Today's Washington Post reports on the controversy over the American Enterprise Institute's effort to solicit analyses and critiques of the IPCC report and proposed climate policies.
Advocacy groups such as Greenpeace and the Public Interest Research Group questioned why the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has offered $10,000 to academics willing to contribute to a book on climate- change policy, an overture that was first reported Friday in London's Guardian newspaper.Set aside the irony of citing Hurricane Katrina in the context of complaining about those who "create confusion on the status of climate science." The Greenpeace complaint ultimately amounts to nothing more than opposition to critical perspectives on the need for the sort of climate policies Greenpeace supports. Whether or not one likes AEI's work on climate change — some of which has endorsed carbon taxes and other serious measures — this is hardly a substantive argument that AEI did anything unseemly.Greenpeace spokeswoman Jane Kochersperger, who noted that AEI has received funding from Exxon Mobil in recent years, said yesterday that the think tank "has clearly hit a new low . . . when it's throwing out cash awards under the rubric of 'reason' to create confusion on the status of climate science. Americans are still suffering the impacts of Hurricane Katrina, and it's clearly time for policymakers on both sides of the aisle to take substantive action on global warming and ignore Exxon Mobil's disinformation campaign via climate skeptics."
AEI visiting scholar Kenneth Green — one of two researchers who has sought to commission the critiques — said in an interview that his group is examining the policy debate on global warming, not the science.
"It's completely policy-oriented," said Green, adding that a third of the academics AEI solicited for the project are interested in participating. "Somebody wants to distort this."
One interesting tidbit in the story provides insight on why Steven Schroeder of Texas A&M declined to participate in the AEI project, and further undermines the most outrageous claims against AEI. In particular, the story reports that Schroeder did not believe AEI would have "skewed his results":
Schroeder, who has worked with Green in the past and has questioned some aspects of traditional climate modeling, said in an interview that he did not think AEI would have skewed his results. But he added that he worried his contribution might have been published alongside "off-the-wall ideas" questioning the existence of global warming.I have a copy of the model letter Ken Green and Steven Hayward used for the second round of solicitations noted in the WaPo story and, because some have requested it, I am posting it below (even though I don't think it laters the bottom line). So others can judge for themselves, here it is:"We worried our work could be misused even if we produced a reasonable report," Schroeder said. "While any human endeavor can be criticized, the IPCC system greatly exceeds the cooperation, openness and scientific rigorousness of the process applied to any other problem area that has significant effects on society."
Faced with such resistance, AEI modified its proposal last month and sent out a new round of offers, asking academics to contribute to a book examining the broad policy options for dealing with global warming.
Dear-----As I noted before, I don't think there is much of a story here: A think tank is commissioning work from people who are likely to produce reports that will support the think tank's general mission. When those reports are produced, they can be evaluated on their merits. Insofar as there is now controversy, I understand why the WaPo ran its piece. My point is that there should not have been any controversy in the first place.This is Steven Hayward and Ken Green writing from the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. We are writing to solicit your thoughts about, and hopefully your participation in, an AEI project on climate change policy. Between the forthcoming Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC due later this year, the Stern Review, and the close of the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period on the intermediate horizon, the time seems propitious for a fresh round of discussion of climate policy. AEI would like to commission a series of essays from a broad range of experts on various general and specific aspects of the issue, around which we should like to organize several conferences in Washington and ultimately a book.
Two general thoughts dominate our thinking about the structure of a useful project. First, in the public mind at least (which is to say, the news media) climate change has tended to be caught in a straightjacket between so-called “skeptics” and so-called “alarmists,” with seemingly little room left in the middle for people who may have reasonable doubts or heterodox views about the range of policy prescriptions that should be considered for climate change of uncertain dimension. This perception is mistaken, of course, as Andrew Revkin’s recent New York Times article on “an emerging middle ground” on climate change made evident. Nonetheless, we would like to attempt to break out of this straightjacket and see if it is possible to create a space for an identifiable “third way” of thinking about the problem that is similar to the various “third way” approaches to other social policy problems that were popular in the 1990s.
