BBD
I don't believe you. Dec 18, 2011 at 6:15 PM
Dec 18, 2011 at 6:28 PM at the very least carries that implication without using the actual word.
That's from the last week on this thread. I can go hunting for more if you like.

I'm not sure what you want re Tim Ball.
On the 'Upwardly mobile" thread at Dec 19, 2011 at 4:49 PM I gave you a perfectly adequate rebuttal of your Dec 19, 2011 at 4:07 PM post.
Not my fault you don't like it.
As with Soon & Baliunas, you are obsessed with "Big Oil" or "right-wing front organisations". You have lost your sense of perspective if you cannot understand that funding does not equal dishonest results.
Or if it does it applies equally to those funded by Big Government or Big Green or any other of the bottomless purses that pour money into climate research.
Whether your view of the science is right or mine is it serves no useful purpose to be blind to the obvious fact that anyone is susceptible to tailoring his opinions to suit his paymaster. Fortunately relatively few do but they are not confined to one side of the debate as you seem determined to claim.

Let's go over this again since your genius prevents you from understanding the issue:

You said:
"And yet despite the blindingly obvious links between S & B and right-wing corporate front organisations, you continue to deny that there is a problem here."

Meaning: There is a problem if there are links between researchers and corporate fronts.

Whose interpretation is this? Yours.

Meaning: You have to provide proof that the existence of such links is problematic.

Leaving aside the circular claim of saying, that SB criticism of Mann is the very proof of cosy corporate relationships, if you cannot provide proof for the existence of such links, then you have just wasted your time in conspiratorial nonsense.

The fact is, as Mike points out, it appears that believing in the CO2-RF-etc theory necessitates buying into a complete demonology in the pursuit of intellectual consistency.

You can bullshit others by providing links and asking people to 'read'. Lay out what you learn from them in your own words and see how that'll survive.

I've looked at the nonsense by Green'peace' on the page you link to. It has stuff like : "Research by Greenceace researchers revealed that Soon has received funding from the American Petroleum Institute..." which is lazy Greenpeace's euphemism for "we looked at the acknowledgement sections of Soon's papers". Here's their own words:

Other papers written by Dr. Soon and reviewed by Greenpeace researchers show that the American Petroleum Institute has been funding Dr. Soon since the mid-1990s, a period when he also acknowledged funding from Mobil, Texaco and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)

If you are someone who believes that corporate funding or any funding should be the sole criterion for judging the merit of someone's work, then you keep that politics to yourself. I don't agree with you and I think it is an ad-hominem form of argument. It is undignified, and stupid and beneath someone as you. I think big oil put their money to good use when they gave it to Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas who were able to comprehensively demonstrate that the supposed consensus view of paleoclimatology about the Medieval Warm Period was nonsense. As you admit yourself, and as we now see in revealed in full glory in the Climategate emails, it was the hockeystick that was mistaken.

All that is left therefore are exhortations to big oil.

Corporate links can be clearly corrupting. When pharmaceutical corporate influence in drug trials is exposed, a direct line with vested interest can be drawn sometimes.Due to patent law and the huge sums involved. It can be shown, that outcomes of research may have a direct make-or-break consequence on company fortunes and profits. Alleged links between fossil fuel companies and their interest in climate change scepticism is vastly nebulous and problematic to infer. What is one supposed to infer? That fossil fuel companies are afraid of increasing costs that would result from regulation? Or that they feel threatened of the impending nuclear energy renaissance engineered by the UN climate talks? All these supposed lines of reasoning are tenuous (and if any such exist, have to be provided by your laziness in the first place, instead of just linking and shouting abuses).

Please provide checkable evidence that the GP research is flawed.

Can you provide any checkable evidence that it isn't?

Can you provide any checkable evidence that it isn't?

Yup. In America, if you say something like this and the supposedly maligned party thinks it has even a fair chance of winning, you will get sued. Just look at all those allegations, all those named individuals, all those named organisations in the GP research... Number of lawsuits arising: NONE.

Wakey, wakey.

Shub

So, you cannot show the Greenpeace research to be in any way inaccurate, and are back to snide rubbishing (exactly as predicted). I will therefore ignore the unsubstantitated section of your comment.

