Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
hinder the advance of science and technol-
ogy, and damage the health and welfare of
mankind. There is no convincing scientific
evidence that human release of carbon di-
oxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases
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 atmo-
spheric carbon dioxide produce many ben-
eficial effects upon the natural plant and
animal environments of the Earth.”
The petition quickly picked up nineteen
thousand signatures (the number was up
to 31,486 by January 2010). The National
Academy responded, noting that the “pe-
tition does not reflect the conclusions of
expert reports of the Academy.” It must be
stressed that signing a petition in opposi-
tion to a concept is a statement of belief, and,
as the retired climatologist R. G. Quayle
pointed out in private correspondence,
does not equate to peer-reviewed scientific
assertions. Robinson has admitted to a lack
of climate scientists on the petition. David
McCandless and Helen Lawson Williams
examined the background of the signato-
ries and determined that 49% of those sign-
ing the petition are engineers. In contrast
to the “no consensus” message of the Or-
egon Petition, Naomi Oreskes, in a review
of the abstracts of 928 papers on global cli-
mate changes, found not a single one that
did not explicitly or implicitly accept the
human role. The Oregon Petition, floated as
evidence that there is no scientific consen-
sus regarding global warming, is nonsense.
