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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.
More proof that just because you're a professor or student from Harvard, you aren't instantly a respectable or knowlegeable authority.
---
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.
Support SETI@home
Not surprising; the main source of critiques that attempt to discredit climate science is the "Heartland Institute," which doesn't state its funding sources, except to say it's funded by "foundations and corporations"... but reading the budget information from Exxon Mobil shows those "foundations and corporations" tend to be fossil fuel companies, and fossil-fuel funded institutes like the American Petroleum Institute.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
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.
I guest that would be fine if you disclosed your funding sources AND DIDN"T FREAKING LIE TO CONGRESS ABOUT IT!
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
and voter apathy are the main causes behind this country's approaching decline. This shit needs to stop. This kind of thing was rampant in the US around the late 1800s and the country went through war and economic depression before finally turning itself around. I fear that history is repeating itself, and that nobody who can actually do anything about is bothering to give a fuck. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the country's crumbling infrastructure (physical and digital), and the horrible US economy are all symptoms of those underlying three causes. Take care of those and the sinking ship that is the US would eventually right itself.
shocked to find that gambling is going on in here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME (youtube)
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
Was there really any doubt that Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon were full of it?
Here's a thorough debunk of their most infamous paper.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXesBhYwdRo#t=2m00s
i.e. The one skeptics go crazy about how in emails, how other climate scientists said it shouldn't have even been published in the first place.
You really are extraordinarily stupid if you can't understand the problem with this, aren't you? Have you never even heard of the commonplace saying "He who pays the piper calls the tune?"
I note that Willie H. Soon is also not highly ranked amongst climate science authors. See <http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/climate_authors_table.html>.
Oh, you're one of those people who believe that everything is composed of black and white, with no neutral in between, and composed of discreet values.
Similarly, the opposite of rich is poor, so if you're not swimming in your private swimming pool on board your private jet, you're in the streets begging for money.
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.
I have heard this idea before. It assumes that all the climate researchers are somehow in collusion on a vast conspiracy. The problem with your idea is that the top tier universities are full of egotistical bastards who would gladly screw their peers in order to demonstrate that they are smarter than everyone else. These professors tend to do pretty well with grant money and anything that enhances their fame just ensures that the money keeps coming, even though this may be at the expense of others.
Please stop refering to these people as climate 'skeptics'. They are climate 'deniers' - just like holocaust deniers and round earth deniers.
You couldn't guess?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/29/the-log-in-the-eye-of-greenpeace/
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
He didint lie, they are taking a statement from 2003, then putting it against the findings of his funding from 2005 and 2010...
And you think public funding isnt controlled by those that control the public representatives?
Except that those billions collected from the oil companies are more than spent on hiring and equipping troops to enforce their contracts to extract oil from various places around the world, and making sure that their tankers (flagged in an off shore tax haven like the Cayman Islands that has essentially no Navy.) are not taken buy pirates.
Exxon probably gets more than 5x what it pays in taxes in the form of military assistance alone, not to mention R&D and other small perks.
Strictly domestic oil companies are probably getting the shaft as far as their tax bill, but the multinationals are more than getting what they pay for.
If Obama would refuse to send us war ships to rescue foreign flagged ships from Somali pirates I would be a little happier about the situation. (and our national debt would be a little lower.)
Work bio at MMWD
I agree, but then I dont like that public funds are controlled by groups put in place by public representatives, that are controlled by banking interests.
I dont like that the UN is controlled by the IMF.
I dont like that everything in this world is controlled by the banks and big money holders.
So the money comes from oil industries or from the public (which means bank controlled interests), makes no difference, on side is just as bad as the other.
Aside from the obvious gains those who have vested interest in alternative energy have what do those scientists who feel global warming is man made have to gain? What are the motives? The flip side is obvious, the fossil fuel industry stands to lose trillions of dollars if anthropogenic climate change is the real deal. I have always been a pragmatist. The logic goes something like this:
1. Everyone knows that fossil fuels are a finite resource whose peak availability may have just passed, is happening now or will happen reasonably soon (decades not centuries, likely)
2. There is a possibility that fossil fuel use is contributing to potentially catastrophic weather pattern shifts on the only habitable and reachable planet we know of in the universe.
