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Scientists Offered Cash to Dispute Climate Study
w1z4rd writes "According to an article in the Guardian, scientists and economists have been offered large bribes by a lobbying group funded by ExxonMobil. The offers were extended by the American Enterprise Institute group, which apparently has numerous ties to the Bush administration. Couched in terms of an offer to write 'dissenting papers' against the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, several scientists contacted for the article refused the offers on conflict of interest grounds."
- Probable temperature rise between 1.8C and 4C
- Possible temperature rise between 1.1C and 6.4C
- Sea level most likely to rise by 28-43cm
- Arctic summer sea ice disappears in second half of century
- Increase in heatwaves very likely
- Increase in tropical storm intensity likely
It's a 20 page report and I know we're all really busy but I think this is the first document one can read and really catch up on what's been decided recently in the scientific community.I haven't seen anyone discredit this panel or this document yet. What I have seen is criticism from right wing papers about this report either being "unsurprising" or "offering no hope, grim." On the other hand, leftist papers have been in a sort of "we're doomed" sort of mode. I haven't really seen anyone stepping up to the plate and telling the public that it's on our consciouses now. We are responsible--if you have the money, start paying more for green products or products from carbon neutral companies. Increase incentive for companies to be carbon neutral. Right now, as a consumer, I don't know how I would figure out if the car I bought comes from a more or less environmentally friendly company. Consumers need to start driving this change because it sure the hell isn't going to be our ignorant president.
Also, Zonk, I think you mean Mr. Chase knows why, Salmon P. Chase is on the $10,000 bill. Offering nominal fees for paper and pen to write reports is one thing but when the incentive is a large percentage of my yearly income, I think Exxon should be ousted as scientifically backwards assholes.
My work here is dung.
Can someone publish the names and phone numbers of these scientists so I can lobby to get them into top positions in government?
Work smarter, not harder.
>> several scientists contacted for the article refused the offers on conflict of interest grounds." ...now please can we have the email addresses of the ones that accepted the bribe?
...report writes you! ((Or, better, the market writes the reports))
Truly, in a capitalist environment, the markets should decide who is write and wrong. Science should be chosen by those with good money sense.
Ugh.
nfm
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
attempt to bribe them (oh, sorry, "lobby aggressively"). It's The American Way (tm).
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
We've never gotten so much Bush in all of our lives. Bush is somehow tied to everything. In college, it was Bush motivated me to sacrifice my morals. Bush often made us all do things we wouldn't normally have done.
Oh, the Bush administration. What was I thinking?!
(Seriously... This is such flamebait)
My ZooLoo
If a report were issued that global warming was not manmade and a thinktank offered a similar reward, would you also call it a bribe?
If (and this is a very strong IF) they do this right, what they are doing is using money to accelerate the scientific debate. If there are errors in the report that other scientists can find, there is now incentive to find them and weed them out. It's the scientific process pushed forward by money.
The downside of it will, of course, be that a lot of "scientists" will make wild claims in an attempt to collect on this cash and muddy the waters. But I think in the long run this might actually speed up the process by which we arrive at a definite conclusion to the debate and finally start seriously working on solutions.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
How could that be defined? Conflict between the desire for money and power versus life on earth?
And this is news? How do you people think scientists make their money anyways? They find somebody that wants something proven, for a price, then they prove it. There just happens to be more money floating around to prove "man-made" global warming at this time, that is why "more" scientists are trying to prove this. Reality is that if there was "more" money floating around to dis-prove man-made global warming, then that would be that would be the "science-dejour".
This is just propaganda from the liberal controlled greeny environmental industry, making shit up to slander the good name of an honest, productive and responsible corporation. Everyone knows global warming scientists are rich as Midas from all the money funneled to them by their commie-pinko-socialist masters, of course they don't need to take money from an honest corporation! Just think, this poor industry, barely making ends meet, scrapes up a little money to try to help fund some REAL SCIENCE, and these vicious intelelctuals turn on them like a pack of wild dogs. /right-wing-parody
Anyone want to place a bet on how many of these 'ideas' are going to become official talking points on Faux News?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Once, warning og climate change might have been damaging for you career. Now, disputing climate change, something everyone now believes to be a reality, will do the same. This is why bribes like this is no longer effective.
Only thing that works for a big companies now is to think "if you can't beat'em, join'em" and go green, or at least seemingly green.
Let's hope it brings a change for the better. Anyone else who actually feels a bit optimistic that we're learning to take a bit more responsibility for our own future now? (:
If Exxon wants to fund climate research, good. Once their research comes out then if it disagrees with your pet theory then argue based on the facts, but don't denigrate the funding of those who may interpret things differently than you do. Doing otherwise is following in the footsteps of the church who forced Copernicus to recant because it disagreed with their theory.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
I wonder if ExxonMobil is actually still funding the American Enterprise Institute. Late last year they announced their intention to stop funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and I was assuming (I know, dangerous) that they were going to stop funding all similar institutes. Here is their official try-to -please-everyone-without-admitting-any-guilt statement for those who are interested.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
$10K is a pretty damn paltry bribe. $100K research grants are pretty common for those in the sciences, with $1M+ programs not unheard of. As for personal salary, a PhD college professor in the sciences is easily at $100k+/year when you include summer salary.
If you are going to bribe someone, make sure you at least get in the right ballpark of "interesting". Trash my carreer for $10K? Don't make me laugh.
Test your net with Netalyzr
What's Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Iraqi Minister of Information is up to these days?
I'm sure he's looking for work.
While I don't agree with "offering cash for dissenting papers" I do think that the scientists with opposing viewpoints AND the evidence to support these viewpoints do need to get more coverage. The Global Warming subject is currently a media darling as evidenced by Al Gore's recent Nobel Prize nomination for his "work" in this area. I guess the invention of the Internet wasn't good enough for a nomination! http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi -0702020118feb02,1,4285055.story?coll=chi-newsnati onworld-hed/
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
...that every single move taken by the tobacco industry in the last 15 years is going to be repeated in exact fashion by the oil industry?
- This particular case is exactly the same as the tobacco industry paying to have scientists say there was no connection between smoking and cancer (or any of the other ailments).
- The paying off of lobbyists is normal, but was made infamous by "big tobacco". Now it's "Big Oil" making sure senators get to make frequent holidays in the Grand Caymans.
- Some might even point out that all of the gas guzzling autos are the cool toys for the younger crowd...just as people might say Joe Camel was targeted at America's youth. I, of course, would not make such a brash statement; but only to say some might.
There are plenty of other examples of the pattern being repeated, but I'm too tired to write them all out. Short version, the only thing that's changed is the product
- Nobody would know what RTFA meant if it didn't need to be said all the time
Now before we all cry bloody murder, why are we calling this a bribe? There was a report released on global climate change. One company is hoping that there were shortcomings and inaccuracies in that report. That company doesn't have the scientific capability to refute the findings, so they are hiring scientists to document any and all shortcomings for them.
As far as I can tell, there is no proof that they asked the scientists to lie. Unless, of course, you have already made up your mind that global warming is a fact and any attempt to refute it is corrupt and evil.
The company involved is obviously biased, but I don't see an attempt to refute a study as evil in and of itself.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=c 6a32614-f906-4597-993d-f181196a6d71&k=0 has some scientists who already dissent. Of course, they all recently purchased new cars....
Wow. Way to get rich. To do the research, write the paper, get it through the no doubt rigorous review process: how long will that take for something this controversial? A couple of months, maybe? How many Nobel prize winners will work for $60k a year? And who will read an article by somebody with no reputation?
Couched in terms of an offer to write 'dissenting papers' against the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, several scientists contacted for the article refused the offers on conflict of interest grounds
How about refusing on the grounds that research and scientific opinion should not be for sale or political motive? It's pretty sad only one person did so: Professor Schroeder.
Scientists often talk big, but nothing shuts them up faster than a threat to their funding, and there's no better way to threaten your research group's funding than to say "no" if an organization linked to Bush (a large number of AEI people have worked as administration "consultants") comes around asking for a favor. "Conflict of Interest" was a polite and evasive way to say "no" without saying "no"...
Please help metamoderate.
Just like the other researchers were "bribed" into doing the "global warming" research in the first place. It's called funding folks. It's what you do when you don't have a bunch of religious zealots to spread your viewpoint for free or you need to entice credible resources to risk their life, limb and career disagreeing against said zealots.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
There is no impartial scientist to be found. As earth is a closed system -- we're all here for the duration -- we all have a vested interest in the future. It makes little difference whether a study is financed by a corporation like ExxonMobil or by a green group with deep pockets; both have agendas, and in the final analysis, either the scientific methods are sound, or they're not, regardless of who is funding.
The problem up to now has been the tendency of many to assume that a) because a study is endorsed by scientists, it must therefore be valid, and b) that if it is financed by a green organization or a government, it is therefore more trustworthy than if it were funded by a multinational corporation. Both assumptions are false. Of all the scientists on the planet, only a very small percentage are competent in the the analysis of climatological data, and of those, even fewer are knowledgeable with respect to the long term studies involved. As to funding and impartiality, every group I can think of has an agenda here, be they environmental groups, governments, or corporations.
What is clearly needed is a rational study by qualified scientists, and discussion and even attacks on the conclusions drawn by other groups of equally qualified scientists. This is essentially the kind of thing that is done to keep scholarly journals on track. Articles are refereed by people with knowledge and experience in the field.
Finally, one of the chief problems in trying to analyze the existing data is that we possess reasonably accurate data for only a very brief period of time, and from those data, we hope to extrapolate global long term trends. In undertaking that task, trends are extrapolated forward and backward, and assumptions are stacked upon assumptions. The further we get from today, in either direction, the less reliable are those assumptions. And let us not forget that we are still unable to reliably predict the weather more than a few days in advance, yet we have sufficient hubris to believe we can predict 100 years forward.
