Massive climate funding exposed
Climate Money
The Climate Industry: $79 billion so far – Trillions to come
For the first time, the numbers from government documents have been compiled in one place. It’s time to start talking of “Monopolistic Science”. It’s time to expose the lie that those who claim “to save the planet” are the underdogs. And it’s time to get serious about auditing science, especially when it comes to pronouncements that are used to justify giant government programs and massive movements of money. Who audits the IPCC?
The Summary
The US government has provided over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, foreign aid, and tax breaks.
Despite the billions: “audits” of the science are left to unpaid volunteers. A dedicated but largely uncoordinated grassroots movement of scientists has sprung up around the globe to test the integrity of the theory and compete with a well funded highly organized climate monopoly. They have exposed major errors.
Carbon trading worldwide reached $126 billion in 2008. Banks are calling for more carbon-trading. And experts are predicting the carbon market will reach $2 – $10 trillion making carbon the largest single commodity traded.
Meanwhile in a distracting sideshow, Exxon-Mobil Corp is repeatedly attacked for paying a grand total of $23 million to skeptics—less than a thousandth of what the US government has put in, and less than one five-thousandth of the value of carbon trading in just the single year of 2008.
The large expenditure in search of a connection between carbon and climate creates enormous momentum and a powerful set of vested interests. By pouring so much money into one theory, have we inadvertently created a self-fulfilling prophesy instead of an unbiased investigation?
Read the Full Report at the Science and Public Policy Institute.
There doesn’t necessarily need to be a conspiracy. It doesn’t require any centrally coordinated deceit or covert instructions to operate. Instead it’s the lack of funding for the alternatives that leaves a vacuum and creates a systemic failure. The force of monopolistic funding works like a ratchet mechanism on science. Results can move in both directions, but the funding means that only results from one side of the equation get “traction”.
Billions in the Name of “Climate”
In total, over the last 20 years, by the end of fiscal year 2009, the US government will have poured in $32 billion for climate research—and another $36 billion for development of climate-related technologies. These are actual dollars, obtained from government reports, and not adjusted for inflation. It does not include funding from other governments. The real total can only grow.
In 1989, the first specific US climate-related agency was created with an annual budget of $134 million. Today in various forms the funding has leapt to over $7,000 million per annum, around 50 fold higher. Tax concessions add to this. (See below for details and sources.)
..after spending $30 billion on pure science research no one is able to point to a single piece of empirical evidence…
This tally is climbing precipitously. With enormous tax breaks and rescue funds now in play, it’s difficult to know just how far over the $7 billion mark the final total will stand for fiscal year 2009. For example, additional funding for carbon sequestration experiments alone amounted to $3.4 billion in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (not included in the $7 billion total above).
The most telling point is that after spending $30 billion on pure science research no one is able to point to a single piece of empirical evidence that man-made carbon dioxide has a significant effect on the global climate.
If carbon is a minor player in the global climate as the lack of evidence suggests, the
“Climate Change Science Program” (CCSP), “Climate Change Technology Program” (CCTP), and some of the green incentives and tax breaks would have less, little, or no reason to exist. While forecasting the weather and climate is critical, and there are other good reasons to develop alternative energy sources—no one can argue that the thousands of players who received these billions of dollars have any real incentive to “announce” the discovery of the insignificance of carbon’s.…
“Thousands of scientists have been funded to find a connection between human carbon emissions and the climate. Hardly any have been funded to find the opposite. Throw 30 billion dollars at one question and how could bright, dedicated people not find 800 pages worth of connections, links, predictions, projections and scenarios? (What’s amazing is what they haven’t found: empirical evidence.)”
By setting up trading networks, tax concessions, and international bureaucracies before the evidence was in, have we ensured that our understanding of the role of carbon in climate science would be sped up, but that our knowledge of every other aspect of climate science would be slowed down to an equal and opposite extent?
Monopolistic funding creates a ratchet effect where pro-AGW findings are reported and repeated, while anti-AGW results lie unstudied and ignored.
