Government Energy Policy, Business and Technology

Consensus Affirmed: Virtually All Climate Scientists Agree Warming Is Manmade

Inside Climate News: Ninety to 100 percent of climate scientists agree that the planet is warming due to human activity, according to a peer-reviewed paper published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Research Letters. The study, called a "consensus on consensus," synthesizes findings from prior published research.

While there is a near-unanimous consensus among climate scientists that human activity is causing the planet to warm, public opinion in the U.S. lags far behind. Only 70 percent of Americans (79 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of Republicans) believe there is evidence for global warming, according to recent national figures. Corporate funding that seeds doubt on the science of climate change has helped create this wide disparity in beliefs on climate change between scientists and the general public, particularly Republicans, according to a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Republican party's two leading presidential candidates say they do not believe in manmade global warming.

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