Here’s some coal to stoke the engines of cynicism. Academic opinion for hire, according to Elizabeth McSheffry in the National Observer. Plus discussion of how to deliver hard-to-trace funding.
A recent undercover investigation by Greenpeace suggests two prominent climate skeptic researchers were willing to take payment from companies to produce peer-reviewed research, and hide the sources of funding for their research.
The environmental organization released the results of an October ‘sting operation’ on Tuesday, revealing two prominent, U.S. scholars willing to write pro-fossil fuel papers for energy companies in exchange for cash ranging between USD 8,000 and USD 15,000 a piece.
During its investigation, Greenpeace UK reporters posed as consultants for fake oil and coal corporations with interests in Indonesia and the Middle East. They asked professors Frank Clemente of Penn State University and William Happer of Princeton University to write articles promoting their clients’ interests in the wake of the COP21 climate talks in Paris.
Both agreed, and further promised not to disclose the source of their papers’ funding or any salary paid to them.
Just to lighten things up, here’s the ever-amusing Tabatha Southey in the Globe and Mail on emerging naming conventions for climate science deniers. This prompted by the AP’s revised style guide, asking for the terms “climate-change denier” and “climate-change skeptic” to be referred to as “climate-change doubter”. Her response: a few observations, followed by A Field Guide to People Who Are Really Wrong About Climate Change.
. . . actual skeptics, those who labour to debunk pseudo-science and mysticism, resent people who reject overwhelming scientific evidence encroaching on their world.
It must gall genuine skeptics to be associated with a fringe minority who, eschewing empirical evidence, lean toward secret-society-type conspiracy theories instead. Skeptics can’t possibly appreciate being lumped in with people who frequently cite statistics without context and with no apparent understanding of the meaning of many of the words they’re chanting; stats like spells.
Those who reject mainstream climate science are the pre-eminent magical thinkers of our age.
Sample from Ms. Southey’s field guide:
Climate-change ostrich
-
Call: “Most of the world’s scientists are wrong, the Earth stopped warming 15 years ago!” This cry is followed, if ostriches are presented with proof that, over the past 15 years, our planet has accumulated heat at a rate equivalent to four Hiroshima atomic-bomb detonations per second, by a piercing “Look, I just want to wait until all the facts are in!”
-
Population: Once common, the climate-change ostrich is now a rarer bird, its call having lost much of its resonance as acceptance of the reality and menace of climate change has become mainstream, even in conservative circles. But quite honestly, call aside, it was always a big, silly bird that had a lot of trouble mating anyway.
-
Habitat: The climate-change ostrich has lost much of its territory to better-camouflaged species of climate-change wrong-abouters but can still be found at unavoidable family gatherings, on Reddit, and – on particularly cold winter days – making half-joking but not really joking remarks on TV.
-
Diet: Subsists mainly by cherry-picking and on the patience of its own family members.
