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

I'm not sure why the overall dollar amount at stake is relevant. If an organization's existence depends on a certain conclusion then how big that organization is doesn't really matter.

The problem is that both of your assumptions are false. There isn't a party without $$$ at stake. Being part of a non-profit doesn't mean you are any less likely to have an agenda. The example of the oldest non-profit in human history, religion, shows this to be a false assertion.

I don't have to do so. My argument is that scientists depend on funding. Funding comes from organizations with agendas. Writing off contrary opinions because they get funding from one side of the debate while simultaneously concluding the obviousness of another opinion under the delusion there is funding unfettered by agenda is silly. THAT is my point. Of course it should also be pointed out that this conclusion isn't 'decades' old, but rather recent. As I pointed out earlier, if you go back a couple of decades the basic research pointed to a cooling of the earth, not a warming.

I admit that with this one you've confused me.

 

Greenpeace, your example, was around long before global warming was popularly known and spends approximately $8m on its climate change campaign out of a $111m expenditure budget. I don't know how much of that funds research, but I suspect it is very little - most of it is probably publicity campaigns.

So you're wrong to suggest that's the reason for its existence.

And you're wrong in saying that a group with trillions of dollars at stake isn't willing to take a different course of action than one with millions - especially when the long run result of the one with millions ultimately renders the milions to be irrelevant.

Yeah and none of those are my assumptions. Regards.

, yeah, you kind of do.

Really? My impression is that most basic research on global warming came from tenured professors doing regular basic research or government agencies - funded by governments, regular university budgets, which gets filtered down through many levels - etc - nobody with a real discernible agenda in the same way that the GW denier people are.

Honestly, wouldn't the government or the university NOT want global warming to be happening? I sure don't.

Can you point to one major breakthrough or study in the history of global warming theory that was underwritten by pro-GW environmental groups? I can't think of any, but then again I neever checked, but again I doubt it given the limited funding available. I mean I see where environmental groups tout certain studies, but I'm unaware to the extent they fund them.

It shouldn't be written off solely because of the funding. it should be written off because it is crap science - that's a point I made repeatedly. Of course crap science and dubious funding go hand in hand, and it's worth noting.

LOL, why would that be the "perfect case in point"?, you don't have a contrary opinion, YOU claimed earlier that you DID believe in global warming.

I'm ridiculing you because you're a acting like an ******* and saying stupid things - an endearing combo. You're obviously looking for a fight or to settle some old score, so just quit while you're ahead, chico.

 

No, your statement was: "Why would environmental groups want global warming to be happening?"

My answer is that the conclusion that warming is happening and is man made is of benefit to their coffers. The reason for its 'existence' is not relevant to the argument that it benefits in such a manner.

You're running in circles, Sam. If my organization is 10 people and your's is 100,000 we're still going to do what we need to see it grow. The size is completely irrelevant.

Yeah, they are. I pretty much just took them straight from your post.

That's the same reason there is so much mar1juana research coming out of US colleges and universities, right? The government never passes an agenda on to those insitutions? You seem to believe that researchers operate in a vaccuum where they are just these guys who are completely unaware of what research will guarantee future funding and what won't. I have to say that seems a bit naive.

Now you're mixing and matching. There are plenty of GW studies funded by governments with environmental agendas'

I don't have a problem with challenging the science. Never said I did.

Because you are an admitted non-expert ballyhoo'ing one conclusion, deriding the other based on a funding/agenda linkage while ignoring that funding and agendas are almost always present.

I wasn't talking about me, Sam - but I guess you were attacking me. We're familiar with your opinion that anyone who disagrees with you is stupid or an '*******' but you losing it doesn't really bother me too much. When you're ahead you don't have to settle scores, silly rabbit.

 

...to make the point that in the long run - if environmental groups are indeed correct - they don't profit from it at all.

Yes, I acknowledged that there was a financial incentive but that it was comparatively minor.

