Thursday
Mar012012
by 
Josh
Josh US Government Climate Change spend 2011 vs Heartland - Josh 153
Mar 1, 2012 Climate: fakegate Heartland Josh Fakegate showed how small the Heartland Institute budget is compared to spending on Climate Change science. Here is just one example using US Government figures. I thought a simple graphic would be more helpful than a cartoon here.
;)
Click the image for a bigger version.
Reader Comments (70)
heard on my local radio this morning, 50 new academic posts and £50 million, for climate change and food security at Reading University... (home of Walker Institute, Meteorology, etc)
It would be great to have accurate figures for all sides of the debate and globally - do send them in.
Well, you could start with the near $30 billion in Fast Start Climate Pledges....
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2012/02/not-even-rounding-error.html
Rick, not sure that link goes anywhere. Here is Fast Finance for the US
www.faststartfinance.org/contributing_country/united-states
Never mind the quality, feel the width...
The really crazy thing, is that if you ask the average warmist what the ratio was, they would say the reverse. So, whereas the truth is 100-1000:1 (alarmist:sceptic) they really believe it's 1:100-1000.
The shear imbalance is bad enough. But then you realise that the difference between reality and the warmist's delusion is:
1 : 10,000 - 1,000,000
In other words, for every £1 we sceptics have to spend, the warmists believe we have £1,000,000.
We are either the worlds greatest (and most thrifty) publicists, or ....
the warmists are totally, absolutely, incontrovertibly ... deluded.
Mike Haseler : 'We are either the worlds greatest (and most thrifty) publicists, or ....
the warmists are totally, absolutely, incontrovertibly ... deluded.'
... or both!
To be fair to the warmists (and, let's face it, they need every help they can get), they don't regard climate change research money as innately biassed : they believe it is neutral money, dedicated to seeking out the truth; they regard the BBC as unfairly pre-disposed to over-presenting the sceptic case; and they regard Greenpeace, the WWF and other such groups as potential saviours of the universe. To understand their views on funding, one must understand their self-selected axiomatic 'truths'!
josh says it all again.
the alarmists have never been very good with figures.
Josh - doesn't that imply that Heartland's $6.5m is from the govt?
"the warmists are totally, absolutely, incontrovertibly ... deluded."
Is there a specific reason why you would not rather think that the average warmist is, instead, simply lying?
Which is simpler: to constantly, without exception or deviation - EVER, 'misunderstand'; or to indeed understand but lie about it.
Shall we consult Mr. Occam? You mistake, which is depressingly typical, is a refusal to face an (apparently) emotionally-hard-to-live-with truism: hippies are LIARS. Taken just one step further: they know what they do, they know what the consequences of their actions are: hippies are EVIL.
You are weak. Which has consequences identical to that of the actions of the hippies themselves. But what does that matter to you: I really hope you, and those like you, get to face the Living God one day, and I would like to see you try and sell 'well, I was just deluded-mistaken, Dude, honest!' to Someone Who cannot be LIED to. It would be amusing, perhaps even very amusing.
Ian, isn't it a kind of incremental delusion:
1. 1980s climate scientists tried to prove global warming
2. The current climate scientists - knowing that it is true, try to "refine" the 1980s work to better show the known trend
3. The NGO's then take the scientists "work" and apply their normal layer of bullsit and
4. The news-media then take the NGO's bull and using their normal "integrity" they "sex up the story".
5. Holyrood (& wood) & others forming public opinion take the story and invent their own stories to sell to the public.
At each stage, and according to its own ethics, the story is "improved". It never is over exaggerated by any one group ... moreover the importance of the story means that they shouldn't hold back on the evidence, they shouldn't be cautious.
So, the story is sex up, then the sex up story is sex up, and then the sex up story which has been sexed up is sexed up.
Until we have a sexed up, sexed up, sexed up, sexed up, sexed up story. And no one lied!!
But, what starts as a "3mm yearly increasing sea level" .... finally reaches the public as " impending doom through inevitable 60m waves crashing down as brave Gleick fights the evil forces ... and putting on his superman pants, defeats us all by his superior intellect.
An addendum to my post: have you considered the RESPONSES to Gleick by the relevant hippie scientists?
Liars. Like I said. Evil. Like I said. Obviously, like I implied.
I like visual representations of things, Congrats Josh! Always so much better than the somewhat dry algebraic version.
$2481miliion < ( $6.5million + x)
Where x = Reality.
Not to mentioned the almost $600 MILJUN($600.000.000!!!) ClimateWork Foundation got from the Hewlett Family over the last 4 years ($100 Miljun this February alone).
