Petition Project another strike against GW.

This petition is really really old news. And I hope you want some cigarettes with it.

While working for R.J. Reynolds, Seitz oversaw
the funding of tens of millions of dollars
worth of research.92 Most of this research was
legitimate. For instance, his team looked at the
way stress, genetics, and lifestyle issues can contribute
to disease.93 But the program Seitz oversaw
served an important dual purpose for R.J.
Reynolds. It allowed the company to tout the
fact that it was funding health research (even
if it specifically proscribed research on the health
effects of smoking) and it helped generate a
steady collection of ideas and hypotheses that
provided “red herrings†the company could use
to disingenuously suggest that factors other than
tobacco might be causing smokers’ cancers and
heart disease.

Aside from giving the tobacco companies’
disinformation campaign an aura of scientific
credibility, Seitz is also notable because he has
returned from retirement to play a prominent role
as a global warming contrarian involved in organizations
funded by ExxonMobil. Consider, for
instance, one of Seitz’s most controversial efforts.
In 1998, he wrote and circulated a letter asking
scientists to sign a petition from a virtually
unheard-of group called the Oregon Institute
of Science and Medicine calling upon the U.S.
government to reject the Kyoto Protocol.94 Seitz
signed the letter identifying himself as a former
NAS president. He also enclosed with his letter a
report co-authored by a team including Soon and
Baliunas asserting that carbon dioxide emissions
pose no warming threat.95 The report was not peer
reviewed. But it was formatted to look like an article
from The Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences (PNAS), a leading scientific journal.

The petition’s organizers publicly claimed that
the effort had attracted the signatures of some
17,000 scientists. But it was soon discovered that
the list contained few credentialed climate scientists.
For example, the list was riddled with the
names of numerous fictional characters.96 Likewise,
after investigating a random sample of the
small number of signers who claimed to have a
Ph.D. in a climate-related field, Scientific American
estimated that approximately one percent of the
petition signatories might actually have a Ph.D.
in a field related to climate science.97 In a highly
unusual response, NAS issued a statement disavowing
Seitz’s petition and disassociating the
academy from the PNAS-formatted paper.98
None of these facts, however, have stopped organizations,
including those funded by ExxonMobil,
from touting the petition as evidence of widespread
disagreement over the issue of global
warming. For instance, in the spring of 2006,
the discredited petition surfaced again when it
was cited in a letter to California legislators by
a group calling itself “Doctors for Disaster Preparedness,â€
a project of the Oregon Institute
of Science and Medicine.
http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/E...ng-tobacco.html

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Wildkow @ Mar 20 2007, 04:26 PM) [snapback]409235[/snapback]</div>

Wildkow, you are a like a man on a beach littered with seashells as far as the eye can see, looking desperately for fragments of calcified growth that look like a bit of unicorn horn, and each time you find something that remotely looks like it could have broken off a unicorn horn, pouncing on it and holding it up and shouting "See! There are no seashells on this beach! It's unicorns!" So far, all of your unicorn bits have turned out to be seashells after all, seashells amid a beach full of them, but you keep on hunting for your unicorn.

Mark Baird
Alameda CA

 

This "tsunami" is old news (the petition came out in 1998), and the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, despite the "official" sounding name, has no credibility whatsoever- it's basically run by one eccentric old scientist. Thay also market a home-schooling kit for "parents concerned about socialism in the public schools" (I bet I just raised the esteem of this organization in the eyes of the right-wingers here.)
Fred Seitz was once a well-regarded scientist, but he sold out to the tobacco companies, and he's long been considered to be past his prime and no longer competent. Don't believe me? The CEO of R.J. Reynolds said so, back in 1989.



<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Mar 20 2007, 08:14 PM) [snapback]409266[/snapback]</div>

This is fun, indeed! I picked one at random- "David Garstin". I could find no references to him whatsoever except several citations that list him as a signer of anti-global warming petitions; and one web page that mentions him as a representative of the Colloidal Association of America; an organization that itself shows no evidence of existence.
Help us out people! I'm sure that Wildkow will not be satisfied until we discredit every single signer of that petition- which, given enough time, I don't doubt is doable.