Our second general thought is that the chief difficulty of carving out a “third way” on climate change is due to the unwieldy size and complexity of both the scientific inquiry and policy approaches to the problem. We had thought to produce a series of essays to review and critique the forthcoming IPCC FAR, early drafts of which are circulating, but have been persuaded that an IPCC-focused project is too limited. Although some commentary on the IPCC FAR is in order, our latest thinking is broaden our scope. One idea is to solicit essays in two categories. The first category would be along the lines of a blue-sky essay on “What Climate Policies Would I Implement If I Was King for a Day.” The second category would be specific critiques of existing or proposed policy responses such as will appear in Working Group III or have been put forward in reports such as the Stern Review. (Such essays might take as their focus a single chapter from Working Group III, or an aspect of the Stern Review.)
Above all we want to have a diverse collection of pre-eminent thinkers on this subject, which is why we are keen to include you in the project. AEI is willing to offer honoraria of up to $10,000 for participating authors, for essays in the range of 7,500 to 10,000 words, to be completed by September 1, and we are keen to work with you to refine an appropriate topic.
UPDATE: According to this report, ExxonMobil was not involved, or even aware, that AEI was soliciting critiques and analyses of the IPCC report and climate policy proposals.
Related Posts (on one page):
- "Scenes from the Climate Inquisition":
- The Senatorial Inquisition of AEI:
- On Ad Hominem Arguments:
- WaPo on AEI Funding Climate Critiques:
- Did AEI Seek to Buy Climate Scientists?
Scientific inquiry has been exceedingly valuable precisely because it has been undertaken to discover what is actually there - not to shore up somebody's political arguments. Don't worry though, we are well on our way to killing that goose.
As usual, you struck to the heart of the WaPo piece today: Schroeder admits that it was fear of being painted guilty by association that made him dissociate himself from the project and make that dissociation a public act.
This is the chilling effect of the constant attacks being made on people who ask questions about climate science or policy that might in any way run afoul of the UN/Enviro-left crusade to take control of the world's energy economies.
I think you're also the first person to notice that the very fact we asked someone like Gerald North is prima facie evidence that we were seeking a range of viewpoints, including those in the "climate science mainstream."
Finally, as for the $10K...I suppose to some that can seem like a lot of money. However, we were asking people to read 3,000 pages of dense scientific material that is only comprehensible to those with extensive educations and deep immersion in the subject, then to write a rigorous, referenced, policy-oriented paper based on the latest scientific information. The effort would almost certainly take weeks, and possibly a month to complete. Makes that $10,000 look smaller when you're asking for a month of someone's time, doesn't it?
Ken
This is the chilling effect of the constant attacks being made on people who ask questions about climate science or policy that might in any way run afoul of the UN/Enviro-left crusade to take control of the world's energy economies.
This seriously mischaracterizes Schroeder's reason, as described in the article:
he worried his contribution might have been published alongside "off-the-wall ideas" questioning the existence of global warming.
What Schroeder is saying is that he does not trust AEI to restrict itself to serious comments and critiques of the IPCC report. He fears that AEI will include nonsensical ideas that he does not want to be associated with.
That is certainly a legitimate fear, especially when Green characterizes those who disagree with him as being on a "crusade to take control of the world's energy economies." That doesn't sound like someone interested in objective analysis.
Where North says "...the IPCC system greatly exceeds the cooperation, openness and scientific rigorousness of the process applied to any other problem area that has significant effects on society."
In other words, Green argues that the IPCC is suspect of bias and suspect science, whereas North says the IPCC has a solid integrity process in place to avoid such problems.
I also see nothing binding the letter sent out. Who's to say that data will not be cherry picked from reports, some published, some not and politicized as it so often is on this subject whether it be Greenpeace or from the other side of the political spectrum?
As to the use of financial incentives is not the governmental grant making process one fraught with political overtones? how is that different than what AEI has done, except AEI is not (presumably) using tax payer dollars.
This who thing appears to me to be a tempest in a teapot.
second: If, say, the Gates foundation offered researchers a ten million dollar honorarium for coming up with a cure for cancer, would that invalidate the cure? Is this not an appropriate analogy?
After all, Greenpeace's favorite scientists are also taking money to espouse a specific point of view. They are getting massive research budgets, good salaries, comfortable jobs, and international junkets because they expressed a desire to tailor their research to come up with the results everyone wants to see.
But that's different, I guess.
If Global Warming activists were held to the same standard I would agree, but I wasn't aware that An Inconvienient Truth had been peer reviewed.
I think we need to constructivly debate all aspects of global warming. I wouldn't question a stipend to authors of a paper as long as the work can stand on its own, just as I wouldn't question the funding of An Inconvienient Truth, what matters is whether its assertions and conclusions can stand a rigorous debate.
