Monday
Oct262015
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill When the Tyndall Centre loved big oil
Oct 26, 2015 Energy: gas Energy: oil Greens 
Kevin Anderson, the deputy director of the Tyndall Centre, wondered a couple of days ago whether oil-company funding was "worse than tobacco funding".
Report concludes top UK uny's receive major Oil funding&influence https://t.co/6XYamaxoBE @OfficialUoM
Worse/better than tobacco funding?
— Kevin Anderson (@KevinClimate) October 24, 2015How different to the founders of the Tyndall Centre, who were extremely keen on oil companies, discussing a strategic partnership with Shell that would include the provision of funding, placements of students with the company.
What happened in the intervening years I wonder, to change the minds of the Tyndall Centre people so far?
Reader Comments (33)
Pedantically speaking, which is worse, an educated (seemingly) man who can't spell the short form of 'university', or one who mis-uses an apostrophe?
Sorry - where exactly does "great Britain" end and rest of us start.
I cannot see any Scottish uni's listed.
It's Kevin Anderson who doesn't take a shower in order to save the planet. Another nutty professor.
Global warming professor Kevin Anderson ‘cuts back on washing and showering’ to fight climate change – Admits at UN climate summit: ‘That is why I smell’
When I last looked USS, which is the pension fund for so many academics in the UK, had as its major equity investment Royal Dutch Shell.
Funny thing is that the list of investments has temporarily vanished. Maybe just me!
http://www.uss.co.uk/UssInvestments/InvestmentsTypes/Equities/Pages/USStop100investments.aspx
though a list is promised for January 2016.
Perhaps someone would like to comment on the graph shown in this link
http://www.uss.co.uk/UssInvestments/Responsibleinvestment/MarketWideInitiativesPublicPolicy
/ClimateChange/Pages/default.aspx
Since Anderson writes paper together with the potty Alice Bows-Larkin, the only people likely to take him seriously will be those already placed under restraint for their own good.
Is there another map that shows the Green funding? I couldn't find that...
Big oil should divest from all Universities doing any climate research. As money from the Big Oil companies has been wasted on vanity projects, only to benefit the privileged few, they should pool their financial resources to help people in genuine need, and call themselves The Big Oil Company.
How about research into developing a "back-pack" portable combined solar panel and windturbine unit, for deployment into remote areas?
How about a "back-pack" portable water maker that could desalinate, and purify available water, and be run by solar/wind?
All the technology exists, and is in use, for example by people rowing the Atlantic It justs needs repackaging.
Such units would be in high demand in disaster relief emergencies, and if stamped with the Big Oil Company logo, might show up the Greens for the sham they are.
Typical of these plonkers to parrot each other but Moonbat was first:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/14/oxford-university-takes-shell-funding
Well at least some of these clowns admit that a recession and CO2 reduction inevitably go together - unlike certain economists who talk up costs of carbon but ignore the manifestly greater benefits. But which came first; the desire to control emissions or the desire to reduce growth? Of course we know the answer because Sauven, Porrit, Oreskes and several others admitted it already. Global warming is just a convenient peg to hang the anti-growth agenda onto.
I think we should decarbonize all of them.
Oil Funding vs. Tobacco Funding
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence
Has the Guardian's offshore trust fund divested from sensible investments, or do the pension fund beneficiaries still put income before failed dogma?
I studied Geology at Strathclyde Uni from '85 to '89. Until the oil price crash in '85/'86 the Uni received a lot of funding from Britoil (later taken over by BP). After the crash there was no money and I remember the department jumping on the green/CO2 bandwagon.
The Geological Society of London still has some similar conflicts of loyalty. While a big percentage of its membership works in the oil/gas/coal sector - for which most will have their fees paid for by their employer, the GeolSoc seems to be taking an anti-big oil position, certainly with respect to demonising fossil fuels.
Its Climate Change Policy Statement is well known.
But Ted Nield, the editor of its monthly members magazine, Geoscientists prmoites a particularly polarised and distasteful position in his editorials.
