Academics and scientists are yet again issuing "consensus" statements on climate change.  In 2017, we were warned by 16,000 scientists across 184 countries that "human beings and the natural world are on a collision course."  This past week, BioScience, an academic, peer-reviewed journal from Oxford University Press, found 11,224 scientists, from 153 countries, who signed off on the latest climate change drivel.  Citing a "moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat and to "tell it like it is," they've published the paper "World Scientists' Warning of a Climate Emergency."  In dystopian tone, they've issued a demand for Earth's population to "be stabilized — and, ideally, gradually reduced — within a framework that ensures social integrity."

With the disclaimer that I'm just a layman who resides in "flyover country," who are these "11,000 Scientists," and do they even have credibility to weigh in on this matter?  Scientists, with few exceptions, are subject matter experts in specific fields — their expertise isn't inherently relevant and extensible across varying fields of science.  For example, a physicist won't teach a graduate-level course in biology, a podiatrist won't perform open heart surgery, and a botanist has minimal insight on quantum computing.  How many of these 11,000 scientists possess germane degrees in meteorology, climatology, or atmospheric science?  Lo and behold, BioScience actually published a list of these scientific signatories in the attached link — so I looked. 

In keyword searches across 324 pages of signing signatories, spanning 11,224 scientists, I found 240 (2%) individuals with professions that can be construed as bona fide meteorologists, climatologists, or atmospheric scientists.  As a frame of reference, the Department of Labor reports that there are 10,000 atmospheric scientists in the U.S.  Conversely, this list contains plenty of "experts" who have zero credibility on the topic of climate change, coming from fields such as infectious diseases, paleontology, ecology, zoology, epidemiology and nutrition, insect ecology, anthropology, computer science, OB-GYN, and linguistics.  Bluntly, and no offense intended, I could not care less what a French professor or a zookeeper thinks about climate change — let alone allow him to tell me how to live my life.

This raises the question: "Why did so few meteorologists, climatologists, and atmospheric scientists sign off on this latest paper?"  Perhaps they know that this is faux science?  The climate is a complex dynamic that science don't fully understand, let alone predict.  Nonetheless, radical, statist elements of society continue to advocate economy-destroying actions — taking lemmings over the cliff with them.

At family gatherings in the upcoming holiday season, when annoying in-laws cite "scientific consensus" on man's effects on climate change, expose their ignorance and the irrelevance of these doomsday papers with an analogy.  Advise them to seek out the consensus opinion of a group of chemists, linguists, and data scientists if they believe they tore a rotator cuff or have concerns with an asymmetrical mole they've discovered.