Slashdot Mirror
How One Climate-Change Skeptic Has Profited From Corporate Interests
Lasrick writes Elected officials who want to block the EPA and legislation on climate change frequently refer to a handful of scientists who dispute anthropogenic climate change. One of scientists they quote most often is Wei-Hock Soon, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who claims that variations in the sun's energy can largely explain recent global warming. Newly released documents show the extent to which Dr. Soon has made a fortune from corporate interests. 'He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work.' The Koch Brothers are cited as a source of Dr. Soon's funding.
'He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. Im a little curious if it is standard practice to not disclose this type of relationship. If it is, it is wrong. I see an ethics issue at hand
Id like to see a breakdown on which scientists are getting paid and by whom in all their works.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Their involvement says it all.
The reality is that love of money is the purest love there is. People really will do anything for it.
I wasn't aware that Al Gore was publishing original scientific research in peer reviewed journals.
Meanwhile paid slashdot deniers are getting the standard 30 pieces of silver for the same work.
Gore has made close to one billion dollars.
It sucks that we can't fund science through neutral sources more readily. It's one of the big problems with science and the scientific method. It simply cannot be trusted unless you get personal with it. Anything which reaches the newspapers is likely going to be spun somehow.
Dr. Soon may even truly believe his science is valid, but the funding he receives creates a lopsided megaphone which unfairly skews the perception of the debate.
By the same token, all scientists who receive funding from the pharmaceutical industry or groups they influence, should be barred from publishing papers on vaccine safety.
The problem is... That's everybody.
Anyone who is surprised by this has really not been paying attention (or has been paid not to pay attention).
Scientific research is not necessary since Al Gore has said the science is already settled.
So 1.2 million over the last decade comes to about $120 000 a year.
With whatever it costs, per year, to do research, then whatever is left cant really be considered "getting rich from the fossil industry".
Seriously. If you are a scientist and your research is contrary to the establishments priorities, where will you get your funding if grants are only given to those who who will publish the "right" findings.
At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work.
And his evidence? What about the evidence? What does him accepting money have to do with his results?
Did he fake his evidence, or fudge the calculations?
Science is all about the observations and the predictive conclusions. It shouldn't matter if he was funded by the devil himself - if science can't refute his observations and conclusions, then it's the science that must be revisited.
Let's focus on what's important, and leave the person out of the equation.
(Lots of doctors take money from drug companies - so much so that there's a government database that allows you to look up your doctor online.)
(And for the record, I'm not for or against the "school of thought" that is climate change. It's simply something I haven't looked into. I have seen some seemingly credible arguments against (due to selection bias in the news), but I leave it to the experts to decide.)
And how much money has been accepted from governments by so-called scientists pushing the pro-ACC agenda on behalf of those governments?
Conflict of interest is a two-way street.
if you want to play the money card... George Soros.
Only Soros spends a LOT more. And is wholly partisan in a way the Koch Brothers are not.
More than anything, the Koch Brothers seem to be some kind of hallucinogen, the way Democrats react to any mention of them.
I'd be careful of throwing that rock too hard from your ivory tower made of frosted glass...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Though that estimate might be a little high...
"Just before leaving public office in 2001, Gore reported assets of less than $2 million; today, his wealth is estimated at $100 million."
But then again, it could be right on the money:
"Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in."
Warning about global warming is a good business to be in it seems...
Sent from my ENIAC
sorry wrong link, and you still are a fuckwit - I'm just careless https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Receiving money to conduct research is conflict of interest if the funds come from parties with vested interest in findings' results? 1.2 million over a decade is hardly a "fortune". It's on par with grants received by any small-size lab. In fact, probably much less. If he is quoted as often as the summary claims, he should be receiving at least 5 times as much in government funding.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
If the fossil fuel industry wants to spend their money, that sounds great. I am not going to complain that they are wasting their money, and research in to alternative reasons why the climate is changing is important. As for declaring where his funding comes from, why? A scientific paper must stand alone, and not be judged by any other standard than if its logic is correct and if it is repeatable. All research is funded by someone, and no one is going to fund a paper that they have no conflicts of interest in. Probably far more worrisome is that each and every researcher has a huge personal and professional conflict of interest to have their research hypothesis proved correct and find interesting publishable results. That the funding also ubiquitously comes partied have how huge expectations of getting the results they want can also cause problems, but since no one has yet found a way to conduct research for free, it is not a solvable problem.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Zero. Gore put his money where his mouth was and made an educational movie, the profit went straight back into his educational foundation, not his pocket. Gore is worth ~$100m, none of it has come from his activism on AGW, that activity has COST him money.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If you don't understand how university research is funded, please don't write article summaries for slashdot on that topic. This scientist is described as having "made a fortune" for receiving research funds – but this is research money, not personal money. In fact his institution was given the $1.2M, and he just got to direct how it the money was spent (hint: his mortgage in not an allowable expense). Possibly the grants were used to cover part of his salary (though TFA doesn't say so), but that is a normal use of research funds and there are limitations on that.
I agree that he should have declared this funding in the paper (because the journal asks that funding sources be disclosed), but this is not him getting rich. This is him getting his research funded. You have a missing link:
At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure,
square off with this:
The Koch Brothers are cited as a source of Dr. Soon's funding.
Oh, and btw, citing the source of research funding is generally considered a form of thanking the source for the funding rather than a necessary disclosure.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
" Wei-Hock Soon"
hock (v) 1. To sell or pawn something
Yes, but he didn't attempt to publish research in peer reviewed scientific journals without disclosing that he took cash to publish his results.
