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Open in TheBrain

paid scientist corrupt BS

maybe some rubber glue projection b/c so many hacks outed, plus gotta explain consensus, plus gubmint BS bonus

SEE SCIENCE SUPPRESSION ~ EXPERT --> FASCISM

see gaileo darwin inquisition BS

// PAID PROTESTERS SOROS BS

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aha this is a conspiracy theory, single cause one simple motive eg greed (projection); plus sci/reality is inconvenient to gop

Column: House Republicans give a crash course in how to concoct a conspiracy theory about COVID’s origin

covid origins

Virologists Robert Garry, left, and Kristian Andersen listen patiently at a Congressional hearing Tuesday as a gang of politicians tell them their scientific method was flawed. (House Oversight Committee)

BY MICHAEL HILTZIK

BUSINESS COLUMNIST

JULY 11, 2023

Opening Tuesday’s House subcommittee hearing on the origin of the COVID virus, the panel’schairman, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), promised an impartial inquiry.

“This is not an attack on science,” he said. “And it’s not an attack on an individual.”

He and his GOP colleagues proceeded over nearly three hours to accuse Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — one of the most respected such scientists in the world — of having masterminded the creation of the virus, with the connivance of Dr. Francis Collins, then the director of the National Institutes of Health.

Misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories...have resulted in significant harassment and threats....Online there are so-called kill lists and I have found myself on those lists.

— Virological expert Kristian G. Andersen

The Republicans’ main “evidence,” such as it is, involves a seminal paper in the scientific study of the virus.

Published as a letter in the journal Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020, under the title “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” the paper weighed the two major theories of COVID’s origin: that it reached the human population from infected wildlife (known as zoonosis) or that it leaked from a government lab in Wuhan, China, the teeming metropolis where the first COVID outbreak occurred in late 2019.

Get the latest from Michael Hiltzik

Commentary on economics and more from a Pulitzer Prize winner.

The paper’s authors noted that all the features of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, are observable in nature, coinciding with the zoonosis hypothesis. They added, “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”

For years, Republicans have asserted without a scintilla of evidence that Fauci and Collins manipulated the scientific consensus away from the lab-leak hypothesis.

Why have they seized on this theory? Its provenance may offer a clue: It flowered during the Trump administration among political appointees in the State Department, who saw it as a cudgel with which to beat the Chinese government, which they viewed as an economic threat to the U.S. It was also useful to undermine the authority of Fauci, whose skepticism about Trump’s COVID policies was manifest.

Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan as members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus make a visit to the institute in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on February 3, 2021. (Photo by Hector RETAMAL / AFP) (Photo by HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via

Column: U.S. government debunks COVID lab-leak conspiracy theory, enraging conspiracy theorists

June 26, 2023

Soon enough, it became Republican orthodoxy.

Lab leak proponents in government and Congress have smeared and vilified Fauci and Collins, among other scientists, in the service of purely partisan claims, ignoring the utter absence of any scientific evidence for a lab leak and the mounting evidence that it first reached humans through interactions with susceptible animals being sold illegally at a wildlife market in Wuhan.

The foils for this phase of the GOP effort to construct an evidence-free narrative of COVID’s origin were two of the five authors of the “Proximal Origin” paper, Robert F. Garry of Tulane and Kristian G. Andersen of Scripps Research in La Jolla.

Garry and Andersen sat patiently at the witness table in the committee room as the Republican members used cherry-picked quotes from their emails, misrepresented their research findings and ignored their painstaking explanations of how science is done in the real world. They listened stoically to committee members — some of whom have medical degrees but none any evident expertise in scientific research — harangue them about supposed flaws in their scientific methods.

“We do know something for certain,” Westrup said: “that the drafting, coordination and publication of ‘Proximal Origin’ and downplaying the lab leak was antithetical to science.”

One low note among many others during the hearing came fromRep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), who charged that “Dr. Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins realized that they had been implicated in the creation of production or the creation of this virus and they were doing everything they could including both of you to come on board as tools or vehicles to undermine that theory.”

