Climate Money Distorts Science
by Joanne Nova. July 31, 2009
PrintFar from being grassroots activists to save the planet, the climate industry is funded with billions. Meanwhile they shut down debate from concerned scientists with libellous claims of “oil shill”, even though oil funded money amounts to paltry loose change. Ominously, giant bankers have moved in, pursuing the trillions of dollars in carbon trading. It’s time to talk about monopoly science, about massive vested interests and it’s time the IPCC version of science was audited.
The US government has a near monopsony on climate research. It has spent over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change.
Despite the billions: “audits” of the science are left to unpaid volunteers. A dedicated but largely uncoordinated grassroots movement of scientists has sprung up around the globe to test the integrity of the theory and compete with a well funded highly organized climate monopoly. They have exposed major errors.
Big money is moving in. Carbon trading worldwide reached $126 billion in 2008. Banks are calling for even more. Experts are predicting the carbon market will reach $2 - $10 trillion making carbon the largest single commodity traded.
Meanwhile in a distracting sideshow, Exxon-Mobil Corp is repeatedly attacked for paying a grand total of $23 million to skeptics—less than a thousandth of what the US government has put in, and less than one five-thousandth of the value of carbon trading in just the single year of 2008.
The large expenditure in search of a connection between carbon and climate creates enormous momentum and a powerful set of vested interests. By pouring so much money into a question have we inadvertently created a self-fulfilling prophesy instead of an unbiased investigation? How could that much money fail to find some links?
Can science survive the vice-like grip of politics and finance?
A Monopsony Distorts Science
In total, over the last 20 years, the US government has poured in $32 billion for climate research—and another $36 billion for development of climate-related technologies. These are actual dollars, obtained from government reports, and not adjusted for inflation. In addition there is funding through tax concessions and foreign aid. And of course, that other not-so- small matter of “other governments” who are also funding the industry, which is not included here.
In 1989, the first specific US climate-related agency was created with an annual budget of $134 million. Today in various forms the funding has leapt to over $7,000 million per annum, around 50 fold higher.
The most telling point is that after spending $30 billion on pure science research no one is able to point to a single piece of empirical evidence that man-made carbon dioxide has a significant effect on the global climate. So far, it’s just a theory.
If carbon is a minor player in the global climate as the lack of evidence suggests, many government programs and some of the green incentives and tax breaks would have less, little, or no reason to exist. At the end of the day, no one can argue that the thousands of players who received these billions of dollars have any real incentive to “announce” the discovery of the insignificance of carbon’s role.
There is no conspiracy. It doesn’t require any centrally coordinated deceit or covert instructions to operate. Instead it’s the lack of funding for the alternatives that leaves a vacuum and creates a systemic failure. The force of monopolistic funding works like a ratchet mechanism on science. Results can move in both directions, but the funding means that only results from one side of the equation get “traction.”
No one is being paid to find holes.
It’s So One-sided that the Science Is Audited by Volunteers
Even the most insignificant “pro-crisis” findings are reported, repeated, trumpeted and asserted, while counter results lie unstudied, ignored and delayed. Auditing the pro-crisis research is so underfunded that for the most part it’s left to unpaid bloggers who collect donations from concerned citizens online.
Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts are just two of the unsung hero’s of science doing unpaid work to expose flaws. Both have categorically busted major claims by the climate industry. McIntyre exposed the Hockey Stick Graph, which used fraudulent analysis and statistical chicanery to remove the medieval warming period and the little ice age. His papers have been published in peer reviewed journals, and upheld by independent analysis.
Anthony Watts has become a lightening rod for hundreds of volunteers to photograph and record temperature sensors used by institutions like NOAA, NASA and the Goddard Institute of Space Studies. The results of his work are truly astounding. Almost 9 out of 10 sensors do not meet required standards—they are too close to heat sources.
Would you use thermometers close to air-conditioning exhaust outlets to measure the temperature? Probably not. But these institutions, funded with billions of dollars do that. How can we compare temperatures today with thermometers of 100 years ago, when measurements that used to be done in quiet grassed areas are now done over asphalt in car-parks; where thermometers that used to be near horse drawn carriages, are now surrounded by nine lanes of traffic; and where sensors have systematically been electronically upgraded but at the same time moved closer to buildings so the cable “can reach”.
This photo is just one of hundreds of embarrassing examples from the Surface Stations project. The truth will come out in the end, but how much damage will accrue while we wait for volunteers to audit the claims of the financially well-fed?
Where’s the Incentive to Prove the Carbon-Crisis is Wrong?
There is a systematic failure within science. Normal incentives have been crushed.