This month, he compares Senator Inhofe with the murderers of anti-Creationist scientists in Bangladesh. However, given his record in anti-AGW sceptic rhetoric, we can assume his intention is to smear all AGW-sceptics with a similar brush. 'Dying for Science':
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/October-2015/Dying-for-science
"International condemnation of these senseless murders has been swift.... ‘…on the very day that Roy…was bludgeoned to death yards from where he was signing copies of his latest astronomy book, another American stood on the floor of the Senate with a snowball in his hand, and claimed that what his gut told him was a better basis for preparing for the future than the scientific contributions of thousands of individuals the world over… who have built an understanding of what nature is telling us about our planet's past...‘In that sense, [Senator James Inhofe, Oklahoma] stands not with Roy, Rahman and Das, but with those who opposed them. This is why the deaths of these three science advocates in Bangladesh … is a matter of consequence the world over.
The previous month he specificaly named Willie Soon as a scientist with serious conflicts of interest.
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/September-2015/Interest-and-conflict
"In geosciences, the problem was highlighted by the activities of Willie Soon, a solar physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,...Soon, a ‘global warming sceptic’, failed to disclose in a 2010 paper on climate-change policy, that he was funded from Southern Company - an electricity provider in Atlanta, Georgia, which has lobbied against emissions limits. This was not his only transgression." [while conflcit of interest is clearly an issue in today's published science, its notable that he only mentions those on the 'dark side']
I am surprised that others in the society allow this. Regardless of your position on AGW, this is a very distasteful and un-scientific way to behave.
How about percentages of funding by Green vs Oil?
This makes me REALLY angry, seeing Greenpeace attack perfectly legitimate industrial support for universities, both in research and in training.
What's wrong with an oil company funding a chair in earth sciences, or petroleum geoscience, or MSc places? Why is it any different to Greenpeace or others funding a chair in environmental science? Oil companies need educated and trained staff in disciplines relevant to the employment of those individuals in professional careers.
As usual, Greenpeace is conflating the fact of legitimate oil industry funding with the idea that funding isbeing used for propaganda or subversive purposes<\i>. They have lumped all oil industry funding together and said it must all be suspect. I would strongly doubt that ANY oil industry funding of this type gets used for the fantasy "fossil fuel industry denialist" agenda. This is conspiracy theory writ large.
I despair of when this reversal of the enlightenment will end.
OT, but interesting!
http://speisa.com/modules/articles/index.php/item.454/sweden-to-become-a-third-world-country-by-2030-according-to-un.html
It is in the news at present, & they've tried a few times to link this with AGW!
Oil companies should be BARRED from "cooperating" with these lefty "charities" who are "against oil" anyway.
Otherwise this leaves the door wide open to BLACKMAIL DANEGELD.
A list of companies currently supporting climate science and charities promoting it for their own purposes, would be very helpful for years to come, especially when former employee advocates find themselves actually looking for a job involving work, and expecting pay in return.
Not to mention the CRU at UEA, part funded by both BP and Shell
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/web/cru/about-cru/history
Activism for its own sake is like a mania.
This Twitter Twaddle is simply demonstrating that he's paranoid too....
"Only untainted taxpayer funds must be used to fund academic endeavor and you can only work on what I say is acceptable"
What a sad waste of resources this chap and his chums are.
Hey, that's my favourite climategate quote you've got there !
This is a smoking gun. Shell want control over the research agenda to promote a carbon trading .
"Shell International would give serious consideration to what I referred to in the meeting as a strategic partnership with the TC, broadly equivalent to a 'flagship alliance' in the TC proposal. A strategic partnership would involve not only the provision of funding but some (limited but genuine) role in setting the research agenda etc.
Shell's interest is not in basic science. Any work they support must have a clear and immediate relevance to 'real-world' activities. They are particularly interested in emissions trading and CDM. [Clean Development Mechanism]"
source uea-tyndall-shell-memo.doc 11 September 2000
http://magicjava.blogspot.com/2009/11/setting-research-agenda.html
Alice is the perfect name for a little girl who fell down a rabbit hole and met a mad hatter called Kevin Anderson. He truly is a deep ecology nut if there ever was one.
