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Sure, the funding source is what matters. So why do people assume that academics have neutral or independent funding sources? The basic argument that climate s

Sure, the funding source is what matters. So why do people assume that academics have neutral or independent funding sources? The basic argument that climate scientists wouldn't get funding to do their jobs if it weren't for their predictions of global catastrophe, is a sound one. If climate scientists were reporting "our models suggest the climate is sorta like it used to be, there's probably not much going on", it'd be a backwater with almost no funding and absolutely no media interest. If economists took a stance of, "the economy is too complex to model or predict, but we'll collect a lot of data for you" then how many economists would be employed, or have newspaper columns? There's a structural incentive to be very confident in your ability to predict the future, if you're in certain areas of academia, as there are effectively no other employers. It's not just a climate issue. I'd feel a lot happier and more confident in the narrative if I felt sure this structural problem was at least recognised, ideally dealt with. But I don't see it: - The media present academics as neutral 'experts' whose word is beyond question. - Academics themselves encourage this and never talk about their own conflicts of interest. - Famous journals are run by academics with the same set of incentives. This is how you get stuff like https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/05/07/5-httlpr-a-pointed-review/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/05/07/5-httlpr-a-pointed-rev... happening, where 450 different studies over multiple decades investigated an effect that in the end didn't exist. We're told "science" self corrects and will always yield the right answer in the end. That may well be true if you use a wide definition of science that includes analysis done by random bloggers and anyone else who wants to contribute. But it's not at all clear that's true for the government funded academic apparatus, on at the scales needed, or on any reasonable timescale. It's entirely possible to believe in the scientific method whilst still retaining skepticism about the output of particular groups of people who do scientific work within particular social structures. Note: The CRU shenanigans were revealed through email hacking, not any kind of formal scientific process. In fact the researchers were deliberately evading laws put in place to try and stop that kind of thing. And even though we know ordinary science can self-correct because major faults like 5-HTTLPR are caught, it took decades. Psychology is riven with entire sub-fields that were studied since the 60s and are now known to be totally wrong. How many similar bodies of knowledge are waiting to collapse? There are plenty of examples of things thought to be "science" that evaporated when examined closely, often with scientists involved simply denying that anything had collapsed at all! It looks especially bad when climate scientists start adjusting old datasets to make their predictions come true, as has been happening recently with the new versions of the global temperature datasets. For many years the temperature data showed that global warming had stopped: average temperates were stable. This violated all prior models predicting what would happen and was a major problem for climate science as an endeavour. Now there are new 'versions' of old temperature readings that mysteriously disappear the plateau from the public record. There might be solid, scientific reasons for this. It might be that for many decades global temperature readings were fundamentally wrong and nobody detected it. But if something like that happens, climate scientists need to be very publicly screaming about what went wrong, and why, and what lessons they learned from it, because otherwise it looks suspicious as hell. It looks very much like they're adjusting the data to fit the models in order to preserve their own jobs. It doesn't matter that the Climate Research Unit is NOT government funded. Sponsors have included BP, the Nuffield Foundation and Shell. In the 1970s yes, before it was researching global warming. Currently it's a part of a university and gets its funding from governments (including the US Dept of Energy).

