[throwaway5752]

How uncertain should man-made global warming sound, in your opinion? You're speaking in gross generalities, perhaps getting some hard numbers. What I've read is that nearly 100% of publishing researchers in the area agree on it (high 90's).

...Actually, it's 97%. I found the paper, which describes the data set and their methodology: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048...

[averagewall]

More helpful than the percentage of scientists who think it's true (a bizarre metric in science) would be the confidence they place on that conclusion. It can't be exactly 100%. Showing causation is notoriously hard, especially when you can only look at historical data, and even more so when there's only one example (one case of humans causing global warming).

[Banthum]

This figure gets trotted out all the time and it's tiresome because it is so unconvincing to anyone who is even a bit sceptical.

That's a bit like asking what percentage of Christian priests believe God exists. There's kind of a selection bias there.

More helpful are broader surveys including earth scientists, geologists, etc, which (as I recall, not having the source handy) come up much more conflicted, close to 50% disagreement on various critical questions.

There also the issue of what questions are asked. It's easy to ask, 'is the climate changing', get a near-unanimous response to this near-tautological statement, and declare victory. But that question has nothing to do with any real disagreements real people are having.

The actual questions at hand are much more delicate. First among them is the question of what question we should even be asking.

[ergothus]

> More helpful are broader surveys including earth scientists, geologists, etc,

Wait...while i agree that the methodology that gives 97% suffers a selection bias, I don't agree with the above. I would not trust a survey of priests about the existance of God, but I'd prefer their thoughts on the existance of a particular book of the bible than a survey of choir members.

Science is huge and detailed. I'd not trust geologists over physicists about physics. I acknowledge that physicists are not 100% correct, but that doesn't make non-physicists suddenly more likely to be correct.

I can see your point if the claim is 97% of scientists, but the claim is about climate scientists, because they determine the consensus on the topic.

What method of saying whether or not there is a consensus would you accept that doesn't involve bringing in people with no knowledge or experience with the topic?

You mentioned a 50%ish figure for scientists. Do you have a citation? Even if I think the result unconvincing (based on tjis limited info) I'd like to see their methodology and sample size.

[throwaway5752]

His figure is probably based on a study specifically addressed in link I provided. Look for "Bray and von Storch (2007) and Bray (2010)" and the critique of their results and methodologies.