Hayes if your organization was making no money and you didn't care about making money that much, and mine was making $1 trillion and all I cared about was keeping that money and making more - we don't have the same incentives and will undertake different courses of activity in response to different events.

Hayes - that is bogus. I never said all environmental organizations were pure or that being a non-profit makes them immune from anything. You're not that stupid to have misinterpreted that either, so you're just basically lying here.

I simply said that a party with trillions at stake motivated purely by profit will have different incentives than a party with millions at stake, motivated by things other than profit.

LOL, what government department enforces scientific discipline then? You honestly think there is a government minder who follows scientists around when they sample antaarctic ice cores, or that a finding one way or the other guarantees more funding? How is the agenda passed on? men in black helicopters? It must be quite an agenda to have been successfully passed on throughout the world over the course of 40 years, lol. Talk about a global conspiracy theory.....

But anyway, as for your specific example, at first I thought it was a red herring, but in the end it's a bad example for you.

There have been plenty of studies about medical mar1juana in the US, many of which were sposnored by governemtne and aare listed here:

http://www.medmjscience.org/Pages/science.html

In fact even the office of Drug Control Policy (the "Drug Czar") researched and verified Medical mar1juana claims and recommended its use in certain circumstances:

http://books.nap.edu/readingroom/books/marimed/es.html

Examples? Why don't you just name one major study? Even so, how do they undercut the great weight of evidence, which you yourself believe?

So you're just arguing to be petty...agreed but we already established that.

No, I didn't do it "based on a funding/agenda linkage", I was rather clear abou that.

PS, please provide one iota of support for your contention that "funding and agendas are almost always present" in the same way for the vast body of reasearch about global warming - which you believe.

And tell me why you believe it isn spite of such "funding and agendas [which] are almost always present."

Obviously you were... or else you didn't read any of the posts. You PWI again?

 

Saying they don't profit from it because in the long run they don't profit from it doesn't show anything, Sam. They profit from the theory that it is happening and that it is catastrophic. Exxon doesn't profit from global warming happening either. The question is whether they profit from propagating one position or another. Clearly both sides DO profit from such action.

If you are right and their budgets are small, then 8% devoted to global warming is not minor. But then that doesn't really tell us what their take is from their GW efforts. You can tell us since you've looked this kind of stuff up (I haven't lately), but I do know that historically environmental groups have raised more money on issues that hit the 'catastrophic' button more than smaller issues.

It is an unfounded assumption that decision makers in these organizations don't care about money that much. And that's a pretty myopic view of the process anyway. If one is in the leadership of such an organization is could easily be true that you are prone to take such a stance for the 'greater cause.' The greater cause of course being best attacked by the expansion of your organization. These groups also aren't two french dudes in a rubber boat anymore. They have large organizations with PR/Marketing departments whose sole function is to generate more dollars into the organization.

Hardly. I'll underline it for you. You said:

'Further there's reason to believe that the party without $$$ at stake, and being part of a non profit, values non-monetary gains as well, is going to be less likely to act - in relative terms.

The party WITHOUT $$$ at stake. Those are your words, chief. Oops.

I think my previous statement is unanswered by anything but sillyness. You seem to believe that researchers operate in a vaccuum where they are just these guys who are completely unaware of what research will guarantee future funding and what won't. I have to say that seems a bit naive.

Not really. Federal funding for research was what I was referencing. All that money has gone into research with an anti-mar1juana agenda since the early 70s and it shows that a government can have an agenda and can affect research on a subject. Even so, that six states have sponsored singular studies in thirty five years doesn't disprove the point. Considering each of the sites you point to reference the rigid hoops and red tape needed to even get those studied I think it goes more to proving my point that a government can have an agenda and it can directly affect research.