The problem is that in the NY Times article Greenpeace is alleging that they obtained the information pursuant to a Freedom Of Information request. The Problem is that the FOIA is only binding on government and not on the individual. Therefore, per the information given, the NY Times article is false.
How much money as Al Gore made of the whole Global Warming theory?
Oh by the way, I an atmospheric scientist and I work with computer models every day. I have serious doubts about how well we can simulate the future climate of earth in 10 years, let alone 100 years into the future. We just recently began incorporating micro-biology into the climate models. They are very crude and in my opinion, it's these very organisms that over the long term, will play an ultimate role in the carbon/oxygen balance. Until we have these features much better modeled, we cannot say with any sort of certainty what the earth's temperature will look like in the long term. At this point, there is still a lot of variability in the outcome, by make very minute changes to the model initial assumptions.
Liberal trick at it's best again. Policy of personal destruction used against the scientist that dared to challenge religion of the left.
The basic mechanism is straightforward, even thought the physical system has many interacting processes.
The key observation is that human activity has changed the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and this has changed the equilibrium temperature of the system.
Al Gore, although not a scientist by training, is smart enough to understand this. You, on the other hand, are too biased and stupid to accept facts that have been well known for a long time.
Just to make sure that your are up to speed on basic facts, the world is not flat, the earth revolves around the sun, and the universe is more then 5000 years old. Glad that I could clear these things up for you.
Why is Snark Required?
Should of just posted that as main level comment. Great, short, and very relevant.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Oh, and in case someone poo-pooh's my claim of arguments against, it's Freeman Dyson making some reasoned points(*) against the predictions of climate science.
Again, I make no judgement on the movement, but it's hard to refute Freeman Dyson as an acceptable authority.
(*) Point one is that everything is predicated on models which are shot through with fudge factors. Real models shouldn't have fudge factors, or should be able to show that the factors are derived from first principles.
(*) Point two is that topsoil is an enormous carbon reserve that has largely been overlooked. He calculated how much extra topsoil is needed to offset the carbon in the atmosphere (spread out, it's on the order of 1/100 of an inch) and opined that changing agriculture might be able to offset the CO2.
It amazes me that in 2015 we are still debating whether or not pumping C02 into the atmosphere at an ever increasing rate is a bad thing.
Do we really want to be wrong on this topic?
Tu quoque is not a valid argument.
Show me where Al Gore fudged his results, and then failed to disclose his financial dealings.
I was trying to explain to you what "Junk Science " was?
It really depends on what science you care about. Certainly the greenhouse effect and some contributors to it are understood and agreed upon by most. Just like cyclic weather patterns, solar changes, photosynthesis, ocean currents, jet streams, earth's wobble, etc. are all well known.
What is still unknown is the percentage that all the different climate change contributors are impacting global warming.
Are humans a major contributor? (most theories say yes)
Are humans the only contributor? (some crackpots say yes)
Is the human influence so small it doesn't matter? (some crackpots say yes)
Is it due to burning fossil fuels or the removal/depletion of vegetation?
And then the arguments start about the best way to "fix" the problem. If we reduce our impact is that good enough or do we have to reverse it?
The biggest problem is all the models suck. The whole world should band together and build the exaflop supercomputer and try to solve this problem, then move on to cancer, then someone else can pick something...but most of academia to too damned greedy and egotistical to really work together...and that doesn't even count the corporate fat cats and government lackeys who fund everything.
You had a great post there, right up to the point where you try to defend the likes of Al Gore. His entire motivation is profit. He might be telling the truth, but only by happenstance.
You should read his other posts... Wow. It's like he's a hybrid composite of Victoria Jackson, Sarah Palin and a rabid sci-fi fan who lost contact with reality many years ago.
sorry I have my head up my ass, but the ac is still are a fuckwit - I'm just clueless
climate change is not some scheme al gore cooked up for political purposes
but... for the sake of argument, let's make believe you are right for a moment
let's ignore the research of thousands of scientists, decades of observations, and go with the low iq fantasy that al gore, sitting on his gold toilet, made climate change up, just to hurt big energy donors to republicans
ok. and?
this is your argument?
"i know a guy once who committed murder and got away with it... so this guy here should get away with murder"
that's how you think right and wrong works?
it's like those moronic headlines about how many jets al gore flies in, or how much fossil fuel was burned to fly big wigs to a climate change conference. so what!
if someone does something wrong, *that hardly makes another wrong ok*
point out the grossest, most hypocritical, limousine liberal shallowness on the topic, and guess what einstein: climate change suddenly doesn't go away as a problem. the damage to our atmosphere from fossil fuels doesn't magically disappear and become a nontopic, just because you found a liberal somewhere who drives a gas guzzling 4x4. do you understand?
to not understand this very simple moral concept: that two wrongs don't make a right, simply makes you, and all of the ignorant propaganda that depends on that foundation, look fucking stupid and morally immature
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Dem Officials Admit: Obsession With Koch Brothers Lost Us The Midterms
What most of the discussions appear to ignore is that we are currently enjoying a very brief warm period between epochs of crushing cold. Temperatures during the last few inter-glacial warming periods ranged around a fair amount, quite a bit more than the range that seems to have some in terror of mankind killing the planet. And there's the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age... I've seen enough hysteria on "both sides" of this subject to understand nothing I say here would invite those convinced of their position to adopt an open mind and see things on geologic time scales. Best of luck. May you enjoy the warmth... while we have it.