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
People don't assume that academics have neutral funding sources. That's why many will always look at the potential for conflict of interest, and look more carefully into the why. An academic in a university research body will get loads of funding from private foundations and industry. Even when it's not helpfully labelled as the Microsoft Campus, Oxford University. Who knows, I might be suspicious of some work coming out of there that is reporting a result that happens to be in Microsoft's interests. Given they supposedly have to find change to keep their jobs, how is it that all the research around the world is pointing to similar changes? If they're just making shit up, I'd expect predictions all over the map. The days of constraint free government funding for Blue Skies research are long gone. The world is far worse off as a result. That doesn't mean every single project, from every source is now corrupt. It does mean that some projects and studies do indeed have an agenda. Offer some evidence that academia is entirely corrupt. Or worse than industry. The CRU's current About Us includes: "sponsored by contracts and grants from academic funding councils, government departments, intergovernmental agencies, charitable foundations, non-governmental organisations, commerce and industry" To me that is not proof of "gets its funding from governments". It's one of multiple sources of funding. Regardless of how much you want to paint them as some government funded state puppet. Yet even then I fail to see how that helps your cause célèbre, the British government has been decidedly anti AGW and renewables in the last decade, with policies distinctly in favour of fossil. If the CRU were as corrupt as you keep claiming, the climate unit would surely be busy proving how harmless petrol and gas are, to get more of that filthy Conservative government lucre. We're not going to reach agreement, thanks for the conversation. :)
- repolfx 7y ago
  No problem, I find this conversation enjoyable and useful. I went looking for info on the funding of CRU. The best I could find was this: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6735846/Climategate-professor-Phil-Jones-awarded-13-million-in-research-grants.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/copenhagen-climate-ch... The Climategate docs had a spreadsheet with funding sources. So that's quite old now, but back then it was about £13 million from various sources, all of which were the government. I suppose they probably do get a bit of funding from non-government sources, but it seems it isn't likely to be much. It shows Professor Jones, along with other academics at the university, received more than 50 separate grants with a value of £13.7 million from a number of funding bodies including the European Union, Nato, and the US department of energy. Several British bodies also gave substantial sums including the Met Office, the Environment Agency, the National Rivers Authority and the Department for the Environment. Perhaps this article doesn't list any private sector grantees, but there are plenty of government bodies to go around. Re: everyone getting the same results, is academia corrupt. The research around the world doesn't agree entirely, but it's pretty close. However, it's all based on the same datasets. There are only a few temperature datasets available, really only two major datasets and one is maintained by the CRU. It's really an incredibly influential organisation, which is presumably why someone hacked it and why it was such a splash. Now, if the temperature record is unreliable all climate research based on that record is also unreliable. You can't argue the world is getting warmer unless you can reliably measure temperatures, that's pretty basic. Unfortunately we know for sure the temperature record must be unreliable, because the historical temperature dataset scientists use (which goes back to about 1850) keeps being revised. If you use the dataset that was current in the 1990s, then compare the dataset to the ones being provided today, you can see that the historical temperatures have been changed. This isn't done entirely secretly; the idea is that thermometer readings have to be adjusted to take into effect various confounding factors and that's perfectly legitimate. But there are practical problems: 1. People have been measuring temperatures with thermometers for over a century, yet scientists are still changing how they adjust the raw data today, with the result that the official temperatures seen back in the 30s and 40s, or even earlier, are still changing. The results of the adjustments are massive and fundamentally change the conclusions of the science. But by logical implication, if modern scientists are actually correct to do these adjustments then all previous analyses of the climate made until now must have been wrong. Why is nobody alerting the world to the prior wrongness of climate datasets? 2. Temperature dataset creators like the CRU have a nasty habit of claiming they destroyed or "lost" the raw, unadjusted data. They have also fought very strongly to block the release of raw datasets, and engaged in other sorts of behaviour that scientists aren't meant to engage in. That is, the only datasets available are those that have been "retouched" by people who get multi-million pound budgets because of predictions of warming. This large conflict of interest requires enormous trust in the climate scientists. It is thus unfortunate that revisions of historical data always create warming effects where previously none existed. The apparent pause in rising temperatures was discussed by scientists for many years - the latest temperature datasets from CRU rewrite history and erase it entirely. So you have to understand that climate skeptics are entirely understandable. Their positions aren't weird or crazy. Climate scientists are asking the world for staggeringly huge amounts of trust: to trust them about their understanding of climate trends although they're simultaneously claiming that all recorded temperature data, even as recently as 10 years ago, was wrong. This graphic illustrates the kind of thing that happens: https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Reykjavik2012-2013-1.gif https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Re... Last thing: the British government has been decidedly anti AGW and renewables in the last decade, with policies distinctly in favour of fossil Hmm, did you notice Theresa May's last act before she resigned? She committed the UK to massive climate change spending: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/11/may-defends-inspiring-green-plan-as-critics-call-for-immediate-action https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/11/may-defe... That's not the act of a government that's anti-AGW.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

