[Vision2020] Frederick Seitz Global Warming Petition Rejected By National Academy of Sciences

[Ted Moffett]

Note that the response below from the National Academy of Sciences from 1998
employs language that is less emphatic than the language now emerging from
major scientific organizations world wide, regarding the seriousness of the
problem of anthropogenic climate change, as I will reveal.

Skepticism is necessary in the pursuit of science to provide a check and
balance against bias and fraud in the presentation of evidence and theory.
It appears that while those intent on disproving human impacts on global
warming that demand radical action, find conspiracy, bias and irrationality
in the arguments for this claim, they fail to consider that fraud, bias and
junk science might also infect the efforts of the skeptics of anthropogenic
climate change.  A thoroughgoing and aggressive skeptic would, I am
convinced, after surveying all the published peer reviewed work on climate
science, not be able, with absolute certainty, to deny or affirm the
position that human impacts are changing climate dramatically.  Either
position might be correct.  It's a matter of probability, which the IPCC
2007 report has assessed at 90% plus that human impacts are seriously
impacting global climate.

This is an ongoing process, and as climate science has built its knowledge
and theory base, the evidence has increased that human impacts are radically
altering climate, as this statement from 2007, signed by representatives of
major scientific organizations from around the globe, indicates.  A rather
far reaching and dark conspiracy to construct a scientific fantasy regarding
human impacts on climate would be required to explain a statement such as
this, if authentic, as a hoax:

http://www.nationalacademies.org/includes/G8Statement_Energy_07_May.pdf
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Now the rejection, by the National Academy of Sciences, of the global
warming petition organized by Frederick Seitz, a former president of the
National Academy of Sciences, who later became an embarrassment:

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=s04201998


STATEMENT BY THE COUNCIL
OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
REGARDING GLOBAL CHANGE PETITION


April 20, 1998



The Council of the National Academy of Sciences
<http://www2.nas.edu/nas/>(NAS) is concerned about the confusion
caused by a petition being circulated
via a letter from a former president of this Academy. This petition
criticizes the science underlying the Kyoto treaty on carbon dioxide
emissions (the Kyoto Protocol to the Framework Convention on Climate
Change), and it asks scientists to recommend rejection of this treaty by the
U.S. Senate. The petition was mailed with an op-ed article from The Wall
Street Journal and a manuscript in a format that is nearly identical to that
of scientific articles published in the *Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences* <http://www.pnas.org/>. The NAS Council would like to make it
clear that this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of
Sciences and that the manuscript was not published in the *Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences* or in any other peer-reviewed journal.

The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the
Academy.

In particular, the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public
Policy<http://www2.nas.edu/cosepup/>of the National Academy of
Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering
(NAE), and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) conducted a major consensus study
on this issue, entitled *Policy Implications of Greenhouse
Warming*<http://www2.nas.edu/climate-change/>(1991,1992). This
analysis concluded that " ...even given the considerable
uncertainties in our knowledge of the relevant phenomena, greenhouse warming
poses a potential threat sufficient to merit prompt responses. ...
Investment in mitigation measures acts as insurance protection against the
great uncertainties and the possibility of dramatic surprises." In addition,
the Committee on Global Change Research
<http://www2.nas.edu/bsd/21c2.html>of the National Research Council,
the operating arm of the NAS and the NAE,
will issue a major report later this spring on the research issues that can
help to reduce the scientific uncertainties associated with global change
phenomena, including climate change.
-------------------------
Given the statement above from the National Academy of Sciences does not
name Frederick Seitz, here is background information on Seitz, including
information on the public rejection of Seitz's petition by the NAS, and the
questionable scientific work on climate science associated:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/sep/19/ethicalliving.g2

The chairman of a group called the Science and Environmental Policy Project
is Frederick Seitz. Seitz is a physicist who in the 1960s was president of
the US National Academy of Sciences. In 1998, he wrote a document, known as
the Oregon Petition, which has been cited by almost every journalist who
claims that climate change is a myth.

The document reads as follows: "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 gases 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."

Anyone with a degree was entitled to sign it. It was attached to a letter
written by Seitz, entitled Research Review of Global Warming Evidence. The
lead author of the "review" that followed Seitz's letter is a Christian
fundamentalist called Arthur B Robinson. He is not a professional climate
scientist. It was co-published by Robinson's organisation - the Oregon
Institute of Science and Medicine - and an outfit called the George C
Marshall Institute, which has received $630,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
The other authors were Robinson's 22-year-old son and two employees of the
George C Marshall Institute. The chairman of the George C Marshall Institute
was Frederick Seitz.

The paper maintained that: "We are living in an increasingly lush
environment of plants and animals as a result of the carbon dioxide
increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal
life than that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and
unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution."

It was printed in the font and format of the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences: the journal of the organisation of which Seitz - as he
had just reminded his correspondents - was once president.

Soon after the petition was published, the National Academy of Sciences
released this statement: "The NAS Council would like to make it clear that
this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of Sciences and
that the manuscript was not published in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences or in any other peer-reviewed journal. The petition does
not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy."

But it was too late. Seitz, the Oregon Institute and the George C Marshall
Institute had already circulated tens of thousands of copies, and the
petition had established a major presence on the internet. Some 17,000
graduates signed it, the majority of whom had no background in climate
science. It has been repeatedly cited - by global-warming sceptics such as
David Bellamy, Melanie Phillips and others - as a petition by climate
scientists.

----------------------

For more background information and discussion of these issues, indicating
that Arthur B. Robinson, of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine,
who was associated with Seitz (now deceased), as the article above
discusses, is still promoting his anthropogenic climate change skeptic
effort, widely debunked in the climate science community, the following
discussion at Realclimate is frosty (no pun intended), with skeptics
offering their commentary, among the 138 reader responses:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/10/oregon-institute-of-science-and-malarkey

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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