Popular Press Ignores Thousands
Of Scientists Who Pan "Warming"

CAVE JUNCTION, Ore. — In less than two months, a grassroots effort has gathered signatures from nearly 17,000 scientists on a petition debunking the so-called "global warming" treaty adopted last December in Kyoto, Japan.

The signers run the gamut from climatologists and meteorologists to biologists and biochemists. That is a stark contrast to the claimed "consensus" of 2500 signers of a U.N. paper warning about "global warming" that served to promote the treaty.

The supposedly pro-treaty paper, it turned out, was signed by fewer than 2000 individuals, most of whom were outside their fields of expertise, and the paper itself was ambiguous. Only a boilerhoused "summary" cobbled up after the fact by treaty promoters actually supported the "global warming" scare, and the vast majority of qualified scientists among the claimed signers never even saw the summary, much less endorsed it.

Given the media attention lavished on the earlier paper and the treaty it precipitated, such a thorough debunking might be expected to generate substantial news coverage.

Wrong.

The popular media, having bought into "global warming" like a flock of deed-holders to the Golden Gate Bridge, has almost entirely ignored it. In fact, Livestock Weekly could find only one article about it in the voluminous files of the Associated Press, which offers stories on everything from two-headed calves to Chelsea Clinton’s new boyfriend.

And that one lonely AP story reads like an unvarnished attempt to discredit the petition.

"It was supposed to be a collection of signatures of thousands of scientists ready to debunk global warming," the story begins, "But the petition, embraced in recent weeks by critics of the Kyoto climate agreement, bore some surprising names."

The article goes on to identify fictional TV attorney Perry Mason as among the signers, along with "three doctors from the TV series M*A*S*H," and "even one of the Spice Girls."

It lists these obviously bogus names as "among the 15,000 signatories," thus arbitrarily slashing the number of participating scientists and at the same time suggesting that even those reduced ranks are suspect.

In a show of "fairness," the story allows a disclaimer by petition organizer Arthur Robinson, a chemist with the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. Robinson is allowed to point out that "When we're getting thousands of signatures, there's no way of filtering out a fake."

The article goes on, however, to claim that Robinson has "made little attempt to verify the credentials of those who responded to the petition."

And that is simply not true. Rather, it is technically true, but only in the Clintonesque sense that oral sex does not constitute an adulterous affair.

Actually, a massive Internet website detailing the petition and each of its signatories points out that, "Of the 18,100 signatures the project has received in total so far, 16,600 have been independently verified," and 1500 have not. Among the latter, the site notes candidly, are "several names that were sent in by enviro pranksters."

Independently verified — meaning Robinson and the petition’s organizers, in time-honored scientific fashion, were careful not to do the verifying themselves and thus taint its credibility.

But that is not at all the impression the reader is supposed to draw from the story.

The article goes on to cite mostly unidentified "critics" who "contend few of the names are of scientists who have studied long-range climate change and that Robinson ... has done no independent research on global warming."

Once again, Robinson is allowed a lame response. He is quoted as arguing only that the signers are "qualified to speak on this subject."

A quick check of the website, however, reveals much more detail, all of it available to AP. The website notes that two-thirds of the verified signatories have advanced degrees, among them "approximately 2100 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers and environmental scientists who are especially qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide on the Earth’s atmosphere and climate."

An additional 4400 scientists are specialists in "chemistry, biochemistry, biology and other life sciences," and "especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide upon the Earth’s plant and animal life."

Most of the remainder are "trained in related fields," the website says, and possess technical knowledge "suitable for the evaluation of the relevant research data."

That does not include the "Perry Masons," "Spice Girls," "Hawkeye Pierces," and other prank names that the petition organizers have already culled from their head count to get it down to 16,600.

Those bogus names, it should be noted, were "exposed" by a group called "Ozone Action," a pro-treaty "green" group that quickly brought them to the attention of AP. Given the obscurity of some of the names — a recent People magazine survey found that only a handful of readers could name a single Spice Girl even by her nickname, much less the actual names cited in the article — a cynic might suggest that Ozone Action did a remarkable job of ferreting out the ringers. Almost as if they knew just what names to look for.

By way of clarification, and to head off dismissive critics, the petition website points out that all of the project’s funding comes from private donations, none from industry sources, and none from tax-exempt organizations. The organizers, it adds, also receive no funding from industry, meaning no bankrolling from coal, oil, natural gas or related sources, either through the front door or the back.

A sympathetic website predicted the "greens’" attacks. Describing the petition as a "signal event" that "has blown the claimed ‘scientific consensus’ clear out of the water," its authors warn that it "is going to upset a lot of people who have avoided debating the science and sought refuge by quoting numbers."

That apparently includes the popular press.