Saturday
Nov192011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Outside interests
Nov 19, 2011 Climate: other WUWT has a guest post from Chris Horner, looking at James Hansen's outside interests - the money he earns from speaking fees and so on.
I was wondering if there are any other scientists who have made money on the side of their global warming work. Off the top of my head I can think of almost none. Martin Parry, the ex-head of WGII had a consultancy I think, but that's it.
Is there anyone else?
Reader Comments (18)
Al Gore? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Andrew Weaver. Books and scare lectures, particularly to kids.
Richard Muller
http://www.mullerandassociates.com
Muller has recently tried on the persona of "honest broker making objective study of the facts". It does not fit with his greenie background. Disingenuous.
Richard Betts is listed as someone you can book to talk at a screening of Franny Armstrong's "Age of Stupid".
www.spannerfilms.net/speakers
We don't hear much about the 10:10 Carbon Sasquatch herself nowadays.
I would suggest that everyone leave this to the lawyers. Is the venality (if any) of Hansen really a fitting topic for this blog?
Leave it to Marc Morano. More his style of thingy.
Choo-Choo Pachauri, the mystic pornographer, perhaps...
Jack Savage; "Is the venality (if any) of Hansen really a fitting topic for this blog?"
Is Hansen the topic of the blog? I thought it was a question as to who else was making money on the side from the global warming alarmists. I don't know of any, but I suspect they all try, as do most academics, to make money out of their specialist knowledge. Good luck to 'em, I say.
Bob Watson picked up a 'Japan's equivalent of the Nobel Prize' (a mere £372,000 trousered) in 2010. http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2010/june/nobelprize. "Previous recipients of the prize, now in its 19th year, include Lord Stern and Lord May."
And at the more routine level of graft - it is quite clear that Phil Jones et al were (and still are presumably) nosing around for 'consultancy' truffles, e.g. http://www.di2.nu/foia/1219078495.txt
Beddington and his wife have a firm that has had large consulting contracts on (as I recall) fishing.
Beddington I think still owns MRAG Ltd which wins a lot of government business. There's also Ron Oxburgh's Carbon Capture and Pillage Association that would have gotten carbon sequestration working, if only we'd given them even more money.
How about checking with Scott Mandia of the vigilante clique called the 'Climate Science Rapid Response Team'? Maybe he can assist us to check if Hansen is doing any undocumented fiscally rewarding moonlighting with them? Or vice versa.
John
Hansen is guilty of flagrant violations of applicable Federal laws and policies, some of which are criminal. The non-enforcement is typical of politicized science that is funded by government grants. Producers like Hansen are seemingly immune from enforcement.
Hansen should be defrocked and serving time in prison. His ill gotten gains should be ceased.
In modern times illegitimate actions rarely have consequences for the actor.
Tim Flannery fits the bill, our Aussie Climate Commissioner dude. But at least the money he might have made as a professional alarmist has been sucked up by his losses on his shareholding in Geodynamics, a South Aussie hot rock hopeful he has publicly supported, and which, despite massive taxpayer support and years of drilling etc, has yet to generate a single watt of energy, and therefore lost the support of the market.
Karma.
Tim Flannery fits the bill, our Aussie Climate Commissioner dude. But at least the money he might have made as a professional alarmist has been sucked up by his losses on his shareholding in Geodynamics, a South Aussie hot rock hopeful he has publicly supported, and which, despite massive taxpayer support and years of drilling etc, has yet to generate a single watt of energy, and therefore lost the support of the market.
Karma.
Hansen earned just $48K for speaking engagements over the last four years.
Before we get too excited by the rest of this nonsense, let's not forget:
- The American Tradition Institute is a right-wing front funded by the energy industry
- Its purpose in this action is to smear and delegitimise Hansen
- Its actions are without merit:
1/. Most of the monies in question were for international prize awards
2/. These can be accepted by Federal employees and do not count as 'outside activity' for which permission must be sought
3/. The insinuation that Hansen might not have complied with ethics guidelines by not filing 'outside activity' forms for these prizes (which are not required) is clearly misleading
4/. This matter was apparently settled on 09 November with the release of 225pp of documents by NASA:
[Case 1:11-cv-01144-ESH Document 8 Filed 11/09/11]
Now, does anyone wonder why there is not one single word about Hansen's published scientific work in this farrago of nonsense? The 'American Tradition Instiute' (a mere two years old) would have us believe that Hansen is some sort of profiteering crook filling his boots with the illegitimate proceeds of bad science. So, where's the substantive rebuttal to Hansen's work?
This is an absolute disgrace.
Additional information and legal documents may be accessed here and here.
BBD, Mother Nature seems to be doing a pretty good job of providing rebuttals to Hansen's work all by herself, but that is not the focus of this thread. That focus is on the fact that a great deal of money has been made (whether rightly or wrongly does not matter to the ledger) and continues to be made thanks to the reactions of several governments, and other grant-awarding bodies, to the various alarums about climate.
Michael Mann is on sabbatical, and is probably getting some speaking fees for his various talks. Did Curry and Mann get fees for their back-to-back appearances at MIT?