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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George is a campaigner as well as a journalist. So double standards are part of the armoury. For example, I get regularly attacked for having my views in the daily tabloids – front page of the Daily Express a few months back, the Mail, and Al Jazeera, but they don’t mention the Times Online, because that is more credible. I therefore ought to qualify as ‘prominent’ – having also had a book published (and reviewed in The Holocene, a relevant science journal). I certainly get villified for misleading the public on issues that have ‘already been refuted’. But of course, I would not argue I was prominent in the sense that Willie Soon is…an academic at Harvard. Still, worth slinging some mud…..problem is….I am not funded by anyone. And Monbiot knows this very well.
He regularly contacts me in my field of biodiversity strategies – in which he has a developing interest in ‘rewilding’ (I wrote the main Uk treatment of the field). And he followed a blog-debate I had with Prof Alistair MacIntosh, author of ‘Hell and High Water’ (an orthodox AGW treatment). So these guys all know my work, my record on the environment, and that I am not funded by big oil, big coal or any right-wing think tank.
Gradually, this mud-slinging denier-crap is antagonising a lot of older environmentalists – including my former colleague, Jackson Davis, who co-wrote the Kyoto Protocol. We are now working together – again, without funding. An ex-TV journalist paid toward my airfare last year to get out to Boulder, Co., so that Davis and I could set up a working relationship. That is the sum-total of our funding…about £300. Eventually, we will have enough for a TV documentary. We are working at the meta-analysis level, gathering data already produced and reviewing papers. We are both old campaigners too…..and very successful (the banning of nuclear waste dumping, incineration at sea, plutonium discharges, new toxic substances legislation to prevent marine pollution), but we relied on using rational argument, data and forcing debate, not trying to debase the opposition.
Monbiot says: I got something WRONG abt Willie Soon.
“I SUGGESTED he’d Never declared his fossil fuel funding.”
UNLIKE MANY, it turns out he has.
It is nitpicking time here as far as I am concerned.
Monbiot did not “SUGGEST” anything.
He SAID it. He clearly stated this. It was not a suggestion.
Perhaps we should club together and buy him a dictionary.
Monbiot also says; UNLIKE MANY it turns out he has (declared his fossil fuel funding).
Would the “brilliant” but wrong Monbiot like to elucidate here on WUWT and name the “MANY” please?
Peter Walsh, Dublin, Ireland.
I bet Soon and Balliunas did not cook the books and play around with data, like that lot of ciminals at the CRU did.
No one reads the Guardian anyway.
“Well I once had a Shell Oil credit card for which I got cashback credits on purchases, so I guess that makes me guilty.”
LOL
Have a great 4th of July
“Apologies” George? Just “Apologies”?
After you have stirred the world’s MSM is “Apologies” all you can offer?
I want a distinct and prolonged GROVEL from you for ever having cast your odious aspersions on Dr. Soon. Your apologies should be as widely disseminated as your aspersions; please ensure that this is so.
Calling the API grant “fossil fuel money” is itself a bit of disinformation, since they deal in paper, not oil. Sort of akin to calling the librarians at Texas A&M “farmers.”
Peter Taylor says:
July 1, 2011 at 1:30 pm
“‘rewilding”
Good grief. The ultimate megalomaniacal Watermelon project. In the US and Canada this project – e.g., Yellowstone to Yukon – has been supported by a deluge of junk model-based pseudoscience, deliberate historical revisionism, and outright lies.
It is nothing but a profoundly dishonest land grab.
But then, given the post-normal “mission-oriented” junk science called Conservation Biology which is behind it, what more can we expect?
As I have noted in the past, this is the corrupt twisted sister of AGW climastrology and the two work hand in dishonest hand. This we have the ‘doomed’ polar bear for example.
Once the AGW climastrology scam has faded, I hope the world will take a much closer look at this junk science. The whole ‘mass extinction’ story and ‘biodiversity crisis’ that the UN is now cooking up is from this same source. Same pattern of fearmongering, gross exaggerations, etc. plus herds of lawyers.
I saw a few people defending the Monbiot, and I think you should be clear, his apology was nothing of the sort really. He as others pointed out had to hurl an insult along with it, and the only reason he supports nuclear power is that he has finally realized that its the only carbon free energy source that can really support a modern country. Nothing intelligent or really smart there, just the same spreading of false information as others.
