Consider the Source but Study the Science
Horrible capitalists trying to muddy science with money!
Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world’s largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.
Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Here’s a dumb question.
Do you think scientists and economists work for free or that they are all funded by happy impartial governments?
Let me boil down this offer to you in non-loaded language free from sinister overtones. The IPCC has put our a report on climate change. The AEI believes there may be some holes in that report. They are willing to pay people to find those holes and write reasoned and solid papers revealing what they have found.
There, isn’t that simply evil of them?
I suppose it would come as a shock to the reporter, but scientists and economists don’t all work for “the government. They’re not all on the UN payroll just churning out reports bereft of bias or agenda in big white sterile labs. Science costs money and most scientists don’t care about where that money comes from. So long as they can do their work, they’re pretty darned happy. That’s as it should be. The problem is that there is a stigma that can be quickly attached to any science that’s funded by someone not the government.
I once had a professor who dismissed a raft of papers put out by the Competetive Enterprise Institute that spoke in opposition to Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. He dismissed them not because the science was bad or because the conclusions were flawed. He dismissed them because the CEI is largely funded by Big Oil. The obvious belief at work is that what companies fund are so flawed they do not deserve even out most fleeting consideration while studies done by governments are holy writ.
The truth about government-funded science is that the government – in this case, the United Nations – is not an objective actor. The UN has its own agenda and its own goals, as does any government. It is lobbied by outside organizations. Officials are wined and dined. This stuff happens in every government and the UN is certainly no exception. Those little transactions between individuals and officials create biases in the system, eddies around which the bureaucracy flows, little things that give the big machinery a nudge in this direction or that. This is something the reporter didn’t quite mention, though. Everyone has biases. Even newspaper reporters and college professors.
I follow a very simple rule when it comes to stuff like this: Consider the source, but study the science. It could very well be that the science of the IPCC report is rock-solid but I won’t know until I see the report. I can tell you that I’m suspicious of anything the UN produces but that doesn’t mean it’s incapable of producing a solid study. Same goes for the AEI, except that I’m not quite as suspicious of them.
The reason I’m not quite so suspicious of the AEI is because you get to see their biases right out in the open. They do not hide that they get funding from ExxonMobil and other companies and individuals. It’s an easy thing to find out. They make no big secret about where their money comes from nor where it goes.
The UN on the other hand…well…come on. Claudia Rosett has made it nearly her life’s work to unravel the Oil for Food scandal, which was but one program supervised by the UN for not even ten years. Its books are not open. Their motives are not clear. There is no transparency that lets us see who influences their committees and study groups. There are no public records we can examine to see who is funding what science. To the contrary, the UN exerts great effort to keep their records and finances hidden from the likes of you and me.
The AEI is open and the UN is not. That also informs my decisions. I’m suspicious of the UN because the UN acts suspiciously. It hides most of its inner workings. I cannot trust its motives. I can have some trust in the AEI because I know who is paying the bills and what their “slant” is.
Nevertheless, I’ll read both studies because it’s always important to consider the science regardless of how we got it. That’s the beautiful thing about data. It doesn’t care who is using it. It is simply there. It’s up to us to evaluate what data is used and in what ways. I welcome the studies the AEI will pay for because they will put more data into the discussion – more science into a scientific matter. You can disregard what will come as right-wing mercenary hackery, as I’m sure the left will do anon, but if you do, you cut yourself off from learning and understanding. Me, I can’t afford to be purposefully ignorant because of my political biases.
This story just seems a bit of frippery to me – a way to undercut any science done by AEI-funded scientists and journalists without actually dealing with any work they will produce. It’s easier to impugn their motives than it is to contend with their science when it comes out.
It’s not a surprise, though. Too many on the left hold climate change as a political issue to be managed and not a scientific matter to be analyzed nor a problem to be evaluated and solved. I suspect this is just another attempt to cast anyone who disagrees with the orthodoxy as a “denier”.
Related posts:
- It's Consensus, Except That's It's Not.
- Maybe It's Not the End of the World After All.
- The Obama Admininstration vs. Science
- If You Think Bush Was Anti-Science, Wait Until You See This Guy
Category: Oh the Climate, It is A-Changin'
About the Author (Author Profile)
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
I posted some of this in another thread, but it's more approprate here.
