Astounding Interview with “Oregon Petition” Nutjob – Art Robinson
October 13, 2010
Remember that creepy old guy in your neighborhood that had a lot of guns and was always yelling at you to keep off the grass? Or maybe you can picture the archetypical survivalist freak in a bad science fiction movie? (Tremors comes to mind.)
Now you can meet that person in real life. My video, “32000 Scientists”, is one of my most popular, because it addresses the widely circulated meme about a petition of “scientists” who purportedly deny the reality of climate change.
The originator of the bogus petition is Art Robinson, an entrepreneur serving the needs of the paranoid, right wing, conspiracy theorist and survivalist subculture from his lair in rural Oregon. Mr Robinson is now running for Congress as a Republican Tea Party candidate. Last week, Rachel Maddow featured an interview with Mr Robinson in full-on climate conspiracy crazy mode.
Hilarity ensued.
The Maddow interview is here in two parts.
I’ll be commenting more on this in upcoming posts.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
October 16, 2010 at 9:55 am
My bet is that the anonymous donor for Dr. Robinson’s Tea Party candidate campaign is the Kochs.
The Kochs are spending money like it’s going out of fashion and they’re eager to buy political influence and they are funding the Tea Party.
The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29rich.html?_r=2&hp
Koch Industries Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine
http://tinyurl.com/Secret-Funding
COVERT OPERATIONS
: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.
by Jane Mayer
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer
‘The billionaire Koch brothers have long claimed that they have no direct connection to the Tea Party, denying that their vast oil wealth is directly funding corporate front groups like Americans For Prosperity, the key organizers of the fake grassroots Tea Party movement.
David Koch told New York magazine earlier this year, “I’ve never been to a tea-party event. No one representing the tea party has ever even approached me.” ‘
Well read this and decide if he’s being honest.
http://www.desmogblog.com/david-koch-has-direct-contact-tea-party-astroturf-organizers-americans-prosperity-event
Of course we can’t prove that Robinson knows who his donor is, but given his involvement in the deceit that was the Oregon Petition, and his reference to the petition ‘there are thousands of physical scientists in this country, who on the basis of scientific information alone reject the idea of human cause global warming’ (video 1 from 5.47) means his honesty is seriously compromised. IIRC, the normal definition of a scientist is a person with a PhD in a scientific discipline, and since the climate is the subject of concern, only atmospheric sciences are relevant. Whereas the vast majority of the Petition signatories, held only bachelors’ degrees in diverse subjects as engineering, veterinary science, dentists, metallurgy.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/OISM-Petition-Project.htm
The source document for the Petition Project was co-authored by Robinson. It has been wisely debunked and was clearly motivated by ideology and the receipt of funds from vested interest and not by science.
Dr. Robinson and the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine has a history of being tight-lipped concerning funding, but the Petition Project was part funded by the George C. Marshall Institute, which in turn was funded by ExxonMobil.
October 16, 2010 at 1:56 pm
The script of the movie ‘Tremors’ has more credibility than Dr Robinson’s Petition Project. While on the subject of bad science fiction: The name of one of his co-author sons Dr Zachary Robinson is more than a hint at a scientific spoof, because it’s a combination of two characters (Dr. Zachary Smith and Will Robinson) from the sci-fi series & movie ‘Lost in Space’!
There’s loads more about The Oregon Petition; Doctors for Disaster Preparedness; Arthur Robinson; Willie Soon; Sallie Baliunas; Jane Orient.
A partial debunking of the Oregon Petition Document with links to other devastating debunks.
http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=OISM
Paste the following terms into Google:
Arthur Robinson site:rabett.blogspot.com/
Baliunas site:rabett.blogspot.com/
Willie Soon site:rabett.blogspot.com/
JPANDS site:rabett.blogspot.com/
doctors for Disaster Preparedness site:rabett.blogspot.com/
jpands site:scienceblogs.com/deltoid/
March 19, 2011 at 9:08 pm
[…] Fox news veers into Art Robinson territory, with his views on “hormesis”. (sprinkling radiation around is a good […]
July 1, 2011 at 1:57 am
[…] mailed to scientists with the so-called “Oregon Petition” documents, wherein Dr.Arthur Robinson mocked the document up to make it appear to be from the august National Academy of Science, drawing […]
July 7, 2011 at 6:48 am
[…] originally mailed to scientists with the so-called “Oregon Petition” documents, wherein Dr.Arthur Robinson mocked the document up to make it appear to be from the august National Academy of Science, drawing […]
October 27, 2012 at 10:05 am
[…] Robinson, of Oregon Petition fame is running for Congress. Peter Sinclair has Robinson’s interview by Rachel Maddow. Robinson comes across as more than a little nutty — rather than elaborate on his views on […]