I've read the claim, many times, that something like 97% of scientists agree AGW is real. But I really don't know what is meant by "AGW is real". Does it mean simply that one believes man's activities are affecting global temperature, or does it mean you believe CO2 from man's activities are affecting global temperature. I am a scientist and I believe that the evidence, so far, strongly suggests that rising CO2 is having very little affect on surface temperature. My personal opinion is AGW may be real but seems to be quite insignificant compared to other phenomena affecting the Earth's surface temperatures. Further, I believe that the original Hansen hypothesis that began the AGW controversy has been absolutely, and thoroughly disproved. So, depending on how a survey is worded the results could vary, and may be misleading when reported in the popular media.
Last year, a survey published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
(Neil Stenhouse, Edward Maibach, Sara Cobb, Ray Ban, Andrea Bleistein, Paul Croft, Eugene Bierly, Keith Seitter, Gary Rasmussen, and Anthony Leiserowitz, 2014: Meteorologists' Views About Global Warming: A Survey of American Meteorological Society Professional Members. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc.roil, 1029–1040.) began by reviewing some earlier and similar surveys published five years ago. Here is Stenhouse, et al.'s summary of the 2009 reviews:
"Research conducted to date with meteorologists and other atmospheric scientists has shown that they are not unanimous in their views of climate change. In a survey of Earth scientists, Doran and Zimmerman (2009) found that, while a majority of meteorologists surveyed are convinced humans have contributed to global warming (GW; 64%), this was a substantially smaller majority than that found among all Earth scientists (82%). Another survey, by Farnsworth and Lichter (2009), found that 83% of meteorologists surveyed were convinced human-induced climate change is occurring, again a smaller majority than among experts in related areas, such as ocean sciences (91%) and geophysics (88%).
Let me reiterate something I have posted here a number of times, and that is that scientific questions are never settled by opinion polls, even among scientists, nor can they be. Once a scientific issue is "settled", the consensus among scientists will be virtually 100%, and any issue on which even one or two percent of scientists disagree certainly can't be regarded as "settled". I put "settled" in quotes because no scientific question is truly "settled" in the sense that it can not be overturned by new information. Science is about models, both mathematical and physical, and it isn't unusual for an older model to be rejected in favor of newer models that do a better job of describing natural phenomena.
Below I have appended Table 1 from the Stenhouse paper which summarizes the responses to questions in the 2014 survey. I personally don't see anything in the Stenhouse survey that would justify a remark such as 100%, or nearly 100%, of scientists, or climate scientists, agree that AGW is real.
I recommend consulting the original manuscript, available free, for more information.
