Off the back of the recent Climate Skeptics vs The Consensus image, we were curious how many scientists might make up ‘The Consensus’.
The Skeptical side claims at least 31,486 dissenters in their ranks, according to the PetitionProject.org. That sounds like a lot. But is it?
Of course, not all 12 million US scientists therefore agree with ‘The Consensus’. But this puts the PetitionProject’s 31,486 signatories in some kind of context.
Our maths here is somewhat coarse. Some better data suggests the ‘consensus’ figure is around 97.5% of publishing climatologists and around 90% of all publishing scientists supporting the human-induced climate theory. See this study for more details (PDF – Doran And Zimmerman 2009)
Actually, here’s how some of it looks:
Skeptical Field
Among the climate skeptic scientists, we wondered which fields of science were most represented. We expected climate and earth sciences. But we got…
In fact, when you adjust the PetitionProject’s odd categorisation – they filed ‘chemical engineers’ as chemists and physical engineers as ‘physicists’ – the total number of engineers who signed the petition, by our reckoning, jumps to 49%
Why so many engineers?
UPDATE 1: 23rd Dec 09. Thanks all for the excellent feedback (and barbs!). The language and presentation have been adapted now to hopefully better reflect our exploratory intentions.
:: Research by Helen Lawson Williams
:: source The Petition Project, US Census Bureau – Data on Science Degrees (Excel) & Advanced Science Degrees (Excel)
:: You can find all our data in this spreadsheet.
115 Comments
It seems unlikely to me that every scientist who does not believe in climate change went and signed that one online petition. It also seems unlikely that a) everyone labeled a “scientist” by this graph is actually qualified to accurately speak about climate change and b) agrees that it exists. I’m not falling one way or another on the issue, I just think there are better sources than an online petition university records of everyone who’s ever received an advanced science/math/engineering degree. Pretty graphic though.
Are you seriously trying to claim 12,904,852 scientists agree with the consensus? Even Al Gore never claimed more than a couple of thousand.
Beautiful visualizations, but such poor understanding of math and sampling… this is almost a textbook definition of lying with statistics.
This is an utterly ridiculous presentation. 12.9 MM scientists in the US? You include IT graduates, engineers, etc? Basically anyone with a science degree?
Then you say, only 31,478 scientists disagree. First off – as an active Professional Engineer, no one asked me my thoughts, you just dump people like me into the 12.9 MM who are in agreement.
IMO, your analysis is on shaky ground and about as meaningful as the supposed settled science behind AGW.
Below the picture says “delcaring” when it should say “declaring” I suppose…
Great post ! your obsession for clarifying information makes my day a little more happier each time ..
@Kit: Are you seriously trying to claim only a couple thousand scientists agree with the consensus? The 12,904,852 is simply those with a science degree who haven’t signed the petition. Also, Al Gore’s number was in relation to the number of articles written in support of the climate change theory.
What a silly graph. I’m no anthropogenic climate change skeptic but this is a horrible mangling of data. You include all scientists in the country but only the skeptics from a petition? That’s not very scientific.
I’m pretty sure it says 31.478 disagree. Wait, I’ll check it one more time…
As an engineer I can tell you why engineers at least do not like it;
- The measurement data does not yet give a clear picture thus one cannot make conclusions (you need a longer timespan for accurate measurements to satisfy the engineer).
- We only have one earth, to do good experiments one has to have several earths and change one variable at a time to see what influences what ;-).
- Computersimulations are there to model what one can see and to confirm this, not what will happen in the future. This to me is a serious concern though, as I really believe computersimulations are not ment to look far ahead, certainly not when the variables that have to be taken into account are not very clear or cannot be predicted accurately (world population growth for example).
Thus from those things it is from an engineers point of view very hard to ‘believe’ the climate story. On the other hand; we need to look at our energy spendings anyway, oil is not there forever and fusion energy is an engineers wet dream; I only see a win-win situation ;-).
Why engineers? Better bullshit detectors. It’s an occupational hazard.
That means of the 0.24% who disagree, only 12-31% know what they are talking about (Atmosphere and Physics).
This is a great visualization, but it only shows half the story. Out of the 12,904,852 scientists how many actually agree with the IPCC report? From the data I have seen many that are cited in the IPCC do not agree with the report’s conclusions. Most importantly the scienctific process is not by consensus, but facts and data. Unless you are drinking the “kool aid” the facts and data should make one skeptical.
@ Kit, the title of the visualization is “How many US scientist *disagree* with human-induced climate change”. The the 12944000 figure (how did you come up with 12904852?) is clearly labeled “total scientist in the us”
how is it, exactly, that you inferred that this image and blogpost is claiming that most scientist agree with it?
