While there are big research grants available to climate scientists who peddle the politically correct theory of man-made global warming, researchers who dare to question the sacred dogma are dismissed as "deniers' and virtually cut off from funding.
The gravy train of research riches for the global warming doomsayers shows no sign of running off the rails, despite the exposure last month of hacked e-mails (or was it the work of a whistleblower?) from Britain's Climate Research Unit (CRU) revealing efforts by top climate scientists to fudge temperature data, finagle computer models and blackball critics.
In one of the e-mails, a frustrated computer programmer named "Harry," after trying to un-knot CRU's tangled temperature databases, sent the following message to fellow researchers:
"I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seem to be in nearly as poor a state as Australia was. . . . Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight. . . . So we can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage!
He continued:
Ulp! I am seriously close to giving up, again. The history of this is so complex that I can't get far enough into it before by [sic] head hurts and I have to stop. . . I could be throwing away all kinds of corrections.
As the eminent British economist Ronald Coase once quipped, "If you torture data long enough, it will confess."
The CRU fiasco, now referred to as Climategate, unmasked the junk science behind much of the man-made global warming hypothesizing. It comes as no surprise that some of the same researchers mentioned in the e-mails also played a role in making the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period disappear from climate history.
When inconvenient climate facts failed to match their pre-conceived theory of anthropogenic warming, they simply manipulated the raw temperature data to smooth out the warm peaks and cold valleys. When other researches asked to see the raw data, they were told to get lost. Now the data has suspiciously disappeared.
But global-warming research funding hasn't. One of the biggest beneficiaries is CRU Director Phil Jones, at the center of the Climategate controversy, who received $19 million in research grants between 2000 and 2006, six times the amount doled out to him during the previous decade.
In December, the Wall Street Journal reported that the European Commission appropriated nearly $3 billion for climate research, an amount that doesn't include grants from EU member governments.
U.S. government agencies also are dishing out the dough.
According to the same Journal article, "The House intends to spend $1.3 billion on NASA's climate efforts, $400 million on NOAA's, and another $300 million for the National Science Foundation. The states also have a piece of the action, with California - apparently not feeling bankrupt enough - devoting $600 million to their own climate initiative. In Australia, alarmists have their own Department of Climate Change at their funding disposal."
In 2001, James Hansen, chief climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, won a $250,000 Heinz Award "for his exemplary leadership in the critical and often-contentious debate over the threat of global climate change." He also was co-winner in 2007 of the $1 million Dan David Prize for his contributions to climate research.
In spite of his accolades, Hansen has been rebuked by his former supervisor at NASA, Dr. John Theon, who publicly disagreed with his sky-is-falling global warming predictions and suggested that "some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results."
Government agencies are not alone in the campaign to pump lots of loot into climate-change research. During the past decade, big corporations have upped the ante, channeling billions of dollars into climate studies.
According to The Boston Globe, ExxonMobil in 2002 doled out $100 million to establish a Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford University tasked with studying climate change. In 2006, Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways, pledged $3 billion to fight global warming. He also has promised to pay $25 million to anyone who develops a method to cleanse at least a billion tons of CO2 annually from the earth's atmosphere.
The money pouring into the global warming camp is "huge," says Professor Ross McKitrick, a professor of environmental economics at Britain's University of Buckingham.
"Institutions like the CRU have a very large budget, but that would disappear if global warming ceased to exist. Scientists are enjoying a funding gravy train. There is so much money in climate research. Lots of areas of science are short of money, but not climate change."
With so much money at stake, researchers and their contingent of green supporters have turned their verbal daggers towards anyone who threatens to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, told Britain's Daily Telegraph that he has been the target of five death threats since openly questioning the man-causes-global-warming doctrine.
"Western governments have pumped billions of dollars into careers and institutes and they feel threatened," said the professor.
"I can tolerate being called a skeptic because all scientists should be skeptics, but then they started calling us deniers, with all the connotations of the Holocaust. That is an obscenity. It has got really nasty and personal."
How nasty?
"Governments are trying to achieve unanimity by stifling any scientist who disagrees [with global warming]," said Nigel Calder, a former editor of New Scientist. "Einstein could not have got funding under the present system."
