Oregon Petition

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The '''Oregon Petition''' (also known as '''The Global Warming Petition Project''') was a petition to the [[United States]] [[government]] accompanied by a slick brochure written by [[Arthur B. Robinson]], his son, Noah Robinson, and [[Willie Soon]]. First circulated in 1998, it urged the government to reject any policies based on concerns over [[global warming]], particularly the [[Kyoto Protocol]] of 1997 (which the US has still not accepted).

The project website claims to have signatures from 31,487 [[scientist]]s who [[climate change denial|deny]] that "human release of [[carbon]] dioxide, [[methane]], or other [[greenhouse effect|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."<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20090309210103/http://www.petitionproject.org/index.php Oregon Petition Project homepage</ref> It is probably the best known and most frequently quoted petition used by those who wish to deny there is a [[scientific consensus]] in respect of the existence of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

==Verifiability?  Eh?  What's that?==
What the "petition" does in fact have is thousands of largely unverifiable signatures on slips of paper<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20080519143249/http://www.petitionproject.org./ Oregon Petition Project homepage]</ref> which um... isn't really exactly the same thing. Hmmm, a petition of scientists of questionable repute to challenge a mainstream scientific view using a failed [[argument from authority]] — [[Expelled: Leader's Guide#More than 700 scientists have signed this statement!|that's a new one]]!

[[Image:Oregon project.jpg|500px|center|thumb|All it takes is a scribble, and ''you too'' can have a Ph.D.!]]
The barely legible sample signature on the example slip used by the project could be read to be "Edward Teller." Teller wrote the introduction to the 1987 Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine's reprint of a U.S. government civil defense manual. It would obviously be impossible to verify every signature, and it looks like an invitation for every Tom, Dick and Harry who holds an opinion to send in a form and claim to be a [[Ph.D.]] 

The ''Seattle Times'' reported that it includes names such as: "Perry S. Mason" (the fictitious [[lawyer]]), "Michael J. Fox" (the [[Hollywood|actor]]), "Robert C. Byrd" (the [[Robert Byrd|Senator]]), "John C. Grisham" (the lawyer-author), not to mention a Spice Girl, aka. Geraldine Halliwell: the petition listed "Dr. Geri Halliwell" and "Dr. Halliwell."<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20080530201947/http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19980501&slug=2748308 Jokers Add Fake Names To Warming Petition], ''Seattle Times''</ref> The petition also contains duplicate signatures, signatures of a last name only with not even a first initial, and even "signatures" attributed to corporations.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20150412172147/http://ecoearth.info/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=44234 Bashing the Scientific Consensus on Global Warming]</ref> (Although as [[Mitt Romney]] taught us, [[Corporate personhood|corporations are people]] too.) In an interview, Robinson said, "When we're getting thousands of signatures there's no way of filtering out a fake." ''[[Scientific American]]'' examined the list and came to the conclusion that a large percentage of the alleged Ph.D. signatures probably ''are'' fake.<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20060823125025/http://www.sciam.com/page.cfm?section=sidebar&articleID=0004F43C-DC1A-1C6E-84A9809EC588EF21 Skepticism About Skeptics], ''Scientific American''</ref>

Notwithstanding its rather dubious methodology, that bastion of scientific rigor, [[Fox News]], has quoted the petition in its news stories.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20080525202200/http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,357201,00.html Fox story] quoting said petition.</ref>

==Specialist in everything==
However, even if one were to assume that every single signature the petition has gathered ''was'' genuine, the petition fails in three other regards:
*The validity of science is determined by the veracity of the [[evidence]], not the number of people who think a scientific proposition is true. Thus the petition is little more than an example of [[Argumentum ad populum|argument from popularity]].
*Even if scientific truth could be derived from the people who accept it, the number of signatures is only a small fraction of all scientists.
*Even by the admission and records of the petition itself, only a tiny fraction of the people who signed the petition hold a degree in any field relevant or related to climatology, with the plurality of signatures coming from [[Engineers and woo|engineers]],<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20090309022411/http://www.petitionproject.org/qualifications_of_signers.php "Qualifications of Signers"]</ref> who are not scientists. Meanwhile, only 39 signers are climatologists. The petition might as well be from the general public.

==See also==
*[[Frederick Seitz]]
*[[S. Fred Singer]]
*[[Soon and Baliunas controversy|Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas]]
*[[Project Steve]] for a "list of experts" done the right way.

==External links==
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20070523093126/http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=s04201998 National Academy of Science statement on the Oregon Petition]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20080706180341/http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/GlobWarm0.HTM A Global Warming Counterfeit], University of Wisconsin
*[http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-11-12/ Misleading by Petition] ''Skeptic'' magazine
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20100625114540/http://climatecrocks.com/2010/01/09/32000-scientists/ Climate Denial Crock of the Week on the Oregon Petition]

==References==
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Denialism]]
[[Category:Global warming]]

Categories: Denialism, Global warming