Dr. Powell updates his chart.

This is a chart just released by Dr. James Lawrence Powell, a retired professor with the appropriate credentials who (during his long productive career) sat on a number of important government boards on science. I had written about him after he consented to be on my late radio show a couple years ago (full details and links here). Long story short, Dr. Powell just published an article in the peer-reviewed Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society where he dismantled the popular liberal bromide that “ninety seven percent of scientists accept AGW as the cause of climate heating. In fact, the number of deniers among active researchers is less than 1%. He has just issued a press release that should silence everybody on the ‘denial’ side of the ‘debate’ on climate. In his words:

Go here to read my peer-reviewed article in the Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society showing that the consensus on man-made global warming among publishing climate scientists is 99.99%, verging on unanimity. Dr. Susan Losh, editor of BSTS and an expert on the public understanding of science, has written an introduction to my article. Her introduction will shortly be available here.

The thesis here is explained in the above chart. While there might be a hypothetical 3% of scientists not accepting AGW (human causation of warming), they aren’t the scientists actively publishing or pursuing research. The Willie Soons of the earth are in a very exclusive ‘special class’–less than one scientist in 17,000 agrees with them.

For those of us in the NTHE group, this is old news, of course. But it’s still a useful metric for the coming BS tsunami we can expect in the 2016 US general election. Whether those who are going to tell this particular truth will venture out further and tell the electorate that the game is over is another matter. But at least you can throw facts at your Cousin Joey come the unavoidable Memorial Day family picnic. 

Here’s a video of Dr. Powell giving the details. If you’re going to argue this at a family outing, bring good beer–if the world is coming to an end as soon as some predict, you should go out drinking the good stuff. 

PS: Do not conflate Dr. Powell’s study of the scientific literature with any of my mentions of near term human extinction. I do not know Dr. Powell’s opinion on that subject. He has done us an enormous service in providing the study on the scientific literature on the topic of whether science has any sympathy for AGW denial.