“There is virtually unanimous consensus among the world’s scientists who work in the area that human beings are the major reason that this is so the world’s average temperature rising,” writes Raven from London. “Because, just as first noted by the Swedish chemist Arrhenius in 1895, when you add more carbon dioxide or other co-called greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, you make it warmer.”
Academic and scientific surveys have repeatedly confirmed this view among the world’s climate scientists.
One detailed study, “Expert Credibility in Climate Change,” published in PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, July 6, 2010, focused on “an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers.”
It found that “97-98 percent of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field … supported the basic tenets of ACC manmade global warming established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
It also determined that the minute number of detractors had significantly less standing in the field of climate science among their scientist peers.
It reported that “the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of those tenets of climate change are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.”
America’s Prestige Damaged by Its Climate Denialism; World Has ‘Given Up’ on Hoped-for U.S. Leadership
“Two years ago,” Raven added in his email, “the world was hoping for U.S. leadership on this question, global climate change, and now it has pretty well given up, with us as the only hold-out nation on the science.”
An extensive “disinformation campaign” in the United States about the scientific solidity and gravity of manmade global warming has been described in detail by a number of academic analyses and extensive professional journalistic enquiry.
For example, “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues From Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming,” by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, details how ideological, political and fossil fuel industry interests have been able to confuse and intimidate many leaders in legislature and media.
Author and journalist Ross Gelbspan, who directed a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation at the Boston Globe, was one of the first professional journalists to describe fossil fuel industry efforts to delay government regulation on greenhouse gas emissions as long as possible.
“They don’t expect or need to win any debate,” he says, “they just want to keep the appearance of a debate going.”
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via Global Warming Denialism ‘Just Foolishness,’ Scientist Peter Raven Says – ABC News.