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Icecap.us, Just Who Are These Global Warming Denialists
By Mark Schauss | April 13, 2009
I just love it when people tell me that global warming is a sham and point to groups of so-called scientists to back up their claims such as the bunch from icecap.us. Being the eternal skeptic myself, I decided to find out who the people are at icecap so I looked over the list of adviser’s and I headed to Sourcewatch.com to find out where these people get their funding. Guess what? Yup, they are people who make their living from those who would most suffer from controls on global warming emissions.
Let’s look at who some of these people are:
Robert C. Balling Jr –Balling has acknowledged receiving $408,000 in research funding from the fossil fuel industry over the last decade (of which his University takes 50% for overhead). Contributors include ExxonMobil, the British Coal Corporation, Cyprus Minerals and get this OPEC!!!
Sallie Baliunas – Between December 1998 and September 2001 she was listed as a “Scientific Adviser” to the Greening Earth Society, a group that was funded and controlled by the Western Fuels Association (WFA), an association of coal-burning utility companies.
Robert M. Carter– Sits on the advisory board os the Institute of Public Affairs which is funded by the mining and tobacco industry along with Monsanto.
Reid A. Bryson– While certainly a climatologist and skeptic, Dr. Bryson passed away last year yet is still listed on icecap as being a consultant. Maybe they discovered how to channel the deceased?
To me, I’d rather follow 30,000 scientists who believe that global warming is real than a handful of industry backed people. My biggest concern is that if the skeptics are wrong and we do nothing, billions of people will suffer. Paying a little bit more for energy is well worth the expense to protect our world.
Topics: Environment, Global Warming, Opinion, Our World, Websites | 9 Comments »
May 14th, 2009 at 6:37 am
Yes, I am a global cooling denialist. Also, my name is spelled Schauss.
While I respect your background, I respect the tens of thousands of other with similar credentials who disagree with your comments. Carbon dioxide is not the only reason for global warming and you know it (or are denying it). Deforestation, growth of cities and many other reasons are causing a man-made rise in global temperatures.
July 1st, 2009 at 12:42 pm
How many of the 9,000+ PhDs are climatologists? Not many. How many work in the industries that cause global warming and have a vested interest in denying it? Oh, a whole bunch of them, just do some simple Google searches on the names. Also, having a PhD does not make one an expert in the science behind global warming. And the fact that only 31,000+ Americans signed the petition, is dwarfed by the 100,000+ scientists who signed petitions backing the concept of human involved global warming.
The Petition Project is a farce.
Oh and calling me Mr. Schauss, when you know I have a doctorate is purposely insulting. If you want to be taken seriously, act serious and respectful.
July 20th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
I notice that the Global warming supporters attack the scientists who
believe that the earth is in fact cooling instead of attacking the science. Perhaps those supporter of the global warming theories are the ones that have an agenda instead of a studious interest. God save us from
scientists with a theory to prove regardless of the consequenses. The global warming theorists are alot louder but that doesn’t make them right.
July 20th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Too bad you have added no scientific proof otherwise. You lay out the same unsubstantiated arguments. The global warming denialist have a far greater agenda than we do and that is greed.
July 24th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
You are right-on, Dr. Schauss. I have looked into claims from the global warming deniers many times, and they constantly twist the facts, cherry-pick the statistics, even tell outright lies. For example, they make claims such as “2008 was the coolest year of the last decade”, which is not true. It was cooler than the previous 7 years, but only because they were 7 of the 10 hottest years since direct measurements of global temperature began in 1880. 2008 was also among the 10 hottest years since 1880. If you want scientific proof the world is warming and not cooling, just go to http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/. Here is a quote: “Calendar year 2008 was the coolest year since 2000, according to the Goddard Institute for Space Studies analysis [see ref. 1] of surface air temperature measurements. In our analysis, 2008 is the ninth warmest year in the period of instrumental measurements, which extends back to 1880”. If 2008 was the ninth warmest year since 1880, then it was warmer than 120 of the past 129 years! Yes, they are using one of the warmest years since measurements began to try to prove that the world is cooling. If that isn’t cherry-picking statistics to twist the truth, I don’t know what is. If you look at the graphs on that same web page, you can clearly see a warming trend for around the last 30 years. You can also see that although 1998 was an abnormally hot year, it was not the peak – there was already one year hotter after 1998. If you are really a scientist, “Dave”, you are not a very good one to miss such an obvious fact. Global temperatures vary more year to year than the average rate of increase caused by global warming, and so you should expect some years to be hotter and others colder than the general trend. A good scientist without an agenda would also take into account the fact that there is a roughly 11 year cycle of sunspot activity and that the sun warms the earth more when there is more activity. The minimum activity of the current cycle should be somewhere in the range of 2008 to 2010. So this has been making the climate somewhat cooler over the last few years than it would have been. But soon the sunspot activity should start to increase, which will have the opposite effect. Also, the climate models predict that global warming should increase the amount of snow that falls on Antarctica at first. The cause of the increase in snow is global warming itself, because a hotter atmosphere holds more water. I would think a meteorologist would know that too. But the models also predict that later on the melting will surpass this increase in snow, and the Arctic will begin to lose ice mass. This will probably happen earlier than the models predict, because they don’t take into account some of the things that are happening, such as the lubricating effect of the water traveling down the moulins to the bottom of the ice.