Which leaves us with one of the most breathtakingly stupid things I've ever seen written about the anti-science lobbying carried out by the fossil fuel industry. Luckily, I've treated you as a joke (in very poor taste) for a long time, but even so...

Corporate links can be clearly corrupting. When pharmaceutical corporate influence in drug trials is exposed, a direct line with vested interest can be drawn sometimes.Due to patent law and the huge sums involved. It can be shown, that outcomes of research may have a direct make-or-break consequence on company fortunes and profits. Alleged links between fossil fuel companies and their interest in climate change scepticism is vastly nebulous and problematic to infer.

You are truly, madly, deeply in denial.

MJ

BBD
I don't believe you. Dec 18, 2011 at 6:15 PM
Dec 18, 2011 at 6:28 PM at the very least carries that implication without using the actual word.
That's from the last week on this thread. I can go hunting for more if you like.

You do that. What I said is a world away from calling you a liar. Don't make stuff up.

I'm not sure what you want re Tim Ball.
On the 'Upwardly mobile" thread at Dec 19, 2011 at 4:49 PM I gave you a perfectly adequate rebuttal of your Dec 19, 2011 at 4:07 PM post.

No, you didn't. See above re making stuff up. And Ball is something of a bad joke outside 'sceptical' circles. Do some background.

As with Soon & Baliunas, you are obsessed with "Big Oil" or "right-wing front organisations". You have lost your sense of perspective if you cannot understand that funding does not equal dishonest results.

Ye gods. Naive, or just in denial? Or both? I give up on you.

How can the Greenpeace 'research' be inaccurate? It is based on information provided by Soon himself.

Shub

Strawman. Obviously I refer to all of it - affiliations, funding in general - not just S&B (2003). Boring.

Jeez.
And you call me naive!
You accuse me of "making stuff up" and at the same time you describe it as "a world away" from calling me a liar.
Are you are are you not claiming that Ball's CV is a lie?
Are you or are you not denying that his PhD thesis was on a subject that could legitimately be called climate change?

To suggest that Greenpeace's research into Soon must be right because otherwise he would have sued them is not simply naive, it's plain stupid. There may be 100 reasons not to sue only one of which is that what is written is false and defamatory.
But since Soon himself is quite happy to state in his work where his funding comes from we are left with the collective paranoia of Greenpeace, desmogblog, sourcewatch, BBD, et al who are collectively too bigoted and too determined to undermine any contrary view to accept that it is possible to do good science regardless of who pays the bills.
I repeat, you have lost your sense of perspective if you cannot understand that funding does not equal dishonest results.
And you have lost your mind if you think there is anything objective about the three sources I have just mentioned.

Yes. Similar information is available from his papers, not just SB03

This program was supported by the Electric Power Research Institute, Mobil Foundation, Inc., Texaco Foundation, Inc., Scholarly Studies Program, and Langley-Abbot Fund of the Smithsonian Institution, American Petroleum Institute, and Richard C. Lounsbery Foundation.
This research was made possible by a collaborative agreement between the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the Mount Wilson Institute.

From:
SOON, POSMENTIER, & BALIUNAS INFERENCE OF SOLAR IRRADIANCE VARIABILITY FROM TERRESTRIAL TEMPERATURE CHANGES, 1880-1993: AN ASTROPHYSICAL APPLICATION
OF THE SUN-CLIMATE CONNECTION THE ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL, 472:891-902, 1996 December 1

Greenpeace research, my foot.

Shub

- Yup, lots of energy industry funding!

- And where did it lead?

This gets funnier by the day.

MJ

Just look into Ball's public statements about climate change and the legal embroilments he has come off worse in. Research is your friend, not your enemy.

" Yup, lots of energy industry funding!

- And where did it lead?"

Yup indeed. You tell us. That is what we've been waiting to hear from you.

You need to show how Greenpeace found something more than what Soon's already declared in his papers, and what *you* inferred. Innuendo is not enough.

Speak up and be bold. Just saying someone has 'industry funding' doesn't have the desired effect you might think it has on me.

Shub

Speak up and be bold. Just saying someone has 'industry funding' doesn't have the desired effect you might think it has on me.

Perhaps not. But imagine how others see it.

How do you see it? I can't imagine it, so why don't let us know?

