From an article in The Hill in which Russ Feingold criticizes his GOP opponent Ron Johnson for claiming sunspots are causing global warming (sadly for Ron, his sunspot “theory” simply is not true)comes this comment from “Sally” who lives in an alternate reality:
Why are there never any mentions of the 30,000 scientists who are suing the government over the false claims of global warming ? Never had a debate…because the greenies know they will lose. Big bad joke.
Are there 30,000 scientists suing the Government or Al Gore or anyone else for that matter over global warming. Not exactly:
This is a myth that has been going round for a couple of years now. It originated from a video made by John Coleman in which Coleman said he was going to take Al Gore to court over his malicious global warming claims. In the same video Coleman made reference to 30,000 scientists who had signed a petition against global warming. There was never any mention of the scientists suing Gore.
Coleman has yet to initiate his action against Gore and the ’30,000 scientists’ claim is another myth. This relates to a document known as the Oregon Petition. It originated in 1998 from Professor Frederick Seitz and circulated under the guise of having come from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).,p>
Seitz sent out a mailing card together with a covering letter and invited people who had a degree qualification to sign and return the card. The petition was for the US Government not to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol, there was no mention of either global warming or of climate change.
Thinking the petition had come from the NAS a number of cards were signed and returned. Upon collecting the signatures the wording of the petition was changed.
Because signatures were collected by means of a mailshot there was no verification process in place and as a consequence the signatories included Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, John Lennon, Elvis Presley and various incarnations of the Spice Girls.
A few years ago some 13,000 names were removed from the petition. Of the remaining 18,000 names there are many from people who have no scientific credentials. Recently it appears that many of these names were mysteriously reinstated. I have consulted the petition on several occasions and to date have found only one person who is a climate scientist and that is Russell Qualls, it appears his name is a fraudulent addition as he believes in manmade global warming.
Whilst the Oregon Petition is blatantly fraudulent there is a less fraudulent petition that scientists can sign ‘against’ global warming. This is known as the Leipzig Declaration, it has been available since 1995 and attracts about one signature a month from the 60 million who are eligible to sign it.
However, an investigation by a Danish journalist found that many of the names on the declaration were invalid and the true number of genuine signatories appears to be in the order of 30 to 50 people.
Current Oregon Petition website
http://www.oism.org/pproject/Current covering letter from Prof Seitz
http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p41.htm[…]
Sourcewatch page about the petition
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oregon_Institute_of_Science_and_MedicineWikipedia page about the petition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition
This is what your right wing neighbors, friends and family who pass around conservative emails believe though, truth be damned. Needless to say if Gore or the government had been sued by any scientists we’d have heard about it in a Drudge millisecond. But even pond scum like Drudge won’t touch crap like this. Yet the true believers persist …
