If Global Warming Is Real, I Want It. - Page 18 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14955447
Truth To Power wrote:more water is available to support biological processes

That will not help you.

Martin Parry, Hadley Centre, UK Meteorological Office wrote:Anthropogenic pressures – socio-economic, and land use changes [due to climate change] – are likely to be vastly more important as drivers of biodiversity change than climate change.


:lol:
#14955450
Why are people debating bio diversity as a good thing?

It stands to reason there be more bio diversity under climate change as animals need to adapt to their surroundings to survive. But more diversity doesn't mean more life. And it certainly isn't a good thing for those living things that live on Earth today - including Humans. Although with high UV levels we will all be black in the future. So there is a fuck you from God to the climate deniers right there. :lol:
#14955671
Pants-of-dog wrote:And since Dr. Patrick Michaels is receiving funds from the fossil fuel industry, his claims are probably suspect.



No more suspect than the claims of those receiving government funds or NGO funds. You can't have it both ways, either money corrupts or it doesn't.


#14955677
Sivad wrote:No more suspect than the claims of those receiving government funds or NGO funds. You can't have it both ways, either money corrupts or it doesn't.


That is simplistic.

There is a difference between fossil fuel industry magnates paying people to lie, and climatologists simply receiving a paycheck for doing their work.

To equate the two is fallacious, as the former is basically a bribe while the latter is simply a matter of receiving a wage like all of us wage slaves.

Also, we were not just discussing money, but also how control over carbon resources allows the elite to have an undue impact. This is true in the case of Dr, Michaels but not in the case of other climatologists.
#14956622
Pants-of-dog wrote:That is simplistic.

There is a difference between fossil fuel industry magnates paying people to lie, and climatologists simply receiving a paycheck for doing their work.


No there isn't, their paychecks and their careers depend on securing those grants and the people who direct large projects make quite a bit of money and get all kinds of inducements in the way of cash prizes, luxury travel, and celebrity status. If you don't think Money can game science then you just don't understand how either Money or science work in the real world.
#14956635

Some of the published exaggeration of the degree of understanding, and of over-simplification is best understood as a combination of human psychology and the pressures of fund-raising. Anyone who has struggled for several years to make sense of a complicated data set, only to conclude that “the data proved inadequate for this purpose” is in a quandary. Publishing such an inference would be very difficult, and few would notice if it were published. As the outcome of a funded grant, it is at best disappointing and at worst a calamity for a renewal or promotion. A parallel problem would emerge from a model calculation that produced no “exciting” new behavior. Thus the temptation to over-interpret the data set is a very powerful one.

Similarly, if the inference is that the data are best rationalized as an interaction of many factors of comparable amplitude described through the temporal and spatial evolution of a complicated fluid model, the story does not lend itself to a one-sentence, intriguing, explanation (“carbon dioxide was trapped in the abyssal ocean for thousands of years;” “millennial variability is con- trolled by solar variations”; “climate change is a bipolar seesaw”), and the near-impossibility of publishing in the near-tabloid science media (Science, Nature) with their consequent press conferences and celebrity. Amplifying this tendency is the relentlessly increasing use by ignorant or lazy administrators and promotion committees of supposed “objective” measures of scientific quality such as publication rates, citation frequencies, and impact factors. The pressures for “exciting” results, over-simplified stories, and notoriety, are evident throughout the climate and paleoclimate literature.

The price being paid is not a small one. Often important technical details are omitted, and alternative hypotheses arbitrarily suppressed in the interests of telling a simple story. Some of these papers would not pass peer-review in the more conventional professional journals, but lend themselves to headlines and simplistic stories written by non-scientist media people. In the long-term, this tabloid-like publication cannot be good for the science–which developed peer review in specialized journals over many decades beginning in the 17th Century–for very good reasons.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 9110001563
#14956661
Sivad wrote:No there isn't, their paychecks and their careers depend on securing those grants and the people who direct large projects make quite a bit of money and get all kinds of inducements in the way of cash prizes, luxury travel, and celebrity status. If you don't think Money can game science then you just don't understand how either Money or science work in the real world.


This is all speculation without evidence.

Also, why are you citing a paper about oversimplification and exaggeration in the field of paleoclimatology as if it described climatology?
#14956773
Pants-of-dog wrote:This is all speculation without evidence.