One of his descendants will add a "g" to the end of his name, and then create homicidal mutant humans. Then one of his descendants will create a homicidal android.
Seriously? In 2014 there was an added 100,000 new "Acres" of ice on the surface of the earth, and the North American Continent has just experienced 2 of its hardest winters in quite a while. Tree ring data suggest STRONGLY that this has happened before, and WILL happen again. The Dinosaurs lived in a time on the earth when their was 5x the current amount of CO2 on the earth... I'm sure they didn't call it "global warming" or "Climate Change" back then. It was just the "Long Season" something the Mayans knew about, the Azteca, and others... Screw the Kotch Brothers, Screw this Mainstream BS, just use your head and read some historical data. It all becomes VERY clear then. HISTORY DOES NOT LIE FOLKS! Its in the very rocks and trees around us... CLIMATE CHANGE IS A MONEY GRAB AND A SCAM! Carbon tax credits are valued at around 24.90$ a Ton... With 250,000,000 TONS being produced each year by the major nations... YOU do the math!
Uhh, he lobbied for a government-mandated market, then profited from this very market. Sure it's legal, but definitely not ethical.
Zero. Gore put his money where his mouth was and made an educational movie, the profit went straight back into his educational foundation, not his pocket. Gore is worth ~$100m, none of it has come from his activism on AGW, that activity has COST him money.
You really believe that, don't you? Holy shit what a fucking moron.
all he has to do is regurgitate whatever his owners tell him to say. It's not like he is doing anything remotely resembling real science.
... Shouldn't throw stones. Anyone that says people supporting AGW don't profit from that position is either a complete fuckwit or is being willfully deceitful. There is a lot of money and power being thrown around on both sides.
If it were just some plucky scientists fighting against the evil corporate interests then you wouldn't have all these UN panels, green energy inititiaves, mass media smear campaigns, large numbers of politicians on both sides, and lets not forget there are a lot of corporations that are selling products that only make sense in the context of AGW.
I'm not saying AGW is wrong and I'm not saying that people aren't paid to say it isn't real. Rather, I'm saying that you gain no moral high ground by pointing that out because that's something both sides are profoundly guilty of at this point.
And any argument that doesn't acknowledge that fact is either fatally inaccurate or intentional propaganda.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
How much have warmists profited from their data manipulation to get government grants and public donations?
Hmm, what industries could profit from climate change true believers?
The "green" energy sector? Ethanol D-85? Depopulationists?
Nevermind whether these are actually good for the planet, it's ecology or more poluting than fossil fuels in totality.
The point being: Anytime, and I mean ANYTIME, you hear the media and politicians spouting scaremongering bullshit, FIRST you follow the money. I did, and that was enough for me to start down the propagandist trail and realize that "Climate Change" is mostly just scaremongering. There's no widespread consensus among climate scientists either, but you have to do your own fact checking to find out. I'm a real scientist, that means I'm a professional skeptic. I believe that climate change happens, just that the dire emergency of a runaway greenhouse effect is quite far fetched. At worst, in a few million years we'll wind up with giant plants and insects, and more turbulant wheather that irrigates our deserts to a lushness not seen since prehistoric times.
I won't waste any more time posting here, since the shills and moronic non-fact-checking slashdaughters rule this hellhole. If I'm not down modded and brow beaten by up-modded fools who don't know what "disproving the null hypothesis" is, then it'll be a minor miracle.
Those who screen the loudest are the ones that stand to lose the most. I'm just surpized that the Kroch's haven't started making contingency plans; other than the XL Pipe Line. Maybe further up river?
All the focus on funding.... OMG he didnt disclose where he got the money to spend the time writing the report!
Turnabout is fair play...
the IPCC wont even show their work, so stfu.
I dont give a shit who funds what... if they show their work and other scientists can check it.... then a true consensus is achieved... not some adhoc spun up interpretation of a multiple choice poll, inverting opinions 180 degrees in the process. 99 scientists agree on something we wont share with you...
The Alexander Graham Bell quote is revisionist history - there is no record of such statements prior to 1997. No one has ever published an image of any document with such words. Bell was anything but an environmentalist, he advocated alternative fuels because he believed that oil would be depleted within a decade. Your ability to copy verbatim from a Wikipedia article is unlikely to be confused with intelligence or critical thinking by anyone possessing either of those traits.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Many scientist I know of which are "only" post doc do not even get salary here , they get 1/2 or 1/3 salary as long as they have no real tenure / place. $1.2 million is a HUGE deal. Now we do HAVE an example of scientist paid off. And guess what ? It is on the skeptic side. It is funny to find so few climate skeptic "it is the sun/volcanoe/scientist are paid off" protesting that huge ethical breach.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
There is not many article on cholesterol in comparison, believe it or not biology is far far more complicated than climate science, because of the many additional factor both camp "cholesterol is bad for you" and c"cholesterol is good for you" can be bot right, due to the way the homeostasis in our body work and what happen when it does not, body requirement, confounding factors etc.... This is why you see often study contradicting each other in biology "coffee is good / bad for you". This is not about settled science , this is about having far far many factors coming in. In climate science on the other hand , the system are huge, but the number of factors or confounding factors is relatively small compared to a human. Think about it : you cannot simulate properly a human by slicing him in single voxel of meat and simulating the interaction between each other. You can do that with atmosphere to predict short term and evolution, and you can do that on a different level to predict long term evolution.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
You can clear things up by converting that base mechanism into a working model, otherwise STFU.
