Despite uncertainty about many of the details of climate change, there is a broad consensus among the world's most prestigious scientific bodies that the world is warming and that humans have played a significant role in creating that warming.

Various studies have attempted to ascertain the extent of this consensus. A survey of 928 peer-reviewed abstracts on the subject "climate change" published between 1993 and 2003 showed that not a single paper rejected the consensus position of man-made warming. Three-quarters of the papers reviewed implicitly or explicitly agreed with the consensus position; the other quarter were focused on analytical methods or historical climate change and made no comment either way.

Subsequent research has reached similar conclusions. A survey of 3,146 earth scientists asked the question: "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?". More than 90% of respondents had PhDs, and 7% had master's degrees. Overall, 82% of the scientists answered yes, but the response rate differed markedly according to level of expertise in climate science. Of scientists who were non-climatologists or didn't publish research, 77% answered yes. By contrast, 97% of climatologists who actively publish research on climate change responded yes.

This overwhelming consensus among climate experts was confirmed by an independent study that surveyed all climate scientists who have publicly signed declarations supporting or rejecting the consensus position. It found that 97-98% of climate experts support the consensus. Moreover, the study found that the small number of scientists rejecting the consensus had published, on average, around half as many papers each as the large majority of scientists accepting the consensus position.

This article was adapted from Skeptical Science, part of the Guardian Environment Network.

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