Climategate--Let's Follow the Money, Shall We?

[Waitone]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703939404574566124250205490.html

Last year, ExxonMobil donated $7 million to a grab-bag of public policy institutes, including the Aspen Institute, the Asia Society and Transparency International. It also gave a combined $125,000 to the Heritage Institute and the National Center for Policy Analysis, two conservative think tanks that have offered dissenting views on what until recently was called—without irony—the climate change "consensus."

To read some of the press accounts of these gifts—amounting to about 0.00027% of Exxon's 2008 profits of $45 billion—you might think you'd hit upon the scandal of the age. But thanks to what now goes by the name of climategate, it turns out the real scandal lies elsewhere.

Climategate, as readers of these pages know, concerns some of the world's leading climate scientists working in tandem to block freedom of information requests, blackball dissenting scientists, manipulate the peer-review process, and obscure, destroy or massage inconvenient temperature data—facts that were laid bare by last week's disclosure of thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, or CRU.

But the deeper question is why the scientists behaved this way to begin with, especially since the science behind man-made global warming is said to be firmly settled. To answer the question, it helps to turn the alarmists' follow-the-money methods right back at them.

Consider the case of Phil Jones, the director of the CRU and the man at the heart of climategate. According to one of the documents hacked from his center, between 2000 and 2006 Mr. Jones was the recipient (or co-recipient) of some $19 million worth of research grants, a sixfold increase over what he'd been awarded in the 1990s.

Why did the money pour in so quickly? Because the climate alarm kept ringing so loudly: The louder the alarm, the greater the sums. And who better to ring it than people like Mr. Jones, one of its likeliest beneficiaries?

Thus, the European Commission's most recent appropriation for climate research comes to nearly $3 billion, and that's not counting funds from the EU's member governments. In the U.S., the House intends to spend $1.3 billion on NASA's climate efforts, $400 million on NOAA's, and another $300 million for the National Science Foundation. The states also have a piece of the action, with California—apparently not feeling bankrupt enough—devoting $600 million to their own climate initiative. In Australia, alarmists have their own Department of Climate Change at their funding disposal.

And all this is only a fraction of the $94 billion that HSBC Bank estimates has been spent globally this year on what it calls "green stimulus"—largely ethanol and other alternative energy schemes—of the kind from which Al Gore and his partners at Kleiner Perkins hope to profit handsomely.

Supply, as we know, creates its own demand. So for every additional billion in government-funded grants (or the tens of millions supplied by foundations like the Pew Charitable Trusts), universities, research institutes, advocacy groups and their various spin-offs and dependents have emerged from the woodwork to receive them.

Today these groups form a kind of ecosystem of their own. They include not just old standbys like the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, but also Ozone Action, Clean Air Cool Planet, Americans for Equitable Climate Change Solutions, the Alternative Energy Resources Association, the California Climate Action Registry and so on and on. All of them have been on the receiving end of climate change-related funding, so all of them must believe in the reality (and catastrophic imminence) of global warming just as a priest must believe in the existence of God.

None of these outfits is per se corrupt, in the sense that the monies they get are spent on something other than their intended purposes. But they depend on an inherently corrupting premise, namely that the hypothesis on which their livelihood depends has in fact been proved. Absent that proof, everything they represent—including the thousands of jobs they provide—vanishes. This is what's known as a vested interest, and vested interests are an enemy of sound science.

Which brings us back to the climategate scientists, the keepers of the keys to the global warming cathedral. In one of the more telling disclosures from last week, a computer programmer writes of the CRU's temperature database: "I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seems to be in nearly as poor a state as Australia was. . . . Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight. . . . We can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage!"

This is not the sound of settled science, but of a cracking empirical foundation. And however many billion-dollar edifices may be built on it, sooner or later it is bound to crumble.

So now we get a glimpse of some of the money at the worker and drone bee level.  Would any of APS's academic types care to help us understand how the grant business works?