Engineering is the most likely science that Christians will go into, since it doesn’t “conflict” with their “beliefs.”
Hey, how about visualizing the 97% of CO2 that is natural in origin vs the 3% that is man made? Better yet… let’s visualize water vapor the greatest green house gas… How much more water vapor do we spew in to the atmosphere than CO2? How about visualizing the IPCC scientists? You think they’re all climatologists? The railway engineer leading them surely isn’t.
How about visualizing the volume of the oceans vs the volume of gas in the atmosphere? How about visualizing the size of the sun ( 98% of the solar system mass) vs the Earth.
I’m normally a big fan and follower of this website… however, this article is really really using bad, bad statistical practice.
I don’t know if man has induced any global warming or not on the Earth, I’m open to both sides of the discussion, honestly, but to claim that all scientists who did not sign a certain document believe one way against the other and then to put it to graphics?
Terrible. This information is not beautiful. This information is BS.
[The intention was to put the number of skeptical scientists on the PetitionProject in context. Otherwise 31,458 is just a meaningless number. I was careful not to infer that the remaining scientists therefore do support the human-induced global warming. Perhaps not careful enough. If you can suggest a clearer / better / less bad way of doing this, I'm more than happy to edit the image. Thanks! David ]
You can not claim that the lack of signing the PetitionProject.org site with their opposition therefore means they are a climate change believer. There are real issues here and bad information does NOT help.
Perhaps engineers are more likely to disagree because their livelihood is less dependent on things like peer perception and obtaining government funding.
I always question my doctor. Because I don’t trust him to understand enough medicine to make decisions. I also don’t trust nutritionists and I think I’ve found the BEST way to lose weight. Also, I don’t trust my school board members when they say there isn’t enough money to fund school projects. In fact… I think I see a trend here. I don’t trust anyone, because obviously I can take a half-arsed cursory glance at any data, some of the most general textbooks and make sweeping generalizations about the validity of a widely peer reviewed concept. I don’t need to do comprehensive study on the intricacies and pitfalls of analysis on any particular subject. I come in supposing something, and the data ALWAYS fits my perception.
So, you’re comparing the total number of scientists that exist in the US to the number that have signed a petition. That’s kind of disingenuous, as the presentation makes it look like 12m scientists have actively agreed with the consensus. Comparing active disagreement with passive agreement is not the same. It’s apples and oranges.
The best I’ve been able to find about consensus is Global Warming Scientific Consensus which claims “97.4% believe that human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures” based on a study of 3,146 Earth scientists.
So, I agree that there is overwhelming scientific consensus, but this presentation doesn’t do anything to support the cause that climate science is open and honest.
What’s the term for information design without integrity…. oh yes, rubbish.
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/interesting-easy-beautiful-true/
Maybe the engineer/general science group is larger than the others? These percentages tell us what percent of signers are from each group. Completely unknown is what percent of each group are signers.
Thanks for putting the bs into context. I wondered why everyone hates the petition project and calls it a fraud. This clarifies. There is a consensus and the petition project is a dubious effort to manipulate the truth.
Well, that was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction on my part, allow me to expand. Your question driving this graphic was “how many scientists made up ‘The Consensus’”. However, all your graphic tells us is how many “scientists” signed a specific petition. It’s not an accurate representation of the number of scientists who are skeptical, and by extension, tells us nothing about the number of scientists that are part of The Consensus.
[No, the question was 'What proportion of the scientific community does 31,458 skeptics represent?' The number itself is meaningless unless put in some kind of context. This is not the ideal context but it gives some impression.
We've got some additional (better) data that suggests around 97% of publishing climatologists support the idea that human activity as a significant contributing factor in global warming. 89-90% of all publishing scientists. 77% of non-publishers, non climatologists. 55% of the public.
That's from here - http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
Thanks! david]
If your aim is to produce images that convey information beautifully, why not make them represent that information accurately? One upside down scientist in 100 is 1% not 0.24%
[The head is coloured grey to represent 0.24% - David]
It seems rather disingenuous to claim that all scientists that haven’t signed the petition agree with the consensus. It might be more convincing if it were restricted only to climate scientists who were more likely to have an informed opinion.
[Yes it would be ideal to do a version focusing on climate and atmosphere scientists. Any ideas where we could find that data?
We used the Petitionproject's own criteria for defining informed opinion here (i.e anyone with a Bachelor Of Science or higher) - Thanks David]
@Kit: I don’t think our wonderful hosts are claiming that, but I can easily see someone jumping to that conclusion. It would be better to add the proportion of known supporters of climate change to the illustration.
@vanderleun: anyone?
@mt: And the evidence to support your contention is…?
Oh, how I enjoy editable posts….
