Comment on Hiding the Decline: Part II by Coldish

Paul, are you thinking of the Doran and Kendall Zimmerman (2009) questionnaire survey (Climate Change, 90, pp. 21-22)? That survey did have the figure 97% among its results. The final sample size was not very large, tho’: only 79 respondents were considered suitable for inclusion in the final count. Among the final criteria for inclusion were (1) that they “…listed climate science as their area of expertise…” and (2) that they had published “…more than 50% of their recent peer reviewed papers on the subject of climate change.” The original sample size had been much larger. Of the 79, 76 (96.2%) answered ‘Risen’ to Question 1 “When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen or remained constant?”, while 75 of 77 (97.4%) respondents answered ‘Yes’ to Question 2 ” Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?” Those seem to be the only two questions listed in the Climate Change paper, although it is not clear whether other questions were asked in the original survey.
The ‘Risen’ and ‘Yes’ responses indeed average out to around 97%. It suggests that most people who regard themselves as climate scientists and who have been recently publishing mainly in the field of climate change think that global temperatures have been rising recently and that human activity is a significant contributing factor in global temperature change. I don’t find those results too surprising. Neither question mentions carbon dioxide. So perhaps Paul was thinking of another survey. Apologies if so.
Personally (and I’m happy to announce that I am not a climate scientist) I don’t understand Q 1 as it stands. Before answering it, I would need to establish how far back before 1800 is meant: is it 50 years, 400 years, 1500 years, 10,000 years, 20,000 years? In some cases the answer would be ‘Yes’, in others ‘No’, in others again ‘Don’t know’.
Regarding Q2, (which incidentally would include anthropogenic cooling as well as warming), it depends for me on what one means by ‘significant’. Certainly if one left out either the word ‘significant’ or the word ‘global’ I would answer ‘Yes’ to Q2. So, I suspect, would most (or at least many) scientists, including climate sceptics, climate deniers and whatever. As the question stands I would probably answer ‘Don’t know’.
The Climate Change paper was written up from a Master’s degree dissertation by the second named author (M. Kendall Zimmerman).
Apologies if this comment is O/T, but so are many of the other comments on this particular post.