--- Bill
What you're saying makes perfect sense concerning the debate amoungst scientists, but when it comes to the popular debate, large amounts of funding will result in a proportional amount of material. Since the population at large don't have the wherewithall to analyse the findings, they look instead to the volume of the work produced and the reputation of those producing it.
In the abscence of the capability to analyse the science itself, it help to know where the funding comes from. If the science is then picked up by a scientist who's sources appear not to be compromised, then it is reasonable to assume that it was sound science in the first place. This filter layer is the meaning of peer review. In the abscence of this filter layer, it is reasonable for the population to know that the funding is selecting for particular conclusions, thus possibly prejudicing the data or the analysis of that data.
Knowledge of funding is part of the mechanism by which the non-scientist protects him or herself against junk science.
Wikileaks, no DNS
If you could scientifically (key word) demonstrate that humans made no significant contribution to global warming (within a certain margin of error, of course), you'd have no problem getting grants - especially from the current administration. (OK, maybe not "no problem". You also have to be able to write halfway well. Let's just say it'd be easier than if you were just a conformist scientist who didn't produce any novel research.) They do ultimately control the purse strings, and if there was some grand conspiracy going on, do you really think that Bush and friends wouldn't be using their influence to end/replace it?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
This is an urban myth that has been debunked numerous times already. Only a small amount of scientists in the '70s were thinking about ice ages, and most of them were afraid of nuclear winter scenarios (which remain a possibility if a Cold War-style massive exchange were to take place), not gradual climate change per se.
It was -14F this morning, and with the wind chill right now it feels like -20F. Seems to be more like regional warming to me.
I've seen this claim quite a few times; could you quote a source for it? Because if you're talking about government grants (specifically, federal grants), are you seriously making the claim I think you are?
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
With Exxon posting profits of US$ 39.5 billion over 2006, I doubt they don't know about the right ballparks. It seems to me the Guardian article is crap, because Exxon could have easily put in a higher bribe. Just because Exxon is/was a donor of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), does not mean everything the AEI does, needs to be linked back to Exxon.
My tax dollars are being given over to pro-glowball warming scientists in the form of grants. Do these research grants which are often worth hundreds of thousands of dollars also constitute bribes?
I guess they took the expression, "the marketplace of ideas" a bit too literally.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
This kind of attempt to brible people to peddle an agenda should carry consequences similar to that of obstruction of justice like tampering with a witness. This situation is tampering with science -as best understood. And the "scientists" who support or "cherry-pick" their data should be held to the same standards as front-people are held accountable if they (mis)-represent a product they know to be short of what is claimed --as it is in some states.
If these people get paid to mis-represent data (differing from soomeone who is simply on the misguided path in their scientific quest), the scientists in question if paid to support only a particular (biased) outcome, should be held to some account. With fines and depending on severity disqualification from their profession.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Really, what do you expect exxon et al to say, do... look at the tobacco lobbies and their efforts to discredit studies and such that say cigarettes are not addictive using their own lobby-funded studies. In the rest of the world, and I would say most of the US, global warming is not controversial. Do wing nuts prop up their people to go on camera and say "it ain't happening". Sure, but so did the tobacco people. Most thinking people can see past this type of stuff and not get swept up in the propaganda wars. Unfortunately many do get suckered in by it. They have a lot of cash to throw at ads and lobbying these days due to the price of oil, and they want to keep that cash flowing. Like the addictive tobacco controversy... this one is dying. Expect to see more thrashing from the lobbies as it goes down for the count.
Won't change anything, and at least you can buy a nice winter coat.
"...several scientists contacted for the article refused the offers on conflict of interest grounds, while others happily signed their life away and are hustling to finish their dissenting papers. And who have planned a luxurious European jaunt. And who just bought a Mercedes. And a new house."
As opposed to scientiests who depend on grant money that only comes in if they say the exact opposite.
;-) The scientific community has been quietly (and largely un-funded) been studying the problem of "global warming" and man's effects on it for over 100 years! The first well know scientist I'm aware of to really bring this forward was Svante Arrhenius. Here is an article he published on the topic in 1896. Far from raking in the money because of his research as you suggest, this Nobel prize winner was widely critisized and had a lot of trouble getting any presigious posts because of his views.
This should be added to the list of well known trolls!
It seems there are those (cannot imagine who they could POSSIBLY be) who want to convince the public that agreeing with or studying global warming is some new get rich quick scheme for scientists
Since him, thousands of other scientists have toiled in obscurity studying this field. Over the MANY years, these largely annonymous scientists have managed to compile and report on their data which points in some troubling directions for our future. Because of this, one would hope more and more money will go toward thier research (sadly today more money still goes toward trying to debunk them by organizations with VERY conflicting agendas).
Yes, there are some bad "scientists" out there which will sell themselves to any religious cult or multi-billon dollar company out there, but these are the VAST minority. You think scientists (especially climate scientists) have choosen that field for the celebrity and wealth that awaits??? Seriously???.
Please! Just please, let this stupid troll arguement die!
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
I just have wonder what is wrong in Exxon-Mobile. Every other major oil company in the world has admitted that global warming is for real and it's probably caused by man. In example Jorma Ollila who is the chairman of Shell has said it an interview that global warming is real and the only way to tackel it is to reduce carbon emissions. He continued and said that when he came to work in Shell, he was amazed by the concern that Shell employees had about global warming. So the question is what is wrong in Exxon-Mobile? Are their executives so locked into an equation (oil = money) that they have forgotten that it's really (oil = energy = money) and that a company can have other forms of energy sources than just oil?
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
PhD college professors who are experts in climatology all agree that global warming is an effect of burning fossil fuels. People who are accepting those $10k aren't scientists, they are just mediocre writers, almost certainly unemployed, for whom that money makes all the difference in the world.
I like that when an environmental organization funds climate change research it is called "funding", but when an oil company funds research the media refers to it as "bribery". Say what you like about how non-partisan you think the media is, I think that the agenda is pretty apparent.
So lets see: Exxon Mobile doesn't like it when their scientifically baseless critisim falls on deaf ears so they offer a bounty to try and find someone with a shread of credibility who can generate something they can run with. Anybody else find this a little backassward?
the whores of academia.
The word "bribe" does not appear at all in TFA. Or if it does, Firefox's Find box can't find it. As such, the summary writer's and/or Slashdot Editor's extreme bias is showing badly. That forces me to rate the whole thing as Flamebait -1.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Well. $10,000 plus travel expenses doesn't sound like a bribe to me. Seems more like small compensation. Writing a dissenting paper takes time. Lots of it. These professors make more than 10K a month. And, it would take quite some time to write a paper.
Course we could say that the scientists who wrote the IPCC were bribed for their time as well. I think that I will start bribing my employees to work for me as well.
I think that this is much more a case of... The AEI is looking for papers critical of the IPCC's findings. As compensation they are offering $10,000 plus expenses. While AEI hopes that this is incentive, they realize that it's not very much. But, they don't have great funding. 1.6 million barely covered their budget last year.
These numbers aren't that big. !!!!$10K!!! (a months salary) $1.6 million!!! (6 months - year operating cost) Does noone understand accounting and expenses anymore?
Real bribes could easily be done by ExxonMobile, real bribes in the 100k for people and 100M for companies. This isn't a bribe, it's a pittance. Looks to me that AEI is actually wanting real papers, not names signed on for their agenda.
Sorry for the rambling...
Other than the media-circuit, when is this ever done? Sure, you might have a scientist who is funded by the government who writes an article pointing out how another scientist's conclusions were wrong, but he wasn't paid to write that specific article. He was paid to do research, and to report the results of that research, regardless of what those results are. That's the difference between government funded research and privately funded research. Privately funded research often has the proviso that the results cannot be published without first being authorized by the funding agency. Do you understand how that causes bias?
Because these scientists are not actually finding real problems. They just speak in a language that mere mortals don't understand in such a way to suggest that there is doubt. Even when, couched in their own language, they say there is no doubt. Take a look at this article written by Richard Lindzen, provided to me by someone who was arguing against anthropogenic global warming. Ostensibly, he's saying that the global warming alarmists are all wrong. However, read closely and you'll find this gem:
"Never been widely contested"? Then, what exactly are you saying? Oh, just that certain claims by certain climatologists might not be accurate. Not that the overall picture is wrong, just that some/many of the details are. Next time you read an article by Lindzen, keep this in mind. See if he ever actually disputes the main point. Case in point. If you notice, Lindzen is very careful to stick to the Gulf Stream argument. That way, it looks like he's in disagreement with the basic science, without actually having to say anything unscientific. Clever.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
They're called "grants"
The difference, of course, is that grants are given based on your planned experiments / studies, and not on the results of those experiments -- there may be some early/partial results known, but the whole point of the grant is to do a more in-depth study that will, ideally, give more accurate and useful results -- and a full analysis may even (in fact, hopefully will) give a different and much more complete picture than what was known at the beginning. If grants were awarded primarily on the conclusion of a study rather than the methodology, that would also be an enormous and unethical conflict of interest -- just like the "funding" described in this article.
I am the man with no sig!
So they can pay the scientists more! That's a win/win situation!
From any other scientist who accepts a grant from a company - or from a government?
Clear, Dark Skies
Because the money was offered only if criticism was provided, therefore it's a payment made to a person in a position of trust to corrupt his judgment - a bribe by dictionary standards. This doesn't even touch on the fact that the bribes were offered through a funded organisation rather than from the company themselves, which is inherently dishonest.
If the money had been offered to do scientific research regardless of outcome, that's when it stops being bribery and becomes funding. However, ExxonMobil only wants one outcome, so why would they pay out for something that's useless to them?
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Instinctively everybody knows that version 1.0 of this Energy(tm) app we have written to support Human Civilization(tm) version ?.0 is inherently buggy. There is a memory leak, and the cache is filling up and the leak is gaining momentum. We need to debug, but the original developers don't want to play because their stock options depend on version 1.0 running for a long time, screw everything else.
