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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.
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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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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.
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.
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.
Which government is that? Certainly not the US.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
"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
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
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.