Consensus about what aspect of global warming? Does it exist? Are we causing it? What will be the result? There is definite scientific consensus that the phenomena exists. Increases in the average temperature of the earth and the shrinking of ice caps and glaciers is a measurable fact. The 1 millimeter per year average increase in sea level has also been documented. There aren't any scientists that seriously debate that global warming exists.

Most of the media controversy comes from the second and third questions. Are we to blame and what are the consequences going to be? There is scientific concensus that increases in the level of human generated greenhouse gases is the main reason that the earth is getting warmer. Can you find a scientist that would tell you otherwise? Of course, but that is not how scientific concensus works. Just because an expert in a field says something doesn't make it a fact.

Scientific consensus is rooted in the peer review process. This is the process by which a scientist submits their research for publication to a journal. Whether or not the submitted article is accepted for publication depends on the article being reviewed by other experts in the field. If it passes this rigourous process then the research is published in the journal.

A review of the scientific literature, which is one of the things that the UN panel of experts did, shows that essentially all of the peer-reviewed literature supports the idea that human activities are mainly to blame for global warming. That is scientific consensus. There are some scientists who argue otherwise and have published their views, but those publications were in books that they wrote, magazine articles or other media pieces. Such publications are not accepted by anyone in the scientific community as contributing to the scientific body of knowledge. Their main purpose for publication is that there are people (mainly non-scientists) who read them out of interest. These pieces are controversial and therefore can sell, but they don't contribute to science. They do however contribute to propagating the myth that maybe humans are not the cause of global warming.

There is one area of global warming where there isn't scientific consensus. What exactly will be the consequences. This has not been settled. Will the ocean rise by 1 meter or 12 meters? Will the average temperature, by the year 2100, increase by 2 degrees or 6 degrees? Will millions or billions of people be affected. There is much scientific debate on this, but the debate centers around how much devestation will occur, not on whether or not there will be devestation.

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