BBC Global Warming show

[DrTodd13]

The Great Global Warming Swindle

[luke warm]

link didn't work for me, but you have some nerve introducing doubt into what we all know to be GOOD science, and an inconvenient truth

[mike777]

I am rereading Gravity's Rainbow after more than 30 years. Once I understand this book I will tackle something easy such as understanding and solving global warming and give you the solution to Iraq and the Israel/Palestinian question. ;)

 

 

Not sure why no one has made a movie out of this thingy yet. Maybe this can be Mr. Gore's next project.

[DrTodd13]

link didn't work for me, but you have some nerve introducing doubt into what we all know to be GOOD science, and an inconvenient truth

Weird. The link works for me. I just tried clicking on it. And I'm not introducing doubt. I'm only posting a link. ;) Seriously, try going to google video and searching for global warming swindle and you'll probably find it.

[jdonn]

link didn't work for me, but you have some nerve introducing doubt into what we all know to be GOOD science, and an inconvenient truth

It's thinking like that which reminds me of how people used to think the earth was flat.

 

I am not expressing an opinion either way about global warming, but what kind of statement is that when you didn't even suggest any evidence to support you? Even moreso, you didn't watch the video and your mind is already made up!

 

And even if it WERE an absolute certainty that global warming exists, why would it be nervy of him to disagree anyway?

[luke warm]

link didn't work for me, but you have some nerve introducing doubt into what we all know to be GOOD science, and an inconvenient truth

It's thinking like that which reminds me of how people used to think the earth was flat.

 

I am not expressing an opinion either way about global warming, but what kind of statement is that when you didn't even suggest any evidence to support you? Even moreso, you didn't watch the video and your mind is already made up!

 

And even if it WERE an absolute certainty that global warming exists, why would it be nervy of him to disagree anyway?

you act as if i've not already read what many scientists on both sides have to say about this... and to be clear, my views aren't about global warming per se, they're about the claim that whatever warming exists is the cause of man

 

oh, on the nervy part - i was being sarcastic... it takes nerve to disagree with the majority (sometimes)

[mr1303]

Well, I watched the whole thing, and as a result I'll be driving my car around as much as I possibly can, in protest against these pseudo-communist environmentalists.

[Al_U_Card]

I am watching.....sounds like it is "driven" by the oil lobby....

 

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-45...+global+warming

 

that link worked for me

[Al_U_Card]

So, according to them, if warming is inevitable then you might as well relax and enjoy it (as long as you don't live near the coast.....)

[the hog]

Sponsored by Shell or Exon no doubt!

[DrTodd13]

Ah....ad hominem...the last resort when you don't know enough to refute with facts.

[boris3161]

I watched the programme when it was broadcast and a number of "facts" were raised that I don't have answers to. Chief amongst these were:

1/ If CO2 leads to global warming, why does the historical record suggest CO2 increases follow warming? There is agreement that CO2 and warming are linked but the programme suggested that CO2 does not lead to warming but follows it.

2/ If the greenhouse gasses were responsible for the current warming we should be seeing increases in temperature in the upper atmosphere. We aren't.

3/ The structure and funding of research follows political aims - so if I want to study squirrels in Sussex I link my research to global warming and, if I want to get published, I'd better make the link demonstrate the seriousness of the situation.

4/ Global warming is happening - but it is probably not man-made but linked to the sun and its cycles.

5/ Most species have survived similar warming events in the recent (geologically) past and so are unlikely to be devastated by this event. Life is more sturdy than some believe.

 

I would like to see a refutation of the arguments put forward in the programme. It did seem to draw on a large number of eminent people but I have no way of knowing whether it was total rubbish or a reasonable analysis.

 

Having said all of that, fundamentally I believe that it is not good to continue to squander the resources of the earth and to pollute our atmosphere - so any efforts we can make to minimise our impact will not be wasted.

[helene_t]

sorry mistaken post

[helene_t]

On Wikipedia I found time series for atmospheric temperature as well as for atmospheric CO2 conceentration. Not so user-friendly: One is leftward, the other rightward. Anyway, judge for urselves. My impression is that temperature rises come first.

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/Ice_Age_Temperature.png

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e9/Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr-2.png/280px-Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr-2.png

[hrothgar]

Real Climate has already published some thoughts about the BBC program.