Gore is right: the science is settled. In fact, it's been understood for nearly 200 years [wikipedia.org].
That's kind of ignorant.....if we only were going to get warming from the CO2, then there would be little to worry about. It's the extra warming that we get from hypothesized feedbacks that really would destroy the world. Furthermore, even understanding the effect of CO2 is problematic, because it is mixing with other gasses and that makes a difference. There was a study in 2006 that further refined the effect that CO2 had on the atmosphere (narrowed the error bars).
We are still improving the computer models. If the science were settled, they would be much, much better at predicting.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
So where did you hear the other stories? Your psychic powers?
I fail to see how it is bad if it benefits the world more than it causes harm.
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
Greenpeace 'discovery' of a corrupt scientist misbehaviour looks like an old story, probably paid through new grants to warm up alarmist opinion lavishly funded from green tax and carbon trading bilionaires. Or perhaps Greenpeace are scared of having investigated themselves by authorities for their financial integrity, so they start again crying wolf.
See how 'greens' are funded and by whom.
www.thecommentator.com/article/1069/follow_the_money_the_morality_of_green_funding
If Al Gore is your idea of a scientist, then you don't get an opinion on what is or isn't settled.
And you tards think pro-global warming propaganda hasn't made people rich? Such double standards. Al Gore? Hmmm.
By the way, even if your are right, this is nit picking. It has no significant baring on when the phenomenon was proposed. Bell is just a well known figure, and he was not the first or last to bring up this possibility.
Why is Snark Required?
non liberals.
It's the science that matters. Is his science good? Has anyone been able to disprove it? If it holds up, it could be paid for by Iran and North Korea for all I care.
But it's an interesting pointer that the OP said NOTHING about the quality of the science, and just tried to smear the scientist by indicating his funding....
Elected officials who want to block the EPA and legislation on climate change frequently refer to a handful of scientists who dispute anthropogenic climate change. One of scientists they quote most often is Wei-Hock Soon, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who claims that variations in the sun's energy can largely explain recent global warming.
I can find no reference to him in the recent Congressional Records. I am a skeptic of the phrase "One of scientists they quote most often is Wei-Hock Soon" as this is the first I've ever heard of him. And you would think the Congressional Record of floor debates and speeches would be the place to find a mention of him if "elected officials who want to block the EPA and legislation on climate change frequently refer to [him]." Does anyone have a reference to back this statement up?
Don't all AGW scientists also have a bias that should damage their credibility? Aren't they all funded in large part by environmental and government sources that have a vested interest in a certain outcome?
Come on people, as scientists, we apply our logic consistently.
In the grand scheme of things, it is irrelevant how much he earned, or his detractors earned, from their respective supporters. In a debate, when someone resorts to saying, "you're stupid", or "you're ugly", it's a sign that the attacker is unable to counter the argument. Given the heated rhetoric directed at Soon, he must have landed some solid body blows against the 'global warming' position. If his evidence could have been easily swatted away, it would have been, and no one would have bothered to try to dig up dirt against him.
Frankly, I'm not completely sure what you are saying because you are incoherent: "the effect of CO2 is problematic, because it is mixing with other gasses and that makes a difference". Mixing how? Chemically? Via radiation? Interacting with clouds?
"... if we only were going to get warming from the CO2, then there would be little to worry about." Could you quote a source on that? Did you make it up? How about "There was a study in 2006 that further refined the effect that CO2 had on the atmosphere (narrowed the error bars)."? Any references for that one either? Did you mean to imply that reduced error bars mean that the effects of global climate change are not important? What are you talking about?
Now let's examine "We are still improving the computer models. If the science were settled, they would be much, much better at predicting." This is just flat out wrong. The quality of a simulation is not solely determined by knowledge of the basic science. For huge chaotic systems like global climate, the vast computational resources required limit predictive results. Furthermore, there is still a lot we don't understand, for example the effect of clouds, or the interaction between ocean circulation and climate. Note that these have nothing to do with the physics of greenhouse gasses, which is the nominal point under consideration.
Both climate modeling and computational resources are getting better on a yearly basis, as you pointed out. That doesn't mean the current state of the art is useless.
To conclude, you called me "kind of ignorant". I take personal offense to that. I just went to some effort to demonstrate that your are a thoughtless fool who seems incapable of logical argument and plays fast and loose with facts. Before you insult your betters you should examine your own mental resources. At this point all you have shown is that you are an intellectual failure.
Why is Snark Required?
"the effect of CO2 is problematic, because it is mixing with other gasses and that makes a difference". Mixing how? Chemically? Via radiation? Interacting with clouds?
The different gases overlap in their absorption bands, so that makes it hard to say what the individual contribution is. Also, while CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere, water vapour is not. For instance, most of the water vapour is in the lower layers of the atmosphere, and in the arctic areas there's very little water vapour at all, so in higher layers and in the arctic, greenhouse effect is mostly determined by CO2. In humid layers, water vapor is the main contributor.
For a conflict of interests, you first of all have to have more than one interest.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You're really asking this in a country where a not too small portion of the population lives in areas that are routinely hoovered up and spit out by tornadoes? A population who lives in trailers in exactly those areas, too?
Really?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Just pure physics. Natural changes is the Sun' activity over centuries are well documented. We have to stop this fear-mongering craziness with facts. Humanity is thousands of years away from ability to make any affect on the globl energy balance at all.
