The scientific evidence for climate change is pretty strong – we often hear that 97% of scientists agree that climate change is happening and human activities are at least partly the cause. A page at NASA shows this consensus.

The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows increasing confidence that this change is happening, using words such as “unequivocal” and “unprecedented“.

A recent literature review by geochemist James Lawrence Powell, finds that of 10,885 papers published in 2013 only 2 or about 0.02% reject the human-related climate change. For a larger group of papers published from 1991-2013 the figure is higher but still quite small (0.01%). In a description of his methods, Powell makes it quite clear his is a literature survey and review.

A survey such as this cannot find every paper and cannot catch every nuanced view of the data and so may miss or mis-characterize a paper here or there. But it is quite clear that very few of peer-reviewed scientific papers reject the idea of human-related climate change.

Nevertheless, it seems quite clear to me that there are few climate change skeptics among scientists. No doubt there are a variety of opinions. But there is little doubt climate change is here and human activities are at least partly the cause.

In contrast, skepticism and denial seem more prevalent among politicians, especially Republicans.