We recently had a story about the UK Met Office putting out a petition amongst scientists (even non-climatologists) to prop up the image of the CRU. Some scientists said they felt “pressured” to sign.
This story explains how they might feel that way.
WUWT reader Norris Hall commented on this thread: Americans belief of global warming sinking – below 50% for the first time in 2 years
… it is possible that this is just a big conspiracy by climate scientist around the world to boost their cause and make themselves more important. Though I find it hard to believe that thousands of scientists…all agreed to promote bogus science …Pretty hard to do without being discovered.
To which Paul Vaughan responded as follows:
Actually not so hard.
Personal anecdote:
Last spring when I was shopping around for a new source of funding, after having my funding slashed to zero 15 days after going public with a finding about natural climate variations, I kept running into funding application instructions of the following variety:
Successful candidates will:
1) Demonstrate AGW.
2) Demonstrate the catastrophic consequences of AGW.
3) Explore policy implications stemming from 1 & 2.
Follow the money — perhaps a conspiracy is unnecessary where a carrot will suffice.
Opposing toxic pollution is not synonymous with supporting AGW.
From Planet Gore: This confirms the stories that I’ve been hearing over the last few years.
New maxim: The Carrot Train
h/t to Planet Gore, who got it from Bishop Hill, who got it from comments here on WUWT
Sometimes there’s so much happening on WUWT, it is impossible to take it all in.
Thanks guys!
Oops Typo there. I meant FOE (Friends of the Earth) not FOF and, on reflection, I should have used the phrase- demolishing the case for AGW – rather than disputing.
He gives a fantastic example of how “Group Think” has been used before in Science to create a consensus that was later brought into disrepute but only after much damage had been done.
Many of his academic readers are apoplectic with rage!
While you are searching for examples of grants, also read the following critique of the system for awarding grants:
The Government Grant System: Inhibitor of Truth and Innovation?
Written by Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD
Monday, 21 April 2008
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/gov_grant_system_truth_or_innovation.html
Nice search string.
Related: 2005 Marshall Institute study of climate funding. Doesn’t examine whether support of climate change ideas is required. Mostly dollar amounts and participants.
From the first few pages of search results…
http://www.crdf.org/funding/funding_show.htm?doc_id=1014809 (I think someone posted it above)
http://www.niccr.nau.edu/forms.html – 2010 RFP
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw/details/house-climate-funding/ – Congress plays the game of funding based upon”the reality of global warming climate change “.
http://www.edf.org/pressrelease.cfm?contentID=9398 – Peer reviewed research where someone says more funding is needed for preparing for climate change. Maybe they have a list of the kind of research which has happened which meets their requirements.
http://www.epa.gov/ncer/rfa/2005/2005_hsa_impacts_research.html#FUNDING
“Michael (10:38:19) :
Has anyone thought about bombing the antarctic to break off the ice so it floats around the world cooling the planet?”
We could also attach tug boats to those ice cubes we bomb off, to bring them to higher latitudes so “Operation Crushed Ice” works better.
Who is John Galt, and why are you using my handle?
Solar wind
speed: 251.9 km/sec
http://spaceweather.com/
Just tell me folks where is that “tipping point” and I’ll be there…How many hockey stick you said you needed? or just want some good hiding place for whatever declines you could have…got some tree rings too…
Weir in Space and Dimmed Sun Creates 200-Million-Mile-Long Lab Bench for Turbulence Research
http://www.physorg.com/news179749839.html
National Science Foundation “Dear Colleague Letter: Climate Change Education”
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/nsf09058/nsf09058.jsp?org=NSF
Investigators who have appropriate proposals already submitted to one of the programs above that are still under review for FY09 funding should request that they be identified now as CCE [Climate Change Education], by notifying the cognizant program officer for the program by July 24, 2009.
Neo (09:35:31), thanks for the link. I especially like the quote from an unnamed commenter:
“None of the scientists who have ‘come out’ as climate skeptics allege a massive conspiracy by scientists, any more than there is a massive liberal conspiracy in Hollywood. What you have is a self-emergent, self-organizing bias.”
The CAGW Echo Chamber.
Michael: “Has anyone thought about bombing the antarctic to break off the ice so it floats around the world cooling the planet?”
Funny you suggest that. When my brothers and me were researching a canoe trip to the Ungava crater in northern Quebec way back in 1988, we came across an article in Mechanix magazine (May 1946) that proposed using nukes to “defrost” the Arctic and get rid of the pesky ice to make it and the world more temperate. It concludes, “but the two great developments of the World War—the control over nuclear energy and the creation of the United Nations Organization—may yet be linked in the spectacular job of melting the Arctic ice.”
Would it be possible to secure a grant so I could buy a Ferrari and study the effects on the climate and my sex life?
I bet if they put up $1 billion in grant money to prove “AGW a bust,” this would be over by lunch tomorrow.
WSJ
The EPA’s Carbon Bomb Fizzles
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703514404574588120572016720.html
Brilliant ! Let us bomb [snip] the antarctic so it will eventually cool down the planet 🙂
Good thinking outside of the box sometimes 🙂
And let’s recall that in the real world, even if it isn’t spelled out in b&W, explicitly calling for evidence of X, it’s pretty easy to :
A. Write “between the lines” so everyone inthe field knows what’s expected but the deniability is preserved to lawyers and the naive.
