Although the Institute is claiming one document is a fake, this is well worth reading.
Apparently, Bob Carter is getting $1667 per month from the Institute. Carter has not denied this; in fact, his non committal statement on the amount he receives can reasonably be implied to confirm it.
That's odd. His scientific work on climate scepticism convinces absolutely no one of scientific importance, as far as I can tell. (His last co-authored paper is still attracting attention for how wrong it was, with Michael Tobis questioning how it ever got published.) He doesn't even seem to have a very high profile in media appearances, if you ask me. (Actually, I see now that he did have a recent piece in The Australian, but seems to be his first for quite a while. Ian Plimer, the other geologist to make money out of being a professional AGW denier, keeps writing books for the Right to launch for him, and I would say has a higher profile.
Graham Readfern has a great post about this, which shows Carter's laughably hypocritical attitude to this revelation:
It gets worse (the hypocrisy, that is):Professor Carter added: “The details of any of these payments are private to me. I can’t imagine that Heartland has released this document – so the question is, how this document was released.”
“Scientists are paid not to have agendas or opinions, but to summarise the scientific evidence.”
Now I have to say I found this last statement pretty rich, coming from someone who is continually writing opinion pieces for newspapers and websites.
For example, during the carbon tax debate of last year, Professor Carter collectively described Chief Scientist Ian Chubb, Climate Change Minister Greg Combet, now Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery and former Australian Government climate adviser Professor Ross Garnaut as the “four horsemen of the climate apocalypse”.
Was this his opinion, I wonder? The kind of opinion he says scientists aren’t allowed to have?
“I’m a senior scientist and I speak in public on climate change. My scientific authority has nothing to do with who is paying me. I’m not implying a threat here, but I would advise you to be very cautious about what you impute. “
He said he “emphatically denies” any suggestion that his opinion on climate change was swayed by funders, but then stated this would not matter in any case.
Of course, Carter has been noteworthy in the Institute of Public Affairs, which refuses to disclose funding too.
“Professional scientists cannot have their opinion bought,” he said, adding it was not important who funded research, but whether or not it was correct.
This is an odd assertion for Professor Carter to make, given that he has regularly over the years attempted to suggest that mainstream climate scientists are motivated by research dollars.
As far back as 2006, in the UK’s The Daily Telegraph, Professor Carter wrote: “scientists are under intense pressure to conform with the prevailing paradigm of climate alarmism if they wish to receive funding for their research.”
Oddly, on Professor Carter’s webpage he chooses to state that he receives no research funding from “special interest organisations such as environmental groups, energy companies or government departments”.
Yet, if this funding doesn’t matter, then why make this statement? If he takes no interest in who funds his projects, then how would he know if he is receiving funding from “special interest groups” like those he describes.
I pointed out to Professor Carter that it was standard practice for scientists to disclose the funders of research when they publish in peer-reviewed journals. This, said Professor Carter, was “a very quaint and old fashioned practice”.
The Heartland leak at least shows what sensible people already knew - it is not interested in genuine science, it's a mere advocacy group that wants to dissuade the public's belief in genuine science.
This is, of course, what the IPA does as well.
3 comments:
I don't see what's so newsworthy about this. If you don't think these people don't believe what they write, you're even more of an idiot than I thought
Jason
That's an odd comment, given that my second last paragraph implied that it was no surprise.
The post spent most of its time noting the spectacular hypocrisy of Carter claiming for years that climate scientists are swayed by money, only to switch tack when it is clear that he is being paid by a blatantly political organisation to "of course scientists aren't swayed by money."
As to whether Carter and Plimer really believe what they write: who knows? There is the well known psychological effect of being able to convince yourself of something if you repeat it often enough.
You are stupid. You spent a week writing this.
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