Wanted: Scientists To Undermine UN Report On Global Warming
A major report of the world’s scientists has determined that global warming is “most likely” caused by humans — a finding that further weakens the contention by some that only tree-huggers, flaming liberals and those sympathetic to former Vice President Al Gore think it’s a real problem.
And now there are indications that this report has sparked a major response: A prominent conservative think tank that reportedly receives some oil company funding has reportedly let it be known that they’ll pay for $10,000 for scientists who come foward with information that undermines the report.
This offer isn’t on eBay yet (but the day is young).
First, the report. Time Magazine:
The world’s leading climate scientists said global warming has begun, is “very likely” caused by man, and will be unstoppable for centuries, according to a report obtained Friday by The Associated Press.The scientists — using their strongest language yet on the issue — said now that the world has begun to warm, hotter temperatures and rises in sea level “would continue for centuries,” no matter how much humans control their pollution. The report also linked the warming to the recent increase in stronger hurricanes.
“The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice-mass loss, support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely that is not due to known natural causes alone,” said the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — a group of hundreds of scientists and representatives of 113 governments.
The phrase “very likely” translates to a more than 90 percent certainty that global warming is caused by man’s burning of fossil fuels. That was the strongest conclusion to date, making it nearly impossible to say natural forces are to blame.
If you’re at a radio today, just listen to how some talk show hosts will say: “Aha! It only says ‘very likely,’ which shows you this is a supposition, a manufactured issue that’s part of the liberal agenda. It’s not science — and look how wrong science has been anyway!”
But scientists say this isn’t quite on the same level as theories about Bigfoot:
What that means in simple language is “we have this nailed,” said top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, who originated the percentage system.
Even the White House isn’t (so far) rejecting this report out of hand:
Sharon Hays, associate director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, welcomed the strong language of the report.“It’s a significant report. It will be valuable to policy makers,” she told The Associated Press in an interview in Paris, where hundreds of scientists and government officials were meeting to discuss global warming.
Hays stopped short of saying whether or how the report could bring about change in President Bush’s policy about greenhouse gas emissions.
The 20-page summary of the panel’s findings, due to be officially released later in the day, represents the most authoritative science on global warming.
The report may or may not affect the decision-maker’s stance (which then impacts the United States response which then impacts the global response).
But it has reportedly inspired the American Enterprise Institute to offer green stuff to scientists who can come up with information that’ll undermine the report, the Guardian reports:
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.
Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered….
…..The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI’s board of trustees.
The letters, sent to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere, attack the UN’s panel as “resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work” and ask for essays that “thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs”.
The latter is what’s going to doom the AEI’s (paid) findings when they come out. It’s specifically setting up a conclusion and offering to pay experts to fill it in so it can then be presented as an expert conclusion (in a report that will most likely not mention offered payments or travel expenses).
On the other hand, isn’t this the way consultants and experts hired by lawyers on one side of a trial to testify in favor of the side that hired them generally work? AND:
Climate scientists described the move yesterday as an attempt to cast doubt over the “overwhelming scientific evidence” on global warming. “It’s a desperate attempt by an organisation who wants to distort science for their own political aims,” said David Viner of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.“The IPCC process is probably the most thorough and open review undertaken in any discipline. This undermines the confidence of the public in the scientific community and the ability of governments to take on sound scientific advice,” he said.
The letters were sent by Kenneth Green, a visiting scholar at AEI, who confirmed that the organisation had approached scientists, economists and policy analysts to write articles for an independent review that would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC report.
“Right now, the whole debate is polarised,” he said. “One group says that anyone with any doubts whatsoever are deniers and the other group is saying that anyone who wants to take action is alarmist. We don’t think that approach has a lot of utility for intelligent policy.”
It’s hard to find fault with Green’s quoted comments. He’s stressing the need for an independent review. But the quoted letter sent out suggests that isn’t what’s being sought. Rather, it suggests money is being offered at the outset to get information that can be used as ammunition against the report and its scientific framework’s legitimacy.
The apparent ideological set up and big bucks being offered means that any findings of the group will be dismissed by most as essentially ideological and corporate talking points.
They will get great play on Fox News, Sean and Rush’s show but most likely not impact the views of the vast majority of Americans or many citizens throughout the world. And it will perpetuate the prevailing perception that oil companies seemingly seek to squelch and discredit the whole idea of global warming not because of environmental or scientic doubts but because of the corporate bottom line. And the bottom line is indeed good for Exxon Mobil these days…
OTHER VIEWS ON THIS ISSUE: Bradford Plumer, Daily Pundit, Americablog,Democrats.Com,
Think Progress
14 Responses to “Wanted: Scientists To Undermine UN Report On Global Warming”
I think it’s comically tragic that the issue still has a industry/environmentalism tag when Walmart and the insurance industry have embraced the idea that we should try to do something about global warming. Even the Secretary of the Treasury thinks we should join Kyoto and that it would greatly increase future economic growth.
It’s so stupid to let the energy companies frame the debate the way they do. Most of the proposed alternatives could (theoretically) be made much more cheaply than gas, so after a decade or two of marginally slower growth our economy would explode.
Even worse is the fact that politicians seem to be putting most of our hopes on hydrogen fuel cells without recognizing that they are just batteries, not energy producers. A enviro-economic report a couple years ago projected that it’d make better sense from both standpoints to forget about the “hydrogen” economy and rapidly adopt hybrids while furthering research on biofuels (where currently corn, one of the most energy consuming crops is being used for stupid political reasons), solar, nuclear, geothermic, wind and potentially fusion.
