GREENHOAX: WHERE DO SCIENTISTS STAND?

Showing off media monkeys like Stephen Snyder of the National Center of Atmospheric Research, the mass media make you think that global warming is accepted by the entire scientific community, and that only illiterate mavericks could possibly contradict it.

That is not what a Gallup poll found. Sampling climatologists, meteorologists and geophysicists, it found that less than 19% believe that warming of the atmosphere is induced by humans;

90% regard global warming as an emerging rather than a mature science, and 70% rate media performance fair to poor.

More important, on 2/27/92 the Science and Environmental Project (1015 18^th St. NW/#300, Wash., DC 20003) released a strongly worded statement by renowned atmospheric scientists, which I have here slightly condensed:

"As independent scientists, researching atmospheric and climate problems, we are concerned by the agenda for UNCED, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Develop-ment, being developed by environmental activist groups and cer-tain political leaders. This so-called Earth Summit is scheduled to convene in Brazil in June 1992 and aims to impose a system of global environmental regulations, including onerous taxes on ener-gy fuels, on the population of the United States and other in-dustrialized nations.

"Such policy initiatives derive from highly uncertain scientific theories. They are based on the unsupported assumption that catastrophic global warming follows from the burning of fossil fuels and requires immediate action. We do not agree.

"The majority of scientific participants in a survey (summer 1991) agreed that the theoretical climate models used to predict a future warming cannot be relied upon and are not validated by the existing climate record. Yet all predictions are based on such theoretical models.

"Agriculturalists generally agree that any increase in carbon dioxide levels from fossil fuel burning has beneficial effects on most crops and on world food supply.

"We are disturbed that activists, anxious to stop energy and economic growth, are pushing ahead with drastic policies without taking notice of recent changes in the underlying science. We fear that the rush to impose global regulations will have catastrophic impacts on the world economy, on jobs, standards of living, and health care, with the most severe consequences falling upon developing countries and the poor."

You will not get a list of the signatories from the media, who imply that only uneducated cranks reject the greenhoax. So here is a listing of the signatories, which you will be hard pressed to get elsewhere:

David G. Aubrey, Ph.D., senior scientist, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute;

Nathaniel B. Guttman, Ph.D., Research Physical scientist, National Climatic Data Center; Hugh W. Ellsaesser, Ph.D., Meteorologist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Richard Lindzen, Ph.D., Center for Meteorology and Physical Meteorology, M.IT.; Robert C. Balling, Ph.D., Director, Laboratory of Climatol-ogy, Arizona State University; Patrick Michaels, Ph.D., Assoc. Professor of En-vironmental Sciences, University of Virginia; Roger Pielke, Ph.D., Professor of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, Michael Garstang, Ph.D., Profes-sor of Meteorology, University of Virginia; Sherwood B. Idso, Ph.D., Research Physicist, U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory; Lev S. Gandin, Ph.D., Visiting Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research; John A. McGinley, Chief, Forecast Research Group, Forecast Systems Laboratory, NOAA; H. Jean Thiebaux, Ph.D., Research Scientist, National Meteorological Center, National Weather Service, NOAA; Kenneth V. Beard, Ph.D, Professor of Atmospheric Physics, University of Illinois; Paul W. Mielke, Jr., Ph.D., Professor, Dept. of Statis-tics, Colorado State University, Thomas Lockhart, Meteorologist, Meteorological Standards Institute; Peter F. Giddings, Meteorologist, Weather Service Director;

Hazen A. Bedke, Meteorologist, Former Regional Director, National Weather Service; Gabriel T. Csanady, Ph.D., Eminent Professor, Old Dominion University;

Roy Leep, Executive Weather Director, Gillett Weather Data Services; Terrance J. Clark. Meteorologist, U.S. Air Force; Neil L. Frank, Ph.D., Meteorologist; Bruce A. Boe, Ph.D., Director, North Dakota Atmospheric Resource Board; Andrew Detwiler, Ph.D., Assoc. Professor, Institute of Atmospheric Sciences, South Dakota, School of Mines and Technology; Robert M. Cunningham, Consulting Meteorologist, Fellow, American Meteorological Society; Steven R. Hanna, Ph.D., Sigma Research Corporation; Elliot Abrams, Meteorologist, Senior Vice Presi-dent, AccuWeather, Inc.; William E. Reifsnyder, Ph.D., Consulting Meteorologist, Professor Emeritus, Forest Meteorology, Yale University; David W. Reynolds, Re-search Meteorologist; Jerry A. Williams, Meteorologist, President, Oceanroutes, Inc.; Lee W. Eddington, Meteorologist, Geophysics Division, Pacific Missile Test Center; Werner A. Baum, Ph.D., former Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, Florida State University; David P. Rogers, Ph.D., Assoc. Professor of Research Oceanog-raphy, Scripps Institution of Oceanography; Brian Fredler, Ph.D., Asst. Professor of Meteorology, School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma; Melvin Shapiro, Wave Propagation Laboratory, NOAA; Joseph Zabransky, Jr., Associate Profes-sor of Meteorology, Plymouth State College; James A. Moore, Project Manager Research Applications Program, National Center for Atmospheric Research;

Daniel J. McNaughton, ENSR Consulting and Engineering; Brian Sussman Meteorologist; Robert D. Elliott, Meteorologist, Fellow, American Meteorological Society; Robert E. Zabrecky, Chief Meteorologist; William M. Porch Ph.D., At-mospheric Physicist, Los Alamos National Laboratory; Earle R. Williams, Ph.D, Associate Professor of Meteorology, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, M.I.T.; Fred Singer, Ph.D., Atmospheric Physicist, University of Virginia, Director, Science & Environmental Policy Project.