A research challenge for my readers. The task is to nominate scientists who
(i) have undertaken serious research on climate change
(ii) doubt that human activity is contributing to global warming
(iii) are disinterested, with no financial or political axe to grind
I’m reasonably flexible on (i) and (ii). That is, I’ll count anyone who has published relevant research in a reputable journal or who has done research on the topic and holds a job in a university science department or similar institution. Similarly on (ii) it’s sufficient that the person express doubt as to whether the evidence supports the anthropogenic view: they need not claim that it has been disproved.
On the other hand, as far as (iii) goes, I’m applying a stringent criterion. I’m excluding anyone who has taken money from lobby groups with a political position on climate change policy, is a member of any such group, or has publicly expressed a political position on the Kyoto protocol.
I claim that I can nominate hundreds of scientists who satisfy (i) and (iii), as described, and whose work supports the anthropogenic hypothesis. I suggest that the number of scientists satisfying (i) and (iii), as defined above, but who doubt the anthropogenic hypothesis, is in single digits. My current estimate is one, but perhaps readers will be able to double or triple that estimate, or perhaps reduce it to zero.
Update I obviously need to clarify the point on government funding. I’m not excluding scientists who have received research funding from public research bodies, even where those bodies are funded by anti-Kyoto governments, such as those of Australia and the US. This is making the task of finding disinterested sceptics easier, not harder, a fact which several commenters have apparently failed to observe.
John Quiggin 
I’m excluding anyone who has taken money from lobby groups with a political position on climate change policy.
This is bunkum.
It matters not a whit whom pays for the research what matters is the quality of the research.
The best research I have reead on the banking industry was done recently by Kim Hawtrey. It was funded by the ABA.
Big deal.
It either rises or falls on the scholarship involved.
In this instance Kim Hawtrey’s scholarship shone through.
Applying the JQ criteria I shouldn’t have read it!
Does Garth Paltridge as described qualify?
Homer, I responded to this claim here.
In the current context, I’m interested to know what criteria you apply in assessing the scholarly quality of work in atmospheric physics and paleoclimatology. Are you confident that you can assess scholarship in these contexts? If so, on what basis?
I’ll look at Hawtrey’s paper and tell you what I think about it.
Paltridge fails on iii.
Well (i) and (ii) are fairly easy, (iii) could be open to interpretation;
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20050623/40748412.html
“MOSCOW. (Yury Izrael, Director, Global Climate and Ecology Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences and IPCC Vice President, for RIA Novosti). One issue on the table at the G8 summit at Gleneagles in early July is global climate change.
As I see it, this problem is overshadowed by many fallacies and misconceptions that often form the basis for important political decisions. G8 leaders should pay attention to them.
There is no proven link between human activity and global warming…….”
“I’m excluding anyone who has taken money from lobby groups with a political position on climate change policy1, is a member of any such group, or has publicly expressed a political position on the Kyoto protocol.”
As opposed to those that take money from governments? Because governments have no interest one way or the other?
To be fair, you really need to ask (ii) in both the affirmative and the negative:
(i) have undertaken serious research on climate change
(ii) do _not_doubt that human activity is contributing to global warming
(iii) are disinterested, with no financial or political axe to grind
Financial axes are relatively easy to identify objectively. But political axes? On a loose enough interpretation of this requirement you’d have to rule out a large proportion of the government-funded research sector as many have green/anti-development/anti-capitalist leanings, and global warming is an excellent vehicle for them to try and realise their political goals:
[Aaron Wildavsky]
For a more extreme analogy: how many Australian feminist legal studies academics advocate increased rights for fathers in the Family Court?
(A: as far as I know, zero)
They’re government funded, published researchers, but hardly without a political axe to grind. Their lack of advocacy of father’s rights should have as much influence on public policy as tobacco-industry-funded studies of the health-effects of cigarette smoking.
Check out this link.
Your hypothesis fails on all three criteria.
