Airhead California organization promotes global warming with a "bounty" 

"A funded campaign asserting that over 95% of American scientists believe that global climate change is real and is most likely caused by humans has been launched with a $5,000 bounty on TruthMarket, the site that enables grassroots, crowd-funding of challenges to political, commercial and science misrepresentations

TruthMarket, a division of Truth Seal Corp., today announced that registered member, Ellen Davis, launched a campaign challenging climate change deniers to prove that more than 5% of credible American scientists dispute global warming or that it is likely caused by humans. The first person who can deliver verifiable evidence that significantly fewer than 95% of qualified American scientists believe in the reality of global climate change and that humans are a likely cause will win the $5,000 bounty."

More HERE

Greg Jefford has claimed the reward.  Here's what he sent to Truth Market:

"Provide verifiable evidence that significantly less than 95% of American scientists believe in the reality of Global Climate Change and that humans are a likely cause."

My question: "Where are the definitions of 'verifiable,' 'evidence,' 'significantly,' 'believe in,' 'reality,' 'Global Climate Change,' and 'likely cause'?

We already know from the Zimmerman survey in 2008 of 10,257 scientists with a participation rate of 30.7%, that 97% of a final 79 respondents believed that human activity could have an impact on a change in the global mean temperature. Compared to this, the Global Warming Petition Project has been signed by 31,487 American scientists (over 9,000 with a Ph.D.) who believe:

“There is no convincing scientific evidence that the human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth”.

Inasmuch as 31,000 American scientists is a far, far larger number than ~30.7% of 10,257 American scientists (3,146), and since 9,000 Ph.D.s is a much larger group than Doran's 2831 Ph.D.s in his entire survey, it's pretty well verified, at least by surveys, that significantly fewer than 95% of American scientists "believe" in Global Climate Change (if this is defined as anthropogenic global warming and/or cooling, whichever happens to be the more convenient argument to make at any particular time). By comparing self-attested belief in these global climate change matters between two groups of self-selected (in their response) American scientists, we see that almost 10 to 1 American scientists do NOT "believe" either in a danger posed by "Global Climate Change" (or else why would you even be concerned about it?) or that humans have any discernible influence.

So you should really award that money to me. If Doran and Zimmerman's 2 question survey was sufficient for the Global Climate Change folks to claim vindication of their belief regarding support among scientists, then the voluntary signature of the Global Warming Petition Project is as valid a method of demonstrating the opposite belief.

You can send me the check at my registered address on your site.

The whole thing is obviously just a stunt so Greg might be waiting a while for his check


Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).