Slashdot Mirror
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.
The Inquisition didn't deal with Galileo by refusing to let him sponsor their conference.
It's not like Exxon is trying to stifle the American Geophysical Union by sponsoring their event.
The geoscientists are really making themselves look bad by doing this.
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.
At some point, you have to look at the motivations that each party has for their "speech." ExxonMobil has a huge vested interest in downplaying the role that burning oil has in accelerating climate change.
Suppressing their speech? When they have billions at their disposal to continue lying to the public? That's a laugh.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
Exxon studied the science, found it to be persuasive, even raising rigs to adapt to sea level rise, but lied about the science to the public for years. http://insideclimatenews.org/c...
That's equivocation. When somebody says the validity of scientific models should always be in question, that doesn't imply you should treat all scientific conclusions as coin tosses. If you conclude there's a 97% chance of global average temperature increases at an unprecedented rate, you don't point hide out in the 3% because it's convenient to your argument.
Likewise, the value of subsidies to cars running on alternative fuels is valid to question, but the statement was that he downplayed the value of renewable energy policies. You're making an argument on his behalf, which he may or may not have made himself, but is not included in the letter.
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
The oil giant Exxon has a history of funding organizations that perpetuate climate misinformation
Boo!
try to thwart policies that address climate change
I thought you just said Exxon was *funding* organizations that perpetuate climate misinformation, not *fighting* them.
After all, the real misinformation would be continuing to spread the lie that CO2 will have a significant impact on temperature increase, or in any way hasten the inevitable ice age that could come back any moment.
Perhaps just a misspelling in the summary?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Same mentality. Disagree with someone? Do whatever you can to suppress their speech.
Except it's the opposite: this is more like Disagree with someone? Stop taking their money.
Do keep in mind that the groups Exxon had been funding weren't doing climate science-- those groups, as it turns out, actually were agreeing with the consensus on global warming (until Exxon stopped funding them). The groups the geoscientists are complaining about Exxon spending a hundred million dollars to support were ones that were making political points by calling climate scientists "frauds", saying climate science is a "scam", the conclusions were "a hoax," and climate scientists "need to be sent to prison."
"Stop accepting money from an organization that pays people to denigrate your work" seems like a reasonable decision to me.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Go ahead and show us better data. I'm sure Exxon can fund the search. After all, they have a huge vested interested in refuting the data you claim is bad.
ExxonMobile has rights. Stop trying to lock them out.
Exxon Mobil has the right to offer money to the AGU.
And the AGU has the right to say no.
The End.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
A) http://berkeleyearth.org/ Your turn.
Not only them. There are several flavors of denial. The fossil fuel industry is one, motivated by money, but it's not the only one. There are also those who deny it out of political ideology - dedicated libertarians who refuse to accept it because if climate change were a real concern then there would be no option but to impose strict government regulation to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Such an act would be in direct violation with libertarian ideals, and therefore climate change cannot be accepted as a real concern. There are also the culture-war types, who reject climate change concern because it is a 'liberal thing' - American politics is very much a team sport, and if one side takes a position the other is pressured to oppose them.
You mean because they underestimated the warming? Or what?
I don't think any of the models the IPCC approved of forecast such a continuous chain of years with record breaking heat. If you want to say some areas were also colder than forecast, yes, that's also true. And much does depend on exactly how you measure temperature. But if I propose any specific method there are reasons why that's not a good choice. (Which is why many different methods are used.)
The temperature that I consider most significant over the short term is the average temperature of the ocean surface, but that's quite difficult to measure. Infrared measurments from space tend to get the top several meters (admittedly with rapidly decaying significance), samples taken from ships only pick up very local measurements, etc. But it's the temperature most directly related to the rate of evaporation.
FWIW, the IPCC was a political document and it trimmed out models at both extremes. This may have been unwise. But too many models were predicting things that politicians weren't willing to hear.
All that said, weather is complex and there have been areas where it didn't behave as expected. E.g., this was supposed to be a particularly wet winter where I live, but it has, instead, been drier and warmer than usual. For some reason that I haven't checked into, however, the snowpack is slightly ahead of normal. But things have been so warm that I still expect it to melt off in the early spring. Not good.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
So I went and looked at the report you cited. They split the expenditures into 5 categories:
1) Scientific research into climate change, about $2.5 billion.
2) Clean energy technologies, about $6 billion.
3) International assistance, about $0.9 billion.
4) Natural resource adaption, about $0.09 billion.
5) Energy tax provisions that may reduce GHG emissions and energy payments in lieu of tax provisions, about $10 billion.
So direct climate research is only about 11.6% of the total expenditures and by far the biggest chunk is tax provisions that aren't actually expenditures but just reduce the taxes collected.
Regarding the tax provisions and other breaks fossil fuel producers get plenty of that sort of support as well. For example coal mines that pay less than $5/ton for coal mined on government lands that they can sell to China for around $50/ton.
[citation needed]
I'll save you the trouble though. There isn't a single scientific research article that substantiates any of the horseshit you've said. And it is horseshit because you and the "I do believe in fairies" crowd who wouldn't know thermodynamics if it came up and kicked in the balls have been repeating the same horseshit for the past few decades.
~X~