Beware of propaganda

In an April 15 letter, the writer asserts that global warming is not made by humans, cites a petition signed by more than 30,000 scientists to prove his point. It took the Google search engine 0.37 seconds to return links showing the petition was debunked almost as soon as it was released and numerous other times since.

There was in fact a petition, started in 1998, then known as the Oregon Petition. At that time the National Academies of Sciences released a letter stating, “The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy.” It was shown to be global-warming denier propaganda in 2010. Of the thousands of scientists who supposedly signed the petition, only 0.1 percent are climate scientists. In the letter writer’s words, “How scientific does that sound?”

The big numbers sound impressive to those easily fooled. Don’t be suckered by this long circulating and often discredited petition. We do better to put our faith in the well-documented science found by a search on global warming at the National Academies of Sciences.

This story was originally published April 27, 2016 at 6:39 PM with the headline "Beware of propaganda."