Mark Iverson wrote:
<<So what? Here's a place that has 31,072 petition signatures, all with
degrees, nearly half with
PhDs/MDs.
Science is NOT done by concensus!
http://www.petitionproject.org/gwdatabase/Signers_BY_State.html
http://www.petitionproject.org/gwdatabase/GWPP/Review_Article.html>>
This is the infamous Oregon petition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition which was relaunched. The
signatories are almost exclusively people from other disciplines than
climate science. The Oregon petition is a textbook example of the "appeal to
authority" fallacy. The recent (smaller) survey that launched this thread is
not such an example because it was done "within the field".
Here is a criticism of the original Oregon petition:
<<The Oregon Petition has been used by climate change deniers as proof that
there is no scientific consensus, however they fail to note the controversy
surrounding the petition itself. In April 1998, Robinson's Oregon Institute,
along with the Exxon-backed George C. Marshall Institute , co-published the
infamous "Oregon Petition" claiming to have collected 17,000 signatories to
a document arguing against the realities of global warming.
The petition and the documents included were all made to look like official
papers from the prestigious National Academy of Science . They weren't, and
this attempt to mislead has been well-documented.
Along with the petition there was a cover letter from Dr. Fred Seitz a
notorious climate change denier (and big tobacco scientist), who over 30
years ago was the president of the National Academy of Science. Also
attached to the petition was an apparent "research paper" titled:
Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. The paper was
made to mimic what a research paper would look like in the National Academy's
prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy journal. The authors of the
paper were Robinson, Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon (both oil-backed
scientists) and Robinson's son Zachary. With the signature of a former NAS
president and a research paper that appeared to be published in one of the
most prestigious science journals in the world, many scientists were duped
into signing a petition based on a false impression.
The petition was so misleading that the National Academy issued a news
release stating that: "The petition project was a deliberate attempt to
mislead scientists and to rally them in an attempt to undermine support for
the Kyoto Protocol. The petition was not based on a review of the science of
global climate change, nor were its signers experts in the field of climate
science.">>
The newly relaunched petition (in 2007) with a claimed 32,000 signatures
appears to use the same misleading "paper" written by the Robinsons and Soon
which has been comprehensively demolished as misleading and deceptive not to
mention highly based on old discredited or superseded papers.
Nick Palmer
