climate change. His findings were published in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. Mr. Love Anderegg found that 97% to 98% of the 200 most prolific writers on climate change believe "anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible for 'most' of the 'unequivocal' warming." There was no mention of how dangerous this climate change might be; and, of course, 200 researchers out of the thousands who have contributed to the climate science debate is not evidence of consensus.

That first survey was an online one conducted by a University of Illinois student and a thesis advisor.

Big whip.

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