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\begin{document}

\title{Research on Climate Consensus Provokes Strong Reactions}



\author[1,2]{John Cook}%
\author[3]{Backstories}%
\affil[1]{Global Change Institute, University of Queensland}%
\affil[2]{School of Psychology, University of Western Australia}%
\affil[3]{Backstories}%


\vspace{-1em}



  
  \date{May 24, 2024}


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This article was originally published at
\href{https://thewinnower.com/discussions/3-research-on-climate-consensus-provokes-strong-reactions}{The
Winnower} and is the backstory behind~\emph{Cook, J., D. Nuccitelli,
S.A. Green, M. Richardson, B. Winkler, R. Painting, R. Way, P. Jacobs,
and A. Skuce. 2013. ``Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global
warming in the scientific literature.'' Environmental Research Letters
no. 8(2) (024024). doi:
\href{https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024}{10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024}.}

In 2004, Naomi Oreskes published a paper in Science investigating the
level of agreement in the peer-reviewed literature on climate change
(Oreskes 2004). Among the 928 `global climate change' papers published
between 1993 to 2003, not a single paper rejected the scientific
consensus that humans were causing global warming. This result was
featured by Al Gore in his Oscar winning film, An Inconvenient Truth.

This was the first of several papers investigating scientific consensus
among climate scientists. A survey of over 3000 Earth scientists found
that the higher the expertise in climate science, the greater the level
of agreement on humanity's role in climate change (Doran and Zimmerman
2009). Among climate scientists actively publishing climate research,
97\% agreed that humans were significantly changing global temperature.

A similar result was obtained two years later in a study collating
public declarations on climate change (Anderegg et al. 2010). Among
scientists who had published peer-reviewed research on global warming,
around 97\% endorsed the consensus.

When you consider that not a single national scientific organization in
the world disputes the consensus, the conclusion is inescapable. The
scientific agreement that humans are causing global warming is
overwhelming and robust.

However, this conclusion has yet to seep into public consciousness. A
2012 survey of Americans found that 57\% of the public disagree or are
unaware of the scientific consensus (Pew 2012). There is a gaping chasm
between public perception of consensus and the 97\% reality.

In light of this, we decided to update Oreskes' examination of the
peer-reviewed literature by adding another decade of peer-reviewed
research to the analysis. The period examined was 1991 to 2011. We also
broadened the search by adding `global warming' papers (Oreskes
originally searched only `global climate change' papers). The larger
sample of over 12,000 papers allowed us to examine the evolution of
consensus over the 21-year period.

Research was done by a team of volunteer researchers, all of them
members of the Skeptical Science team. Skeptical Science is a website
whose purpose is to refute climate misinformation with peer-reviewed
science. This was a citizen science effort with a mix of team members,
including a diversity of academics from all over the world. This
included a climate scientist from Canada, chemistry and environmental
scientists from the USA, a meteorologist from England and yours truly, a
social scientist from Australia.

The initial challenge was maintaining motivation among the volunteers
over several months, as we read and rated over 12,000 abstracts (not
just once but twice in order to double check each others' ratings). The
work was tedious but not without its rewards - one rater reported
feeling giddy when he encountered an abstract rejecting the consensus! I
later learnt that there had been two similar efforts to measure the
level of consensus in published climate papers. In both cases, the
sample size was around 1000 papers. Both efforts were never completed.
Had I known this, perhaps I wouldn't have been so ambitious with our
sample size.

Another hiccup during the process was our website getting hacked
(Lacatena 2014). Rather than cope with multiple email threads, we
collaborate and discuss our research in a private web-based forum.
Midway through the rating process, the forum was hacked and published
online. This led to a number of bloggers poring over years' worth of
private conversations, including discussions about our consensus
research. The research was suspended for a short period while we
relocated our forum and the online abstract rating system.

Our paper was rejected by the first two journals we submitted to. The
reason? Establishing scientific consensus is stating the obvious. To
paraphrase the reviews: tell us something we don't know! We worked hard
to overcome this potential difficulty, including novel methods and
results in our analysis. We invited authors of the climate papers in our
analysis to categorize their own research, providing an independent
measure of consensus. In our resubmission, we were careful to more
strongly emphasize the novel aspects of our research.

Our paper was accepted by Environmental Research Letters, a journal
launched in 2006 that already has an impact factor rivaling such
prestigious journals as Geophysical Research Letters and Climatic
Change. One of our priorities was making our paper open-access. Hiding
it behind a pay wall would have been hideously unproductive, given our
aim of increasing public awareness of consensus. The fee to make the
paper open-access was USD\$1,600. We put the call out for PayPal
donations in a Skeptical Science blog post (Cook 2013a). It took 9 hours
to raise the funds.

Once our paper (Cook et al. 2013) was published, our results generated a
great deal of interest. Distributing press releases from the
universities of myself and my coauthors led to media coverage in over 28
countries, including a number of non-English speaking countries (thank
goodness for Google Translate). Interest peaked when President Obama's
Twitter account tweeted about our research to 31 million followers
(Obama 2013b). Several weeks later, President Obama mentioned the 97\%
consensus in a landmark speech on climate change (Obama 2013a).

Altmetrics is a website that measures chatter about scholar articles by
monitoring mainstream media and social media outlets such as blogs and
Twitter. Our paper was ranked as the 11th most talked about scholarly
paper in 2013 (Altmetric 2014). Sadly, we were pipped out of the top ten
by a paper about Sudoku. Our research was also listed in the top 5\% of
all scholarly papers. This last statistic, ranking the level of social
media chatter on all academic papers ever published, does need to be
taken with a grain of salt. There was no one in 1859 tweeting ``OMG!
Tyndall just discovered GHGs!''