Just tried another one- "Elliott Berman" (any relation to the good doctor?) He designed a cheap solar cell in the 1970s that was funded by- yes, that's right, the Exxon Corporation. It was for use on oil rigs. He may be the only engineer in history to apply solar energy to harm the environment!

 

I'll bite.
So, I went looking to see if there were any females on this list. While I'm sure there may be more, this was the only one I could find in a quick search. Through several letters. It's looking like less than 1 percent of these folks are chicks.

Know what I found? Even better! It looks like they're duplicating names. Of course, as a previous poster said, this is ten years old. Maybe she's been cloned.

Here's an example of the name duplication: Salome Gluecksohn Waels, PhD, Salome G Waelsch, PhD.

I mean, come on. What are the likelihoods that these are two separate people? Salome is SUCH a common name!
The first can't be found anywhere except on this list. Here's the second one's short mission statement:
Our research is concerned with the analysis of mechanisms of cell and tissue differentiation and the genetic control and regulation of cell type specific gene expression. Lethal mutations in the mouse with severe effects on prenatal development and cell type specific differentiation provide model systems for our experimental studies. Mutant effects are identified on genetic, morphological, ultrastructural, biochemical and molecular levels with the ultimate goal determining modes of action and expression of the respective wild type genes during normal development and differentiation.

 

hey, credentials i wasn't aware of! woohoo, i'll add it to my CV :lol:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(livelychick @ Mar 20 2007, 09:46 PM) [snapback]409304[/snapback]</div>

Hey, I found another female- "Dorrie Kasmar" (I assume "Dorrie" is a female name?) She's a laboratory manager at aKishwaukee Community Hospital (a job which, I reckon, requires a college degree)

This is the most fun game on PriusChat since "the next poster" game!

 

Here's another female: Madonna J. Perkins, Assistant Professor of Business and Accounting at U. Wisconsin. Well, I suppose she could tally up heat fluxes on a spreadsheet. She did get a teaching award, though- from Wisconsin Power and Light Foundation (part of Alliant Energy). I'm guessing she got the award for signing anti-global warming petitions.

 

Oh, I found a couple more chicks, too. Couldn't find references for any of 'em. Several more duplicated names. This has been fun, but I'm done.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(livelychick @ Mar 20 2007, 10:08 PM) [snapback]409314[/snapback]</div>

Livelychick, I grant you this game isn't easy. Most of the names, and I deliberately chose names followed by PhD, I randomly googled only yielded links to this anti-global warming petition. That tells me that they are either made-up names, or the person has no qualifications whatsoever. But for your benefit I tried to find another female. Here's one: Marian C. Diamond is a professor of anatomy (at least I found someone who is a professor of something), and she wrote "The Human Brain Coloring Book". Sounds like fun.

 

Oh, I should have read Scott's posting to the end. Scientific American already checked out this list of names and determined it was bogus. I should have checked the ucsusa.org website. Still, it was fun verifying it myself.

What is really embarrassing about this idiotic petition is that Rep. Dana Rohrabacher actually had it introduced into the congressional record during hearings for the federal R&D budget for fiscal year 2007. It was Rohrabacher who postulated that cycles in the earth's climate were caused by dinosaur flatulence.

 

"During the past 2 years, more than 17,100 basic and applied American scientists, two-thirds with advanced degrees, have signed the Global Warming Petition."

Hmmm. Scientists without advanced degrees. Reminds me of the Dr. Science radio show whose sign off went something like:

Ask Doctor Science. (he's not a real doctor) I have a Master's Degree in Science!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Wildkow @ Mar 20 2007, 11:57 PM) [snapback]409373[/snapback]</div>

Right here. Several of us have also duplicated their random sampling and come to the same conclusion. But if you don't believe us, or Scientific American, then why not attempt to verify a few of them yourself? A scientist with any sort of credentials will have an academic or institutional affiliations, papers published in refereed journals, etc. and be easily verifiable (yes, by using Google). And please, don't accuse me of "discrediting and personally attacking"- that is not an attack, it's a simple fact.