A Review of the President’s Fiscal Year 2015 Budget Request for Science Agencies
On Wednesday, March 26, 2014, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology will hold a hearing to review President Obama’s proposed fiscal year 2015 (FY15) budget request for programs and science agencies under the Committee’s jurisdiction.
Dr. John P. Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), will review the proposed budget in the context of the President’s overall priorities in science, space, and technology and will describe how the Administration determined priorities for funding across scientific disciplines and agencies.
Witness
- John Holdren, Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President
The following web links are highlights of the President’s FY 2015 budget request:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/Fy%202015%20R&D.pdf
The following web links provides highlights U.S. Global Change Research Program, clean energy programs, and climate change initiatives in the President’s FY 2015 budget request:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/FY%202015%20Climate.pdf
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2015/assets/fact_sheets/building-a-clean-energy-economy-improving-energy-security-and-taking-action-on-climate-change.pdf
The following web link provides highlights of the Administration’s STEM education programs in the President’s FY 2015 budget request:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/fy_2015_stem_ed.pdf
The following web link provides highlights of the Administration’s proposals for investing in American Innovation in the President’s FY 2015 budget request:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2015/assets/fact_sheets/investing-in-american-innovation.pdf
Smith asks Holdren about NSF’s “stress in Bolivia” grant.
Holdren: I’m not sure any of us in this room are in a better position to judge these grants than the NSF.
Smith: Don’t you feel that NSF should justify these grants to the American taxpayer?
Holdren: I believe they do. The organic act says the NSF’s job is to promote the progress of science. Funding basic research is in the NSF’s mission, we should let it continue.
Smith: I don’t think they’ve justified these grants.
Rohrabacher challenges Holdren on “bogus figure” of 97% climate scientists, Holdren questions its accuracy but says the study was peer-reviewed. Rohrabacher asks about tornadoes and hurricanes getting more “ferocious.” Holdren says that there is no evidence, none, of changes in tornadoes, but that there is evidence supporting changes in hurricanes, droughts, and floods. Rohrabacher calls Holdren out for “weasel words.”
Neugebauer challenges Holdren on fracking study. “There was not a lot of evidence to justify going down this road. It appears this administration is on a witch hunt. The administration continues to take a negative, slanted view towards the technology.”
Holdren: “This is not a witch hunt. I don’t want and the president doesn’t want to lose access to this natural gas and oil, this very important set of resources because we don’t do this right.”
Statement of Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas)
Hearing on The President’s FY2014 Budget Request for Science Agencies
Chairman Smith: The topic of today’s hearing is the President’s budget request for the coming year. This is the first of several hearings to examine over $40 billion in annual federal research and development (R&D) spending within the Science Committee’s jurisdiction.
Unfortunately, this Administration’s science budget focuses, in my view, far too much money, time, and effort on alarmist predictions of climate change. For example, the Administration tried to link hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts to climate change. Yet even the Administration’s own scientists contradicted the president.
The Administration also has not been as open and honest with the American people as it should. When the Committee asked the EPA for the scientific data being used to justify some of the costliest regulations in history, their response was that they didn’t have it even though they were using it.
When we asked the National Science Foundation (NSF) last year for their justification in funding numerous research grants, the NSF refused to provide a response.
All government employees and their agency heads need to remember they are accountable to the American taxpayer who pays their salary and funds their projects. It is not the government’s money; it’s the people’s money.
Further, an estimated $300 million was spent in building the website Healthcare.gov prior to its public rollout last October. Secretary Sebelius rightly called this “a debacle.” In its haste to launch the Healthcare.gov website, it appears the Obama Administration cut corners that left the site open to hackers and other online criminals. According to experts who testified before the Science Committee, millions of Americans are vulnerable to identity theft from this website.
For this reason, the Science Committee has twice asked the White House’s Chief Technology Officer, Todd Park, to testify about his role in the development of the Healthcare.gov website. Rather than allow him to testify before Congress, the White House instead chose to make Mr. Park available for interviews with Time magazine. So much for accountability and transparency.
The Administration’s willful disregard for public accountability distracts from the important issues of how America can stay ahead of China, Russia, and other countries in the highly-competitive race for technological leadership.
