How government scientists plunder the till in the name of science
Three years ago, I ran into former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at a ritzy Northwest Washington restaurant. We exchanged pleasantries, but before long, our conversation became unpleasant.
Since climate science is my field, I felt compelled to point out that Mr. Rudd’s support for a cap-and-trade policy for carbon emissions had recently helped cost him his job as prime minister. “Well, what should I have done?” he replied. “My scientists, I say, my scientists, told me this is an important problem.” (more…)
Alarmists rarely attack, or even mention the Climate Money paper I did in 2009. It’s an own goal to draw attention to the fact that skeptics are paid a pittance, while the alarm industry soaks in extended baths of cash, grants, and junkets, and the vested interests are a magnitude larger. Exxon might lose some money if a carbon tax comes in, but the world will still need oil. The same can’t be said for ACME-Solar. If a carbon scheme falls over, so does a Solyndra.
So yes, let’s do talk about The Money. As Climate Money pointed out: all Greenpeace could find from Exxon was a mere $23 million for skeptics over a decade, while the cash cow that is catastrophic climate change roped in $2,000 million a year every year during the same period for the scientists who called other scientists “deniers”.
John Timmer tried to debunk it with words like “bogus”, and “false” but lacked things like evidence and numbers to back up his case. As far as I can tell the arguments amount to saying that a massive wall of money doesn’t influence the scientific process because scientists are incorruptible, the peer review process is faultless, and the human process of science works in ways that no other human process does. There are no political aims, personal ambitions, or human failings in *The Science!*™
“Conspiracy Theorist” – the taunt you use when you want to “win” the debate without having to argue your point.
When someone points out that the Regulating Class want to bring on a world government, they’re called a “conspiracy theorist”. When the king-pins of the Regulating Class, or their media apostles, actually admit they rather love the idea of a world government, where are the retractions? They can’t hold an honest conversation, let alone budget, plan and spend your money wisely.
Gary Stix – former Scientific American writer – blogs that he used to edit articles on nuclear fusion and clean coal, but now thinks he ought to have written more on psychology, sociology and economics. (See, when their attempts at logic, reason and evidence don’t win over the crowd, the anointed need to explain how stupid, flawed and selfish people are.) (more…)
A rapidly growing number of Americans are coming to distrust “scientific” climate report conclusions that emanate from authoritarian government and institutional sources — often with good reason. Such skepticism has arisen in part from revelations of conspiracies among influential researchers to exaggerate the existence and threats of man-made climate change, withhold background data and suppress contrary findings evidenced in the “ClimateGate” scandal.
Other doubt is legitimately fueled by direct observations. We commonly witness alarmist claims based upon short-term warming events, while other equally notable cooling episodes are dismissed in importance, attributed to warming, or cited as proof of disturbing “climate change.”
Who pays for all this bad science, and worse, news? We do, of course. And it doesn’t come cheap. According to data compiled by Joanne Nova at the Science and Public Policy Institute, the U.S. Government spent more than $32.5 billion on climate studies between 1989 and 2009. This doesn’t count about $79 billion more spent for related climate change technology research, foreign aid and tax breaks for “green energy.” (more…)
The key question — with all the billions spent on cutting Australia’s carbon production: the trade and income lost; the jobs cut; the pain of living near wind farms; the foreign holidays avoided and then paying more for petrol and electricity than we have to — how many degrees will our actions cool the world by?
Assuming the IPCC are right about the effects of CO2, and that Australia stopped producing CO2 entirely (if we all left the country) by 2100 the world would be 0.0123 degrees cooler, and sea levels would be 2mm lower. These are so small they are unmeasureable.
Abandon Australia and save
The statistics every Australian should know:
Australia produced 1.38% of global human emissions of CO2 in 2011. (EIA, 2011a)
Each year global emissions increase by twice Australia’s total annual output. (2.8%/year (EIA, 2011a). If we all emigrated and left a bare deserted continent, it puts off the warmer Armageddon by just six months. (more…)
This excellent article by Art Horn in the Energy Tribune, takes the lid off the massive amounts of money being spent by government on “climate change”, at a time of severe financial constraints.
“As a meteorologist and climate change (what happened to global warming?) investigator, I constantly hear the charge that we who do not kneel at the altar of Al Gore are simply hired hacks for “Big Oil.” We are clueless stooges who will say anything for money. This old and tired argument is used over and over again by people who don’t do any research to back up that claim, they simply “know it’s true” because they read it in the New York Times or Newsweek or saw it on some television program. I wonder how many of those making this charge drive a car, use plastics, fly on planes or use virtually any product that we in our hydrocarbon based society enjoy? I’d bet all of them. (more…)
Jo Nova has done sterling work in documenting and providing insight into what led to the 10:10 video in which the producers fantasise about utterly destroying, at the press of a button, those who show the slightest reluctance to toe the party line on climate. Including young children in a classroom.