Truth to tell, however, the committee majority’s purpose was no secret from the start. The hearing was titled, after all, “Investigating the Proximal Origin of a Cover Up.”

It may be useful to examine the path the subcommittee’s GOP majority traveled to come to its assertions that the Proximal Origin paper was a sham.

[Dr. Scott Atlas speaks as President Donald Trump looks on

BUSINESS

Column: These ‘experts’ sold the U.S. on a disastrous COVID plan, and never paid a professional price

May 23, 2023]

As laid out in written testimony submitted to the subcommittee by Garry and Andersen, it started in January 2020, when almost nothing was known about the virus and not much about its genomic family.

The first examinations of its structure revealed several features unfamiliar to virologists. At first glance, they looked like nothing occurring in nature. Many thought this pointed to some sort of laboratory engineering.

When Andersen brought this concern to Fauci during a call on Jan. 31, Fauci urged him to write a scientific paper about the issue, and suggested that if confirmed, the matter should be referred to the FBI and the British intelligence service MI5.

Jeremy Farrar, an infectious disease expert who is currently the chief scientist of the World Health Organization, convened a conference call on Feb. 1 among nine scientists, including Andersen and Garry. Fauci and Collins joined the call, but by all accounts merely listened in without contributing any opinions.

New data came to the scientific community in a torrent over the next few days and weeks. The unfamiliar features turned out to be more common in nature than many virologists had known, and the process by which they might become incorporated in SARS-CoV-2 progressively better understood.

By the end of February, when the authors of the Proximal Origin paper submitted an initial draft to Nature Medicine, they still did not have enough data to rule out either major theory but had become more certain that a laboratory role was plausible.

The subcommittee Republicans profess to be thunderstruck that a theory about COVID’s origin could be posed and discarded in the space of a few days, but Andersen and Garry tried to explain that they’re wrong.

The scientists started with no data, and incorporated new information into their viewpoints as it arrived. In any event, Andersen testified, the period between the conference and the publication of the paper wasn’t three days, as the Republicans kept insisting, but 45 days. Neither Fauci nor Collins played any role in guiding the authors’ conclusions, the witnesses said.

The published paper, moreover, made clear that the state of SARS-CoV-2 research was in its infancy. “More scientific data could swing the balance of evidence to favor one hypothesis over another,” the authors wrote.

[Column: How Trump’s anti-science meddling erased 3 years of crucial COVID research

May 12, 2023]

But its general conclusion that a lab leak is implausible and the virus probably emerged by natural spillover from animals “has only been further supported by additional evidence and studies,” Andersen told the subcommittee. He and Garry said that if evidence emerged supporting a lab leak, they would examine it objectively and be guided by their findings. As of this moment, there is none.

Under prompting by subcommittee Democrats, the witnesses pointed to the long-term consequences of the Republican efforts to foment mistrust of science by mainstreaming conspiracies.

“Misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories around the paper have resulted in significant harassment and threats,” Andersen said. “Including everything from typical targets on social media to emails, to telephone calls to my office ... to death threats.... Online there are so-called kill lists and I have found myself on those lists together with my co-authors.”

The thrust of the subcommittee’s claims, he said, “is that the virus was created and that American scientists played a role in that and have been covering that up.... All of which, as the record clearly shows, is false.... The focus has been that there’s a need to blame someone.”

What has been going on here has been nothing less than a partisan witch hunt. Westrup made clear that the Republican narrative was predetermined: “We’re examining any conflicts of interest, biases or suppression of scientific discourse regarding the origins of COVID-19,” he said. The record shows, however, that what occurred was the scientific method in action.

If the subcommittee members are truly devoted to protect Americans from a future pandemic, they couldn’t find a worse way to reach that goal. “If I was a future scientist, looking at the attacks directed at us, for example, maybe I wouldn’t go into infectious disease research.... It’s incredibly damaging,” Anderson said.