Anyway, I am sure that $10,000 to fund possible holes in this report may actually be better value for money than the bullshit research that gets fed down the news pipes daily.
(Please note that Energy(tm) and Human Civilization(tm) are licensed trademarks of God Inc. Any misuse will incur the full wrath of God Inc's omnipotent and lightning-wielding legal department)
Nothing witty
the Global Warming on MARS?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Several European oil companies (most notably Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum) have gotten involved in other energy sources than just oil (hydrogen, solar, wind and others).
However, the US oil companies (such as ExxonMobil and Chevron) refuse to acknowledge that any energy sources other than oil even exist and are fighting tooth and nail all alternative energy sources and anything that would show that humans are killing the planet with fossil fuels.
Why aren't the US companies following the lead of the Europeans and trying to become world leaders in the new technologies before someone else (such as Shell or BP) beats them to it?
The problem with most institutions like CEI is that when they fund the research, they typically add a clause that says that the results of the research cannot be published without their explicit authorization. (This happens in other fields, as well.) This is most likely not the case with either Branson or the Sierra Club. If it is, I'll gladly call shenanigans on them, as well.
Also, Senator Inhofe is not exactly the best source for such information. His position on the relative importance of the environment is well documented.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The first time I ever saw anything on climate change was about ten years ago. At that time the claims were:
1) That the average temperature world-wide was increasing.
2) That the cause of the temperature increase was human in origin.
3) That the damages from temperature increase would be colossal.
4) That the benefits from temperature increase were negligible or non-existant.
5) That humans could do something to alleviate the temperature increase.
6) That the only way humans could do something required huge new government powers.
7) That once the government aquired the new powers, our evidence of success would be that nothing happened.
Please note that, at the time, evidence suggested 1) perhaps might possibly be true. There was no evidence to support 2) through 7). Frankly, I think the process has become so politicised that I don't believe it's possible for me to become convinced. Ask me again in sixty years.
-Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Someone posted the difference between legitimate and illegitimate scientific funding yesterday in the comments on Slashdot. Legitimate funding is when you pay someone to do research in a specific area (eg. climate change). Illegitimate funding is when you pay someone to research a specific conclusion (eg. climate change is right/wrong), because then you're assuming the conclusion.
Dude! Ice that has existed for thousands of years is disappearing now. Arctic and antarctic species are in danger of extinction. Land masses that have been covered with ice since before the dawn of man are now available for farming! There's some real obvious signs of things that are just not right. Forget about the other obvious things like acid rain killing the fish... we somehow addressed that concern did we?
This isn't guilt for existance, it's guilt for being sloppy assholes who care little about the world we live in. There are ways to live and be clean about it. It's possibly "expensive" or otherwise a departure from what we are accustomed. So what?
I feel guilty. I can't afford to live in ways that are cleaner or I most certainly would. I can't do any of those nifty money-saving things like power from the sun or wind and earning money back from "the grid" because I live in an apartment. I cannot afford to buy a new, more efficient, car let alone a hybrid or electric. I can only WISH the people who make their money selling stuff to the world's population would care enough to take a hit from retooling and selling us stuff that's better for the world.
The alternatives are there. They just don't want to do it.
If you could scientifically (key word) demonstrate that humans made no significant contribution to global warming (within a certain margin of error, of course), you'd have no problem getting grants
If you are a climatologist and get a grant to study the effects of human-produced CO2 on climate, and you found that the effects were negligible and that reducing emissions wouldn't have an impact, then you WOULD most certainly have trouble getting grants. If there was nothing more we could do, why would the government spend money on even more research?
At the very least the evidence would be inconclusive...that would be justification for further funding and hence job security. Don't tell me scientists are so far above everyone else that there isn't a single one who wouldn't consider that because there are for sure. If there IS conclusive evidence about climate change due to human activity (and the absolutely IS that evidence--though specific conclusions about the magnitude or nature of such change is far from certain) then it is even better--even LARGER grants for even MORE research in order to come up with solutions. Despite the general consensus there is certainly resistance to skepticism and a bit of "religion" involved on this subject from both sides.
Based on your comment, you must know that even if research is funded non-corporately it doesn't mean it is automatically untainted government grants are most certainly politically motivated to some degree and can be used to direct research in one direction or another...witness stem cell research in the US, or the fate of so many non-patentable pharmaceutical discoveries for example.
Well, many companies will control what can be published from the research they pay for, but when it comes to the government, that is not the case at all. They give you money to do research in a particular area. They do not give you money to reach particular conclusions. If they knew the conclusions you were going to reach, they wouldn't be funding you. Now do you see the difference?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Can you elaborate? Every grant process I have been involved in has been focused on providing research, with the aim of finding out whether a particular hypothesis is supported by the evidence or not. If there are any organizations supplying grant money on the condition that the final report contains a conclusion that is pre-determined, then for sure the people they are funding are not scientists, and for sure organizations such as the NSF would disown both the `scientists' and the funding body in a heartbeat.
That doesn't mean that paid shills pushing an agenda onto an unsuspecting public (or politician!) don't exist. But don't confuse this with legitimate science!
The DMCA is/was a good policy? The DMCA is just one of many pieces of domestic legislation I loathe that he he signed and hasn't been allowed to sunset. lemme guess though. its really all those damn republicans fault, right?
I don't think that anybody is implying that scientists are choosing a position based on celebrity or _personal_ wealth. But let's face reality here. They aren't going to risk being ostracized from the community by disagreeing with the MAN-MADE global warming hysteria. Being a scientific skeptic of MAN-MADE global warming effectively excommunicates them.
Yes, it's getting warmer. Is it natural or man-made? What will the overall effects be and how will we adapt? Those are the questions that nobody has any real answers to. I can't believe that climatologists have anything other than the foggiest idea of what will happen. Some ice will melt, some places will get drier, some will get wetter. These are the same people who predicted that the 2006 hurricane season would be the worst ever. The hard fact here is that no matter what the temperature is doing, people are afraid of change. Something different? Must be bad!
This is nothing more than fear mongering and taking advantage of fact that most people can't think of anything that encompasses a time-scale larger than a generation. If we were in the middle of the last ice age, I'm sure the same people would be telling us that we'd all drown or burn to a crisp.
is this example right here.
b urns.htm
This is what happens when the belief that markets should be less regulated is not examined carefully. We've had decades of blind faith regarding the miraculous powers of capitalism and it seems to me there's little to show for it.
Are societies as a whole better off with _less_ regulated markets? Yes. There is however a huge category of desirable elements in a society that are actually harmed under capitalism.
This guy is on the right track! http://www.thesimpsons.com/bios/bios_townspeople_
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The scientists had already reached their conclusions before being asked to speak about them.
s -selling-solar.html
This is just the opposite, money is being offered to reach predetermind conclusions (that the report is wrong).
The first case is quite honorable and, as we have seen, brave, given the unscrupulous methods of those who fund the deniers.
The second case is, as the article said, an inducement to a conflict of interest, namely deciding the outcome of work before the work is performed.
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Solar! It's whats for power! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Because you are doing good research that demonstrates that the effects of human-produced CO2 on climate is negligible! If that's not worth funding, I don't know what is!
Absolutely. There have been a couple recently uncovered in particle physics. A real shame. However, they are the exception and not the rule. However, do you really think that an entire field (climatology) would be so "bought"? (Assuming that you're initial belief is right, which it's not.) If you read the recent statements from the darlings of those that would cast doubt on climate science, you'll note that even Lindzen and Michaels don't actully say that humans don't have a significant (negative) impact on global warming. The best these people can say is that others exaggerate the problem. Not only don't say that there is no problem, they'll tell you that humans do contribute significantly to global warming.
Lindzen
:Michaels
:Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Second, he was formerly a researcher (employed by the Canadian government). The Guardian's staff apparently views the word "scientist" as just an occupation.
Third, this is basically an ad hominem argument... he's a "former scientist", and let's just assume he's an objectivist, commits fraud, etc so he couldn't possibly be right. Please.
FYI. You can find lots of info on him by starting here.
Tadepalli Satyanarayana Murty, known simply as Tad Murty, has worked with Canada and the US on the Pacific Ocean tsunami warning system. An expert on tsunamis, storm surges and tidal waves, he is vice-president of The Tsunami Society, Honolulu, which publishes the journal Science of Tsunami Hazards. Having served the Canadian Oceanographic Service for 27 years, he was also the director of Australia's National Tidal Facility for three years. Currently with the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Ottawa, Murty was involved with the preparation of the 'Indian Ocean Tsunami Travel Time Atlas', due to be published soon, which India has managed to produce ahead of Australia. Since the December 26, 2004 tsunami, Murty, originally from Guntur, has made seven trips to India. In his last visit to Chennai recently, as an invitee of FICCI, he spoke to Outlook at length on the various challenges that the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System poses and the need for coastal inundation maps.
Well, God, obviously. He told me that he sent those ducks just to fuck with Micheal Savage. We had a good laugh. Then God asked if I wanted to strip down to our underwear and, you know, wrestle a bit so I told him I had to leave 'cause I had work in the morning. He always gets like that when he drinks.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The environmental groups would be perfectly happy to learn that climate change wasn't a problem, if the research showed that. Why? Because they have a number of other active priorities too. There are issues of species and habitat loss which have nothing to do with climate change - and which were sufficient to motivate donations to the environmental groups before there was any hint of climate change. There are also issues of various sorts of pollution which are unconnected to climate change. The environmental groups are overwhelmed with good causes, and if they can get themselves out from under a few of them, they will still have more than they can handle, and still have vast fund-raising appeal. They have no vested interest in global climate change being as serious an issue as science says it is; they are following the science, not leading it. But since they do need to follow the science, they fund it. ExxonMobil by contrast has a strong interest in discrediting the science. Consider: This is deliberately-misleading propaganda. He's implying that there are two equal groups. There aren't: Within science, 99+% of credentialed professionals agree there's a major problem, thus the new international report. Yet the AEI, by commissioning statements of doubt, wants to achieve some sort of 50/50 compromise between doubt and belief. That's to say, they want to deny the near-certainty of 99+% of the scientists qualified to make judgments in the field, and return the issue in the popular mind to the "he said, she said" status that ExxonMobil has so successfully promulgated in the media, science-ignorant as the communications majors who do most of the reporting are.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Doesn't it make you think? When the Bush administration uses scare tactics and implements a Terror Alert Warning system, the liberals come out and cry foul, "You can't use scare tactics on us!"
