No, there is not. Of you have been sleeping for a few years, then. Many scientists have come out in the recent past to stand against the "global warming" theory.
It is nothing like gravity where we can clearly experiment and it's predictable. Climate change is no way certain nor predictable, and anyone who pretends otherwise is either a fool or an ignorant. Climate models are based on so much data (standard variation is HUGE) that you cannot even draw a line without being laughed at by a statistician.
I was coming up with a list of cites, but at this point it'd just fall on deaf ears. If you're genuinely uncommitted, just look at what's published by everything from climate journals to general interest journals, like Nature and Science. Sure, the consensus might be wrong, but it's incredibly obvious that there is one: experts are very largely of the opinion that anthropogenic carbon emissions are a major driver of climate change.
Of course, I have family whose post-doc research is in this, so I might just be part of the conspiracy!
Edited to add: well, just to get you started, check out NPG's specialist climate journal: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/index.html . No article is trying to prove anything beyond their own limited theses, but it's very clear where experts are coming from.
"Given the widely noted increase in the warming effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations, it has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008."
This is coming from the GWPF itself : "It is good news that the authors recognise that there has been no global temperature increase since 1998. Even after the standstill appears time and again in peer-reviewed scientific studies, many commentators still deny its reality. We live in the warmest decade since thermometer records began about 150 years ago, but it hasn’t gotten any warmer for at least a decade."
So, temperature increase? Hum ? Global Warming ? Hum ?CO2 levels are exploding but no significant temperature increase from 1998 - 2008.
You are wrong. My dictionary defines consensus as "general agreement" and this is clearly the case when it comes to climate science.
No one in the climate science arena disagrees that the changes in CO2 levels are 1) created by burning fossil fuels 2) driving the observed warming effect and 3) that the observed warming trends are outside the levels of natural variability.
The IPCC Third Assessment Report [1] outlines this in much detail. This report has been signed-off on by dozens of international science academies, including the Science Council of Japan, the US National Academy of Sciences, and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Other institutions endorsing the IPCC report include NASA's Goddard Institute, NOAA, the American Meteorological Society, the Royal Society of the United Kingdom, the American Geophysical Union, and the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society.
If this doesn't constitute "consensus" then I would like to hear what you WOULD consider sufficient. There are MANY debates in climate science, but they are generally about the HOW's not the IF's or WHY's.
CO2 is not the single driver. If it were, how do you explain we do not see significant temperature increase over the past few years while there is more and more CO2 in the atmosphere. You cant have it both ways.
And I repeat again, there is no consensus. Consensus in science is not like a democratic vote. The consensus in science is obtained when there is NO ONE debating anything anymore. Just like noone is casting doubt on Einstein s relativity theory in physics. Do we have that level of scientific certitude regarding climate? Hell no.
"June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe." (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-te...)
You clearly have an opinion on this topic, but everything you've asserted in this thread is simply wrong. Debate on these issues is always fine (even with a scientific consensus, it does not mean 'no further debate') but you do the opposing camp a disservice when you promote falsehoods.
The temperature has been rising for ~150 years or more.
Of course the most recent half of the trend is higher than the average. It's meant to sound scary when it's just a plain fact that a rising trend will have most of the later part of the trend higher than the entire average.
A probability of the last part of a series being higher than the average would only be interesting if the series was random. The temperature series isn't random - it has a trend upwards. So the probability business is just nonsense. It's just a ridiculous way of saying the temperature series has trended up for a long time. (Long in human lifetime measurements, but not geological lifetime)
Hence : in the last 327 months of my life, I'm taller than my lifetime average. Because it would be very unlikely that the opposite would be the case.
Temperatures have not been rising for 150 years or more. You need to check your facts.
Direct instrumental measurements only go back ~150 years, but another direct mechanism exists: borehole measurements [1]. This gives us a very good measurement of temperature over ~500 years. These show that at no time have temperature averages been as high as they are now.
We can go back even further, to the tune of 1000 years, through proxy data obtained via things like tree rings, coral growth, stalagmite layers, etc. This covers the so-called "Medieval Warm Period" and these data show the last century to be warmer than any other in the data set.
Not enough? Antarctic ice core analysis provides a record of the glacial-interglacial cycle over 100s of thousands of years. These data show that current average temperatures are higher than they've been over the last 100,000+ years. This is documented in Figure 2.22 of the IPCC Third Assessment Report [2].
The cranks who claim Einstein is wrong have no means to prove he is.
