Liudvikas Bukys

Dean’s World: What do over 2,600 climate scientists have in common?

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.”