And when Gore comes out with a movie with a scene of a polar bear struggling to get onto a floating piece of ice, with a voice-over of the horrors of global warming and how we're all doomed, no one cries scare tactics at all.
I guess it'd be egotistical to hope that both sides will mod me a Troll. But come on, there are others out there that see it like I do right? That both sides are now using fear to promote their agenda? Hell, one of them got a Nobel Prize nomination for scaring the living s out of the world. BRILLIANT!
"refused the offers on conflict of interest grounds"
This is very true. Those scientist have an interest to the people who originally funded them and that is the liberal left. The interest there is anti-capitalism, anti-competition and totally socialist. If course it is a "conflict of interest". If anyone has payed attention, the not government and education based funding has proof of non-human effects on climate change while those funded always claim that we are responsible for global warming.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
They aren't going to risk being ostracized from the community by disagreeing with the MAN-MADE global warming hysteria. Being a scientific skeptic of MAN-MADE global warming effectively excommunicates them.
;-).
Sorry, but you seem to have absolutely zero understanding of the scientific community. Sure it can be a bit contentious at times, but this is hardly a new twist or isolated to climate study. ALL OF SCIENCE is about skeptisim of existing "truths" and looking for holes in it, then in finding holes discovering new "truths". Its the scientists which have pointed to man-made global warming which have been ostracized for nearly a century. However, after over a century of study and others trying to poke holes in thier studies, thier findings are holding up and those trying to pole holes in them are finding it harder and harder to do given refinements in thier findings. This is how science works!
Do I think anyone knows exactly the hows, whats, or whens of global warming (or how much of it is man-made)? Of course not! There is very little (if any) fields of science where I would guarentee we have a 100% correct and complete understanding. That CERTAINLY doesn't mean you just ignore it until it becomes 100% or you will be waiting for eternity! The fact is man-made global warming is currently the scientific concensous. May it be proven wrong tomorrow? Sure it might. However, not by people complaining about "These are the same people who predicted that the 2006 hurricane season would be the worst ever". (talk about your "taking advantage of fact that most people can't think of anything that encompasses a time-scale larger than a generation" you couldn't even make it past one year
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
According to Greenpeace's 2006 Annual report, they spent 4.3 milliion Euros on their 'climate' campaign.
This is pure advocacy advertising money, by the way, unlike Exxon which actually has to sell a product.
How is it that (Company A) offering $10,000 for proof of one side of an issue is irredeemable evilness, but (Advocacy Group) spending $5.6 million is a justified righteous crusade?
-Styopa
...the American Enterprise Institute group, which apparently has numerous ties to the Bush administration.. Notice the use of the word 'apparent'. Saying group A has "apparent ties" to group B is just a way of smearing group A by association without taking any responsibility if those "apparent ties" turn out not to be "actual ties". Guilt by "apparent" association. Orginal Poster you can do better than that.
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. -- Aldous Huxley
In reporting on the effects of GHG emissions, fear does not seem to be very important. This is basically a matter of fact thing. Policy makers' response may be driven by fear, as in the case of the present administration which fears the loss to their backers' funding source, or it may be driven by confidence in the manner that, say FDR, handled things. That's a leadership choice, not a scientific issue.s -selling-solar.html
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Solar! Rage, rage against the dying of the light! -The other Dylan http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Haven't scientists also been given money by special interest groups to PROVE global warming theories??
How does he know the ducks weren't sent by Satan to lead him astray?
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
>grant money that only comes in if they say the exact opposite.
A lot of the research is funded by the US federal government.
Do you assert that the Bush administration is determined, regardless of facts, to prove that burning fossile fuels is harmful?
The report is already quite definite about its conclusions. The ExxonMobil effort is not at all likely to move us forward in the way you would like.s -selling-solar.html
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Move forward wih solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
The report does not say that humans are the ONLY cause. Just one of the big ones.
/. comments here that were made by folks with a 'damage control' agenda against the report. All you Exxon employees go home, we don't want you here.
Can someone tell me what the global-warming-is-not-happening and if-it-is-happening-it-isn't-humans-fault people are trying to accomplish? Suppose that global warming wasn't happening at all. Do these people want us to keep pumping crap into our land sea and air? As long as the world is not heating up, the acid rain, increase in lung disease, damage to ecosystems and the damn soot on my car (and in my lungs) every morning are all ok? Let's just keep going as we are? Really? What are they trying to accomplish by being against a reduction in pollutants? Sheesh.
I can almost smell out the
Now, I'm no supporter of Bush, nor nearly any of his policies. But I'd also be interested in seeing which other political groups AEI is affiliated or associated with. I'm sure they're somehow tied to parts of the Democratic party.... Basically, what I'm saying is that a lot of these groups are trying to get close to groups other than Bush and the neo-cons.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Funny you should compare Big Tobacco with Big Oil's tactics.
It's not just the "Climate Skeptics" that should have issues with conflict of interest. It was on March 19th of this year that "60 Minutes" profiled NASA scientist and alarmist James Hansen, who was once again making allegations of being censored by the Bush administration. See http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/17/60minute s/main1415985.shtml. At the time, Hansen was given a one-sided glowing profile.
The 60 Minutes segment made no mention of Hansen's partisan ties to former Democrat Vise President Al Gore or Hansen's receiving of a grant of a quarter of a million dollars from the left-wing Heniz Foundation run by Teresa Heinz Kerry, There was also no mention of Hansen's subsequent endorsement of her husband John Kerry for President in 2004. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/dai_complete.pdf.
Many in the media dwell on any industry support given to any so-called climate skeptics, but the same media completely fail to note Hansen's huge grant from the left-wing Heinz Foundation. http://222.heinzawards.net/speechDetail.asp?speech ID=6. I guess ketchup money is different from oil money.
IMHO Global Warming is a real threat, and it is man made.
However, like yourself, I really would like to see more of the science and less of the hype. It would be better for all of us.
In this vein, I would really like to know where 'dissenting papers' came from. It's in quotes - which suggests that it is a quote, but my 'find' button must be broken because it doesn't seem to appear in the article.
What's with this?
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
I don't understand the emphasis on MAN-MADE as a reason to not take action. Even if global warming is not a MAN-MADE cause (which personally I find unlikely), is it something everybody wants to risk? Clearly pumping tons of carbon into the atmosphere is not good. We are smart enough to figure out better and cleaner ways to produce mass energy. Why don't we just clean up now regardless of the cause for the sake of the environment? In 50 - 100 years, it's going to be too late to be decide, "oh wow, it really was MAN-MADE, better start taking action now!".
The whole debate seems pointless to me, but I very well could be missing something.
The scientific culture does reward mavericks, and thrives on challenges to the status quo, assuming that the person saying "throw out the old theory" has a better theory. But saying "nuh-uh!!!" doesn't quite measure up to that.
I really, really wish the left-wing hadn't gotten to environmentalism first and staked it out as their issue. I sincerely think that much of the resistance to the idea of global warming is that conservatives just don't want to find themselves in agreement with those irritating, smarmy granolaheads. I can sympathize, more or less. I certainly wouldn't want to find myself in agreement with Ann Coulter, much less David Duke. But the idea that anthropocentric global warming is a "liberal" issue is really hurting us, almost as badly as the idea that civil rights are a "liberal" issue.
What you have done is to set up, or at least respond to, a false dilemma: either scientists are in it for the money, or they are in it for the love of knowledge. Human motivation is not that simple. Setting up the dilemma and disproving one horn is not the same as proving the other.
Though your reasoning is fallacious, the thing you attack is equally flawed. Whether a scientist (or anyone else) is motivated by greed, fear, ideology, or peer recognition is irrelevant. His findings are either valid or not.
Some people may enter their field for the love of its subject matter, only to be seduced by greed or peer recognition. Others may enter with financial dreams, and find a thirst for knowledge only later. I would posit that in all cases there is a mix of motives, people being people. Ask yourself how many work for free.
At any rate, sorting out motivations is impossible, and is the wrong way to go about analyzing the problem, besides. It can only lead to the next ad hominem. Rather, let the work speak for itself. Flaws in the work are flaws in the work, whether originating from poor skill or dishonest motives, and it's a fool's errand to try to tell which.
sigs, as if you care.
Really? I do believe that 10K was the amount the now-jailed scientist got for selling nuclear secrets to the Chinese back in Clinton days.
I have plenty of understanding of the scientific community. I was part of it (certainly not a climatologist) and I got out because it sucked. Here's how it really works.
:)
1. You survey what grant money exists and hope you can find something interesting to study.
2. You read all the available papers on the subject.
3. You research and write some papers of your own to be submitted to peer journals. This has different effects:
a) You agree with the majority, get your paper published, get more grant money. Rinse and Repeat.
b) You come up with some air-tight, irrefutable evidence that proves the majority wrong. You become an icon and get more grant money.
c) You disagree with the majority based on a disagreement with their fundamental assumptions. Your paper is rejected and you get no money.
That's how it works. This isn't cancer or pharma research where there is a clinical trial where your drug works or doesn't. It isn't engineering where you can build a prototype and show people that it's better. It's all theory, and everybody has one. To pick a similar example, look at string theory physicists. They go from being fashionable to being ignored and back again because none of their info is provable.