LATEST FROM MICHAEL HILTZIK

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Column: RFK Jr. gets around to blaming the Jews

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NOTE HE DOES NOT SAY PAID OR GUBMINT BUT TOP-DOWN

mma

August 19, 2025, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show SALEM

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): You've taken on the entire kind of climate science world. Energy department attacks climate science in contentious report. By the way, you're in safe company here. We think this is all politicized. This is driven towards a environmentalist agenda that is trying to weaken American energy dominance. The agency asked five client skeptics to write a report criticizing the consensus on global warming.

First of all, science does not have consensus. This is a very important thing. Right? Science says nothing. Scientists say things. Okay? Science never talks. Science is silent. This is a good thing that could apply to everything. Scientists say things. And scientists, like we learned during COVID, we learned during the lockdowns, learned during the vaccines, can say a lot of different things with the data.

Now, again, global warming does not have consensus like the second law of thermodynamics. Global warming does not have consensus like a object at rest will stay at rest. Your reaction, Mr. Secretary, and how you think about this because they — again, let me read this New York Times article, The consensus on global warming. What an outrageous claim. Your thoughts, sir.

CHRIS WRIGHT (GUEST): Yeah. I always give the contrast between the science, which is what the left likes, which is the opposite of science. Science is a process of challenge and engagement and debate and wrestling with data. And if the data doesn't agree with your model, your model is wrong. Where the science is this top-down, authority-driven thing used with COVID to me was the climate movement in fast forward. The science told you what to do.

But as you said, Charlie, look at those critics. They critique the authors. Five skeptics. Well, skeptical of what? They presented — these are five highly distinguished scientists. One of them was undersecretary for science in the Obama administration, provost at Caltech, PhD from MIT. All of those scientists were accomplished scientists that are also tired of this censorship of the science, censoring real science and real process of engagement. But even on my CNN interview a couple weeks ago, I went on to talk about the climate report. There are zero questions about climate change. Zero. They want to impugn the writers or impugn the way we reference people. They want to find little things. What we want to talk about is the data.

Let's talk about climate science. Like, it's a real phenomenon. It's a slow-moving phenomenon, not even remotely close to the world's biggest problem, but it's used by the left to justify big government and top-down control of everything. Let's be honest. Let's engage in real science, as you said. That's what we're about. And I'm excited to have that debate over four years. We're going to end a lot of children's nightmares. We're going to end a lot of people trying to be pushed around and bullied by people that don't know what they're talking about. Like, I've spent twenty years studying climate science as physical data, and the people who were passionate about it never want to debate me because they don't know anything about it. But we're going to have that debate whether they want it or not.

KIRK: Science is a process. It doesn't tell you anything. People tell you. Science is a method. It's a methodology. And good science, which again is a verb, they they act as if, well, science, you know, puts something out. No. You do science. You go in exploration of truth. And then once you have a conclusion, you have to measure it, you have to analyze it, you have to inquire it, you have to cross-reference it. And by the way, we're bringing back that methodology to our government, RFK at HHS, and you at the Department of Energy.

TRUMP ZELDIN BS COVER

mma

The Trump administration's “critical review” of climate science is authored by some of Fox News’ favorite climate deniers

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Allison Fisher

Published 08/14/25

These arguments, routinely made by people who reject the scientific consensus on climate change, were included in an unusual report released by the Energy Department on Tuesday. The report, which is meant to support the Trump administration’s sweeping efforts to roll back climate regulations, contends that the mainstream scientific view on climate change is too dire and overlooks the positive effects of a warming planet.

“There is a history of some of the authors of this document cherry-picking dates to show that there is no change, but they’re not providing the evidence to support that,” said Kristie Ebi, a professor of global health at the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the University of Washington.

Judith Curry, former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, consulted for oil and gas companies during her time in academia. She resigned from Georgia Tech in 2017 citing climate “craziness” and has been called out by other scientists for promoting debunked climate denial arguments.

As climate-fueled Hurricane Idalia barreled toward Florida in August 2023, Curry appeared on Jesse Watters Primetime to argue that scientists have “seriously mischaracterized” the threat of climate change. She claimed that the “dominant factor” in climate change is “far and away” the “natural climate variability” of the Earth. (Earlier that same month, Curry published an op-edin the New York Post, another Murdoch property, where she falsely claimed that the “overwhelming scientific consensus” on climate change is “manufactured” and suggested that scientists are incentivized by “fame and fortune” to push the idea that climate change is caused by human activity.)

