Discussion > Is this science?
@PC Are the 11,000 practising scientists ?
Some were, some weren't ... that correct ?
So media that used the words "11,000 scientists" or "11,000 researchers" were wrong
Has anyone stepped forward to say they were refused from the list ?
Was the item News or was it PR ?
A truthful headline is "some bloke wrote an OPINION piece and 11,000 liked it"
The BBC piece came out on Tuesday 3:46pm ..by 10pm someone was already pointing at bogus names on the list
Don't you think that BBC should apologise and add a correction ?
stewgreen
Aahh, science by consensus; don’cha just love it!
Curious, how no-one seems to be able to point to an actual “climate emergency”…. Probably mainly because climate, itself, is such an amorphous concept, there is no definitive event which can be classed as an “emergency” or even a “crisis”.
Also, to relabel it as “anthropogenic climate change”, rather than the old favourite, “anthropogenic global warming” covers the next base that is developing – cooling. Should the world start to cool, as it does appear to be doing, then, of course, they will triumphantly declare that this is the real “emergency” that they were talking about, and it really, really, really is the fault of humans and their nasty carbon dioxide.
Radical Rodent
AK
re browbeating signers = absolutely.
- I didn't mention Avaaz up thread lightly - they seem to have a root and branch structure fed by the likes of change.org
I found that even signing up to a profile (just to look at who's signed or is the "organiser" rather than "vote") on change.org guaranteed regular showers of sly "sign this or you're a bad person" emails which take around 18 months to subside.
I wonder how the signers of this effort from a provincial .edu in Portland went global. I very much doubt that the native traffic to Oregon State reflects the geographically diverse (but no Mongolia) demographics of the proffered list....
tomo
<¡>Don't you think that BBC should apologise and add a correction ?
Possibly. Probably not. The BBC said 'around' 11,000. The actual number was 11,258. It now emerges some names should never have been on the list, but the 'around 11,000' probably remains accurate enough for a headline.
Nov 8, 2019
Phil Clarke
Perhaps the BBC might indulge one of their persistent habits when it comes to amplifying the impact of a piece and add a gratuitous soundtrack - The Mongolian Pioneer Anthem maybe?
I wonder at the local outfit apparently sponsoring the petition?
Worthy makes a change from woke
tomo
Yet another "discussion" devolving into another spat between Phil Clarke (whoever they may be) and the BH all comers. Not adding much to the sum of human knowledge.
Nov 8, 2019 at 8:42 AM | AK
As Phil Clarke still believes in Mann's Hockey Stick, that erased the MWP and LIA, to flatten out the Earth's Temperature record to fit the faked up theory, it is easier to assume that 97% of his contributions are from equally untrustworthy sources.
golf charlie
PC when you watched Ezra's video and he talked about "thousand of the signers seem to be students"
what did you think ?
stewgreen
PC you forgot to answer my question.
I also ask
Don't you think that you are being *played* by PR trickery ?
stewgreen
Stewgreen,
I downloaded the list of signatories, and counted the number of times the word 'student' occurs. It is less than one thousand. That tells me all I need to know about Ezra's credibility.
And a PhD student or a Masters by Research student has every right to describe the self as doing science, in my view.
Phil Clarke
"counted the number of times the word 'student' occurs"
#1 ..How many was it ?
#2 Are you sure that having the word student next to their name is the only way of identifying they are a student ?
#3 "And a PhD student or a Masters by Research student has every right to describe the self as doing science, in my view."
.. what even if they are in a non-science subject like theology or history or woman's sytudies etc. ?
#4 If the BBC said that petition was described as being by 11,000 scientists and all those "scientists" were actually all psychologists
would you count the description as good ?
==========
Look at the first page , obvious duplicates and a zoo keeper
https://twitter.com/cdjstrydom/status/1192393310926712832/photo/1
stewgreen
The list of "scientists" are at the bottom includes
Geography Lecturer
Zookeeper
Beekeeper
accountant/book keeper
Neuroscientist
Political scientist
Biomedical scientist
Animal behaviouralists
@PC You deny these counts ?