Not to mentioned the almost $600 MILJUN($600.000.000!!!) ClimateWork Foundation got from the Hewlett Family over the last 4 years ($100 Miljun this February alone).
Isn't the DOE middle-fingering us in the picture above? Not that I'd be surprised...
Mar 1, 2012 at 10:40 AM cb
The ones I have spoken to are, without exception, extremely sincere in what they believe.
I do agree very much with Ian E regarding the Greens' perception of neutrality and "truth".
All that government spent and in the process wasted because the public no longer believe the world is in peril.
You certainly get more bang from the sceptical buck.
How much do the BBC get again?
Cb, I have had conversations with many real people, including close family members, who fully accept the CAGW line. I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that they are not lying, although I strongly suspect they are deluded.
In contrast, you expecting a conversion one day with your imaginary friend makes be quite certain that you are deluded - however, I would not say that delusion was "lying."
Josh -
I wouldn't consider what you've illustrated to be the relevant quantities to compare.
First off, a nit -- Heartland's entire 2011 budget was $4.5 M; the amount they spent on climate change was perhaps 20% of that.
But more importantly, I don't think it's fair to call, say, organising Heartland's climate change conference as "climate change research"; it's more advocacy. [There is perhaps some justification in calling an effort such as NIPCC "research", but (as I understand it) it's secondary research, being a literature survey and evaluation.] While some of the US governmental expenses in this area can definitely be characterised as advocacy, I would suspect that the majority goes to primary research (satellites and such) and a large chunk to subsidising alternative energy. While some of that can arguably be considered advocacy spending, it's a fine line to draw. A better comparison would be to the efforts of avowedly advocate NGO's (and other organisations') efforts.
We've seen, for example, Greenpeace's reports cited by IPCC; how much are their staffers & scientists paid? The problem, of course, is that the figures are not easily available. From 2010, the USA's Greenpeace Inc. reported $2.4M spent on their "Climate campaign". But there's also $4.8M in "public information and education" and $3.5M in "outreach campaign"; I suspect some of that is related to climate, much as some of Heartland's expenses are in these areas. Of course Greenpeace is worldwide; each country no doubt has its own figures.
I don't know if anyone has gone to the bother of trying to compile hard figures. After all, it seems clear that Greenpeace, even in the US, are considerably larger than Heartland; their 2010 fund-raising expenses alone are given as $3.9M, almost as large as Heartland's entire 2011 budget. But it might be worth checking around, or someone here might know where these figures have been collected.
Alarmists live in a fantasy world, where it is perfectly okay to lie, cheat and steal. A place where conspiracies abound and being paranoid is the norm. It is little wonder that ordinary people look upon the green-minded as being mightily odd.
Josh's graphic is a good start. But it would also be nice to see similar graphics for (a) the Transies (UNO, EU) (b) the NGOs and "Charities" (WorldWildLiesFund, Greenpiss, Fiends of the Earth, Oxfam, RSPB etc) and (c) the Billionaire "foundations" and funders like Grantham.
Compared to some of these, Heartland's "anonymous donor" is either a tightwad or financially small fry.
Martin, if you can find well referenced figures then I will do the graphic!
Ordinary people were taken in by the alarmists because activism rather than science held (and still holds) strategic positions of power.
* There's IPCC and its tiny inside team, headwaters of all the corruption of the science
* Then there's the heads and PR of scientific establishments where Lindzen demonstrated how "back-door" admission to activists has come about
* Lastly, but importantly, there's the media sidekicks including Al Gore and his £)£$%B film
* And with that, Joe Public was hooked, and with Joe Public, the politicians.
Now Joe Public is slowly waking up, the dripping fantasy, malevolent projections, and abandonment of human decency are breaking out into full view. Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.
Thank you Josh for such a clear picture.
Mac: "Alarmists live in a fantasy world, where it is perfectly okay to lie, cheat and steal."
... because they believe the warmists are up against insurmountable odds, that there is no way to beat the massive BIG-OIL funded sceptic machinery that has its tentacles manipulating each and every part of government.
They think: "we have to lie, we are right to lie ... because how can us small guys beat the overwhelming odds against us"?
This is their key to success. They have taken all that is bad about themselves and put it onto us. They are the ones who lie, who deny solar, who cheat, manipulate peer review. They are the ones who are funded by big oil, they are the ones who are the establishment.
And then they justify their lying cheating manipulative ways by deluding themselves that we US ... the merry band of amateur sceptics are the establishment, BIG-OIL funded, lying cheating global scamsters, that they are.
It is literally the Goebels BIG-LIE .... tell a lie big enough, so fundamental that it just could not be true ... and people will believe you.
The real lie is that they are the small guy struggling to get their voice heard against us!