However when I hear statements such as a co-worker made this morning stating that it is perfectly legitimate to cherry pick the facts and research on GW to paint as dire a picture as possible inorder to galvanize action, as AIT does, I cringe. I don't think trying to manipulate the public for a greater good is ever a legitimate tactic, and I do think there is an uncoordinated, decentralized effort being made to silence GW critics.
it is perfectly legitimate to cherry pick the facts and research on GW to paint as dire a picture as possible inorder to galvanize action, as AIT does, I cringe.
I hope your coworker doesn't describe that as "science".
2. Will AEI give the IPCC an opportunity to respond to the critiques prior to publication and include the responses?
3. Will AEI accept for publication a critique that largely agrees with the IPCC report?
4. What editorial oversight will AEI exercise over articles submitted to it for publication?
5. Why, since AEI fellows are appearing on these threads, won't they commit to funding a process which would appear to be far more credible than that proposed in the first letter?
You wrote:
"The subtext of the AEI's offer is quite clear - oppose the "IPCC on climate change and get a chunk of industry cash. Itis assumed that your conclusions will be concordant with the AEI's stated political goals."
The subtext? Did you write the letter? You're guessing, as well as defaming, which has nothing to do with, nor is in any way a part of scientific inquiry. Yet you profess insight in this area.....not terribly scientific, old chap.
You write:
"Scientific inquiry has been exceedingly valuable precisely because it has been undertaken to discover what is actually there - not to shore up somebody's political arguments."
(Really? I can see you're a real student of both the history of science and how campus politics work :-)
I will, however, concede this; scientific inquiry is indeed fact-based. However, modeled projections based on algorithms used to stochastically process multiple large data tables in multiple variables, whether using complete or incomplete data is a tool and a method, not scientific "fact". Well, the outputs are of course facts, in the sense that they are a product (oh, look, a computer printed this....it must be true..!).The Global Warming (GW) crowd depends on some recent and some dated results of these processes to demand that we accept their version of the World. It's nonsense, and their call to silence critics is itself highly diagnostic. Whether or not a modeled product product(s) represents reality, either present or future, is certainly a fair subject for scientific scrutiny, especially by those who have an ax to grind about it. The expression "the exception proves the rule (originally proofs or tests)" is a simple articulation of this. More to the point, to the degree action on such findings will affect the polity at large it is legitimate to gather any and all "facts" that work to correct and counter unpleasant consequences of adopting the proposed program. This testing is essential to the scientific process, and to the political process in free societies, which really upsets the GW shills (its not clear which process irritates them more, so I recommend you follow the money). People will engage in any nonsense when power and money is involved, and the number of pseudo-scientists crawling around the lip of this honey jar is itself an important test of motive.
Now, the fact that the Earth is mildly warming in the 20th century appears to be a fact. To suggest, however, wrenching changes to the First World, which principally would benefit GW traffikers, the enviro-religiosity industry, tin-pot UN dictatorships, and a number of uncompetitive First World governments sliding from fraternitie into mediocritie, without harsh testing, is truly unintelligent and irresponsible. Without first beating the hell out of the GW theses, it is the height of thuggery, arrogance and totalitarianism for GW proponents to tell others to "Shut up". Most unscientific.
It's not. If the honorarium was for research suggesting that Compound X cured cancer, that would be analogous.
There's also the Lancet issue, where they published a (horribly incorrect and falsified) paper from a scientist who had a direct financial interest in the MMR lawsuits in England.
If I were trying to sell out to Exxon by proxy, I'd hold out for more.
Otherwise, Professor Adler pretty much nailed it, though he might have added that, in addition to the unconscious irony of Greenpeace using Katrina as an argument about AGW, listening to Greenpeace complain about untrustworthy advocacy is like -- I don't know -- like listening to Paris Hilton complaining about bad publicity? Something like that, anyway.
As interesting, Exxon has denied any connection to the little farago.
Remember, this is Greenpeace making the criticism. The people who say that if we allow the globe to warm, malaria will start appearing in heretofore temperate places. I live in Hawaii. We don't have malaria here, but it isn't because it's too cold.
Now all of these things cost money, as does keeping Hawaii maleria free. As global warming accelerates, as has been observed, the cost of this adaptation will accelerate. One of the major mistakes people make is to assume doing nothing has no economic cost. There has been much study of such impacts and the coming IPCC AR4 WGII report will summarize them. Stay tuned.