Perhaps the greatest example of the White House’s lack of leadership is with America’s space program. The White House’s approach has been to raid NASA’s budget to fund the Administration’s environmental agenda. In the last seven years, NASA’s Earth Science Division has grown by over 63 percent. Meanwhile, the White House’s budget proposal would cut NASA by almost $200 million in Fiscal Year 2015 compared to what Congress provided the agency this year.
And The White House’s proposed asteroid retrieval mission is a mission without a budget, without a destination, and without a launch date. Rather than diminish NASA’s space exploration mission, President Obama should set forth a certain, near-term, realizable goal for NASA’s space exploration.
Many experts believe that a Mars Flyby mission launched in 2021 is a potentially worthy near-term goal. A human Mars mission would electrify the American public, excite American scientists, and inspire American students.
Our leadership has slipped in areas such as: space exploration where we currently rely on Russia to launch our astronauts into space; supercomputing where China currently has the lead; and even severe weather forecasting where European weather models routinely predict America’s weather better than we can. We need to make up for lost ground.
These budget hearings are about something far more important than simply numbers on a ledger. They’re about priorities. And the Administration should reevaluate its priorities if we want to continue to be a world leader in science, space, and technology.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) Rejects Human Responsibility for Climate Change
A few months after the devastation of Superstorm Sandy, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) rejected the scientific fact of anthropogenic global warming. He made remarks rejecting the linkage between human activity and changes in weather at a Heritage Foundation “Conversations with Conversatives” event on January 22, 2013. Questioned by Heritage’s Rob Bluey, Massie said he took “offense” at President Obama’s remarks on climate change in the 2013 State of the Union address.
I was disappointed to see him blame the droughts on human activity and then to say that we’re denying the evidence of scientists. As someone with a science-type background, I took offense at that. I would challenge him to show us the linkage, the undeniable linkage, between the droughts and the change in weather, and human activity.
“Now, it’s true that no single event makes a trend,” Obama said in his address. “But the fact is the twelve hottest years on record have all come in the last fifteen. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods — all are now more frequent and more intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science — and act before it’s too late.”
Obama’s words were scientifically well-founded. In August 2010, the World Meteorological Organization issued a statement on the “unprecedented sequence of extreme weather events” that “matches Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections of more frequent and more intense extreme weather events due to global warming.” Climate scientists have concluded that “[m]any lines of evidence — statistical analysis of observed data, climate modelling and physical reasoning — strongly indicate that some types of extreme event, most notably heatwaves and precipitation extremes, will greatly increase in a warming climate and have already done so.”
Massie’s “science-type background” refers to his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change has a helpful FAQ on climate science which provides answers to Rep. Massie’s questions, such as, “Are extreme events, like heat waves, droughts or floods, expected to change as the Earth’s climate changes?” The answer: “Yes.”
According to the Program of Atmosphere, Oceans, and Climate in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT, which studies the “substantial human interference of the climate system”:- “Over the past 200 years or so, humans have altered the chemical composition of the atmosphere and oceans.”
- “There’s clear evidence that greenhouse gases have been increasing by very large amounts since preindustrial times, and the vast majority of these increases are due to human activity.”
- “Current concerns about future climate change are driven in large part by the observational evidence that several long-lived greenhouse gases are increasing at significant rates.”
- “Climate models suggest that both global mean precipitation and the intensity of precipitation extremes will increase in a warmer climate.”
- “The total amount and distribution of water in the atmosphere is very sensitive to temperature such that global warming is expected to lead to substantial changes in all aspects of the water cycle.”
- “Anthropogenic factors are likely responsible for long-term trends in tropical Atlantic warmth and tropical cyclone activity.”
Massie is a freshman member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. He has received $87451 in campaign contributions from the energy industry, including $34,451 from the oil and gas industry, of which $12,000 is from Koch Industries.
Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) Counters Climate Science with 'Global Freezing'
Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) rejects the scientific fact of anthropogenic global warming. In a December 2011 interview uncovered by Hill Heat, Posey told conservative activist Victoria Jackson that climate change has nothing to do with human activity:
If we’ve had at least three ice ages, and some people, some scientists say five, you cannot have five seamless ice ages. You must warm up between, you know, to have them. The earth has had tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions tectonic plate shifts, meteor strikes, asteroid strikes, for millions of years, and it’s not going to stop just because we’re here now. When you think back twenty years ago, the worry was global freezing. “We’re going to freeze again. We’re going to have another ice age.”
