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!
Interesting approach, Rajendra Pachauri wishes that US voters will remove Senators for asking for transparency in the weather records…
“…Twenty-eight Republican senators, Saudi Arabian officials and climate skeptics have asked for an independent investigation into whether top climate scientists attempted to manipulate data to boost the evidence of man-made global warming.
Pachauri said that the senators had a right to request additional investigation but warned that it could cost them at the polls.
“I hope the constituencies which have elected them will respond in a matter that democracies are able to,” he said.
The IPCC is looking into the stolen emails. Additional investigation, said Pachauri, is unnecessary.
“Our credibility is not under question,” he said.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30510.html
Investigation unnecessary? Of course—Choo-choo Pachauri wants to keep driving his gravy train.
Sorry this belongs here:
Snitched from a Poster on Bishop Hill:
As a retired scientist, I appalled by what has happened to the Scientific Method I was trained in 40 years ago. Back then you preserved your raw data, explained what you did, how you did it, and why you did it; and your results were considered “preliminary” until replicated IDEPENDENTLY. I do not mean by your buddies, but by someone not tied to you. And there was scientific debate. Remember that?
I guess we have the New Science, much like we had the New Math back in the 1960’s –“1 and 1 equal 5 for sufficiently large values of 1” .
I also appreciate the comment about Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, who nearly destroyed the Soviet Union’s agricultural efforts in the 1930’s and 1940’s. He, too, practiced totalitarian science — his way or the Gulag.
So, like Lysenko, I expect the Hockey Team to one day become discredited and go away. And perhaps we will discover the scientific method again, for at least a little while. My only question is just how much it will cost us individually and collectively.
As for the chatter about whether it was a “conspiracy” or not, most such activity does not start as an overt crime. Witness Bernie Madoff. He needed money to look good so he fudged what he was doing. Then it grew like Topsy. Pretty soon his Ponzi scheme topped $50 billion. I am afraid that the Cap and Tax scheme the Hockey Team is fronting for will cost us $50 trillion.
But what is a trillion dollars nowadays? Just ask the US Congress.
December 12, 2009 | Don Pablo de la Sierra
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/12/11/no-conspiracy.html?currentPage=2
I’d like to see Paul Vaughan prove his comment is true. I’d like to see links to such instructions so I can read them with my own eyes and share them with others. I don’t know Paul Vaughan, so it’s not enough to tell people, “This guy on a blog said the following was true.” Paul’s comment would be a smoking gun of sorts to prove much of what skeptics postulate: that funding dictates a pro-AGW stance.
I Googled- ‘Successful candidates will demonstrate climate change’ and most paths turned to this blog post or quotes of this blog post or quotes of Paul’s comment. I want this to be true. I really do, but I need more than Paul’s word for it. I need verifiable links to PDFs and application pages where “Successful candidates will demonstrate AGW” is clearly stated.
‘Google’ is not a synonym for ‘research’. – Dan Brown
Douglas Cootey (12:52:14) : I Googled- ‘Successful candidates will demonstrate climate change’ and most paths turned to this blog post or quotes of this blog post or quotes of Paul’s comment. I want this to be true. I really do, but I need more than Paul’s word for it. I need verifiable links to PDFs and application pages where “Successful candidates will demonstrate AGW” is clearly stated.
‘Google’ is not a synonym for ‘research’. – Dan Brown
Douglas Cootey I appreciate what you say and I too would rather like proof than Paul’s word for it. But if you want this to be true, (Why should you? – thats not scientific, but maybe you are not a scientist or appreciate the scientific method), do your own bloody research. Which may amount to a little more googling and follow-up. Dont expect to lie back and be nanny fed.
Here a few leads, which took me a few seconds.
http://newsinitiative.org/story/2008/12/13/tracking_climate_science_funding_in (A few graphs there)
http://royalsociety.org/ (Explore Funding and Grants)
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw/details/adaptation-funding-in-waxman-markey-captrade-bill/
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/15180
Delve deeper from there
To give anything this “Paul Vaughan” says any credence at all, just a few simple things would suffice. a) a link to his academic homepage. b) a link to some publications. c) examples of any of these alleged funding applications
The fact that these weren’t given originally should have made people suspicious. Until any of these are forthcoming, I consider it likely that he is a crank and a liar. I wonder why Anthony Watts didn’t bother to check him out at all before promoting his obviously questionable claims.
