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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.'"
The politicians who stand to gain power, money and prestige by implementing climate policy.
"One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, " -- Ottmar Edenhofer, UN IPCC
Other than the fact that that is a lie promulgated by conservative talk radio hosts, it would be a good point.
Either you don't work at a Univeristy or you are dishonest. The amount of grant money one can bring is a significant part of your evaluations and status within the University and the science community as a whole. When a University looks at hiring someone for the faculty, one of the things they look at is grant history and existing grant money that the new hire will bring with him. (Not the only thing, but one of them.) If you want to move up the ladder you need to have grants.
Research faculty write their salaries into those grants. If they don't get grants, they either don't get paid or they have to take University money which has teaching responsibilities attached. If you want to do research full time instead of being saddled with the 100 level undergrad courses, you pray for grants.
If they don't get grants, they don't get to buy the fancy new computers and pay for graduate students and research assistants. The larger your number of supported people, the higher your status.
The more students you have, the more conferences that you are likely to attend. If you are thinking about doing field work, the more students you have means the more likely you are to be able to do that field work. (If your grant is to do field work and you don't pull it off, your chances of getting another one drops significantly.) Those students will be busy doing research which will result in papers being published which will be added to your vitae, and when it comes time for tenure to be granted, your publication history is one of those things they look at. Lots of grants, lots of students, lots of papers, more likely to get tenure.
Now, when it comes time to write those grants, is someone going to write a grant that says "this isn't really much of a problem but it is an interesting science question", or will they be likely to write "DANGER DANGER this could kill us all if we don't study it!"? Yes, that was hyperbole, but the impetus to be more like the latter than the former is still there. Funding agencies have limited amounts of money and are often tasked with supporting research to find practical answers to pressing issues. They're more likely to fund something that is "DANGER kill us all!" than "yawn, why is the sky blue?" kinds of things.
So, no, it isn't a lie propogated by talk radio hosts. Quite the opposite. And anyone who works in a University knows it and has seen it first hand. Other than maybe the janitors. Anyone whose job involves being paid by grants know this.
Oil companies have been getting billions in corporate welfare for a long time. Why is this necessary? BP, despite spending over $20 billion on the DeepWater Horizon spill, have already returned to profitability. Gore's supposed "millions" pale in comparison to the clout and resources of just the oil and coal industries.
While most plants grow more quickly as CO2 increases, it's not a slam dunk. Researchers have discovered that soybean crops grown in higher levels of CO2 are more susceptible to attack by insects. Bigger and faster doesn't necessarily mean better and healthier.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Turns out Greenpeace, Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, the Nature Conservancy and the World Resources Institute all receive significant funding from ExxonMobil, BP, and other "Big Oil" companies as well. I assume then - in terms of fairness - you'll also discount any of their publications based upon your perceived taint from their financiers?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
BFD,
Lets see here: Oil money that goes to scientists that refuse to obey the "GREEN" public line is bad... BUT Oil money that goes to "GREEN" organizations is good?
http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/2010/06/bp-greenpeace-big-oil-jackpot.html
Enough with the double standard.
You'll find the same basic tactics in all branches of pseudo-science. I spent years debating IDers and Creationists and it strikes me that pretty much every tactic used by the pseudo-skeptics in that debate have been used against science in this one.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
But it isn't a lie. It's a fact. Billions of dollars are being poured into climate research by tax-payers. That is an order of magnitude more than corporations are spending on the sceptical viewpoint. None of that money would be available to these institutions and researchers if the conclusion was, "climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 is ~1C and in other news, increasing CO2 makes plants grow more vigorously". Al Gore has made millions from this fraud. But you people are completely blind to these things.
I love how your perfectly accurate, sensible, and truthful post was modded troll.
Doing this sort of thing is called "the Tabbaco Strategy". Read "Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming" Naomi Oreskes (Author), Erik M. M. Conway (Author) http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1309463389&sr=8-1
D. E. (Steve) Stevenson, Ph.D. Emeritus Associate Professor,School of Computing,Clemson University.
So, because I don't reject the crushing scientific consensus because you have linked to one paper (that doesn't contradict the consensus that much if you read it), I'm some kind of zealot? Simply because I require a bit more evidence from you, you throw a strop?
Here is a more appropriate paper for someone like you to read: https://physics.le.ac.uk/journals/index.php/pst/article/view/363/204
Close, but you missed the point. Sadly, it doesn't appear that science is well understood on Slashdot anymore.
I provided direct scientific evidence that warming since 1850 is NOT anomalous within the last 2,000 years of history, and that similar warming to it has occurred multiple times previously. You dismissed the evidence by appealing to SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS!
You see, the scientific method and process doesn't care if 99 people in 100 believe the earth is flat, what matters is the one person with a space shuttle that flies around the earth taking pictures of the fact it is a sphere.
I am NOT misquoting Mann's paper what so ever. He reanalyzed his data with a different and by his own words more accurate statistical method, and his graphs of the results clearly show that the warming since 1850 has been exceeded multiple times before. My CORRECT reading of this very simple graph is further, and irrefutably evidenced by the fact Mann's own conclusion at the end of this paper is to observe that only the last decade is an anomaly, a far step down from his conclusion in his prior paper observing that the last century was the anomaly.
Please, demonstrate that I am wrong in my interpretation or that my source is biased and wrong. Just don't pretend like declaring CONSENSUS in any way trumps hard scientific evidence to the contrary, that's the work of zealots and ludites.