Today I visited Rapperswil which is about 30min drive south of Zurich at the Lake. It's a small pittoresque village with a monastery on a hill in the center. Everything is very close by: The lake where people are having their sunday walk, youth play soccer, or some cold-resistant women even have a swim. The monestary. And a castle built right next to it. |  .jpg) |
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Monday, May 12, 2008
Rapperswil
ExxonMobil
In January the Union of Concerned Scientists released a report [1] that showed that ExxonMobil spent at least $16mio to fund at least 11 seemingly independent research institutes that in turn supported global warming sceptics.
For example, in 2003 scientist Sallie Baliunas published a paper "Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years" in Climate Research stating that the sun caused the current change in climate and that it was nothing to worry about ("Combating global warming would be a waste" [2] was the title of a press statement she wrote in July 2003 for the George C. Marshall Institute [4]).
The paper was controversial: It was "rebutted by 13 scientists who stated she had misrepresented their work in her paper" [1] and after its publication half of the editorial board of Climate Research resigned in protest [3].
However, "this renunciation did not stop ExxonMobil-funded groups from continuing to promote the paper. [...] The paper trail shows that, to serve its corporate interests, ExxonMobil has built a vast echo chamber of seemingly independent groups with the express purpose of spreading disinformation about global warming." [1].
This echoing from seemingly independent voices creates something that is the currency of science: reputation. How to manufacture reputation was outlined early in the 20. century mostly by Edward Bernays in his books "Propaganda" (1928) and "Public Relations" (1945). It is interesting that these classic techniques continue to work today.
To make these techniques work a little less well one needs a public database where individual and corporate funding of research institutes is recorded. Then techniques from data mining can be applied to find those artificially created echo networks.
Footnotes:
[1]: UCSUSA Report
[2]: Sallie Baliunas: "Combatting global warming would be a waste", George C. Marshall Institute, July 25, 2003
[3]: "Stormy Times for Climate Research", SGR Newsletter 2003
[4] Note that the research institute that issued this press statement, the George C. Marshall Institute, is the same that found out that tobacco smoke is harmless and there is nothing wrong with earth's ozone layer. It got about $600.000 from ExxonMobil.
For example, in 2003 scientist Sallie Baliunas published a paper "Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years" in Climate Research stating that the sun caused the current change in climate and that it was nothing to worry about ("Combating global warming would be a waste" [2] was the title of a press statement she wrote in July 2003 for the George C. Marshall Institute [4]).
The paper was controversial: It was "rebutted by 13 scientists who stated she had misrepresented their work in her paper" [1] and after its publication half of the editorial board of Climate Research resigned in protest [3].
However, "this renunciation did not stop ExxonMobil-funded groups from continuing to promote the paper. [...] The paper trail shows that, to serve its corporate interests, ExxonMobil has built a vast echo chamber of seemingly independent groups with the express purpose of spreading disinformation about global warming." [1].
This echoing from seemingly independent voices creates something that is the currency of science: reputation. How to manufacture reputation was outlined early in the 20. century mostly by Edward Bernays in his books "Propaganda" (1928) and "Public Relations" (1945). It is interesting that these classic techniques continue to work today.
To make these techniques work a little less well one needs a public database where individual and corporate funding of research institutes is recorded. Then techniques from data mining can be applied to find those artificially created echo networks.
Footnotes:
[1]: UCSUSA Report
[2]: Sallie Baliunas: "Combatting global warming would be a waste", George C. Marshall Institute, July 25, 2003
[3]: "Stormy Times for Climate Research", SGR Newsletter 2003
[4] Note that the research institute that issued this press statement, the George C. Marshall Institute, is the same that found out that tobacco smoke is harmless and there is nothing wrong with earth's ozone layer. It got about $600.000 from ExxonMobil.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Mai
Over the long weekend friends visited. We went around Zurich and to Einsiedeln, a big monastery.
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