Is it true that 97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is real? Where does the 97% figure come from? And if it is true, do they agree on both the severity of and the solution to climate change? New York Times bestselling author Alex Epstein, founder of the Center for Industrial Progress, reveals the origins of the “97%” figure and explains how to think more clearly about climate change
The Trojan Horse of “Climate Change Catastrophe”
The rhetoric for a “climate change catastrophe” has been around for decades. When warming didn’t happen, the rhetoric changed to threats of freezing, which morphed back to warming.
Epstein begins by conceding that 97% of scientists believe that anthropomorphic global warning is real and then ends the video by calling into question the study on which that claim is based.
It would be much more effective if he reversed the order of his arguments.
Consensus in science is an irrelevant goal. Indeed, if history is any measure, it generally means someone’s not thinking.
Facts: Lots of industry & automobiles back then spewing CO2 into the atmosphere, right?
2.7 Million Years Ago Icy Greenland was Pretty Green, Study Finds
“‘More than 2.5 million years ago Greenland looked like the green Alaskan tundra, before it was covered by the second largest body of ice on Earth,’ the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said in a statement Thursday.”
https://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2014/Apr/NR-14-04-05.html#.U1BNpfldXv4
Atmospheric CO2 at highest levels in 3 million years
“The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.”
http://americablog.com/2013/05/global-warming-heat-trapping-co2-concentration-passes-400-ppm-milestone.html
Antarctic CO 2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4 Million Years — Scientific American
“Carbon dioxide has been steadily rising since the start of the Industrial Revolution, setting a new high year after year. There’s a notable new entry to the record books.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antarctic-co2-hit-400-ppm-for-first-time-in-4-million-years/
Fact: See http://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/styles/inline__450w__no_aspect/public/70106NiD_Co2Chart.png?itok=J64Sn3l-
400,000,000 years ago, CO2 levels were 2,000 ppm
Today those levels hover around 3-400 ppm.
So, as with the 97% of Earth’s population who believe in supernaturalism, it doesn’t matter if every scientist on the planet believes in AGW. The facts–facts asserted by those who believe in AGW–state differently.
Out of the roughly 8 million research scientists on Earth, the websites run by so-called climate sceptics constantly quote the same handful of scientists, because they don’t have anyone else.
Most of their handful are retired – and are connected to various right-wing political ‘think-tanks’ in the USA, and/or various fringe eccentric religious organisations.
In addition, not one professional scientific organisation on Earth agrees with the so-called climate sceptics, not in any country, nor in any field of science.
No matter who has investigated this and collected evidence, no matter who pays for the research, the outcome has been the same.
Exxon researchers in the 1970s? The same result, which didn’t please their employers.
Sceptical scientists who set up the independently-funded Berkeley Earth project? The same result.
The so-called climate sceptics who originally applauded the Berkeley Earth initiative, and said they would accept BE’s results, instantly rejected the results when those results didn’t fit their mythology.
Which shows they are not actually sceptics at all.
97% is a minimum – it’s probably more.
Yes, the climate – and CO2 levels – have changed before. Always for a reason.
Oddly enough, in at least one ancient warming event, the CO2 came from fossil fuels – it was volcanic action that burned coal then, in Siberia.
There are a number of papers on that such as:
“Initial pulse of Siberian Traps sills as the trigger of the end-Permian mass extinction” – Burgess et al, 2017
There’s also
“Catastrophic dispersion of coal fly ash into oceans during the latest Permian extinction” – Grasby et al, 2011.
It’s not a precedent we want to emulate.