Andrew Freedman wrote in the Washington Post on October 18th that Americans are confused about global warming. He cites one poll that shows fewer Americans believe that humans are the primary cause of global warming, and nearly half the respondents to another poll say they have thought about global warming “a little” or “not at all.” Where Freedman is wrong is where he says humans being the primary cause of global warming is a “view held by the vast majority of climate scientists.” Freedman goes on to say, “In fact, there is very little disagreement in the climate science community about whether the climate is warming and why.”

This is simply untrue. When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its report in 2007, 400 climate experts disputed the findings; that number has since grown to more than 700 scientists, including several current and former IPCC scientists. University of Virginia professor Fred Singer recently published an 800-page report titled, “Climate Change Reconsidered,” which questions and debunks many of the IPCC conclusions and emphasizes that there is no scientific consensus on climate change.

Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, notes that IPCC’s models fail to take into account naturally occurring cycles such as El Niño, the Pacific decadal oscillation, or the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation. Other prominent scientists called political action “irresponsible and immoral” because of the lack of credible evidence.

Yes, the climate is changing but there the vast majority of climatologists do not agree why. The difference is the climatologists who disagree that humans are the primary cause are typically ignored out by the media.