One of the favorite put-downs from people who think they have the moral high ground in the climate debate is to accuse skeptics with this phrase: “You are nothing but a shill for Big Oil”
Who amongst us hasn’t seen variants of that pointed finger repeated thousands of times? The paradigm has shifted. Now it appears CRU is the one looking for “big oil” money. See the email:
See the entire email here:
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=171&filename=962818260.txt
There’s more.
But wait that’s not all!
Further down in that email, look at who else they were looking to for money. Oh, this is horrible, it just can’t be, they wouldn’t. They were looking to not only BP but, but EXXON in its Esso incarnation:
See the entire email here:
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=156&filename=947541692.txt
Now who is the shill for Big Oil again? Next time somebody brings up that ridiculous argument about skeptics, show them this.
h/t and thanks to WUWT reader “boballab”
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“Looks like “Hockey Stick” Mann also got money for reconstructions (the grant is still active):”
You found a job that Obama saved! Unfortunately, it’s not even in America.
““The rationale behind the research is that quantitative comparison of reconstructions and simulations of climate over the past two millennia can provide an assessment of the extent to which natural and anthropogenic forcing can explain observed patterns of climatic change.””
What a scam. Getting simulations to better compare with reconstructions is why the climate models went kaput in the first place…if they get the past wrong there ain’t no way they’re gonna be able to predict the future.
I’ve been saying for almost two weeks now that the hockey stick and the team’s insistence on covering for it actually sabotaged the models and climate science.
One of the newer and more effective “enhanced recovery” techniques for “depleted” oil fields is CO2 injections. Faced with a choice of PAY someone to buy liquid CO2 or GET PAID to take the “evil CO2” and “sequester it”, well, If I was an oil company with old fields I’d be all in favor of AGW and CO2 “sequestration” too…
The Cru have a new place to dwell
With Old Nick at his homestead in Hell
The Earth ain’t too hot
But Nick says “Worry not”
We’ll be heated with oil from Shell!
hey trolls,
remember how many times you said i was paid by big oil?
OPPS, the oil money is on your side. Sucks to be you.
——————-
I ♥ ClimateGate!
——————-
Reading the statement from Whitehall, it hit me that the warmers are reasoning that since the earth has been warming in recent decades, and since CO2 has been also, the latter is the cause of the first. It also hit me that they think that if warming occurs, something must be forcing it to happen; it couldn’t just happen on its own.
Somehow it had never struck me so forcefully that they are sincerely in the clutches of such a simplistic paradigm, since it has so often been criticized here and in other contrarian writings. They’re obstinately thinking in terms of a mechanistic model. They really haven’t come to grips with the concept of climate being an inherently unstable, dynamic, chaotic system with an elusive equilibrium point and lots of internal cycles created by chasing that equilibrium. They can’t see that the current uptrend could be just one of those cycles.
Along with this goes a “Gawdsaker” / reformist mentality: “For Gawd’s sake, do something!” (H.G. Well’s term.) Intrusive, controlling, alarmist, dirigiste. Put them together and you’ve got a censorious CRUsade.
Oh I expect Gavin will say when Big Oil gives money to climate scientists thats different, and because you’re not climate scientists you can’t be expected to understand the difference.
PS: Given their mental model, they somehow think that contrarians are denying that it’s warming. (We are only claiming that warming has been overstated, not that it isn’t there.)
Their mental model also accounts for their claim that thousands of scientists support their CAWG thesis, when all that the majority of them are supporting is the fact that the globe has been warming. To the CAWGers, global warming = CAWG, since they believe that warming must be “forced” by some factor, and that as long as that factor increases, so must the warming.
Our future critiques of the warmists must heavily stress this basic mental model of theirs. We’ve stressed it already, but apparently it needs to be brought more emphatically front and center.
“photon without a Higgs (03:46:33) :
hey trolls”
One of rather disappointing results of Climategate is that worthy people like Flanigan, RR Kerpen and Scott Mandela have disappeared.
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which”
—
In the Guardian of December 4 2009 the same Mike Hulme of these e-mails is now suddenly pleading NOT to mix science with politics ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/04/laboratories-limits-leaked-emails-climate? )
In January 2000 Hulme was looking for (Oil) support for the UEA’s new baby, the Tyndall Centre. Its objectives are ( http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/About/Tyndall-Centre-Objectives ) : “To become an internationally recognised source of high quality and integrated climate-change research, and to exert a seminal influence on the design and achievability of the long-term strategic objectives of UK and international climate policy.”
Has Hulme turned 180 degrees?
http://www.shell.com/home/content/responsible_energy/environment/climate_change/our_approach_to_climate_change/approach_to_climate_change.html
Shell Energy
“Our approach to climate change
We support urgent and wide-ranging action to address climate change. Our approach includes reducing CO2 emissions from our operations and products; helping customers manage their emissions from using our products; and advocating the wide-ranging policy changes needed from governments.”
Here’s the Wingerville headline for you: The time’s they are a changin.’
“Has Hulme turned 180 degrees?”
He’s covering his you-know-what. He knows which way the wind is blowing. I said as much at dotearth where he is being praised for the things he’s saying today.
There is far more profit in oil trading and distribution than in exploration/refining. That is why John D. Rockefeller captured the distribution networks while the wildcatters went broke in a cutthroat competition. Eventually, Rockefeller expanded into banking.
