Yes.
It is (yet another) cynical attempt at propaganda by those who support the "consensus" position on global warming.
The article tries to claim that the ratio of believers to sceptics is 12,944,000 to 31,486. Then it cites the Doran and Zimmerman (2009) paper to arrive at a 97% figure.
Problems:
The 31,486 was measured.
The 12,944,000 was not measured . It is basically a number plucked from the air.
Doran and Zimmerman found 75 people who thought man's contribution was "significant".
So if we remove the speculative figure and rely on the measurements we get a 31,486 to 75 ratio of sceptics to consensus scientists. However, there is no attempt made to provide any kind of balance based on the data so it is propaganda.
@Gary F: The fact is that consensus views change. So just because there is a consensus at a given time does not mean that it is right or even the best possible idea.
Also, the "scientific method" is seldom as straightforward as many claim. Wegener was ridiculed for his views on tectonics.Many scientists have been ridiculed for their ideas, including some who subsequently won a Nobel prize for that same work. The evidence suggests that scientists do not always recognise good science until many years later.
Jonathan Swift is reported to have said: "When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
How do we know that the currently ridiculed climate voices will not turn out to be right? Empirical evidence of the scientific method suggests that we need to wait at least 50 years before we can be reasonably certain.
Kano's answer is misleading: the consensus among scientists is not used to advanced science, it should be used to make public policy. Making public policy by ignoring the consensus in the hope that someday it will be reversed is foolhardy.
What I cannot understand is how kano – who knows absolutely nothing about science – cannot know that he knows nothing about science.
>>concensus has no place in science<<
Absolutely wrong. Science is ALL about consensus – the consensus of data, evidence, verifiable results, and explanatory power.
>>“in fact all through scientific history the concensus has always been proved wrong”<<
Unimaginably ignorant as well as absolutely wrong. It is philosophically moot since there is no such thing as “scientific proof” and the goal of science is knowledge – and it is epistemological nonsense since the scientific method (when used correctly and based on the available evidence) has never produced results that make the method suspect.
The Big Bang, Biological Evolution, Plate Tectonics, Heliocentrism, gravity, Newton’s laws of motion and hundreds of other examples of scientific consensus have never been shown to be false. Further, gravity and evolution have been confirmed so often and so unequivocally that scientirsts consider them to be “facts” – and, therefore, for all practical purposes “true.” The theory of gravitation accurately predicted the behavior of objects on the moon and other planets before we had the ability to observe them and evolutionary theory correctly predicted DNA 100 years before Watson and Crick discovered it and that we would find fossils intermediate between fish and limbed terrestrial animals in geological deposits dating 375 million years ago.
Scientific fact, law, or theory?
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Law.
The universe is expanding.
Fact.
Humans and gorillas evolved from a common ancestor species.
Fact.
The sun will rise tomorrow morning.
Hypothesis.
The Earth is older than 10,000 years.
Fact.
Global Warming.
The warming is a fact; a significant anthropogenic variable is a theory – just like gravity, atoms, and the Copernican universe.
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Kano –
>>What was the concensus before the big bang, plate tectonics, evolution, heliocentrism, gravity, and Newtons laws of motion?<<
Most were mysticism, primitive religious beliefs, and attempts at logical deduction.
Newton’s Laws of Motion – like all scientific laws – describe things. They do not explain things and, therefore, there is nothing to have a consensus about.
Copernican published his heliocentric theory in 1542. It was immediately accepted by scholars and rejected by theologians. In the late 1600s, Newton calculated the dynamic effect of gravity on the planets. The scientific consensus began forming in the early 20th century through the work of Einstein and others. Plate tectonics had to overcome the entrenched religious-belief in a static universe. It was proposed in the 1920s-1930s. The scientific consensus formed quickly in the 1950s and 1960s when scientific evidence became available.
Evolution is the first and only scientific explanation of every plant and animal species (living and fossil). “Naturalists or Natural Philosophers” (as they were called in the early 1800s) had no explanation for their observations until the theory of evolution. That was the creation of all Biological Science.
Newton provided the foundation for the scientific method, but “science” as we know it (the method and philosophy) did not develop until the mid-1800s to early 20th century. It is no accident that the Royal Society – although formed in 1640 – is not called something the Royal Science Society. There was no “science” and members of the Royal Society were called Natural Philosophers. The first national science association in the U.S. was the American Association for the Advancement of Science – formed in 1848. The National Academy of Sciences was created in 1863 and consisted of 50 people (scientists).
The reality is that there were no earlier “scientific consensuses” on any of the issues before the development of their basic ideas. You cannot use pre-scientific and non-scientific explanations of the physical universe as arguments against modern scientific knowledge.
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Dr Jello –
>> Spot on Kano - At one time even Phrenology was a science according to the consensus. And like all consensus sciences, it will go extinct as we learn more.<<
You jumped on the Stupid Bandwagon at an early age and never got off, huh?
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graphicconception –
>>I spotted the obvious flaw as well but Kano beat me to it by 20 hours!<<
The flaw is yours – ignorance of science, its history, its philosophy, and it method (epistemology).
I find it hilarious that you think kano’s demonstration of scientific illiteracy is some kind of accomplishment.
It is all completely irrelevent concensus has no place in science, in fact all through scientific history the concensus has always been proved wrong, to be replaced by a new science and a new concensus.
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/climate-change-a-consensus-among-scientists/