To clarify the point Yobbo, I’m not excluding scientists because they’ve taken money from an anti-Kyoto government (eg Australia or the US). Feel free, if it makes you happier, to exclude scientists who’ve been funded by EU governments.
Rog, your cited source appears to fail on (iii): I assume this guy is an offsider of Iliaranovsky (sp?).
“I exclude standard forms of research funding, whether the governments providing the funding support or oppose Kyoto.”
This is called ‘get out of jail free card’.
Homer, I’ve read the Hawtrey piece. It’s competent work, but I have to say that it reads like exactly what it is: a piece of advocacy commissioned by an interest group. The numbers are (I assume) accurate, but they are presented in a way that puts the banks in a favorable light. Someone who read this paper without any prior knowledge of the issue, and without being aware of the fact that it was bank-funded could be seriously misled.
I’m not opposed to advocacy, just saying that interests should be declared, as Hawtrey did.
TCFKAA, your claim seems to be true by definition: “how many Australian feminist legal studies academics advocate increased rights for fathers in the Family Court?”
Presumably, you would not class someone who advocated increased rights for fathers as a feminist, so the answer to your question is zero by definition.
A more relevant question is whether publicly-funded academics with relevant research expertise can be found on both sides of this debate, and the answer to this question is “Yes”. For example, AIFS research has presented a fairly positive view of shared parenting, while noting some of the difficulties in making it work.
This is true for most debates where there is a serious case to be made on both sides, but not (with marginal exceptions) of debates over smoking and lung cancer, evolution or global warming.
the commenter formerly known as anon
On a loose enough interpretation of this requirement you’d have to rule out a large proportion of the government-funded research sector as many have green/anti-development/anti-capitalist leanings, and global warming is an excellent vehicle for them to try and realise their political goals:
Great throw away line with nothing to back it up, always convenient to use against any scientist that brings out reseach that hinders business profit.
Jennifer M would be proud.
Did you use that against the medical researchers that linked smoking with cancer?
jquiggin, whether someone is a feminist legal studies academic is determined by the courses they teach and their research focus, not by whether they advocate fathers rights. Note that “feminist legal studies academic” is the noun-phrase here, not [feminist] “legal studies academic”. So no, my claim is not “true by definition”.
But you are right, there are respected academics on the other side of that debate.
However, you required “no political axe to grind” which has to apply to both sides for it to be a fair comparison. I believe there are good reasons to suppose that many proponents of global warming have a political axe to grind (or at least a kitchen knife). But either way, my point is that since it is your criterion, the onus is on you to show otherwise when you publish your list of “hundreds of scientists”.
I don’t understand Yobbo’s point. Why would a government prefer that human-induced climate change be occurring?
What about Richard Lindzen and John Christy? I think that both of them have some degree of doubt on the effect of human activity.
I know that Lindzen at least has done a small amount of consulting work for the petro industry.
This is why the jq’s requirements are somewhat dubious. Lindzen has held his sceptic views for a long time, well before he received a small amount of petro consulting money. It is hardly the case that the petro industry is going to go to a rabid global warming proponent for their advice, hence the financial requirement biases against sceptics.
TCFKAA,
I think that the bias would also tend to work the other way – in that institutions would probably not fund (to the same extent at least) research that they would regard as non-productive and, climate change sceptisism being unpopular, it may well also be widely regarded as non-productive.
This sort of herd mentality is widely seen in many markets, where the safe course, whether right or wrong, is taken by most people as they tend to be risk adverse. Thus the Enron research reports.
If I remember correctly there was a lot of research funding in the 1970’s going into the concept of global cooling resulting from human activity. That funding dried up as the global warming theory came into vogue.
PrQ – note that I am not saying either theory is wrong, although the published evidence these days tends to favour the warming theory. That may be due to the bias mentioned above or it may be due to it being correct.
It would be an interesting research paper, though, examining any funding bias that results from the popularity of the theory rather than its intrinsic worth. Getting funding for it may be a problem, though.
