Does Climate Money matter? Is a monopoly good for a market?

Climate Money report, SPPI.

Climate Money turned the tables on the Big-Oil criers

A reply to an article on Wired and Ars Technica

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!*™

Here’s why each excuse doesn’t pan out:

Excuse 1/”this is not how science works”

If money doesn’t have any influence on researchers, by implication, climate scientists are not like the rest of the human race.  (Why do we pay them at all, one wonders?) It would take a truly angelic mature being to welcome awkward results with a smile. Who would enjoy finding data that showed that they’d been barking up the wrong tree for two decades and was now an expert in a dead-end irrelevant topic?  If the results did not support their theory, which superhuman scientists would willingly work to ensure that their own specialty would plummet off the public agenda from “The Greatest Moral Threat” down to 193rd on the list of hot topics needing public attention? After we figured out that CO2 was of minor importance, the funding would slow, the red carpet events would dry up, and the two week long annual UN coordinated junkets in exotic countries would invite other experts from other fields.

Periodically an alarmist will claim that “mainstream science” would welcome the discovery that man-made emissions were irrelevant. But we don’t need to do that thought experiment, we’ve tested it already. Scientists who publish papers supporting non-catastrophic conclusions get called Deniers, they quickly get a DeSmog/SourceWatch/Exxon Secrets smear page that investigates contracts they may or may not have made 20 years ago, makes fun of their religious beliefs, dissects their biography, and if they persist, Greenpeace sends letters to their employer suggesting they ought not have a job. What’s not to like about that?
The price for speaking out against global warming is exile from your peers, even if you are at the top of your field.
We need a real free market in climate science before we create free markets in the real economy based on those conclusions.

Excuse 2/ The funding was mostly for “Climate Technology”

Funding for “technology” will not affect the science, says  Timmer. Apparently Jo Nova misread her own graph (and “spectacularly too!”) Except JoNova labelled the graph accurately, read it correctly and just drew different conclusions. Technology isn’t science research, but as far as the media, politicians and press are concerned, the difference is moot. The IPCC was happy to count those solar, wind power, biomass and geothermal scientists as “science experts” that made a consensus. (Remember 4000 scientists support the IPCC conclusions.) No one complained that the solar engineers were “not climate scientists” when they made statements on press releases saying “climate change is real”. Money for solar, wind and carbon sequestration fueled many press conferences and expo’s where the “threat” that CO2 poses was taken for granted. In universities those research groups added to the pressure on science faculties to “keep the alarm running”, if only because they adopted the same disdainful culture to scorn dissenters. None of any of these researchers spent ten minutes checking the modelers assumptions on water vapor feedback. Neither did any of the zoology majors who report on iguana habitats shifting either. They all became mindless cheerleaders for  the message. Can someone explain how any of those technology (or biology) researchers had an interest in announcing flaws in the theory of man-made climate funding?

Excuse 3/ It’s incomprehensible that money could affect science. Ergo science is uncorruptible?

I pointed out that “Thousands of scientists have been funded to find a connection between human carbon emissions and the climate. Hardly any have been funded to find the opposite.” Timmer responds that this is “an almost incomprehensible misunderstanding” (and there goes Adam Smith in the bin) but  the effect of only funding one side of a theory is not just “comprehensible” but documented in peer reviewed journals. Anyone with eyes can see how adjustments to the data progressively shift the graphs in one direction. (See these sea level graphs for example.) The adjustments are non-random, just like the adjustments to global temperature sets, and ocean heat content. The trend is always shifted to be more like the models. That’s exactly what you’d expect if you funded hundreds of people to look for one answer. You get what you paid for.

Excuse 4/ Timmer points out that some people are looking for solar effects on the climate.

True, a scattering of scientists funded through other areas are looking for natural causes of climate change, but they are  not necessarily free to find it. Funding for climate change is so large, and the anti-skeptic culture is so strong that even in astronomy researchers know better than to speak their skeptical minds freely. The grants panels of national research committees almost always include someone who is a fan of the man-made theory, and when competition for a grant is so fierce that making one enemy on an assessment panel can make the difference between success and failure, researchers know that keeping their skeptical opinions to themselves is important. Hence, even distant fields are affected by the rivers of money flowing in the Climate Change Stream. I’m relaying this story direct from a researcher, though for obvious reasons I cannot name them.

Excuse 5/   The government had been throwing lots of money at climate science for decades.

(So?) Timmer claims climate funding had not expanded out of nothing in 1989 though he has no numbers (that is always the way isn’t it?). Certainly, the US government had been studying climate science under many different agencies before then. But what the graph unmistakably shows is that money directed towards man-made global warming issue was expanding fast. The new “climate change” label plastered over hundreds of research grants, and underlying billions of dollars of spending, tells us that the emphasis, the motives, and the aim of international research had shifted. There was no “climate change” research project before then. In those days, people were mostly just trying to understand the climate.

