RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Expert credibility in climate change
JF Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
JO Proc Natl Acad Sci USA
FD National Academy of Sciences
SP 201003187
DO 10.1073/pnas.1003187107
A1 Anderegg, William R. L.
A1 Prall, James W.
A1 Harold, Jacob
A1 Schneider, Stephen H.
YR 2010
UL http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract
AB 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 agreement among 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.