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.
61 Responses to “Sunday Times publish pseudo-science as it were fact – their “scientists” have links to big oil”
Anon E Mouse
Kevin – What does my name have to do with an interest in your job? Just interested is all. You seem to be pretty up to speed on this topic is all. Most people around here never seem to be able to present a case for their statements (even if that case may not be correct).
Me – I’m an engineer currently sub-contracted to work on two projects for energy saving and remote monitoring of gas, water and electricity and the control of those items via the internet.
We have just completed two 12 month test sites where we have cut electricity usage (with no effect on the users in the building) of 26% minimum. That includes outside lighting control and storage heaters remotely set by computer without the need of a timer locally.
We also take advantage of different electricity prices at different times and we can get immediate energy usage (plus csv’s into a spreadsheet) at any time from a website. It’s quite cool really.
Personally I program the embedded devices we use on the local circuits and physically (manually) populate the surface mount devices on the pcbs.
You?
Neil Bartlett
@jasondlee Those "scientists" were funded by Exxon and not peer reviewed http://is.gd/8vJbo Got anything else?
Oxford Kevin
Mr Mouse,
Why having a name matters is that in the past I have found that when someone anonymous starts losing an argument they disappear and a little while later a new anon e mouse turns up with a different argument and you realize from their writing style that they are the same as the first person. I have even had a switch happen on me where the two arguments were mutually exclusive, how can so little carbon have such a big effect, to the absorption bands of carbon are already fully saturated so adding more carbon makes no difference. So posting publicly makes a big difference.
I also find that people who post anonymously often find it easier to malign others.
I am a software engineer, but many years ago I worked for a government research organization, I have a degree in physics and a graduate diploma in robotics. Your work sounds interesting and I am glad to see that you are one of the recipients of the £300 million pounds being spent in Wales in the climate change industry that I couldn’t find anywhere when I checked all the university departments.
I understand why most people struggle to argue a case in comments on sites like leftfootforward. Like me they mostly accept that the scientific process of peer review publication and scientific competition mostly keeps scientists honest. So unless there is actual evidence of scientific fraud, and there is absolutely no evidence in any of the stolen e-mails and files that the scientists in question were trying to cook the data, then they will mostly accept the conclusions of the scientists.
For this very reason I hadn’t thought a lot about the science of climate change since I finished my degree more than 20 years ago, when at that time from my understanding the science was in, and that the warming we have seen since confirms that conclusion.
A few years ago I started following the debate quite closely, but felt that I could not really join in. Though I had read a lot it is very hard to find information that you remembered reading on the internet previously to counter various points. The climate skeptic noise overwhelms the google results. So after a time I started collecting a file with links etc. of what to me is the rational responses to the many skeptic topics that were repeated over and over again. What I have come to describe as zombie talking points because no matter how many times zombie talking point are killed they rise again. What you are seeing now is a consequence of that.
I don’t believe that any discussions like this makes a difference to the science. All that it does is to have a very small impact on public opinion. This in turn makes it hard to provide the motivation you need to not only read a lot but keep track of what you have read, and keeping track of records, and data and links is something which I am poor at.
If you want to read my thoughts about how the process should work then read this piece about http://oxfordkevin.carbonclimate.org/?p=48 on my blog.
So it is unsurprising that most people on websites like this fail to make much of a case, the science is complicated, it is done by professionals who work for many years in a narrow speciality, it is very difficult for outsiders to judge what the science means and in reality for nearly all of us we can only choose to believe what the scientists working in the field say or don’t say. Why then should we bother to learn some of the finer points of climate science just to counter the skeptic arguments purely to stop one more person becoming a skeptic because they see skeptic arguments going unchallenged. Especially when it is meaningless in terms of what the scientific research says.
There are so many things you have said on this thread that I know how to challenge but I just don’t have the time to do so. Your lack of understanding of the scientific process as demonstrated by your “proof” comment demonstrates this, and this is reflected in your other statements. Also rather than address the issues I specified you just said that I was wrong when in previous posts I have tried to respond directly to the points you made.
Oxford Kevin
jeeves
“We used to grow grapes in Vine Street in Cardiff…”
Mr. Mouse, there are many vineyards in Wales.
Anon E Mouse
Jeeves – The point was not just Cardiff – it was that Northern Europe was once far hotter than it is now, there were many more grape growers and there was no man made CO2 to contribute to that hotter climate.
Kevin – I’m not losing the argument for a start and if I was I certainly wouldn’t disappear. I do not malign anyone for anything that I cannot substantiate but I am a realist and not one who is impressed with silly scare stories about anything generally like Millennium Bug – whatever.
I also do not have time to respond to items people post and often on this site you will find people, including the moderators, will argue black is white / night is day which I also do not do. If something is true then it’s true. If it’s not then it’s not.
If I say anything in life I always have a basis for making that remark or I don’t make it. My name is James as I stated to another regular contributor here (Liz McShane) when asked but I like Anon.
On the climate change money, the company has a grant (not taken yet) but because I personally do not believe this change is all man made we are trialling the system on the basis of saving money which it certainly does.
And regarding “proof” if I see a rock fall I believe it has fallen under the influence of gravity. That is proof to me. It may have fallen due to some “sub vortex atomic localised time shifted anomaly” (joke statement) but to me it’s just gravity.
Also if I lack an understanding of the scientific process then so do the “scientists” at the CRU and their so called findings have resulted in the Prime Minister calling me, an ex-Labour voter now, a Flat Earther, a denier and taxed me on my overseas trips which I really object to.
Finally you are the one trying to prove your case on this “science”. It is a battle you are rapidly losing judging by the numbers of people who support your views (that doesn’t make you wrong) so if you did learn the finer points as you put them you may win more people over.
Not me though Kevin – the temperature has gone down since 1998 it may continue downwards – no one knows.