Reader DJ writes in Tips & Notes:
Since becoming a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists when I found out all you needed was a valid credit card, my curiosity about who and what they really are has spiked.
Chief Executive Kevin Knobloch makes $229,000/yr, and isn’t even a scientist. He has a masters in public administration. UCS has a staff of 121 with an AVERAGE salary of $92,000/yr. 15% of their income goes to fundraising and administration.
$5.4Mil, or roughly 1/3 of their program budget is spent on climate, and $460,000 is spent on “legislative”. (Lobbying?)
I’m now receiving emails from them soliciting donations, in the same format as the save-the-whales/puppies/children/ pleas.
=============================================================
Seems to me like just another NGO with policy predicated on distributing FUD. Gotta love the way they combine global warming and nuclear war in the header. – Anthony
Btw,….before UCS changes the page….
When you go to the Donate page, it says “For your annual membership of $25 or more, ..”
Yes, for your donation, they give you a membership. It says right there, you become a MEMBER.
I won’t be surprised if they change that to “partner’, or “sponsor”, or some other diluted status.
So, I guess if someone is dumb enough to believe in AGW, they are dumb enough to send $25 –> $1,000 to a group with an impressive name! Plus, they DO take American Express!!!
I’m in the wrong business, I got to start a scam like that….
James Sexton, the candidate Mitt Romney former Gov of Mass has a considerable record with AGW policies in his state which you can examine.
1. He was responsible for legislation which made state co2 emissions standards 30% stricter than national standards.
2.”Back in 2005, Romney told the Boston Globe he was “convinced” that cap-and-trade was “good business.” It was his administration, in fact, that helped guide the development of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade system in the Northeastern U.S. that has raised $860 million for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs.”
3. At the last minute he pulled out of the RGGI, however, it should be noted that the $860 million he rasied came from fees from utility companies and consumers. He indeed shows a track record of belief in the so-called “green economy,” and has expressed that the scientific consensus is that man is responsible for climate change through co2 emissions. Leaving Romneycare aside. Hope this clarifies what his record actually is in Ma.
The soviet “Union of Concerned Scientist” has been a running joke in my household for years.Most of these noisy so called professional NGOs are nothing more then lefty noise machines. The ones that did not start out that way have long since been infiltrate and co-opted.You would not believe the nonsense from the societies targeting my various professions!
DJ says:
August 18, 2011 at 7:58 am
“Btw,….before UCS changes the page….
When you go to the Donate page, it says “For your annual membership of $25 or more, ..”
Yes, for your donation, they give you a membership. It says right there, you become a MEMBER.
I won’t be surprised if they change that to “partner’, or “sponsor”, or some other diluted status.”
=====================================
Such as “Dupe” or “Mark” or “Sucker” or “Useful Idiot” or “Stooge” or???
Self-inflated crackpots.
Dave Stephens said:
I began to wonder what environmental scientists were up to when two incredibly common plants (also edible) were listed in Oregon and California as “threatened”.
Anybody calling himself a taxonomist can ‘study’ a regional variant and declare it to be a separate species. No credentials or publications necessary, just a quick ‘SHAZAM’ and you have a threatened species. Snail darter, spotted owl, dune lizard, common edible plants… All fodder for the Confiscators.
A free country would have an Endangered Genus Act that paid people who have a population on their land.
Jon Hunstman got Utah into the Western Climate Initiative with a stated goal of reducing Utah’s CO2 to below 2005 levels. He was one of 2 Republican goveners to join it, along with Arnold. So, he too is to be shunned as a Presidential candidate.
http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/02/jon-huntsman-greenest-gop-presidential-hopeful
James, Thanks for your comments wrt your politicians. It is the same here, promise all sorts then get voted in and nothing changes.
If though,we can get one top ranking politician who challenges the AGW “orthodoxy” then we might move forward. It is like the “Emperors New Clothes”, one person says what everyone else thinks and it snowballs.
