
Billion dollar climate-denial network exposed - swombat
http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/12/billion-dollar-climate-denial-network-exposed/
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iand
Even though the underlying research is paywalled, the methodology is openly
available and very interesting. It lists all the organisations in the study
and their funding sources, plus the structure used for categorising their
involvement. Look under Supplementary Material here:
[http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-013-1018-7](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-013-1018-7)

~~~
tvanantwerp
I find the methodology questionable. First, build a list of denier
organizations based on anyone who has ever been remotely associated with known
climate-deniers. This includes being labeled a conservative organization.
Second, classify the organizations on a scale that categorizes anyone who
neither remains totally silent nor actively encourages immediate government
action as some form of denier. Third, pull all the publicly available funding
data you can find on those organizations since 2003 and attribute it all to
climate change denial.

Lots of these organizations are almost totally focused on non-climate change
issues. There is no attempt made to figure out what fraction of their revenue
might actually support climate change work, if any. (It would be difficult,
given how little data 990s provide, but there are proxy measurements: number
of staff working on climate change relative to total staff, number of climate
change studies relative to total studies, etc.) Instead, if an organization so
much as expresses some small doubt that immediate government action is the
best solution to climate change problems, all of their revenues for years are
considered to deny climate change.

This study is like the Glenn Beck chalkboard of climate change denial
conspiracies.

~~~
iand
Without seeing the actual paper I don't think it's fair to assume that no
adjustment is made to an organisations funding to account for their level of
involvement with climate change debate. The methodology paper appears to
categorise them into 4 levels of involvement which could be used in the paper
to weight the funding amounts.

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calcsam
Calling this a 'billion-dollar' network is misleading. Heritage and AEI are
conservative policy think tanks with a variety of topics they write on, and
counting their whole budgets is rather odd math.

~~~
3am
Do they count their entire budgets? I wanted to get more details, and followed
the link back to the original story on Wired UK
([http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-12/21/denial](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-12/21/denial)),
which linked to the journal article in question at:
[http://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-013-1018-7](http://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-013-1018-7),
which is sadly behind a paywall.

At any rate, I didn't read anything in the article that detailed their
methodology well enough to see how you can conclude they are counting the
entire AEI and Heritage budgets. They note the organizations get $7B USD in
total donations, so if only 15% or so of their activity was climate denial
related it would be an accurate title. Which seems completely plausible.

EDIT: why the downvote? Also, I thought it should go without saying, but they
note that this isn't limited to AEI and Heritage, but that there are 91 groups
they looked at.

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matthewmcg
Here's a link to the paper on the author's university's site:
[http://www.drexel.edu/~/media/Files/now/pdfs/Institutionaliz...](http://www.drexel.edu/~/media/Files/now/pdfs/Institutionalizing%20Delay%20-%20Climatic%20Change.ashx)

~~~
001sky
Q: Does he test a null hypothesis.

How much money goes toward <promoting> climate change? That would actually be
a far more intersting paper. Count all of the receipts and distribution of
cash-flows down to the nickel on expensed taxis and expensive hotel-rooms,
promotions, papers, professorships and other "self-interested" uses of what is
almost always tax-payer money. There is nothing wrong at having a two-sided
debate, I think the FISA courts are excellent examples on that front. People
asking questions and taking opposing views is not, in the general sense any
form of "conspiracy". Especially when what they are arguing over is just a
proxy-war over other political topics that polite company doesn't always
discuss in public--because it basically comes down to peoples sources of
salary and their pay grade.

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jaboutboul
Seems kind of skewed. The groups called out by name in the article are think
tanks that have large budgets and lobby for multiple and various causes, one
of which might be climate change. Point understood but don't use funny data
points to back up an "investigation."

~~~
iand
The methodology accounts for varying degrees of involvement in climate change.

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tvanantwerp
Climate change tends to be a small (if even existent) policy area addressed by
most of these think tanks. It's highly misleading claim that all revenue over
several years was used exclusively by these think tanks to deny climate
change.

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salient
Last I checked those two organizations were also in favor of stronger Patriot
Act-like laws, and other such things, probably because such laws favor their
friends in the Military Industrial Complex.

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mikegioia
This is a 300 word article, making a pretty big claim, that links to a $40
springer paper as it's source.

Not only can I not see what they're claiming is exposed, but the short article
even mentions that most of the funding for these think tanks is routed through
private trusts.

    
    
        However, Brulle admitted that tracing the funding back
        to its original sources was difficult, as around three
        quarters of the money has been routed through trusts that
        assure anonymity to their donors.
    

Ok...

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Tycho
'denying' climate change or just questioning the research?

~~~
sophacles
If I were presented a very large pile of money, a large consensus and the task
of changing that consensus (in order to stop changes that might cost me a very
very large pile of money), I would fund both. The goal doesn't have to be
changing everyone's minds.

The "moderate" voices actually hold a great swaying power in this situation.
If you fund the extreme opposite to give them volume, you now have a base to
provide "reasonable" voices (that you also fund) the power to say things like:

"lets not make rash decisions - lets study it more"

"Reactionary policy is awful - lets instead migrate to it slowly"

"Let's question the shady underworld of the consensus"

"Let's compromise"

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iand
The sad state of climate change debate is that we now have the vested
interests of the fossil fuel economy pitted against the vested interests of
the subsidised clean fuel economy, with their guaranteed feed-in tariffs. Not
to mention the dozens of research facilities that are grant supported and
would be closed down if the science and solutions were deemed to be entirely
settled. All these players are fighting an existential war.

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wtbob
So, using the same methodology as this study, how many billions of dollars are
involved in the climate-change network?

~~~
waps
Well here's the numbers for the US only :

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ost...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/FY12-climate-
fs.pdf)

I think it's pretty safe to say that money involved in the climate change
network is at least 10 times the money being invested in denier networks.

And frankly the results are equally stupid. The IPCC has released 5 reports.
Their predictions were wrong every single time. AR0, AR1, AR2, AR3, the world
did not warm anywhere near their 95% predictions. So let's calculate. About
one report every 5 years ... 95% "certainty" interval ... that means that if
you believe the IPCC "certainty" they have made the mistakes they claim to
make in 800000 (20^4 * 5) years, in 20 years.

Question for empiricists : why do you believe in climate change ? The
predictions of climate change theory, as compiled by the IPCC, are falsified.
It SHOULD be that simple.

Needless to say, color me in the "chaotic climate change" camp. I don't say
it's not gotten warmer but I do say :

1) You cannot predict the effect of energy additions to a chaotic system. It
may get colder as a result (and it has). Climate change theory only works on a
planet in thermodynamic equilibrium, in other words, it would work on the
moon. It doesn't work on the earth. A famous paper was published in 1962 with
a proof that climate was chaotic, and that should really have been the end of
any prediction.

2) The fact that it's chaotic means that there is no reasonable (finite, non-
omniscient) way to predict climate evolution.

3) As a matter of principle, and organisation that publishes wrong predictions
4 times in a row should be laughed out of office, and out of funding. I think
that this didn't happen indicates we just really, really, really want to
believe climate change is happening and is human-caused.

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kyusu
and cue the shills...

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andyl
Internet surveillance was widely known, but not a matter of public interest
until Snowden.

The climate denial network is also widely known, but not a matter of public
interest. There has to be some sort of catalyst to bring climate denial info
focus.