3. Since we know this weaning is going to happen sooner of later, why not start (seriously) now.
There is no easy weaning in some industry. Organic solvents aren't going to be replaced by a commercially available synthetic anytime soon. This is important if you like medicine. Next, there aren't any alternative shipping/flight options available on the horizon for commerce. So we need reserve for commercial entities.
Thoughts?
Argh. The laws of science be a harsh mistress.
Which government is that? Certainly not the US.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Maybe you can help tell Gore to STFU.
I stopped listening to this totalitarian political hack back when he wanted to force us to let the government have the keys to all of our encryption. Al Gore was the administration's point man in the crypto wars of the 90s, and he wasn't on our side.
Probably the one positive thing about George W. Bush is that he prevented Al Gore from becoming President.
"In addition the American Petroleum insitute (API), which represents the US petroleum and natural gas industries, gave him multiple grants between 2001 and 2007 totalling $274,000".
2011-2001 = 10 years
2001 < 2003
It's not oil and coal companies funding lobbying and advertising that raises eyebrows. This is a prominent scientist getting paid a substantial amount of money by these companies. It raises serious questions over his research and his position on global warming. Promoting public policy, whether you think it's appropriate or not, is an entirely different issue.
Ah the out-of-context quote, an outdated weapon from the age when it took effort to find the context, like throwing a spear at a tank.
“But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. 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.”
He was saying that environmental policy affects economic policy, and that economic policy has become the sticking point to environmental policy change:
http://www.environmentaltrends.org/single/article/un-climate-talks-and-power-politics-its-not-about-the-temperature.html
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Of course people are interested in how both sides are funded. But as soon as you jump into conspiracy theories you run the risk of losing ears.
Contrast two conspiracy theories:
Exxon funds climate change skeptic. We are talking about a very well known company that is even better known for the damage they have caused to the environment. Regulations around climate change are against their best interests. Plausible conspiracy.
Some agency that noone has even heard of funds an actvist group that noone even knows, but the agency is lead by well known enironmentalists and (get this!) it's done with tax-payer's money. Red flag 1: unrelated information makes the argument immediately suspect. Red flag 2: collusion between two groups that few people have ever heard of makes the argument look concocted. Red flag 3: dropping well known names in relation to one of those groups sounds like an attempt to create legitimacy without actually providing evidence.
So which conspiracy theory do you think that people are going to accept? Really, honestly, truely, deep down inside of you, which conspiracy theory would you accept if you weren't already committed to one? Because the sad fact of the matter is, people like simple relationships that use stuff that they already know. They don't want to get their neurons into a knot trying to understand what someone is saying, and they don't want to spend time researching something to verify it's true.
What an absolute pile of twattery. If funding and other biases didn't matter in science, there'd have been no need for the double-blind RCT.
Exxon just about pipped Greenpeace there, with an income of 311bn dollars in the same year.
Sorry, income != profits. Not even close.
And it still doesn't change the fact that Greenpeace (and many other pro-climate-change groups) is financed by ExxonMobil and BP and "Big Oil". Shall we discount their conclusions and papers as well, since they are obviously financed by groups you suspect of ulterior motives?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The full context is much scarier, but I only wanted to post a quote that got the point across, not the whole thing.
Gain WHAT power? They are the fscking Governments! What more power do they need?
If you want to talk about fear mongering, look instead at the "terrorist threat" circus. But the "libertarians" are too busy fighting for the unrestricted rights of corporations to care.
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 you're absolutely right. That's why we have oil and other resource wars, costing billions of years. Because big oil has unwarranted influence over lawmakers, and lawmakers spend trillions sending troops off to die.
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.
I wonder who General Electric and corporations who are knee-deep in building "green technologies" on the government dime are supporting.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
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.
