I'll try to devote some time to finding some evidence for you, on the condition that you do the same.
Outside the scientific community there are questions regarding the proportion of scientists who agree or disagree on the existence of human-caused warming. Environmental groups, many governmental reports, and the non-U.S. media often claim virtually unanimous agreement in the scientific community in support of human-caused warming. Opponents either maintain that most scientists consider global warming "unproved," dismiss it altogether, or decry the dangers of consensus science. Still, others maintain that opponents have been stifled or driven underground. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists is the only scientific society that rejects the predominant opinion.
A 2004 essay by Naomi Oreskes in the journal Science reported a survey of abstracts of peer-reviewed papers related to global climate change in the ISI database. Oreskes said:
Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged major uncertainties in the science. Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case. The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Oreskes stated that of the 928 abstracts analyzed, "Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position". Benny Peiser claimed to have found flaws in her work, writing,
Oreskes, a professor of history, claims to have analyzed 928 abstracts on global climate change, of which 75% either explicitly or implicitly accept the view that most of the recent warming trend is man-made. When I checked the same set of abstracts [plus an additional two hundred found in the same ISI data bank], I discovered that just over a dozen explicitly endorse the "consensus," while the vast majority of abstracts does not mention anthropogenic global warming.
In order to include only "hard science" papers rather than opinion pieces or editorials, Oreskes excluded the Social Sciences Citation Index and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index and set the search to include only Articles, while Peiser searched for all document types in all indices, and the interpretation of the remaining parts of his attempted refutation is further disputed. In a later op-ed piece in Canada's National Post, Peiser makes no further reference to his review.
Peiser also stated:
...the overwhelming majority of climatologists is agreed that the current warming period is mostly due to human impact. However, this majority consensus is far from unanimous.
Timothy Ball asserts that those who oppose the "consensus" have gone underground: "No doubt passive acceptance yields less stress, fewer personal attacks and makes career progress easier. What I have experienced in my personal life during the last years makes me understand why most people choose not to speak out; job security and fear of reprisals. Even in University, where free speech and challenge to prevailing wisdoms are supposedly encouraged, academics remain silent."
A 2006 op-ed by Richard Lindzen in The Wall Street Journal challenged the claim that scientific consensus had been reached on the issue, and listed the Science journal study as well as other sources, including the IPCC and NAS reports, as part of "a persistent effort to suggest... that the theoretically expected contribution from additional carbon dioxide has actually been detected."[28] Lindzen wrote in The Wall Street Journal on April 12, 2006,
But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.
In February 2007, environmental consultant Madhav L Khandekar, in reaction to the Oreskes survey, issued an annotated bibliography of 68 recent peer-reviewed papers which he claims question aspects of the current state of global warming science.
okay... now, i didn't say there was a consensus; i've long heard that there's a consensus agreeing that it's man-made, but recently i've learned that that's untrue. but i disagreed with your assertion that "a majority of meteorologists do not believe that global warming is man made." i should take a step back for a moment; i wasn't thinking specifically about meteorologists as opposed to environmental scientists in general. but i'm not so sure there's a huge difference between disciplines.
the quote above shows one thing clearly: there's still debate about how much debate there still is.
incidentally, i work with Naomi Oreskes. she's an historian, yes, but a science historian. that article almost makes it sound like she's got no buisness talking about these issues. she's got a B.S. in geology and her PhD is in geological research and science history - from Stanford. her expertise certainly isn't worthless. she's also a very gracious person and a dedicated teacher. i just wanted to say that because i didn't like the representation of her in that article.
i don't think her article proves that there is a consensus, only that there aren't many scientists actively arguing against the view that global warming is being caused by humans. the concluding point, that perhaps researchers have "gone underground" for fear of job security, is a lot more valid. but that still means such researchers perceive themselves in the minority, and if they're that fearful they probably are in a the minority.
of course, without actually surveying pertient experts on their opinions, it's impossible to know how close or far from consensus they are. i haven't been able to find any such survey (probably because researchers are usually more interested in their own reseach than in anyone else's).
