Funding for Climate Science.

[Title added by Ivor Catt] Sonja A Boehmer-Christiansen	1:43 PM (3 hours ago)
to Poptech

Just one comment re me in WikiLeaks.. If I made any  contributions, they relate to  my training as physical geographer/geologist in South Australia, Adelaide University and several years as teacher and lecturer,  I become a political analyst of  ‘green causes’ after doing an MA and DPhil in UK, Sussex Uni. The PhD was on the politics of marine pollution control as it began  during the  1960s to ‘peak ‘ with little implementation in the Law of the Sea treaty in early  1980s. (Title:  The International control of marine pollution)  I lived in the European  research physics ‘community’ for several decades,  in Australia,  UK and Germany.  From the mid -1980s I  worked at the  University Susses Science Policy Research Unit  as researcher and later senior researcher,  working initially on acid rain as well as  science policy-making. Several books  and articles arose from this period and defined me , in my opinion, not as a ‘denier’ or even sceptic as some have claimed, but as a realist who learnt that  acid rain had many effects, some good, others bad and that it affected different part of the environment differently. It  also became an important issue of technological and hence economic competition, giving rise to the hypothesis that  environmental threat can be used ‘politically’ - to push  competition, advance technology and increase bureaucratic powers.

My husband who died in 1992, was  a plasma and then space physicist. I think I know how science works...like other institutions in need of  financing. I also know, from my  social  science training, how readily science is misused for other purposes: a promising power by proclaiming ‘truth’ as well as fortunes, or now , increasingly, the avoidance of disaster. My research carrier slowed down and soon ended at Hull University, and in the mid-1990 I became editor of Energy&Environment (Multi-science), an academic journal which gave a voice to research by climate sceptics, or rather, tried to assist a proper science debate about the causes of climatic change, clearly of major importance to energy policy and research. As every  geologist knows climate change is typical of earth history and by  publishing the  ‘deniers’ and paying attention to the ongoing science debate in my Fuel for Thought contribution, I  hoped to assist science and energy policy. The  journal paper was bought by SAGE in 2016, I was asked to  give up Fuel for Thought and then stand down as editor in early 2017.

 Like all funded institutions – public and private – research bodies and especially the natural sciences comprise major industries/businesses relying on the public purse or the generosity of  funders – all interested parties.  Research and hence science has ‘interests’ - they like to expand and attract financial, ideological and political support. This was particular true for relatively new  computer model based science, such as climatology. Research  turned into the research enterprise as I called it.

Pure science if it exists at all, faced a difficult dilemma.; how to attract financial  and political  support. Climate science since the 1960s has been deeply concerned with  its growth and gaining funds, and the IPCC became its vehicle, spearheading a wider trend towards seeking support by prophesying catastrophe for which it – science and technology - had or  would  find the solution. A successful recipe, usually. I did a lot of work on this under a 4 year research grant from the  ESCR  studying the IPCC, the intergovernmental on Climate Change, y  concluding that its  driving force was not science (Working group 1)but WG 3 dealing with policy. I interpreted the IPCC as an body in search of support for policy ambitions closely allied to environmentalist agendas, new technological ambitions (especially in energy) and increasing powers for international bureaucracies, in brief as a political body. This was not a popular conclusion and while I published it in the academic literature and in one book (with Aynsley Kellow) it found little support among ‘greening’ institutions. The ‘West’ had created, probably with good motives, policy-driven science.

Sonja B-C 8.6.2017