Too bad we cannot rely on science... Of course, that would require actual REAL science with hypotheses that can be tested and falsified - exactly what you CANNOT do with climate "science". What it really is, is a set of observations (and even that is a stretch sometimes when you build an entire case from a single tree's rings) and some guesses about what could cause it, but no way of actually testing - or even validating - your guesses.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The motivation of a politician aiming to gain power, money and prestige by implementing climate policy runs a poor second to the motivation of someone aiming to maintain or increase the flow of billions of dollars into their corporate and personal coffers. The likes of (former) Senator Evan Bayh demonstrate that while legislating may be good for the ego, the big money is in private industry.
Luke, help me take this mask off
If a bunch of government elites got together to crush my business and get behind a theory that conveniently gives bureaucrats massive amounts of power, I would chip in .0001% of my profits to an alternative point of view.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
http://www.logicalfallacies.info/relevance/genetic/
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Oh, that is an absolutely priceless rejoinder.
In case you hadn't noticed, Greenpeace is a *nonprofit*. It had a surplus of a mighty 3m euros in 2009, which went into its reserve fund because of course no money is paid out to shareholders. By contrast, 2009 was a shitty year for Exxon, which made only 20bn dollars of net income (that's profit to you, dipshit). That means they made the same amount of profit as Greenpeace's annual surplus about every two hours.
It's a good job we're talking about profits, isn't it? It's clear now that Greenpeace has *much* more financial skin in the game.
As for the notion that Greenpeace is financed by Exxon et al. What? I mean to say, what? Where on earth did you get that idea? This is the age of the interwebs, ya know. You could do a bit of fucking research before spilling bilge on your keyboard. You could provide evidence for outlandish claims.
But the biggest corporations on the planet are it's Governments. Somehow their funding leaves a scientist impartial? The claim of Global Warming has given them new and nearly limitless power. It lets them play in pools of money and influence that our founding fathers never dreamed of... (In their worst nightmares)
If the findings from your science indicate the skeptics are correct, and you aren't smart enough to shred them, you may as well shred your career.
Weather Climate Expert will calls for you to be de-certified, forget ever getting another grant, and hold on to your tenure, etc...
The Hockey Stick graph was an exposed fraud. But much like Dan Rather's decades old MS Word Doc on Bush - some people believe it's fake but accurate.
Ahhh, and they say religion is on the decline.
And there arent similar interests to implement carbon credits and carbon trading?
RTF, he was funded from2001 onward.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The fact that this got modded down "troll" shows exactly the kind of groupthink wall that anyone hits for daring to question global warming or the motives of its evangelists (and make no mistake, these *are* evangelists, with a sermon to preach). Someone questions the motives of a skeptic who gets funded by the oil industry and that's great. But someone responds with the inconvenient truth that the proponents of global warming often have their own funding sugar-daddies too and he's a troll who must be silenced.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
...tarily,
Where else could they get funding?
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
I was just wondering about the word choice. Why "skeptic" instead of "denier" or just the neutral climate "scientist"?
I guess "flamebait" now means "intersting" but provocatively so.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Of the prizes Hansen was awarded, only the Sophie Prize could even come close to originating from a "pressure group".
I suspect a number of these were awarded not just for his research, but also for setting the example of sticking by it while the Bush Administration was busy quashing the results. A classic of the Bush "climate doctrine" was a quote from NASA Administrator Griffin to NPR, to the effect that we shouldn't dick with climate change, because our past and current climate may not be the best one for humans.
Why, it was brilliant. A civilization adapted to thousands of years of gradual climate changes? Why not run a little experiment to see if it's even better adapted to an utterly different climate?
I don't think I've ever wanted to use my radio to reach through time and space as badly as that day. It's enough to make me wonder if he actually defended a dissertation to earn that PhD.
Luke, help me take this mask off
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.
Climate scientists are funded by the money they scare up, I mean, solicit for their own expertise to fight the process they are experts in. And yet we don't apply the same standards of conflict of interest to them because they are on the 'right side'?
something is obviously wrong does not make it so. While it's hard for people of more limited intelligence to comprehend, there are a lot of things that can be researched. If research subject number one doesn't pan out you can always go to numbers two through 568 million.