The whole thing deserves deep study. The paper by Jo Nova has been published by the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI), and can be downloaded as a pdf from here: (1)
Kudos to the SPPI for publishing this. Kudos to Jo Nova for creating it. She gives a summary and background at her own blog (2). (more…)
Thank you 10:10. We could not have come up with better promotion to show how malignantly dangerous the totalitarian eco-fascist dark side of Greens is. Send copies of this to your friends. Send them to your enemies!
10:10 produced a star studded sicko fantasy of what their real Christmas gift wish is for the world. When you can’t convince people with reason, mark anyone who disagrees, blow up their children.
Their true nature is so on display… softly, softly, quietly under the guise of “nice”: trick them, decieve them, say “No Pressure”, and then be judge, jury and executioner in gratuitous orgasmic revenge: press a button and see exploding blood and guts splat on the wall.
The sore losers are soooooo frustrated.
Spot the difference with green terrorism and Islamic Extremists. At least the jihadi’s are not pretending to hide their greedy egotistical self-interest by pretending to “care” about the planet.
The entire green movement of the world needs to answer this. It doesn’t matter whether they made it or not. They can’t hide behind this as a joke. Would they let any vigilante out there produce a video of someone blowing up, say, boat people’s kids? Should such a sick “joke” as that be put online. Any true human-rights-respecting, tolerant, compassionate speaking person must denounce the 10:10 video in no uncertain terms.
They used former-stars people who used to have some social standing (what were they thinking?). Gillian Anderson (x-files), Peter Crouch (footballer), David Ginola (a French footballer), Richard Curtis (film maker, eg Love Actually, Notting Hill), and Radiohead. (more…)
A reader review posted on the Amazon website of the useful book A Primer on CO2 and Climate, second edition by American academic Howard C. Hayden says “someone recommended this book to me. So I went here, and all I see are glowing reviews. Yet, if you check up on this retired professor, he sits on an organisation called CFACT that has received over $US472,000 ($A532,000) from ExxonMobil over that last seven years. CFACT has been critical of government regulation on many issues, including the o-zone layer, mercury emissions, global warming, toxic waste and the use of pesticides. While buying this $US14.95 book helps supplement his income, it is pretty clear who is funding his retirement.”
This comment is typical of the dirt flung by activists at anyone who dares to challenge their dearly held belief that the science on human induced global warming is rock solid. Also, like all such accusations, the amounts produced with a flourish by the global warming activists contradicts the case they are trying to make, that big energy is bankrolling scepticism. The amount revealed works out to a little more than just $US67,000 a year, which is trivial even in Australian terms for a lobbying organisation of any size let alone in America where CFACT operates, and never mind that it’s been given to the organisation with which Hayden happens to be associated rather than directly to the scientist. The amount just looks large to activists. (more…)
Sensing that their sky-is-falling theory is crumbling under scientific scrutiny, the always-insecure global warming True Believers are losing their cool, lashing out at critics with a mounting campaign of scurrilous personal attacks, impugning the motives, integrity and mental state of anyone who refuses to genuflect before the high priesthood of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).
The latest target of the Warmists: Viscount Christopher Monckton begin_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skype_highlighting of Brenchley, a mathematician and leading critic of the global warming theory, a.k.a. “climate change.” Monckton was recently mocked and browbeaten in a 115-slide presentation by John Abraham, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. His “hit and run” slide-show attack was an attempt to discredit a presentation that Monckton had given in St. Paul, Minnesota, in October 2009.
Monckton replied with a powerful rebuttal that, point by point, eviscerated Abraham’s embarrassingly dishonest production. Monckton called on Abraham and the university to issue a formal apology, remove the libelous presentation from the Internet, and donate $110,000 to a Haitian charity as compensation for the damage done to his reputation. (more…)
What do you do when someone speaks against your faith, sounds authoritative, well informed, and backs everything up with lots of evidence? If you’re sane, you change your mind.
If you are John P. Abraham, a lecturer in fluid mechanics at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota, you write to a few select scientists distorting what your opponent said, and then collect the infuriated responses. Abraham went on to assemble a list of things Christopher Monckton didn’t say, complained about things he didn’t cite (even if he did and it’s printed on his slides), pretended he couldn’t find sources (but didn’t take ten minutes to ask), and created a litany of communication pollution in an effort to denigrate Monckton’s character.
The untruths and fabrications have come back to bite him. (more…)
An email today asking if this is real science or just hype prompted me to do some research. First, below, the tragic story from the lizard specialist at BYU, whose rediscovery of some old field notes apparently was enough to touch off a firestorm of press coverage. My rebuttal, with citations, follows. (more…)
Thanks to Glenn Beck, we get bit more insight into the tangled web that The House of Global Warming was built on.
Who would have thought? Goldman Sachs has been working hard to save the environment for years.
Generation Investment Management (GIM) was founded by Al Gore, and a few friends, which included David Blood (former Goldman executive), Mark Ferguson (Goldman) and Peter Harris (Goldman). They are the fifth largest shareholder in the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). Then in 2006, when the CCX needed some extra funding, who should step up to buy 10% of the company – Goldman Sachs.
CCX is an exchange that won’t be doing a heck of a lot if carbon trading doesn’t become mandatory. All of these players have a vested interest in Cap N Trade legislation. (more…)