Five years have gone by since the publication of Lomborg’s book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, which assuaged scientifically challenged resource wasters with its statistical analyses that purported that humans have caused no significant negative environmental impacts. Almost immediately, many scientifically qualified sources meticulously debunked Lomborg’s faulty attacks. (See Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark.) Despite the reality that today there is no longer any significant debate among qualified scientists, popular and political media outlets perpetuate a myth of scientific disagreement over the basic facts of global warming and human contributions to the increasing rate of warming. Just today the Albuquerque Journal ran a front page article titled, Is it All Just Hot Air? (requires subscription to view), that gives the views of two dissenters equal (perhaps greater) emphasis than those of the vastly greater scientific consensus. I do believe that dissenters, particularly if they possess relevant credentials and experience, should be heard, but I am alarmed by the frequency with which the media incorrectly portrays the scientific community as being in great conflict over global warming.

Creating conflict, of course, is a mainstay of commercial journalism. Conflict sells. Consensus is invisible. What is more surprising is that scientific communities—working scientists and the informed educators and laypersons who seek to translate scientific knowledge into information for the masses—seem to flounder when it comes to characterizing specifically the extent of scientific consensus. Statements such as, “virtually all climatologists agree” or “only a few renegade researchers still question the factuality of human contribution” do not convince the average reader who has a vested interest in continuing a wasteful lifestyle. Such general, non-cited statements would not pass muster for a scientific journal or dissertation, for that matter. What we need are rigorous, meticulously designed surveys of relevant scientists (scientists who are respected specialists in areas relevant to climate change and its human components). We need to be able to say things like, “8421 of 8426 scientists who responded strongly agreed with the statement, ‘Human activity is a primary contributor to global warming.”

I cannot find (and this is a point of much crowing by those who want to avoid dealing with human-magnified global warming) any rigorous study that actually identifies a majority of qualified scientists and then collects their positions on (1) the reality of global warming and (2) the extent to which humankind is contributing to global warming. Ideally, such a study would be commissioned and overseen by one or more of the leading international scientific bodies in areas of direct relevance to climatology, rather than by organizations that are likely to be influenced by political or commercial interests (on either end of the argument). Scientific associations that specialize in related areas that are impacted by global warming, such as biologists researching deforestation, loss of biodiversity, etc., could craft and participate in those sections of the survey. The methodology for the survey(s) and administration should be as exacting as for any other legitimate study.

Do such studies exist? I recently saw An Inconvenient Truth. Al Gore did a good job communicating the situation, but he also failed to cite explicitly even one exhaustive survey of scientists from relevant fields of research. There are probably several reasons that there is still a so-called public debate on carbon emissions. One is clearly that the press repeatedly presents one or two personalities who, to the uninformed, appear to be qualified critics (Crichton, Lomborg, etc.) as making scientifically qualified counter-arguments. Even liberal leaning newspapers are printing so-called “balanced reporting” in which two side-by-side columns present the “two sides of the public debate”. The reader does not get the message that one side represents a specific overwhelming percentage of qualified scientists and the other side represents an insignificant number (perhaps two or three) of personalities, some of whom possess no relevant scientific background and have commercial or political biases.

This is too consequential a subject to entrust so fully to the media status quo.