Josh - far be it from me to criticise your latest work of art but there is a major flaw. Of the $6.5 million that Heartland is projecting to spend only about 1/3 of it is related to climate change (even after adding in a share of the overheads).
"It is literally the Goebels BIG-LIE .... tell a lie big enough, so fundamental that it just could not be true ... and people will believe you."
The whole "big lie" thing has been somewhat mauled by history. The term was coined by Hitler, not Goebbels. And the "Big Lie" was a technique he accused the Jews (who else?) of deploying when pursuing their nefarious goals.
I´d say the 'size' of the truth claim is not what matters most - rather it is the ability to make disputing a certain truth, "big" or "small" socially costly to question that is critical to setting up a situation like the one in climate change / AGW. You wouldn´t want to be a denialist denier, would you?
cb, I suppose with my beard and fairly long hair I would be perceived as an old hippy,
However I don't think CO2 is pollutant. I don't believe in human-induced global warming.
Am I an evil liar?
Your comments reek of redneck prejudice. Do you belong in this blog which has always represented a variety of word views?
Ron, I agree. It is quite difficult making the comparison without getting into a real fruit basket - and that is on both sides of the comparison. The main point is whether the sums of money used by the Heartland Institute are, comparatively, anything like as large as some alarmist commentators say they are and the answer is clearly and unequivocally 'no'.
Ha ha, nice graphic Josh. I was going to mention the point Ron made, but he beat me to it (and a fair answer from Josh).
The only change I'd make - being a pedant - would be the Heartland coin. I think you've made it a bit thinner to reflect that it is 2/3rds of a full coin, am I right? I think I would have had the coin full height, but maybe clipped a bit off (or taken a pie-style wedge out of it) rather than made it thinner.
Anyway, enough pedantry for today, it's a nice graphic that should be spread far and wide :)
Since the thermidors are asserting that sceptical activity is well funded, it might be worthwhile to consider that they very likely include all energy company advertising budgets among these funds.
In the US, for example, BP runs a series of television ads touting the vitality of the Gulf tourist economy post-spill. There is also a frequently shown series of television ads pointing out the vary large reserves (not used as term of art) of various kinds of hydrocarbon energy beneath our feet and the million jobs which would flow, so to speak, from its release from regulatory bondage. It's subtle.
I tend to think that most of us would not see these as sceptical propaganda pieces, but maybe they do.
U.S. Global Change Research Program
YEAR....BILLIONS..LINK
2012....2.642.....ucar.edu
2011....2.561
2010....2.122
2009....2.080.....climatescience.gov
2008....1.864
2007....1.825
2006....1.691
2005....1.865
2004....1.975
2003....1.766
2002....1.667
2001....1.728
2000....1.687
1999....1.657
1998....1.677
1997....1.656
1996....1.654
1995....1.760
1994....1.444
1993....1.326
1992....1.110
1991....0.954
1990....0.659
1989....0.134
Total $39.504 Billion
'j ferguson' - "thermidors"
LoL - I do like
I emailed this to Tom Nelson this morning:
"Environmental funders spent a whopping $10 billion between 2000 and 2009 but achieved relatively little because they failed to underwrite grassroots groups that are essential for any large-scale change, the report says. Released in late February by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, Cultivating the Grassroots was written by Sarah Hansen, who served as executive director of the Environmental Grantmakers Association from 1998 to 2005."
http://www.alternet.org/environment/154290/why_the_environmental_movement_is_not_winning
That amount (which is staggering IMO) came from this report:
http://www.ncrp.org/files/publications/Cultivating_the_grassroots_final_lowres.pdf
Two points. The first is that in the Gleick affair and a common theme running through Michael Mann (and others) emails is the "Fossil-fuel-funded denial machine", a slur which is also targeted at groups such as Heartland Institute. The "denial machine" is clearly a fabrication and Mann and others should be constantly called out on this - there is no evidence that I am aware of of any significant spending by energy companies in this regard. Quite the opposite - they would never want to be seen doing this and anyway no amount of government policy is going to change the fundamental revenues of oil companies for the foreseeable future. Energy is an essential raw ingredient and people have to buy it. Couple this with the fact that oil companies only get about 25% of the revenue from petrol pump sales in the uk - the rest goes to the goverment (which is also simultaneously taking petroeluem taxes from the north sea AND corporation tax!). Without these tax revenues the government would be a little short of money and so it is the governement not the oil companies that stand to lose the most in the long term. There is no threat to oil companies for the foreseeable future so they have no reason other than to stay generally neutral on climate change.
