As noted the other day, Gerry North was one of the presenters at Ralph Cicerone’s AAAS panel. North had previously been chairman of the NAS panel on Surface Temperature Reconstructions, where he described their due diligence process as “not doing any research” and that they just “winged it” – the sort of due diligence failure […]
My interest in climate change derived in part from experience in the stock market where “consensus” is not infrequently established in favor of opinions that are completely incorrect. And, in many cases, the people promoting the views are competent and serious people. How are such things possible? I read about the Bre-X and Enron failures, […]
I’ve posted up a little treat from the past – Enron’s climate change policy as downloaded in October 2002. I knew that Enron was favor of Kyoto before I knew of Michael Mann. In 1998, Enron received the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Climate Protection Award for its “exemplary efforts and achievements in protecting the global […]
A big story today is the guilty verdict on Enron executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. There are many interesting issues involved in this, but the one that I wish to draw to attention of readers here is that Lay and Skilling were not found guilty of stealing money or looting the treasury, but of […]
Are any of you keeping track of the news on the trials of Enron executives Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling? Andrew Fastow, their CFO, was on the stand yesterday. There’s a terrific book about Enron by Kurt Eichenwald, in which the House Energy and Commerce Committee is mentioned (they had a piece of some Enron […]
"Full, true and plain disclosure" is a fundamental obligation in the offering of public securities. As someone with experience in this field, I’ve been reflecting for some time about the following questions: Is there a duty of “full, true and plain disclosure” or its equivalent in science? If so, how is it expressed in journal […]
For people with stock market experience, "consensus" is not something that usually is a strong buy signal. Here are some interesting examples – two from Enron showing how fragile a "consensus" can be, one from a geologist surveyed in one of the surveys supposedly showing a consensus among scientists.
Climate Audit 