Who is Novim and why are they messing with the Earth's Temperature update

I noticed earlier today an article in the Daily Californian which has become a topic over at WUWT. I had checked a bit into it this morning and when I saw that WUWT had picked up the story I decided to look a bit deeper. Here is what I have found out with just a quick investigation.

This Berkley Earth Surface Group is part of the Novim Group. It appears based on a quick review of their literature that they are very much into Geo-Engineering. In fact  in a linked PDF which is described as a Novim Overview their Executive Director Michael Ditmore is quoted:

 .... When it comes to climate change, he said, the world doesn’t have time to let politics and innuendo block the best available scientific thinking from reaching the public. 

“The problems are not unsolvable, but we’re running out of time,” Ditmore said.

It seems to me that Mr. Ditmore has already determined in his own mind that man made climate change/global warming is not something to be determined through study of the temperature records but rather an established fact in need of  immediate control.

I will try to find time to dig a bit deeper into this, but it does not appear to me that the Berkley Earth Surface Group is without an agenda.

Update:

I meant  to post this from the same source above:

Novim is being privately funded, mostly by individuals and their foundations in the Santa Barbara area

Update 2:


At least part of the funding for the project comes from an outfit called The Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research which interesting enough comes from Bill Gates money see here

Analysis of historical temperature data.     Michal Ditmore, Novim ($0.1 M)

Update 3:

From the for what it is worth file,

 Michael Ditmore the Executive Director of Novim has recently filed for bankruptcy protection. Less people think this may be another individual with the same name the filings are at the same address as Novim's Tax Exempt registration. He is also on the advisory board of  Urgent VC.

Of perhaps a more important note Jason J Blackstock the lead writer of their paper on geo-engineering is  Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment at CIGI- Centre for International Governance Innovation, love those international governance organizations. This seems like it would be an important position to put on one's resume which makes one wonder why it was left off of the Novim's web site biography of Mr Blackstock. Especially since he was not only the primary author of their paper but also the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) coordinator at COP-15
Among other writings of Mr Blackstock we find this

. Despite mounting evidence that climate change could be more severe and rapid than estimated by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), progress toward globally reducing carbon emissions remains alarmingly slow. Concern over the global failure to act on climate change has been the dominant motivation behind scientists' recent convening of several prominent reviews of geoengineering - the intentional, large-scale alteration of the climate system - as a potential recourse for moderating the impacts of climate change. These scientific reviews (particularly the Royal Society and Novim reports on geoengineering in 2009) found existing geoengineering concepts to be fraught with uncertainties and potential negative side effects, making them unsuitable as an alternative to dramatic emission reductions. Nevertheless, they recommend greatly expanding research, as the risks of unabated climate change could prove far worse than the risks of geoengineering.

It seems that for a group which claims

“Novim doesn’t take a position, doesn’t advocate a policy,” Ditmore said. “We provide a factual basis … so that policy makers can take a strong position on an issue and know that they’re backed up by the science.”

They have taken a very strong position and back an agenda.

By the way I can no longer get on Novin's web site. I assume it is temporarily down.