Slide 18: 
Petition of 31,000 independent US scientists
For good
reasons, petitions have never been a reliable way to establish scientific
facts.
According
to the Petition
Project website, while the 31,000 signatories all claim to have science
degrees, only 39 (0.1%) have climatology degrees and a further 112 are qualified
in atmospheric science. The largest group of 9,834 are engineers. There is no
way of knowing how many of these claimed scientists actually work in their
fields of qualification, or are indeed “independent” in
McLean’s terms (i.e. not associated with government). Presumably few if
any have contributed to the IPCC!
A survey of 3146 earth scientists which asked the question
"Do you
think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean
global
temperatures?"
(Doran 2009). More than 90% of participants had Ph.D.s, and 7%
had master’s degrees. Overall, 82% of the scientists answered yes.
However, what is most interesting is responses compared to the level of
expertise in climate science. Of scientists who were non-climatologists and
didn't publish research, 77% answered yes. In contrast, 97.5% of climatologists
who actively publish research on climate change responded yes. As the level of
active research and specialization in climate science increases, so does
agreement that humans are significantly changing global
temperatures.
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