Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature
John Cook1,2,3, Dana Nuccitelli2,4, Sarah A Green5, Mark Richardson6, Bärbel Winkler2, Rob Painting2,
Robert Way7, Peter Jacobs8 and Andrew Skuce2,9
Published 15 May 2013 • © 2013 IOP Publishing Ltd
Environmental Research Letters,
Volume 8,
Number 2Citation John Cook
et al 2013
Environ. Res. Lett. 8 024024
References
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https://badge.dimensions.ai/details.../8/2/024024?domain=https://iopscience.iop.org
Abstract
We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11,944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming.
Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers.
Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%).
Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For both abstract ratings and authors' self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position on AGW marginally increased over time.
Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a Vanishingly Small proportion of the published research.
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