142 Medical Doctors
2 Sexologists
6 Paediatricians
21 Nutritionists
17 Civil Engineers
71 Psychologists
31 Animal behavior
83 Vets
102 Medicine
1 Porfesor (sic)
40 Profesors (sic)
8 Linguistics
91 Neuroscience
9 Orthopedic surgeons
4 Gynecologists
18 Philosophy
40 Computer science
5 Urban planning
8 Architecture
stewgreen
From the screenshots
that list in no way looks likes a list of properly checked "hard scientists"
who have an expertise in topics to do with climate
I first thought 'Yeh so what, of course the "11,000 scientists" narrative story the BBC feeds us is just PR trickery
cos that is all BBCnews ever do one cutpasted PR trickery BS after another'
I wasn't going to waste my time looking into it
there is no point debunking BBC or Guardian climate "news" stories
cos they always turn out to be PR BS
However even cynical me wasn't expecting that they would do a NON science thing of using an online petition
without stripping off the names of people who were not proper hard science people connected to the field.
(Let alone that the premise is the fallacies of argument from authority, and ad popularum, in the first place)
stewgreen
Here is a pretty good take-down of the charade (if a little padded), pointing out that the article is labelled “Viewpoint”, so is not a science paper, despite Mr Clarke’s claims, and it does investigate some of the names of these “scientists”. Oooh, dear…. It doesn’t look good for “science”…
Radical Rodent
That is the same Ezra Levant Rebel Media video already mentioned here on page 1
Nov 7, 2019 at 7:26 PM | fred
Altough Fred was a bit lazy and didn't include an explanation like you did.
stewgreen
Nope, I pointed out it was an opinion piece in this thread (Nov 6, 9:15).
Semantics, Stewgreen, nobody claimed these were all climate scientists. Clearly their definition was something like 'someone with the scientific training and experience to assess the evidence and who endorses the conclusions of the report'. So yes, a neuroscientist could qualify.
Even if your counts were accurate, they amount to around 3% of the total, a not unusual error rate, and a number that doesn't actually falsify the 11,000 total.
Phil Clarke
PS ' Profesor' is Spanish for 'teacher'.
And some of the other counts don't work for me either, but life's too short.
Phil Clarke
Doh it's not the actual number that matters
It's the fact that there is no evidence of any quality control at all regarding the list.
There is no sign they ever rejected one name.
Also half of the rest of the names might be fake in some way for all we know
stewgreen
Imagine if the situation was reversed and it was we skeptics that had done did a internet petition and used it to claim that 11,000 scientists had signed our official paper
and the media gave it wide coverage and said all the people were scientists.
People like Phil would be all over it
Pointing out this
study has 500 undergraduate students
500 masters/ PHd students
another close 1,000 are retired etc.
take off he doctors and dentists and its another 650
Then when it became apparent that the BBC had done no checks but merely cutNpasted the PR material: would the alarmists be saying
"Sure the BBC has nothing to apologise for " ?
No, they'd be drama queening all over place.
============
I find the alarmists attitude is so disingenuous
Why should anyone invest, live in , have their pension in the UK, when the establishment let these people drive the agenda ?
People whose houses are flooded today, are probably suffering
cos of the way the alarmist activists pressure has caused resources to be diverted away from proper flood preparation and into climate conferences and romantic green dreaming.
stewgreen
There are no dentists on the list, Stewie, you're just making stuff up.
Phil Clarke
And 196 retired (1.7%).
Phil Clarke
There are no dentists on the list, Stewie, you're just making stuff up.
Nov 13, 2019 at 10:10 PM | Phil Clarke
If dentists lie, make stuff up, or abuse their position of trust, they can be held criminally liable, whereas Climate Scientists expect financial rewards.
golf charlie
@PC Dr Phil McCaverty
(You can't be sure that some of the 11,000 are not dentists ..all you can say is that on your word search the word dentist didn't come up
.. plenty of US dentists call themselves doctor ..so some of those on the list maybe ..hence I said "doctors and dentists")
BTW : "emeritus" also indicates retired
stewgreen
Keep digging. The number was still plucked out of your overactive imagination.
And does a scientist stop being a scientist the day they retire? I guess we should ignore everything from emeritus Professor Richard Lindzen after 2013, then?
Phil Clarke
Not to mention Judith Curry, retired from academia. Can't possibly be a scientist.
'retired' plus 'emeritus' = 425 = 3.7%.
Phil Clarke
I actually agree with much of that, an open petition doesn't tell you much useful, there was a similar document a few months back with 20k signatures, didn't change much.
We already know the concensus amongst scientists with relevant expertise and in the academic literature overwhelmingly backs what I'm going to lazily label the IPCC position,rising to 100% if you consider professional associations. Head-counting doesn't add much to that fact, any more than the risible Oregon Petition detracts.
They've closed the petition now, if they were to reopen it, and do proper QA, I suspect a final number greater than 11k would result. Why a Namibian tour operator but no Hansen, no Mann?