I googled the exact phrases (using advanced search):
1) the successful candidate will demonstrate climate change
2) the successful candidate will demonstrate global warming
3) the successful candidate will demonstrate AGW
4) successful candidates will demonstrate climate change
5) successful candidates will demonstrate global warming
6) successful candidates will demonstrate AGW
and got zero hits.
PS as Paul Vaughan has stated, what he was told was verbal. So you have to take his word for it in this case. Do not expect policy to laid out so blatantly (though it maybe in some instances).
Maybe you could see
1. How much funding is being done for “Climate Science”, “Climate Change”, including such incidental things like the “Social implications of Climate Change” (off the top of my head)
2. How much of these are for pro- AGW studies. (The Hypothesis assumes AGW to be correct in the first place and surprise, surprise, confirms it after the study) or Hypothesis that assumes AGW to be a fact and then purports to study some alleged consequence of it.
3. How many grants are being given for contrary theories.
Make your own judgements from your research.
hmmm (13:21:10) : Do a little research on how to Google. Do not expect such blatantly obvious infringements of the scientific method.
Here are some results I got in a few seconds
“The Post-doctoral researcher will actively cooperate in theoretical and applied planning and design research regarding how urban structures, including the integration of buildings and infrastructure, can be shaped to withstand and adapt to demanding and changing climates. The aim is to investigate how, from a long term sustainability perspective, practical and functional structures with aesthetic, harmonious and symbolic dimensions can be achieved, as well as to investigate relations between humans, nature and built-up environments. The successful candidate will demonstrate a broad interest in sustainable urban systems. The particular focus of the post doctoral position will be agreed depending on the candidate’s expertise and interests within the general scope provided here.
“The School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University is currently accepting applications for two postdoctoral fellows in the Natural and Social Sciences…Potential themes include: Water, Food/Agriculture, and Climate Change in the Natural Sciences or Economics of Inequality in Asia, Global Woman’s Health, and Global Security in the Social Sciences.
Applicants should possess a Stanford PhD, or have served in a postdoctoral position at Stanford University. A research background and interest in teaching are required. International experience, particularly in connection to Asia, is preferred. The successful candidate will demonstrate a clear commitment to involving students in scholarship through active learning.”
(Assumes AGW to be a fact – brainwash other students)
“Allen & York has been retained by the Abu Dhabi Environment Agency, one of the Gulf region�s leading environmental regulatory authorities, to recruit an international Crisis Management Specialist. The successful candidate will be working as a focal point for implementation of the organisation�s emergency management plans and responses…. Educated to degree level, the successful candidate will demonstrate a track record in leadership and communication having operated at a management level. A technical background dealing with environmental issues concerning crisis management and emergency response is essential. This is likely to have been gained working for another environmental regulatory body or within the private sector advising on such matters… Candidate will be rewarded with a highly competitive salary package.”
You want the job for that “highly competitive salary package”.. what are your chances of being hired by saying in your interview that there aint no environmental crisis?
No some of you understandably took my Google string too literally. It was simply to pick up the modern tendency for internet job ads to set out job criteria and hence that well worn ‘candidate will demonstrate’ with the additional ‘climate change’ to gauge the size of the industry out there (very crudely of course). To cut out a lot of extra albeit sometimes useful noise, try “candidate will demonstrate” + “climate change” for 27800 hits and “candidates will demonstrate” + “climate change” for 40000 hits and you’ll get a better picture. Now that’s certainly not definitive but you’ll get a quick idea of the size and nature of the empire and where it’s concentrated. It’s certainly a worry if there’s lots of secure tenure involved.
Needless to say, I didn’t bother applying for the funding. Contacts gave me tips about how to get funding. I then browsed a bunch of websites, engaged in conversations, read between the lines, and synthesized. It was clear that I would be funded if I conformed and that I would not be funded if I did not — hardly surprising. I chose not to sell my soul to help corrupt people mislead the public. For that choice I have been punished severely financially, as expected.