However, when a scientist argues against the lack of long term data to discuss global warming, and the inconsistencies of the theory, he is met with disapproval, insults, and shunning. There is a lack of scientific discussions because there is a huge political agenda behind it, and it is not a surprise to see most of 'climate scientists' funded by governments who approve of that theory and want to have this on their agenda.
Kind of hard to keep a straight face as a scientist when your funding depends on the theory itself. Of course youd be fighting to make sure it remains the 'mainstream' theory.
- disclaimer: student of environmental physics here -
Uhm, no. We can still do climate science without the problems, and there will be funds (maybe not as much, but that's ok). Climate is still something we want and need to understand, even if there is no problem at the moment (just imagine another ice age.. )
All the researchers here (Heidelberg) would be happy - euphoric! - to be able to disprove the theory. Just image, you'd be able to tell everyone it's gonna be ok.. but it's most probably not. And there are so many students and grad students working on the data - if there was a problem, can you really imagine that not a single student would be idealistic enough to speak up? (I totally would, but then I might be in already.)
You can download raw data if you want, and look at them yourself. Most projects actually have a data base, and if not just ask. If there is a problem in the way the data has been taken and evaluated, notice the authors. But a lot of people have looked over it already.As I said, everyone would be unbelievably happy if the problem didn't exist.
Look here for some oceanic data, for example:
http://woce.nodc.noaa.gov/wdiu/
Wouldn't that apply equally to almost all scientific research being conducted? Just about everybody has some result they're hoping for. This sounds more like bias on your part ("They could be exaggerating, and I'd like them to be, so I'll make the leap from mere possibility to certainty") than a fact-based analysis of the climate scientists' research.
"There is scientific consensus"... No, there is not.
Sorry, but there is[1].
You are welcome to debate whether those scientist are right, and welcome to debate if other, non-climate specialists are better qualified to offer their opinion, but trying to argue against there being a consensus is misguided.
It's funny but I see a parallel between your line of reasoning about global warming and the reasoning of those who believe in creation, and deny evolution.
There are scientists who advocate creation, not evolution and there is no easy way to "prove evolution" as an absolute fact.
People have their reasons for ignoring proofs of evolution and others have their reasons for ignoring proofs of global warming.
What degree of evolution? That things change? That this change is observable? Or that man evolved from apes. If the latter, a) why are there still apes, b) where is the missing link?
There is a whole list of "human missing links" on Wikipedia[1]. The best preserved are the Australopithecus afarensis set of skeletons[2].
It is thought that A. afarensis was more closely related to the genus Homo (which includes the modern human species Homo sapiens), whether as a direct ancestor or a close relative of an unknown ancestor, than any other known primate from the same time.
There is tons (literally) of evidence that evolution is real, from a wide range of independent, disparate sources.
Here's one: the fact that volcanic islands, which have land that has been historically only accessible to birds, have a number of bird species that have filled ecological niches normally filled by rodents.
Here's another: you can see in the fossil record progressive changes. Sure, there are missing links, but try coming up with an explanation that fits the islands fact (above) as well as this one. In addition, have it explain, in a way that permits further predictions, 10 other otherwise independent sources of evidence.
Only in an exceptionally mild way, and no worse than you should reasonably expect from posting absurdly uninformed critiques of basic science to a technology oriented online community. Besides, I meant it more for humour than offense, as I find it hard to resist such a good feed line.
Major scientific institutions don't get funding for saying "Things seem to be going ok right now", they get funding for saying "Things are screwed up, here's why, and we think we can fix it". I say this as someone who works at a major scientific institution.
We have an Institute for Creation Research [1]. There is plenty of funding for anti-climate change research. It's just not producing anything. That should give a hint as to where reality lies amidst interests.
I doubt that funding is even a tiny fraction of the research money from governments. And in addition it is money that might taint your reputation for future research funding rounds.
This is true in many areas of research. If you want funding there are certain opinions and buzzwords you should include when applying for funding.
Why yes, they do. Look at the LHC or major astronomic observatories - it's not like they fix a big existential problem for most people for the time being. Where do you work?
There is seemingly a scientific consensus among scientists in fields relevant to climatology.
If we ignore all of those however, then I would agree that there isn't a scientific consensus in the general populous on climate change, especially among people who haven't bothered to look into the actual science of it particularly.
Also, more data does not equal worse statistics, at least on average anyway.
No, there is not. Of you have been sleeping for a few years, then. Many scientists have come out in the recent past to stand against the "global warming" theory.
It is nothing like gravity where we can clearly experiment and it's predictable. Climate change is no way certain nor predictable, and anyone who pretends otherwise is either a fool or an ignorant. Climate models are based on so much data (standard variation is HUGE) that you cannot even draw a line without being laughed at by a statistician.