The "Consensus" is Dead

Prior to the Kyoto extravaganza in December 1997, Access to Energy published its November 1997 issue summarizing the information on "global warming'' that we have discussed over the past few years. Little did we then realize that this summary would turn into a five-month activist odyssey into the world of Algore and his retainers.

Step one on this slippery slope occurred when a prominent man who reads Access to Energy recommended the November issue to an editor of The Wall Street Journal. The editor asked that we compress the issue to two figures and 1200 words. He accepted the resulting draft, assigned another editor to work with us on a final text, and published that text as the primary editorial the Journal printed against the global warming myth during the Kyoto meeting.

This editorial was well-received, caused a little trouble for the en-viros, and was, of course, yesterday's news within a few days. We were very happy to have had this unusual opportunity.

Then, however, the enviros made an error. They launched a remarkably strong attack on us for the contents of our editorial. Particularly enlightening was a Union of Concerned Scientists "physicist'' who offered radio listeners in New York the wisdom that Arthur Ro-binson is a "crackpot''; only one scientist in America agrees with him (Richard Lindzen at MIT); the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine is not qualified to comment on global warming because it has no "mainframe computers;'' and our "secret sources of funding'' undoubtedly were oil-industry related. He also lied about the experimental data, but that is just normal enviro behavior.

This caused us to reread a manual published by UCS on tactics to be employed with the media. This UCS physicist's whole diatribe was straight out of their book. It also caused us to reflect upon the plight of our colleagues who have tried to bring the truth about the global warming myth to public attention - only to be personally marginalized in similar ways. The myth of an overwhelming scientific consensus that agrees with the global warming hypothesis has been thereby widely disseminated.

For example, the Microsoft Internet home page recently carried a long article in the weather section in which the featured enviros, with Microsoft endorsement, claimed that 2,000 scientists were in agreement with "global warming'' and that there were only 20 scientists opposed. While not quite so strident, highly politicized Science magazine has also fed this myth by selective editorial policies that favor the warmers, while more popularized outlets like Scientific American have published truly blatant warmer propaganda. It is not surprising, then, that ordinary news writers parrot this nonsense.

Underlying the entire Kyoto process is the perceived, yet false notion that human-caused carbon dioxide release is warming the atmosphere and is going to lead to catastrophic weather disruptions - and that virtually all scientists agree with this. So overwhelming is this support supposed to be within the scientific community that most politicians on both sides of the issue are not even asking questions about the science. The fact is, however, that this perceived consensus does not exist. The perception of it, however, is giving the enviros all

So, we decided to take away their perceived consensus by circulating a petition among the silent majority of scientists. This undertaking was quite difficult for us. We needed to: raise enough money to make the effort credible; write a review paper that communicated the facts and literature references to potential signers in the language scientists understand; obtain appropriate mailing lists; design, print, and send the mailing; and receive, computerize, and disseminate the results - all in a short time period - with volunteers who were already occupied with other work. The truth is that we are neither large enough nor financially strong enough for this sort of undertaking.

Money for printing and postage was provided by Access to Energy readers and their friends. (We still have not had time to send individual thank you letters. These will be sent soon.) The labor was largely provided by volunteers at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine who, because of this, have been working almost non-stop 16-hour-per-day schedules since the project began. Access to Energy readers also paid another price as AtE arrived later each month as we fell behind with all of our work. (This will be the last unusual issue. Next month, our format and schedule will return to normal.)

We did absolutely everything we possibly could to mail these petitions to as great a number of scientists as possible. The exact number we mailed remains a secret because we do not want the enviros to be able to calculate our percentage return and then claim that everyone who did not sign agrees with them. We are continuing to mail to additional scientists whose research specialties are of particular political value. Moreover, more than 4,000 of the initial signers have asked for more petitions for their colleagues. We are sending these, too.

The 8-page review we produced could not be published in an ordinary scientific journal before the petition drive because of the long time required for publication (usually at least several months) and because acceptance of the manuscript would have transferred copyright to the journal and thereby prevented its use in the petition project. It has recently been submitted for publication. The enviros are now attacking it as "not peer reviewed.'' Even in the pages of Science, this weak complaint is all that they have mustered against us.

The result - during a six-week period, more than 15,000 American basic and applied scientists have signed the petition (wording reprinted below). As we write this, these initial results are being released. A complete account, including lists of the signers, is available at www.oism.org/pproject/ and at www.sitewave.net/pproject/ .

Scientists who are subscribers to Access to Energy were the first approximately 1,000 signers. They have now been joined by more than 14,000 of their colleagues throughout the United States.

By contrast, the best effort the enviros have ever made was that by the group that calls itself the "Union of Concerned Scientists,'' which gathered a reported 1,558 pro-global warming signatures of scientists in 1997. Even this is doubtful. I talked with one Nobel prize winner who signed the UCS petition. The document he signed, however, only asked that research on climate change not be discontinued.

The enviros' perceived consensus is now dead. Furthermore, our results indicate that their support is very weak among scientists.

•	*The "Consensus" is Dead*
•	SCIENCE AND ADVOCACY
•	PEER REVIEW
•	FIELD OF SPECIALIZATION
•	STARK RAVING MAD
•	GOOD READING

Vol. 25, No. 8

Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
Volume: Issues
Issue/No.: Vol. 25, No. 8

Date: April 01, 1998 03:52 PM (For actual publication date see newsletter.)
Title: The "Consensus" is Dead