Climate change, extreme weather | Are you still skeptical? Researchers now agree 99.9% of the time.

There will always be some exceptions and deviations, even crazy scientists, says a climate scientist.

Researchers at Cornell University in New York looked at 90,000 climate studies. conclusion in studies is that there is a 99.9 percent scientific consensus that climate change is man-made.

Thus, there is as much scientific agreement about man-made climate change as there is scientific consensus on evolution and plate tectonics (the geosciences about Earth’s crust movements), according to the researchers behind the new study.

The study was released just a week and a half before world leaders meet at the United Nations Climate Summit in Glasgow in November.

– It does not surprise me that there is almost complete consensus on the cause of global warming. There are some questions as there are still some discussions, but the main picture is that there is mostly agreement. These are few studies, and there will always be some exceptions and deviations, even crazy scientists, climate researcher and senior researcher in the Department of Modeling and Climate Analysis at the Meteorological Institute, Rasmus Benestad, tells Nettavisen.

– There is a comprehensive control over the quality of what is published in scientific articles, and they are checked by colleagues in case of their validity. Therefore, most mad scientist research will likely be discarded. I myself participated in the analysis of 38 studies that conflict with the scientific consensus on climate change, says Benstad, referring to the study «Scientific audiences, misinformation, and fake news».

– We checked and went in every study after the seams, and everything was wrong. Either they omitted relevant information or made a false basis and misunderstanding. There are still some who don’t believe in evolution and believe the Earth is not spherical, he says.

From 97 to 99.9 percent in a few years

A previous study from 2013 showed that there is a 97 percent scientific consensus about man-made climate change. The study findings were then based on a review of published studies on climate from 1991 to 2012. Thus the small percentage of skeptical researchers has been further reduced since the previous review. The new study reviewed studies published from 2012 to 2020.

The new study, which was published in Environmental Research Letters On Tuesday this week, in two stages. Initially, the researchers conducted 3,000 randomly selected climate-related studies, and found only a few studies that were skeptical of man-made climate change.

The researchers then categorized the searches over the entire database of 88,125 studies. The researchers searched for keywords typical of climate skeptics such as “natural cycle” and “cosmic radiation.”

Searches yielded the results of 1,000 studies, and after careful examination of these studies, only 28 studies were found to be skeptical of man-made climate change.

The 28 studies were published in small scientific publications.

“Knowing that at least 31 (including the three studies in the random sample) of the entire database of 88,125 studies were skeptical, we can say the consensus on man-made climate change is 99.966% at most,” studies.

Climate deniers convinced

The study also shows that there is a lack of public understanding that there is a significant scientific consensus that climate change is man-made. This is especially true in the United States, where a Pew Research study from 2016 found that only 27 percent of the adult population believed that “nearly all scientists” agreed on man-made climate change, he writes. Watchman.

Why is it that some are still convinced that climate change is not man-made, even though the scientific consensus dictates the opposite, Binstad?

– It’s a good question and I have some ideas about it. One thing is that there is a distance between us researchers and the rest of the community. And if you don’t know any researcher, a “us and them” mentality may emerge. In addition, researchers may be a little bad at explaining things, that we use unnatural language and communicate in a difficult way. In addition, there is a certain campaign that is trying to discredit climate scientists. He says the BBC film “The Resource” addresses this issue.

There have been a number of premeditated campaigns that resemble the tobacco industry’s attempts to undermine science. There are also some seniors who have heard things in the past, and what you learned when you were young can be hard to let go of. So there are probably many reasons for that, says Benstad.

The dilemma of Facebook and Twitter

Despite the great scientific consensus about man-made climate change, there are still social media platforms that promote skeptical views about man-made climate change.

This is the dilemma of Facebook and Twitter. This is very similar to misinformation about vaccines. Both lack academic qualifications and both have a devastating impact on society. The study’s lead author, Mark Linas, says in a statement that social media that allows disinformation about climate will have to reconsider its algorithms and guidelines, or it will be forced to do so by authorities.