Green ‘scientists’ lobby group gave membership to dog

First there was the Climategate scandal, and then the UN IPCC errors over disappearing glaciers that weren’t disappearing, now it turns out a well-known lobby group supporting the UN’s call for swift action on climate change has been selling membership to “scientists” like some websites sell fake degrees.

The Union of Concerned Scientists is a climate change lobby group purpoorting to represent the views of concerned scientists around the world. It has made newspaper headlines in Britain’s Guardian newspaper and elsewhere as a credible scientific organisation.

However, the whistle was blown this weekend by the WattsUpWithThat climate science blog, after Anthony Watts successfully registered his dog “Kenji” as a “concerned scientist”, purely on the basis of buying a membership online with a credit card.

Watts was tipped off by one of his readers that the Union of Concerned Scientists appeared to be fooling the news media into thinking it was a group of scientists, while it was really just selling memberships to anyone who would pay the fee.