As geochemist James Lawrence Powell continues to prove, the only people still debating whether or not climate change is ‘real,” and caused by human activity, are the ones who aren’t doing the actual research. In an update to his ongoing project of reviewing the literature on global warming, Powell went through every scientific study published in a peer-review journal during the calendar year 2013, finding 10,855 in total (more on his methodology here). Of those, a mere two rejected anthropogenic global warming. The consensus, as he defines it, looks like this:
Powell even had to expand that itty bitty slice of the consensus pie five times for us to make it out – the actual doubt about climate change within the scientific community is even tinier.
Adding this new data to his previous findings, Powell estimates that the going rate for climate denial in scientific research is about 1 in 1,000. The outliers, he adds, ‘have had no discernible influence on science.” From this, he comes up with a theory of his own:
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Very few of the most vocal global warming deniers, those who write op-eds and blogs and testify to congressional committees, have ever written a […]