John Christy

John Christy is “an atmospheric scientist who doubts the extent to which human activity has caused global warming,” according to The New York Times. (In reality, “more than 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific papers agree that climate change is mainly caused by humans.”) He has regularly downplayed the link between climate change and extreme weather and has also pushed the false narrative — central to the Trump DOE climate report — that “CO2 is not the problem” because “carbon dioxide makes things grow. The world used to have five times as much carbon dioxide as it does now. Plants love this stuff. It creates more food.”

During a deadly global heat wave in July 2022, Christy appeared on The Ingraham Angle to falsely claim that extreme heat and other disasters are not “increasing in intensity or frequency.” He also repeated the common climate denial argument that “deaths from weather disasters and so on has gone down about 95% in the last hundred years.” But Reuters points out that the decrease in deaths since 1920 is largely due to “better forecasting and preparedness,” even while “the number, intensity, and cost of climatic and meteorological hazards have all increased over the last hundred years.”

Steven Koonin

Physicist Steve Koonin, a former scientist for the oil and gas giant BP who wrote a book chock-full of errors about climate change, appeared on the August 10, 2021, edition of Fox Business’ Kudlow to downplay the release of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s sixth climate assessment. Koonin stated that “it is kind of absurd to think that another one degree over a century is going to create catastrophe.” But this would put the planet at over 2 degrees Celsius of warming, which climate scientists have long urged policymakers to prevent because it will be catastrophic for large parts of the globe.

Koonin also appeared on the August 10, 2021, edition of Special Report with Bret Baier to dismiss the connection between extreme weather and climate change, claiming that natural disasters were “on the face of it, weather. If they were climate, we would see trends over several decades in those phenomena, and we don't.”

In fact, climate scientists have been able to estimate how much climate change affects any given extreme weather event for years. Notably, researchers found that the heat wave that sent temperatures in the Pacific Northwest into triple digits just two months before the release of the 2021 report would have been “virtually impossible” without global warming.

Roy Spencer

Roy Spencer is a research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, an adviser to the Heartland Institute, and a former visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation who was known as Rush Limbaugh's “official climatologist.” Politico reported that even while he has written that “climate change is big business” driven by a “marching army of climate scientists whose careers now depend on a steady stream of funding from governments” (a frequent claim among climate deniers), Spencer himself “has worked with organizations that have received funding from an interlinked network of fossil fuel companies — a multitrillion-dollar global industry — as well as wealthy foundations with billions of dollars in holdings that support groups opposing climate and energy regulations.”

After Hurricane Irma devastated parts of the U.S. in 2017, Fox & Friends hosted Spencer to undermine the science linking more intense storms to a warming planet. Spencer claimed: “As you go through time, there has been no increase in the number of major land-falling hurricanes in Florida, and there's been no increase in their intensity.” While climate scientists predict that “storm frequency will either decrease or remain unchanged” due to climate change and studies consistently show “no discernible trend in the global number of tropical cyclones,” data has confirmed that warmer temperatures have increased their intensity — including stronger wind speeds and greater precipitation.

“I've been in the climate debate and discussion for over 20 years, so I know certainly a lot of people in that world and I just made a list of who I think are the true, honest scientists,” Wright responded. “They follow the data and the facts where they lead them. They don't have a political agenda or a desired policy or a desired thing. They're just honest scientists. There's plenty of those. But I made a list of about a dozen of them that I thought were very senior and very well-respected. I called the top five and everyone said yes.”

Collins noted that “some people have criticized the report saying the information was cherry-picked by people who had already predetermined what they wanted to say in this report.” Notably, “some people” includes climate scientists whose work is cited in the report.

Wright also claimed that “the report references the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports over 100 times,” but it is worth noting that the well-known climate contrarians behind the Trump administration’s “critical review” contradict the findings of the hundreds of scientists who spent eight years developing the IPCC report.

