Scientific consensus on climate change, claims to which propel arguments for radical energy reform, lacks the heft commonly attributed to it.
Initial findings of a survey by the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University indicate the collective scientific mind remains less than fully resolved.
Participating were 4,092 members of the American Meteorological Society, 53% of the total surveyed, of whom 37% described themselves as climate experts.
Among key results: 29% of participants think change to the climate over the past 50 years is entirely due to human activity; 38% think most of the change is caused by human activity; 14% think the change is caused more or less equally by human activity and natural events; and 7% think the change results mostly from natural events. Five percent of respondents think change is caused largely or entirely by natural events, 6% don’t know, and 1% think climate change isn’t happening.
So two thirds of responding weather specialists think human activity causes all or most of the changes observed in the climate in the past half-century. When a third of such a group expresses different views, though, the science cannot be described as settled.
Ever asserting otherwise, climate activists demand immediate implementation of disruptive policies certain to create hardship. They tolerate no questions about whether their prescriptions might work.
Nevertheless, only 18% of respondents in the survey think worldwide mitigation can avert almost all or a large amount of additional climate change over the next 50 years. According to 42% of respondents, only a moderate amount of change can be averted. One fourth of respondents think a small amount of additional change can be averted, and 9% think a global effort would avert almost no change.
Survey findings thus tilt toward human causation in observed climate change but away from confidence in the effectiveness of globally imposed remedies.
Most decidedly, the findings demonstrate diversity of expert opinion about a complex subject—not the consensus of popular mythology.
(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted Apr. 1, 2016; author’s e-mail: [email protected])