One picture is worth thousands of words
Liberal logic... Climate scientists being paid by corporate interests they agree with = good. Climate scientists being paid by corporate interests they disagree with = bad.
Another "Anyone who questions Climate Change (TM) is corrupt/stupid" article from Slashdot. Color me shocked. I was under the impression this was a tech site... maybe you should go find a street corner for your soapbox and let the rest of us read articles about tech instead of your opinion pieces.
Besides AL Gore, it's time to start digging on pro climate change scientists. Sure hope there is no glass houses out there.
From http://wmbriggs.com/post/15337...
"It was at this point real dread set in. It looked like the four of us were telling the truth. We were. And to the deluded who cherish the genetic fallacy this appeared that our result might be true, too. So the mentally feeble David Appell (sometime scourge of the comment box) put a FOIA request to the employer of Legates, but the poor soul was rebuffed because no state monies were involved in the writing of the paper. As we claimed. Then Greenpeace contacted the employer of Soon with the same intent, and Greenpeace discovered that Soon was in the same state as those who receive Greenpeace money. Which is to say, Soon in his career received money from sources other than our beneficent government. But he didn’t get anything for the paper the four of us wrote. How disappointed Greenpeace must have been to have discovered that."
It's been well documented that Al Gore is set to make billions from carbon credit exchange, and that the green energy industry has profited from the AGW fraud.
Why don't the Dem's ever talk about Soros?
Don't be ridiculous. Al Gore's notoriety, famous for making a movie that was full of lies - worse than any Michael Moore movie, then started his own TV channel that was bought by Al Jazeera. He still jets all over the world talking utter shite about things he knows little about.
I would like to see who is supporting the pro global warming
And what is wrong with living in a greenhouse? Nothing. It's warm, it's wet, it's full of lush vegetation. Look at the Amazon rain forest: full of life, activity, variety. Greenhouses are great.
"an aerospace degree involves more physics relevant to climate (e.g. fluid dynamics) than astrophysics does"
DAFUQ????
No it doesn't. I DO have an astrophysics degree and my fourth year was entirely fluid dynamics of an accreting white dwarf binary.
Moreover, the "Saturated Gas" argument is known to be wrong because if it were, you'd not be able to see
a) sunspots
b) the absorption lines of the elements in the photosphere
c) work out the proportions of the elements in the photosphere
Every scientist has ingrown bias. Someone pays their salary, and in order to keep their jobs, they have to make that person happy. Otherwise, that person is not by definition a professional scientist.
Just the same as anyone else. Whether its government grants or private funding, the money comes from an employer who is biased and wants certain results, and so the pressure is on the scientist to conform or wither away without funding. To think that any scientist is completely impartial is missing the most important part of being a professional scientist: that they are being paid. After that, what else is important? Attack the science itself if you call yourself a scientist, and if you are a political hack, attack the funding like is done here.
To say that one scientist who is funded by a private individual is anymore biased than scientists who are funded by Government is sloppy thinking at best that fails to recognize that science is a system without funding and without consensus in itself.
Agreement? not at all.
The only aspect in science we care about is logic and deduction, and 99.9% of the time when a scientist is not being attacked because of their actual science, its nothing but a political witch trial that cares only about its pound of flesh.
Real scientists for instance would never point to this guys source of funding as a form of bias. They would attack the science itself and go from there. But than again, this entire piece is a witch-hunt to destroy one man who disagrees with someone. Welcome to politics, where we do not follow the scientific method and where we insult others thinking we are doing the work of science.
http://www.berkleyearth.org
"The different gases overlap in their absorption bands"
No they don't.
And even if the pressures were so high that pressure broadening made them overlap, it would have no effect on CO2 since it is well mixed and goes higher than water vapour does (since it condenses out in temperatures less than about 0C).
But the basic point is that your claim there is wrong and hasn't been true for nearly 100 years, since when we've managed to get more sensitive measurement of absorption spectra that show categorically that they do not overlap.
Al Gore will not give up his private jet. You are giving me the 'stopped clock' argument.
Is your entire evidence for that "Because they're members of the IPCC"? Because that includes Saudi Arabia, who are unlikely to want oil to remain in the ground for fears that it will cause climate change we cannot adapt to.
And let me know why George W Bush and Ronnie Reagan, both government leaders who supported the IPCC to the same extent all those governments do today, changed to become watermelons, pushing the AGW "myth" on the international stage whilst sacking scientists who didn't go through PR channels to talk on the reality of AGW (like the Harper government did too).
Alternatively, you're talking bollocks and you only claim this through circular logic:
a) Governments push AGW because ...
b) The IPCC push AGW because
c) Governments push AGW because
d) The IPCC push AGW
... are for entertainment value only. It's like shoving 500 feral cats into a van and watching the action.
Who the hell cares if this scientist took some under-the-table money over a decade ago. Neither side has proven anything, and pointing out a pimple on the other side's stripper doesn't make anyone look creditable.
Dear Slashdot: poisoning your content in this way doesn't motivate me to visit your site.
To conclude, you called me "kind of ignorant". I take personal offense to that.
You're right. Maybe I should have said, "You express yourself poorly." You said the science is settled, but even you yourself point out places where it is not.
If you want to get a taste of the difficulty, then here. This explains science you are probably already familiar with.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
God forbid a scientist get money from a *GASP* private company. At what point does this get attributed to all the non-skeptics who suck grant money away from the gov and deliver results that allow them to justify vast increases of power? Everyone is on someone's payroll, but somehow unless that someone is an evil oil company it doesn't matter? Absurd.
'He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers.
Did you think greed and corruption was only the purview of politicians?
The climate change alarmists are making their money, and reportedly inflated salaries and grants, spreading what increasingly appears to be lies.
"just because you found a liberal somewhere who drives a gas guzzling 4x4"
Not just ANY liberal, THE liberal Al Gore who is CENTRAL to this whole scheme.
Al Gore didn't sit on his gold toilet and make climate change up to hurt big energy donors. He did it TO MAKE TONS OF MONEY.
This should concern you because it throws the entire thing into doubt. If one of the key figures in this is doing it for money, then why can't we suspect the others are doing it for the same reasons?
And yes, the fact that Al Gore flies a private jet and owns multiple huge houses MAKES A DIFFERENCE.
Nice hit piece. Now, how much money do all the warmists make from grants and working for the government that wants them to declare there is AGW? Don't hear about that. They're pulling in fortunes.
That amount of funding is only pocket change compared to what Al Gore has made in the "Climate change" racket.
Shocked I tell you! Who would have expected this??
When it isn't racsim, it's the Kochs. Or maybe climate change deniers. Or possibly the Tea Party. For sure it is a war on women though.
At least progressives/liberals aren't one trick ponies.
Some of them even play for the same team - Clinton pushed through laws Reagan could have only dreamed of: NAFTA, gutting welfare, telecom deregulation, and repealing Glass-Steagall. The "mainstream media" serves the same status quo interests as Fox, and does it better. Everyone knows Sean Hannity is a chicken hawk hack, but Tim Russert on the other hand! He's got that patented tuffbutfair gravitas, which he gave away to Cheney every time he was on his show.
Remember all the complaints that it was time for OWS to start picking issues and candidates, getting involved with electoral politics? That was frustration from political operatives that OWS didn't immediately turn itself into tools of the DNC the way the Teabaggers let themselves be co-opted by the Kochs.
Not just ANY liberal, THE liberal Al Gore who is CENTRAL to this whole scheme.
i stopped reading there
above in my comment i mock the stereotype of the low iq conservative who thinks al gore invented climate change
you respond by continuing with that low iq "thought"
making you exactly the problem i am talking about
genius:
if al gore never existed we would still have climate change
because we dump co2 in the atmosphere
which is the actual fucking problem. right? do you understand moron?
if al gore never existed, would pumping CO2 into the atmosphere make pink bubble gum and unicorns instead?
it requires evil libruls to turn too much CO2 in the atmosphere into a problem?
what exactly is the hilarious ignorant socially retarded thought process by which al gore is the problem, and not the CO2 we dump into the atmosphere?
do you have the slightest tiniest fucking clue how fucking stupid you sound?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
How do you figure? Solar panels are pennies on the ten thousand dollar bill next to oil. Fellating Exxon is a thoroughly bipartisan endeavor - Obama has opened up more land to drilling than Bush and Cheney, including the eastern seaboard. He brags that the U.S. is producing more oil and gas than it has the ability to transport to market. Biden's son is a top executive at Ukrainian energy company. BP was allowed to savage the Gulf of Mexico and get away with paying a fraction of the costs of mitigation. Politicians from both parties fall over themselves in the rush to pledge their love of coal.
Government has a heavy bias toward fossil fuels. If there was a bias resulting from government-funded science grants, it would be against climate change, not for it.
Because you'd have the same "leave the Brittney scientist alone" reaction if the situation was completely reversed. If an oft-cited study demonstrating that climate change was a real thing suddenly turned out to have been funded on the sly by Michael Moore, Al Gore, or Greenpeace, or the liberal booogyman of your choice. You'd still be calling it character assassination and wanting the science to "speak for itself."
Yup. Sure. You becha.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I second Wisnoskij, this was the most succinct (at 6.5 mins) piece I've seen on the topic, many thanks for the link.
Also a good incentive to read up on Richard Muller's other work. Apparently he was somewhat sceptical so he went out and did his own research; he's not terribly sceptical any more.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
The company that Gore invested in profits from deals with state protected utility companies that receive federal agency grants. Federal funding comes from borrowed money that will never be payed back, the Federal Reserve buying the Treasury's debt which is stolen value by inflation of the currency, and taxes, which is money stolen at the point of a gun under a threat of coercion, imprisonment or death. This is traditional crony capitalism without creating any real value for humanity.
And yep, AGW is happening, and humans are the cause. But I don't have kids so I just want to see you fuckers and your children burn for for your lies. And yeah I'm going to be there as well, but I'm going to be a smug, bitter old man who just keeps telling you fuckers: "Told you so!".
Everyone likes to hold up the IPCC as an authority on Climate Change and a neutral scientific body, yet their Charter and Document Submission Guidelines forbid them from accepting any papers that *do not* show Human-Induced Global Warming. How is that in any way neutral or ethical? Real science seeks the truth: something that disproves your theory is just as exciting as something that proves it!
$1.2M over the past decade?!?! That is $120K/yr... Not quite a lottery-size payout... Oh, and Koch Brothers? Come on, can't the left find another boogie man to pin all their fears on? How much money was spent on the other side to re-affirm what 'everyone' agrees with?
Oh that's right, in 1979.