On the August 7 edition of Morning with Maria, host Maria Bartiromo asked Wright to respond to The New York Times’ “pushback” from the article headlined “Energy Department attacks climate science in contentious report.”

“What a crazy headline, but I guess that’s par for the course for The New York Times — in fact we are doing the exact opposite,” Wright responded. “We are exposing the American people and the broader scientific community to what is actually in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, not the hyperbolic summaries for policymakers or media headlines that claim all sorts of crazy stuff. This is what we actually know.”

“How often do you hear that the planet is getting greener because there’s more carbon dioxide in the air that contributes to increased crop productivity and greener wilderness?” he continued. “How often do you hear that deaths from extreme weather have been falling like stone for a century? And that insured losses from extreme weather events have been on a multidecadal decline — those are just facts.”

All of these climate denial arguments have been debunked for years. Increasing CO2 is far more harmful to plants and farmers than any short-term benefit. Extreme weather deaths are falling because of better forecasting even while weather events are more intense due to our warming planet. And we are currently facing an insurance crisis because of climate-fueled events making some locations economically unviable and dangerously uninhabitable. But these stark realities were abandoned in the Trump administration’s climate report in favor of debunked arguments that support the fossil fuel industry’s campaign against climate action.

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mma 2 24

On January 31, Fox News host and serial climate denier Jesse Watters pushed debunked misinformation to argue that climate scientists are “cooking the books.”

In an effort to disprove that 2023 was the hottest year on record, Watters repeated a bogus claim that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s placement of thermometers on urban concrete skewed temperature data.

“Concrete and asphalt attract heat and retain heat a lot more than the countryside,” Watters said. “No wonder we think the earth’s warming. We’re literally cooking the books."

:{:{Video}:

CitationFrom the January 31, 2024, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime

Watters then cited a post from X user @_ClimateCraze claiming that “improperly located” thermometers “produce unrealistic warming through the Urban Heat Island effect.” Conveniently, Fox News cropped out a portion of the post — a link to a debunked “study” from junk science blogger and climate denier Anthony Watts. The 2022 report, produced by fossil fuel-funded think tank the Heartland Institute, falsely claims that 96% of U.S. climate data is “corrupted” due to thermometer placement

Multiple news outlets and fact-checkers have disproved the Heartland Institute’s bogus study as it spread across social media, with Agence France-Presse noting that past claims about biased data from urban temperature monitoring sites have been “thoroughly refuted.”

PolitiFact pointed out that Heartland’s false claim that the data is corrupted “ignores key facts” including:

First, climate scientists know that weather station data can be impacted by poor siting, and they adjust data accordingly.

Second, climate change analysis focuses on changes over time.

Further, PolitiFact noted that the scientific community has rejected this claim:

"The correct approach is to write a scientific paper and submit it to a scientific journal," said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist currently serving as research lead at Stripe, a San Francisco-based technology company. "In this specific case, the author of the report, Anthony Watts, submitted a paper on the topic around 10 years ago, but was unable to successfully convince other scientists of the validity of his findings and to pass the peer review process."

Watters’ reliance on climate misinformation is no surprise; Fox News has repeatedly proved itself to be a shameless climate denial machine.

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8 23 snapshot // july record temp [also ocean]

https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/15-nonsensical-comments-made-right-wing-media-during-2023s-summer-climate-fueled

15 nonsensical comments made by right-wing media during 2023’s summer of climate-fueled extreme weather events

Special PROGRAMS

CLIMATE & ENERGY

WRITTEN BY ALLISON FISHER

PUBLISHED 08/07/23

July 2023 was the earth’s hottest month on record, punctuated by record-shattering extreme heat events, catastrophic floods, and historic wildfires. While major media outlets sounded the alarm on the climate crisis, climate denial and downplay reached a fever pitch among right-wing media outlets and influencers.

Many in the right-wing media have downplayed the record heat — suggesting that it’s normal summer weather, despite clear evidence that the intensity of this summer’s heat waves would not have been possible without climate change — or dismissed its lethal impact by arguing that more people die of cold than heat. Others have said those linking July’s extreme weather to climate change are weaponizing these events to push a radical climate agenda or call for climate lockdowns.