Big business hates competition and welcomes big government to suppress competition. A leftist historian, Gabriel Kolko documented this in his 1963 book “The Triumph of Conservatism.” By conservatism he meant maintaining the status quo, not political conservatism as we understand it today. Kolko shows how big business actually welcomed the “progressive era” reforms as they would discourage new market entrants and maintain profits.
With cap & trade, climate taxes etc. big oil would have less pressure to engage in risky exploration. Supply would be capped and prices maximized without high cost exploration and refinery expansion. Unit profits would increase. Any losses due to taxes could be recaptured by political lobbying. In fact it is easier to make profits in the political (and leveraged CO2 exchange) worlds than from consumers.
Roger (22:16:16) “Kevin, you seem to be as disgusted as I am with the profligate waste by our Provincial Government and Premier, Special Ed Stelmach! The self-interest wheel is just starting to turn!”
Haven’t you guys elected the exact same party in Alberta for something like 38 straight years now? It shouldn’t come as a surprise that they think they have carte blanche to do whatever the h*ll they please!
Re: Roger Knights (04:49:53)
It’s worse than that. They think clouds are a part of weather, but not climate, and they’ve never heard of integrals and boundary conditions.
…but this is the least of our worries. Whichever way the debate & the politics go, the elite will be running that wagon and truth will only be welcome to play a role in its navigation when that is convenient. Boom & bust, sways left & right – very convenient opportunities for those with sufficient resources since they are positioned to leverage any change. Left & right players in this game are just pawns – the screaming strings being fiddled by the elite bow. Since CRUgate, political neutrality is even more appealing than it was before.
Roger Knights (05:01:49) “Given their mental model, they somehow think that contrarians are denying that it’s warming. (We are only claiming that warming has been overstated, not that it isn’t there.)”
“Whether or not” warming is overstated is irrelevant.
“Whether or not” it is warming is irrelevant.
The important point is that climate change is natural.
At present, it appears that “big oil” & alarmists have a shared interest in ensuring the public “believes” otherwise. To set an example of the level of extremism expected by investors, “saviors” like Jones are crucified publicly. This is just another example of “ideal opposition”, which can be used to engineer usefully predictable swings of the pendulum.
Heyyyy! No love for me for my reference to the Donald Sutherland “Body Snatchers” image in the comments of the first story on this scandal on 11/19? No biggie. It would have been good to show my wife though since she is sick of me “wasting time” on this topic (I have made it a hobby over the last several months to jump into the AGW fire over at Media Matters for America).
I have fallen out of the MMfA fray over the last week as my “real” computer is in the shop for upgrades, but I will return to battle soon (poor timing, I know). I have several times made the Body Snatchers reference over there as I believe it does perfectly illustrate the often rabid response to “deniers” (as I mentioned in that initial WUWT comment, one woman said, “I hope you drown yourself when the sea level increases.”). I have taken to calling the cult there “AGW-fraud deniers” as their responses to this story, though predictable, epitomizes the “nothing to see here” mentality (another phrase I frequently drop) prevalent amongst the believers.
I am glad to see new skeptic blood over on MMfA and I suggest others do the same. Going into “the belly of the beast” there may do more good than you might realize as many people inadvertently pay visit to the site when generically searching through the news and some may not realize just how one-sided their presentation is on AGW. My hope is that my efforts, as well as the efforts of the few other skeptics who raise their voice there, will help to balance it out at least a bit (can be a losing battle many days).
As for this story, it’s great to see WUWT bring attention to it and my hope is that doing so will increase the visibility of the “Big Oil” angle (and let’s not forget the associated and IMO even more important “Big Redistributionist” angle–still think the Horsman/Kelly document needs more play). We know that the AGW issue has been losing steam among the public for quite a while now, but this story cannot be allowed to go away. The stakes are way too high. So even though Christmas came early this year, there are more presents to be unwrapped yet.
Keep up the good work here. As the leading voice online attempting to balance the discussion against what is indisputably an overwhelming pro-AGW machine, WUWT and CA are doing the Lord’s work in my opinion. I am raising my son to have a love of science and to be an independent thinker. He is still too young to appreciate this story, but when the time comes I intend on using this topic to illustrate what can happen to scientific investigation when it is corrupted by politics.
Shell is spending big with Copenhagen on the horizon. I’m seeing their multi-ad campaign on multiple websites such as Scientific American which I previously mentioned and just today on the Guardian with the Mike Hulme article. Screen capture here:
http://co2realist.com/2009/12/05/mike-hulme-in-the-guardian/
The CRU has been handed millions by groups with an AGW agenda: click
Some background info
I love this website!
The CRU’s cozy relationship with Shell (BIG OIL, EGAD!) won’t be covered by Seth Borenstein, but I’m glad you did!
NewsBusters: ClimateGate Research Unit Sought Funds From Shell Oil
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/12/05/climategate-research-unit-sought-funds-shell-oil
Mick Kelly is involved in an e-mail exchange that made me stop using the old eyebrows Canada's oilsands have the largest oil reserves outside the Middle East, but the use of the resource has been expensive and technically challenging
So, let me get this straight: the climate research unit whose internal discussions are discrediting climate research is on the payroll of big oil? What a surprise, eh?