 

The article addresses many of the questions that Boris raises (Does CO2 drive T or does T drive CO2, whats happening in the upper atmosphere, etc.) The article can be read in full here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archi...07/03/swindled/

 

The short form summary is the following:

 

The BBC program doesn't present any new data. These same scientists have been making the same set of claims for quite some time. Said claims have been debunked previously.

 

This documentary doesn't attempt to present an unbiased view of the issue. It is a hatchet job. For whats its work, the writer/presenter has a history of developing these types of distortionary polemics.

 

>The writer and presenter of the programme was Martin Durkin who is closely

>affiliated with the Revolutionary Communist Party which has a strong ideological >opposition to environmental science. In 1997 Channel Four was forced to issue

>its first ever broadcast apology over extreme editing distortions in a similar

>series knocking environmentalism.

 

(You can find a discussion about Durkin at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Durkin...sion_director))

 

BTW, Professor Wunsch from MIT sent the following letter to the BBC regarding the documentary. I think that the following quote iss particularly noteworthy:

 

>What we now have is an out-and-out propaganda piece, in which

>there is not even a gesture toward balance or explanation of why

>many of the extended inferences drawn in the film are not widely

>accepted by the scientific community.

 

Mr. Steven Green

Head of Production

Wag TV

2D Leroy House

436 Essex Road

London N1 3QP

 

10 March 2007

 

Dear Mr. Green:

 

I am writing to record what I told you on the telephone yesterday about

your Channel 4 film "The Global Warming Swindle." Fundamentally,

I am the one who was swindled---please read the email below that

was sent to me (and re-sent by you). Based upon this email and

subsequent telephone conversations, and discussions with

the Director, Martin Durkin, I thought I was being asked

to appear in a film that would discuss in a balanced way

the complicated elements of understanding of climate change---

in the best traditions of British television. Is there any indication

in the email evident to an outsider that the product would be

so tendentious, so unbalanced?

 

I was approached, as explained to me on the telephone, because

I was known to have been unhappy with some of the more excitable

climate-change stories in the

British media, most conspicuously the notion that the Gulf

Stream could disappear, among others.

When a journalist approaches me suggesting a "critical approach" to a

technical subject, as the email states, my inference is that we

are to discuss which elements are contentious, why they are contentious,

and what the arguments are on all sides. To a scientist, "critical" does

not mean a hatchet job---it means a thorough-going examination of

the science. The scientific subjects described in the email,

and in the previous and subsequent telephone conversations, are complicated,

worthy of exploration, debate, and an educational effort with the

public. Hence my willingness to participate. Had the words "polemic", or

"swindle" appeared in these preliminary discussions, I would have

instantly declined to be involved.

 

I spent hours in the interview describing

many of the problems of understanding the ocean in climate change,

and the ways in which some of the more dramatic elements get

exaggerated in the media relative to more realistic, potentially

truly catastrophic issues, such as

the implications of the oncoming sea level rise. As I made clear, both in the

preliminary discussions, and in the interview itself, I believe that

global warming is a very serious threat that needs equally serious

discussion and no one seeing this film could possibly deduce that.

 

What we now have is an out-and-out propaganda piece, in which

there is not even a gesture toward balance or explanation of why

many of the extended inferences drawn in the film are not widely

accepted by the scientific community. There are so many examples,

it's hard to know where to begin, so I will cite only one:

a speaker asserts, as is true, that carbon dioxide is only

a small fraction of the atmospheric mass. The viewer is left to

infer that means it couldn't really matter. But even a beginning

meteorology student could tell you that the relative masses of gases

are irrelevant to their effects on radiative balance. A director

not intending to produce pure propaganda would have tried to eliminate that

piece of disinformation.

 

An example where my own discussion was grossly distorted by context:

I am shown explaining that a warming ocean could expel more

carbon dioxide than it absorbs -- thus exacerbating the greenhouse

gas buildup in the atmosphere and hence worrisome. It

was used in the film, through its context, to imply

that CO2 is all natural, coming from the ocean, and that

therefore the human element is irrelevant. This use of my remarks, which

are literally what I said, comes close to fraud.

