evidence: Over 30,000 Scientists Declare Climate Change a Hoax? A claim has been floating around since 1998 that thousands of scientists have rejected the concept of climate change, ever since since a self-described research group by the name of the "Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine" solicited signatures for a petition (known now as the Oregon Petition) to have the United States reject the Kyoto Protocol to set internationally binding emission reduction targets. [...] In addition to the political motivations behind the Oregon Petition and the deceptive ways in which those motivations were masked, there is also the problem of accountability regarding the validity of the names that appear on the list. In 2001, Scientific American attempted to verify a random sample of 30 names on the list who claimed to have a Ph.D. in climate science: