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.
Most of the scientists I know make a salary and that's it. A $ 100 honorarium (say for giving a talk to the public) is regarded as a big deal.
Apparently you don't read many papers. It is very common, I daresay almost ubiquitous, for scientific papers to say "this work supported by X".
Yes, but they get millions to conduct research. I doubt he took that $1.2 million home.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The thousands of scientists who help compile the IPCC reports do it for free, none of them get a dime from the IPCC, at best they get their regular salary from their university. The IPCC has a $5-6M annual budget, most of it is spent on conference rooms and transport, there are a handful of full time admin staff. The IPCC accounts are published on their website for all to see. The money comes from individual nation states, last time I look there were about 130 nations on the donor list representing every colour of the political rainbow.
Most people in the climate science community will not be surprised that Soon was on the FF payroll.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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
This is interesting, because despite the diplomatic title of the post, many if not most researchers who are publishing against man made climate change are funded by people who are going to lose money, at least short term, if man made climate change becomes a political reality. To be sure the improvements to industrial processes are going to create a whole new class of very wealthy people, but those who will no innovate will be left behind.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Right, and then you're somewhat bound to give the "right" result, because otherwise they won't fund more research.
Hence the conflict of interest.
That's why there is a little thing called "peer review". If his observations are incorrect then a peer review will discover it.
A common misconception. Peer review does not verify that the data is correct, that the methodology in the paper is followed, or in general that the results are reliable. It looks at the methods outlined in the paper and tries to spot obvious flaws or oversights, as well as any major problems with the structure of the paper. It can't detect fraud, cherry-picking data, or a host of other problems. Some "scientists" have gotten away for years with made up data or other fraud. And of course the quality of the peer review (or even if it is peer reviewed, in some cases) depends heavily on the journal that publishes it. Anyone can make the "Journal of American Climate Study" or some other professional sounding name and publish total garbage.
If his experiments can't be reproduced then the paper will be discredited (along with his career)
This has pretty much already happened. He's published papers with deeply flawed methodology that has misrepresented the work of other scientists, espouses a scientific viewpoint (that solar variation causes most observed climate changes) that has been shown wrong years ago, and has failed to disclose the source of his funding, a fairly major ethical violation.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
"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."
He's in good company here, this scientist in 2008, using the same hypothesis correctly predicts the awful and cold winters of 2013 and 2014 The IPCC discredited him, but they have never predicted anything correctly. In fact their model flew off the rails with 75% error after 35 years of refinement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...
NASA, NOAA point out warming has stalled, no temperature has exceeded 1998's.
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...
http://insights.rs79.vrx.net/s...
"Since 2000, temperatures have been warmer than average, but they did not increase significantly. Data courtesy of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center." - climate.gov.
"Nearly every scientist that I know (IAAS) has a project on the side either studying the climate or cancer (preferably child cancer); this is what they must do in order to support their main research, since it probably has no funding."
Another Anonymous (why?) post on slashdot
http://news.slashdot.org/story...
'The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books — mine included — because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened," Lovelock said. "The climate is doing its usual tricks. There's nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now," he said. "The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,"
"'I made a mistake'
As “an independent and a loner,” he said he did not mind saying “All right, I made a mistake.” He claimed a university or government scientist might fear an admission of a mistake would lead to the loss of funding.
Lovelock -- who has previously worked with NASA and discovered the presence of harmful chemicals (CFCs) in the atmosphere but not their effect on the ozone layer -- stressed that humanity should still “do our best to cut back on fossil fuel burning” and try to adapt to the coming changes.
Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the U.K.’s respected Met Office Hadley Centre, agreed Lovelock had been too alarmist with claims about people having to live in the Arctic by 2100.
And he also agreed with Lovelock that the rate of warming in recent years had been less than expected by the climate models."
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
You think it's warming? Show me your data that proves NASA wrong then.
You do understand that that "97%" was 73 guys getting a climate grant each, right? Not that consens ever equalled truth:
"97%+ of geologists agreed the continents were stable. It was Settled Science. Hundreds of research papers supported it. Overwhelming consensus. And wrong. And, oddly (not really, if you think about it a moment), it was not a geologist but a meteorologist, Alfred Wegener, who ultimately showed all the mutually agreeing geologists they had it all wrong; the continents move." - Dr. Michael K. Oliver"
Need Mercedes parts ?
He's in good company here, this scientist in 2008, using the same hypothesis correctly predicts the awful and cold winters of 2013 and 2014.
Did they predict it for the whole globe? If they did they were wrong. They were right if they only predicted it for Eastern North America.