Raylan Wolfe wrote:
http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/apr/04/don-beyer/don-beyer-says-97-percent-scientists-believe-human/
Rayban, you are clinging to a bogus report that was debunked years ago. This is so old, I can't even quote a source. But here are the details:
Recently, 31,000 scientists signed a document claiming that CO2 emissions are not the cause of global warming. Yet CO2 alarmists continue to claim that 97 percent of scientists believe in man-made global warming. The 97% is bogus. It doesn't even represent scientists, it represents research papers that were hand selected by a team of 12 scientists who blog under the collective name of Skeptical Science. These 12 scientists, led by Sarah Green, a chemistry professor at Michigan Technological University and John Cook, a research fellow at the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland in Australia are convinced that man is causing global warming. They feel that action must be taken by politicians, that a show of support from scientists was needed. Here is an excerpt from Scientific American.
"Cook thinks that politicians are not acting because the public is not pressuring them enough. If people realize that the majority of scientists agree on human-caused climate change, they will absorb that knowledge like empty vessels and become more convinced of the threat, he said. They will then be more amenable to picking up their phones and calling their legislators."
So they set out to prove scientist support. But rather than survey scientists, they decided to research scientific reports. "So, in 2011, Cook decided to do one more consensus study and promote the heck out of it. He collected 11,944 papers from the ISI Web of Science database that contained the words 'global warming' or 'global climate change.' He and 11 Skeptical Science volunteers went through the abstracts and coded the authors' positions on anthropogenic global warming." Of the 11,944 papers, the group selected 4,014 to be in their final report. Of those 4,014 papers, 97.2 percent supported the idea that humans play a role in global warming.
"That statement quickly got boiled down in the popular media to a much simpler message: that 97 percent of scientists believe climate change is caused by humans. President Obama tweeted the 97 percent consensus."
There are two major problems with this approach.
1. The 97 percent represent papers, not scientists.
2. The papers were hand selected by a biased team trying to prove a point.
The "97 percent of scientists" claim is bogus, obtained through a biased research project. The project was successful, in that it achieved Cook's goal of getting people fired up to contact their congressmen. Just look how many posters on this board have suckered for the 97 percent pitch. But it is a hoax.