Major Research Programs were created to solve preordained problems

Whole programs were created around 1990 to deal with a “risk” and “danger” from climate change. What previously was called “climate science” (or geography, geology, meteorology, and oceanography) now became part of a large campaign called the “climate change science program”. Note, sec 204 of the legislation that created the Global Change Research Act of 1990. Paraphrased:

The President shall establish an Office of Global Change Research Information. The purpose of the office is to supply information about the research and development related to:

  1. reducing energy use,
  2. promoting renewables,
  3. solving the ozone hole,
  4. reducing the amount of CO2,
  5. helping poor countries use agricultural and industrial chemicals,
  6. promoting recycling and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions.

In other words, before the research was even done, the government was funding it so that results could help them achieve policy goals that were already decided. The questions were not: 1. Figure out if reducing CO2 is worth the cost, or is even beneficial. 2. Make climate models that will predict the weather and help agriculture and town planning. The science was decidedly unsettled in 1990, yet the government knew that it wanted to reduce CO2, burn less fossil fuel, and promote renewables.

Excuse 6/ Science is done by peer review, not auditing

Christopher Essex wrote to me to point out that when billions of dollars rests on research results, peer review is not enough, the work ought to be audited:

“Timmer is right that there is a difference between auditing and peer review. These things are very different and they have different purposes. Peer review is cursory in some sense. It is a compromise at best, but it is not intended to check or reproduce everything in a study, but provides an author and editor some feedback on the merit of a piece. The problem is that the peers are not school teachers marking a student’s assignment, because they are peers. They do not necessarily know better than the author. In fact  even a peer with great reputation can be wrong, which is why publication is not adding to holy scripture, but an opportunity to allow peers to respond with their own papers. Peer reviewed papers can thus be terrible, while non-peer-reviewed papers of high quality can experience a very rough ride.

 Independent auditing is an entirely different matter. It has limited place in normal scientific give and take. But  it is crucial from a corporate or policy point of view. If you aim to adopt something out of the scientific literature as a basis of a business or government strategy or policy, the executive has a fiduciary responsibility to be sure that the work adopted is correct in terms of its internal consistency and credibility of the assumptions and interpretations. Peer reviewed literature must  be subjected to that from a liability point of view. That means everything needs to be checked, with caveats fully discovered and reported. This is not science except in as much as reproducibility is legitimately important to science.
The problem here is that most adoptions of  peer reviewed literature by the UN were not audited. That makes those responsible for the various UN IPCC howlers liable for the costs that have arisen as a result. Of course there is always a question of whether the UN can be sued, but that is the principle of it. All of the government policy stuff needs to be audited as some level, peer review is not sufficient. On that other hand non-peer-reviewed material might also be audited, and be fine.
One does not want suits over peer reviewed material in the science literature, because it is important that scientists do not get a chill over making mistakes. That would compromise the ability of the scientific community to work things out and to advance. But this caveat does not apply to corporate or government uses of science where people may be hurt financially or physically because of mistakes or bias. “

Cheap Shots that prove my point

The bottom line is that Timmer is so short of real arguments that he scratches for slurs, even resorting to associating a climate change skeptic to a HIV skeptic: “Like many other self-proclaimed skeptics, Nova …” (follow the link). There is no connection between the two topics. John Timmer’s attempt at denigration by association (of the non-existent kind) is more proof of just how unscientific, unenquiring and desperate the world of climate groupthink is. Why does the team that claims to do *The Science!* have to resort to baseless character attacks instead of reasoned arguments? Could it be they have no evidence?

Then there’s the standard of research”: Timmer claims I’m an “Australian journalist” but if he’d done ten seconds of research and read the  “About” page on my site,  he’d have seen that I’m not and have never been a journalist. It’s irrelevant in the big scheme of things, but emblematic of a sloppy mind. If he didn’t know or care what Jo Nova does, why say anything?

After ten years of hearing how Big-Oil was controlling the debate by funding experts, it took him two and half years to come up with the idea that money has no influence. Is he sending a memo to DeSmog? Is he telling them to call off the Exxon attack dogs?

 

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9.3 out of 10 based on 63 ratings

79 comments to Does Climate Money matter? Is a monopoly good for a market?

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    Paul79

    Another aspect of ‘peer review’ is missing in the work of adjustments, homogenising, etc., of data when no actual examples are given to satisfy one that the method used is justified and correct.
    Nor is there any explanation or justification for the discepancy between tide gauge data and satellite sea level data trends.
    None of these discrepancies are explained in peer-reviewed papers, so one may suspect that there could be a complete lack of integrity by the nameless people processing the data.

