FTFY. I am joking but I think there is a serious credibility issue here. I forget who but some famous science researcher (not in climate research) once said that the conclusion of every research paper is, more funding is needed. How does that institutionalized mindset impact objectivity and who is paying for most of the research today? As I mentioned this is not an overt policy or strategy but just the way things work out once the government takes over funding science research. Read Rand on "The Establishing of the Establishment" for a clear discussion of how it works insidiously to corrupt even an honest man.
If you saw my reply to stouset then imagine that I tried to have a career in climate research. If you aren't "all in" on the validity of the models you don't get jobs, you don't get published and you don't have a career. And that's just questioning the validity of the models not even questioning that global warming is caused by man.
Moreover, the qualifier "peer-reviewed" is one of the standards being undercut by government funded science. If all your peers have to "go along to get along" then the independence of their review has to be questioned. There was the email leaks a few years back where it was revealed that climate researchers were publicly telling other researchers who disagreed with the methods or conclusions to publish in peer-reviewed journals if they wanted to be heard. But privately, through back channels and political pull, they got papers spiked and opponents blackballed and threatened boycotts of journals that published any "anti" papers. This is not science, it is politics.
This sort of problem has historically corrected itself[1]. Unfortunately for us, with regard to the climate, the numbers keep "correcting" themself in the wrong direction.
[1]: http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm
Knowing that 50 percent is anthropogenic means that we can reasonably look for anthropogenic solutions. Though so far game theory has outweighed rationality...
Again, the actual consensus on damage is lower than what people imagine and scenarios propagated in grey literature by Environmental organisations.
Further, from the report (emphasis theirs):
> It is very likely that globally aggregated figures underestimate the damage costs because they cannot include many non-quantifiable impacts. It is virtually certain that aggregate estimates of costs mask significant differences in impacts across sectors, regions, countries and populations.
It's extremely disingenuous to provide the 0.2-2.0% figure without the massive footnote that this is a stark underestimate.
"It is extremely likely [95 percent confidence] more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together."
That is very different from 95% of climate scientists think that the threat is dire.
The IPCC says that perhaps 51% of the increase in temperature is due to greenhouse gasses AND other anthropogenic forcings, you're saying something quite different.
That is the consensus.