Most scientists agree on climate change

By Max de Liberato

Seven climate experts are indicating 90 per cent or more of environmental scientists believe climate change is a serious issue.

Naomi Oreskes, Peter Doran, William Anderegg, Bart Verheggen, Ed Maibach, J. Stuart Carlton, and John Cook took it upon themselves to find out just how seriously the scientific community is taking climate change with seven separate studies:  

• Oreskes found 100 per cent of his participants believe climate change is a major issue
• Doran, Carlton, Anderegg and Cook found 97 per cent
• Stenhouse found 93 per cent
• Verheggen found 91 per cent

In 2013, the Obama administration published a report stating 97 per cent of climate experts are concerned with global warming and that it is man-made.  There has been speculation since then about the the assessment, judging it to be politically motivated and misleading.

According to the Fraser Institute’s Ross McKitrick, 66 per cent of published studies took no position on whether climate change was man made or not.  Of the remaining 34 per cent, one-third said they believe climate change is man-made. McKitrick says this means two-thirds believe that climate change is not man-made.

“Generally, the problem is people overstate the certainty in their position.  This was a problem with the hockey stick graph, the data is far too noisy to compare today’s climate to the climate of a thousand years ago.” said McKitrick

The hockey stick graph shows the temperature over the last 1,000 years, the first 900 years of which show little variation, but curves significantly in the most recent 100 years.

“I don’t know of any credible scientist that I’ve run into that doesn’t think there’s a serious climate change [concern],” said Aaron Fisk, professor of environmental science at the University of Windsor.  “I would say some of them maybe don’t believe it’s going to be as dramatic an effect on our lifestyle.”

Climate change is the global or regional change in climate patterns.  According to Fisk’s research we are seeing this in Canada, across the Great Lakes and in Canada’s arctic.

“Scientists need to start talking about this.  We have to stop talking about whether it’s real or not,” said Fisk “The evidence is so overwhelming that things are going haywire.  We need to talk more forcibly about it.”

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, earth’s temperature depends on the energy balance entering and leaving the system.  When the earth absorbs the energy produced by the sun it warms. When the earth reflects the sun, it cools. There have been studies to map climate change dating back millions of years through examining ice cores, tree rings, glacier lengths, pollen remains, ocean sediments, and by studying changes in Earth’s orbit around the sun.

“I think it has been shown to be proceeding at a slower rate than climate models project,” said McKitrick about climate change. “Even at the model-projected rate, it is not likely to be a big problem in the future since it will involve changes that are relatively small compared to other forms of change.”

NASA has record of temperature dating back to the 1880s, the earliest year for which reliable instrumental records were recorded.  NASA’s data shows that the earth’s temperature is indeed rising, but only by approximately one degree Celsius.