Google and dissent

A group of Google Science Communication Fellows have written to their benefactor explaining that the company should not be supporting Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe because of his views on climate change.

...in the face of urgent threats like climate change, there are times where companies like Google must display moral leadership and carefully evaluate their political bedfellows. Google’s support of Senator James Inhofe’s re-election campaign is one of those moments.

The thrust of the fellows' argument is that Inhofe is trying to prevent them getting their way on the climate change issue. However, their presentation of the issue as a moral one seems to rely on an argument that Inhofe is a bad man. And why is he a bad man? Well, because he is trying to prevent them getting their way on the climate change issue.

So what it boils down to is that the fellows want Google to stop funding people who disagree with them. This behaviour suggests that they are unsure of their intellectual ground, but also bears a close resemblance to that of the Climategate authors, plotting to unseat journal editors and have dissenting scientists fired. This is the modus operandi of the activist and not the scientist.

So in the wake of Tamsin's article on trust, I wonder who on earth is going to believe a word of the academic output of any of these people?

Comments

[Paul Matthews]

Is it even true that Google is funding Inhofe, as widely reported (and implied by your post)?
The letter is remarkably hazy on exactly what google is supposed to have done wrong,
"Google’s July 11, 2013 fundraiser supporting Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe’s 2014 re-election campaign".

Following a link in the Revkin article, it seems that a fundraising lunch for Inhofe took place in a building owned by google. In which case it seems more likely that Inhofe would be paying google for the use of the room.

[Latimer Alder]

In light of His Grace's final rhetorical question, this article by Pointman is very germane

http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/08/02/why-would-anyone-believe-a-single-word-coming-out-of-their-mouth/

The more they do stuff like this, the more their work's credibility reduces.

'I'm from Head Office, I'm hear to help you'

'The cheque's in the post'

'Trust Me, I'm a Climate Scientist'

[not banned yet]

//
The reality that human activities are causing major disruptions to our global climate and that these disruptions pose serious risks to society is accepted by virtually every climate scientist and by the world’s leading scientific organizations. Yet for more than a decade, Senator Inhofe has attacked and demeaned the very scientists who have worked tirelessly to better understand the threat and to warn us of the risks posed to the environment, our communities, and our children.
//
As Fellows in Science Communication, you'd have hoped they would have provided some traceable refererences for their claims on the disruptions and the risks we face.

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2013/08/01/open-letter-from-google-science-communication-fellows/

[steve ta]

By speaking out when our admired companies and political leaders let us down, we are the only ones who can create the conditions where the morally right thing to do is also good for politics and business.

The the F**K do these a**eholes think they are?

[ConfusedPhoton]

I wonder what criteria Google uses to picks its fellows.

I notice the letter to the New York Times by M Nisbet, A. Townsend, J. Koomey and J. Cole finishes with

"we are the only ones who can create the conditions where the morally right thing to do is also good for politics and business." - morally the right thing to do? Of course only these people consider themselves morally right

Reminds me of the "Moral Majority"

Perhaps this tells us more about Google's Fellows than anything else.

[Peter Stroud]

Well, Ed Davey will certainly endorse these Fellows. But to be serious, why is it that Inhofe is always associated with his views on CAGW only? Surely he has many other interests that affect those he represents. If he is, in general, a good representative Google have every right to support him.

[stewgreen]

- Why do climate activists want Inhofe suppressed ? well see this example of Inhofe's good work that I posted on unthreaded a few days ago Jul 25
Video Sen Inhofe asks the EPA "are you aware of any documented cases of groundwater contamination being definitely caused by fracking ? short answer please"
- guess the answer (50% chance of being right)

(perhaps the activists will push for such videos to be removed from the Google owned Youtube and Google search)

[Jack Hughes]

@Steveta Yes I noticed that one..

... we are the only ones who can create the conditions where the morally right thing to do ...

Remember the "Messiah Complex" is a psychological condition - not an address in California.

