Comments on: 31,478… 13,245… 152 OISM “scientists” can’t be wrong

By: Queen Lylah

Queen Lylah — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 03:24:36 +0000

You know…this type of things seems just typical. I don’t know why there’s even any debate on this issue anymore. I live in Michigan, and it’s pushing into the 70′s here in the beginning of November. The summer was hot as heck.

Even the migratory patters of bids is being impacted. My husband is a hunter and opening day of the goose season was a joke because it was in the mid-70′s so the geese stayed happy and warm up in Canada and didn’t even bother to come down this way until the season was almost over. It’s getting hotter people! You can see this yourself, you don’t need any fancy charts and graphs, nor do you need “experts” to put some type of blessing on the diagnosis before we do something about it.

By: Heartland Institute VIPs misrepresent facts again | Scholars and Rogues

Heartland Institute VIPs misrepresent facts again | Scholars and Rogues — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 22:15:19 +0000

[...] that defined anyone with a Bachelor’s of Science degree as a “scientist.” S&R investigated the petition and found that, by the petition’s own criteria, 31,000 was approximately 0.3% of scientists, [...]

By: Heartland Institute VIPs misrepresent facts again « The Daedalnexus

Heartland Institute VIPs misrepresent facts again « The Daedalnexus — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 19:22:14 +0000

By: Nick Palmer

Nick Palmer — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 16:32:30 +0000

Hi, I thought I might cross post a comment I made on Kate’s excellent Climatesight blog.
Before I reproduce the comment, I recognise that your “relative percentages” is another powerful argument to downplay any misplaced significance that people may attribute to the OISM; maybe if we launched a similar petition to “all scientists”, but worded to back up the IPCC/mainstream climate science view, we would get 3.2 million signatories…

However, maybe we have all been missing something very simple. The petition is worded in a particular way and attached is a pseudo-scientific paper – that others have shown was made to look like it was formatted as a contribution to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Most scientists or those with a science degree that was not particularly relevant or with little knowledge of climate science would have looked (or just glanced) at this “paper” which looks “sciency” and taken it as read that there were credible publishing scientists who disputed the alleged consensus view (as presented in the wording) that there is “proof” that AGW will lead to “catastrophic warming”. As scientists, they would know all about uncertainty and so they would sign the petition because the straw man position presented of consensus climate science in the OISM wording has no “uncertainty” in the language. Legitimately, James Hansen could have signed it!

Here’s my comment:
Pointing to the few Mickey Mice, Gerry Halliwells and dead people in the OISM petition is all very well, but still a very large number of legit scientists, or those with science degrees, signed it.

What the Oregon petition proves is that scientists, or those with science degrees, are at least as vulnerable to being misdirected as the general public. Indeed, possibly more so. A degree or qualifications in one scientific field does not seem to bestow a universal ability to spot what’s wrong or right in another field.

In psychic research it is pretty much standard knowledge that a fake psychic can more easily fool a scientist than a non-specialist – a scientist is looking for a rational explanation of the phenomena they see in front of them (which includes possible unknown powers), whereas the magician is skilled at making an effect happen that looked like it happened for one reason but was actually accomplished by another (deceptive) method.

As far as the OISM petition goes, I have already pointed out elsewhere that the operative deception in it is that one has to sign that there is “no proof” that AGW will lead to “catastrophic warming”. Indeed there is no proof nor will there be until after we have finished the experiment by which time it would be way to late to do anything. Climate scientists themselves could almost sign the OISM.

What AGW science gives us is major probabilities with small uncertainties but the carefully crafted misleading words of the OISM sucked the average “non climate scientist” in.

The sceptic denier crowd use the OISM and similar in a deceitful way. To the public, they trumpet that this very large number of scientists don’t believe we’re in certain proved danger (which we’re not – just almost certain danger) and the public – like people watching a magician who don’t know he’s a magician – take this to mean that most scientists (far, far more than practising climate scientists) say there is no real problem – move along, nothing to worry about here.

The deceit of the OISM is both in the wording and how it is presented and used.

By: Scholars and Rogues » Three of four misconduct allegations against Michael Mann found to be without merit (updated)

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:05:13 +0000

[...] that Mann is out of step with mainstream scientists by comparing him to the thoroughly debunked OISM Petition Project, and pointing to the biased and flawed work of Icecap’s Joe [...]

By: Scholars and Rogues » Heartland distorts AMS climate survey results, paper

Scholars and Rogues » Heartland distorts AMS climate survey results, paper — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:31:09 +0000

[...] And Heartland? They ignore this critical distinction entirely, instead quoting the meteorologist D’Aleo as saying “from my observation, the opinion of broadcast meteorologists on this is issue (sic) is similar to the opinions of all fields of practicing meteorologists.” As far as Heartland is concerned, there is no difference between climatology and meteorology, just as they maintain that there is no difference in expertise between 32,000 people with bachelor of science degrees and thousands of actual, practicing scientists. [...]

