Where did that famous “consensus” claim that “98% of all scientists believe in global warming” come from? asks Forbes

It came from an intentionally brief two-minute, two-question online survey.

In 2009, two University of Illinois researchers sent out an online survey to 10,257 scientists.

“Of the about 3.000 who responded, 82% answered “yes” to the second question, which like the first, most people I know would also have agreed with,” writes Forbes contributor Larry Bell.

“Of those 10,257 scientists, only about 3,000 responded.”

“Then of those, only a small subset, just 77 who had been successful in getting more than half of their papers recently accepted by peer-reviewed climate science journals, were considered in their survey statistic."

That “98% all scientists” referred to a laughably puny number of 75 of those 77 who answered ‘yes.

Seventy-five of those responses agreed with the human-caused global warming theory and, as the French say, voila, you have your 98% consensus of scientists

“That anything-but-scientific survey asked two questions.

The first:

“When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?” 

Few would be expected to dispute this…the planet began thawing out of the “Little Ice Age” in the middle 19th century, predating the Industrial Revolution. (That was the coldest period since the last real Ice Age ended roughly 10,000 years ago.)


“The second question asked:

“Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?”

So what constitutes “significant”? Does “changing” include both cooling and warming… and for both “better” and “worse”? And which contributions…does this include land use changes, such as agriculture and deforestation?

Read the rest here

http://iceagenow.info/what-consensus/