A study has suggested, that nearly 98 per cent of scientists researching climate change agree that human activities are contributing significantly to the rise in temperature.
However, climate sceptics are refuting the findings calling them merely a biased outlook of climate research. According to sceptics the publications in scientific journals are not a good measure of expertise. Findings for these claims are now published in the science journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
The authors of the new study have said they discovered a large gap, in regards to both expertise and field prominence, of those who support the main ideas in the latest research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and those that are sceptical of the IPCC’s assessments.
Overall, the research shows that scientists who believe human impact is the majority cause of climate change publish papers twice as often as their sceptical colleagues. Additionally, others conducting similar research cite these scientists more often. William Anderegg, from Stanford University and lead author on the report, said that the findings show not all experts agree, but rather that the researchers who are convinced are simply published more regularly.
Mr Anderegg and his research team took from a list of 908 scientists, all of whom have contributed work used by the IPCC. A large portion of them had signed statements supporting the broad ideas of the UN body’s findings. From the sceptical side of their peers, the researchers took 475 scientists drawing from a list of 11 major sceptical publications.
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