Noble cause corruption gone wild. People tend to think of scientists as being unbiased, in climate science, apparently if you aren’t biased, you aren’t doing useful work.
From CFACT: A new peer-reviewed paper published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, titled “Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements”, is openly advocating that global warming proponents engage in mendacious claims in order to further their cause.
The paper appears to openly advocate “information manipulation” to further the cause of man-made global warming and “enhance global welfare.”
The authors, Assistant Professors of Economics Fuhai Hong and Xiaojian Zhao, note how the media and environmental groups “exaggerate” global warming and then offer their paper to “provide a rationale for this tendency” to exaggerate for the good of the cause.
The paper was published on February 24, 2014.
The author’s boldly note in the abstract of the study that the “news media and some pro-environmental have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate the damage caused by climate change. This article provides a rationale for this tendency.”
“We find that the information manipulation has an instrumental value, as it ex post induces more countries to participate in an IEA (International Environmental Agreement) which will eventually enhance global welfare.”
The authors of the paper, Fuhai Hong is an assistant professor in the Division of Economics, Nanyang Technological University. Xiaojian Zhao is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
The complete Abstract of the paper is reproduced below:
###
The paper:
Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements
+ Author Affiliations
- Correspondence may be sent to: fhhong@ntu.edu.sg.
-
The authors thank Larry Karp, Madhu Khanna, Jinhua Zhao, two anonymous referees, and participants in the Conference on Global Environmental Challenges: the Role of China for their helpful comments.
Abstract
It appears that news media and some pro-environmental organizations have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate the damage caused by climate change. This article provides a rationale for this tendency by using a modified International Environmental Agreement (IEA) model with asymmetric information. We find that the information manipulation has an instrumental value, as it ex post induces more countries to participate in an IEA, which will eventually enhance global welfare. From the ex ante perspective, however, the impact that manipulating information has on the level of participation in an IEA and on welfare is ambiguous.
We’ve always known these people were mendacious and fundamentally amoral – no surprise here. The whole leftist/environmentalist meme always has been.
This is far from the first time the corruption of global warming alarmism has been so baldly exposed – inter alia, the several Climategates have already done a pretty good job of that, as have the Senate hearings where the alarmist witnesses so transparently lied their heads off.
I haven’t read the full paper, but the abstract does not say that one should engage in such data manipulation. It says that ex post it can have a good result, ex ante the results are ambiguous.
Given the assumption—that policy to prevent warming is a good thing—that sounds like a pretty straightforward argument. Lying to people for their own good may be morally wrong, but it isn’t obvious that it never works.
Aphan says:
April 4, 2014 at 9:16 am
“Hang on a moment, I hate it when the AGW crowd says something about a paper that the paper itself doesnt actually say. We also wouldn’t to be guilty of “exaggerating” the claims in this paper would we?
The “article” (as opposed to a study) as represented above does NOT say anything about scientists manipulating data or using corrupt methods in scientific studies.”
Yes, but they don’t need to. We have already caught them. Enter the USA’s finest (history rewriters); NASA:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/hansen-changed-the-world-in-2000/
“Even at present, the only truly viable definition of “history” is: fiction with foot notes.”
So why do you refer to history at all if it really is just fiction with foot notes?
Not all history is fiction. Not all history is accurate.
Doug Proctor says:
April 4, 2014 at 8:39 am
“Chinese: possible live grenade for the warmist camp disguised as support. A “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him” , but in reverse.”
Good idea. Much Sun Tsu.
I expected to see The Pacific Institute referenced in the paper’s abstract, because this has the look of Peter Gleick’s fine body of work.
The comments to this post are a little like folks interpreting an abstract painting in a museum, everyone has an individual take. The abstract may have been ambiguous but the headline introducing the post was a mischaracterization. This was an opinion piece, not a peer reviewed paper. Take it all with a grain of salt.
Don’t know about you, but to me the following suggests it was ‘peer reviewed’. Elsewise what were the referees doing?
“The authors thank Larry Karp, Madhu Khanna, Jinhua Zhao, two anonymous referees, and participants in the Conference on Global Environmental Challenges: the Role of China for their helpful comments.”
Well, many Chinese are still communist and commies are people of the left. This is the way their minds work. They think backwards. Instead of following reason and evidence they start with the conclusion they think must be right and find excuses to ignore contrary reason and evidence while exaggerating supporting reason and evidence.
They certainly can be effective propagandists, but as soon as a person abandons reason in support of what he believes to be right, it is guaranteed that his presumptions about what is right are going to be wrong. Reality does not care what anybody thinks. It goes its own way, and the only way to discern it is by following reason and evidence. Anyone who isn’t doing that will make fifty wrong turns in the first mile. It is simply not possible to IMAGINE where reality is going to go. You have to follow it.