For those who don’t know my background: I am a hardcore environmentalist, an opponent of toxic pollution, and an advocate of parks & natural forests. My background spans 7 disciplines, with ecology being the core and applied stats & physical geography being major components. Rather than going narrow & deep and settling into a publishing role at an ivory tower, I opted to keep trying new things every few years, driven largely by a desire to gather interdisciplinary knowledge that was clearly absent (& even culturally impossible) in disciplines in my rear-view mirror. Ecology is an extraordinarily complex field, so ecologists are often inclined to seek knowledge from a wide range of other disciplines.
There was one particular funding criteria webpage which inspired me to post a similarly scathing comment on WUWT many months ago. I applaud the administrators of that webpage for at least altering their optics (which previously invited sarcasm & ridicule). I am not going to identify the webpage as doing so would be more like blowing a bridge up than burning it. Just because there have been differences of opinion with colleagues & contacts in the past does not mean there cannot be mutually beneficial interactions in the future.
Dissonance & harmony are both found in nature’s beauty. I’m not a “global warming denier”; rather, I’m a nonalarmist. All I ask for is 5 to 7 years of secure, stable, sufficient funding, to be used in my hometown (where my essential contacts are), to follow some fruitful leads on natural climate variations via harmonic cross-wavelet & time-integrated cross-correlation analysis. I’m not concerned about the source of the funding (big government, big oil, whatever). All I’m concerned about is the truth. The source of the funding has no impact (whatsoever) on the truth. Some will disagree; I can suggest that one option is to do so respectfully. If funding for my natural climate variation research is not forthcoming, one option I can see is to continue drawing inspiration from Gandhi. Anyone investing in my research will be able to claim a light ecological footprint, as I walk or sea-kayak 95% of the time when I travel and I do not fly.
Let’s all keep in mind that this is a blog and that a major purpose of a blog is to generate discussion.
Best Regards to All, Anthony Watts & WUWT moderators in particular.
If not the Carrot Train then the Global Gruesome Greasum swamps Big Oil any day from where this small businessman peeps out of his foxhole in no mans land. Unfortunately I’m too bloody old and set in my ways for a C’Change career move now.
PDFs for grants? People, there is a thing called “google” as in http://www.google.com, which can answer all your questions and relieve the rest of us from wading through your questions, or snide questions, or dumb questions, or whatever they are. A good start is also http://www.grants.gov. cheeze.
bonsoir (13:20:11) :
To give anything this “Paul Vaughan” says any credence at all, just a few simple things would suffice. a) a link to his academic homepage. b) a link to some publications. c) examples of any of these alleged funding applications
The fact that these weren’t given originally should have made people suspicious. Until any of these are forthcoming, I consider it likely that he is a crank and a liar. I wonder why Anthony Watts didn’t bother to check him out at all before promoting his obviously questionable claims.
I’m suspicious that your suspicions are actually a fishing expedition, and you’ve made a pretty rash assumption that our host did *not* “bother to check him out.”
Personally, having seen first-hand the shenannigans that bureaucrats pull when they’re in charge of distributing funds, I wouldn’t be foolish enough to declare Mr. Vaughan’s statements “questionable”…
I have not read all the comments. Not enough time. But here is an example someone asked for about research grants
. 7.5 million GBP up for grabs here boys n girls. I think applications are still open.
http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/Images/Energy_and_Communities_Call_Specification_tcm6-34922.pdf
Do you make a proposal saying (a) “we are going to focus on points 5.3 and 5.5 and how carbon emissions can be more accurately measured and presented to ordinary conusumers in order influence their energy intensive lifestyles to the downside…” OR
(b) I would like X amount to study whether carbon emissions are even relevant to this debate.
Read the PDF it is obvious which side of the debate the funds are on. That’s bias. Simple.
Or just go here and cringe. Click through a link or two and decide for yourself whether the agenda is tied to the funding. there’s plenty of money for grabs up here as well.
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/funding/news/
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/work/policy/society/
Just a sample but you can not deny from this that researchers would not tailor their research proposals to get a grant from them when the strategic goal is , I quote:
“enabling society to respond urgently to global climate change and the increasing pressures on natural resources;” Already decided see. Science settled and all that.