Hmmm, let's have a think about this.
On the one hand, we have: Exxon, Shell, BP, Saudi Aramco, Total, Koch, Halliburton and literally dozens of other companies making billions of dollars of profit from oil.
On the other hand, we have: erm.... a few financial houses that are playing with carbon credits as a small fraction of what they do... and often also with a financial stake in oil too. Oh, and mighty Greenpeace. Mustn't forget them and their 3m euro surplus last year.
Yep, the interests are equally balanced there.
but not expected.
Bloom County had it spot on back in 1982.
"The earth isn't round, either. Yep! It's shaped like a burrito!"
There's reality, and then there's... somewhere else.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
My thought is that oil is too important to our material culture (manufacturing, agriculture, industrial chemistry and so on) to be stuck in vehicles or power plants. If people think the worst that's going to happen is the price of a tank of gas goes up in 30 or 40 years, they are living in a fantasy land.
We need to wean ourselves and fast, AGW or no AGW, because the shit is going to hit the wall and we're allowing private commercial interests to threaten our civilization for short-term profits. Irreversible climate change will merely be the coup de gras as the economy spends decades trying to get viable energy solutions working to replace the fossil fuel base it can no longer use.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
What have the industrial giants achieved in this world in their lust for money?
What have politicians achieved in their lust for power?
You name some industrial giants.
I'll name Stalin, Mao, Genghis Khan, Hitler and Pol Pot. They didn't do it for the money.
Here's a question for you: Is climate change happening?
Climate change is always happening. The pertinent question is whether it's being significantly effected by human activities and, if so, what is the extent of this change, is it a threat, and what can and should be done about it.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
How is that a lie? In order to sell research, the results of the research must be, potentially, important. If you write a report, and it says "nothing much is happening, and there's no reason to change anything" how can you go on to say "this is important research and it needs more funding". That's not to say that reports never reach such conclusions, just that after they do, you don't see continued funding. It's not a comsparicy theory, or a lie, or a accusation, it's just how it works. That's why it's important for the energy companies to fund the research themselves, otherwise it won't realistically get funded.
Also, whining about the source of the funding is bullshit. If the results of the research is bogus, you should be able to point to that. All the money comes from somewhere, complaining that it came from oil companies does not, in itself, discredit the research. If you have research that is clearly fraudulent, and you see that it was funded by someone interested in the results, that should discredit the researcher. But you can't go backwards and say "the money came from oil companies, so that discredits the researcher, therefore his work is not credible" that is a garden variety ad-homonym attack.
That's kinda a "Who's who," list of big environmental orgs in the United States.
If, as all did at one time, you lived your life out under the sun, you would know from study the effects of the sun. Yet for some now doing studies in retrun for grants in air-conditioned buildings, the sun does not matter. yet some say otherwise http://www.solticeproject.org/
We get it. Help, help, you're being repressed. All of these Big Environment funding sources picking on the poor little Big Oil skeptics is really tough to watch.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
It is quite a scary statement completely with context, in fact even more damning, which is why I thanked the other poster for posting the whole context, not the partial context you posted, quoted from someone else.
When acid rain was a concern there were skeptics who doubted the cause of acid rain or whether it was really a bad thing, and I'm sure many of them were funded by big companies. When smog was a concern, there were plenty of skeptics who were probably being funded by Oil and Coal companies. When it was thought that tobacco might be causing lung cancer, there were skeptics funded by the Tobacco companies.
The list is endless, there is no shortage of weasels who will pose as an expert and say anything you want for a sum of money, this is no big surprise.
But, while the weasel has the excuse that they were paid to say nonsense, what excuse do the people who believe the skeptics have? Is there some type of intellectual trait missing from their makeup that prevents them from seeing patterns of repeated lies from big companies? I've know some otherwise fairly intelligent people who believe every lie uttered by a certain political party. Any kind of reasoning was useless, it felt like I was debating religion, and you know haw useless that is!