Yet these “economists” are presuming that people who ignore sound reasoning in order to support pre-formed conclusions will nevertheless be putting forward policies that “enhance global welfare.” IMPOSSIBLE. Backwards thinkers ideas about what is right will be systematically wrong. That is the nature of the left and why it is always such a disaster. Think Obamacare, or working for four years to install the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent organization of al Qaeda, into power in Egypt. Thank God that one blew up in Obama’s face, like an explosion in a terrorist bomb factory, eeehaw.
The most destructive thing going on now is the war on CO2, eating out the remaining prosperity of the modern west with oceans of green energy corruption. These advocates of green propaganda are not economists, meaning they are not doing proper economics. They are ecommunists.
I haven’t read it yet either, but I did find this email exchange between the authors and a fellow agriculture economist, Jayson Lusk. It is from Lusk’s blog.
Really smart strategy, warmistas. /sarc. The whole reason I became a skeptic in the first place — back in the mid-aughts — was because of obviously grossly exaggerated claims that a warming world would cause one to get bad acne, cause more earthquakes, make one’s manhood shrivel into oblivion, etc.
Well now that they have declared an official position of exaggeration for effect, and have even published a peer-reviewed study we can all cite in response to these exaggerations, I expect skeptics to increase their numbers with free-thinkers who become suspicious at their lies. The more outlandish the exaggeration, the better for skeptics.
which will eventually enhance global welfare.
================
which will eventually enhance global warfare.
The problem with Nobel cause corruption is that it establishes that FALSE = TRUE. From this many other harmful effects will now appear beneficial as the faulty logic spreads through the system. Until eventually the Nobel cause devours the host and from the ashes the survivors start again. We had to kill them to save them from themselves.
I warned you…
Hasn’t harmed any of the major religions, what makes you think it will make a difference to “climate science”?
A “green” tactic since the inception of the enviro movement. No surprise here.
Umm… it is time to be more clear about what happened. Do take a look at this:
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/04/ignoble-cause-anthony-watts-tells-lie.html
Sorry to be pedantic Anthony, but your quote from the abstract omits the word “organization”.
Sorry, “”organizations”.
[FEELS FLUSH OF EMBARRASSMENT]
The assumption in this paper is that an International Environmental Agreement “will eventually enhance global welfare”. That’s an unproven assumption, even if it is known what is meant by “global welfare”, which it is not. To me, FREEDOM is an important part of my own personal welfare, and any IEA will probably lessen my own personal freedom. But even if you discard freedom from the “welfare function”, numerous things that could be said to contribute to “global welfare” will be worsened by an IEA, or at least one that has any hope of stopping climate change. For example, the cost of goods will increase dramatically as the energy required to transport them is artificially limited, and/or the price of said energy increases. Also, money that COULD be spent to feed the hungry, or eradicate malaria, or other things that will enhance global welfare, will instead be MISspent to “stop global warming”.
If the climate scientist are right, your freedom and cost of goods and services will be even more severely hampered down the road much more than the cost of cautionary steps now. Actually, becoming more energy efficient very possibly would save us money, even if global weirding didn’t exist.
Matayaya, let me see if I understand you correctly. In your mind, massively increasing costs now will save money later because of the costs of “global weirding” would cost.
First, I say “massively” because energy efficiency will not be enough to eliminate CO2 output from the world economy. It will mean embracing provably insufficient, inefficient and inconsistent energy sources (unless we go all nuclear electric generation).
Second, your statement that this “would save us money, even if global weirding didn’t exist” is totally false since it costs massively more to live on “renewable energy” and without the offsetting costs of “global weirding” it will still cost us more in the foreseeable future.
Finally, you say that “global weirding” exists. I refer you to some simple facts that are provable with actual data (not models):
1. Hurricanes around the world are not up, but down in frequency and total energy
2. Tornadoes around the world are not up, but down in frequency and total energy
3. There has been no discernable change in the frequency or duration of droughts and floods
4. The calculated average temperature of the earth has not increased in over a decade and a half by all databases available.
5. The UN IPCC says that no effect of CO2 contributed by industrialization can be detected prior to 1950. However, the increase in temperature between 1900 and 1950 is indistinguishable from the increase in temperature between 1950 and 2000 (and on to the present).
From this I ask, on what do you base “global weirding”? The only known basis for this is climate models whose predictions are falsified by the facts given above.
Therefore, increasing the costs by using inefficient, unreliable, insufficient and inconsistent energy sources cannot be justified… especially when we have hundreds of millions of people around the world in real poverty caused by energy poverty.
JimS says: @ur momisugly April 4, 2014 at 8:42 am
Such stupidity – the first principle of propaganda is never admit that it is propaganda.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Or it is another effort to sabotage the climate/environmental talks coming up soon. Remember at this point China is SELLING her goods to westerners esp. those in the USA.
How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room
They have ceased to be scientists and become propagandists. Lysenko would be proud. Of course they don’t care that science will suffer as a result of this