Even your own example lends credence to that process. Until man-made global warming became a political agenda, the scientists trying to prove it were ignored and ostracized. Now their theory is fashionable and people are calling for the censure of people who disagree with them. Global cooling mentioned in the 70s and over-hyped. It's hard to separate the real science from what the media decides to push down our throats.
And my point about the hurricane season was that if they can't even get the short term predictions correct, how can they get the long term ones correct? (I don't think I shot myself in the foot with that one, but I may have grazed myself by being unclear.) They based the prediction of the 2006 hurricane season on the 2005 hurricane season, much like they are basing the predictions of the next 100 years on the last 100 years. If they're using the last 10,000 years (post ice age), why stop there? How warm was it millions of years ago when dinosaurs (reptiles for the most part) ruled the earth? How hot do crocodiles like it? I know we have ice core samples from Antarctica that go back a long time, but if it's less than 1,000,000 years does it accurately represent the "normal" state of the planet?
I just really hate the "OMG! Golbal Warming! Everybody Panic!" attitude. Could it just be part of an agenda to push Prius sales? Doubtful, but a 250cc motorcycle is a more efficient means of transportation for a single person and _nobody_ seems to be suggesting that we get more bikes on the road. They're only telling us which _cars_ to buy now.
I could go on a lot longer, because this stuff really is interesting, but lunch is over and I have to actually get back to work. Be well, and stock up on shorts both for the heat and the higher sea levels.
Do your part to reduce Global Warming...stop breathing.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The emphasis on "man-made" is to separate whether this is a controllable phenomenon or not. If it isn't something that is directly linked to our past actions, we may be modifying the wrong behaviors if we want to reverse the trend.
ex, if 80% of global warming is due to sunspot activity, changing our CO2 output will have a minimal effect compared to some other things we might do. (yeah, I don't know what, but you get the point)
It's science if yes, (s)he is hired to investigate a particular claim and see if it holds truth. However, it is not science if the clauses on the funding prevent him from publishing results that go against the funder's agenda.
In other words, there's nothing wrong with offering cash to *investigate* and offer facts on a particular subject, nor with offering said cash to disprove or prove a particular theory, provided that - if the evidence does in fact go against what they expect - the results may still be published as such. Many companies don't allow this, so I'd have to see what the actual contract (or just the strings on the funding) says.
Both sides play this game, but the oil companies seem to be getting panicky and throwing out a lot of money with these sort of funny clauses in attempts to debunk the pollution=global warming angle of things. You can't prove or disprove anything unless you can offer evidence from both sides.
Perhaps, in the midst of your hysteria, you could outline precisely what parts of the research or flawed or faked. You know, back up your assertions. That's scientists do, so get to it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You mean the same Cheney/Bush who, when he took office in 2000, created his own automotive energy project, moved the existing hybrid vehicle project( 7 years old ) into this new project, axed the old project, created and funded a hydrogen/hype vehicle project, then axed the hybrid vehicle project? The list goes on and on about the deals Cheney and Bush made which stalled or killed off efficiency projects and labs while making sure their buddies in the oil industry would grow their profits. Remember during the 2004 election campaign when Bush made a visit to a renewable energy lab in Colorado? It was found out a week earlier that he'd cut their funding and they were going to layoff over 40 employees right before Bush arrived. They got special funding in a matter of days before Bush arrived but the funding was only going to last about 1 year....
So this is not surprising. What gets my goat is that all the Republicans were just acting like lemmings and allowing Cheney/Bush to do whatever the wanted. Only now that he's a lame duck and the public FINALLY figured out Iraq is a screw-up, are some Republicans making statements against their( Cheney/Bush ) policies.
What a wonderful spineless group bunch of lemmings they are. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
...that every single move taken by the tobacco industry in the last 15 years is going to be repeated in exact fashion by the oil industry? ...
There are plenty of other examples of the pattern being repeated, but I'm too tired to write them all out. Short version, the only thing that's changed is the product
Well, that and the fact that everybody, including you, is going to be hating life if we can't use petroleum. It won't just be another case of making oneself feel all righteous by taking away stuff that only those uncool lower class people use.
They aren't going to risk being ostracized from the community by disagreeing with the MAN-MADE global warming hysteria. Being a scientific skeptic of MAN-MADE global warming effectively excommunicates them.
If you could show any evidence whatsoever of this supposed "excommunication" actually occurring, you might have a point. But you don't, and you probably can't. If someone came up with sound scientific arguments for why global climate change is not being affected by human activity, or with specific problems or gaps in current understanding, their views would be welcome. Journals love publishing conflicting viewpoints, it tends to bring lots of attention and readers. However, they only like doing it if the conflict is backed by actual scientific evidence, and thus far most of the evidence points to a significant human impact on climate change.
These are the same people who predicted that the 2006 hurricane season would be the worst ever.
No, they aren't. Those would be meteorologists, or other people that study short-term (decadal) weather patterns. They thought they had found a pattern of cyclical changes in storm intensity, and based on that pattern they predicted a very active storm season. They were wrong. This has little or nothing to do with the study of long-term climate change. What you claim is akin to saying that since 2006 was the hottest year on record, it proves that humans are influencing global climate. It does nothing of the sort; it is merely one more data point (well, lots more than that).
This is nothing more than fear mongering and taking advantage of fact that most people can't think of anything that encompasses a time-scale larger than a generation.
It is true, we are coming out of the latest glacial period in a series of glacial-interglacial cycles. Based on records of previous cycles, we would expect the climate to still be warming at this point. There is little or no question about this. Yes, regardless of whether humans were around, we would currently be seeing a long-term trend of global warming. However, when we look at the rate of temperature change, and various factors that impact/are impacted by climate change, it is apparent that our current warming trend is very different from similar periods in the previous several cycles. This isn't an attempt at fear-mongering (though some have certainly tried to hijack it to that cause), it is an attempt to explain why this time the pattern is so different, and the primary answer that comes up is that this time humans are having a significant effect.
What is going on is that a certain group of people have absolutely convinced themselves that scientists are saying humans are the root of all global warming and that the climate would be stable and wonderful if it weren't for us dastardly humans. This isn't at all what the science shows, and this isn't what the scientists have been saying, but it is much easier to argue against this absolutist view than it is to argue against what the climatologists (and scientific evidence) actually show.
Enclosed is my thesis on the hypothesis commonly known as global warming. I'm sure that you will find it both enlightening and satisfactory.
You may mail my check to the return address on this letter.
Best Regards,
dapsychous
What does more harm? Paying scientists to create misleading reports that lead us to pursue more environmentally friendly and healthy alternatives to power and industry OR paying scientists to create misleading reports that lead us to continue to use environmentally destructive power sources and industrial practices. Personally, I'd rather pay more now for products and practices that are more sustainable and have less impact on the global ecology. There's more to be gained in caution that blind stubborness so I'd suggest that if one MUST err, that they attempt to err in the fashion that would be most beneficial to them.
Unfortunately, companies do not like things that hit the bottom line, and environmental consciousness definately hits the bottom line. Today's corporate culture hardly seems to consider sustainable business practices worth considering so why in the world should we trust them to educate us about sustainable envirnonmental practices. I'd have a very different view of this situation if it was BP involved since they have been actively pursuing alternative energy sources for year. But then, I doubt that BP would offer a bounty of contrairian propaganda to suit the needs of their PR department.
I just really hate the "OMG! Golbal Warming! Everybody Panic!" attitude.
:)
;-) BTW, I'm not freaking out about global warming (at least I don't mean to come across that way) ;-). I simply think its something that needs study and we need to begin thinking about what if anything needs to be done about it. It just bugs me to no end to see people dump on climate scientists who study this (and many of them have been well before there was any of this craziness) because its some sort of get quick rich scheme they are trying to pull on us. Its just complete nonsense.
I agree. It is horribly sensationalized by the media, but reguardless of that current scientific research points to it being true and should be deeply studied. One of the best aspects of the latest UN paper in my opinion is it doesn't try to tell us what we need to do or if we should do anything. Science can certainly help in these decisions, but it is society as a whole which will ultimately decide.
As far as what time lines of data should be used in these models, that is always a tricky question. When doing any such models you tend to want to use the largest set of accurate data which correlates to the conditions you want to test for. So you want as much data as possible, but if the data from long ago cannot be guaranteed to be as acurate as more current data, it can actually take away from the value of the output. Also, even if we know its 100% accurate but the conditions at the time were so different at the time it could also take away from the accuracy of the output. I mean, should we also include current data from Jupiter? I agree its a hard question, but I have to trust the professionals in that field to choose the best values. The beauty of science is if they don't others will catch it and offer counter agruements in the peer-review process.
I could go on a lot longer, because this stuff really is interesting, but lunch is over and I have to actually get back to work. Be well, and stock up on shorts both for the heat and the higher sea levels.
Agreed and same to you
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
This is like Microsoft paying for a report stating that open source projects cost more and don't work. This is big business investing in FUD, this is information pollution: Noise meant to hide information which they fear.
You can't take the sky from me...
I'm continually shocked at the wonderful readers of /.. I've never seen so many people fight against global warming so hard. Global warming threads always generate a whole lot of comments of "funding science = bias". Right. /.'ers that have such a hard time understanding science? Are you the same people who talk about how PS3 will pwn the world? Do all of you only believe corporations? Personally, i've never found a reason to trust a corporation.
What is it about half of you
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
That's how old theories get replaced with better ones. That said, a dissenting opinion by someone who's funding comes with fewer strings would be less questionable.
But on the other side of the coin, a dissenting opinion slows down action; the tobacco industry proved this over the last 30 years; I am sure they are still trying to fund studies saying tobacco isn't addictive, and cigarettes aren't bad for you.
Because the funding is coming from a party heavily invested in disproving global warming, the studies are going to be valueless.
I propose that any study by "independent" scientists list in the header of their paper,
1) Where they got their funding from
2) If the funding is from a little-known institute (like the American Enterprise Institute), then the source of the institutes money should be listed clearly as well.