You should distinguish between simplistic arguments like "oil money = bad scince" from the bigger argument being made. Almost without exception, all of the (very few) climate skeptics that are actual scientists are a) not climate scientists by training and/or b) funded by big oil. On the other hand, the vast majority of actual climate scientists who say global warming is a problem come from all sorts of funding sources — some are funded by governments, others by big oil (check out the new chief scientist of BP), others by the insurance industry, others by the UN. Being funded by big oil doesn't prove you're wrong, but when the oil companies can't find anyone credible that's not on their payroll to support their position, it's a pretty telling sign.
And you're naive if you think that money motivates climate scientists' conclusions or that some cabal is preventing skeptics from getting funding — the skeptics are swimming in funding; it's the government scientists who have to scramble for ever-scarcer research dollars (although the "let's study it instead of taking action" crowd in Congress HAS helped that some).
And besides, what, exactly, are these skeptics saying that is so persuasive?
– There is no disagreement among scientists that CO2 levels are rising. None. The evidence is indisputable and undisputed. Even the skeptics agree.
– There is no disagreement among scientists that the burning of fossil fuels is the primary reason for this. The evidence is indisputable and undisputed. Again, no actual scientist can dispute this with a straight face.
– There is no disagreement among scientists that increasing CO2 levels will alter global climate. This is just basic physics. There are plenty of uncertainties in the details (hurricanes? the exact amount of sealevel increase?), but the fact that the climate will be disrupted is not in dispute.
You'll notice that most climate "skeptic" arguments are non sequiturs to the above argument. For instance:
"The Earth isn't warming up YET (it's all "heat islands") or, if it is, it hasn't been PROVEN that it's because of humans (it could be the Sun, etc., etc.)." — Well, even if that were true (and, according to the latest consensus, bashed by many as too optimistic, a) is false and there's only a 10% chance that b) true), so what? Just because we can't prove TODAYs warming is CERTAINLY caused by humans, that doesn't somehow prove (or even SUGGEST) that global warming won't be a problem over the next 40 years — it's a complete strawman argument.
"Remember global cooling in the 70s? All of those climate scientists today clearly don't know what they're talking about." You mean a couple of papers by one team of scientists in the infancy of climate science about the impact of aerosols? Before the age of supercomputer climate models and near-universal consensus under the spotlight of intense public scrutiny? That work? So what? This argument is as illogical as it is irrelevent.
But I'm getting far afield here. What are you still on the fence about? What part of the argument I've outlined for believing global warming is a problem do you disagree with?
What actual debate still has you on the fence?
Ralph, I'll respond in more detail to you this weekend. But, in brief, let me give you two article that disprove a couple of your main assertions.
First, you say that there is no real dissent that the burning of fossil fuels is the primary reason for global climate change (as I understand the chain of your argument).
Last year, 60 scientists wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister of Canada that said in part, "Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural 'noise'". These scientists, who are climatologists and in related fields, believe that we need to spend much more time looking for the actual causes of climate change before we throw a ton of money at it. That's something i've said many times here.
Second, your characterization of global cooling in the 1970s as something confined to just a couple papers by one team of scientists. It was presented as common consensus among scientists. It was headlined in newspapers and magazines. It was taught in schools. It was wrong. You tout new computer models. The same letter I cited before disagrees with you again. It says, "Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future." We now know that the vaunted "hockey stick" model was wrong. Models built on incomplete data – which is all we have still – will never be accurate.
You can find that open letter right here. YOu might also enjoy reading the links here, though I'm sure you will not approve of the source.
OK, I call your bluff. Show me the "consensus" on the global cooling. Show me anything approaching the consensus arrived at yesterday.
Second, you (delibrately?) misinterpreted my post. You wrote:
"First, you say that there is no real dissent that the burning of fossil fuels is the primary reason for global climate change (as I understand the chain of your argument)."
I wrote no such thing. I wrote:
"– There is no disagreement among scientists that CO2 levels are rising…
– There is no disagreement among scientists that the burning of fossil fuels is the primary reason for this…
– There is no disagreement among scientists that increasing CO2 levels will alter global climate…."
