“How often do we hear,” Baudet says, “that 97% of scientists agree that humans are the cause of climate change; that this climate change is severe, posing a major threat to the planet; and that we need a drastic reduction in our carbon dioxide emissions.”

“All of this, and I do mean all of it, is false. It’s a blatant lie that 97% of scientists agree with it. In reality, only 1.6% agree with [those] statements,” he goes on, after which he explains that there are major disagreements on this among climatologists, geologists, chemists, physicians, and so on.

“This myth” about the 97% was famously propagated by former U.S. President Barack Obama. “On May 16, 2013, he posted, and I quote,” Baudet explains, “’97 percent of scientists agree, climate change is real, manmade and dangerous.’ With this tweet, Obama referred to a paper published the same year by a man named John Cook.”

And that’s where it goes wrong. Because Cook is a “controversial” climate activist who even runs a ridiculous alarmist website called scepticalscience.com. “In this paper, he aims to demonstrate an overwhelming scientific consensus with the obvious intention of strengthening the environmentalist cause. To do so he analyzed 12,000 articles published in learned journals containing the words ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change.’ He then subdivided these articles into seven different categories.” //

That’s right. In fact, only 1.6% of papers stated that mankind plays a significant role in global warming.

Cook made that 1.6% look like 97%, however, and he did so by using some handy statistical tricks. As they say: There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. //

As a result, Baudet concludes, you can only say that a majority of scientists believe that there has been “a slow, marginal warming trend since the 1850s. But the end result that 97% of scientists would agree that man is mainly responsible for this is utter nonsense.