Part of the reason that these studies work is that the source of the money isn't widely know.
This is not "Big Oil". This is Exxon Mobile. Exxon Mobile is clearly on the record denying global warming and fighting tooth and nail and dollar against anyone who says otherwise or who wants to do something.
Shell Oil and BP are just as firmly on the record saying that global warming is real and trying to help do something about it. You can argue about whether they are part of the problem or whether they are doing enough to help solve it, but they are not global warming deniers.
See this article for an overview of Big Oil and global warming.
I'd like to start the bidding at One Billion dollars. I would gladly write an article saying that Global Warming is not based on sound scientific research. Please email me at dekkerdreyer@gmail.com for an address to send the check.
Dekker Dreyer
As opposed to scientiests who depend on grant money that only comes in if they say the exact opposite.
There is climate change caused by humans. This was concusively proved by 9/11. When the planes were grounded, there was a change in climate that was measurable. The massive amounts of fuel burnt high in the atmosphere does cause climate change. I have found no one that has ever dispute this.
Now, compare someone paid to do research that may have to get a grant from different sources (and Exxon is happy to grant grant money, as they showed here) if they piss off their benefactors to someone that is paid $10,000 to find a specific finding. Do you not understand that paying someone for a result (what the oil companies are doing) is different from some possible cutting of some non-guaranteed future grant? For one, as long as your results are valid and replicable, I have known many scientists to find the opposite of what they were expecting to find and still get renewed funding.
Learn to love Alaska
Seriously, I am getting rather tired of the I can't believe that climatologists have anything other than the foggiest idea of what will happen argument. This is a very lazy, very pre-conditioned, very lame line of argument. Yes, climate systems are really f-ing complicated and there's a lot we don't know. But there's a lot we do know, and we generally know what we don't know (which is important). Read the report, and when the full IPCC report comes out, flip through that sucker and tear it apart to your heart's content. With detail. With logic.
I do agree with your contention that most people can't think of anything that encompasses a time-scale larger than a generation. But as far as the science goes, I think we're past that.
My bottom line is:
Where is gets squirrelly is how all of the other climate feedbacks work. Are there mechanisms like the one(s) Lindzen of MIT talk about, that (somewhat magically) release the extra heat out the back door? Water vapor/clouds? Ice albedo? Increased crop fertility? A lot is known about these, and a lot is unknown. But I sure as shit haven't seen any smoking guns that say don't worry about it. For me, the null hypothesis is, well, read the frickin' report.
Also, there are pluses and minuses associated with increased CO2, with or without warming. On the plus, maybe increased crop yields. On the minus, more pollen, much more hardy poison ivy, ocean acidification. Even if the climate can take care of itself, I am still quite concerned with CO2 emissions.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
So when people can only hear one side of a story it's a good thing? I don't dispute that there are benefits to living in Singapore/North Korea/choose your own example, but I find the dangers of accepting "what everybody knows" blindly to be a greater danger than letting science do it's job.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
I dispute the study on economic grounds. Fossil fuels are becoming more expensive while renewables are getting cheaper. Market forces will put ExxonMobil's fossil fuel side out of business much sooner that the report assumes. There is a fundemental flaw in the report's assumptions!
s -selling-solar.html
You said you wanted economic criticism too. That'll be $10K plus travel please.
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Solar! It's cheaper! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Would it be a 'bribe' for me to hire a criminal defense attorney and experts to poke holes in the prosecution's case if I were accused of a crime? That's how I see what's being described here. This is a company being accused of environmentally inimical behavior and wanting to find out if there are flaws in the case being made against it.
Well the first batch of greedy scientists have already pledged themselves to attack the IPCC report: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archive s/004133.html.
... "have" or "has"? I guess I'll have to wait until the linguists are done with their climate research.
Oh damn, is "batch" a singular or plural subject?
It turns out the answer is "us". So now we know ... only what are we going to do about it? Seriously ... what is the best way to deal with this problem? Energy conservation is one way, but how far should one go? It's got tremendous inertia, and that might be working both for us and against us.
I'm asking this because somehow I cannot imagine a few hundred million people in the West ditching all their cars, turning off their PC's and the Internet, shutting down their aircos, and grounding all airliners. Much less countries like China switching off their coal-fired power plants. No matter what the long-term consequences, the short-term (economic and lifestyle) consequences will ensure that there will be no support for anything like that. Political or otherwise.
Juding by the scenarios presented it's best to do something soonish ... but how do we make sure that it's not just us who bears the brunt of this problem? And what's the minimum we can do? Doing something about this is likely to hurt. Badly.
And how do we determine who should do how much? The Kyoto agreements suddenly don't seem to stupid anymore, but not even the ecological boyscouts in the EU seem to be able to achieve their agreed reduction in carbon emissions.
Any ideas who is concocting a reasonable type policy taget?
Wow, is this what happens when you listen to Ann Coulter and his clones 8 hours a day? A conspiracy of actors and non-profits and ivory tower intellectuals (otherwise knows as scientists) are trying to pull a scam over the American people? To achieve what? What is it that they hope to gain? We know what Exxon gains; freedom from regulation. How does Al Gore or the Sierra Club benefit?
Even the conspiracy theorists around the JFK assasination have a "reason" behind their theories: the Cubans getting revenge for the Bay of Pigs, the mafia getting revenge for Marilyn, the aliens trying to disrupt the Apollo program.
So what is the reason for this huge conspiracy?
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Even though I disagree with some of your overall conclusions, in general, I think you've made an excellent, highly reasonable post here.
One point I would make:
And my point about the hurricane season was that if they can't even get the short term predictions correct, how can they get the long term ones correct?
Well, I hope you will excuse my use of an analogy here, but I think it's germane to the problem. If I'm running a retail store, it's perfectly natural for me to want to do sales forecasting. Now, this can be done in some kind of back of the envelope way such as last year's sales * 1.15 = this year's projected sales, or it can be done using an elaborate regression model that requires a team of economists to produce. Anyway, suppose you take extensive care and build a good model.
Now suppose you start trying to forecast what the sales will be for, say, February 23rd. Odds are, the daily data is drastically noisier than the annual data. While even a lousy annual model is quite likely to be accurate within +/-50% overall, it might be that for a certain type of store on a given day you sell anywhere between $500 and $10,000 worth of products, depending on who walks through your door and the value of the products they choose to purchase.
At a micro level, your model may well be effectively worthless. But it still may have significant value at making those larger scale predictions, because the low-level noise tends to balance out over time.
Obviously, this is nowhere near proof that any given climate model is valid. But it could well be that a climate model is no more accurate at predicting the severity of a given winter or hurricane season than The Old Farmer's Almanac, but it quite effective at predicting average climate trends over a longer period. So I don't believe that your assertion is valid that models must first prove themselves highly accurate at short term data before any weight should be applied to their prediction for long term data.
An Inconvenient Truth. Damn, that was a great title.
I am Jack's smirking revenge.
The 'scientists' accepting these payments don't have any real credibility. They do however have PhD's and work for official sounding institutes which gives the air of credibility for an incurious public (their audience).
Stop the lies!! This is why any arguments you might contribute to the discussion have to be taken with a grain of salt. You flat out LIE!! The Sierra club doesn't really fund basic research on climate science -- you're just rehashing the same lies you hear on right-wing media and propagating them without using your brain to filter out the BS first.
The 1998 vote on Kyoto WAS unapposed. Why? Maybe because nearly a decade ago, there wasn't as much conclusive research into the issue and politicians didn't want to rock the popular boat of economic recovery. Now, only those in the pockets of big oil will STILL deny the impact of humans on global climate change. So NOW, if the government doesn't act, it certain SHOULD be held accountable. Also, I don't see many people specifically using the Kyoto protocol vote to criticize the president. It's the far more doable things that the current administration isn't doing -- like actually ADMITTING that global warming is caused by human industry, the country most responsible for excessive carbon emission being the US.
This is a fallacious argument. Climate and weather prediction are related but different problems. There is good reason to believe we can predict climate changes with more certainty than we can predict whether it will rain next week. Nobody's trying to predict the weather 100 years forward (on a particular day), nor is anyone claiming we have this ability.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
jesus f'n christ ... DUH :P
is everyone in the scientific community a retard??
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
i noticed this trend when i was 10
i mean SHIT a single volcano dumps out more shit gasses than we ever could
p r m t h s
Damn, I love you! Someone who finally brought up Acid Rain.
I guess if you don't live in the Great Lakes region you don't know about Acid Rain or toxic waste dumping. Yeah lets catch some fish from Lake Erie and have them for dinner!
It becomes ever more increasing that people are just too fucking stupid to live. They have no clue or understanding of science or the scientific method. They see nothing wrong in researchers accepting money from businesses that have a vested interest in the outcome of their research. Tobacco companies anyone....
And even when they are presented with the facts they would rather stick their heads in the sand and pretend nothing is wrong.
Fucking bunch of morons.
And just who is funding the global warming proponents? I ask this question regularily
.. .. while other scientists whose opposing theories hold just as valid are ignored
when one of these GW articles pop up on Slashdot and I invite everybody and all to do the
research and to find out.
The scientists who propose global warming theories out there are for the
most part likely to be sincere in their findings - but they are also the most
likely to be funded by the UN "Agenda 21" crowd through their network of Sustainable
Development cronies
at best, more often ridiculed and jeered by the publicity that same funding money
also buys. A less __selective__ reporting would not just unearth one single case of the
undesired sides shortcomings but in all fairness report on the funding that is
going to both sides, both the official as well as the underhanded. (As an exception
the official funding is far more interesting in this case).
Sustainable Development is going to be the pivot element of the UN global governance
that has come knocking and a lot of effort is being invested into it to make the
sustainable development - global warming paradigm package stick no matter what the opposition
to the scientifism it is based on.