By: Jim Prall

Jim Prall — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 23:36:17 +0000

Hi Brian.
Nice work. On my website I’ve been tallying signers of a wide range of petitions and open letters both for and against action on climate change;, and collecting stats on how much they’ve published on climate and how widely cited they are.
I’m writing up why I had to skip the OISM petition (way too long list, names only makes it tedious to track who might actually have published, very few qualified on climate). Check out my site for another take on who the climate ‘skeptics’ actually are, and how much (or how little) they’ve published.

Jim Prall
Toronto, Canada

By: Charles R. Anderson

Charles R. Anderson — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:02:36 +0000

The catastrophic AGW claim is a very strong assertion that a substantial amount of global warming is due to man’s emissions of CO2 due to the use of fossil fuels and that this has catastrophic consequences. It further generally proceeds to claim that drastic curtailment of fossil fuels is necessary to avoid catastrophe. This is both a scientific claim and an economic claim. The economists are key to measuring the scale of any catastrophe and providing a response to that catastrophe should there be one. In addition, if the climate science is definitive and the general public is to be subjected to job loses, financial losses, and lifestyle changes, do you not think that the scientific argument for great AGW effects should be presented to and understood by most scientists? It is completely appropriate that general scientists and economists should make their opinions on catastrophic AGW known.

By: Scholars and Rogues » “I’m not going to shake the hand of Hitler Youth.”

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 05:05:25 +0000

[...] as disbelieving in climate disruption. S&R examined the OISM petition’s claims and found that the OISM petition signatories, at most, 0.3% of all US scientists even when using the OISM’s own expansive definition of [...]

By: “Outpouring of Scientists Rejecting Man-Made Climate Fears!” « Greenfyre’s

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 01:46:10 +0000

[...] of the Denialosphere, then it should have been 1,600 letters from the insignificant 1% that the Petition claims to represent (the petition may not be a reliable source ). The ACS did not receive 1,600 letters, or even 160; [...]

By: bluegrue

bluegrue — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:00:04 +0000

The list resurfaces in the NIPCC report, they waste about 13% of the pages of the "report" on reprinting the list. That list is claimed to have 31,478 entries and just lists the names ordered by US state.

By: Brian Angliss

Brian Angliss — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:43:30 +0000

I recommend you read the last 18 months worth of my Weekly Carboholic columns and the comments therein (esp. my arguments with AGW denier Judy Cross - there's massive amounts of data there), my detailed debunking of over 20 of the most common denier arguments and the massive associated comment thread, my co-blogger's post on John Coleman and the associated comments there too, and my post on the difference between weather and climate. Then get back to me. There's a lot more to the IPCC than just Chapter 9, seeing as attributing climate change to human activity cannot occur without a deep understanding of what's happening as described in Chapters 1-8. As for the complaints I've read about the web about how few people explicitly endorse all the IPCC's conclusions, or even all of just Chapter 9's conclusions, those complaints show a complete lack of understanding of how science works. If 10 claims are made and a scientist supports only 9 of them, then our example scientist doesn't wholly support the claims and will say so. Which is why complaints like this are one example of how you lie with statistics.

By: An Engineer

An Engineer — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:17:21 +0000

Might be kind of interesting for the author to post the scientifically valid empirical data that proves that man-made carbon dioxide is the sole cause of the variations in global temperatures. And then, just for giggles and grins, the author can post his explanation for the downward trend in temperatures that has occurred since the start of the 21st century WHILE the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has continued to increase.

Instead of repeating the same tired, media driven claims about the the number of “scientists” who supposedly authored the key section of IPCC AR4 WG1 (Chapter 9 for those who actually care about the facts). Which was, according to data readily available on the IPCC AR4 website, 52.
And, instead of explaining why comments provided to the 52 authors, again readily available on the IPCC AR4 website, were summarily dismissed by the authors…

By: What if the Oregon Petition names were real? « Greenfyre’s

What if the Oregon Petition names were real? « Greenfyre’s — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:54:51 +0000

[...] add to that the equally comprehensive, but somewhat different analysis from Scholars and Rogues » 31,478… 13,245… 152 OISM “scientists” can’t be wrong where Brian does a much more detailed look at how representativveive the signatories are of their [...]

By: Climate change Bytes and Blogs VI « Greenfyre’s

Climate change Bytes and Blogs VI « Greenfyre’s — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:50:36 +0000