Rather than claiming 97 percent of scientists believe in man-made global warming, hopefully now some media outlets will revise that number closer to 50 percent.
Contrary to the repeated insistence of both climate alarmists and the media, scientists do not all agree on the standard climate alarmism talking points. A Purdue University scholar [1], surveying scientists in the agricultural sector including climatologists, found surprising disagreement on humanity’s role in climate change. These findings, though contrary to popular narrative on climate change, are unsurprising to anyone familiar with the prevalence of dissent in the scientific community.
Linda Prokopy, a Professor of Natural Resource Social Science [2] at Purdue University, surveyed more than six thousand farmers and scientists and found widespread disagreement on human contributions to climate change. While 90 percent of scientists and climatologists surveyed thought the climate was changing, only about 50.4 percent contended that humans were the primary cause of these changes.
More shocking was that just 53 percent of climatologists surveyed thought “Climate change is occurring, and it is caused mostly by human activities.” While that number of climatologists was small, the result is still significant.
This evidence is inconvenient to the many media outlets that have endlessly repeated that 97 percent of scientists endorse the global warming hypothesis. Prominent outlets like NBC [3] and The New York Times [4], as well as countless others [5], have effectively shut down debate by asserting there is no scientific debate.
Of course, many skeptics will not find this newsworthy, because they have known for a long time that there is dissent amongst the scientific community.
In fact, many studies cast doubt [6] on climate alarmism and many scientists have differing views from the so-called "consensus." In 2010, Marc Morano released a collection of more than 1000 scientists [7] who “challenged man-made global warming claims.” Similarly the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change aggregated “thousands of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles that do not support” man-made climate change.
Interestingly, a third of farmers surveyed claimed they had not noticed any significant effects of global warming. This is an inconvenient realization for the many alarmists that believe climate change is already disrupting weather. In fact, many alarmists, including those in the media [8], have argued that wildfires and droughts are increasing with climate change, but certainly many of these farmers disagree from their personal experience.
— Sean Long is Staff Writer at the Media Research Center. Follow Sean Long on Twitter. [9]