What would you do with your Petition Project card?

Question

I got my very own response card from the Petition Project.

http://www.oism.org/pproject/

I'm torn between sending it back with a few choice words and just ignoring it.

I suspect if I send it back, they would use my name as supporting the petition even though I told them to get stuffed. Is having a chance to tell Seitz he's an idiot worth the risk of having my name appear along with thousands of other scientific illiterates?

It does come with a very nice glossy reprint on climate change from the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. A lot of surprisingly good climate science is published there, it's sort of Crichton's home journal. Anyway, pretty much every argument you hear here is given in detail there. So all you skeptics can just reference this:

Env. Effects of Inc. Atm. CO2, Robinson, Robinson, and Soon, J. Amer. Phys. Surgeons, (2007), 12, 79-90.

Answer 1

Wow, you should feel honored.  You're now among a select few (i.e. every person that ever took a science course in any field and has their name on some mailing lists), along with such "prominent scientists" as Michael J. Fox, B.J. Honeycut, and Dr. Frank Burns.

The sad thing is that in these type of mass mailings, you can be pretty sure that 5 - 10% of people will ignorantly respond to the slick propaganda without knowing anything about global warming.  That kind of credulousness is what keeps mass mailers in business.

Given OISM's record of being such "skilled pollsters", I'm pretty sure any response you made to them would result in your name somehow being added to their list of global warming "skeptics".

Answer 2

The possibility of getting invited to speak at a denier conference would be tempting. You could tell Seitz he's an idiot in person. There is the downside of risk to your reputation from being associated in any way with bad science.  I would send the card back with my cat's name. I would find it rather amusing to see my cat listed as skeptic climate expert.

Answer 3

Hey congrats - I guess you must have a college degree!

Do you think if you gave them some sort of 'stuff it' response and they added your name to the petition, you could then sue them?  Because that would be an awesome win-win.  Telling Singer where he could shove his petition and then suing him.