 

I have some experience in dealing with TV and print reporters

and do understand something of the ways in which one can be

misquoted, quoted out of context, or otherwise misinterpreted. Some

of that is inevitable in the press of time or space or in discussions of

complicated issues. Never before, however, have I had

an experience like this one. My appearance in the "Global Warming

Swindle" is deeply embarrasing, and my professional reputation

has been damaged. I was duped---an uncomfortable position in which to be.

 

At a minimum, I ask that the film should never be seen again publicly

with my participation included. Channel 4 surely owes an apology to

its viewers, and perhaps WAGTV owes something to Channel 4. I will be

taking advice as to whether I should proceed to make some more formal protest.

 

Sincerely,

 

Carl Wunsch

Cecil and Ida Green Professor of

Physical Oceanography

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

[hrothgar]

Ah....ad hominem...the last resort when you don't know enough to refute with facts.

For the record, the same article of Real Climate that I previously referenced notes the followng

 

There was only one scientific advisor on the programme, Martin Livermore, whose sole scientific qualification is that he is the Director of a web-based think tank, The Scientific Alliance. The Alliance was set up by in 2001 by Robert Durward, the fiercely anti-green director of the British Aggregates Association, and Foresight Communications, a Westminster public relations and lobbying company, to "counter scare-mongering by the so-called green lobby". The Scientific Alliance has no affiliation with any recognised scientific body but, like most of the contributors to the programme, it does have very strong links with the US public relations and lobbying organisations that have been so effective in setting the Bush agenda on climate change.

 

Many of the people who appeared on the programme were captioned to institutions and universities that they left years ago in order to pursue their political campaigning work: Fred Singer, Patrick Michaels, Philip Stott and Tim Ball are among them. Richard Lindzen is a practising scientist, but a highly politicised and criticised one. All of them have close associations with the Washington public relations and lobby groups that front for the fossil fuel companies and the libertarian right (whose ideology is often strangely indistinguishable from the Revolutionary Communists. Strange things happen at the political extremes).

 

Technically, Ron did engage in an ad hominem attack. However, I think that this is an example where this is warranted. He suggested that the the individuals who put out this documentary were probably paid by the oil companies. And, in fact, it turns out that the "scientists" who produced the data are shills for the oil companies. I think that this type of information is useful when one attempts to evaluate thier arguments.

 

In a similar vein, a couple days back the Washington Post publiched a length Op-Ed autored by Robert Kagan that argued that the surge in Iraq is working. Many people (myself included) felt that the Post should have mentioned that Kagan's brother Frederick authored the original surge strategy...

[Al_U_Card]

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) said that there are lies, damn lies and statistics.

 

CO2 is not even the most important greenhouse gas (methane is and at about 30 times the effect of CO2 is problematic as well).

 

The issue is that within the "normal" variance of world temperature are we contributing in a deleterious (but ultimately controllable) manner? The answer is definitely yes. It is our duty to ensure that we do nothing to exacerbate the global climate change. It is possible. We need to have the political will and the volition to enact and enforce sensible and workable solutions.

[Rain]

20 deg C yesterday and today in Chicago. In March

 

Brings to mind Paris Hilton's catchphrase. Its really hot. :|

[helene_t]

CO2 is not even the most important greenhouse gas (methane is and at about 30 times the effect of CO2 is problematic as well).

Huh? Wikipedia disagrees.

[inquiry]

Can and does man-made activity affect the environment = absolutely.

 

Is man-made gasses, and particularily CO2 lead to "climate change"? I don't know.

 

Is anything wrong with the global warming initiatives? Well, yes. Global warming initiaties are being pushed by political issues. That is ok, science can and should push for socially responsive change. However, science also includes the necessary and required peer-review and scientific skepticism. Any scientific theory, no matter how basically sound and believed, should challenged and its underpinning tested.

 

We all have heard of the scientific method, and were no doubt taught it in school. the method can be describes as four basic steps but it is really iterative. These steps are:

1. Observation or a phenomenon .
   
2. Development of a hypothesis explaining the phenomena
   
3. Make predictions based upon the hypothesis, to predict the existence of other phenomena or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations based upon the predictions,
   
4. Obtain peer review where independ scientist perform experimental tests of the predictions of the hypothesis
   

Over time, if the independent verification supports the hypothesis, it become more generally accepted, and may eventually become scientific theory (generally accepted), or a scientific fact (proven to be correct). Or as the others test the model, other variables that contribute to phenomena can be discovered and hypothesis modified to fit the new finding. (Of course, the hypothesis might be totally disproven as well by such inquiries). But the scientific method REQUIRES skeptics to test the bounds of the theory. Such scientific INQUIRY into a hypothesis is absolutely necessary and should be encouraged.