No climate scientist, not even the signatories of the letter you linked to, disagrees with any of those points. The link you sent went directly to the other point I quoted, which, again, is a non sequitur. How does the (alleged) lack of absolute proof that man HAS ALREADY changed the climate already in any way challenge the indisputable chain of logic that CO2 is increasing, that we are causing it (the rise in CO2, I mean), and that additional CO2 WILL change the climate? Or, how does arguing that models cannot predict exactly HOW the climate will change alter the conclusion that we will alter it IN SOME WAY in the near future?
Global Warming is the new Welfare. Making gubment employees is its game. It's replacing anti-poverty efforts. In fact it will keep third world people living in poor conditions and prevent progress. It will make the gap between the poor and rich nations larger as we can afford all the fancy technologies and they can't. We won't let them drive or have the factories they need or pesticides. On and on.
Re: calling your bluff
While I still call your cooling bluff, I do want to reiterate that the whole argument about cooling is as irrelevant as it is illogical. Who cares what the last generation of climate scientists thought before all the satellite data and supercomputers? Those scientists did NOT say "cooling will happen — we have enough data to say so unequivocally." They said that we needed to start a massive campaign to study climate change. They got it. As a result, todays scientists are saying "warming will happen — we now have enough data to say so unequivocally."
Miss Carnivorous –
Are you claiming it's a misguided hoax or saying that you don't like the proposed solutions?
Ralph, I have no bluff to call. It is a fact that global cooling was the science du jour in the 1970s. You can visit Google and look for articles written in Timme or Newsweek that said just that.
As to your three statements…well…so what? What does that have to do with the central point of my post, which is that we do not have nearly enough data to make an informed decision about what to do about what may or may not be happening.
Let me say this. You put a lot o credence in twenty years of data. I do not. I realize that twenty years of data about a system that is millions of years old is like trying to diagnose a disease based on a picosecond's worth of vital signs.
What I and the dissenting scientists are saying is that there are common-sense solutions that don't involve a new global bureaucracy and a set of restrictions that would cripple the industralized world. I am saying that there are quite a few people who are making quite a lot of money drumming up panic. We need to pay more attention to the data and less attention to the politics being played.
I agree! I totally agree! Less politics! More science! What my 3 points have to do with your thesis is this: everyone, the consensus, the skeptics, everyone, agrees that we are on pace to change the climate over the next century, whether they phrase it that way or not. A vast majority says we can prevent this. A few are paid to muddy the waters and confuse the issue by bringing up irrelavent side issues. A few enjoy stirring up a panic and promoting a radical environmental agenda. Most of us are in the middle, saying "it's time to switch from healthy skepticism to activism".
"20 years of data" — actually, it's 1000's of years of data. We've collected a lot of ice cores. The timescales for climate change can be very long, but the timescales on which the climate is changing now is very short.
"Google and look for articles" — sorry, I still call your bluff. An article in Time or Newsweek is not the same as a 10-year international effort with an enormous budget and thousands of scientists coming to the consensus that anthropogenic global warming is "unequivocal". I stand by my original comment, which you have not refuted.
Tell me, if all those professional climate scientists tell you you're wrong, and the only ones saying you're right all get paid by an industry whose survival depends on you believing what you do, why do you believe the few and not the many? Could it be that conservatives have such a strong, conditioned disdain for environmentalism that they'll believe in an elaborate hoax perpetrated by a vast, left-wing conspiracy of scientists before anything that comes out of Al Gore's mouth?
Eventually, as the evidence grows, any honest skeptic will have to realize that their resistance to acknowledging the dangers of anthropogenic global warming is no longer tenable. I understand that that point is different for many people. Famous climate skeptic Michael Schermer's flipping point came last year (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=13&articleID=000B557A-71ED-146C-ADB783414B7F0000). The latest IPCC report, summarizing an enormous undertaking over decades by the world's scientists was published 2 Feb. Where is your flipping point?
If you are an honest broker and not a shill or hack, then answer this question: what would you have to see or read or hear to finally acknowledge global warming as a man-made threat? What evidence would persuade you that you haven't already seen? Or do you believe that it's just impossible, evidence be damned, that increasing the atmospheric CO2 concentration by 40% could possibly have adverse effects on global climate?