People don't assume that academics have neutral funding sources. That's why many will always look at the potential for conflict of interest, and look more carefully into the why. An academic in a university research body will get loads of funding from private foundations and industry. Even when it's not helpfully labelled as the Microsoft Campus, Oxford University. Who knows, I might be suspicious of some work coming out of there that is reporting a result that happens to be in Microsoft's interests. Given they supposedly have to find change to keep their jobs, how is it that all the research around the world is pointing to similar changes? If they're just making shit up, I'd expect predictions all over the map. The days of constraint free government funding for Blue Skies research are long gone. The world is far worse off as a result. That doesn't mean every single project, from every source is now corrupt. It does mean that some projects and studies do indeed have an agenda. Offer some evidence that academia is entirely corrupt. Or worse than industry. The CRU's current About Us includes: "sponsored by contracts and grants from academic funding councils, government departments, intergovernmental agencies, charitable foundations, non-governmental organisations, commerce and industry" To me that is not proof of "gets its funding from governments". It's one of multiple sources of funding. Regardless of how much you want to paint them as some government funded state puppet. Yet even then I fail to see how that helps your cause célèbre, the British government has been decidedly anti AGW and renewables in the last decade, with policies distinctly in favour of fossil. If the CRU were as corrupt as you keep claiming, the climate unit would surely be busy proving how harmless petrol and gas are, to get more of that filthy Conservative government lucre. We're not going to reach agreement, thanks for the conversation. :)

repolfx 7y ago
No problem, I find this conversation enjoyable and useful. I went looking for info on the funding of CRU. The best I could find was this: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6735846/Climategate-professor-Phil-Jones-awarded-13-million-in-research-grants.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/copenhagen-climate-ch... The Climategate docs had a spreadsheet with funding sources. So that's quite old now, but back then it was about £13 million from various sources, all of which were the government. I suppose they probably do get a bit of funding from non-government sources, but it seems it isn't likely to be much. It shows Professor Jones, along with other academics at the university, received more than 50 separate grants with a value of £13.7 million from a number of funding bodies including the European Union, Nato, and the US department of energy. Several British bodies also gave substantial sums including the Met Office, the Environment Agency, the National Rivers Authority and the Department for the Environment. Perhaps this article doesn't list any private sector grantees, but there are plenty of government bodies to go around. Re: everyone getting the same results, is academia corrupt. The research around the world doesn't agree entirely, but it's pretty close. However, it's all based on the same datasets. There are only a few temperature datasets available, really only two major datasets and one is maintained by the CRU. It's really an incredibly influential organisation, which is presumably why someone hacked it and why it was such a splash. Now, if the temperature record is unreliable all climate research based on that record is also unreliable. You can't argue the world is getting warmer unless you can reliably measure temperatures, that's pretty basic. Unfortunately we know for sure the temperature record must be unreliable, because the historical temperature dataset scientists use (which goes back to about 1850) keeps being revised. If you use the dataset that was current in the 1990s, then compare the dataset to the ones being provided today, you can see that the historical temperatures have been changed. This isn't done entirely secretly; the idea is that thermometer readings have to be adjusted to take into effect various confounding factors and that's perfectly legitimate. But there are practical problems: 1. People have been measuring temperatures with thermometers for over a century, yet scientists are still changing how they adjust the raw data today, with the result that the official temperatures seen back in the 30s and 40s, or even earlier, are still changing. The results of the adjustments are massive and fundamentally change the conclusions of the science. But by logical implication, if modern scientists are actually correct to do these adjustments then all previous analyses of the climate made until now must have been wrong. Why is nobody alerting the world to the prior wrongness of climate datasets? 2. Temperature dataset creators like the CRU have a nasty habit of claiming they destroyed or "lost" the raw, unadjusted data. They have also fought very strongly to block the release of raw datasets, and engaged in other sorts of behaviour that scientists aren't meant to engage in. That is, the only datasets available are those that have been "retouched" by people who get multi-million pound budgets because of predictions of warming. This large conflict of interest requires enormous trust in the climate scientists. It is thus unfortunate that revisions of historical data always create warming effects where previously none existed. The apparent pause in rising temperatures was discussed by scientists for many years - the latest temperature datasets from CRU rewrite history and erase it entirely. So you have to understand that climate skeptics are entirely understandable. Their positions aren't weird or crazy. Climate scientists are asking the world for staggeringly huge amounts of trust: to trust them about their understanding of climate trends although they're simultaneously claiming that all recorded temperature data, even as recently as 10 years ago, was wrong. This graphic illustrates the kind of thing that happens: https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Reykjavik2012-2013-1.gif https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Re... Last thing: the British government has been decidedly anti AGW and renewables in the last decade, with policies distinctly in favour of fossil Hmm, did you notice Theresa May's last act before she resigned? She committed the UK to massive climate change spending: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/11/may-defends-inspiring-green-plan-as-critics-call-for-immediate-action https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/11/may-defe... That's not the act of a government that's anti-AGW.