Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature

Here’s a very scholarly publication documenting a broad consensus on AGW (anthropogenic global warming)  in scientific literature.  Maybe it’s just a personal thing, but I’ve always hated articles like these.  An article about articles?  A “meta-article,” I guess it could be called?  Eww.

In addition to not liking overly academic treatments of any subject, I point out that, even though there is very clearly a consensus in the subject, I’m not sure what that means.  When Copernicus published his work on heliocentrism in 1514 there was consensus that the Earth was the center of the universe; the fact that Copernicus was the sole dissenter didn’t mean that he was wrong.

Having said that, the evidence surrounding AGW is overwhelming, and we’re certainly not doing ourselves any favors by pretending the matter is in doubt.