Expert credibility in climate change
William R. L. Anderegga,1, James W. Prallb, Jacob Haroldc, and Stephen H. Schneidera,d,1
aDepartment of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305; bElectrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada M5S
3G4; cWilliam and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Palo Alto, CA 94025; and dWoods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
Contributed by Stephen H. Schneider, April 9, 2010 (sent for review December 22, 2009)
Although preliminary estimates from published literature and
expert surveys suggest striking agreement among climate scientists
on the tenets of anthropogenic climate change (ACC), the American
public expresses substantial doubt about both the anthropogenic
cause and the level of scientific agreement underpinning ACC. A
broad analysis of the climate scientist community itself, the
distribution of credibility of dissenting researchers relative to
agreeing researchers, and the level of agreementamong top climate
experts has not been conducted and would inform future ACC discussions.
Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate
researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i)
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 (ii) the relative climate expertise and
scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are
substantially below that of the convinced researchers.........
pnas.org |
