After the revelations yesterday of the latest IPCC self destructing FUBAR, we now have at Bishop Hill, a guest post by Ben Pile. In it he outlines what he has found about the millions of Euros that are being spent to create the appearance of favorable research influence on green policy. It is post-normal “science” at it’s worst.
Some excerpts:
The advice it produces will further the agendas of those policy-makers. The suggestion here is not that money has changed hands — Greenpeace doesn’t need the money; what it gets for the favours it does the establishment is influence. The service it provides is to give government-funded, agenda-ridden ‘research’ the superficial appearance of independence and legitimacy: ideological money-laundering. It makes clean the millions of Euros of public money given to the renewable energy sector for its PR.
It is no surprise that the EU and governments, spurious quasi-autonomous organisations and NGOs are in cahoots. It has long been known that organisations such as Friends of the Earth and WWF are paid by the EU to lobby the EU in favour of the policies that the EU wants. And it is no surprise that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change takes research that benefits the agendas of governments. We all knew this much.
What is surprising is the sheer scale of this shameless enterprise. We all knew that ‘grey literature’ — non-scientific and non-peer reviewed ‘research’ — found its way into IPCC reports. What surprises is the extent to which ‘grey organisations’ — para-govermental institutions with public functions, but little or no democratic accountability or transparency — are involved in the production of policy and evidence-making, benefitting a narrow industrial sector and serving a particular political agenda.
h/t to Josh
You can search for EU funding beneficiaries here: http://ec.europa.eu/beneficiaries/fts/index_en.htm
Looks like some “brown washing” is going on too: LINDE GAS BENELUX BV, SHELL DOWNSTREAM SERVICES INTERNATIONAL BV*SDSI , DEUTSCHE STEINKOHLE AG* , UK COAL MINING LTD, IEA COAL RESEARCH LIMITED, COAL SERVICES PTY LIMITED, GDF SUEZ SA, LNG MEDGAS TERMINAL SRL etc etc
Allan M says:
June 17, 2011 at 2:06 am
Thanks for this juicy bit, Allan. My guess is that Schmidt has aether in his Gaia Model. At least we know that Schmidt is working in a tradition that denies experimental science and scientific method.
Alexander K says: June 17, 2011 at 1:41 am
Immediately organisations resist public financial audits by reputable auditors, alarm bells should ring and automatic mechanisms which begin the stable-cleaning should be triggered.
Perhaps some distinction between an individual(s) and an organisation is needed firstly Alex K.
This would be an interesting book to read given the debate above?
Lecturing Birds on Flying: Can Mathematical Theories destroy Financial Markets?
Pablo Triana, Nassim Nicholas Taleb (May 2009) ISBN: 978-0-470-40675-5
“An intriguing look at how financial models have repeatedly failed our markets, including now
Leading and contrarian thinkers have been talking for years about the conflicts between theoretical and real finance. Nassim Taleb first addressed the issue in his technical treatise on options, Dynamic Hedging. Now, in Lecturing Birds on Flying, Pablo Triana moves the conversation to a narrative that anyone can follow, and explains how it is that theoretical finance can fail dramatically in the real world. The heart of the book, though, isn’t about technicalities, but instead explores how widely accepted theories that are applied daily cause our world real harm. Many times, it’s the quantitative models that hedge funds and investment banks use (and regulators and rating agencies embrace) that lead to market implosions. These so-called models end up offering false guidance and misplaced certainty, and sanction unsavory behavior. In fact, these models were largely responsible for the stock market crash of 1987, the LTCM crisis of 1998, the credit crisis of 2008, and many other blow-ups big and small. Pablo Triana has been writing about the limits of these types of mathematics for several years; now he reveals exactly what this means for our markets and why blind self-enslavement to quantitative dictums puts us at great peril.
Pablo Triana (New York, NY, and Madrid, Spain) has successful derivatives experience at all levels: trading floor, professor, consultant, and author. He is a frequent contributor to business publications, including the Financial Times, Forbes.com, Breakingviews, and Risk magazine, among others. His prior book is Corporate Derivatives. Triana holds a master of science from New York University, Stern and an MA from American University.’
source: http://au.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470406755.html