Bernard Miller wrote:
Ferdinand Engelbeen wrote:At this moment, there is a petition going around against the questionable
science behind the UN/IPCC predictions. See:
http://www.oism.org/pproject/ That web site contains a lot of interesting
information.
That petition is already signed by over 17,000 scientists. Signers of this
petition so far include 2,660 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists,
meteorologists, oceanographers, and environmental scientists.The OISM Petition to which Mr. Engelbeen refers is one of many petitions produced by or at the request of petroleum producers, the chlorine industry (for which Mr. Engelbeen speaks) and their various PR and trade organisations. On some petitions, the scientists quoted have never been traced as existing and in some cases genuine scientists whose signatures purportedly appeared on petitions, when approached by independent investigators denied ever signing them. For people who are not familiar with the way in which the PR industry attempts to mislead not just the public in general but scientists and doctors, this book is an eye-opener. In the case of this petition, the OISM tried to give the impression that the paper which accompanied the petition had been approved by the National Academy of Sciences, obliging the NAS to take the unusual step of issuing a disclaimer.
With the permission of the authors and publisher, I quote in full from pages 278-283 of the book "Trust Us, We're Experts" by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber of the non-profit Center for Media and Democracy. The book was published by Tarcher/Putnam of Penguin Putnam Inc. in 2001 (ISBN I-58542-059-X). I strongly recommend reading this and other books by the same authors on the subject of how the Public Relations industry promotes and manipulates the world view of a range of industries. For anyone who might be thinking of signing this or other petitions, you should be aware of this information before doing so, and anyone reading the figures quoted by Mr. Engelbeen should be informed about how they were achieved.
My apologies for the delay between the appearance of Mr. Engelbeen's original message last week and this response but I had to wait for permission to post this text.
--
Bernard Miller
Montreal=======================
Trust Us, We're ExpertsChapter 10 - Global Warming Is Good For You
Some Like It Hot
The Oregon Petition, sponsored by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM), was circulated in April 1998 in a bulk mailing to tens of thousands of U. S. scientists. In addition to the petition, the mailing included what appeared to be a reprint of a scientific paper. Authored by Arthur B. Robinson and three other people, the paper was titled "Environmental Effects of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide" and was printed in the same typeface and format as the official Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). A cover note from Frederick Seitz, who had served as president of the NAS in the 1960s, added to the impression that Robinson's paper was an official publication of the academy's peer-reviewed journal.
Robinson's paper claimed to show that pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is actually a good thing. "As atmospheric CO, increases," it stated, "plant growth rates increase. Also, leaves lose less water as C02 increases, so that plants are able to grow under drier conditions. Animal life, which depends upon plant life for food, increases proportionally" As a result, Robinson concluded, industrial activities can be counted on to encourage greater species biodiversity and a greener planet. "As coal, oil, and natural gas are used to feed and lift from poverty vast numbers of people across the globe, more CO, will be released into the atmosphere," the paper stated. 'This will help to maintain and improve the health, longevity, prosperity, and productivity of all people. Human activities are believed to be responsible for the rise in C02 level of the atmosphere. Mankind is moving the carbon in coal, oil, and natural gas from below ground to the atmosphere and surface,, where it is available for conversion into living things. We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the C02 increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life than that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution.""
In reality, neither Robinson's paper nor OISM's petition drive had anything to do with the National Academy of Sciences, which first heard about the petition when its members began calling to ask if the NAS had taken a stand against the Kyoto treaty. The paper's author, Arthur Robinson, was not even a climate scientist. He was a biochemist with no published research in the field of climatology, and his paper had never been subjected to peer review by anyone with training in the field. In fact, the paper had never been accepted for publication anywhere, let alone in the NAS Proceedings. It was self-published by Robinson, who did the typesetting himself on his own computer under the auspices of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, of which Robinson himself was the founder.
So what is the OISM, exactly? The bulk mailing that went out to scientists gave no further information, other than the address of a post office box. The OISM does have a website, however, where it describes itself as "a small research institute" in Cave junction, Oregon, with a faculty of six people engaged in studying "biochemistry, diagnostic medicine, nutrition, preventive medicine and the molecular biology of aging."" The OISM also sells a book titled Nuclear War Survival Skills (foreword by H-bomb inventor Edward Teller), which argues that "the dangers from nuclear weapons have been distorted and exaggerated" into "demoralizing myths ."22 Like the Institute itself, Cave junction (population 1,126) is a pretty obscure place. It is the sort of out-of-the-way location you might seek out if you were hoping to survive a nuclear war, but it is not known as a center for scientific and medical research.
"Robinson is hardly a reliable source," observes journalist Ross Gelbspan. "As late as 1994 he declared that ozone depletion is a 'hoax'-a position akin to defending the flat-earth theory. In his newsletter, he told readers it was safe to drink water irradiated by the Chernobyl nuclear plant, and he marketed a home-schooling kit for 'parents concerned about socialism in the public schools.'""
