The keyword in the Oregon Petition (way to go Mike) is not the 97% consensus, they keyword or rather keywords are right at the beginning of the second paragraph:
"There is no convincing scientific evidence..."
Just what does that mean, 'no convincing scientific evidence'? Convincing to whom? If he means the 31,000 signatories of his little petition, the great majority of whom are NOT climate scientists nor from any related scientific field, then surely that says more about the expertise on climate science of those who signed it than it does about the science itself.
The current existing consensus is based on the comprehensive climate scientific research and papers available and build up over the past 100 years. As such, it is mainly active climate scientists who will have the best knowledge about it in the same way that the global community of active neurosurgeons will be more knowledgeable about how to treat particular brain injuries than a bunch of electrical engineers, vets and general medicine doctors.
Yet it is the latter category of 'scientists' who make up the bulk of the Oregon Project's signatories, misleading the general public (and the easy to fool fake skeptics) into believing that their opinions are as valid as those of active climate scientists. They are not and for good reason. Its expertise which counts, not just a title, and the expertise mostly lies with active climate scientists, not with electrical engineers, IT technicians or veterinarians or other non climate science related fields which makes up the bulk of the Oregon Petition's 31,000 signatories.
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Not the statement itself but the way the Oregon Petition has been (and still is) treated by mostly hard-core denier sites (the ones where you usually score your 'question' material.) Again and again it pops up whenever the 'consensus' is being discussed, as if the opinion of 31,000 mostly non-climate science related persons is equally important as the one held by the global climate science community as a whole.
Consensus is an integral part of the scientific method. And no... there is no firm consensus on this matter no matter how many times the media squaks that there is. However, I have yet to hear a single, credible argument advanced that less pollution is a bad idea. The only definitive conclusion logically allowed would be ... no conclusion. I could give you good arguments both for and against. Sextus Empiricus (where the word "empirical" comes from) said if you can conclude 2 mutually exclusive things from the same data... the only thing you can say with certainty is that you don't know. In my opinion... we should err on the side of caution.
I find it amusing that there are several people who tout the National Academy of Science as a source that shows AGW is definitely happening and is cause for alarm. Richard Lindzen is a member of NAS and I'm sure he doesn't agree with this assessment. Summary Reports from NAS do not conclude this either. It would be nice to see these conclusions by the National Academy of Science.
"Al Gore likes to say that mankind puts 70 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every day. What he probably doesn't know is that mother nature puts 24,000 times that amount of our main greenhouse gas -- water vapor -- into the atmosphere every day, and removes about the same amount every day. While this does not 'prove' that global warming is not manmade, it shows that weather systems have by far the greatest control over the Earth's greenhouse effect, which is dominated by water vapor and clouds."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat...
The 97% is that # who know CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It is "not" the # who know that humans are causing the planet catastrophic harm.
The "Oregon Petition" is one of the dumber anti-science denialist crocs.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/OISM-Pet...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Peti...
I thought you were smarter than having to resort to trotting that parlor trickery out, or is your Inner Billy getting stronger? http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...
Or did you have problems in school not just with science but also math?
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/c...
It may be advanced arithmetic for you, but try dividing 32,000 by 10.6 million
Some try to bring up the Oregon Petition Project as an example of "going against the consensus". There have been extreme efforts to discredit it. Here is the exact wording of what was signed:
"We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition
What 97% "consensus" is that statement opposing?