It's not speculation, you just don't know what you're talking about as usual. The top climate scientists control millions of dollars in grants, travel all over the world to conferences and awards ceremonies, receive accolades from the most prestigious institutions, get tons of media attention, and they're paid extremely well to boot. Gavin Schmidt makes $170,000 a year as an academic, that's a pretty sweet gig. And these guys are the gatekeepers, they control which PhDs and post docs are brought on to the research projects, these are the guys that sit on the peer review committees so they crontrol who gets published, it's all money and politics just like every other racket in this world.

NASA records released to resolve litigation filed by the American Tradition Institute reveal that Dr. James E. Hansen, an astronomer, received approximately $1.6 million in outside, direct cash income in the past five years for work related to — and, according to his benefactors, often expressly for — his public service as a global warming activist within NASA.

This does not include six-figure income over that period in travel expenses to fly around the world to receive money from outside interests. As specifically detailed below, Hansen failed to report tens of thousands of dollars in global travel provided to him by outside parties — including to London, Paris, Rome, Oslo, Tokyo, the Austrian Alps, Bilbao, California, Australia and elsewhere, often business or first-class and also often paying for his wife as well — to receive honoraria to speak about the topic of his taxpayer-funded employment, or get cash awards for his activism and even for his past testimony and other work for NASA.

For example, consider these failures to report often elegant air and hotel/resort accommodations received on his SF278 as required by law (the amount of direct cash income received from the party providing him travel, as well, is in parentheses):

Blue Planet Prize ($500,000), travel for Hansen and his wife to Tokyo, Japan, 2010
Dan David Prize ($500,000), travel to Paris, 2007
Sophie Prize ($100,000), Oslo Norway, travel for Hansen and his wife, 2010
WWF Duke of Edinburgh Award, Travel for Hansen and his wife, London, 2006
Alpbach, Austria (alpine resort)(“business class”, with wife), 2007
Shell Oil UK ($10,000), London, 2009
FORO Cluster de Energia, travel for Hansen and wife (“business class”), Bilbao, Spain, 2008
ACT Coalition, travel for Hansen and wife to London, 2007
Progressive Forum ($10,000)(“first class”), to Houston, 2006
Progressive Forum ($10,000), to Houston, 2009
UCSB ($10,000), to Santa Barbara, CA
Nierenberg Prize ($25,000), to San Diego, 2008
Nevada Medal ($20,000), to Las Vegas, Reno, 2008
EarthWorks Expos, to Denver, 2006
California Academy of Science ($1,500), to San Francisco, 2009
CalTech ($2,000), travel to Pasadena, CA for Hansen and his wife, 2007
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/18/ ... de-income/


Also, why are you citing a paper about oversimplification and exaggeration in the field of paleoclimatology as if it described climatology?


"throughout the climate and paleoclimate literature"

So why are you pretending like he's not talking about climatology?
#14957046
Sivad wrote:It's not speculation, you just don't know what you're talking about as usual. The top climate scientists control millions of dollars in grants, travel all over the world to conferences and awards ceremonies, receive accolades from the most prestigious institutions, get tons of media attention, and they're paid extremely well to boot. Gavin Schmidt makes $170,000 a year as an academic, that's a pretty sweet gig. And these guys are the gatekeepers, they control which PhDs and post docs are brought on to the research projects, these are the guys that sit on the peer review committees so they crontrol who gets published, it's all money and politics just like every other racket in this world.


No, this is not evidence.

Nor is the supposed “faliure” of James Hansen to report travel expenses.

What is interesting is how the litigation against Dr. Hansen was filed by the American Tradition Institute.

The American Tradition Institute was launched in Colorado in February 2009 as the nonprofit Western Tradition Institute, later changing its name to ATI. WTI, in turn, was a spinoff of the Western Tradition Partnership (WTP) — a 501(c)(4) political advocacy group backed by energy interests.

The American Tradition Institute has described itself as a public policy research and educational foundation – a 'think tank' – founded in 2009 to help lead the national discussion about environmental issues, including air and water quality and regulation, responsible land use, natural resource management, energy development, property rights, and free-market principles of stewardship.

Funding

During the 2010 elections, the Montana Commission of Political Practices found that ATI organization broke state campaign laws by failing to register as a political committee or report its donors and spending.