Here are a couple of things people might want to check out who want to learn more
about this...
Here are a couple of points to google for "Sustainable Development" "Property rights"
"Agenda 21" "Joan Peros" (also try this on http://video.google.com/
You didn't read the article, did you. ExxonMobil isn't offering the money to DO research. It's offering the money for scientists to just start saying that they doubt the validity of anthropogenic climate change. This isn't a bounty for reserarch, it's a standing offer for scientists to trade their integrity for cash.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Because this isn't a grant to do research. It's a grant to publically take a certain position on an issue. They are being paid to use their scientific reputations (not skills) as part of a marketing effort to sway public opinion on anthropogenic climate change. No science is actually involved here, other than in the sense that scientific integrity is being as casually trod-upon as the survivability of our descendants.
I'm in the same boat as you. (I'm currently waiting to hear whether my latest grant to the NIH has been accepted.) You're right that there's always a certain amount of group think. However, if you had already done much of the research and could show to the group that your results convincingly challenged the status quo (which many of these pseudo-scientists claim), then you would stand a very good chance of getting funding. If all you were claiming is that you have a theory and you need funding to do the research, then, sure, the flavor-of-the-month mentality will come into bear.
Also keep in mind that both Lindzen and Michaels receive at least some funding from the government. To say that you can't get funding unless you toe the line is therefore patently false.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
No doubt there are some valuable findings in the report, and I know it draws on the results of multiple climate models, but it is still a group commissioned by a political group (the UN) amid very intense political pressure under the presumption of climate change. My understanding is the lead investigators of the group are paid by the panel...paid quite a bit more than $10,000 I'd wager.
I don't want to debate the conclusions of the report here and I certainly disapprove of bribery (I wouldn't consider hiring scientists to independently review the report a bribe, btw, anymore than the IPCC "bribed" a different group of scientists to write the report). I just think if people are going debate bias in the findings of such and such a study, they should be honest in recognizing where it may be working its way.
I know a bunch of people are going to misinterpret my comment as a viscious attack on the IPCC, so I'm going to stop there and close with this quote from a researcher in the organization that was looking to hire these scientists to review the report:
So, yes. You can dissent and still be funded by the government. (To be fair, he's only dissenting with the "alarmism", and not the general science.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
It's good to hear both sides of a story. But the fact is, there is only one objective reality, one objective truth. Science deals with this truth. What Exxon is doing is not science, it has nothing to do with truth and everything to do with perception. Exxon is doing the opposite of letting science do its job.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Yes, it's in the report. They don't know if the sea was higher 40 years back, or lower. They do know, it will be higher in next 40 years. Sure.
A new study shows there may be a conflict of interest amongst some climate scientists.
The study, done over the course of the last 60 years, shows some startling conclusions:
- many climate scientists are employed by public universities, which themselves are funded by governments
- the employment of many climate scientists is contingent upon publication in referreed journals. Those journals themselves are paneled by other government-employed climate scientists
- a key finding of climate science research is that climate scientists should have more say in public policy
- another key finding of climate science research is that considerably more government money needs to be spent doing climate science research at institutions that pay climate scientists with government money
Some nerve ExxonMobil has in paying people to do research.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
...how many Exxon-endorsed people are going around posting blogs and replying to news articles like this to give the appearance that there is actually any intelligent dissent.
Too bad, you are obviously for loss of arguments stuck with playing
the magical "kook" card. You sure that trump is still working?
This is simply the summary report or abstract if you will for policymakers (SPM). In other words, the document that is directed to and approved by the government representatives. The real report won't be out for another 3 months - it is still being edited. What is most disturbing, however, is the process being used to "edit" the final report. From Appendix A to the Principles Governing IPCC Work comes the following:
...
Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers or the Overview Chapter.
(page 5)
The Session of the Panel will review and adopt the longer report of the Synthesis Report, section by section,
i.e. roughly one page or less at a time. The review and adoption process for the longer report of the Synthesis
Report should be accomplished in the following manner:
- When changes in the longer report of the Synthesis Report are required either to conform it to the
SPM or to ensure consistency with the underlying Assessment Reports, the Panel and authors will
note where changes are required in the longer report of the Synthesis Report to ensure consistency
in tone and content. The authors of the longer report of the Synthesis Report will then make changes
in the longer report of the Synthesis Report. Those Bureau members who are not authors will act as
Review Editors to ensure that these documents are consistent and follow the directions of the
Session of the Panel
- The longer report of the Synthesis Report is then brought back to the Session of the Panel for the
review and adoption of the revised sections, section by section. If inconsistencies are still identified
by the Panel, the longer report of the Synthesis Report is further refined by the Authors with the
Assistance of the Review Editors for review and adoption by the Panel. This process is conducted
section by section, not line by line.
(page 8)
Think about this for a moment. What this means in practical terms is that the detailed reports, the science, if you will, are being edited so that they are consistent with the policy summary, the summary by the way that is edited in part and approved by policy wonks not scientists. In other words, the data/reports are being made to fit with the conclusions. This is known as cooking the data.
Since the early drafts of the IPCC FINAL report are somewhat available, it will be an interesting exercise to do a comparison between those and what the final "consistent" report has to say.
Galileo's many discoveries, especially the universe revolved around the sun and not the earth, put him at odds with the papacy and many universities. He was pressured into silence for almost two decades. Towards the end of his life he faced the Inquisition, was compelled to abjure, and spent his life imprisonment under house arrest.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
I dont' see sierra club or greenpeace funding scientists that dispute claims of global warming.
I don't see conservative meterologists advocating that pro-global warming advocates be de-certified.
Global warming left the realm of science and is now just a political issue.
One thing of note from the report, which I can independently confirm: Since the last interglacial period peaked out at 4 to 6m higher seas, and 3 to 5 C higher temperatures, then in the absense of evidence suggesting we should peak elsewhere, we should assume that the global climate will max out at similar levels, apart from any human infulence. (After that happens, maybe the IPCC can tell the politicians how to make new laws to encourage greenhouse gasses emission, to somehow keep the next ice age from coming along and killing us all.)
cash to right wing orgs are bribes?
It's ok for government agencies to fund reseach limited to proving global warming, but not for disproving it.
Nice double standard.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
"Predictions are not based on just extrapolating a past trend, you know. They also involve modeling the physical processes involved in climate. You can't just point to some part of a time series where there was a variation from the normal and claim it is inherently unpredictable. On the basis of time series analysis alone, it would be. On the basis of physics, it's a different matter."
OK, do a physics experiment to prove the significance of anthropogenic global warming. Oh. You can't do that? You have a simulation instead? And why should I believe your simulation? What if it doesn't model all the physical processes involved? What if it models them incorrectly? How can you possibly validate it? I know! Let's feed it with some past conditions and see if it can predict what we already know happened next! Oh... it gets that wrong? But this time, just coincidentally with a Kyoto treaty that targets the developed world and exempts the undeveloped world, it works. It's got physics. So, although it fails to retrodict the past, I should surrender to Chinese and Indian economic hegemony immediately anyway instead of waiting for them to overtake us normally... It's got physics.
That's OK, I've got a devil-mask here that keeps me safe from witches. I understand. If only more people did.
--
phunctor backs away slowly
This whole "man made global warming" issue beautifully illustrates the inability to measure a system within a system. Science is built on and maintained by faith.
"Right now, the whole debate is polarised," he said. "One group says that anyone with any doubts whatsoever are deniers and the other group is saying that anyone who wants to take action is alarmist. We don't think that approach has a lot of utility for intelligent policy."
Both sides play this game. Everyone takes what that gas-bag Gore says as fact, yet his hockey-stick graph has been disproved as any sort of concrete evidence. What's wrong with saying, "Let's not freak out and make things worse."?? I agree that offering money may not be the best way of focusing on the short-comings of this report but where did all the concern go for Global Cooling?? It wasn't that long ago that we were concerned that the world was cooling at an alarming rate. Hell we were even talking about spreading coal on the ice caps to warm the planet: http://www.savefile.com/files/461234
"Thoughts are more powerful than any weapon, and I don't even let my people own guns." --Joseph Stalin
Mr. Burns mighta been onto something there, in that Simpson's episode ...
If our climate is being deleteriously affected by too much energy coming into our climate syste, is it practical to throw up a satellite at the Lagrangian point between Earth and the Sun that effectively shades the Earth from some of the Sun's solar output?
$10K is a pretty damn paltry bribe. $100K research grants are pretty common for those in the sciences, with $1M+ programs not unheard of. As for personal salary, a PhD college professor in the sciences is easily at $100k+/year when you include summer salary.
But then they normally have to do some research. Here they only have to sit down an evening to write an essay.
If you ask an expert to say something he believes is not true, or more importantly oposes his prior public statements, he will just say no. There are plenty of experts, and at least one will say whatever you need. That is how the game is played.
That's pretty funny.
10: PRINT "Everything old is new again."
20: GOTO 10
It's not so much naivety as a lack of clarity. What I meant to say is that unlike many businesses, governmental funding is not contingent on what you can publish in other avenues. Sure, unfortunately the government might edit/censor what you say through official channels, and might even put other pressures on actual government employees (as opposed to merely grant recipients). However, I am not aware of any instances of them not allowing grant recipients to publish their results in journals due to those results not being favorable. By comparison, that does happen with corporate funding (and this is no secret).
Nice conspiracy theory you got going there, but it fails the sniff test. You can't claim victory when you've made very deliberate predictions that temperatures will go up, and then refine those predictions (still going up but in a narrower range), if temperatures actually go down. So, no, you are incorrect that they can "claim victory regardless of the direction temperatures actually go" now that they've renamed "anthropogenic climate change". That statement is either ignorant or deliberately misleading.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
To that end, I have sold my car in 2003 and living without one ever since. That's rather difficult, as I live in Toronto uptown, but I found that I can easily rent (Enterprise is my favourite) when I absolutely need to; my life and my health have improved and am generally happier this way, not to mention that it's much cheaper. I also try to avoid buying gas from Esso (for the few times I need to rent), because I disapprove of Exxon and what they stand for.
