Exxon Offered $10k to Scientists to Debunk U.N. Global Warming Report

Fighting global warming is not bad for economies as a whole. It's bad for certain companies. However, it also funds all sorts of new research and new industries.

Based on what, exactly, given that you've dismissed all the scientific evidence to the contrary?

Again, based on what?

Of course, Bush's primary problem with Kyoto was that it did the exact opposite and put more of a burden on developed countries. But hey, who needs facts?

 

I haven't dismissed all scientific evidence. You guys are skeptical of studies funded by groups that take money from Exxon. I'm skeptical of reports that the world is going to end because of global warming published by scientists and groups that already know the answer before they start the research.

I never said anything about Kyoto in this thread. But hey, who needs facts, right?

 

There is not one global warming denier that is not linked in some way to Exxon or some other big oil company. I have done loads of research on the global warming - and this always turns out to be the case.

I wrote a whole presentation on oil-sponsored global warming "think-tanks" for a project two semesters ago.

 

Let me ask you this:

Who else is going to give money to a scientist who doesn't blindly endorse global warming as a catastrophic event?

EDIT: I would also suppose that everyone on here has to consider me an expert on terrorism because I spent two semesters researching it, correct?

 

I am not sure who goes to which conferences. But you are accusing the whole scientific community of a practice 100% against scientific principle.

The whole idea behind science is that results should be based in research and results. Desired results don't determine the experiments with pre-conceived outcomes.

The fact that a company is offering to pay scientists to find a desired outcome, goes against scientific principle.

 

I agree with what you're saying.

However, how often do you think a scientist who performs a study that may cause doubt on global warming is able to find funding for future projects or is able to get his study published. My guess would be not very often because it's often immediately thought of as junk science. What I'm saying is that AEI is publishing that they will be funding and publishing results that won't be treated that way elsewhere.

I'm not dumb enough to think there's no conflict of interest but how do you think these studies get funded anyway? Somebody pays for them and I'm willing to bet more often than not a study that gets released is funded in some part by some party that benefits from the findings of the study.

Have you ever seen a smoking study funded by an anti-smoking company that found that second-hand smoke doesn't kill or one funded by a big tobacco company that says it does? No, because once the results are found, they don't get published by the people who commissioned the survey or the funding for future projects is cut off.

Also, if you read the AEI e-mail they make it clear they haven't only published findings that question global warming.

 

I didn't know you were an expert on the workings of the oil industry. How many people do you know that work in the industry? Are you basing your opinion only on the opinions of others?

 

I never claimed to be an expert though I know a lot of people who work for and are involved with various companies such as Exxon, Shell, etc. This doesn't mean I know more than anyone else, of course.

You came on here with accusations of price fixing and other illegal business activities so why should I prove that they aren't true if you haven't offered any evidence that they are true? Your logic is a classic example of conspiracy theory logic. You bring up an accusation and then expect others to disprove it instead of offering evidence yourself.

As for me, I admit I base some of my opinions on the opinions of others whom I find to be logical and/or reasonable. However, I don't wake up in the morning and read blogs and watch the news and wait for others to tell me what I should think. I (and I would argue most people) use the opinions of others as a starting point and not as a finishing point.

 

What amazes me is that you think Exxon really controls the price of gasoline.

FYI, Exxon currently makes 8 cents on the dollar for the gas they sell.

To answer your last question: yes. Americans are buying more gas now than ever. It's a combination of cars that don't get good gas mileage, more cars on the road and more people driving.

 

That's because it is junk science. Most scientists aren't in the business of shunning those who do sound research. Like someone said earlier, you don't get taken seriously by the scientific community if you ignore the peer review process. That is a good thing.

 

I think everyone has chosen sides in this debate and is making unfair assumptions.

Environmentalists deify the scientists. They assume the degree on their walls and the vaunted scientific process make them imune to political bias, profit motive, and the herd mentality. Anyone who attended college knows of the turf wars and petty political nonsense that goes on there.

Skeptics tend to be corporate apologists. I work in the oilfield service industry. Exxon in particular, is anti-competitive and their sheer size does significant harm to the consumer

 

are you a communist?

 

While I don't agree with everything you say here, I'd say your assessment on both sides is a reasonably fair one.

That's why it doesn't belong in the D&D. Come on, man, you didn't even call anyone any names.

 

I'm not saying that all scientists are saints, but the scientific process, when followed, does tend to filter out a lot of the bias.

 

Here's a report from an Israeli scientist (astrophysicist, I know) who, like other scientists, entered into his study of climate change with a preconceived notion about climate change but changed his opinion based on research. Again, this doesn't change the opinions of many but it's another opinion that generally does not get play in the scientific community.