Kind of like articles on slashdot that make a big deal about OLD news…climate sceptic funded by big oil….and this is one of the reasons I stopped reading slashdot unless referred there. I used to contribute there daily and always had moderator points, etc once upon a time, but then they became political….I guess its just one of those things that tends to happen…they could have kept their site apolitical and still had quite a few more people (Its always been more of a programmer news site then anything…) But its really a run-down piece of trash now…just look at the articles and the quality of them. I started at the site 11 years ago roughly and I just couldn’t stand it anymore. So as far as slashdot goes, just don’t bother…they post articles such as that and comments on that article such as “Don’t call them sceptics, call them deniers because they deny everything including round Earth theory, AGe of the Earth, and other facts.” – this particular comment is one of the highest ratest comments on that site.
So you can see, the site is definitly not impartial…its one of those things that you can see clearly. Its sad to see sites such as that lose their way so to speak. Kind of like google recently…they turn political and its the beginning of the end for them. Just watch and see….
As far as funding for AGW and sceptics alike, this is all meaningless. I think several people have mentioned this, but I could care less about where money comes from as long as its legal and freely given. The fact that they make big deals about this tells us how bankrupt their science really is. They can not argue on the validity of their science, and as such must resort to personal attacks. Sad, its self-destructing so quickly..I thought it had at least 3 more years left of life, but at this rate we are looking at a Christmas present…who knows though?
. I have seen George Monbiot speak on other issues and he is an entertaining and gifted man. Things he says make a lot of sense, apart from when he moves into climate science. On this subject he is flawed, he has this encapsulated delusional system that allows no disagreement or evidence to affect the way he thinks on the subject. Maybe it’s the human condition, maybe its the achilles heel of many great writers, It may be many things, but ultimately it’s a tragedy for him, and for those who in other ways appreciate his writing.
James Sexton,
I don’t get the point of your reply to me at all. How does proof that Soon acknowledged his funding sources in a paper prove that he acknowledged them speaking before Congress? If Greenpeace’s claim that Soon told congress that he had “… not knowingly been hired by, nor employed by, nor received grants from any organisation that had taken advocacy positions with respect to the Kyoto protocol or the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change” is true — and considering the source that’s a big ‘if’ — then it’s irrelevant what Soon said in any paper; he lied to Congress.
Blue smoke is seen coming from the WarmistMobile.
The old stories keep resurfacing, and it looks as bad as it sounds.
I suspect that there will be mass defections around the bend if this keeps up.
Shouldn’t Monbiot also be raising the AGW scientists under or seeking money from BP etc… its no different the other way around, and “green” companies are just as capable of being “evil” as they are still trying to flog stuff to people and make money in the same way. I know the industry I work for like to push AGW as its a work stream for us, and when times are tough the rhetoric is raised – its all about the MONEY!
Large companies never mind government regulations. They simple ask their lobbyist to change the parts their lawyers can’t figure out how to game. Small companies, on the other hand, who by definition, have no law department, have to stay under the radar. So the big get bigger and the small stay small and everyone just passes the cost onto the public. Big Oil really doesn’t care if cap- and-trade becomes law or not. The idea that they are fighting it is a fantasy. But then again every movement needs a good villain.
Tweets are for twits. There is a good reason do discuss things in more than a few characters. If that is all the twitter can muster, I guess I have no regrets that I do not and will not use it. I can see its value in “battle” situations but beyond that, forget about it.
@Climate Majority says:
July 1, 2011 at 12:35 pm
“Oil companies have a fiduciary responsibility to make money.”
Oil companies positioned themselves as energy companies a long time a ago and their self proclaimed responsibility is to produce energy for the benefit of the consumers and investors alike.
Can you with absolutely certainty say your pension fund (and where would it be if it) doesn’t invest directly in companies owning, or indirectly owning stakes in, oil, coal, nuclear and hydro, or defense and porn?
Or what about mining companies mining for “dirty” coal but also mining rare earth metals to the wind power industry? Of course they’re mining gold as well, that communist hippies buy to their loved ones, at the same time they’re mining uranium for nuclear rods.
If you you think “Big Oil” consist of a handful of OPEC oil-only companies, then you’re deluded. Why not check the the owner structure online, it is freely available information accessible to anyone, pretty much, with an internet connection, some software and a computer (mostly made from oil and other carbon based materials.)