So let's see, Numbtits, Satellite temperature records started around when the satellites network to make the temperature readings went up.
WHO'D'ATHUNKIT!
Oh, and wow, lookie here: When you google for "1970 temperature anomaly" you get temperature graphs from 1979.
Well, THAT proves that the temperature record of climate science started in '79, yessirree!!!
My god you deniers are ignorant and BRAZENLY DENSE pieces of shit.
All of it, and I mean ALL of it, is 100% bullshit.
There are only three good reasons for promoting climate change denialism.
Protecting corporate interests by promoting bad science is something you shouldn't do at all, but if you're going to do it for them, they should be paying you really well. Supporting that particular political party's protection of their corporate sponsors' interests by promoting bad science is something cynical enough you should also only do if they're paying you well for it. (They pay their other marketers well.) Annoying liberals is something you can do for lolz is something you can do for free if that floats your boat.
If you're going to do "scientific research" to disprove climate change, and you don't get some outrageously large "research grant", you're getting ripped off, and you should at least go join a union like the Screen Actors' Guild so you can get paid scale and overtime. (SAG union rules presumably say the studio is supposed to pay for costumes, but if you need to spring for a white lab coat and some glassware and blinkenlights to make a demo tape, that's probably ok, even if they use that in production.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Whenever scientists publish a controversial new cosmological theory there is no gossiping over who paid them. Because it doesn't matter. If their interpretation of the data is wrong, or if their model is wrong, all someone has to do is correct their work. Yet when it comes to "climate science" much ink is spilled disparaging the motives and character of anyone who challenges the orthodoxy. If he's wrong, show how he's wrong. I don't give a rat's behind who paid for what. The work either contributes to our understanding or it doesn't.
Water precipitates too quickly to be the cause of a forcing in temperature. As a greenhouse gas, its role is largely to amplify the warming caused by gasses like CO2 and methane.
http://www.skepticalscience.co...
You'd still be crying "character assassination" if a pro-AGW study turned out to have been funded by Al Gore without disclosure, and was met with the same criticism? It's an apples-to-apples comparison, so you should have no problem answering a simple question with a simple monosyllabic answer.
Yes or no.
Yes or no.
Yes or no.
Here's an idea, if no one else has thought or mentioned this in an earlier post, have someone else review the Doctor's work and attempt to replicate his found results; you know science. Then bitch about his ethics if it is proven his work would leads us down the garden path.
Funding bias is a very real problem in all of science not just climate research. Do the authors of this really think that those who get government funding don't have a bias? That the government doesn't have it's agenda and what results it wants to see? It changes from one administration to another but it is always there.
If you want to read a great explanation of why the IPCC models are broken beyond belief there was a great article describing that and all
the other problems with science in general and climate science in particular by Dr Brown of Duke university
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/06/real-science-debates-are-not-rare/
A question for everyone who thinks that CO2 controls the climate. How long with rising CO2 and flat or falling temperatures before you admit your theory is wrong? 20 years? 30? Never?
All 5 of the major datasets (RSS, UAH, HadCRUT4, GISS, NCDC) show no warming for between 14 and almost 18 years. In that time CO2 has risen 8-10%.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/23/smear-campaign-his-judgment-cometh-and-that-right-soon/
And how is it, that magically, the billions collectively going into climate research, and the millions going to individual researchers, (such as 1.8 million dollars received by Dr. Michael Mann on a topic for which he is not an expert) which tends to have only one scientific outcome, is somehow pure, while research funding looking into linkage between climate change and the sun done by Dr. Soon, is somehow evil?
They think it is evil because supposedly the outcome is paid for. That’s about as ridiculous as saying that because the Phil Jones Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the center of Climategate, somehow made specific outcomes in their climate research because CRU took money from “Big Oil” in the past.
If science is not capable to make solid predictions on a man made system like financial markets, how can one claim to be right on modeling the climate. The nature of any model is that it will always be false at a point in time..
And this publication just proofs how much financial dependencies there are with proofing that we influence the climate.
Amid the thousands of files apparently lifted from Britain’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) last week sit two documents on the subject of the unit’s funding. One is a spreadsheet (pdj_grant_since1990.xls) logging the various grants CRU chief P.D. Jones has received since 1990. It lists 55 such endowments from agencies ranging from the U.S. Department of Energy to NATO, worth a total of £13,718,547, or approximately $22.6 million. I guess cooking climate data can be an expensive habit, particularly for an oft-quoted and highly exalted U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chief climatologist.
But it’s actually the second document (potential-funding.doc) that tells the more compelling tale. In addition to four government sources of potential CRU funding, it lists an equal number of “energy agencies” they might put the bite on. Three — the Carbon Trust, the Northern Energy Initiative, and the Energy Saving Trust — are U.K.-based consultancy and funding specialists promoting “new energy” technologies with the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The fourth — Renewables North West — is an American company promoting the expansion of solar, wind, and geothermal energy in the Pacific Northwest.
Needless to say, all four of these CRU “potential funding sources” have an undeniably intrinsic financial interest in the promotion of the carbochondriacal reports CRU is ready, willing, and able to dish out ostensibly on demand. And equally obvious, Jones is all too aware that a renewable energy-funded CRU will remain the world’s premiere authority on the subject of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) despite any appearance of conflict.
