UPDATE: About an hour after this story was posted, Monbiot backs down, see below. – Anthony
===========================================
Sheesh, can’t these people read? I find the timing of this more than coincidental.
George Monbiot tweets:
Secret funding of climate change deniers exposed again: bit.ly/m6Yjlp. Key issue here is that interests never declared.
Soon and Balliunas 2003:
Acknowledgements. This work was supported by funds from the American Petroleum Institute (01-0000-4579),…
Paper here (PDF)
here’s the full acknowledgment:
Acknowledgements. This work was supported by funds from
the American Petroleum Institute (01-0000-4579), the Air
Force Office of Scientific Research (Grant AF49620-02-1-
0194) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(Grant NAG5-7635). The views expressed herein are those of
the authors and are independent of the sponsoring agencies.
We have benefitted greatly from the true and kind spirit of
research communications (including a preview of their
thoughts) with the late Jean Grove (who passed away on January
18, 2001), Dave Evans, Shaopeng Huang, Jim Kennett,
Yoshio Tagami and Referee #3. We thank John Daly, Diane
Douglas-Dalziel, Craig and Keith Idso for their unselfish contributions
to the references. We also thank the Editor, Chris
de Freitas, for very helpful editorial changes that improved
the manuscript. We are very grateful to Maria McEachern,
Melissa Hilbert, Barbara Palmer and Will Graves for invaluable
library help, and both Philip Gonzalez and Lisa Linarte
for crucial all-around help.
There’s been a swarm of such news items happening this week in an attempt to discredit climate skeptics. ICCC6 is getting some press, and in response these claims of “secret” get circulated. How transparent. The other LOL is from washed up science writer David Appell (who runs an angry blog called Quarksoup) expressing “being stunned” that WUWT readers haven’t denounced a supposed recent death threat that occurred in Australia 5 years ago that was “repackaged” for the present. Trouble is, the press is onto the scam.
Monbiot also tweets:
Is there a single prominent denier who won’t turn out to have been funded by an oil or coal company, or by the Koch brothers?
Well I once had a Shell Oil credit card for which I got cashback credits on purchases, so I guess that makes me guilty.
Bishop Hill quips:
Now obviously there’s a bit of Monbiot “puff” going on here, but I think we should look on this enthusiasm for disclosure of conflicts of interest as an area in which widespread agreement should be possible.
Perhaps George would like to consider a joint call (a) for the IPCC to activate its COI policy for all AR5 working groups with immediate effect and (b) for climate journals to require disclosure of conflicts of interest in the way that medical journals do. I’ll write and ask him.
How about it Monbiot? Goose, gander, and all that.
h/t to reader PaulM
================================================================
UPDATE: About an hour after this story was posted, on his Twitter feed, Monbiot recognizes his error.
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“It should be noted that I am also involved in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).”
Sorry to hear that. Do you often undertake useless enterprises?
So…correct me if I’m wrong, but when a journalist/reporter does not check for accuracy, they lose their job. Right? Ask Dan. He did. So Moonbat needs to pack a little cardboard box filled with his desk nicknacks. Yes?
*sigh* I got scholarship for my masters degree by some European science and petroleum R&D fund that I forget the details of now – it had no bearing on the choice or direction of my thesis or the way I conducted my studies. People who point at funding sources and go *aaahhhh, looook, big oil! – denier!! burn!!* need to have crystal clear evidence that the research was biassed or advocated as a result of the funding or I can foresee libel action ahead.
Though I am a full blooded CAGW skeptic, I can see a degree of humility and sincerity in George Monbiot missing in many of the fanatics. He went against the grain in declaring qualified support for nuclear power, and will admit when he believes he is wrong.
He may turn out to be an unlikely ally
I seem to remember the rumor that the Doxology was sung at the Rockefeller cathedral, University of Chicago, as “Praise John from whom Oil Blessings Flow”.
Hector M.
I believe that Paul Dirac is usually given the credit for predicting anti-matter (positron) and Carl Anderson for its discovery, although others were involved in earlier speculation on the subject. I’m not sure in what sense Teller was right wing, let alone a warmonger; maybe you know something that I don’t.
