2,660 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and other environmental scientists (so far) have signed a petition saying that global warming hysteria is pseudoscientific baloney. They've been joined by an additional 5,017 chemists, biochemists, biologists, and other life scientists, and over 10,000 other scientists, attached to major universities and research organizations around the world. Yet if you went by what "environmental" activist groups like Greenpeace, Sierra Club, or the so-called "Environmental News Network" tell you, you'd think this petition, and others like it, never existed.
The Oregon Petition reads, in its entirety, as follows...
We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.
The petition was put together by Dr. Frederick Seitz, the former President of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Thousands of qualified scientists have signed it, and more are signing all the time. If you're a qualified scientist or meteorologist who'd like to sign the petition yourself, or want to see a list of all the signers, click here to go to the web site run by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, which is sponsoring the initiative.
The Oregon Petition is not the only such petition signed by scientists, either. Over 4,000 scientists from 106 countries, including 72 Nobel Prize winners, have signed the Heidelberg Appeal. This petition, issued in response to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro back in 1992, warns against "the emergence of an irrational ideology which is opposed to scientific and industrial progress and impedes economic and social development." They further warn "the authorities in charge of our planet's destiny against decisions which are supported by pseudoscientific arguments or false and nonrelevant data."
The Leipzig Declaration is similar. It was signed by scientists who work in climate research, who strongly object to the lack of science underlying the IPCC--a group whose work is usually cited as definitive by Environmental News Network, World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and others pushing warnings about global warming. The Leipzig Declaration reads, in part: "...based on all the evidence available to us, we cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes and calls for hasty actions. For this reason, we consider the drastic emission control policies deriving from the Kyoto conference -- lacking credible support from the underlying science -- to be ill-advised and premature."
A similar statement was released around the same time by dozens of climate scientists employed by government, university, and private research organizations. It attacked Kyoto and similar plans to curb so-called "greenhouse gasses," saying, in part, that "Such policy initiatives derive from highly uncertain scientific theories. They are based on the unsupported assumption that catastrophic global warming follows from the burning of fossil fuels and requires immediate action. We do not agree."
All of these petitions and more can be found at the Science and Environment Policy Project's web site.
Although you'd think much of this would be explosive news, it's gotten scant attention from most of the news media, and very little from so-called environmentalist groups. Even worse, when they do get discussed, they are often dismissed as "right wing extremists" or "in the pocket of big business." Yet anyone who reads the list of signers of these petitions can see that these are scientists from major universities around the world, not political ideologues.
Why is it that when so-called environmentalists encounter someone who disagrees with them, they feel the need to bash people and accuse them of political bias? Why can't you simply disagree with World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, or ENN without being a rabid extremist?
If there is to be real discussion of the issue of global warming, it would seem to me to first require looking at what all the available science has to say, and what actual working scientists say about it. Too bad so many "environmentalist" groups seem to refuse to do exactly that.
It warms the cockles of my social-scientist heart to be exposed to the tacit assumption that large numbers of physical and life scientist are inclined to agree with the side of the bread wherein lies most of their butter, to wit, the techno-optimist side.
The facts we know are fairly few. We have expanded the petro-automotive technological regime to the point that we are actually creating changes in carbon dioxide levels that would show up as a clear upward spike on a time scale of eons.
The petition claims that we do not know for certain whether this unprecendented human intervention in atmospheric carbon dioxide and
methane levels is calamitous.
Now, it sounds quite plausible to me that we don't know that. Iteven sounds plausible to me that we do not have strong evidence to indicate that.
However, as a development economist, I have some idea of the time scale involved in adapting to substantially new agricultural production regimes with confidence that it is more or less economically sustainable. Ecologists may argue over ecosystem responses to increased carbon
dioxide levels, but I would want to know how fast this "Beneficial to some many species" is going to hit the agrarian systems of these countries. Large sections of India having to adjust to new staple food crops at the same time as they are faced with more serious weed and pest problems, little time to develop responses other than dumping herbicides and pesticides on the fields, and no foreign exchange to buy the new herbicides and pesticides with as resistences are developed to the ones in use.