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    Gee Aye

    To me this looks like a slur, even when the hyperbole is removed

    It would take a truly angelic mature being to welcome awkward results with a smile. Who would enjoy finding data that showed that they’d been barking up the wrong tree for two decades and was now an expert in a dead-end irrelevant topic? If the results did not support their theory, which superhuman scientists would willingly work to ensure that their own specialty would plummet off the public agenda from “The Greatest Moral Threat” down to 193rd on the list of hot topics needing public attention? After we figured out that CO2 was of minor importance, the funding would slow, the red carpet events would dry up, and the two week long annual UN coordinated junkets in exotic countries would invite other experts from other fields.

    Actually maybe it isn’t a slur. At first sight it looks like slur but then passive rhetorical questions can look like anything. I know this is not meant to be a straight news report full of facts and substantiation but I wish it was not this.

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    Philip Bradley

    Jo, the UN can’t be sued. It is a condition of the treaty (convention) member states sign in order to join the UN. The UN itself has no laws concerning theft, fraud, bribery, etc. So all these activities are perfectly legal at the United Nations.

    The Convention’s core provision with regard to immunity from jurisdiction is found
    in article II, section 2, which runs as follows: “The United Nations, its property and assets
    wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall enjoy immunity from every form of legal
    process except insofar as in any particular case it has expressly waived its immunity.”

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  • #
    BobC

    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!*™

    That IS the argument, and it is another example of the Big Lie Technique. As most who have worked in academia (or even passed through it, while getting an advanced degree) well know, academics have a lower than average sense of ethical behavior — probably because there are little or no consequences for ethical misconduct, unlike in the business world where getting a reputation for questionable ethics can have devastating financial effects.

    For example, this study concludes that

    …[while] questionable research practices, such as keeping poor research records or permitting honorary authorship … violate traditional values of the research enterprise … there is “neither broad agreement about [their] seriousness… nor any consensus on standards for behavior in such matters.”

    But, parallel to the academic world (and invisible to most academics) there actually are legal standards about such things. For example, “honorary inventorship” is illegal on US patent applications, but advisors are traditionally listed on their student’s inventions, usually as first inventor — even when it is a complete fabrication. The student has no choice but to go along with it because their advisor holds their future career hostage. It is my opinion that the majority of patents coming out of US universities could be invalidated by investigating this.

    Sloppy data keeping is nearly universal, and is a violation of the terms of any government funding contract. The government could theoretically demand a refund.

    And this doesn’t even touch the really nasty stuff, like pressuring students for sexual favors — which is almost never reported. I personally know of PhD students who switched fields to escape a lecherous advisor.

    In general the academic abuse of the asymmetrical power relationship between professors and students is widespread. An amusing, but telling, anticdote occured at the state university in my town about 30 years ago: A Stanford student, in the 19th year of pursuing his PhD in mathematics, murdered his advisor with a sledge hammer. He pled “not guilty” and claimed justifible homicide. He was, of course, sent to prison.

    The amusing thing was that scores of copies of the newspaper article appeared on bulletin boards, laboratory doors, and graduate students’ office doors overnight. There were no comments, just the bare clippings, many of which stayed up for years.

    Some years latter, the Stanford student came up for parole (he was a model prisoner), but turned it down as one of the conditions was that he express remorse. He claimed he was morally justified and served out the remainder of his term. This news article also appeared all over campus, on grad student office doors.

    Stuff like this doesn’t happen where high ethical standards are maintained.

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  • #
    JMD

    If money doesn’t have any influence on researchers, by implication, climate scientists are not like the rest of the human race.

    We need a real free market in climate science before we create free markets in the real economy based on those conclusions.

    True statements if I have ever read them Jo, but as I have previously tried to point out, or is that prod? poke? bludgen? you seem to take them no further.

    Why does money have this influence on people? Just what is it about money that makes the government protect its monopoly – over money – with an iron fist?

    There is NO free market in anything while the government is the ‘market maker’ with its money monopoly. Carbon credit is NOT the greatest scam in human history, not even close. That belongs to Government credit, it is junk, lead trading as gold, oregano as weed. Your civilisation is being destroyed while everyone looks in the wrong direction.