The statement was not meant to be factual.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Or, in this case, can have positive consequences depending on where you live. Canada for example is expected to have significant benefits from global warming over the rest of this century, due to things like the opening of the northwest passage allowing new shipping lanes in the arctic and exploiting the arctic's natural resources, as well as (what is more important in the longer term) an increase in arable land due to melting of the permafrost which raises the country's capacity for farming as well as livable land for development....
If the deniers were trying to make the case that there are benefits to climate warming, it wouldn't bother me in the last. That's a defensible position-- not one that the green lobby likes, of course, but nevertheless a plausible case to make. It's the ones saying "It's a hoax! The scientists are corrupt! It's a fraud!" that I object to.
...I do find it amusing that the countries that worked hardest to defeat international accords to limit greenhouse emissions were Canada, Russia, and Norway. But it's probably just a coincidence: these are also three countries that have large fossil-fuel reserves, and hence very large political lobbies for the fossil-fuel industry.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Yes, they also gave him $247,000 in grants between 4,050,756 BCE and 2007 CE.
How does I understood sample set?
-1 Disagree, lol
Well this is science. In science you can't deny anything that has evidence, otherwise you're in the wrong profession.
Now if you look at the definition:
"Noun
skeptic (plural skeptics)
Someone who habitually doubts beliefs and claims presented as accepted by others, requiring strong evidence before accepting any belief or claim."
He is simply stating that there is not enough evidence. If the term was "denier" it'd mean "there's a ton of evidence but the guy is sticking his fingers in his ears and going 'la la la la' ".
Context, my dear fellow, context is key. If you're gonna list politicians, list some that are contemporaries of the industrialists in their native land. Climate change is an issue now, not then. Otherwise, I might as well compare David Koch against the mayor of Bumfuck, Wherever.
A more pertinent example would be to pit Putin against his oligarchs, or the Central Committee of the CCP against the (mostly state-controlled) Chinese industrial elite.
Luke, help me take this mask off
It is hard to estimate the amount of money that is being poured into climatology DUE to the current alarmist hysteria. All sorts of projects from within universities of from NGOs depend crucially on maintaining the alarmist spirit.
Side note: back in the 80ies, the current alarm was not global warming but global cooling. Though I lived at the wrong side of the Iron Curtain some info from the West still managed to leak through the curtain and, yes, the scare of the day was global cooling. End of side note.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/basic-income-from-a-millionaires-perspective.html
There I outline a case for why, in an industrialized information age 21st century society, rich people should support systematic wealth distribution (like a "basic income") as in their own best interests.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
No one cares that he got paid only that he lied about it.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
And then comes the research grants and tenure from Rainbow Hug Community College, the book deal, the lecture circuits, it's all gravy.
I want to live in your world, where New Age community colleges have trillion dollar budgets comparable with oil companies. I think it would be fun there.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
i dont know if you have ever visited a wing of a school named after a business man, but there are tons of them.
and 'endowed chairs', and donated computer labs, and so forth and so on.
not to mention all of the projects that professors work on outside of school, you can search their CVs .
Remember when Slashdot used to be only geeky science types? Where did all these pointy haired plebeians come from?
Now, and throughout history, money isn't necessarily the great motivator. For individuals, the lust for power or the spread of one's ideology has historically been the great motivator for the major world changes, and I gave examples. Nobody who was simply lusting for money has done as much as they have.
Now we have the politicians supporting the ideologies of globalization and socialism (redistribution of wealth), leveraging climate change to further their causes. We have politicians staking their climbs to power and their legacies on pushing climate change. This is just a more modern instance of Mao and Stalin, those driven by ideology and the lust for power.
True, to a lesser extent we do have companies who stand to gain by climate change policies, and the politicians who are involved with those companies in order to gain. But that's chump change compared to the billions flowing into the climate change industry from governments.
Contrast all of that to some companies who get to spend their money to combat climate change theory, after billions have already been confiscated by their governments in order to promote it.
the problem is not always about denial.
what policy will save the planet? if the United States cut its carbon emissions by 50% tomorrow, it would have absolutely zero effect on the future of global warming. The Communist Party of China is not going to stop building coal fired power plants, or keeping around old, inefficient manufacturing processes, because they make tons of money off of it. In fact, they will build more of them, faster, and US manufacturers will move every last slip of production there, overnight.