In reality, the carbon-dioxide greenhouse effect is a physical fact known since the 1800s. The only scientifically plausible systematic explanation for the rapid and continuing warming of the planetary climate since 1950 is industrial greenhouse pollution. Paleoclimatologists have identified at least five major ice ages in the past 2.5 billion years of Earth’s history. We are currently in an interglacial period within the Quarternary or Pleistoscene ice age, defined by the permanent Antarctic ice sheet which formed 2.58 million years ago. There have been eight cycles of glaciation and retreat in the past 740,000 years. Levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to industrial pollution are at levels not seen in the past 740,000 years, and likely not seen at any point during the current ice age. WIthout global policy to end the combustion of fossil fuels, concentrations are expected to double from current levels within decades.
Posey, elected to Congress in 2008, is a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. He has received $33,700 from the energy sector including $19,900 in lifetime political contributions from the oil and gas industry. His district includes the NASA Kennedy Space Center, Eastern Florida State College, and the Florida Institute of Technology.
Roger Pielke Jr's First Post for Nate Silver's Venture Relies on False Claim about Climate Science
In fact, today’s climate models suggest that future changes in extremes that cause the most damage won’t be detectable in the statistics of weather (or damage) for many decades.
This claim is false, even under Pielke’s terms. Pielke defines “extremes that cause the most damage” as “floods, droughts, hurricanes and tornadoes,” excluding “heat waves and intense precipitation,” because “these phenomena are not significant drivers of disaster costs.” (That exclusion is made without a supporting reference.)
In fact, climate models, checked against observations, have already detected changes in the most damaging extremes in the statistics of weather, even under Pielke’s carefully chosen terms:- Anthropogenic greenhouse gas contribution to flood risk in England and Wales in autumn 2000, Pall et al, Nature 2011
- Atlantic hurricanes and natural variability in 2005, Trenberth and Shea, Geophysical Research Letters 2006
- Global warming increases flood risk in mountainous areas, Allamano, Claps, and Laio, Geophysical Research Letters, 2009
- Increasing drought under global warming in observations and models, Dai, Nature Climate Change 2012
Given a sensible policy toward risk, that uncertainty should increase our concern about the continued pollution of our weather system, not decrease it.
CNBC's Joe Kernen: Climate Science is "Witchcraft"
On Thursday’s Squawk Box, CNBC pundit Joe Kernen claimed that climate science is “witchcraft” for the conclusion that rising atmospheric CO2 from industrial emissions is increasing the planetary greenhouse effect. Arguing with Andrew Ross Sorkin about the news that January 2014 was the fourth warmest in recorded history for the planet, Kernen made several factually incorrect claims.
Kernen said: “The other warmer months were like in the ‘90s. Why would there be a warmer month when CO2 was 30% less in the ‘90s?”
In fact, the other warmer Januaries were in the 2000s: ‘07, ‘02, ‘03, ‘14. Five of the 6 next warmest months were in the ‘00s: ‘10, ‘05, ‘98, ‘04, ‘09, ‘13. 1998 was a warm year because of a very strong El Nino, such that some of the vast amount of heat stored in the oceans was added to the atmosphere.
Carbon dioxide was 10 percent less in the 1990s, not 30 percent less. The global CO2 average for 1990-1999 was 360 ppm, which is 9 percent less than the 2013 annual average of 396.5 ppm. CO2 levels were 26 perecent less than the present day in the 1880s, and the earth was 0.8 C (1.44 F) cooler then.
Kernen has regularly questioned the science of man-made global warming and pilloried scientists and activists as the “eco-taliban.”
Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) Thinks Global Warming is a Hoax
Now we hear all the time about global warming. Actually, we have had flat-line temperatures globally for the last 8 years. Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human-induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus.
In reality, the carbon-dioxide greenhouse effect is a physical fact known since the 1800s. The only scientifically plausible systematic explanation for the rapid and continuing warming of the planetary climate since 1950 is industrial greenhouse pollution.
Broun is a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. He has received 146,050 from the energy sector including $87,550 in lifetime political contributions from the oil and gas industry, of which $33,500 is from Koch Industries and $31,750 from Georgia Power.