I don’t think it matters, as such, whether a petro company global warming research or whether the ABA funds some banking research or whether McDonalds funds nutrition research.
What matters is that the usual standards of scientific verification should apply. The funded researchers should be prepared to make their data available to critics or reviewers and the results must be replicable. If so, then the research stands on its own merits.
If they refuse, for whatever reason (like, the data are “commercially confidential”) then their results should be viewed with extreme scepticism.
I think this all comes back to how JQ plans to prove the negative for his legions of global warming proponents. That is, for each scientist, establish that they have no political axe to grind.
Everyone lost interest in global cooling because it is global warming that is actually happening. There is no smoking gun here to prove human origin. And global warming has really been continuing since the last Ice Age. (Coinciding with the evolutionary rise of humans).
Those living in the more northerly latitudes don’t care about the cause of global warming. They just hope it continues.
Dave re you comment that the ‘usual standards of scientific verification should apply’. While I don’t know what to think on the greenhouse issue, I do find it somewhat ironic that many of those who are usually so post-modern in their outlook (there is no objective truth etc and following Thomas Kuhn this applies as much in the physical sciences as it does in the social sciences etc) suddenly get very absolutist when it suits them. My experience being stuck in a department full of green Nazis for many years is that the modus operandi was to disparage scientific findings when they do not support their end of the world is nigh arguments (referencing Thomas Kuhn etc) and cite scientific findings uncritically when they appear to support their views.
Michael,
I am not a post modernist; nothing I have said in this or any other forum would imply that I am; and I don’t have double standards. When I wrote that the usual standards of scientific verification should apply what I meant was that the usual standards of scientific verification should apply.
Is that clear enough for you?
And enough already with your sorry tales about your unhappy experiences in academia. Must everything come back to your own personal experiences?
This puts the skeptics on par with prostitutes selling their wares to the highest bidder- giving no credence to the individual concerned.
People who work for nothing are worth more? or pay peanuts and get monkeys?
It would have been interesting to have conduct a similar exercise re the millennium bug in 1999. I recall the sky was falling then and yet academia neglected to give a balanced perspective of a non existing crisis.
As I recall, the chief proponents of the millenium bug scare were the big IT consulting firms who stood to profit from the scare, and did. This was a case of commercial interests promoting a dodgy theory rather than putting up dodgy opposition to a sound theory, but I don’t see how it weakens JQ’s argument. If anything it strengthens it.
Who will gain if more funding is put into research?
Pro or Con academia has a vested interest in exaggerating the crisis to gain the benefit of more funding for research. As the computer industry gained from the perceived millennium bug. Hence the skepticism about this issue.
Yobbos point (and it was a fair one, though intentionally misused by JQ) is that people who survive on the handouts of the government are probably more inclined to support big government. Ergo Kyoto. Ergo all the things that go along with Kyoto…. including warming.
And there would probably be less funding for researching global warming if it didn’t exist… 🙂 News item: “global warming scientists discover: we are redundant — please don’t give us money!” lol
Who is in the government is not the point. The institution of government and the current government are different concepts. And I also note that the Aust govt does accept the existence of manmade global warming.
“people who survive on the handouts of the government are probably more inclined to support big government.”
Well, maybe, but I can think of one person who makes his living by consulting to the government yet does not support big government.
There’s nothing quite like a bit of cognitive dissonance.
Dave, actually it was a general comment, I was not necessarily suggesting you were a post-modernist (so I apologise if I gave the wrong impression). Re your usual snide comments regarding my academic experiences. Well personal experience is of empirical value whether it be in my case 30 years in the Labor party and NGOs such as Amnesty International as well as many years experience in academia. In other words, I have formed my rather negative views of the ideological stupidity of many academics and social activists through many years of personal experience (running fund raising stalls etc and I am not simply carping from the sidelines). The personal is political it seems only when young middle class white females from the affluent suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne are having a whinge about the non-existent discrimination they have supposedly faced.
