I'm not interested in semantics. I'm more interested in explaining scientific principles and how evidence is evaluated. Climate researchers are in general agreement that humans warm the earth. Period.
Explaining principles requires clear meaning with respect to the words that are being used. Odd that you would not consider this to be of importance.
Show me the evidence. I've shown you that every recent literature review on the subject indicates there is a consensus. The 2004 survery (Oreskes) indicates there is a consensus. The IPCC report indicates that humans likely warm the environment. Every national scientific body of industrialised nations agrees with the consensus. That's a very broad consensus. I'd like to see more than an article co-authored by a someone from the Cato Institute before I'm willing to doubt the current overwhelming consensus.
You are the one asserting a consensus with respect to the whole scientific community and the published research. The burden of proof is on you to show it. If papers take no position on an anthropogenic cause for climate change, they assert no position. Period. This can't be so difficult to grasp, can it?
A literature review can contain references to papers that make no attribution to human causation. The paper you cited earlier does so. It includes papers to make reference to a specific phenomena. The IPCC does the same thing.
I have literature reviews on climate change phenomena such as droughts, sea level rise, ocean oscillations and solar-climate couplings - all major phenomena with respect to climate and climate change. None makes reference to anthropogenic causation when assessing the changes observed, or when trying to understand why such changes take place.
As for Oreskes, she cites 928 papers from over 11,000 articles on climate change from 1993 to 2003. Of her study, she suggested that 75% either explicitly or implicitly accepted the consensus view, and that 25% took no position with respect to anthropogenic causes for climate change. What is not clear from her research (if you've read it) is whether those papers in the "yes" category actually conclude that human activity is changing climate, or whether they they just raised a concern with respect to such a possibility. Her work is not particularly clear on distinctions.
But you don't want to know about distinctions.
No, not everyone who disagrees with the so-called consensus is deliberately trying to mislead the public, some are victims of the relentless propaganda machines of right wing government. Because for now, any way you look at the literature, there is a general agreement.
The research that disagrees with your asserted consensus might actually have excellent arguments as well, have you ever considered that?
Do recall the fact that climate has always been changing. It is a well-recognized constant of nature. Otherwise, your sentence makes you sound like you have a very closed mind. As a teacher, would you be okay with your students suggesting that alternate arguments in science are the product of politics, right wing conspiracies, or other philosophies they so happen to disagree with and vilify? As a scientist, do you always automatically label views you disagree with in such terms?
As for the propaganda machines, and evil right-wing governments, the Unites States government is, in terms of funding, the largest contributor to climate research. The Canadian government also a major source of funding for climate research, as well. So to with the British, Germans, French governments, and so on.
Rather than letting your politics blind you, maybe you should try to make distinctions between the public service and their myriad of branches and departments, and the administration.
The problem is that now there may be good data refuting the theory of human contribution to climate change but their voices may not be heard as loudly because people are now suspicious of that side after seeing such deplorable acts as governments trying to silence scientists.
I think we can both agree that any government that unreasonably attempts to silence scientists better have a damn good reason as to why they tried to do so. But as to why people would confuse that action with scientists who have good data that shows other causation for climate change is a little beyond me. Such a response is unreasonable.
It's no more discrediting that someone saying, "the evidence indicates that tobacco smoking increases the risk of lung cancer, and you are wrong to disagree". As for being victims of propaganda, I assume the average Joe won't sit down and examine the scientific literature. So when you see him protesting and declaring global warming is BS, I often assume that he's been duped by someone who had something at stake. That's also what I'd think if I saw people protesting that tobacco causes lung cancer or that HIV causes AIDS.
So are you suggesting that no alternate scientific point of view to a human causation for climate change is worth considering? What about natural causes for climate change? With all due respect, owing to the extremely complex and dynamical nature of climate, and the numerous unanswered questions regarding natural climate processes, climate change is quite a different phenomena than a smoking-lung cancer relationship or AIDS. The methods of inquiry and means to show meaningful relationships are quite different in each case.
