Thought Piece
Dear thoughtful readers, I have a few thoughts to add to the narrative about the Professor Judith Curry departure from GTU: (1) Dissent is not illegal; (2) persecuting dissenters probably should be; (3) the United States was created by dissenters; (4) skepticism is a building block of all intellectual inquiry; (5) the politicization of any science will never create better scientific practices; (6) good debates from the loyal opposition have never harmed a democracy; and finally, (7) a humble scientist should never be an oxymoron.
Global Warming Alarmists Claim A Scalp, Drive Skeptical Scientist From University
Officially, Judith Curry is retiring from the School of Earth and Atmospheric Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology. But it’s not because she feels she has nothing left to contribute. She’s leaving the school she once chaired because of the madness that’s infected climate science.
“A deciding factor was that I no longer know what to say to students and postdocs regarding how to navigate the CRAZINESS (her emphasis) in the field of climate science,” Curry wrote in an explanation of her resignation.
“Research and other professional activities are professionally rewarded only if they are channeled in certain directions approved by a politicized academic establishment — funding, ease of getting your papers published, getting hired in prestigious positions, appointments to prestigious committees and boards, professional recognition, etc.”
Curry is a known skeptic of the manipulative narrative that says without a bit of reservation man’s burning of fossil fuel is causing Earth to dangerously warm. She’s even been called a” “denier,” a label that means she hasn’t surrendered to the intellectual corruption that has sullied her field.
Though she’s leaving Georgia Tech, Curry will continue to work in climate science. But it will be in the private sector, which she believes is “a more ‘honest’ place for a scientist working in a politicized field than universities or government labs.”
Curry has seen firsthand how climate science has been bought by a government that sees the global warming scare as a way to seize more control, and by left-wing groups that financially support pro-warming research, which they use justify their big government agenda. While skeptical and lukewarm scientists are often accused of being shills for oil companies, the big money goes to the researchers who keep the climate scare rolling. We’re talking around $100 billion or more by now from the federal government alone since just 2008.
This racket was corroborated by auto columnist and editorial cartoonist Henry Payne, who said a couple of years ago that “government/foundation monies go only toward research that advances the warming regulatory agenda.” There is “a clear public-policy outcome in mind,” he added, making “the government/foundation gravy train … a much greater threat to scientific integrity.”
Richard Lindzen, the highly credentialed Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s climate scientist who has refused to buy into the popular warming account, explained a couple of years ago that “billions of dollars have been poured into studies supporting climate alarm, and trillions of dollars have been involved in overthrowing the energy economy.”
No decent person should want to be a part of that, so we can see why Curry would rather take her research skills to the private sector.
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The “well funded” climate business – follow the money
Flashback, Michael Mann said this on October 5th, 2010:
Our efforts to communicate the science are opposed by a well-funded, highly organized disinformation effort that aims to confuse the public about the nature of our scientific understanding. … Scientists are massively out-funded and outmanned in this battle, and will lose if leading scientific institutions and organizations remain on the sidelines. I will discuss this dilemma, drawing upon my own experiences in the public arena of climate change.
Next time you get challenged on how much money is involved and whose side gets it, point out Mann is delusional by showing them this from 2009, Climate Money, a study by Joanne Nova revealing that the federal Government has a near-monopoly on climate science funding.
The starting point was in June 1988 – James Hansen’s address to Congress, where he was so sure of his science, he and Senator Tim Wirth turned off the air conditioning to make the room hotter.
Then show them this from the Daily Caller:
The Congressional Research Service estimates that since 2008 the federal government has spent nearly $70 billion on “climate change activities.”
Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe presented the new CRS report on the Senate Floor Thursday to make the point that the Obama administration has been focused on “green” defense projects to the detriment of the military.
The report revealed that from fiscal years 2008 through 2012 the federal government spent $68.4 billion to combat climate change. The Department of Defense also spent $4 billion of its budget, the report adds, on climate change and energy efficiency activities in that same time period.
Inhofe, the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, argued that the expenditures are foolish at a time when the military is facing “devastating cuts.”
Video May 17, 2012 by JimInhofePressOffice
Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and a Senior Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, took to the Senate floor today to put the spotlight on the far-left global warming agenda that is being imposed on the Department of Defense by President Obama, which comes at the same time the Obama administration is forcing devastating cuts to the military budget.
Senator Inhofe announced that he will be introducing a number of amendments during next week’s markup of the Defense Authorization bill in the Senate Armed Services Committee that will stop President Obama’s expensive green agenda from taking effect in the military.
As part of that effort, Senator Inhofe is also releasing a document put together by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) which reveals that the federal government has spent $68.4 billion on global warming activities since 2008 — and that’s just a conservative estimate. Instead of focusing on funding our critical defense needs such as modernizing our military’s fleet of ships, aircraft and ground vehicles, the Obama administration’s priority is to force agencies to spend billions on its war on affordable energy; this is further depleting an already stretched military budget and putting our troops at risk.