New York Times April 22, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/22/opinion/22sat3.html?pagewanted=print
The Politics of Pot

The Bush administration's habit of politicizing its scientific agencies was on display again this week when the Food and Drug Administration, for no compelling reason, unexpectedly issued a brief, poorly documented statement disputing the therapeutic value of mar1juana. The statement was described as a response to numerous inquiries from Capitol Hill, but its likely intent was to buttress a crackdown on people who smoke mar1juana for medical purposes and to counteract state efforts to legalize the practice... That seems disingenuous. The government is actively discouraging relevant research, according to scientists quoted by Gardiner Harris in yesterday's Times. It's obviously easier and safer to issue a brief, dismissive statement than to back research that might undermine the administration's inflexible opposition to the medical use of mar1juana.

I think we're not connecting on this one. You said environmental groups don't pay for studies, I replied that is probably true but governments also have environmental agendas.

I don't think that the conclusion that global warming is happening is any longer in dispute. The rate, the effect, the cause - all are still in dispute. But again that wasn't my point.

Not being petty at all. Also not suprised you see any challenge to your posts as petty, stupid etc. My position was, and is, that there is no reason to drown out another opinion with ridicule because no position is either infallible nor unreproachable. Contrary opinions need not be met with scorn as exemplified by the point that both sides have reason for bias, not just exxon.

I will grant that it wasn't only based on that, as you also challenged the science.

Well, Sam...that's what an argument is - a claim and a warrant. That's what I've been doing.

Not sure why it would be 'in spite of' funding and agendas. The two positions in the debate are fairly consistent with their expected bias.

No, I was responding to your attacks on halfbreed. But then again your history is to namecall but declare the conversation over if someone dares do it to you, so whatever.

What is PWI?

 

Leading scientific journals 'are censoring debate on global warming'
By Robert Matthews
Last Updated: 2:08am BST 01/05/2005



Two of the world's leading scientific journals have come under fire from researchers for refusing to publish papers which challenge fashionable wisdom over global warming.

A British authority on natural catastrophes who disputed whether climatologists really agree that the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity, says his work was rejected by the American publication, Science, on the flimsiest of grounds.


Radcliffe on Sour power station with Dr Benny Peiser (inset). He disagrees with the pro-global warming line
A separate team of climate scientists, which was regularly used by Science and the journal Nature to review papers on the progress of global warming, said it was dropped after attempting to publish its own research which raised doubts over the issue.

The controversy follows the publication by Science in December of a paper which claimed to have demonstrated complete agreement among climate experts, not only that global warming is a genuine phenomenon, but also that mankind is to blame.

The author of the research, Dr Naomi Oreskes, of the University of California, analysed almost 1,000 papers on the subject published since the early 1990s, and concluded that 75 per cent of them either explicitly or implicitly backed the consensus view, while none directly dissented from it.

Dr Oreskes's study is now routinely cited by those demanding action on climate change, including the Royal Society and Prof Sir David King, the Government's chief scientific adviser.

advertisementHowever, her unequivocal conclusions immediately raised suspicions among other academics, who knew of many papers that dissented from the pro-global warming line.

They included Dr Benny Peiser, a senior lecturer in the science faculty at Liverpool John Moores University, who decided to conduct his own analysis of the same set of 1,000 documents - and concluded that only one third backed the consensus view, while only one per cent did so explicitly.

Dr Peiser submitted his findings to Science in January, and was asked to edit his paper for publication - but has now been told that his results have been rejected on the grounds that the points he make had been "widely dispersed on the internet".

Dr Peiser insists that he has kept his findings strictly confidential. "It is simply not true that they have appeared elsewhere already," he said.

A spokesman for Science said Dr Peiser's research had been rejected "for a variety of reasons", adding: "The information in the letter was not perceived to be novel."

Dr Peiser rejected this: "As the results from my analysis refuted the original claims, I believe Science has a duty to publish them."

Dr Peiser is not the only academic to have had work turned down which criticises the findings of Dr Oreskes's study. Prof Dennis Bray, of the GKSS National Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany, submitted results from an international study showing that fewer than one in 10 climate scientists believed that climate change is principally caused by human activity.

