Oregon Petition Project Analysis

“But 31,000 scientists disagree!” If someone is trying to persuade you with this claim that means that: 1) they’re citing the Petition Project, and that you should 2) stop taking them seriously. The Oregon Petition Project claims that over 30,000 scientists are rejecting the consensus position on climate change. But what they tend to leave out that their “project” was never verified; meaning that Donald Trump could be one of those 30,000 “scientist.” Organization like the Petition Project are one of the many reasons for the continuing denial in the face of absolute truth. Expert consensus is crucial, as it has the power to alter public perception, which has been found as a gateway to belief, affecting other climate beliefs and attitudes including policy support. But organization like the Petition project have been largely successful in denying the existence of an expert consensus; creating the “consensus gap” Only 16% of Americans realize that the consensus is above 90%
To summarize: in Cook’s paper, he and his team surveyed 11,944 climate abstracts from 1991 to 2011, and found that of those speaking about climate change, 97% point to humans as the cause. To ensure that there wasn’t any bias in the results, they went and found the same climate scientist; and when they rated their own papers, they found the exact same figure: 97%. Cooks’ paper has been the primary research when defining the consensus among scientist on climate change. Which has led it to become a target among climate deniers. But try as they might, they can’t debunk the results. Ask Richard Tol, a prominent climate skeptic, when he tried to discredit the paper, even he found a 90%