Sorry, but there is a significant minority that in my mind prevents a consensus from existing. Majority is 84%, consensus is in the high 90s for me.

Take away vocal proponents, and you can clearly see that there is still room for debate here.

"The skeptic attitude to consensus usually starts with “there is no consensus”. That’s wrong, and they usually retreat from it to “but consensus science is meaningless”, and/or “consensus has nothing to do with science”. The latter is largely true but irrelevant. The existence of the consensus doesn’t do a lot to determine what science is done; it doesn’t prevent contrary lines being explored. But the consensus view does come into the tricky interface between science and policy, and science and the media."

[0] http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/just-w...

Also, I've been discussing the arguments all along, not sure what the reference to 'ad hominem' is about.

Here's the actual Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_c...

It mentions: "No scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion; the last was the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, which in 2007 updated its 1999 statement rejecting the likelihood of human influence on recent climate with its current non-committal position."

Maybe the American Association of Petroleum Geologists made that image you reference before changing their position. I don't know, it's completely out of context.

I'd agree- significant majority, but not a consensus right now.

I understand the logic but I find it counter-intuitive that pollutants emitted from Cows (burps and farts), are contributed to human behavior. Specifically, Agriculture accounts for 14% of Green House Gas, and a majority of it is from Methane emission. Similar to our trying to reduce CO2 emissions from cars, humans are trying to reduce Methane emissions from Cows including genetic modifications and harvesting the Methane to power the farms.

So I personally think the idea of measuring "human contribution" is complex, especially when Cow farts and burbs are contributed to human activity. That said whether or not there is consensus that Human activity is responsible for global warming it does not matter, there is certainly consensus that Human's are the only ones who have a chance at addressing global warming, unless unknown to us the Cows are currently convening in secrete meetings to discuss how they might better regulate their own emissions of Methane and Ammonia because their contribution to global warming is weighing so heavy on their conscience.

Also, they did not eat corn or soy-based diets much in nature, which both cause increased methane emissions. Alfalfa and flaxseed are proven to reduce emissions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/us/05cows.html?pagewanted=...

I agree with you that cow methane is our doing ultimately, but to say it's 'complete nonsense' is dishonest.

Sorry, your whole point is more intellectually dishonest than you accuse the "complete nonsense" phrase of being.

I did not post to be controversial, I was not suggesting humans are not responsible for Global Warming, however, the contribution of humans to global warming is not always black and white. Cars and coal plants? Yes, black and white humans are responsible. Cows? Yes and No, sure you can count the 1.5 billion domesticated cattle as human behavior, but on the other hand 20% of all cattle are found in India where they are not domesticated or raised to be eaten. However, I suppose it is a matter of time before someone makes an analogous argument to the agricultural argument, if you can argue Humans raise cows to be feed on therefore their pollution is attributed to humans, then you can argue that if Humans raise cows to be worshiped their emissions are still attributable to humans....Screw it....whether you drive a car, operate a coal factory, spray an areosol can, eat a steak or passively worship cows you are 100% responsible for global warming.

Models on decades when considering climate change are meaningless: we are talking about extrapolation, going into a warmer world for which we have no models working so far. Beyond that point it's just supposition.

> climate science is 'still very much a work in progress'

It is very much a work in progress, since there are clear setbacks from the reality vs what has been predicted so far.

See this - do you see a huge global warming effect? http://h16free.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/ipcc_fig1-4_mo...

The recent CERN CLOUD experiments results show that many climate scientists seem to forget that there's a huge fireball in the skies that may also have an impact on our climate. It's not all about CO2.