(Sigh). Michael, just for the record, did you get passed over for promotion in favour of an undeserving young middle class white female in your current unhappy public service career or was it in your previous unhappy academic career? Do you have to put up with the Green Nazis now? Or was it just then? I’m sorry, but I’ve lost track of all the terrible things that have happened to you.
JQ, I apologise for distracting this thread on the life and very personal times of Michael Burgess, victim extraordinaire, but I feel this is very important.
“And there would probably be less funding for researching global warming if it didn’t exist… News item: “global warming scientists discover: we are redundant—please don’t give us money!â€? lol”
But all else being equal, one would expect there to be more funding for researching global warming, over a longer period of time, if there was greater uncertainty (or alleged uncertainty, at least on the part of policymakers) about its existence, extent, local and regional consequences, social and economic impacts, most appropriate policy responses, etc. The fossil fuel lobbies and associated state agencies may well have done their sums and concluded that expenditure on keeping scientists and economists engaged in endless research and debate which leads to minimal and/or persistently deferred action is an overhead cost worth paying when compared with the fiscal costs to them of effective and prompt greenhouse response measures.
The first scientifically respectable Australian greenhouse sceptic I learned of was the mathematician Professor Roger Braddock, whose scepticism was given extensive coverage in 1989-90 in the Brisbane Courier-Mail and the organs of the IPA. I believe that Roger may have revised his views over time as the evidence has accumulated. However, at the time that he was a public and well-publicised greenhouse sceptic, Roger was Dean of the Faculty of Environmental Sciences (or whatever it was called then) at Griffith University, and this fact was trumpeted by the Courier-Mail and IPA as proof of his authority on the subject.
Also, the first conspiracy theory I heard about global warming was that it was the result of a Marxist-inspired plot to undermine capitalism. This theory was quietly but quickly dropped when the USSR formed a unity ticket with the Reagan and Bush I administrations in 1988-89 to oppose Western European calls (led by the centre-right Kohl administration in West Germany) for stronger greenhouse response measures.
I thought Michael’s remarks on fair-weather post-modernism were quite interesting. Only yesterday I was contemplating something of the opposite point of view, namely that even though I am usually rabidly anti-postmodernist, I seem to become a bit of a post-modernist when here – deconstructing other posters’ language and attempting to expose the implicit bias.
It seems like it is you who latches on to his other remarks and blows them out of proportion.
Comment edited for offensive language. Anything further like this will lead to automatic moderation. JQ
General policy advice. Rules against coarse and abusive language are not circumvented by the use of asterisks in swearwords
Dave, like to many people who regard themselves as socially progressive (while at the same time defending some appalling reactionary practices among non-western cultures) you resort to snide remarks and general personal abuse when anyone dares to criticise perspectives or groups you support.
As for green issues, well the acting head of my department when I was at university was an American Gandhian who believed in doing away with the military and arming the population (social defence I think it is called). The present head used to get students colouring in posters (which I as a tutor had to mark and put up on walls) to emphasise issues relating to environmental degradation. Before western development a picture of happy natives in a rain forest. Next to it a picture of miserable people in high rise flats and slums to illustrate the evils of development. In one class the lecturer had them build a paper mache toilet to symbolise water pollution in Sydney. That night, I saw a student express his and my views on the virtue of this approach by kicking the shit out of it – a job I then finished.
The lecture in question has has won prizes for her innovative teaching methods and was made a professor. This plus other factors (e.g., 30 years or so of misguided negative commentary on the impact of India’s green revolution – one of the most positive development initiatives ever undertaken) has made me somewhat sceptical of the rationality of many greenies and other so-called soical progressives.
It might well be of course that despite all this, the greenhouse theory has legs. However, those of us subjected to 40 years of constant doom and gloom from the green movement can hardly be blamed for be somewhat sceptical.
