by Judith Curry
Once you tug on the thread of undisclosed financial interests in climate science, you’ll find it more a norm than exception. – Roger Pielke Jr (tweet)
Context
I started working on this post last week, in response to the Willie Soon imbroglio. This whole issue has now become personal.
In case you haven’t been following this, Justin Gillis broke the story on Willie Soon with this article Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher. The Smithsonian issued the following statement on the issue of Soon’s funding and apparent failure to disclose this funding in journal publications. Science Magazine has a summary [here] and Nature has a summary [here].
The ‘plot’ thickened yesterday, as Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva (Democrat) Asks for Conflict-of-Interest Disclosures from GOP’s Go-To Climate Witnesses [link]. Excerpts:
The conflict-of-interest scandal involving a climate denier secretly funded by the fossil-fuel industry is spreading to other academics who oppose regulation of climate pollution. A top House Democrat has issued letters asking several researchers who have appeared as Republican witnesses before Congress questioning climate science to disclose their funding sources.
“I am hopeful that disclosure of a few key pieces of information will establish the impartiality of climate research and policy recommendations published in your institution’s name and assist me and my colleagues in making better law,” Grijalva wrote. “Companies with a direct financial interest in climate and air quality standards are funding environmental research that influences state and federal regulations and shapes public understanding of climate science. These conflicts should be clear to stakeholders, including policymakers who use scientific information to make decisions. My colleagues and I cannot perform our duties if research or testimony provided to us is influenced by undisclosed financial relationships.”
The letters request the institutions’ disclosure policies, drafts and communications relating to Congressional testimony, and sources of external funding for the academics in question.
The disclosure requests are needed because Congressional “truth in testimony” rules require witnesses to disclose government funding sources, but not private or corporate funding. Under Republican control, the rules are unevenly implemented, with not-for-profit witnesses required to submit pages of additional disclosures, while corporate-sector witnesses are not.
The seven academics who dispute the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming who have been asked to disclose their funding are:
David Legates, John Christy, Judith Curry, Richard Lindzen, Robert Balling, Roger Pielke Jr., Steven Hayward.
A copy of the letter from Grijalva that was sent to President Peterson of Georgia Tech is [here].
An article in ClimateWire provides additional context [link].
Skip to JC reflections for my punch line.
Conflict in scientific publication
Conflict of interest related to industry funding is a very big issue in biomedical research (related to drug and food safety) and also related to environmental contaminants. It isn’t a big issue in other scientific fields. Apart from expecting scientists to describe funding sources in the Acknowledgements, many journals don’t even have any conflict of interest disclosure requirements.
For those journals that do have such requirements, the requirements for disclosure are vastly different. As examples:
Nature: In the interests of transparency and to help readers to form their own judgements of potential bias, Nature journals require authors to declare to the editors any competing financial interests in relation to the work described. The corresponding author is responsible for submitting a competing financial interests statement on behalf of all authors of the paper. Authors submitting their manuscripts using the journal’s online manuscript tracking system are required to make their declaration as part of this process and to specify the competing interests in cases where they exist. The definition of conflict of interest relates to funding sources, employment, and personal financial interests.
Science: Science goes further with this statement: Management/Advisory affiliations: Within the last 3 years, status as an officer, a member of the Board, or a member of an Advisory Committee of any entity engaged in activity related to the subject matter of this contribution. Please disclose the nature of these relationships and the financial arrangements. Within the last 3 years, receipt of consulting fees, honoraria, speaking fees, or expert testimony fees from entities that have a financial interest in the results and materials of this study.
Wow. I haven’t published anything in Science in recent years (and never as a first author). So, all those scientists serving on Boards of green advocacy groups [Climate Scientists Joining Green Advocacy Groups] who publish in Science on any environmental or climate change topic should be declaring a conflict of interest.
So, once an author of a climate change paper declares a conflict of interest, what is that supposed to mean? An article in Science Magazine addresses this issue: Conflict-of-interest controversies are rare in her field, she notes, and “they can be tricky.” Conflict is often in the eye of the beholder, she says, and researchers often accept all kinds of funding that doesn’t necessarily skew their peer-reviewed publications. “I’m for full disclosure,” she says, “but I’m not sure how we’re going to address this.” The journal, published by Elsevier, asks authors to fill out a conflict-of-interest disclosure. But Strangeway admits he’s never carefully examined one—and isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do if he sees a red flag. “We wouldn’t be raising the journal issue if [Soon] had simply disclosed Southern’s support,” he says.
Scientific journals are being alerted by watchdog groups to fossil fuel funding of contrarian climate studies [link]. Are we not to be concerned by fossil fuel funding of consensus climate science (there is plenty of that, see below)? Are we not to be concerned by funding from green advocacy groups and scientists serving on the Boards of green advocacy groups?
DeSmog surprised me with this article: How often were Willie Soon’s Industry-funded Deliverables Were Referenced by the IPCC? I was surprised to find that published journal papers with ties to industry made it into the IPCC, to counter all those gray literature articles by Greenpeace et al.
So, in climate science, what is the point of conflict of interest disclosure? Bishop Hill sums it up this way:
As far as I can see, the story is that Soon and three co-authors published a paper on climate sensitivity. At the same time (or perhaps in the past – this being a smear-job it’s hard to get at the facts) he was being funded to do work on things like the solar influence on climate by people that greens feel are the baddies. They and the greens feel he should have disclosed that baddies were paying him to do stuff on a paper that was not funded by the baddies.
The issue is this. The intense politicization of climate science makes bias more likely to be coming from political and ideological perspectives than from funding sources. Unlike research related to food and drug safety and environmental contaminants, most climate science is easily replicable using publicly available data sets and models. So all this IMO is frankly a red herring in the field of climate science research.
Bottom line: Scientists, pay attention to conflict of interest guidelines for journals to which you are submitting papers. Select journals that have COI disclosure requirements that are consistent with your comfort level.
Conflict in Testimony
The HillHeat article provides links to the relevant testimony by the 7 individuals (see original article for actual links):
- David Legates, Department of Agricultural Economics & Statistics, University of Delaware climatologist (6/3/14, 7/29/03, 3/13/02)
- John Christy, University of Alabama atmospheric scientist (12/11/13, 9/20/12, 8/1/12, 3/31/11, 3/8/11, 2/25/09, 7/27/06 (video), 5/13/03, 5/2/01, 5/17/00, 7/10/97)
- Judith Curry, Georgia Institute of Technology climatologist (1/16/14, 4/25/13, 11/17/10)
- Richard Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology atmospheric physicist (11/17/10, 5/2/01, 7/10/97, 1991 (Senate), 10/8/91)
- Robert C Balling Jr, Arizona State University geographer (3/6/96; North Carolina Legislature 3/20/06)
- Roger Pielke Jr, University of Colorado political scientist (12/11/13, 7/18/13, 3/8/11, 5/16/07, 1/30/07 (video), 7/20/06, 3/13/02)
- Steven Hayward, School of Public Policy, Pepperdine University historian (5/25/11, 10/7/09, 4/22/09, 3/12/09, 3/17/99)
HOLD ON. The article ‘forgot’ to reference my earlier testimony for the Democrats in 2006, 2007:
- House Committee on Govt Reform, “Hurricanes and Global Warming,” 7/20/06 [link]
- House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, “Dangerous Climate Change,” 4/26/07 [link]
I can see that this earlier testimony is ‘inconvenient’ to their argument.
UPDATE: HillHeat has updated their article to include my earlier testimony and additional testimony for Pielke and Christy
When you testify, you are required to include a financial disclosure related to your government funding. Presumably this is relevant if you are testifying with relation to performance by a government agency. There is no disclosure requirement that is relevant to individuals from industry or advocacy groups, or for scientists receiving funding from industry or advocacy groups.
To clarify my own funding, I have included the following statement of financial interests at the end of my testimony:
Funding sources for Curry’s research have included NSF, NASA, NOAA, DOD and DOE. Recent contracts for CFAN include a DOE contract to develop extended range regional wind power forecasts and a DOD contract to predict extreme events associated with climate variability/change having implications for regional stability. CFAN contracts with private sector and other non-governmental organizations include energy and power companies, reinsurance companies, other weather service providers, NGOs and development banks. Specifically with regards to the energy and power companies, these contracts are for medium-range (days to weeks) forecasts of hurricane activity and landfall impacts. CFAN has one contract with an energy company that also includes medium-range forecasts of energy demand (temperature), hydropower generation, and wind power generation. CFAN has not received any funds from energy companies related to climate change or any topic related to this testimony.
I note that during congressional questioning, I was never asked anything about my funding sources.
Again, I think that biases in testimony related to climate change are more likely to be ideological and political than related to funding.
So what is the point of asking for detailed financial information (including travel) from these academic researchers?
Intimidation and harassment is certainly one reason that comes to mind. Roger Pielke Jr seems to think this is the case, as described in his blog post I am Under Investigation:
I have no funding, declared or undeclared, with any fossil fuel company or interest. I never have. Representative Grijalva knows this too, because when I have testified before the US Congress, I have disclosed my funding and possible conflicts of interest. So I know with complete certainty that this investigation is a politically-motivated “witch hunt” designed to intimidate me (and others) and to smear my name.
The relevant issue to my mind is to expect non-normative testimony from academic researchers. I discussed this issue on a previous blog post Congressional testimony and normative science. Consensus climate scientists routinely present normative testimony, along the lines of ‘urgent mitigation action needed’. On the other hand, I personally work to make my testimony non-normative, and I would judge Christy’s and Pielke Jr’s testimony to be generally non-normative also (note Christy and Pielke Jr are the two on the list of 7 that I know best).
‘Dirty’ money?
The issue of concern of Congressman Grijalva is funding from the Koch brothers and fossil fuel companies somehow contaminating Congressional testimony from scientists invited by Republicans to testify.
The reality is that fossil fuel money is all over climate research, whether pro or con AGW. Gifts of $100M+ have been made by oil companies to Stanford and Princeton. Anthony Watts notes the prominence of oil companies in funding the American Geophysical Union [link]. The Sierra Club and the Nature Conservancy take fossil fuel money [link]. The UKMetOffice has stated that energy companies are major customers.
NRO has an article Follow the Money, excerpt:
In truth, the overwhelming majority of climate-research funding comes from the federal government and left-wing foundations. And while the energy industry funds both sides of the climate debate, the government/foundation monies go only toward research that advances the warming regulatory agenda. With a clear public-policy outcome in mind, the government/foundation gravy train is a much greater threat to scientific integrity.
With federal research funding declining in many areas, academics at universities are being encouraged to obtain funding from industry.
I have to say I was pretty intrigued by Soon’s funding from the Southern Company. Southern Company (SoCo) provides power to Georgia. Georgia Power (a SoCo subsidiary) has provided considerable funding to Georgia Tech (although I have never received any). For most of the time that I was Chair, the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences had an endowed Chair from Georgia Power. When the faculty member left Georgia Tech, I chose not to hire a replacement, since I felt that my faculty hiring funds would be more productively used on younger faculty members in different research areas. I also note that one of my faculty members received funds from Georgia Power that was a ‘charitable donation’, without overhead and without deliverables. I also ‘heard’ that Southern Company/Georgia was very unhappy with the Webster et al. 2005 paper on hurricanes [link]. Note, I have received no funding from SoCo/GaPower.
JC reflections
My first reaction to this was to tweet: Looks like I am next up in this ‘witch hunt’. My subsequent reactions have been slowed by a massive headache (literally; cause and effect?)
It looks like it is ‘open season’ on anyone who deviates even slightly from the consensus. The political motivations of all this are apparent from barackobama.com: Call Out The Climate Deniers.
It is much easier for a scientist just to ‘go along’ with the consensus. In a recent interview, as yet unpublished, I was asked: I’ve seen some instances where you have been called a “denier” when it comes to climate change, I am just curious as to your opinion on that? My reply:
As a scientist, I am an independent thinker, and I draw my own conclusions about the evidence regarding climate change. My conclusions, particularly my assessments of high levels of uncertainty, differ from the ‘consensus’ of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Why does this difference in my own assessment relative to the IPCC result in my being labeled a ‘denier’? Well, the political approach to motivate action on climate change has been to ‘speak consensus to power’, which seems to require marginalizing and denigrating anyone who disagrees. The collapse of the consensus regarding cholesterol and heart disease reminds us that for scientific progress to occur, scientists need to continually challenge and reassess the evidence and the conclusions drawn from the evidence.
Well, the burden is on Georgia Tech to come up with all of the requested info. Georgia Tech has a very stringent conflict of interest policy, and I have worked closely in the past with the COI office to manage any conflicts related to my company. Apart from using up valuable resources at Georgia Tech to respond to this, there is no burden on me.
Other than an emotional burden. This is the first time I have been ‘attacked’ in a substantive way for doing my science honestly and speaking up about it. Sure, anonymous bloggers go after me, but I have received no death threats via email, no dead rats delivered to my door step, etc.
I think Grijalva has made a really big mistake in doing this. I am wondering on what authority Grijalva is demanding this information? He is ranking minority member of a committee before which I have never testified. Do his colleagues in the Democratic Party support his actions? Are they worried about backlash from the Republicans, in going after Democrat witnesses?
I don’t think anything good will come of this. I anticipate that Grijalva will not find any kind of an undisclosed fossil fuel smoking gun from any of the 7 individuals under investigation. There is already one really bad thing that has come of this – Roger Pielke Jr has stated:
The incessant attacks and smears are effective, no doubt, I have already shifted all of my academic work away from climate issues. I am simply not initiating any new research or papers on the topic and I have ring-fenced my slowly diminishing blogging on the subject. I am a full professor with tenure, so no one need worry about me — I’ll be just fine as there are plenty of interesting, research-able policy issues to occupy my time. But I can’t imagine the message being sent to younger scientists. Actually, I can: “when people are producing work in line with the scientific consensus there’s no reason to go on a witch hunt.”
Update: I just remembered something interesting/entertaining. Too bad Grijalva only requested my travel since 2007. In 2006 I was on the ‘green circuit’, with numerous invites from green advocacy groups. One trip is particularly notable, which was organized by the Wildlife Federation. Peter Webster and I had an hour with then Governor Jeb Bush, and then another hour with then candidate Charlie Crist.
(the years have not been kind to any of us). Following that meeting, we visited several different cities, where I and Joe Romm (!) gave a tag team presentation on the climate change problem and the solutions.
So I’m not sure how to ‘score’ this one; Wildlife Federation and Romm on one side, and Jeb Bush on the other side. To those of you not following U.S. politics, Jeb Bush is a Republican candidate for President in the 2016 elections.
It’s well known that politicians like Raul Grijalva are constantly fundraising, so who are they to question the conflicts of interest among scientists?
Those on the list should band together and send a letter to Raul Grijalva asking him to list every source of funding he has ever received from anyone backing the Global Warming orthodoxy, to be presented at the next meeting of his committee.
Raul is in the pocket of big casino. Not really in the pocket, but since he appeals to the native Americans who use reservation gaming as a primary income in many cases, they throw him some cash. His fund raising is on the below average side though possibly due to his too radical for even radicals position on some things, like Republica Del Norte.
After checking him out at OpenSecrets, it appears that many of his donors have a pro-orthodoxy stance on Global Warming and/or have urged the federal government to take steps to mitigate it.
The SEIU does, the National Congress of American Indians (of which many of his donors are members) does, the American Federation of Teachers, AT&T has recently divested from the Heartland Institute over their stance on climate change, the American Association for Justice has attacked people as “climate deniers” and says that this hurts Americans.
So I guess even someone as inept at fundraising as Raul Grijalva is “tainted” by money from people with a specific climate agenda
All members of the House of Representatives are constantly fundraising. It is the plight of their terms only running for two years before their next election and a reality pointed out years ago by political scientists.
What does this have to do with anything? Most House members have very safe seats. Every two years for several years, just weeks after House elections, an organization underlines this point by successfully predicting who will win the NEXT election in all districts. Mostly (>90%), the incumbents are predicted to win, and do, in fact, next time out, win. So maybe they’re raising money but they don’t need it. Or it’s stuffed into leadership PACs through which they can give big donations to each other. It’s quite the little scam since donations through these PACs are far higher than those allowed to ordinary mortals.
As my mom used to say, and moms are pretty smart, “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
Raul Grijalva’s funding sources (it looks like he needs to drum up some big Steyer-type donors):
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=n00025284#fundraising
Hmmmm…unions and gambling, kinda like the old mafia…
Does anyone have Raul Grijalva’s email address? It’s not on his website.
Here is a 2009 resource worth looking at:
http://www.constitutionproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/WhenCongressComesCalling.pdf
The after the fact inquiry is a bit of a problem for the committee. Conflict of interest disclosures are not normally investigated after congressional testimony – but before – so this strikes me as a bit odd.
It is my understanding that each committee has rules and forms, but to change them and apply them to past testimony seems strange.
A letter is not a subpoena – but I would imagine that your employer will cave and voluntarily provide the information because that is what large organizations do. It would be nice to see one of the institutions involved tell congress to pound sand just to see if they actually issue a subpoena.
The NYT piece lived an interesting life by itself, and it risked smearing every climate scientist at the start
http://omnologos.com/climate-chaos-at-the-new-york-times/
“Dear Congressman, please don’t ask for this information a second time, as being told to Foxtrot Oscar can often offend.”
Very respectfully
The Georgia Tech Faculty
It all sounds like an organized way for the Left to control the funding of ideas and free speech.
Heaven forfend that they would engage in such despicable practice!!! Outside Chicago, that is.
There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell Chicago will ever go Republican. Oh wait — it looks like hell may have frozen over…
http://historylists.org/images/treachery.jpg
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.
I should also mention that this witch hunt will no doubt dampen the enthusiasm of people to testify before Congress. This committee chairperson is making Congressional oversight much more difficult, because who will want to bother voluntarily appearing to be a witness if this is the sort of thing the opposing party will pull.
not exactly, it will only discourage politically incorrect testimony — the consensus fanatics will get just the testimony they want
Heh. A bit of stick to go with the carrots, pour encourager les autres.
Judy,
In many areas the possibilities for grants are extremely limited and it is not clear to me that a grant with no conditions should necessarily be considered a conflict of interest. I was the editor for one of the electrical engineering journals and there was no requirement that the authors give their funding sources in their papers. Often they often did not. Funding sources may ask to be acknowledged to help justify the grants to their own management, but that is between the grantor and the grantee, rather than an issue for the journal or the readers.
Congressman Grijalva can get carried away at times. During the budget standoff, he put up a petition to stop fossil-fuel production on federal lands. This inspired a homework problem for my students to discuss what the consequences would be for our society of shutting off a substantial fraction of our oil, gas, and coal production.
Dave
–e.g., consequences: subsidizing statist tyrannies
So you asked your engineering students to conduct a socio-political analysis? I guess interdisciplinary education really is the new thing.
Hi Steve,
First they need to figure out how much of our energy comes from public land. From there they can deduce impacts on the electricity grid, transportation, and residential energy.
Dave
Every gang of thugs tries to maintain dicipline by whatever tools it has at its disposal. Keeping up the facade of “consensus” and “settled science” is just politics trying to strong arm indepedent scientific thought.
As a scientist I have tried to resist seeing the global warming debate as first and foremost a political, not scientific issue, but the evidence is becoming overwhelming.
You cannot be a fact-checker without running afoul of the global warming machine. It has been that way since William Gray was branded a denier and Dr. Edward Wegman was slandered to give cover to the fabrications of Michael Mann.
Now the FF firms are being contacted directly, asked if they funding studies that “confuse” http://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/markey-boxer-whitehouse-query-fossil-fuel-companies-climate-denial-organizations-on-science-funding
Andrew,
Thanks for that link. Of note, to this observer, are the names of those not queried. Prediction, a similar letter will soon be sent to WWF, Sierra Club, Auduban Society, Greenpeace, etc. Wonder from whom the letter might come?
Might as well include Solar Companies and wind generators (GE?), utilities of all kinds, and so on. Might be a long list.
Perhaps someone should enquire why leglislators like Senator Kerry and Senator Markey are part of an extra-governmental group like GLOBE International, which promotes “climate” legislation in members home countries, without any reference to the people of those countries.
http://globelegislators.org/about-globe/24-history
“GLOBE International was originally founded in 1989 by legislators from the US Congress, European Parliament, Japanese Diet and the Russian State Duma with the mission to respond to urgent environmental challenges through the development and advancement of legislation.
The website has a photo of Senator Kerry as a Founding member of GLOBE International.
“As early as 1992 GLOBE urged industrialised countries to take the lead in reducing CO2 emissions through the introduction of fiscal instruments for the encouragement of energy efficiency. GLOBE National Chapters grew in a number of countries and across the European Region.
There is a photo on the Globe History page of Congressman Wang Guangtao of the National People’s Congress of China and Congressman Ed Markey of the United States Congress, jointly chairing the 2009 GLOBE Copenhagen Legislators Forum.
These meetings take place with no mandate from any electorate, but are funded from government sources. You will not see them reported in the media.
The following comments are from “United Socialist Nations”
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/un_progress_governance_via_climate_change.html. It was written in 2010, but GLOBE have moved on since then and made more inroads into national policies around the world. For those wishing to know more about the politics running the AGW agenda it is a must read.
“Globe has close links with the Club of Rome whose Co-President, Ashok Khosla, is a member of Globe International and President of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
“Without the burden of formal governmental negotiating positions, legislators have the freedom to push the boundaries of what can be politically achieved.
GLOBE’s vision is to create a critical mass of legislators within each of the parliaments of the major economies that can agree common legislative responses to the major global environmental challenges and demonstrate to leaders that there is cross-party support for more ambitious action.
All major government policy decisions should be consistent with climate change goals.”
Senator Barack Obama gave a keynote address to the GLOBE Tokyo Legislators’ Forum, on June 28th 2008:
“If elected President, I will turn the page on failed domestic policies that have continued our dependence on carbon fuels. I will pursue ambitious policies designed to move the U.S. economy toward a new path – one that reflects the cost of carbon and its impacts on the atmosphere; and one that steers our energy policies toward a sustainable, reliable, and affordable future.
From the beginning of my campaign, I have supported a carbon cap-and-trade program and an aggressive program of energy research and development that truly reflects the seriousness of the peril we face.”
Thanks for exposing the global links of politicians that believe trace levels of CO2 in air have greater influence on changes in Earth’s weather than does the pulsar remains of a supernova (1 AU away) that made every atom in the solar system.
Can someone shed light on the “deliverables” issue? There has been lots of innuendo that Dr. Soon provided “deliverables” to SoCo as if SoCo had input (did they?) but the SoCo contracts I’ve seen were between SoCo and Smithsonian. So it is the Smithsonian representative that signed the funding contract with SoCo that is contractually obligated to provide these “deliverables” which as far as I can tell are progress updates. Am I looking at this the right way?
I have dealt with “deliverables” on many projects over my 45 year research career. They have never related to “results” in the sense of “expected” outcomes. Rather, as you suggest, they were progress updates, usually related to phases of a project. Currently, I am working on a water management project that requires three deliverables. The proposed project was fleshed out in consultation with farmers and municipal governments during recent extensive overland flooding that took a million acres out of production. Deliverable #1 is a complete physical survey of the areas designated for water storage and release structures. If this shows feasibility
, deliverable #2 will be an engineers report that verifies the proposed plan vis-a-vis functionality and projected outcome. Deliverable # three will be construction of the water control structures and drainage network to the specifications of the engineers. Deliverables #1 and #2 must verify the viability of the project or construction will not proceed. This is a $$mm dollar project and must have assurances of due diligence. Within the current context, I would guess that government funding of research runs a much higher risk of the other kind of “deliverables” alluded to. Although there are some examples of government direction of research, I think things are better here in Canada.
As an alumnus of Georgia Tech, I have just addressed a message to President Peterson asking for his full support of Dr. Curry.
Good on you. Can you spread the word via the GT alumni network somehow? Copy your letter to them for endorsement from more signatures maybe?
I have done so on the LinkedIn group of the GTAA.
thank you Bill!
Bill,
Can you be more specific about which of the “1,802 results for GTAA” I should look for?
Thanks
I think you need a LinkedIn account. If you do, here is the link:
https://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=2777&type=member&item=5976461941437128705&trk=groups_most_recent-0-b-ttl&goback=%2Egmr_2777&_mSplash=1
I am gratified that President Dr. Peterson responded to my inquiry by saying that The Institute “highly values” Dr. Curry.
==> ” Are we not to be concerned by fossil fuel funding of consensus climate science (there is plenty of that, see below)? Are we not to be concerned by funding from green advocacy groups and scientists serving on the Boards of green advocacy groups?”