 

What is occuring with global warming initiative now is we have a phenomena (average global tempeature over some unit time has been increasing). This is a documented fact. One theory to explain this is that industrialization is causing this change, and perhaps the biggest contributor to this is "green house gasses". That is certainly a reasonable hypothesis. One could reach other hypotheses instead. One might assume, for instance, that the sun has increased its energy output over the last 200 years or so, and that is warming the planet, or perhaps that the earth orbit around the sun has decreased a little accounting for the rise in temperature. One might make an assumption that there has been an increase in thermal events that are heating the oceans and that heat is raising the temperature. Or that the global warming is related the number of acres of rice fields globally.

 

Once one draws up a hypothesis, which ever one, one has to determine ways to test that hypothesis by either direct experimentation or by experimental observation. In fact, by definition, all scientist should be skeptics, and challenge scientific hypothesis and even scientific theory (until proven as a fact). And this is where I have a problem. It seems to me that anyone who follows the scientific method and raises questions about the data and assumptions on which the human contributions "climate change" are based are attacked for being heretics (bad thing, rather than skeptics, which is a good thing) or in the pay of "bid oil companies". So while the scientific method is built on (and requires) dissent and challenges to test a hypothesis and refine it and reshape it. Dissent against the global warming "theory" is attacked. Here are some quotes describing such dessent. Richard in discussing the video shown stated those producing the video "were probably paid by the oil companies". He is far from being alone in this view. Others say power industry, big oil, transportation industry and the automotive industry are all behind "attacks" on the hypothesis of man-made addition to global warming. Any "scientist" who dare oppose the theory is labelled a crank, or a sell out to big industry.

 

Well, I am skeptical by nature. I am skeptical of the data used to support man-made global warming, and I am skeptical of the material I observed in the video posted here. Having said that, the one thing for sure, is that global warming initiave (the public movement) has removed this discussion from the relm of science and place it squarely in the control of politicians and public policy. The net result, some of which will be very very good, and some of which will be bad, is that your life (and mine) will be affected by "green policy" driven by political responses to this science (rather or not the science is sound or not).

 

Gas prices? will surely rise in an effort to reduce utilization. That will affect the price of not only transportation and heating, but the price of goods you buy in the stores.

 

Automotive? The major manufactors will have to create more energy efficient cars and ones that run of alternative fuels (min will run on E85 but I can't buy it here).

 

Home design. I heard today on the radio that England is "going green" and that all homes have to implement green initiatives or the home owners will face stiff fines.

 

Fortunately, I think I will be able to handle the higher cost associated with these plans. And I believe that pollution needs to be controlled, not so much for global warming issues == because I am not certain of the science there == but for health related issues, over which there is no doubt exist. But I would hate to see anyone who wants to probe and challenge the theory to man-made contributions to climate change shouted down as heritics. Natural skeptism and inquiry into this (and any other) hypothesis will only the hypothesis better (either supporting it-- driving it to become a theory -- or redefining it and thus stegnthing it by finding additional variables that play a role, or disproving it, which if it is not true, then of course needs to be disproven).

 

Let me end with a few short stories. Dr. Barry Marshall, an Australian scientist, showed the bacterium Helicobacter pylori is the cause of most ulcers. Dr. Marshall and his collaborator could not get scientific funding and they had TREMENDOUS trouble getting their finding and hypothesis published. Dr. Marshall eventually had to swallow the bacteria himself and develop ulcers because of it, and cure these ulcers using antibiotics to get this "hypothesis" even looked at. The reason, because everyone "knew" before this that ulcers were caused by stress and lifestyle and they were called heritics for their ideas.