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    cementafriend

    Re excuse 3 There are many incidents of corruption with so-called climate scientist. This is a short list
    1/ Douglas Keenan wrote a peer reviewed paper “The Freud Allegations against some climatic Research of Wei-Chyung Wang” Eng&Env Vol 18 No7 2007. Keenan provided this information under oath to UK parliamentary inquiry. Dr Phil Jones of UEA CRU was a co-author of a paper with Wang in which Wang had included the false data. Jones has continue to rely on the paper assuming that there is no UHI effect.
    2/ Mann’s hockey stick paper and graph which has been debunked on there grounds a) upside down Tiljander tree ring series, b) Briffra’s selection of Yamal tree rings and cutting off of the series at 1960 & c) a computer program that results in a hockey stick result with random data.
    3/ FOI emails showing adjustments of the GISS US temperature record to reduce 1930’s temperature and increase recenet temperature. (said to be under instruction from Hansen)
    4/ Prof Ian Lowes exaggeration by 13 times of calculated emissions highlighted by the President of a Land & Environment court in 2007
    5/ Prof David Karoly’s paper about Butterfies and Climate change at Laverton (highlighted by the ABC in March 2010) which completely (deliberately) ignored the domestic housing and industry development in the area.
    6/ Numerous false pronouncements & papers by Dr Ove Hoegh-Guldberg about the state of the Great Barrier Reef and the affect of climate change and ocean acidification.
    7/ Recent cherry picking of temperature data by Will Steffen in a report about climate effects in Western Sydney

    There are sure to be many others

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    pat

    unsurprisingly, a glowing review!

    3 May: Futures&OptionsNetwork: Book review: Richard Sandor’s Good Derivatives
    Richard Sandor is a man who does not let failure get in the way of his ambition. From his early days as an academic to the establishment of the world’s leading climate exchange, his story, recounted in his newly released autobiography Good Derivatives: A Story of Financial and Environmental Innovation, stands testament to what can be achieved through vision and perseverance…
    Sandor’s commitment to the environment, which went on to dominate his career, began with a 1990 meeting with Phil Senechal, who was a member of a pressure group promoting a cap and trade scheme called the Coalition for Acid Rain Equity. “I know you’ve commoditised interest rates. Can you do it for air?” Senechal asked.
    The second half of the book documents Sandor’s successful struggle to commoditise air, beginning with the First EPA Annual SO2 Auction and ending launching new projects in China and India. The story ties together the themes of Sandor’s career: the forging of novel concepts against staunch opposition, regulatory change framing innovation and, above all, a ruthless determination in the face of failure.
    It was this determination that led to what will be one of Sandor’s lasting legacies: the European Climate Exchange, or the “Jewel in the crown” as he terms it. In the wake of the rise and fall of the Chicago Climate Exchange and the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange, the European Climate Exchange has overridden the negativity in the market and the impact of the collapse of CO2 prices to emerge as a market leader and a global blueprint for cap-and-trade emissions schemes…
    http://www.fow.com/Article/3022778/Book-review-Richard-Sandors-Good-Derivatives.html

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  • #
    memoryvault

    .
    Sort of O/T and sort-of not.

    BHPB just announced a six month moratorium on all new capital investments.

    I’ve written many times on how this CAGW madness would not end until the money flow stopped.
    And the money would not stop until the mining boom did.

    .
    Well, it just did.

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  • #
    pat

    Senechal today, in company with some coal boys!

    Stafland Energy Corp: Management: Philip J. Senechal, President and CEO, with more than 30 years of experience in the energy and mining industries, is responsible for the overall strategic direction of Stafland Energy Corporation.
    Mr. Senechal was the lead investor, President, and CEO of Bellefonte Lime Company, Inc., and GenLime Group, LLP, formed in the mid 1980’s to make acquisitions in the chemical lime industry. The companies were comprised of assets purchased from The Warner Company, General Dynamic’s Marblehead Lime Division, U S Gypsum, and Waste Management…
    Mr. Senechal also served as President of the National Lime Association for two terms, acting as a member of an ad hoc committee formed by the Chairman of the United States House of Representatives Energy Sub Committee to draft the House version of the Acid Rain sections of the Clean Air Act of 1990.
    Mr. Senechal was a member of the Clean Air Committee, representing the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). Together with the input of the ad hoc committee and the CBOT, the Emission Allowance Trading Program of the CAA of 1990 was crafted…
    Robert A. Biggans, VP Operations, has over 25 years of diverse experience in the coal mining, chemical and construction industries…
    L. Nicholas Stevens, VP Marketing, has over 30 years of experience in the coal industry, including mining operations, transportation, marketing and sales.
    He is the CEO and President of TransAppalachian Coal, which holds a substantial reserve position of low sulfur coal in West Virginia…
    http://staflandenergy.com/management.htm

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  • #
    Sonny

    Jo,
    This will be my last comment on your blog. Everything that can be said has been said.
    I must say that climate change has affected me personally in that I have become depressed, obsessed, skeptical of everything, angry, distrusting – all of which has cost me a great deal personally. I have found that I am powerless to do anything to stop the tide of climate change apart from having my say on this forum and boring friends to death.

    Goodbye all you fine, honest, unselfish and caring humanitarians.
    As for all the alarmists that have profited from the corruption of science? You can all Get F$&@ed!

