Bishop Hill Coining it
Nov 26, 2011 Climate: CRU Email 3989 covers a consultancy tender by CRU staff. The tender is for AEA, an environmental consultancy.
We learn that the day rates are as follows:
>> Phil: £750
>> Tim, Rachel, Anthony, Aldina, William, Clare: £550
>> Maureen: £450
And what will happen to this money?
[School of Environment] will top slice the total cost by 10% and there is a 15% management fee so basically you will have a choice to make regarding the remainder (75%) you can either take this personally via payroll or choose to 'gift' some or all of it into a school consultancy income account where it can be used for travel, equipment, etc.
If you wanted to maximise the amount that you receive you could ask Jim to increase the UEA daily rates he has given by 25% to cover this.
There is some further discussion later in the thread
Overall, it seems that [???] will need to tell the university whether or not we want to take the money as salary or not.
To which someone replies:
No we don't, you don't decide what to do with the money until it's payout time...there are a number of options - take as (non-pensionable) bonus, donate to school pot or, if you can get it past finance you can try and charge yourself as a direct cost (to Tyndall/CRU or whatever) and attempt to get the money transferred....if you're lucky enough to be a Prof - Phil might have one - you can transfer to that via the school - Jacquie B and me have talked about this in the past - lots of options but all have got ages to decide and each individual can choose what to do.
Lucky old them.
Reader Comments (83)
They seem cheap, considering these are supposed to be the best scientists in climateology.
As a lowly, mid-range IT person I was "sold" as a "consultant" at a rate of £750 a day in 1996 by my then employer.
I didn't get to choose where the money went though.
Bit OT - sorry.
Climatefellas II (h/t to Maurizio for the title)
Big Jim has called an emergency meeting of “the family” to discuss the current crisis
Big Jim “Guys, I gotta tell ya straight, it's lookin' real bad – mebbe worse than two years ago. We got the denier mobs crawlin' all over us, Mad Mikey's still got the DA on his back, we lost some of our best guys at that shoot out over at Loose Judy's and now the feds've got evidence to bust most of our rackets ”
Mad Mikey “Don'tworryaboudit boss, I can take care of it. Me and my guys gonna get tooled up, take to the mattresses 'n waste the lot of 'em. Pow! Splat!, we'll use the HS secret weapon again - nobody messes with Mad Mikey!”
Big Jim “ Yeah – that worked brilliantly last time didn't it Mikey, your secret weapon's killed more of our guys than the deniers have - that's why the DA's getting your cell ready.”
Crazy Kev “Absolutely – you really screwed up with that HS crap, Mikey, people don't take it seriously any more. You should see when my guys roll out the Nul Hypothesis – you can see the denier crowd shake with fear.”
Big Jim “It's not fear, Kev – they're laughing at you again. But all youse guys all need to loosen up and get some strategy – listen to Gav – he's the brains of the outfit.”
Garrotter Gav (the British consigliere) “ I've been talking to Fingers Phil about the British end boss. Things looked bad there for a while – but he thinks he's getting them under control”
Mad Mikey “ Shit boss, why to we have to listen to those whingeing, yellow toothed pussies – it's always the friggin' same – the Limeys get into wars and we've gotta bail em out – it's 1942 all over again. If it wasn't for Fingers Phil and his CRU mob the feds would never have got their mitts on all the evidence in the first place.”
Big Jim “Shuddup Mikey. You gotta understand it's different over there. They may seem like a bunch of fairies, but Phil 'n his guys have pulled some pretty sweet rackets in the UK. They don't have the feds and politicos breathing down their necks all the time like we have. Everybody's in on the scam there – the Queen's son heads up the racket, the politicians 'r all fixed and the feds do what they're told. Y'know there's even a protection mob called the Beeb, that Phil works with, who get 200 bucks protection from every citizen – and they don't even have to work up a sweat smashing their stuff or roughing them up. If they don't pay up the feds put 'em in jail – how sweet is that! We could learn a lot from the Brits.”
