[AEI] was founded to be an alternative to universities, freed of any desire to promote open inquiry and debate.

Let’s not forget that universities are hardly the bastions of free intellectual inquiry that they might once have been. They’ve become instead one of the least hospitable places to free speech and open debate in American life. There’s no doubt in my mind that I’d face far less incivility as an atheist addressing a typical Christian church than as a conservative addressing a typical college campus. I should know, I work in one. I don’t mean to be offensive, but the leftists here seem typical — they are frighteningly rabid. Perhaps the younger ones will grow out of it.

It also seems as though it is only a matter of time before questioning the prevailing orthodoxy in climate science will become a violation of university speech codes punishable by forced indoctrination sessions.

Sean, it’s got to hurt – a person who helped you out and mentored you has turned dishonest. But endorsing their good character, when they’ve disproven it, puts scientists in the same position as the elite MSM, where ‘journalists’ can lie or BS as they please, and not suffer any bad consequences.

And a corollary of that should be:

“Scientists should NOT take money from the AEI if they wish to be trusted.”

The AEI letter (pdf) claims that they are interested in “an author who can write a well-supported but accessible discussion of which elements of climate
modeling have demonstrated predictive value that might make them policy relevant and which elements of climate modeling have less levels of predictive utility, and hence, less utility in developing climate policy”.

While they claim to be interested in a ‘balanced view’, what they will do, based on their previous behavior, is widely promote ‘those elements with less levels of predictive utility’ and ignore all others.

Scientists should stick to the facts if they want to be trusted. On the issue of solar forcing, consider what Professor Nigel Weiss, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge, past President of the Royal Astronomical Society had to say:

“Weiss was so offended by this mischaracterization that he issued a news release, saying “Professor Nigel Weiss, an expert in solar magnetic fields, has rebutted claims that a fall in solar activity could somehow compensate for the man-made causes of global warming.”

“Although solar activity has an effect on the climate, these changes are small compared to those associated with global warming,” Weiss said in the news release. “Any global cooling associated with a fall in solar activity would not significantly affect the global warming caused by greenhouse gases.”"

This is in great contrast to Professor Sallie Baliunas, who is still apparently pushing the ‘global cooling’ issue, which dates back at least the National Center for Public Policy Research and their public relations campaign of the late 90’s; see this press release by , Talking Point#40: Sun Is Real Culprit Responsible for Global Warming

As of 2003, Sallie Baliunas is still saying that The scientific history drawn from nature and man’s observations over the last millennium suggests that a strong trend of human induced warming does not exist

As that link demonstrates, she does have a long history with right wing organizations like the Heritage Foundation, the George C. Marshall
Institute, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute – not exactly models of ‘objective scientific integrity’.

Given the fact tha the solar maximum was back in 2001, and that no ‘global cooling trend’ has been observed (as Professor Baliunas predicted), it seems that she should retract her comments, unless she’s decided to forsake science in favor of politics.

Second, Dr. Baliunis (sorry for spelling; I can’t copy and paste) is only honest if she’s become an editor at TCS with no knowledge of what the place is – unless she was hired in the past few months. It was *founded* by a PR organization as an astroturf outlet, DCI; the PR guys didn’t even work hard on covering their tracks. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_Central_Station for a background. If Dr. Baliunis merely wrote a few articles for them, she might have been duped, but it strains credibility that they’d have made her an editor.

BTW, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallie_Baliunas doesn’t paint a flattering portrait of her.

“There’s been a bit of blogospheric buzz about this story in the Guardian that accuses the conservative American Enterprise Institute of OFFERING [my emphasis] $10,000 to scientists who will contribute articles to a collection responding to the recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

A little later you say:

“So there is some concern that the AEI is simply BRIBING [my emphasis] scientists to go along with Big Oil’s party line.”

and a little later after that you say:

“The point is, there’s no need to BRIBE [your emphasis] scientists to be skeptical about climate change, or to hold any other industry-friendly minority position. ”

Now I have looked up the exact definition of “bribe” and it is:

# make illegal payments to in exchange for favors or influence; “This judge can be bought”
# payment made to a person in a position of trust to corrupt his judgment

But “Big Oil” and AEI did not bribe anybody, they merely, as you say in the first quote above (of AEI) “offered” scientists money.

They did not make an illegal payment (since they have the right to free speech) nor are they responsible for corrupting people’s judgement (since people have free will).

Have you equated an offer with a bribe?