Sunday, February 22, 2009

Scientists And Skeptics: We Got Lists

From Birdbrainscan--whose blog can be found here-- in the comments to an earlier post

I've been working on the Inhofe list in connection with my list of climate scientists which I sort by frequency of citation of their published works.

I add a link to an author's academic homepage, photo, and I've annotated who was on IPCC AR4 WG1, and which people signed any of a dozen public declarations either for or against prompt action to cut GHGs, such as the Leipzig Declaration, Bali Climate Declaration, Manhattan Declaration, etc.

The Inhofe list is cumbersome to work with, but I've found it largely recycles lists of signatories of the larger 'skeptics' declarations like the Manhattan.

Tracing a new unknown skeptic can be a headache; finding any real academic is a cinch, as their university homepage generally comes up tops in Google, or very close. By contrast, Joe Schmoe, climate denier, can be anybody and may or may not work at any university or have any published work. I use google scholar to trace published works (they even include Energy & Environment, so the *published* skeptics even turn up!) But for a common name, there are often several other scholars with the same initial(s) and last name, doing real published work on lots of other things. It takes time to establish if Dr (Mr?) Schmoe has ever done anything in print.

There is also good work going on to trace the skeptic at DeSmog Blog as you may know.

The most extensive project of its kind that I have seen, some of BBS' most interesting observations include:

- none of the 619 contributing authors to AR4 wg1 have signed any of the five public declarations of 'skepticism;'

[...]

- of the top 500 most cited authors in the larger list, just 18 (3.6%) have signed any climate skeptic declaration, while 179 (36%) -- nearly ten times as many -- have signed an 'activist' statement (aside from the IPCC reports themselves.)

BBs also lists the Canadian players. Terrific stuff.

1 comment:

Dante said...

Even the crickets who are sounding after this post sound bored.

I wonder how long it will take for die hards like yourself to become too embarrassed to post on this issue.