How about this for a conflict of interest

In early 2007, the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to its parent organization that polars bears be declared a threatened species. The US Geological Survey produced 9 reports examining the problem.

8 of the 9 reports were funded by the USGS, and 5 of these were funded by the US Fish and Wildlife Service itself.

Here is a clear example of conflict-of-interest. That is how you demonstrate it. Even then, it says nothing about the scientific content of the reports. They would have to be examined independently.

What if you found out that Pennsylvania State University had funded the Greenpeace investigation into Willie Soon's research funding?

Ian Stirling is a polar bear scientist who wrote some of the reports used to declare the species as threatened.

Here is funding acknowledgement for one of his papers:

We thank the following for their support of the research that made this project possible: the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Canada; the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS); the Polar Continental Shelf Project; the World Wildlife Fund and the Churchill Northern Studies
Centre.

You are telling me, that Greenpeace is justified in bringing up funding issues with one Willie Soon because he criticized the work of scientists who were funded by WWF?

BBD
As I expected.
When asked a question you don't answer.
When posing questions you have an ongoing hissy fit if people don't answer them.
One more try:
Are you are are you not claiming that Ball's CV is a lie?
Are you or are you not denying that his PhD thesis was on a subject that could legitimately be called climate change?
I originally challenged PowerofX on the basis of Ball's CV. So far you have not succeeded in proving that what I said was wrong.
Neither have you proved that Soon and Baliunas' research was influenced by the source of their funding.
In true warmist fashion you make defamatory statements about individuals and claim that these provide proof that their science is wrong. So far you have not supplied one piece of genuine evidence to back up your case.
And, also as usual, you try to move the goalposts.

There is an enormous grey area involved with climate science that promotes influences and agenda scrutiny on a scale that puts most political lobbyists to shame.

Take for example Prof. Neil Adger of the Tyndall Centre, who has worked very closely with Prof. Mike Hulme.
His CV is extremely impressive:

Resilience Alliance Invited member and co-director of UEA node from 2005. Member of Board of Directors.
Global Environmental Change and Human Security Programme of IHDP, Programme Associate.
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Lead Author on Uncertainties in Responses for the Response Options Working Group, 2002-2005.
Consultant - HM Treasury/ESRC: Stern Review on Economics of Climate Change and Development, (2005-06).
Consultant to OECD Agriculture Division on impacts of climate change on agriculture in OECD countries, 2006.
Co-Editor of Global Environmental Change from 2004. (Impact factor 2.600. Ranked 3/40 in Geography, 2/40 in Environmental Studies)
Editorial Board Member of Environment and Planning A, Ecology and Society, Frontiers in Ecology and Environment, Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, and Environmental Values.
Assessment panel member for ESRC and NERC and extensive reviewing for ESRC, NERC, EPSRC, Norwegian, Swedish and Netherlands Research Councils and NSF and NOAA (US). Reviewer for all major publishers and journals in my field including Nature and Science.
Examiner of MSc, MRes, MPhil and PhD degrees at Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Stockholm, Sydney, British Columbia and others.

A very influential person, IPCC, Stern Review, major reviewer of scientific papers and degree work. A pillar of his scientific community.

In the CG2 release of emails he is referenced over 90 times, some details of which perhaps taint what should be a perfect career.

For example in the period of 2004-2005 the two Professors became Editors for a journal called Global Environmental Change published by Elsevier discussions for which appear in :

1965.txt
5073.txt
3840.txt
0516.txt

We have been discussing the schedule and perhaps think that we will include an Editorial on new directions and policies in first issue of 2005. Would you consider a restyling of the cover etc for 2005? That would really help re-launch the journal.

In the meantime we would wish to appoint a new Board as soon as practical. I attach a list of 32 eminent scholars we plan to approach. I guess not all of them will want to come on board. We plan for 30 in total. As discussed we will now approach them informally and if they respond positively, you will write to them formally to offer them a place on the Board. Please confirm that this is the arrangement.

A paper is then submitted for publication 1122.txt and Mike Hulme organises the Reviewers.

Of course the paper is not published until 2005, after both professors become editors. Still the paper is cited 142 times so it must have some merit.