TCFKAA, you are new here and haven’t had to suffer Michael going on, and on, and on, and on, about the same things, using himself as the frame of reference, for as long as I care to remember.
But that’s enough about him. Let’s talk about you.
JQ,
If that is the case then you will not be referring to the ‘competent’ papers wriiten on IR and productivity that was financed by the BCA but actually found results the opposite of what BCA have been asserting publically over the last 15 years!
“But that’s enough about him. Let’s talk about you.”
No thanks. Why don’t we get back to the topic. I am going to raise this one more time then rack off, seeing as I don’t seem to be getting a response.
JQ, how are you going to prove that your “hundreds of scientists” have no political axe to grind?
Michael, as you well know, or should know by now, I am old Left (old as in political tradition, that is). I don’t support reactionary practices amongst non Western cultures, or any other cultures. I am also, on this very blog, a critic of the Mickey Mouse academic practices you describe.
Believe it or not, I think our values are pretty much the same. But your consistent failing is an insistence of lumping everybody with whom you disagree on any one issue, and this would be everybody to the left of John Howard, into a big pot – the academic/postmodern/anti western culture/anti Israel/green Nazi/undeserving middle class feminist pot.
Combined with your self-appointed victim status, your defensiveness, and your continuing use of yourself as point of reference, it makes for unpleasant reading.
I assume that the 17000 scientists who signed the “Global Warming Petition” have not been adequately profiled. However at a guess you could keep yourself busy reviewing the list.
http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p37.htm
I am personally amazed that Kyoto (which is a market based solution) actually got on the table. Imagine using a market to solve a societal problem. What an impressive idea.
Such a pity they excluded all those developing nations and turned it into a charity piece. I can understand why G.W.Bush would appose it. There are already a lot of jobs moving east. Not that I am a protectionist of any sort.
Dave, what makes unpleasant reading is misrepresenting what someone says and dismissing personal experience when it does not fit in with ones framework (again the personal is only political it seems when it involves certain individuals from certain groups). For example, I think pro-Israeli individuals in the United States, Europe and elsewhere do have a right to whinge when they are denied academic positions because of their views. More broadly, the fact that a succession of heads of the American Middle Eastern Studies Association, including John Esposito America’s most famous Middle Eastern scholar, have sung the praises of the likes of Hassan al-Turabi (someone responsible for massive human rights abuses) does indicate that there is a clear bias in academia.
Like far too many progressive individuals who have belonged to the Labor party and social activist organisations such as Amnesty International, I could simply give up in disgust at the fact that the extremists always seem to dominate and, in the process, allow right wingers to claim the intellectual high ground (I personally know three very active Amnesty International members who have left the organisation in the last year and numerous ex supporters of Community Aid Abroad and the Labor party etc) .
Dave, I also note that you ignore my point on the past doom mongering of the environmental movement encouraging scepticism about their present claims. What if, for example, instead of bagging India’s green revolution a generation of left wing and green academics had pointed to it as an example of what can be achieved with aid. Maybe attitudes to the possibility of alleviating poverty in developing countries would have been far more positive among the populations of the developed world over the last 30 years or so. This could well have generated the political will to do something really constructive in Africa and elsewhere. Instead all we have heard from a succession of ideologically motivated doom mongers on the left is that aid does not work and western style development has failed etc etc etc. If nothing works then bother is the message the largely reactionary and selfish populations of the developed world have been more than grateful to accept.
Luis, Lindzen fails on (iii) and Christy on (ii). Links soon.
Dave, MB and anon, I’ll try to set up a separate thread shortly, where such issues as the failings of Hassan al-Turabi (whoever he is) can be debated at full length. In the meantime, could we stick to comments on global warming.
John, sorry about that. (I don’t know who Hassan al-Tirabi is either.)
But I cannot resist one last shot.
