14 DAY TRIAL // A team of researchers writing in the journal Environmental Research Letters document the scientific community's view on climate change and its causes.
Long story short: it appears that a whopping 97% of 4,000 peer-reviewed papers blame human society and its heavily industrialized ways for the changes currently taking place in weather patterns worldwide.
Study lead author John Cook says that the findings of this report contradict the assumptions of nearly 50% of the general population.
As he explains, many still think that the scientific community is yet to decide on what it is exactly that causes climate change and global warming.
It is John Cook's belief that the public's perceptions on said phenomena are being toyed with by fossil fuel industries whose supporters do not shy away from carrying out misinformation campaigns.
Interestingly enough, it was back in 2010 when one other study showed how, out of total of 1,000 scientists asked to comment on the causes of climate change, nearly 97.5% pointed the finger at various human activities known to have a noteworthy ecological footprint.
According to Mongabay, John Cook's commented on the findings of this report as follows:
“Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary.”
“There is a gaping chasm between the actual consensus and the public perception. It's staggering given the evidence for consensus that less than half of the general public think scientists agree that humans are causing global warming,” the researcher further argued.
Apart from their altering weather patterns worldwide, the emissions released by several industries impact on the chemical make-up of oceans and seas, meaning that they trigger and fuel a phenomenon known as ocean acidification.
“When people understand that scientists agree on global warming, they're more likely to support policies that take action on it,” John Cook offered as an explanation for his and his colleagues' decision to carry out this investigation.