 

Another one, for decades after we discovered cholesterol in atherosclerotic plaques, people -- especialy people on heart-smart type diets -- were told to avoid eating eggs, because that will raise the cholesterol level. That makes sense of course, but no one bothered to do investigate rather eating eggs actually raised blood cholesterol levels. Whole industries grew up around artificial eggs (can you say egg beaters). After 40 years of being a scientific "fact" that eggs raise your cholesterol and increase risk of heart attack and stroke, several epidemiology studies show that no difference is risk between those eating one or less eggs per week and people eating two or more eggs per day.

 

To make matters worse related to cholesterol, I am not even sure ciruculating cholesterol (good or bad) are related to plague in the first place. There is no doubt it is found in them, but several clear facts seem to be overlooked. For one, people with normal and low cholesterol levels have heart attacks. In fact, essentially half the heart attacks occur in people with normal cholestrol. There are skattered reports upon autopsy that there is no correlation between the extent of arteriosclerosis in the arteries and cholesterol concentration in the blood takne shortly before or after death. However, try to grant money to disprove the role for cholestrol in arteriosclerosis and heart disease and you will fail. I will give one sort of odd example. My doctor wanted to put me on lipitor and I have below normal cholesterol. I asked him why? His answer? Everyone should be on lipitor, no matter how good your cholesterol level is, it could be better.

 

There was, years ago, a huge outcry that medical studies were being conducted on men and that women health issues were being ignored. This despite women having a longer longevitity than men. The public outcry drew politicians into the mix and the public furor and outrage drove federal research agendas and budget allocations. One exmaple was that the allocation to study breast cancer skyrocketed, and by 1992, National Cancer Institute funding 145 million for breast cancer reached $145 million, but only 31 million for prostate cancer.

 

Now, I think all money spent on biomedical research is good, so I don't have a problem with this. But, in the mean while, but in 1993 congress passed a law requiring the National Institute of Health to track sex-specific enrollments and we all waited for the grim statistics to see how under-studied women were in health related studies. In 1994 (less than a year after the law was passed), NIH reported covering an earlier time period discovered that for all participants in NIH-funded studies were 52% female, 45% male! Shock.

 

And you want to know what else? Since the bureaucracy had already been established to drive federally-funded woman-based medical studies, the latest statistics from NIH covering the 2003-2004 data (see pdf by clcking here if you like) is that the ratio or particpants is now 60% female to 40% male.

 

How about female hormone replacement? Hormone replace (as cremes etc) has been used for years, and in the recent past a synthetic estrogen was recommened for 10's of millions of new women each year. And how long will they be on estrogen and progestin replacement to "protect the heart, prevent dementia, relief of hot flashes and the prevention of osteoporosis? 30 years or more each. This was based upon several hypothesis...production of hormones decrease with age, and after this reduction occurs, women experience an increased risk of heart attack (approaching and equally that of males) so estrogen must lower risk of heart attack, that osteroperosis and dementia occurs after hormone production is reduced, and of course, hot flashes will go away when on the hormone. The only problem was that when a scientific study of hormone replacement found all kinds of problems, like no or moderate improvement for risk of bone fractures, no benefit at all for women who have heart disease prior to treatement, a 50% increase in the risk of suffering a non-fatal heart attack or dying of heart disease for those on the treatment versus placebo, an incresed risk of stroke in the first year of theapy, no reduction in the amount of plaque in blood vessel walls, and very troubling, a 40% increase in risk of breast cancer.

 

All in all, it is prudent to allow skeptics. All science needs to be held up for review and "criticism", no matter how popular and how wide-spread the belief. My concern is that healthy skepticism is not being tolerated in the "green debate". As the debate seems to have moved from the cause(s) and the reality of the problem to how to address it. I certainly don't mind the how to address it discussions, but I think there is still room to enact reasonable regulations and safeguards while still challenging and probing the central hypothesis on which the debate is formed. Anyone who wants to shut up the voice of dissent, to me, is the REAL HERITICS, that is not the science way (method), but rather the method of crusaders in the bad context of that word.