But going back to the propaganda, most "average" people won't be examining the scientific literature either way. But it is also fair to say that an overwhelming number of media stories about climate change centre most specifically on human causation and bad outcomes. Worse yet, many of these pieces tend to emphasize imminent disaster. Some of this has been driven not only by politicians, but by scientists as well. But by and large, the media likes a good disaster story. All too often, floods, hurricanes, snow storms, glacier movements and heat wave are glaringly attributed to human-caused global warming - without any proof. Even if there was a human contribution, it would be impossible to separate the specific impact of that human effect from the much more prevalent and powerful natural processes.
But why would you include reviews that don't deal with issue of human causation? Those should be the ones you use your literature review.
Because there are reviews that examine aspects of climate change that don't automatically make reference to human activity. Because there are reviews that examine the state of understanding of the specific phenomena that are directly related to climate change. These are reviews of the state of climate science as it relates to understanding why global or local climate changes. Not all reviews in climatology relating to a changing climate automatically focus on human causation. Climate change is first and foremost a natural and ongoing phenomena. Too many people have automatically assumed that climate change means human contribution.
You could do a search of "climate+change+human" or "global+warming+human". This search would probably have an equal chance of turning up positive and negative studies as those key words would show up in either kind of article.
Sure, you would find articles on human contributions to climate change. I've never doubted that such articles exist. And if you go through those articles you would find a great degree of variation as to how that relationship is treated in each article. For example, there would be those that suggest a strong correlation between human emissions of C02 and temperature change that could affect climate. Others, for example, would point to potential impacts of human C02 emissions on the possibility of drought. Others might point to the potential effects of a warming atmosphere on the arctic region. Still, others papers might simply make a statement acknowledging that there have been connections between human activity and climate, but that paper may then make no statement in its conclusion either way in terms of agreeing or disagreeing with that position. There are some that state a position that there is a human impact on climate, but that the impact is small. In other words, there are many ways in which the subject of a human impact on climate can be treated in the research. They are not all concluding with an absolute affirmative in equal measure. There is that matter of degree...
I (and I'm sure other teachers) would certainly deduct marks for that sort of statement coming from a review of the literature. It does not completely accurately describe the current state of the literature. I would expect something along the lines of "climate research suggests that human activity likely contributes to climate change" or "there appears to be a general agreement among climate researchers that human activity likely contributes to climate change". Then you would conclude with something such as, "Further research is required to elucidate the degree to which humans contribute and what the potential consequences may be."
Thanks teach. You've advertised your credentials fairly well (Ph.d, doctor, teacher). But do note that asserting knowledge of what the scientific community
as a whole knows or believes - which you have done on this thread - would get lots of laughs from many other scientists (and bad marks, too). As I have pointed out here, there is no General Theory of Climate in existence. Climate is an extremely complex phenomena and its study spans across many disciplines. To pretend to know what the consensus is with respect to the the potential effects of human emissions of C02 across this science - particularly when no such agreement to a consensus has been provided in so many instances - is an extremely large presumption.
The actual long-term effects of human emissions of infrared absorbing gases on the climate remain very largely unknown. This is even noted in the IPCC. The only assertions as to the possible effects of C02 are largely derived from highly parameterized computer models, and none of these models have been independently validated. Presently, there is also no clear way to distinguish any human signal on climate from that of natural climate phenomena.
Owing to the fact that this is a bulletin board and these posts can get quite long, I like to opt for brevity now and then. Nothing wrong with your first suggestion with respect to a literature review. Concerning your second one, if many climate researchers take no position with respect to anthropogenic causation, they can't get roped into being part of a
general agreement. In other words, if one does not vote, a vote cannot be counted. You can't just pretend to know how everyone would vote on the basis of some of those who did.
Or as As Ludwig Wittgenstein once said:
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
