97% of climate scientists agree that AGW is a serious problem. What about the 3%? On what do they disagree?

You will always find disagreement in the scientific world, the claim by one of those who answered that the 97% of those who support global warming work for the government is of course stupid.

When Darwin first put forward his theory of evolution many scientists called him crazy, as the futher proof of fossils, bones and DNA have been discovered the number of scientist who still do not believe we evolved has diminished greatly but there are still some who still refuse to accept the evidence.

I think you need to look closely at who these dissenting scientists work for and the evidence those groups who deny climate change use plus the reporting which is done in much of the media.

The Guarding exposed that ExxonMobil distributed 2.9 million dollars (2.3 million euros) to 39 groups that groups which are attempting to actively "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence." Exxon are using the same tactics as the tobacco companies used to deny the link between smoking and lung cancer, heart disease etc.

On April 29, 2008, environmental journalist Richard Littlemore revealed a list of "500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares."

This list was distributed by the Heartland Institute and included at least 45 scientists who neither knew of their inclusion as "coauthors" of the article, nor agreed with its contents. Many of the scientists asked the Heartland Institute to remove their names from the list. (By the way, the Heartland Institute is the same group that criticizes science documenting the dangers of second-hand smoke).

Also take a look at the author of Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming's Unfinished Debate. Singer is one of the leading global warming skeptics. However, he is far from independent and his stand is anywhere but neutral. He has worked with Exxon Mobil for over 20 years as a consultant.

To gain an understanding of the level of scientific consensus on climate change, a recent study examined every article on climate change published in peer-reviewed scientific journals over a 10-year period. Of the 928 articles on climate change the authors found, not one of them disagreed with the consensus position that climate change is happening or is human-induced.

These findings contrast dramatically with the popular media's reporting on climate change. One recent study analyzed coverage of climate change in four influential American newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, and Wall Street Journal) over a 14-year period. It found that more than half of the articles discussing climate change gave equal weight to the scientifically discredited views of the skeptics.

Sallie Baliunas is a leading denier. She is a Harvard-Smithsonian Institute astrophysicist who has been giving global warming deniers scientific cover since the mid-1990s. She is a senior scientist at the George C. Marshall Institute (received $310,000 from Exxon Mobil).

These non believers are in the main not climate scientists and are supported by those who's economic interests are opposed to the acceptance of the facts.

The 97% could of been out of 10 scientists who work for the green party or for government or whatever.

If they were to poll every single scientist who deals with climate in any way then the figure would be nearer 50/50

There are loads of areas of disagreement in the climate world. From the way the figures are put together or the models are done through to the simple fact that there have been times in the earths existence when it was warmer with less co2 and colder with more.

This is an argument which there will never be full agreement amongst those that study it.

Governments can all agree about it because it gives them a great excuse to impose rules and taxes.

Scientific truth is not determined by voting, but by logical inference and observations.

Cloud feedbacks are generally considered to be the most uncertain of feedbacks, although all twenty climate models tracked by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) now suggest cloud feedbacks are positive (warmth-amplifying) rather than negative (warmth-reducing). The only question in the minds of most modelers is just how strong those positive feedbacks really are in nature. This article deals with how feedbacks are estimated from satellite observations of natural climate variability…and describes a critical error in interpretation which has been made in the process.

If your a climate scientist who without funding will be unemployed, what would you say? There are also plenty of Climatologists, Astrophysicists, Meteorologists, and Geophysicists that are doctors in places like Princeton, Cal Tech, MIT, Oxford, and various other reputable universities, that debunk 97% of AGW alarmist BS.

It would also be a good bet that 97% of those scientists are part of the IPCC, a group that openly dismisses any scientist that disagrees with their rhetoric.

I'm in agreement with BB here. Where did you find that 97% of climate scientists agree that agw is a serious problem?

I've seen that number here before, but never substantiated. It seems excessively high and I doubt it's really anything more than wishful thinking on behalf of the alarmists. I'm sure that the actual number is far less.

