Global Warming is Now a Religion

(Opinion) Global Warming is Now a Religion

By Cato Institute

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Regarding Comment
Wrong.
  • Rice klowN
    No, there IS consensus...

    ... in the scientific community that is relevant to climate science , but still an overwhelming majority of all scientists are either with AGW or don't offer an opinion.

    However, as for your claim of 30,000 "scientists" deny GW, I have a rebuttal:

    1) that petition (known as the Oregon Petition) contends that man has not contributed to global warming , not that global warming itself is a farce. It also claims that reducing man made emissions of green house gases would be BAD for the environment ! (WTF!?!)

    2) the OISM (Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine), the corporation that is responsible for starting and continuing that petition, is also one of the groups that claims there is no science proving smoking leads to cancer .

    3) there are 2.7 Million "scientists" in the US alone. If the signatories were only in the US, that would mean that 1.2 percent deny that man has contributed to global warming. However that petition boasts international scientists, so that 30,000 (which is actually just over 31,100) is from a potential pool of an estimated 63 million "scientists" making the percentage dismally low (like one ten-thousandth of a percent)

    4) Of the "Oregon Petition" signatories, almost 10,000 of them are engineers, 4700 are chemists, almost 3000 are in Biology or Agriculture, and just over 3000 are in medicine . This implies that their criteria for "scientist" is only that the person have a "degree in science" which can be a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, or a Bachelor of Science in Structural Engineering. In other words, anyone with a BS, MS, or PhD qualitifes as a "scientist". 

    5) Of the signatories, only 578 are involved or credentialed in atmospheric sciences.  Of those, only 154 are involved in climatology or atmospheric science. Over 300 are meteorologists (weather not climate). So the intellectually honest number for that position is that of the hundreds of thousands of scientists that were asked to sign that petition, only 154 that have the relevancy required to honestly sign the petition, actually signed the petition. This is similar to the Wedge Petition with 700 signatorees "denying" evolution when only a single signatory was actually a biologist, Micheal Behe, and he was the author of almost all of modern Intelligent Design arguments. All of Behe's arguments have been debunked by the scientific process.

    5) a very small random polling (30 of 1400) of the PHDs relevant to climate science among the original petitions signatories (original had 17,000 signatories) only 1 actually researches climate, several didn't remember signing it and 6 would not sign again.

    A well sourced write up is here: http://cce.890m.com/scientific-consensus /

    Another debunking here: http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2009/08/02/152-oism-scientists-cant-be-wrong /

    And for good measure: http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/what-if-the-oregon-petition-names-were-real /

    I never used the word "kooks", I call them denialists, although misinformed would be acceptable too. 

    I consider them to be in the same class of denier as those who fought heliocentrism after the science proved them wrong... Not kooks, just wrong and in denial of evidence.

    But the most important factor is that petitions or polls of scientists does not determine what is "the consensus" among scientists. "The consensus" is determined by a full review of published peer-reviewed research which is what the IPCC report is. "The consensus" can be "up for debate" if new research survives the peer review process properly (I.e. The right reviewers, the right kind of journal, and positive reviews). However, the mere publication of research doesn't break a consensus necessarily until the research is reviewed in the public square positively and then the research will usually be given the real test of duplication. 

    After all that, only then can the "consensus" be said to be broken or under serious challenge.

    The first link I posted mentions one report with over 600 authors from many different countries that addressed 30,000 comments and came to the consensus that AGW is real.

    Currently, no dissent has survived the scientific community's review, making Anthropogenic Global Warming the "Consensus" view.       

    - Rice klowNUS October 29, 2009 1:19PM

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