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

What opinion?

And more, what does it matter if the opinion is utterly unfounded?

This guy Ball apparently has very little research or evidence in his corner (which is not surprising, given the great weight of the evidence in the opposite direction) and only became famous as "voice in the wilderness", paraded around by anti-envrionmentalists.

I can find people who will share the opinion that the moon landing was faked or the Holacaust didn't happen, but the circumstantial and physical evidence in support of these two opinions is pretty dubious.

 

Sort of like the data you provided contradicting the first study I posted in here?

Oh wait...

Look I'm trying to be as civil about this as I can. I'm not attempting to say any of you are bad people because of your beliefs despite the insistence that I am because of mine.

All I'm asking is why studies funded by environmental organizations are not "mired in controversy" while those funded by big oil companies are. It's the same type of conflict of interest.

 

Again, my point in posting the Ball article wasn't to support his science or his methods but to provide an example of someone else in the community who feels any opinions of global warming that are contrary to the popular belief are immediately discredited without being reviewed.

I provided a study earlier in this thread that I feel has more of a solid scientific base. Again, I'm not an expert so I can't vouch for everything in the study but I find it amazing that everyone on here (with the exception of Deckard) has in a way proven my point about immediately discrediting these types of findings. For those of you who are so convinced of global warming, it should be very simple to scientifically disprove every counter-claim so why doesn't that happen? Why is it always "look at the funding" or "the evidence in my direction has more weight so I'm 100% right?"

 

You want data then?

I don't know why you keep acting like you are being maligned. It's confusing.

If an environmental organization funded a study, I would be accordingly suspect of the resultss/agenda. But we are talking about peer-reviewed journals and the IPCC, not greenpeace.

Understood - He thinks like you. Now, where is the data to review? Like you said, it's an opinion piece, there's precious little science involved at all. How can one "review" that?

 

I wouldn't disagree with that, either. Thanks for the sarcasm, though.

Wouldn't you agree that victim's rights organizations have a sort of agenda that they're trying to further and that any study they produce will only be in favor of furthering that agenda?

 

I believe global warming is happening and that at least to some extend man is affecting the phenomenon. However,

it is pretty damn funny to read some of you guys writing about the obviousness of 'an oil conspiracy' while simultaneously discounting a competing theory as a 'conspiracy theory.' That just blows my mind.

Scientists on both sides have reasons to tailor their findings and to suggest otherwise is silly. FUNDING - from a governmental or private organization - is the lifeblood of the scientific community. Is Greenpeace going to fund a scientist who's hypothesis is that warming is NOT happening? Is a governmental organization like the EU? No, of course not. So to claim that a finding is untrustworthy because it did not come from the opposing side of the debate makes no sense.

A supposed 'consensus' can have a chilling effect on contrary conclusions. This phenomenon is thousands of years old so to dismiss it out of hand is silly.

Is it a consensus? On this specific issue one only has to look at the IPCC controversy to see there are problems. Scientists with contrary opinions are blugeoned with 'thousands of nobel winning scientists agreed' only to later have it come out that the IPCC signatories have many many disagreements beyond the simple 'there is some global warming.'

Again I think it is happening, and to some extent (I don't know how much) there is a human factor. But discounting other opinions out of hand is dumb.

 

You give a better example with Solomons. I suggest that others here read the rest of the articles he has available at the original site you mentioned. This other guy seems a bit of a nutty "tool" for the industry.

Whatever the reason for climate change, it is definitely happening. Glaciers all over the world are disappearing at an alarming rate. The ice caps in Greenland are melting. Ice sheets in the Arctic region and in the Antarctic are breaking off, sliding into the sea, and melting... ice sheets thousands of years old. The temperature of the oceans increasing, which causes the oceans to expand all by itself. Clearly, reducing greenhouses gases and man made pollution would help. Whether that is the only cause of what we are seeing is open to debate, but for some scientists to make broad statements saying it has no effect is disingenuous, if not dishonest, IMO.

We're going to Europe this summer, and I'm making a point of seeing at least a couple of glaciers in Switzerland that I remember from trips 20 to 35 years ago. Should be interesting.




D&D. Coldplay.

 

This is where you're overreaching. There's no evidence, either presented by you or in existence, to suggest that global warming theory is entirely or mostly funded by environmental groups with an agenda to promote.

Most of the basic research on global warming has accrued over decades from colleges and universities, with funding from governments, in-house budgets, etc etc etc.

Further, the cash incentives are much less warped. Why would environmental groups want global warming to be happening? They're not going to profit financially from it - and in the end, the potentially cataclysmic results which they warn of would eat it up.

Even if they do profit somewhat, the financial incentive is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction that corporate interests that underwrite the anti-environmnetal lobby receive from staving off environmental regulation (though in the long term they too will suffer when they are proven wrong)

I think global warming is real (as do most scientists - most of whom don't get money from the Sierra club) - but I woudl rather it not be. I don't have any incentive to wish it was real. I wish it wasn't. I don't think most scientists woudl disagree with that. They would rather live in a world we didn't have to worry about it.

LOL, well it would help if he would have submitted one of his papers to be reviewed then over the last two decades right? But he didn't. By all accounts the guy is an absolute lightweight with no research to promote.

Because you're out of your depth discussing climate on a scientific level (and so am I). BTW your study was actually an article about a study, and it didnt' say much at all about the "scientific base", it just explained a random theory by a guy who isn't even a climate expert.

Of course I can't "disprove" research on a scientific basis, sicne I don't have the expertise. however, it's telling to me (and I don't know why it's not to you) that the vast majority of experts in the area believe in GW and that the minority are a random Israeli astrophysicist and an unknown Canadian polemicist.

It woudl help of course if the GW-deniers actually submitted their research to real scientists but most of them don't, and prefer to take the "talking head" approach like Dr. Ball.

Honestly - like I said before, you can find so-called experts in certain areas who will say anything no matter how outlandish, like the Holocaust denying rabbis that hotballa noted.

 

I'm not trying to help myself out. I don't have any stake in this argument unless winning an internet argument makes me cooler in the eyes of others. I don't see why it would.

I'm merely saying that I wouldn't trust a study published by either a victim's rights organization or a criminal defense attorney to be 100% accurate. They both have obvious stakes in the findings.

If you think victim's rights organizations and environmental organizations don't have a stake in proving that they're correct on certain issues that's your opinion.

 

all those environmentalist living high on the hog. LOL

 

They share a gated mansion next to all those welfare millionaires.