Please, AGW alarmists, tell me: where do I queue up for my oil money? I've been blogging against this nonsense for three years now, and not one red cent have I had. Do I need to fill in a form?

To summarise – there should be no funding into climate change science or adaptation/mitigation technologies because it is just “global warming lunacy”.

Hmmm, your slip is showing again, Mark.

Another tired old article by Mark...ho hum

Mark Lawson here
Qanda your response does not make sense. The point about the article is that overwhelmingly all the funding is going to the global warming side. Its not that they are getting some funding and I'm objecting. The global warming side is getting all the funding while try to claim, in the teetch of all evidence, that really they are hardly getting any. That global warming science is a load of lunacy, I agree, but its not the point of the article. It is lunacy that is monopolising the funding, almost entirely.
One interesting point about this article is that there have hardly been any objections. I was feeling neglected until you weighed in. Thanks for that.

Is it David vs Goliath?

Or Cranks vs Reality?

only time will tell......

Leastways, someone on the 'sceptics' side appears to be making money, given the plethora of books on the subject out there. They wouldn't publish them unless there was some moolah in it would they?

Mark Lawson
Bugsy - true, there are a lot of sceptical books out there now, including mine in two weeks. Almost a flood now, but that has more to do with the change in public sentiment, all all it has really done is change the ratio. Now instead of all the books being global warming alarmist, for every 10 such books perhaps another five to six will be sceptical.
And the global warming stuff will sell more because its about alarming people - you know, Japan will take over the world financially, the Y2K bug will destroy our society, the 9/11 incident was all a plot. That stuff sells books.
Scepticism does not pay nearly as well. I wish I could be an alarmist then I might make money.

Some wish for money, others wish for truth.

There are plenty of other counterestablishment groups that claim to have the science on their side...

The Intelligent Design movement (lots of books there)
The anti-Vaccination squad (a few books there)
and the list goes on..

Some may prove correct, others...not.

One things for sure, I know one activity that doesn't make money and that's writing scientific papers.

The climate mafia have taken a lot of leaves from the Tobacco Industry's book of dirty tricks. First they reversed the story so it was the sceptics who were claimed to be in denial of the science, not them. And then they portray themselves as the impoverished ones in the face of some imaginary onslaught from big money. The Tobacco Institute used this very line back in 1983, portraying themselves as the small business "battlers" at the mercy of the suposedly big, bad, overfunded, anti-smoking activists, ie, "the powerful anti-smoking lobby". If the public had taken just one look at our tatty, cockroach infested office at the Harare end of Pitt St, Sydney, and our $3,000 annual budget, they would have thought otherwise. After 30 years it is still a case of new spivs, same old slur.

Folks...I've been banging away at this for a while now..please get with the program :)

It doesn't matter how real or unreal 'Global Warming' is... from the point of view of a common sense approach to limit our damage to the planet.

It's common sense that if we keep on pumping rubbish out there.. there will eventually be some impact.

All I'm saying is that there are ways to address this withOUT being sucked into them Strong/Soros/Gore and ilk 'Brave New World' of them being the rich powerful fat cats who dictate to all of us...

AVOID CARBON "TRADING" like the worst plague on earth.

NO NO NO.. no carbon TRADING... there is a much simpler solution.

Carbon TRADING is NOT the answer.
NO....to carbon TRADING.
Carbon TRADING just makes ME richer...and my other buddies.

I find we have a few enthusiastic posters here.

However, I would be cautious about way the climate change zealots behave, right down to them seeking out sceptical Huguenots and the denier Cathars for burning, through an modern day AGW Inquisition on public opinion.

So, I feel, anyone who supports accepted democratic processes, would demand the Climate Change Lobby be excluded from public funding on the grounds of separation of church and state.

More denialist drivel from someone who's written lots of it. Enough said.

Mark Lawson

Few PR offences have been so obvious and so despicable as your attack on the science of climate change and the combined efforts of the multi-national denialist camp has been a bagatel of disinformation - primarily financed by the energy industry, despite your blatant denial.

The Atlas Economic Research Foundation (of which the IPA and the Centre for Independent Studies in Australia are members, according to my reputable sources) has supported more than 30 other foreign think tanks. The foundations are linked to ExxonMobil, the Koch family, and other conservative interests which have donated more than $1 million to Canada's Fraser Institute, which in turn supports a network of think tanks in 71 countries that promote "economic freedom.."

Exxon, the Kochs, and other foundations tied to American oil money have also helped bankroll the British-based International Policy Network. In 2007, IPN created the Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change, a group of 59 "independent civil society organizations" from 40 countries, "as a response to the many biased and alarmist claims about human-induced climate change."

The ‘usual suspects’ are the recipients of donations from ‘charity’ foundations like the Sarah Scaife Foundation which is financed by the Mellon industrial, oil, and banking fortune.