Global Warming: Follow the Money
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/414359/
by Henry Payne February 25, 2015 4:00 AM It isn’t the fossil-fuel companies that are polluting climate science. Citing documents uncovered by the radical environmental group Greenpeace, a group of media outlets — including the New York Times and the Boston Globe — have attacked global-warming skeptic Wei-Hock (Willie) Soon for allegedly hiding $1.2 million in contributions from “fossil fuel companies.” The articles were the latest in an ongoing campaign by greens and their media allies to discredit opponents of the warming agenda.
But in allying themselves closely with activist groups with which they share ideological goals, reporters have fundamentally misled readers on the facts of global-warming funding.
In truth, the overwhelming majority of climate-research funding comes from the federal government and left-wing foundations. And while the energy industry funds both sides of the climate debate, the government/foundation monies go only toward research that advances the warming regulatory agenda. With a clear public-policy outcome in mind, the government/foundation gravy train is a much greater threat to scientific integrity.
Officials with the Smithsonian Institution — which employs Dr. Soon — told the Times it appeared the scientist had violated disclosure standards, and they said they would look into the matter. Soon, a Malaysian immigrant, is a widely respected astrophysicist, and his allies came quickly to his defense.
“It is a despicable, reprehensible attack on a man of great personal integrity,” says Myron Ebell, the director of Global Warming and International Environmental Policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who questioned why media organizations were singling out Soon over research funding.
Indeed, experts in the research community say that it is much more difficult for some of the top climate scientists — Soon, Roger Pielke Jr., the CATO Institute’s Patrick Michaels, MIT’s now-retired Richard Lindzen — to get funding for their work because they do not embrace the global-warming fearmongering favored by the government-funded climate establishment.
“Soon’s integrity in the scientific community shines out,” says Ebell. “He has foregone his own career advancement to advance scientific truth. If he had only mouthed establishment platitudes, he could’ve been named to head a big university [research center] like Michael Mann.”
Mann is the controversial director of Pennsylvania State’s Earth System Science Center. He was at the center of the 2009 Climategate scandal, in which e-mails were uncovered from climatologists discussing how to skew scientific evidence and blackball experts who don’t agree with them.
Mann is typical of pro-warming scientists who have taken millions from government agencies. The federal government — which will gain unprecedented regulatory power if climate legislation is passed — has funded scientific research to the tune of $32.5 billion since 1989, according the Science and Public Policy Institute. That is an amount that dwarfs research contributions from oil companies and utilities, which have historically funded both sides of the debate.
Mann, for example, has received some $6 million, mostly in government grants — according to a study by The American Spectator — including $500,000 in federal stimulus money while he was under investigation for his Climategate e-mails.
Despite claims that they are watchdogs of the establishment, media outlets such as the Times have ignored the government’s oversized role in directing research. And they have ignored millions in contributions from left-wing foundations — contributions that, like government grants, seek to tip the scales to one side of the debate.
Last summer, a minority staff report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works gave details on a “Billionaire’s Club” — a shadowy network of charitable foundations that distribute billions to advance climate alarmism. Shadowy nonprofits such as the Energy Foundation and Tides Foundation distributed billions to far-left green groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, which in turn send staff to the EPA who then direct federal grants back to the same green groups. It is incestuous. It is opaque.
Major media ignored the report. Media outlets have also discriminated in their reporting on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The Times trumpeted Greenpeace FOIA requests revealing Soon’s benefactors, yet it has ignored the government’s refusal of FOIA filings requesting transparency in pro-warming scientists’ funding.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, for example, has submitted FOIA requests asking for the sources of outside income of NASA scientist James Hansen (a key ally of Al Gore). The government has stonewalled, according to Ebell.
Media reporting further misleads readers in suggesting that “fossil fuel” utilities such as the Southern Company (a $409,000 contributor to Soon’s research, according to the Times) seek only to undermine climate science. In truth, energy companies today invest in solar, biomass, and landfill facilities in addition to carbon fuels. Companies such as Duke Energy, Exelon Corporation, NRG Energy, and Shell have even gone so far as to join with green groups in forming the U.S. Climate Action Partnership — an industry/green coalition that wants to “enact strong national legislation to require significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.”
This alliance worries a scientific community that is hardly unanimous that warming is a threat. Continued funding of contrarians such as Soon and Lindzen is essential to getting the best scientific research at a time when the EPA wants to shut down America’s most affordable power source, coal — at enormous cost to consumers.
The lack of warming for over a decade (witness this winter’s dangerous, record-breaking low temperatures) and Climategate are proof that the establishment has oversold a warming crisis. Attempts by the media to shut up their critics ignore the real threat to science. ― Henry Payne is auto columnist for the Detroit News, an editorial cartoonist with United Feature Syndicate, and a regular contributor to National Review, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/414359/