Monopolistic funding creates a ratchet effect where even the most insignificant pro-AGW findings are reported, repeated, trumpeted and asserted, while any anti-AGW results lie unstudied, ignored and delayed. Auditing AGW research is so underfunded that for the most part it is left to unpaid bloggers who collect donations from concerned citizens online. These auditors, often retired scientists, are providing a valuable free service to society, and yet, in return they are attacked, abused, and insulted.
The truth will come out in the end, but how much damage will accrue while we wait for volunteers to audit the claims of the financially well-fed?
The stealthy mass entry of bankers and traders into the background of the scientific “debate” poses grave threats to the scientific process. The promise of “trillions of dollars” on commodity markets—with all of that potential money hinging on finding that human emissions of carbon dioxide have a significant role in the climate—surely acts like blanket of mud over open dispassionate analysis.
All of this means we must be extra diligent in only focusing on just the evidence, the science, the empirical data. Illogic and unreason cloud a debate already loaded with bias. When there are so many incentives encouraging unclarity and overcomplexity, the simple truths need help to rise to the top. But who funds the counter-PR campaign—now that even Exxon has been howled out of the theater of science. There is hardly any money promoting Natural Causes of Climate Change, while billions upon trillions promote Unnatural Forces.
In this scientific debate, one side is gagged while the other side has a government-funded media campaign.
The bottom line
Even if monopolistic funding has affected science, the total amount of money paid to each side won’t tell us whether The Planet’s climate is warming or whether that warming is due to carbon-dioxide. The point of this report is to show how the process of science can be distorted (like any human endeavor) by a massive one-sided input of money. What use would money be, if it didn’t have some impact?
The massive amounts of money involved only makes it more imperative that we look hard at the empirical evidence.
by Joanne Nova
Science and Public Policy Institute
U.S. Government Funding for Climate Change Related Activities 1989-2009
(Millions of Dollars)
. Fiscal Year . Climate Science . Climate Technology . Foreign Assistance . Tax Breaks . Annual Total
1989 134 $134
1990 659 $659
1991 954 $954
1992 1,110 $1,110
1993 1,326 845 201 $2,372
1994 1,444 1,038 186 $2,668
1995 1,760 1,283 228 $3,271
1996 1,654 1,106 192 $2,952
1997 1,656 1,056 164 $2,876
1998 1,677 1,251 186 $3,114
1999 1,657 1,694 325 $3,676
2000 1,687 1,793 177 $3,657
2001 1,728 1,675 218 $3,621
2002 1,667 1,637 224 $3,528
2003 1,766 2,533 270 580 $4,569
2004 1,975 2,870 252 500 $5,097
2005 1,865 2,808 234 369 $4,907
2006 1,691 2,789 249 1160 $4,729
2007 1,825 3,441 188 1730 $5,454
2008 1,832 3,917 212 * 1420 * $5,961
2009 2,441 * 4,400 * 579 * 1160 * $7,420
TOTAL $32,508 + $36,136 + $3,506 + $6,919 = $79,069
*Estimate or Request.………..Annual Spending totals (right hand col) do not include Tax breaks.
References:
Climate Change Science Program, Annual Report to Congress: Our Changing Planet
http://downloads.climatescience.gov/ocp/ocp2009/ocpfy2009-8.pdf
Analytical Perspectives Budget of the US Government, Fiscal Year 2010.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2010/assets/spec.pdf
1993-2005 GAO, Federal Reports on Climate Change Funding Should be Clearer and More Complete
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05461.pdf Appendix II page 34.
OMB, Fiscal Year 2008. Report to Congress on Federal Climate Change Expenditures, Table 8.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/legislative/fy08_climate_change.pdf
Atmospheric Sciences and Climate Change Programs in the FY 2009 Budget, p 1. AAAS.
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/09pch15.pdf
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Donald Rokkan and to Brad Jensen for editing help and suggestions. Any errors left are all mine, but you both helped improve this report.