That being said, I believe that Exxon is doing a public service by spending their money this way. If I were a scientist offered money to play the devil's advocate, I would jump at the opportunity. This is because good ideas and good science do not come from unanimity. Dissent, if taken seriously, can only improve the scientific discourse and is the best sanity check against groupthink.
Maybe it's because I lived my formative years in a communist dictatorship, or maybe it's because I loved debating and miss judging those university tournaments, but I often found that I learned the most about a subject by listening to dissenting opinions - opinions I disagreed with.
"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that ones work is terribly important." -BRussell
When the full report actually is officially released, you'll probably find some good responses to the weaker parts at Climateaudit and elsewhere.
I play Nerd-Folk!
You have picked a model uncertainty estimate, not a measurement. The observed value is well known. Also, you got the units wrong because it is a rate, not a displacement. Geez, you don't get $10K for that. Go try harder.s -selling-solar.html
--
Be sure, go solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
You can't claim victory when you've made very deliberate predictions that temperatures will go up, and then refine those predictions (still going up but in a narrower range), if temperatures actually go down.
Let me draw a parallel: Sulfate aerosols. Twenty years ago... BAD! Spend five billion dollars on a five million dollar problem by requiring major changes to industry by amending the clean air act. Now, twenty years later, the same environmental crowd that fought against sulfates so vigorously tell us sulfate aerosols are keeping global temperatures down and should be intentionally put into the atmosphere. Keep in mind, they don't want to lift clean air act restrictions. They want to spend more money (pocket more grants) seeding it with jet airplanes, balloons and artillery cannons... I still haven't heard how this is supposed to avoid the production of acid rain, but there it is, staring you in the face. Twenty years ago, you would have told me to stuff my sulfate conspiracy theories too, I suppose.
So you say a temperature switcheroo in a few decades is impossible? Suppose they just throw up a two or three page "debunking" over at realclimate and continue on their merry way. Would that pass your sniff test? They are simply trying to scare up power and support, just like George W Bush does with the terrorism rhetoric. Remember, the whole sulfate aerosol business started in 1995 when the IPCC's prediction of 1.3C-2.3C temperature increase only turned out to be about a 0.5C increase.
Source: Testimony of Dr. Patrick J Michaels before the 105th US Congress, 1997
I'm surprised no one has brought up the topic of simply arranging a boycott of Exxon-Mobil. They are the largest-grossing oil company, period. They've posted their highest profit ever last year. If they're more driven by $$ than their public image to consumers, we've certainly validated their greed.
:> There are very few companies I get vindictive over, and I don't think Exxon has even ever personally screwed me over.
:P
For my part, I haven't stopped at an Exxon station voluntarily since my father advised me to avoid them sometime after the Valdez incident, and that's one of the few pieces of his advice that has stuck with me and that I've rarely regretted following. This latest news just serves to comfort me that I haven't been totally irrational all this time
I try not to drive far out of my way to avoid an Exxon station. It also helps that Exxon tends to have the highest prices in town.
This policy hasn't rubbed off on my wife yet (she took it there for an oil change last month!). But at least she almost puts up with the constant "we'll just see what's at the next exit" while she anxiously motions towards the gas gauge's needle hovering over Empty.
ExxonMobil is definitely a bad actor but a lot of boycotts center on human rights violations associated with the oil industry rather than on PR or profits.
s -selling-solar.html
Something more direct is to work for a cut in emissions. http://stepitup2007.org/ is one way to do this by getting together on April 14.
--
Solar works! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Um, yes. Sulfate aerosols are bad. Do you dispute that? A single scientist (yes, he's a nobel laureate) is now proposing injecting them into the atmosphere. And you equate that with the "same environmental crowd" how? Are you even listening to yourself?
Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying - barring, of course, some obvious change such as putting a space sunshade in orbit (not that I expect that to happen).
No. No it would not.
As for your final comment, let me point out that you are citing the same Pat Michaels that, despite receiving large sums of money from the coal industry, has recently said:
His "solution" of course is to just wait around for the problem to fix itself:
How convenient that his solution is good for the people who recently gave him so much money. Just a coincidence though, I'm sure.
As for previous IPCC predictions being alarmist, I'll send you to this link which points out that the 2001 IPCC was too conservative, if anything. (Although the temperature increases did stay within the bounds given, they were on the high end of the predictions.)
No climatologist - not Pat Michaels and not Richard Lindzen - is denying that anthropogenic global warming is happening. The only dispute is to how hot and how quickly - oh, and what to call it.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Nothing motivates environmental disputes like a 'Green'-back!
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
My guess is that this money is just some extra incentive to get scientists who *already* do not believe in climate change to publish their work.
All scientists need to make a living. Real scientists make a living by testing hypotheses about the physical world. Whether or not the actual hypothesis is correct or not makes little difference to the income of the scientist; what matters is that the experiments and the reasoning of the scientist are sound and rooted in reality. A scientist who lies and distorts can become a pariah, and can therefore lose income. This is a powerful incentive to tell the truth.
If a scientist's income is instead based on the specific outcome of his/her experiments, then there will be an incentive for that scientist to twist reality to match the desired outcome. In the extreme case, if a scientist receives all of their income from interests who desire a specific scientific outcome, then there will be a very strong incentive to continue to hold a particular viewpoint even if it does not reflect reality. If they change their mind, then they will lose their income.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
The assumption here is that somehow we can control the climate. Maybe instead of all these worries about weather the warming is natural or manmade we can all get together and decide what the perfect climate is. Then we can adopt policies to make sure it is perfect. I would think those in higher latitudes would welcome the warming becuase they will have longer growing seasons and more land to grow on. Also less heating bills ect. As for where it is hot I'm sure they could go for much more cooling to save A/C bills and again get longer growing seasons. It just seems strange that somehow the UN decide the climate was perfect in 1970 (or whenever) and it can't change from there.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Oops. Let me fix that for you:
It's not an empirical science.
See this generally accepted categorization of the sciences.
swym: say what you mean
Dogma is not science. Let exxon fund the scientists in peace. When they fund the marketers to push facts that are provably wrong, expose them, and crucify them, but stop criticizing research that might poke holes in your pet theory.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
OK, surely we can do many things to clean up this world and stop pollution. I'm all for that, but what I don't get is why all of a sudden some scientists say the earth is warming in the last 100 or 1000 years and it's because of us!?
Now hear me out...
Man has lived on the earth for how many years? Thousands? And of those thousands, how long have we been keeping accurate measures of temperatures? Hundreds? And how many years has the earth been in existance? Billions? So really, we know NOTHING of the cyclical patterns the weather has on this planet.
Let me see - here's an excerpt right from Wikipedia on "Ice Age". Anyone can go over there and read it, however, I've taken the pleasure to cut and paste it for you:
"During the most recent North American glaciation, the Wisconsin glaciation (70,000 to 10,000 years ago), ice sheets extended to about 45 degrees north latitude.
This Wisconsinian glaciation left widespread impacts on the North American landscape. The Great Lakes and the Finger Lakes were carved by ice deepening old valleys. Most of the lakes in Minnesota and Wisconsin were gouged out by glaciers and later filled with glacial meltwaters. The old Teays River drainage system was radically altered and largely reshaped into the Ohio River drainage system. Other rivers were dammed and diverted to new channels, such as the Niagara, which formed a dramatic waterfall and gorge, when the waterflow encountered a limestone escarpment. Another similar waterfall near Syracuse, New York is now dry.
Long Island was formed from glacial till, and the watersheds of Canada were so severely disrupted that they are still sorting themselves out -- the plethora of lakes on the Canadian Shield in northern Canada can be almost entirely attributed to the action of the ice. As the ice retreated and the rock dust dried, winds carried the material hundreds of miles, forming beds of loess many dozens of feet thick in the Missouri Valley. Isostatic rebound continues to reshape the Great Lakes and other areas formerly under the weight of the ice sheets."
Yea yea yea - save your flame mail.... so your next comment is what; that we're only speeding things up with the way we're polluting the earth? Again - how many years has the human race lived on this planet? And we are comparing the current rise in temperature with what previous ice-age global warming experience?
How about we stop this madness. We all know scientists get paid on grant money. That's what funds their existance. I've seen scientists use the same results from experiments to prove for AND against the same argument; all based on how they laid out the results. They can manipulate things to make them look any which way they want. It's all about the greed of money people...
Really? I do believe that 10K was the amount the now-jailed scientist got for selling nuclear secrets to the Chinese back in Clinton days.
Do you have a link for that? That just seems way too stupid to believe. Not that it's a stupid statement just that you'd have to be pretty stupid to think the cost/benefit was anything but laughable.
What do you think of the adversarial system of law? Each side hires a professional shill to present a biased opinion in as convincing a way as possible, to convince an audience. We trust that system to more or less present that audience with something they can use to decide the real story.
Revive the Constitution.
The problem with science and global warming is that it has become so heavily politicized that it's pointless to try and follow and / or agree / disagree with either 'side'.
But who is doing the politicizing? Republicans and the fossil fuel industry, not climate scientists. This is just classic GOP propaganda: create the appearance of controversy where none exists, so no action is taken because the issue is "controversial". Note that the same tactic was used with cigarettes and Intelligent Design.
There are islands dissapearing in Bangladesh and the Pacific sea already.
As for the sea leveles not raising, please AC (or any other flat earth deniers, sorry, climate change deniers) explain to us how ice melting in the poles and the sea swelling due to higher temperatures (a basic fact of physics) will not be reflected in a rising of the sea levels.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
$10K? I could use that! Since I have no career to trash (I write software), this would be free money. I've read the book, State of Fear - so this should be a cinch... I know what to say and how to say it!
-- Stephen.