Great rhetorical questions, Judith.
Pick any comment thread over the years of your blog, and no doubt you’ll find a high % where concern is expressed by “skeptics” asserting a direct link between the source of funding and bias in the work of climate scientists. You will, in perhaps somewhat of a smaller but still significant %, find concern about linkages between the financial resources of environmental groups and bias in the work of climate scientists.
Why would you be asking “are we not to be concerned,” when you have seen those concerns expressed perhaps thousands of times by your own very much beloved “Denizens?”
==-> “It looks like it is ‘open season’ on anyone who deviates even slightly from the consensus.”
Judith – it has been open season on those who express alignment with “the consensus” for years.
There is nothing new about any of this.
Not to justify these investigations by saying that “they do it too,” in fact not to justify them in any fashion at all (at their root, they are based in fallacious thinking that you can reverse engineer from someone’s funding to make some kind of determination about their science; their science should stand on its own merits) – but the drama-queening about this (having connections to people who were the subject of McCarthy’s inquiries, it’s hilarious to see RPJr. invoking McCarthy to describe what’s going here) is just sameolsameol. Nothing makes a climate combatant feel better than a chance to whine about their victimization.
So, Pielke invoked McCarthy, perhaps aptly.
The irony drips – Grijalva, according to this site:
http://www.trevorloudon.com/2011/09/red-reps-14-scoop-arizona-rep-raul-grijalvas-communist-party-connections/
has ties to the Communist party,
writing an article for the official propaganda rag in 1993:
http://trevorloudon.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Miscggggg.jpg
Wait, so this is the same Raul Grijalva who has received $79k in donations from Environ-mental groups – Yes?
Bet he didn’t declare that in his letter to Judy’s faculty.
Joshua, I gather you missed my use of the word irony.
No Lucifer – I didn’t miss it.
But I don’t see how that justifies your red-baiting.
But it is rather hilarious that Judith finds your red-baiting acceptable but that my speaking to it isn’t acceptable.
Now that’s ironic!
Joshua, “But I don’t see how that justifies your red-baiting.”
Isn’t Red-Baiting supposed to be false or groundless claims that someone is a commie? If you just note that some one is “red” or possibly “brown” (as in brown beret http://nationalbrownberets.com/ ) and proud of it that would be just making conversation.
Well, it’s pretty clear that politics is dominating science with respect to climate. And it’s pretty clear that people are using “the cause”. I tend to mistrust the advocates to make things up more than the opponents of action. In any event, if we’re questioning influence, we have to include these people:
http://watchdog.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/09/IMG_1703.jpg
http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Screen-Shot-2014-09-21-at-3.50.29-PM.png
http://www.redstate.com/uploads/2014/09/Marxists-at-Climate-March.png
Joshua | February 25, 2015 at 11:11 pm
“But I don’t see how that justifies your red-baiting.”
Off-topic a bit. However, note that Red plus Green gives Brown.
re:
Joshua, can’t you detect the vast imbalance and asymmetry between Davids questioning the Goliath of monolithic “consensus” vs. the Empire pounding down the handful of critics?
A few powerless critics sounding off on a handful of blogs is radically different from the consensus people in POWER seeking to stamp out all remaining independent thought.
Speak truth to POWER, Joshua. Try getting “your” side to show a little bit of tolerance for differing views. That is what this is really all about, whether or not the demagogues can allow the existence of just a few independent thinkers.
meant to place this comment here:
NOTICE this: what the Congressman did not do is announce that all past and future witnesses would be evaluated for possible conflicts of interest. He only picked on a select handful of independent thinkers who do not toe the line in some way. He only picked on people he wants to squelch. What makes it obvious that this is a witch-hunt trolling for anything to use against its targets is the lack of balance and lack of comprehensive standards. This is purely a biased, malicious fishing expedition….
At long last, have you no faith in his bona fides?
========
This caught my eye few weeks ago:
http://notrickszone.com/2015/02/09/long-list-of-warmist-organizations-scientists-haul-in-huge-money-from-big-oil-and-heavy-industry/#sthash.excdcwHz.dpbs
thanks for this link
Dr. Curry,
If the letter is deemed to not be a “formal” request then would there be a requirement to include only that which the informal request states? Could you not include information outside the dates and in fact an evaluation of the cost associated to produce the documentation (presuming the choice to comply is made)?
I only hope that your choice is not to “circle the wagons” as Dr. Pielke, Jr. has currently indicted (subject to change, I hope). Having said that, I’m not wearing your shoes and obviously have no feel for how this may impact you personally. (Offer for the bottle of aspirin still stands, but science may decide it’s not the best approach to address your headache.)
The very reason I’m investing time at this site is for what I perceive a balanced approach of your offerings, and the differing and normally reasonably respectful offerings of points of view.
It would seem to this observer that it would be only fair (ha, in politics) for a simliar inqusition directed towards all who have presented to congress. I don’t have a side, but am no less an investor than anyone else and an apolitical look at the associated funding may lead to a reduction of the noise of who funds whom. Maybe, just maybe, some good will come as a result.
This is a genuinely shocking development, a naked attempt to use political power to silence inconvenient science. I can’t believe that anyone who cares about science, whatever their view on global warming, will welcome this. It just sets too dangerous a precedent. Are we going to label every scientist on Earth with the names of every government department, institution or private donor who has ever given them funding, and rush to conclusions as to their reliability as a result?
Judith, I really hope this just blows over for you and the rest of the ‘selected seven’.
I agree that it is a misuse of congressional power, and I hope that indeed it blows over. It does, fortunately, come from the minority. It is not unprecedented, though. In 2005 Mann, Bradley and Hughes all received rather similar letters from Chairman Joe Barton, speaking for the majority, to which they personally had to respond. They were indeed later subpoenaed.
Because they refused to share data as they had promised. Still haven’t provided some. And Mann then lied to the committee
completely unrelated. MBH was an effort to get them to do real science as they had promised. This effort is totally about abuse and intimidation.
Nick, this sounds good until you actually read the Barton letter. The only similarity was asking for a list of ALL funding. The main part of the request was about data, data quality, methods and transparency. As you may be aware, there was some concern about Mann’s research, results and his refusal to make data and methods available. I did not see that Barton used the equivalent of “Koch Brothers” in his request, nor did he use “hide the decline.” Had Mann been transparent and open about research and methods, this letter likely would never have been written.
A very long time ago, when I prepared papers for publication, all data and methods were available so anyone “skilled in the art” could reproduce my work. But that was chemistry, which seems to be a bit different than climate science.
“The only similarity was asking for a list of ALL funding.”
Well, yes. All you’re saying is that Barton demanded the same and then a whole lot more. Directed at the scientists themselves.
I called Cuccinelli’s investigation of Michael Mann a witch hunt. I didn’t really think I would have to use the term again.
I am a progressive liberal Democrat. I am deeply ashamed of my party affiliation right now.
http://3000quads.com/2015/02/25/congressman-raul-grijalvas-witch-hunt/
Meh, you think Grijalva thought this up on his own? You think Obama did? The Democrats?
===============
Cuccinelli was investigating allegations of fraud on the basis of what he considered to be sufficient evidence.
The current posse is fishing for bait to feed a senseless guilt-by-association scream fest. This is raw intimidation.
I understand funding disclosure. Conflict-of-interest is easy to understand and get to grips when there is a medical device, a pharmaceutical product, or some product with which an author’s financial interest can be tied to. Conflict-of-interest is hard to establish for instances which involve positive actions – like publication of a journal article aligned with your own views, or against someone else’s views – on pure grounds of ideology.
In the Lewandowsky scandal, Lew and Cook were hostile to skeptics and tried to pass off ‘analysis’ of reaction to their own work, as psychology. But the subjects themselves or the domain, are not off-limits, as Paul Matthews’s paper later showed. Or Sou Bundanga’s WUWT word-cloud exercise shows.
Energy companies funding research that cross-question the regulatory agency’s science is an excellent idea. There is no ‘conflict’ here, unless you define ‘conflict’ as production of scientific evidence that questions the claims of regulatory agencies. Under such an absurdly myopic worldview, once ‘science’ has been used to frame government rules, any work that shows the science wrong will become ‘conflicted’. Government scientists, obviously, cannot come up with such research as it would harm government, and private scientists cannot, since they stand to benefit from reduced regulation.
Conflicts of interest are particularly hard in climate because it involves buying in the notion that governmental regulation based on climate scientists’ findings will somehow harm fossil fuel companies and the companies are somehow afraid of it. While companies are definitely right to be concerned about immediate effects of regulation, ultimately, they, and governments have to co-exist and work together as the end product in question is energy, likely one of the most inelastic and indispensable of commodities. The costs would in the end have to be recovered from the same consumers, with companies acting as mere conduits. Why would they be punished?
Fossil-fuel companies being scared of green regulations is a stupid green joke.
Politcally persecuted scientists might just become the latest Cause Celebre: Move over Hollywood Ten, we now have “The Magnificent Seven”. I will cue up the soundtrack as soon as I light up a Marlboro.
Progress;…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Seven
our most important product.
I never thought I would live through that period again. How sad that a person can be intimidated for having a particular view of a physical phenomenon.
We are seeing the worst and the best of our country. Keep up the courage to hold onto your scientific principles.
I’ve got me a list and you’re
on the list. I’ll dig up the dirt
to unearth me some evidence
link you to Big Effervescence
with a view to evanescence
of the Seven’s magnificance
and testmonial significance.
Think that about covers it.
+1 :)
Thx Peter, it’s jest that
serfs git incandescent
regarding the suppressant
acts of tyrants’ …as do peasants.
Doors in the background. Come on Baby, I’ve gone away.
==================
nothing less than an assault intellectual liberty
I want to hear from the warmists here at CE
pick a side
this letter to Georgia Tech has no defense
Dr, Curry, thanks for turning me into a newt
doubt I will get better
please add ‘on’ in first sentence
a bit miffed
hard to type with little newt hands
I’m not familiar with Willie Soon’s work as its not my field. The story, also covered in the Santa Fe paper, made note that his Ph.D. is in an unrelated field and that he had not noted his funding sources. So I was a little worried, and wondered more than anything who peer-reviewed his work and where it was published.
The article used “deliverables” to make it sound like a nefarious quid pro quo. Its actually standard bureaucrat-eze in my field (Dept. of Energy related work). The quid pro quo is not to agree with an agenda, but to deliver a report on time as required by the funding.
As with most things, its easy to get smeared, but in reality the devils are in the details, not the shocking headlines. If someone is a shill for a cause, that should become clear by looking at the published work, not neccesarily whether the funding agency wears a white or a black hat. I once was an expert scientist called on during a lawsuit between an environmental group and a developer on one of the Hawaiian Islands. I joked with my wife that the three of us were obviously baddies because we were paid by the developer. But our science was rock solid. The Federal judge hearing the case fined the environmental folks for court costs as their case was without merit. Our radiochemistry on sediment core samples, however, was excellent.
That is not correct, Willie Soon did disclose his funding sources in most if not all of his older papers. The tempest in the teacup is that they were not disclosed in some of his more recent papers.
Going all the way back to the furor of his Climate Research paper (Soon and Baliunas, 2003), Willie Soon had been attacked as a “paid shill” for oil companies. I guess everyone that knew he was a “paid shill” conveniently forgot so they could feign outrage when old funding was not disclosed on new work.
That paper was interesting because he didn’t present any original data, he just used all the temperature proxies published by others in the field to go back and ask a simple question. Is the 20th century the hottest of the last 1000 years in those proxies? He found that in almost every proxy, there was clear evidence that past temperatures were hotter than modern temps.
The field erupted, first by attacking Soon as a paid shill, then by demanding and accepting the resignations of editorial board of the journal. The only scientific criticism was centered around the idea that the warmer past temps in all the various proxies were not “contemporaneous across the globe”. In other words, back then they expected that the entire globe would heat up at once due to manmade Global Warming, so if the past temps didn’t all go up together it didn’t matter that they were hotter. Now of course, the field has shifted to “climate change” where record cold in the US is evidence that we broke the climate. I guess the whole “contemporaneous across the globe” criticism of Soon and Baliunas has now been jettisoned, meaning that his analysis has withstood scientific scrutiny as far as I’m concerned.
” Now of course, the field has shifted to “climate change” where record cold in the US is evidence that we broke the climate.”
Any port in a storm. 8-)
BTW. Locally, we are about 3% colder than last year and “normal” in terms of heating degree days.
Update through February: Heating Degree Days relative to “normal”, +6.1%; relative to last year, +5.0%.
Conflict of interest related to industry funding is a very big issue in biomedical research (related to drug and food safety) and also related to environmental contaminants. It isn’t a big issue in other scientific fields.
It is a huge interest in all regulated industries. As stated in the part of the post addressing Science publications, Conflict is often in the eye of the beholder, . . . . In all regulated industries, even the appearance of CoI is required to be avoided. This requirement applies to even the refreshments supplied for breaks during meetings. The regulated-ee cannot supply these for the regulator.
And yet the Secretary of the Department of Interior (NOAA?) says climate change deniers are not welcome – with no conflict of interest? If I recall this wrongly, please correct.
Judith,
I’d just finished the piece in National Review “Follow the Money” when I found your new post.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/414359/global-warming-follow-money-henry-payn
I’m deeply sorry for the stress you must be under. In have no words of wisdom as I’ve never done anything nearly as courageous as you and the other publicly dissenting climate scientists. But it seems brave folks like you and Dr. Pielke and Professor Lindzen and the rest, do what you do because ultimately you really have no choice. Which is another way of saying that character is destiny.
There’s no doubt in my mind that there’ll come a time when you’ll be vindicated. The issue with funding, unlike the science, is actually crystal clear. The game is rigged on the side of the alarmists. Anyone who seriously doubts that should give the National Review piece a read. I have a strong feeling that this current push by the climatariat is going to backfire.
All I can say is it’s about time.
Brought a tear to my eye, Al, that you’re so moved that a scientist would have their motives impugned on the basis of their source of funding.
Hi Josh,
You’re not a stupid fellow. I know you understand that the government is getting what it’s paying for in the climate research realm. The question I have is, how can that be ok with you?
The investigation isn’t OK with me.
I think that reverse engineering from funding to impugn a scientists work is fallacious – no matter who does it.
The question I have is how can you reconcile having such selective standards?
Josh,
You make the same mistake over and over again….the equivalence you’re always pointing out in your eagerness to impugn skeptics, is false. The issue for me is simple: the government buys the results it wants with our tax dollars, then shamelessly attacks the few scientists brave enough to go their own way on the grounds that they’re bought and paid for. It’s an obvious, utterly transparent attempt to shut down debate while making sure that any scientists tempted to wander off the reservation will think twice.
Again Joshua, I know you understand these things.
Well I guess that means that the major industrial nations are “getting” (whatever that might mean) what they paid for, because I believe they are all funding research related to climate change. It’s hard to believe they were able to coordinate that.
Lolrt!
Pokerguy
The post amply illustrates why many scientists keep their heads below the parapet or comment anonymously or keep their powder dry until they retire .
Agw has become a religion to some and their righteousness and zealotry knows no bounds.
Tonyb
Don’t disagree, Tony. I keep waiting for some ambitious, brilliant lefty journalist to at long last realize what an explosive story this funding thing really is. It has to happen sooner or later. We need another Woodward and Bernstein. (Mikey Mann would make a splendid Deep Throat. :-)
I told Andy Revkin in 2008 that he was missing the story of his life. Maybe I was too cryptic.
=================
Not the least of whose adherents is the – at long last – now former IPCC Chair, Rajendra Pachauri.
Pachauri’s recently disclosed alleged antics – considering the, no doubt, purely coincidental timing thereof – I’m somewhat inclined to suspect may have contributed to (if not driven) this particularly ignorant, obnoxious and distastefully – and IMHO,diversionary – divisive and utterly disgraceful charge of Obama et al</em's designated Blight Brigade.
In the last six years, I have never ceased to be amazed at those who are impressed by Obama's performance of his Presidential duties. Well, apart from his dedication to improving his golf-game, at Gaia alone knows what expense to US taxpayers.
As a Canadian, I sincerely hope that these products (not unlike other undesirable and/or undemocratic US products) are stopped and turned back at our virtual border.
Although I must confess that Canadian greener and longstanding IPCC-nik and Greenpeace movie star – and CBC's primary expert of choice – modeller Andrew Weaver's recent defamation/libel award of $50,000 by a labour expert suddently imbued with expertise ex nihilo on what strikes me as being an increasingly crowded libel front does not yield much hope of the optimistic (and/or democratic) kind.
Kim,
I once sent a few emails to Matt Taibbi, hoping to get his attention. Story of the century, Matt! Wake up, Matt! I love what he did to Goldman Sachs, whatever his politics. This climate thing is low hanging fruit.
Forbidden fruit.
==========
Extract from Chapter 11 of Hayek’s ‘The Road To Serfdom,
‘The End of Truth.’
‘ The most effective way of making everybody serve the
single system of ends towards which the social system
is directed is to make everybody believe in those ends …
It is not difficult to deprive the great majority of independent
thought. But the minority who will retain an inclination to
criticism must be silenced.’
Tsk Judith Curry, Richard Lindzen, Richard Pielke et al.
(not Al of course,) public expression of independent thought
is, well, it’s a thought-crime. Yer gotta’ subscribe ter what
ever the single system,’blood and soil’ myth de jour happens
ter be.
Guess ‘The End of Truth’ also means ‘The End of Science.’
Consensus rules, nuthin’ less than 100 percent.
Pokerguy, I tried that link and NRO page said it wasn’t a page.
Pokerguy, you missed the final ‘e’ from -payne in your link to the National Review article/ This is the correct link
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/414359/global-warming-follow-money-henry-payne
Judith, thanks for running this fine blog and keep your chin up. This will pass!
Judy–Congressman Grijalva can compel nothing from Georgia Tech. He is in the minority and has no subpoena power whatsoever. If I were GT I would simply ignore the letter. Compliance is foolish here.
Nope, I would have GT comply since there isn’t anything to hide then get congressman Scott to request Penn State to disclose Micheal Mann’s financials :)
pat michaels is correct.
Congress has the authority to issue subpoenas and to compel testimony, the production of documents and appearance before congress. But this power resides in the congress, acting as an institution, not in individual congressmen. Committees can issue subpoenas, as well as the House as an organization. Individual members cannot.
This book has a good summary of the history of the issue.
https://books.google.com/books?id=OSE9AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA99&lpg=PA99&dq=mcgrain+v+daugherty+%281927%29+power+to+compel&source=bl&ots=pY4XnQ2B9g&sig=CCn7biEaccmUCh6sSSa80VpMH9k&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PW_uVKPmFJGsyASAmIHgAg&ved=0CEMQ6AEwCDgK#v=onepage&q=mcgrain%20v%20daugherty%20%281927%29%20power%20to%20compel&f=false
A letter request, whether from the majority chairman or any other member, does not require a response. A letter is not a subpoena.
Such letters are pure political theater. The best way to respond to them is politically.
If the powers that be at Georgia Tech wish to provide the information to the congressmen, one would hope that the other members of the GT faculty be vocal in urging resistance to this type of intimidation. But since most faculty are hopelessly progressive, and therefore believe the end justifies the means, I wonder how much support they would actually give Dr. Curry.
Now If Darrell Issa were to make such a request of a consensus scientist….
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2015/02/24/388682684/my-depressing-day-with-a-famous-climate-skeptic
Yesterday’s NPR story
The corruption of science and society by alarmists and their propagandists continues unabated. The lies, the slanders, the character assassination and the politics of personal destruction — why this is just another standard political smear straight from the Democrat’s political playbook!
Global warming is all about the politics. That’s why any who don’t toe the line get treated to the same kind of abuse and harassment given to the Tea Party, Joe the Plumber, Sarah Palin, the fraternity at UVa, Hobby Lobby, and Chik-fil-a. Those who dissent from the Left’s narrative will be destroyed. Period. Facts don’t matter. They never have.
so fan
where do you stand on this attack on intellectual liberty?
the same freedom Judith Curry generously allows us here
be clear
so far your posts avoid the topic at hand
the world really is watching this time
FOMD stands four-square with Mike Flynn!
http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111226134956/uncyclopedia/images/2/26/Hell_Froze_Over.jpg
Whoops — try again — FOMD stands four-square with Mike Flynn! Good on `yah, Mike Flynn!
AFOMD,
Do you suffer from some bizarre compulsive mental affliction? I notice you seem incapable of quoting people directly. Apparently, you cannot control your compulsion to add and subtract words, and go on to use the usual
Warmist tactics of obfuscation by employing strikethroughs, italics, holding, blue colouring, or a combination of all, attempting to disguise the fact that your arguments are illogical, unsupported, and quite possibly pathological.
Keep at it. I live in hope that you may eventually slip up, and present a relevant fact!
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
That agw is a religion for many in the climate consensus was amply confirmed by ex chairman of ipcc Pachauri who admitted he saw it as a religion which affected everything he did.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ipcc-chief-resigns-after-sexual-harassment-accusations/
Bearing in mind his numerous top level meetings With world leaders and the media, who can doubt he has been widely promoting his green tinged religious fervour and downplaying the science?
Tonyb
Yes, and the ends justify the means to many of them too.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245636/Glacier-scientists-says-knew-data-verified.html
“The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.
Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.
‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.”
…
“[a]n authoritative report published last November by the Indian government said: ‘Himalayan glaciers have not in any way exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat.’
When this report was issued, Raj Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, denounced it as ‘voodoo science’.
…
“The damage to the IPCC’s reputation, already tarnished by last year’s ‘Warmergate’ leaked email scandal, is likely to be considerable.
Benny Peiser, the GWPF’s director, said the affair suggested the IPCC review process was ‘skewed by a bias towards alarmist assessments’.
Environmentalist Alton Byers said the panel’s credibility had been damaged. ‘They’ve done sloppy work,’ he said. ‘We need better research on the ground, not unreliable predictions derived from computer models.’
Last night, Dr Pachauri defended the IPCC, saying it was wrong to generalise based on a single mistake. ‘Our procedure is robust,’ he added.”
“I think Grijalva has made a really big mistake in doing this… …Do his colleagues in the Democratic Party support his actions? Are they worried about backlash from the Republicans, in going after Democrat witnesses?”
Grajalva has already succeeded – he’s going to get the headlines “GOP Global Warming Witnesses Were Funded by Coal!”
And, no, he fears no backlash because no news outlet would ever give the backlash any attention.
This is straight up intimidation and it works.
The good news is it won’t really matter. The Democrats are not going to propose any actual action on AGW- they know the population won’t support it. The bad news is that we’re entering presidential election season, which means activists in the party (and warm activists are party activists) will continue their strategy of demagoguing the issue, while doing nothing about it- expect to take a beating in the partisan press and the big paper editorial pages. The good news on that is that demonizing Kochs and anyone else they could demonize failed utterly in the last election, so Dems who wish to be elected will walk away from this.
The Democrats already have what they want with all the new Obama climate change regulations. He also just vetoed Keystone. Obama is holding all the good hands now, he can afford to moon the Republicans.
I just watched the movie NightCrawler last night. One of the most amazing and indictments of the media (and modern capitalism), and in a very non typical/non patronizing way (unlike so many hollywood films). Great acting.
Grijalva is a patsy. If the smear works, it’s good for the Democrats. If there is backlash, it will be against Grijalva and the rest can claim it was all on him. He is too extreme to move up in the political ranks, but strong enough among his voters not to have to worry about any negative impacts.
The members of the herd always think they safe until the butcher shows up…
Previous comments seems to have vanished, so:
Judith is a hero to many of us for her courage and abilities. I hope that helps.
As a lifelong straight ticket Democrat I could not be more disappointed in how totalitarian and grossly opportunistic my party has become.
The party pushes false statistics and propaganda at a rate that makes me both sad and angry.
I will likely vote Rep in ’16 even if I despise the candidate just to clean house.
It’s a sad day when a Pielke Jr. throws in the towel and says he’s had it with Climate politics.
Obama is to blame for this, clear and simple.
Fan
For the last two years you have been proudly promoting the young scientists who agree with agw and saying they should be listened to. Now you are saying it is the older ones who need to be listened to and those under 70 are suspect. Hmmm.
Well, that now lets in a lot of older sceptics whose views you have previously dismissed. Presumably there is an ironic smile playing around your lips?
Tonyb
AFOMD,
So now it appears that old self proclaimed climatologists, young self proclaimed climatologists, minority religious leaders – in fact anybody who professes belief in the myth of CO2 induced globall warming – are to be revered, somehow.
