Back in July I mentioned that the AEI was offering $10,000 to scientists for a "review and policy critique" of the new IPCC report. This month the Guardian caused all kinds of grief for the AEI when they described these payments as bribes. David Roberts and Andrew Dessler tell the story and what it means. They conclude that the payments weren't bribes, but:
What they do not acknowledge is that the conservative movement has squandered its credibility on the subject of climate change. After years of efforts to deny or obfuscate mainstream climate science -- driven by ideology, fossil-fuel funding, or some unknowable mix of the two -- conservatives simply are not trusted on the issue. A story about a right-wing think tank funding attacks on science is credulously accepted precisely because it conforms to recent history. Most people expect it to be true.
If a conservative think tank seeks to fund responsible criticism on climate science or policy, it would do well to tread carefully, making explicit its acceptance of the core IPCC consensus and reassuring potential participants that their work will not be drafted in service of an ideological attack. That Hayward and Green were so incautious in their approach indicates that they have not fully recognized the level of mistrust they must now overcome, simply by virtue of their institutional and ideological affiliations.
Those who favor action on climate change can learn something from this episode as well, and not just the wisdom of bringing heightened skepticism to favorably biased news stories. Too many activists and commentators are fighting the last war, pounding away on any sign of doubt about basic climate science, even where no such doubt exists. The debate over the existence of anthropogenic climate change, despite some noisy rear-guard skirmishes, is largely over.
Oh, and why I'm not fond of the AEI.
Still. Nobody has addressed the Cato Institute's Regulation Magazine. They host nonsense by right-wingers and contrarians and I'm wondering whether Roger Pielke Jr. took home a paycheck for contributing.
Pielke has never stepped up to the plate and answered that question. Of course, I'm sure that Roger will term any payment an "honorarium."
Kinda off Topic, but has anyone seen Tim Ball's interview wherein he advocates giving alcohol to a 7 year old?
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=19409
Roberts and Dessler have bent over backward to be fair to AEI, both in this piece and in Dessler's earlier report (which Steve Hayward of AEI described as "critical but fair-minded"). That's all to the good in its own way, but it leaves the reader with an unrealistic picture of AEI's honesty, or lack thereof, in describing its role, and its ethics, or lack thereof, in distributing the money and shaping what it bought.
Eli has an excellent follow-up. He notes that AEI sent out two letters to scientists, of which only the first seemed to be an offer of $10k for a "critique" of AR4 and an arms'-length relationship between AEI and its content. In the second letter, AEI's intent appears in sharper focus:
I bet.
If it is a bribe to pay people for doing work, then we are all bribed every day, except for those who inherited enough money not to have to work at all. Among those invited to attend the AEI roundtable are some of the same scientists who produced the recent report that politicians, environmentalists, and the media tout as the last word on global warming. http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell021407.php3
Sceptic
Your link provided no information as to which scientists were invited to the AEI roundtable.
More importantly it provided no information as to their response.
Among those invited to attend the AEI roundtable are some of the same scientists
Huh. Thomas Sowell...OK, let's give the right-wing nutjob the benefit of the doubt and see who attended the AEI food fest.
Let's see...hmmm...where are those names...hmmm...
Well.
Why do shills, denialists, contrascientists, and FUD purveyors always assume no one will check their work? Because their intended audience is below average IQ?
Best,
D
Whether it was a bribe or an honorarium really makes no difference because when one is trying to bring the American public around to one's way of thinking, perception is everything.
As soon as people suspect that they are being gamed, you have already lost them.
A nod's as good as a wink especially to a shill - you can be sure that prospective authors will be in no doubt at all as to what is required of them, no.
Abe G.'s link to the Timmy Ball Comedy Hour offers some real knee-slappers. My favourite,
"I'm not a conspiracy theorist and I hate being even pushed toward that, but I think there is a consensus conspiracy that's going on."
I don;t know why but that reminds of an old joke "I'm not gay but the guy who sucks my dick is."
Here's some more Tim Ball comedy gold from climatesceptics:
>Here is another piece I received from an engineer. I don't know the people whose initials appear here, but it is not important with regard to the scientific issues.
