11:55am Monday 8th February 2010
ROBERT Meggs (Echo, Feb 4) said that the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) had petitioned almost every scientist in the US to see if they believed that carbon dioxide is causing global warming.
Apparently 17,000 said no. Mr Meggs then did a hatchet job on the OISM by pointing out that some of the respondents to the petition were said to include Michael J Fox, Geri Halliwell and others.
No doubt Mr Meggs got his information from the internet – eg, from Wikipedia – and the problem there is that anybody can access it and make unauthorised changes. It is not a reliable source of information.
For example, environmental activists apparently added the names of several celebrities to the list of respondents to discredit the OISM.
Having said all that, it does seem that the OISM is a small research institute that studies biochemistry, diagnostic medicine, nutrition, preventive medicine and the molecular biology of ageing. No climatologists, geologists, etc, are involved and the results of their petition on climate change and global warming should not be regarded as being authoritative.
Jim Allan, Hartlepool.
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