Climate science is a contradiction in terms. Where are the definitions? Where is the scientific method, or the results? Little, if any, relationship to real science is evident!
Hansen is delusional. Tipping points? Flooding? Boiling seas a la Venus?
Gavin Schmidt – a less than first rate mathematician, amateur computer programmer, and full time bureaucrat.
Bill Gates is a wealthy university drop out. His views on global warming are as relevant as any other wealthy person. Salman, head of the House of Saud, is quite possibly richer than Bill Gates, and has the same number of university degrees. If he is richer than Gates, is his opinion any the more useful?
None of the endless parade of believers in the impossible, whom you trot out regularly, can point to a single experimental verification of the wondrous GHE. Not one. Even putting all the unbelievers to death will not turn fantasy into fact.
In the mean time, you might wish to look at what is happening in the 95% of the globe that isn’t American. You might need to remove the blinkers first, though.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Well said Judith.
Pat Michaels, CATO has been awfully quiet on Climate lately. Seems like there’s a need for some proactivity here.
Cato got a letter of their own:
http://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/markey-boxer-whitehouse-query-fossil-fuel-companies-climate-denial-organizations-on-science-funding
Judith,
I have been a Democrat fan all my life (FDR, JFK, LBJ). After this appalling development, that skin has been shed forever.
Mars Attacks cards were a childhood interest where the US (Space) Marines took the fight to the enemy territory, an early experience of the counter attack. Scipio Africanus took the fight to Hannibal’s home of Carthage.
Your best response to this is to take the fight to Congress, aiding the Republican effort. They fear you, and with good reason. .
I think you are right – Grijalva has made a big mistake here. Many people who have no sympathy for climate sceptics have spoken out and criticised him, including Gavin, Eric Steig, Simon Donner, Robert Brulle and even Bob Ward. Presumably they realise how damaging this is to their side of the climate debate.
Recently, ‘And Then There’s Physics’
( Shouldn’t it really be ‘And Then There Are Unstable Linearizations of Non-Linear Differential Equations’ ?)
had a poster display this:
https://i1.wp.com/www.culturalcognition.net/storage/no_warming.png
The distinct divide, which probably extends to those in study of climate, reminds us of how political the whole subject is. That’s probably natural – when one party attempts to advance an agenda using an incomplete premise, the other party will resist.
Right now, given that we’re observing luke-warming rates, it appears that Mother Nature is a Moderate.
If you misrepresent your funding sources, then that is a big problem. I personally don’t care if fossil fuel companies fund research, as environmental NGO’s do it all the time. You can’t tell me that when Greenpeace or the WWF funds research that everybody doesn’t know quite clearly what the desired outcome of the research is. If the research turns out to be counterproductive to the agenda of the funding agency, then the research is not published (and the researcher is likely not used again). It’s the way the game is played.
The increased hostility by climate advocates is probably out of frustration. If they burned all the witches at the stake, it is not going to make a difference in the public’s acceptance of expensive ineffective solutions to climate change. The thought that removing all skeptics from the equation will result in a blank check from public taxpayers isn’t well founded.
The overt effort here to shut down debate is right in line with the left’s other thought police actions with speech on college campuses. I think this is a big overreach that is ultimately going to backfire. It is an embarrassment to the liberty we are proud of in the US.
I can’t do better than repeat my comments from earlier threads.
First: ‘Ranking’ member and I can smell it all the way over here.
Second: Grijalva follows ordures.
Third: The Iron First, no velvet at all.
=======================
This whole farce brings a couple of points to the fore –
US politicians apparently believe that the 5% of the global population that they supposedly represent, have the divine right to impose their will on the remaining 95%. Obviously democracy at its finest!
The main point, however, is that facts outweigh funding sources. If an experiment demonstrates that CO2 warms things – which, of course, is a current impossibility – then it matters not at all who performed the experiment, who funded the experimenter, whether the equipment was manufactured in China or Outer Baldonia, or anything else.
As an example, who remembers the names of the experimenters who disproved the existence of the luminiferous aether? No doubt some do, but what about the other questions? Who provided their salaries, if any? Where did the money come from? What religion were they? How about their sexual proclivities?
Silliness after silliness. If facts depend on funding, then US facts are on the decline, and Chinese facts are taking over. If you believe this sort of nonsense, you may well believe in CO2 global warming, or other such rubbish.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
AFOMD,
Thank you for your kind thoughts.
The undergraduates who think that climate science is an actual field of study per se, are likely to possess but a tenuous grip on reality. Prima facie, they are gullible, and easily led.
They are not mature enough to be able to distinguish between science and climatology. Science leads to discoveries and breakthroughs, increasing mankinds knowledge of Nature.
Climatology leads nowhere.
Science requires the use of the scientific method.
Climatology requires absolute belief in the impossible and unverifiable.
Science provides explanations.
Climatology provides obfuscations.
But what would I know? Maybe I need to read the book “Great moments in climatology”, but nobody seems to have written one.
Keep trying, and keep up the erratically whimsical introduction of irrelevant and pointless appeals to absent authority.
May the Celestial Teapot pour its blessings on you from a great height – and copiously! It may change your point of view.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Dr. Curry,
I am sorry that you are being harrassed.
However, I found this statement a bit odd from the National Review. It states: “And while the energy industry funds both sides of the climate debate, the government/foundation monies go only toward research that advances the warming regulatory agenda. ”
Could it be that those being funded by government/foundation monies are actually doing proper research that does demonstrate that global warming is a serious issue?
I think you are doing an excellent job with your presentations.
Rose
Time for a rewind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtIZBcWBcis
“A government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity”.
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.”
“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. “
Wise words from an amazing man – it is not surprising that he was able to bring together a coalition of warrior-chiefs to win WWII in Europe.
I’m getting a bit tired of this Eisenhower video. I just wish that commenters on this blog went after the Military Industrial Complex with as much energy as they go after climate scientists. Oh, but many of you are engineers who probably profitted from it. Hypocrites.
rmd
Ike made that speech in the late 50s. Since that time there have been many changes in the defense acquisition process and there is no longer a military industrial complex. The Federal Acquisition Regulation now has strict procedures that limit who can be awarded contracts and who on the contractor’s team can be involved (no retired military or government employees). There are also limits on what contract officers can do, and severe penalties if they cheat (they can go to jail and be fined).
A bigger problem today is that politicians are appropriating funds that the Pentegon says it doesn’t want, to keep hometown defense businesses in business.
Richard
RLS & RMD,
RE: “A bigger problem today is that politicians are appropriating funds that the Pentegon says it doesn’t want, to keep hometown defense businesses in business.”
Taken one step further, if the governmental agency (not just military) doesn’t spend any one year’s allocation the next year will be cut. Unlike you and I saving up for a need/want, they must spend and saving is not part of the equation. More frivolity occurs at the end of fiscal years than at most other times.
rmd
Leave Ike alone. Every time I see this video it reminds me how much the Federal decision making process has degenerated since WWII. For the last 15 years, constructing a simple memorial to him has tied the bureaucracy in knots.
He would have had it constructed in a week. So far there is no date certain for completion. A metaphor for how incapable the country is in getting anything done.
I expect completion to be delayed by a day, by a meteorologist, wisely.
=============
Danny,
“Taken one step further, if the governmental agency (not just military) doesn’t spend any one year’s allocation the next year will be cut.”
You are absolutely right. September 30th is the deadline to get all your funding obligated. Warnings go out from management; get it done. It is also a good time to introduce new projects; I got many projects funded this way. The month of September is frantic for the financial wizards and they all hit the bars and celebrate “New Year” at midnight September 30.
Ah, Memories
Richard
RMD,
““And while the energy industry funds both sides of the climate debate, the government/foundation monies go only toward research that advances the warming regulatory agenda. ”
Energy industry has business decisions to make so as an investor I wish them to make the most informed decisions they can.
But I do have to question what the goals of government are as government does not have the same mandate and indeed depending on the “leaders” can have contrary positions. To this observer, it leads to wonder if the data might be different were the leader(s) to change. This applies not just to the U.S.
So I’d have to say yes it could to this “Could it be that those being funded by government/foundation monies are actually doing proper research that does demonstrate that global warming is a serious issue?” but it doesn’t have to be. If it were, why then would the investigation in to funding not be being applied to all sides? Makes me wonder about motive.
I have always felt that money was a poor motivator for seeking information. Many scientists that I know and have known enjoy the research. The added perk is that the research might help solve many problems. That’s the way I see it.
I respect the energy grid engineers on this blog because they just deal with the technical issues and facts. There is no money involved (although presumable they have a salary and are concerned about keeping their jobs, like many scientists. Both still have to deal with facts.). My feelings are different regarding the management hierarchy and making decisions for investors rather than the public, I become more wary. Sure pulling oil out of the ground is easier and more profitable. It is also putting CO2 back into the atmoshere in 50 years for what it took millenia to accumulate.
The purpose of the government is to balance what private businesses are doing with the public good. It’s a bit of a joke these days but not just in climate research. Every aspect of government is failing. And money has a lot to do with it.
RMD,
Just catching up. Re:”Every aspect of government is failing. And money has a lot to do with it.”
While I agree there is much “mission creep” in many phases those on both sides are responsible. I’ve had the wonderful fortune to spend many months working side by side with those in the lower ranks (specifically at the USFWS) and find much dedication (not related to money as they don’t make much). The problems, as I see them, are at the top. One example is using the pen by this Rep. in his quest for sullying the reputations of those who do not share his world view.
After traveling this wonderful country for going on 7 years, speaking directly with those of us who are not in politics (except as voters), I find folks willing to assist folks and the vitriol is so much lessened.
The problem is not just money, but where that money is focused.
@ rmdobservations
“Could it be that those being funded by government/foundation monies are actually doing proper research that does demonstrate that global warming is a serious issue?”
No.
+++++++++++++++
@Bob Ludwick. Anything to back up what you say? I would like to see the statistics used by the The National Review article to defend what they said.
Bob
If they were doing proper research we probably would know more about internal variability. AR5 shows a graph of a pseudo proxy model that is flat across the last 2 millenium, and appears to be its answer to internal variability. Wonder why 100% of global warming is deemed man-made? My humble opinion is that the writers of AR5 have no clue regarding internal variability and have guessed that it is zero, and they don’t want to know because zero lets them announce CAGW.
Richard
@ rmdobservatins
” Anything to back up what you say? ”
Since you are a regular reader of and commenter on Dr. Curry’s blog, I thought you would find my answer to be another example of ‘belaboring the obvious’.
Apparently not.
After watching the kabuki theater known as Consensus Climate Science play out over the past 20 odd years, I thought this post by GaryM on the previous thread summed up my observations pretty well:
GaryM | February 25, 2015 at 12:16 am | Reply
So. more specifically, in no particular order, and CERTAINLY not exhaustively:
Climate science, which no one had ever heard of previously, burst on to the scene with an announcement that ACO2 was causing the planet to heat rapidly and catastrophically, only IMMEDIATE action to curb or eliminate fossil fuels could save us, and that the science was settled. And indeed it was. Anything or anyone who has subsequently attempted to introduce DATA which would cast doubt on any one of the three statements was attacked instantly. By those funded by governments/green foundations. Apostates/doubters were personally and professionally destroyed. People were–and continue to be–fired for the SLIGHTEST deviation from orthodoxy. See Dr. Curry’s experience over the past three years. I could go on. That is defending orthodoxy, not investigating an extremely complex scientific problem. It is not the mark of people doing ‘proper research’ into how the climate behaves.
I have observed, year in and year out, that ALL of the ‘research’ conducted by climate scientists funded by governments/(green)foundations is focused laser like on producing ‘data’, often tortured to the extreme, that will support the original ‘settled science’ and/or DISCREDIT any data collected by anyone OTHER than those supported by governments/foundations.
I see chart after chart massaging old data, some imaginary (krigged?), useless for the purpose, to produce ultra-precision GLOBAL temperature anomalies.
I see data presented in its most scary form, designed to inspire alarm, not to convey information. Example: Ocean heat is rising at a rate of 1e22 joules/year! Scary! The ocean, the whole thing, is warming at a rate of a couple of milli-degrees/year, with charts going back 60-70 years. Same information; not so scary. And now that I mention it, have we really been able to measure the annual temperature of the entire ocean (whatever that is), NECESSARY to determine its heat content, with millidegree precision, for the last half century?
Headlines worldwide in every form of media and the focus of ‘State of the Union’: 2014 warmest year since records began in 1880! Instant attribution to ACO2. Warmest by 0.02 degrees? Did any of the government/foundation scientists question whether ANYONE knew the ‘Annual Temperature of the Earth’ since 1880 well enough to list them in rank order and with enough precision to justify worldwide headlines ‘warmest by 0.02 degrees’? Or question the importance of the 0.02 degree ‘record’? Yet that announcement is apparently being used as justification for the imposition of draconian ACO2 controls and shutting down more fossil fueled generators.
And ALWAYS, following the result of data torturing that ‘reveals’ that something possibly related to climate is changing over time is the claim by government/foundation scientists that whatever is changing will bring catastrophe AND that the proximate cause is ACO2. If you are a climate (or any OTHER) scientist you question EITHER premise at your peril.
Example: sea level is apparently rising by 1-2 mm/year. I wouldn’t know, or care, nor would anyone else, if it were not for headlines announcing the catastrophe. And that it is all caused by ACO2.
Now not being a scientist, government or otherwise, I don’t know much about sea level, other than what I am told. I certainly haven’t been able to go to the beach over the last 50 odd years and work up much of an alarm over the rising seas.
What I DO know is that based on the total area of the oceans that a millimeter of sea level represents about 360 km^3 of water. And I DO know that ANYTHING that changes the volume of the ocean OR the volume of the ocean basins by 36O km^3 will result in a change in sea level by 1 mm.
I can only list a few regular ‘goings on’ that I KNOW affect sea level; I’m certain that there are others: Change in overall temperature of the oceans (a few millidegrees/mm), plate tectonics, slit from rivers, erosion of seashores, extraction of ground water which ultimately returns to the oceans, marine life and its products building up the ocean floors, melting land ice, undersea discharges of a variety of ‘stuff’ from literally hundreds of thousands of sources, often at temperatures in the 1-2 thousand degree range, which we are only now beginning to notice, wind carrying dust from the land and dropping it on the ocean. And that is a subset. Any combination of them that results in a change in volume of the water OR its basins by 360 km^3 will change the sea level by 1 mm. Yet the government/foundation scientists claim that sea level rise is caused by warming oceans (millidegrees) AND that the warming is due to ACO2. And anyone who questions them, even mildly, and regardless of supporting data, is savaged, personally and professionally. Proper research exemplified.
We are told by the government/foundation scientists that EVERY trend in anything related to climate is undesirable and/or catastrophic AND driven by ACO2. Unquestioned and, more importantly, UNQUESTIONABLE.
My opinion, supported by the above and a seemingly endless list of similar examples, the history of CAGW, noting the curricula vitae of the individuals and groups before CAGW became an issue who are now touting CAGW, and their activities in fields outside of ‘climate science’ is that ‘Global Warming’, by whatever euphemism is currently in vogue, is not a problem; it is an excuse. And that the purpose of ‘Climate Science’, as represented by the climate scientists supported by governments/green foundations is NOT to advance our knowledge of how and why the climate has changed, is changing, and, presumably, will continue to change, but to provide ‘scientific’ justification for governments to tax and/or regulate every human activity that produces a ‘carbon signature’. Which would be all of them.
So to repeat: No.
Bob Ludwick, quoting Gary M: I have observed, year in and year out, that ALL of the ‘research’ conducted by climate scientists funded by governments/(green)foundations is focused laser like on producing ‘data’, often tortured to the extreme, that will support the original ‘settled science’ and/or DISCREDIT any data collected by anyone OTHER than those supported by governments/foundations.
With the publication in Science of papers by Romps et al and Laliberte et al (discussed here), and the paper in Nature by Feldman et al (discussed now at WUWT), I expect that we’ll soon see a large change in that prevalence. The papers do not claim to challenge the consensus, but detailed analyses show cracks in the consensus theory which can’t forever be overlooked.
Well, as a first thought, I’m somewhat surprised that Appellations is not here yet, screeching away at Judith C. Perhaps he’ll be along soon
Second thought:
> I don’t think anything good will come of this (Judith Curry)
Pielke Jr knows better. He is even quoted in the main post as acknowledging that continual MSM smearing is effective (not a surprise, of course – it’s been evident for over two decades now)
From the viewpoint of AGW advocacy, a great deal of good comes of it
The perceived powerful know only two methods of dealing with informed dissent, and which method is chosen depends on an assessment of how much support the dissenter is perceived to have. Either one is invited into the tent to piss out, or one is publicly crucified – there is no* third way
@ inal8888
“Well, as a first thought, I’m somewhat surprised that Appellations is not here yet, screeching away at Judith C. Perhaps he’ll be along soon.
He is on Dr. Briggs site, screeching at him. I’m sure he’ll get around to Dr. Curry shortly.
Hayward’s initial reaction
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/02/are-you-now-or-have-you-ever-been-a-climate-skeptic.php
Do they have a financial interests in green advocacy or are they just concerned about environmental issues? And in this case Soon is being paid large sums to do research, so he has a financial interest. And so do the groups funding the research. And I guess their is no conflict of interest there either.
And the head of the IPCC has been “fossil fuel funded” forever- here’s a half-decade old write up about it.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/un-climate-chief-rajendra-pachauri-comes-under-attack-for-steamy-book-promoted-by-bp/story-e6frg6so-1225827732916
Someone selectively outraged, someone like you for example, has an agenda.
Joseph: Do they have a financial interests in green advocacy or are they just concerned about environmental issues?
One of the fallacies is that financial interests are the only important interests. But yes, green advocates earn lots of money from their green advocacy. This is especially true of the executives of green NGOs, and of university faculty whose salaries depend on federal grant money. The other great interest is self-defense. Having once taken a stand in public, most people will work 100 times as hard to preserve their view as they will to learn anything new. That applies to all of us (the 100 to 1 ratio might be due to Keynes or Galbraith.)
Matthew, I was referring to climate scientists.
Joseph: Matthew, I was referring to climate scientists.
You missed my reference to university professors.
What does getting grant money have to do with being a green advocate?
@ Joseph
“What does getting grant money have to do with being a green advocate?”
If you aren’t one, you don’t get any.
Joseph: What does getting grant money have to do with being a green advocate?
You asked whether they had a financial interest. They have a financial interest in persuading funding agencies that warming is a problem, and their financial interest is served as well by public advocacy that stimulates letter-writing campaigns and such.
> the 100 to 1 ratio might be due to Keynes or Galbraith.
We could also add Friedman, who disbelieved the omnipotence of invisible hands at least once:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/23/business/23scene.html
Even if this was a somewhat crude proposal, Denizens ought to take note.
Of course, so did Adam Smith.
But as an enemy of “big government” Friedman made a consistent proposal: get rid of all the bureaucratic nonsense and replace it with a simple system anybody who could do arithmetic could predict. Of course, Friedman, like most 20th century economists, was founded in an economy of scarcity. The recent rapid progress towards robots, and flexible automated production (e.g. 3D printing), may have rendered most labor obsolete.
The time may be coming when a “negative income tax” will be necessary, just so enough people will have enough money to buy all the stuff the capitalists want to make money selling. Fundamental change can make strange bedfellows.
> get rid of all the bureaucratic nonsense and replace it with a simple system anybody who could do arithmetic could predict.
Sure, let’s replace behavioral economics with pocket calculators.
Non sequitur.
When will Willard will the digits wither they will?
===================================
> Non sequitur.
Here you go:
1. A simple taxation scheme would allow for predictions using hand calculators.
2.Behavioral economics rest on the obvervation that using hand calculators to predict behavior reduces empirical research to armchair theorizing.
3. Either you accept (1) or (2) – you can’t accept both.
4. If we accept (1), we might as well reject (2).
***
It would be interesting to know if Adam Smith ever held something like (1).
But the government has no financial interest in the outcome of the research, right?
Joseph,
Which branch?
The government is by definition a not for profit, right?
Joseph,
There are two ends. Senders and Receivers. And we know that on all sides the Receivers use what they’ve got to influence Senders.
We’ve gotten Fascened Sticks, with a capital ‘F’, and they’re shaded by Government, with a capital ‘G’ and it stands for Greed.
=============
Well if being funded by the government is a conflict of interest then modern science is in big trouble., That is all I have to say.
Joseph,
Two responses in one:”Think about that, Jim. Was BEST started to prove that the modern temperature record was reliable (lending support to AGW) or was it to prove that it was flawed?”
Was this a COI, a “bad investment”, or did science break out?
“Well if being funded by the government is a conflict of interest then modern science is in big trouble., That is all I have to say.”
Is it possible that in some cases folks do let money influence them, and that some do not?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t subscribe to the science by gov’t funding = padding the nest any more than I do that funding by private entity does, nor neccessarily less.
“…then modern science is in big trouble”
Ya think so? Really?
Andrew
I think it would be the end of science as we know it, since the private sector can’t fund it. You have any suggestions there, Andrew?
Joseph, make a mental note of this: Big Money corrupts, wherever it comes from. You’re probably a statist, so this may be a surprise to you. But now you know.
Andrew
Danny, do we really want fossil fuel interests funding scientists directly. Do we want the renewables industry to start funding pro-agw scientists directly? Conflict of interest or even an appearance of conflict is an important concern for a reason whether you can prove any wrongdoing by the parties of concern.
Joseph,
I am all for my tax money to pay for that which might not get studied otherwise. But every day private interests pay for research. It can be direct, or indirect. Specifically on the topic of AGW, in fact, I can see good reason for funding by private interests as investors deserve the best available information on which business decisions are made. So my short answer is yes.
Carrying a bit further. If these same studies are used for policy and not business decisions then all funding and all substantiation along with the results must be made public. There is a new paradigm. Entities such as Climate, etc., ATTP, RC, WUWT, etc. will pic nits and this is as it should be evaluation of the science is what matters.
This same evolution has occurred in real estate, medical science, and so on as a result of the internet and the information age.
RE:”Conflict of interest or even an appearance of conflict is an important concern for a reason whether you can prove any wrongdoing by the parties of concern.” Do you see that Dr. Pielke’s choice to “circle the wagons” is a good choice? (I see it as a major loss to the discussion and hope Dr. Curry choses differently). If funding by all sources leads to good science who cares? This is as opposed to intimidation due to a “manufactured” appearance of impropriety by who is asking questions and why. If funding by all sources is business as usual and disclosure is done, I’m all for it.
Joseph,
Follow up question. Do you percieve the existence of BEST to be a net negative or positive?
Danny, do we really need fossil fuel interests funding climate change research to get the “best available evidence?” Isn’t there already a lot climate research going on? We have IPCC reports, etc.
Joseph,
First, I noticed that you didn’t answer my questions. Out of good faith, I will address yours. IPCC is a quasi governmental organization. I try to think critically and notice that at times IPCC puts forth in SPM that which is not neccesarily supported by science. Then, an appeal to authority occurs (97% concensus) but in no way do I find substantiation by that concensus for 100% of what IPCC is proposing (especially after I see the political leanings of the leadership). As a result of this, I in no way trust (nor distrust) the entirety. I look, as a suggestion is made, to see what IPCC says and I bounce that off what I find elsewhere and I look for perspectives. One of the benefits to my time here is that I come with predispositions and find that there are alternative views with alternative reasons. One thing I’ve learned over my years is to not trust any entity fully. I don’t trust Democrats (lean left socially myself), I don’t trust Republicans (lean right fiscally myself) and I certainly don’t trust mass media. Lot’s of extraneous information but offered only so you can see from where my view originates. For me, the concept of “fresh eyes” is enlightening. Science being funded soley by one side or the other, not so much in my eyes. Now I’ll look forward to your answers to my earlier.
Joseph: Well if being funded by the government is a conflict of interest then modern science is in big trouble., That is all I have to say.
That has been said by many people. Government research contracts, grants, are awarded by committees of people who have themselves received grants, will receive grants in the future, are funding their friends and colleagues, and will be judged by friends and colleagues in the future. The potential for a bias to develop into a vicious circle is obvious; whether that has happened in climate science is a matter of debate.
That’s for universities. For people in government, there is an obvious financial interest for them to exaggerate the problems that they study, for self-promotion and promotion of friends and families.
As with fossil fuels and Soon, the potential for conflict of interest does not imply the existence of wrongdoing. But the potential does exist.
Do appreciate any research that is found to be of quality work, then the answer is yes. Do I think vested interests will always fund quality research, the answer is no. I don’t think Soon’s research has made much of an impact. Do you?
are awarded by committees of people who have themselves received grants
Um I am not sure what you are referring to. If we are talking about government grants, those grants are given out by bureaucrats who don’t receive any grant money.