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  • #
    Joe's World

    Jo,

    Bias is a big factor in many areas of our lives.
    From science to propaganda is usually bought for us to ingest for generating a like minded society.
    90% of science is supposedly unexplored…yet we have these laws and theories that block any new technologies or science discoveries from even being published as it may effect the many.
    True exploration for just the understanding of our planet and solar system is lost for man made models that fail miserably.
    Simple basic measurements were NEVER done hence NEVER included but it would definitely effect the many that our science is mostly man made to fit their parameters and conclusions.
    Who has paid this bill?
    Mostly our governments through grants and wages by universities. They are not to be questioned no matter how much the technology has changed as the published works are considered their basis of reference. No matter how bad the science conclusions are, they will still be referenced rather than question the actual worth of the research.
    Miss a single parameter and the whole thesis is garbage(which would NEVER be an option to the consensus).

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  • #
    Peter Miller

    Having read Jo’s article, I wrote down the name of every scientist I know. The number is 27; they are mostly geologists and all work in the private sector.

    In conversation, the subject of CAGW rarely comes up, as everyone rightly knows it is a complete crock and that is the end of the discussion.

    So, who are the ‘scientists’ – 97% isn’t it – who believe in CAGW?

    There seem to be certain pre-requisites to be a ‘scientist’ who believes in CAGW:

    1. You almost certainly work for government or an NGO. The first is not necessarily a bad thing, while the second almost certainly is.

    2. You work in an environment where punishment for not actively demonstrating your faith to the current whim of your political masters is dismissal, non-renewment of contract, or a sideways shuffle into bureaucratic oblivion. This is more likely to happen in an NGO than in government, but probably not by much.

    3. You are prepared to abandon all the basic cornerstones of real science, such as: i) reproducibility, ii) non-manipulation of data, iii) openness, iv) no cherry picking of data, v) willingness to debate, and vi) not pre-determining the conclusions of your research.

    4. You are not prepared to have any responsibility, or accountability, whatsoever for your actions – this is already an obvious an essential characteristic for all those who work in NGOs.

    5. You choose to place continuation of your cosy, comfortable lifestyle above the interests of scientific accuracy and integrity.

    In my humble opinion, if you, as a scientist, have to adhere to the above pre-requisites for your current position in life, then you are not entitled to an opinion, you should be dismissed and your organisation disbanded, because you clearly serve no purpose and are just a drain on limited financial resources in times of relative economic hardship.

    This is no more than an overdue and practical solution to the cancer of ‘climate science’, as it is practiced today.

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  • #
    handjive

    Just going slightly o/t, but…carbon (sic) trading related:

    In Pictures: The World’s Largest Solar Thermal Power Plant

    When it’s finished, it will generate 370 megawatts of electricity on sunny days.

    Construction was temporarily slowed to accommodate the care and relocation of desert tortoises—a threatened species—found in larger numbers than expected.

    Tortoises, birds, humans.

    Nothing is safe from our clean energy future.

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  • #

    […] Jo Nova Share this:PrintEmailMoreStumbleUponTwitterFacebookDiggRedditLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. This entry was posted in Climate Change, IPCC and tagged climate fraud, PlayStation® climatology. Bookmark the permalink. ← Ruling on wind farm says the countryside is as important as climate change targets […]

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  • #
    oeman50

    I saw a TV show on one of the cable channels (sorry I can’t provide a name or a link) about a study that mapped the tree growth in an acre of land and compared it to a fractal model. It was a very interesting study and show. At the very end, they started measuring the areas of leaves on the trees to see how much CO2 they would absorb.

    It was so clear from the way this was tacked on at the end that it was far from being the focus of the study, they wanted to do the math. It also became apparent this was the finanacing mechanism of the study. Tie almost anything to CO2 and “global warming,” even fractals, and the money spigot opens up.

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  • #
    Kevin Moore

    This excerpt from a Greenpeace propaganda sheet put a smile on my face. I wonder if Christine Milne wrote it?

    http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/globai-warming-and-energy/exxon-secrets/faq/

    Why Exxon?
    While the rest of the world is now accepting climate change and moving on the issue, especially in the business sector, ExxonMobil continues to fund the think tanks and organizations who are running a decades-long campaign denying the consensus of urgency from climate scientists and attacking policies to abate global warming. A major shift by ExxonMobil would send strong signals throughout the business world. While Exxon isn’t the only company funding these organizations, it has played a leading role in several key anti-environmental lobby groups, including the Global Climate Coalition and the American Petroleum Institute.

    But doesn’t Exxon say it cares about climate change?
    Exxon might “take climate change seriously” but the reality is that it has been spearheading this campaign to undermine action on climate change for many many years. The company has recently recognized that its longstanding position on global warming has become unpalatable with increasing public awareness and political momentum on climate change, so it has shifted its rhetoric and revised its choice of words around the issue.

