Once upon a time (in 2007), deniers could get as many as 30,000 signatures on their silly climate denial petitions—although that number includes fake names, including people's pets, the Spice Girls and the deceased.
Now, a month after the issue was more or less resolved, there's a new letter making the rounds in support of witch-hunter Lamar Smith (R-TX), and it’s only received 300 signatures. Of course, the low number won't stop people like Andrew Follett from “covering” the “story” in such a way as to imply there is a significant body of support for climate denial among academics. In his so-called reporting of the story, Follett—who is apparently in competition with Michael Bastach for the title of "Most Prolific Daily Caller Churnalist"—has basically pasted together a WUWT post with quotes from the letter. Follett’s only original contribution seems to be counting up the number of signers with doctorates and relaying the signers' fields of study.
Glancing at the names, one finds many of the usual suspects. Scanning through, it seems at least one person on every page is affiliated with a Koch- or industry-funded group. Some of the credentials are even a bit amusing. William Briggs, for example, is listed as a “statistician with specialty in evaluating the goodness and usefulness of models.” That's right; he apparently evaluates "goodness." On the list you'll also find Willie Soon listed as just a "scientist." We can only guess this means he is no longer trading on his Harvard-Smithsonian reputation since the pay-to-play scandal.
On the other side of the issue, last year when it was still relevant, a series of letters came out in support of NOAA and against Lamar’s quixotic quest, including a letter signed by 587 scientists, a letter from two dozen former NOAA scientists, another from the American Meteorological Society, and finally one from a coalition of literally every major professional scientific society: AAAS, ACS, AGU, AMS, ASA, ESA, GSA, and SCB. The American Association for the Advancement of Science represents over 120,000 members, the American Chemical Society over 150,000, and the American Geophysical Union over 62,000—so just including the top three groups, it looks like the deniers are outnumbered by 300,000 to 300. Or 1,000 to one.
With that kind of ratio, it doesn’t exactly take William Briggs to evaluate the letter's “goodness."
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