Deltoid

Yes. Pre-order the book. I've reviewed it, and she and Erik dug out some amazing details of past history , all the way back to the way the White House used Fred Singer to hijack acid rain recommendations.

The anti-science crowd has pursues asymmetric warfare against climate scientists, who are trying to do science, and do not have the time or skillset for studying their attackers.

On the other hand, it is a very bad idea to attack someone who is a published geoscientist, a meticulous science historian used to digging hard, and well-respected by senior folks at the AAAS. She only got really interested in this turf after she starting getting nasty emails and phone calls after her 2004 essay in Science. Very, very bad mistake on their part. Wrong person to attack.

Posted by: John Mashey | March 5, 2010 11:42 AM

She only got really interested in this turf after she starting getting nasty emails and phone calls after her 2004 essay in Science. Very, very bad mistake on their part. Wrong person to attack.

I saw Naomi speak at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography a couple of years ago (it was Naomi's "American Denial of Global Warming" lecture that you can watch at ucsd.tv or on youtube). My impression of her is that in a debate with a male denier, she'd be the one leaving the room in possession of the pair of testicles. She's one tough cookie who won't take any s**t.

After the lecture, I mentioned to her that the local (San Diego) talk-radio hosts (Rick Roberts and Rodger Hedgecock) were constantly spewing global-warming denial talking-points and had invited "denier" guests to appear on their shows. I then asked her if she or any of the Scripps scientists had ever been contacted for interviews on those shows. All I can say is, it's a good thing that she wasn't sipping any coffee when I asked her that question!

Posted by: caerbannog | March 5, 2010 12:46 PM

crossposting:

I’ve read more Oreskes than I really care to. Her effect on this debate has been pernicious. She has done a lot of harm.

this statement is simply false. this post by Tom (“Global warming–undefeated, untied and unscored upon “), posted about a month ago, clearly demonstrates a massive lack of understanding of the Oreskes works.

http://www.examiner.com/x-9111-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2010m1d21-Global-warmingundefeated-untied-and-unscored-upon

Tom basically has not read anything on Oreskes. neither had he read Peiser, when he made the false claims that he wrote in that post.

i have given up on Tom Fuller. he does not correct the errors he makes. (another really dubious statement by him above. i only witnessed a single correction, among hundreds of errors) neither is he anywhere near the middle of the topic, as he continues to claim.

Tom is just another person, trying to make money by spreading false claims about climate change.

Posted by: sod | March 5, 2010 1:25 PM

Sod (#5):

Good summary about Fuller. That's why I posted his quote above. If he says its bad, the opposite is almost certainly true.

BTW, I would not post his Examiner link anywhere on the interwebs. He thrives, nay, needs the faux controversy in his bog as a revenue stream source.

Posted by: Former Skeptic | March 5, 2010 2:08 PM

Ah, was this a peer reviewed lecture or a 'puff' for a forthcoming book.(LOL)

Posted by: Dave Andrews | March 5, 2010 5:27 PM

s.lindsay - I know you didn't come here to be educated, but really, is a hack attack by ben pile the best you can do to attack Oreskes? The attack you link to contains no evidence, merely wilful misunderstanding of the plain language of Oreskes and the people she quotes.

Posted by: calcinations | March 5, 2010 6:31 PM

You get a sense of how effective Oreske is by the volume of unsubstantive attacks her work inspires from denialist.

To cap off Fuller and Ducky Andrews empty snipes, cue - lindsey's link which seems to be empty of valid critique. Lindsey can correct me if I'm wrong by presenting his/her favored strong points from the 'critique'.

Posted by: jakerman | March 5, 2010 6:51 PM

Tom Fuller:

Sure, Heartland and CEI got some energy funding at the beginning of all this, but nothing like what your side is getting from energy companies today.

PR and propaganda is cheap, science is expensive.

But if you want to talk big money, how much is delay of mitigation worth? Its estimated to be worth about $1 billion each day of delay to fossil fuel giants. That's about $360 billion per year or about $3 trillion a decade. That is US$3,000,000,000,000.00 per decade. In other words the rewards of delay (for an elite few) equal about the same as the revenue required for an Iraq type invasion/occupation every decade.