We can assume most scientists are honest and hardworking, but even so, who's kidding that they would all spend as much time and effort looking to disprove AGW as they do to prove it? If your reputation and funding are on the line, you sweat, struggle and stay up late at night to figure out why you’re right and they’re wrong. Competition brings out the best in both sides.
Then there’s not just a lack of financial incentive to drive the auditors, there’s a funded program to act as a disincentive. Volunteer auditors like McIntyre and Watts are often retired scientists, are providing a valuable free service to society, and yet, in return they are attacked, abused, and insulted. There is no other branch of science where paid bloggers write for specialized attack sites to vilify scientists. The intimidation and ad hominem attacks are a powerful form of censorship. Normally scientists who debunk a major theory might win prizes or awards. Instead people finding errors in climate science are rewarded with personal attack pages. (Meanwhile the prizes go to non-scientists worth $100 million for making inaccurate documentaries with misused graphs and which interview no scientists. Is a Nobel prize worth anything anymore?)
The Exxon Blame-Game is a Distracting Side Show
Exxon has been called an Enemy of the Planet, and James Hanson has called for their CEO to be jailed for high crimes against humanity. Exxon is still vilified for giving around 23 million dollars, to skeptics of the enhanced greenhouse effect. It amounts to about $2 million a year, compared to the US government input of well over $2 billion a year. The entire total funds supplied from Exxon amounts to less than one five-thousandth of the value of carbon trading in just the single year of 2008.
Apparently Exxon was heavily “distorting the debate” with a mere 0.8% of what the US government spent on the climate industry each year at the time. (If so, it’s just another devastating admission of how effective government funding really is.)
While Exxon has been attacked repeatedly for putting this insignificant amount of money forward, few have added up the vested interests that are pro-AGW. Where are the investigative journalists? Money that comes from tax-payers is somehow devoid of corrupting incentives; while any money from Big Oil in a free market for ideas, is automatically a “crime”. The irony is that taxpayers’ money is forcibly removed at the point of a gun, but Exxon has to earn its money through thousands of voluntary transactions.
The side show of blaming Big Oil hides the truth: that the real issue is whether there is any evidence, and that the skeptics are a grassroots movement that consists of well respected scientists (including numerous university professors) and a growing group of thousands of unpaid volunteers.
Big Money Gets BIGGER
Emergency rescue packages put into place since October 2008 promise to add billions to the pie. That impact is ominous, but the stealthy mass entry of bankers and traders into the background of the scientific “debate” poses far graver threats to the scientific process.
According to the World Bank, turnover of carbon trading doubled from $63 billion in 2007 to $126 billion in 2008.
To give you an idea of just what kind of a monetary monster is being created, listen to Commissioner Bart Chilton, from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). He predicts that within five years a carbon market would dwarf any of the markets his agency currently regulates: “I can see carbon trading being a $2 trillion market.”
While he points out that it wouldn’t be as large as some of the financial markets, like “Treasury bills” (which is hardly reassuring) it will still be “The largest commodity market in the world.”
The promise of “trillions of dollars” on commodity markets amounts to one of the all-time largest vested interests in any industry. All of that potential money hinges on scientific “findings” that human emissions of carbon dioxide have a significant role in the climate.
Carbon is the New Fiat Currency
Without government decrees about the value of carbon-credits, in any free market the value of air with slightly less carbon in it would quickly trade down to its true value. Nothing. Just like a dollar note from a government that doesn’t exist, it has no value.
Not surprisingly banks are doing what banks should do (for their shareholders). They’re following the promise of profits, and hence urging governments to adopt carbon trading. Banks may be keen to be seen as good corporate citizens, but somehow they don’t find the idea of a non-tradable carbon tax appealing. It might “help the planet,” but it won’t help their balance sheets. The difference is telling.
What About My “Green Investments?”
What the government gives, the government can take away. While green investments are noble, in the present climate it would be very risky for individual investors to place faith in the science that underlies any green investment that has anything to do with greenhouses gases or alternative energies.
As scientists and citizens wake up to the distortions in science, and begin to demand evidence, the market for some technologies like carbon sequestration could literally evaporate, while even other useful projects, like developing solar power, will suffer as the need for alternative energy subsidies plummets.
The Bottom Line
Studying the funding won’t tell us if the planet will warm. The point here is that the process of science can be distorted (like any human endeavor) by a massive one-sided input of money. What use would money be, if it didn’t have some impact?
More than ever, we need to focus closely on the question of evidence. We need to stop the bullying and start debating.
© 2009 Joanne Nova
For more information links and references: Full PDF Document. Commentary, feedback and discussion on Joanne Nova’s site
Joanne Nova is a freelance science writer based in Perth Australia. She’s author of The Skeptics Handbook. 160,000 copies of which have been distributed in the US, Australia, NZ and Sweden. Volunteers have translated the handbook into five languages already.
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