I note that no one has picked up on the “Unlike many” comment in Monbiat’s correction. Given that his initial comment was exactly wrong, shouldn’t he now be pestered to list at least two or three of the “many” he refers to in his correction. After all, he’s indicting those “many” now, instead of Soon.
The quote: “Unlike many, it turns out he (Soon) has” (listed his oil funding). Again, who are among the “many”? It seems reasonable to ask him for names.
Wiglaf comments: “George Monbiot seems to be a communist based on his actions and words. The communist is the ultimate materialist. So, of course, funding sources is very important to him.”
Nope. This is so-called vulgar materialism, alleging economic motivations for each individual act, which has nothing to do with Marx or communism, which were thinking (much like Smith or Ricardo) that economic facts “define the general conditions for social life”. Marx, in fact, was funded all his life by the profits his pal Friedrich Engels was getting from his family’s cotton factory in Manchester, i.e., his hours and years digesting economics books at the British Museum and writing mighty tomes on capital and economic theory, were directly financed by the surplus value created by Victorian workers labouring countless hours a day for miserable wages, and appropriated by the mill owners, the Engels family.
The idea that science responds to “interests”, and that said interests influence science contents and infect its validity was advanced mostly by jaded French post modernists “philosophes”, comfortably debating their ideas at some Rive Gauche café or sedately expounding in the Sorbonne. Chiefly by folks like Michel Foucault, who regard knowledge as a form of power and see “interests” dominating the whole of science. Also by guys in the so-called “strong programme” of the sociology of knowledge, like David Bloor or Bruno Latour, claiming that external reality has nothing to do with science statements, which are governed instead by the petites guerres among lab scientists, and largely determined by “interests” funding them.
As it’s confession time I must make mine.
I must be a shill for Big Oil. Between 1970 and 1973 (ish) I worked after school and at weekends as a pump jockey at the local ARCO service station. From memory I got 25p per hour (17.5p in the week) and 1p for each pint of oil I sold.
This largesse has had a profound influence on my life and I have been in complete thrall to the petroleum industry ever since. Perhaps it also explains why my normal mode of transport is a one Latimer Power pushbike. And electric trains.
Bernie Kelly says July 1, 2011 at 8:05 am
Bernie, you’re obviously in dire need a new shirt. One of these should do the trick 🙂
Scarlet Pumpernickel says:
July 1, 2011 at 6:52 am
Enron loved Carbon credits too. Big oil loves it, as it makes their product more expensive!
Big Oil loves carbon credits because it makes coal more expensive than oil, increasing demand for oil, increasing profits for Big Oil. The higher the carbon credits, the more power plants will be forced to switch from coal to oil and gas.
In the US this is now being done using the EPA. Large investors got in early and invested heavily. They are now pushing this agenda to reap the rewards.
This has nothing to do with saving the environment. What is has to do with is politicians using the “green movement” to favor some industries over others. Friends of the government and other insiders invest in these industries beforehand and make a financial killing. Otherwise it would make no sense to spend 100 million dollars on an election campaign to take a job that pays $150 thousand a year.
This is nothing new. When the railroads were built, insiders bought up the land along the route and made fortunes. The same thing happened when the highway system was built. Now we are seeing the EPA in the US being used to favor oil and gas over coal, with trillions to be made for the Washington insiders. And people still ask why the US debt is increasing at such an alarming rate.
A few months ago Monbiot seemed to be dialing things back, apparently chastened by Climategate. But now he’s apparently back to being his old Moonbat self.
Jeff Alberts: your
Sorry to hear that. Do you often undertake useless enterprises?
Quite often, if someone is paying me for it…..In spite of my objections, they continue to pay me….
I am astonished at the behaviour of these people. it’s as is someone has pokes a stick in a wasp’s nest. Just what has spooked them so?
