Tom Nelson writes:
Bummer: If the Kochs are really spending $100 million annually on climate change denial (as Michael Mann claims), why is prominent skeptic JoNova forking over her own cash to replace her five-year-old computer?
Also, why did I just pay 100% of the costs to replace my own 6-year-old MacBook Pro?
Global gloom. Help. I need a new computer. « JoNova
Donations gratefully received. A newer monster with more memory has been ordered…
Right now these self funding academic researcher-analyst-commentators could do with support (and we could use more than just a ‘puter).
Flashback: Michael Mann: “Kochs spend 100M$/year on #climatechange denial”
Hey Michael: Who, specifically, gets that money each year? How, specifically, does that money get spent?
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I’ve met Jo and I’m privy to some of her personal details and many of the problems associated with keeping her website going, which is self-hosted. I just sent Jo a donation, and I urge others to do so too (see the tip jar at upper right here), if for no other reason than spite for Michael Mann’s lewdicrous conspiracy theory ideation.
For the record I don’t get any money from the Kochs either (either directly or indirectly) and I don’t know any climate skeptic who does.
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I *like* the idea about getting Koch Bros money — and an ad! — for all climate sites (and others…?)
which support honest science. And, it would be most brilliant if each ad could be personalized with the amount of the Koch Bros’ contribution. …like $4,000 for a new computer.
Amounts could increase over the course of a year and the ad might affirm that no other monies, direct or indirect, supported the site.
AND, it could ask the question about the George Soros-funded sites, both direct and indirect. How much?
This might help dispel the myth about Big Oil and Koch funding, at least a bit. Make Michael Mann look even shorter. ….Lady in Red
I too just made an emergency chocolate donation. Happy to help.
Ed Forbes said
“I sent in a donation. Where do I send the receipt to Koch to get reimbursed?”
Better still, send the receipt to Michael Mann.
Oh to be a fly on the wall when he reads the request for reimbursement since he has played a prime part in this farce.
Ric
It’s certainly worthwhile keeping the John daly site going. It strikes me that the Ernst beck site will presumably at some point need rescuing. Are you or anyone else aware of its current status?
Tonyb
I have all the checks from the Kochs ready to distribute. They are on my desk in our secret volcano base. You all have keys to the base, so feel free to drop by and take your check from my desk, but do not touch my computer – its recording Mann’s phone calls right now…. Bwaa haa haa….
If the Kochs are really spending $100 million annually on climate change denial (as Michael Mann claims), why is prominent skeptic JoNova forking over her own cash to replace her five-year-old computer?
If you want to keep the AGW faithful righteously attending the Church of Gaia…. and contributing substantially to the ‘offering plate’, you must have a few Devils for them to believe in as well!
“The forces of Evil are attacking the holy Church of Gaia, My Brethren! Contribute generously, that we may Save The Planet from the evil adherents of fact based, reproducibly tested science!” So sayeth the Prophet Mann. Hallelujah!!
And so it goes….
MtK
Anthony, gosh, thank you. This is very very helpful. 🙂 Shucks!
For the reader who asked why I self-host: I set up my site originally ten years ago for a totally different purpose, when I turned that static domain into a blog I didn’t know anything about blogs. I quite possibly should have chosen the same format as Anthony, but at the time the advice, the help and the simplest path was self hosted, all done at friends rates. Traffic was low. It was cheap then. After the traffic stats took off, having spent hours mastering a system, I did not want to change. To put it in perspective, the cost of self hosting, while it is significant, is a tiny fraction of the real cost, — the opportunity cost, the full time salary I don’t collect. (That my family bears. And it would probably be same for Anthony).
That said, it is the most rewarding, stimulating pursuit. Mental tennis. If I won lotto I would still be in the fray. And climate skepticism is the best filter to find great people. It won’t be so good once everyone is onto it. 😉
For the reader who asked about the paypal button. Sorry it’s not ideal, but paypal pretty well designed for overseas transactions. Nothing is designed to cope with our Nanny state though – which decreed that I am not allowed to collect “Donations” by that term, because I’m not a registered charity, and you are not freely allowed to choose who you donate your money to. Instead people buy me emergency chocolate supplies (could it get more silly?) and in answer to Jim above, If you put more units in the basket the tally rises above $1. I do love chocolate.
Not to be too precious though, if I had $1 from all my readers I would be doing so well that there would be hordes of liberty bloggers and science writers clamouring to get their share too. It would be a hot-ticket career, and that ladies and gentlemen would be a great thing would it not? Wouldn’t it be something if there was a career path for independent thinkers? A permanent bevy serving the public through voluntary payments instead of coerced ones?
Freedom does not come for free, unfortunately.
Server not found…
11:43 San Diego time, http://joannenova.com.au/
Tom J says:
April 9, 2013 at 9:25 am
“What’s important to note is that Michael Mann is under the delusion that the grant money (translation: forcibly extracted taxpayer money) he receives is ‘good’ money whereas the money (however piddling it may be) that differing scientific research receives is ‘bad’ money.”
The purpose of CO2AGW research is to give statists even more money and control, so under the moral coordinate system of a Michael Mann, there is indeed good money from the state and bad money from the private sector.
Ric Werme said:
April 9, 2013 at 10:09 am
Do you think it’s worthwhile to preserve http://john-daly.com/ ? I’m leading that effort.
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I don’t see a tip-jar on that site; can one be added? If not, how else to contribute?
Thank you for your efforts!