[hrothgar]

We all have heard of the scientific method, and were no doubt taught it in school. the method can be describes as four basic steps but it is really iterative. These steps are:

1. Observation or a phenomenon .
   
2. Development of a hypothesis explaining the phenomena
   
3. Make predictions based upon the hypothesis, to predict the existence of other phenomena or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations based upon the predictions,
   
4. Obtain peer review where independ scientist perform experimental tests of the predictions of the hypothesis
   

Over time, if the independent verification supports the hypothesis, it become more generally accepted, and may eventually become scientific theory (generally accepted), or a scientific fact (proven to be correct). Or as the others test the model, other variables that contribute to phenomena can be discovered and hypothesis modified to fit the new finding. (Of course, the hypothesis might be totally disproven as well by such inquiries). But the scientific method REQUIRES skeptics to test the bounds of the theory. Such scientific INQUIRY into a hypothesis is absolutely necessary and should be encouraged.

Ben

 

I don't think that anyone here would disagree with what you are saying. Healthy skepticism is a very good thing. However, the issue that I - and many other people - have with so-called most global warming skeptics is that they are not disinterested parties taking part in a scientific debate. Rather, they are paid apologists and propagandists, funded by the tobacco and oil lobbies.

 

I find it useful to compare and contrast the "money trail" on either side of this debate.

 

On the one side - the so called skeptics - I can clearly document where the money is comping from. And, surprise, surprise, the money is coming from groups that have a strong vested interest in untaxed CO2 emissions (oil/coal producers) or attacking the scientific method in general (the tobacco lobby)

 

If we look at the other side, organizations like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace certainly have their own policy agendas. However, they aren't able to bring nearly the same amount of financial resources to bear. I am sure that there are some shills on the environment side as well. I'm sure that there are some complete ideologues who can't be reasoned with. However, by and large I think that they is a lot less bias on this side of the fence.

[inquiry]

Sometimes, you just can't make this stuff up... Global Warming trek KO'ed by cold

 

In their trek across the Arctic Ocean, explorers Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen had planned to call in regular updates to school groups by satellite phone, and had planned online posts with photographic evidence of global warming. In contrast to Bancroft's 1986 trek across the Arctic with fellow Minnesota explorer Will Steger, this time she and Arnesen were prepared to don body suits and swim through areas where polar ice has melted.

 

Seriously, what kind of photo from the artic would be proof of global warming? I mean it is March and the polar ice cap shrinks each spring/summer. Ships use to sail up there and get trapped for the "winter" while the expeditions explored. This was a publicity stunt not science. Swimming in the artic ocean for goodness sake.

 

But the one paragraph I found intriquing was this one from the article.... ""They were experiencing temperatures that weren't expected with global warming," Atwood said. "But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability."

 

Now, in the last 100 years or so, the average temperature has gone up one degree F. The last time these women were there was 1986. Does that fact taht the average temperature increased 1 degree mean anything for the given temperature on any give day? Since temp varies wildly. Last week we didn't get above freezing, today it is suppose to be 78 here. That is a swing nearly 50 degrees for a high is a week, and this time of year, not that ususual.

 

What happened on this expedition? One night they measured the temperature inside their tent at 58 degrees below zero, and outside temperatures were exceeding 100 below zero at times

 

Now that is cold. One got frostbite, and they decided (wisely) to return home. The cause of their problem? Isn't it obvious? Don't know yet, let me give another quote...

 

"[They were] experiencing temperatures that weren't expected with global warming. But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability."

 

That's right. The extreme cold was a product of unpredictable global warming... the temperature (what with global warming and all) should have been much colder. Can they really be serious? Photos taken over a couple of months (was to be long trek) as proof of global warming? No doubt we would have seen part of the ice cap falling into the sea (as it does every spring/summer). This is a publicity stunt that turned out badly, and had nothing to do with the science of global warming.

[inquiry]

On the one side - the so called skeptics - I can clearly document where the money is comping from. And, surprise, surprise, the money is coming from groups that have a strong vested interest in untaxed CO2 emissions (oil/coal producers) or attacking the scientific method in general (the tobacco lobby)

 

If we look at the other side, organizations like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace certainly have their own policy agendas. However, they aren't able to bring nearly the same amount of financial resources to bear. I am sure that there are some shills on the environment side as well. I'm sure that there are some complete ideologues who can't be reasoned with. However, by and large I think that they is a lot less bias on this side of the fence.

I don't mind if the "science" is provide by someone with an agenda. What I want is to have the findings presented so both sides can weigh the evidence. The data presented, no matter the source of funding, will have to stand up to scrutiny and peer review.