It's part of a larger series about opinions on global warming that differ from the opinions of the vast majority of the scientific community. The other parts of the series are on the page that you goto if you click the link. This is the one that was most convincing to me but that doesn't mean it's the only opinion or that it's the right one.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=069cb5b2-7d81-4a8e-825d-56e0f112aeb5&k=0

Limited role for C02
The Deniers -- Part X
Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post
Published: Friday, February 02, 2007

Astrophysicist Nir Shariv, one of Israel's top young scientists, describes the logic that led him -- and most everyone else -- to conclude that SUVs, coal plants and other things man-made cause global warming.

Step One. Scientists for decades have postulated that increases in carbon dioxide and other gases could lead to a greenhouse effect.

Step Two. As if on cue, the temperature rose over the course of the 20th century while greenhouse gases proliferated due to human activities.

Step Three. No other mechanism explains the warming. Without another candidate, greenhouses gases necessarily became the cause.

Dr. Shariv, a prolific researcher who has made a name for himself assessing the movements of two-billion-year-old meteorites, no longer accepts this logic, or subscribes to these views. He has recanted: "Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media.

"In fact, there is much more than meets the eye."


Dr. Shariv's digging led him to the surprising discovery that there is no concrete evidence -- only speculation -- that man-made greenhouse gases cause global warming. Even research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-- the United Nations agency that heads the worldwide effort to combat global warming -- is bereft of anything here inspiring confidence. In fact, according to the IPCC's own findings, man's role is so uncertain that there is a strong possibility that we have been cooling, not warming, the Earth. Unfortunately, our tools are too crude to reveal what man's effect has been in the past, let alone predict how much warming or cooling we might cause in the future.

All we have on which to pin the blame on greenhouse gases, says Dr. Shaviv, is "incriminating circumstantial evidence," which explains why climate scientists speak in terms of finding "evidence of fingerprints." Circumstantial evidence might be a fine basis on which to justify reducing greenhouse gases, he adds, "without other 'suspects.' " However, Dr. Shaviv not only believes there are credible "other suspects," he believes that at least one provides a superior explanation for the 20th century's warming.

"Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming," he states, particularly because of the evidence that has been accumulating over the past decade of the strong relationship that cosmic- ray flux has on our atmosphere. So much evidence has by now been amassed, in fact, that "it is unlikely that [the solar climate link] does not exist."

The sun's strong role indicates that greenhouse gases can't have much of an influence on the climate -- that C02 et al. don't dominate through some kind of leveraging effect that makes them especially potent drivers of climate change. The upshot of the Earth not being unduly sensitive to greenhouse gases is that neither increases nor cutbacks in future C02 emissions will matter much in terms of the climate.

Even doubling the amount of CO2 by 2100, for example, "will not dramatically increase the global temperature," Dr. Shaviv states. Put another way: "Even if we halved the CO2 output, and the CO2 increase by 2100 would be, say, a 50% increase relative to today instead of a doubled amount, the expected reduction in the rise of global temperature would be less than 0.5C. This is not significant."

The evidence from astrophysicists and cosmologists in laboratories around the world, on the other hand, could well be significant. In his study of meteorites, published in the prestigious journal, Physical Review Letters, Dr. Shaviv found that the meteorites that Earth collected during its passage through the arms of the Milky Way sustained up to 10% more cosmic ray damage than others. That kind of cosmic ray variation, Dr. Shaviv believes, could alter global temperatures by as much as 15% --sufficient to turn the ice ages on or off and evidence of the extent to which cosmic forces influence Earth's climate.

In another study, directly relevant to today's climate controversy, Dr. Shaviv reconstructed the temperature on Earth over the past 550 million years to find that cosmic ray flux variations explain more than two-thirds of Earth's temperature variance, making it the most dominant climate driver over geological time scales. The study also found that an upper limit can be placed on the relative role of CO2 as a climate driver, meaning that a large fraction of the global warming witnessed over the past century could not be due to CO2 -- instead it is attributable to the increased solar activity.

CO2 does play a role in climate, Dr. Shaviv believes, but a secondary role, one too small to preoccupy policymakers. Yet Dr. Shaviv also believes fossil fuels should be controlled, not because of their adverse affects on climate but to curb pollution.

"I am therefore in favour of developing cheap alternatives such as solar power, wind, and of course fusion reactors (converting Deuterium into Helium), which we should have in a few decades, but this is an altogether different issue." His conclusion: "I am quite sure Kyoto is not the right way to go."

Lawrence Solomon@nextcity.com

 

I can't prove or disprove what Al Gore said in his movie, but he does at least claim that there isn't a single article written in a peer-reviewed scientific journal that is "anti" global warming.

I wouldn't know if the above is a peer reviewed paper or not, or if what Al said is true, but it'd be interesting if it was...

 

This is my point about the whole thing. Al Gore can say that because the articles published in those journals will never be accepted if they don't toe the party line with regards to global warming. That's why he said "in a peer-reviewed scientific journal."

Studies do exist and not all of them are funded by a big oil company. The problem is that none of them will get published by a peer reviewed journal because of the biases of those doing the reviewing.