@vanderleun: was supposed to read “Salem Hypothesis anyone?”
@mt: Nevermind. Since we agree, you’re obviously a very intelligent person of fine character and demeanor.
This chart is misleading. Why not compare anyone in any part of the world living or dead who ever had a science kit, took a science course in school or read a science fiction novel with some actual scientific information in it, and chart how many of them signed this one online opinion petition.
[We used the Petition's own criteria of 'scientist' - anyone with a Bachelor Of Science degree or higher.- David]
You could reverse the conclusion of the graphic by counting how many of the defined group have joined the Union of Concerned Scientists, who claim a membership of 75,000 on their website; though they don’t differentiate how many are “citizens” and how many are “scientists” (their distinction).
Better to count individuals with science degrees, actively employed full time as climatologists, and even meteorologists. Shade how many have published work supporting man-made climate change, how many opposing, and how many have not taken a position in any way that had their name at the bottom.
83% of all statistics are just made up.
@Jonathan Stampf We’re working on an image relative to climatologists. In the meantime, we think the number of publishing scientists (all fields) skeptical about climate change is around 10%. From climatology, it’s 1%. That’s from eyeballing this report http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
There are 494 signatories of the petition involved in Meterology (343), Atmospheric Science (112), Climateology (39). Anyone have any ideas how many scientists (with BS or higher) in the US are involved in those fields? David ]
Why engineers? It seems the Salem Hypothesis holds for climate change denialism too.
(Disclaimer: I’m an engineer. By training, at least.)
thank you for this. i always laugh when told climate change is the greatest hoax of all time and that over 30 000 scientists agree with this. now we see what 30 000 actually means!
What do you count as a degree when you say “Those who have a degree or higher in…”? People with just a Bachelor’s degree generally don’t know jack. I would count PhDs as scientists.
[We used the PetitionProject's own criteria for 'scientist' - anyone with a Bachelor's degree in Science or higher. Thanks! David]
It’s really not fair to assume that everyone who didn’t sign a particular petition believes in human-induced climate change.
“Why engineers?”
Isn’t obvious? Petroleum engineers, Power plant engineers (and other civil and mechanical engineers), Mining Engineers, etc. Nuclear engineers are probably under-represented because they are pitching their power source as green in an ironic twist of logic.
@vanderleun: They don[t have better BS detectors, they have a vested interest in suppressing global climate action which will hurt the profitability of their industries.
I suppose it depends on whether there is any interest in being fair. That first graphic is so blatant in its disregard for presenting any actual useful information that I don’t think fair was ever really a consideration.
[Why? Can you help us improve it? David]
Why don’t you make another graph just like it that plots out the # of US adults, and compare it with the # who voted for Obama.
I have to agree w/the posters preceding me. While I think it’s interesting to showcase which type of scientists may agree/disagree with the consensus and ponder about why they aren’t in geo sciences fields, this doesn’t seem like a sound way to determine who is in the consensus to begin with.
Also, from a design point of view, do you think it’s problematic to show the dissenter as an upside-down icon? That seems fraught with negative meaning and seems to imply a bias towards the data. I think the design should be more neutral. Just because a small percentage of a population are dissenters, doesn’t mean they are wrong (think about famous dissenters in history we now see as heroes). No comment on these particular dissenters, however. ; )
[Yeah I wondered about that too. Its a design tweak because the head is naturally around 25% of the image. David]
As an aside, I ordered your book and looking forward to checking it out; however, it’s on back order on Amazon until Jan! Congrats to you, but I am bummed about not getting it sooner.
Best,
Teresa
Would prefer an image showing total population of scientists with the skeptics broken out as above, but also breaking out the subset that has published or otherwise expressed agreement with the ‘Consensus’.
I think the first graph is a good answer to the question “Is 40,000 scientists a lot of scientists?” Not so much.
The second graph, though, could be better. It clearly shows that more engineers signed the petition than earth scientists. But for all that’s shown here, those engineers could be a tiny minority of America’s engineers, and those earth scientists could be every earth scientist in the country. I’d like to see what percentage of each field signed the petition, rather than what percentage of the petition signers are in each field.
[Yeah I'd like to see that too. If anyone can find those figures or give good educated guesses, please SEND THEM OVER! David]
I would like to know the specifics surrounding the numbers in the paper you cite:
We’ve got some additional (better) data that suggests around 97% of publishing climatologists support the idea that human activity as a significant contributing factor in global warming. 89-90% of all publishing scientists. 77% of non-publishers, non climatologists. 55% of the public.
Are these only counting papers (and writers) that specifically write about climate change? I have no evidence but I would imagine there are a not insignificant number of climatologists et al that have never publicly expressed an opinion on this issue (or is this the only things that climatologists study?). Not saying that this is something you should track down just an interesting question that came to mind after looking at the image above.