Joseph: If we are talking about government grants, those grants are given out by bureaucrats who don’t receive any grant money.
You write as one who has not participated in this process.
Danny, we have more than just the IPCC. There are a number of climate related reports and updates every year. I think the funding has been and is going to increase in the future. Why do we need vested fossil fuel interests (specifically) to fund climate science? I still don’t see it. And I said I approve of solid research which BEST turned out to be so yes is the answer to the question. And I am glad you think we need more funding for climate science. And I wonder if that research changed the Koch brother’s minds when they got the results. I bet they were happy., ha ha
Joseph,
I think you’ve answered the question with how you (and I) perceive BEST turned out. The devil is in the details. No strings, no “deliverables”, just good honest open science. In fact, FF indirectly funds much of the science that supports the AGW theory via their funding of universities. FF industry has a requirement for openness due to SEC regs. And, they report to stakeholders. I think that FF is covered with too large a blanket. For example, is Exxon a FF entity or an energy company? If their research leads towards seeing a need to supplant their traditional forms of energy generation then I as an investor hold them to a standard that I’m not able to do towards say, Georgia Tech. or M.I.T. We’ve seen on this very thread how folks have contacted the heads of Ga Tech as alumni. I don’t have that standing, and cannot achive same w/o graduating. To attain standing w/ Exxon all I need is one share of stock. I frankly don’t care much how Koch feels about their investment in BEST as I’d guess they’ll be okay either way. But BEST is a great example of a duplication of efforts off which we can bounce the results of NOAA/NASA and independent scientists. I’d be all for more examples like this. And I’d be okay with alternative energy companies, insurance companies, and the like doing the same as long as all is open and no strings.
You have failed to answer my question. Go back, read it again and then get back to me
Joseph,
Fair question and point that I didn’t answer directly:”Why do we need vested fossil fuel interests (specifically) to fund climate science?”
Because they are impacted just like every other person, entity and, government and it’s their right to do with their money as they chose.
What entities do you wish to disallow to fund climate science? Examples I can think of that have vested interests include: GE (wind turbines), Re-insurance and insurance, Flood insurance, Solar, Hydro, Berkshire, Agriculture. So who would chose and why? Why would you exclude soley FF?
You said:
You haven’t demonstrated that we need for fossil fuel interests to fund climate science to get the available information. So why are they funding climate science and skeptics specifically? What do they stand to gain from it?
Joseph,
“So why are they funding climate science and skeptics specifically?” Funding of “skeptics” is an entirely different question. I’m referring to funding of “climate science”. My expectation of a “scientist” is to do science. My impression is that from your view anyone with a bias (or is it just skeptics?) should not be funded. Where would that leave us? One paper per scientist, game over, next career?
I would be suspicious of the renewables industry funding pro-agw scientists. I think the insurance industry can make money either way. And I don’t really see the need for the private sector to fund climate change research at all.
Joseph,
Okay: “I would be suspicious of the renewables industry funding pro-agw scientists”. So how about FF fund pro AGW and renewables fund “skeptics”?
“And I don’t really see the need for the private sector to fund climate change research at all.” Hmmmmm. Might wanna work on that one. CaptD gave an answer for one example in the FF industry & coastal regions (real estate and tourism?). I might offer that if the “coming disasterous droughts” in the southwest and great plains might impact agricultural interests so they might want “fresh eyes” for land and water considerations and optimal (or expected) growing conditions.
Industry funding for climate science is mostly to determine impacts on their operations, as with the military. They have moved on from whether it is happening to what exactly is happening, which is where the uncertainty is.
Joseph, ” And I don’t really see the need for the private sector to fund climate change research at all.”
You are kidding right? Offshore or coastal business ventures would benefit by more accurate estimates of SLR and tropical cyclone intensity. The range provided by “consensus” climate science is really too large and uncertain to be useful for medium term planning.
Jim D: what exactly is happening,
Have you become a skeptic? A lukewarmer?
“what exactly is happening”
The “weather”?
Andrew
Right Jim, but we are referring to research related to AGW.
The research is not about whether, but what. If nothing was happening they would not be putting research dollars into it. Regional changes are the largest area of uncertainty. What happens to food production, coastlines and infrastructure, water supplies, energy demand, etc.? These are the questions. Skeptics aren’t too bothered, but they are not the ones thinking about long-term planning.
JIMD,
“Skeptics aren’t too bothered, but they are not the ones thinking about long-term planning.”
Too broad of a brush. Skeptics are considering the ramifications of all sides of the conversation from what I see. This is exactly why I don’t understand why everyone (including you) aren’t skeptical of the nuts and bolts as opposed to the entirity. Warming? Sure. Lots of evidence. AGW “CO2 only and FF must die”. Skeptics “Now wait just a minute, are we sure and are their alternative transitional approaches for FF to have a place while alternatives are improved and developed. Plus, we can improve infrastructure “for yesterday’s weather” (h/t Steve M.) and land use plus consider some relocation if we’ve been warming all along).
I am specifically referring to research related whether or not CO2 is responsible for global climate change. I apologize for the lack of clarity.
“If nothing was happening they would not be putting research dollars into it.”
Yes, gov’t never wastes money. It’s estimated that 97% of every penny is well-spent.
Andrew
Joseph, I understand, but they are drawing a false equivalence. Soon’s research is trying to deny a CO2 effect. On the other side, they are not trying to prove it because they are well past that. The research is on quantifying the effects now and in the future. Industries, not surprisingly, also want to know.
Joseph, “I am specifically referring to research related whether or not CO2 is responsible for global climate change. I apologize for the lack of clarity.”
Doesn’t change anything. “Consensus” science has produced a range of 1,5C to 4.5C which is still too large to be useful for medium term. Business looks for “most likely” with uncertainty and where most of the uncertainty is located. No feedback is in the range of 0.8 to 1.2 C meaning for the next 30 to 50 years there could be no significant impact on most business ventures. The high end 3 to 4.5C should have already shown significant impact.
So if you are planning business in the Gulf of Mexico region you would harden your structures for the “realistic” projections which could be cost effective where worst case is not.
Most of the skeptical arguments are related to “best estimates” for planning not something completely untenable. That must be that crazy capitalistic gene we all seem to share rearing its ugly rational head doncha know.
@Joseph…
How about a better idea of the probabilities than they’ll get from the consensus. It’s common in science for the majority to follow the standard paradigm, but there’s always the chance that it’s wrong. The only way to evaluate the probability of that is to look at skeptical positions.
What is the chance that, 10 years from now, the climate consensus will be that CO2 has little effect on climate? That CO2 has actually varied much more than currently assumed? Etc.
What is the chance that one of those possibilities is true, even if the climate consensus isn’t on board? What are the possible effects on the value of their investments? How should they keep their options open? What’s it worth compared to preparing for fossil-neutral mandates?
Any smart corporate management needs to evaluate those probabilities. And given the current state of the manufactured “paradigm” in climate science, a case could certainly be made that the management of any corporation at risk from a scientific change, such as the collapse of the current paradigm, has a fiduciary duty to investigate plausible potential challenges to that “paradigm”.
What “Climategate” showed, along with other disclosures, is that there’s a high probability that the current “paradigm” is much more representative of the results of a political perversion of the scientific process than is true for most scientific paradigms.
Danny, as you seem to now understand, the “conflict of interest” has to do with what exactly is being studied and who is doing the studying.
Right, I was not clear what I meant by that. I was referring to causes of global climate change or whether it is occurring.
No there is no “consensus science.” There is just “science.” I don’t understand how fossil fuel interests funding “skeptics” like WIlie Soon is going to get us any closer to understanding the science of climate change.
Skeptics don’t have to rely on vested fossil fuel interests to do research, nor do fossil fuel interests have to fund their research to learn about alternatives to the consensus position. I have seen Pop Sci’s list of work numbering in the thousands. So there is no dearth of “skeptic” research out there.
Joseph, “No there is no “consensus science.” There is just “science.”
Beg to differ. Annan and Hargreaves among others have recommended the upper legitimate limit be trimmed to 4.0 C. the after midnight paper by Otto et al. for AR5 made a substantial shift in distribution of sensitivity estimates to the lower side and there have been follow up papers, Lewis and Curry for example that stress the lower estimate range. Pretty much every higher estimate you can find will be based on papers published prior to 2007, AR4.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-48fexW-5Oiw/VMGKozGRK0I/AAAAAAAAMQU/cH6xpbFoq_s/w789-h559-no/mann%2Bhockey%2Bstick%2Bwith%2Bhadcrut4%2Band%2Bbest.png
This 2015 version of Mann’s HockeyStick ends in ~1999 and appears to use outdated instrumental data form 1902 to the end with less than “standard” smoothing for a PR effect. Like it or not there is considerable salesmanship being used to keep the high side alive.
Since most successful businesses didn’t get that way but being herd members, they are likely to continue funding “independent” research.
That’s for them to decide. Not you.
Not true. Read Kuhn.
Well by all means make the case that they need to…
Beg to differ. Annan and Hargreaves among others have recommended the upper legitimate limit be trimmed to 4.0 C. the after midnight paper by Otto et al. for AR5 made a substantial shift in distribution of sensitivity estimates to the lower side and there have been follow up papers, Lewis and Curry for example that stress the lower estimate range. Pretty much every higher estimate you can find will be based on papers published prior to 2007, AR4.
Climategate.
@Joseph…
More here.
Same as government scientists, they have overriding ideological interests in promoting climate alarmism. And again as with government, science and objectivity hardly get a look in.
In the interest of fairness and balance, the NGO sources of AGW projects and research will also be indentified – when pigs sprout wings and fly.
Here is an interesting take on the supposed public good of NGOs:
http://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Betrayal-Liberal-Undermine-America/dp/0971985111/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1424906646&sr=8-1&keywords=Foundations+of+betrayal
More principled commentary from a “skeptic” – decrying the McCarthyism of the climate “consensus” by linking a book that exposes, among other horrors, “Ford’s agenda helping radical Muslims and even suicide bombers; “
Ya know Justin I don’t have the time to read nonsense from the left or right. And with a name like that it’s likely it is also in that nonsense category. But I will consider taking a look if this idea catches on we see more stories about it in the media, ok?
Yes, do trust the MSM and be a “useful idjiot”.
From those right-wing orgs Booktv and c-Span:
http://www.c-span.org/video/?198248-1/book-discussion-foundations-betrayal
Justin, where do you think I learned about books containing nonsense from the right and left?
Sorry, I must have pushed a button. The truth about those foundations really hurts, doesn’t it? Those angels turn out to be rather self-interested. It’s good for the left that most people are unaware of their devious nature. The best strategy for you would be to discredit the source, Saul Alinski-like. Good on ya!
Yeah – the truth about Ford helping suicide bombers really hurts.
Well, maybe a law will come out of all this that requires that everyone reveal their funding sources. But what does one do with this information? This Congressmen’s mistake was in singling out these 6 people. I have no idea what he was thinking. But unfortunately, Congress is full of people like this on both sides. (p.s. that book sounds absurd. Look at the Eisenhower video above. That’s the real problem.
Someone once said that if you scratch a Democrat you’ll discover a totalitarian under the surface waiting to get out.
I don’t think you even have to scratch them anymore. Now scientific researchers and academics who dissent from the progressive consensus on climate change must account for their finances to their Democrat overlords.
That follows:
Every Senate Democrat voted to amend the First Amendment to stop the Koch Brothers from donating to Republicans;
They weaponized the IRS to go after political speech they don’t like;
They used government coercion to force you to buy government approved insurance to enrich government approved insurance companies, who will then funnel part of those riches into Democrat campaigns;
They have now vetoed the Keystone pipeline, even though its gone through five separate State Department reviews and Obama’s own state department signed off on it each time. But he’d rather hurt white, middle class American men who will build the pipeline and work in the refineries, because Tom Steyer needs a consolation prize after failing to buy several Democrat Senators with his $75 million spending spree in the last election cycle.
Totalitarian. And corrupt to the core.
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” – George Orwell, from Animal Farm
==> “Someone once said that if you scratch a Democrat you’ll discover a totalitarian under the surface waiting to get out.”
Yup.
1/2 the American voting public = totalitarians.
Groty,
Hmmm. Stating hurting white men. Unsupported premise and inappropriate in so many ways. Dr. Curry, this is your playground but I for one think this should not go unresponded. This, and someone’s obviously never been in a refinerey or seen a pipeline built.
Danny, you gotta point (and I’ve been in many refineries and seen many pipelines built) but in the grand scheme of things, Groty’s comment re. white middle class men is the least of the issues raised by this post.
Mark,
Took all I could muster to comment on what I did. Have at it! :)
So Danny Thomas doesn’t like the words he has read, and his response is to encourage the authoritarian figure to reprimand me. I’d bet a cheeseburger he often votes Democrat. Thanks for strengthening my case.
Groty,
No, I did not care for the word choices you made and still don’t. In part, because your words effectively are an insult to our host, from my view. But please take note, that I did comment that your words should not lay unresponded. Yes, I’ve voted for Democrats, and also for Republican’s and a few self labeled independents (just to fill in the blank). And will do so as I see fit in the future as I’m not constrained by labels and I think independently. Interesting that you felt “I told on you”, when in fact I commented out of turn so effectively apolgized to our host for doing so.
So what was the case you were making?
@Danny Thomas I agree with what you said. Thanks for making it short and to the point.
Quite remarkable. Which is why is so amusing when “skeptics” argue the their politics is coincidental to their views on climate change.
Groty: But he’d rather hurt white, middle class American men who will build the pipeline and work in the refineries, because Tom Steyer needs a consolation prize after failing to buy several Democrat Senators with his $75 million spending spree in the last election cycle.
It’s about the boom in railroading. Transportation of oil by rail is booming, and along with that are huge increases in the cash flows to major Democratic contributors like Warren Buffet (majority owner of BNSF) and Tom Steyer.
Groty: Someone once said that if you scratch a Democrat you’ll discover a totalitarian under the surface waiting to get out.
Someone else once said the same thing about Republicans.
Judy Curry wrote: As a scientist, I am an independent thinker, and I draw my own conclusions about the evidence regarding climate change. My conclusions, particularly my assessments of high levels of uncertainty, differ from the ‘consensus’ of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Why does this difference in my own assessment relative to the IPCC result in my being labeled a ‘denier’?
That is clear to me. They are stating a certainty that is totally bogus.
You deny that they are correct. It is a bad thing, only, because they don’t explain what it is that you deny and many people don’t know what you deny.
Many of us know what you deny and it is a really good and wonderful and just denial. Don’t try to deny being a denier, celebrate it because you deny the things that should be denied.
The dirty side of politics in the US has materialised here but it comes to me as no surprise. Nonentities like Congressman Grijalva have hitched their sleds to the AGW trainwreck and who will, along with many of the acolytes that comprise the so-called scientific accord on this subject, be consigned to the dustbin of history. The truth about climate will ultimately prevail and ethical behaviour will win out over opportunism. Judith needs to be strong and she has my best wishes.
Edward R. Murrow …
No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy
Of course there is conflict of interest argument advanced when people who have failed to study rhe evidence adequately, disagree. Climate is an om/off process as well as random noise, so you can expect such claims.
Conflict of interest claims are easily resolved by careful study of the evidence presented.
It is truly sad to see this kind of thing happening right before our eyes. The POTUS stated he was going to name and shame and has kept to his word. One wonders why now? Paris in December is why. Make no mistake, it is all part of the power grab for energy control to diminish those beyond the manufactured consensus.
What I don’t think the perpetrators of this realize is how resilient independent thinkers are when the facts are on their side. They have unwittingly opened a Pandora’s box that many will soon regret via their unwanted, yet impending, personal disclosure and exposure.
This instance of bullying has started “Climate Warfare”.
Regards Ed
This is what happens when a Chicago community organizer with the Rev. Wright as pastor gets elected president. Won’t end well for him, his entourage (Holden), the Dems (this piss ant congressman pulling a McCarthy). They evidently forgot some of us can read, think, AND vote.
Personally, I think Gruber hit the nail on the head. After all, Obumbles was elected TWICE! Only if you go full paranoid and believe the (mostly) voting machine elections were rigged, the US citizens are awfully stupid.
Friendly Canuck
Your country is starting to scare me, calling out deniers, congress targeting scientists for having non-conforming opinions, news papers targeting the same scientists, thought police on the watch for any deviation, universities incapable of defending real inquiry, there is a chill in the land of the free and the progressives have shed the cloak of liberalism and now wear the brown shirt.
Me too!
From Australia; Me too!
But given history who the hell would be stupid enough to elect a Chicago Democrat as President TWICE!
The Democratic Party does not deserve the label “Progressive”. The Republicans are still obsessed with this socialist “brown shirt” meme. Depending on one’s news source, the “thought police” were always there. It’s how the powerful stay in power, regardless of political philosphy. The US represents the best and the worst.
And these are the guys that are going to fix the Internet? I no longer wonder why the president saw fit to bring up the Crusades and Inquisition at the prayer breakfast.
Dr. Curry
I suggest that you send the Honorable Congressman a bucket of sand and a hammer, with a note that if he hasn’t figured out how to use them in thirty days, let you know and you will fax him a copy of the instruction manual.
+10. But the instruction manual won’t help; he is apparently illiterate.
I think there is something huge that a huge number of people are missing.
If the Koch brothers or fossil fuel companies or whatever or whoever, spend huge money to pay for research, it is not to get them to make up false results. They pay the best people they can find out there to get the best science answers they can get to help them make the best business decisions they can make.
If they pay someone they think they can bribe to give a wrong answer, how can they know that dishonest person will not cheat them.
They are much to smart to hire a crook.
They really do have a really powerful position. They pay the best people to get the best science and the other side don’t trust the results because they don’t trust who is paying. They can make decisions based on the best science and the competition will go down a wrong path just because the believe the opposite of the best science.
@popesclimatetheory “They pay the best people they can find out there to get the best science answers they can get to help them make the best business decisions they can make.” This seems to be a very idealistic view of how private funding is directed. But don’t government funding agencies (not elected officials) want they same thing?
No, their success depends on helping the elected officials achieve their agenda’s. Proving CO2 is bad is much more important to them than finding out if that is really true.
Try to question it and see how they react. This is in the public records.
Judith Curry
Raul Grijalva is the new Eugene MacCathy. Only in a small way will he be viewed through the lense of history as a extremist who occupies a certain status with the ilk of WWF, Greenpeace, Sierra Club and others.
I liken your feelings as to that of a physician who has been sued in an lawyer’s sweep of deep pockets. Facts do not matter. The thrust is to maim; like a swordfish scaring the school of fish to scatter and the school of immunity results in those who are and consumed, ie, those fish that scatter.
My message to you: stay strong, show no fear. Speak to power. Repeat your message.
Surprisingly, the dirt settles to the bottom in a calm pool. And Grijalva is a coarse grained dirtbag.
I don’t think you mean Eugene McCarthy….
You are right. Perseveration from another conversation
Perseverwhateration? Please, clean it up. For Gene.
=================
Senator Joseph McCarthy re: McCarthyism
Skeptics better keep an eye out for contact from the IRS. Just sayin’.
Yes, you are rcorrect. Whatever happened to that issue? Maybe the Dems and the burrocrats just rope-a-doped the GOP into submission? I smelled a rat, but it is still hiding…
From the article:
…
The White House told Congress last week it refused to dig into its computers for emails that could shed light on what kinds of private taxpayer information the IRS shares with President Obama’s top aides, assuring Congress that the IRS will address the issue — eventually. The tax agency has already said it doesn’t have the capability to dig out the emails in question, but the White House’s chief counsel, W. Neil Eggleston, insisted in a letter last week to House Committee on Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan that the IRS would try again once it finishes with the tea party-targeting scandal.
“It is my understanding that in May 2014, Commissioner Koskinen responded to this request by indicating that the IRS would be able to address new topics such as these following its completion of document productions already in progress,” Mr. Eggleston wrote in a Feb. 17 letter. “To the extent that the committee continues to have an oversight interest in this matter, I encourage you to continue working with the IRS to address those questions.”
…
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/irs-scandal/
The IRS is an underfunded mess.
No, the IRS is an inefficient mess. At some point, the public will understand that throwing money at problems is not always the most efficacious method of solving those problems. I would have thought after 50 years that fact might have dawned on some of the brighter bulbs in the packet.
Oh noes a Congressman is doing a bit of grandstanding and everyone here stares in awe and thinks this is the beginning of McCarthyism or some other bizarre. Come on people get a grip..
Hmmm … so you thought of McCarthy too. Interesting.
lol jim I have just been reading all of these paranoid conspiracy ramblings. I think McCarthy was the last thing on my mind before this post.
Joseph, you should think about this a little more. I am a liberal Democrat who has been an enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama for more than 8 years. And Joseph McCarthy was the first person I thought of when I read about this.
There is a lack of symmetry. One was a totalitarian response to a totalitarian effort, the other is a totalitarian response to an anti-totalitarian effort.
There are wonderful symmetries, and jarring juxtamalpositions.
=========================
I first thought of Joe Barton. Closer. And I didn’t like it.
Blimey. I thought you meant Joey Barton for a moment there, had to go and look it up – if you had meant Joey I would agree I certainly don’t like it.
> … paranoid conspiracy ramblings
Straw man, and repetitively tiresome …
Noble cause corruption is a mindset, not a conspiracy, and as such entertained by those of high moral vanity
I think this a rather encouraging development. As the actual temperature, or at least the temperature after it has been through various mincing machines, fails to rise as the GCM predict, the bulk of the climate science field looks increasingly stupid. The various temperature indecies are being attacked, and rudely defended by their creators, yet they still not make the global temperature rise. So what is left? Attack the heretic’s and plat the (wo)man and not the ball.
Judy, you have so worried the ‘it’s worse than we thought’ crowd that they are accusing you of professional misconduct and lying in your work, by among others the President of the USA.
This means that you are winning.
+1 DocMartyn.
Problem is that the MSM reports almost exclusively on the warmest year meme providing no context. While the general public is luke warm on global warming, they are still being fed a steady diet of exaggerated claims of cagw.
This is a job for the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. Willie should expect a call offering their support.
My initial reaction to this is people need to stop and think what “immediate financial interest” amounts to here.
If you are a utility company selling electricity, the only thing that will change with a draconian Paris accord is the price you charge the customer will go up. The customer will still need electricity, in fact your profit margin likely would be better.
In pharmaceutical research, where a pharm company pays a scientist to study the efficacy of their drug for example, where an obvious immediate financial interest can both be established and should be disclosed. I just don’t see an obvious parallel here.
The energy companies are guilty of funding people who are critical of aspects of climate science (if that is something you can be guilty of), but in the same vein they also fund, in much more massive quantities, people who are mainstream climate researchers.
I think the real problem for the climate science thought police here isn’t that energy companies are solely funding critics of climate science, rather it’s that they are funding them at all. Heretics must be punished.
Because climate science.™
I have seen a few instances, but is it really “in much more massive quantities?” Is it even more than they give to “skeptics?” Any evidence would be nice,,
I have to say that in your situation I’d be doing everything possible to include all of that information related to travel and work that lands before the arbitrary cut off date.
I don’t have any problem with scientists funding in Climate Science being scrutinized. In fact I think it’s about time. Certainly when what is being published has the potential to be used to determine our economic and social course for decades to come it’s not unreasonable to know who funded it.
I do however, have a problem with people on both sides of the debate who seem to believe that only funding from the other side deserves scrutiny.
As for anyone who thinks one side is more or less corruptible then the other… All I have to say is the program I graduated from allowed students to major in International Business or International Development. In the world we live in the top NGOs are staffed full of and run by the same people who run the worlds largest companies. Business and all that entails, for better or worse, guide both types of organizations. The differences between the two are skin deep. If you blanket distrust one you can’t very well blanket trust the other.
I agree.
Thank you for the only reasonable comment, Al. As a grad student working on agriculture and drought, it’s obvious that both private industry and government corrupt and silence research. But it is also obvious that both government and industry want fossil fuels to dominate for as long as possible.
So that would include skeptics like Dr. Curry and you would want to know about any potential financial conflict of interest? For example, would you be concerned if the renewables industry was funding some pro-agw scientist without disclosing it?
There’s a big difference between Greenpeace / World Wildlife Fund type of NGOs with their political agendas and Businesses trying to make a living. The latter can diversify away from danger, whereas the former can’t.
People rarely catch on to the fact that fossil fuel corps are among those who stand to benefit the most from regulation, particularly cap-and-trade.
