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”
Mwezzi
Sunday Times forgets to check extreme bias in sources when reporting the 'non-existence' of climate change: http://tinyurl.com/ykbfpo5
Oxford Kevin
Leakegate is getting bigger and bigger.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/leakegate.php
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/leakegate_scandal_grows.php
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/leakegate_scandal_gets_bigger.php?
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/leakegate_the_case_for_fraud.php?
Phil Clark
Reading the thread on this Sunday Times piece http://ow.ly/17sLH and considering topping myself
pv
So “only 24% believe in man made global warming”. So?
I like the idea that facts are determined by how many people believe in them. But I think religion already has the rights to that one.
And in the real world it doesn’t matter who believes what, so it’s not particularly impressive that 76% of the world’s population doesn’t believe in man-made global warming. Similar numbers I’ll bet didn’t believe that tobacco smoke is the single biggest cause of lung cancer, or that tetra-ethyl lead in petrol cause drain damage, or that CFCs in the atmosphere destroy the ozone layer, or that asbestos particles in the air can kill you… all those silly scares.
It’s easy to talk about climate science and (and the work of thousands of scientist around the world) and compare it to MMR scares (and Saint Andrew Wakefield’s lying and conniving) and the like, but it’s also moronic and shows a complete lack of knowledge of how the scientific process works.
Anon E Mouse
pv – You miss the point. The science clearly isn’t settled – if it was then the glaciers would be gone by 2035 and on and on. Your opinion is now in a minority which doesn’t make it wrong but without public opinion on your side you fight a losing battle.
Two years ago everyone believed that MMR caused autism. At one time people believed the world was flat. Both opinions have been shown to be wrong and in time most people believe that this climate stuff will be proven wrong also.
As the oils runs out; by definition less can be used resulting in less CO2.
If you believe the change in climate is man made (I don’t know myself) shouldn’t you be angry that “scientists” at the CRU behaved so badly? Why not challenge the sceptics with science rather than the usual shoot the messenger stuff.
I was lead to believe that 1998 was the hottest year on record so for over a decade the planet has cooled. What’s the problem then?