[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
Isn’t this a problem on BOTH sides of the argument? Are you arguing the Pro-global warming hippie crowd has 9:1 more money to spend than the industry anti-Global Warming crowd?
…
Yes and yes. (I am not sure of the exact figure but it dwarfs industy spending)
Where in the hell is the money coming from? And are you talking about funding, or actual profit-spending, like the gas companies have done?
Links maybe?
Government spending.
The authors find that government funding of research has corrupted the scientific process as scientists compete for funding in a politically charged envi-ronment. Total federal spending on global climate change research has ballooned from a few million dollars to $2.1 billion annually in the last 15 years
http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v22n3/warming-journal.html[/quote]
The authors hilariously funded by Big Oil(hundreds of thousands of dollars), but yeah otherwise very credible, except not credible if judged for honesty or accuracy.
Review excerpt from American Scientist:
The Satanic Gases is an altogether different beast. Patrick Michaels and Robert Balling
are professional atmospheric scientists, and the dust jacket of their book states that their
scientific studies support their claim that global warming predictions are “simply wrong.”
The book does not fulfill this claim. Errors in scientific statements are numerous,
misleading logic is used, and much of the “evidence” presented is from earlier, now
superseded, studies.
Minor scientific errors are common: The authors claim the earth
radiates in visible wavelengths; they refer to gamma rays as “thermonuclear signals”; a
thunderstorm is said to collapse when it “literally runs out of air”; ozone is said to break
down to OH; and so on.
They make even more errors when describing policy matters and attempting to disparage
various mainstream scientists. A scientist with whom the authors disagree is likely to be
labeled “federal scientist” or “federal employee,” even when he or she is a university
professor, apparently in the belief that the term “federal” is pejorative. The 1997 Kyoto
Protocol, the agreement to make a small start on greenhouse gas reductions, is repeatedly
criticized, even though the authors’ description of the agreement suggests they have not read the text.
They claim that this treaty allows the United Nations “to invoke whatever
penalty it might choose upon those who do not meet their commitments.” No such
provision occurs in this treaty, nor is it likely that a group of sovereign countries would
delegate such powers to the UN.
A sad aspect of this book is the effort throughout to prove that other scientists are
scientifically dishonest.
Climate modelers are accused of hiding the deficiencies of their
models, when in fact modelers fairly meticulously list the ways in which their models fail to perform and the approximations made in creating a model. Those who choose to
describe a variety of scenarios rather than using one uncertain guess are said to be
employing “politicized fairy tales.”
The most egregious example of a personal attack is a quote taken out of context and
altered to distort its meaning.
The quotation is taken from a published interview with a
well-known scientist in which he discusses problems faced by climate scientists when
talking to congressional committees and the press. In the interview he points out that one
is obligated to give the whole truth, with the caveats–the ifs, ands, and buts. As human
beings, though, he observes, we want to see the world become a better place, to draw
attention to a potentially serious problem, so we feel a pull to use colorful metaphors and
dramatic examples.
This leads to an ethical bind. He concludes that “Each of us has to
decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that
means being both.” Michaels and Balling omit the phrase “I hope that means being both,”
saying only that the scientist has said that "he has to choose ‘the right balance between
being effective and being honest’ about global warming. "
This book cannot be recommended, either as a contribution to public understanding of the
current status of climate change science or as a helpful description of the current
international negotiations searching for a consensus on how and on what time scale the
world should begin the process of reducing emissions of climate-changing gases.
Also note federal funding not the same as funded by Big Oil obviously.