They also rarely remember ENRON.
Looks like tonyb’s comments below have been orphaned :)
Any tactic to distract from getting to the truth and exposing the big lie of cagw. There is no honesty in this witch hunt, and you can bet that the clapping seals, aka the msm, will exaggerate or flat out make up “news” that smears anyone daring to chalenge the consensus. I applaud your courage Dr. Curry, as you take fire from both sides of the “debate”.
I’m betting that both Grijalva and Obumbles know the secret Communist’s handshake.
this one?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b8/Breznev-Honecker_1979.jpg/320px-Breznev-Honecker_1979.jpg
1000 –
Judith does not generally delete my comments if they are carefully thought out out expressed -although there have been a couple of occasions.
I think that you can express disagreement on pretty much anything at ATTP without getting moderated out if you express yourself thoughtfully so as not to antagonize.
Thoughtfulness and intent to antagonize are not mutually exclusive. People rarely don’t have ultimate control over whether they get moderated.
People have been over and over the Schneider convo many times. You didn’t have anything to say that hasn’t been said before, i assure you. It wasn’t about “not being subjected to opposing viewpoints.” it’s about not wanting to face the same points over and over that people think are just flat out poorly-reasoned.
Does FOMBS show up a lot at ATTBS?
FOMD’s style is one of preaching, and that would be like preaching to the converted. I think he views being here as his mission to the darker areas in need of enlightenment.
It’s not about physics, it’s about politics
I’d point out this red-baiting, but Judith would be upset. Not at the red-baiting, of course, but at my pointing it out.
Because, you know, McCarthy.
Joshua,
What the heck is red baiting? I assume it’s something to do with making fun of Communists, but is there some special significance in the US?
I thought that the U.S. lawmakers were so terrified of democracy that they passed the Communist Control Act of 1954. Maybe they should just have held the Communists’ feet to the fire! So much for freedom.
I believe the majority of consumer goods sold in the US are produced in Communist countries, so maybe Capitalism depends on Communism for its profits. Odd, that. It doesn’t seem to be illegal to benefit from Communists, just to be one.
But still, what is red baiting, and what is its relevance to conflicts of interest in climate science – or any science, for that matter?
Do you think the US President is really a Communist? Wouldn’t that be illegal?
Please explain it all to me. I honestly don’t understand your reference.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Hi Joshua,
You asked me some questions over on …and Then There’s Physics. However, I got discouraged over there after the moderator disallowed my explanation of my view of Stephen Schneider on the grounds that he “has been maligned enough elsewhere without me allowing it to continue here.” My final post to you was also disallowed, probably because I compared …and Then There’s Physics to a club where all the members think the same way and do not want to be subjected to opposing viewpoints. That may be extreme, but it is certainly true with respect to remarks about Stephen Schneider. I have a question for you. I saw your remark about “Judith being upset.” What has been your experience on this or similar sites? How often have you tried to post a carefully expressed and thoughtful opinion or observation (not one involving libel or conduct that could be called abusive) only to have it disallowed on the ground that the owner or moderator of the site did not want that opinion to be expressed?
Joshua, i delete your comments when it appears you want to try to start a food fight with another commenter, especially if it is off topic to the post
For Mike Flynn:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-baiting
It is considered to be a boorish tactic.
So it’s red baiting to point out that the United States and most of Europe are run by progressives whose fondness for socialism is matched only by their ignorance of capitalism?
Justin Wonder,
Thank you. I misunderstood, obviously. This sort of thing is usually employed by the person who cannot pound the facts, or the law, and is too dumb to find a table on which to pound.
If I understand correctly, I could respond to a red-baiter by pointing out that 50% of lawmakers are below the average intelligence of their group, and invite the red-baiter to provide proof that he was at least as smart as a boxful of hair. Or suggest he indulged in metrosexual practices as a young man.
My null hypothesis about politicians is that if their lips are moving they are either lying, drunkenly slobbering, or in the grip of uncontrollable drooling.
Luckily, some of them act in ways that cause me to change my mind, so no harm is done.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
1000 –
Sorry, belongs here:
http://judithcurry.com/2015/02/25/conflicts-of-interest-in-climate-science/#comment-678658
> I have a question for you.
Just one?
I left many at AT’s, e.g.:
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2015/02/18/climate-dialogue/#comment-49463
The “but Schneider” shows at least that Swood’s either a very talented rookie, or less new than presumed earlier.
Gary, Justin, Mike,
Red baiting is reminding progressives of things that they are trying really, really hard to forget. Things like last century’s climate predictions perturb the doublethink process. It’s a problem they’ve had at least since molotov ribbentrop, probably longer.
Joshua and Willard:
Willard, you linked to a post by Kevin O’Neill. Is that what you intended? But since this topic is “Conflicts of interest in climate science” and my remarks about Stephen Schneider definitely relate to that subject I will re-post here the post that was disallowed over on ATTP.
Marco had referenced http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/DetroitNews.pdf which was Schneider’s defense of his statement.
ATTP had mentioned that he was unhappy about having let me malign Stephen Schneider. I replied as follows:
I don’t want to malign Schneider at all, since to malign someone involves saying things about him that are untrue. However, this is an example of what we were talking about and what limits there should be on debate. When is an interpretation allowable as one that a reasonable and impartial observer could arrive at and when is it to be precluded as either being not a reasonable interpretation or as being incorrect or as being one not favored by most of the audience. Of course this is a proprietary forum and nobody but the owner has the right to post anything. Here is Schneider’s quote:
“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”
Schneider describes being “honest”: “…in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts…”
Schneider describes being “effective”: “…we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have…”
Then he says “Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”
Certainly there can be much overlap between “honest” and “effective.” But aren’t some of the elements of “effective” and “honest” that he describes mutually exclusive? Is it logically possible for a person to tell “the whole truth…we must include all doubts” at the same time as he is making “little mention of any doubts we might have”?
Isn’t it true that “honest” must trump “effective” wherever they conflict? He urges being both but there can’t be both, as he describes them. So he ends by affirming both honesty and effectiveness whereas it seems to me that at most he should be urging effectiveness only to the extent it does not compromise honesty.
At the end of the day he does urge this conduct: “…we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have…” and says that each scientist must determine for himself how that is to be reconciled with telling “the whole truth.” He hopes it will not be reconciled to the disadvantage of either. Do you think he is implying that honesty trumps effectiveness and I missed it?
We have discussed that a scientist can also be an advocate and have policy preferences, and it has been suggested that these two roles should be separated so that the scientific work and role is not compromised by the advocacy. But doesn’t Schneider urge that a scientist should be an advocate in his role as scientist? That is, that he should report the results of his study (perhaps he has in mind the informal reporting) in a manner designed to influence the policy? How can that be considered compatible with the unbiased role we expect of scientists? Shouldn’t two scientists report the results of a study the same way regardless of their policy preferences?
Here is a report on responsible advocacy in science: http://www.aaas.org/report/report-responsible-advocacy-science-standards-benefits-and-risks. Five items are mentioned:
1. Limit communication to area of expertise
2. Present information accurately, in clear, understandable terms.
3. Disclose relevant interests
4. Point out weaknesses and limitations
5. Mention opposing scientific views
Doesn’t being “effective,” as Schneider describes it, conflict with items 2, 4 and 5? (As to 3, if one of his personal interests or concerns is the belief that climate change is a serious threat, under what circumstances is he required to disclose that? Is he in a catch 22 in that he should not include advocacy when reporting his results but he is required to disclose his relevant interests, which involve disclosing his belief that a certain policy should be adopted? Or is he required to disclose his interests only when he is trying to be “effective”?) Is the following the correct interpretation of these rules: “Find the right balance between (a) pointing out weaknesses and limitations and (b) in cases where the scientist has an interest in the policy outcome, making dramatic statements, and little mention of any doubts we might have”? To what extent are Schneider’s statements compatible with these rules concerning responsible advocacy?
Shouldn’t Schneider have said that reporting scientific results (whether formally or informally) should not be done in a fashion designed to advocate policy, but given that scientists are human, at the very least such activity must not take place to the extent that it at all conflicts with the honesty required by scientific ethics. If a person is finding a balance between being effective and being honest doesn’t that involve a little bit of compromise to each? What else is meant by “balance”?
> you linked to a post by Kevin O’Neill. Is that what you intended?
No. I intended to link to my last series of questions, which I will repeat since they are still unanswered by Swood’s latest JAQing off:
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2015/02/18/climate-dialogue/#comment-49183
uggggg
swood1000. Don’t use questions to argue.
Just stop it. It’s annoying.
Willard –
Yes
I believe so. Do you have a better one?
Not if by “idealize” you refer to a type of behavior higher or beyond that required in the normal course of affairs. Do you agree that “effective” and “honest” should not be “balanced” but that rather “honest” trumps “effective” wherever there is a conflict, and that this principle must be applied literally, and in actuality, in practice? What exceptions would you make?
No more than, for example, the criminal code rests on an appeal to perfection. If an applicable ethical rule requires a scientist to “point out weaknesses and limitations,” do you think that is the same as “point out some but not necessarily all weaknesses and limitations”? Is it too much to expect a scientist to actually point out all known weaknesses and limitations?
Let’s see. The definition of truism is “an undoubted or self-evident truth; especially : one too obvious for mention.” Well, no. Although it is true I wouldn’t call it a truism.
I don’t know what you mean.
I don’t know. But there are many common things that are true.
No.
N/A
I don’t know what you mean.
Don’t mention it. Will you please point out the portion(s) of what I wrote that you believe to be untrue or questionable, along with your reasons?
Willard –
> Do you agree that “effective” and “honest” should not be “balanced” but that rather “honest” trumps “effective” wherever there is a conflict, and that this principle must be applied literally, and in actuality, in practice?
No, but this is irrelevant to what Schneider said. Schneider was reminding the truism that (scientific) communication implies a compromise between clarity and precision, thereby corresponding virtues. This interpretation is commonsensical, fits in one sentence, and does not rely on any counterfactual to be understood.
To illustrate that point, I can say that I hesitate to introduce the idea that the “but Schneider” meme confuses virtue ethics and deontology. The precision it could add would obscure the clarity of the preceding paragraph. Should I go for more clarity or more precision? It depends on the audience, the circumstances, and our own preferences.
Language is a social art.
***
> No more than, for example, the criminal code rests on an appeal to perfection.
The criminal code does not appeal to perfection, because it is usually not an argument.
The appeal to perfection in the “but Schneider” meme rests on the idea that we could determine once and for all how to conduct every communication performance.
This is far from being obvious.
1000 –
> Do you agree that “effective” and “honest” should not be “balanced” but that rather “honest” trumps “effective” wherever there is a conflict, and that this principle must be applied literally, and in actuality, in practice?
No, but this is irrelevant to what Schneider said. Schneider was reminding the truism that (scientific) communication implies a compromise between clarity and precision, thereby corresponding virtues. This interpretation is commonsensical, fits in one sentence, and does not rely on any counterfactual to be understood.
To illustrate that point, I will confide that I hesitate to introduce the idea that the “but Schneider” meme confuses virtue ethics and deontology. The precision it could add would obscure the clarity of the preceding paragraph. Should I go for more clarity or more precision? It depends on the audience, the circumstances, and our own preferences.
Language is a social art.
> No more than, for example, the criminal code rests on an appeal to perfection.
The criminal code does not appeal to perfection, because it is usually not an argument.
The appeal to perfection in the “but Schneider” meme rests on the idea that we could determine once and for all how to conduct every communication performance.
This is far from being obvious.
> No more than, for example, the [C] code rests on an appeal to perfection.
The code does not appeal to perfection, because it is usually not an argument.
The appeal to perfection in the “but Schneider” meme rests on the idea that we could determine once and for all how to conduct every communication performance.
This is far from being obvious.
Joshua –
You mentioned two different things here: a) expressing oneself so as not to antagonize, and b) intent to antagonize. How are we defining “antagonize”? How about this one: “to incur or provoke the hostility of.” Let’s suppose I am expressing a viewpoint (like my one on Schneider below) and am trying to logically justify my position. I can express it to one person who, while he opposes this viewpoint, is unlikely to take offense. I might know that another person is more hot-headed and would probably take offense. Do I antagonize the second person but not the first? If I go ahead and post the remark to the second person, is that an “intent to antagonize” since I did intend to make the statement knowing that that would be the result, even though that was not my goal?
I believe that the general rule should be that if the viewpoint is not inherently abusive, and if the poster is not attempting to antagonize under cover of a legitimate post (trolling), and if it is an arguably reasonable point of view, and if the site is one that purports to allow all viewpoints, then it should not be prohibited on the grounds that it is extremely at odds with the view held by many at that site.
swood,
I know I probably shouldn’t bother, but here’s something that you – and many others – don’t seem to get. My blog isn’t some kind of public service. I don’t particularly benefit from letting people post comments, and they’re certainly not paying to do so. I – and the one person who helps me moderate – have to deal with the consequence of comments, even if you didn’t intend to antagonize. Others are more than welcome to run their blogs as they wish, but I’ll continue to run mine as I wish. If people don’t like that, they don’t need to comment. If I don’t let you post a comment, or choose to moderate it, it’s not censorship; as you’ve proven here by posting the comment that I chose to moderate.
> then it should not be prohibited on the grounds that it is extremely at odds with the view held by many at that site.
Why is there a “then”?
What does it have to do with everything written before that?
Isn’t that called a non sequitur?
Isn’t Swood begging the question with this non sequitur?
Shouldn’t we be able to think about six other reasons to exclude Swood’s comments before breakfast?
Many thanks!
ATTP:
All true. It is also true that it was the first post I have ever had “censored” so to speak. If I had realized how common that seems to be I probably would not have been so shocked.
You are correct that I do not understand blogs from your perspective. I do not know what the “consequences of comments” can be. My assumption was that there is no need to police beyond reining in excess and keeping people civil. My assumption also was that sharp disagreement, as long as it is in good faith and is not abusive or frivolous, is something one would not want to discourage. Perhaps frivolous is in the mind of the beholder, as you no doubt believe the bulk of the skeptic position to be frivolous. I might suggest that you enhance your “Comments policy” page to add a paragraph explaining the pressures you are under, and that underlie your need to moderate more heavily. Also, you might add a paragraph explaining flat out that there are some topics that you believe have been subject to abuse on the blogosphere, that those topics will be moderated as necessary, and that the First Amendment is a limitation on the government, not on private blog owners. Then in your moderation note include a link to the comments policy page. Otherwise the inference arises (in the minds of some people) that comments on your blog are not moderated in order to exclude certain topics (using exclusion criteria that need only be sufficient to you) and there can be an unnecessary misunderstanding.
Also, you said that I seemed to be changing to a different topic without answering all posts that had been sent to me, but I was actually following a LIFO (last in first out) procedure where I start at the end and go backward. If this is unacceptable you might mention it also on your comments policy page.
Whoo, Baby!
========
Willard –
“Then” is an adverb. Here it means “in that case.” For example: “If no reasons exist to prohibit something, then it should not be prohibited.” I’m afraid I will have to refer you to an introductory grammar text if you are still having difficulty with this.
You need editors like Judy and Steve McIntyre. The route of the zamboni heads first for religion and politics. And then there’s everything else.
===================
Joshua –
This notion underlies your entire post. I think he does. Did you think that my suggestions were ill-intentioned, or were meant other than as suggestions for reducing misunderstanding, made in good faith? On ATTP when I posted that the public perception of some scientists can be impacted by what other scientists do, you replied
No, that’s not what I said. That’s your imagination.
> “Then” is an adverb. Here it means “in that case.” For example: “If no reasons exist to prohibit something, then it should not be prohibited.” I’m afraid I will have to refer you to an introductory grammar text if you are still having difficulty with this.
The difficulty is not grammatical, but logical: the “then” triggers a non sequitur. Here is the last part, again:
The “extremely at odds &c,” besides being false, is irrelevant for what precedes that “then”.
Before mansplaining an adverb, Swood might need to mind that his playing the ref stands on a suboptimal inference.
So, even after me pointing out in the comments that I was uncomfortable with the discussion and that I would do something about future comments, wasn’t enough to indicate that future comments about the topic might be moderated?
ATTP –
You are correct. You did state your concern. At one point you said that you were uncomfortable about having let me malign Stephen Schneider, and that you were going to do something about such comments in the future. I think I assumed that you were objecting to offhand statements that Schneider affirmed “effectiveness” at the expense of “honesty” but without thinking that this would apply to a reasoned review of what Schneider actually said and what meaning those words could have. However, since I had previously posted to Arthur Smith a mini version of my argument I guess I should have realized that you were referring to any assertion questioning Schneider’s statement, of whatever nature.
You had also referred to one line of discussion as one that we should probably drop since it wasn’t going anywhere but it was not clear that Schneider was the focus of this. (And by the way I never got to respond to you on that. You said “We trust the method, not the individuals!” But if that is true in such an absolute sense then why do Journals request disclosure of funding sources from those publishing studies?) Marco sent me a link to Schneider’s defense of his statement and I answered it. If I had it to do over I would have answered “I’d love to respond but the moderator believes that criticism of Schneider is not constructive, so we’ll have to leave it at that.” That aspect of it had just not sunk in, so your accusation that I was inattentive probably has some merit.
Perhaps it would be helpful if moderators had handy a list of links to posts in prior threads, and if an over-posted issue is raised give the person the links to the discussion and tell him to first do his homework by reading the threads, perhaps even disallowing questions that have already been adequately answered or assertions that have already been refuted, or comments that do not contain an explanation as to why the existing treatment is inadequate.
swood1000,
It would also be helpful if people realised that moderating is rarely easy, never perfect, and always thankless.
Two separate things, IMO. Openness is good; we should be willing to disclose who funds our research and should be willing to acknowledge any conflicts of interest. What I was getting at is that even if someone we trust – who has no conflicts of interest – publishes a paper, we wouldn’t assume it was right. Similarly, if someone we don’t trust – who has conflicts of interest – pubishes a paper, we don’t immediately assume it’s wrong. At the end of the day, we trust something once it has been replicated and reproduced so often that the result becomes reliable/robust (whatever word you prefer). Okay, there’s no fixed rule as to how often this has to happen, but ultimately we trust the method, not the people.
1000 –
Re, Schneider:
See the related discussion:
http://judithcurry.com/2014/12/17/ethics-and-climate-change-policy/#comment-656355
That’s why I say that you have nothing new to add to the Schneider discussion, and it’s perfectly understandable for Anders to not want to repeat the same answers to the same viewpoints he considers obviously flawed.
BTW – I don’t agree with Anders moderation policy, as I think that comments should only be moderated out if the are in some sense extreme (as opposed to run-of-the-mill, which is how I see your Schneider-related comments).
Joshua –
Thanks for the link to the prior discussion. That is a useful approach. I read your posts carefully and I think I understand your point of view.
Your view is that Schneider was talking specifically about “sound-bite journalism” where the scientist is asked to explain a complex situation in, let’s say, under 50 words. You are saying that he was describing an attempt to impart to the lay public “in short sound bites in the media what the essence of a controversial complex problem is.” Let’s consider the phrase “make little mention of any doubts we might have.”
As the scientist views it there is some doubt, but to use up some of his allotted 50 words with a sentence about doubt would misrepresent the amount of doubt he believes is actually warranted, and would reduce the number of words that remain to describe the essence of the problem. Since he believes doubt to be a minor aspect of the whole, leaving it out entirely allows a more complete and accurate expression than mentioning it, given the constraints. His 50 words are not sufficient “to cover all the caveats in depth, (i.e., “being honest”) or to present all the plausible threats (i.e., “being effective”)” and so he is faced with a built-in communication failure and must just do the best he can, balancing both aspects to produce the closest thing he can to the truth. He says that within the constraints of sound-bite journalism “Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.” Do I understand you correctly? (I ask that with caution since to some people asking a question like that is an attempt to mislead and deceive. They appear to believe that only declarative sentences should be used, such as “That represents my understanding of your position and I await any necessary correction.” However I am unclear about when they think this applies or the reason for it.)
This understanding of Schneider’s solution sounds like a reasonable compromise, given a difficult problem. One difficulty with it is whether he was consistent in how he defined “being effective.” In one place he said it was “to present all the plausible threats.” However in another place he described it this way:
This goes beyond the problems inherent in trying to accurately express oneself in 50 words but adds the element of advocacy of political goals, based on personal values, interests and motivations. If the dilemma were simply between “honest” (cover all the caveats in depth) or “effective” (present all the plausible threats) then perhaps neither one has priority and one must balance as best one can. However if the dilemma is between “honest” (cover all caveats in depth) and “effective” (make the world a better place) then it seems that we are balancing honesty with personal political goals, raising an ethical problem. Your thoughts?
See also my previous post on this topic: http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/21/stephen-schneider-and-the-“double-ethical-bind”-of-climate-change-communication/
In politics, a faux pas is when a politician speaks the truth.
CAGW is a political movement, and Schneider was a virulent activist politician in the movement. Nothing he or his fellow acolytes say about his speech, which was clear on its face, and in context, changes its real meaning.
This is just the Gruberization of the climate debate. You see the same dishonesty in the current debate over whether the express language of Obamacare means exactly what its writers said it meant, or what they now want it to mean.
For those for whom there is no categorical difference between the truth and lies (TM Mosher), nothing more should be expected. But it is a waste of time debating the issue of integrity with those who deny there is any such thing as objective morality.
ATTP:
Does that really represent how you view things? So when Willie Soon or some other hardened “denier” publishes a paper you don’t immediately question it, and assume that liberties were taken with scientific procedures and that it is likely that the findings will not be valid?
Track record counts for a lot. If someone has published a series of dubious papers, the next one will meet more skepticism. They don’t look at the funders more than the track record.
1000 –
There are a bunch of different threads to this discussion that are hard to keep track of. Looks like I missed a couple of your comments above….
Let me at least respond to the one I excerpt below…although the discussion is getting kind of fractured and too complicated for productive blog exchange.
==> “Do I understand you correctly?”
Hmmm. There are two questions – one to understand me and the other to understand Schneider. My main point is that simply, to understand Schneider’s views, you should consider the full range of Schneider’s explanation of his views. You don’t have to accept all of his explanations as being transparent explanations of his views, or logically consistent, but you at least need to account for the full range of what he said and not cherry-pick from some of what he said to reach certain conclusions about what he meant without even addressing other things that he said about what he meant. I see the latter as happening most often when “skeptics” present their interpretations of Schneider’s views: they present their interpretations as facts, not interpretations, and they fail to account for the full range of what he said If a “skeptic” is willing to rise above that bias-confirming line of discussion, I see something to talk about. If he/she insists on maintaining that line of discussion, there’s nowhere to go. Thus, it comes across as deliberately antagonizing – even if the intent is not necessarily to be antagonistic per se.
And I think that in your most formulation, you have made a good faith effort to account for what Schneider said about what he meant. And I think that for the most part, you have made a good faith attempt to convey what Schneider intended by what he said.
To make a good argument about what Schneider said, IMO, you need to be able to restate what he said in your own words in a way that he would agree is an accurate description of what he meant. Do you think that your recent formulation would be one that he would agree with?
Speaking of questions:
==> “(I ask that with caution since to some people asking a question like that is an attempt to mislead and deceive.”
This is, IMO, inaccurate. If I understand the “some people” you’re referencing there (my sense is that it isn’t just some description of some random people who might exist somewhere), I think that this reformulation of how that “some people” view asking questions would not be one that they think accurately portrays their views.
==> ” They appear to believe that only declarative sentences should be used,”
That is, IMO, inaccurate – in the same way as what I just described above. Ask yourself, would that “some people” agree with your description of their views?
Back to Schneider.
==> “This goes beyond the problems inherent in trying to accurately express oneself in 50 words but adds the element of advocacy of political goals, based on personal values, interests and motivations. If the dilemma were simply between “honest” (cover all the caveats in depth) or “effective” (present all the plausible threats) then perhaps neither one has priority and one must balance as best one can. However if the dilemma is between “honest” (cover all caveats in depth) and “effective” (make the world a better place) then it seems that we are balancing honesty with personal political goals, raising an ethical problem. Your thoughts?”
I don’t think that humans are very capable of distinguishing between accurately expressing their views in 50 words and trying to make the world a better place. I am very skeptical of people who claim that they can make such a distinction. I am skeptical of people who decry the influence of “advocacy” by claiming that they, unlike others, are not influenced by their values and ideology – particularly in highly politicized contexts such as climate change. So I don’t accept the definitions that you create – which rely on binary constructions and conditions of mutual exclusivity.
