Trust is, perhaps, the most important word within the climate debate at present. "Who do you trust?" is the question that hangs over every discussion on the topic.

Do you trust the vast majority of climate scientists who claim that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are causing a clear and present climatic danger? Or do you trust the much smaller band of sceptical climate scientists who argue that there isn't a problem?

In much of our lives, we rely on the testimony and views of experts. We do so when we feel ill and choose to visit the doctor. We do so when we want to reduce our tax liabilities. We do so when we wish to be ably represented in a court of law. We do so when a strange noise appears from the engine of our car. We will often pay good money to benefit from the many years of training and experience offered by experts in their field - be they doctors, accountants, lawyers or mechanics.

Climate science is a little different, it seems. A notably large – and growing - proportion of society appears to be rejecting the expert view of climatologists and choosing instead to place their trust elsewhere. Needless to say, this has confounded many who work within the climate sciences, but the causes are myriad and much discussed.

But an interesting new study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences throws some new light on the "expertise gap" that some within the climate debate have noted exists between the two increasingly divided factions.

The authors, led by Professor Steve Schneider at Stanford University, have conducted an extensive literature review to establish the identities, views and respective authority of 1,372 climate researchers whose work "constitutes expertise or credibility in technical and policy-relevant scientific research". One of the principal goals of the study, say the authors, was to "examine a metric of climate-specific expertise and a metric of overall scientific prominence as two dimensions of expert credibility in two groups of researchers". In other words, they wanted to provide a tool to those outside the climate sciences to help them better assess which experts to trust.

A broad analysis of the climate scientist community itself, the distribution of credibility of dissenting researchers relative to agreeing researchers, and the level of agreement among top climate experts, has not been conducted and would inform future ACC [anthropogenic climate change] discussions. Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that 1) 97-98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; and 2) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.

If you get the chance to read the study in full, please do. It includes a detailed explanation of their chosen methodology, including how they nullified the potential influence of "possible cliques" among published scientists.

But the central idea seems to be that the more a scientist gets their work published and cited in "climate-relevant publications", the more credibility they should be accorded as an "expert" in that field. Nothing revolutionary in this, of course: it's the way it works in any academic discipline. However, it is still illuminating to see their findings laid out so succinctly.

We provide the first large-scale quantitative assessment of the relative level of agreement, expertise and prominence in the climate researcher community. We show that the expertise and prominence, two integral components of overall expert credibility, of climate researchers convinced by the evidence of ACC vastly overshadows that of the climate change sceptics and contrarians. This divide is even starker when considering the top researchers in each group. Despite media tendencies to present "both sides" in ACC debates, which can contribute to continued public misunderstanding regarding ACC, not all climate researchers are equal in scientific credibility and expertise in the climate system. This extensive analysis of the mainstream versus sceptical/contrarian researchers suggests a strong role for considering expert credibility in the relative weight of and attention to these groups of researchers in future discussions in media, policy, and public forums regarding anthropogenic climate change.

One other interesting nugget from the study: "From the ~60% of researchers where year of PhD. was available, mean year of receiving a PhD. for UE [unconvinced by the evidence] researchers was 1977, versus 1987 for CE [convinced by the evidence] researchers, implying that UE researchers should have on average more publications due to an age-effect alone."

The study shows, however, that this is not the case. It's been noted before, of course, that sceptical climate scientists tend to be approaching retirement age, or are, in fact, already retired. What does this tell us? That wisdom comes with age? Or is this evidence of "retired man syndrome"; when scientists who have already seen the best days of their career pass them by develop a contrarian view in an attempt to seek validation and court attention?

Either way, I suspect this intriguing paper will court its own attention given the distrust that permeates in this debate. As ever, sceptics will reject it, whereas those who trust the message that 97% of climate scientists are telling us will nod their heads in acknowledgement.