Here are 15 other examples that illustrate the lengths to which right-wing media are going — often deploying nonsensical arguments or outright lies that attempt to ignore the fact that there is scientific consensus that carbon emissions are heating our planet— to maintain climate denial in the face of climate-fueled catastrophes: 

1 in

  1. response to extreme weather that grounded planes in the Northeast, Fox host Rachel Campos-Duffy said the left is “trying to control the weather” and “trying to be God.” Fox News, Fox & Friends, [7/3/23]
  2. Responding to calls for climate action, Newsmax host Eric Bolling denied that human activity is responsible for warming: “Real scientists, meaning those not purchased by the kings of propaganda, well, they’ll tell you there is actually no such thing as climate change.” Newsmax, Eric Bolling The Balance, [7/11/23]
  3. ...

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Center for Constitutional Studies

Center for Educational Freedom

Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity

Center for Representative Government

Troubled Currencies Project Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies

Center for the Study of Science

Downsizing the Federal Government

Project on Criminal Justice

Project on Social Security Choice

Center for the Study of Science

Federal government involvement in science, particularly physical science, grew during World War II through the Office of Scientific Research and Development, created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941. After the war the OSRD ended; but Vannevar Bush, who oversaw the Manhattan Project and the OSRD, strongly advocated the creation of a peacetime agency to fund and promote scientific R&D, as well as to heavily involve the federal government in research and educational funding for science activities in academia.

The result was the establishment of the National Science Foundation, which was soon followed by the development of scientific programs in several cabinet departments. The ensuing government presence creates the potential for politicization by officials with policy goals. The Center for the Study of Science, established by the Cato Institute in 2012, is dedicated to exploring this process. The Cato Institute, which does not accept government funding, has the independence to shine light on this little-studied issue.

Affiliated Scholars:

Patrick J. Michaels, Director, Center for the Study of Science

Paul C. "Chip" Knappenberger, Assistant Director, Center for the Study of Science

Richard Lindzen, Distinguished Senior Fellow

Edward Calabrese, Adjunct Scholar

Terence Kealey, Adjunct Scholar

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interesting ~ to myth of gubmint scientist paid

https://yyy.theguardian.com/science/2022/mar/21/universities-must-reject-fossil-fuel-cash-for-climate-research-say-academics

no lnx many

Universities must reject fossil fuel cash for climate research, say academics

Open letter from 500 academics likens fossil-energy funding of climate solutions to tobacco industry disinformation

Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, speaks to media before a Climate Emergency Summit in Melbourne

Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, said fossil-fuel funding ‘has been used to compromise leading academic institutions’. Photo]

Fiona Harvey environment correspondent

Mon 21 Mar 2022

Universities must stop accepting funding from fossil fuel companies to conduct climate research, even if the research is aimed at developing green and low-carbon technology, an influential group of distinguished academics has said.

Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, the Nasa data scientist Peter Kalmus, and prominent US climate scientist Michael Mann are among close to 500 academics from the US and the UK who have written an open letter addressed to all university leaders in the two countries, calling on them to reject all funding from fossil fuel companies.

Accepting money from fossil fuel companies represented “an inherent conflict of interest” and could “taint” essential research and “compromise” academic freedom, they wrote. For the companies, it was a chance to “greenwash” their reputations and skew the findings of research in a way favourable to them.

The letter draws a comparison to the tobacco industry and its disinformation campaigns, noting that numerous public heath and research institutions reject tobacco funding for these reasons and calling on fossil fuel cash to be treated similarly.

“Universities and the research they produce are vital to delivering a rapid, just transition away from fossil fuels. However, such efforts are undermined by fossil fuel industry funding. Academics should not be forced to choose between researching climate solutions and inadvertently aiding corporate greenwashing,” the signatories wrote.

Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, told the Guardian: “This sort of funding has been used to compromise leading academic institutions. It’s a two-for for polluters: they purchase the imprimatur of these institutions and their presumed authority and objectivity, while funding research that often translates into advocacy for false solutions and ‘kick the can down the road’ prescriptions like massive carbon capture, which is unproven at scale, and geoengineering, which is downright dangerous. That is entirely the wrong path forward.”

