May 20, 2008

Onward Rode the 32,000!

I'm sure you won't see many mainstream media sources covering this:

Using a subset of the mailing list of American Men and Women of Science, a who’s who of Science, Robinson mailed out his solicitations through the postal service, requesting signed petitions of those who agreed that Kyoto was a danger to humanity. The response rate was extraordinary, “much, much higher than anyone expected, much higher than you’d ordinarily expect,” he explained. He’s processed more than 31,000 at this point, more than 9,000 of them with PhDs, and has another 1,000 or so to go...


I think what's important here is not so much who believes what, but that the "consensus of opinion" that we hear so much about doesn't really exist.

For my money, I'm not sure that the scientific world should ever feel comfortable saying "the debate is over." They certainly shouldn't feel comfortable saying it about man-made global warming. It just seems antithetical to the scientific process.

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