Posted by: jakerman | March 5, 2010 7:06 PM

Please post a link to the dino cartoon!

Posted by: John | March 5, 2010 7:29 PM

looking for tobacco connections is not enough of a strategy, and should only be used in passing as a small disposable part of our armoury.

To clarify guthrie, its obvious that unlike Fuller you don't want to ignore the pattern, just put it in perspective. Thus if the pattern is strong it should be exposed as such.

Posted by: jakerman | March 5, 2010 7:36 PM

i mostly disagree. i agree, that the claim "it is a big oil conspiracy" is simplicistic and false.

Sod, where is this simplistic and false "claim"? Who makes it? Oreskes describes a pattern of well supported nuanced relationships and political ideologies with powerful connections. I wouldn't down play the support and vested interest from wealthiest corporations in history. Some financial support from Exxon has been found, and we should not be assume that this is the limit of financial support.

Not simplistic and not wrong.

Posted by: jakerman | March 5, 2010 8:07 PM

It is clearly not just Big Oil. Look at p623-65 of that report I mentioned in #25.

One can find:
1) Identifiable contributions from:
a) ExxonMobil Educ. Foundattion.
b) Wealthy family foundations

2) Then, one can look at the fundees' "990" forms, see how much money came in compared to those. I did that for GMI, p.45. In their case, that left (very roughly) 40% of their income.

4) In general, the other income might be:
a) ExxonMobil directly
b) Other oil co's, directly.
c) EM and others via the American Petroleum Institute, or PR agencies, or through other foundations or think tnaks. [For example, if this were Heartland, exactly who pay for those big conferences, and by what route?]
d) Coal cos, either directly, or indirectly through trade associations, or other think tanks.
e) Cigarette companies, certainly a factor fro some.
f) Others, including in GMI's case, quite possibly aerospace companies (they might be unusual in that.)

The real puzzle to me has long been: why did EM use a Foundation whose records are public? They spent a lot more money on lobbying, but of course, thinktanks that are nonprofit (501(c)3 here would lose that status, but I'd think it would have been easy enough to funnel money via various service contracts. "Come in and give us a seminar on current science." "Sure, only $50,000." "What, so cheap?"

By the way, do people recall:

*[SOO2003] Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas, “Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years,” Climate Research Vol. 23:89-110, 2003. Submitted: 04/11/02; Accepted: 08/29/02; Published 01/31/03. this (poor) paper eventually resulted in mass resignations, because the publisher would not let Editor-in-Chief von Storch repudiate it. First sponsor was API:
“Acknowledgements. This work was supported by funds from the American Petroleum Institute (01-0000-4579) (and others)… We thank John Daly, ... Craig and Keith Idso for their unselfish contributions to the references. “

Posted by: John Mashey | March 5, 2010 8:45 PM

That Exxon gave $100 million to Stanford for Environmental Studies?

Trying to buy influence and establish funding models to their favor has a long and ugly trend. It is becoming more pervasive and the same "think tanks" who bat for tobbaco and big oil, also push for funding models that put science as subordinate and begging to corporations.

Posted by: jakerman | March 5, 2010 10:42 PM

Fred Singer got $143K for the NIPCC report

Baliunas got $52K from the Marshall Institute in the same year the OISM report came out. OISM got an extra $200K that year

Soon and Baliunas got $300K from 2005 to 2007 from Exxon

Singer got $20K (he was working cheap) for writing a report which pooh-poohed the danger of environmental smoke.

and that's without Eli spending a lot of time tracing this stuff.

Posted by: Eli Rabett | March 5, 2010 10:56 PM

jakerman:

1) Big companies are complicated. I used to work for Bell labs, i.e., AT&T, at the time a 1M+ person company. Sometimes the left hand and the right hand don't work together in big companies.

EM funds GCEP @ Stanford (some of the money goes elsewhere). I've met lots of the people from GCEP, multiple times, I attend their big yearly public-can-sign-up 3-day conferences, and it is good research. I see a lot of VC friends there looking for ideas.

