By Chris Horner on Planet Gore

Before Seth Borenstein tells the woolly kids at SEJ how to spin this claim, take a quick look at what it does and does not say. While the harsh winter pounding many areas of North America and Europe seemingly contradicts the fact that global warming continues unabated, a new survey finds consensus among scientists about the reality of climate change and its likely cause. A group of 3,146 earth scientists surveyed around the world overwhelmingly agree that in the past 200-plus years, mean global temperatures have been rising, and that human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures.

In trying to overcome criticism of earlier attempts to gauge the view of earth scientists on global warming and the human impact factor, Doran and Kendall Zimmerman sought the opinion of the most complete list of earth scientists they could find, contacting more than 10,200 experts around the world listed in the 2007 edition of the American Geological Institute’s Directory of Geoscience Departments. Experts in academia and government research centers were e-mailed invitations to participate in the on-line poll conducted by the website questionpro.com. Only those invited could participate and computer IP addresses of participants were recorded and used to prevent repeat voting. Questions used were reviewed by a polling expert who checked for bias in phrasing, such as suggesting an answer by the way a question was worded.

Two questions were key: have mean global temperatures risen compared to pre-1800s levels, and has human activity been a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures. About 90 percent of the scientists agreed with the first question and 82 percent the second. In analyzing responses by sub-groups, Doran found that climatologists who are active in research showed the strongest consensus on the causes of global warming, with 97 percent agreeing humans play a role. Petroleum geologists and meteorologists were among the biggest doubters, with only 47 and 64 percent respectively believing in human involvement.

Any details about what was actually asked would be enlightening, because, at least as reported, the prompt-and-response prima facie actually say nothing ("human activity,” “a role,” “involvement"), and are already being spun as saying everything (that the very authors find this necessary tells you what you need to know about the results’ worth). Despite much pre-buttal in the release about the integrity of the questions, the actual questions were not provided. Surely they will be in the journal article when published.

The importance of this is that the common and surely the intended usage here of “global warming” is of the projected future, catastrophic man-made variety (via GHGs), while as reported the conclusions say nothing about GHGs, the future, or catastrophism. Instead, it addresses the past mild, benign (beneficial) warming also coming on the heels of the Little Ice Age ending.

So the idea they seek to dispel is the inconvenient and growing public understanding that there isn’t actually a consensus (like the one Naomi Oreskes argues exists) about future projections of catastrophism - and unless we promptly enact their agenda. Yet these survey results might well reflect 100 percent agreement that Man had a significant role in the past century’s beneficial warming which, due to CO2’s logarithmic Global Warming potential, has already been imposed to the fullest extent possible. Land use is the obvious, other potential culprit which the question apparently permitted to slip in under the (subsequently advocated) guise of blaming greenhouse-warming). Or maybe respondents are saying that Europe cleaning its air a bit in the past few decades did indeed significantly contribute to the past warming, as recently reported. Read much more here.