Government monopsony distorts climate science, says SPPI
The climate industry is costing taxpayers $79 billion and counting
Washington, DC 7/22/2009 09:12 PM GMT from TransWorldNews
The Science and Public Policy Institute announces the publication of Climate Money, a study by Joanne Nova revealing that the federal Government has a near-monopsony on climate science funding. This distorts the science towards self-serving alarmism. Key findings:
Some Excerpts:
The US Government has spent more than $79 billion of taxpayers’ money since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, administration, propaganda campaigns, foreign aid, and tax breaks. Most of this spending was unnecessary.
Despite the billions wasted, audits of the science are left to unpaid volunteers. A dedicated but largely uncoordinated grassroots movement of scientists has sprung up around the globe to test the integrity of “global warming” theory and to compete with a lavishly-funded, highly-organized climate monopsony. Major errors have been exposed again and again.
Carbon trading worldwide reached $126 billion in 2008. Banks, which profit most, are calling for more. Experts are predicting the carbon market will reach $2 – $10 trillion in the near future. Hot air will soon be the largest single commodity traded on global exchanges.
Meanwhile in a distracting sideshow, Exxon‐Mobil Corp is repeatedly attacked for paying a grand total of $23 million to skeptics—less than a thousandth of what the US government has put in, and less than one five‐thousandth of the value of carbon trading in just the single year of 2008.
Read the entire report here (PDF)
Before the money, there was Al Gore & Roger Revelle
http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/40867912.html
“While serving as Director of Scripps, Revelle and one of his researchers wrote the first modern scientific paper that linked carbon dioxide released into the air from the burning of fossil fuels and the greenhouse effect and the warming of temperatures. This triggered an avalanche of research that eventually became the impetus behind the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the entire global warming movement.”
Then a twist.
“In 1988 Roger Revelle was having major second thoughts about whether carbon dioxide was a significant greenhouse gas. He wrote letters to two Congressmen about it. And in 1991 he co-authored a report for the new science magazine Cosmos in which he expressed his strong doubts about global warming and urged more research before any remedial action was taken.
At that point Mr. Gore pronounced Revelle as senile and refused to debate global warming. He continues to refuse to debate today. Many offers of 10s of thousands of dollars have been made such a debate. Today Gore sequestered the media at this event and set forth rules, no questions, no interviews. ”
Alas this turned into a court case with Singer who coauthored with Revelle ,
The Revelle/gore story,
http://www.urban-renaissance.org/urbanren/revelle-gorestory.pdf
Al gore is a BIG part of this ridiculous science mess.
So spend a few billion a year to justify collecting 500 plus billion a year in taxes, strgenthen polical power, and use this tax money pretty much however you like. Humm? sounds like a great political investment, even more so consi
dering that the oringinal investment came from taxes in the first place.
Now where is the Govt sponorsed study quantifying the economic saving from the fact that without this 100 part per million increase in CO2 we would need 12 percent more water just to grow the current amount of food we produce.
The agenda is proven by the fact that the govt only studies “possible” catostrophic negative consequences, and does not study observable positive
effects. The agenda is proven by attempts to silence decent. The agenda is proven by refusal to release data and methods of how “scientific” studies reached their conclusion, rendering these studies incapable of being reproduced.
Sounds like a lot of money – then again:
“Fed Refuses to Disclose Recipients of $2 Trillion”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=apx7XNLnZZlc
“A Few Trillion Missing from Pentagon”
“Financial bailout’s cost to U.S. could total almost $24 trillion”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32010841/ns/business-us_business
“What Does A Trillion Dollars Look Like?”
So, I guess things “could” be worse and even without the climate “science” funding…
“The problem with science, you know, is that it’s like a religion. There are fashions or beliefs which are considered dogmas like in a religion. And you have to believe in it. And if you don’t, you are not executed, you are not burnt now but you are put away out of the field. You don’t have money, it is very difficult to exist or persist. So you have to follow the fashion.” – Luc Montagnier recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Regarding Joanne Nova’s astonishing report on climate science funding, I thought about the money a bit. I took fiscal year 2008 as a sample, in which, according to said report, 1 864 million dollars was spent on climate science. That’s a frikkin’ big load of money! It did make me wonder at where all that money is spent, and Nova for sure is certain that it is spent against the benefit of the tax payer and against what she describes is “good” science. Being a layman in these financial matters, I took to google and checked to get a comparison to that sum of 1 864 million dollars. What else is being done in the US with similar amounts?
From this page ( http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104772.html ) I found a “Summary of Federal Government Expenditure” for the fiscal year 2006.
I tried to find some number from this government statistic for fiscal year 2006 that would match the 2008 amount spent on climate science. One number (there were many options) was the amount that the state of New Hampshire spends on grants: 1 743 million dollars. And that is for GRANTS only. This state of New Hampshire has a population of 1,3 million approximately (estimate for 2008).
So, the amount spent on climate science for 2008 roughly equals the 2006 amount New Hampshire spent on grants. Total expenditure for said year for the state is 8 875 million dollars.
It does kind of put Joanne Nova’s “shocking” figures into perspective, doesn’t it?
It’s certainly not being used to re-write archaic, and poorly-written applications which manipulate the station temps. Apparently some of it is going towards running RealClimate.org, since at least one NASA employee maintains it during work hours. So some of it is directly used for propaganda and to stifle dissent.