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/strategy/ngscience.asp
How hard would it be to provide a link to just one climate-related publication? Impossible, I guess, because despite extensive searching I can find no climate-related publications by anyone called Paul Vaughan.
His “anecdote” is pure invention, uncritically parroted.
You did not need 1000 scientists to be involved. All that was need was for one or two people in perhaps five or six countries to adjust the data. Anyone using the data when making a comparison to CO2 would find the results that had been seeded into the data. The scientists would not be aware that they were being played. They would honestly think that their conclusons were correct. Only none of their predictions would ever be confirmed.
It would only have taken a dozen people in just the right place, and remember it took years to pull this off.
Hunter (17:11:29) “[…] despite extensive searching I can find no climate-related publications by anyone called Paul Vaughan.”
I do not claim to be a climatologist, nor do I claim to publish.
–
Hunter (17:11:29) “His “anecdote” is pure invention, uncritically parroted.”
You are mistaken.
Perhaps you misunderstand my mission. I suggest you review my posts in this thread.
“I do not claim to be a climatologist, nor do I claim to publish.”
That rather dramatically contradicts your statement about “going public with a finding about natural climate variations”. If you are not a researcher in a climate-related field, and if you do not publish papers on climate-related subjects, your anecdote cannot possibly be true.
This is increasingly Bizarre!
Paul now:
“I do not claim to be a climatologist, nor do I claim to publish”
Paul then (regarding funding in the climate sciences):
“Personal anecdote:
Last spring …after having my funding slashed… ***after going public with a finding about natural climate variations***…funding application instructions of the following variety”
This post is very disappointing. I’ll not comment further.
Re: Hunter (04:30:49) & kdk33 (05:32:41)
The [patently false] premise here seems to be that only a publishing climatologist is capable of making a finding about natural climate variations.
In 2008 I had 3 contracts that involved running cross-wavelet & time-integrated cross-correlation analyses to explore climate variations. During the period of contracted work, I made only one public announcement (via a public presentation). It did not come as a surprise to me that my superiors found my research & presentation “provocative”. I do not blame them for the current political climate, which makes my research a bit of a hot potato for administrators. [Interestingly, it was clear to me that a number of the people who would not fund my research were hoping I would publish and present at conferences.] In January 2009 I started funding my own research.
My concern is about the backlash against the environmental movement (& related questionable science) and the increasingly misdirected energy within the environmental movement. Many important environmental issues no longer get media attention and Jane & Joe Public (on my street at least) now think they’ve done their bit for the environment if they’ve done so little as change their light-bulbs.
Climate alarmists & nonalarmists agree about the need to understand natural climate variations better. This is the common ground.
Note that I do not equate climate alarmism with environmentalism. I oppose toxic pollution & flawed science and advocate parks & natural forests.
Do I think climate science is overlooking important nonrandom timescale-dependent phase-variation patterns shared by a number of solar/geophysical variables and their integrals & derivatives? Yes – and I comment about this occasionally at WUWT, in support of the environmental movement. Opposing toxic pollution is not the same as supporting AGW.
If you wish to carry this exchange further, I suggest doing so in a civil manner. (I do not consider malicious distortion, automatic assumptions of guilt, & false accusations civil.)
If you are a frightened alarmist, I understand. Just keep in mind that I’m not a big bad denier. Perhaps a respectful & enlightening dialogue is within your grasp if you can overcome miscalculated & misdirected prejudices.
All the best.
If you are not publishing in the peer-reviewed literature, you are not doing worthwhile research. It sounds very much like you were pursuing private interests on your employer’s time and so you got fired. You are clearly not describing the funding of normal scientific activities, although it’s clear that you wanted to give the impression that this is what you were talking about.
Science does not work in the way that you were insinuating. You make it clear that you are not a scientist and you don’t publish, so you can offer no insights into the prevailing attitude in funding of climate research.
[REPLY – However, it is said that one does not need a Ph.D. in Fashion Design to make preliminary determinations regarding the Emperor’s new clothes. One also mourns for the ruined and corrupted process once known as “peer review”. ~ Evan]
Re: Hunter (11:53:01)
You are engaging in unsupported speculation & distortion.