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Should I overlook the fact this guy is employed by The Cato Institute, which is funded by big oil?

dpatru 17y ago
No, but also don't miss the fact that most of those on the other side are funded by big government. Neither side is neutral.
- bballant 17y ago
  Fair enough, but the security and welfare of citizens is the primary interest of big government (o.k. secondary, but aligned with the primary interest of getting re-elected), whereas big oil has no interest other than making loot. With respect to climate change, big oil loot comes at the expense of our planet (and our security, and lives our troops in the middle east, and our health, and our economy).
  - zaphar 17y ago
    Employment is not a valid criteria by which to validate a scientific paper. It's a red-herring, when the actual paper and data is available to validate. Employment has 0 bearing on it's validity. The point of the article and other like it is that papers and careers were being blacklisted not on the validity of the science conducted but on the personal opinions of a group more interested in their own ideas than in open discourse.
- chubbard 17y ago
  Here's what I don't understand about the nobody's neutral point. Sure nobody's absolutely neutral (just like nobody's is absolutely truthful). It's all relative, but who's more neutral seems to be what they have to gain. Who benefits more by being right? If big oil is right then they get to carry on using fossil fuels until we run out. By some estimates there's still several trillion dollars of oil, coal, etc in the ground yet to be extracted. If global warming advocates are right what do they get? Gold star, notoriety for being great scientists, pat on the back and a gold watch? Even billions of dollars in research grants? Once they're right research money dries up, and you still have to fix the energy crisis that would ensue. And, big oil is handing out money left and right for any study saying the opposite. If funding were your only incentive you could just as easily get money from the other side. If you can prove global warming is or IS NOT caused by human activity you'll be very very famous, maybe rich. Still that's paltry in comparison to the revenue of the oil, coal, and to some degree gas industries. I can't seem to make the the pay offs for being right equal out. I like to not be so paranoid, but quite frankly this whole debate just seems like a smoke screen from both sides at the moment. Which could be yet another tactic since status quo benefits the CO2 producers.
jacoblyles 17y ago
This is just ad hominem. You might as well say "I am politically on the left and I don't like the Cato Institute". It would be more honest. As an aside, the Cato Institute turned down a donation from Fannie Mae before the financial crash so as to avoid the appearance of bias in their advocacy, so I have a bit of respect for them. How many think-tanks would do the same? Yes, they were founded with a gift from the Koch families decades ago, but does that invalidate the work of Michaels, who by all appearances is a climate scientist that has published real research? Should we dismiss his thoughts outright and not listen to what he has to say? (Update: a link below shows 3/4 of Cato's annual funding comes from individual donations, only 2% comes from corporations. Presumably, the rest comes from non-profit foundations.) Sorry, I accidentally up-voted you when attempting to do the opposite.
- DanielBMarkham 17y ago
  meta-note: I've noticed a tendency on HN for commenters to impeach people sometimes without good reason (this case may or may not be a good example, that's not the point) On several articles today the comments basically boiled down to an ad-hominem -- and this was on subjects as far-ranging as naval warfare, startups, science, etc. I'd like to call it out more, but there's so much of it -- it's a lost cause, I think.
  - jpwagner 17y ago
    Unfortunately, it seems even more prevalent in the real world...
jpwagner 17y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute#Funding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute#Funding Looks like they receive funding from ~20 corporations annually accounting for 2% of their overall funding.
viggity 17y ago
Isn't it possible that the Cato Insitute's beliefs preempted the money and not the other way around? I donate money to the NRA because they support gun rights. The NRA doesn't support gun rights because I personally give them money.
amackera 17y ago
No, you should not. Also keep in mind the author edited the World Climate Report funded by the non-profit "Greening Earth Society", which in turn was funded by the Western Fuels Association (a non-profit cooperative for "coal and transportation services"). On further reflection this might be a bit of stretch...
logjam 17y ago
The author of this sorry little polemic is whining about, in part, the justified criticism of an extremely poor paper whose publication and subsequent political use by the Bush Administration caused the resignation of half the editorial board of Climate Research. "Some journalists are digging even deeper into the sources of Soon and Baliunas’s funding. Their Climate Research paper includes acknowledgements to NOAA, NASA and the US Air Force, as well as to the American Petroleum Institute. Yet NOAA flatly deny having ever funded the authors for such work, while the other two bodies admit to funding them, but for work on solar variability not proxy climate records, the topic that has caused such a storm." http://www.sgr.org.uk/climate/StormyTimes_NL28.htm http://www.sgr.org.uk/climate/StormyTimes_NL28.htm And now here we are on "Hacker News", where this axe-grinding swill keeps getting endlessly posted by the same axe-grinding posters to "Hacker News" and voted up by folks who frankly haven't taken the time to begin to look into the actual science. ("Hacker News"? This particular little niche website is fast becoming Wall Street Blog West. People who came for the tech are leaving because of the increasing emphasis on how to make a few fast buck any old way.) Meanwhile, as an experiment a few days ago I posted an article from FactCheck that concluded "ClimateGate" is overblown nonsense, and that, "The American Association for the Advancement of Science released a statement "reaffirm[ing] the position of its Board of Directors and the leaders of 18 respected organizations, who concluded based on multiple lines of scientific evidence that global climate change caused by human activities is now underway, and it is a growing threat to society." The American Meteorological Society and the Union of Concerned Scientists have also reiterated their positions on climate change, which they say are unaffected by the leaked e-mails." http://www.factcheck.org/2009/12/climategate/ http://www.factcheck.org/2009/12/climategate/ "Hacker News" response: ~crickets~ It was obvious that facts are the last thing Cato and the Wall Street Journal and the axe-grinders here are interested in.
- antonovka2 17y ago
  ("Hacker News"? This particular little niche website is fast becoming Wall Street Blog West. People who came for the tech are leaving because of the increasing emphasis on how to make a few fast buck any old way.) I agree. I found it depressing that your comment was down-voted to the negatives.

