Flashback, Michael Mann said this on October 5th, 2010:
Our efforts to communicate the science are opposed by a well-funded, highly organized disinformation effort that aims to confuse the public about the nature of our scientific understanding.
…
Scientists are massively out-funded and outmanned in this battle, and will lose if leading scientific institutions and organizations remain on the sidelines. I will discuss this dilemma, drawing upon my own experiences in the public arena of climate change.
Next time you get challenged on how much money is involved and whose side gets it, point out Mann is delusional by showing them this from 2009, Climate Money, a study by Joanne Nova revealing that the federal Government has a near-monopoly on climate science funding.
The starting point was in June 1988 – James Hansen’s address to Congress, where he was so sure of his science, he and Senator Tim Wirth turned off the air conditioning to make the room hotter.
Then show them this from the Daily Caller:
The Congressional Research Service estimates that since 2008 the federal government has spent nearly $70 billion on “climate change activities.”
Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe presented the new CRS report on the Senate Floor Thursday to make the point that the Obama administration has been focused on “green” defense projects to the detriment of the military.
The report revealed that from fiscal years 2008 through 2012 the federal government spent $68.4 billion to combat climate change. The Department of Defense also spent $4 billion of its budget, the report adds, on climate change and energy efficiency activities in that same time period.
Inhofe, the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, argued that the expenditures are foolish at a time when the military is facing “devastating cuts.”
Video May 17, 2012 by JimInhofePressOffice
Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and a Senior Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, took to the Senate floor today to put the spotlight on the far-left global warming agenda that is being imposed on the Department of Defense by President Obama, which comes at the same time the Obama administration is forcing devastating cuts to the military budget.
Senator Inhofe announced that he will be introducing a number of amendments during next week’s markup of the Defense Authorization bill in the Senate Armed Services Committee that will stop President Obama’s expensive green agenda from taking effect in the military.
As part of that effort, Senator Inhofe is also releasing a document put together by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) which reveals that the federal government has spent $68.4 billion on global warming activities since 2008 — and that’s just a conservative estimate. Instead of focusing on funding our critical defense needs such as modernizing our military’s fleet of ships, aircraft and ground vehicles, the Obama administration’s priority is to force agencies to spend billions on its war on affordable energy; this is further depleting an already stretched military budget and putting our troops at risk.
‘course not Joel D. Shore.
But, what if they are quoting a source or citing a reference? You know, a living source like a Michael Mann, a Keith Briffa, a James Hansen or a Gavin Schmidt?
What then? Is it still “Don’t take Newsweek or other popular media as your source of ______” (fill in the blank as required)?
What then if it is a Steve McIntyre or Lindzen that is quoted or their work that is cited?
Gander and goose get the same sauce or no?
.
“The Congressional Research Service estimates that ‘since 2008’ the federal government has spent nearly $70 billion on “climate change activities.”
———-
Shouldn’t that read “through 2008….”
I hope.
OssQss says:
May 19, 2012 at 7:25 pm
I can assure you, the numbers in it are not the same as when the article was first produced.
I have often quoted from here and I do not see any difference in the numbers. Which particular numbers are you thinking of?
Thank you Smokey.
Thank you izen.
As for the red arrows on Smokey’s graph, they merely illustrate what Phil Jones said in the interview. The point is that warming is no faster now than in the past, even though there is much CO2 in the air now and there was little before. So the implication is that CO2 does not have a huge effect on climate. The warming is NOT accelerating as was sometimes claimed.
This is just the same behaviour of a farter. He who smelt it delt it. 😉
Warmists know full well where the well funded disinformation campaign is. This is like David V 1,000 Goliaths but David will still win because David just needs the truth on his side.
Finally, it’s interesting to note that only part of Heartland’s ~$6.5 million annual is actually spent on climate. Also think about all the other governments of the world, organisations and private contributors who contribute to AGW alarmism in all the other countries.
[my bold]
Off course they do. Now look again at the amounts of money involved and that’s not to mention countries around the world and you will understand why there is a consensus. Finally, consensus has absolutely nothing to do with science.
