Their tentacles are everywhere

Guess who bought and paid for the opinions of the nation's top climate change-denying scientist:

Dr. Willie Soon is certainly entitled to his theory that global warming is caused by solar variations rather than CO2, especially given his field of study within astrophysics—Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences. But getting paid to $1 million by the Koch Brothers, Exxon and a fleet of other energy industry giants makes Soone a stooge.

Now, it is possible that Dr. Soon developed the theory that solar variations cause climate change before the $1 million in grants began to arrive in his bank account, but it’s just as likely that he was approached by the energy industry and developed the theory for the express purpose of earning his keep.

Soon himself states in a Reuters interview:

I have never been motivated by financial reward in any of my scientific research. I would have accepted money from Greenpeace if they had offered it to do my research

Question: if Greenpeace had funded his studies, would his research have aligned with their point of view?

If we are to get unvarnished scientific opinion, there cannot be the appearance of corporate influence. Soon may be sincere in his theory, but his acceptance of oil and coal industry grants do much to discredit his studies, even if there is possible value in his ideas. And it seems that Soon has had his ideas peer-reviewed.

Greenpeace filed a Freedom of Information Act and obtained information revealing the Koch Brothers gave Soon $175,000 in 2005/2006 and once again in 2010. The American Petroleum institute gave Soon grants totalling $274,000 between 2001 and 2007, and Exxon Mobile provided Soon with $335,000 in grants between 2005 and 2010.

One can’t really fault Soon for wanting a payday or for holding such a theory on climate change—but we can certainly be skeptical of his sincerity now. Like every American, Soon seems to have a price.

Now we know why Chris Christie has declared war on the teachers' unions

It's because he's an uneducated, willfully-ignorant moron and wants a state of people just like himself:

Gov. Chris Christie says he's skeptical that humans are responsible for global warming.

The governor, a new darling of the Republican Party, made the remark at a town hall meeting he hosted in Toms River Tuesday afternoon.

Asked by a man attending the event whether he thought mankind was responsible for global warming, Christie says he's seen evidence on both sides of the argument but thinks it hasn't been proven one way or another.

Christie says "more science" is needed to convince him.

Science: Another casualty of Barack Obama's desperate need to be liked by Republicans

From Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility:

Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of the date when new rules to protect federal scientists and science from political interference were supposed to have been in place. As a result, federal scientists continue to report the same sort of suppression and skewing of scientific and technical reports by agency managers that occurred under the George W. Bush administration, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

On March 9, 2009, President Obama issued an Executive Memorandum to all federal departments and agencies declaring his intent to adopt policies that protect scientific integrity. The accompanying White House fact sheet described the action as addressing “one of the President’s key campaign commitments on science policy, which was to ‘restore scientific integrity in government decision making.’” That order directed the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop proposed policies for Presidential action by July 9, 2009. That deadline has long since lapsed with no new due date and without a cogent explanation for the delay.

“The atmosphere under Obama for federal scientists remains largely unchanged from the Bush era,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, whose organization works with federal scientists seeking to remedy scientific misconduct and political obfuscation. “Federal agency science is still manipulated for political reasons largely because there are still no rules against it.”

Is there nothing in this country that won't be sacrificed on the altar of Barack Obama's childhood emotional baggage?

The God Over Progress party strikes again

I guess the GOP believes that either the baby Jesus will take care of things like energy and disease, or that they'll be raptured and they don't care what happens afterwards. Because the Republican Party is now officially the party of ignorance, superstition, and despair:

It was strike two for a major science funding bill Wednesday as House Republicans again united to derail legislation they said was too expensive.

Going down to defeat was legislation that would have committed more than $40 billion over three years to boost funding for the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies involved in basic and applied science, provided loan guarantees to small businesses developing new technologies and promoted science and math education.

Congress enacted a first version of the legislation in 2007 with a large majority in the House and a unanimous vote in the Senate. But in this election year, with Republicans out to show their anti-spending credentials and intent on disrupting the Democratic agenda, things are different.

Oh. Never mind.

The funniest post you will ever read. But you have to read it CAREFULLY. It took ME a minute to get it.

(via)

Can we please stop the "Global warming evidence was faked" crap now?

Mr. Brilliant is a bit of a science geek. I can't tell you how many nights I've sat blogging, playing mahjong titans on Vista, trying to do the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, or sitting around waiting for an Excel spreadsheet to load while I'm connected to my employer's VPN while he watches yet another program on plate tectonics, or black holes, or how the universe began, or something else that makes my eyes glaze over because if I pay attention I'll feel so insignificant that nihilism seems like a good way to go. He really does understand what the Large Hadron Collider is supposed to be doing.

You know what he doesn't really get, though? What the hell happened with the infamous Climate Change E-mails™. What he DOES understand, though, is that the scientific community and those who recognize that if we don't do something about climate change PDQ we are going to be in a world of shit, have done a really crappy job of explaining why these e-mails don't "disprove" that climate change exists, that we are largely responsible for it, and that if we don't do something about it, we are going to be in a world of shit.