I am not saying that the elements that you describe don’t exist, or that balancing those elements isn’t where the rubber of ethics meets the road.
This is the difficulty that I have with the way that the notion of “advocacy” is being leveraged by partisans in the climate wars. I see very few participants who, IMO, would not fall under a non-partisan definition of “advocate.” I see many people decry the impact of others as being a corrupting influence of “advocacy” but who then rely on highly selective, and I might add almost entirely unscientific, definitions of “advocacy” to fallaciously exclude their own input from the negative dynamic they describe
Although I agree that advocacy can sometimes result in negative outcomes in a proximal sense, I see advocacy as in balance a good thing – and a very important component of our social fabric. I think that we’re all advocates here. I think that selective criticism of “advocacy” is unfortunate in that it leverages an important part of our societal fabric to score political points.
IMO – it is more useful to discuss where reasoning is fallacious and where fallacious reasoning is used as a tool for advocacy. I’m distrustful or the moralizing about advocacy, and I’m skeptical when people use unscientifically qualified arguments about the morality of advocacy (and morality more generally) to somehow influence what kinds of conclusions we should draw about the science.
I tend to think that we’re all operating at pretty much the same moral plane here We all pretty much desire very similar outcomes. We tend to get stuck, however, on defending and attacking “positions” rather than discussing how to achieve shared interests. I’d rather look at what Schneider said as a useful segue into discussing the policy implications of decision-making in the face of uncertainty – rather than to bicker about our obviously subjective judgments about his morality. IMO, the vast majority of the morality-hunting and motive-hunting that I see in the climate wars looks to me like the basic identity-aggressive and identity-defensive behaviors that are the manifestations of cultural cognition.
Sorry for the rambling.
swood1000,
What I may think when I see a paper from someone I may not trust and who may have an acknowledged conflict of interest is not all that relevant. I used the word “we” specifically, and was referring to the scientific community as a collective, not to individual scientists/people. The scientific community would not (at least I’ve never encountered this) reject a study simply because the author lacked trust and had an acknowledged conflict of interest. That would be an insufficient strong reason to explicitly reject some work, and quite rightly so.
Lol!
==> “But it is a waste of time debating the issue of integrity with those who deny there is any such thing as objective morality.
GaryM makes an excellent point. We should just go with his definition of “objective morality” and get on with it.
Keep in mind, also, that Gary usefully informs us that the 90% or so of the American public who are to the left of him politically (and are, according to his views on “objective morality” are “progressives” and thus morally depraved) are “incapable” of critical thinking. So not only would it be wasteful to exchange views with them because they “deny” Gary’s view of “objective morality”, it just be doubly wasteful because of their deprived thinking skills.
Joshua,
To be fair, Gary did say
which could simply mean that to debate with him we would simply have to accept the existence of an objective morality; we wouldn’t necessarily need to accept his specific definition of that objective morality. To be fair to you, though, this was also my immediate response to his comment
Anders –
==> “which could simply mean that to debate with him we would simply have to accept the existence of an objective morality; we wouldn’t necessarily need to accept his specific definition of that objective morality. To be fair to you, though, this was also my immediate response to his comment”
Sure – I was thinking about that as I wrote my comment.
So maybe we can get some definition of terms and premises – which would be the only way to know if there’s a meaningful distinction between what I said about Gary’s views and the alternative description you offered.
GaryM won’t talk to me (because I’m immoral – presumably as determined by his “objective” standards of morality) ….but maybe he’ll talk to you.
If you wouldn’t mind, ask him how he determines that an “objective morality” exists? Ask him to define that “objective morality,” And ask him to explain how he knows that the 90% of the American public that he thinks are incapable of critical thinking and who are immoral, don’t accept that an “objective morality” (as he defines it) even exists.
“For those for whom there is no categorical difference between the truth and lies (TM Mosher), nothing more should be expected. But it is a waste of time debating the issue of integrity with those who deny there is any such thing as objective morality.”
##################
this is funny. I say there is no point in discussing integrity with people
who misrepresent the views of others.
Truth and lies? Epistemics. Hmm, I think the discussion over “truth”
in the philosophical sense is uninteresting. I’d place myself more with Quine, or rather Rorty’s sense of Quine.. easier just to say pragmatic.
In the end you want beliefs that work. asking whether these beliefs
“correspond” to reality or asserting they work because they are true,
add nothing but a little comfort. I can do with out that comfort. so, works and dont work. 100% american pragmatist. Motherhood and Apple pie.
Objective morality? similarly uninteresting concept. It’s not that there isnt an “objective” morality. Add a plural and you might get closer.
if you think of a moral intuition as the “observables” in ethical theory
Then one could say there are many theories that explain the same observables. And further, that there are some observables that people
disagree about. The failure to resolve these differences doesnt render judgments “subjective”.
Now of course this nuance upsets GaryM. And in a show of integrity
he misrepresents his opponents.. all in the name of integrity.
What does “objective morality” have to say about African bushmeat?
The integrity calculus never made much sense to me, after going through all the differentials.
===========
Joshua –
You appear to be saying that (a) we all have policy preferences, (b) to say that having a policy preference is unethical is absurd, and (c) there is nothing wrong with the fact that a scientist likes and wanted the policy results that his study made more likely.
But we have to deal with a situation where the scientist is reporting the study in a way different from how he would have reported it if he had not been trying to influence policy. If he is making little mention of any doubts for reasons having to do with the need to keep his statement under 50 words, then we might say that the fact that he also has policy reasons to exclude his doubts is not an ethical violation (though in some cases he should probably not even make a statement). But let’s suppose that the scientist has no reason to make little mention of his doubts other than to influence policy. Is that permissible?
1000 –
==> “You appear to be saying that (a) we all have policy preferences, (b) to say that having a policy preference is unethical is absurd,…”
Nope on part (b). Not even close.
I suggest that you go back and read what I said again, and see if you can restate part (b) in a way that I would agree is an accurate reflection of my viewpoint.
You don’t have to do that, obviously, and you could legitimately be confused, but I have to think that your seeming inability (or is it unwllingness?) to reflect back my view in a way that I’d agree is at least close to accurate indicates at least some degree of bad faith.
Now maybe there is no bad faith there, but I’m not inclined to try to explain again unless you at least attempt to do a better job. It just seems like it would be kind of pointless. Generally, I think that the writer has the burden of responsibility for getting the reader to understand but in this case I think that the error in intepretation that you made is quite obvious. If someone tries to restate my view and misses on some subtle point, I am inclined to try to restate my point with clarification. I don’t feel so inclined in this situation. I mostly just feel discouraged about further engagement.
If you’re not interested in trying again, so be it. We’ll both survive just fine.
Pending a closer description of my view relative to point (b), we could go on to discuss your point (c) and the rest.
I would suggest that if you look at the stage that we’ve reached here in our convo, you’d see the point at which in a parallel discussion, someone like Anders might be inclined to not want more of similar comments at his blog
ATTP –
Perhaps this dialog has run its course. Let me just add this. Even if what you are saying were true of scientists towards each other it is not true of the way that the general public views science. According to this study http://www.pnas.org/content/111/Supplement_4/13593.full#sec-5 climate scientists score well as being trustworthy, with the “Achilles’ heel” being the “gain research money” motivation. You may say that it is not important whether the general public trusts scientists as individuals because they should trust the method, not the individual. But I feel confident that the general public (a) has not been trained in the scientific method, and (b) is unable to read a scientific study either to understand what it says or to evaluate the method used. How scientific results impact public policy is controlled by how much confidence the general public has in the scientific results, and this confidence can be reduced if the public believes that the scientific results consist of “scary scenarios” put forward by scientists primarily in order to influence public policy.
Joshua –
You must have misread this, since it says the same thing as (a). Everybody has policy preferences, it is absurd to say that they don’t, and it is absurd to say that having policy preferences is unethical. Isn’t that your position?
No, I don’t see it. What would be the reason?
1000 –
==> “You must have misread this,”
Perhaps, but with each additional glass of wine, the chances of determining whether I have misread, diminishes. We only have one or two posts before I reach the point of diminishing returns (if I haven’t already). :-) I take no responsibility for whether what follows makes any sense, whatsoever.
Perhaps my confusion is with regard to the difference between:
“[it is absurd] to say that having a policy preference is unethical, ,…”
your first phrasing, and
“[it is absurd] to say that having policy preferences is unethical….”
your second phrasing.
I don’t think that it is absurd to say that having (or reflecting) any particular policy preference (i.e., “a” policy preference) is unethical.
I think that it is absurd to say that having (or reflecting) policy preferences is, in and of itself, unethical,
We all have policy preferences. Of course, we might argue that a particular policy preference held by someone else is unethical. It would not be absurd to do so. But IMO, it is absurd for people to claim to not be reflecting their policy preferences, in particular while pontificating about the harmful effects of others having policy preferences (as I see so often from Judith and other “skeptics”), in even further in particular in such a politicized context,
==> “No, I don’t see it. What would be the reason?”
The reason would be a perception of bad faith – as I had, rightly or wrongly, w/r/t your characterization of my views.
Usually, we have a large degree of control over whether someone perceives us in such a way. We can choose to act, accordingly, and usually that doesn’t mean suppression of opinions, but exercising care in how those opinions are expressed.
Joshua –
Let me rephrase what I was trying to say. Clearly a scientist will have one or more policy preferences, as we all do. There is nothing wrong with this. It is the human condition. However, do you think it is justifiable for a scientist, when he is informally reporting the result of a scientific study, to make little mention of doubts where making little mention of doubts is not required for any reason other than to influence policy?
Joshua –
I think that in many cases the degree of control is much more limited. I think that many people react in a knee-jerk fashion: if a person appears to hold the opposite viewpoint they immediately view what he says in the worst possible light.
In addition, there appear to be two types of posters: the veterans and the non-veterans. The veterans have seen and participated in all the arguments, and when they see an argument raised (such as Stephen Schneider) that they think has been argued to death, and where the poster appears to be opposed to their point of view, they tend to be quick to assume that the poster is aware of this fact and is just trying to be irritating, as if his post had been the last post of a thread in which all viewpoints on that topic had already been expressed and thoroughly explored. I think that is why some of my comments over on ATTP were mocked instead of being responded to seriously.
I think that if a veteran poster believes that a comment or question has already been thoroughly explored, instead of assuming bad faith on the part of the poster, supplying a reference to the prior discussion would be a better first response. Of course, for many people on both sides of these questions, venting one’s spleen is one of the primary objectives of posting, and if one ventures to post on a blog on the “other” side one had better be ready for that.
1000 –
I observed your interactions at ATTP (not terribly closely).
I won’t defend how you were treated or the fact that you were moderated.
But on the other hand, I think that you could have anticipated and responded to the signals you got, more effectively (assuming your intent was good faith exchange of views). I think you had more control over what transpired than you exercised.
1000 –
==> “However, do you think it is justifiable for a scientist, when he is informally reporting the result of a scientific study, to make little mention of doubts where making little mention of doubts is not required for any reason other than to influence policy?”
Hmmm.
Justifiability is a complicated judgement call without considering relevant context.
We have already discussed context, and Schneider referred to context. That context is often left out when “skeptics” criticize what he said. As we saw with GaryM, they often act as if he was trying to justify a moral transgression for which no contextual factors could even be relevant.
For me, personally, as a general principle it is important to try to quantify uncertainty when discussing scientific conclusions. I think it is interesting to discuss the implications of that belief of mine within the context that Schneider described.
So I don’t understand why, after we began to discuss the context, you are now asking me my opinion about some decontextualized construct. That looks to me like a tired pattern that plays out over and over in these discussions. Why would you now, move back to the decontextualized discussion after we began discussing the importance of context, after I pointed out that I think that context is crucially important? I repeated that point. I pointed you to the other thread to underline that point. You spoke to that point, previously.
Is it that you agree with Gary – that context should be irrelevant as some precondition for acceptable morality? If so, there isn’t much for us to discuss.
Is it because you’re ignoring what I said about the importance of context? Why would you do that? If that is so, there isn’t much for us to discuss.
It seems to me that you should be able to anticipate the problem I have with this shift that you’ve made from discussing Schneider in context and back to some decontextualized construct. We’ve already been down this road.
I see your question as a rhetorical one – as I’ve already given you important information related to your question that you seem to be ignoring. It seems to me that you’re putting words into my mouth, not asking me for an opinion. If I were someone with Anders’ moderation policy, and this were my blog, I would be tempted to moderate you out at this point, and it would have nothing to do with not wanting to be confronted with alternate points of view.
Joshua –
Let me change the question, then. Can you describe a context in which you think it is justifiable for a scientist, when he is informally reporting the result of a scientific study, to make little mention of doubts where making little mention of doubts is not required for any reason other than to influence policy?
A rhetorical question has an obvious answer. What is the obvious answer to the question I asked in the last post?
Perhaps by not saying things or taking positions that I knew would be extremely unpopular over there, or by contradicting people less directly. I don’t see how any other type of control could have been of any use.
1000 –
As you think about blog moderation, consider the following (which I found quite amusing even if it is typical)….
First we have this:
And then we have this:
Please notice that PMHinSC’s extolling of the “meat” of the convo before Judith’s deletes comments for being off-topic.
It’s just another example that blog moderation is almost always subjective. Very rarely is the moderation based on consistent criteria (I could be biased, but I think that Judith’s moderation is particularly capricious).
Consider how Judith posted an original post that engaged in tribalistic conflation of fact with opinion about the “controversy” related to MSLB, and then deleted comments that spoke to the “controversy” related to MSLB. Consider that the original post referred to Barackobama.com, and Judith deleted comments because they referred to Barackobama.com.
The bottome line is that if you are writing comments on someone’s blog, you should expect a subjective application of criteria by the moderator. As such, if you’re particularly concerned about having your comments moderated out, you should adjust what you post accordingly. If you choose not to do so, that’s on you. If you’re moderated out, it almost always means that you chose not to adapt to the context.
If the characteristic of moderation weren’t almost always so subjective, and you stumbled into a particular site and were surprised by a subjective application of moderation rules, then it would be understandable of you would feel that you weren’t accountable. But the default value for moderation that I’ve seen at practically every site in the blogosphere is a selective application of moderation rules. (I can think of only one blog, off the top of my head, that moderates comments and does so through a consistent application of moderation criteria across the board).
1000 –
==> ” Can you describe a context in which you think it is justifiable for a scientist, when he is informally reporting the result of a scientific study, to make little mention of doubts where making little mention of doubts is not required for any reason other than to influence policy?”
I thought that we were talking about Schneider?
==> “A rhetorical question has an obvious answer.”
That’s not how I think of a rhetorical question. For example, suppose I asked you, “Can’t you engage with me without using bad faith rhetorical devices?”
Would the answer to that question be obvious?
==> “Perhaps by not saying things or taking positions that I knew would be extremely unpopular over there, or by contradicting people less directly.”
First, you just conflated two techniques that are quite different from one another.
Second, I think that there are other, useful, ways that you could exercise more control. Can’t you think of any others?
Easy solution, let Joshua moderate.
===========
I have asked the same question now in multiple ways and been met each time with a refusal to answer. This is exactly the same response as the one I got from multiple posters over on ATTP. I think that if I had posed that question to Stephen Schneider right before he died he would have said that no such context existed. (Apart from ridiculous ones such as if somebody were holding a gun to his head. In fact, the purpose of his vigorous defense of himself on this issue was precisely to deny the implication that his answer could be yes. It’s just that many people believe that his earlier statement indicated that his ‘real’ answer was yes, which he thereafter tried to back away from.) The fact that you cannot bring yourself to reply to the question can only mean that (a) you are reluctant to disclose your answer, or (b) you don’t have an answer. So I think I’ll have to be satisfied with that. Thanks for the conversation. Take care.
1000 –
==> “The fact that you cannot bring yourself to reply..”
Your logic is flawed. It is not that I “cannot bring [my]self to reply.”
Do you think that your failure to account for obvious possibilities other than what you stated is an example of bad faith exchange?
Joshua, 1000, & Attp,
From this observer uninvolved in the original discussion at ATTP I’d like to point out that Dr. Curry was kind enough to allow the continuation of the discussion to occur here. In case this wasn’t obvious.
Danny –
So noted. And not unappreciated
Nothing like a friendly port! But there will be no need to trespass any further on her hospitality as my participation in these discussions has concluded. Many thanks!
Pingback: Congressman Raul Grijalva’s Witch Hunt | 3000 Quads
They have the people begging government to enforce the wishes of cartels.
Trial and error found a way by which they will never have to stand in a docket & still get their voting rights.
Any tactic to distract from getting to the truth and exposing the big lie of cagw. There is no honesty in this witch hunt, and you can bet that the clapping seals, aka the msm, will exaggerate or flat out make up “news” that smears anyone daring to challenge the consensus. I applaud your courage Dr. Curry, as you take fire from both sides of the “debate”.
Why is it considered out of hand it seems that all government funding is pure in intent while all private funding is dirty money automatically requiring a quid pro quo?
For example. If not for the funding of several private foundations this nation’s Astronomy resources this nations first great optical telescopes would not have come into existence when they did and other nations would have led the way.
@rah You are right to some extent. I admit that I have this prejudice. The US Congress controls the budget of the government funding agencies. But as far as I know, the Congress is not involved in specific grants. But private companies can be more involved in who they give money to. And their agenda is therefore suspect. In my opinion. Generalities always have an element of error.
The fact that Congress is not involved in agency grants simply makes the situation worse, since the agencies are certainly subject to executive branch (and NGO) agendas.
It is well known that the unionized Federal government staffers are Dimowits, by and large. Look at how the IRS goes after the TEA party as well as other conservatives and how the FCC declared by fiat that net neutrality is the law of the land. Dimowit to the core.
Right now Raul is small potatoes. Maybe he’s trying to attract more “attention.”
Total Campaign Contributions Received by Raúl M. Grijalva: $487,084
Public Sector Unions $52,000
Casinos/Gambling $47,591
Transportation Unions $34,000
Industrial Unions $30,200
General Labor Unions $27,250
Lawyers/Law Firms $23,200
Lobbyists $20,942
Crop Production & Basic Processing $19,650
Building Trade Unions $18,500
Hospitals/Nursing Homes $14,000
Service Employees International Union $15,000
International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers $10,000
American Crystal Sugar $10,000
Border Health $10,000
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union $10,000
United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America $10,000
International Brotherhood of Teamsters $10,000
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees $10,000
National Education Association $10,000
American Federation of Teachers $10,000
http://maplight.org/us-congress/legislator/268-ral-m-grijalva
From that same site:
Top 10 Contributing Zip Codes
Washington, DC 20036 $59,624
Washington, DC 20001 $58,400
Washington, DC 20006 $45,000
Tucson, AZ 85718 $30,416
Washington, DC 20005 $26,750
Washington, DC 20004 $22,750
Tucson, AZ 85716 $22,158
Washington, DC 20007 $18,500
Chicago, IL 60611 $15,000
Lakewood, OH 44107 $15,000
Just ask all the consensus scientists to state their funding sources. A big long list of US taxpayer funded agencies might show the discrepancy in funding. It could be very embarrassing.
At the end of every climate journal article is a statement about funding.
rmdobservations: At the end of every climate journal article is a statement about funding.
It only applies to the support for the work on that paper. This brings us directly back to the Soon case, who was vilified for support he received that did not fund his work on the paper with Monckton, Legates, and Briggs.
Possibly relevant quote from Mahatma Ghandi –
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn
Mike Flynn
Based on these True words of wisdom then it looks like the battle is nearly over.
I would also like to say that any COI issues will go unresolved for so long that the righteous ones who like to be heard and do not like to listen will not be able to comprehend or absorb the information requested let alone act on it. Best wishes to you Judith.
So sad to see the replies from the community “to establish climate change”. Hell, changing the name from climate warming to climate change (which is of course always happening) hit me hard, since growing up in 1950-60’s with climate cooling with some of the same activists, and clued me into the lying. This is still there. And now upping the ante. As said, so sad. And yet you let the useless Josuah and “Fan” to continue their mindless commentary. You are Prof Curry a very good person.
This is not about conflict of interest, but about tarring your opponents with having consorted with devils (ie, the Koch brothers).
Conflict of interest is everywhere. Every scientist has a point of view that colors his work. Some prefer experiments, some theory.
Every source of funding but a very few come with strings attached of some sort. Most federal funding, even for “basic research”, now wants a statement of significance for society (just saying it helps us understand the atom isn’t good enough) and one is supposed even to structure the project to achieve progressive goals like minority recruitment to science. The call for proposals is often phrased in terms of protecting oceans or enhancing biodiversity, rather than studying same. It is almost impossible to get a grant without making some promise about your results before you have even done the work.
But all of this is why we have the scientific method and why science is ad hoc–everyone can contribute and we all then must evaluate what is produced in terms of quality and what it means. This striving for consensus is sick and totalitarian–it isn’t science.
Your assessment seems to be based on first hand knowedge. You are right about the grant writing. Oh, to be an independently wealthy scientist left only to study what is interesting.
Oh, to be an independently wealthy scientist left only to study what is interesting.
That’s fine if you’re doing it only for your own interest or benefit. However both in academia and industry, the self-funded are generally judged to have been unable to convince anyone else to fund them, putting them at a distinct disadvantage in marketing their ideas, products, or whatever to others.
Heh, whores to utility instead of to curiosity. Hmmm, that’s the ticket.
=================
http://files.libertyfund.org/econtalk/y2007/Yandleregulation.mp3
http://files.libertyfund.org/econtalk/y2007/Yandleregulation.mp3
Bruce Yandle of Clemson University explains why politics makes such strange bedfellows and the often peculiar alliance of self-interested special interests with more altruistic motives. He uses his insights to explain some of the seemingly perverse but politically understandable effects of the Clean Air Act, the tobacco settlement and other regulation.
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/01/bruce_yandle_on.html
DeSmogBlog has received $217,960. in 2013 from the Oak Foundation of Geneva, Switzerland under the Environment grant category. The person in charge of grants at Oak used to be a honcho with WWF. Oak Foundation is pushing for carbon trading. http://www.oakfnd.org/node/1293 INTERPOL’S “Guides to Carbon Trading Crimes” indicates carbon trades are the playground of organized crime and white collar criminals (as did a 2009 Deloitte Australia report).
There were many more Oak grants to US ENGOs.
From the article about Interpol’s guide to crime in carbon trading:
“The guide includes several case studies from around the world where greenhouse gas accounting firms, national authorities operating in under-regulated jurisdictions, and individuals or companies claiming to offset emissions in return for investment have cut corners, falsified information or received bribes.”
The news article:
http://www.interpol.int/en/News-and-media/News/2013/PR090/
Interpol’s guide to carbon trading crime:
http://www.interpol.int/content/download/20122/181158/version/3/file/Guide%20to%20Carbon%20Trading%20Crime.pdf
Tesla lost money but made approximately $80,000,000 selling carbon credits. That could be seen as a public subsidy for a company that sells electric cars to rich people that get a tax credit for their toy. I wonder if those people get a free pass to the commuting/carpool lane too. Who said life is fair?
They’ve found Mosher’s marbles.
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/02/18/vast-bed-metal-balls-found-in-deep-sea/?intcmp=ob_article_footer_text&intcmp=obnetwork
I don’t see how this situation can do anything other than escalate. I don’t see how it can be good for any climate scientist regardless of their views. All it is likely to do is scare off potential contributors and make making a living much more difficult for everyone in the field.
True.
I’m gonna have to call you ‘The Sensible Alarmist’.
============================
Rep. Raul Grijalva is committing slander, libel and publicly attacking the foundations of the scientific method. He will have to stand before the Judge of all the world who declared:
I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak
Are you now, or have you ever been, an Independent Thinker?
+1000 Best of Show
I’ll need to take advice on that.
Rep Grijalva (D-AZ) To Hold Hearings on Phrenology Deniers http://wp.me/p31sf8-1DY
I am worried about something else. The United States was founded on a principle of freedom. Our forefathers disobeyed The King. Is it a crime to disobey The President? His(?) website http://www.barackobama.com surely suggests that you can be paraded in streets for that crime – actually, not for disobeying, merely for disagreeing. That the attack against Prof. Curry, Prof. Pielke and others followed within days may be a coincidence or a coordination. We should ask a conspiracy expert Prof. Lewandowski to resolve it.
This is what happens when you put beauty contest winners in charge of a country. The results tend to be far less pretty than the contestants.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Reblogged this on the WeatherAction News Blog and commented:
A very thoughtful take on the Climate Inquisition.