Please go look up information on Continental Drift / Plate Techtonics and Helicobacter Pylori and you should understand that consensus has nothing to do with science. Authority has nothing to do with science.
spend some 70 Billion on fiction Carbon pollution etc, but serious poisoning of soil water and air like in this item..
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/magazine/last-ones-left-in-treece-kan-a-toxic-town.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120520
and apparently some other 100+ towns inm usa…gets naff all funds or remediation effort.
boy houston- you DO have a problem!:-)
so they an blow some 70 billion on fiction over Carbon pollution?
yet?
this place and hundreds of others get naff all remediation or attention, soil air and water are toxic for real, so they ignore it and move people out and pretend its a non event?
loved the bit re making it a wildlife park, suuuure the parks folk weren’t so stupid, they said NO.
so now flog it to idiots who dont know to grow crops or shoot deer and presumably eat them, lead in grass = lead in deer (before they got shot)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/magazine/last-ones-left-in-treece-kan-a-toxic-town.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120520
@- Jimbo says:
“Please go look up information on Continental Drift / Plate Techtonics and Helicobacter Pylori and you should understand that consensus has nothing to do with science. Authority has nothing to do with science.”
I find I am in complete disagreement with you.
Both consensus and authority are key aspects of science and we all use them to inform our understanding and decisions.
The two examples of ‘paradigm shifts’ in areas of science rather make the point for me.
First, stomach ulcers had no consensus causal explanation in medicine, it was treated symptomatically and ‘stress’ (that catch-all of medicine!) was nominated as a exacerbating factor. At the time the ability of bacteria to live in extreme conditions was not well recognized within the medical field although it was a hot topic in evolutionary biology, and the widespread presence of commensurable acidophiles in the stomach was not suspected.
There was no scientific concensus about the cause of stomach ulcers, and little authority behind anything but symptomatic treatment.
When Marshall and Warren showed that H. Pylori was a significant co-factor and stomach ulcers could be treated by eradicating the bacterial ‘infection’ it did not overthrow a previous consensus on cause or treatment, it ADDED to the sum of scientific knowledge in this area and with supporting evidence rapidly became part of the consensus and acquired the authority derived from solid research.
However, it is wise to remember that the majority of the population carry H. Pylori as commensals, the majority who carry the bacteria do not get ulcers and a small proportion of those with ulcers do not have H. Pylori ‘infections’.
Second, plate tectonics and its precursor are a good comparison with AGW.
Some geologists, (as well as many geometrists!) had fitted Africa into South America and wondered if they had shared a closer relationship. But seductive though that speculation was, without a hypothesis about the physics there was no concensus about the shape, stability or evolution over time of the continents and oceans.
It was only when better physical evidence of a link emerged, and a coherent physical process for moving the continental plates was suggested that a consensus emerged. That consensus was driven by the authority of the evidence – the mid-floor spreading shown by the magnetic transitions – and the coherence of the explanation; the floating of less dense crust on convective currents in the molten upper mantle.
There are interesting parallels with AGW. Like continental drift it was a speculative suggestion around the 1900. But lack of evidence and credible hypothesis for the mechanism prevented any consensus.
Then, around the same time Plate tectonics gained authority, AGW also gained from the removal of the objection that oceans would absorb any additional CO2 from human sources when Revelle explained the bicarbonate buffer, and the accurate calculation by Plass and others of the way energy is transfered through the atmosphere. Both those advances in evidential backing and physical explanation conferred authority on the theory and generated the scientific consensus behind it.
In science authority comes from the evidence and the consilience of the explanation. The more authority that has, the greater consensus forms behind it.
A consensus is a measure of the authority of the evidence.
This is why when faced with a serious medical problem most of us first turn to the consensus view. We recognize that the consensus is a indicator of the authority carried by the evidence. It may be that the consensus is weak, there is no authoritative evidence or coherent hypothesis explaining the condition we want treated. Then perhaps we would look for alternatives…
But for a mainstream condition, well understood and explained with solid evidential support for over fifty years we would be extremely foolish to reject the consensus and authority that has accumulated around the problem.
