One of the popular rhetorical moves in the climate change debate is for advocates of aggressive government intervention to claim that “97% of scientists” agree with their position, and so therefore any critics must be unscientific “deniers.” Now these claims have been dubious from the start; people like David Friedman have demonstrated that the “97% consensus” assertion became a talking point only through a biased procedure that mischaracterized how journal articles were rated, and thereby inflating the estimate. But beyond that, a review in The New Republic of a book critical of mainstream...
