Ivar Giaever’s links to Exxon Mobil, Heartland, Cato etc…
Earlier today, I wrote that Ivar Giaever was either a sell out or senile with his recent very public exit from the American Physical Society over AGW. I argued that for a man of his scientific stature to say the propaganda he has been saying, he had to be either on the take (paid for by the usual suspects like the Kochs and Exxon) or senile. This is because the science of AGW really is that sound. Having someone of his stature come out against it the way he has is like a respected rabbi suddenly arguing that pig is kosher. Something had to be up.
My response to Ivar Giaever: Sell out or senile
He was on the take and now I am going to prove it.
Here he is on the Heartland Institute’s list of experts.
The Heartland Institute is a front for creating and legitimatising right wing propaganda paid for by people like Exxon Mobil and Phillip Morris. They have a tremendous history of denying all sorts of science, like the notion that cigarettes cause cancer. You can also see him listed by them here:
If you continue looking down that list you can find well known “cigarettes are OK” activist and professional climate denier, Richard Lindzen, and Bjorn Lomborg as well. Amongst some of Heartland’s and co group Heritage Foundation’s more interesting stances, in addition to the usual climate denial and false ecological data has been a defence of US business use of overseas child and slave labor.
Gaiever also appeared on a full page ad denying climate change funded by the Cato institute.
The Cato Institute is funded by ExxonMobil, Phillip Morris the American Petroleum Institute (API) and Koch Family Foundations.
All of these groups have vast amounts of money poured into them by fossil fuel interests who want the science of climate quashed. They want it quashed because if people took it seriously and the coming catastrophe of unmitigated climate change seriously, then people would use other sources of energy than fossil fuels. It is all about lying for money at the expense of future generations and even our own. These groups get the false science they are paid to produce and then propagandise it.
Some might think that this does not prove a sell out - only a collaboration with these groups. That would require believing that a well known scientist with no history of climate research of his own comes out with a list of wingnut talking points that are easily scientifically refuted just because of the goodness of his heart - because he believes his contrary “science” so much that he had to speak out - but he does not bother to publish a single paper on the topic that can be peer reviewed.
If he truly had some data to take down climate science, he would publish it somewhere. But he hasn’t.
Of course he is getting paid. Of course Heartland pays its “experts.” There is no other motivation for a respected scientist to act so unscientifically and tarnish an otherwise sterling reputation.
Update:
From Real Climate… hat tip to PublicityStunted
What if you held a conference, and no (real) scientists came?
At the regular scientific conferences we attend in our field, like the AGU conferences or many smaller ones, we do not get any honorarium for speaking – if we are lucky, we get some travel expenses paid or the conference fee waived, but often not even this. We attend such conferences not for personal financial gains but because we like to discuss science with other scientists. The Heartland Institute must have realized that this is not what drives the kind of people they are trying to attract as speakers: they are offering $1,000 to those willing to give a talk. This reminds us of the American Enterprise Institute last year offering a honorarium of $10,000 for articles by scientists disputing anthropogenic climate change. So this appear to be the current market prices for calling global warming into question: $1000 for a lecture and $10,000 for a written paper.
So we know what happened then. Ivar sold out. He sold out his name. He sold out physics. He sold out science. He sold out his posterity. He sold out you and me and all our kids.