It's unfortunate that it's up to the Associated Press, that wonderful organization that brought us Nedra Pickler, to do the job. AP has been known to be somewhat dickish when it comes to excerpting their articles, so you'll have to click over. Or, you can read the statement directly from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Yes, it was bitchingly cold in New Jersey yesterday. Yes, I know there have been blizzards in the midwest. Global warming doesn't mean "Everyplace gets hotter." Anyone who's enough of a dumbass (I'm talking to you, John Elliott, the nimrod on WCBS-TV in New York who says crap like this every time the temperature is below normal) to believe that one cold day means decades of science is bunk deserves to drown or die of tropical diseases that are going to be moving north. But I defy you to look at this, this, this, or this and tell me that there's nothing going on and that if there is, we have NOTHING to do with it, and then try to tell me that we have a God-given right to burn as much fossil fuel as possible driving our kids to soccer practice.

And how weird is it when I find a voice of sanity on all this over at Little Green Footballs? But I did, and found this:

The important issue no one is talking about

I'm not a science person. Mr. Brilliant loves watching the Science Channel, but my interest in black holes is limited to that episode of The Simpsons in which Homer falls into one. Perhaps it stems from my utter inability to learn to use a slide rule (yes, I went to high school in the pre-calculator age), or the time I seriously cut my finger trying to put a glass tube into a rubber stopper in high school chemistry class. But while I have little aptitude or even interest in the nuts-and-bolts of science, I realize how important it is to not just life in today's world, but how vital it is to solving the many problems that face us today.

Because I work in the area of clinical trials and studies, government commitment to scientific and medical research is not just an abstract concept, it's my bread and butter. But when you have a government run by people who are flat-earthers, or who embrace flat earthers like John Hagee, you have a government that lacks that commitment:

Speaking at a science summit that opens this week's first World Science Festival, the expert panel of scientists, and audience members, agreed that the United States is losing stature because of a perceived high-level disdain for science. They cited U.S. officials and others questioning scientific evidence of climate change, the reluctance to federally fund stem cell research, and some U.S. officials casting doubt on evolution as examples that have damaged America's international standing.

"I think there's a loss of American power and prestige that came about as a result of our anti-science policies," said David Baltimore, a biologist and Nobel laureate and board chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Raising questions about the science of evolution, he said, "leads to a certain disdain for American intelligence." He added, "What we need is leadership that respects science."

The panelists also expressed concern that science funding has not been a major issue for any of the presidential candidates. "The campaign so far has given too little attention to what science means for our own economy and our status in the world," said Harold Varmus, a Nobel laureate and president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

The fish rots from the head. The anti-science posture of the Bush Administration, Congressional Republicans, and the wingnut echo chamber are a significant part of the problem, but also at fault are schools that can't can't attract teachers with scientific knowledge and parents who place sports at a higher level of importance than knowledge.

We didn't get to where we were when I grew up by being incurious religious nuts who think a Great White Alpha Male in the Sky made the earth in six days and sculpted us out of clay. But we're sure as hell going to go back to the Middle Ages if we don't stop letting these people dictate policy.

Superstition

ABC News:

Science vs. politics gets down and dirty

Malicious, vindictive and mean-spirited. These are words that might surface in divorce court.

But they have been lobbed in the course of a different estrangement: the standoff between the Bush administration and the nation's scientific community.

The relationship, which has been troubled since the dawn of the Bush presidency, hit a new low last month when Richard Carmona, surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, lashed out at his former colleagues in testimony before a House committee.

Joined by former surgeons general C. Everett Koop and David Satcher, Carmona said public health reports are withheld unless they're filled with praise for the administration. "It was Surgeon General Koop who pointed out and still says today … 'Richard, we all have fought these battles, as have our predecessors going back over a century, but we have never seen it as partisan, … as vindictive, as mean-spirited as it is today, and you clearly have it worse than any of us had.' "

Though Koop, who served under President Reagan, and Satcher, who was appointed by President Clinton, also spoke of political interference, it was Carmona's testimony that took lawmakers and scientists by surprise. He was, after all, the man who gave the president a hug before TV cameras when he was named surgeon general.

Carmona's statements crystallized the schism between the president and many of the nation's scientists, touching off conversations within and outside the administration on how bad things have gotten, who is to blame and what this means for the future.

From President Bush's televised address on Aug. 9, 2001, when he announced his intention to restrict federal spending on research on embryonic stem cells, conflicts with scientists have been a hallmark of his administration. The debates have included sex education, space exploration, contraception and global warming.

"The science community now recognizes that this administration completely puts its political cart before the scientific horse," says Science magazine editor in chief Donald Kennedy, a former Food and Drug Administration chief. "We've seen it with one issue after another."

"Science is Magic that works." -- Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)