M.A.DeLuca:
At July 1, 2011 at 3:00 pm you ask and say to James Sexton,
“I don’t get the point of your reply to me at all. How does proof that Soon acknowledged his funding sources in a paper prove that he acknowledged them speaking before Congress? If Greenpeace’s claim that Soon told congress that he had “… not knowingly been hired by, nor employed by, nor received grants from any organisation that had taken advocacy positions with respect to the Kyoto protocol or the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change” is true — and considering the source that’s a big ‘if’ — then it’s irrelevant what Soon said in any paper; he lied to Congress.”
As an observer of the debate between the two of you, perhaps I can help to help you “get the point” because Soon did NOT lie to Congress..
Congress asked a question and Soon gave an honest answer to that question. The question he answered was about whether he had obtained employment or grants “from any organisation that had taken advocacy positions with respect to the Kyoto protocol or the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change”
Congress did not ask Soon if he had received money and or funding from oil companies. That is a different question because oil companies have not taken advocacy positions with respect to the Kyoto protocol or the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change” (except for BP that supported the Kyoto Protocol and Soon was not funded by BP).
It seems you may have been duped by ‘warmist’ propoganda that assumes oil companies advocate against the Kyoto protocol and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. They don’t (as several posters have pointed out above).
I hope this clarification helps.
Richard
Hector M. says:
July 1, 2011 at 8:21 am
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.
Hector, did you just post a defense of Marx on a Climate blog trying to defend Monboit? Really?
Denier says:
July 1, 2011 at 10:22 am
Ah, lay off Monbiot.
At least he sputters while swallowing the Kool-Aid.
I’m inclined to agree. Monbiot is the sceptic’s warmist. He is currently a true believer, but his faith has been shaken badly over the past couple of years. He still clings to the remnants of that belief, but he is hanging on by his fingernails now. And I understand where he is; I once walked that road, and it’s not an easy one.
Inside a year or two, his epiphany will come, if it hasn’t already. The question is, will he continue to push the CO2 agenda – it is his day job, after all – or will he have the moral fortitude to tell it how he really sees it? We’ll have to wait and see.
There was a wonderful case when a David McKnight wrote an angry letter to the Sydney Morning Herald claiming ExxonMobil was funding junk science.
Here is the reply letter the following day:
“David McKnight, of the University of NSW, alleges that ExxonMobil has funded “junk science” with the intent to “deny” climate change (“The climate change smokescreen”, August 2).
ExxonMobil agrees climate change is a serious issue and is taking action to address it. We are an active player in the debate on Australia’s climate policy. We are taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at our operations and have invested in energy-efficient cogeneration technology that has saved more than 10 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.
The work of ExxonMobil scientists has produced more than 40 papers in peer-reviewed literature. Our scientists participate in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and numerous related scientific bodies. We have supported major climate research projects at some of the finest academic and governmental organisations in the world, representing a range of positions on the science of climate change.
McKnight has ignored the fundamental point that ExxonMobil does not try to control the views and messages of those whom we support. A case in point: one of the institutions we have funded for many years is McKnight’s employer.
Trisha Perkins Public affairs manager, ExxonMobil, Australia”
BTW – the whole Willie Soon and Sally Baliunas story is on youtube in 5 parts.
We had a very cold Nov thru Dec and then a fairly “normal” winter in the Uk, no doubt protected by the Gulf Stream which evidently does not exist. This was followed by a relatively warm early Spring with June predicably bringing us down to earth with cold and rain.
My day at Wimbledon on Tuesday was badly interrupted by thunderstorms which had followed some very warm weather which lasted all of 24 hours…..our summer (British sense of humour)
It has been drier and cooler ever since.
It is the weather of the UK and falls in line with Middle England temps records for over three hundred years.
Just why are people getting grants and governments taxing us over what is quite normal?
Put away your playstaions now and leave us in peace.
Enough is enough.
Who cares what Monbiot thinks.
Monbiot shows such contempt for truth, to anyone seeking it, it is obvious he is paid as a disinfo agent…
What is sad, is that people seem to care what he says, but maybe less than used to.
His column is censored & policed & heavily populated with paid sock puppets to create a false consensus.
The house of cards is taking more & more to keep it propped up now…
Is there a single warmist scientist who isn’t funded by big government?
I’m not Monbiot’s no 1 fan but he has been talking more sense recently (this example excluded). I even retweeted him yesterday! I think (generally speaking) sceptics/lukewarmers actually share some common ground with him in terms of nuclear power and the conduct of climate science.
He’s wrong to make such a comment but fair play he admitted he was wrong.
Thanks,
Joe