You want to have China do something? Fine, good luck with that. A guy who ran a website about the poisoned baby-milk scandal got several years in prison recently. If they do that to someone who complains about the state producing poisoned baby milk, I wonder how they would treat someone who complains about the state producing too much Co2?
Then there are dozens of other countries in similar boats. Dictatorships who make tons of money off of fossil fuels. Passing a carbon tax in the United States would do nothing to them.
The 'carbon trading' system is going to be run by the same geniuses who run the Credit Default Swap market and the CDO market, not to mention the Catastrophe Bonds market and the Longevity Swaps market. They not only caused the Great Recession, they are also the geniuses who jacked the price of oil and food up by several times in 2008, causing world wide food riots and in some places mass malnutrition and starvation. That's who is going to be in charge of your carbon trading system.
So good luck.
I work in climate science, and we get paid millions by the government (through research funding). Our careers depend on it. We have a vested interest too. Let's just have an open and honest debate based on the facts. It doesn't matter that this guy gets paid - we all do.
Because so far in most cases the way to "prevent/reverse man-made climate change" is "well, just make it too expensive to pollute" and "let's trade carbon credits!"
Guess who's interested in trading? Organizing an exchange with some fees to come with it? Help companies to make "the most" out of credits companies would get for free via assistance of a broker? Compensate for "rigid requirements" with wonders of free market?
Yeah. And, as price of pollution credits goes up, so will the fees.
Instead of making a non-monetized restriction on pollution and regulations that reflect reality, everyone seems to be completely certain that regulation has to include an exchange and stupid across-the-board unobtainable (without trading) goals.
I think the primary problem is not the climate change, but the amount of entities that want to earn easy money on proposed solutions.
Hyperom.com
The "polluters" give much more money to Climate Alarmists than skeptics - why isnt that front page news? ...
Excerpts from http://climate-change-theory.com/ ...
FALLACY IN GREENHOUSE GAS THEORY: The GHG theory appears to consider only heat (actually photons of electromagnetic radiation) coming from space. Some get through the clouds and heat the earth, or get reflected. Others are also sent into the atmosphere. These photons that go up from the surface have varying frequencies and only some of them will be emitted back to earth by COmolecules. There will always be some getting through to space. However, the theory claims that some of those that return will enter the crust and warm it - probably just the first few centimetres. Yes they will, but if the crust gets warmer it will emit more back than it would otherwise have done, and some of those will get through to space. Each time the process is repeated some more photons will escape. So the process is slowed down a bit, but given that the photons travel at the speed of light, there is plenty of time all through each night for lots of return trips. The main point is that, by the end of the night, the top few centimetres will cool down to the same equilibrium temperature that they would otherwise have reached anyway. This is because, as we have seen, there is in fact a lot more heat flowing through from the Earth's core, and it has been escaping to space for the life of the Earth. It is the rate of flow of this heat which determines the equilibrium temperature, and that depends on the core temperature. To draw an analogy, think of a lake with an inlet between it and the ocean. Water from a heavy unending inland storm represents the heat from the Earth's core. The ocean represents space, the inlet is the atmosphere and the lake is the outer few centimetres of the crust, its level representing the temperature of that crust. High tide represents a sunny day, and low tide the night. At high tide (daytime) some water will flow up the inlet, raising the level of the lake, but at low tide (night) both the water from the rain and the extra water that had come in from the ocean will flow back out to sea until the level of the lake lowers to that of the ocean. Adding COmay make the inlet perhaps 1% or 2% narrower, but there is still plenty of time for all the water to escape. What we are adding is a drop in the bucket. The lake will not dry up because of the unending inland storm: if there were no heat coming from the Earth's core there would never have been human life on this planet.