Unless the diagnosis is obesity and we wish at all costs to avoid accepting the clear inference that we would need to reduce our calorie consumption!
izen says:
May 20, 2012 at 4:36 am
“But for a mainstream condition, well understood and explained with solid evidential support for over fifty years we would be extremely foolish to reject the consensus and authority that has accumulated around the problem.”
The only problem is that the CO2+water vapor AGW theory has made only the prediction that water vapor content should rise as a consequence of rising CO2 and that the tropospheric height should rise. And both of these are falsified. This means: Theory kaput.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/simple-disproof-of-runaway-greenhouse.html
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/03/simple-disproof-of-runaway-greenhouse.html?showComment=1332558067400#c2031512486689428024
All izen is doing is diverting from the issue, and that is ,a huge disparity of funding all propping up a meme that is fast falling apart.
Pointless even bothering to put up with his well monied and well oiled meanderings. A glieke crying wolf in sheeps clothing..
Just make sure that the worst waste is defunded and he won’t be in such a comfortable position. Lets see how fast his tune changes when CAGW rorts get chucked out. Might even get him to consider the cyclic changing of weather, its variability and ways to better predict and warn those that habitually live in precarious flood and extreme weather prone areas.
How fast he will scuttle to find another trough, another meme. !! If he was at all genuine in his concern, he should be the first to complain at the deception used by Hansen and his cohort, its advocacy not science to jack up the heat and spin their panic message, and worse still to crow about it to their cronies.
That deception started the money flow, and they have rolled around in the slime of that deception ever since. That’s the be all and end all. Climategate was just a confirmation of how low this “joke” of climate sceince fell.
Just put the boot on the other foot and see how it feels. All the rest just gives them room to spin and smarm to protect their inevitable exposure.
izen says:
May 20, 2012 at 4:36 am
Both consensus and authority are key aspects of science and we all use them to inform our understanding and decisions.
Consensus is a political concept, not a scientific one. All it means is that — regardless of the presence or absence of evidence — a majority of some defined group believe something. Consensus necessitates having a belief in something, and that belief need not be proven. I remember when the “medical consensus” flipped from “coffee is okay” to “coffee is bad for you but decaffeinated coffee is okay” back to “coffee is okay.” There was no *evidence* for the “coffee is bad for you but decaf is okay” belief, but that was the consensus.
And that consensus was formed by advertising agencies who were hired by the makers of Decaf to push their product. Those who believed the consensus were somewhat shocked a few years later when they discovered that coffee beans were soaked in formaldehyde in order to neutralize the caffeine, and they’d essentially been drinking dilute embalming fluid in order to “be healthy.”
The way we attribute authority to someone can be tricksy — someone whose field of expertise is the novels of Charles Dickens and the Bronte sisters may not know squat about Christina Rosetti, but he’s very likely to have the press designate him as an authority on Victorian literature based solely on the fact that your average MSM scribbler equates Dickens and the Brontes with “Victorian Literature.”
joeldshore says…..
Trying to rewriting history again Joel?
I was alive and reading Scientific American and Popular Science etc back then. Even the science fiction magazine Analog had a “Snowball Earth” short story that was rather gruesome. All the stories back then were about the coming Ice Age. Heck Kukla and Mathews warned President Nixon and the CIA looked into it.
The 1974 CIA document, A Study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems even shows how the earth has been cooling since the climate optimum 4,000 to 5,000 years ago using “pollen zones” on page 20. This is part of the text from page 18.
Joe Romm over at Climate Progress stated:
“Absent human emissions, we’d probably be in a slow long-term cooling trend due primarily by changes in the Earth’s orbit — see Human-caused Arctic warming overtakes 2,000 years of natural cooling, “seminal” study finds…”
Temperature and precipitation history of the Arctic
This paper also agrees that we are at the point in the earth’s Milankovitch cycle that ushers in an ice age. Lesson from the past: present insolation minimum holds potential for glacial inception (2007)
Joel you lose all credibility when you try to pedal propaganda meant to rewrite history. Even “Your Side” agrees that we are at the tail end of the present interglacial.
izen: “ANY change that exceeds the adaptability of our agricultural infrastructure is a problem.”