[RevDisk]

So now we get a glimpse of some of the money at the worker and drone bee level.  Would any of APS's academic types care to help us understand how the grant business works?

On paper, typically, a grant is offered of X amount in a specific or general area.  Proposals are written and tendered for consideration.  The proposals are evaluated using fair, unbiased and procedural methods to determine the "best" proposal(s) who are then awarded the money, resources, et al specified in the grant.

In reality, it's often a political byzantine system of fiefdoms, patronage and favor-peddling.  Grants are often awarded on who sucks up the best, likelihood of generating further funding to the grant issuer, or is guaranteed to deliver the goods (ie only give results that match the ideology of the grant issuer).  Little is fair or unbiased.  Don't get me wrong, there are grant sources that are fairly above-board.  DARPA and DoD, some private foundations, etc.  Non-military government grants?  Oh gods, the horror, the horror.  Well, not always, but pretty often. 

Math and physics grants are generally above board.  Further you get away from the 'hard sciences' (ie provably true or false), the more corrupt it gets.  By the time you're getting to sociological, wedge issue science and art...  it's nothing but corruption.

[longeyes]

Grantsmanship is a fine art--and quite lucrative.  Specialists in the art can make well into six figures a year over and above their "real" jobs.  Every thriving NGO or government operation has its grantwriter ninja.

Slowly but surely the word "grant" is replacing the odious "profit motive."

[French G.]

And that's how you shut up dissenting scientists. No grants for you!

[Physics]

From what I understand, grant writing is all about buzzwords and pretty pictures.  I also know about cases of people not getting grants because they didn't give credit to a colleague on a paper for work done, and that colleague ends up on the review panel for a grant that person is applying for.  Favoritism I haven't heard about so much but I'm sure it happens as well.

[Balog]

And that's how you shut up dissenting scientists. No grants for you!

Ayup. Which is why so many unproven theories have become enshrined as common knowledge; cause anyone daring to question is automatically dismissed as unserious (and their work is not peer reviewed) and they gets no grants.

[Nitrogen]

Ayup. Which is why so many unproven theories have become enshrined as common knowledge; cause anyone daring to question is automatically dismissed as unserious (and their work is not peer reviewed) and they gets no grants.

Which "unproven theories" are you referring to?

[Balog]

Which "unproven theories" are you referring to?

I think you know. And I think you know this thread will be on the fast train to locksville if you drag me into an argument about that. So I'm going to ignore your attempt at a thread derailing red herring and ask you this.

Do you think the current grant system encourages or discourages scientific objectivity and independence of inquiry?

[Iain]

Using the term "unproven theories" is bound to provoke a question. Hardly a red herring, it speaks directly to your understanding of science and your ideas about what should and should not receive funding/be taught/studied.

[MicroBalrog]

Using the term "unproven theories" is bound to provoke a question. Hardly a red herring, it speaks directly to your understanding of science and your ideas about what should and should not receive funding/be taught/studied.

As someone who studies in a public university because the state owns all universities:

Nothing.

The state should not fund science outside of defense spending. Public universities must be privatized, or better yet, have their campi burned to the ground, and salt sown on the ruins.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

Iain

what proofs do you offer on agw?

[Iain]

Iain

what proofs do you offer on agw?

Why the word 'proof'?

[MicroBalrog]

Why the word 'proof'?

Science. It relies on it.

[Iain]

Science. It relies on it.

Is a theory unproven?

[MicroBalrog]

A theory must:

1. Account for the existing knowledge in the field.
2. Provide an explanation for existing facts.
3. Predict future facts that may occur or be discovered.

Proof is necessary for 1 and 2. 3 provides an opportunity to disprove your theory in the future.

[Iain]

You can 'prove' that it fits the facts, 'prove' that it is an explanation for the facts and continue to make good predictions based on it. That makes it a good scientific theory.

Do people accept that as the meaning of 'proof'? Especially when that asserts that certain unpalatable theories are 'proven'? The frequent retort on evolution/AGW discussions is - "it's only a theory, it's not proven"? Is that the same meaning of the word 'proof' as the one you have given?