Another paper Vulnerability is published in 2006 which again is cited 274 times.
This also gains a rather strong critic "Vulnerability" from Professor Ilan Kelman

The article is published in a journal edited at the time by the author, the author's wife, and the author's institutional director. Therefore, the author cannot claim that this article has undergone an objective scientific peer review process, because any such attempt would entail a conflict-of-interest. The consequence is that this article could be considered to be an editorial or viewpoint, but it should not referenced as being a scientific paper.

The critique goes on to suggest that Prof. Adger is not a part of the consensus opinion of the time, but is this just turf war Humanitarian Futures Programme or does the criticism have merit?
Does this tarnish peer review or is it accepted practice?
Does the fact that Prof. Adger has close financial ties with NERC and ESRC and also advises the Government on direction on climate change cause a conflict of interest?

Lord Beaverbrook
Interesting post.
Following through on one of those links I eventually came to
http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=3797 (which is actually email 3847)
An email from Clair Hanson at CRU about the "Tyndall Blueprint Project" including

Tim O'Riordan has approached Ford, BP, WWF, Shell, Climate Network Europe, Ecologic.

Talk about "putting yourself about a bit"!

I think this thread has lost its direction. That was specifically about the reliability or otherwise of S&B 2003 (including the role of Chris de Freitas as editor).

If I dare summarise.

Many findings of S&B 2003 (MWP and LIA existence and ubiquity) are accepted; some conclusions are overstated (specifically "the 20th century is probably not the warmest") and that the whole issue of who funds research (and influence pertaining) remains very contentious and partisan.

Have a happy Christmas

No I am not f*ckin' Santa Claus

MJ

Amid your noise, you have forgotten my point: Ball misrepresented his credentials, which is an absolute no-no. See the letter to the RS. He claimed to have been a professor of climatology at U Winnipeg. He was not. When this fabricated claim was detected, he changed his self-description to professor of geography while still misrepresenting the length of time he held the post of full professor by many years. In both cases, he misrepresented himself as still being in post, although he had in fact retired the previous decade.

I showed this on the thread. Go back and read it. Your focus on the current version of his CV available from his own website is a misdirection. Which is why you keep on about it. The tactic has failed.

You, Shub and everybody else who continues to deny that there is anything untoward about S&B's affiliations and funding look deeply foolish.

Gixxerboy is right - this is just a waste of time now.

Gixxerboy is right - this is just a waste of time now.

It always was, as trying to discuss with you usually is.
You are reduced to quibbling as you often are. Ball was, in my view, quite entitled to claim his PhD was in climatology since climate change was the subject of his thesis. Given that when he took up his professorship (and I have already suggested that his arithmetic could be considered "dubious") climatology as a separate discipline was largely unheard of his position as "professor of climatology" within the geography department raised no eyebrows.
And none of this debate would be taking place were he a warmist — these minor matters would be overlooked and were we to mention them it would amount to harassment of a dedicated scientist who was being pursued by deniers/flat earthers/ contrarians/pick whichever term you like.
As for Soon and Baliunas, you continue to dig this pit. The idea that their funding must be dubious because sourcewatch and Greenpeace and desmogblog say it is is laughable. Soon himself is quite open about who funds his research.
And as the email I quoted above shows: Tyndall was looking for funding from two oil companies, a car maker and two environmental activist groups. What does that make them?

MJ

I'm not quibbling about radiative physics, Arctic melt, glacial recession, OHC increase, the increase in GAT since the mid-70s or the increase in tropospheric average T since 1979.

Ball got caught misrepresenting his credentials. He also has nothing in the reviewed mainstream climate journals. He constantly misrepresents the science. He is a 'fake expert'. Just do some background: see for yourself. You are being conned by a contrarian ;-)

If you looked at the research I've linked, you would see the same old names, again and again and again. You would begin to understand the interrelations between the money, the politics and the corporate influence. You would be unpleasantly surprised. But you won't look, so you won't learn.

You are doing yourself a grave disservice. I have tried and tried to convey this to you with no apparent success. You simply want to believe things that aren't true, and will not admit any evidence that might undermine your belief system. That is textbook denial. Only you can fix this.

Stop bloody patronising me.
I don't care whether you are quibbling about radiative physics, Arctic melt, glacial recession, OHC increase, the increase in GAT since the mid-70s or the increase in tropospheric average T since 1979. I am not debating these things with you because your mind is superglued shut and I have better things to do with my time than debate with a brick wall.