I’ve done a fair share of farming during my life. Let me tell you that if the climate would suddenly turn 2 degrees warmer, (even during a few years), farmers would greet it as a positive thing. The results would be increased productivity.
We choose what we produce, based on the climate. If it is warmer, it gives us bigger harvests and lets us choose from a wider variety of grains. If it is colder, we choose grains that can cope with a shorter growing season. If it gets really warm, we can even start getting two harvests in a year instead of one.
There’s absolutely no point in being scared of a warmer climate because of agriculture.
izen says:
May 20, 2012 at 4:36 am
In science authority comes from the evidence and the consilience of the explanation. The more authority that has, the greater consensus forms behind it.
A consensus is a measure of the authority of the evidence.
What we have with CAGW, unfortunately, isn’t actual science, but an agenda-and-money-driven pseudoscience, akin more to Lysenkoism. The consensus claim itself, even if CAGW was science-based instead of ideologically-driven is a fraudulent one, meant to prop up what amounts to a big lie.
_Jim says:
Because this website has been asking me to log in with my WordPress account. And, when I do that, that is what WordPress puts up as my id.
I think that quotes from anybody in the popular media should not be taken too seriously The science is best summarized in reports produced by reputable scientific organizations like IPCC, NAS, Royal Society, etc.
Of course, the top post is an apple-oranges comparison based on a false premise. The vast majority of the government climate science spending is for science itself — collecting and analyzing and understanding data; improving theories to organize and explain the data; developing computer models to fit and predict and explore; training new scientists. As such, it is intrinsically neither pro-AGW nor anti-AGW. To claim that the money spent collecting and analyzing data is “pro-AGW” is to admit that the data itself is indeed “pro-AGW”. Similarly, money spent on technology and tax breaks will encourage spending on specific green technologies, but it does not all go to swaying public opinion.
Or consider that Dr. Lindzen and Dr. Spencer are among those receiving this government support for research. No one accuses them or their results of being “pro-AGW”.
So Anthony seems to be comparing on the one hand,
with
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yes, Hanson’s (and others’) PR efforts are funded in part by this money.
Yes, there may well be a bias toward funding research that is expected to confirm the AGW hypothesis.
Yes, a lot of people stand to make money from green technology (just like many people stand to make money from traditional CO2-producing industries).
But it is simply ridiculous to try to equate this entire graph of federal spending on all climate research & technology to money spent specifically on anti-AGW PR.
Gail Combs says:
I gave you a peer-reviewed paper that surveys the peer-reviewed literature of that time. If you don’t believe it to be correct, find all of those peer-reviewed papers that they left out.
I was talking about the peer-reviewed literature, not the popular media…although as pointed out in the paper that I linked to, the discussions in the popular media were more split than those who really are rewriting history would have one believe. For example, the 1973 movie Soylent Green had as one of its premises that we had caused global warming. And, the book “Hothouse Earth” was published in 1975.
Actually, there is considerable debate on the issue of whether we are really that close to the tail end. The best analog for the current interglacial in terms of the various orbital parameters is one several (~400?) thousand years ago that lasted considerably longer.
However, it is also not contradictory to anything I was saying. While most scientists agreed that the long term natural trend would be toward a new ice age, they also recognized that this was over longer timescales and in the absence of anthropogenic effects. For example, Hays et al.’s pivotal paper in Science in 1976 on the Milankovitch cycles and climate ( http://www.sciencemag.org/content/194/4270/1121.abstract ) made it clear that their prediction of cooling was over long timescales and ignoring any anthropogenic effects:
People like George Will have quoted part of the last sentence while ignoring the rest of what they said because it is inconvenient for their myth.
As all the rationalizers and defenders of the status quo pour in, it’s worthwhile to review the concepts of “vested interest”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vested_interest
Now I’m sure all these folks who are trying to pretend “there’s nothing to see here” have spent a lot of time arguing that huge amounts of Defense Spending, “Fossil Fuel Subsidies”, and government real estate incentives don’t lead to beneficieries of such policies behaving in a certain way.
I’m sure they have.
tjfolkerts says: @ur momisugly May 20, 2012 at 7:44 am….
