The last thing I want to do is to stand up for the sceptics but I also believe that dismissing them 'out of court' is wrong.

So the sceptics will say that the the 2% who are apparently the least active could be a reflection of the prevailing consensus, not of the actual activity of said scientists. This is quite plausible if 'activity' is measured by published papers and references to same.

Brian Orr

On 23 Jun 2010, at 04:28, James Pavitt wrote:

This is another paper that everyone should read – it destroys the myth that there is no expert consensus on ACC.  Most interesting is that the 2% of climate scientists who are still questioning ACC are the least active in their field.
 
 
James
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Abstract
Although preliminary estimates from published literature and expert surveys suggest striking agreement among climate scientists on the tenets of anthropogenic climate change (ACC), the American public expresses substantial doubt about both the anthropogenic cause and the level of scientific agreement underpinning ACC. A broad analysis of the climate scientist community itself, the distribution of credibility of dissenting researchers relative to agreeing researchers, and the level of agreement among top climate experts has not been conducted and would inform future ACC discussions. Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.