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Climate Skeptic Funded By Oil and Coal Companies
Honken writes with a report from The Guardian that "'One of the world's most prominent scientific figures to be sceptical about climate change has admitted to being paid more than $1m in the past decade by major US oil and coal companies.' This somewhat contradicts that [Harvard researcher Willie] Soon in a 2003 US senate hearing said that he had 'not knowingly been hired by, nor employed by, nor received grants from any organisation that had taken advocacy positions with respect to the Kyoto protocol or the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.'"
many climatologist on both sides of the discussion are employed by people who take a particular interest in one outcome or another.
So, you found one you don't like, I am quite sure we can find more, there are probably even websites dedicated to this.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Lying in these kinds of hearings is utterly amoral and can have drastic negative consequences for society.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I remember when lying to Congress used to be a crime. Now it's just an alternative lifestyle.
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many climatologist on both sides of the discussion are employed by people who take a particular interest in one outcome or another
Your attempt to muddy the waters aside, one thing is clear: this guy accepted a million dollars to deny reality.
many climatologist on both sides of the discussion are employed by people who take a particular interest in one outcome or another.
What do you mean by "both sides"? Really? What funding source were you thinking of that has a financial interest comparable to the trillion dollar profits of the fossil-fuel companies?
That's the party line of the climate-change deniers: "Oh, it doesn't matter that the so-called skeptics are all funded by fossil-fuel companies, because both sides are funded by dirty money."
But, oddly, when there is even a rumor that a climate scientist has received as much as a lunch paid for by a source that is not absolutely spotlessly apolitical, isn't it amazing how the blogosphere lights up with accusations of how climate change is "bought and paid for." (Even when the rumor turns out to be unrelated to actual fact.)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Here's a hint: the universities and research agencies that employ most normal scientists get the same amount of money regardless of the findings on anthropogenic climate change. The oil companies who employ all of the prominent ACC skeptics stand to lose billions of dollars if the findings are not a certain way.
Let's put it another way. Acme Pharmaceuticals wants to start selling a new drug. Scientists from universities find that the drug is not safe. Scientists employed by Acme Pharmaceuticals find that the drug is perfectly safe. Given these two pieces of information, would you give this new drug to your children?
This constant "the other side is exactly as bad" argument from conservatives and libertarians is laughable in almost every instance it is used.
What *is it* with fuckwits like you?
Greenpeace global revenues in 2010: about 56m euros. Exxon just about pipped Greenpeace there, with an income of 311bn dollars in the same year. So clearly it is Greenpeace who is able to throw money around like billy-o and has an enormous financial stake in the outcome of this debate. Yes, that's absolutely clear.
Please stop refering to these people as climate 'skeptics'. They are climate 'deniers' - just like holocaust deniers and round earth deniers.
Researchers who are subsidized by public concerns are paid to provide results that may be useful to the public. The grant process is transparent.
Researchers who are subsidized by private concerns are paid to provide results that are useful to the owners. The grant process is opaque.
The perceived interests of active shareholders and executives often do not coincide with the perceived interests of the public at large, ergo private concerns often attempt to hide their role in certain kinds of "research", because the degree of self interest in controlling the results is all too apparent.
Luke, help me take this mask off
I think it strange that research done by ethical people funded by organizations with one vested interest is deemed suspect while research done by ethical people funded by organizations with other vested interests is not.
The environmental community is not without funding issues. They have to cater to their contributors to continue to receive funding. An organization that gathers funding under the auspices that global warming is caused by human activity that published research contrary to that position will not continue to get funding. It is possible that the research is tainted in the same way and for the same reasons as research funded by oil companies.
Even Government funded research funding is not above suspicion. If the research does not agree with the position of the government will the funding continue?
Anywhere that money changes hand the desires of the one giving the money influences the outcome. The only solution I see is to have an independent body that takes money from all contributors and distributes it to researchers. That way researchers are not funded by one side or the other.
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/12/climategate/
As for carbon-taxes, you can still believe Anthropogenic Global Warming is happening and disagree with the carbon-tax solution. In fact, I've seen experiment that show that, if you present people with arguments that global warming is real and carbon-tax is the solution, and then show a second group of people an argument that global warming is real and nuclear power is the solution, people are more likely to accept the idea of global warming+nuclear power solution. What this says to me is that people aren't making up their minds from the facts of global warming, but they're making decisions about the reality of global warming based on their fears of what happens if they accept it.
This is the real "climategate". Of the emails stolen from CRU that the best climate skeptics could do was a couple of quotes out of context in the the roughly 70mb of emails. I even downloaded the torrent to see for myself*. This was heralded as proof of the climate change hoax. It was not, rather it proved everything was legit.
THIS is worthy of the title Climategate, the real scandal is in the millions spent or trying to seed doubt and stall planet-saving policy. (After initial expenditure, hords of useful idiots and wackjobs take over - they are desperate for something to fight since the cold war, there are no longer commies under their beds).
Once again the data doesn't support what the deniers claim. Once again, caught red handed, lying for money.
Deniers: Please please present examples of scientists caught out doing false science for money from whoever has a vested interest in saving the world rather than wrecking it for short term profit, I dunno... EV battery company?
*(In actual fact the volume of emails showed nothing untoward, just genuine scientists doing their usual thing).
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
You have no idea how egocentric and individualistic scientists are. There is no causal link here strong enough to override the "I'm smarter than my fellow scientists and I can humiliate them by showing how wrong and stupid they are" opportunity that all climatologists scientists have. Without an iron clad conspiracy, the situation in which all climatologists lie out of interest would be completely unstable: the first ones to tell the others climatologists are wrong would get multiple awards plus funding.