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”
Erinath
RT @bengoldacre: Sunday Times publish some pretty desperate climate pseudoscience http://ow.ly/16zRNk
Oxford Kevin
Anon E Mouse, how can you believe that a mistake in the WG2 report says that the Himalayan Glaciers were going to be gone by 2035, when it should have said 2350 means the science isn’t settled. Also note that this number is in the 1000 page impacts report. In chapter of the 1000 page (WG1) science report they have 45 pages on glaciers snow and ice. See http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter4.pdf where they got the number right.
There are very few medical research scientists in the peer review press believed that MMR caused autism. Just like in the 1970s there were very climate scientists who thought global cooling was the problem rather than global warming.
As to the scientists at CRU, throughout all the files and e-mails there is no evidence they tried to fix the data, commit scientific fraud. Hide the Decline was a non issue. Criticizing certain journals for their lack of full peer review rigour and discussing what to do about it and some of the poor quality articles that were published privately amongst colleagues seems not unreasonable, some of their comments were over the top but at least it was private unlike comments on blogs, but all the papers in question were fully covered in the IPCC reports. Just remember that at the time half the editorial board resigned from one of the journals in question after they found that the journal publisher in league with one of the editors were pushing poor quality climate skeptic papers through the review process behind the backs of the other editors.
As to what the temperature range is that the climate scientists would have expected for the last 10 years then check out the graphs linked to here: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/riddle-me-this/
By the way there is plenty of tar sands and coal to cook the climate. Conventional oil reserves maybe not.
Kevin
Anon E Mouse
Kevin – I don’t know what causes climate change – I was lead to believe it has always changed – I’m old enough to remember the Global Cooling in the 1970’s.
My point is that silly alarmist scare stories from the climate change brigade do little to convince the public of your case – especially when a scientifically illiterate man like the Prime Minister calls me a “Flat Earther” and then taxes poor people on cheap holiday flights.
And those other idiot party leaders, Clegg and Cameron are no better.
Do you not think that having a Chairman of the IPCC like Dr Rajendra Pachauri is a mistake?
I have asked before but if this government really believed in climate change they wouldn’t have gone ahead with the third runway at Heathrow any more than Al Gore would step near a plane.
This whole thing has become a religion and until I see proof, not peer reviewed opinion, I remain to be convinced. The planet keeps cooling…
Fair point on the oil reserves though…
Oxford Kevin
I do think that Pachauri was not the best choice, he was forced on the IPCC by Bush and co because Bush and Co didn’t like the Clinton incumbent who according to Bush was too alarmist. Bush wanted someone who was more “Business friendly”. You might remember the global cooling of the seventies, but a paper looking at the published papers of the 70s and whether they were for cooling or warming definitely showed the scientists were on the warming side by a big margin.
What did you think of the graphs of temperature change?
Kevin
Oxford Kevin
By the way any theory, even obvious ones like the conservation of energy can never be proved, they can only be disproved. All science can do with any theory is improve their level of confidence in that theory. That is why we always have to make judgements, at what level of confidence do we decide to take action?