97% Statements Are 100% Wrong

97% of scientists agree is 100% wrong

In an earlier column I wrote about the real lack of settled science.  This Forbes article details exactly why the 97% statement is absolutely false.

You see, there was no actual survey of what scientists think about global warming or climate change.  The method used to arrive at 97% agree is not what you might think it was, or anything remotely scientific.

John Cook runs a web site named Skeptical Science.  Cook claims to have reviewed many papers written on the climate matter and that 97% agree with the statement that man-caused climate change will become catastrophic.  The problem is that his methods are extremely unscientific. 

As Alex Epstein writes in Forbes, "Where did most of the 97 percent come from, then? Cook had created a category called “explicit endorsement without quantification”—that is, papers in which the author, by Cook’s admission, did not say whether 1 percent or 50 percent or 100 percent of the warming was caused by man. He had also created a category called “implicit endorsement,” for papers that imply (but don’t say) that there is some man-made global warming and don’t quantify it. In other words, he created two categories that he labeled as endorsing a view that they most certainly didn’t."

There are many people, especially in politics, who repeat this claim over and over.  It seems to me that when politicians repeat a statement such as this, then follow it up with actions they are proposing, they have a political motive in mind.

As Epstein concludes, "Think about how many times you hear that 97 percent or some similar figure thrown around. It’s based on crude manipulation propagated by people whose ideological agenda it serves. It is a license to intimidate."