Gav “Yes, Phil says the Beeb mob and their deal with the Guardianista family are keeping the lid on things over there. There's a bit of trouble from the Bish's mob but they're old guys and they don't stand a chance against the Beeb, the Guardianistas and the feds combined. We should take a lead from the Brits – keep our heads down, avoid showdowns and quietly take out any deniers we can get near to. That's how we run things at the Arcy Bar. We let a couple of deniers in, not too many, let them make themselves comfortable until they speak out of turn - then Raypierre the Bear, Evil Eric and the heavy mob just quietly take 'em out back and they're never seen again.”
Big Jim “OK, Gav's right – listen up. We're gonna play it cool, pretend like nothing happened and send our soldiers around town to pick off the denier mob one at a time. With luck the whole thing'll blow over before the feds can deal with all the evidence. We've got the big Durban meet with all the other families and Capo Patchi next week - we'll review things there and see if we need to go to the mattresses
Oh – and one more thing, there may be some of you junior guys with wives 'n kids, who've just been on the fringes the rackets, and might be thinking they could make a deal with the feds, clear their conscience and buy themselves some immunity. Weeelll........ I unnerstand we're all human and we have our little weaknesses and I really want to help you guys work 'em through – I just want you to know that if anyone feels that way, I've arranged for one-to-one counselling, with Raypierre the Bear and Evil Eric, in the basement room – next to the furnace.”
Re Foxgoose
I like it!
I asked about Mann deleting Real Climate comments, and requesting guidance from Jones and Osborn on Yamal over at Real Climate. I received a suggestion to go and look up McCarthyism:
http://climategate2011.blogspot.com/2011/11/2743txt.html
the markdown is higher I'd say..
never mind, we're in a climate blog :)
I do not think the rates are high, but they are to the wrong people: public servants should FIRST resign, then go for the high rates. Public servants shld be paid out netto, to make very clear to them and us they do NOT pay taxes. and creativity games like this should be strictly forbidden.Is of the same tenure as the Tahiti conference drooling.
I womder if HMRC has a view on this or do they just chase the easy fish for tax
James P
Leaving that question aside -- my question is did any of them "sell their services" and if so, to whom?
As for consulting rates, as a senior tech writer I earned $100 per hour for serious technical manuals (i.e. software development tools) and $300 per hour for writing the technical sections of patent applications. The lawyer who hired me charged his client $500 for my services and all this was 10 years ago. So these guys were CHEAP.
Of course, I was working in Silicon Valley, not quite in the league of UEA.
Don P
the rates are difficult to compare. But in commerce, to get more than £500 per hour you need to have rare skills. And we are talking as full-time freelanceers.
But who would pay Phil £750 a day when you can get an oracle programmer for an equivalent sum?: For that rate, you can get a CFO at a medium sized company.
For extreme specialism, such as jonathan Jones, you will pay more....but not for more than a very few days. And that is the difference...is this consultancy for a few days or for an unspecified period....
I can tell you that typical international rates for consultancy projects where you are bidding competitively for a package of work in the fossil fuel industry are typically:
Project Management $2000 - $2400 per day
Reservoir Engineer $2000 - $2400 per day
Geophysicist / Geologist / Petrophysicist / Geomodeler $1500 - $1900 per day depending on experience
More Junior Geoscientist $1000 per day
Technical Assistant $750 per day
International travel time is typically charged at 50% of the day rate. Travel is typically business class for journeys longer than 4 - 6 hours but economy (otherwise known as coach or cattle class) on shorter haul flights. The exact cutoff time depends on client oil company internal policy.
To get the top rates you would need to be 20 - 25 years experience with a good track record and CV. You would likely be doing a package of work containing 20 - 80 days. Software usage would be charged separately, as would travel, expenses etc. For some software packages used in the oil industry the charges could be $7000 - $15000 per month for a single package
The rates quoted at the top of the post are perfectly reasonable for technical science consultancy by University Scientists. Their rates are rarely as high as commerical rates as they usually only provide the technical expertise, not the wider experience. For example, I have had academics who are specialist in certaint statistical areas provide 1 - 2 days consulting on a project and the rates would be similar to those in the head post.
Regarding the point about grossing up by 25% - you just remember to divide by 0.75 to gross up, not multiply by 1.25
For someone at the peak of his profession in a vital and relevant discipline to the saving of the planet from catastrophic climate change which will cause untold trillions of damage to the human race to be charging a measly £750 a day (plus, one assumes, reasonable expenses), suggests a huge concern for the welfare of the human race or being a bit out of touch with the going rate.
