Climate activists claim that 97 percent of climate scientists accept that global warming is real and is caused by fossil fuel emissions. This so-called ‘consensus’ is just an invention of the media and has no basis in reality.
Fact:
The figure of 97 percent was always correct and has now reached 99.9 percent! Climate ‘scepticism’ is quite literally dead – in the scientific community at least.
Two decades ago, a number of major studies generated the 97 percent figure. Two of the best known were done by academics at Princeton University and the University of Illinois. Peer-reviewed articles in respected climate science journals were reviewed to see if the authors supported the notion of anthropomorphic (human-induced) climate change. Those authors were also given the opportunity to reject the conclusions reached by the reviewers. The figure each of these studies came up with was 97 percent. By contrast, no studies were done suggesting anything different. In addition, it should be pointed out that not all of the 3 percent of scientists who indicated that they did not accept the consensus were deniers of anthropomorphic climate change. Many simply had not reached a conclusion.
Since the Princeton and Illinois studies were done, a lot has changed. All eight of the famous climate ‘sceptical’ scientists have now accepted the reality of climate change, after decades of claiming the opposite, and four of them have also accepted the role of CO2 and methane in causing the observed temperature increase. The others do not know what is causing it. So, the scientific consensus is much higher than 97 percent now. A 2021 study by Cornell University looked at 88,125 scientific papers published on the topic of climate change since 2012 and found that only 0.1 percent were sceptical of the notion that humans were causing global warming. In other words, the scientific consensus is now 99.9 percent! It is only non-scientists who are still sceptical about climate change.