BROUN: This bill is going to kill millions of jobs in America. People are going to be put out of work because of this bill.
Now we hear all the time about global warming. Actually, we have had flat-line temperatures globally for the last 8 years. Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human-induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus.
But this is going to kill jobs. It’s going to raise the cost of food. It’s going to raise the cost of medicines. It’s going to raise the cost of electricity and gasoline. Every good and service in this country is going to go up, and who is going to be hurt most? The poor, the people on limited income, the retirees, the elderly, the people who can least afford to have their energy taxes raised by, MIT says, over $3,100 per family.
This rule must be defeated. This bill must be defeated. We need to be good stewards of our environment, but this is not it. It’s a hoax.
In Series of Misspelled Tweets, CNN's Newt Gingrich Attacks John Kerry as 'Delusional'
CNN personality Newt Gingrich lambasted John “Kerrey” in a series of tweets on Monday for the Secretary of State’s recent remarks on climate change. Secretary Kerry said that global warming is “perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.”
Gingrich’s position on global warming has repeatedly flipped. In a 2007 appearance with then-Senator Kerry, Gingrich said action on carbon pollution should be taken “urgently.” This week, he called for Kerry’s resignation for making similar comments in a series of misspelled tweets.
“The most direct reaction to kerrey’s global warming speech is to ask if he is completely out of touch with reality.”“If kerrey believes his global warming speech it is a terrifying prospect for American policy. He is making policy in a fantasy world”
“Does kerrey really believe global warming more dangerous than north Korean and iranian nukes? More than Russian and Chinese nukes? Really? ?”
“Every American who cares about national security must.demand Kerrey’s resignation.A delusional secretary of state is dangerous to our safety”
Gingrich’s criticism of Kerry could be caught in the crossfire of previous Gingrich remarks, as he has argued that climate change is a serious threat in previous years. In 1989, Gingrich co-sponsored legislation saying “global warming imperils human health and well-being” and represents “a major threat to political stability, international security, and economic prosperity.” In 2007, Gingrich said “mandatory carbon caps” is “something I would strongly support.”
Most notably, Gingrich stood on stage with Kerry in 2007, saying that the country should “urgently” take “most effective possible steps to reduce carbon-loading of the atmosphere,” calling himself a “green conservative.”
Global warming and nuclear weaponry are very different kinds of global threats. In particular, as Nicholas Stern, John Kerry, the U.S. Department of Defense, and many others have pointed out, rapidly accelerating global climate change is a “threat multiplier,” a destabilizing force that increases the risk of armed conflict over resources and forced mass migrations. We are already seeing this in action, experts point out. For example, the polluted climate helped precipitate the ongoing Syrian conflict. For those concerned about the threat of nuclear war, global warming is considered a serious risk factor.
It may be informative to compare the scale of nuclear conflict with that of global warming on a purely energetic basis.
The nuclear arsenal of North Korea is estimated at 12 to 27 “nuclear weapon equivalents”, with less than a dozen warheads, each with an explosive potential of about 10 kilotons of TNT (46 terajoules). Iran is not known to have any nuclear weapons. Russia’s estimated nuclear stockpile is 8500 nuclear weapons, and that of China is estimated at 250.
Greenhouse pollution adds 250 terajoules of heat energy to the climate system every second. Thus, global warming adds more heat energy to the planet than the equivalent to the explosive yield of the estimated nuclear arsenal of North Korea every five seconds, and the equivalent of the nuclear arsenals of North Korea, China, and Russia combined every thirty minutes. Every hour, the planet warms at the heat energy equivalent of the entire global nuclear arsenal.
As Kerry said in 2009, “we live in a country where if you dismiss the threat posed by terrorism, you would be laughed out of the political mainstream. But if you dismiss the threat of climate change, you might just find yourself a leadership position inside the Republican Party.”
Jeff Bezos' Washington Post Hires Volokh Conspiracy Theorists
The Volokh Conspiracy, a blog of climate conspiracy theorists, is now part of the Washington Post.
When Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took over the Washington Post, some climate activists hoped he would close down the Post’s editorial support for climate-science deniers such as George Will and strengthen the influential paper’s focus on the climate threat.
But it was not to be.
