Survey of 12,000 studies finds strong agreement on climate change

Over half of Americans believe that there’s considerable disagreement among climate scientists about human-caused climate change—perhaps because they've heard that from industry advocacy campaigns and politicians. With so much controversy in the media many assume that the same controversy must exist in the scientific community.

In most situations people agree that it’s sensible to go with the majority of relevant experts whether that's in accepting that protons are real or a given medical treatment is effective. Those decisions depend critically on an accurate understanding of expert consensus.

Several attempts have been made to shine a light on expert opinions relating to global warming. One such study surveyed about 1,000 active climate scientists, finding that 97 percent of them accepted the evidence for the consensus position that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are largely responsible for the warming observed over the last century.