The Climate Science Isn't Settled

[CrusaderFrank]

The American Petroleum Institute does not pretend to be performing science!

Phil Jones should have formed the East Anglia ManMade Global Warming Institute and at least been honest about it.

Monday, June 2, 2003

Foes of global warming theory have energy ties

By JEFF NESMITH
COX NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON -- Non-profit organizations with ties to energy interests are promoting a controversial new study as proof that prevailing views of global warming are wrong.

The scientists who wrote the study contend that the global warming of recent decades is not without precedent during the past 1,000 years, as other scientists have claimed. In fact, they say the Earth was even warmer during what is known as the "medieval warm period" between A.D. 900 and 1300.

The paper has touched off a worldwide storm of e-mail among climate scientists, some of whom have proposed organizing a research boycott of two journals that published the study.

The links among authors of the new study, the non-profit groups and the energy interests illustrate a three-way intersection of money, science and policy. Energy interests underwrote the study and help finance the groups that are promoting it.

The study also illustrates a strategy adopted by some energy companies in the late 1980s to attack the credibility of climate science, said John Topping, president of the Climate Institute and a former Republican congressional staffer who founded the institute in 1986.

By relying on the news media's inclination to include both sides of a story, the industries were able to create the impression that scientists were deeply divided over climate change, Topping said. "It was all very shrewdly done," he said.

The institute, which takes the position that climate change threatens the global environment, promotes international cooperation to address the issue. Less than 1 percent of its funding has come from oil industry sources, Topping said, with the rest coming from foundations.

Most climate scientists think the rise in global climate -- largely stable until the late 1980s, they say -- results from the atmospheric buildup of heat-trapping "greenhouse gases," especially carbon dioxide released by the combustion of fossil fuels. Industry-backed groups claim their study challenges the validity of this view by presenting evidence of global warming when fossil fuels were not being burned in appreciable quantities.

The study, "Reconstructing Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1,000 Years: A Reappraisal," was published several weeks ago in a British scientific journal, Energy and Environment. The authors contend in the 65-page paper that their reanalysis of data from more than 200 climate studies provides evidence of global temperature shifts that are more dramatic than the current one.

The research was underwritten by the American Petroleum Institute, the trade association of the world's largest oil companies. Two of the five authors are scientists who have been linked to the coal industry and have received support from the ExxonMobil Foundation. Two others, who are affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, also have the title of "senior scientists" with a Washington-based organization supported by ExxonMobil Corp.

The organization, the George T. Marshall Institute, is headed by William O'Keefe, a former executive of the American Petroleum Institute. He also was at one time the president of the Global Climate Coalition, a now-defunct organization created by oil and coal interests to lobby against U.S. participation in climate treaties, such as the Kyoto Protocol.

"Statements made about the warming trend of the 20th century and the 1990s do not withstand close scrutiny," O'Keefe said at a luncheon for study author Willie Soon, a physicist and astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, to present a summary of the new research.

Major news organizations did not publish a Harvard-Smithsonian Center news release that declared that the scientists "determined" that the warming trend is neither the hottest nor the most dramatic change in the past 1,000 years. But it was picked up by the Discovery Channel Online.

That article was copied and distributed by the staff of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, headed by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., a climate-change skeptic.

Yeah, the Warmers will all be huddled together in AlGores bunker, clinging to one another for warmth.

 

[Big Fitz]

Prostituting one's credentials is far more lucrative than engaging in real research. Scratch most of the present Denialists, and under the surface you find someone who whored for the tobacco companies in the past. Lindzen and Singer are especially prominent in this regard.

Researching global warming skeptics - SourceWatch

Why document the skeptics?
All too commonly, media consumers are given scant background information on who they are, their scientific credentials (if any), any ties they have to corporate funded think tanks or past claims they have made that were incorrect. Some were defenders of the tobacco industry when they were affiliated with think tanks the tobacco companies funded. Some of these have now moved on to be deniers of global warming with think tanks that have been or are funded by fossil fuel companies such as Exxon. Not surprisingly, connections such as these are rarely included in the promotional materials circulated by the skeptics or groups such as the Heartland Institute.

Just as commonly, skeptics who aren't affiliated with think tanks make a lot of noise disputing scientific information that is outside their expertise. Even where they do have real climate science credentials they often champion claims rejected by the overwhelming bulk of climate scientists within that discipline.

Having a well rounded and documented page on the leading skeptics in SourceWatch can be a powerful antidote to the often limited disclosure statements of the individuals and think tanks disputing global warming. Within a short period, SourceWatch pages will float to the top of Google rankings and allow citizens and journalists to get the best synthesis of information available in the individual.

Ummm... weren't liberals the first in line to persecute the tobacco industry for creating deliberately flawed tests to create light and ultra light cigarettes?

Weren't they also demanding blood for them knowing that smoking was dangerous and hid the results?

Haven't they shoveled enough outrage over advertising programs to addict children?

So... tell me, son... why aren't you bellowing in outrage that your heroes have done the same damn thing almost verbatim.

Juuuust wondering.