Today's Sunday Rimes runs pseudo-science as if it were real science - their "scientists", however, have links to the Exxon-funded "Heartland Inst." lobby group.
The Sunday Times today run pseudo-science as if it were real science with a story titled:
“World may not be warming, say scientists”
So just who are these ‘scientists’ making the claim at the heart of The Sunday Times’s story?
According to the lobbying transparency organisation SourceWatch, the so-called “Science and Public Policy Institute” (SPPI) – who are named in The Sunday Times as the organisation behind the “research” – are none other than a spin off of the Exxon-funded group “The Frontiers of Freedom”.
The SPPI website shows that they are also linked to the Exxon-funded lobby group, the Heartland Institute. Indeed, the first press release of the SPPI listed a Heartland Institute staffer as its press contact.
The Royal Society has attacked Exxon for its funding of such front groups, which have been described as “the climate denial industry”.
The ‘research paper’ was not ‘peer reviewed,’ which isn’t surprising given that the ‘scientist’ who authored the paper is Anthony Watts, known to the rest of us as one of the world’s leading climate denial bloggers and somebody without any climate science credentials.
The SPPI draws heavily on the papers of Lord Monckton, who the SPPI list among their “personnel”. Viscount Monckton is a UKIP peer who claims to have a Nobel Prize when he doesn’t.
He also claims to have a cure for HIV! Of course he doesn’t. He described the Copenhagen conference as “a sort of Nuremburg rally,” and recently attacked a young Jewish climate campaigner as “Nazi”.
Also today, The Mail on Sunday reports the astonishing claim that “there has been no global warming since 1995”.
In reality, according to both the World Meteorological Society (WMO) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the 2000s were the warmest decade on record.
The Mail’s claim is particularly ironic given that the website of the climate denial lobby group, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, promotes a graph of temperatures beginning in 2001, presumably precisely to conceal the marked warming recorded through the 20th Century and the fact that nine of the ten warmest years occurred this decade.
In related news, it has been reported how a quote held up by sceptics as a ‘smoking gun’, as it was purported to have come from former IPCC and Met Office climate scientist Sir John Houghton, was fabricated.
Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation quoted Houghton as saying “unless we announce disasters no one will listen” – but on the letters page of today’s Observer, Houghton demands a public retraction from Peiser.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation, whilst demanding transparency from the scientific community, refuses to reveal who fund them. As Left Foot Forward has already reported, however, many of their key people have ties to the fossil fuel industry.
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61 Responses to “Sunday Times publish pseudo-science as it were fact – their “scientists” have links to big oil”
Dominic Brown
RT @bengoldacre: Sunday Times publish some pretty desperate climate pseudoscience http://ow.ly/16zRNk
Anon E Mouse
Mr.Sensible – You may have doubts about the impact but everyone else doesn’t. Only 24% now believe in (man made) climate change – down from 41% I believe.
It is in the interests of Joss Garman and his ilk who earn a living from this nonsense to perpetuate the whole thing.
This is going to go the way of GM food, cell phones causing cancer, MMR, Swine Flu, CJD and all the other scare stories that just get superseded by newer scare stories…
Richard Boulter
https://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/02/sunday-times-publish-pseudo-science-as-it-were-fact-their-scientists-have-links-to-big-oil/
Liberal Conspiracy » Watts Up with The Sunday Times?
[…] Foot Forward has some of the relevant background to Watts’ report, which he co-authored with another well-known climate change denier, Joseph […]
Barry Norton
This blog post does a real disservice to Climate Science and I’m surprised that Ben Goldacre promoted it.
What do the distasteful (Godwinesque) personal comments about a campaigner, and your other ad hominem attacks, have to do with the article, and why hold up the WMO and NOAA statistics as if they contradict the claim made (right or wrong) when, in fact, they don’t?
Don’t stoop to the opposing side’s level!