Another Red Herring Survey

This week Marc Morano (you know–the guy who gives out the e-mail addresses of mainstream climate scientists so his hordes of slack-jawed minions can send them hate mail) released a SPECIAL REPORT for the benefit of the delegates at the climate conference in Cancun.  Yes, “More Than 1000 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims”!!!

My first reaction to this bombshell was that 1000 scientists is kind of a yawner, since the organizers of the Oregon Petition got over 34,000 “scientists” to sign their statement.  Of course, it turned out that less than 1% of those signers had a PhD in anything related to climatology, and they allowed anyone to sign who claimed to have a bachelor’s degree in ANY science or engineering field, including veterinarians, entomologists (people who study insects), metallurgists, and electrical engineers.  Since about 40% of the signers only had bachelor’s degrees, it was probably more likely that a given signer was a urine sample lab tech than a working climate scientist.

But this SPECIAL REPORT claims to include “many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN IPCC”.  Really?  I decided to comb through the highlights page to see how impressive their stable of contrarians was.  Here are the first few of the people mentioned.

1. Tom Tripp. Yes, Tom Tripp, the very first dissenter listed in the highlights, was a “lead author” for part of the last IPCC report!  Impressive, right?  Well, I dunno, which part did he work on?  As I reported way back in March, he worked on the section about greenhouse gas emissions from magnesium production operations.  Since Tripp is a metallurgist working for U.S. Magnesium, he is presumably well qualified to comment on the chemistry of magnesium production.  Unfortunately, it also means that he is likely to be quite unqualified to make comments about the state of climate science.

2. Leonard Weinstein. It turns out that Weinstein is a retired NASA aerospace engineer.  Which means his specialty was designing aircraft/spacecraft.  Two people and I’m already sensing a pattern, here…

3. Robert Laughlin. Although he won a Nobel Prize in physics, Laughlin is a particle physicist, not an atmospheric physicist.  Oh well, Nobel winners have a tradition of publicly commenting on whatever they feel like, and why not?  Smart people know everything about everything, don’t they?

4. Christopher Kobus. Here’s how the Climate Depot page lists him:  “Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Oakland University, specializes in alternative energy, thermal transport phenomena, two-phase flow and fluid and thermal energy systems.”  Yep.  A mechanical engineer.  It sounds like his background would give him a leg up on others who want to get up to speed on atmospheric physics, but where’s the evidence that he has done so?  A quick check of the ISI Web of Science database, which indexes all the major peer-reviewed scientific literature, revealed a number of articles on engineering topics, but none on climate.

5. Anatoly Levitin. Again, here’s how the Climate Depot page lists this guy:  “the head of geomagnetic variations laboratory at the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radiowave Propagation of the Russian Academy of Sciences.”  Well, at least the Ionosphere is part of the atmosphere.  So, at last!!!!  Five people into the list, and we have an actual atmospheric scientist of some sort!!!  A quick check of the Web of Science shows that he has published a number of articles about the interaction of solar radiation with the Earth’s magnetic field, and the like.

6. Geraldo Luís Lino. Lino is a Brazilian geologist who wrote a book called The Global Warming Fraud.  Some geologists study past climates, so I wondered what Lino’s research specialty is, and looked him up on the Web of Science.  Guess what?  Lino didn’t show up.  In other words, he has never published anything, about any scientific topic, unless it was in some obscure Portuguese journal, or something.  As far as I can tell, Lino doesn’t have a PhD, either.

7. Mary Mumper. Dr. Mumper is apparently the Chemistry Department chair at Frostburg State University in Maryland.  Her faculty web page doesn’t list any research specialties, so I assume her job is limited to teaching.  But if she has a PhD, surely she has published something, hasn’t she?  Yep.  the Web of Science says she published 3 articles and one abstract in the period from 1993-1998… about biochemistry.   So she isn’t an active researcher, and her training was not in anything to do with climate science.

8. William C. Gilbert. The Climate Depot page says:  “Research Chemist William C. Gilbert published a study in August 2010 in the journal Energy & Environment titled ‘The thermodynamic relationship between surface temperature and water vapor concentration in the troposphere’ and he published a paper in August 2009 titled ‘Atmospheric Temperature Distribution in a Gravitational Field.’  Energy and Environment is a joke of a journal that will seemingly publish anything by anyone, as long as it’s skeptical of mainstream climate science.  The second article seems to just be something Gilbert posted on the Internet.  What is Gilbert’s real research specialty?  Well, I’m not sure.  There is a person named WC Gilbert listed in the Web of Science who has co-authored a few studies of anesthesiology.  Another winner.

9. Hans Jelbring. Climate Depot introduces him as: “Swedish Climatologist Dr. Hans Jelbring, of the Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics Unit at Stockholm University.”  An actual climatologist?  Wow!  Let’s look in the Web of Science and see what he’s published about climatology.  Wait… he doesn’t have ANY peer-reviewed articles about ANYTHING listed in the Web of Science?  What a surprise.

Ok, I’m quitting now, since this is getting a bit boring.  I checked the first nine people on Marc Morano’s list, and found exactly two of them with training in something to do with climate, and one of those doesn’t appear to have published anything in the major peer-reviewed literature.  I’m sure there are more active climate scientists in the list, somewhere, (I could name a few off the top of my head,) but I get the impression that their number is FAR less than 1000.  Apparently, Morano’s list is just another cheap red herring to distract attention from the fact that there is a strong consensus AMONG ACTIVE CLIMATE SCIENTISTS.  Not engineers.  Not mechanics.  Not dog catchers.

I would say that Morano should go back to cyber-bullying (he’s better at it,) but I guess I shouldn’t be encouraging that, either.