Ryan Gainey says:
April 9, 2013 at 8:18 am
The existence of climate sceptics who aren’t receiving money does not invalidate the claim that the money is being spent. Surely that is obvious to all parties?
Huh? Who/what funds the IPCC? 350.org? NOAA? NASA? Muller? Gavin?
I suppose SOME money is being spent on the skeptic side, but you can’t get grant money for non hockey stick work, and more than likely you will be dismissed from any current university “funded” research if you tried.
Maybe Ryan can google the grant money flowing to Penn State on Mike Mann’s behalf?
Or read about the $179 billion spent on pro AGW research in Jo Nova’s article?
If there is money for hockey sticks, you make freaking hockey sticks, get it?
Ryan Gainey says:
April 9, 2013 at 8:18 am
I’m having trouble discerning a point here which isn’t completely trivial. Of course “money is being spent”; as I commented at Jo Nova’s site when making a donation “speech is free but printing presses cost money”. Everyone on all sides of the climate debate is spending money to present their views, even if it is only coming out of their own pockets. Some people get material support from other pockets; most of the big names in the pro-global warming camp are funded by government jobs, or government or foundation grants. Sceptic blogs like WUWT and JoanneNova are not.
If you take the position that a dollar of Koch brothers money taints anyone who accepts it, you then accept the burden of proving that dollars from Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and George Soros don’t have exactly the same effect. By that reasoning, whoever gets the most money is the most corrupted — you really want to run with that?
An earlier incarnation of the “big oil funded climate denial groups” was tried years ago when Matt Drudge first got started. The established media kept sneering “who is funding him?” rather than admit they’d been scooped; they failed to grasp the shift to new media taking place. Drudge talked about this in a 1998 speech to the National Press Club. Old media just didn’t get it.
Similarly those who think they control (or have privileged access to) scholarly journals and popular coverage of same just don’t accept that people with a very modest investment can reach the same audience.
Addendum to previous: The “modest investment” I meant was monetary. The necessary investment of time and talent is anything but modest.
Greg says:
April 9, 2013 at 8:16 am
I completely disagree about the petty comment. If a Mann will deliberately tell a bald lie about that, what won’t he lie about?”
I actually don’t think that Mann is lying because he really believes everyone is in the pay of Big Oil. He’s like Don Quixote and sees a dragon in every windmill
“http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/meet-the-us-billionaire-who-wants-to-kill-the-keystone-xl-pipeline/article10825081/”
Has any one considered the possibility that their are many large oil interest in the states who do want cheaper crude to compete with their production, thereby reducing their profits?
Whenever you ask these people for evidence there is silence or a pointing to a grant or two made to a few sceptical scientists or a speaking dinner fee. That does not equate to $100 million from Koch as well as the other ‘millions’ from all the other oil, coal and gas companies.
A pooling to get 1 billion would be chump change to these guys yet Anthony Watts has a donate button on the right side bar and appears to be an Amazon Associate and has some ads (some WordPress some your???). This is not the sign of a well funded denialist campaign.
Anyone who thinks sceptics are well funded needs to read Notes From Skull Island and apply reason and logic and you will see that Mann’s claims are sh!te.
Here is Michael Mann’s cash
DirkH on April 9, 2013 at 11:47 am
The purpose of CO2AGW research is to give statists even more money and control, so under the moral coordinate system of a Michael Mann, there is indeed good money from the state and bad money from the private sector.
Quite correct. The problem for the statists is that, in the end, government is a dead load. Stability in a society allows individual, and individually organized group efforts, to flower. Through application of law, and the concept of its unbiased and equal application, government can foster that stability. And THAT is about as far as it should go. When it goes beyond that, the dead load of government, saps the very source (the “bread from the mouth of labor, that it has earned”*) of its own sustenance. That problem, by its intrinsic nature, cannot be reconciled. That’s when it gets nasty. The CAGW crowd refuses to see this.
* That’s a quite tortured quote from Thomas Jefferson’s inaugural address.
Joanne – please put some (or more ads) on your site. Advertisers want to pay you for some of your audience’s attention!
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Ryan Gainey says:
April 9, 2013 at 8:18 am
The existence of climate sceptics who aren’t receiving money does not invalidate the claim that the money is being spent. Surely that is obvious to all parties?
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Of course it doesn’t invalidate the claim, just like the fact that you’ve never seen a Unicorn doesn’t invalidate their existence.
Making a claim that something IS occurring (e.g. that a movement is receiving sizable funding) and then requiring them to prove the negative (that they are not) when there is no apparent evidence to support the claim is a denialism of its own kind.
I have been giving money to my favorite conservative party but now I may have to switch some skeptical sites and I am not talking about skeptical science!
thursa says:
April 9, 2013 at 9:24 am
Wiki is not necessarily the truth. It merely releases information that the owner(s) would prefer wasn’t release into the public domaine.
Ric Werme – john-daly.com is too important to lose. Definitely! I would be willing to make a modest contribution.
It’s good to see Mann applying the same rigor to his analysis of political spending as he does to his climate reconstructions: no data, no methodology, just a BIG SCARY NUMBER!
“For the record I don’t get any money from the Kochs either (either directly or indirectly) and I don’t know any climate skeptic who does.”
It’s got to be Delingpole.
What I find funny about Mann’s claims is that Al Gore got more money in one deal from “Big Oil” than all the skeptic blogs combined. Has Mann ever commented on Al’s of sale his TV thing? (I forget what his network was called. Not very memorable to me.)