A couple of decades ago, an acquaintance had a charge out rate somewhat less than double that of the good professor a mere six months out of university with a well known management consultancy firm. My best rate was £150 an hour in the mid to late 80’s. Unfortunately it wasn’t for many hours and hasn’t been even approached since.
Perhaps the real money is to be made in extra-curricular activities such as ‘carbon’ trading: a trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking serious money.
The alternatives to global warming are long term climate stability (yeah, right and how long is long term for an animal with a life expectancy of approximately 75 years? Predictions for 2100 suggest that one is not going to be terribly concerned about whether or not they turn out to be accurate – Majikthise and Vroomfondel would approve) or cooling, which means shorter growing seasons, longer heating seasons and greater demand for food. Coupled with the peak in oil production, which has been at a plateau since mid 2004, a cooling trend would be remarkably unappealing especially if it started a week last Tuesday.
That the general state of the world has been a mile deep in ice and we are about 11,000 years into one of several interglacial periods, the longest of which was about 12,000 years, suggests that when it comes to ‘catastrophic climate change’, cooling is the one to worry about.
Global warming? I say: bring it on!
Winston Smith
Apparently Trevor Davies and Mike Hulme worked for Goldman-Sachs: http://climategate2011.blogspot.com/2011/11/4092txt.html, where Davies says 'We (Mike H) have done a modest amount of work on degree-days for G-S.'.
But Mike Hulme does not mention Goldman-Sachs on his 'openness and transparency' page: http://mikehulme.org/category/bio-and-cv/ (probably soon to be taken down).
Should there not be a public register where academics disclose all their consulting relationships, instead of selective (convenient?) disclosures like Hulme's?
geoffrey - the MSM's response has been a disgrace:
25 Nov: UK Telegraph: Geoffrey Lean: Climategate II: the scientists fight back
The first Climategate made scientists dive for cover, refusing to comment. This time, they held a press conference.
Yet the public response seems to have been nothing more than a yawn. The emails dropped out of the news within a couple of days. And Google’s record of trends for searches and news coverage of Climategate, which went through the roof two years ago have scarcely registered a blip…
And the science itself remains sound, based on a wide variety of sources and studies and so far not invalidated by anything that has emerged from either Climategate…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/8915689/Climategate-II-the-scientists-fight-back.html
btw if u open the Telegraph link, u will find a pic with the caption:
More signs of a warming planet? The vanishing glaciers of the Himalayas Photo: EPA
truly mindboggling...
David Rose has another article in the Daily Mail. I wonder if they will take this one down as they tried with the last one. He really hit into the whole BBC bias scandal. Read it while you can, I feel sure a certain troll will be along there and its fun to see her getting panned!
Visit Article
Oh dear! Zed had better forget Sunday Lunch, Much to much to do!
Daily Mail again!
Camerons Green Guru sides with Lord Lawson!
From the Mail article:
‘It was right that the BBC decided not to give sceptics parity on climate change,’ saying there was a ‘cross-party consensus.’ (Harrabin)
A few sentences above that comment, labour and conservative MPs suggest that an inquiry into the BBC's activities with the UEA is required.
I wonder if the BBC will be inclined to report on the cross-party consensus that an inquiry into collusion between the UEA and the BBC is required?
Slightly off the original topic of this thread, but I've written my letter to the BBC Trust.
It's hard to escape the conclusion that everything is a bit too cosy, what with Prof Steve Jones' idiotic characterisation of climate sceptics being accepted without a murmur (till Lord Lawson got his big legal stick out), with Richard Black doing a good job for 'the team', and Roger Harabin being the conduit between UEA and the BBC. This coterie will continue to control the Beeb's agenda until we who pay for the Beeb challenge it loudly. I don't like my money being used to promote an agenda, that's not what the licence fee is for.
Question
Has anyone here submitted evidence to the BBC Trust consultation? It is entitled 'Delivering Quality First'.
If not this is a reminder that submissions have to be in by 21 December 2011. More details here.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/consult/delivering_quality_first.shtml
Pete H
That second link seems to be wrong, try
Camerons Green Guru sides with Lord Lawson!
