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A Climate Deception Revisited: What's Behind the Signatures of 31,478 Skeptical "Scientists"
In early 2008, the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) published their Petition Project, a list of names of people who claim to be scientists and who reject the science behind the theory of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming (AGW). The petition was an attempt by the OISM to demonstrate that there are many more scientists opposing AGW theory than there are supporting it.
This so-called petition took on special importance coming after the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report, and specifically the Working Group 1 (WG1) report which attributed climate change to human civilization.
The WG1 report was authored and reviewed by approximately 2000 scientists with expertise in climate and related fields. So the ability to publish a list of over 30,000 scientists who reject the WG1’s conclusions was a powerful meme that climate skeptics and deniers could use to cast doubt on the IPCC’s conclusions and, indirectly, on the entire theory of climate disruption.
And in fact, this meme has become widespread in both legacy and new media today,
It also happens to be an elaborate deception, as the following deconstruction of the Oregon Petition Project will demonstrate, and important to revisit as federal climate law is negotiated in Congress.
According to the Petition Project “qualifications” page, “Signatories are approved for inclusion in the Petition Project list if they have obtained formal educational degrees at the level of Bachelor of Science or higher in appropriate scientific fields.” The fields that are considered “appropriate” by the OISM are as follows:
- Atmosphere, Earth, and Environment fields:
atmospheric science, climatology, meteorology, astronomy, astrophysics,
earth science, geochemistry, geology, geophysics, geoscience,
hydrology, environmental engineering, environmental science, forestry,
oceanography - Computers and Math: computer science, mathematics, statistics
- Physics and Aerospace: physics, nuclear engineering, mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering
- Chemistry: chemistry, chemical engineering
- Biochemistry, Biology, and Agriculture:
biochemistry, biophysics, biology, ecology, entomology, zoology, animal
science, agricultural science, agricultural engineering, plant science,
food science - Medicine: medical science, medicine
- General Engineering and General Science: engineering, electrical engineering, metallurgy, general science
The OISM’s qualifications for being a “scientist” are expansive, and as such there are a number of questions that have to be answered before we can take this list seriously. What expertise does a nuclear engineer or a medical doctor or a food scientist or mechanical engineer have that makes them qualified to have an informed opinion on the cause(s) of recent climate disruption? How many of these names are working climate
scientists instead of science or math teachers or stay-at-home-mom’s with engineering degrees? How many of these people have actually published a peer-reviewed paper on climate? How many people took a look at the card that served as a “signature” and realized that they could lie about having a science degree and their deception would never be discovered?
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Oregon list of 31,000 scienmtest
At least most are scientist, unlike the spokesman for this scam, Al Gore, who studied law at Vanderbilt Law School and for sure didn't finish his divinity training there either. The head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, is an economist. “It is well known that many, if not most, of its members are not scientists at all, 80 percent of the IPCC membership has absolutely no dealing with the climate as part of their academic studies.”
That was the year Gore's classmates remember him spending
a notable amount of time in the Dunster House basement
lounge shooting pool, watching television, eating
hamburgers and occasionally smoking marijuana. He
received one D, one C- minus, two C's, two C-pluses and
one B-minus, an effort that placed him in the LOWER fifth
of the class for the second year in a row.
For all of Gore's later fascination with SCIENCE and
technology, he often struggled academically in those
subjects. The political champion of the natural world
received that sophomore D in Natural Sciences 6 (Man's
Place in Nature) and then got a C-plus in Natural
Sciences 118 his senior year. The self-proclaimed
inventor of the Internet avoided ALL courses in
mathematics and logic throughout college
This is the education that Steve Running used to gain his share of the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore and then they criticize some one like Dr. John Christy because he shows how flawed their contentions are. This may be a shock to some that worship at this cathedral of their religion, global warming, but Al Gore has no scientific credentials and Steve Running, who holds a “B.S. in Botany; Oregon State University, Corvallis, 1972, M.S. in Forest Management; Oregon State University, Corvallis, 1973 and a Ph.D. in Forest Ecophysiology; {what ever that is}, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, 1979.
"Plant ecophysiology is an experimental science that seeks to describe the physiological mechanisms underlying ecological observations." At least he has been exposed to science but is a long ways from being a climatologist, but then again, how much difference do credentials make when the head of the IPCC is an economist?
Then we have Dr. John Christy:
“Ph.D., Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, 1987 M.S., Atmospheric Sciences, , University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, 1984; B.A., Mathematics, California State University, Fresno, 1969” and also
"Richard Siegmund Lindzen who is a Harvard-trained atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen is known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides and ozone photochemistry. He has published more than 200 books and scientific papers. He has been a critic of some anthropogenic global warming theories and the alleged political pressures on climate scientists" I tend to listen to Dr. Christy, Dr Spencer and Dr. Lindzen before paying much attention to Gore or Running. We shouldn't forget James Hansen that was predicting global cooling back in the 1970's
This assumes that if a
This assumes that if a scientist hasn't signed the OISM petition, they automatically and axiomatically believe in AGW. Unless those 8.4 million have all explicitly stated they believe AGW, that statement seems fallacious.
Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
The below link contains results of a survey conducted by the University of Illinois at Chicago. The results were published in 2009 and are quite useful given the transparency in survey methodologies and scientific audience the survey was aimed at. This link is a great resource for people interested in getting a general sense of how experts in the Earth Sciences feel about climate change.
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
great work
just wanted to add....the minute i started down that list of "scientists" i noticed that a number of veterinarians had signed on.... instantly suspicious
Thank you
Mr Angliss for, what appears to be, the culmination of a great deal of careful research.
I think many of us completely underestimated the ability to be underhanded of the industries that have a vested - short term - interest in continuing to change the globe's climate.
This, alongside the fraudulent letters, from coal interests shows many people and their businesses in a very poor light.
Personally, I would like to see the perpetrators behind bars but I fear there's little chance of that. Maybe the names could be published so that people facing the real brunt of climate change in a few decades time will be able to know the people at the forefront of putting short term self interest above the long term health of our world so that they may judge accordingly.
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