NOTICE this: what the Congressman did not do is announce that all past and future witnesses would be evaluated for possible conflicts of interest. He only picked on a select handful of independent thinkers who do not toe the line in some way. What makes it obvious that this is a witch-hunt trolling for anything to use against its targets is the lack of balance and lack of comprehensive standards. This is purely a biased fishing expedition….
We ride the backs of devils to secret places deep in the woods to fornicate, drink crude oil, and swear allegiance to Satan inscribed in blood.
We bear marks of the depraved. Birth marks, the devil’s brand. “Prickers” are coming to prick these marks. If they do not bleed, it is conclusive evidence of depravity.
One hundred thousand people, mostly elderly women, eventually signed statements confessing to precisely the above (save the oil) and were burned or hanged.
We naked apes are weird.
The postmodern inquisition has begun.
I worship Baphomet
Everything goes to one extreme before it breaks and moves the other way. Some runs like religions can go for 100’s of years, others last less than a few weeks.
If everything was going sweetly there would be no need for the pressure and attacks.
There is a lot at stake at the end of this year and silencing critics by any means is fair game.
There is no hope in logic, everything rests on the weather and weather patterns.
If 2015 looks like being much colder than usual, If the Arctic freezes up, if….
then there is some hope.
Funding declaration is a double edged sword however,
People with green funding will be exposed.
People will be looking ever more closely at the funding of those who call for checks on funding. A certain democrat will be in big trouble soon as this call will focus attention more on his and his allies funding than anyone else.
You may be troubled Judith,
Rep Grijalva (D-AZ) will be very, very sorry he has started throwing stones and sooner [sorry Willie] rather than later.
So far 2015 looks to be warmer, and by quite a bit. Too early to be guessing.
JCH,
You wrote –
“Too early to be guessing.” If you are not guessing, upon what facts do you base your statement that 2015 looks to be warmer?
Warmer than what? Warmer where? Warmer when? By how much? Do you understand what you are saying?
You cannot even define what you are saying, unless I am mistaken. More vague Warmist throw aways – worth nothing, and designed to obfuscate rather than illuminate.
Please feel free to correct me, if you feel slighted. A relevant fact or two would be appreciated. Assumptions about the future are not actually facts.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Data for Jan and for Feb to date.
Mike Flynn,
the only reason the planet will be ”much warmer” in 2015 is; because on Paris conference they intend to declare the ”skeptics” as nutcases and start issuing straight jackets for then…
The planet is never warmer, or colder overall – will not be in 2015 also; But the phony skeptics would believe anything, accept the truth… it’s time
“So far 2015 looks to be warmer, and by quite a bit”
Well I just got up and all the car windshields are covered in frost. This is Houston and there are probably only two ice scrapers in the whole city. The morning rush hour will be fun as Texas drivers have a somewhat strange attitude to driving on solid water.
JCH | February 26, 2015 at 12:17 am |
“Data for Jan and for Feb to date”
January was warm second hottest on data but February?
On the 26th February.
You have no data for February.
It Ain’t out yet.
Pacific still hot , probably the cause of the January readings but…
Antarctic Ice refreezing on the way to a new record should help cool the world down, Arctic undecided.
Australia will be cooler this month and USA /Canada?
You tell me.
Hoping for a drop and then continued drops in the temp+++
Judith
I am troubled and sorry for you, that such an attack has been leveled at you. Please remember that this is a political tactic, plain and simple. Those of us who admire the quality of you work, your principles, and your courage will only appreciate you more during this difficult time.
Just remind yourself of Saul Alinsky and his 12 rules for radicals. In particular, numbers 3,4,5,8 and 12. Understand that a fish stinks from the head, and that our president literally taught this abhorrent methodology and proudly utilized it as a community organizer. It is no wonder then that these tactics have transformed mainstream politics, and not for the better, at a time when our fourth estate is little more than a confederacy of activist sycophantic dunces.
But also understand that because there are leaders of character and good will such as yourself, then this dreadful period in scientific and social discourse shall pass.
Thank you Dr. Curry for having the courage to stand up for a concept as simple yet powerful as intellectual integrity.
+ lots
Thank you SciGuy
Sciguy, + 100.
“the years have not been kind to any of us”
Perhaps Dr. Curry, but history will judge you kindly :)
All IPCC scientists have a conflict of interest when conducting climate research. The IPCC produces reports that support the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is the main international treaty on climate change. The ultimate objective of the UNFCCC is to “stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”
Therefore, all IPCC scientists cannot, in principle and in practice, say something that contradicts the ultimate objective of UNFCCC. It is ridiculous for a scientific body to have a political agenda namely to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is glaringly obvious that IPCC is a political advocacy group and cannot be unbiased in its reports.
As such, climate skeptics must petition to Congress to ban all IPCC scientists from making testimonies and reject IPCC reports unless corroborated by scientific studies outside the purview of IPCC.
I grant IPCC scientists can still testify in Congress but they should be regarded as environmental lobbyists not as climate scientists.
To be a humble GP you have to know anatomy.
Yet the free-for-all called “climate science” requires very little focus on the whole physical earth and what influences it from within and without. Almost all of the planet is ignored, as is what is beyond the planet.
If Willie Soon is prepared to glimpse at what might matter in this regard, and which is so wilfully neglected, he may one day come to be remembered as an actual climate scientist. An early one, at least. Someone with a tiny piece of the vast puzzle.
Give him some more dough. Anybody…just give him some dough.
Pingback: Congressman Raul Grijalva’s Witch Hunt | The Lukewarmer's Way
People really ought to study history of science, we have seen this kind of orthodox dogmatism and persecution of dissident scientists before and it surely was a sad episode for science: Lysenkoism
A good introduction available here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00bw51j
Lysenkoism not only damaged the Soviet science, it also started the downfall of the totalitarian society. What will be the consequences of the orthodox dogmatism within climate science and politics in our time? Downfall of the western industrialized societies, while China, India and Russia are smiling of our foolishness?
Pethefin,
I suspect the downfall proceeds apace. As I am part of a western industrialised society I hope that it happens slowly. Very slowly. Slowly enough that I can keep hold of the notion that my tribe is superior to all others, and live the rest of my days in denial and contentment.
If only. Facts have a way of interfering with fantasy – mine or anybody else’s!
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Having kindly linked us to National Review’s Mr. Cooke, who observes :
“Curry has made it clear that she believes the best way to ensure that tit-for-tat exchanges do not embroil us all in endless legal battles is to recognize that questions of public import are best debated outside the courtroom. “I would like to stand up for Michael Mann’s right to make insulting and defamatory tweets, statements in op-eds, etc.,” Curry has written on her blog. “As an American, I am pretty attached to the right to free speech.”
could Judith please remind Mr. Cooke that for the last year National Review has systematically refused to post comments on this topic by anyone calling their facts into question .
The same is true of Breitbart columnist James Delingpole.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/376574/climate-inquisitor-charles-c-w-cooke
Russell
you say;
‘Could Judith please remind Mr. Cooke that for the last year National Review has systematically refused to post comments on this topic by anyone calling their facts into question .’
I don’t know the situation in the US but if some organisation in the UK was being sued their lawyers would advise them not to throw fuel on the fire by encouraging a debate.
As For James, I have met him and found him an interesting and intelligent character who earns a living by being abrasive but he is not a scientist or represents a scientific organisation funded by public money.
Perhaps you can confirm which facts he has posted and which have been called into question.
tonyb .
Er don’t need know why we need ter worry
about global warming kerfuffle when bubble-
geo-engineering of the ocean could cool the
planet by up ter three degrees celsius. Oh
my goodness , how do we know this ? Why
Russell Seitz plugged the data into a climate
model, that’s how we ‘know.’
vhttp://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/27/foaming-climate-change/
Russell! Were you in the pay of Big Effervescence? Or were you writing for The Onion at the time?
Russel you seem confused about right to free speech in the United States. Freedom of speech is the political right to communicate one’s opinions and ideas. It doesn’t grant anyone a right to use the private property of another to facilitate the communication. The pages of National Review, including online, are private property.
Russel needs a course in simple logic. He can’t seem to think straight.
Whilst the US authorities go after some scientists who gently query the green blob and muse that the world doesn’t actually seem to be warming despite the billions thrown at identifying a non existent problem, those same authorities are allowing a vile and violent cancer of terrorism and intolerance to spread in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Nigeria that is threatening us all.
Perspective anyone?
tonyb
Tony, all these huge powder kegs are major oil producers, except Syria, which is a huge pipeline powder keg.
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/pipeline-politics-in-syria/
And yet we need persuading to toss some domestic coal into our own domestic power supplies. Or to run some nukes, where geology permits, using uranium mined in Canada or Oz. It’s like we don’t want Big Oil to become just another shop on Energy Street, even as OPEC’s decline and oil abundance make that possible. We seem to go looking for tension over oil because we grew up with it. “Renewables” mean oil and gas, Russia and the ME…but the rabbit just keeps staring into the spotlight.
Like that doomed bunny, we are transfixed by fashionable “issues” and just not seeing the political world – much as most climate scientists shun looking at the physical world.
mosomoso
Ironically of course many of the big oil producers don’t much like us and yet we continue to fund this dislike by buying their oil and giving them undue influence over us.
The green blob would have been better advised to point out we need to wean ourselves off oil and gas from unfriendly countries and Hey! wouldn’t we be better off promoting renewables and nuclear?
However we are where we are and I am much more concerned by a murderous medieval clan being a few hundred miles off the coast of Southern Europe than I am by a world that resolutely refuses to follow the climate models.
Lets hope the next US president has a better sense of perspective, geography and history than the current one does.
tonyb
Do dots connect themselves or do idiots?
===============================
Don’t forget the real threat of those radical right wing groups in the US as well. Afterall, they are the real problem.
Tony
don’t know if you watched the Oscars
we lack income equality here
and women just have no chance at all
we can’t be worried about Christians and other apostates being massacred wholesale
after all, any nice American Progressive knows it’s just karmic payback for the Crusades
blame the English…Richard I
don’t you have a nice statue next to Parliament
I recommend it’s removal due to cultural insensitivity
“…muse that the world doesn’t actually seem to be warming.”
_____
This is the ideal definition of denialism. Yes Tony, the world does “seem to be warming”, it is only a matter of how fast and the combination of natural variability and external forcings that are causing that warming. There are very very few climate scientists who would publicly or privately suggest that no warming at all is occurring. I’m sure you can find a few, and they are in big demand by certain groups.
The past 10 years are the warmest on instrument record, the past 5 years are the warmest in instrument record, and 2014 is at the very least tied for the warmest year on record, and the past 12 months (Jan 2014 through Jan 2015) were the warmest 12 month period. How does any of this, by any stretch equate to “the world doesn’t actually seem to be warming”?
The tense of the word “warming” is always a problem, because it presupposes the future state ( regardless of one’s hypotheses ).
The most recent traditional thirty year trend from NCDC is +1.5C/century.
So by that measure: warming.
But 1.5C/century as lower than the low end projections ( Hansen and IPCC ) and also represents a deceleration from earlier periods.
Rgates
What worries you most, Fundamentalists who want to lop your head off, and enslaves schoolgirls, and blows up cartoonists, and a resurgent Russia grabbing territory and threatening nato countries, or a gentle (possible) warming that has been going on for 350 years and which one of these days might reach that of the MWP but is unlikely to ever reach that of the Minoan warm period. Historical perspective is needed and CAGW doesn’t match up to other more pressing concerns.
tonyb
==> “What worries you most, Fundamentalists who want to lop your head off, and enslaves schoolgirls, and blows up cartoonists, and a resurgent Russia grabbing territory and threatening nato countries, or a gentle (possible) warming that has been going on for 350 years and which one of these days might reach that of the MWP but is unlikely to ever reach that of the Minoan warm period. Historical perspective is needed and CAGW doesn’t match up to other more pressing concerns.”
Wow.
Indeed, if R Gates cares about global warming he must not be concerned about misogynistic mass murderers sufficiently.
Joshua,
Why do you insist on stirring the pot. What Tonyb asked was (quite specifically and openly):”“What worries you most,”
Danny –
what is the purpose of the question?
Danny, what do you care about more your family’s health or radical Islam? What do you care about more children starving in Africa or radical Islam? What do you care about more poverty or radical Islam? What do you care about more, bigotry and intolerance or radical Islam?
Joshua,
What I care about right now is honoring the request of our host to stay on topics. What I care less about and do not understand is your need to stir the pot and create off topic controversy. Tonyb, as I viewed it, was trying to gauge a level of concern between two topics and immediacy. Your list of questions to me was in no way pertinent. I won’t bite. I’ve said my piece and am done with this.
Joshua
From your previous posts I assume you are over 30. Consequently having lived through various experiences you will know that some human conditions are worse than others and that the world seems incapable of keeping very many balls in the air consistently . So we tend to have to select those things we can do something about and put them into some sort of order of priority.
In that respect it is perfectly reasonable to ask what someone else’s order of priorities are.
Doing anything about global warming (should it be a man made problem of any concern) is way down my list. Doing something about the many problems that are proliferating, of which I named some of the most current I would place far higher in the list of things to tackle. Others would have a different list of priorities.
tonyb
“Danny – what is the purpose of the question?”
Perhaps to see if you can give an answer to a straight question. Apparently not.
In the US, Obumbles heads the list of problems.
==> “Perhaps to see if you can give an answer to a straight question. Apparently not”
how ironic given the subject of the original post. What is your source of funding, Jonathan? Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the communist party?
I also live the concept of innocently asking someone in good faith to give you a “straight” answer.
Because, there’s no implication, nothing rhetorical, of course, in asking for a “straight” answer.
Lol.
Tony,
I don’t lose sleep or worry about Russia, terrorism, nor anthropogenic global warming. My interest in the topic of climate is purely academic at this point. I only reacted to you comment about “the world doesn’t actually seem to be warming”. These little bits of inaccuracies do cause me more concern than anything, as they are not supported by the data of actual facts.
Tiny –
=>> “, those same authorities are allowing a vile and violent cancer of terrorism and intolerance to spread in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Nigeria that is threatening us all.”
Lol! Yes, if only they would stop “allowing” that to happen.
Er…Tony
Joshua
Add Russia to the list. Are you saying America has now relinquished any desire to be a force for good and to deter evil? Has it lost its moral compass? Is it no longer a global power?
tonyb
Tony –
the notion that we are “allowing” fundamentalist Islam to spread (let alone that it is “allowed” somehow as an opportunity cost of concern about the impact of ACO2] is, sorry to say, IMO so profoundly ahistoric and ignorant of the full v ontext if the phenomenon, that i can’t even think of how to begin a response. I’m actually surprised to see you embrace such a shallow conceptualization of cause and effect in such a complex social phenomenon.
It isn’t happening as a result of what the u.s. or the west or non-islamic countries “allow.”
And Tony –
=>> “Add Russia to the list. Are you saying America has now relinquished any desire to deter evil?”
That is, IMO, sorry to say, just a bizarre reconstruction of my point. Obviously, something can happen without person X “allowing” it to happen, without then requiring a logical conclusion that it person X has “relinquished any desire to deter evil.”
Joshua,
I think its fair to say that what tonyb means by “allowing” is
“refusing to stop”
Or to be even more specific “only taking limited action to stop”
or in other words ‘refusing to declare war”
right now there is a genocide of sorts going on in christian areas of syria.
we are allowing that, refusing to stop it, only taking limited action to stop, refusing to declare war on it.
you understand what he meant.
Joshua
Having travelled widely in the area, been to Iraq three times and met sadaam Hussein, Syria twice and met the former president, Jordan twice and met the king, plus studied Islam I do Know something About the causes of Islamic fundamentalism , the secular concept, the need to ‘contain’ the forces of evil and stop their spread and that allowing this sort of barbaric fundamentalism to take root will mean we will have to deal with a bigger problem in the future.
The region had ‘strong men’ for a reason and that the wEst cultivated them demonstrated they knew the alternatives were often going to be much worse.
Shallow conceptualisation? I think not, more a regret that the US seems to have turned its back on actively combatting the evil that is shooting up.
Tonyb
Mosh
Thanks. A clear exposition. Joshua knew what I meant .We should be doing much more and we traditionally have looked to America to play the leadership role . That leadership seems to be lacking at the moment. That we can ‘allow’ these barbarians to openly flout the rules of civilised behaviour I find disturbing.
Tonyb
Time shows us all that the light of pride is blinding.
The first problem it’s the simplistic argument that anything other than an all out war, or whatever other policy tony as an individual deems as the optimal policy, is the equivalent of “allowing” it to happen. By that logic, any failed attempt to prevent = allowing it to happen (when the reality might well be that nothing you might have done would have prevented it from occurring).
The second is the assumption of a counterfactual, that tony’s prescribed policy would have worked. Bad logic. Proving a counterfactual requires passing over a high bar of evidence, evidence that tony lacks.
In fact,efforts have been made to prevent the spread of radical islam based on roughly the mindset of “they need a strong response” logic that tony recommends, and those efforts have, it certainly can be argued, made the situation worse by setting up dynamics that only radicalized mite Muslims than would have been radicalized otherwise.
There are many people who have studied the issues in great detail who would disagree strongly with Tony’s simplistic strategizing. Who’s right? I do don’t know…but i do think that
Simplistic reasoning has a higher priority if being sub-optimal
=>> ” That we can ‘allow’ these barbarians to openly flout the rules of civilised behaviour I find disturbing.”
So is your point, Tony, that if someone doesn’t agree with your view of cause and effect and your simplistic prescription about how not to “allow” it to continue, they aren’t similarly disturbed?
=>> ” That we can ‘allow’ these barbarians to openly flout the rules of civilised behaviour I find disturbing.”
So is your point, Tony, that if someone doesn’t agree with your view of cause and effect and your simplistic recommendation about how not to “allow” it to continue, they aren’t similarly disturbed?
Joshua
you have gone off on one of your long abstract musings that has nothing to do with the core issue. Evil needs to be nipped in the bud before it grows. The worlds policeman seems to have decided that courting Cuba is more important than helping to prevent entire communities having their heads lopped off or otherwise horribly killed or maimed or sold into slavery.
tonyb
Don’t worry Tony, Obama is going to take care of the ISIL problem with the strategy and tactics he used to facilitate our humiliating retreat from Yemen:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/joseph-klein/yemen-obamas-counter-terrorism-success-story-sinks/
OK Joshua a test:
“The second is the assumption of a counterfactual, that tony’s prescribed policy would have worked. ”
Q: Should GWB have invaded Iraq?
It should be noted that there is almost 100% compliance with ignoring the counterfactual on the left. Note this is a rhetorical question, and I do not want to actually open this can of worms.
=>> “Q: Should GWB have invaded Iraq?”
That’s a fair point, Tom.
Joshua
‘The first problem it’s the simplistic argument that anything other than an all out war, or whatever other policy tony as an individual deems as the optimal policy, is the equivalent of “allowing” it to happen.
that is not what he is saying. he used the word “allow”
what he meant to say, what was I wrote.
You have a problem with the word allow?
DROP it .
very simple. if you want a dialog on the issue, ask Tony if this represents his view
“Whilst the US authorities go after some scientists who gently query the green blob and muse that the world doesn’t actually seem to be warming despite the billions thrown at identifying a non existent problem, those same authorities are refusing to stop a vile and violent cancer of terrorism and intolerance to spread in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Nigeria that is threatening us all.”
put another way. Tony is saying this. It appears to him that our balance of priorities is wrong. Pretty effin simple.
Heh.
==> “…those same authorities are refusing to stop …”
Yeah. Don’t say “allow” ’cause that’s not what he means. Say “refusing to stop” instead.
Incredible.
“wrong balance of priorities” and “refusing to stop” = same, same but different.
There are people who think the UN and it’s security council members have a greater purpose – even a duty – than to merely issue statements of sadness after every genocide- like that in Rwanda in the 90s and Syria today.
Joshua is not one of those people, but Tony is. Joshua will be sad once the genocide is done. Sadder than you. That’s what makes him better. ‘Cause you’ll be angry.
==> “Joshua will be sad once the genocide is done”
so once again we have evidence of a self-described skeptic who formulates an opinion without any basis in evidence to reach a conclusion that is absolutely wrong. Thanks Jeff.
==> “Joshua is not one of those people, ”
so once again we have evidence of a self-described skeptic to formulate an opinion with no basis in evidence to reach a conclusion that is absolutely wrong. Thanks Jeff.
Genocide doesn’t make you sad, Joshua?
I don’t wait until it’s done to be sad about it, Jeff.
Strike 3.
The world is most definitely warming, so this is off to a bad start.
Tonyb,
It’s worse than that. Our “leaders” view Climate Change as the biggest challenge facing mankind and have labeled it a weapon of mass destruction.
Meanwhile, the ME is a powder keg and our best allies there don’t know if they can trust us any more. ISIS has us in their sights and Iran is laughing out their asses at us. Russia is stirring up shit everyplace and has taken Obama’s measure.
Obama has shit on Canada by vetoing Keystone and he insults Netanyahu because he disagrees with him on a nuclear Iran.
Political correctness and groupthink has become the scourge of our campuses where a former Dept.Chair at Ga. Tech says a thesis that contests the primacy of climate models would never see the light of day.
> Perspective anyone [on “Whilst the US authorities go after some scientists who gently query the green blob and muse that the world doesn’t actually seem to be warming despite the billions thrown at identifying a non existent problem, those same authorities are allowing a vile and violent cancer of terrorism and intolerance to spread in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Nigeria that is threatening us all”]?
Besides that we’re still waiting for a real audit of the costs of the Irak occupation and that if we’d spared the American budget from Barton hearings we could have invested into more search for WMDs, there’s this, TonyB:
http://starecat.com/content/wp-content/uploads/not-only-will-america-go-to-your-country-and-kill-all-your-people-theyll-come-back-20-years-later-and-make-a-movie-about-how-killing-your-people-made-their-soldiers-feel-sad.jpg
Thank you for your concerns,
W
Tonyb, its embarrassing, worrying, and wrong. Sec. of State Kerry declared climate change the biggest foreign policy issue, not ISIS, the prowling Russian bear, or Iran’ s nuclear program. Everybody watched Obama get snookered by China on the climate change ‘deal’ where China took a free pass to 2030. Everybody watched Obama blink over his Syrian chemical weapons red line. How I long for Teddy Roosevelt, who spoke softly but carried a big stick. Obama speaks loudly and carries no stick. Not so good.
Witchhunters. The degree to which ad hominem and other logical fallacies have attached themselves to “science” (Taken to mean mostly environmental and climate science) has basically reduced the conduct of research to a practice sodden with innuendo, fear, and bellowing…where those in power determine the direction of research, and also those who are allowed to speak on the subject.
Heh, Free the Science, else it free itself.
=================
Figured if I searched for various ties to big oil, I’d find something on Democratic Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva who is behind the Witch Hunt against Climate Skeptics…
Right away found that he invested in Royal Dutch Shell and other energy companies in 2013…
http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/grijalva-buy.pdf
Plus, I found that he has a conflict of interest when he opposes the Keystone Pipeline. Like Democrat Tom Steyer, his wife has invested in a competing pipeline. Not just a pipeline, but a ‘TAR SANDS PIPELINE’. See Enbridge Energy Partners. Snort!
“These are all the top Democrats that Tucson produces. We are proud when Raul Grijalva leads the charge to stop the Canadian oil pipeline, but why must he make money off of this also? It turns out he has his own conflicts of interest by profiting off of his actions when his wife bought stock in the competing oil pipeline company.”
http://threesonorans.com/2014/07/30/tucson-activists-call-divestment-raul-grijalva-invests-wells-fargo-caterpillar/
SECOND CANADIAN COMPANY COMPLETING TAR-SANDS PIPELINE INTO THE U.S.
State Department agrees to 800,000 barrels per day
“Barring litigation, or action by the State Department, Enbridge will achieve what has eluded TransCanada. And it will have done so with scant attention from the media and without the public debate generated by campaigns against the Keystone XL.
Enbridge will be transporting the same tar sands described by former NASA climate scientist James Hansen as one of the “dirtiest most carbon-intensive fuels on the planet.” Mining and burning Alberta’s tar-sands oil alone, University of Saint Thomas (Minnesota) engineering professor John Abraham warned in Scientific American, will result in a global temperature increase that’s equivalent to “half of what we’ve already seen.”
“It’s a complicated story,” an environmental lawyer said of Enbridge’s pipeline, “so it’s not getting much media coverage.” Also lacking media attention is Enbridge’s role in the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history, the result of a ruptured pipe in 2010.”
http://washingtonspectator.org/2nd-canadian-company-completing-tar-sands-pipeline-u-s/
With All Eyes on Keystone, Another Tar Sands Pipeline Just Crossed the Border
“The Keystone XL pipeline may be in political limbo, but that hasn’t stopped another Canadian company from quietly pressing ahead on a pipeline project that will ramp up the volume of tar sands oil transported through the U.S. What’s more, the company, Enbridge, is making those changes without a permit, and environmental groups say it is flouting the law.
