Democrats’ attempts to paralyze
climate skeptics in academia, think tanks, and companies, using intimidating
letters threatening a federal investigation into their funding connections,
backfired. They opened a Pandora’s Box of questions concerning where climate
alarmists get their money. Now Democrat Senators Barbara Boxer (CA), Ed Markey
(MA), and Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) and Democrat Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva have
egg on their faces.
Public-choice economics explains
politicians and bureaucrats are as self-interested as anyone. They seek
expanded authority and bigger budgets. Because the federal government and
left-wing foundations provide the vast bulk of climate research funding,
funding from these two sources certainly should undergo at least as much scrutiny
as funding from private industry.
Nearly all university-based
climate scientists are funded mainly by federal grants, and the ideological and
political goals of those authorizing the grants could reasonably be expected to
affect the kind of research universities and researchers undertake. The
conflict between gaining research money and scientific integrity puts sound but
nonconformist science at a crushing disadvantage.
Michael Mann, Pennsylvania State
University’s notorious ClimateGate email scandal figure, has garnered close to
$6 million promoting scary scientific conclusions serving government’s goal of
control over energy sources, $3.6 million of it from the National Science
Foundation. Both PSU and the NSF conducted investigations absolving Mann of any
wrongdoing in ClimateGate, but with the offending institutions effectively
investigating one of their own, would anyone expect a different outcome?
Influence, Conflicts of Interest
Princeton professor Michael
Oppenheimer has written more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and testified before
Congress on multiple occasions. He was the Environmental Defense Fund’s senior
scientist (1981-2002) and remains as science advisor to the multimillion-dollar
lobbying group (2013 assets: $208.7 million). EDF has received $2.8 million in
federal grants since 2008, spent $11.3 million on lobbying, and has 55 people
on 32 federal advisory committees.
Since 2008, EDF has received
3,332 grants from 600 foundations, totaling $544,487,562. EDF is deeply rooted
in left-wing foundation agendas. Oppenheimer’s professorship is supported in
part by private equity tycoon Carl Ferenbach’s High Meadows Foundation, which
has given Princeton $6.5 million and the Environmental Defense Fund $6 million.
Ferenbach is both EDF’s Chairman of the Board and a trustee of Princeton,
suggesting a strong conflict of interest.
The proudly progressive Center
for American Progress (CAP) has five people on federal advisory committees,
spent $3.6 million on lobbying, and gave $312,400 to Democrat candidates in
2014. CAP Senior Fellow and Chief Science Advisor Joe Romm has testified before
Congress on global warming and coauthored numerous peer-reviewed studies. Yet
Romm failed to file conflict-of-interest disclosures for an article in
Environmental Research Letters although the journal explicitly requires it.
Since 2004, CAP has been
supported by left-wing foundations including Marilsa (Getty Oil fortune, $7
million), Rockefeller (Standard Oil fortune, $5 million), Sea Change (ties to
Russian oil money laundering, $4.8 million), and 200 other left-wing
foundations.
Government and foundation monies
go only toward research advancing a pro-regulatory climate agenda. That is the
greatest threat to the integrity of scientific research.
Ron Arnold (arnold.ron@gmail.com) is a free-enterprise
activist, author, and commentator.
No comments:
Post a Comment