Oreskes, 2004
A 2004 essay for
the journal Science
was written by historian
Naomi Oreskes,
who is not a scientist.
Oreskes reported
examining abstracts
from 928 scientific papers,
listed in the Institute for
Scientific Information database,
published in scientific journals
from 1993 and 2003,
using the key search words
“global climate change.”
She concluded 75%
of the abstracts
either implicitly or explicitly
supported IPCC’s view
that human activities
were responsible
for most of the
observed warming
over the previous
50 years,
and claimed
NO ONE
dissented.
Oreskes did not distinguish
between articles that assumed
some human impact on climate,
however small, and articles that
supported IPCC’s specific claim
that human emissions are
responsible for most of the
global warming observed
during the past 50 years.
Many of the thousands
of studies about plant
growth, for example,
simply assume CO2
levels will increase
in the future, and tested
plant growth at higher
CO2 levels.
Oreskes’ deliberately
overlooked hundreds
of articles by prominent
global warming skeptics,
including John Christy,
Sherwood Idso,
Richard Lindzen, and
Patrick Michaels.
Oreskes’ methodology
assumed a nonscientist
like her could determine
the findings of scientific
research by quickly reading
the abstracts of the
published papers.
Even trained climate scientists
are unable to do that,
because abstracts routinely
do not accurately reflect
their articles’ actual findings.
Abstracts routinely overstate
the actual research findings,
and contain claims
that are not proven by
the underlying research.
Most articles simply
assume IPCC claims
are true, and then
go on to address
a different topic,
such as correlations
between the temperature
and outbreaks of influenza.
Oreskes’ use of
the search term
“global climate change”
instead of
“climate change,”
resulted in her finding
fewer than one-thirteenth
of the estimated total count
of scientific papers
on "climate change"
over the stated period.
Medical researcher
Klaus-Martin Schulte
used the same database
and search terms as Oreskes,
to examine papers published
from 2004 to February 2007
and found fewer than half
endorsed the “IPCC consensus”,
and only 7% did so explicitly.