[stewgreen]

See Bish's previous Jul 13 post IPPCC Vice chairman complaining to Schmidt about Inhofe fundraiser

[stewgreen]

- again it's PROJECTION as their main complaint against the opposition comes from what they ACTUALLY do themselves 100 times bigger
- Eric Schmidt Google chairman has form; he and his wife Wendy Schmidt * are "true believers" who have donated $millions to activist causes . After his words on Radio 4 Start The Week

"Yes when it come to Climate Change we have this vast machine of paid deniers just like Big Tobacco" (I paraphrase)

I wrote these notes : Super powerful funder of the Global Warming Hype Machine says they are losing cos of Powerful Funders schewing the debate
- See these 2 posts
1.dailycaller.com : Google’s Schmidt would bring climate activism to Obama admin
- 2. 2011 WUWT story on Google taking sides the story of 21 Paid Google Climate Scholars paid to do PR rather than research :
- "you can't be both a gatekeeper & political/scientific advocate at the same time"
* Wendy Schmidt : She became involved with two nonprofits related to climate change, Climate Central and the 11th Hour Project and on the board of NRDC eco charity"

[John Marshall]

Inhofe is a good investigator where the EPA is concerned. He does not let any foolishness slip past.

[Mike Jackson]

I wonder who on earth is going to believe a word of the academic output of any of these people?

Unfortunately, Andrew, the ones who "matter". The rest of us can just disappear down the nearest drain for all they care.

[Rick Bradford]

The the F**K do these a**eholes think they are?

They think they are the Saviours of the Planet, heroic little guys standing up against the evil juggernaut of capitalist greed and preventing the ... zzzzzz

I think they are self-aggrandising narcissists with a sense of entitlement and very thin skins.

[KnR]

When your out to 'save the planet ANYTHING you do is OK'

Its amazing how often through history that 'for the good of the people ' has been used an excuse by those that carry out action that anything but 'good for the people '

[stewgreen]

- I just found my notes I made after I saw a photo of the "huge" protest of 5-50 people (guess shows that most Activists did get the perspective right and are not mindless bullies.)
Now why would Google let Oklahoma Sen. Jim "Climate Change Denier" Inhofe use their building for a fundraising dinner ? Well..he is the senator for the state where Google houses many of it's data centers.
- "Google's website boasts of more than $1 billion donated to renewable-energy projects."
- "Last year Google forked over more than $18 million in lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics" — more than any company except General Electric.
- "Last month climate activists protested when Google sent $50,000 to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank"
- The photo has 5 protesters a commenter claims there were 50 !
- Contradiction : The Green Activists normal line is "you can't trust CEI, Inhofe etc. they are funded by big oil !",
Doesn't that mean that they want non-oil corps to be putting in a higher percentage of the funding ?..yet when this happens they protest.

Like most of the demonstrations that dot downtown D.C. each day, it was a ragtag scene: a few paid staffers, a couple of passionate locals, and a clutch of students toting signs and chanting slogans outside a glassy office tower. The company being targeted, however, was an unlikely villain for environmental protests. “Google is supposed to be green,” says Matt Owens, a climate activist from suburban Washington. “What they’re doing is completely unacceptable.” swampland.time.com

- Oh course you could spin it the other way
..saying "Google tries to bribe effective Climate Skeptic Inhofe"

[Gixxerboy]

"So in the wake of Tamsin's article..."

I sail these seas. There is no wake.

[stewgreen]

sorry for overposting, but I find stuff. Russel Cook wrote this :

"Ironic for him to advocate for people to NOT go looking for things while being associated with a business that ‘goes looking for things’.

and then links to his good 2011 article offering insight into OPEN MINDS of Google fellow PAID academics

"The uncertainty argument .. that climate scientists are corrupt" and "People who are opposed to regulation ... are trying to prove that there is an argument going on," "They're just trying to create noise."

..the writer counters : .. of course a false premise. And goes on :

This is basically all we hear from global warming believers about their critics: "don't read EPW pages, don't listen to skeptic scientists since they are corrupt, don't ask Al Gore tough questions, don't ask us to debate the issue, read Gelbspan's book but don't question anything in it, ignore the ClimateGate stuff, there's nothing to see there, move along".

