måndag 11 november 2013

50% For and 50% Against = Minimal Consensus (about AGW)

Judy Curry reports on:
  • A comprehensive survey has been conducted of the American Meteorological Society membership to elicit their views on global warming: Meteorologists’ views about global warming: A survey of American Meteorological Society professional members.
The survey is collected in the following table

The rightmost column shows that 52% believe in Mostly human global warming, while 48% believe in the negation including Equally human and natural, Mostly natural, insufficient evidence, et cet. 

In short: Roughly 50% believe in Mostly human global warming and 50% in Not Mostly human global warming. This is Minimal Consensus: Any deviation from 50 - 50 would give more weight to one of the beliefs and thus would support more consensus. 

What is particularly remarkable is that 26% non-expert non-publishers ask for more evidence of human cause of warming (to believe that it is real), while only 9% expert publishers do that. 

In other words, non-expert scientists show more of a critical scientific attitude than expert scientists do. 

Does that tell us something about the state of (climate) science today?  Is the reason that experts are government funded, while non-experts are not by definition, and governments do not ask for evidence which may confuse the public.

The 50 - 50 non-consensus of the study is to be compared with the IPCC proclaimed 97 - 3 consensus of government funded experts.   

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