    Don’t the deniers have a right to free speech?
    There’s a difference between free speech and a campaign to deny the climate science with the goal of undermining international action on climate change. However, there’s also responsibility that goes with freedom of speech – which is based around honesty and transparency. Freedom of speech does not apply to misinformation and propaganda.

    Debate is part of science, isn’t it?
    Real scientists always debate science – that is correct, its part of the scientific process, testing hypotheses and introducing new data and analysis. But the scientists named on ExxonSecrets rarely publish peer reviewed scientific work…..

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  • #
    NoFixedAddress

    Can we (Australia) now talk about severing all connection with the “UN”.

    In my lifetime we (Australia) have had sanctions on South Africa, Zimbabwe, Iraq and I do not understand why our sanctions were dropped because they are failed states.

    This whole gobble warming scam is part of ‘making it all safe for you and me’ mind set.

    I am sick of helping the Labor (who do they represent) Party.

    Ben Chifley got us into this and it has been all downhill ever since.

    I want to stand on the border of “UN” countries and ‘p’ on them and laugh in their face.

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  • #

    When millions of dollars are made available to study a purported problem the one thing that is certain to not be discovered it that there ian’t one.

    What is the difference between peer review in climate science and collusion in the financial industry?

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  • #
    pat

    some back-tracking at a Minerals Council lunch:

    30 May: Herald Sun: Malcolm Farr: Tony Abbott admits ‘difficult to undo’ carbon tax
    TONY Abbott today conceded that elements of carbon pricing will be “difficult to undo” but pledged to scrap both it and the mining tax if made Prime Minister…
    “They are trying to prevent the next elected government from undoing the harm that they have done,” he said in his speech.
    “And there is no doubt that there are measures associated with both the mining tax and the carbon tax that will be difficult to undo.
    “We will be able to deliver tax cuts without a carbon tax. We will be able to deliver pension improvements without a carbon tax…
    Mr Abbott did not itemise the difficult sections of the carbon pricing scheme and the Minerals Resources Rental Tax.
    But he told the lunch: “Let me assure you that a tax that has been put in place by legislation can be removed by legislation. What the Parliament does the Parliament can undo.”…
    http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/tony-abbott-admits-difficult-to-undo-carbon-tax/story-fn7j19iv-1226374361912

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    pat

    30 May: Reuters: Jeff Coelho: UPDATE 2-Global carbon market value rises to record $176 bln
    Editing by Jason Neely and Jane Baird
    A record number of emissions products were traded in 2011, even though prices of EU carbon permits and international offsets plumbed new depths well below $10 a tonne late in the year, the bank said in its annual report on carbon markets.
    Worldwide emissions trading last year rose 17 percent in volume to 10.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, with permits in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) accounting for more than three quarters of the total…
    The rise in volume lifted the value of the EU market to $148 billion from a revised $134 billion in 2010, even though average EU carbon prices fell 4 percent year on year to $18.80 a tonne.
    Carbon markets were not immune to recent global economic volatility from the Arab Spring, Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster and the euro zone debt crisis, the World Bank report said.
    “A considerable portion of the trades is primarily motivated by hedging, portfolio adjustments, profit-taking and arbitrage,” it said.
    But if carbon prices continue to remain below $10 a tonne, there will be little incentive for companies and governments to invest in low-carbon projects, a bank official said…
    Other national and regional carbon schemes showed mixed results. New Zealand’s carbon market value tripled to $351 million, while the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in North America nearly halved to $249 million, the bank said…
    Secondary trading volumes for international offsets regulated by the United Nations also soared in 2011, rising 43 percent year on year to 1.8 billion units valued at $23 billion.
    The main reason for this was a rise in demand for U.N.-backed emissions offsets, because a certain number of the credits can be used for compliance in markets such as the EU ETS…
    The World Bank suggested recent and emerging cap-and-trade schemes in Australia, California, Mexico, South Korea and Quebec could contribute to future growth in overall carbon trading…
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/30/world-bank-carbon-idUSL5E8GUGBQ20120530

    30 May: Reuters: EU carbon emissions rise, end multi-year decline
    Editing by Jason Neely and Alison Birrane
    Greenhouse gases from the European Union rose more than 2 percent in 2010 when a cold winter and a rebound in many economies drove up energy use, breaking a multi-year pattern of emissions declines.
    ***The year-on-year rise in the official EU data released on Wednesday was slowed by emissions declines in struggling Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain…
    International Energy Agency Chief Economist Fatih Birol said it would be a surprise to him if emissions did not continue to grow, chiefly because of the impact of a collapsed carbon price…
    To stimulate low carbon energy, the IEA has said a price of $50 a metric ton (1.1023 tons) is needed. That compares with current prices of less than 7 euros ($8.78) a metric ton on the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).
    Although gas use rose in 2010 because of lower prices, Birol said that in 2011 cheap carbon pushed up coal use in Europe by 6 percent, while natural gas declined by more than 10 percent…
    Among the greenhouse gases reported to the United Nations, carbon dioxide accounted for 82.4 percent of emissions.
    Industry emissions of hydroflourocarbons (1.9 percent), which are extremely potent greenhouse gases, continued a rising trend identified since 1990, as air conditioning and refrigeration demand grew…
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/30/us-eu-kyoto-idUSBRE84T0VI20120530