Climate science isn't certain. In any uncertain endeavour, you'll get a distribution of opinions. Scientific opinion is different from popular opinion (ie it's better informed and better able to understand the argument), but you still get a distribution.

The areas of disagreement are generally:

1- Earth is/isn't warming

2- if it is warming it's completely natural

3- climate models are wrong because (insert: they are too simple, they are too complex, they make too many assumptions...)

4- warming won't be bad for people

5- warming like this has happened in the past

6- we're missing or have underestimated some natural effect on climate

7- we've overestimated our effect on climate

1 and 2 are quite popular amongst laypeople (eg 'this year was colder than last so global warming has stopped!' or '1998 was the hottest year so we've been cooling for 10 years'). Very few scientists seriously argue that. The nuances of 3-7 are quite commonly argued by the small minority of contrarians.

Ben O is wrong, the number comes from Doran & Zimmerman (Eos, 2009).

jamand: Scientific research in the 1970s projected global warming 6 times as much as it projected global cooling:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-prediction...

I'd suggest you read some science, or publications by scientific institutions. If you get your science filtered by governments or the media first then you WILL get a bastardised view. Science doesn't work like that; research of quality gets published regardless

And your claim that the 3% have disproved global warming theory is nonsense...

EDIT: For those of you who continue to say the poll is made up/rubbish because you can't be bothered to look for it, a .pdf is here:

http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.p...

Bray & Von Storch's poll, far from being 'an above the board survey', was done over the internet without guarantee that actual scientists were responding. That's why it was rejected by Science and has to be published by political organisations like the Heartland Institute. Unlike Doran & Zimmerman, which passed Eos' scientific peer review.

Here's a report on a slightly older survey:

http://stats.org/stories/2008/global_warming_surve...

Well, I think Bill Gray believes that a few watts per square meter here or there is down in the noise.

Richard Lindzen believes that the Earth is self-regulating through an "iris" effect.

Others think what we've seen over the last 50 years is just natural variation.

Quite a few believe in it, but don't think it will be anything catastrophic. Lots of people don't trust climate models.

I believe that 97% was a very small sample, actually.

So if they're not publishing, they're not scientists -- is that REALLY your "logic" here? 77 out of 3,146 doesn't make the others not scientists.... and you seem to want us to believe it does. Since when is publishing a criteria for actually being a scientist?

I worked for many years with the meteorologist of the Arctic Research Institute in Russia.

A summery of his opinion is as follows

Does human activity cause global warming - no

Does human activity contribute to global warming - Yes, probably in the second place of decimals of a degree centigrade.

He is not required by his government to support the AGW like many scientists in the west.

As an Ecologist with 30 years experience, I struggled for many years to get my research projects funded, now all I have to do is weave some aspect of global warming into the proposal and politicians a queueing up to throw money at me. AGW has been a god send for us in the biological sciences who are struggling to support a family and mortgage

There isn't any. The three percent are the cranks.

So it really is virtually 100% among climate scientists. I don't think it matters how big a sample you took. The vast majority of all serious scientists in the world would answer yes to 1 and 2. The data and the analysis are overwhelming. There will always be contrarians who say no only because everyone else says yes. That is human nature and it's fine by me. There is a chance, in the limit, at the margin, that they are correct and everyone else is wrong. Or they might be partially correct and thus help to refine the theory.

Just don't give them more credit than is due. The denialists want to use a 1/100th of a percent of a chance and claim that it overthrows the prevailing theory. Which just shows ignorance.

Just because you invent a number, 97, doesn't mean that it is real. It is just a fantasy in an alarmist's mind as is harmful warming. I say 67.3% scientists think there is no significant human caused warming. Prove me wrong. Bubba attacking geologists is about as logical as attacking oncologists who suggest we shouldn't smoke tobacco. Those that know the most about a subject, particularly the history, should be listened to, not mocked simply because they don't agree. I suspect it has much to do with them hating free market economies as well.