Calgary, Alberta-based Enbridge is the same company that spilled more than 1 million gallons of thick, sticky tar sands crude into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan in 2010. The spill was the largest of its kind in the U.S. and took four years to clean up.
Enbridge applied for a State Department permit two years ago for its latest project: a bid to increase the capacity of its “Alberta Clipper” pipeline from 450,000 to 800,000 barrels of tar sands crude per day. The Clipper crosses the border from Canada into the U.S. in North Dakota, so a presidential permit from the department would be required by law.”
http://www.newsweek.com/2014/12/05/all-eyes-keystone-another-tar-sands-pipeline-just-crossed-border-286685.html
Keystone critic decried conflict of interest as wife backed competitor
“The wife of a leading House Democrat owned stock in a top competitor to the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline while he raised red flags about potential conflicts of interest in the government’s review of the project, documents show.
Rep. Raul Grijalva (D., Ariz.) was very concerned about the potential financial benefits of approving the pipeline for the federal contractor that conducted an environmental review of the project last year.”…
“However, Grijalva may have faced his own financial conflict even as he warned of the potentially compromised positions of those supporting the case for the pipeline’s construction.
According to disclosure forms filed last year, Grijalva’s wife bought between $1,000 and $15,000 in stock in a major Canadian oil pipeline company just months before the congressman penned his letter to Obama.
The company, Enbridge Energy Partners, is Canada’s largest transporter of crude oil and is a direct competitor to TransCanada.
Enbridge is expected to benefit as Keystone continues to languish in bureaucratic limbo awaiting a go-ahead from the Obama administration for its southern leg, which would carry Canadian “oil sands” crude to the U.S. Gulf Coast.”
http://soaznewsx.com/USA/ID/5554/Keystone-critic-decried-conflict-of-interest-as-wife-backed-competitor
Thanks for the link to the “Second Canadian Company Completing Tar-Sands Pipeline into the U.S.” article. It was both illuminating and depressing. Why is it not in the news? Good question.
Steve Kroft did a story on CBS’s “60 Minutes” highlighting the legal, but unethical, practice of congress and their families trading stocks on inside information, a widespread practice. If you or I did the same we would be in jail. The champion trader was Nancy Pelosi. Here is a transcript of the story:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-trading-stock-on-inside-information/
Steve Kroft interviewed Peter Schwietzer, the author of the book on this issue. Basically, members of Congress get millions of $ in donations to get jobs that pay $175,000/yr so they can end up getting rich. Nancy Pelosi, at the time of the 60 Minutes story, had made $7,000,000, not bad for a champion of “humble people”.
Here is the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Throw-Them-All-Out-Politicians/dp/0547573146/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1424967175&sr=8-2&keywords=Peter+Schweitzer
The latest statement at Barackobama.com is
“Be a part of the team that’s holding climate change deniers’ feet to the fire. Add your name.”
HT Barry Woods.
If you do add your name, the next page is a demand for money.
Paul Mattthews,
Re:
“. . .holding climate change deniers’ feet to the fire.”
I believe this is called torture by the civilised world. Nice to see it is now officially recognised by the US President as a desirable course of action.
All he has to do is find a few people who are demented enough to believe the climate doesn’t change, and scorch their feet until they scream for mercy! That’ll fix ’em!
He must be a foolish fellow indeed, to lend his name to such a witless pronouncement.
Politicians. You have to admire their complete and utter disconnect from reality, from time to time! Ah, the rich tapestry of life!
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
What I find perversely amusing about this webpage is:
given how many of congressman and senators are climate change ‘deniers’, that makes a pretty good case that something fishy is going on with climate ‘believers’.
Now if it had been a page full of convicted felons I might have understood the point of such a page.
Ahem, are your faces all in their places, Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego? Gotta look good at recess, now.
============
Judith, i have never commented on your site before, but access it regularly. I cannot believe that this is happening. I am sure that thousands of people like me, people who understand science even if we are not “climate scientists” , are shocked and amazed at this development. I wish you every success in dealing with this and I feel that this may be a turning point and will backfire badly on its protagonist. Good luck and thank you.
Thank you Peter!
Pingback: Activists: Play with your own Willie | contrary2belief
You might want to note how the “warmists” treat their own:
Peter Gleick stole documents and forged another to attack his political opponents. Despite the gravity of this crime he was welcomed back into the fold of those promoting worst-case scenarios about the impacts of climate change as if he were a hero, not a criminal. This is not unusual in political movements. The cause becomes more important.
Al Gore was one of the first who promoted global warming as an imminent threat to human safety. His sybaritic lifestyle was evident from the first–private planes, living in a mansion, conspicuous consumption. None of that was sufficient to cause the Cause to disavow him. It still is unclear whether it was his arrest for pressuring a masseuse for sex or his sale of his television channel to a fossil fuel organization was the cause of his fall from grace–but that fall was apparently temporary, as he still speaks on global warming before green groups the world over. The rules don’t apply.
And now it is the turn of Rajendra Pachauri. Women are now speaking of a decade-long pattern of sexual harassment. Even before this revelation, Pachauri was involved in misconduct, ranging from suppressing dissent to hiding the income from his foundation. He showed incredibly poor judgment in publishing a bodice ripper of a novel while head of an organization that had been criticized by the IAC–with many of those criticisms calling into question his leadership. But it doesn’t matter. He was a champion of the Cause.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/24/the-peril-of-great-causes/
Even Saul Alinski, author of Rules for Radicals, knew better:
“I’ve never joined any organization—not even the ones I’ve organized myself. I prize my own independence too much. And philosophically, I could never accept any rigid dogma or ideology, whether it’s Christianity or Marxism. One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as ‘that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you’re right.’ If you don’t have that, if you think you’ve got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated. The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide.” – Saul Alinsky
And today I find Ruiz of the Cortes.
================
And speaking of conflicts, how did Rajendra Pachauri get so conflicted that he roared the IPCC Train of Threat right over the broken down bridge?
=================================
The issue has some media traction:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/opinion-rich-lowry-climate-change-115518.html#.VO8jeWNTeM0
Not everybody in the mainstream likes this.
Dear Congressman Raul Grijalva,
Seriously sir:
http://www.quickmeme.com/img/a5/a53f67e6c544a19bda5614c38e46a78f6158db159da93e4b1a315749f4294ada.jpg
What is the Senate GOP doing about all this? Apparently nothing!
You can keep your AGW science too.
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2015/02/25/gov-baker-calls-for-resignation-of-gruber-at-health-connector/
Sham the Ham & the Pharaohs
“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjectures out of such trifling investment of fact”. – Mark Twain
In climate science we have gazillions of facts. Our cast-in-concrete conjectures arise from vast uncertainty about what the facts mean.
We read papers by NASA scientists and their colleagues that the uncertainty in the global radiation budget is 17 Wm-2 and in the same paper that the estimate for 200-2010 of net radiation imbalance as 0.6 Wm-2 based on Ceres and Argos data. (Refs at the end)
Today I read a paper that claims to measure the increase in surface radiative forcing by CO2 during the same ten-year period as 0.2 Wm-2.
Does this mean anything, given that the difference in total flux (downward and upward radiation) is about one part in 680? about 0.15 of 1 %?
With this new study have we not reached the point at which the level of variation in radiative flux approaches the level of variation in solar irradiance?
I leave you with two papers by Kopp & Lean and Pamela Mlynczak all mainstream solar specialists who tell us that solar science is not as settled as some people think.
I wonder how long it will be before the numbers show that Willie Soon is not as far off the mark as they claim he is.
Graeme L. Stephens et al, An update on Earth’s energy balance in light of the latest global observations. Nature Geoscience Vol. 5 October 2012
URL: http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~tristan/publications/2012_EBupdate_stephens_ngeo1580.pdf
Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010
http://www.nature.com/articles/nature14240.epdf?referrer_access_token=m5RAJie8Wrb4jLzVvkuVQNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MBUVHxgrRxcZhDCgss_A2amrmWs-jvM0mhjtxfcSHo9uyisFewqu32axjpL_CkG1CZh2SXtKaWFWujeqZKRmzt
Greg Kopp and Judith L. Lean, A new, lower value of total solar irradiance: Evidence and climate significance, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 38, L01706, 2011
http://chicagowilderness.org/members/downloads/Strategic/February%2011_CCTF_solar_irradiance.pdf
Pamela E. Mlynczak, G. L. Smith and P. W. Stackhouse Jr. Interannual variations of surface radiation budget, 22nd Conference on Climate Variability and Change, 2010.
https://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/163815.pdf
I think Grijalva (or possibly Congress) would more appropriately be using investigatory resources by asking for Mann’s emails at the University of Virginia and Penn State. Both universities are partially funded by the federal government, and based on publicly available information, there is much more evidence of incompetence and bias on his part than there is with respect to the people he wishes to investigate now.
JD
Is the net effect of something like this negative for Dr. Curry? It would seem to raise her profile, increase her book sales and requests to speak, and result in net sympathy from the public (even from many of the alarmists). Since the Republicans hold the House there is little chance of onerous requirements coming from that source, and it would seem to tend toward a generally heightened awareness of the full spectrum of alarmist activities, some of which might not fare well under the glare of the spotlight.
Dr. Curry – I think that you will weather this just fine. It is a shame that you have to put up with the aggravation.
What hilarity!
Judith, for years promoting and drawing attention to the ‘climate-gate’ and associated investigations silliness, is now all aghast and concerned at any kind of investigation into possible unethical behaviour by ‘skeptics’.
And in a fit of one-eyed, tribalsitic stoopid, tries to obscure the issue of Soon’s non-disclosure by blathering about ‘dirty money’.
You can take money from whom ever you want – just don’t try to hide the fact.
And in a final act of terminal naivety –
“The intense politicization of climate science makes bias more likely to be coming from political and ideological perspectives than from funding sources.”
Yes, that’s right, the sources of the funds are magically devoid of “political and ideological perspectives”.
FFS.
Someone who is unable to see the obvious & insists on his view of the invisible, says so…
OK, if it will make you happy.
Do you see a pattern?
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-consequences-ice-officials-who-dont-follow-executive-amnesty_866479.html
What does it mean to you?
Michael, good for exposing your warped sense of humor yet again.
The Soon allegations are third time recycled garbage from the same original Greenpeace sources. Already been re-exposed elsewhere.
Why do you associate with such stuff. Tars you with the same brush. Maybe you cannot see or smell the tar?
Circle the wagons Rud!
The horse is already out of the barn…
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/022615-741140-climate-chief-rajendra-pachauri-resigns-from-united-nation.htm
but, thank you.
I think a fanatic would be someone so ideologically driven that they believe that liberals are the something like the root of all evil in this world. Does that sound familiar?
Dr. R.K. Pachauri (member of the India Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change) in stepping down as director general of the IPCC (the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), dropped the charade. He explained a lot on his way out the door about what motivates the global warming alarmists, admitting in his resignation letter that global warming isn’t science – it’s religion: “For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma.”
Those who make up the ranks of the global warming machine believe that’s where they will find happiness; it’s where their peers go to seek fulfillment. Finding contentment and meaning in a simple life is not a part of their religion of saving the planet from us.
Wags, the Director General does really do anything but manage the process. He doesn’t contribute anything to the content of the reports. His influence is minimal.
…and therefore, not a fanatic? Interesting reasoning. How might we apply such reasoning to –e.g., ISIS?
I don’t know if he is truly a “fanatic” or not, but whether or not he is a “fanatic,” he is still can have the correct view of the science based on the evidence. The two are not necessarily related. I am not sure why you think he is representative of liberals or any other group for that matter.
Surely the tell of fanatics is their unwillingness to accept any beliefs other than their own — an unwillingness even to accept the obvious: global warming is obviously about politics and not science or it wouldn’t be a Left vs. right issue, would it?
,
I know you believe that, but it’s definitely not obvious. And if it were true wouldn’t that mean that people on the right are playing politics?
Oh and to answer your question the reason it has become a “left vs right” issue is that those on the right don’t like the policy implications that go along with acknowledging climate change.
> … don’t like the policy implications that go along with acknowledging climate change
And you’ve disconnected from the power grid, have you ?
Living the green dream ?
Please, no arm-waving reply
The policy options that have been put forward by both sides of the debate on AGW have little to commend them. They have never been properly costed with appropriate discount rates reflecting the costs to the industrialised countries of the world and are in any case impractical to implement.
Nuclear is probably the most realistic substitute for power generation currently undertaken by coal burning plants but there are numerous issues of installation cost, safety and on-going need for the treatment and disposal of waste.
This is all a pointless exercise in funding piety. I’m guessing if you follow the money, there is plenty of green in Big Green funding to various parties.
All of this doesn’t matter to science. It doesn’t matter who provides the funding, it doesn’t matter how smart you are, it doesn’t matter if the President likes what you have to say – if it disagrees with experiment, it’s Wrong.
“Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Climate Denial Party of the United States?”
….. At long last, Mr. Grijalva, have you left no sense of decency?
Judith
Perhaps a simple response such as:
Mr. Grijalva
I would be interested in better understanding the basis of your request and how you determined which scientists you determined you would request this information from. Have you determined that there is a relationship between the validity of a scientist’s analysis of the issue of AGW and the source of their funding? Could you please share this analysis? Why did you decide to request this information only from seven scientists? What is it that makes these scientists unique in your view?
Without further justification of the basis of your request, it appears to be unreasonable. I look forward to your response.
I agree Rob but I would probably condense your draft response for President Peterson to just one 2 letter word: no.
Historically, the response is probbaly more like “NUTS”
Michael Mann has been an outspoken supporter of President Obama.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703657604575005412584751830
COI?
Coleridge, who wrote op-eds for about a decade around 1800 and is no dummy (Essays on His Times, 3 volumes, Princeton U Press), wrote that a conflict of interest is the pulley on which good character is hoist into public view.
That’s so apt that it winds up in the index under pulley, in case you want to find it again.
It’s also apt as a reminder today.
Willie Soon’s co-author Sally Balliunas on witch hunts and weather cooking
For a background on the Soon & Baliunas controversy from 2003, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soon_and_Baliunas_controversy
perhaps she is not without sin
but the presentation in this clip is damn spot on
another example of diversion from the argument to the person
for me it is gettin’ old
one of the main reasons I’ve become a loud n’ proud denier
oh yeah, and
thanks tall person, excellent choice, good 7:11
I have only just gone to the barrackobama web site to look at the item on calling out deniers
https://www.barackobama.com/climate-change-deniers/#/
I am genuinely shocked and disgusted. I hope all alarmists on this site have contacted their political representative to complain about this witch hunt, if not you ought to be adjamed of yourselves. This is a truly despicable and alarming development.
Has this truly been endorsed by your president? Someone tell me it is a spoof?
This is all of a piece with the attacks on Soon and Judith. Have you all been infected by green madness?
Tonyb
The masks can come off now. How wonderful this should be.
Many years ago I had an American friend, a wild-eyed, wild-haired musicologist who was the last type you’d expect to be a Repub.
I asked him about his political bent and he explained that he was from Chicago. Then he explained about THAT machine.
Oh, I read it. They dared to criticize The Unerring Hockey Stick Graph!
Dr. Mann is extremely good at guarding his own interests.
Sacrifices are required
pour raisons d’etat!
Saint Joan.
Strange girl. hears voices.
But, by Jove, even in death
she lightens up a room.
H/t David Bader.
beththeserf,
Interesting, is it not? Commenting on Jeanne d’Arc, Roman Catholic Saint, reference to a pagan god – Jove – is accepted without demur.
What should we make of the pagan religion of Climatism, whose symbol is the bent stick? Should we sanctify Hansen, Schmidt, and Mann?
Strange men. See doom.
But, by Jove, even in life,
they are purposeless.
They await death, with the faint prospect of justification.
Sorry ’bout that. The Devil made me do it.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Tres bon,
Mike. Flynn.
Barry Woods has been quoted (a Tweet) at WUWT, noticing that Peter Gleick’s fake Heartland memo was cited in the letter. This deserves much scrutiny and may backfire spectacularly if it gives renewed attention to Gleickgate in the midst of this latest attempt to smear dissenters from the “consensus” —
If the committee majority is on the ball (doubtful) they will jump on the Ranking Member’s dubious reliance upon Gleickgate’s forgery plus stolen docs.
Subpoena Gleick to answer all questions about the provenance of said illegitimate docs. He will surely “take the 5th” but it would be important to bring to the fore issues which have never been properly investigated or resolved.
Agree 100% but GOP filled with cowards and Obama enablers. They act like they lost the 2014 elections even though they won.
could we get a FOIA going on Mr. Grijalva’s communications on this matter?
OBVIOUSLY this guy and his staff were picked for this action by someone, and likely he was the only Congressperson duped into following through.
What a dunce. A hell of a scary dunce at that.
I believe that Congress exempted itself from FOIA. So I don’t think you can get Mr. Grijalva’s communications. Good thought.
Yes, bit time dunce. They likely told him he was going to be a hero. I continue to think this is going to backfire on the climatariat. Be interesting to watch.
maybe I missed something
but isn’t it odd that the Democrats and the White House have gone to a full court press on ‘climate change’ after ignoring the issue for six years
The Train is leaving the station.
=========
A rat is never more dangerous than when it feels cornered.
The Republic ‘leadership’ doesn’t have a clue of what the forces were behind the 2014 election. But the Democrats do.
Paris is on the horizon. The people are not falling for AGW anymore. Huge investments in Green Bonds and renewables through World Bank and other banks too (another mtg fiasco in the making? perhaps..on a global scale) Its a ponzi scheme that needs more food in the form of carbon taxes and ‘believers’. Financial Times titled “Private equity retreats from renewables fad,” of Feb. 21, 2014 quoted Joseph Dear, chief investment officer of Calpers, of the world’s sixth-largest pension fund, as describing clean-tech investment as a “noble way to lose money.” None of the CAGW financial investors/supporters want the rest of us to find that out.
Reblogged this on The Global 'Climate'.
Dear Representative Grijalva,
Are you now or have you even been associated with the casino/gambling industry?
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=2014&cid=n00025284&type=I&newmem=N
Great cartoon over at WUWT:
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/investigations_scr.jpg
Joe McCarthy, Nancy Pelosi, Raul Grijalva
Three peas in a pod.
http://www.opednews.com/populum/uploaded/witch-hunts-22149-20120730-503.jpg
A few questions:
1. Supposedly Big Oil is seeking to maximize its profits by casting doubt on the CAGW message. In that vein, can it be demonstrated that Big Oil is also trying to thwart the nuclear industry?
2. SoCo is a power company in Georgia, of which Georgia Power is a subsidiary, and as such, it is not a fossil fuel company, and in fact is developing nuclear and renewable facilities, and it is strictly regulated by a state commission. Where is the conflict of interest?
3. Representative Grijalva has written to the universities that employ the professors who were invited by Republicans to testify before congress. The matter concerns an issue that the congressman has with the professors, and is not a matter concerning the universities, especially since nothing done was illegal. Would it be inappropriate for a university to meddle in a matter regarding one of its employees and a congressman? Shouldn’t the congressman’s only recourse be to get the information directly from the person in question?
Thank you for any forthcoming answers,
Richard
http://cronkitenewsonline.com/2013/06/yuma-unemployment-rate-was-highest-in-the-nation-in-april-report-says/
Maybe spend a little less time on out-of-state witch hunts and a little more time solving problems in your own back yard, Mr. Grijalva.
http://www.arizonadailyindependent.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/grijalva-dreams.png
Sounds a lot like Obama!
It appears that Raul Grijalva is also tainted by big oil and big coal. He got a $1,500.00 contribution from DTE an energy company in the last election cycle. They seem to spread their wealth almost egually between Rs and Ds. Interesting that they’d throw a bone to him as they have no utilities in AZ.
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cid=n00025284&cycle=2014&type=I&newMem=N&recs=100
DTE Energy produces energy from 61.3% coal, 16.4% natural gas, 11.4% oil, 9.3% nuclear and 0.2% biomass.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTE_Energy
Raul Grijalva was a radical student who was a member of MECha and RUP Raza Unida Party. MEChA has the motto, “Por La Raza todo, fuerade la raza nada.” – “For the race, everything, outside the race, nothing.” They believe in reuniting the boarder states with Mexico and has as one of it’s icons this symbol:
http://www.mayorno.com/files/aztmap.jpg
Grijalva was so militant he alienated some members of Tucsons Mexican American community. After losing his first bid for elective office, a 1972 run for a seat on the school board, he began to cultivate a less radical image. Navarro writes that Grijalva “Decided to dissociate himself from RUP” and “adopted a much more middle-of-road image and approach” that included outreach to non-Hispanics.* **
*Armando Navarro, opp cite page 209
**Ibid page 217
That used to be called ‘selling out’.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra%C3%BAI_Grijalva
Besides the benefits that the use of fossil fuels brings to us all, the taxes paid by Big Oil go to fund all that climate “research”. This from The Tax Foundation web site:
“Indeed, since 1981, when the failed windfall profits tax was first enacted, federal, state, and local governments in the U.S. have collected more in taxes from the oil industry than the industry has earned in actual profits for its shareholders. For example, after adjusting for inflation, the combined net earnings (net of taxes and expenses) for the largest petroleum companies between 1981 and 2008 totaled $1.4 trillion. By contrast, the total amount of taxes collected by U.S. governments from the oil companies topped $1.95 trillion, roughly 40 percent more than the industry’s combined profits. Tax collections exceeded company profits in 23 of the 27 years surveyed.”
That’s an average of $72.2 billion a year in taxes paid. There are 117.5 million households in the US, which means each household in the US coughs up an average of $51.22 a month in oil taxes.
People should be reminded of that every time some yutz babbles on about the need to “eliminate oil subsidies” or some other code word for raising energy taxes even more.
Mr. Grijalva, have you ever knowingly employed or otherwise given aid to an illegal alien?
http://cis.org/grijalva
Raul Grijalva: From Chicano Radical to Congressman
Asking for these materials after the fact seems a bit problematic.
It would be better if congressional committees requested all this information
as a precondition of testifying.
If you want to testify then present all your drafts and correspondence related to the testimony as well as a full financial disclosure.
That way folks get the transparency they seem to want and we avoid fishing expeditions after the fact.
Rep. Grijalva identifies himself as a ranking member of a committee, but this request seems to be his own. I wonder if he overstepped his authority (if any) by dragging the committee into this.
Where Al Gore’s investments in green technology a conflict of interest?
Wags, Al Gore is not a climate scientist and I believe has only testified before Congress once on climate change in 2007.
Wagathon, what are the odds that Gore used his connections in Washington to lobby for government subsidies on behalf of the companies in which he had a financial stake? Any chance of that happening?
Just askin!
The article in the Telegraph says that is exactly what did happen.
The difference between a climate scientist and a meteorologist is that a climate scientist cannot be verified.
Raul has gone after people/groups opposed to Obamacare as well.
http://www.newsmax.com/US/danner-grijalva-ellison-obamacare/2012/06/15/id/442422/
It’s just a tactic to make sure people know that if they disagree with the progressive agenda a powerful person in Government will do everything in their power to destroy you.
Dear Professor Curry, my commiserations in advance for all that you are about to suffer. I have predicted that the global warming scare will all be over in nine years, but I am afraid it is going to get much worse before it gets better. You say they won’t find a smoking gun for any of the seven. Oh, but they will! For all seven! Or at least, that will be reported. It hardly matters whether the smoking gun in each case will be totally made up or will be based on a distortion of something actual. Any way, it will absolutely be reported that all seven have undisclosed conflicts of interest due to funding by fossil fuel interests. That will be the headline. It will take a bit of work for critically-minded individuals to uncover the fabrications. We are in for a couple of years of this sort of horrific nonsense before the reaction sets in.
Beware if the Soon standard becomes the norm. Can you imagine if this standard was applied to every scientist?
How many scientists list every grant, speaking fee, travel expense reimbursement, etc. for the last 10 years for every paper they submit to a journal?
If research is funded with a federal grant, this is obviously disclosed. But does every scientist also mention the speaking fee they received from their favorite left or right group 10 years ago (on every paper they submit for the next 10 years)?
I don’t think so.
Maybe we should go on a witch hunt of our own?
I bet all the big name climate scientists are being hypocrites on this issue.
I am pretty sure the general rule is you only disclose funding related to the research being funded – not in connection with other non-funded research.