Oreskes, 2004
A 2004 essay for the journal Science was written by historian Naomi Oreskes, who is not a scientist.
Oreskes reported examining abstracts from 928 scientific papers, listed in the Institute for Scientific Information database, published in scientific journals from 1993 to 2003, using the key search words “global climate change.”
She concluded 75% of the abstracts either implicitly or explicitly supported IPCC’s view that human activities were responsible
for most of the observed warming over the previous 50 years, and claimed NO ONE
dissented.
Oreskes did not distinguish between articles that assumed some human impact on climate, however small, and articles that
supported IPCC’s specific claim that human emissions are responsible for most of the global warming observed during the past 50 years.
Many of the thousands of studies about plant growth, for example, simply assume CO2 levels will be higher in the future, and test plant growth at higher CO2 levels.
Oreskes deliberately overlooked hundreds of articles by prominent global warming skeptics, including John Christy, Sherwood Idso, Richard Lindzen, and Patrick Michaels.
Oreskes’ methodology assumed a non-scientist like her could determine the findings of scientific research by quickly reading the abstracts of the published papers.
Even trained climate scientists are unable to do that, because abstracts routinely do not accurately reflect their studies actual findings.
Abstracts routinely overstate the actual research findings, and contain claims that are not proven by the underlying research.
Most articles simply assume IPCC claims are true, and then go on to address a different topic, such as correlations between the temperature and outbreaks of influenza.
Oreskes’ use of the search term “global climate change” instead of “climate change,” resulted in her finding fewer than one-thirteenth of the estimated total count of scientific papers on "climate change" over the stated period.
Medical researcher Klaus-Martin Schulte used the same database and search terms as Oreskes, to examine papers published from 2004 to February 2007 and found fewer than half endorsed the “IPCC consensus”, and only 7% did so explicitly.