The case of 97% of climate scientists agreeing that human beings are the main cause of warming. One of the main papers behind the 97 percent claim is authored by John Cook: Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024/pdf Here is Cooks summary of his paper: Cook et al. (2013) found that over 97 percent [of papers he surveyed] endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause. A quick scan of the paper reveals that this is not the case. Cook is able to demonstrate only that a relative handful endorse the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause. Cook calls this explicit endorsement with quantification (quantification meaning 50 percent or more). Only a small percentage of the papers fall into this category; Cook does not say what percentage but when the study was publicly challenged by economist David Friedman, one observer calculated that only 1.6 percent explicitly stated that man-made greenhouse gases caused at least 50 percent of global warming. Where did most of the 97 percent come from ? Cook had created a category called explicit endorsement without quantification that is, papers in which the author, by Cooks 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 dont say) that there is some man-made global warming and dont quantify it. In other words, he created two categories that he labeled as endorsing a view that they most certainly didnt. Scientists whose papers were classified by Cook protested: Cook survey included 10 of my 122 eligible papers. 5/10 were rated incorrectly. 4/5 were rated as endorse rather than neutral. Dr. Richard Tol That is not an accurate representation of my paper . . . Dr. Craig Idso Nope . . . it is not an accurate representation. Dr. Nir Shaviv Cook et al. (2013) is based on a strawman argument . . . Dr. Nicola Scafetta Think about how many times you hear that 97 percent or some similar figure thrown around. Its based on crude manipulation propagated by people whose ideological agenda it serves. And peep the core samples, son !