“all we have heard from a succession of ideologically motivated doom mongers on the left is that aid does not work”
This is Orwellian. It is the Right who say that aid does not work, that it goes straight into the Swiss bank acccounts of corrupt dictators, that it weakens the resolve to introduce market based reforms; hence their bagging of Live8 etc.
Back to global warming. As I said before, the fact that someone comes to an anti-global warming view and has accepted funding from a petro company doesn’t mean they have an axe to grind or that their work should be dismissed out of hand. Their work should be able to be verified, the same as all scientific work.
The point is John (which Dave seems to want to ignore and resort to personal abuse) is that one cannot just simply dismiss greenhouse sceptics as being ideologically motivated or motivated by self-interest etc. Many people have simply had a gutful of the end of the world is nigh (if massive changes are not introduced) approach to policy of most environmentalists – and this includes high profile scientists. Tim Flannery who claimed that Australia cannot support more than 10 million people etc. Also look at the predictability of Ian Lowe and other high profile academic environmentalists in regard to the issue of Nuclear power. They are simply against it and will use any argument to justify their position which will never change no matter how ill-advised it is and no matter how much paranoia their irresponsible scaremongering encourages among the general public. Ditto with the GM food debate.
Yobbos point (and it was a fair one, though intentionally misused by JQ) is that people who survive on the handouts of the government are probably more inclined to support big government. Ergo Kyoto.
Now I don’t understand John Humphreys’ point. What does Kyoto have to do with “big government”?
Michael, congratulations. You have now achieved the feat of attributing to me views which are not just exactly the opposite of those that I have expressed, but the opposite of those I re-expressed in the comment immediately preceding yours.
You may recall that our little exchange started when you commented on my most that said that the research of scientist who reeive funbding by corporate interests should be evaluated where “the usual standards of scientific verification should apply”.
And, yet again, you are resorting to gross generalisation, with your lumping together of green political activists with the hundreds of scientists who have published serious work supporting the existence of climate change.
PrQ,
Can someone fail on (iii) if they received funding after expressing a climate change sceptical position? If so, it might be impossible to find one unless they are in the period between publishing and getting funding.
BTW Hassan al-Turabi is an Islamic idealogue and former speaker of the ‘parliament’ of Sudan – but he was much more influential than that title suggests.
“What does Kyoto have to do with “big governmentâ€? ”
Kyoto = green agenda = government sets up trading in carbon credits = socialist = big government.
It’s obvious, innit?
PS I looked up Hassan al-Tirabi. He’s one of the bad guys in Sudan, apparently.
“Dave, MB and anon, I’ll try to set up a separate thread shortly, where such issues as the failings of Hassan al-Turabi (whoever he is) can be debated at full length. In the meantime, could we stick to comments on global warming.”
Apart from my missive to Dave, that’s exactly what I have been trying to do.
I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours. Ie, give me your hundreds of scientists advocating athropogenic warming and the proof that each has no political axe to grind, and I’ll give you the similarly classified sceptics. But until you show us your criteria for proving someone has no political axe, your original request is impossible to fulfill.
“I don’t understand Yobbo’s point. Why would a government prefer that human-induced climate change be occurring?”
Because they rely on peoples’ fear to justify their continued existence and expansion. The environmental movement in general has been a great boon for those who believe that the state should exert more control over the means of production.
New thread is now open.
anon, you’re reversing the burden of proof, and asking for proof of a negative, which is impossible. I’m happy to accept anyone on either side of the debate as disinterested in the absence of explicit evidence to the contrary.
Econwit, before making generalized claims about the failings of academics (in this case regarding Y2K) please check the record. Similarly with MB and postmodernism. Both these side issues should be shifted to the Al-Turabi thread.
Terje, the “Oregon petition” was discredited years ago. Again, please use the search facility before raising old points.
Andrew, it’s perfectly possible to get ordinary grant funding for research that casts doubt on global warming. Lindzen, for example, gets plenty of research grants, though he also gets industry money and promotes political arguments against Kyoto.