© Trevor Pritchard/CBC
Protesters on Parliament Hill demand change during a major climate rally in Ottawa on Sept. 27, 2019. A petition declaring a climate emergency is being questioned after it emerged that one of the 11,000 signatories was Micky Mouse.
Protesters on Parliament Hill demand change during a major climate rally in Ottawa on Sept. 27, 2019. A petition declaring a climate emergency is being questioned after it emerged that one of the 11,000 signatories was Micky Mouse.
The signatories included climate scientists and researchers from other fields, such as microbiology, glaciology and oceanography.
However, at least one name on the list is raising questions: Micky (sic) Mouse from the Micky Mouse Institute for the Blind in Namibia.
When asked how Micky made it on the list, William Ripple, one of the authors of the paper, said in an email that he and his colleagues used a four-step process to check the signatures but that this one seems to have "slipped through our checks."
Comment: Whenever you have a petition open to the public, you're bound to get some trolls from the opposition. This isn't really the issue (unless there are enough fake entries to put a significant dent in the total number of signatories). What is more egregious is that many of the signatories appear to have nothing to do with climate science or its related fields. If the petition wants to use Science™ to lend it credibility, it darn well better make sure its '11,000' signatories are actual scientists in related fields. Otherwise, they might as well have polled Guardian readers.
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