Over at the American Nuclear Society’s ANS Cafe blog, ANS Fellow and Adjunct Professor of Nuclear Engineering Dr. Ruth Weiner exposes the anti-scientific character of appealing to consensus to push climate alarmism:

Scientific thought progresses as a result of skepticism about a consensus rather than by invocation of that consensus. The fallacy of the 97 percent is not that it was the wrong number or that the subject group was improperly identified, but that the phenomenon – that atmospheric carbon dioxide drives global climate change and global warming — has not been demonstrated in the physical world, nor is it currently demonstrated; perhaps it cannot be demonstrated definitively. The skepticism about this agreement, though widely ridiculed, has not been examined. The history of scientific unanimity suggests that skepticism cannot be dismissed summarily. The only phenomenon about which there can be a consensus of climate change experts, no matter how many agree, is that the earth’s climate changes continually and human activity has some unquantified influence on such changes.

The 97 percent agreement does not support the climate change role of carbon dioxide at all.

Well put! And then she courageously goes one step farther:

There are other, considerably more substantive reasons to question the primacy of carbon dioxide’s role in global climate change.

Yes, indeed—e.g., that the climate models project 2 to 3 times the warming actually observed over the relevant period, that it is impossible to know that CO2 is the only driver even of that slight (0.13 deg C per decade over the satellite monitoring period, since 1979) warming, and that after controlling for solar, volcanic, and ocean current variations, there’s no warming left to blame on CO2.

For more in-depth critique of the 97% claim, click here.