To state, with a straight face, that the jury is still out, or that we can’t separate natural variation from human caused changes, or that the earth has stopped warming for the last decade, or any of the other things we constantly hear from climate change denialists is exactly the same thing as standing there with a big sign that reads “I am a moron.”
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Most times, though, the science-denialism comes from a handful of very active blogs, from those charismatic lecture circuit denizens such as “Lord” Christopher Monkton, and a very large number of commenters and their probable sock puppets who show up at every on line newspaper and blog to spew the same exact lines again and again even though every single remark they make … without exception … has long ago been discredited with science and reason.
It turns out that there is a fairly straight forward explanation for this continued craziness. $500,000,000 dollars.
According to Steve Conner at The Independent,
A secretive funding organisation in the United States that guarantees anonymity for its billionaire donors has emerged as a major operator in the climate “counter movement” to undermine the science of global warming…
The Donors Trust, along with its sister group Donors Capital Fund, based in Alexandria, Virginia, is funnelling millions of dollars into the effort to cast doubt on climate change without revealing the identities of its wealthy backers or that they have links to the fossil fuel industry.
Conner documents a link between billionaire Charles Koch and Donors, via another organization called the “Knowledge and Progress Fund,” which is a Koch Family run non-profit. This organization gave $1.25 million each in 2007 and 2008, $2 million in 2012 to Donors, and appears to have made no other donations to anyone or any thing. According to Conner,
The Donors Trust is a “donor advised fund”, meaning that it has special status under the US tax system. People who give money receive generous tax relief and can retain greater anonymity than if they had used their own charitable foundations because, technically, they do not control how Donors spends the cash.
This is a general pattern among Big Oil, but the Koch Brothers seem to have been competing with the more traditional players for the role of Big Daddy to the climate science deniers.
During the period from 2005 to 2008, inclusively, ExonMObil supplied the science denying community with just under 9 million dollars, while the Koch Brothers kicked in something closer to 25 million dollars to the effort to discredit climate science and climate scientist. One of these well funded efforts is known to most people as “Climate Gate,” a bought and paid for attempt to defame Professor Michael Mann of Pennsylvania University, and climate science in general, by Watergating a large number of emails and cherry picking them to make it appear, falsely, that climate scientist were up to no good. (source)
According to Drexel University sociologist, Robert Brulle,
… approximately $500m has been donated to groups dedicated to casting doubt on the science of climate change, with a large proportion of this money arriving via third party organisations. … “We really have anonymous giving and unaccountable power being exercised here in the creation of the climate counter-movement. There is no attribution, no responsibility for the actions of these foundations to the public.”
I’ve looked all over the internet to find factual statistics for climate change, but have not found any yet. Just put up original photocopies of all the documented statistics and the algorithms that go with them(that are proving your case) and leave it at that.
http://climate.nasa.gov/key_indicators
http://berkeleyearth.org/dataset/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/
James,have you checked under your couch cushions? Sometimes things fall between the cracks.Good luck on your ‘sincere’ quest for the truth.
How come the Koch Brothers are still doing this? When Richard Muller’s BEST study told them what they had expected it to refute – was it not time for any rational supporter of climate change denial to admit that the game was up?
A classic oxymoron there; did you spot it? There are no rational supporters of climate change denial.
Looks like mentioning Donors Trust is a sock puppet magnet. Talk about waving a sign that says “I am a moron.” Well, paid to be a moron, I guess. The previous post this morning on arctic ice loss was shocking, but then, almost all the climate news is shocking these days. Obama gave a good speech, but what he does on Keystone will tell the truth about his position. We’ll see.
Agree that the XL decision will be a key indicator. Great posting, by the way.
One of the problems facing deniers, particularly those who are right wing, and especially those of the Libertarian persuasion, is that they deny climate change because they have too. The earth’s atmosphere is a global commons and so long as someone can profit by dumping stuff into it, someone will continue to do so until some sort of regulation or tax is imposed to discourage such activity.
But how can we get big government off our back’s / drown it in the bath tub, if issues like climate change exist and create a constant need for some sort of authority (who for lack of a word we’ll refer to as “the government”) to enact laws to ensure these issues are properly dealt with?