Genevieve Guenther, founder and director of the End Climate Silence campaign, and an affiliate at the New School university in New York, said: “Funding research enables oil and gas companies to ground their promotional statements in enough truth to give substance to the green shadows in which they hide their most polluting and deadly activities. We must remove fossil-energy interests from our institutions so that our children can have a chance at a liveable future.”

Universities have been under pressure from their students and some academics for several years to divest their investments, such as pension funds and endowments, away from fossil fuels, and many have done so. However, this is the first major call from senior academics for them to go further and cut all research ties with fossil fuel companies.

There is no clear estimate for how much money universities accept from fossil fuel companies, as most do not publish their sources. An investigation for the Observer last year found UK universities alone had taken at least £89m from oil companies in the previous four years.

Some scientists disagree with the letter. James Hansen, former chief scientist at Nasa and one of the first scientists to warn governments of the impending climate crisis, told the Guardian: “It’s the wrong focus, causing young people to waste their energy on unproductive activities, while they actually have the potential to lead a solution.”

Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, said it was reasonable for universities to accept funding from fossil fuel companies if those businesses showed genuine commitment to transforming themselves. “Fossil fuel companies that are genuinely committed to the transition [to a low-carbon economy], including net zero emissions, can and should receive help from university researchers, particularly with the development of technologies for carbon capture and storage, renewables and emissions reductions. However, universities should be careful about accepting funding directly or indirectly from oil, gas and coal companies that are not genuinely committed to the clean energy transition and which are attempting to greenwash their reputations.”

A spokesperson for Imperial College London, which the Observer found last year had accepted £54m from oil companies since 2017, said: “Decarbonisation is our top priority when working with energy companies. This goal requires a radical shift in industrial systems, technologies and business models in the energy sector. We are using our influence and expertise to accelerate this transition and actively engage with energy companies to push them to meet the Paris Agreement targets. We will monitor progress and only continue to work with companies who demonstrate commitment and credible action to achieving these targets.”

Some academics argue that fossil fuel funding is needed to develop the technologies necessary for a low-carbon economy, and that if western universities reject such funding it will be accepted in other countries around the world.

Guenther disagreed: “It’s a myth that fossil-energy companies are spending large sums to aid the green transition. According to the IEA’s 2021 World Energy Investment report, a mere 1% of fossil-energy companies’ capital expenditure is devoted to research, development or deployment of technologies that either abate or do not produce greenhouse gas emissions.”

At the end of this month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will publish the third part of its comprehensive review of climate science, examining the potential ways of cutting greenhouse gas emissions. This will include technology such as renewable energy and nuclear power, and novel ideas such as sucking carbon dioxide out of the air.

The report will throw the spotlight on the potential technological solutions to the climate crisis, which will require tens or hundreds of billions of pounds in funding to be brought to market and deployed widely around the world.

Jason Hickel, an economic anthropologist who is signatory to the letter, said the funding should come from governments. “The US and UK are among the richest countries on Earth, and their governments enjoy total monetary sovereignty. They have the capacity to finance the necessary research many times over, at the touch of a button. Most of the major innovations and public projects that have changed history over the past century have relied on public funding for research,” said Hickel, who is professor of environmental science at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a fellow of the LSE.

The letter did not specify whether companies with interests in fossil fuels amid a broader portfolio should be included in the ban. Ilana Cohen, a Harvard student who led the organisation of the letter, said it was directed at the top 200 fossil fuel companies.

Cohen said the organisers had confined the call to US and UK universities for now as these are where many fossil fuel companies are concentrating their funding, but that it could be widened in future to a global effort.

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origin of prosecute?