No, but also don't miss the fact that most of those on the other side are funded by big government. Neither side is neutral.

bballant 17y ago
Fair enough, but the security and welfare of citizens is the primary interest of big government (o.k. secondary, but aligned with the primary interest of getting re-elected), whereas big oil has no interest other than making loot. With respect to climate change, big oil loot comes at the expense of our planet (and our security, and lives our troops in the middle east, and our health, and our economy).
- zaphar 17y ago
  Employment is not a valid criteria by which to validate a scientific paper. It's a red-herring, when the actual paper and data is available to validate. Employment has 0 bearing on it's validity. The point of the article and other like it is that papers and careers were being blacklisted not on the validity of the science conducted but on the personal opinions of a group more interested in their own ideas than in open discourse.
chubbard 17y ago
Here's what I don't understand about the nobody's neutral point. Sure nobody's absolutely neutral (just like nobody's is absolutely truthful). It's all relative, but who's more neutral seems to be what they have to gain. Who benefits more by being right? If big oil is right then they get to carry on using fossil fuels until we run out. By some estimates there's still several trillion dollars of oil, coal, etc in the ground yet to be extracted. If global warming advocates are right what do they get? Gold star, notoriety for being great scientists, pat on the back and a gold watch? Even billions of dollars in research grants? Once they're right research money dries up, and you still have to fix the energy crisis that would ensue. And, big oil is handing out money left and right for any study saying the opposite. If funding were your only incentive you could just as easily get money from the other side. If you can prove global warming is or IS NOT caused by human activity you'll be very very famous, maybe rich. Still that's paltry in comparison to the revenue of the oil, coal, and to some degree gas industries. I can't seem to make the the pay offs for being right equal out. I like to not be so paranoid, but quite frankly this whole debate just seems like a smoke screen from both sides at the moment. Which could be yet another tactic since status quo benefits the CO2 producers.

