Planet Hot

Saw this and had to share:

Utilities Paying Skeptic
(Associated Press)
WASHINGTON - Coal-burning utilities are passing the hat for one of the few remaining scientists skeptical of the global warming harm caused by industries that burn fossil fuels. Pat Michaels — Virginia's state climatologist, a University of Virginia professor and senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute — told Western business leaders last year that he was running out of money for his analyses of other scientists' global warming research. So last week, a Colorado utility organized a collection campaign to help him out, raising at least $150,000 in donations and pledges.

(rest of article here...)

Also, courtesy of SourceWatch.org, here are some bullet points on Mr. Pat Michaels:

• Michaels has received more than $115,000 over the last four years [circa 1995] from coal and energy interests. World Climate Review, a quarterly he founded that routinely debunks climate concerns, was funded by Western Fuels.
• Michaels claims that Kyoto is an EU conspiracy to hurt smaller countries, despite the fact that basically every developed country except Australia and the US has joined.
• In August 2004, Michaels told Business Week "We know how much the planet is going to warm. It is a small amount, and we can't do anything about it.
• Michaels has published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature, being noted rather for his shrill op-ed pieces and indiscriminate denunciations of virtually every finding of mainstream climate science.
• Many of the supposedly factual statements made in Michaels' testimony are either inaccurate or are seriously misleading.
  
  

Pat Michaels is a douchebag for taking dollars to effectively make up science for Big Energy. That's gotta be against, like, the scientific Hippocratic oath or something. What, you tell me there is no Hippocratic-type oath for scientists? Well, there should be. This guy is a total ass.

Though I don't necessarily mean to sound perjorative when I call him an ass. Some asses are great. Like Jessica Alba's, for instance, as seen here at A Collection of Jessica Alba's Ass Pictures. With her posterior, da lovely can't put anybody in her pocket.

Fantastic.