The global warming camp often wags its collective finger at dissenting scientists, demonizing them as allies of big energy conglomerates. But skeptics such as James Spann, a meteorologist in Alabama, claim they have been unfairly criticized and, in truth, the only the people cashing in are those who peddle the global warming orthodoxy.
"Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon … Nothing wrong with making money at all. But when money becomes the motivation for a scientific conclusion, then we have a problem. For many, global warming is a big cash grab."
Even some long-time environmentalists bemoan their peers' addiction to the almighty dollar. David Crowe, founder and former president of the Alberta Greens political party in Canada, said he has stopped funding environmental organizations whose focus is climate change.
"There is a lot of evidence that the activity often called science, and the scientists who practice this activity (as opposed to those few who have a monk-like dedication to the scientific method), are not trustworthy. Peer review is a bankrupt process . . . It is lousy at detecting fraud, but very good at suppressing innovative thought.
"Financial conflicts of interest are frequent and rarely disclosed. Scientists often fall into the trap of focusing on their next grant rather than what important questions need to be asked (including questioning their own assumptions and biases)."
Kirk Myers' Examiner column appears several times weekly. To receive alerts when a new article is posted, click on the "subscribe" button at the top of the page. Upcoming topics: the carbon-credit game, "greenwashing" children and Climategate post-mortem.
Comments
Carbon is the stuff of life. He (Obama) who controls carbon, especially CO2, controls the world. Think of the consequences if you do nothing! For one, the UK is becoming the poster child for George Orwell’s “1984” and the US government’s sponsorship of this worldwide Global Warming propaganda campaign puts it in a class with the failed Soviet Union’s relentless violation of the basic human right to truthful government generated information. Given ClimateGate’s burgeoning revelations of outrageous government misconduct and massive covert misinformation, what are the chances that this Administration’s National Health Care sales campaign is anywhere near the truth?
KEEP donations local, close to home. MAKE donations to Oklahoma’s Senator Inhofe, the only politician to stand firmly against this obvious government/media coordinated information operation (propaganda) targeted at its own people. People that government leaders and employees are sworn to protect. WRITE your state and federal representatives demanding wall to wall investigations of government sponsored propaganda campaigns and demand indictments of those responsible. WRITE your state and federal Attorneys General demanding Al Gore and others conducting Global Warming/Climate Change racketeering and mail fraud operations be brought to justice, indicted, tried, convicted and jailed.
Are you angry about this obvious RICO Act fraud and the national media's complicity in the cover-up, misinformation, reframing and misdirection of the issue and the related “carbon derivatives” market Obama’s Administration is spinning up? Take responsibility and take action. STOP all donations to the political party(s) responsible for this fraud. STOP donations to all environmental groups which funded this Global Warming propaganda campaign with our money, especially The Environmental Defense Fund. They have violated the public trust.
This is a very biased and misleading piece. Did you ever think all the money is going into studying the problem because its a real and significant threat? The science has moved on from whether AGW exists. Its time to find ways to reduce it now. Even ExxonMobil and Richard Branson think its real - why can't the deniers accept that?
At the bottom of this page
www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/
From the Climate Research Units own web site you will find a partial list of companies that fund the CRU.
It includes:
British Petroleum, “Oil, LNG”
Broom's Barn Sugar Beet Research Centre, “Food to Ethanol”
The United States Department of Energy, “Nuclear”
Irish Electricity Supply Board. “LNG, Nuclear”
UK Nirex Ltd. “Nuclear”
Sultanate of Oman, “LNG”
Shell Oil, “Oil, LNG”
Tate and Lyle. “Food to Ethanol”
KFA Germany, “Nuclear”
Look for yourself.
You might what to check out what theres, and the other companies actually do.
This is all about Nuclear Power, Liquefied Natural Gas and Food to Ethanol.
So can you climate scientologists please stop with the skeptics in the pockets os Big Oil thing, it’s getting old.
These companies have been funding the CRU for years and years. British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell were in there right at the start in 1972.
OJB: WE NEED more CO2 for thriving plant life; the whole basis which involves CO2 as being somehow 'bad' for the planet is pure speculation to create wealth for the few out of thin air... literally.
CO2 should NEVER be regulated when we have many, many real man-made pollutants and many are in your food and water and MEDS. Sure, let's outlaw CO2, but this same admin says it's okay to double the amount of mercury in vaccines (mercury is one of THE most toxic substances on the planet, you know).