Climategate: George Monbiot, the Guardian and Big Oil -James Delingpole
But who is it that sponsors the Guardian's Environment pages and eco conferences? Why, only that famous non-fossil-fuel company Shell. (Though I notice their logo no longer appears on top of the Guardian?s eco pages: has the Guardian decided the relationship was just too embarrassing to be, er, sustainable?)
And which company has one of the largest carbon trading desks in London, cashing in on industry currently worth around $120 billion ? an industry which could not possibly exist without pan-global governmental CO2 emissions laws ? BP (which stands for British Petroleum)
And how much has Indian steel king Lakshmi Mittal made from carbon credits thanks to Europe?s Emissions Trading Scheme? £1 billion.
And which companies were the CRU scientists revealed cosying up to as early as 2000 in the Climategate emails? There?s a clue in this line here: ?Had a very good meeting with Shell yesterday.?
And how much was Phil Jones, director of the discredited CRU, found to have collected in grants since 1990? £13.7 million ($22.7 million)
And why does this Executive Vice-Chairman of Rothschild?s bank sound so enthusiastic in this (frankly terrifying) letter about the prospects of the ?new world order? (his phrase not mine) which result from globally regulated carbon trading?
Or why not try this blog, in which a German Green party MP is revealed being given hefty donations by a solar power company?
Or how about this tiny $70 million donation to the climate change industry from the Rockefeller Foundation?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100019523/climategate-george-monbiot-is-in-the-pay-of-big-oil/
esmiff
Thanks for the references - loons like Kev are largely immune to the charge of hypocrisy. The best hope is I suppose that he implodes.
Perhaps Kev might consider allying with this lot? ?
Kev & Co's activist antics to my mind have no legitimate place in our higher education system - the simply stupendous quantity of hypocrisy and willful delusion being deployed by this twit and blizzard of sociological progressive gobbledegook spouted makes me seriously wonder if he's actually in the correct university department - really Does he lecture undergrads and do they have a nickname for him?
Climate science depends on a protection racket. Power companies are threatened with GreenSlime Blackmail, unless they pay money to protect climate science's income streams.
The Guardian's conscience is not troubled by it's wealth preserving hypocrisy, because without the income, the Guardian would cease to exist, as happens to other businesses flogging products that nobody wants.
Ya won't believe this folks. He's an another oil man.
"Kevin has a decade’s industrial experience, principally in the petrochemical industry."
http://kevinanderson.info/blog/biogs-photos/
esmiff
I saw that - he's remarkably coy about what he actually did in the "oil industry".
In fact so reticent is he that one suspects volunteering the details might be uncomfortable. Unless of course he's another Ian Crane .....
tomo
He isn't a normal climate scientist, he is a very public, extremist mouth piece in the manner of Bob Ward. Who knows ?
Gore, Pachauri and the new IPCC gu, Lee are oil industry connected too. Margaret Thatcher (created the Tyndall Centre) was the wife of an oil executive. The supposed, little Irish geologist that promoted peak oil was an oil industry executive and an oil company owner.
My position is that once Enron created the multi trillion dollar carbon trading scam, climate science became a vehicle to promote that. That's why it's a pack of lies from beginning to end. It's not a conspiracy theory because the climate community is happy to go along with it. There is no conspiracy as such, just mutual self interest.
my take on Kev - what a complete & utter nutter
(AKA - TWIT) did i spell that correst
I read his statement about top universities taking millions from Shell etc and my immediate thought was so what. It's a non story from a non entity based on some drivel from Greenpeace.
I tend to take the view that there are lies, damned lies and Greenpeace, who have plenty of form when it comes to lying about both fossil fuels and man made climate change.
As usual, Greenpeace is conflating the fact of legitimate oil industry funding with the idea that funding is being used for propaganda or subversive purpose
Thinkingscientist noted the above but this is not surprising because that is what Greenpeace itself does all the time. Its funding of "friendly" academics is always used for propaganda and it cannot understand why anyone else might be different.
We'll all keep the Consensus Silence, I hope, and not ask if government climate science funding is worse than tobacco funding.