It’s often repeated that 97% of all climate scientists in the world agree that global climate change and the greenhouse effect are caused by human carbon dioxide emissions. This is completely untrue, according to the author Mark Steyn, who wrote the book ’A Disgrace to the Profession.’
These figures come from a survey conducted by Margaret R. K. Zimmerman at the University of Illinois in 2008.
What actually happened was that Zimmerman sent emails about an online survey with two questions to 10,257 earth scientists, including climatologists. Only 3,146 responded, and of these, 96.2% were from North America, with 6.2% from Canada. Most in the U.S. came from California.
Zimmerman then proceeded to exclude and reduce the number of climate experts to only 79, and of these, 97% agreed that human carbon dioxide is behind climate change.
Among journalists worldwide, these data have been interpreted to mean that 97% of the world’s climate scientists or 10,257 ’climate experts’ agree that humans are the cause of global climate change.