...
Before the US or Oz puts another Sports Utility Vehicle on another suburban street, there's an argument that they should show that they are NOT doing harm to India's agrarian system, given that these emissions are a substantial change on a global basis and there is not as yet any
scientifically compelling case as to what the impact of that change will be.
Of course, the techno-optimist position, which in Oz is a variety of the "she'll be right" attitude, is to press ahead.
A cynic might say that unless the consequences are so dire that they cause economic collapse, physical and biological scientists get to have
an each-way bet, since they continue to receive industry funding to pursue development of the current technological regime, and if the result is a crisis they will have even more funding available in better understanding the crisis.
A cognitive scientist might point out that people who are techno-optimists have a greater tendency to enter into these type of sciences, and then the pre-existing population bias supports institutionalisation of a bias toward techo-optimism. That kind of thing would be expected,
after all, so long as scientists are humans, because humans tend to behave that way.
Why is it that certain people, when faced with data that does not support their viewpoint, find it necessary to resort to ad hominem attacks?
Why is it okay to insinuate--without data--that thousands of qualified scientists who disagree with global doomsayers are simply taking that position because it's "the side of the bread wherein lies most of their butter?"
Also, out of curiosity, if a scientist working for the IPCC or deep-pocket environmental group or a government agency is being paid to study the "problem" of global warming, do they have any financial stake in proving that the problem exists? Will they keep their jobs, will the
funding keep coming in, if they come to the conclusion that global warming scares are unjustified and possibly dangerous?
Questions of vast global importance, in which hundreds of millions of lives may be at stake, it would seem to me deserve serious treatment. And it does not seem to me that anyone who makes kneejerk assumptions about the character of those who disagree with them is really taking these issues seriously.
So the scientists who signed the petition are saying that they do not know what will happen, due to a 30% increase in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. I believe that. I doubt that many scientists would argue that they KNOW with any real certainty what the outcome will be.
But what would they say to this hypothetical situation:
Pick a gas, any gas, that is currently present in the atmosphere. Let's perform an experiment. Let's increase the concentration of this gas far above it's present level, far more quickly than the historical record tells us has ever occurred naturally.
We have two alternative futures: Perform the experiment on the atmosphere, or don't perform the experiment.
What would a prudent scientist do?
If the experiment were begun inadvertently, would the scientist allow it to continue?
You would have to ask each of the thousands of scientists their opinion.
But, given that we know beyond a reasonable doubt that at different periods of the Earth's history, CO2 levels have been much higher than they are now, you're asking a pretty strange hypothetical in my view.
I agree that personal attacks to not further useful discussion of this issue. Unfortunately, most people do not have the expertise to determine whether the science behind global warming is credible or not.
On the one hand, we have Working Group I of the IPCC -- a group of 637 climate scientists who specifically studied the available peer-reviewed scientific literature relevant to climate change -- concluding that global warming is being caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. On the other hand, we have a petition signed by thousands of scientists who have....what did they do again? Oh yeah, they read the short summary arguments generated by the petition organizers.
I am an atmospheric physicist, and I have looked at the IPCC report (you should too) and at the info that goes along with the petition. It only took me 10 minutes to find that the temperature data used to "show" that global temperatures are decreasing slightly in the petition info are based on column means from radiosondes. That means, they're looking at total atmospheric column temperature and not at SURFACE temperature. With an increase in the greenhouse effect, the lower atmosphere warms and the upper atmosphere cools. So you would not expect to see an increase in column means.
How many of the 19,000 signatories know that? How many of them took the time to actually look up the source and see that EVEN THE SOURCE CITED BY THE PETITION ORGANIZERS says that the surface temperature has been increasing. It's much more likely that they were convinced by the very convincing looking information and signed on.
That is why the petition is not credible: not because the signatories aren't credible, but because the information on which they based their decisions to sign is not credible.
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Well thought out blog entry, though I'm not sure I entirely agree with the point being made! However saying that everyone has their own point of view and is entitled to it.