>Tim Ball
>>"On the basis of measurements from space, atmospheric researchers have offered the theory that our globe, Earth, is getting warmer due to retained solar radiation. One of them, RJC, claims that this continuously arriving and retained solar heat amounts to 239.6 watt/m^2 (80.1 Btu per hour per square foot), and another one, KET, claims that it amounts to 55 Petawatt (35.6 Btu per hour per square foot).
>>The laws of thermodynamics state that heat energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So, this heat, where is?
>>Is it in the atmosphere surrounding Earth?
>>No - One cubic foot of air at sea level can absorb about 0.015 Btu per degree F. This amount decreases inverse proportional to height. At about 50,000 feet above sea level the heat retention ability of air is virtually nil.
>>Is it in the ground?
>>No - Reason 1: The specific heat of rock is about 2.5 Btu per cubic foot per degree F. For lakes and oceans, 62.5 Btu will raise one cubic foot of water by one degree F. If RJC was correct, Earth surface temperature would rise daily by 770 degrees F, and if KET was correct, Earth surface temperature would rise daily by 342 degrees F. - We would have all been incinerated long ago, if that were true.
Reason 2: The Earth's own heat rises continuously from its core to the surface and from there radiates out into space. It is physically impossible for solar radiation to enter Earth at the same time, which is another rule of thermodynamics.
>>Hence, since energy cannot just get lost, it follows that there is no "Global Warming"."
Lurker: shorter Tim Ball: "you'd be paranoid too if everyone was out to get you".
"I'm not a conspiracy theorist and I hate being even pushed toward that, but I think there is a consensus conspiracy that's going on."
What exactly does that mean (if anything)?
Does it mean that people are conspiring to reach consensus?
But if they have already agreed to conspire to agree, doesn't that imply they had reached consensus to begin with? -- ie, before they even agreed to conspire to a agree.
Also, forgive my ignorance, but doesn't a conspiracy depend for its success on the fact that only a few people know about it?
So a "consensus conspiracy" would seem to be a little counter-intuitive, to say the least.
If everyone (at least everyone in the climate science community) knows about it, doesn't that make it hard to keep it a secret and how is it then a conspiracy?
A conspiracy directed at the one person who does not know about it?
These are the kinds of logical conundrums that can keep a person awake at wee hours in the morning.
I'm too gobsmacked by that engineers screed to actually post a coherent reply.
Let's understand something. The American Enterprise Institute is a whore, and it strikes me that of the scientists who take their offer are whores, too. If any real climate scientists had anything to say to dissent from the IPCC report, they should have said it in the IPCC report. (Most reports like the IPCC report allow for dissenting opinions to be published along with the report.) It really is as simple as that.
What the American Enterprise Institute is really interested in is obtaining 800 (or so) word columns for publication in newspapers and such, by people who have a bit of alphabet soup (preferably PhD--Piled Higher And Deeper) after their name, whether or not the alphabet soup has any relevance to the subject matter over which they are bloviating.
Abe G, there are a lot of non-alcoholic beers, some of them even traditional (root beers). Traditionally, anything made from berries was wine, and anything made from roots, grains, honey or just about anything else was beer, fermented or not.
Harald,
Perhaps Tim Ball is using some antiquated definition of beer--or is that a Canadian definition? For the record, I don't think Ball is actually advocating preteen alcohol use. Perhaps he meant root beer or confused his anecdotes. The point is, skeptics are always taking out of context quotes and trying to build a case with them. Because they have no real arguments, and no tactics save obfuscation.
I've been to Saskatoon, and nice town as it is, I must agree that 7 year olds living there would need a certain amount of beer consumption.
I'd love to know where I could get $10,000 for some screed describing the terror of anthropogenic climate change. Lord knows, I've heard enough about how it's a construct used by the fabulously powerful climatology cartel to justify their enormous wealth. Heck, even Senator Inhofe, the smartest man who ever lived, informed us that the only reason people watch the Weather Channel is because of their inflated fear of global warming.