Do Inhofe's 400 skeptical scientists indicate that global warming skepticism is decreasing?

Question

After all, in 2001 they claimed they had 19,000 skeptical scientists who had signed the Oregon Petition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_petition

Now even scouring the ranks of chemists, mathematicians, engineers, and retired architects, Inhofe can only find 400 skeptics.

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport#report

Does this mean that the skeptics have lost 98% of their numbers in just a few years?

Answer 1

Sadly H. agwskepticis is nearing extinction being unable to compete with H. sapiens in the scientific environment with data or viable theories. Clearly the time has come to talk about habitat preservation and measures to protect the beady eyed H. agwskepticis from poachers. How about setting aside YA, one of the last places H. agwskepticis is observed in the wild state as a national preserve?

Answer 2

I am often confused as to how people feel "400" is a significant number.

I work in a building with more scientists than that.

Utter madness.

At least though the number of skeptical scientists is decreasing.

If only it were true that the skeptics in the entire population were decreasing, but every day there seem to be more people telling me " Oh didn't you hear ? it turns out its all the Sun, nothing we can do, stop all this recycling et al, just get on with life"

Answer 3

What a ridiculous question. The Oregon Petition was not well-vetted and included people with Bachelor's degrees. I do not know all of the names on Inhofe's list but many of them I do know. Many of them are published scientists in related fields, including climatologists, paleoclimatologists, geologists, oceanographers and meteorologists. All of these people study climate in their fields.

Inhofe quotes the Washington Post that noted the number of skeptical scientists is growing. This is due to a great deal of peer-reviewed papers contrary to catastrophic AGW that were published in 2007. The most important of these papers appears to be by Schwartz and can be found here:

http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf

Answer 4

Even a brief glance at the actual "report" reveals clearly that the a large percentage of the contributors are speaking off the cuff, making reckless comments far outside their field of expertise. Read through it for yourself, and note that the ones with enough detail to see that they're unqualified are among the very few that they had any information from at all:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport#report.

The Oregon Petition claimed to have 19,000 scientists who did not believe in anthropogenic global warming. This new list of "400" includes a worthless dump of names that simply could have been harvested from that list. What happened to the other 18,600? (I almost signed the oregon Petition myself until I spent 5 minutes looking into the facts.) When you lift the covers, both lists mean nothing.

Anyone who is even mildly skeptical about the oil industry's "skeptical" propaganda isn't going to be fooled by the "400 skeptical scientists" report published by the Republicans on the EPW committee. The deceptive nature of the language of the "report" is an embarrassing low point for all Republicans, and crap like this has led me to rethink having anything whatsoever to do with the Republican Party in the future.

More relevant to the discussion of so-called "skeptics":

Several skeptical scientists—Fred Singer, Fred Seitz and Patrick Michaels—have been linked to organizations funded by ExxonMobil and Philip Morris for the purpose of promoting global warming skepticism (see section: Risks of passive smoking). Similarly, groups employing global warming skeptics, such as the George C. Marshall Institute, have been criticized for their ties to fossil fuel companies.

On February 2, 2007, The Guardian statedthat Kenneth Green, a Visiting Scholar with AEI, had sent letters to scientists in the UK and the U.S., offering US$10,000 plus travel expenses and other incidental payments in return for essays with the purpose of "highlight[ing] the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC process," specifically regarding the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.

A furor was raised when it was revealed that the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (an energy cooperative that draws a significant portion of its electricity from coal-burning plants) donated $100,000 to Patrick Michaels and his group, New Hope Environmental Services, and solicited additional private donations from its members.

The Union of Concerned Scientists have produced a report titled 'Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air', that criticizes ExxonMobil for "[underwriting] the most sophisticated and most successful disinformation campaign since the tobacco industry" and for "[funnelling] about $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of ideological and advocacy organizations that manufacture uncertainty on the issue." In 2006 Exxon claimed that it was no longer going to fund these groups though that claim has been challenged by Greenpeace.

The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, a skeptic group, when confronted about the funding of a video they put together ($250,000 for "The Greening of Planet Earth" from an oil company) stated, "We applaud Western Fuels for their willingness to publicize a side of the story that we believe to be far more correct than what at one time was 'generally accepted.' But does this mean that they fund The Center? Maybe it means that we fund them!"

Donald Kennedy, editor-in-chief of Science, has said that skeptics such as Michaels are lobbyists more than researchers, and that "I don't think it's unethical any more than most lobbying is unethical," he said. He said donations to skeptics amounts to "trying to get a political message across."

Answer 5

Senator Inhofe is a ranking member of Congress. I can't believe he'd release a list like this on a federal government website. Our tax dollars pay for this website, but he decides to put an obvious partisan press release on it?

This should be on a website that Inhofe pays for, not the American taxpayers!

Answer 6

I think he is saying he found 400 more to add to the growing pile of “deniers”. Maybe the global warming alarmist or "socialist in disguise" are afraid to debate the issue, so they resort to lame tactics like you are employing.

Answer 7

We don't see eye to eye on this issue,but have a very Merry Christmas to you and your family,my friend,..