Jeremy Grantham -- Cheney's own investment manager. "What were we thinking?' Grantham demands in a four-page assault on U.S. energy policy mailed last week to all his clients, including the vice president.
Titled "While America Slept, 1982-2006: A Rant on Oil Dependency, Global Warming, and a Love of Feel-Good Data," Grantham's philippic adds up to an extraordinary critique of U.S. energy policy over the past two decades.
"Successive U.S. administrations have taken little interest in either oil substitution or climate change," he writes, "and the current one has even seemed to have a vested interest in the idea that the science of climate change is uncertain."
Yet "there is now nearly universal scientific agreement that fossil fuel use is causing a rise in global temperatures," he writes. "The U.S. is the only country in which environmental data is steadily attacked in a well-funded campaign of disinformation (funded mainly by one large oil company). Exxon Mobil.
As for Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen, who appears everywhere to question global warming, Grantham mocks him as "the solitary plausible academic [the skeptics] can dig up, out of hundreds working in the field."
As for the alleged economic costs of going "green," Grantham says that industrialized countries with better fuel efficiency have, on average, enjoyed faster economic growth over the past 50 years than the U.S.
Grantham says that other industrialized countries have far better energy productivity than the U.S. The GDP produced per unit of energy in Italy is 50% higher. Fifty percent. Japan: 60%.
And China "already has auto fuel efficiency standards well ahead of the U.S.!" he adds. You've probably heard about China's slow economic growth.
Grantham adds that past U.S. steps in this area, like sulfur dioxide caps adopted by the late President Gerald Ford, have done far more and cost far less than predicted. "Ingenuity sprung out of the woodwork when it was correctly motivated," he writes.
There is also a political and economic cost to our oil dependency, Grantham notes. Yet America could have eliminated its oil dependency on the Middle East years ago with just a "reasonable set of increased efficiencies." All it would take is 10% fewer vehicles, each driving 10% fewer miles and getting 50% more miles per gallon. Under that "sensible but still only moderately aggressive policy," he writes, "not one single barrel would have been needed from the Middle East." Not one.
But you fell for my trap. Malaria is not a tropical disease. Including it in statements about a warming climate merely convicts the writer of ignorance about malaria.
(Don't feel too bad. I've run this little spritz dozens of times, and it ALWAYS works.)
Randy quotes somebody who claims (not very credibly) to know about investments: 'industrialized countries with better fuel efficiency have, on average, enjoyed faster economic growth over the past 50 years than the U.S.'
In 1945, the US had one half of the world's industrial capacity. Fifty years ago, in 1957, it was somewhat less.
Of course, other countries have grown at a faster rate than the US. US growth was limited by, for the most part, its chronic labor shortage; to a lesser degree by its assumption of the expense of defending countries like Japan; and to a still lesser extent by being the first country to include the expense of environmental cleanup in its national accounts.
Meanwhile, Japan went from practically nowhere to 2nd largest, but not very clean, economy. (China, of course, is even worse in that respect and so is growing even faster.) Obviously, these countries had rates of growth higher than the US rate.Duh.
Piece of advice for you Randy: don't invest any money on Grantham's recommendations.
Public health costs. Global warming stresses the system. Go RTFR Harry.
When Abe Lincoln was lawyering in Illinois, malaria was the leading cause of death. Illinois, where the temperature right now is about 0.
Malaria exists as far north as Norway. About 99.9% of the world's population is already living in malaria zones and always has been.
You should tear youself away from foresworn GW tracts and read some epidemiology. There's a field which is (except for AIDS) comparatively free of political shenanigans.
did your eyeballs block. Also, as I recall southern IL can be pretty hot in the summer.
TD you need a class in atmospheric sciences rather than attempting a drive by. There is a difference in the isotope ratios of carbon atoms from fossil fuels and from land use changes. The observed differences show that the increased CO2 comes from burning fossil fuels.
As to the carbon fertilization effect it is real, but limited. Among other things only plants that use the C3 pathway for photosynthesis will be fertilized, not those that use the C4 pathway, so the claim that all plants will under go a dramatic increase in growth is wrong because ALL will not, and the increase will not be DRAMATIC.
The claim that forests will expand is also nonsense. Forests are mostly limited by humans doing things like cutting trees for cropland and McMansions.