[LINK] Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study

Sun Feb 4 09:50:56 AEDT 2007

On Sun, 04 Feb 2007 08:58:54 +1100
"rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au" <rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au> wrote:

> ...and I almost forgot. The other tactic, now being deployed by the 
> Institute of Public Affairs, is to put forward an unknowable
> proposition as a reason to do nothing. Hence: "We don't know that
> climate change will be bad for [X], so we should not act until we
> have measured its positive effects."
> 
> Hence:
> http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21144521-601,00.html
> 

Richard,
If you are intending to imply that this is somehow dishonest
manipulation, then I guess I must disagree with you. It is not news
that warming will have some benefits, just as increased CO2 in the
atmosphere does. It is certainly not dishonest to try to understand
these.

The general discussion here seems to be that politicians are resisting
and disbelieving of "climate change", no matter how expressed. That is
not my observation: successive NSW governments have done nothing,
NOTHING, to deal with a water supply that was established to serve 2
million people in Sydney. Now, isn't it great!, we can make up for
years of political incompetence AND get political mileage out of it by
saying it really is the fault of climate change.

At the Federal level, who would have ever thought that there was an
opportunity for reactivating a moribund uranium industry? Climate
change to the rescue!

Finally, when it comes to "unknowable propositions", I would like to
see some validation of the computer models that are going to change our
lives. To paraphrase Tom Lehrer: "Computer models are like a sewer -
what you get out of them depends on what you put into them." Validation
would include, at least, public availability and scrutiny together
public tests of "predicting" the past.

Alan

> RC
> 
> rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au wrote:
> 
> > Jan,
> >
> > Jan Whitaker wrote:
> >
> >> At 01:56 PM 3/02/2007, Rick Welykochy wrote:
> >>
> >>> (B) The survey of popular media (newspapers, magazines, TV) found
> >>> that approx 56% of the articles examined disputed the veracity of
> >>> the global warming (and also tended to use the term climate
> >>> change instead --
> >>>     spin). The reason for this discrepancy? An active campaign
> >>> funded by vested interests (Big Oil) to discredit the theory
> >>> through popular
> >>>     culture and media.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Or is this nearly 50% alternative view an example of MSM (blog
> >> speak for mainstream media - had to look it up myself recently and
> >> decided to use it more often) trying to be 'unbiased'? The concept
> >> of having 'equal time' does nothing for showing the public that
> >> there is weighting toward one view or another.
> >
> >
> > In a word, "yes". "Balance", for example in debates over the ABC,
> > is a piece of weaselry which is deployed to put media and
> > journalists on the defensive. As a result, people get tricked into
> > believing they have to give airplay to kookery like the denial
> > lobby, intelligent design, and so on.
> >
> > All too often, journalists have been drawn into debating whether or 
> > not their coverage is "balanced" as a distraction. "Balanced" does
> > not matter: the MEAA code of ethics spells it out. Journalists are 
> > required to tell the truth, and truth is an inherently unbalanced 
> > concept. Truth says "the Earth is not flat", where balance says
> > "even the crackpot flat-Earthers deserve airtime".
> >
> > If a vastly wealthy lobby (which incidentally includes big 
> > advertisers) needed to give airtime to the flat-earth theory, you
> > can be sure that they would construct a campaign which would target 
> > publishers ("We just want to ensure that the public receives both 
> > sides of the story, and remember that we are big advertisers") as
> > well as individual journalists. And we would start seeing stories
> > talking up the "other side of the argument".
> >
> > If you wanted to see where the money is, one good way is to look at 
> > where kooks are treated seriously in the media. Creation science
> > and intelligent design gets a run in America because it is backed
> > by money. Climate change denial is driven everywhere by large
> > dollars (and undisclosed conflicts; a column last week by someone
> > associated with the Institute of Public Affairs quoted a criticism
> > of the Stern Review without disclosing that it was part-authored by
> > one IPA member, and part-funded by Exxon). Other examples will
> > occur to others ...
> >
> > The "balance equals fair equals true" game played by the lobbies
> > also feeds into another journalist characteristic: "he said"
> > journalism is a really quick and easy meal, and the journalist gets
> > to say: "What I wrote is true: he did say it. I'm not responsible
> > if he's a lying shill. And anyway I had to get his opinion because
> > the editor said the story has to be balanced."
> >
> > The journalist gets a salve to the conscience, the shill is working 
> > for an institute which only incidentally gets big donations from 
> > advertisers like motor companies, oil companies and coal companies, 
> > and the manipulation of the press by advertisers is done at arms' 
> > length. And everybody's happy, except that the punters are given
> > bad science as being equally as important as good science.
> >
> > Richard Chirgwin
> >
> >>
> >> The global warming v climate change language is a Bush White House 
> >> thing. I heard somewhere that the US administration always changes
> >> it to 'climate change' because 'global warming' was seen to be too 
> >> alarming. Change is thought to be a neutral word.
> >>
> >> Jan
> >>
> >>
> >> Jan Whitaker
> >> JLWhitaker Associates, Melbourne Victoria
> >> jwhit at janwhitaker.com
> >> business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
> >> personal: http://www.janwhitaker.com/personal/
> >> commentary: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
> >>
> >> 'Seed planting is often the most important step. Without the seed, 
> >> there is no plant.' - JW, April 2005
> >> _ __________________ _
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >>
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> >
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-- 
Alan L Tyree                    http://www2.austlii.edu.au/~alan
Tel: +61 2 4782 2670            Mobile: +61 427 486 206
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