jacoblyles 17y ago

This is just ad hominem. You might as well say "I am politically on the left and I don't like the Cato Institute". It would be more honest. As an aside, the Cato Institute turned down a donation from Fannie Mae before the financial crash so as to avoid the appearance of bias in their advocacy, so I have a bit of respect for them. How many think-tanks would do the same? Yes, they were founded with a gift from the Koch families decades ago, but does that invalidate the work of Michaels, who by all appearances is a climate scientist that has published real research? Should we dismiss his thoughts outright and not listen to what he has to say? (Update: a link below shows 3/4 of Cato's annual funding comes from individual donations, only 2% comes from corporations. Presumably, the rest comes from non-profit foundations.) Sorry, I accidentally up-voted you when attempting to do the opposite.

DanielBMarkham 17y ago
meta-note: I've noticed a tendency on HN for commenters to impeach people sometimes without good reason (this case may or may not be a good example, that's not the point) On several articles today the comments basically boiled down to an ad-hominem -- and this was on subjects as far-ranging as naval warfare, startups, science, etc. I'd like to call it out more, but there's so much of it -- it's a lost cause, I think.
- jpwagner 17y ago
  Unfortunately, it seems even more prevalent in the real world...

jpwagner 17y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute#Funding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute#Funding Looks like they receive funding from ~20 corporations annually accounting for 2% of their overall funding.

viggity 17y ago

Isn't it possible that the Cato Insitute's beliefs preempted the money and not the other way around? I donate money to the NRA because they support gun rights. The NRA doesn't support gun rights because I personally give them money.

amackera 17y ago

No, you should not. Also keep in mind the author edited the World Climate Report funded by the non-profit "Greening Earth Society", which in turn was funded by the Western Fuels Association (a non-profit cooperative for "coal and transportation services"). On further reflection this might be a bit of stretch...

logjam 17y ago

The author of this sorry little polemic is whining about, in part, the justified criticism of an extremely poor paper whose publication and subsequent political use by the Bush Administration caused the resignation of half the editorial board of Climate Research. "Some journalists are digging even deeper into the sources of Soon and Baliunas’s funding. Their Climate Research paper includes acknowledgements to NOAA, NASA and the US Air Force, as well as to the American Petroleum Institute. Yet NOAA flatly deny having ever funded the authors for such work, while the other two bodies admit to funding them, but for work on solar variability not proxy climate records, the topic that has caused such a storm." http://www.sgr.org.uk/climate/StormyTimes_NL28.htm http://www.sgr.org.uk/climate/StormyTimes_NL28.htm And now here we are on "Hacker News", where this axe-grinding swill keeps getting endlessly posted by the same axe-grinding posters to "Hacker News" and voted up by folks who frankly haven't taken the time to begin to look into the actual science. ("Hacker News"? This particular little niche website is fast becoming Wall Street Blog West. People who came for the tech are leaving because of the increasing emphasis on how to make a few fast buck any old way.) Meanwhile, as an experiment a few days ago I posted an article from FactCheck that concluded "ClimateGate" is overblown nonsense, and that, "The American Association for the Advancement of Science released a statement "reaffirm[ing] the position of its Board of Directors and the leaders of 18 respected organizations, who concluded based on multiple lines of scientific evidence that global climate change caused by human activities is now underway, and it is a growing threat to society." The American Meteorological Society and the Union of Concerned Scientists have also reiterated their positions on climate change, which they say are unaffected by the leaked e-mails." http://www.factcheck.org/2009/12/climategate/ http://www.factcheck.org/2009/12/climategate/ "Hacker News" response: ~crickets~ It was obvious that facts are the last thing Cato and the Wall Street Journal and the axe-grinders here are interested in.

antonovka2 17y ago
("Hacker News"? This particular little niche website is fast becoming Wall Street Blog West. People who came for the tech are leaving because of the increasing emphasis on how to make a few fast buck any old way.) I agree. I found it depressing that your comment was down-voted to the negatives.