An Alliance of World Scientists petition declaring a climate emergency has been blocked online after questions were raised about some of its celebrity signatories.
Mickey Mouse from the Mickey Mouse School of the Blind, Namibia made it through onto an official list published with a major article in BioScience on Tuesday.
After the statement had been submitted to the journal, claiming the support of 11,000 world scientists, Mickey was joined on the list by Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts.
The first signature on the online list was Araminta Aadvark, professor of Zoology at University of Neasden, UK. Neasden University does not have a zoology department.
Mickey Mouse from the Mickey Mouse School of the Blind
The climate emergency statement included authors from University of Sydney and Oregon State University.
Sydney University said on Thursday the petition was being managed by Oregon State.
Albus Dumbledore also made it onto the official list published with a major article in BioScience.
Oregon University was understood to have blocked access to the online petition to review the signatories and was expected to make a statement on it.
An online link to the petition on Thursday said “access denied” and “you are not allowed access to this page”.
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The Alliance of World Scientists claims to have 23,000 subscribing members from 180 countries.
The paper published in BioScience warned that “untold human suffering” is unavoidable without deep and lasting shifts in human activities that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and other factors related to climate change.
It said mitigating and adapting to climate change meant “transforming the ways we govern, manage, eat, and fulfil material and energy requirements.”
The scientists said global surface temperatures were not sufficient to measure climate change which should be tracked by a scorecard of population, meat consumption, forest loss and the use of air transport.
The statement has been lauded by science groups as significant.
But consulting geologist, Marc Hendrickx, who highlighted the errant signatures said “legitimate researchers passionate about the scientific method do not do science by social media”.
