We know that 97 of climate researchers agree with each other from surveys, so it's not just something that the "Green side" claims.
I'd be interested to see what survey you're talking about. If, for instance, you're talking about this one (
Survey Tracks Scientists' Growing Climate Concern - US News and World Report), then it's 97% who agree the Earth has warmed over the past 100 years, but only 74% who believe it was induced by humans. Less than half believe it will be catastrophic.
"Skeptics say scientists who don't agree with the theory have their funding pulled, suffer persecution, can't get their papers published, and even risk losing their jobs, so the consensus isn't objective.". This one is a bit weird. Sounds like a classic conspiracy theory. Do you really belive it's a force out there that control 97 percent of climate researchers? If so, I suppose you belive other brances of science also suffers from this?
This isn't conspiracy theory stuff. Scientists themselves complain about it. For example, Richard Lindzen, a scientist at MIT, wrote about it in the Wall Street Journal.
But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.
Extra - WSJ.com
And yes, I believe other sciences suffer from these problems. To quote Discover Magazine, "Science, like any other human endeavor, is susceptible to trends and pendulous swings of groupthink." How often does the term "than previous thought" pop up in science literature? Quite often.
The more complex the system, the more rigorous researchers must be. The more impact a scientific conclusion has on society, the more careful researchers must be to filter out their own biases. In that sense, physics is actually one of the easiest sciences because it is the simplest. It gets much more difficult as you move into biology, psychology, and sociology. It's much harder to avoid cargo-cult science with the sciences dealing in more complex phenomena.
Also, your last claim, "Mankind is innocent until proven guilty and so far, the prosecution's behavior is very suspect.", does not work in this case. What if the prosectuor is right, but the man keep on denying, and suddenly, it's too late. People start to die from famine due to loss of food sources, drought, etc etc. It's even possible to deny darwin was right, it's possible to deny the whole science, but it does not mean it's smart or sane to do so.
Ahh, the precautionary principle. If that applied universally, we would be subject to the whims of anyone who wanted to scare us into doing anything they wanted. "You have to scrap your constitution and put us in charge of everything immediately so we can sterilize women and control the allocation of resources or else we'll all devolve into cannibalism within 10 years!!!" "Well, they may be wrong and they do seem a little power-hungry, but gee honey, what if they're right? Better go along with it, just in case."
The history of alarmism has shown us that the burden of proof should be on them and the public should be skeptical of alarmist claims.