    ***some great examples to follow?

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    memoryvault

    .
    Speaking of monopolies, it’s just been announced that the Rothschild Investment Trust (principal vehicle for Rothschild’s global financial interests), and Rockefeller Financial Services (principal vehicle for Rockefeller global financial interests), are merging into a single investment entity.

    .
    We live in interesting times.

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    rukidding

    Radio National beating the alarmist drum curtsy of Karl Braganza, Susan Wijffels and Paul O’Gorman.

    For those who want to listen.

    And offcourse its worse than we thought

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    warcroft

    OT, but seriously batty. . .

    North Carolina considers outlawing accurate predictions of sea level rise.
    Faced with predictions that sea levels in the coastal areas of North Carolina will rise by a meter in the next century, legislators are considering bold action: making those predictions illegal. ”

    http://io9.com/5914378/north-carolina-considers-outlawing-accurate-predictions-of-sea-level-rise

    At first I was thinking it was another attempt at silencing the skeptics, but its about wanting to silence the warmists exaggerated predictions.
    The title of the article is misleading because they are claiming that 1m sea level rises over the next century is accurate.
    The comments get even more loony trying to justify the sea level rise.

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    Joe's World

    Jo,

    Confusion is the main tool that scientists use to keep people ignorant to what they really have no clue to our planet.
    Many areas were NEVER looked at for the how and why events or systems work. Just data and thesis rather than looking at parameters. Individualizing the whole area of science made it worse as many factors work together rather than the single areas that fail when trying to recreate this to the limited models.
    E=MC2 does not factor pressure is layered and is NOT double in mass but retains stored energy of greater and greater torque with depth as compression tries to squeeze more molecules together. Water and atmospheric gases have much of the same factors just density is different which we do not measure correctly.

    The individual researcher is NOT allowed to show mistakes made by the consensus.

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    Kristopher

    FYI: Some warmists at AAAS are pimping massive geoengineering to “fix” global warming.

    Live chat today at 1500 US Eastern time.

    http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/05/live-chat-can-geoengineering-sav.html

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    theRealUniverse

    WARNING Bilderberg update:

    The Bilderberg Group plans to put the finishing touches to a global carbon tax agenda that is already in full swing, according to our inside sources, with the threat of endangered species set to replace man-made global warming as the main vehicle through which the elite’s post-industrial revolution is accomplished.

    Alex Jones’ source inside Bilderberg has told him that the secretive cabal still plans to use the World Bank as the collection agency for a global CO2 tax.

    http://www.infowars.com/bilderberg-puts-finishing-touches-to-carbon-tax-agenda/

    There you go you NON believers ..As warming hysteria dies endangered species (many of which are in plentiful numbers) are the new eco-facsist tool for world govt.

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    Why should anyone not expect the Rothschild’s to take advantage of a financial crisis to pick up investments at bargain prices. It was Baron Rothschild himself who famously said, “the time to buy is when there’s blood in the streets.”

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    Ross James

    I do not understand why on earth Alex Jones followers believe his / this garbage.

    Alex predicted millennial havoc, but none occurred.

    “This is only the beginning. In the next few years, in this second phase–the period of escalating violence. They’re gonna allow limited nuclear exchanges.” “There’s going to be more. This is only the kickoff.” (9/13/01)

    “Within 2 years I’m predicting…that you’re going to see a suitcase nuke in this country. You’re probably going to see a release in a few years of something communicable. & I am predicting that you will see a lot of conventional bombings…in the next year or so.” (10/18/01)

    “I’m telling you now…there’s a very good chance there gonna blow something up overseas or here.” “The evidence is all tilting toward…blowing up a building. They’re really setting us up for a smallpox attack.” Chemical attacks are “almost a guarantee in the next six months or so.” (9/26/02)

    “They’re preparing for new terrorist attacks that are much larger. & they’re planning to bring in foreign armies….The U.S. government is going to engage in large terrorist attacks domestically & probably internationally…They may kill millions of Americans.” There was going to be a nuclear release in Iraq, an international depression, formation of a world government, probably a nuclear release in Iraq, an international depression, a world government formed. Also, “They may kill millions of Americans.” (7/11/02)

    They’re going to blow more stuff up.
    (4/13/04)

    “I predict Arnold is gonna save children at a school shooting, or there’ll be some type of bombing, & he will land by helicopter & run in & direct things. I predict it….I see it all aligning. I see it all coming together. I see their plan, clear as day….He’ll fly in & things will be burninig & he’ll run into it & save someone.” [circa March of 2005. Kinda proves Alex is living a fantasy, doesn’t it?]

