Analysis of Ben Carson's climate statements

See the candidate’s statements annotated by scientists

Guest comments:

Twila Moon: This candidate seems unaware of the vast science on this topic and its basic conclusions that the Earth’s atmosphere is warming.

Michael Mann: The notion that we don’t even know if Earth is warming is pure anti-science. Individual avoided score of zero with the somewhat enlightened acknowledgement that we have “a responsibility to protect our environment.”

Reviewers’ feedback:

Ryan Sriver: Complete ignorance. No attempt to even address the issue.

Emmanuel Vincent:  “We may be warming. We may be cooling.” is inaccurate. All evidence confirm that the temperature of our oceans and lower atmosphere is increasing over the long term.

Rasmus Benestad: The candidate does obviously not understand the science and causes of climate change.

David Battisti: This candidate shows a profound ignorance of the observational records, the climate science.

Kevin Trenberth: Tremendous ignorance.

Victor Venema: Severely misinformed and refuses to inform himself.

See the analysis for other candidates

Note on the statistical significance of the rating:

The average of the scientists’ ratings is 5 with a 99% confidence interval level of 2-9*, a “Very low”. We estimate that this rating is very robust given that all scientists independently converged on a “Very low” estimation.

* The confidence interval level is based on a bootstrap technique randomly drawing from the set of ratings.