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"What's important is that this is not just one study -- it's the consensus of multiple studies," Sarah Green, one of the authors and a professor at the Michigan Technological University, says. This consistency across studies contrasts with the language used by climate change doubters. This perspective stems from, as the authors write, "conflating the opinions of non-experts with experts and assuming that lack of affirmation equals dissent."
A research team has confirmed that 97% of climate scientists believe climate change is caused by humans. That is the link to the actual paper, but you can review discussions of the article from Science Daily and Michigan Tech University.
The point of this research is to further emphasis that the strongest level of consensus is found amongst the experts in this field.
Environmental Research Letters published the paper this week. In it, the team lays out what they call "consensus on consensus" and draws from seven independent consensus studies by the co-authors. This includes a study from 2013, in which the researchers surveyed more than 11,000 abstracts and found most scientists agree that humans are causing climate change. Through this new collaboration, multiple consensus researchers -- and their data gathered from different approaches -- lead to essentially the same conclusion.
The key factor comes down to expertise: The more expertise in climate science the scientists have, the more they agree on human-caused climate change.