May 17, 2017

The Cornwall Alliance is set to release a new documentary titled “Convicted:**How Climate Alarmism Harms the World’s Poor” (working title) as the sequel to “Where the Grass is Greener: Biblical Stewardship vs. Climate Alarmism.” [48]

According to event description, the film would “delves into the deadly impacts of climate alarmism on people in developing countries, and what Biblical Stewardship requires of us: ‘To seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.’” [48]

The event would be co-hosted with the Heritage Foundation, featuring E. Calvin Beisner and Becky Norton Dunlop.[48]

The Convicted trailer is available on Vimeo, from CDR Communications. Those featured in film include Tom Harris, Tim Ball, S. Fred Singer,Leighton Steward, Patrick J. Michaels, David Legates, among others. [48]

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ref

http://web.archive.org/web/20170517004058/http://www.heritage.org/environment/event/convicted-how-climate-alarmism-harms-the-worlds-poor

May 17, 2017

Convicted: How Climate Alarmism Harms the World’s Poor

Co-Hosted by The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation

Learn why top experts risk their jobs, funding, and public reputations to oppose the politicization of science.

iStock

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

5:00 pm - 6:30 pm

The Heritage Foundation

Allison Auditorium

214 Massachusetts Ave NE

Washington, DC

20002

RSVP FOR THIS EVENT

Co-Hosted by

E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D.

Founder and National Spokesman, The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation

Becky Norton Dunlop

Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow

Description

The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation presents its latest documentary, Convicted: How Climate Alarmism Harms the World’s Poor (working title). As the sequel to Where the Grass is Greener: Biblical Stewardship vs. Climate Alarmism, Convicted delves into the deadly impacts of climate alarmism on people in developing countries, and what Biblical Stewardship requires of us: “To seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.”

Learn why top experts risk their jobs, funding, and public reputations to oppose the politicization of science and the use of scientific theories to push social, economic, and political agendas. The science is not settled, watch Convicted: How Climate Alarmism Harms the World’s Poor to know more.

View the trailer at https://vimeo.com/216242322

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ever released? diff name?

several old white guys no ID tim ball prof climatology, singer and michael id as prof of env sci uva; l stewart

co2 effect is insult to gawd

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“Convicted: How Climate Alarmism Harms the World’s Poor,” The Heritage Foundation, May 17, 2017. Archived May 16, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/Fr8lN

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ICS

 December 2015

Lord Christopher Monckton reported that he would be part of a “expert team” setting out to “prosecute the climate fraudsters.”[8]

Monckton’s “expert team” appeared to consist largely of those who attended a “counter-conference” hosted by the Heartland Institute that took place shortly before the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21).

The so-called Paris Climate Challenge, taking place from December 1 – 3, 2015, was reported as an associated project of the Heartland Institute, newly-formed Independent Committee on Geoethics, and Collectif des Climato Réalistes. The conference’s website offered the following summary: [9]

“We call on governments, NGOs and universities to stop pursuing policy and dogma based ‘evidence’ gathering.

According to Monckton, Heartland’s conference “came to a unanimous conclusion that a fraud investigation team should be established to gather evidence of outright criminality on the part of the surprisingly small scientific clique that has until now got away with foisting its anti-scientific nonsense on just about all nations.”[8]

Monkcton said the group would “assemble the evidence into a prosecution fileand then to submit the file to the professors for their consideration.”

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2007 gr GW swindle UK:

The film takes a strongly denialist view of current scientific thinking on climate change. It argues that the consensus on climate change is the product of "a multibillion-dollar worldwide industry: created by fanatically anti-industrial environmentalists; supported byscientists peddling scare stories to chase funding; and propped up by complicit politicians and the media".[2][15]

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Z.2010.08-11 Roy M. Spencer

NAS Begins Global Warming Inquisition IRS-3E Meme-146

“A new  [so-called meme] “study” has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy

of Sciences (PNAS) examining the credentials and publication records of climate

scientists who are global warming skeptics versus those who accept the “tenets

of anthropogenic climate change.”

It should be no surprise that the study finds scientists skeptical of the

anthropogenic global warming (AGW) crisis theory have fewer publications or

are less credentialed than the marching army of scientists who have been paid

hundreds of millions of dollars over the past 20 years to find every potential

connection between fossil fuel use and changes in nature.”

Roy Spencer’s career has been based on government money, but he has

been wrong again and again. When scientists complain about exclusion,

sometimes it is because they are poor scientists, §Y.1.