1. THE 60 YEAR CYLE: Nicola Scafetta and John Dodds are not the only ones to have observed the 60 year cycle. Mathematical statistical analysis of the data confirms its existence. John Dodds explained why it is due to variations in the gravitational energy from planets (Footnote 2) leading to irregularities in the pattern. These irregularities help to confirm the existence of the cycle because, when several nodes match with a high statistical probability the evidence is very compelling. Furthermore, application of the 60 year cycle predicted the maximum (1998-2000) above the long term 900 year cyclical trend. The IPCC model did not predict such and, in fact, I believe it will soon be able to be disproved by its failure to do so because there will probably soon be statistically significant variance (from their trend) commencing in 2003.
2. WHY THE PLANETS CAUSE CYCLES: Why are temperatures on Earth apparently following cyclical patterns that correlate with certain orbital events of the moon and the planets, primarily Jupiter, Saturn and to a lesser extent Venus? Consider, firstly, the effect of gravitational energy which the Earth receives from the moon. It pulls ocean waters forming tides and ocean currents. Recent research into wave generators shows that these could easily supply all of Australia's power requirements three or four times over - and that's from just a minute proportion of the w
How many governing parties all over the world (on national and state level, where applicable) would rather that AGW wasn't true? For example here are the Utah republicans.
So how do you get funding if you think you have something which would show that AGW wasn't happening, or would be offset by some other effect, or just global warming but not anthropogenic? Apply for research money from the state.
And if due to some bizarre conspiracy that's not possible in your state - try in any other industrialized country of the world.
I have no reason to believe what you are saying is true. I can find web sites that say Anthony Watts is on meth and funded by the mafia. You shouldn't believe that, either.
Support SETI@home
No, YOU stop referring to "these people" as anything. The first step in character assasination/villification is to give your opponent a perjorative label. You know, nigger, towel head, hajji, gook, krauts, kike, etc. Such behavior has no place in scientific debate. Just because someone has a different interpretation of the data does not mean that they are on the same level as Nazi sympathisers. Face the facts. People on your side of the fence has lost all semblance of scientific method and decorum. You have become zealots, both by the secular and religious definitions. You could not tolerate heretical views and seek to discommunicate the unbelievers. Step back and re-examine your thoughts and actions.Are you really holding your views because you believe and truly understand the hard data or are you just a Believer.
If you happen to be without a spare Earth, you do have other options!
The most obvious way that comes to mind is that the scientific theory of Global Climate Change depends on the validity of the Greenhouse effect. The lynch-pin of the greenhouse effect is that some gasses, like carbon dioxide for instance, absorb and re-emit (a scattering effect) radiation in the infrared band of the electromagnetic spectrum. This much has been experimentally verified under laboratory conditions.
Therefore to falsify AGW: Simply demonstrate that carbon dioxide and methane do not have the greenhouse gas properties described above*.
*You will probably want to consult with the climatology journals to get a more accurate and complete description of the properties of greenhouse gasses.
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This criticism isn't applied uniformly. Somehow getting funding from these guys taints everything they do regardless of whether they publish verifiable data. Yet we don't apply the same standard to say, "news" outlets that contribute 85% to one political party. Where else might these standards be conveniently brushed under the rug?
I suspect if you dig deep enough, you'll find some evidence of this in one form or another and to varying degrees for every single scientist in existence. Good science can be verified.
Not against. As noted, this is about political ideology, the desire for globalism and wealth redistribution. Climate change is only a mechanism, a fear that can be leveraged to accomplish their goals, which admittedly have little to do with the environment.
He said in 2003 that he hadn't received money.
He said in 2011 that he had.
Perhaps he was paid between 2003 and 2011?
The problem is the idea of objective research. It is nearly impossible especially with something that has political consequences. What do politicians love above all? Power over other people. So public grants will tend to go to things that can lead to a justification for expanding politions power.
The way much of this climate research is done would never be allowed in medical trials. They have acknowledged researchers bias and have taken steps to blind researchers who are doing the analysis of the data.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I keep hearing people talk about all this power politicians are trying to amass to themselves. If this were so, the US would be in lockstep with the Kyoto participants. Yet, somehow, they don't have any more power than in '01.... save what they gave the US Administration to deal with a security scare.
