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Lawmakers Seek Information On Funding For Climate Change Critics
HughPickens.com writes: John Schwartz reports at the NY Times that prominent members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate are demanding information from universities, companies and trade groups about funding for scientists who publicly dispute widely held views on the causes and risks of climate change. In letters sent to seven universities, Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who is the ranking member of the House committee on natural resources, sent detailed requests to the academic employers of scientists who had testified before Congress about climate change. "My colleagues and I cannot perform our duties if research or testimony provided to us is influenced by undisclosed financial relationships." Grijalva asked for each university's policies on financial disclosure and the amount and sources of outside funding for each scholar, "communications regarding the funding" and "all drafts" of testimony. Meanwhile Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, Barbara Boxer of California and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. sent 100 letters to fossil fuel companies, trade groups and other organizations asking about their funding of climate research and advocacy asking for responses by April 3. "Corporate special interests shouldn't be able to secretly peddle the best junk science money can buy," said Senator Markey, denouncing what he called "denial-for-hire operations."
The letters come after evidence emerged over the weekend that Wei-Hock Soon, known as Willie, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, had failed to disclose the industry funding for his academic work. The documents also included correspondence between Dr. Soon and the companies who funded his work in which he referred to his papers and testimony as "deliverables." Soon 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. "What it shows is the continuation of a long-term campaign by specific fossil-fuel companies and interests to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change," says Kert Davies.
The letters come after evidence emerged over the weekend that Wei-Hock Soon, known as Willie, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, had failed to disclose the industry funding for his academic work. The documents also included correspondence between Dr. Soon and the companies who funded his work in which he referred to his papers and testimony as "deliverables." Soon 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. "What it shows is the continuation of a long-term campaign by specific fossil-fuel companies and interests to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change," says Kert Davies.
SO, they're only investigating the funding sources of people who disagree with their position.
Well, that couldn't be biased at all, now could it?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
"My colleagues and I cannot perform our duties if research or testimony provided to us is influenced by undisclosed financial relationships."
That line from the mouth of a politician is pure gold. Pot, meet Kettle.
I'm tired of these evil republicans going on witch-hunts after scientists! Those evil right-wingers hate anyone who disagrees with their religion and [interrupted, whispers]..
Oh wait, this is a brave Democrat who is uncovering a vast evil conspiracy because some evil slimeball had the gall to say that global warming is real but that the apocalyptic predictions of natural disasters made by the religion of Environmentalism aren't supported by real facts*.
Carry on, burn him at the stake, expose all of his emails because only those who exercise the faith properly have a right to privacy.
* Seriously, it's now considered blasphemy to say that Global Warming is real but that the world hasn't ended. You know what's funny? Those wacky Christian radio guys who predict the end of the world at least have the decency to admit the world didn't end the next day. Being in the religion of Environmentalism means you don't even have to exercise that level of introspection.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
If only there was some way of detaching politics from science.... Hm....
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
The President’s 2014 Budget proposes over $ 21.4 billion for climate change activities
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Well, I suppose it's a good thing if it can be demonstrated that the Koch Brothers and other fossil fuel interests are behind the vanishingly small number of still-reputable scientists issuing climate change lies. But, really, when you have 98% or 99% consensus, you don't need to wonder if the 1 or 2% are lying or just wrong. There are no areas in life where we find ourselves unable to operate with a consensus of 98% or 99%.
So the problem is not that a few scientists are wrong, or willing to be bought. The problem is that the people we elect are willing to destroy the planet for the benefit of their reelection. And the problem is that substantial numbers of voters are stupid and so incredibly self-interested that they are willing to trade their children's future for some politician's "promise" of "jobs, jobs, jobs."
Capitalism as we see it is a complete failure, allowing 85 individuals to control equivalent assets to several billion people, and legally treating the destruction of the planet as just another externality. "Democracy" as it is practiced in the United States is a game played by advertisers and strategists; really, all you need do to understand the depth of the fraud is to realize that advertisers "buy" points with advertising buys. It's not a democracy if you've learned you can predictably alter the point spread with a "buy" of a certain size.
There is no longer *any* legitimacy to our national-level institutions, and for the Senate or House to "investigate" fraud is a joke.
Of this there can be no argument. It is established fact.
So you will have no problem proving your claim ?
If 95%+ of scientists agree with each other ... and are NOT all paid by the same corporations ...
but the scientists who disagree with them ARE all (100%) paid by the same corporations ...
I think you're implying bias on the wrong side.
They just play the denier's game. Attacking AGW folks because of funding was one of the first games the deniers played, as they couldn't come up with enough solid science on their side.
I see, so pseudo-skeptics can be as shrill and hyperbolic as they please, and that's just fine, but the scientific community is just supposed to endlessly take it up the rear.