One can speculate as to why EM funded GCEP:

a) Somebody in EM worries about the problems. At least one of the EM guys who apparently helped set it up has been involved with IPCC.

b) Get early visibility into research. [Stanford runs all sorts of things like this, where industry sponsors something, has no control over the micro-funding decisions, but gets to know the people and see research results. I've been the SGI rep to computing entities like that. If done well, it can be very, very effective for everybody.]

c) Or, it could just be marketing cover: "See, we fund research." Given how long research takes, no research is going to put them out of business any time soon.

I make zero claim about which (or which combination) of these is reality, or whether it is something else. Having some experience with huge companies, anything is possible.

Of course, the portion of the EM think tank funding I listed is clear. What is unclear is exactly what EM thought it was getting, and what sort of documentation went from think tanks each year. This is why I'd love to hahve the equivalent of the Tobacco Archives, in which one can find the equivalents of "We have these skills- pleae fund us! or This is what we did for you last year! or We could do such-and-such..."

Posted by: John Mashey | March 5, 2010 11:23 PM

Tom Fuller says

Well, doesn't it strike anybody here as funny that CRU was hitting up Big Oil and energy companies for repeated funding? That Exxon gave $100 million to Stanford for Environmental Studies?

Only if you accept a caricature of Oreskes argument.

Is it likely that all the senior management of the fossil fuel companies believe that global warming is a crock? Or that the executives of tobacco companies are not aware of the health effects of cigarette smoking? Or DuPont scientists were not aware of the effect of CFCs on the ozone layer? Or that industrial scientists were not aware of the cause of acid rain?

Perhaps we can speculate that some process rendered well educated and in many cases scientifically trained individuals selectively stupid.

The more likely explanation is that they accept some of the science but believe that by "manufacturing doubt" through funding of the contrarians, they can reduce and defer effective action. Meanwhile profits continue to flow while they develop "clean coal", "biofuels", "smokeless cigarettes" etc.

These delaying tactics are not at all inconsistent with portraying themselves as "green and clean".

Oreske points out in her lecture that DuPont dropped their objections to the banning of CFCs once their researchers had developed replacements.

jakerman's link @ 16 points out profitable delaying tactics are.

Of course this is an over generalisation - some individuals are idealogically motivated and immune to the science, some are just plain greedy and some deniers really have been wacked with the stupid stick.

Posted by: MikeH | March 6, 2010 1:56 AM

in the same way, as you did not read Oreskes? but keep making comments about her?

Tom, do you even notice how you are exposing your way of "work"?

Posted by: sod | March 6, 2010 3:24 AM

Tom:

After your last try at misrepresenting climate science, Mike Tobis was dead right about you:

Tom Fuller is among the people lacking much clue about science, but who is happy to write about it and to try to attract an audience. This is irresponsible, especially because he does not appear to be learning anything, and has not offered to explain how he chooses whom to trust.

Tom Fuller is part of the problem.

I have advised him to write about stuff he is better equipped to write about. He thinks this is insulting but it's intended as honest and thoughtful and even kind advice. Perhaps with reading skills like he displays he ought not to be writing at all.

Keep on believing you are as relevant as the people you smear or misrepresent -- I sure as hell would like to see how deep the hole you're digging gets. :)

Posted by: Former Skeptic | March 6, 2010 3:39 AM

Brilliant!

Within a few posts this 'discussion' had descended into a tussle over Oreskes bona fides and useless minutiae about who funds who and is therefore tainted.

Doubt! Doubt! Doubt!

The key message from Oreskes was ... ????????????

Not that doubt is the product! But that the science needs to be communicated differently and better ... in light of opposing tactics! FFS

Posted by: Alan | March 6, 2010 4:01 AM

jakerman #20 - exactly, put it in perspective. What the denialists lack is perspective, and spend their time nit-picking, just like a really bad auditor. I've been audited under ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, and the bad auditors try and find things that aren't right, the good auditors agree they are here to help you improve things and act differently. And are much more effective at improving how things work.

Posted by: guthrie | March 6, 2010 5:20 AM

Please join this new Facebook group if you are frustrated by Canada's lack of action to combat Climate Change.

Canadians Against Climate Change Inaction

Posted by: Jason W. | March 6, 2010 3:37 PM