by Daniel M. Kammen
We generally complain that action on climate change
is mired in polarized partisan politics and thus nothing can be done. True to an extent, but lets hold on a
bit.
In terms of generating important discussion about
the clarity that exists around the conclusion that the scientific debate over
climate change as an anthropogenic process is over, the political bully pulpit can be incredibly powerful.
A case in point is the paper published last week in Environmental Research Letters, where I
am the Editor-in-Chief, “Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global
warming in the scientific literature” (Cook, et al., 2013) with the abstract:
We analyze the
evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in
the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts
from 1991–2011 matching the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'.
We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed
AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global
warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the
consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of
this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract
ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW
(35.5%). Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed
the consensus. For both abstract ratings and authors' self-ratings, the
percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position on AGW marginally
increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting
the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published
research.
The paper came out, and President Barack Obama then
tweeted:
@BarackObama:
Ninety-seven percent of
scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous. Read more: http://OFA.BO/gJsdFp
Follow-on tweets came from Vice-President Al Gore
and U. S. Congressman Henry Waxman.
Television coverage followed in: ABC Lateline, Al Jazeera (Inside Story), CNN International, Democracy Now, and NRK. At last count there were over 200
newspaper and magazine pieces, and a number of radio segments. At last count there were several hundred blog
posts on the findings of this paper and the Obama Tweet. A
link to the ever-growing set of media coverage is: http://sks.to/tcpmedia.
The
article has been downloaded over 21,600
article downloads in just a few days of having the paper published online.
What this story highlights – beyond the excellent
data collection, analysis and scholarship in the paper itself – is the value of
thoughtful comments and recognition of these findings.
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| Photo credit: Mashable.com |
Daniel
M. Kammen is the
Distinguished Professor of Energy at the University of California, Berkeley,
where he founded and directs the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (http://rael.berkeley.edu). Kammen is a Coordinating Lead Author for the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace
Prize. Kammen the Lead Scholar for the
Fulbright NEXUS program in energy and climate for the U. S. Department of
State.
References:
John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli, Sarah A
Green, Mark Richardson, Bärbel Winkler, Rob Painting, Robert Way, Peter Jacobs
and Andrew Skuce (2013) “Quantifying
the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature”, Environmental Research Letters, 8 (2).
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article
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