In the first major move since the acquisition, Bezos has replaced liberal “wunderkind” blogger Ezra Klein with the corporate-right lawyer blog Volokh Conspiracy, founded by Eugene Volokh in 2002.
The Volokh Conspiracy bloggers are aptly named, as they have promoted conspiracy theories about anthropogenic climate change and the scientists who study it.
“As these stories make clear, several of the scientists whose e-mail and other documents were disclosed engaged in both unethical and illegal conduct.”— Jonathan H. Adler, former Competitive Enterprise Institute environmental director and Heartland Institute contributor, 1/30/10
“JunkScience.com, run by the Cato Institute’s prolific Steven Milloy, is a year-round antidote to the unscientific panics incited by big government and the scientists who love it.”— Dave Kopel, Independence Institute, 12/6/04
“The recent Climategate scandal underlines the dangers of like-minded small groups falsifying evidence and excluding opposing views.”— Ilya Somin, Cato Institute Adjunct Scholar, 12/21/09
“Whatever the exact state of climate science, the marriage of the authority of science and the authority of the United Nations plainly corrupted a non-negligible number of the climate scientists. Not, let us be clear, that it took very much to sway scientists who were offered what appeared to them to direct global economic policy and win Nobel prizes.”—Kenneth Anderson, Hoover Institution Visiting Fellow, 2012
“All of their examples of people supposedly ‘reinventing’ the climate change debate were people who were convinced that we needed to do something now to stop or reverse global warming, which is pretty much what that side of the debate has wanted all along. . . . We may well be causing climate change, but it’s not clear there’s anything we as individuals or we as a country are really equipped to do about it.”— Will Baude, 6/22/13
“Hoffer is correct that we now have enough data to know that most prior climate models are wrong.”— Jim Lindgren, 1/3/14
“Remember, people are usually at least somewhat circumspect in writing emails to professional colleagues around the world. Thus, is it likely that the corruption in this subfield of climatology is LESS serious or MORE serious than the scientists would disclose to their colleagues in their own emails?”— Jim Lindgren, 12/8/09
“While the wider world is just beginning to realize that the subfield of paleoclimatology is in shambles (and has been for the last decade), scientists in related disciplines are increasingly fighting back against the shoddy work and orthodoxy that was foisted on them.”— Jim Lindgren, 12/7/09
“The other moment in the debate that struck me as quite strange was Biden’s comment that he is certain that all global warming is manmade and that manmade global warming is what is melting the polar icecap . . .— Todd Zywicki, Competitive Enterprise Institute Director, Institute for Humane Studies Director and Charles G Koch Alumni Award Recipient, Goldwater Institute Senior Fellow, Mercatus Center Senior Scholar, Property and Environment Research Center Fellow, 9/28/08Palin’s answer was much more nuanced and consistent with science (not to mention being absolutely correct about what to do it about it as a policy matter, focus on the impacts and the mix of policies to respond to climate change) . . .
It is obvious that there are cyclical temperature changes on the planet (in addition to other natural variances, such as sun spots, cloud cover, etc.). We have had ice ages and tropicl [sic] periods. I have tried to find some nuance or qualification in Biden’s statement that he understands the difference between ‘all’ and ‘most’ or the possible role of natural causes, but I don’t see it. He seems to just be wrong about his understanding of what the science actually says on this point.”
Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), New Climate Research Subcommittee Chair, Thinks Climate Science 'Arrogant'
Arizona Congressman David Schweikert of the Sixth District rejects the scientific fact of anthropogenic global warming. Rep.Schweikert (R-Ariz.) is the incoming chair of the House Science Committee’s subcommittee that oversees climate change research, The Hill reports. Schweikert is replacing fellow science denier Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Environment. Stewart left the science committee post in December for a slot on the House Appropriations Committee.
In a 2010 interview uncovered by Hill Heat, then-candidate Schweikert claimed the science of climate change is actually a conspiracy concocted by the “arrogant” “Al Gores of the world,” the “control freaks, the people who want to control my life, want to control my lifestyle.”
