New Study Reaffirms Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

A paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) underscores the widespread consensus among climate scientists that human activity is driving climate change. The paper will be available by the end of the day online and is available by emailing the PNAS staff.

The paper, written by William Anderegg, James Prall, Jacob Harold and Stephen Schneider, surveyed the work of 1,372 climate researchers. They found that nearly all published climate scientists agree that human activity is driving climate change. Their findings are consistent with a 2009 survey of scientists' attitudes as well as a 2004 survey of the scientific literature on climate change. The Anderegg et al. paper comes on the heels of a series of NAS reports that underscore the reality of human-induced climate change and the need to respond.

"This study is consistent with other papers that have found a widespread scientific consensus that human activity is driving climate change," said Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). "The biggest wildcard is how much we'll change the future climate, largely due to uncertainty about how much more carbon dioxide we will dump into the atmosphere. It's up to policymakers to act, knowing that heat-trapping emissions from burning fossil fuels are the biggest lever acting on the climate."

A number of surveys have identified a persistent gap between how the public perceives climate science and what scientists know about global warming. Over the last few years, reporters have been giving more credence to contrarian points of view than they deserve, according to UCS. But that might be changing. On June 20, the Sunday Times of London retracted a story that misrepresented science in a story attacking the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"Unfortunately, some oil- and coal-industry-funded groups and ideologues are still feeding the public a steady diet of misinformation about climate change," Ekwurzel said. "Americans need to know that their health, their communities and their overall quality of life are all at risk from unchecked climate change. Fortunately, these baseless attacks on science have not stopped governments and businesses from beginning to think about how best to respond to climate change."

The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading U.S. science-based nonprofit organization working for a healthy environment and a safer world. Founded in 1969, UCS is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also has offices in Berkeley, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

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