A Warming Consensus

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Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. —John Kenneth Galbraith

A couple of weeks ago, I watched most of the televised portion of the Academy Awards. Throughout the show, a constantly reiterated theme was that former Vice President Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth was neither left nor right, neither red nor blue, neither conservative nor liberal, just true.

I have labored under the belief that there was no real consensus on the existence of global warming, the cause if average temperatures were in fact rising, and the possibility that temperatures would continue rising if temperatures were rising. Being an ignoramus in climatology, it’s important that I understand the state of consensus (especially since I have made so much of consensus in previous articles).

Apparently, that assessment is ten years old, at least. According to Wikipedia, scientific consensus now firmly supports the theory that global warming is real, that it is 90% likely to be caused by human factors, and that it will continue, even if we begin cutting greenhouse emissions. (See articles on global warming, scientific opinion on climate change, and scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming.) The only controversy now seems to be over what should be done.

I began this article hoping to ask Theodora’s assessment of the consensus or lack thereof among scientists, but the articles cited above seem pretty clear that I need to adjust my assessment of the consensus.

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