“I don’t see the data. You know, I think I have a reasonably good statistics background. And I have not sat there with pages and pages of data. But when you think about the complexity of a worldwide system and the amount of data you’d have to capture, and how you adjust for a sunspot, and how you adjust for a hurricane and I think it’s incredibly arrogant for the Al Gores of the world to stand up and say the world is coming to an end. Because as I kid I remember on the flip side when they were warning me we were going to go into an ice age. . . . I wish people would make up their mind. It’s the control freaks, the people who want to control my life, want to control my lifestyle.”
In the interview, Schweikert also implausibly claimed, “as I kid I remember on the flip side when they were warning me we were going to go into an ice age.”
In reality, the carbon-dioxide greenhouse effect is a physical fact known since the 1800s. During the 1970s, scientific research on the global climate was advancing and popular coverage reflected the variety of scientific opinions about the consequences of man-made pollution on the climate, before the influence of greenhouse pollution became unmistakable by the 1980s. The only scientifically plausible systematic explanation for the rapid warming of the planetary climate since 1950 is industrial greenhouse pollution.
He has also described climate science as “folklore.”
“Understanding what part of climate change is part of a natural cycle and what part has human components is the first step.” Schweikert told the Arizona Republic during his failed 2008 candidacy. “Our elected officials must be careful to react to facts and not folklore.”
During a debate with his 2012 primary against Ben Quayle, Schweikert affirmed he does not believe in man-made global warming, the Phoenix New Times reported. Schweikert has also described the effect of greenhouse limits on coal-fired plants as having “negligible environmental benefit.”
“I’ve learned in Congress it’s not necessarily Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals. It’s those that do math and those that don’t,” Schweikert said in a March, 2013 interview. “You need to make policy on facts.”
Q: Since you want to reduce the tax burden, I assume you’re against cap-and-trade?A: Oh yeah.
Q: Which some call cap-and-tax?
A: Oh yeah.
Q: As a related question, do you think global warming is a hoax, or do you think that man is capable of doing anything about climate change at all?
A: I’m not going to say whether . . . well . . . I don’t see the data. You know, I think I have a reasonably good statistics background. And I have not sat there with pages and pages of data. But when you think about the complexity of a worldwide system and the amount of data you’d have to capture, and then how dpyou adjust for a sunspot, and how do you adjust for a hurricane this and that, and I think it’s incredibly arrogant for the Al Gores of the world to stand up and say the world is coming to an end. Because as I kid I remember the flip side where they were warning me we were going to go into an ice age.
Q: In the 1970s there were pictures of protesters carrying those signs.
A: I wish people would make up their mind. It’s the control freaks, the people who want to control my life, want to control my lifestyle. And I’m a guy, I drive a hybrid. But I drive a hybrid because I think gas prices were going to go up. I did it from economic self-interest, not because I wanted to save the planet.
Q: Yeah, I always get a kick out of thinking, gosh, they’re so worried about global warming, what if we go into another global ice age and we hadn’t protected ourselves from that!
A: It’s . . . you want to protect and love your environment. But I’ll make the argument the person that owns their private property is going to love and protect it much greater than a bureaucrat hundreds of miles away who will manage and protect that same piece of real estate.
Q: And of course you’re talking about the problem of the commons.
A: Exactly! You understand the basic economic theories. The ability to say, look, we all want a common goal. The air, we want that clean. We want the best land use. We want this and that. Then maximize the private ownership. Because a private owner will cherish and love those resources much more than a bureaucrat ever will.
Top Climate Science Conference Sponsored By Top Climate Polluters
The annual conference of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the top meeting of the world’s climate science community, enjoys the “generous support” of the world’s largest greenhouse polluters, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, and BP. The AGU’s annual meeting in San Francisco each December is the world’s largest gathering of earth scientists, at more than 20,000 attendees, ranging from physical climatologists to petroleum geologists. This December 9-13, AGU’s sponsors were prominently displayed on its website and on posters in the conference halls with the headline, “Thank You To Our Sponsors”:
AGU would like to take the time to recognize the generous support from all of the sponsors of the 2013 Fall Meeting and the events at the meeting.
The top sponsor credited was ExxonMobil; second-tier sponsors included BP, Chevron, and drilling services giant Schlumberger.
The prominent “thank you” given to the companies that profit from the disruption of our climate system received condemnation from some public commenters.
“Nausea-inducing greenwashing: Pukewashing,” tweeted climate and energy blogger Lou Grinzo.