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Think "testable" rather than "provable".  The scientific method requires hypotheses and theories to be testable.  Otherwise all you have is idle speculation.

Tell me how to test AGW theory.

The overarching hypothesis of AGW is that calamity will ensue (rising seal levels, wicked hurricanes, droughts, whatever) in 50 or 100 years if we don't cripple our standard of living.  It seems as though it's set up to be inherently untestable.  Which, to me, sounds as though it's deliberately set up to be non-scientific.

[MicroBalrog]

AGW, however, is not necessarily proven even in that sense.

[Balog]

Using the term "unproven theories" is bound to provoke a question. Hardly a red herring, it speaks directly to your understanding of science and your ideas about what should and should not receive funding/be taught/studied.

So attacking the person making the argument vs the argument itself... Sounds about right.

Think "testable" rather than "provable".  The scientific method requires hypotheses and theories to be testable.  Otherwise all you have is idle speculation.

Tell me how to test AGW theory.

They test it all the time! They just won't tell you how...

[Iain]

Balog - it's hardly attacking you to ask what you mean by 'unproven theories'. The simple fact is that the public understanding of proven is not the same as the scientific meaning. Like I say I could not count how many times I have seen 'X isn't proven, it is only a theory', which is a not a statement that is useful in a scientific context.

[Ben]

Think "testable" rather than "provable".  The scientific method requires hypotheses and theories to be testable.  Otherwise all you have is idle speculation.

Further, contrary to very recent scientific ideology, science is not about proving the hypothesis. It's about disproving the negative hypotheses until no more negative hypotheses can be disproved. Independent, repeatable tests with all original raw data are used for verification. At that point you have sound theory, or in some instances scientific law.

There used to be a very honorable title -- the Skeptical Scientist. As science and politics become interwoven, we have more people using the inferior methodology of "I proved my hypothesis, and my colleagues agree" (such as in consensus science -- a political, not scientific construct) versus the sounder methodology of, "I came up with hypothesis "A", let's prove me wrong". The former method seems to have lately encroached across the scientific spectrum. The latter method used to be considered fun and exciting, because it was just as cool to be proven wrong and to eliminate a possibility, as it was to be proven correct (or potentially correct).

[Jocassee]

As someone who studies in a public university because the state owns all universities:

Nothing.

The state should not fund science outside of defense spending. Public universities must be privatized, or better yet, have their campi burned to the ground, and salt sown on the ruins.

This quote made my day.

[French G.]

Think "testable" rather than "provable".  The scientific method requires hypotheses and theories to be testable.  Otherwise all you have is idle speculation.

Tell me how to test AGW theory.

The overarching hypothesis of AGW is that calamity will ensue (rising seal levels, wicked hurricanes, droughts, whatever) in 50 or 100 years if we don't cripple our standard of living.  It seems as though it's set up to be inherently untestable.  Which, to me, sounds as though it's deliberately set up to be non-scientific.

I has a club. There, globular warming solved.

[brimic]

There used to be a very honorable title -- the Skeptical Scientist. As science and politics become interwoven, we have more people using the inferior methodology of "I proved my hypothesis, and my colleagues agree" (such as in consensus science -- a political, not scientific construct) versus the sounder methodology of, "I came up with hypothesis "A", let's prove me wrong". The former method seems to have lately encroached across the scientific spectrum. The latter method used to be considered fun and exciting, because it was just as cool to be proven wrong and to eliminate a possibility, as it was to be proven correct (or potentially correct).

Ben nailed it.

Science is not about proving things right directly, but proving things wrong. Its definately not about consensus building.
Consensus building in the past has led to people being ostracized (or even killed) for having viewpoints that the Earth is not flat or that the Earth is not the center of the universe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

[Balog]

Iain: my thoughts on unrelated matters have what to do with this debate again? Aside from seeking to discredit my opinion...