Caught with their pants down.
Unskeptical-scientists, like Hansen, Trenberth, and Mann, have plastered their name on a document aiming to stop scientific research. They want less science funding. Who hates science then?
The Ethical Poseurs
Who cares about the ethics of fossil fuels funding skeptics, but doesn’t care when renewable-energy corporations sponsor pro-crisis exhibitions? Siemens was principle sponsor of the UK Science Museum’s propaganda gallery on climate science. It makes EUR 80 million profit each quarter from wind and renewables. Where is the outrage? When mercenary corporates use museums to boost their profits, that’s OK for Hansen, Trenberth and Mann. The other big sponsor was Shell, which profits from gas sales, when its cheap competitor coal gets hit thanks to “climate-panic”. Shell, of course, likes windmills, which need a gas form of back up.
Time skeptics stood up for science funding
We skeptics need to stop buying into the bullying and intimidation of those who say fossil fuels can fund unskeptical research but not skeptical (i.e. real) research. The sole reason they do this is to starve skeptics and to poison the well for audiences. It is anti-science, anti-free-speech, anti-intellectual in every way.
Most times when a skeptic says “we take no fossil fuel funding” it caves to that meme. It feeds the monster. It is as if skeptics are confirming that unskeptical activists are right to “expose” and discuss funding without even discussing the research. It is never OK to use an ad hom in place of an argument. The correct response of any scientist accused of receiving any money “linked” to fossil fuels is to say:
“We’d be grateful if we were. Please give my details to the Koch Brothers.
So you are still too scared to discuss the science? If you can find a problem with my research, we would talk about that instead, wouldn’t we?“
It’s time scientists talked science instead of “vested interests”
The Unskeptical-scientists don’t want to debate this through peer review, they’re terrified. Knobbling competing scientists by attacking their funding is their best strategy; their scientific case is riddled with holes.
That’s why it is great to see a group of scientists take this head-on, and you can join them.
The Natural History Museum has written an open letter to other museums – telling them to stop taking fossil fuel money (specifically Koch funding) for vapor thin ethical reasons, and because they are nice people who really care a lot about the planet.
CO2Science has an Open Response, where they are collecting names in support. Essentially, they point out that it boils down to a well funded mob complaining that skeptics got about 1% as much money from philanthropic donors as they did:
Instead of arguments based on science and facts, the movement labels any who question their dogma as “deniers,” funded, according to the letter, by “climate-change-denying organizations spending over $67 million since 1997 to fund groups denying climate change science.” The hypocrisy is breathtaking. Orders of magnitude more funding has been given by governments and foundations to organizations and individuals charged with “scientifically” proving the alleged evils of CO2 and inventing ways to cope with it. In 2011 alone, ten large foundations donated $577 million to environmental causes, nearly ten times more than the total funding since 1997 to the so-called “deniers.” And that does not count tens of billions of dollars from the government and other foundations. Apparently the movement’s scientific case is so weak that they feel threatened by any research that does not support their doctrine.
We applaud support for informative studies of the climate, for example, ocean monitoring programs, satellite instruments, or meteorological networks with high-quality data archives. This work needs no defense from scientific challenges, regardless of the source of funding. The honest scientists responsible for much of this excellent work cannot be blamed for the excesses of the anti-fossil fuel movement. But the signers of the letter include some of the biggest feeders at the climate trough, who benefit from millions of dollars of funding every year for research empires, which, in many cases, stoke a propaganda mill instead of producing real science. In the interests of transparency and intellectual integrity, the signatories of the “To the Museums” letter should have each revealed their annual and cumulative climate funding.
Their hypocritical ethics claims, and the obvious outcome of less funding for science mean it’s hard to see any aim in this other than to shut down any investigation that threatens their status, their funding or their religious belief. Pure scientific parasites.
How can more funding for science be bad? The answer is “when the funding is already monopolistic, biased, and one-sided and extra funding makes the balance worse.” Though the danger here is merely that the well funded team produces more irrelevant, repetitive papers. If science journalists were half smart and properly trained, that would hardly matter.
Funding should be declared, but always research stands or falls on it’s evidence and its arguments. The time for talking about funding only comes after some grievous problem is found with the research, or if the research is hard to replicate and dependent on data collected and maintained by the same team.
They ask museums “to cut all ties with the fossil fuel industry and funders of climate science obfuscation.”
The letter has no chance of actually working because fossil fuel empire funds more pro-panic exhibits than it has ever funded skeptical ones. The UK science museum is very happy to take money from Shell and BP. Likewise British Museum, Tate, and others, ahem, are ethically quite OK with BP money, oil spills and all. Though the letter has already achieved what it probably wanted, which is mass PR as most in the gullible media sucked it up.
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TO ADD YOUR NAME
We welcome additional signers, both US and non-US citizens, who are informed about CO2 and climate.
If you would like to add your name, please send a note to [email protected].
Include your name and a short affiliation, analogous to that of other signers. Also include a brief
paragraph to show that you are familiar with the facts of climate and CO2, either as a scientist, a
meteorologist, an engineer, or an informed person with another occupation. We will review this
paragraph and add your name to the list if we judge that you base your opinions on knowledge. Neither
information from this paragraph, nor your e-mail address, will be made public.