"98 percent of scientists agree on Global Warming." Wait, maybe that's a bit high...

It's "common knowledge"--that is, widely assumed to be true--that a) 98 percent of scientists agree that Earth is experiencing an unprecedented warming; b) which is caused by CO2 produced by humans burning fossil fuels; and c) the only way to stop this is if Americans would stop driving and flying so much, and stop using so much electricity, coal and oil.

All three items above are bullshit, of course, but that hasn't put a dent in the story.  Proponents keep chanting "98 percent!" as if that proves their case.

So it's with great amusement that I note the just-released results of a survey of the members of the American Meteorological Society, in which every member was asked their opinion on aspects of global warming.

The AMS has been among the strongest pushers of the global warming theory.  So they were probably surprised by the results of the survey, which were...ah...not what the AMS execs expected.

1,821 members responded--so a nice large sample.  Of those, just 52% agreed that humans were causing global warming.

Long damn way from "98 percent agree..." eh?

And note that this is a group with a HUGE amount of peer pressure in favor of the humans-are-causing-it theory.  In support of this, here are the authors' conclusion about the survey:

We suggest that AMS should: attempt to convey the widespread scientific agreement about climate change; acknowledge and explore the uncomfortable fact that political ideology influences the climate change views of meteorology professionals; refute the idea that those who do hold non-majority views just need to be “educated” about climate change; continue to deal with the conflict among members of the meteorology community.

"And how shall we deal with this 'conflict,' comrades?  Shall we allow those with dissenting views to publish papers on their studies?  Of course not.  Instead we should use every effort to re-educate these poor, ignorant non-believers into thinking correctly about this.  Because we all know what happens to our stream of federal grant money if we lose on this, right?"