Trust me, the only place where the “human activity doesn’t cause global warming”-crowd has any impact at all is in America. The rest of the world knows better.
To put it more blunty: Europeans have the tendency to laugh at America when certain Americans / American organizations say that human activity doesn’t cause / increase global warming significantly.
Whatever other scientists say, funded by this type of people, it will be ignored in Europe or Europeans will laugh at it in utter amazement.
I have to agree that the only place that mankinds role in climate change is in any state of real doubt is the US, much like the only place where evolution is considered “debatable” is rural Kansas (at least within the US). Industry sponsored scientists are already suspect, much like a greenpeace funded scientist might be. Still though, science is science. If a scientist finds reasonable evidence that global warming is NOT due largely to mankind, and such evidence holds it’s own under review by peers, then OK. That’s what the Fox news people don’t want to get; that acceptance by the larger scientific community is essential to good science. It’s not a popularity issue, nor is it purely political, the fact is that if your experiment is not falsifiable, reproductible etc. it’s not good science.
What the Faux News folks never explain is why all the scientists in the damn world want to gang up on humanity. The say the ominous “liberal agenda” as if scientists somehow had an “L” branded on our back upon graduation and sweared loyalty to the “liberal agenda” (which includes lowering polution for no good reason, aparently).
It seems to me that even if there were legitimate doubt about the human contribution to global warming it is still good policy to accelerate the reduction of emissions, of any kind, into the environment.
Wow! Did everyone read that comment by the Daily Pundit? Everything that happens is just further proof of how right he is, and how anyone who disagrees is just acting in bad faith.
Ethanol is loony the way its done these days (using corn kernals), and without serious government commitment, celluosic ethanol (using corn stalks, wood chips, switchgrass, etc.) won’t be come economically viable for a while, if ever (apparently it’s a chemistry problem). Ethanol is king because Iowa has political clout that is WAY out of proportion to its economic and demographic power.
Hydrogen is great, if you can make it using something other than coal or natural gas, and if you can distribute it, and if you can store it. And even then, it’s still probably wrong for the transportation sector (see Questions About a Hydrogen Economy, Scientific American, May 2004).
I’ve discussed this in far greater detail at my own blog and at the 5th Estate
Thanks for filling in some more detail angliss. In my opinion the problem on both sides is the focusing on a silver bullet to take care of all our ills. There actually is one, fusion power, but who knows when we’ll get that. In the short term, we need to focus on using alternatives like solar, geothermic and wind to help reduce energy needs instead of pretending like they can answer them all.
If we had custom tailored solutions to get energy from the environment “passively” then nuclear power plants (which like you pointed out on your blog could potentially be great if they were breeder reactors) could fill in the demand for quite a long time. I’m confident that biofuels could be used to power most transportation and some genetic engineering is the key to making plants that are optimal for that.
Lastly, there is some promising research coming out on superconductors. Since superconductors don’t have any electrical resistance they could be used to transport power over vast distances without energy loss. It’d be expensive to make, but there are some remote areas in the country that could produce massive amounts of electricity, and with superconducting wire they could power cities hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Did anyone catch the show 2057 on the Science channel a few days ago? That show is a must watch! It seem that solar technology will be the way to go check this truely awesome discovery out. If this pans out it will most likely solve our energy need for the indefinite future.
Here’s the money quote.
The 2057 show said that they where expecting around an 80% efficientcy
with the nanocrystal photovoltaics. With that efficentcy the averave surface area of a homes roof could not only generate enough energy to fill that house’s need but also four additional homes.
This is a false story, George Soros paid someone to plant this story. Go to AEI and look at their statements on Iraq, they are always Right.
The AEI and the CEI might as well be clones. Neither organization is interested in honest debate on either the scientific or policy issues concerning AGW. If you want to know something about the history of it that you certainly won’t hear from those groups Naomi Oreskes, a science historian has an article on it in the Washington Post that I wrote a brief post about here.
I never understood how if some think tank gets some money from an oil company everything they say can be discounted without even bothering to see if their work stands up to scrutiny. But if, for example, the Sierra club produces or sponsers work it is treated as if it was the gospel brought down from heaven itself.
Research stands on the quality of the work itself and motiations dont enter into it in the slightest. Denying that makes you UNscientific.
If you can demolish someones work from the stanpoint of science more power to you. But villifying people isn’t scientific.
It IS slightly fascistic.
Is it getting hot in here?…
Crooks and Liars
Global Warming is back in the news today. Mike posted about it in the Round Up already. (Mike tends to get to stories pretty quickly if you read through the round ups regularly.)
Isn’t it sickening that Big Oil&n…
Iconic – When has the Sierra Club payed out a $10,000 bounty for pro-enviroment articles. Maybe Armstrong Williams will junp at the offer.
The “scientists” that AEI and CEI recruit don’t do any original research of their own. They make criticisms of the work of others that don’t go through peer review and are only meant to be referred to by people like IM and make their way into the media.
IM tries to create a false equivalency between researchers who will never become wealthy from their work and energy companies who see their profits as being threatened by conservation and other possible solutions to the AGW issues. Somehow I just don’t see the motivations as being the same for a researcher maybe making in the upper 5 figures and an Exxon-Mobil who just announced annual profits of $39.5 billion. Then he claims it is the scientists and others who agree on the existence of AGW who are vilifying people.
It was just the other day on NPR that Marlowe Lewis, a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute when asked if Bush should shift course on warming said “If the country believed in voodoo should Bush become a witch doctor?”. Quit pretending that this class of “skeptic” is interested in what the science really says, please.