What are you afraid of? That it will turn out most of the shit people like you believe is bullcrap invented by the Koch Brothers?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Come out! And accept your punishment, with shall be death by burning at the stake! You're a witch!
Fuck all this! Make the damn politicians who write the damn laws reveal their sponsors! Then maybe they can complain about other people
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If only there was some way of detaching politics from science.... Hm....
Easy: make sure to elect only religious people as politicians. So they won't need to bother with science, and can base laws & regulations on holy books alone. While in the meantime, the rest of society can use actual science to discover how the world around us works (and improve our lives in the process).
Oh wait...
Same as we did on the "lead in gasoline isn't harmful", "asbestos is safe to breathe" and "smoking tobacco doesn't cause cancer" instances, yes.
Industry runs the same playbook over and over, and reasonable people counter it the same way each time...
You're referring of course to the billions of people around the world who drive cars, use electricity, burn trees for heat, or any other activity which contributes to climate change, yes?
Convince the world to go back to a pre-industrial standard of living, and all the industry funded "science" in the world won't make a difference. There won't BE a fossil fuel industry.
Now the politically correct enforcers are going to jackboot all over anyone who has a different opinion?
Obviously if they don't agree with us, they must be corrupt or worse.
That's some Nazi shit right there.
No, the fact that he has been caught not disclosing his funding sources and been caught breaking ethical guidelines is what makes him corrupt.
Just a thought.
Disclosing your funding source is standard practice. Not doing so is very sketchy.
Soon's paper was fine. No lies, no fabricated data... And he attempts to explain the obvious elephant in the room: Why Climate Models Run Hot, which they obviously do.
Read more...
http://www.breitbart.com/big-g...
Billions and billions of dollars have been squandered on this boondoggle. No wonder so many people don't accountability.
Your source is suspect there, I'm afraid.
If his papers are fine then why did he not disclose his funding source? That's rule one about publishing your work. To not do so is very sketchy.
So you are claiming that transparency is fascism. O...K...
That shutting down funding of a contrary point of view is not exactly scientific best practice.
Who said anything about shutting it down?
All they want is for him to disclose who is funding him, as is standard practice in science.
AHAHAHAHAHAHA. You're citing Breitbart of all news sources and trying to claim they're... fair and balanced.
Now this just uses the same argument: Climate sceptics have to doubt AGW, because otherwise they would lose their financial founding. And to support that, the lawmakers want to actually know who founds the climate sceptics.
The old appeal to authority. Nice. Well, Dyson is a physicist and mathematician, so his opinion on this matters exactly the same as yours - not a jot.
You're doing a great job of discrediting yourself - no one else needs to even bother.
Burning trees for heat is as close to carbon neutral as you can get (hint: they're made from carbon removed from the atmosphere).
All the article does is highlight a few carefully selected weather stations where the temperature records have been adjusted. It doesn't explain why the adjustments were incorrect. It also doesn't show what the unadjusted temperature record would look like if you took all the station data.
Luckily, somebody else did that: http://judithcurry.com/2015/02...
Hey, Liberals are nazis now, so transparency being fascism is perfectly cromulent in this worldview.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Powerful people in government going after citizens who are critical of the party line. That's what smells.
We can't get the same standards for police brutality that exist in Fergeson to be applies in LA, Chicago, or New York City. We can't get the same standards of ethics you have on the oil industry to apply to Big Media, Big Pharma, and of course the Globalization cartel.
Muck Raking has been turned into an extortion racket. I'm not taking part.
So investigating a conflict of interest is now "going after citizens"?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
What are you afraid of? That it will turn out most of the shit people like you believe is bullcrap invented by the Koch Brothers?
I'm afraid that people like you are absolutely certain of what you believe, and that one of the things you believe is that none of your beliefs were influenced by anyone with a motive.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
That's some grade A word salad there.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Funny. Very few governments seem to be willing to do anything except sit on their asses.
one of the things you believe is that none of your beliefs were influenced by anyone with a motive.
Of course they were. Just like your beliefs. That in itself doesn't help us determine which are true, though.
Well I suppose you would support an equal amount of investigation into the funding of those that might be considered GW activists, you know, to make sure they are not funded by the renewables industry, or their lobby or other activist organizations?
Personally, I think when science allows itself to get into witch hunt mode, it is damning itself to staying there. Scientist should stand up and say "we got this, politicians, please stay out of it".
You have no idea what you're talking about. The principle is called full disclosure, has nothing to do with the inquisition, and is required by every respectable scientific journal and research institution. Willie Soon's problem is not that he had received money for research (all kinds of industries finance all kinds of research all the time), but that he failed to disclose the fact (well, bragging to his sponsors about his papers as "deliverables" certainly didn't help his reputation either). A wider disclosure check is not inappropriate in this context.