Follow the money. Once you get past the Medicare, Social Security, or DoD budgets, you're looking at jack squat in Federal funding. The real money is with the top 1%, and politicians who cater to their wants... such as no cap gains or estate taxes, minimal income taxes, and no obstructions to their ability to externalize the costs to their business. And any fossil fuel company is externalizing a boat load of costs, and you, me, we get to keep paying for it. Brilliant.
Luke, help me take this mask off
See what I mean? You don't want to know about how the other side is funded. You've got your fingers in your ears, so to speak.
What exactly is "the other side" here? We have scientists funded by big oil, and you counter that with who's giving money to Greenpeace? I don't even want to know where your fingers are.
Fandroids hate facts.
That's why we have to resort to WHO is making a claim and how it's paid for, instead of WHAT is being said.
Let's pretend your claim in the title wasn't bullshit - this isn't about "who", it's exactly about where what was being said, and under what circumstances.
Fandroids hate facts.
We are now observing what has been predicted by scientific hypothesis over a century ago. Where is your science?
Fandroids hate facts.
The log in the eye of Greenpeace: http://goo.gl/60vU8 Greenpeace puts the "green" in blackmail and extortion. There's no business like the imminent doom business . . . and has been so for millennia "According to a May 2011, report to Congress by the US General Accountability Office, the total Federal Government funding for climate change from 1993 to 2010 amounts to US $106.7 Billion. This does not include the revenues lost to the Federal Government for special deductions and tax credits (including grants in lieu of tax credits) of $16.1 Billion. These bring the total to $122.8 Billion." Funds that could have been spent instead on real science and technology. Claims that scientists who question the global warming dogma are in the pay of so-called Big Oil are, by comparison, laughable.
Your linked article does NOT state that Exxon funded any of those organizations. It does state that BP contributed to them, as part of an initiative to "green" the company.
It goes on to make a big fuss over the salaries of executives at environmental organizations, and various government funding of same. But the dollar amounts are insignificant compared to the amounts spent by ExxonMobil on various climate change deniers.
On the while, the linked article is merely a feeble attempt to smear conservation organizations. Classic propaganda.
I have to disagree. Politicians are using Global warming as a grab for power, scientists & academics are using it as a grab for funding. The entire situation is hyper politicized.
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
Norway is even further north than Canada, we have _very_ little flat land at low elevations close to the ocean, and we get pretty much all our electricity from hydro-electric plants.
We will still get badly hurt by increasing global temperatures:
The first result of a temperature rise is a large increase in the amount of severe weather, something which you could argue have already started. In the US that means longer and much more severe tornado seasons, in Norway we get severe river flooding from melt water (both snow and glaciers) combined with heavy rain periods.
Yes, our agricultural growing season will increase, but with only 2.7% potentially arable land, this really doesn't make much difference.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
What is it that you are disagreeing to? That there are plenty of governmental institutions who'd be more than happy to fund non-AGW research? Can you make that plausible somehow?
Name one with sufficient funning.
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
So I suppose this guy's research is supposed to be tainted by $1mil from oil companies.
Do you suppose that the $billions from governments, bent on new ways to tax and control, carries no taint to the research of government scientists?
But among those who aren't that I've known who have basic English skills can comprehend the words saying it has little to do with the environment anymore.
It's all about politics now, power, ideology. Money's in there too, and environment is dead last.
.I do find it amusing that the countries that worked hardest to defeat international accords to limit greenhouse emissions were Canada, Russia, and Norway.
Of these three countries, which one hasn't ratified the Kyoto Protocol yet? Right, the fourth - USA! USA!
Fandroids hate facts.
is anything to judge the UN by, then 'carbon reduction' treaties at the UN will be not only corrupt, but completely dishonest.
They don't, but there's a lot more of them, so when snouts are counted, the "consensus" is that WE ALL GONNA DIE.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Give me a fucking break. I already named Utah. How many state governments are run by republicans?
You can't think of *one* which would provide funding? Are you serious?