And yet, no such latitude has ever been extended to scientists in the skeptical camp.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2009/11/cru_files_betray_climate_alarm.html#ixzz3SaJIib00
I thought ad hominum attacks were the preferred tool of the people with no science to use.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
Having been a grad student in the employ of various research institutions that research climate change, I can say I could easily write the same article about many research projects that support anthropogenic climate change. Most universities and other research organizations profit greatly from these types of grants and actively promote and support researchers who can generate the grants. This there is incentive for bias before the grant is even made.The typical charge to a grant for a research project is between 40% to 60% for overhead, meaning if the University of "Climate Change" has a researcher who generates a $1 million grant, they get to keep $600,000 for themselves and the other 40% is doled out as the research is done to pay expenses related to the research. It doesn't matter that the donor is the Koch Brothers, or Tom Steyer, this is how it works. Getting the funding in the first place, however, requires a grant proposal that must interest the grantor. Perhaps Dr. Soon, based on his body of work, has an easier time raising money from Koch Brothers and their likes, than from Tom Steyer and his cronies. Neither side of the climate debate is any LESS INNOCENT of this same type of conflict of interest, and the NYT has simply managed to write an article making it sound as if this ethics issue and bias is somehow unique to this side of the debate.
How can the fact a researcher took millions in private funds negate the impact of the sun on earth's climate? Climate science has been set back 50 years by those who dismiss natural causes for any climate cycles.
Can you show me that climatologists are getting their money from "green" industries? Because I think paying an institution to accept an engineer into an astrophysics institute so his publications on solar output can seem more authoritative is as conspiratorial as it gets: But you just skip over that bit - how convenient.
He profited from a market that doesn't exist. He's better than I thought!
How much did PG&E rake in for "subsidies" for wind power?
How much is Musk's Solar City STILL making in government kickbacks, and how much does that equal for it's owner?
Always the politically correct focus it seems. Point to the guy who made a million because it fits the narrative, but ignore the dozens each making millions PER YEAR from the other side.
You truly are an idiot - just as Alexander Graham Bell predicted you would be. One cannot prove that Bell did not say the thing attributed to him, but no one can find such a quote before 1997 (75 years after his death) from the falsified biography which was attempting to make Bell relevant, but no one has an image of an original document or contemporary reference to support the quotation - it is drawn from whole cloth. I can cite the source relevant to his supposed advocacy for alternative fuels which clearly shows he had no environmental concerns and confirms my statement as to his reasoning which were strictly economic contrary to many of the current attempts to rehabilitate his image as a forward-looking environmentalist instead of an industrialist: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/...
It isn't nitpicking, I simply do not believe your post required more than a cursory response. I have no obligation to address the many falsehoods you put forth, but let's start with your initial statement, "Gore is right: the science is settled. In fact, it's been understood for nearly 200 years" Again, this is revisionist history. Fourier ultimately dismissed "greenhouse" effects in his published works which disqualifies him from being credited with an understanding of the issue of planetary temperature. https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~r...
If you want to insist that Fourier understood the issue, then you must conclude as he did that the atmosphere was not part of the issue of the the planet's temperature. I am confident you do not agree with his conclusion.
Svante Arrhenius described the greenhouse effect in 1896 which at 119 years ago is not really all that near 200 years.
Perhaps you should actually educate yourself on this issue. It is clear that your sources are dubious, and that you are not a critical thinker, but merely a parrot spewing talking points.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Are you really trying to suggest he wasn't corrupted by the money? Even if he didn't 'take it home', he was still gaining status from it in soft ways.
"Here's 1.2 mil. We want you to tell us that it is possible that global warming is being caused by the sun"
The Sun causes all warming, there is no other source of energy for us. (And no, things that originally came from the sun don't count...)
But, if you want to know if it is possible that the Sun could cause what is called "Anthropomorphic global warming", then yes of course it could. It is already known to do so. The berden of proof is on the other side, to prove that it is -not- caused by changes in the sun !
...and skipped right over the fact that Hillary would be talking about nothing but WMD's if they had actually been found in Iraq. Because the reason she hasn't been president the last 6+ years is her vote to invade Iraq.
To stop Saddam from using/possessing WMD's.
Clown. Shoes. Iraq is why Democrats took back Congress in 2006, and Republicans across the country took a beating in 2008. Do explain why everyone from the Bush family and the Bush Administration wouldn't be talking about these discovered WMD's if they vindicated W's war.
I wont hold my breath, because you'd first explain the workings of a perpetual motion machine before you could square that circle.
You do know that Hillary was at State, and not the Pentagon, right? The Hillary that was all set to "obliterate" Iran back in 2008? The Megathatcher would have re-invaded Iraq two years ago to fight the monster her boss's administration created.
Too bad you stopped your Goolgling. Because yes, the USG under Obama did create ISIS, by arming, funding and training extremists to fight Assad. Echoing the strategy of the first modern right-wing president, Carter, who funded the proto-Taliban in Afghanistan to provoke the USSR into stating what American Exceptionalists would call a "humanitarian intervention".
But that's the ever-present problem for right-wingers: the only legit criticism of Democrats comes from the Left.
Agreements which entirely revolved around...Saddam's WMD's. Like I said, clown shoes.
What's interesting is that your own link never mentions WMD's, or Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Because it's not a weapon of mass destruction if it's incapable of causing mass destruction.
Because it's not a weapon of mass destruction if it's incapable of causing mass destruction.
Because it's not a weapon of mass destruction if it's incapable of causing mass destruction.
Because it's not a weapon of mass destruction if it's incapable of causing mass destruction.
Repeated so it might sink in this time, even through the clown shoes.