Not all of the chatter was glowing. In less than a year, over 200
attacks on our research have been published. There have been blog posts,
cartoons, reports, a YouTube video, a paper, TV interviews, and
testimonies in government hearings. The one thing these attacks have in
common is almost all were conducted by individuals or groups who reject
the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming.

Why did our research provoke such strong reaction? Ours is the latest
episode in over two decades of attacks on scientific consensus. In 1991,
a fossil fuel group spent \$510,000 on a PR campaign to reposition
global warming as theory, not fact (Oreskes 2010). In recent years, the
most common climate myth promoted by conservative columnists was ``there
is no consensus'' (Elsasser and Dunlap 2013). Attacking the consensus is
a central strategy by opponents of climate action.

Our research has also withstood some criticism from several academics
that don't dispute the consensus. In these cases, I've been diligent in
promptly and publicly responding to comments on our research by
respected academics.

Law and psychology professor Dan Kahan questioned whether communicating
the scientific consensus was an optimal approach, given that it may
provoke a negative reaction from those dismissive of climate change
(Kahan 2013). In response, I outlined the evidence for both the efficacy
and importance of consensus messaging (Cook 2013b). Consensus
information increases both acceptance of human-caused global warming
(Lewandowsky, Gignac, and Vaughan 2013) and support for climate policy
(Bolsen, Leeper, and Shapiro 2013). But crucially, consensus messaging
was shown in an Australian experiment to partially neutralize the
biasing influence of ideology with conservatives showing a greater
increase in belief in human-caused global warming than liberals
(Lewandowsky, Gignac, and Vaughan 2013). A study with U.S. participants
found that the increase in perceived consensus in response to consensus
information was greatest among conservatives (Kotcher et al. 2014).

Climate scientists at the Climate Change National Forum also questioned
the value of the research, arguing that scientists should be discussing
more nuanced questions than human-caused global warming (Forum 2014). In
response, I pointed out that while the fundamental fact that humans are
causing global warming was considered settled by scientists decades ago,
the general public continue to be confused over even these fundamental
elements of climate science (Pew 2012).

Climate scientist Mike Hulme argued that instead of discussing
consensus, we should be talking about policy options (Hulme 2014). In a
co-authored response, Stephan Lewandowsky and I argued that this was a
counterproductive argument, given that those wishing to delay climate
policy have focused on casting doubt on the consensus (Lewandowsky and
Cook 2014). The entire point of reinforcing that the science on
human-caused warming was settled was to move us to beyond the science to
where the debate should be happening - what should we do about it?

Attacks on our research continue unabated. Those wishing to delay
climate action will continue to cast doubt on the scientific consensus.
At the same time, climate scientists and science communicators will
continue to debate the most effective ways to communicate the realities
of climate change. And social scientists continue to research the role
of consensus messaging. I am part of this research strand, exploring the
psychology of consensus and the impact of misinformation on public
perceptions.

\section*{References}

{\label{874218}}

Altmetric. 2014. Altmetric 2014 {[}cited Mar 1 2014{]}.

Anderegg, W. R., J. W. Prall, J. Harold, and S. H. Schneider. 2010.
``Expert credibility in climate change.'' Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A no.
107 (27):12107-9. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1003187107.

Bolsen, T., T.J. Leeper, and M.A. Shapiro. 2013. ``Doing What Others Do:
Norms, Science, and Collective Action on Global Warming.'' American
Politics Research. doi: 10.1177/1532673X13484173

Cook, J. 2014. Be part of a landmark citizen science paper on consensus.
Skeptical Science 2013a {[}cited Mar 1 2014{]}. Available from
\url{http://www.skepticalscience.com/Be-part-of-landmark-citizen-science-paper-on-consensus.html}.

Cook, J. 2014. Communicating Scientific Consensus: John Cook responds.
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\url{http://www.culturalcognition.net/john-cook-on-communicating-con/}

Cook, J., D. Nuccitelli, S.A. Green, M. Richardson, B. Winkler, R.
Painting, R. Way, P. Jacobs, and A. Skuce. 2013. ``Quantifying the
consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific
literature.'' Environmental Research Letters no. 8 (2) (024024). doi:
10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024.

Doran, Peter T., and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman. 2009. ``Examining the
Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.'' Eos, Transactions American
Geophysical Union no. 90 (3):22-23. doi: 10.1029/2009EO030002.

Elsasser, Shaun W., and Riley E. Dunlap. 2013. ``Leading Voices in the
Denier Choir: Conservative Columnists' Dismissal of Global Warming and
Denigration of Climate Science.'' American Behavioral Scientist no. 57
(6):754-776. doi: 10.1177/0002764212469800.

Forum, Climate Change National. 2014. Quantifying the consensus on
anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature" by John Cook
et al: 97\% of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global
warming. Climate Change National Forum 2014 {[}cited Mar 1 2014{]}.
Available from
\url{http://climatechangenationalforum.org/quantifying-the-consensus-on-anthropogenic-global-warming-in-the-scientific-literature-by-dr-john-cook-et-al-97-1-agree-that-humans-are-causing-global-warming/}

Hulme, M. 2014. Science can't settle what should be done about climate
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Kahan, D. 2014. Annual ``new study'' finds 97\% of climate scientists
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Kotcher, J., T. Meyers, E. Maibach, and A. Leiserowitz. 2014. Correcting
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Lewandowsky, S., and J. Cook. 2014. Establishing consensus is vital for
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Lewandowsky, Stephan, Gilles E. Gignac, and Samuel Vaughan. 2013. ``The
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