B. Simply deny funding to anyone not willing to play by the unwritten rules. ” Wasn’t a good proposal.”
It’s a form of prior restraint. Also, Skeptics won’t even BOTHER to apply to certain sources because they’d know it’s a waste of time. In fact smart ones will leave the field to find a field of research more congenial.
You all know thre are people who earn a living writing grant proposals , right? Ya think maybe they know how to phrase proposals to appeal the bias of the funding sources and reviewers? I know, I’m so cynical. Sorry.
I remember speaking to a drunk bureaucrat , in another field, about how he could manipulate things. He’d give “research” travel grants to journalists who said the right things (Let’s visit sunny country Y in December to see how Z is working out.) , “lend” an office overseas, provide “pre-written” articles, access to people, etc… Say the wrong thing and suddenly you’d never get a grant, office, “leak”, would have to fight for months for the smallest scrap of information …
Phil A (10:14:30) :
Justice is big.
http://www.state.nj.us/dep/seeds/njcee/grants.htm
In addition to the traditional criteria, EPA is encouraging applications that address the disproportionate impacts of climate change in communities by emphasizing climate equity, energy efficiency, renewable energy, local green economy, and green jobs capacity building.
And more along the lines of what others are seeing.
http://www.nevada.edu/epscor/oldsite0508/programs-nsf.html
The project will create a statewide interdisciplinary program that will stimulate transformative research, education, and outreach on the effects of regional climate change on ecosystem services (especially water resources) and support use of this knowledge by policy makers and stakeholders.
Now do you think they really would entertain results that say “there are no effects of regional climate change on ecosystem services”?
This must be the agency that is in charge of making certain all research and conclusions are traveling in the same direction:
http://www.globalchange.gov/
@Vincent
‘If this is a conspiracy, it is qualitatively very different from any previous conspiracy, real or imagined.’
My personal reflection is that it more looks like a flash mob, but reinforced by lots of carrots. The few who joined into the fray in a spur of the moment are only those that already had the same type of belief in that something had to be done to save; the polar bears, the dolphins, the rain forest, the inner city pollution, the world from nuclear power plants, the earth from going under [from a modern doomsday version] , or just that the next flood will come from Greenland….
However a flash mob never last for very long, people tend to snap out of the fun, or fear, sooner or later.
I have an idea for a PhD project:
“The influence of the theory of anthropogenic global warming’s influence on the beliefs in anthropogenic global warming being true and the general publics’ ability to discern real science from social hysteria.”
Too complex?
Any funds available?
Steve Schaper (09:23:26) :
Anna, university faculty departments are nothing if not political. Galileo ran up against the academic establishment’s Ptolomaic paradigm and political power when he insulted his chief supporter and lost his political protection (that would be the Pope) Things haven’t changed.
People are people. But by distributing the funds evenly different schools of scientific theories can survive and compete with each other in the interpretation of data. So each institution might be influenced by the pecking order within, but it will be a different and variable pecking order for each institution and worldwide lockstep would be improbable.
“The influence of the theory of anthropogenic global warming on the beliefs in anthropogenic global warming being true and the general publics’ inability to discern real science from social hysteria.”
Office of Science
Financial Assistance
Funding Opportunity Announcement
DE-PS02-08ER08-05
Abrupt Climate Change Modeling:
Climate Change Prediction Program
http://www.science.doe.gov/grants/FAPN08-05.html
A one-sentence description of the main expected outcome of the research should be included.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
DOE BER is a member of the interagency U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), focusing on understanding the principal uncertainties of the causes and effects of climate change, including the possibility of abrupt climate change. The Climate Variability and Change Interagency Working Group of the CCSP has identified Abrupt Climate Change as a priority focus area for FY 2008.
Technically, an abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced across some threshold, triggering a persistent transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster than the cause (Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises, National Research Council, 2002). DOE interest is on events where large (i.e., subcontinental) and widespread change occurs within a short period (i.e., a decade). The DOE Abrupt Climate Change Modeling activity is focusing on examining both attribution of recent past abrupt climate change, as well as potential future abrupt climate change based on climate change projections using dynamical coupled climate models. Abrupt climate modeling applications prior to the Holocene are not encouraged under this announcement
Proposed research should include the following activities: articulating the thresholds, nonlinearities and fast feedbacks in the climate system with a focus on abrupt climate change, incorporating causal mechanisms into coupled climate models and testing the enhanced models against observational records of past abrupt climate change. Examples of abrupt climate change of interest to DOE are mega droughts, rapid changes in Arctic sea-ice extent and duration, and potential rapid increase in sea level rise.
Im no scientist as i shortly hope to demonstrate! 🙂
As i understand it, water freezes at 0 degrees C.
Sea water is obviously saline so it freezes at around -2 degrees C.
If its -30 degrees c outside on the floes, wouldnt the ambient temperature have to be approaching -2 degrees C before any melting of the ice caps takes place?
those poor polar bears…
We all know that the climate can change, the climate is not a constant. We don’t deny that the climate is not changing or that the earth has not been warmer since the LIA. It has. Where we argue, and rightly so, is on the cause and if it is all, in part, or not at all from anthropogenic emissions.
Doing research on the impact of climate change on whatever is under the sun is not bad research since we know the climate changes anyway and will give us technology and adaptation strategies anyway. In any case, we always said that the debate was not over…
As I said previously, it is not the research topics that is at fault, it is the people making the decisions of funding or not.