As with Dr Peiser's study, Science refused to publish his rebuttal. Prof Bray told The Telegraph: "They said it didn't fit with what they were intending to publish."

Prof Roy Spencer, at the University of Alabama, a leading authority on satellite measurements of global temperatures, told The Telegraph: "It's pretty clear that the editorial board of Science is more interested in promoting papers that are pro-global warming. It's the news value that is most important."

He said that after his own team produced research casting doubt on man-made global warming, they were no longer sent papers by Nature and Science for review - despite being acknowledged as world leaders in the field.

As a result, says Prof Spencer, flawed research is finding its way into the leading journals, while attempts to get rebuttals published fail. "Other scientists have had the same experience", he said. "The journals have a small set of reviewers who are pro-global warming."

Concern about bias within climate research has spread to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose findings are widely cited by those calling for drastic action on global warming.

In January, Dr Chris Landsea, an expert on hurricanes with the United States National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, resigned from the IPCC, claiming that it was "motivated by pre-conceived agendas" and was "scientifically unsound".

A spokesman for Science denied any bias against sceptics of man-made global warming. "You will find in our letters that there is a wide range of opinion," she said. "We certainly seek to cover dissenting views."

Dr Philip Campbell, the editor-in-chief of Nature, said that the journal was always happy to publish papers that go against perceived wisdom, as long as they are of acceptable scientific quality.

"The idea that we would conspire to suppress science that undermines the idea of anthropogenic climate change is both false and utterly naive about what makes journals thrive," he said.

Dr Peiser said the stifling of dissent and preoccupation with doomsday scenarios is bringing climate research into disrepute. "There is a fear that any doubt will be used by politicians to avoid action," he said. "But if political considerations dictate what gets published, it's all over for science."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/01/wglob01.xml

 

The IPCC consensus vs. the Greenhouse Hall of Fame

The IPCC claims its alarmist “Summaries for Policymakers” represent a consensus of the scientists who worked on the underlying report.

This is simply not true. Several distinguished scientists who have worked on all three of the huge IPCC Assessment Reports have spoken out against the bias and alarmism of the Summaries.

In early 2001, the government functionaries who comprise the IPCC approved Summaries of the Third Assessment Report (TAR). Their “big news” was that the upper limit for warming in the 21st century had been jacked up by almost 50 per cent since last year’s draft - to an alarming 5.8 degrees C.

At this point, the modellers jibbed. The co-author of the relevant Report chapter, Martin Manning, said “Many of us in the WG I community think the A1FI [fossil-fuel intensive] emissions are unrealistically high”. So how did they get there? To quote Manning again: “the fossil intensive scenario was not introduced by climate modellers or indeed anyone directly associated with the WG I report.” Instead it “was a response to final government review comments” on earlier, less drastic scenarios.
In other words, it was the result of political interference.

Then Richard Lindzen, Professor of Meteorology at MIT, weighed in. He had once again been a lead author of a Report chapter. He scoffed at the idea that the Summaries for Policymakers represented a consensus of scientists. “The truth is”, he said, “that we are not even asked”. Lindzen then gave a public lecture showing how the Summary had misrepresented what the scientists had said, and exaggerated the authority of “undistinguished scientists” who backed the IPCC line.

John Christy, Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Alabama, and another lead author of the TAR, then told the London Times that the 5.8 degree model result was “not going to happen” and added that climate models “are not the real world. They have many shortcomings - the sort of tiny shortcomings that can make long-term predictions suspect.” Christy also debunked alarmism about droughts, floods, tornadoes and the spread of malaria.

Several other top scientists who had contributed to the scientific part of the IPCC Report echoed these criticisms. This follows a pattern which can be observed over the past decade. The IPCC claims scientists world-wide agree with its alarmist predictions. But only a handful of these scientists ever appear, and they are almost invariably dependent on government greenhouse budgets for their livelihood. By contrast, really top experts who have genuine independence are often scathing about the greenhouse scare.

http://www.warwickhughes.com/climate/consensus.htm

 

I apologize in advance if this was posted here before...but I just came across this. I really don't have a strong opinion on this. I'm open to learning more of both sides...and I'm convinced that it's a good idea to rid ourselves of more pollution sooner rather than later, even without the Chicken Little approach.

