Well, it's not a web form. Over half of their respondents have been required to mail in their signature (their early signers didn't have to, I presume they could e-mail). 31,000 "scientists" have signed it! 9,000 even have PhD's! Okay, so I'm not obsessed with academic degrees, but if you don't have a PhD then what kind of scientist are you signing this? A student? Well, that's fine. Often students have some great ideas.
Well, really the breakdown looks like most of these folks aren't scientists by any normal definition. They're working folks in industry. They're not signing because of that, but they're not publishing papers either.
Still, 9,000 PhD's is quite a few. Certainly many of them are what you'd call "scientists."
If only they were terribly serious about what they signed. Scientific American, 2006:
Scientific American took a random sample of 30 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science. Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, 11 said they still agreed with the petition—one was an active climate researcher, two others had relevant expertise, and eight signed based on an informal evaluation. Six said they would not sign the petition today, three did not remember any such petition, one had died, and five did not answer repeated messages. Crudely extrapolating, the petition supporters include a core of about 200 climate researchers -- a respectable number, though rather a small fraction of the climatological community.
What I find interesting is that they've gotten 7,600 PhD's to sign this in two years? Hmm, I doubt that. If only there were an example of fraud. 2005, Hawaii Reporter:
In less than 10 minutes of casual scanning, I found duplicate names (Did two Joe R. Eaglemans and two David Tompkins sign the petition, or were some individuals counted twice?), single names without even an initial (Biolchini), corporate names (Graybeal & Sayre, Inc. How does a business sign a petition?), and an apparently phony single name (Redwine, Ph.D.).Now, if you want to find out how the scientific community feels about global warming then ask its database: Published scholarly works which have been peer reviewed.
Peter Norvig's summary is my favorite due to his writing style. The important part of it is his references to the two scholarly meta studies on the subject. Norvig's is a casual and small sample size replication of theirs. Norvig is no climatoligist, so his study should be taken with a grain of salt. Oreskes and Peiser are the papers to consider.
I've listened to scientists who disagree with global warming, or at least some part of it. Some have some great points (Al Gore blew things out of proportion by showing the projected worst case scenarios). Their disagreement is hardly stunning and usually laced with implicit agreement that we are causing some change. Search you-tube for these. They're interesting.
Global warming isn't religion and it's not a you verse me political issue. It's a problem of debatable scale with debatable methods for battling it, and the debate isn't for you and I: Most of us think we can't fix our computer or car, we're far too inept to discuss something truly complex.
What is for you and me is a debate of what you and I should be doing and shouldn't be doing.
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