Shouldn't it be if the report is confirmed and the reports from the professors contain falsified data or conclusions? Maybe I'm jaded, but I found nothing surprising here. Professors at research schools are paid by outside parties to perform research. Any complex issue will have multiple, factually true sides to it. Even more challenging is any study that requires assumptions. By skewing assumptions one way or another while keeping them reasonable, it's easy to skew the outcome one way or another. The article seems to be making a genetic fallacy. Because the money came from oil or coal, any result must be inherently distrustworthy.If this report is confirmed, the two scientists should have their degrees revoked
I am with you here. I expect that academics collect fees for providing testimony, presentations, and papers all the time. The secrecy is a bit disconcerting, but Happer does not request secrecy, nor does he request a fee. The article claims this undercover investigation but the e-mail chain shows Happer specifically sought agreement on his position first: "I would be glad to try to help if my views, outlined in the attachments, are in line with those of your client." He further and very specifically explained his position in the next message. (A note added to this passage reads "A 2013 survey of 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers found 97% of scientists agreed global warming was man-made." This does not contradict Happer's position, nor is it true. If it is the same survey I looked into, only some 3000 scientists responded to the survey, and only 82% of them were in agreement. When only the most expert scientists were counted -- 79 of them -- two of them denied climate change and were thrown out of the results. 75 of the 77 left -- the 97% -- said that human activity is "a significant contributing factor" to climate change, not that it is the only or primary factor.)Maybe I'm jaded, but I found nothing surprising here.
revealed just how easy it is to pay an academic to say whatever you want him to
To be sure your client is not misled on my views, it is clear there are real pollutants associated with the combustion of fossil fuels, oxides of sulfur and nitrogen for most of them, fly ash and heavy metals for coal, volatile organics for gasoline, etc. I fully support regulations for cost-effective control of these real pollutants. But the Paris climate talks are based on the premise that CO2 itself is a pollutant. This is completely false. More CO2 will benefit the world. The only way to limit CO2 would be to stop using fossil fuels, which I think would be a profoundly immoral and irrational policy.
Fair point, but it seems as though the energy lobby has made it for that genetic fallacy not to occur anymore. maybe the two scholars at hand countered climate change scientists through facts and reasons (for Clemente, the second scientist, maybe he argued that there were many other factors that caused the death of those 3.7 million people, and that they were not a direct result of coal related pollution), but the fact of the matter is that anything they say can contain malicious intent, and that is what we have to be weary of, especially when they get transferred money through the "dark-money ATM" of the energy lobby.The article seems to be making a genetic fallacy. Because the money came from oil or coal, any result must be inherently distrustworthy.
I totally agree, and while I'll argue the money source doesn't inherently void the work, I should have said just as clearly that the money can be a cause for concern and should be a reason to investigate the validity of scientific claims.