Did you know "the Hockey Stick" has been widely rebutted??

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009625

Climate of Opinion
The latest U.N. report shows the "warming" debate is far from settled.

Monday, February 5, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

Last week's headlines about the United Nations' latest report on global warming were typically breathless, predicting doom and human damnation like the most fervent religious evangelical. Yet the real news in the fourth assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may be how far it is backpedaling on some key issues. Beware claims that the science of global warming is settled.

The document that caused such a stir was only a short policy report, a summary of the full scientific report due in May. Written mainly by policymakers (not scientists) who have a stake in the issue, the summary was long on dire predictions. The press reported the bullet points, noting that this latest summary pronounced with more than "90% confidence" that humans have been the main drivers of warming since the 1950s, and that higher temperatures and rising sea levels would result.


More pertinent is the underlying scientific report. And according to people who have seen that draft, it contains startling revisions of previous U.N. predictions. For example, the Center for Science and Public Policy has just released an illuminating analysis written by Lord Christopher Monckton, a one-time adviser to Margaret Thatcher who has become a voice of sanity on global warming.

Take rising sea levels. In its 2001 report, the U.N.'s best high-end estimate of the rise in sea levels by 2100 was three feet. Lord Monckton notes that the upcoming report's high-end best estimate is 17 inches, or half the previous prediction. Similarly, the new report shows that the 2001 assessment had overestimated the human influence on climate change since the Industrial Revolution by at least one-third.

Such reversals (and there are more) are remarkable, given that the IPCC's previous reports, in 1990, 1995 and 2001, have been steadily more urgent in their scientific claims and political tone. It's worth noting that many of the policymakers who tinker with the IPCC reports work for governments that have promoted climate fears as a way of justifying carbon-restriction policies. More skeptical scientists are routinely vetoed from contributing to the panel's work. The Pasteur Institute's Paul Reiter, a malaria expert who thinks global warming would have little impact on the spread of that disease, is one example.

U.N. scientists have relied heavily on computer models to predict future climate change, and these crystal balls are notoriously inaccurate. According to the models, for instance, global temperatures were supposed to have risen in recent years. Yet according to the U.S. National Climate Data Center, the world in 2006 was only 0.03 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in 2001--in the range of measurement error and thus not statistically significant.

The models also predicted that sea levels would rise much faster than they actually have. The models didn't predict the significant cooling the oceans have undergone since 2003--which is the opposite of what you'd expect with global warming. Cooler oceans have also put a damper on claims that global warming is the cause of more frequent or intense hurricanes. The models also failed to predict falling concentrations of methane in the atmosphere, another surprise.

Meanwhile, new scientific evidence keeps challenging previous assumptions. The latest report, for instance, takes greater note of the role of pollutant particles, which are thought to reflect sunlight back to space, supplying a cooling effect. More scientists are also studying the effect of solar activity on climate, and some believe it alone is responsible for recent warming.

All this appears to be resulting in a more cautious scientific approach, which is largely good news. We're told that the upcoming report is also missing any reference to the infamous "hockey stick," a study by Michael Mann that purported to show 900 years of minor fluctuations in temperature, followed by a dramatic spike over the past century. The IPCC featured the graph in 2001, but it has since been widely rebutted.

While everyone concedes that the Earth is about a degree Celsius warmer than it was a century ago, the debate continues over the cause and consequences. We don't deny that carbon emissions may play a role, but we don't believe that the case is sufficiently proven to justify a revolution in global energy use. The economic dislocations of such an abrupt policy change could be far more severe than warming itself, especially if it reduces the growth and innovation that would help the world cope with, say, rising sea levels. There are also other problems--AIDS, malaria and clean drinking water, for example--whose claims on scarce resources are at least as urgent as climate change.

