[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by Captain Snooze

I'm not sure how that fits in my post:

It is commonly stated that it is a contrived number by whom? That seems to be the counter narrative, but saying it is contrived could be true, or it could be necessary to try to discredit and dissuade in the face of such scientific agreement. As mentioned, this was the playbook of big tobacco to try to discredit scientists and dissuade people from accepting the scientific consensus.

I would say go to the papers that have analyzed the literature and decide from yourself over a Forbes article, if you want to reconcile two contradictory positions:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1003187107

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 surveyed here sup- port 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.

https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/17/do-s...limate-change/

Yes, the vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists – 97 percent – agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change. Most of the leading science organizations around the world have issued public statements expressing this, including international and U.S. science academies, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and a whole host of reputable scientific bodies around the world. A list of these organizations is provided here.

https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

That Forbes article was from 2015, and the temperature data was up to 2010. This is up to 2021 showing a significant jump from the “flat” spot. The trend seems pretty linear.