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Scientists Urge American Geophysical Union To Cut Ties With Exxon (insideclimatenews.org)
mdsolar writes: More than 100 geoscientists are calling on the American Geophysical Union to drop ExxonMobil as a sponsor of its annual earth science conference in response to the company's years of spreading climate denial views. The call appeared in an open letter posted Monday morning on a science website called The Natural History Museum. The oil giant Exxon has a history of funding organizations that perpetuate climate misinformation and try to thwart policies that address climate change (in direct conflict with the earth science association's mission and funding policies), the scientists said in their letter to Margaret Leinen, president of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). "AGU has established a long history of scientific excellence with its peer-reviewed publications and conferences, as well as a strong position statement on the urgency of climate action," the letter said. "But by allowing Exxon to appropriate AGU's institutional social license to help legitimize the company's climate misinformation, AGU is undermining its stated values as well as the work of its own members," it added.
Let's see...Exxon supports (i.e. generously sponsors) the AGU which is pro warming-cooling climate change. And Exxon supports others who are con warming-cooling climate. Seems like they support both sides, a.k.a. neutral. But I guess the real problem is that the AGU wishes to promote the "deniers are evil" mantra rather than actual free speech, free science, dogma science, etc. Personally, I find the idea of "settled science" ludicrous. And, FWIW, I'm a real scientist with genuine credentials to back that up (PhD physics from Tier 1 university).
Freeman Dyson doesn't believe human activity is causing global climate change, nor does he believe a changing climate is necessarily harmful. Historically, warmer times have been better times.
"Generally speaking, I'm much more of a conformist, but it happens I have strong views about climate because I think the majority is badly wrong, and you have to make sure if the majority is saying something that they're not talking nonsense." - Freeman Dyson.
If Freeman Dyson says your maths are rubbish -- They are.
I saw someone wearing a button that said "Informed Denier \n I love nature". Asked her about it and she said she was informed enough to know that climate change wasn't real. Sorry I didn't have more time to talk to her.
There are a lot of people that I like to talk to one-on-one. Among them are climate change deniers, flat earthers, young earthers, trump/cruz supporters, and general conspiracy theorists. They are an entertaining bunch, you can give them facts and empirical data, and they find some way to ignore it or redirect as opposed to disputing the facts. It's become fascinating.
I think it is well established the Exxon is not "neutral" in any sense of the word on climate change. They directly fund deniers and have been doing this for years. Their financial interest is in continuing to burn more fossil fuels.
As opposed to, say, nation-states, whose incentive is to use a catastrophe-scare to vastly increase their control over businesses and populations (and have spent tens - maybe hundreds - of billions on "climate research"), or politically-connected financial types (such as Al Gore) whose incentive is to create an artificial, rent-seeking, gate-keeping, market in "carbon credits" to skim billions off the energy market.
Seems to me that there ARE no "neutral" funding sources. In order to avoid an appearance (if not an actuality) of bias, the AGU may need to accept funding from all "sides" of the issue. To refuse "tainted" money from an interested party is to publicly sign on with its opposition.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You're sort of forgetting all of the others.
Like the ones back in the 1990s that claimed it was ALREADY happening. Every time we had a big storm, it was global warming!
And no, it wasn't the fringe warmists who said that, either. It was a major theme by everyone who supported the theory. James Hansen (one of the leading lights in the field) was telling people that there would be massively increased storms of all sorts in twenty years - in 1989. Which would make that 2009 prediction false in a very dramatic way. He also said that sea levels would be meters higher by now, instead of centimeters.
Even as recent as 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme said that all of the dire predictions were "imminent," and we'd have 50 million "climate refugees" by 2010. So far, according to the most generous counting, it's about 100. If you count the island off south Louisiana that got munched by a hurricane. If you go by actual refugee counts, it's negative (population increases in just about all of the potential "climate refugee" countries, to the order of a few hundred thousand).
Up until the last couple of years, all of the "increased tropical storm frequency and intensity" predictions were for shorter terms - a few years to a decade. Now that we know that never happened, they had to move the predictions out past a human lifetime so they can stop being wrong quite so often.