The Carthage Foundation is part of the Scaife Family foundations and is chaired by Richard Mellon Scaife

The Claude Lambe foundation is controlled by the Koch family who have a combined net worth of approximately $4 billion.

And the money laundering continues - regularly through foundations that are laundering oil and coal money to make it difficult to trace to its sources.

http://mediamattersaction.org/transparency/organization/Barbara_and_Barre_Seid_Foundation/grants

http://mediamattersaction.org/transparency/organization/Exxon_Mobil_Corporation/connections

http://mediamattersaction.org/transparency/organization/Lynde_and_Harry_Bradley_Foundation/grants

Jay Lehr (Heartland Inst.), a convicted felon, was presented by the Brisbane Institute as an “internationally renowned” scientist but who is better known for spending three months in jail for defrauding the US Environmental Protection Authority.

Oh what a web you weave.....! Are the contents of your book as fallacious as the propaganda in this article?

Protagoras - I noticed Lawson failed to more than glimse (then look away) into the funding of anti-science beyond some of exxon's. Misleading and deceptive. The biggest funders - Koch industries - didn't rate a mention, meanwhile actual funding of scientific inquiry on this is apparently 'activism'.

The problem is real - The fossil fuel industry would sponsor real climate science if it actually thought it could win the science argument - but they choose to fund anti-science PR because they know they can't.

Meanwhile if there are wasteful and ineffective programs funded in the name of climate change it's almost certainly a result of the failures of mainstream politics to treat the issue as truly serious; things that sound good to quieten growing concerns about climate without having to actually do anything. That and the willingness of mainstream politics to do deals behind closed doors with the intent of stitching up support from lobby groups rather than the intent of stitching together good policy. Corn ethanol in the USA looks to be a bad example of vested interests using the issue for their own advantage, with actual effectiveness considered less important than the votes of US corn farmers. With serious bipartisan efforts to tackle climate change we'll get more effective and open policy.

Ken Fabos – I believe the network of institutions attempting to undermine climate science is vast. Apart from the witch hunts, lies, slander and money laundering, the right wing extremists are paralysing Governments with massive donations (bribes?)

Individuals and political action committees affiliated with oil and gas companies in the US have donated $238.7 million to candidates and parties since the 1990 election cycle, 75 percent of which has gone to Republicans.

The top 2009/10 donor contributors were Koch, Exxon, Chevron, Valero and Marathon Oil. Unsurprisingly, the largest ever combined total of donations from oil and gas corporations occurred in 2009, with 2008, a close second. What chance clean energy?

In the US, the coal industry has supported Republicans in each of the past 10 election cycles. Coal companies gave Democrats only 27 percent of their donations in the 2008 cycle which was actually a leap from previous cycles. Between 2000 and 2006, the Democrats secured a paltry 12 percent of these companies’ contributions.

I’ve read of the revolving door in the US 'that shuffles former government employees into jobs as lobbyists, consultants and strategists just as the door pulls former hired guns into government careers. While officials in the executive branch, Congress and senior congressional staffers spin in and out of the private and public sectors, so too does privilege, power, access and, of course, money.' Sound familiar?

One could also rightly or wrongly presume that the mining industry in Australia is endeavouring to ‘buy’ academia with their Chairs in every major university in the nation. Rio Tinto has committed $21 million to R&D at the University of Sydney to support their global mining and processing activities. Bludging off the environment is a profitable business.

While there is compelling evidence to show that our hard-working academics cannot be bought (though there are one or two suspects!), one must ask if the mining industry’s infiltration into academia has the potential to gag researchers, compromise transparency and any effective endeavours towards mitigating hazardous fossil fuel emissions including CO2?

Protagoras, there does seem to be a significant divide between academic programs aimed at understanding climate, climate change and it's impacts and those aimed at maximising industry growth and efficiency. Climate science is currently more in the pure science end of the spectrum rather than patent hunting applied sciences, where corporate partnerships seem to have a legitimate place. Proponents of action on climate change still support applied R&D - technological solutions are fundamental to successful transition to low-emissions - but not R&D intended to maximise the ongoing use of fossil fuels.
Mark Lawson appears to consider any spending on climate change, regardless of it's importance, appropriateness or effectiveness, as waste ie he thinks it should cease.
Proposing we stop studying climate and climate change and stop developing any kinds of mitigation and adaptation strategies - and seeing that as the proper and responsible policy response - is deeply dismaying but hardly surprising from staunch opponents of action. Given that multiple lines of ongoing research keep vindicating and strengthening understanding of human impacts on climate change what else is left but to try and stop more and better science on it! In order to get people to believe climate change is overblown or non-existent trust in climate science and scientists has to be undermined. It will be futile; the real world impacts of past and present emissions are going to be increasing evident as global warming gathers momentum and the Mark Lawsons of the world will be recognised as the misguided, reality denying obstacles to our future that they are.