In addition to my former comment about materialistic theories of knowledge, let me say that I do not believe either that Monbiot is anything like a communist. From the extreme right, everything to the left is saw in the red part of the spectrum, but that is an optical illusion caused by the particular and atypical position of the observer at the far right-hand tail of the distribution, at a distance of many standard deviations from the mean.
Does anyone have any statistics on how much of the research/educational grants paid by oil companies ends up funding AGW beliefs versus non AGW beliefs? My guess is 10 to 1 in favour of AGW.
So why did the Guardian editor run the story (link below)
Basically a rehash of greenpeace allegations… ie they have ‘found’ evidence of funding, when the interest/funding was declared in his published work…
A total non story designed to smear by inuendo, considering how many pro-agw climate scientists have received similar funding.
ie Why no headline – IPCC scientists receive millions in funding from BP, Shell, Exxon, etc,etc…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/28/climate-change-sceptic-willie-soon?CMP=twt_fd
The guardian ‘environmental’ journalists twittered this guardian inuendo article to all their followers
http://twitter.com/#!/john_vidal/status/85766986700824576
http://twitter.com/#!/leohickman/status/85775050061524992
Damian Carrington – Head of Environment
http://twitter.com/#!/dpcarrington/status/85723752620498944
Guardian Eco – 45,000 followers
http://twitter.com/#!/guardianeco/status/85769314937995264
Guardian Science – 141,000 followers
http://twitter.com/#!/guardianscience/status/85766066210484224
I see the ‘independant’ resource for journalists/media – The Carbon Brief have been ‘fact checking’ their stories again, twittering this link from De Smog blog, of all places..
http://twitter.com/#!/carbonbrief/status/86017315572957184
Another ‘fact checked’ twitter from the Carbon Brief, straight from Greenpeace
http://twitter.com/#!/carbonbrief/status/85706226335354880
oops, wrong Carbon Brief tweet in the above..
http://twitter.com/#!/carbonbrief/status/86009839830044672
As real-world observations continue to falsify their model predictions of warming, the alarmists seem to increasingly be relying on spurious ad hom attacks for misdirection. It’s pretty much all they have left. Reaching back to 2003 seems desperate though.
I think Monbiot is being disingenuous. He’s been around the climate game long enough to know in his own mind that funding runs both ways and far more in the warmist direction for at least the last decade. I don’t think Monbiot really believes there’s much actual impact on anti-CAGW scientific conclusions from funding, but he believes it can be an effective meme to further his “noble cause” with those who aren’t familiar with the debate.
At least Monbiot had the grace to apologize for his error about Dr. Soon. I’ll give him that, and I don’t typically give eco-whackjobs any leeway at all.
Of course monbiot has a degree in zoology so is qualified to talk about climate science……oh wait a minute.
Alarmists have been suckling on the taxpayer teat for years. The EU alone donates millions to their cause year on year. Oil and energy companies fund alarmist campaigns. As does the UK Government.
Then someone on the other side of the fence earns a few grand and declares it? There’s no comparison. Monbiot’s ‘big oil’ argument is a nonsense.
BTW: The paper he works for just discontinued their international edition. A harbinger of further cuts to come perhaps?
Over here in England we refer to people like Mr Monbiot as ‘pratts’.
Not only do oil companies fund warmist causes, but so does government big time. Big oil knows that they win with cap and trade—they are not stupid and can game the system—and garner good will by going along with the government’s (stupid, misguided) goals for carbon.
The warmists complain because skeptics have any money at all, knowing that they benefit from many billions in funding and income of all kinds, including bribes.
My complaint is that skeptics should be funded with billions EQUAL to the warmists’ funding. THe tiny finding skeptics receive are so effective, imagine what the outcome would be if they had real finding similar to the bedwetting warmists.
Pamela Gray says:
July 1, 2011 at 8:00 am
“So…correct me if I’m wrong, . . .”
Okay, you are wrong. It’s probably a function of living where you do. You expect people to say what they mean, and mean what they say.
Already Mr. Monbiot is receiving accolades for truth, justice, and the American way. Next a pay raise. Then a fancier sounding title.