And of course, even if we can dodge the AGW bullet, there’s still issues such as peak oil, water shortages, environmental pollution (I would argue Climate change is merely a symptom of this wider problem), extinction of endanger wild life, over population, etc, all to worry about!
In essence a free market accolade has essentially two choices at this junction, admit that his philosophy is seriously flawed and that yes there is some role (limited or otherwise) for governments to perform….or denying that the problems mentioned above actually exist.
Inevitably the zealots within the political right opt for the latter option. And when those pesky annoying facts get in the way, they resort to dubious pseudo-science quackery or propagating wild conspiracy theories to fill in the gaps.
http://daryanenergyblog.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/why-do-people-deny-climate-change/
Hence, I don’t “debate” climate with people these days, I’ll merely correct a few well known misconceptions and debunk the odd myth. But I take the view that anyone who comes along who clearly is letting his ideology cloud his judgement, you’re wasting you’re time. You’ve about as much chance of convincing a creationist on evolution, or getting the pope to become Buddhist!
I have had some success (limited) when debating free market types who in principle,accept that global warming is occurring,and that at least some of it is man made(lukewarmers usually) ,by pointing out that free market purists agree that ‘externalities’ ( such as pollution/Co2)are the responsibility of the person who emits them,and they should pay,either by taxation,or whatever mechanism,so the harm and penalty are directly coupled ,so as to discourage harm.
In years to come- people like the Koch’s Go to trial they will say they lied- to protect the Greatness of America, and the Holy Alter of Capitalism. By then what is left of the USA will be zoned, habitable and uninhabitable .
Incredible. Those of you with such negative attitudes are akin to Born-Again-Christians, who have found the ‘TRUTH’. Good luck to you all.
Sifting through the groups Donors Capital Fund supports,
http://www.faqs.org/tax-exempt/VA/Donors-Capital-Fund-Inc.html#suporgs_a
I was curious about the Moving Pictures Institute.
http://www.thempi.org/about_mpi.html
Oh goody, a DVD library for birthers, truthers, and deniers.
I wish I received some money from somebody for being a denier.
Instead, all I get is name calling from people like Peter Sinclair.
In fact, the only “validation” climate psychopaths have of their crank “science” is name calling.
Oh – and bullying, too. Bullying demonstrates that AGW is “valid.”
What is your science background, Brian?
Freely available to anyone who looks it up on the web and can be cross-referenced to any institution.
If you care to do so, and I don’t “look people up on the Internet.”
I admit bias in this matter, however. When I was a sophomore chemistry major in college (1966), I was introduced to AGW by a physical chemist who called the idea “an absurd idea of Arrhenius, debunked early in the 20th century, but continues to resurface.”
So AGW has a shady history associated with it, which appears to be forgotten when people can’t find enough things to worry about (or feel powerless to do anything about events in their world)
While I’m not a climate scientists myself, I seem to recall that the main rebuttal of his theory was A) carbon dioxide levels we’re not rising B) neither was the temperature of the earth and C) he neglected to consider the carbon absorbing abilties of nature, notably the oceans.
However, we now know that A) C02 levels are rising B) so is temperature and C) A study by the Scripps Institute (50’s or 60’s, can’t remember which) showed that the ability of the oceans to absorb C02, had been vastly over estimated, notably because previous theory had failed to account for seasonal variations.
So in short, Arrhenius is only debunked if we ignore all climate science between 1950 and the present day….course, I sometimes get the impression that’s exactly what deniers do!
Check out the argument against the “Atmospheric Greenhouse effect” published by the American physicist, Robert W Wood (Phil Mag, 1914)
Come back and debunk that for us
They pine for the good ole days,you know,when men were men,and women knew their place,and sanitation and vaccines didn’t interfere with our ‘precious bodily fluids’. The hazy, lazy days of ignorance and bliss…sigh
But alas! We have eaten of the bitter fruit of knowledge,and now it is our punishment to glimpse our fate,and there are now those who would deny it.
