Remember the one about 97% of scientists agreeing that we were contributing to global "warming", since changed to climate "change"? Alan L. Urban, writing in The Spectator, reckons the claim was "so fraudulent that it should classified as crime".

Mr. Urban states that the survey that came up with this 'fact' was a two question job, emailed to 10,257 scientists. Of these, 3,146 responded. Many believed that the poll was "fundamentally flawed" and could be "misinterpreted"; others declined to complete the poll because of "mistakes".

96% of respondents were North American. Of these, 77 were selected by the researchers, and 75 of these agreed with the proposition. There's their 97% - unrelated to the 3,146 respondents,

Enough said?

ttbn

unfortunately the current crop of academia has dumbed people down enough by repeating lies so often that its accepted as truth. Demonising anyone can think has been the tactic of the regressives. Whether it is calling someone born with a penis a girl, gw or ' marriage equality', Islam is the religion of peace etc, the dumbed down crowd like getup and the media seem incapable of thinking.

ttbn, oddly though I've seen entirely different versions of the rebuttal of the number.

The version I'd seen was based on abstract analysis of published papers

eg The tone of much of this document http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

I'm still concerned that much of the Consensus talk is self reinforcing by creating a situation where those challenging the "consensus" view are on the outer so unlikely to be game to try and publish and likely not to be published if they do.

I'm also highly sceptical of a lot of the political add ons and tactics used to push agenda's with Climate Change as a tool for social engineering/wealth redistribution etc but suspect that's just the way the activists operate and it does not necessarily make all the science bad.

Clearly some big problems with the way what are often political bodies (or groups that rely on political bodies for funding) have operated but again I'm nervous about the approach of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

R0bert

Too add to the absurdity some people in positions of power want to make it a crime to deny climate change is real.

Hi Robert,
The dangers of "groupthink" and confirmation bias are inevitably real, but in general the scientific community has a pretty good set of bullshite filters.

A bigger problem is the few groups who are funded by vested industrial and political interests to muddy the waters. We've seen a couple of those on this site in recent weeks.

Over time, if there is a problem with a consnsual interpretation of scientific results, or if the results themselves are poorly derived it will be noticed and the faults will be rectified.

If only our resident Henny Pennies could apply the same model to their own "reasoning" process...

Runner,

All true. Only conservatives are able to see through the lies and resist the rot. The trouble is, most people rely only on the seriously Left media for their information on everything. For the Left, the end justifies the means, and they will do anything to gain control. Until we have so-called conservative politicians with the guts and the brains to stand up to them, we are in a losing position. Irrespective of what governments call themselves these days, the Left is setting the agenda. Since Howard, the supposed-to be Right side has made such fools of themselves that they are not worth supporting. There is a complete vacuum of commonsense and duty.