Climate Skeptics

Are you now, or have you ever been one?

Don’t know why I didn’t make the cut.

[Update a few minutes later]

Related: Climategate, and the smearing of Willie Soon:

…the New York Times and other pro-government sources assume that government funding of research is lily-white, while corporate funding is inherently suspect. This is ridiculous. Put aside, for a moment, the fact that the American environmental movement is funded by Russia’s state-controlled oil company. Also the fact that Greenpeace gets money ($203 million) from the American Petroleum Foundation, with another $214 million coming from the Chamber of Commerce. [This has been reported, but the Chamber says it is not the case.]

That isn’t the real scandal. The real scandal is that the overwhelming majority of money spent on climate research comes from governments. Governments, most notably ours, fund climate hysteria to the tune of billions of dollars per year. Why? Because the whole point of global warming alarmism is to persuade voters to cede more control over Western economies to government. (No one actually cares about CO2 emissions from India or China, which together vastly exceed ours.)

Governments fund climate research–but only climate research that feeds alarmism–because they are the main parties in interest in the climate debate. Governments stand to gain trillions of dollars in revenue and unprecedented power if voters in the U.S. and other Western countries can be stampeded into ceding more power to them, based on transparently bad science.

Yup.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Thoughts from Judith Curry:

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 seven 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.”

Punch back twice as hard.

9 thoughts on “Climate Skeptics”

  1. Pretty ridiculous, but a lot of AGW believers actually believe this nonsense about the fossil fuel industry being “Merchants of Doubt”, funding all those skeptics. Clueless. They will be disappointed.

    1. Have the climate skeptics ever been able to substantiate claims that so many climate scientists are deep into the pockets of ‘Big Academia’ or ‘Big Green Energy’? I mean something akin to this news article in the NYT about Wei-Hock Soon’s publishing of “deliverables” — sorry, academic papers — with no reference to the money he’s received from the fossil-fuel industry: http://nyti.ms/1FHTIvj

      Sure, my question is meant to be provocative, but its also asked sincerely since I haven’t seen the ‘smoking gun’ data linking climate scientists to their alleged deep ties to an industry.

      1. Don’t you mean ‘Big Government,’ since it is the interest that benefits from the kinds of programs the Climate Alarmist cult demands (not excluding the internment camps many have proposed for us non-cultists)?

        We already know that the big government grant money only goes to those who toe the AGW line, and there is no master so jealous as big government.

        1. We already know that the big government grant money only goes to those who toe the AGW line

          This is exactly the specific feedback I’m looking for. A link or two to help me process what you’re talking about. I will read them sincerely, I promise.

      2. “Have the climate skeptics ever been able to substantiate claims that so many climate scientists are deep into the pockets of ‘Big Academia’ or ‘Big Green Energy’? ”

        Do you mean that that is where they get their money from or that it influences their work? Funding of AGW scientists is usually brought up to point out that if money corrupts, it can’t be a one way street. To which AGW defenders always say that their people are pure and unquestionable and not like all the other humans.

        I think the social pressure and threat of excommunication from academic or scientific fields has a larger effect than any amount of money. It takes courage to be different than your peers on an issue but even more to be express views that get you cast out from society.

      3. I personally don’t have a clue. But all scientists work on grants, either from the government or from some private corporation or NGO or such. I assume that the government is by far the biggest provider, Greenpeace and such fund a lot of studies, and so do large corporations like Big Oil. Why focus on Big Oil’s contributions and ignore the others?
        Note that Judith Curry’s post points out that she had received contributions from various Green sources in the old days before her “conversion”. Note also in the comments there a list of fossil fuel corporations that have supported various pro-AGW science projects. For instance, the Koch group was a major contributor to Richard Muller’s BEST project, and Muller testifies that they neither tried to influence the work nor complained when it turned out to support (that piece of) the consensus.
        I don’t see what about this counts as a “scandal”. Lots of groups fund science.

  2. Given how scientifically illterate the people who demand scientific goodthink from others are, you’d imagine they wouldn’t be so strident.

    People, like Grijalva, who are one high school biology question away from public humiliation, should probably avoid casting a light on scientific literacy.

  3. I found an audio recording from March 26, 2013, where Dr. Don Easterbrook (Professor Emeritus of Geology at Western Washington University) provides testimony to the Washington State Senate Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee. His arsenal of data and observations that are contrary to the theory of anthropogenic global warming is simply amazing. While he studiously remains cordial with the committee’s questions and challenges, he probably would be labeled as a skeptic on AGW.

    http://www.themindrenewed.com/mp3/TMR_039_GuestEpisode_DrDonEasterbrookTestimony_48kbps.mp3

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