The state suggested WTP/ATP was involved in corruption and money laundering. Huffington Post reported they found that it solicited unlimited contributions to support candidates and then passed them through a “sham organization,” the Bozeman-based political action committee The Coalition for Energy and the Environment that ran attack ads against Democrats. WTP told corporations that it aimed to combat 'radical environmentalists' and 'beat them at their own game' and that their contributions would remain secret.” [1]

According to a 2010 filing with the IRS (PDF), ATI received $40,000 from its sister group ATP, which in turn is supported by oil, gas and coal interests.

According to Conservative Transparency, ATI received another $15,000 from the Atlas Economic Research Foundation (AERF) in 2011. [10] According to ExxonSecrets, AERF is a Virginia-based think tank that has received over $1 million in funding from Exxon Mobil since 1998. Atlas also received $122,300 from the Koch foundations and $735,000 from the Pope foundation. [8]


So, this is an institution that openly supports neoliberalism. Considering your alleged cynicism about beoliberal agendas, I am surprised you do not see this as a nuisance suit by fossil fuel magnates.

It also, somewhat hypocritically, failed to report income.

"throughout the climate and paleoclimate literature"

So why are you pretending like he's not talking about climatology?


Because I read the actual paper and I know the author was focused on the field of paleoclimatology.
#14957113
Pants-of-dog wrote:No, this is not evidence.


:knife: The facts aren't in question. Everyone, including Hansen, accepts that Hansen received these benefits.

Nor is the supposed “faliure” of James Hansen to report travel expenses.


:knife: It has nothing to do with that, we're discussing the various incentives that influence climate scientists.


What is interesting is how the litigation against Dr. Hansen was filed by the American Tradition Institute.


:knife: It's irrelevant to this conversation. It doesn't matter where the information came from, it only matters that it's factual. And it is factual.

Considering your alleged cynicism about beoliberal agendas, I am surprised you do not see this as a nuisance suit by fossil fuel magnates.


:knife: I don't care what motivated it, the point is Hansen gets a lot of comps.

Because I read the actual paper and I know the author was focused on the field of paleoclimatology.


:knife: Then your reading comprehension is as screwy as your logic because the paper is definitely referring to both.


I'm going to be charitable and assume you're being dishonest because if it's you're actual thinking then just, damn. :lol:
#14957148
Sivad wrote:The facts aren't in question. Everyone, including Hansen, accepts that Hansen received these benefits.


No one is denying that.

The question is whether or not these funds were an incentive to lie. As far as I can tell, they were not. Moreover, this is merely one scientist. Even if we accept that Dr. Hansen lied because he was paid for travel expenses associated with speaking engagements, this does not mean that the thousands of other climatologists who have corroborated Dr. Hansen’s work are also being paid the same.

Finally, these nuisance suits never went anywhere because Dr. Hansen did nothing unethical.

It has nothing to do with that, we're discussing the various incentives that influence climate scientists.


Yes, that is exactly what the “article” is about.

If the article was not about your claim, you should not have cited it.

If we are discussing what incentives influence the vast majority of climatologists, why are we looking at the exceptional case of the most famous one of them all, who is perhaps the most sought after climatologist in terms of speaking engagements? He is definitely not an example of an average climatologist.

It's irrelevant to this conversation. It doesn't matter where the information came from, it only matters that it's factual. And it is factual.


You are claiming that money exerts an undue influence on science and politics. I pointed out that this scientist has been the target of nuisance suits, and that these nuisance suits come from a neoliberal think tank funded by fossil fuel interests. I think I am also giving an example of money exerting undue influence in science and politics.

I don't care what motivated it, the point is Hansen gets a lot of comps.


Yes, you do seem apathetic about how neoliberal capitalist groups have been using money to influence the climate change debate.

What are “comps”?

Then your reading comprehension is as screwy as your logic because the paper is definitely referring to both.


No.

The author is complaining about certain tendencies in fields where the amount data is poor, and there is very little opportunity to test hypotheses. Paleoclimatology is one of these fields. Modern climatology is not. The author also uses the example of string theory in physics.

Then there is the fact that paleoclimatology is specifically mentioned in the paragraphs preceding and following the text you cited.

Here is a working link to the paper:
http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonl ... eocean.pdf

The paper is called:
Towards Understanding the Paleocean
By Carl Wunsch
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