Monday, April 23, 2007

More on Global warming

As I was doing my research yesterday, an interesting article caught my eye: it was BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change published in the research magazine Science in 2004. I've taken the liberty of quoting a couple of paragraphs from the article. It should be kept in mind that this article was written in 2004 - about 3 years ago.

"The authors analyzed 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change" (9). .... This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect.” (my emphasis added)

"The scientific consensus might, of course, be wrong. If the history of science teaches anything, it is humility, and no one can be faulted for failing to act on what is not known. But our grandchildren will surely blame us if they find that we understood the reality of anthropogenic climate change and failed to do anything about it.”

I thought these two paragraphs were rather enlightening.

More on the question of scientific consensus: There is a Wikipedia entry entitled "Scientific consensus on climate change" which IMO pretty much ends the discussion on the global warming, unless one chooses to argue that the opinions of groups of scientists is meaningless. The entry lists 14 US and international organizations which state, in one way or another, that the evidence for anthropogenic climate change is overwhelming or that that the particular organization is in agreement with the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; see my previous post). These organizations include the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the US National Research Council, and American Association of State Climatologists. The only dissenting organization is the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. (I wonder why that is?)

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