RE: Revisiting Global Warming and the War on Terror
By Letters To The Editor Harvey Leifert (07/24/06)
In Paul A. Ibbetson's article on global warming, posted on at least two Web sites today, he writes, "In reality, a survey of the American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society taken in [1992] found that only 17% of scientists endorsed the greenhouse gas climate theory (Saunders, 2006). " The statement is incorrect in several respects.
First, the survey was conducted in 1991. Second, the questions that evoked the 19 (not 17) percent positive response concerned human-induced warming over the previous 100 years, 1891-1991.
Third and most importantly, the next question in the survey was, "In your opinion, is human-induced greenhouse warming now occurring [i.e., in 1991]?" The response: 66 percent of scientists said "yes," only 10 percent said "no," and 24 percent responded "don't know." This is a glaring omission from your report, as it was from Saunders'.
Of course, in 2006, scientists are nearly unanimous on this point, thanks in part to the advent of satellites to monitor Earth's climate and supercomputers to crunch huge amounts of data, which were not available in 1991. The peer-reviewed research data are overwhelming. But even back in 1991, there was evidence enough to convince two-thirds, not just 17 percent, of scientists that human-induced greenhouse warming was occurring.
The incorrect and incomplete data from the 1991 survey that you repeat have been passed around and published in op-eds and, more recently, blogs by climate change skeptics for years, but repetition does not make misinformation correct.
Harvey Leifert
Public Information Manager
American Geophysical Union
2000 Florida Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20009, USA
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