    Alex also said (several times) they were going to roll out Osama bin Laden “on ice” before the 2004 election.

    Alex said they were going to blow up Washington DC before the election.

    Alex said Saddam Hussein had been taken to Cuba.

    __________
    Note the above FEAR scaremongering well. The mental state of conspiratorial fellow American’s do not bode well either in their political judgements.

    This commentary says it all about the unbalanced mental state when you blend religious fanatical ideas with science and politics:

    “If a person believes in Aliens, or the possibility thereof, and on this site its more than likely…how do we konw what these advanced (and I say advanced, as we supposedly cant even land on mars with people, yet they can travel to us…) they come here, and are advanced, and we act as though we know their motives, etc.? Hey, they could have been here since the beginning, we could be seeded by them… Religions tell the tales of reptilians, the sepherim angels in the Bible are fiery reptilians, Satan a dragon…”

    “dAlen; a member of AboveTopSecret.com”, Alex Jones – Trustworthy? Think Again

    http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread231813/pg1
    ___________

    Ross J.

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    The main difference between Alex Jones and the climate alarmists is that some of Jones’ prediction have actually proved to be correct.

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    Peter Lang

    Alarmists rarely attack, or even mention the Climate Money paper I did in 2009.

    Here is another example where the alarmists ignore a post that undermines their message.

    I posted comments on ‘The Conversation’ https://theconversation.edu.au/iea-reveals-emissions-are-up-again-but-its-not-all-bad-news-7321 and got abused by John Cook (owner of SkepticalScience) and dana1981, the in-house ‘scientist’ for SkepticalScience. They used most of the Excuses 1 to 6, and the “Cheap Shots” covered in Jo’s post.

    So I posted two comments on the SkepticalScience thread Nordhaus Sets the Record Straight – Climate Mitigation Saves Money here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1325#80580

    My comments show that the CO2 tax and ETS will cost about nine times more than the estimated benefits (and the benefits only accrue if the whole world acts in unison, implements an optimal CO2 price, maintains optimal for a century, and all other assumptions about climate sensitivity and damage estimates are correct.

    Dana had two small nibbles, realised he didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, and nothing more was said. It’s just ignored. So once again, “Alarmists rarely attack, or even mention the [money]”.

    If John Cook has the integrity he like people to believe he has, he would have fixed the misleading caption for the post.
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1325

    However, the arguments about the integrity and honesty of John Cook, dana1981 and the Skeptical science blog site continue here: https://theconversation.edu.au/iea-reveals-emissions-are-up-again-but-its-not-all-bad-news-7321

    I am alone against many Alarmists, so any help would be great.

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    Peter Lang

    Further to my comment #30 the discussion on “The Conversation” with John Cook and dana1981 is very revealing, IMO. It is clearly showing how biased is the ‘Skeptical Science’ web site. The owner, John Cook, argues that his site uses only reputable, peer reviewed literature. He believes his site is reputable and unbiased, but, believes the ‘denialist sites’ are biased.

    A recent exchange is revealing. I just posted my latest response to John Cook this morning. I’ll post it here for readers enjoyment, and encouragement to join in.

    John Cook,

    Are you aware of how biased you are?

    My 5 word comment was a direct copy of one by your in-house ‘scientist’ dana1981, but with his word “denial” changed to “Alarmists”.

    Do you see the irony, hypocrisy and bias in your comment – and in most of the comments by you and dana1981.

    It clearly demonstrates what underpins the alarmist spin you post on SkepticalScience.

    =========

    To make it easier for you to recognise the bias in your comment, below I provide the context of the discussion in which Dana1981 posted the words I then used and you attacked me for using. 3 days ago, dana1981 said:

    Dana1981: “And for those interested in what William Nordhaus *actually* says about climate economics, I recommend here:” he then listed three links to his posts on SkepticalScience.

    I replied: “Wow, what an authoritative source – a CAGW Alarmist web site!!

    Dana 1981 replied: “Ad hominem – classic denial.”

    When I then used these same words {in response to a separate comment by dana1981] with “denial” replaced with “alarmist” John Cook said:

    John Cook: “Peter, take a few moments to see the irony inherent in your 5 word response, namely accusing someone of ad hominem then engaging in an ad hominem attack.”

    John Cook, you did not attack your alarmist colleague for using same wording, did you?. This clearly illustrates your bias.

    ===============

    See if you have the integrity and guts to admit that your comment reveals and highlights the bias that underpins all of what you do (BTW it is similar on most of the other Climate Alarmist blog sites).

    Can you recognise your bias?

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