Many groups claim xx% of _____ support us but that can be disingenuous when relying on self-selected respondents. ie FOX news polls
Never mind, I see you’re still looking for the data that would enable the graph I want.
Derek, it was based on a survey sent to 10,257 earth scientists at universities and government labs, of whom 3,146 responded. It’s not based on publications or publicly expressed opinions.
It is a self-selected subset of those invited. I’d expect that to skew the results in favor of “having an opinion”, but not necessarily toward one side or the other.
You can get more details in the PDF David linked to in previous comments.
Malcom… you said: “It seems rather disingenuous to claim that all scientists that haven’t signed the petition agree with the consensus.”
If you look directly below the graph it specifically states:
“Of course, not all 12 million US scientists therefore agree with ‘The Consensus’. But this puts the PetitionProject’s 31,486 signatories in some kind of context.”
[My mistake here causing this glitch Enci. I've edited the post to clarify my intentions since Malcolm made his comment Apols. David]
Would my Master of Science in Journalism get me counted as a scientist for purposes of this graphic?
I am a scientist… a political scientist. Sorry, thought that might amuse.
Information is fascinating because like a fine wine or hot dog from Coney Island, how information is perceived depends very much on how it is presented and in what context it is presented. If one were to take the information above and put it into a slightly different delivery, makes the everything different.
Right now, intended or not, the delivery seems to be “Only 31k of the over 12m scientists here in America are skeptical of human-induced climate change.” Now this might not be the intention, as I say it is my perception and I have my own biases that I bring to the table.
However, if we were to put the same data into a slightly different delivery and context…
“According to the latest data, the number of scientists who actively oppose or are skeptical of the idea of human-induced climate change has grown to 31k or 0.24% of all American scientists.” Even this piece of information, re-arranged from the original, is not exactly accurate but it certainly turns the information on its head.
Statistics especially are very easy to manipulate:
“…it was based on a survey sent to 10,257 earth scientists at universities and government labs, of whom 3,146 responded. It’s not based on publications or publicly expressed opinions…”
If I were a die hard anti-climate change skeptic, I could take that piece of information and do this with it:
“Only 30.7% of those queried even bothered responding, showing that many scientists do not take the climate debate seriously or may be skeptical of science behind it.”
Just as I can use the numbers to make dubious assertions with above, so can anyone take the image and make anything out of it that they wish.
Another thing that bothers me is that there is an unspoken commentary on the intelligence and or character of the 31k who signed the petition. Indeed the assertion is that they are are either not qualified, not intelligent, or have a vested interest in disproving the ideas of human-induced climate change. The simple idea that majority rules works in government and opinion related items, not true science. One cannot simply vote away the idea that there be something incorrect about current climate theory. The reason many governments strive to protect the minority is to prevent the majority from abusing their collective position.
LM, it’s based on U.S. Census survey data which places degrees in 17 categories (plus “Other”). You probably would have categorized your journalism degree as “Communications”, which isn’t one of the categories considered for this graphic. So, no.
(Actually, people with advanced degrees are categorized in the census spreadsheet by the field of their Bachelor’s degree. So if you majored in chemistry before you got your journalism degree, yes, you would be counted. Conversely, a psychology major who went on to a PhD in astrophysics would be left out. I don’t think this is all that relevant, just interesting.)
Consensus is for politics and religion. Hard facts is for science.
Science is not about consensus so your point, accurate or not, is irrelevant.
Big bang cosmology was once an utterly fringe scientific theory. In fact, the steady state theory of the universe was created out of whole cloth simply to have a plausible alternative. The list of quotes from the leading scientists of the time speaking against big bang cosmology is LONG.
Of course, today, big bang cosmology is accepted fact.
So, consensus on scientific topics means NOTHING.
Hi David,
Although I question the result that you present, just like some commenters above, I have to say this is definitely an interesting question to answer and visualize. Good effort.
Just how many scientists actually agree with the anthropogenic climate change theory?
Another question that would be interesting to investigate is how many climatologist work for the IPCC or funded by the government ;-)
If you conclude, as I have, that this is mainly a psycho-social issue full of opinion based on vested interests, then the motivation for individual public statements needs to be assessed. Most climate science is funded by government, so it is best to stay silent rather than voice your skepticism. We’ve seen from the Climategate emails how you are dealt with by club members if you dare question The Hypothesis. That’s why most vocal skeptics are either retired, or not dependent on government jobs now and in the future. I can assure you there is a big silent majority out there who are too afraid to voice their doubts.
I wonder what percentage Copernicus and Galileo were in?