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:35 am
You obviously have not read the literature thoroughly. Science through consensus is often times used with difficult issues. Hey, evolution, which has been shown to exist is denied by many but scientific consensus says it exists. Secondly, they do take into account the effects of the Sun in many models and your third comment is also misleading and not based on fact. Many of the models are verifing known climate change all the time. Instead of repeating Fox News try reading journals like Nature and Science.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Yawn. Instead of arguing the evidence you deem it necessary to attack me personally. I can challenge skeptics if they put forth poor science. I can give a crap about Al Gore. If the other side puts forth people credentials who are no longer living and use their name, yes I can challenge that. I own books on both sides of the argument and the ones showing mans hand in the problem are overwhelmingly more convincing than the deniers.
I can challenge credential and points of view of whomever I choose. I don’t need to call them anysided nut jobs like you seem to need to.
Show evidence, stop accusing.
December 2nd, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Don: You are correct that predictions based on models have not been perfect. The models, when run backwards, predict the ups and downs of temperatures in the past, so in that sense they are very good. But they show temperatures rising more slowly than they did in the past, and not going as high. This indicates that their predictions are probably underestimating future climate changes. Therefore, your third point proves we should be more alarmed about global warming, not less. According to recent, more accurate measurements from paleoclimatoligists, the last time CO2 levels were this high for an extended period of time, the temperature was 10 to 15 degrees F higher than now. (See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091008152242.htm.) This is another indication that we will probably get warmer than the IPCC predicted. The IPCC is not alarmist, they are actually too cautious, and many things have already gotten much worse than their predictions said it would (for example melting of Arctic sea ice, thawing of permafrost, melting of Greenland ice sheets, rise in ocean levels).
Dan: Hansen works for our government, so his money comes from all of us who pay taxes. Global warming deniers allege he is funded by Soros, but I have seen so many lies and distortions coming from the deniers that I don’t trust anything they say. If you have some proof, I’d like to see it, otherwise I consider this just another lie. According to http://www.researchcrossroads.org, the only funding he has received (besides his NASA salary) was $25,000 from the NSF in 2002. The NSF is a very reputable scientific organization, about as unbiased as they come.
Dean: If surface temperature data isn’t reliable, as you say, then why do global warming deniers refer to that same data when they say the world has been cooling for the last several years? I’ve read several denier claims that used the surface temperature data to try to prove a point, so if you are right, they are basing their conclusions on bad data too. Have you attacked their arguments too?
Well, before you start attacking deniers or anyone else who uses surface temperature data, you might want to think about it a little more carefully. The surfacestation.org site was interesting, and I think it is great that people are double-checking the temperature measuring equipment. I do have questions about their methods, things that I’d want to know before trusting their data. But even if their data is valid, trying to use this to put down NASA’s conclusion that the world is warming doesn’t fly. Why? If their data is valid, it calls into question the temperature measured, but not the change in temperature. NASA’s data is all about the change in temperature.
Just think about it. Surfacestation.org is saying that some sites are recording higher temperatures than they should because they are located too close to heat sources. So let’s say a certain station recorded 16 degrees in 1960 when it should have recorded 14 degrees, and it recorded 17 degrees in 2006 when it should have recorded 15 degrees. If you use the recorded temperatures, there is a 1 degree rise in temperature. If you use the actual temperatures, there is a 1 degree rise in temperature. The change in temperature, the only thing in question here, is not affected at all by this.
If they had historical data that showed that artificial heat sources increased or decreased for particular measuring stations, then that would concern me. But they don’t have any historical data. It’s not their fault, they only started doing this work recently. But it does mean their data doesn’t prove anything about the reliability of global surface temperature changes.
Going forward, if they collect data through time, then scientists might be able to use this data to adjust their temperature data, so I hope they keep at it. But I am also worried about how they are determining the accuracy of the measuring systems. For example, did they just guess that having a station within 10 meters of an artificial heating source would raise the temperature 2 or more degrees? I couldn’t find any place where they said how they determined these numbers, and they may or may not be way off. Even if they had a good method for determining this, they treat all artificial heat sources exactly the same, and that is obviously not right. Some heat sources output much more heat than others. Why do they say having the measuring device above a parking lot would raise the temperature the same as above a sidewalk, when asphalt gets much hotter than concrete? What about the stations with a bias going in the other direction? For example, if the measuring device was in the shade for part or all of the time, that would reduce the readings, but they don’t even have a category for that. This seems like a built-in bias for their data. I would also suggest they make this a global project, because most of the world is outside of the United States, and we are talking about global temperature change.
January 1st, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Average Joe – where can you get “empirical data” from the future? That’s what models are for, to predict what is most likely to happen in the future. But paleoclimatic data from the past also shows us that when CO2 is high, temperature is high, and climate changes. You deniers have nothing, no valid explanations for how the climate works, no valid criticisms of the work of climate scientists, no respectable scientists. Call names and twist facts all you want, it won’t make you right. What you are doing is the worst possible crime, whether it is done intentionally or out of stupidity.