None of the coauthors of "Environmental Effects of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide" had any more standing than Robinson himself as a climate change researcher. They included Robinson's 22-year-old son, Zachary (home-schooled by his dad), along with astrophysicists Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon. Both Baliunas and Soon worked with Frederick Seitz at the George C. Marshall Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank where Seitz served as executive director.24 Funded by a number of rightwing foundations, including Scaife and Bradley, the George C. Marshall Institute does not conduct any original research. It is a conservative think tank that was initially founded during the years of the Reagan administration to advocate funding for Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative-the "Star Wars" weapons program." Today, the Marshall Institute is still a big fan of high-tech weapons. In 1999, its website gave prominent placement to an essay by Col. Simon R Worden titled "Why We Need the Air-Borne Laser," along with an essay titled "Missile Defense for Populations-What Does It Take? Why Are We Not Doing It?" Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the Marshall Institute has adapted to the times by devoting much of its firepower to the war against environmentalism, and in particular against the "scaremongers" who raise warnings about global warming.
"The mailing is clearly designed to be deceptive by giving people the impression that the article, which is full of half-truths, is a reprint and has passed peer review," complained Raymond Pierrehumbert, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Chicago. NAS foreign secretary F. Sherwood Rowland, an atmospheric chemist, said researchers "are wondering if someone is trying to hoodwink them." NAS council member Ralph J. Cicerone, dean of the School of Physical Sciences at the University of California at Irvine, was particularly offended that Seitz described himself in the cover letter as a "past president" of the NAS. Although Seitz had indeed held that title in the 1960s, Cicerone hoped that scientists who received the petition mailing would not be misled into believing that he still has a role in governing the organization ." 25
The NAS issued an unusually blunt formal response to the petition drive. "The NAS Council would like to make it clear that this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of Sciences and that the manuscript was not published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or in any other peer-reviewed journal," it stated in a news release. "The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy." In fact, it pointed out, its own prior published study had shown that "even given the considerable uncertainties in our knowledge of the relevant phenomena, greenhouse warming poses a potential threat sufficient to merit prompt responses. Investment in mitigation measures acts as insurance protection against the great uncertainties and the possibility of dramatic surprises ." 26
Notwithstanding this rebuke, the Oregon Petition managed to garner 15,000 signatures within a month's time. Fred Singer called the petition "the latest and largest effort by rank-and-file scientists to express their opposition to schemes that subvert science for the sake of a political agenda." 27
Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel called it an "extraordinary response" and cited it as his basis for continuing to oppose a global warming treaty. "Nearly all of these 15,000 scientists have technical training suitable for evaluating climate research data," Hagel said." Columns citing the Seitz petition and the Robinson paper as credible sources of opinion on the global warming issue have appeared in publications ranging from Newsday, the Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post to the Austin-American Statesman, Denver Post, and Wyoming Tribune-Eagle.
In addition to the bulk mailing, OISM's website enables people to add their names to the petition over the Internet, and by June 2000 it claimed to have recruited more than 19,000 scientists. The institute is so lax about screening names, however, that virtually anyone can sign, including for example AI Caruba, the pesticide-industry PR man and conservative ideologue whose "National Anxiety Center" we describe briefly in chapter nine. Caruba has editorialized on his own website against the science of global warming, calling it the "biggest hoax of the decade," a "genocidal" campaign by environmentalists who believe that "humanity must be destroyed to 'Save the Earth.'. . . There is no global warming, but there is a global political agenda, comparable to the failed Soviet Union experiment with Communism, being orchestrated by the United Nations, supported by its many Green NG0s, to impose international treaties of every description that would turn the institution into a global government, superceding the sovereignty of every nation in the world."
When questioned in 1998, OISM's Arthur Robinson admitted that only 2,100 signers of the Oregon Petition had identified themselves as physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, or meteorologists, "and of those the greatest number are physicists."30 The names of the signers are available on the OISM's website, but without listing any institutional affiliations or even city of residence, making it very difficult to determine their credentials or even whether they exist at all. When the Oregon Petition first circulated, in fact, environmental activists successfully added the names of several fictional characters and celebrities to the list, including John Grisham, Michael J. Fox, Drs. Frank Bums, B. J. Honeycutt, and Benjamin Pierce (from the TV show M*A*S*H), an individual by the name of "Dr. Red Wine," and Geraldine Halliwell, formerly known as pop singer Ginger Spice of the Spice Girls. Ginger's field of scientific specialization was listed as "biology.""
Casting Call
In April 1998, at about the same time that the OISM's petition first circulated, the New York Times reported on yet another propaganda scheme developed by the American Petroleum Institute. Joe Walker, a public relations representative of the API, had written an eight-page internal memorandum outlining the plan, which unfortunately for the plotters was leaked by a whistle-blower. Walker's memorandum called for recruiting scientists "who do not have a long history of visibility and/or participation in the climate change debate." Apparently, new faces were needed because the industry's long-standing scientific front men Michaels, Balling, Idso, and Singer had used up their credibility with journalists.32
Walker's plan called for spending $5 million over two years to "maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media and other key audiences." To measure success, a media tracking service would be hired to tally the percentage of news articles that raise questions about climate science and the number of radio talk show appearances by scientists questioning the prevailing view. The budget included $600,000 to develop a cadre of 20 "respected climate scientists" and to "identify, recruit and train a team of five independent scientists to participate in media outreach." (Unanswered, of course, was the question of how anyone who has been recruited and trained by the petroleum industry can be honestly described as "independent.") Once trained, these scientific spokesmodels would be sent around to meet with science writers, newspaper editors, columnists, and television network correspondents, "thereby raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom.'"33
"One of the creepiest revelations is that oil companies and their allies intend to recruit bona fide scientists to help muddy the waters about global warming," commented the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, seemingly unaware that this "third party" strategy had been part of the industry campaign from day one . 34