The Structure of Scientific Opinion on Climate Change

Over the past several decades, environmental issues have become a steadily more significant part of political discourse in the United States and around the world. Since the 1990s, politicians, journalists, and the public have focused increasingly on global climate change, the possibility that human activities are creating significant increases in planetary temperatures. Throughout these debates, the comments of technical experts have played an important part. However, the debate has had an important political dimension, with policymakers either seeking out scientific voices in support of their policies or discounting scientific opinion that failed to support them. For all the political discord and public uncertainty, there has been relatively little academic examination of scientific opinion regarding global warming and its impact. This research note helps address this relative gap in the literature by presenting data from a survey of prominent scientists affiliated with two professional associations that are closely connected to climate change research the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU). In addition to determining the nature of scientific opinion on key issues regarding climate change, we conduct a multivariate analysis to examine some potential determinants of scientific opinion, including nature of employment, professional discipline, level of expertise, and level of confidence in scientific understanding of climate change. Adapted from the source document.