“The cognitive dissonance is mind-boggling,” wrote geology student Ryan Brown.
The union recognizes that the sponsorship is designed to influence its attendees; in promotional materials AGU says sponsorship will “build your brand and create [a] positive link in the attendees’ minds” and “recruit new scientists, enhance your corporate image, show support, and raise your visibility among the scientific community.”
In August 2013, AGU declared that “human-induced climate change requires urgent action.” The AGU Climate Change Position Statement clearly implicates “fossil fuel burning” as the dominant factor in “threats to public health, water availability, agricultural productivity (particularly in low‐latitude developing countries), and coastal infrastructure,” and “no uncertainties are known that could make the impacts of climate change inconsequential.”
The statement was developed by a 14-person panel chaired by Texas A&M climatologist Gerald North. Thirteen of the 14 members voted to approve the strong statement; famous climate skeptic Roger Pielke Sr. dissented. (Pielke’s son, Roger Pielke Jr., is a political scientist who argues as a pundit that climate change does not require societal action.)
Hill Heat sent email messages to the members of the AGU panel asking if they had concerns about AGU accepting funding from the fossil-fuel industry, including companies that have an extensive history of funding attacks on climate science and political opposition to the regulation of carbon emissions.
“Frankly, I have never thought about this,” Dr. North, the panel chair, replied. He noted that many AGU scientists are employed by the extractive industries, and said he would be concerned only if he had seen the AGU’s work being corrupted by fossil-fuel money:
Many AGU members work in the oil and gas industries as well as the coal industry. I suppose the AGU could be corrupted by these elements, although I have no evidence (that I know of) of this having happened in the past. AGU Committees I have served on have shown no evidence of nefarious inputs or pressures. Usually, the first meeting of an AGU Committee there is a conflict of interest session in which all tell of any matters that might be construed as a conflict of interest. This was the case with the Committee I chaired.
“So far I have no reason to object to these contributions so long as AGU Committees can operate without interference,” Dr. North continued. “It’s a little like universities taking such donations. For example, my university Texas A&M accepts many contributions from them and I have never felt any pressure from any university official or Texas government official. There has to be a ‘wall’ of separation between donors and what is done with their money. For example, at the University donors of endowed chairs have no say in who the chair goes to.”
Fellow panelist Kevin Trenberth, Distinguished Senior Scientist in the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., related a similar sentiment to Hill Heat.
“Fossil fuels exist and will continue to do so,” Trenberth wrote. “Many of the companies have diversified into other areas of energy. So that alone is not a reason for inappropriateness. In addition a big part of AGU is geophysics and geology. Several companies have also declared that they have good intentions and no longer fund mis-information. I am not sure how well that bears up to scrutiny. But in general, yes, AGU should accept funding from the fossil fuel industry, as long as it has no strings attached. And they can use the funds to push back if warranted.”
Sylvia Tognetti, an environmental science and policy consultant who is not an AGU member, told Hill Heat she does not believe it is appropriate to AGU to accept fossil-fuel industry sponsorship. “I expect that a campaign on this issue would be a difficult one, given the schizophrenic relationship that exists between science and policy,” she wrote in an e-mail. “But bringing attention to these contradictions might just provoke an important dialogue on the role of science for the public good.”
According the AGU Fall Meeting Sponsorship Prospectus, “Sponsorship at the AGU Fall Meeting is a cost-effective way of branding your company, your products, and your services to more than 20,000 geophysical and space scientists.” The prospectus notes that “Sponsorship can increase your corporate/product awareness, build your brand, and create positive link in the attendees’ minds between you and an activity in support of their science.” The top “gold” sponsorship level costs a minimum of $15,000.
In the 2012 Fall Meeting Sponsorship Prospectus, AGU says that Chevron and Exxon Mobil are companies which “realize the benefit of sponsorship with the AGU,” as a “cost effective, high profile tool your company can use to recruit new scientists, enhance your corporate image, show support, and raise your visibility among the scientific community.”
The AGU conference also advised climate scientists on effective communication, with presentations such as “400ppm CO2 : Communicating Climate Science Effectively with Naomi Oreskes and multiple presentations by John Cook, Stephan Lewandowsky, Susan Hassol, and Dana Nuccitelli.