The second point picks up on Mike Haseler comment above, and it really struck me. When I was a young lad in the 1970's environmental issues were hippy, they were regarded as unusual and certainly not mainstream. Mike Haseler above said "They are the ones who are funded by big oil, they are the ones who are the establishment.". thats actually a very profound statement. Environmental issues, the big players such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, WWF have become the establishment. They are wedded to government and politicians, they are extensions of government actions and politicians don't make a disin with consulting "greens". The problem for the greens is I suspect they have reached their zenith and the tables are swinging away from them. With overhyping of climate catastrophe etc I think the backlash will be very severe. They have massively overplayed their hand and, whilst they have got many things they want (recycling, crap light bulbs, increased car tax for CO2) in the short term it isn't going to last. And when the fall from grace of greens comes, as it will, it is the environment that will suffer. Thsi has always been Bjorn Lombergs message and I think he is right.
A while ago there was a rather revealing video of some lady activist explaining how she was at the very centre of rewriting the previous govt's 2008 Climate legislation.
Can anyone remember who she was?
Correct me if I'm wrong , but Heartland's spend is on communication, they don't do research. So this isn't comparing like with like.
Stuck-record, that was Baroness Worthington, see the Bishop's post here.
Thinking Scientist: "And when the fall from grace of greens comes, as it will, it is the environment that will suffer."
Couldn't agree more. Yes the environment isn't sacrosanct, there is a balance between e.g. road building a nature reserves, but personally I think there is far too much building of urban sprawl, too much cutting down wilderness and too little concern for e.g. what we are doing to fish stocks.
But these days, when I see someone with an WWF jacket on their face, I have to stop myself swearing at them for their utter stupidity. As for Greenpeace and FOe ... to me they are just marxist eco-capitalist money-making scamsters. (and yes it is contradictory -- but most marxists these days are in it for the money!)
Maurizio, I hadn't planned it but I think you are right. Trust you to spot that
;-)
Hengist, it may look like a fruit basket but both are spending on Climate Change. Also Heartland do support scientists. And the US Gov funded research goes into the IPCC 'communication'.
The issue is do Heartland have comparatively huge amounts of money to spend and the answer is no.
If you have better figures I would be happy to update or do a new graphic.
I think there are a few things missing... the Defense Department and the State Department both have global warming budgets. I believe the Department of Education does too. Probably other departments do as well...
@ Mike Haseler
We are either the worlds greatest (and most thrifty) publicists, or ....
the warmists are totally, absolutely, incontrovertibly ... deluded.
Another possibility is that the CAGWitches assume that money is spent as wastefully in the private sector as in the public. To attain the credibility that sceptics attain on no money the ecofascists need trillions, so they assume that's what sceptics actually dispose of.
It's often forgotten that R.101, the airship that broke in half, was one of a pair of airships built in the 1930s. R.101 was the public sector one. It went so far overweight they had to cut it in two, add in an extra section and weld it back together again. As well as being overweight it went wildly over budget - and it was still useless and still crashed.
The other, R.100, was a parallel project built by private sector money that came in on budget and was cheaper, safer and better able to lift a commercial payload.
Greenie activism in general, but the obsession with windfarms in particular, are the new airship industry: loonies in pursuit of a dead-end technology that will never work and is being developed wastefully and prematurely with other people's money and without any regard for alternatives that might be better.
Hengist. "Correct me if I'm wrong , but Heartland's spend is on communication, they don't do research. So this isn't comparing like with like.
Bearing in mind that just one UK TV/press campaign, ACT on CO2's ludicrous kiddie scarer from a couple of years ago, cost £6 million, do you think the budget discrepancy might fall from 1:1000 to 1:500? 1:100?
Wow. Those evil Big-Oil funded deniers with their huge budgets clogging up the TV with their endless stream of propaganda. Can't open a paper or switch on the news without being bombarded by sceptical viewpoints. And all the sceptical taxes I'm paying!
What about all the government subsidies to both energy providers, and also those green businesses that took in hundreds of millions and effectively flushed it down the drain?
ilma, indeed, what about those subsidies?
Hard to find out exactly what is meant by the word 'subsidy' but it looks like the definition used is sometimes quite broad, almost to the point of hand wavy anything-you-like-vagueness.
http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/
http://priceofoil.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/koplowtypesofsubsidy.pdf
I guess the bottom line is whether Governments make more money in tax than subsidy from a particular energy sector. What do you think?
This is a re-post of a comment that I made on this topic at WUWT slightly cleaned up:
"No mention of the Defense Department. IIRC there have been various announcements of their Green/sustainability programs. For example, the linked article reports that the Defense Department “investment” in clean fuel research was $1.2 billion in 2009, almost double the amount cited above for Department of Energy.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20110134-54/military-green-investments-could-hit-$10b-by-2030/