_________________________________
Then how do you explain Dr Jaworowski being refused funding when he wanted to look into CO2 measurements done in ice cores and whether they were valid?
Caspar and the Jesus paper is another example.
Editor-in-Chief of Remote Sensing Resigns from Fallout Over Our Paper is an additional example.
There are also all the Climategate e-mails were “The Team” discussed how to keep skeptics from publishing and how to keep skeptic papers out of the IPCC reports.
So yes some of that funding might have gone to actually funding science but it was still twisted to suit the agenda or trashed.
The Goat ate my homework
“Adjusting” data graph
It seems izen is trying to justify the expenditure on the AGW scam – which is rather sad, as the money wasted on the sham science could have been put to much better use.
Those commenters that have tried to respond to izen have seemingly wasted their efforts! He just izen’t getting it!
I would like to think that in 10+ years time, izen will still be around and apologising profusely? But I fear, no member of the warmist camp is unlikely to ever apologise because it’s not the science they care about – it’s the theme and the advocacy. If it was the science and it was being reported correctly, virtually ALL the CAGW indicative type papers would have the following caveat in bold in the findings ‘Warning, this work is based on conjecture, modelling (of guestimated and assumed unknown parameters) and adjusted data – values may go up or down in the future,etc’ – and indeed, all the pro-AGW folks would be reminding us of this ALL the time! Funny though, they never seem to do that……..
By direct contrast, the skeptic camp are simply being skeptical BECAUSE the proof has never been demonstrated and therefore whether right or wrong – they will have no need to apologise!
I don’t care what anyone says, the real science is done from a skeptical approach i.e. you always try and disprove ones own theory – only when it stands the test of a million disproofs, does it then stand even a ‘chance’ of being correct. This is the opposite of course, of the AGW theory (which isn’t a theory really but never mind) which has been ‘accepted’ (hence the psuedo science term ‘concensus’ LOL) without either proof or ADEQUATE attempts at disproof BY the supporting/proposing scientists. That is serious scientific malfeasance and/or psuedoscience in my book. Of course, when a real scientists starts to look into the actual climate science – he/she starts to ‘see’ the flaws and failures – the assumptions, the models (LOL), etc, etc.
I confess to getting really frustrated because the efforts of the climate science ‘team’ are so clearly advocacy and sadly, so are those of the ‘faithful’ ….
Folkerts says: The vast majority of the government climate science spending is for science itself
Wrong. If it doesn’t have a pro-CAGW hook, it doesn’t get funded. Agenda-driven science isn’t science at all. But then, you Alarmists have shown time and again that you don’t really know what science is.
One other pro-CAGW arm that isn’t even mentioned because it’s “free” is the MSM, which has willingly acted as the mouthpiece for anything and everything that is pro-Alarmist. That pro-Alarmist stance of the MSM, over time has probably been worth multi-$billions.
Oh really? So you think we were born yesterday? When it specificallysays it is for “COMBATING CLIMATE CHANGE” it is intrinsically pro-CAGW wouldn’t you say?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/FY12-climate-fs.pdf
$2.5 BILLION is being spent this year alone.
AND you don’t see the ‘Change’ option near the bottom of the screen?
One wonders what the perception/perceptive abilities ARE of some ppl … really!!
No wonder the IPCC is capable of such sway; y’all seem to accept whatever ‘authority’ can assert it’s will your direction! I have the same ‘issue’ with WP too, ya know; it’s a constant battle to assure the underscore-incorporating moniker is displayed versus the one WP would prefer to use automatically …
(Okay, apologies, but this rolling-over attitude displayed by posters re: ‘handles’ forced by WP just chaps my hide.)
.
@- DirkH says:
“The only problem is that the CO2+water vapor AGW theory has made only the prediction that water vapor content should rise as a consequence of rising CO2 and that the tropospheric height should rise.”
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate/2009-time-series/humidity
http://www.math.nyu.edu/~gerber/pages/documents/santer_etal-science-2003.pdf
@- “And both of these are falsified. This means: Theory kaput.”
As you can see from the links above, both are confirmed; Theory validated.