Bull-fucking-shit. AGW is about the observation that increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere lead to increased energy in atmospheric systems, increased surface temperature, increased ocean temperatures, and increased absorption of CO2 into the oceans leading to acidification.
This idea that the laws of the fucking universe somehow have to abide by YOUR political ideology is so ludicrous as to make me believe you either a fucking moron or a religious fanatic.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You're comparing asking a researcher why they received large amounts of cash from groups with obvious and well known biases to AGW research to McCarthyism?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Because they're on the same team, silly. Dyson says things he agrees with and that's all that matters.
The difference is that no one is going to go to jail, and the worst repercussions are likely to be the researcher in question is taken to task for not reporting his funding sources.
Are you fucking retarded?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I wonder how much funding George Soros and his cronies have into this now?
We could look into that. But according to you (here) it would be a witch hunt. So I guess we can't look into conflicts of interest.
I see. So the fact that the overwhelming majority of linguists believe French, English and Urdu all descend from a common mother tongue mean that the consensus proves Proto-Indo-European studies are false?
You're talking bullshit, and sounding like a simpering moron.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The denier in question is a scientist, who has taken large amounts of money from the fossil fuel industry without reporting it in his papers.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The funny thing is, I can't tell which side you're talking about.
It isn't the "scientific community" that is making this demand, it is the people that fund the "scientific community"
Nope, its the people who have to listen to the same "experts" (who mostly aren't climate scientists) repeating the same arguments that disagree with the vast majority of actual climate scientists. And they want to know if there is something going on here - like the experts being paid by the same people as those who insist that they know more about climate science than actual climate scientists. You know, Senators like James M. Inhofe and people like the Koch brothers.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Consensus is the exact opposite of science. If we went with the consensus, the Earth would be flat, the sun would revolve around the Earth, the moon would be made of cheese, etc. Science is questioning *everything*. Anybody who says there is a consensus in AGW and opposition is to be silenced or downplayed is anti-science.
What are *you* afraid of?
You don't understand what a scientific consensus is. In science a consensus exists when there are no longer arguments among the practitioners of a science about a particular point in that science. It's not something they vote on, it just happens organically.
The old appeal to authority. Nice. Well, Dyson is a physicist and mathematician, so his opinion on this matters exactly the same as yours - not a jot.
You're doing a great job of discrediting yourself - no one else needs to even bother.
You are grossly overstepping in your zeal to disprove your opponent. Unless of course you really do think physics and math aren't relevant to computer modelling of... statistical estimates for changes in radiation absorption based on multiple variables. You know, the very heart and soul most important component of the greenhouse effect.
Dyson's opinions as portrayed in the linked article include: ...was that article substantially accurate about your views?
Question:
Dyson:
He had his agenda. Obviously he wanted to write a piece about global warming and I was just the instrument for that, and I am not so much interested in global warming. He portrayed me as sort of obsessed with the subject, which I am definitely not. To me it is a very small part of my life. I don’t claim to be an expert. I never did.
Later he makes his position on various items known:
I was involved in climate studies seriously about 30 years ago. That’s how I got interested. There was an outfit called the Institute for Energy Analysis at Oak Ridge. I visited Oak Ridge many times, and worked with those people, and I thought they were excellent. And the beauty of it was that it was multi-disciplinary. There were experts not just on hydrodynamics of the atmosphere, which of course is important, but also experts on vegetation, on soil, on trees, and so it was sort of half biological and half physics. And I felt that was a very good balance.
After describing the work at Oak Ridge and a general assessment by everyone about the interconnectedness of the climate across disciplines:
It’s a problem of very complicated ecology, and to isolate the atmosphere and the ocean just as a hydrodynamics problem makes no sense.
Thirty years ago, there was a sort of a political split between the Oak Ridge community, which included biology, and people who were doing these fluid dynamics models, which don’t include biology. They got the lion’s share of money and attention. And since then, this group of pure modeling experts has become dominant. I got out of the field then. I didn’t like the way it was going. It left me with a bad taste.
What’s wrong with the models. I mean, I haven’t examined them in detail, (but) I know roughly what’s in them. And the basic problem is that in the case of climate, very small structures, like clouds, dominate. And you cannot model them in any realistic way. They are far too small and too diverse.
So they say, ‘We represent cloudiness by a parameter,’ but I call it a fudge factor. So then you have a formula, which tells you if you have so much cloudiness and so much humidity, and so much temperature, and so much pressure, what will be the result... But if you are using it for a different climate, when you have twice as much carbon dioxide, there is no guarantee that that’s right. There is no way to test it.
Dyson doesn't seem particularly overstepping his knowledge. He doesn't seem to be 'denying' things. He's just putting forward some pretty reasonable skepticism. Notably, the IPCC repeatedly observes as well that the impact of clouds is the single biggest unknown in current modelling, largely because it's so very, very hard to model accurately.