David Rose sums up the UEA's CRU in the first sentence:
"Britain’s leading green activist research centre..."
An excellent one line description.
Booker sums up the utter stupidity of the AGW scam in the Sunday Telegraph
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5Y29RYGCUjM/TtFar2_L0RI/AAAAAAAAUdI/P-F036k57S0/s1600/Delusion1.jpg
From the Mail article referred to by PeterH, linked by Lord Beaverbrook:
“Steve Hilton, the Prime Minister’s director of strategy and ‘green guru’, is the latest person to admit to doubts about climate change.
‘I’m not sure I believe in it,’ he announced at a meeting of the Energy Department, prompting one aide to blurt out: ‘Did I just hear that correctly?’”
It’s a bit galling that one sentence from Cameron’s green guru will make more waves than everything His Grace and his faithful flock have done and said over the years. Still, that’s politics, and, as the Mail makes quite clear (and the emails make even clearer) it’s all about politics, and nothing else.
It is normal for University academic staff to do consulting work.
This is a non-issue.
I'm no conspiracy theorist but;
Lobbyists who cleared 'Climategate' academics funded by taxpayers and the BBC
ZT,
That is a peculiar justification from Harrabin but perhaps explains many things. There, in black and white, is a claim from a BBC correspondent that the BBC see their role as one of repeating the view of Westminster. What other reporting might that Westminster 'consensus' be shaping?
The BBC is a plainly political beast.
In spite of what MSM say, to me it appears that CG2 is much more significant than CG1. FWIW, I think that the leaker / hacker is a master-tactician, and that not only will CG3 be infinitely more significant than CG1, we might be lulled into a false sense of security in believing that we have got two more years to wait (prepare?) for CG3, when in fact we will be hit out of the blue at any time - after all, it only requires the entry of a word or phrase into a computer - something which we all do many times a day. Maybe they are waiting for any significant event - Mr. Huhne's nemesis, perhaps (!) ........ Are you listening Msrs. Mann / Jones / Harrabin / Acton / Oxburgh / Patten et. al.?
Sorry, old link, however 'lest we forget'.
Some good news: the latest Climategate information is getting into the British press.
BBC sought advice from global warming scientists on economy, drama, music... and even game shows
by DAVID ROSE (Daily Mail), on 27th November 2011 at 12:29 AM
Britain’s leading green activist research centre spent £15,000 on seminars for top BBC executives in an apparent bid to block climate change sceptics from the airwaves, a vast new cache of leaked ‘Climategate’ emails has revealed.
The emails – part of a trove of more than 5,200 messages that appear to have been stolen from computers at the University of East Anglia – shed light for the first time on an incestuous web of interlocking relationships between BBC journalists and the university’s scientists, which goes back more than a decade. .....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2066706/BBC-sought-advice-global-warming-scientists-economy-drama-music--game-shows.html
"There, in black and white, is a claim from a BBC correspondent that the BBC see their role as one of repeating the view of Westminster. What other reporting might that Westminster 'consensus' be shaping?
The BBC is a plainly political beast.
Nov 27, 2011 at 11:11 AM | Unregistered CommenterGareth "
I'm afraid that it's true of all the broadcast news in the UK and most of the press too.
On any given subject it's easy to get a contributor in from the Govt and one in from the "Opposition" (sic) and let them fight it out. Rarely, if ever does anyone suggest that there are alternate arguments or even that any such spat is a side issue or pathetically minor compared to the real problems with the country. Rarely does a subject, however vital, even get questioned if both "sides" are in agreement.
Journalists and politicians occupy the same incestuous bubble and it's no co-incidence that the general public are increasingly despising both.
Would they be consulting on their own time?
Surely what they did with the money as a group, not individually, has to be FOIA-ble material? Like a report containing how many of them chose which option, with no names attached.
"What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural
fluctuation? They'll kill us probably [...]"
that statement..i don't know if we shld feel comfortable with that..It doesn't conjure up all the confidence there is supposed to be on the "settled" science..shld we really really be investing trillions in climate mitigation when the Doctor Ozzes are worried it cld be natural fluctuation.