 

In addition, I think you underplay the power of greenpeace and the Sierra club. Those are for all practical purposes political action groups who try to shape public opinion and thus the political agenda. The fact the US has now has a "Division on Climate Change" as part of its Office of Atmospheric Programs shows the attention the politicians are paying to this issue. The goverment has a "comprehensive" policy on climate change, that no doubt will continue to evolve. You can read about this policy on the EPA webpage (Click for link

 

A couple of things. The Climate Change Technology Program is designed to funnel funds from different agencies into directed research towards these technologies. This is not new money, but money taken away from other basic science programs and directed towards topic related to climate change. You want these dollars? Describe your research in climate chage language. This is similar to the woman's health care initiative at nih also mandated by congress.

 

Another one is the Climate Change Science Program. This is another multi=agency initiative that takes money from many different agencies to fund the science behind climate change. Again, as far as I can tell, this is not new money, it is redirected money. If you rely on these agencies for funding you will either switch to climate based research or risk losing your funding (or at least compete for a smaller pool of money with other non-climate based scientist).

 

I, for one, am never against funding good science. And climate based science is certainly an area that I am interested in (not as a researcher but as a consumer of knowledge generated by the research). Still I have some old fashion ideas, one is that the best science proposed or the most novel and potentially important science proposed, should be funded first. Federal set-asides, however, ensure certain topics will get funded, such that bad science gets funded in these directed projects while good science in other areas ends up being ignored for lack of funds. I am not yet convinced of the crises that setting aside other "good science" (and no I have no specific example) gets pushed to the side to allow directed research to be funded for political means.

 

Rather than cross-agency funding, there should be a single program in climate science with its own, clear budget. Then let the climate scientist submit proposals and compete for that pot of money, without harming the chance of good proposals unrealted to climate research. The current plan gets "climate issues" stuck on projects which will never have an impact on climate research. Let me give personal example. A group I use to be with was doing some cardiomyopathy studies in rats. One of our members wrote a grant "hyping" the role of cardiomyopathies in patients with HIV and even added some AIDS related drugs to a rat study in an effort to get funding for the ongoing studies, despite our reseach was totally unrelated in any way to HIV or HIV-induced cardiomyopathies. However the logic for the proposal was that at that time was the branch of NIH the grant was being submitted to had "set aside" money for HIV research that was going wanting for lack of proposals. That one was funded, in part with money meant, no doubt, for HIV research. And in my opinion, the science in that proposal was weaker than a lot of other proposals that did not get funded that year. It is clear that scientist will go where the money is and use some pretty far-fetched relationships to justify getting the money. The point being, it is not just big oil money driving one side of the research, that at least, I am certain.

[hrothgar]

A couple of things. The Climate Change Technology Program is designed to funnel funds from different agencies into directed research towards these technologies. This is not new money, but money taken away from other basic science programs and directed towards topic related to climate change. You want these dollars? Describe your research in climate chage language. This is similar to the woman's health care initiative at nih also mandated by congress.

 

Another one is the Climate Change Science Program. This is another multi=agency initiative that takes money from many different agencies to fund the science behind climate change. Again, as far as I can tell, this is not new money, it is redirected money. If you rely on these agencies for funding you will either switch to climate based research or risk losing your funding (or at least compete for a smaller pool of money with other non-climate based scientist).

For what its worth, I agree with that the Federal Government often screws up funding priorities.

 

For as long as we've been debating climate change I've been saying the same two words: "Carbon Tax".

 

1. Tax CO2 emissions, thereby internalizing the externality

2. Let the market decide on the best response

[luke warm]

ben's post made perfect sense to me... but it's my opinion that when richard says, "However, the issue that I - and many other people - have with so-called most global warming skeptics is that they are not disinterested parties taking part in a scientific debate. Rather, they are paid apologists and propagandists, funded by the tobacco and oil lobbies." he misses the point

 

to think that only one side in this debate has an agenda, or a vested interest, is to be naive... i've proven in other posts that it's the GW proponents who have come right out and admitted that the truth of the matter is immaterial, this agenda must be pushed regardless... so it seems somewhat disingenuous to oppose "disinterested parties" when they are in opposition to ones own beliefs, and support them otherwise