That would be Roger Revelle and Hans Suess you are talking about. And it did not Invalidate Arrhenius.
Arrhenius work was on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere not absorption of carbon dioxide in the oceans. This was the mid-50s no real measurement of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere’s were made until the geophysical year by Keeling. The question of the existence of the greenhouse effect in the 1950s was related to the assumption that all the carbon dioxide that was produced by humans would be absorbed in the ocean which Roger Revelle and Hans Suess showed that that was not the case. That there was a limit to the amount of CO2 absorption in the ocean. The effect of CO2 being a greenhouse gas is never question somehow I think you are confused.
Arrhenius works dealt with the explanation for the ice ages in the geologic past. He make calculations that doubling of carbon dioxide atmosphere would cause an increase in temperature.He also said that humans would increase CO2 levels would also do the same. How in the world does this debunk basic physics or Arrhenius?
Brian G Valentine
Robert W Wood. He published in the journal Philosophical Magazine, in 1909 and I suggest you READ IT
It is about The greenhouse effect inside a real GREENHOUSE is due to the blockage of convective heat transfer with the environment and it is not related, neither obeys, to any kind of “trapped” radiation
He is correct your denialest information is false.
Is it therefore necessary to pay attention to trapped radiation in deducing the temperature of a planet as a affected by its atmosphere? The solar rays penetrate the atmosphere, warm the ground which in turn warms the atmosphere by contact and by convection currents. The heat received is thus stored up in the atmosphere,remaining there on account of the very low radiating power of a gas. It seems to me very doubtful if the atmosphere is warmed to any great extent by absorbing the radiation from the ground, even under the most favourable conditions.
– Wood, Phil Mag, 1909, reproduced 1914
Brian,even denier climate scientists like Christy,Lindzen,and Spencer (hell,even ‘Lord” Monckton) do not dispute the greenhouse effect of Co2.Sheesh!!!
When I hear deniers/creationists (all the same really!) complain about “being bullied”, I translate that as “use big words and equations that make brain hurt” ;0
They are not the “same,” “biology” has no meaning to me outside of “evolutionary biology.”
This is just another argument used to bully.
As Lindzen points out, the most effective tool AGW advocates have is criticism of people’s “intellect” if they question AGW.
As far as I am concerned, it is the only argument to validate AGW.
Ah….so you’re going to ignore all of the scientific evidence built up by the IPCC, or like I said, ignore all scientific evidence that confirms AGW since the 50’s and only consider stuff that supports you’re argument.
If so then basically, we’re no longer having a scientific argument. As you are letting you’re poltics cloud you’re judgement. When rational logic fails, one is often forced to rely on sarcasm to get the message across.
The IPCC was (is) a review panel, which selectively promoted studies supportive of their viewpoint. The panel allowed no publication of a “minority report” or anything else that criticized their findings, which by the way were terribly exaggerated by the “graduate students” (no joke!) who wrote the “Summaries for Policy Makers.”
I was going to be part of IPCC, when it first formed, as rep from the US DOE. My opinions on the matter at that time were not welcomed, and I received no more communication from them.
The IPCC was (is) a review panel, which selectively promoted studies supportive of their viewpoint.
How do they do that and get away with that, Brian? how does the IPCC get away with getting every prestigious scientific institution on the planet, with no exceptions, to go along along with this fraud?
You have the floor, spell it out.
At the heart of every AGW denier argument lies the conspiracy.
“So AGW has a shady history associated with it, which appears to be forgotten when people can’t find enough things to worry about (or feel powerless to do anything about events in their world)”
You realize that you have here just elevated the viewpoint of one dismissive physical chemist, and one physicist (who published in 1913) above the viewpoints of thousands of modern climate scientists, and many tens of thousands of other scientists in many disciplines – including p-chem and physics – who belong to professional organizations, all of which do not believe the Greenhouse effect is bogus?
I assume you are familiar with Occam’s razor. Which set of comparators do you think would be much more likely to have a “shady history”? Do you see how your conclusion – that the greenhouse effect indeed has a “shady history” is apt to be viewed by an objective observer?