The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine - an organization poo poo’ed by AGW proponents as insignificant, ties to “big oil”… the usual mantra - has released the results of their petition drive to American scientists. 31,072 of them who reject the assertation that global warming is a crisis, or that it is caused by human activity.
The release of the list has managed to elude most MSM outlets, but can be found reported in Heartland Organization’s July 2008 newsletter, Environment & Climate News.
Tho SourceWatch has a less than complimentary review of both the OISM and it’s head, Arthur Robinson, the petition has garnered the support of credible scholars.
The current list of 31,072 petition signers includes 9,021 PhD; 6,961 MS; 2,240 MD and DVM; and 12,850 BS or equivalent academic degrees. Most of the MD and DVM signers also have underlying degrees in basic science.
All of the listed signers have formal educations in fields of specialization that suitably qualify them to evaluate the research data related to the petition statement. Many of the signers currently work in climatological, meteorological, atmospheric, environmental, geophysical, astronomical, and biological fields directly involved in the climate change controversy.
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Outlined below are the numbers of Petition Project signatories, subdivided by educational specialties. These have been combined, as indicated, into seven categories.
1. Atmospheric, environmental, and Earth sciences includes 3,697 scientists trained in specialties directly related to the physical environment of the Earth and the past and current phenomena that affect that environment.
2. Computer and mathematical sciences includes 903 scientists trained in computer and mathematical methods. Since the human-caused global warming hypothesis rests entirely upon mathematical computer projections and not upon experimental observations, these sciences are especially important in evaluating this hypothesis.
3. Physics and aerospace sciences include 5,691 scientists trained in the fundamental physical and molecular properties of gases, liquids, and solids, which are essential to understanding the physical properties of the atmosphere and Earth.
4. Chemistry includes 4,796 scientists trained in the molecular interactions and behaviors of the substances of which the atmosphere and Earth are composed.
5. Biology and agriculture includes 2,924 scientists trained in the functional and environmental requirements of living things on the Earth.
6. Medicine includes 3,069 scientists trained in the functional and environmental requirements of human beings on the Earth.
7. Engineering and general science includes 9,992 scientists trained primarily in the many engineering specialties required to maintain modern civilization and the prosperity required for all human actions, including environmental programs.
The following outline gives a more detailed analysis of the signers’ educations.
The Salem-News weighed in on the petition’s progress back in June, saying:
As the Senate prepares for floor debate on global warming legislation, the list of scientist signatories to the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine’s petition against global warming alarmism is growing by about 35 signatures every day, announced OISM’s Art Robinson.
~~~Signatories include such luminaries as theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson, MIT’s atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen and first National Academy of Sciences president Frederick Seitz. More than 40 signatories are members of the prestigious national Academy of Sciences.
The purpose of the Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climatological damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis.
The petition was mailed out, along with a cover letter from Professor Frederick Seitz - former President of the Nat’l Academy of Sciences.
Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1951, Seitz served as president on a part-time basis for three years before assuming full-time responsibilities in 1965. Among his numerous honors and awards, Seitz received the Franklin Medal in 1965; Stanford University’s Herbert Hoover Medal in 1968; the United States Department of Defense Distinguished Service Award in 1968; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Distinguished Public Service Award in 1969 and 1979; the Compton Award, the highest award of the American Institute of Physics, in 1970; and the James Madison Medal of Princeton University in 1978. Rockefeller University awarded him an honorary doctor of science degree in 1981 and the David Rockefeller Award for Extraordinary Service to The Rockefeller University in 2000. In addition to Rockefeller, 31 universities in the United States and abroad awarded him honorary degrees.
Seitz was a member of numerous scientific organizations, including the American Physical Society (president, 1961), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Society for Metals, the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum Engineers, the American Crystallographic Society, the Optical Society of America, the Washington Academy of Science and a number of European scientific academies. From 1978 to 1983 he served as vice chairman of the board of trustees of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Robinson, himself a biochemist specialist, is described by SourceWatch as an eccentric scientist who has a long history of controversial entanglements with figures on the fringe of accepted research. OISM also markets a home-schooling kit for “parents concerned about socialism in the public schools” and publishes books on how to survive nuclear war. The entire history by the site offers the usual progressive “snear” in flavor, but provides a career overview that reveals a man with a more than interesting past.
SourceWatch’s dated commentary on the petition, states:
When questioned in 1998, OISM’s Arthur Robinson admitted that only 2,100 signers of the Oregon Petition had identified themselves as physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, or meteorologists, “and of those the greatest number are physicists.” This grouping of fields concealed the fact that only a few dozen, at most, of the signatories were drawn from the core disciplines of climate science - such as meteorology, oceanography, and glaciology - and almost none were climate specialists. The names of the signers are available on the OISM’s website, but without listing any institutional affiliations or even city of residence, making it very difficult to determine their credentials or even whether they exist at all.
What a difference a decade makes, along with the AGW religion shoved down the world’s throats. A settled science and consensus? Not by a long shot. And as time marches on, the temperatures fall, the JPL’s Auru satellite measuring systems start filling in stratosphere data not previously measured, the numbers of skeptics grow.
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