Follow the money on ALL UN issues and it does lead back to our 'leaders' and supposed 'elected' officials. Bho is invested in pharma and AGW. The man, if he can be called that, is a fraud just like AGW. AGW was brought about through IPCC for a purpose and bho had a purpose to... they are both failing as the people start waking up.
The UN and many members of our gov are corrupt and until we DEMAND transparency and force them to SERVE the people, not dictate, it will continue.
OJB: It doesn't matter if EXXON believes, because both EXXON and BRANSON are INVESTORS. They want power and money, they don't care about issues. Drop the oil crap... OIL moguls, like the corrupt rockefeller, play ALL sides for PROFIT. Don't think they love their oil; they love what oil brings them, profit, control and a great life. They don't care about the product, they didn't create it, they use it. Damn. Are people so dense that they cannot see what is obvious. Turn off the idiot box. This is not about which industry will benefit, but who will NOT benefit. CO2 is a naturally occurring substance that is ESSENTIAL in great quantities. Forget what you know about CO2 and start over.
Who cares what Branson thinks anyway. I think differently. Are you suggesting that we blindly follow billionaires words blindly? LOL. Get real. The TRUST has been gone from corps, to gov, to UN in my mind for a long time based on their actions.
FOLLOW the MONEY
Alouishes Gorrington stopped the mideval warm period by himself back in the day. He just put a huge tax on the beans they fed to the clidesdales (the SUV of the day) and forced them into buying the less polluting rice, (which he was co owner of the rice company- (but that's not important))
Oh, how I wish we had someone to take up the call to stop the warming period we have today. I guess were destined to burn up like a marshmallow on a stick!
Merry Christmas y'all
Nog up!
Cheers!
When people believe, per se, that "all the money is going into studying the problem because its a real and significant threat" (AGW being the presumed "problem") they forget that AGW "industry" has a good "business" model in that many entities are accessing alot of money/control while being secretive of the true nature of AGW.
"The science has moved on from whether AGW exists."
Yes it has.
AGW had it's time in the 1990's when it was logical to evaluate this theory. However, the last decade as well as the CLIMATE-GATE scandal has shown that the AGW theory has inadequacies and no amount of "fudge factors" are going to make the AGW theory the "be-all-end-all" theory that accounts for
climate change.
A reality check is required, assessing the relative importance of natural climate change and human-induced climate change. The latter is good for business, while the former is not good for business.
Remember ....
SKEPTICS EXIST TO GIVE GULLIBLE PEOPLE A REALITY CHECK.
The side effects of climategate is all science suffers! Here is a partail article:
Science is in trouble. The process of scientific discovery is too often being traded for the practice of political science. The recent "Climate Gate" scandal is just a symptom of a much larger problem. When scientists at Britain's Climate Research Unit refuse to release climate data and dismiss any legitimate questions regarding their methodology or conclusions, they undermine the credibility of the very profession they practice.
The manipulation of the scientific process for political purposes is not new. What is alarming is the extent to which it is now happening and the potential impact on national policies.
Michigan State University reportedly is considering shutting down its geology program. Geology is a well established science that provides researchers with an understanding of prehistoric conditions that formed and transformed the planet. Future geologic investigation is critical.
To all those who are prepared to look at both sides of the arguement try Andrew Bolt's Australian blog. You can find it by checking out Andrew Bolt at the Sun Herald, Victoria. It's well researched and has certainly changed my mind as far as global warming is concerned. The amount of money granted to warmists is mind boggling. Check it out.
If you are really interested in learning about the subject rather than voicing a bias have a look at these two websites. They are choc-a-bloc with information.
Climate4you - just add .com and away you go.
Also - climatesceptics. just add .com.au
They should keep you happy for hours and answer a lot of questions like the number of scientists who object to global warming. It's a pity we are not allowed to put in links. It would save a lot of time.
Scientists get a lot of grant money to research the causes and possible cures of cancer as well.
Is your argument that they are better off not doing this because it is just being greedy?
Got something to say?
Examiner.com is looking for writers, photographers, and videographers to join the fastest growing group of local insiders. If you are interested in growing your online rep apply to be an Examiner today!