“to reduce the threat of global warming AND nuclear war”
Wow, I didn’t know they were connected. Which do you suppose leads to the other? 🙂
Do you think that if I offered them $75 they award me a doctorate? Quantum Physics would be nice.
Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь!
К. Маркс
Workers of the world, unite!
K. Marx
That is, unionize. Scientists are workers too. And make sure you are thinking correctly about science! It seems we need to define a subset of PC speech, ‘SC’, Scientifically Correct.
I’ve pointed out on other websites how they are just a silly NGO with no credibility. A lot of the Fukushima scaremongering came from similar organizations that called themselves scientists.
The truth about the Union of Concerned Scientists has been known for years. They are not a union and they are not scientists. They are a left wing advocacy group with an impressive name and nothing else.
Jim Rubens, a consultant for the Union of Concerned Scientists, and investor who works in the clean-energy sector versus Rick Perry.
Presidential candidate Perry says climate change is only an unproven theory
http://www.vancouversun.com/story_print.html?id=5272624&sponsor=
So they are a union, like the ACLU and they pretend to be something they are not.
At 1:46 AM on 18 August, Andrew Harding writes:
Oh, by no means. Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul (a 12-term congressman who was also the only man in the Republican nomination race who accurately predicted the 2008 financial “bust” back in 2007) is the senior politician declaiming the bogosity of the AGW fraud.
wowser – another charity type spoof organisation with overpaid staff doing butt all except scamming poor sods with a ‘catchy’ header/name – who would have thought it? /sarc
Just my personal opinion you understand!
On a more serious note – anybody subscribing to anything should always check the details! Some time ago, I recall an investigative journo TV program about charities and their fundraising and commenting on how much of the actual funds raised reached the intended project – it was mostly peanuts IIRC !
That is really almost surreal as all the standards for vetting have become loosened. I must admit that I have been the beneficiary of such things, however. In order to practice tarot reading in my state, I had to become an ordained minister. There are several churches that exist on paper, perhaps as not much more than a shell company, that issue certificates of divination for about $10. Technically I can perform weddings in all 50 states and most of Canada, which I do find dubious but necessary. However, science is another realm and can really put more people in jeopardy – obviously they are eliminating their overhead costs of researching the credentials of their base.
So the ‘Union of Concerned Scientists’ is just an anti-nuclear mob screaming that the Fuk-U-shima disaster wasn’t simply the consequence of an exceptional tsunami?
David L. Hagen says:
August 18, 2011 at 7:33 am
Does the End justify the means?
Harvard hired a new dean for its Business School who has helped develop:
The MBA Oath
Kind of irrelevant to the discussion, but a flashback to my university days:
A scientist asks: “Why does it happen?”
An engineer asks: “How do I make it happen?”
An accountant asks: “How much does it cost to make it happen?”
An MBA asks: “How can I rape the shareholders and make myself rich?”
Rough UCS history:
Nuclear power scares
Food scares
AGW scares.
Call me slow, the crazed climate communist hippies does (although they take their merry god damn time doing it), but what is the actual point with calling a ponze scheme look-a-like organization if they have so few actual scientists? Are those few scientists of theirs actual real scientist that’s been published at all for starters. Since they did pay the fee after all, are they sane at all?
It must be good to be the head of that organization though since he earns about the same as every EU countries prime minister does. No wonder the actual scientists of that union is concerned!
Oh, the lure of being a scientist!
I’ve got a credit card. And I’ve already got a PhD (in Philosophy, not any actual science, but let’s not fuss about details), so I could be a scientist in a white coat whom everyone respectfully calls “Dr. RoHa”.
Lots of attractive young female assistants to accompany me to major international conferences in Cancun.
TV punditry.
Maybe my own show!
Oh, wait.
$25?
I can’t afford that.
Bang go all my dreams of glory. Doomed again.
I experienced a similar epiphany regarding CSPI, AAAS, and other organizations of ‘scientists’ when I was still a graduate student in Chemical Physics at the University of Texas at Austin, so many years ago. The primary qualification for admission is the availability of liquid assets. Since I was earning less than $400/mo on a teaching stipend, I was unqualified.