The IPCC report should be understood as one more contribution to the warming debate, not some definitive last word that justifies radical policy change. It can be hard to keep one's head when everyone else is predicting the Apocalypse, but that's all the more reason to keep cool and focus on the actual science.

 

Not nearly as decisively as this editorial contends...though it's not surprising that they would state that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy

yeah especially if you're a right wing editorial writer and you only want to focus on the science that goes your way....

 

I hear ya, Sam. But it's not as if a left-wing editorial writer would present a more balanced approach. Read together, we might get at something remarkably close to the truth....or not.

 

No offense intended but isn't this exactly what you are doing?

 

No.

I don't think of global warming is "going my way". I don't want it to be real. Life would be easier if I didn't have to worry about it, IMO.

Anyway - look, even if the statistical criticisms of the hockey stick report are accurate - taht doesn't disprove a thing. There's still a mountain of evidence in support of GW that has to be disproved. It reminds of creationists finding one thing that Evolution can't fully explain and saying "A HA! busted! THEREFORE evolution is worthless! ".

Nothing is perfect or fully understood, but it's by far the best understanding we have right now and supported by a TON of evidence.

I don't really think that applies in this case - it's more like the debate over whether the earth revolves around the sun or vice versa, or moon landing deniers or Holocaust deniers. I think it's one or the other.

 

Really? As to what question?

It seems to me that it's pretty certain we're contributing to the warming of the earth. But I don't know to what degree. And I don't know what the consequences are. It seems to me that there are many out there who are screaming that the sky is falling...and there are others who are saying it won't be so drastic. That's the question that is up for grabs, to me. And I think it's a significant question when you consider the changes being proposed.

 

It's exactly what you are doing. Any evidence that comes out that could cast doubt on your assertion you immediately dismiss. I'm not saying anything I've posted proves that there is no global warming I'm just saying it might not be as bad as is commonly thought. You have shown that you aren't interested in hearing from a viewpoint different than your own on this issue. This is why you are just like the "right wing scientists" you decry.

Also, if you're going to try and discredit something, pointing to Wikipedia isn't the most convincing of sources. I'm not saying anything about the veracity of the Hockey Stick model because I'm not well versed in it at all but it's amazing that so many people, not just you, seem to regard Wikipedia as the bastion of truth.

Of course you don't because to you the answer is already determined and anything that might change your mind can't possibly be right.

 

Dude what evidence has been cited here that is worth taking seriously? A random Israeli physicist or a lightly regarded professional GW denier musing in some random news articles?

Like I questioned you a thousand times - if these guys want to be taken seriously - why dont' they do what normal scientists do and publish their work like real scientists? Why can't you answer this question?

blah, you're just banging the Hayesstreet mantra, which I guess is what people do when they run out of things to say. Boring

Did you read that Wikipedia article? It talks about the controversy surrounding the Hockey stick, it's not presented as sceintific proof itself. It's also about the most extensively sourced wikipedia article I've ever seen - it cites to Science, Nature, etc. and gives a good description of the entire affair. Like many Wikipedia articles in controversial areas, it is not allowed to be randomly edited and heavily policed.

If you can find a better example that summarizes the controversy in a readable and accessible way, why don't you find it yourself? Funny that you claim I'm being closed-minded, yet you see wikipedia and your knee jerks.

Not really. If the majority of the scientifc establishment that is now in favor of global warming goes the other way - I would not hesitate to change my mind.

Now, can you say the same thing? You would follow Richard Ball and through thick and thin, because YOU trust his science, so if he reversed himself on global warming, you'd stick with him? I doubt it.

The theories being espoused in this thread by the scientists lovingly cited by halfbreed contend that global warming isn't occuring at all (as does the "wide rebuttal" of the hockey stick). At this point that's like saying the earth is flat.