Why is Google and its hand-picked ‘experts' seeking to re-educate us on global warming? Because we used Google to discover the mainstream media and far-left politicians and enviro-activist groups have orchestrated their narratives to exclude half the story.

- He also said "But I’m still dazzled by the way Google screens out skeptic material in basic searches, a person really has to force it to come up by knowing what to look for."

[Roy]

Obviously Google should have nothing to do with Senator James Inhofe. The people who disagree with this proposition have forgotten Google's motto:

Do no evil.

The bosses of Google take that motto very seriously. That is why they are willing to censor results for users in China to keep that country's dictators happy and are reluctant to censor child pornography, thereby helping to keep the paedophiles happy.

I will avoid the subject of tax avoidance.

[stewgreen]

@Roy "Do no evil" maybe super super ironic
- you forgot to mention
1. scraping your every key click to build up "anonymous" profile info *
2. PRISM : secretly sharing "meta" data with US gov
* check Task Manager & see how much processor power and RAM, Chrome is using right now

[Don Keiller]

These are exactly the kind of do-gooder,holier than thou, hand-wringing, narcissistic, arrogant, liberal "academics" who make me want to puke.

[John Norris]

Actually, it's "Don't be evil".

[edmh]

"in the face of urgent threats like climate change"

Yes: there is a truly urgent threat facing mankind form Climate Change but it is not what he Global warming Alarmists think it is. Just the opposite.

Assessing the sunspot records we are rapidly heading for (at best) a Dalton minimum in the next few decades. This will destroy agricultural productivity throughout the world.

Recently a further more extreme escalation of the temperature decline has occurred.

In the first half of 2013, UK Met Office Central England Temperatures were a full 1.89°C lower than the monthly averages of the previous 12 years. That decline has lead to significant crop failures and serious loss of agricultural productivity. The effect has been mirrored in both hemispheres.

Global Warming advocates only ever propose solutions for the control of Global Warming, (overheating), by reducing CO2 emissions.

Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming advocates fail to explain how reduction of man-made atmospheric CO2 can ever can help to control Climate Change towards a cooling world. However the climate is presently changing, (as it continues to do naturally), to a colder phase, probably because of reducing solar activity and changes of ocean circulation patterns.

Having made so many dire predictions of impending climate catastrophes from overheating, Global Warming / Climate Change advocates fail to accept that a climate change towards a cooler climate is more likely to lead to more intense and adverse weather. There is good reason to expect this, simply because the energy differential between the poles and the tropics is bound to be greater and that in itself leads to less stable atmospheric conditions.

A cooling world as the Northern Hemisphere seen in the years since 2000 leads to much more dire consequences for the biosphere and for mankind than any realistic amount of warming that could ever arise from man-made CO2 emissions. Cold is a much greater threat than any moderate amount of additional warmth that could result from greater release of Man-made CO2.

National policy makers and the United Nations are neither recognizing nor are they preparing for the eventuality.

[Brian H]

The CAGW cabal has the bit (funding control) in its teeth, and is galloping towards the Cooling Cliff.

[Russell C]

My thanks to commenter stewgreen above for catching the comment I had recently at JunkScience which also pertained to my 2011 American Thinker article on Google and its 'Science Communication Fellow' Andrew Dessler.

I can hardly emphasize the irony I mentioned my 2011 article enough, and this latest August 1st round of weirdness - from of all people Matthew C. Nisbet, a guy I also wrote about in 2011 - only hammers the point harder: The enormous irony here is the very service Google itself provides - people can do their own fact checking on the so-called global warming crisis and all facets related to it.

The greatest fear these AGW pushers have is when we question what they say, which explains why Dessler and others knock themselves out to trash Senator Inhofe and any other skeptic. They are counting on the public believing skeptics are paid shills of 'big coal & oil' and never questioning it, but when a large enough number of folks discover for themselves that there has never been an iota of proof to support that accusation, it will collapse like any other ponzi scheme, causing everyone to turn on Nisbet, Dessler, Gore, and everyone else who told us to trust them and ignore skeptics.