^ I found this and interesting commentary on the infamous "97%" comment. Note that Skeptical Science is run by the people who did one of the 97% studies(the Australian team reference below) so they have a pretty big interested to say what Troutman quoted.
Quote:
Astoundingly, the 97% number comes from a handful of methodologically feeble studies beginning with historian of science Naomi Oreskes in 2004 claiming she’d looked at 928 articles about climate change in scientific journals and 75 percent of them endorsed the “consensus view” that “Earth’s climate is being affected by human activities” while none directly disputed it. Which you’ll notice says nothing about it being dangerous or manmade. Nor did it claim 97% agreement. (And even her 75% didn’t withstand subsequent scrutiny.)
Five years later, two University of Illinois researchers sent an online survey to over 10,000 Earth scientists asking two simple questions: Did they agreed that global temperatures had risen in the last couple of centuries and did they think human activity was a significant contributing factor. They got 3,146 responses, so at best about 30% even of that sample. Of those 90 percent said yes to the first question and 82 percent yes to the second. Again no manmade, no dangerous, and where’s the 97%?
Well, the researchers discarded all but 77 responses from people who self-described as climate experts, of whom 75 said yes to the second question. And 75 out of 77 is 97%. But there’s still no mention of danger and even this very skewed sample only said our influence was significant. Not overwhelming. Not even dominant.
Another survey by Australian researchers in 2013 claimed to have looked at 12,000 scientific papers on climate change and found 97% agreement… that greenhouse gases had some impact on global warming. Again not dangerous and not manmade. Also, it turned out, not true. Nearly two-thirds of the papers said nothing on the consensus. Of the 34% that did, 33% endorsed it. Which again is 97% but only that we’ve had some impact. Which could mean as little as accepting the “urban heat island” effect. A far better question would be how many of the studies said we caused most of it.
Amazingly, we know. Buried deep in the paper is the figure: 64. Not 64%. 64 papers. Out of nearly 12,000. Half a percent, rather short of 97%. And it gets worse. Climatologist David Legates actually read those 64 papers and found that 23 didn’t say what the Australian team claimed. The only danger here is to scientific integrity
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https://boereport.com/2019/03/25/rob...percent-wrong/
Worth reading the whole thing, it isn't all that long. I have seen other analysis like this before, so now I'm skeptical of the 97% claim. No that I'm suggesting that most climate scientists don't have a consensus, but that this 97% thing is probably a little extreme.