I looked at the first 3900 or so signatories, and about 4% are either MD’s or doctors of veterinary medicine. There’s not a lot of climate involved in either field.
I came across this list earlier and, just for giggles, looked at the first PhD for each letter of the alphabet:
Earl Aagaard - Biologist with Southern Adventist University
Dirk Den Baars - Unknown. All I could find was that he was a Japanese POW in WWII.
Fernando Cadena - Civil Engineer with New Mexico State U.
Hugo da Silva - Unknown. I think a mechanical engineer
Joseph Jackson Eachus - Unknown although in 1977 he was on a patent for a data entry touch device
Michael William Fabian - Unknown although in 1960 he wrote an article on fish mortality due to crustaceans
Steven Alexander Gaal - Mathmatics professor at North Dakota U.
Gottfried Haacke - Unknown although in 1972 he was involved in a patent for LCD watch faces
Michael John Iatropoulos - Pathologist, New York Medical College
Robert Jacko - Professor of Civil Engineering at Purdue
Robert J. Kabel - Lawyer and lobbyist. Ironically, having once written a paper on Brazilian ethanol investment, he’s probably the most qualified thus far.
Peter La Celle - Dermatologist, University of Rochester
Robert P. Ma - Dept. of Psychology chair, University of Texas
Misac Nabighian - Geophysicist with the University of Colorado. Holy hell, I think we can count this guy.
Robert Quincy Oaks Jr - Geologist with Yale. Co-wrote a paper on Pleistocene sea levels in Virginia.
J. Pace - Hard to tell with no first name. I believe he’s with a department of computer science.
Forrest W. Quackenbush - Biochemist who wrote about obese rats. Deceased.
Bernard Raab - Unknown.
Alfredo H UA S Ing - 'The hell? I think they mean “Alfredo Hua-Sing” who is a structural engineer
Widen Tabakoff - Aerospace engineer
Herbert M S Uberall - Did work in acoustical waveforms
James P. Vacik - I was interested to see he was a “Director of Environmental Control”. Then I saw it was for a college of medicine.
William R. Wachtler - Patent for a device to hold chemicals during liquid sorting
Ning Xi - Mathmatics and Computer Science professor with Michigan State
Dmeter Yablonsky - Mathmatics professor for Pace University
Robert Zackroff - Microbiologist
My personal favorite that I found so far (myself) was Umass Lowell, PhD. Apparently, they’ll give a PhD to anything these days.
It’s like those 1950’s science fiction movies.
“My degree is in Science!”
“The difference between a real science and a fake science is that a real science doesn’t need the word ‘science’ in its name.” --Fred Brooks
Maybe the Right can use its awesome powers to smear and discredit global warming so it doesn’t dare show its face.
Are you people seriously challenging the professional opinion of the late Forrest W. Quackenbush, PhD (Obese Ratology)?
Not really - only ever published in geomagnetics - usually specifically in mining geomagnetics.
Google Scholar is your friend.
…in 1963. And it was a stratigraphy paper, not climate science. And he’s not at Yale anymore. But OK we’ll say he’s probably the best climate scientist in the sample.
BTW, we should feel a little smug - our scholar search skills are a bit better than this guy, who couldn’t find Oaks at all.
I saw “Neil Adams, PhD” in there and googled it. All citations were back to this petition. Just googling “Neil Adams” came up with the comic book artist/expanding earth kook and others, but I didn’t see any with PhDs on the first couple of pages. It would be hilarious if it was Neal Adams after all.
Nurse, either this planet is dead or my watch has stopped!
(Yes it is Hackenbush in the movie, but it was supposed to be Quackenbush - then this guy’s father, no doubt, objected.)
Since the late Dr Quackenbush “died at the age of 99 on May 21, 2007”, it is not impossible that he himself opposed Groucho Marx mis-appropriating his name.
I want to say that I agree with A in this quote, but to imply that only climatology scientists are educated enough to make an assessment regarding GCC is absurd. Any person with any sort of science or engineering background is likely educated enough to read and interpret data using logic and sound methods.
You don’t need a formal education in the narrow field of climatology to be able to make an intelligent assessment of the state of the global climate.
Though again, I do agree with your first point.
EDIT: Same thing applies to you tomndebb. Since when are we required to publish papers in a field in order to be taken seriously?
Cubsfan: I think I would have to disagree with you on this. Well, okay, maybe not the “formal education” part, but I think you do have to do a very considerable amount of reading in the field. And, particularly in the case of the paper that goes along with this petition: It is particularly designed to be deceptive and to present things in such a way that one would have a hard time seeing what is wrong without a quite good knowledge of the field. Alas, scientists are not generally very good at detecting active deception because we generally expect papers to present at least a somewhat balanced view of the evidence.
Well, the usual next step is that if it’s not caused by humans then humans can’t do anything about it ( which of course doesn’t follow ), so we should just accept whatever happens and “adapt” to any changes. In other words, don’t spend any money now to stave off disaster later, and screw anyone or anything that can’t “adapt”.
Exactly! For example, consider the world-famous Renaissance man, polymath and bon vivant Dr. Forrest W. Quackenbush! The man who is widely considered to be the father of obese rats, even in states where it was illegal! Quackenbush! The man who personally pimp-slapped Groucho Marx, founder of International Communism! Did he feel it necessary to take time out from his critical studies of rat obesity, simply in order to bolster his reputation as an authority on climate change? Of course not! He simply entrusted the task to his brightest, most sedentary rats. (Search on PubMed for a series of articles on projected global climate change and its specific effects on obese rats, co-authored by Skippy and Nibbles.) Indeed, legend has it that Dr. Quackenbush may well have faked his own death in order to devote his time entirely to fighting crime, radical Islam, and overstated claims of anthropogenic climate change. Word on the street is that he has created a strain of obese rat that instinctively seeks out human orifices. Fear the shadows, lawbreakers. Justice walks by night.
QUACKENBUSH!
I agree. However, people need to recognize the significance of such a formal education.
When talking about climate science, is the group with 500 climate scientists more knowledgeable than the group with 2 climate scientists and 498 geologists/chemists/etc.?
I wouldn’t assume anything either way. Instead, I would look at the strength of the arguments made. By analogy, who is best qualified to assess the causes of male/female differences in behavior? A feminist scholar? A psychologist? A biologist? A statistician? The answer is not obvious.
And nobody can be assumed to be immune from human foibles. Suppose a researcher says something like this:
To me, that researcher’s credibility is suspect, no matter what his education or background is.
Reminds me of that huge list of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, comprised of landscape architects, software engineers, and any names a 30 year old quack in a tinfoil hat living in his mother’s basement can come up with.
A friend of mine held this job title at a local university. His job function was to supervise the guys who worked on the furnaces and air conditioners on campus. He also ran the small programming department that automated the building controls.
This is a commendable approach, when it is actually viable. But how much knowledge do we need of the subject to accurately determine the “strength of the arguments made”? To the uninformed observer, any argument can be made to look strong.
A causes-of-male/female-differences-in-behavior-ologist, of course. 
This is a good example of what I was talking about earlier in this post. A quote presented without any kind of context can appear to be a pretty persuasive argument to the uninformed observer.
Perhaps not but I think I could rule out the metallurgist, the herpetologist, the botanist, the software engineer, the nuclear physicist, the military historian and the guy with a patent for soda can linings.